Offline with Jon Favreau - Why Do People Love Joe Rogan?

Episode Date: October 29, 2023

Johnny Harris, filmmaker and journalist, joins Offline to talk about Joe Rogan—how he became the world’s most famous podcaster, where he stands (or doesn’t) on censorship, and how he created a brand of anti-woke contrarianism. Johnny argues that people who are tired of polarization and tribalism see Rogan’s openness, curiosity, and resistance to mainstream labels as a breath of fresh air. But Rogan’s guests also regularly spread misinformation, and Johnny considers the machismo atmosphere of The Joe Rogan Experience to be a gateway podcast, one that leads listeners away from openness and curiosity and towards men’s rights activists like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

I had some conversation with friends who were like, actually, like, Joe Rogan, actually, like, you got to give him a shot. And I'm like, I'm not going to give Joe Rogan a shot. Like, he's the guy who shows up in my newsfeed as like saying all these terrible things. And yet you're right. For the people who understand him, it does create this kind of cultish, like, Joe Rogan speaks truth and no one else does. And that's a part of a broader,

we're renegotiating our relationship with media institutions, governmental institutions, all kinds of institutions that are the authority. And that skepticism, that mainstream media sort of pushback on all sides really is fertile ground for an independent feeling individual in his random room smoking weed to be like, actually, I'm speaking truth that the mainstream media won't tell you about COVID vaccines.

I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline. Hey, everyone. My guest this week is filmmaker and video journalist Johnny Harris. Our friend Max Fisher is still out sick, but don't worry, he'll be back soon. So this week we're going to dive straight into my interview with our guest. Johnny Harris is the former host of Vox's Border series and current New York Times contributor and YouTuber. Johnny's known for his trademark high production video investigations,

where he debunks conspiracy theories, dissects global political conflicts, and tackles tricky questions. So it's one of those questions that I invited Johnny on to talk about today, which is how did Joe Rogan end up hosting the most popular podcast in the world? Johnny published a video a couple weeks ago that set out to answer that question. He watched hundreds of hours of the Joe Rogan experience, from his first show in 2009 to present day, and painted a picture not just of Rogan's shortcomings, but also his appeal. We talked about how Rogan's fame rests in his contrarianism,

why Johnny wouldn't call him a right-winger, and how Joe Rogan illustrates the way every journalist wrestles with the temptation to appeal to the worst parts of our nature. I also asked Johnny, who is a longtime international reporter, about some of his upcoming reporting on the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict and what he learned having previously visited the region for a series of documentaries back in 2016. Next week, we'll be back to our normal format with Max. As always, feel free to email us your thoughts or episode ideas at offlineatcricket.com. Here's Johnny Harris.

Johnny Harris, welcome to Offline. Thanks. It's exciting to be here. You've done a lot of outstanding video journalism that helps explain some of the world's most complicated geopolitical issues. But you recently tackled a tricky question that you said had been on your mind for a long time. It's also one that's been on my mind for a long time, which is how Joe Rogan ended up hosting the most popular podcast in the world. But before we dive into what you found, like what made you want to answer that question? And how many hours of Joe Rogan did you have to consume to do it? More than I ever thought I would or wish to. I mean, it was an amazing experience in some ways. And in other ways,

it is just a lot of dudes talking. And that is tiresome after a while. So why did... Which is a lot of podcasts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of podcasts are our dudes chatting. Here we go. Let's dive in. So Joe Rogan, it's impossible to not feel the ripple effect of this guy's influence in our discourse. And maybe, I don't know if everyone feels that but i certainly felt it and not because i was like a target consumer or because i was like in that world but just because it would come up it's like so soundbiteable it's so he does such an amazing job of like coming up with like really juicy controversial little nuggets that just get sort of spread around and and then a lot of people sort of invoke him as like,

well, the Joe Rogan podcast about X, Y, and Z, like he sort of has this like quasi authority somehow. And I was like, who is this guy? Isn't he like a professional wrestler guy? Like, what is this? And so there was a juxtaposition there that I was just very naturally curious about, just myself, not as like a video maker journalist. And I think,

finally, I just hit a breaking point where I was like, I'm never going to actually answer this question unless I make it my job, you know, which is often a lot of things like I'm going to turn this into my full time job to care about Joe Rogan for a couple weeks. And then the listening began. And I did listen to many like it replaced all of my consumption. Like I stopped listening to The Economist. I stopped listening to podcasts. I stopped listening to music and books. I like listened to Joe Rogan. And again, I guess the first thought was like, what a weird experience to just change your media diet like completely to this other mono crop of joe rogan secondly you realize that there is something so simple and satisfying about just hearing people talk informally like it's almost

cathartic to be like this is not soundbited this is just two hours of like people talking and they're kind of pontificating and shooting from the hip. And in a world of soundbites, I think I felt that sensation of like, this is kind of fun to just like, know that there's no like editing going on here. So that was, that was my first major reaction was just, I get why this is appealing. This guy's entertaining. He's fun to listen to. And it's so different than most media that we consume. I mean, I get a lot of that because I have now done this for the last six, seven years. I've always wanted to, because I'm in same as you, I like hear so much about Joe Rogan and he's like, you know, like I said, he's got the most popular podcast in the world. I think it's like 11 million people per episode, which is just wild in terms of a podcast,

especially when you think about what like the most popular newscast get these days, even when there are big live events. But every time I've tried to listen to Rogan just to see what all the fuss is about, I just can't get over how long each of those episodes are. And like there's so much throat clearing at the beginning and i do agree that it isn't some there's something nice about just hearing people chat right that's the

whole allure of podcasts and i listen to a lot of podcasts that are like that but good for you for listening to that many hours because it's just like i'll i'll pull up my app and i'll be like oh god it's like a two and a half hour joe rogan episode what the fuck what is going on yeah why are they talking i think also people have begun to, and this is one of my sort of critiques that I didn't go too deep into. I was about to. It was kind of a part in the script. But it's like, because it's two and a half hours, you're effectively saying like, if

you want to be informed about something like this is going to consume the bandwidth you have, unless you're listening to podcasts all day, like this is going to consume the time you have to consume media of this format and and so it does monopolize people's information sort of perspectives which i think is why you have like diehard joe rogan warriors like they they're like well i i see the world through joe rogan's lens because he does consume a huge amount of people's time and like his strains of thinking are are woven into all of that and whether you decide that's bad or good I don't know but like it's definitely influential because of that because he is

consuming so much time I know a little bit about Rogan's background I had no idea how eclectic it was can you talk just a little bit about how he ended up as a podcast host and also like what that first episode back in 2009 was like and has it evolved since then or how did it all start? It's a really fascinating story. And I was, you know, I thought this guy was some mastermind who, you know, who rose up and like had this all plotted out. And maybe he is. And I have my like meta theories on him that I'll get to here. But he started out effectively as an entertainer.

Like this guy was, you know, kind of a cheesy sitcom actor for a little bit. And then he got into stand up comedy with kind of this like very like potty humor like raunchy humor type silly uh humor and then he became a uh host for fear factor that was like his big thing um between that and his like ufc hosting he just got the reps of becoming a person who could present to an audience and like this lovable, enthusiastic, earnest character from reality TV to UFC to sitcoms, his kind of relatable personality just pervades each one of those formats, even though they're so different. You would imagine you would need a different personality for each of those.

He, as this just lovable guy, was able to slip into all of this with the through line being like, I'm just really likable and really good at reading the room and entertaining. And so the podcast actually crops up right at the early dawn of podcasting, kind of the late aughts, like 2009, I think was his first one. And it was like kind of a foreshadow for what was to come. And an open-ended conversation with like a fellow comedian that didn't really have a lot of like direction. It was just a conversation and these guys are making jokes and they're being kind of raunchy and they're kind of uncensored. And like it just kind of evolved from there, but it stayed similar. Like it stayed, that ethos of just like unfiltered, let people talk. And Joe Rogan's lovable the whole time is his secret weapon. And like, he's brought, you know, people on to participate in that experience. And I think for the people who are on it, it's kind of cathartic. You know, Elon Musk sitting around smoking weed with him is like this thing you can't really do elsewhere. But like Joe Rogan has created a

space where that is possible. And I think people freaking love it because of it. So you end up with four main takeaways after listening to thousands of hours of Joe Rogan. He hates boxes. He sells contrarianism. He lets people talk and he models curiosity and openness. Let's start with the boxes point. You mentioned that before you made this video, your experience with Rogan was primarily limited to seeing these like, you know, short clips of him saying things that are often offensive, misogynistic, racist, transphobic. I've had a similar experience. That's sort of how I've encountered Rogan as well. But now that you've listened, you said that you wouldn't necessarily call him a right winger. How would you characterize

his politics? Yeah, that was the most disconcerting kind of flip for me as I started to listen. You go in with preconceived notions of like, oh, Joe Rogan, kind of alt-right, misogynistic, whatever. That was the box that i had put him in we're all trained to put people in boxes especially in this time of our of our world like we are we are trained by our media to be like oh you belong to that that super identity and so i just had that sort of default training reaction listening to, you suddenly start to be like, oh, I'm now challenged in all of my assumptions. He's super progressive on certain things and social issues. He's suddenly just like, oh, universal basic income makes total sense. And then the next day, he's, you know, he's kind of parrots a lot of

this like misogynistic vernacular that like we identify with that sort of alt-right identity. And so, he has views that juxtapose other parts of his identity, which again, I think is a very rare thing for someone in the public eye to have. I know I feel that as a public person. I need to kind of line up with a certain set of identity markers. And I try to push against that. But Rogan really pushes against that. He has views all over the place. And that's why I started He Hates Boxes. And I think he genuinely does. If there's one thing I think is very genuine about the whole thing, it's that he is a curious guy who doesn't like the notion of tribal polarized identities. And I think he genuinely embodies that. And then I think he pushes that as a brand and sells that as a part of his like popularity.

Do you think his hatred for boxes is part of the appeal? And why do you think people are sort of attracted to someone who or find someone interesting who doesn't like boxes? Do you think that's something that's like a larger sort of societal push against people trying to put us in boxes? I think it's two things. I think number one, Joe Rogan benefits from being a white male who doesn't have to believe in identity politics because his identity is the identity that won out and therefore boxes are nothing but constraints. And so that there's that component that I deeply believe that I experienced that we all experience if we're kind of in that dominant space. But I think he genuinely and I think the and I think his audience reflects that as well. I think

there's a big group of of conservative young white men who are like, I don't like boxes either. And everyone's talking about boxes and boxes are the thing that are going to make me not get the raise in the job and whatever. And so I don't like boxes either. And I think Rogan kind of reflects that. But there's this more benevolent interpretation of it, which is I, and again, I don't know. I don't know this guy. He's a showman. I don't know how much of this is genuine and how much of it is his craft, but there's a part of him that feels very much like I want to be open-minded to everything. I don't want to define myself by anything other than inquiry and curiosity and openness. And that's the part that muddies everything for me because I'm like, no, I want you to be an asshole. That's easier for me because i'm like no i want i want you to be an asshole like i that's easier for me and it every time i see you model this curiosity it kind of complicates

how i'm supposed to think about you so i think boxes is a is a pretty core thing to his identity and refuting those and i think it's a big part of his his appeal okay before we head to break, two quick housekeeping notes. We love Carrie Yuma shoes. I own quite a few pairs. But Lovett likes them so much that he demanded his very own Lovett or Lievitt sneaker. It's a really cool design. They come in pink and black.

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I mean, we talk about this in politics all the time, and especially when we're talking about voters, because I think people assume that most voters are either, like, partisan Democrats or partisan Republicans, or if they're not, then they're centrists, and centrists are just sort of, like, right in the middle, and their views are right down the middle. And the truth is that, like, most voters, even if they identify as Democrats or Republicans or vote that way, they have views and ideas that are all over the map, sometimes very complicated,

sometimes very contradictory. You know, I've been in focus groups where someone's like, you know, I like Donald Trump and AOC, you know, where's that coming from? So I do wonder if that's part of the appeal. You mentioned that young conservative man and like there has been this sort of brewing discussion about why so many young men, mostly white, but he's talked about often with the barstool sports crew, comedians who seem obsessed with wokeness. You know, it's sometimes Elon Musk, sometimes Jordan Peterson. Right. Like what do you think it is about that crew and especially Joe Rogan, because you've now listened to so much of this, that is appealing specifically to young men i think it is a i mean that's a it's that's i think that is a question that like 30 years from now will be a thing that is written in you know academic journals and history books in the sense that like the identity shift that is in part a polarization thing in our in our culture but also

a a reconciling of of power and and you know race and sex and all of these things it's like we i think we're in the middle of that so it's really hard to know exactly what's playing out when we're in the middle of the storm but my pontification on that is I think there is a massive reaction to being told how to think and the culture telling us how to think. And especially when you are the group that is often being told to be thought of as needing to be cut down, there is this very visceral and and to be completely frank like i i i understand it i understand it because i'm a part of that group and i see a lot of the messaging and i'm like damn like i'm not that like why am i being lumped into this and yet i totally understand why it's happening but even if you're someone who thinks about this and

understands if you're not someone who wants to go through all of the history and think about it critically, it just looks like a barrage on your identity. And so you have this guy who's this guy who gives you permission to be kind of macho and proud of your masculinity and also is curious and actually has sophisticated thoughts. He's not Andrew Tate. He's not the kind of fringe that is so caricatured that it's a turnoff to most people. He's a very palatable version, a gateway per se into this way of thinking or behaving that I think gives a lot of people permission and validates that like, hey, we have a voice too. And he does that really well without entertaining really, really toxic ideas.

Now, everyone could argue whether or not he does entertain toxic ideas, and to some he does. But I think he's a gateway. He's a very benign version of this thinking. But he's right there in that place that I think has garnered a lot of attention because he is so palatable. But he's also very firm in his macho kind of like, I'm proud to be a man, I'm not going to apologize. Yeah. And again, like I'm always thinking, okay, his audience, they could sort of go either way politically, right? These are probably a lot

of people who maybe they voted for Obama, and then maybe some of them voted for trump maybe some of them are now interested in rfk jr and i kind of think that these a lot of these people are up for grabs and i do wonder if the initial version of rogan that you talked about that you interacted with before this project which is the short clips of him saying very offensive things. If you're trying to reach that audience and you're saying, oh, Joe Rogan's just like a right wing asshole and that's all he is. Someone who's been listening to Joe Rogan for a long time isn't really going to listen to that criticism or at least take it at face value because they've probably heard all these hours of Rogan and they think, well, yeah, I didn't agree with him when he said that awful thing, but he also says this kind of stuff. And so I wonder if just like the way that the rest of the world sort of interacts with Rogan,

who's not part of the audience, doesn't listen to them, sort of only firms up people's resistance to criticism of Joe Rogan. I think that's totally true. And that's why this warrior, this kind of these like Joe Rogan warriors exist, because now you have this like, oh, he's so misunderstood. And I got that actually, that was part of my impetus for getting into this story was like, I had some conversation with friends who were like, actually, like, Joe Rogan, actually, you gotta give him a shot. And I'm like, I'm not going to give Joe Rogan a shot. Like, like he, he's the guy who shows up in my newsfeed is like being, you know, like, like saying all these terrible things. And yet you're right. Like it, it does for the people who understand him, it does create this, this kind of cultish, like, like Joe Rogan speaks truth

and no one else does. And that's a part of a broader, we're renegotiating our relationship with media institutions, governmental institutions, all kinds of institutions that are the authority. is fertile ground for an individual, independent feeling individual in his random room smoking weed to be like, actually, I'm speaking truth that the mainstream media won't tell you about COVID vaccines. And honestly, I benefit from this as an independent journalist on YouTube. I'm constantly, a lot of my audience are people who are like, the mainstream media lies to me. Thank you for covering it. And I'm like, whoa, this is like a giant reaction that I can feel every day on my channel. And I think Rogan benefits big time from that.

No, look, we get it sometimes when we're like saying that, you know, the New York Times maybe had it right. And there's a lot of criticism of the New York Times. And then people say it was like, why are you defending the New York Times? How dare you defend Maggie Haberman? You know, and you just you feel sort of the anti-institutionalism that's out there that sort of just pervaded so much of the country. And then and especially it's directed towards so many mainstream media institutions at this point on all sides. Your biggest criticism of Rogan is something you also ultimately find valuable about his show which is that he lets people talk when do you consider that a bad thing and when do you think it's a good thing man the defining question of our discourse right now right like where's where is free speech and

where's the line and what's harm and what should be censored and what shouldn't like this is a question i'm not actually made up my mind on. You know, I recently listened to the witch trials of J.K. Rowling, this big deep dive into kind of an apologetic take on J.K. Rowling with the quest of trying to really confront and understand where I stand, and I still haven't quite found it. I, what I do know is that Rogan bringing on the Alex Jones's of the world is past that line. Like that's one thing I could say, okay, that's past the line. Where, where is that line? Is Candace Owen past that line? Like, I don't know. I do know. And a big thing that I came to in the piece after listening to a lot of this was I walked away from a lot of these conversations being able to empathize and at least see people

that I deeply disagree with as human beings while still deeply disagreeing with what they had to say. And that was a really good thing for me to do because I think that the premise of a lot of this like, hey, people should be able to say dangerous things is that if they say it, it will spread and it will like it, you know, that's risky. felt like listening to Candace Owens talk about all of her horrible ideas actually just made me feel like, okay, Candace Owens isn't a monster. She's just someone who believes a certain thing that I deeply disagree with. And I disagree with it more now because I've heard her talk for two hours. This was actually good. So for the people who believe in discourse and let the best ideas win, that was a point in their direction. But there are lines, and I'm not sure exactly where those lines are. I know Alex Jones is past that line. I don't think Alex Jones deserves 11 million people listening to him spout lies. He's a professional liar. He's caused real harm to people with his lies. who should be disenfranchised from the public discourse because he's proven to be not a valid source of logic or argument or facts. And that's passed the line to me. So somewhere in between

the line exists there. I'm not really sure where. No, I struggle with this all the time. And I found it most interesting when you were talking about watching or listening to the alex jones episode that even you being a journalist who like knows the whole backstory of alex jones knows what a crazy liar he is knows the conspiracies that he spread has has seen it on his show as you're listening to alex jones talk to joe rogan you said you you thought at one point you're like oh no is alex jones like is is he the victim here is he like the victim of some conspiracy is has it been exaggerated and and and i it was it was interesting to me because i'm like well if that's the case then what you were saying earlier which is sometimes you don't want people to speak because then the the scary bad idea gets out there

and it and suddenly people believe it you know it's it's it's tough to figure out where the line is there and yeah obviously truth is one line but truth can also you know be shaded exaggerated subjective at times it's absolutely and that's and ultimately what i tried to do with this was walk into it with this open mind of not like my hardened identity, but like, I'm going to just be open to all these people's words. I'm going to do this for a few weeks, just listen to a bunch of people that I would never listen to. And yeah, there were moments where crazy ideas were being spouted. I mean, Alex Jones talking about him being actually alienated by the media and it was all a conspiracy, I was like,

wait, could that happen? And yeah, I actually thought it through. And I had to actually go back and watch a mashup of the clips of all the things that he said, go back and read some of the reporting of sending his followers to the victim's family's houses, read some of the lawsuit. I was like in the court documents like being like primary source i just need to remind myself and and that did actually contribute to me feeling like okay there is a line free the free market of ideas should have boundaries like any market has

and like and it's it's not just like the best ideas win i i don't i think there are limits and especially when you have professional showmen who are professional liars, that's what they do. They sell health supplements and muscle building supplements with fake information. When you have a craftsman at the helm, that's where it becomes dangerous in my mind. Yeah. And I guess if you're Joe Rogan and you host this podcast, you have a choice of who to bring on and who to expose your 11 million listeners to. And if they're gonna lie and then you're gonna correct the lie, that's one thing.

But then if it's someone who's a liar the entire time, you're like, okay, well, what is the value of just having this person on who's lying constantly and then I'm just gonna correct them? Yeah, and he says a lot of times, like platforming isn't a thing. Like let let all ideas, ideas are going to get out. There's no such thing as platforming. But then when asked if he wanted to have Trump on the show, he said, no, I don't want to help Trump. I don't want to help Trump. So it's like, oh, so you don't believe in platforming, but you believe that if he was on the show, you would help him. So there's that bit of a contradiction there. You can't deny that having someone on the show, especially a show that isn't fact-checked, like he's sitting there unedited, unfiltered. He'll sometimes be like, hey, Google this thing. Let's look it up. But he's not rigorously challenging big ideas. He sometimes is

entranced by the ideas himself. Alexones is spouting off some crazy idea about like genetics and dna and other very very problematic like eugenics types ideas and joe rogan's just sitting there just fascinated like whoa like it's just like i'm just like what this is this is scary stuff it's it's very validating that this curious guy is just letting this happen. That was sort of my impression. The one episode that I listened to a good amount of is his RFK Jr. episode. And when RFK Jr. is going off about the Wi-Fi causing cancer and all that kind of stuff, it's like you hear Rogan. He's like, let me just check that.

He's like, I don't know if that's true. But he didn't really go all in and be like, no, that's actually fucking crazy. He was just sort of like, my Google results don't really say that's true. But he didn't really like go all in and be like, no, that's actually fucking crazy. Yeah. He was just sort of like, Oh, here, my Google results, my Google results don't really say that's true, but it's like,

and I think there's something like, well, that doesn't seem super responsible to just let that hang there. But yeah, that's, there are other times where he does push and he does. And this is, I think his power and what I talk about with him modeling curiosity is like,

he does say like, wait a minute, hold on, hold on. You just said this thing. Can I like push on that a little modeling curiosity is like he does say like, wait a minute, hold on, hold on. You just said this thing. Can I like push on that a little bit? And like he'll go into it, not like a polemic, like he won't be like ready to fight. He'll be like, he'll stress test someone's idea. And that I think is really valuable

because he's not the speech and debate. I'm like super wise and have all my facts ready to go. He's like the everyday person listening, taking the information, and then he's modeling a sort of an earnest critical thinking that doesn't require some like rhetoric skills. And I think that's really valuable for some big portion of that 11 million people who are listening, who are maybe in that same boat where they're like kind of curious, but they feel spoken down to by the smarty pantses out there who are like always correcting them. And Rogan is there kind of being earnest and pushing back on ideas. And I think that that is a very valuable thing about this phenomenon. You mentioned towards the end of the video that all media and news outlets are subject to the seductive temptation to appeal to the worst parts of our nature. You have worked for Vox, your videos have appeared in the New York Times,

you're now mostly an independent journalist. How do you wrestle with that tension and temptation in your own journalism? It's, man, that's a big, big, difficult question because not only is it journalism, it's algorithm journalism. You know, I'm on the front lines of the attention economy. And so I have this, you know, dashboard right in front of me at all times giving me real time feedback on every single thing I put out into the world and telling me what people want and what they don't. My kind of idealistic answer to this, and I believe it, though it might sound a little idealistic, is that for all of the negativity bias that exists in the human psychology, the desire for conflict and negativity and confirmation of your worst identities and your worst thoughts. There is also, I believe, in a large portion of

the population, a deep desire to understand something. And that click, that feeling, that sensation of like, oh, I get this thing that I didn't understand before. I understand the Syrian civil war. I understand why the US went to Iraq. After 20 years of hearing people talk about it, I never understood it and now I do. I believe that sensation is just as, if not more powerful than the sensation of like my group is good and that group is bad. And this media is, is promoting that idea. And so I've capitalized on, on that, on, can I explain something to you that makes you understand it? And can that be more tantalizing than me just having to shit on someone that you don't like? Now I do plenty of that.

I, you know, I'm a very critical of us expansionism and colonial history and general European domination of the planet. Like, I, that's a big part of what I do. And I think that's very valuable work. And I think, and I think glimmer of hope that like, that is in inside of us, even in the algorithm world. And that that that will, you know, pervade like that the market will demand that and I'm here offering it and I hope more people can too. Yeah, no, that look, I something else I struggle with all the time. And it's funny, because yesterday, as I was prepping for this, like, you know, they have the speaker of the house disaster on TV. And so I'm like scrolling through Twitter and I'm, you know, addicted to it.

And you just feel bad when you're trying to catch up on all that news. And I stopped for like a couple hours to like watch a bunch of your videos, which are fantastic. And you do just have, it's like you're calmer. You like feel more fulfilled. Right. It's like the difference between like eating sugar and like empty calories and like having a nice meal. And the challenge is it's always like you feel better about your choice after you sort of consume that kind of journalism and that kind of conversation. It's sort of recently it's been the difference between like following the Israel Hamas conflict on Twitter versus like listening to podcasts about it or reading long articles about it. Right. And the challenge is that I feel like the algorithm sort of just it's it seduces us into the sort of short form clickable. I'm just going to read 200 characters about it as opposed to like really getting into it. And I'm wondering how we like get,

especially younger generations to sort of do the deep dives and click on the longer form stuff, because otherwise we're just going to, you know, if you're watching a couple seconds on TikTok or you're reading a tweet, it's not going to get you much. Yeah, I actually have an optimistic take on this, too. I'm not a super optimistic person, but today I am. I have this, I tend to see younger generations, and YouTube has kind of let me in on some of the data on this as well. Younger generations are less prone to need to feel like they have to be informed on what is globally relevant. And meaning everyone's paying attention to the big fire that happened in a building in Dallas, Texas. And that's the big crisis of the day. And we're all paying attention

to it. And there's like, you know, live feeds on CNN. And they are more interested in what's personally relevant to them, meaning they have their own identity. They have an algorithm that serves them curated forms of the world. There's obviously giant problems with that, not having a shared source of truth. But what it, I think, has done is created a skepticism towards the kind of breaking news itch that we all have to be like, oh, this is happening. We all have to follow it second by second. I, and again, this is me hoping for the future that like, we will move into a world where people are more stubborn about like, no, I'm not going to consume this just because everyone is talking about it right now. I think there will always be that. But I do think Gen Z is just like breaking news.

What? I don't need to watch the live CNN thing of the Gaza border right now. And I'm banking on that. I'm banking on that. And right now, I'm sitting back and slowly consuming the Economist and kind of long reads and looking at think tanks and the Financial Times. And I'm going to put out a piece about geopolitics in the Middle East. It's going to be a month late, but it's going to respond to hopefully the gathering of questions

that people have and what will be relevant for them, which is hopefully understanding, understanding what's the deal with the Middle East? Why is it like this? As opposed to 14 rockets just flew from the northern border today. For a lot of people, they're like, what does that mean? Like that feels like important, but I don't really know what that means. So anyway, I'm banking on that meal, on that more substantial meal being a thing that people want more of in the future. On Israel and Gaza and Middle East,

what's your approach to covering a story like that, that so many people are coming to with so much emotion, such strong views, or frankly, a lot of information that's either unverifiable or just plain wrong, not through any fault of their own. I mean, this was the entire topic of the story meeting we had earlier today, which is just like, how do we tiptoe into this? At Vox, I spent time in the West Bank and in the settlements and did a big series on the conflict in 2016 and learned just how wrong you always are and how you can never

be right and how nothing you say matters to half the people. And I was like, do I want to participate in that conversation again right now and try to draw moral lines? And I don't know. I'm still making up my mind. But the answer comes back to the previous answer I had, which is understanding. There are a lot of people who can't even make up their mind don't even have an opinion on this because the

conversation is dominated by all the smarty pants who have the opinions and are all angry at each other and are yelling at each other on twitter and then the 90 of the population is seeing this and being like i know i should feel angry but i don't really know why or at whom. And so then I want to slip in and be like, hey, here's a nine-minute map explainer that explains why Iran funds proxies in Lebanon and why they're firing rockets and what occupation even means, because most people don't even know what occupation means. We all throw it around, like it's just like, oh, the occupation. And so translating to the masses is one thing that I feel really in love with as an independent journalist is I don't have to react. I can sit back and really evaluate what serves the audience and then come forth with

something that is earnest and that is honest and that is more focused on understanding and less focused on reacting to the discussion. I do believe there is value in reacting to the discussion. That's not my purview. That's Max and I just had a conversation on this show about why social media has made it nearly impossible to follow this conflict. Not that social media has ever made it easy to follow any conflict, but it does seem like it's worse now than ever. Have you felt that too? And why do you think that is? So the answer is no, because I get my news in the slow roll. I read The Economist every week. I read the Financial Times every day in print edition. It comes as a print thing. I sit down and I read the words, and I listen to The Economist.

So my connection to this conflict is very much like it's been baked by a lot of people in terms of like how it's been reported and and and i may be criticized for that like i like i i i didn't follow the play-by-play of the hospital you know i saw that the broad strokes of the debate but i'm like i'm not going to litigate this right now what with everyone else litigating it i'm going to sit back and so i don't totally know i know i know that with ukraine i did follow it. I'm going to sit back. And so I don't totally know. I know that with Ukraine, I did follow it on social media because I was reporting on how TikTok was becoming a big part of it. And I did see how narratives were just being flung around. And I did see the Arab world react to the hospital because of presumably social media being able to spread

unverified information. But no, I don't see under the hood very often because I'm not in the trenches there. Yeah, which, you know what? Of course you can sit back and wait. Who needs to, except for policymakers and activists and people in the region, right? Like, obviously, they need to follow it up to the minute. But like, the rest of us don't need to know you know max and i talked about this in terms of the the horrific debate over whether the babies were killed whether they were decapitated right which is like it wasn't and it started on social media but it ended up being something that like president

biden was talking about as well right and so you realize that like there's so much focus on sort of the most emotional debates and the algorithm just throws you like all of the most extreme takes and all the most emotion. And if you just sit back and wait a couple of weeks, you can have a better view of the story or better understanding of the story and also have some context around it, which is, I guess, what you're trying to do and what you do very successfully with a lot of your video journalism. Yeah. And I think that is a luxury. I think that, again, there are people who like, whether they're, you know, aid workers or they are people connected, they have family, you know, like there are a lot of people who want the second by second because the stakes are much

higher than like guy in Washington, DC who makes YouTube videos. Like, but there are a lot of people who are in that position who like, they don't need to know the play by play. The play by play is often not very helpful. Like when you watch the live feed of CNN covering a mass shooting or something, like you just, you hear professional filler talkers, like people who just know how to make it sound like they're saying something and they're not saying anything. They are just saying, they're just keeping you going. And I think there's a, I think there's a lot of flavors of that in, in this kind of initial

reporting of stuff coming out. Now, that being said, I do think there is value in the masses coming together and like, and like, you know, debating this information and trying to get it out there i do i do think if everyone stepped back there might be a deficit of like information but maybe not i don't know i guess i don't want to like be holier than thou with my like reading the economist once a week type of like approach because i do think there is value in like a discussion happening about what the un just said about bb and like his potential war crimes in gaza like that's a big deal and that should be debated right now and and

i don't know if twitter is the best place to do that but like it is good that it's real time i guess yeah i i feel like i know that it's definitely not the best but no you're right that like that i, even back to our Rogan conversation, like again, one of the appeals for people is like, I want to hear a bunch of people having a real conversation, debating, not yelling at each other necessarily, not feeling like they can't be comfortable in making a mistake in saying something that might be wrong in playing with different ideas right and i mean i i guess i come back to the idea that like the reason i don't think twitter even under the best circumstances even if it wasn't you know has it hadn't been

degraded by elon musk like it's i don't know if the whole world at once needs to have that conversation like i think maybe those conversations and debates can happen in smaller areas and in smaller spaces. And like that's healthier for people because I do think people, especially people who don't feel like they know enough about the conflict or know enough about geopolitics, like they want to feel comfortable asking questions, even if they feel like they're stupid questions or questions that other people may find offensive, right? Like you want to ask those questions, but I just don't, I don't know that social media has been or ever will be a place where that can happen. Yes. And that's, that is ultimately my conception of, of how this stuff plays out in these like very tense information moments is that you have this massive majority

of consumers who want to feel informed, but they're looking at this stage of all of these angry people saying really intense things. And they don't even know the ingredients of the conversation. They just know that like, and that automatically elevates the most digestible outrage. Like, like let's make outrage that will be digestible to those who don't even understand what's going on.

And that will then get the airtime. And so I think there is a toxic dynamic that is based off of this hollow understanding of a lot of issues that I feel like a very important service is like give. And Max and I actually our very first like big viral hit was in 2015, the Syrian civil war. Everyone on earth was like, what is going on with the Kurds and Saudi Arabia? with who and why they're doing this. And that video got a hundred million views and it got a hundred million views on Facebook, the, you know, the, the ADD polemic platform, because there was secretly a giant demand for people to be like, I don't want a hot take right now. I just want to understand what the hell's going on. Yeah. And I, and that, that's the audience that I found and it's the gap in the market that I'm trying to fulfill with my

work. And that is hopeful that there is an audience of people who are like, I don't need the takes. I just want to know what's going on. You've now been on your own as an independent journalist for a little while. How do you like it? And is there anything you miss about working at a big organization? Or is this just, is this living the dream? I love it. I love nine out of 10 of the components of this. It is, there's creative freedom, which for me is this living the dream? I love it. I love nine out of 10 of the components of this. It is, there's creative freedom, which for me is a big deal. My videos aren't just like, like I'm a filmmaker, I'm a animator, I'm a designer. Like I, I like to make things look beautiful.

We have a, you know, we have a in-house music composer. Like we, we put a lot into the craft and that's a big part of being independent is I can really, really nerd out about that. And then I get to have a more of a POV. I'm like, I get to have, I'm this guy who's just like Rogan who benefits from like, Hey, I'm just here in this room. I'm on my couch just talking to you about what something I'm curious about. And there's a lot of generosity that comes from,

especially YouTube where that ethic of like guy in bedroom talks to camera is like very native. And that skepticism towards mainstream media is, is, is, is not there. The downside is real. And it's that I don't have journalistic elders to give me wisdom.

Like, like Max Fisher, my, my old colleague who really taught me how to explain international topics. If I'm being totally honest, Max was like my, my guide in, in, in learning how to do that. Having an editor, having someone to be like, hey, that script is way too long.

Like you don't need to do this is the big downside. And we're trying to solve that a little bit. We started a second channel called Search Party with my another Vox colleague, Sam Ellis. We edit each other, which kind of is nice. But there are big benefits to having a journalistic institution with resources that isn't so up against the market that you're feeling the need to just churn all day. And that gives you that buffer of like an editor and some editorial guidance. But the tradeoff is absolutely worth it for me. I love being independent for a million reasons.

Well, your stuff is fantastic. Enjoy talking to you. This was great. Thank you for coming on. And we appreciate it. Yeah, this is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, John Favreau, along with Max Fisher. It's produced by Austin Fisher.

Emma Illick-Frank is our associate producer. Andrew Chadwick is our sound editor. Kyle Seglin, Charlotte Landis, and Vasilis Fotopoulos provide audio support to the show. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Michael Martinez, Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, Reid Cherlin, and Andy Taft for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Dilan Villanueva, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.