Decoding the Gurus - Special: Joe Rogan 'Sorry, not Sorry'

Episode Date: February 4, 2022

To cap off our impromptu mini-series focusing on the Rogan-verse we take a critical look at Joe's short (non) apology video responding to the Spotify controversy surrounding his recent episodes with Robert Malone & Peter McCullough.In it we get to see a charming Joe Rogan being humble and compromising, while standing firm to explain why his critics have got him all wrong. He's not some hardline anti-vaccine advocate with an agenda to spread covid misinformation, he's just a normal guy who likes to have interesting conversations and hear from both sides(tm) on controversial topics.Joe's certainly on the charm offensive and he's already won plaudits from the heterodox for doing the right thing but are these really deserved? And how well does what Joe says hold up when you look at it critically? We do what few will bother and compare & contrast how Joe describes what he does vs. what he actually does and says in his content. And we find a few discrepancies that seem worth mentioning.This will be our last dip into the Rogan-verse for the next while but we would encourage anyone who wants more to go back to our episodes on Rogan & Jocko Willink or the combined episode on Robert Malone & Peter McCullough.Whether you are a fan of Rogan or a critic, we hope you can find something useful in our critical evaluation and we will back soon with a full length decoding.LinksJoe Rogan's apology videoDTG: Episode on Robert Malone & Peter McCulloughDTG: Episode on Joe Rogan & Jocko WillinkTimbah on Toast: Tim Pool - Fence SitterArticle by Tristan Flock on what Malone & McCullough have actually said and promotedSpotify's new platform rules on Misinformation

🎵 special report chris it's a special report from decoding the gurus oh my god the red phone that's where it was ringing i just ignored it and went on this internet con's dead but something's afoot in the guru sphere what's happening matt the red phone was ringing and i jumped up i'm in my pajamas apparently there's's something about an apology video by Joe Rogan that needs to be dealt with and commented on by the commentariat, i.e. us. Well, it's in our purview and Joe Rogan has released a video responding to the criticism he's received for platforming vocal anti-vax figures and promoting misinformation. He's been credibly accused by people such as ourselves. Very credibly. Very credibly, I thought, Chris. Yeah. You know, we're biased in this respect,

but Joe wants to say, look, look, look, look, look, you guys have got me wrong. You've made a mistake. The mainstream media, they've all got this wrong. You know, it's been referred to as an apology video. I think there's definitely elements of it, which are apologetic and the tone struck is one of, you know, let's just all calm down a minute and try and get our heads around, you know, what's going on here. But it is also fair to say that it is not a recantation of his views or a kind of mea culpa.

It's more a kind of explanation for why Joe has done what he's done and why he'll continue to do it. But let me make some concessions. Now, Chris, when I heard that this apology video had been released, you and others mentioned that this isn't the first time that this has happened. It is not. Correct, Matt. So Joel has a quite well-documented history of whenever controversies become kind of too hot or they get a lot of attention, particularly when he starts to get a lot of negative media coverage and when it

breaks through from internet chatter into negative articles and that kind of thing. Joe will often release a statement, record a short video, give some sound bites where his take is almost always i'm just an ordinary guy why does you know i'm a meathead i'm an mma commentator i don't know most of the things i'm talking about i'm drunk half the time so you know people shouldn't take what i say seriously yeah i just started this podcast to have conversations with people and I don't know what I'm doing half the time. Just trying to figure stuff out.

I do want to say that the thing that would make someone skeptical about, not necessarily the sincerity, but skeptical of what grand change this will introduce to Joe's content is that after all those statements that he previously makes, sometimes he'll make a couple of changes or be more careful for a while. But then, as we've seen in the episodes that we looked at, Joe is not careful and makes conspiratorial claims and he does not carefully dissect the things that his guests are claiming. He just gives the impression that he does that for editorializing and softball pushback. But so a skeptical person might have grounds to regard these kind of half apology videos

as being somewhat useful things to release in the middle of a controversy. somewhat useful things to release in the middle of a controversy. A skeptical response would seem warranted unless there is evidence that suggests Joe is fundamentally changing how he approaches information and avoids promoting conspiracies. So it was just hours after he released that apology video that he retweeted a report from Disclosed TV. Just in, Japan's Kowa, in partnership with Kitasato University at Tokyo Medical University, says ivermectin is effective against Omicron in phase three trial. Joe's comment, well, looky here. He was right after all. He shouldn't have made the apology, Chris.

He was right. Or was he? Or was he? No. you, Chris. He was right. Or was he? Or was he?

No. So that article, as it turned out, the original source was Reuters and it misreported a press release from not a phase three trial, which would be a trial in humans, a clinical trial, but in fact, an in vitro study. I believe not even a study that's been peer reviewed yet, a press release of a study claiming some antiviral effects. So just to note that we already have in vitro studies that have shown antiviral effects of ivermectin. But the point with in vitro studies, in vitro meaning like in the petri dish, in the glass,

right? Because you often can get effects in vitro studies because you can put doses or concentrations of chemicals that are hugely powerful and then this causes impacts on things right but the concentrations used are often such that if you put them into a human you would kill them so often what you get in in vitro studies does not translate into efficacy once you end up past animal trials and once you get into clinical trials. So there's a long way to go from an in vitro study to showing efficacy. And in this case, it was not even a reported study. It was a press release. So yeah, Mira Orr, after saying he's going to be more careful, he triumphantly

retreated as that he kind of implying vindication for ivermectin as a treatment for COVID. It does not inspire confidence. It does not. And a little bit of a contrast with his apology where, as we'll hear, he presents himself as merely someone who is interested in hearing all sides of an issue, both the orthodox narrative and alternative voices. But yeah, getting back to the responses, it was favorably received by some prominent people. And I'm actually just searching for your tweet. Here we are.

So Sam Harris, well done, brother. Andrew Sullivan, well-known right-wing commentator, pitch perfect and devastating. And of course, Barry Weiss thought it was great. Shocking. That was a surprise. That was a curveball. Yeah. Oh, and Michael Shermer as well.

Perfectly said. So yeah, what do we think about it? Was it perfectly said? Are we going to, you know, what do we think? Yeah. So we're going to take a look at this short video in the same way we did with like Sam Harris's short 10 minute episode on meditation and how important it was to understanding his worldview.

And I want to say that for the people that will regard this as, oh, look at them cashing in on Rogan. You know, they're trying to get attached toan, to skyrocket the fame on the back of his podcast. Controversy. Yeah, and controversy. I would like to say, I don't want to talk about Joe Rogan anymore. When we released the Jocko and Joe Rogan episode, we actually recorded that prior to the Malone or the Robert McCullough. Actually, I can't remember if we recorded it at the time

or we, but in any case, we planned it as the kind of end of our season of self-help. It was kind of a joke, right? Because he's self-help for men. And then we did the Jocko and Joe episode and that was a struggle as we covered, you know, Matt, listen to six hours in case you forgot. But then there was the Peter McCulloch and Robert Malone episodes, and we felt, okay,

we've just covered them, but that was a lot of vaccine misinformation. It's tied into the Weinstein network as we have covered before. So we covered before. So, so we covered it. And now we have been looking forward to talk about Robert Wright for months. It feels like, it feels like months to get the good guru. And we are going to do that. And we also have an episode recorded on James Lindsay and Michael O'Fallon part two, but we want to do this as like,

kind of just put a cap on the Joe Rogan, the small mini season of Joe Rogan, because this is really the controversy has peaked, here's his response to it. And let's just have a critical look at it. It's kind of his rebuttal to people like us who would regard him as partisan and promoting misinformation, right? This is him saying we are wrong and we've got it wrong. So let's look at it and see how compelling the arguments are. And I will say, let me put one thing positive first. The thing that he does say in this video is that he's going to try and get some more mainstream people on to balance things out.

And we'll talk about the issues of false balance and all that. But if Joe Rogan gets on more mainstream science scientists who help to promote vaccines and counter some of the misinformation he's helped to spread, I'm in favor of that. I think it's a good step. I'd welcome it. I don't think there's any contradiction between having that stance and saying, but we shouldn't just take Joe at his word. We should look critically at the kind of things he says and what it suggests about his

views moving forward. And of course, the next episode that he is due to release is with Majid Nawaz, who has been on the tear for over a year about vaccines. So I'm not sure there's a chance that they don't touch it because of the controversy, but I think that will also be a telltale sign. He didn't mention it at all on the episode with Jordan Peterson. So it's possible that with Majid, he will have found a way to discuss all our topics or not focus on it. But I'll be curious to see how that goes, because Majid is a very strong skeptic about people should not take direct health advice from his podcast and to take the advice of their doctor and so on. of these controversial podcasts, like specifically ones about COVID, is to put a disclaimer and say that you should speak with your physician and that these people and the opinions that they express are contrary to the opinions of the consensus of experts, which I think is very important.

Sure, have that on there. I'm very happy with that. That's a good thing. It really is. That's better than not having it on, not having the disclaimer on without any doubt. I guess I'm a little bit concerned. If they're spending two hours or three hours going through these conspiracies about the dangers of vaccines and how ivermectin or something is so much better, and then there's a disclaimer tagged on at the end, it's a bit of a nod and a wink. I mean, it's better than nothing, but again, the reason Joe doesn't oppose that is because he knows it doesn't really have much influence, right? And especially because his audience will know, oh, you can't trust the

mainstream, they're all lying to you. Spotify is doing this in order to pacify the criticisms it's got. So it will have some impact, but this is hardly him giving up some great concession. No. He's just allowing, this is controversial. Leopold II's episodes,

which he already says are going to be regarded as controversial by the mainstream. Yeah. And as you say, when people know that he's sort of obligated to have that disclaimer on,

then it'll have the effect of that very fast talking at the end of an advertisement, you know, may cause all these horrible side effects and should not be used by anyone in any circumstances whatsoever. You know? Yeah. I just listened to Tim Bunn Toast who did an excellent video. It's stunningly good on Tim Pool's rhetorical techniques.

And I think we should put in the link to this episode and we'll talk about it maybe more in the following episode. But one of the points that he makes is that if you bombastically make all these sensationalist arguments and you do that repeatedly for 70% or 80% of your content and you add in half-hearted disclaimers, which you reel off with, well, you know, but there are other people that disagree and it could be that I'm wrong about this. Anyway, back to the sensational bombastic thing that like your audience gets the clear message that there is a disclaimer that they can point to whenever they strategically need to. But what you

did is primarily promote the information that you spent most of your time talking about. And we've talked about how Brett and Hello do this with strategic disdainers. It's a very common thing amongst people promoting misinformation. And I don't even think it's always strategic. I think in some cases, it's just a thing that people do reflectively to avoid criticism. Should we start going through the content itself or any more preliminary? No, no, no.

That's it. We already kind of have. So we may as well dive in. So here's Joe kind of leveling the charge, which I'll dispute. But let's hear what he says at the start of the video. I want to make this video, first of all, because I think there's a lot of people that have a distorted perception of what I do, maybe based on sound bites or based on headlines of articles that are disparaging. I want to play that just to note that I'm sure there are some people that that applies to. It does not apply in the case of you yourself

and I, Matt. As we know, you listen to very many hours in full context, and I've listened to hundreds of hours of Rogan. We played extended clips of him talking his own terms. So he might be right that some people are just going on what they've heard about his content. It is not true of many of the people who level very direct criticisms at him. This is a very quick 10 minute talk given by Joe and delivered at the height of this controversy. Everyone in the culture war and in the political commentary

need to jump in and give their two cents. And they obviously always line up according to whether they're a free speech, liberty, heterodox sort of person or not. I'm pretty certain that the vast majority of them do not listen to the full content of Joe's episodes. I'm pretty certain they have not heard the McCulloch and the Malone episodes, but they would listen to this because it's only 10 minutes. It's the kind of flashpoint. So I almost find Joe's comments here a little bit duplicitous because he's sort of implying that the summaries, the headlines, or how it's been portrayed in the media is not a fair reflection of his material. But I think it is.

I mean, we've heard, we've documented how his, like, I'd like to see the headline that is more hyperbolic that presents the claims of McCullough. like to see the headline that is more hyperbolic that presents the claims of McCullough. I can't even imagine a headline that is more extreme than what McCullough actually was claiming. And Joe was totally nodding along to and agreeing with. Yeah. And so just in case anybody has forgotten, Matt, the kind of things that were appearing on those podcasts. Let's have a look. Let's have a listen to one of them. showing how it was coordinated and planned. Now Bobby Kennedy has his book out, The Real Anthony Fauci. I'm the most mentioned physician in that book. I can tell you that if you want to find the evidence that Moderna was working on the vaccine

before the virus ever emanated out of the lab, if you wanted to find the collusions and the operations between the Gates Foundation and Gavi and Cepi and Pfizer and Moderna and the vaccine manufacturers and the operations between the Gates Foundation and Gavi and Cepi and Pfizer and Moderna and the vaccine manufacturers and the Wuhan lab and the National Institutes of Health and Ralph Baric. But also just listen to this. And we've had a giant loss of life, a giant number, millions and millions of unnecessary hospitalizations. And it seemed to me, and I've told Tucker Carlson and many others, it seems to me early on, there was an intentional, very comprehensive suppression of early treatment

in order to promote fear, suffering, isolation, hospitalization, and death. And it seemed to be completely organized and intentional in order to create acceptance for and then promote mass vaccination. So you believe this is a premeditated thing that they were doing. So they realized that in order to get people enthusiastic about taking this vaccine, the best way to do that was to not have a protocol for treatment. It's not just my idea. Now it's completely laid out by the book by Dr. Pam Popper, the book recently published by Peter Bragan, COVID-19 and the Global Predators, We Are the Prey. So I haven't read every article of the headlines and how it's been reflected in the media. But like that is, that is Holocaust revisionism level insanity.

I don't need to play the more of the clips right now. You can go back and see the episode, but they both reference and Malone and McCulloch are referencing the Holocaust. They're both comparing the vaccines to the experiments of Joseph Mengele and the Nuremberg convention and invoking that and so on. So Joe's claims that they're, that he's promoting extreme positions and that that's, you know, not accurate. No, no, Joe, that is very accurate.

And lest it be presented that, well, that's Malone and McCulloch. Joe doesn't endorse those kinds of views. Listen to Joe's questions. I believe he's putting this to maybe it's Malone. Let's see. I want to talk more about this mass psychosis. Do you believe that this is an organized mass psychosis? All these steps that you put about isolation, taking away basic freedoms, and then offering up one individual single solution to this. And this is what has sort of fueled this. What's very obvious to people that there's a lot of people that are not acting well.

They're not acting normal. They are attacking people that seem to be ideologically opposed to whatever is going on. And they're marching in lockstep with the authoritarians. And they're doing it like Stockholm syndrome or something. It's very strange. Do you think this is an organized thing? Do you think this is just what happens when you have a massive group of people that are dealing with an incredibly tense and anxiety-ridden event like a pandemic where no one knows what the solution is? And a lot of people are terrified of just everyday life. And then all of a sudden something like this comes along and those are the people that are more easily manipulated and they fall in line together because there's sort of a tribal aspect,

this type of thinking and behavior. And you find support from other people that are equally afraid. Joe's really pushing back hard, asking some searching questions. That wasn't a question, Mark. That whole episode was to me. Do you think it wouldn't be fair to say? So that's the way Joe interviewed him. But in the video that Joe released, he goes at length to kind of establish Malone and McCulloch as valid voices. So listen to this.

Dr. Peter McCullough is a cardiologist, and he is the most published physician in his field in history. Dr. Robert Malone owns nine patents on the creation of mRNA vaccine technology and is at least partially responsible for the creation of the technology that led to mRNA vaccines. Both these people are very highly credentialed, very intelligent, very accomplished people, and they have an opinion that's different from the mainstream narrative. You can say that again. Yes. Yes, their opinion is different from the mainstream narrative and different from any kind of common sense or contact with the real world. I mean, that's from the apology video, of course, but Joe Rogan is clearly standing by his guests that they are very well credentialed, worthwhile people to hear from.

So in that sense, it's not really an apology. It's a defense. It's saying they were good credentialed people to listen to. They were good credentialed people to listen to. That description of them, nobody disputes that Robert McCullough has a history and an impressive career of publishing. Nobody disputes that Robert Malone was involved in the early stages of technologies that would help to lead to mRNA vaccines. So presenting it as these people, these are their credentials.

That's why they're worth hearing from. There's plenty of people with credentials who have extreme views. Joe's positioning of them as very credible experts that are widely well-regarded. No, they're not. There are now people with fringe extreme views that are promoted on, in most cases, the far right. They'll appear at conferences or by anti-vaccine movements. So his contextualization of them, these are mainstream academics with just an outlier point of view. It's misleading. Misleading indeed. Okay. So let's see, is it get any better? So, you know, he's defensive about Malone and McCulloch, but he wants to point out, even if they have controversial opinions, well, there's still a reason why we need to hear that. I wanted to hear what their opinion is. I had them on. And because of that, those episodes in particular, those episodes were labeled as being dangerous. They had dangerous misinformation in them.

The problem I have with the term misinformation, especially today, is that many of the things that we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact. Like, for instance, eight months ago, if you said, if you get vaccinated, you can still catch COVID and you can still spread COVID. You would be removed from social media. They would ban you from certain platforms. Now that's accepted as fact. And he goes on, he talks about the lab leak and he talks about masks. Yeah. Inefficiency of cloth masks. And apparently all of those things would have gotten you kicked off social media. Yeah. And this kind of hard comes up so much. I push

back on this on Twitter by collecting a series of my tweets about cloth masks and the relative evidence base for them, which I discussed with various people. I heard various opinions of. I didn't get kicked off Twitter. I seen people talking from the earliest stages about the relative efficacy of vaccines that we could expect and upwards of 70% was considered a good result. That would mean that 30% of people would still get infected. And even with vaccines that have 95% efficacy or 90% efficacy, like the vaccines that we got, they're not a hundred percent, right? So there's already in the figures that people are providing the notion that yes, there will be breakthrough cases and everyone knows this. And it's not something that was forbidden to discuss. Joe and so many people in his neck of the woods,

what they get wrong is like the discussion of those kinds of topics. Of course, there are exceptions. Just to give a personal example, I made a sarcastic comment about saying, yes, of course, Soros rules the world and vaccines are a plan to kill us and blah, blah, blah. And I was temporarily banned for Twitter for promoting misinformation, right? It was obviously sarcasm if you read it, but the algorithm doesn't work like that. I'm not saying the algorithm is perfect or all of the decisions

that moderators make on social media networks are perfect. They are far from perfect, but there is this difference between how science communicators and how people who are being careful discuss an issue, discuss technical aspects of it, and how conspiracy theorists and right-wing partisans talk about an issue. And they do promote misinformation and they do lie and exaggerate about things. And it's like people saying that it's impossible for science to discuss the lab like when every paper about the origins of the virus led open the possibility that, you know, they can't rule out the possibility. There were people discussing that it's mistaking hyperbolic articles on

mainstream media, as if that is all the range of possibility that's allowed. Yeah, it's extraordinarily misleading to, this is factually untrue, what he was claiming there. There was this whole bunch of issues that were being treated as completely outside of the Overton window of permissible discussion and would have got you immediately deplatformed or whatever. That's not true. But the other part of it that's extremely misleading is that in the apology video, he quite sensibly doesn't mention any of the claims that were made in those episodes. And as those clips just showed, what are the claims? That the government, Fauci, whatever, the CDC deliberately released a virus planned for this whole pandemic. We're creating a vaccine

ahead in preparation. And the whole thing was a plan deliberately killing people and withholding treatment to force them to get this vaccine for some not specified nefarious reasons. So that's the claims that Rogan's defending and he's defending it by saying that it's equivalent or the same as somebody disagreeing about whether it's a good idea to wear masks outside or not. That's not the same. The way that he frames it, it's directly invoking that science updates what is considered correct based on new evidence. And he's saying, you know, if you rule out all the opinions, you'll prevent any possibility of change.

But no one is saying that. Nobody is saying you can't discuss things reasonably. What they're saying is promoting hyperbolic conspiracy theories, which allege that the vaccines are secretly killing hundreds of thousands of people, that doctors are misreporting gunshot wounds as COVID deaths, that the vaccines cause infertility, that the solution, the protocols that could prevent 95% of the deaths in the pandemic have been silenced by nefarious authorities. That's the kind of claims. And that's Alex Jones level stuff.

That is not people having technical discussions about the relative strength of evidence for cloth masks in community settings outdoors. Those discussions do go on. And it isn't to say the public health authorities always represent the best science. They don't. They often represent compromised positions or they can not reflect the most up-to-date science. But those kinds of discussions, you do hear them. You hear them on science podcasts. You hear them on virology podcasts. You hear people disagree, debate relative amounts of evidence for different positions. And it's nothing like what Joe

and his guests engage in. What they're engaging is anti-vax conspiracy mongering. And that's what the criticism is. Yep. Agreed. Well, okay. But Joe has another response to frame what he does and how people are getting it wrong. I'm not interested in only talking to people that have one perspective. That's one of the reasons why I had Sanjay Gupta on, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who I respect very much. And I really enjoyed our conversation together. He has a different opinion than those men do. I had Dr. Michael Osterholm on at the very beginning of the pandemic. He is on President Biden's COVID-19 advisory board. I had Dr. Peter Hotez on, who is a vaccine expert.

I'm interested in finding out what is correct and also finding out how people come to these conclusions and what the facts are. So Matt, first of all, there's the positioning that he talks to a diverse range of sources, right? And he cites some of the pro-vaccine people that we've had on. Most of those are not recent interviews. And I would also really recommend that if somebody wants to compare, go and look how his interview is with Sanjay Gupta and Peter Hotez and compare it to the interview with Robert Malone and Peter McCulloch. What you'll see is that he's extremely critical of any claim by Gupta and Peter Hotez. And he presents it often as he's just playing devil's advocate. But he's very animated.

He's constantly asking them to cite studies and to prevent the evidence. And as we saw in the Malone and McCulloch episode, there's very, very limited pushback. And the vast majority is saying, is that true? And as you heard with that question, you know, the leading one that went on for like 10 minutes, Joe is on board with their narrative, whereas he's extremely skeptical when it comes to people with a pro-vaccine narrative. So it's not that he never has pro-vaccine guests on, it's that he treats them very differently in terms of the level of skepticism and evidential standards that he applies.

Even if what he said was true, like he was treating both of these positions even-handedly, which he doesn't, I agree with you there, but even if he was doing that, then I still don't think that's good practice to have some reasonable, decent voices on and then have absolutely insane people on as if these are equivalent positions that deserve equal respect and airtime. It's still really bad journalistic practice. And I know he doesn't think of himself as a journalist. He presents himself in this video as an entertainer. But as we heard in those videos, he comes across very much as an activist, not an entertainer, not a decent journalist of any kind, but rather an absolute activist for whatever conspiracy theories are running around his head at the time. There's a clip that speaks to this, Matt, which is him presenting that he wants to bring people together and he doesn't want to generate

controversy. So no hard feelings towards Neil Young and definitely no hard feelings towards Joni Mitchell. I love her too. I love her music. Chucky's in Love is a great song. I don't know what else I can do differently other than maybe try harder to get people with differing opinions on right afterwards. I do think that that's important and do my best to make sure that I've researched these topics, the controversial ones in particular, and have all the pertinent facts at hand before I discuss them. Again, I'm not trying to promote misinformation. I'm not trying to be controversial. Let me just contrast that with Joe talking at the end of his conversation with, I think this is with Malone. I'm just hoping that that clip where you explained this mass formation psychosis makes the rounds.

And I think everything you've laid out today was about as clear and as rational and as well documented as I could have hoped and more. So thank you very much for being here. Thank you very much for everything that you've done. And Jesus Christ, Twitter, put the fucking guy back on. So the difference there, right, is that I hope this makes the round. He wants the various things about mass formation psychosis to go viral, right? But he presents it as, no, I don't want any controversy.

And Matt, just before I get your response to that, one? But he presents it as, no, I don't want any controversy. And Matt, just before I get your response to that, one other thing he said was like, he enjoyed this conversation with Sanjay Gupta, right? He respects him. And he also said, I'm going to do research into these topics before I speak about them. I need to look into things a bit more. Let's contrast that with how he frames the situation with Jocko Willink when he's talking about the conversation with Sanjay. I have two clips relevant to that. If I had a conversation with you about military tactics and leadership in the SEALs, I would defer to you about everything. I would just be asking questions. You're the expert. I think he had this idea that that's how it was going to be,

You're the expert. I think he had this idea that that's how it was going to be. That we were going to have this conversation about COVID and medicine and a medical situation. And then he was going to give me all of this information that was going to straighten me out. Ouch. Didn't work out that way. It didn't work out that way. Well, I've been fucking talking to scientists and doctors and biologists and virologists for months and months and months. And, you know, you've got to be the amount of information that you have absorbed in the past six months or maybe a year about this.

You've been tracking it. You've been talking to all these smart people. Man, that's rough to roll in and think that you're going to trump your your statements. OK, Matt, one last thing. So that was Jocko, you know, saying how good Joe is. Joe got in there too. Now listen to how Joe frames his level of knowledge in this conversation. Well, I think he thought that I wasn't really informed, but I keep a fucking file on my phone and it's not a small file. Let me show you this. I have a folder on my phone called cooties. It's not a small file. I'm going to show you this. I have a folder on my phone called cooties.

And this is, these are all COVID stories that I've read. I've read every one of them. Yeah. And I know, and not COVID stories, like anecdotal stories. These are all like PubMed articles. These are all like peer reviewed data studies. These are all VAERS reports. These are all like things on myocarditis. These are all things on myocarditis.

These are all things on vaccine efficacy, how long it wanes, when it goes. I've been paying attention. I don't have an uninformed opinion. I have a controversial opinion. But what else is new? If you want to be a fucking independent person, you're going to have controversial opinions. It doesn't mean they're wrong. So two points there, Chris.

who is open-minded, is having conversations, and is looking to learn from experts, and is treating them with an even-handed sort of way, and that he enjoyed his conversation with Gupta and got something from it. In his own words there, it's clear that he viewed that conversation as a confrontational one, as one where he kind of owned Tanjay Gupta, because he had his dossier, his cooties dossier, and clearly he felt he'd won that debate. And that contrasts massively with the conversations with McCulloch and Malone, where he was so very clearly on the same page in terms of sharing their controversial opinions. the same page in terms of sharing their controversial opinions. So once again,

the way it is framed in the apology video is very misleading. He thinks of himself as being extremely well-informed on this, and he shares the views of McCullough and Malone, and he disagrees strongly with the views of someone like Sanjay Gupta. In other words, he's an activist. He's not an entertainer with an open mind having interesting conversations with people. On this topic, he is that, I would say primarily, but he gets these topics that he becomes very activist towards, which is somewhat ironic because he presents activists as obscuring facts or misrepresenting things. But like you said, Matt, the contrast in those clips, listen to this. This is from the apology video. I do not know if they're right. I don't know because I'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist. I'm just a person who sits down and

talks to people and has conversations with them. Do I get things wrong? Absolutely, I get things wrong. But I try to correct them. Whenever I get something wrong, I try to correct it because I'm interested in telling the truth. I'm interested in finding out what the truth is. And I'm interested in having interesting conversations with people that have differing opinions. Now, Matt, again, Joe's not a doctor, right? He doesn't advance things. He just has conversations. I sent my friend Ari, I sent him, Joe's not a doctor, right? He doesn't advance things. He just has conversations. I sent my friend Ari. I sent him. He just had COVID.

I sent him nurses to give him the IV vitamin drip, same way I did Aaron Rodgers. Same way I did a Tim Pool. Oh, you mean Satan? I send people. I send people to my friends when they get sick. I'm like, here's what you do. I'll take care of it. I want to hook you up.

So I just have it take, because we have a service that we use. And so the service works nationally. Did you have a protocol set up for yourself if you got COVID? Yes, yeah, I did. And that was based on all the research that you've done? Yeah, yeah, I was ready to go. Yeah. So you just had to pull the trigger?

I just had to pull the trigger, and it worked. And it worked. Five days later. The contrast. Some slight difference. Some slight differences there, Chris. The contrast. Some slight difference.

Some slight differences there, Chris. The epistemic humility that he is projecting in the apology video. Just a guy who doesn't really know, thinks people should listen to their doctor, take their doctor's advice. Yeah. I mean, I don't even think we need to editorialize it because like you should. This is my point though. to editorialize it because like you should this is my point though people like sam harris or other figures who or michael schirmer the head of the skeptic organization in the u.s they shouldn't need someone like me or you to point this out it should be fucking obvious because supposedly they

listen to joe rogan right so they they might say, well, this is a good sentiment, Joe, but you know, you've said very different things very recently, which one is accurate, you know? But none of that. Yeah. Oh, he's done it. He's answered all the critics. Bravo. Bravo, Joe. We said it before, but the truth is, is that they haven't listened. We said it before, but the truth is, is that they haven't listened. They don't know what Joe's talking about, but they know what side they're on in this controversy, no matter what. It's very frustrating. And you're right.

It doesn't require any editorializing by us. Anybody should be able to listen to Joe's statements back to back. And the conclusion is, is that this apology is extremely misleading. I mean, we could be super fair about it and say, oh, look, these things don't match up, which is it, Joe. But we've listened to Joe enough to know what the truth is. And the truth is, is that the apology video was designed for an effect. I think he's quite aware that most of his critics and even most of the supporters, the people weighing in and the infosphere are not aware of the kinds of rabbit holes he

goes down on his podcast. And he can kind of get away with it by just pretending it didn't happen and contradicting himself like this. Yeah. And like Matt, just the tonal difference is so, it's so striking, you know, listen to the way that Joe talked about, you know, all the research he's done and how well informed he is. Then, then listen to this. You know, I do all the scheduling myself and I don't always get it right. This, these podcasts are very strange because they're just conversations and oftentimes i have

no idea what i'm going to talk about until i sit down and talk to people and that's why some of my ideas are not that prepared or fleshed out because i'm literally having them in real time but i do my best and they're just conversations and i think that's also the appeal of the show. So that framing is presenting it as, I haven't done research. I just have conversations. We just see where things go. And there isn't any editorial line that I'm taking. Can I just play some clips that might suggest that's not exactly true. Like it's an engine for fueling views.

It's an engine for controlling the population. And here's my biggest fear. It's an engine for the institution of some sort of a social credit system. And I think that's common. And I think we've got to fight like fucking tooth and claw to keep that. Here it is. Regeneron released data that indicated one dose antibody cocktail cut the risk of catching the virus by nearly 82% from two to eight months. For two to eight months.

So this is about the vaccines being in the engine for controlling the population, right? And then? That's what it is. And that's what it is. And it's a tribal formation. And it's people who don't have personal sovereignty and people who aren't confident with standing by their own thoughts and objectively analyzing things outside of an ideology, outside of the tribe. Those people are very susceptible right now. And those are more common than not. The vaccinated people have no personal sovereignty.

They aren't willing to look at things, you know, bravely. These are not things that Joe thinks about in the spot. He's repeated these narratives over and over again. And in the episodes we've looked at in other episodes, these are themes that come up. They aren't just things that he says at this point in the moment and then retracts the next week. That's not what he does. And just to reiterate in his own words, he doesn't come unprepared to topics like COVID and vaccinations.

He's very proud of the research that he's done. He's very proud of how well informed he is. So much so that he can debate and surprise in his own mind, Sanjay Gupta with all of these counter arguments showing him why the conventional orthodox view is wrong. As those clips show, he goes so far as not just agreeing wholeheartedly with all of these conspiratorial claims, but then going on to psychologize this mass formation psychosis theory to explain why so many people have turned into these NPCs and are sheeple and are blindly accepting the vaccines and so on. So that's how far along he is and how much he's accepted this point of view. So, yeah, once again, the apology video was kind of compelling.

Like it was well done. I listened to it just sort of, if I didn't know all of these things, if I hadn't heard all of these things before, I would have been nodding along going, yeah, that sounds super cool. And man, you know, you've just been getting... He's just a normal guy. Yeah, people are just going... He's just trying his best.

Yeah, he's maybe made a couple of missteps and then people are jumping all over him for something. It's very misleading, extremely misleading. Yeah, and so we're almost through the end of it, but like here's Joe, you know, saying he's going to make efforts to make things different moving forward. And this is the part where I think people claiming that it wasn't an apology video or wasn't intended to give that impression. I think it clearly was because of stuff like this. So my pledge to you is that I will do my best to try to balance out these more controversial viewpoints with other people's perspectives so we can maybe find a better point of view. I don't want to just show the contrary opinion to what the narrative

is. I want to show all kinds of opinions so that we can all figure out what's going on and not just about COVID, about everything, about health, about fitness, wellness, the state of the world itself. It's a strange responsibility to have this many viewers and listeners. It's very strange. And it's nothing that I prepared for. And it's nothing that I ever anticipated. I am going to do my best in the future to balance things out. I'm going to do my best. But my point of doing this is always just to create interesting conversations and ones that I hope people enjoy. So Matt, there's a couple of things there. One, that, you know, on every issue, if you just bring all positions, including the most extreme positions, that you'll kind of hash it out. And through podcasts, we'll get together, we'll discover the truth about health and medicine and COVID through listening just to discussions.

Regardless, if it's with people promoting misinformation and anti-vax information, you know, we'll work it out. And no, it doesn't work like that because people would then get the impression that the doctors that you have on and the anti-vax advocates that you have on, they all have validity to their points of view. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle that, you know, you all have validity to their points of view. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle that, you know, you're not going to get to the fact about medical topics on a podcast by featuring an extreme outlier position followed by somebody in the mainstream who can push back.

That's that false equivalence thing where, you know, is global warming occurring? Here's one doctor that says it is and another that says it isn't. 99% of doctors agree with this guy, but you know, if you have 50-50, it's the wrong impression. If Joe wanted to give the accurate impression of the relative weight of the opinions, he would very, very rarely feature these extreme lone partisan views. But he's talking about balancing them, you know, making it a 50-50 equivalence. I really see a character like Joe Rogan as really a symptom of a broader malaise here, Chris. They've called it the great leveling.

It's the effect of the internet and viewer numbers and clicks and so on driving the infosphere, right? And Joe Rogan's extraordinarily popular because he produces popular content, right? He's got an affable sort of personality and conspiracy theories sell and misinformation is extremely appealing to large segments of the community. Now, the free speech and rationalist fond hope is that in the great marketplace of ideas, when all the views are heard across the spectrum, as you say, equal weight being given to the crazy ones at the fringe and equal weight given to the mainstream consensus

held by like 99% of people with any expertise in the topic, then all of us listeners will be able to figure out, we'll get to the truth that way. And sadly, as you say, that's just not how it works. It's quite concerning. I think Joe is like a dazzled deer in the headlights here. He's totally misled, right? His epistemics are terrible. He's on a personal level, unable to figure out stuff like was the moon landing a hoax or not? Is ivermectin a good idea or not? He's personally unable to do so. And he's sitting there with this massive platform and his strong personal opinions.

And that's what's led him to be this conduit for dangerous misinformation. But I think that's also perhaps being too kind to Joe, because I don't think Joe is confused on this issues. I think he has a clear opinion on most of them about it, what is correct. And he advocates for it, but he strategically retreats to the point of, I don't know, I'm not a doctor when it's convenient, but his, his output gives the clear impression. He isn't confused, right? The Ivermectin thing that he retreated yesterday was lucky here because it was him feeling vindicated about his position.

So the epistemic humility pose is, I think, just strategic for Joe. I don't think it reflects his level of confusion about these topics at all. Oh, I completely agree. I think this apology video is quite duplicitous and misleading and strategic. And I think it's quite effective at what it attempts to do, which is to misrepresent himself as being this casual, open-minded guy who isn't really sure about these things, has epistemic humility, and is interested and open to being better informed by people who know better than him. I only meant to say is that he is genuinely misled. Like he is prone to conspiracy theories. He believes it. Yeah. Yeah. That like, this is

one point that people often get wrong where they're like, so you're saying he's not sincere. Like I, even these points where we're saying these contradict, I don't think that this video was made with him. Like it was strategic. The extent to which he knows that he's misrepresented things. I don't know. I have no idea, but it doesn't matter because I feel like he's sincere in what he says in the moment, but it's the fact that it's serving his current purposes. It doesn't mean that sincere Joe is the real Joe and the Joe on the podcast that we're playing is the fake one or vice versa. They're both Joe in different contexts with different purposes,

thinking about different audiences. And again, so think about that way that Joe presented himself as somebody, you know, trying to get there, just having conversations. He doesn't want the fever one side or the other. And he hears him talking on his podcast with those guests. And they feel like they have this ultimate power to just force people into this binary solution. And the ability also to suppress information, which may in fact be accurate, that the vaccines do carry a risk. What you said today, none of this is wild conspiracy theory.

You're obviously incredibly well-educated, and you're more than qualified to distribute this information. But if this was on YouTube, this would get taken down. We're very fortunate that Spotify doesn't operate like that and that this can be received by millions of people all over the world. But there's not a lot of avenues for this now. There's very few, in fact. They're randomly, I mean, not randomly, just they are purposely targeting experts and doctors that have opinions that differ from the approved narrative.

You are one of those experts. Well, maybe because I looked in the camera and gave a wink in one of the interviews, I think it was Tucker Carlson, where I said, bring it on. And this is what I mean about this. This is a giant game of chicken. And the bottom line is the people who win are the people with the truth. So Joe isn't, he is trying to balance things. Why?

By promoting Malone and McCulloch, who aren't people making extreme claims, right? They're very balanced and fair people. And Matt, this is a little bit unfair, but this was from the same episode. Actually, just a couple of moments after that clip that we played. If we want to get past the pandemic, that have to go is asymptomatic spread and asymptomatic testing. Get it out of here. The other one is natural immunity, robust, complete and durable. Never wear a mask, never take a vaccine, never take another test. You're

done. It's one and done. I advise the Sri Lankan government. They reached out to me and said, listen, we're in trouble. We're getting buried with COVID. This was several months ago. They said, we're running out of masks. What do we do? I said, get your COVID recovery people out there and man the tents and start handing out the ivermectin hydroxychloroquine-based protocols. And that's what they did. Yeah. And Joe is like fully supportive of these guests, does not push back at all, evinces no skepticism whatsoever, unlike when he is interviewing more orthodox figures. So it's quite clear that he's fully convinced himself of this conspiratorial position and that he values his role and sees himself as doing a great good by actively promoting those voices. I think at some point in one of those videos, he's saying that people should rise up against

taking vaccines or whatever, and against all of the suppression of information and all of the misinformation that's coming from governments and medical authorities. That's where Joe's sympathies lie. So it's completely at odds with the apology video. And, you know, I just have to return to it. It makes me sad to see these prominent figures in the rationalist, the skeptical and the heterodox spheres, just applauding the apology video, seemingly ignorant or totally unaware of the misrepresentations and mismatch between it and what Joe's doing. So, you know, like if Joe's content fundamentally changes and he becomes, you know, very balanced and he facts checks people and he starts looking into the claims

and we see a marked change, he doesn't talk with guests that have no relevant expertise. Then I'll be happy to come back here and say, I was wrong. Got it wrong. Joe had a change of heart. He has appeared more skeptical. He started trying to look into issues before he talks about them. I'll be happy to be wrong about this. I wish the same were true for the people in the heterodox sphere. If it turns out that this is not a dramatic change,

right? If it turns out that this, the way that Joe responded, didn't indicate a change of heart. If that were the case, that they might say, well, maybe I should look at things more critically, but they don't. They don't do this, Matt. They never do. And I am taking like, you know, not Shattenford, I don't even know, frustration at this because I just see it so many times. It's what makes people platform Brett Weinstein and treat him like he's somebody who has very, you know, important insights and not mention all of the disinformation he's pushed about

ivermectin and vaccines, right? Michael Shermer did it. Various other people in the heterodox sphere had him on as a guest to talk about his book. Didn't raise the anti-vaccine advocacy at all at his request or his publisher's request possibly, but you shouldn't do that. Shouldn't do that. Sam Harris to his credit is one of the few that pushed back against that. Joe himself, by the way, Matt, he agrees. He agrees with us. All these people that are big fans, listen to what Joe said at the end of the video. If I pissed you off, I'm sorry. If you enjoy the podcast, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you to Spotify. Thank you all the supporters. Even thank you to spotify thank you all the supporters and and even thank you to the haters because

it's good to have some haters it makes you reassess what you're doing and put things into perspective and and uh i think i think that's good too that's right so he you know don't mention the joke don't mention it you're welcome you're welcome he does it well though like he comes across as big-hearted yeah we sound like the assholes and responded to that but that's the point is like it's not all about tone it's not all about who comes across better in a video designed to make you come across well right you know the other thing is I don't hate Joe Rogan. I like listening to him talk with comedians, with Carrot Top.

He did a good interview. I've liked various discussions he's had on this podcast with scientists, with MMA fighters. I enjoy his content. The bit I don't like is the misinformation, is the conspiracy theory, the theorizing. It's the arrogance and the constant presentation of himself as nonpartisan, politically moderate. He isn't those things and he never acknowledges it. So that's it. You and I are not calling for Joe Rogan to be banned or de-platformed. We just don't think that he should be able to promote misinformation with no

consequences. And he hasn't been able to, right? There's been public outcry. Spotify have had a lot of trouble as a result of this. And now Joe has come out with a statement saying, oh, I'm going to try to do things differently. There has been consequences for what he's done, but he has promoted anti-vaccine misinformation to tens, if not hundreds of millions of people. He's the biggest platform that the anti-vaccine movement has in mainstream

because he is mainstream. He's the most popular podcast in the world. And as a result, it's not punching down to criticize someone like Joe. He's not doing MMA commentary. That's not what we're criticizing him for. We're criticizing him for his anti-vaccine misinformation. In the discourse, this controversy around Joe is very much framed in terms of censorship. Should Joe be censored or not? And if Spotify were to do anything, then that is presented as a form of censorship. And I just don't believe that's the case. I don't think a company, just like an individual, has an obligation to help the spread of dangerous misinformation, really bad health advice and

potentially fatal ideas around COVID and vaccines. I don't think Spotify is obligated to go on with their business relationship with Joe without interfering in any way, shape or form. I think it is their right, if they chose, to not participate in that. I think that's a bigger discussion that needs to be had, but they have to stop framing it in terms of, this is all censorship. Everything has to be treated totally equally. That's just a really unhealthy route to go down. Everybody knows this because they know the platforms that don't have any moderation end up filled with Nazi stuff and child porn or that kind of thing. And most people acknowledge those are red lines,

right? That you shouldn't be promoting those on mainstream large platforms. And similarly, people do have red lines. Like they acknowledge that there's a product called Miracle Mineral Supplement, which was promoted along with these kind of like weird cultish kind of religious things. It's bleach. It was encouraged to be given to children for people to take for ailments. And most people acknowledge that you shouldn't be able to promote that on platforms. You shouldn't be able to give misleading information about a product that's going to harm children and say that it cures people. So everyone has red lines. The question is where they're drawn and what, you know, what degree of harm versus the kind of

balancing act of allowing different opinions, even controversial opinions. And it's not easy to draw boundaries. But this view that any response to the kind of clips that we've played with Malone and McCulloch saying, don't get vaccinated, don't wear masks, the vaccines are killing people, it's a mind control plot, and so on. That is not a measured debate about the efficacy of cough masks. So be honest about what the content is. And that's where the discussion should be. You can take a different position than me and Matt completely legitimately on like, you know, how you should work within the frameworks of free speech versus factors related to public health or dangerous messaging.

But you have to do it with acknowledging the kind of information that's there. So free speech versus factors related to public health or dangerous messaging. But you have to do it with acknowledging the kind of information that's there. It's a legitimate debate about when things cross that red line or how wide the Overton window is on a given topic. Most people can easily see that Holocaust denialism might not be something a platform like Spotify would prefer to host and wouldn't have a problem with them saying, okay, we're not going to host that. As you said, if someone's promoting drinking bleach, this isn't qualitatively different. There's always some line that has to be drawn. And I think what we're saying is that you cannot just throw up your hands and say free speech absolutism and just avoid the whole question. You can do it.

You can live in a libertarian bubble fantasy world where there is no regulation and we all own our individual roads and band together into like Mad Max communities to form our own militias. But like libertarians of that stripe are fucking mad and inconsistent. My kingdom for a consistent libertarian. Anarcho-capitalist libertarians. Yeah, fucking Stephen Molyneux used to be one. But the thing is, I see that free speech absolutism thing.

I disagree with what you're saying, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. I've seen that applied to Joe Rogan's material by otherwise reasonable people who would regard themselves as a centrist, moderate people. And I think that they're just avoiding a difficult problem. I think people need to face up to it that you can't just avoid it through with free speech, wave your hand, magic wand.

You could legitimately take the position on balance. The most that you should do is put warnings on this content, right? Like you could take that. But if you're going to take that position, I think you have to just acknowledge what his content is and what's there. And that's what's missing in so much of it. It's missing in how Joe framed the debate and it's missing in the people that defend him from criticisms and some of the critics who don't take time to look at his content,

but the criticisms that most people level about the things that he's promoted are accurate. They are accurate. Yeah. As you were saying, Chris, there is no mention of the actual content, the actual ideas that is getting actively spread by Joe Rogan, deliberately not mentioned in Joe Rogan's apology speech. He doesn't make specific mention of the controversial issues. And it's not mentioned by the defenders or the people who are applauding that apology. And it's just important that if you do defend Joe Rogan's right to free speech,

if you choose to take that position, you will have to accept as part of that, the cost of that free speech is Joe Rogan is influencing a lot of people not to take vaccines, to believe that their government is involved in this nefarious schemes and deliberately killing its own population and encourage them to take ivermectin cocktails instead. Yeah. We don't know exactly how many people who have been influenced by Joe, but let's say it's a lot, right? It's a question of whether it's tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. So just acknowledge that, just acknowledge that that's the price one needs to pay for the benefits of Joe having unrestricted free speech on this topic.

Yeah. So as per usual, Matt, we've managed to go over an hour for a 10 minute clip, but I think this is a good example because like one, we're not going to return to Joe Rogan anytime soon. And also the apology, sorry, not sorry genre of apology is an interesting genre to look at. And I think Joe Rogan, for all the criticisms we've given him, I can agree with the IDW people that this was a masterful performance. It was very convincing. It was framing things in a way that makes him sound very reasonable and that makes his critics seem very unhinged and very unfair.

And yeah, he comes across extremely decent, extremely sincere, and somebody who is being unfairly maligned by people who just have too little tolerance for diverse viewpoints. So good job, Joe, on those respects. I have to give respect for that. It was masterful. I can see why he's a big deal because he's very good at this. All right. One last thing is our editor, who is a libertarian.

I'm very sorry. I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about the extreme libertarians, the mad ones. You know them. You know them. You've seen them at the libertarian con and stuff. Not all you reasonable libertarians, you know, with your economic policies that are well thought out and all that. That's fine.

That's fine. You don't need to contact me. I think you'd agree. Just, I'm talking about the extreme guys. You know them. You know them, right? Not you. Not you.

I've read stuff about consequentialist libertarianism and it seems really good. It doesn't really sound like libertarianism actually, but yeah, there's lots of different versions. That's my point. Yeah. There's libertarians that are really sensible. I want to live in their state. Good job libertarians. But you know the ones I mean, right? You know it, you guys, you know it. You've got them. It's those guys, not you. All right. So thanks, Matt, for enjoying it. And we're off out of the Roganverse.

We're into the Bulbaverse. Robert Wright coming next. We've got it clipped. We're looking forward to it. And it's going to be a fun one. It is going to be a fun one. It's going to be really good. A big change of pace.

No more Joe Rogan. I don't care what he does. He could reinstigate the moon landing hoax and say that the twin towers were destroyed by space-borne lasers. I'm not going to comment on it. I'm done with it. He's somebody else's problem now. I mean, he's going to talk to Majid.

Fuck that. I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. And we will get to Majid eventually, but not doing that. I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. And we will get the magic eventually, but not right now. Okay. So,

so thanks everyone. Um, and, and maybe it is safe again, you know, to go gravel at the feet of your repentant muscle master. Um, so,

so go do that. I will. As long as it's not Joe Rogan. Bye. Thank you.