The Daily - The Saga of Joe Rogan

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

Joe Rogan, a comedian and host of the hit podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” has come under scrutiny in recent weeks for promoting Covid-19 misinformation. Spotify, which owns exclusive rights to Mr. Rogan’s show, has been criticized as the platform for the misinformation.Neil Young and Joni Mitchell removed their music from Spotify in protest. Now, a compilation of video clips of Mr. Rogan using a racial slur on past episodes has surfaced, drawing more outrage.We look into the scandal engulfing the streaming platform and its most popular podcast host.Guest: Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for The New York Times.Have you lost a loved one during the pandemic? The Daily is working on a special episode memorializing those we have lost to the coronavirus. If you would like to share their name on the episode, please RECORD A VOICE MEMO and send it to us at [e-mail]. You can find more information and specific instructions here.Background reading: Kevin explains why the challenges presented by this scandal aren’t going away.Listen to this episode of Popcast to delve deeper into the thorny questions raised about Spotify’s role as a platform.Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. Hundreds of doctors have written an open letter to Spotify about their most popular podcast host, Joe Rogan. Inside the controversy that has engulfed Spotify. They say they are fed up with the misinformation Rogan has been spreading about the pandemic.

And its biggest star, Joe Rogan. Spotify has been pressured to do something about it, but it stood behind its most popular podcast. The question that I have is, why aren't you taking down Joe Rogan? I spoke with my colleague, Kevin Roos, about why this scandal is playing out so differently than those that came before it. It's Friday, February 11th. Hello, Kevin. Michael. Hello.

This is going to be a little bit awkward, this one. Let's lean into it. Yeah, right? Let's get awkward. Yeah, let's just get it out of the way. I mean, we're going to be doing a podcast about another podcast. Yeah, it's unavoidable. Right.

It's like the snake eating itself, whatever that's called. Yeah, this is going to be an Ouroboros of a podcast, but I think that's okay. Agreed. So, Kevin, before we get to the reason why a lot of the country has been talking about Joe Rogan, let's start with how you came to the world of Joe Rogan. Well, I should say, I've been listening to Joe Rogan's podcast for a long time. It's one of the podcasts I listen to when I'm cooking or folding laundry or doing chores around the house. And it's kind of perfect for that because it only requires about 40% of your attention.

And it also has nothing to do with my job, except, I guess, now that I'm talking to you about it. It's part of your job, right? It is my job. So thank you for turning my non-job entertainment into my job. Pleasure. So for people who are not among the millions of listeners of Joe Rogan, like you, who is this guy?

Where does he come from? How did he become this cultural phenomenon? Yeah, it's kind of an interesting story. So Joe Rogan, he doesn't really have a typical resume for a guy who hosts a very popular interview show. And I think that actually has a lot to do with why people find him so authentic and approachable. He grew up working class.

As a teenager, he works on construction sites And does various other jobs He actually gets really, really good at martial arts When he's 19, he actually wins a national taekwondo championship But he decides that he doesn't want to be a professional martial artist And so around the mid-1990s He decides to try his hand at this other thing he likes, which is... Mr. Joe Rogan, give him a hand.

Stand-up comedy. What's up? What's going on, huh? Doing all right? Yeah. Life's going pretty cool right now, but I gotta stop dating bimbos. It's like the biggest problem I have in my life right now. He does a few performances. If you date smart women, they ask tough questions.

You gotta give them real answers, right? Date bimbos, they ask tough questions, you got to give them real answers, right? Date bimbos, they ask, like, real easy questions. And eventually, he moves to L.A. to pursue comedy full-time. And then, in the early 2000s, he gets this big break. I'm Joe Rogan. Welcome to Fear Factor. When he agrees to host this show called Fear Factor. Mm-hmm.

With these 3,000 scorpions. I don't know if you remember Fear Factor, but it was sort of the, it was this ridiculous premise for a show. You know, people would cover themselves in leeches or, you know, like eat spiders. Right. You conquered your fears. Exactly. Exactly. Sherry, Sherry, don't freak out. And he's the host of that show, which runs for, you know, more than 100 episodes and

just becomes like a national sensation. And he parlays that into a gig as a commentator for mixed martial arts fighting. Truly is an honor to welcome back to the broadcast team here on the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the host of NBC's Fear Factor, Joe Rogan. Which is really having a moment right around this time. The UFC is becoming quite big. Phenomenal fight. I can't even believe it's real.

I can't believe it's going to happen. It's going to happen right here because the UFC is as real. And so Joe Rogan kind of becomes like the public face of mixed martial arts fighting commentary. And around 2003, he starts recording these conversations that he was having with his friends, these other comedians or mixed martial arts fighters, just people that he knew from entertainment business. And he has this kind of built-in audience for these shows, people who have watched his commentary on TV and watched him on Fear Factor, these sort of UFC fans and comedy nerds, and honestly, mostly men.

And at first, the show is quite small. It's got a couple hundred listeners at a time. But he keeps at it. And in 2009... Start recording, son. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the broadcast. He moves his show to a platform called Ustream. And shortly thereafter, renames it the Joe Rogan Experience.

It was supposed to be a play on the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Ah. And in 2013, he makes another big decision where he decides that rather than just being a podcast, he's going to take his show

to YouTube and he's going to videotape himself recording it and put the entire thing up on YouTube. And that decision is really what launches it into another stratosphere of reach. Because there are a lot of people on YouTube, they spend a lot of time there, and it turns out that they are willing to sit through a two or three hour video of Joe Rogan talking to another comedian or someone else who Joe Rogan finds interesting. And Kevin, you said his audience, as it's really starting to explode, is largely men. And what does that seem to be about? as it's really starting to explode, is largely men. And what does that seem to be about?

Yeah, I mean, I think of Joe Rogan as kind of the patron saint of like a certain kind of American masculinity. I'm thinking about the guys I know who really listen to him a lot. These are guys who, you know, they're smart, they work hard, they come home to their families, they like to drink beer and watch sports or UFC on the weekends. They like telling a dirty joke now and then maybe. They're not people who are super political or plugged into the news, but they like hearing smart people talk about stuff that interests them.

And Joe Rogan really is that guy. And he loves that guy. He just talks to them without being condescending or assuming that something is going to be too intellectual for them or too out there for them. He just treats these guys in his audience with respect and kind of reflects them back to themselves in a way. And the format of his show really helps with that. Explain that. What characterizes the format? So I guess what might be most useful is to contrast it with what we're doing right now,

like taping the daily, you know, the daily is a hyper produced podcast. Like us, us. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to,

you know, reveal too much of what goes on behind the curtain, but it's a pretty produced show. It is. Fair. It's got vetting and pre-interviews and fact-checking. And after we finish talking right now, there's a team of producers and editors who will take these files and cut out all the boring parts and then trim it down into a tight episode.

Right. And the Joe Rogan experience is basically the polar opposite of that. It's, for one, extremely long. Most episodes are more than two hours long. Many are three or four hours long. It is essentially unedited. There's no post-production to speak of.

It's just what you see is what you get. And it's very informal. It's no post-production to speak of. It's just like what you see is what you get. And it's very informal. It's spontaneous. And that spontaneity is what people like about it. It's what you imagine talking with your friends in your backyard over a bunch of beers would sound like. So in other words, the medium in this case is the message. It's transparent. You get everything just as I made it. Exactly. What you see is what you get. And he also like really dabbles in a wide variety of topics. How is it possible to work out and not be sore? No problem.

Okay, here we go. He's got this whole like fitness, ultimate fighting, health philosophy. What's interesting about the vitamin K1 versus vitamin K2... He loves to have doctors and extreme athletes on, talking about veganism or eating healthy or taking supplements. Wait a minute, Neptune is moving a little unfamiliarly. He's got thinkers on. My phone is... Sorry about that.

Are you going to drop that thing and break it with no case on? People like Neil deGrasse Tyson. Remember? People who talk about psychology or astronomy or gender or metaphysics. He talks a lot, like a lot, a lot, about this vision that I had

high on DMT. I saw an infinite number of those. I saw one hovering here. Doing drugs and psychedelics especially. There are just entire compilations on YouTube of Joe Rogan just talking about doing DMT or getting high in the jungle off the venom of a rare tree frog. Stuff like that.

And if Joe Rogan has a manifesto, it's that these kinds of conversations are good and that you always need to keep learning and keep expanding your horizons. So that's one side of Joe Rogan. What's the other side? Well, maybe it's not technically another side. It's just part of who he is that really stands out

and that ends up becoming very important later on. And it's basically a proclivity for conspiracy theories, for sort of pseudoscience and unfounded claims and hearing out even people who believe pretty radical things. And it's important to know like Joe Rogan has always been kind of a conspiracy theorist himself. Like he had questions about 9-11. He is very into like UFOs and extraterrestrial life. And he brings on a lot of people who traffic in conspiracy theories and mistruths, like Alex Jones, or like, you know, a guy who wrote a book talking about how the aliens built the pyramids in Egypt. And Kevin, let me just zero in on the name Alex Jones for just a minute, because when we mention Alex Jones, I think we need to make very clear who he is, right?

he is, right? This is the man who created a website and a show called InfoWars, which, among other things, posits that what happened at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, that horrible massacre, was actually a hoax. And his proclamations around this resulted in the harassment of many of the parents who lost young children at Sandy Hook. So Alex Jones is among the most polarizing, some would say, despicable people in our culture. Yeah. And sometimes Joe Rogan argues with people and sometimes he disagrees with his guests. But one of his trademarks is that he will let people talk. He is willing to hear them out. Even people whose views are so fringe or factually baseless that they basically couldn't get an audience anywhere else in the media. And for Joe Rogan's fans, that's part of the appeal.

They don't want to be told what to think. They want to be able to make up their own mind and they don't want Joe Rogan doing a lot of interrupting and fact-checking and vetting. And when Joe Rogan gets asked about this, or about the kind of guests he has on his show, he basically says, look, I'm not a journalist. I don't play by a journalist's rules. I'm a comedian with a podcast, and I'm just asking questions.

But that's kind of a dodge from Joe Rogan, because if you've listened to his show, you also know that he has his own views, quite strong ones, in fact. And maybe his biggest, most obvious view that he talks about all the time is that he is just proudly anti-political correctness. He's opposed to cancel culture and these things that he just sees as liberal pieties. He just doesn't believe in

them, and he thinks that people on the left are going overboard. And this really resonates with his audience, many of whom are kind of also sick of being told that they're the problem in some way. So here's a guy who creates a talk show largely for guys. And the key ingredient of that, it sounds like you're saying, is defying many of the norms and formalities that those guys may feel that elite culture is trying to impose on them, which makes listeners, as you said earlier, Kevin, feel seen and, of course, turn to the show by the millions.

Totally. He's telling people, yeah, it's okay to be a man. It's okay to be a white man. It's okay to be a white man who loves to watch people beat each other up in a UFC ring. And some of this might evoke kind of the modern sort of Trumpism to people who don't know him. But his politics are actually kind of squishy and confusing in a way that kind of makes him a singular figure. Explain that. So he's pro-gay marriage. He's pro-legalizing weed. He believes in climate change and worries about renewable energy. I wouldn't say his show is apolitical. He has a political view, but it's not like a Republican show or a Democratic show. It's just kind of this Joe Rogan view of the world. And as time goes on, his audience just explodes.

And so by 2015 or so, something like 11 million people are tuning into him per episode. And this audience really translates to him being able to book bigger and bigger guests. And he starts to have these kind of moments, these viral clips that just really start to influence the culture. And the one I remember the clearest is the Elon Musk episode. So is that a joint? or is it a cigar no it's marijuana inside of tobacco

so Elon Musk one of the richest men in the world a guy who doesn't give a lot of interviews to the mainstream media goes on Joe Rogan's podcast and lights up a joint I'm not a regular smoker of weed how often do you smoke it?

almost never I don't actually notice any effect well there you go and starts talking about very personal things, his childhood and the way his brain works. I think when I was, I don't know, five or six or something, I thought I was insane. Why did you think you were insane?

Because it was clear that other people do not, their mind wasn't exploding with ideas all the time. It was just strange. It was like, hmm, I'm strange. That was my conclusion, I'm strange. That interview currently has more than 50 million views on YouTube. Which is astonishing. Totally crazy.

And at the time it's published, it just becomes this kind of instant meme, this thing that everyone is talking about that actually caused the stock price of Tesla to drop because investors were like, wait. Its CEO is Smokey Pot. Exactly. They're like, he's doing what on a show? This is the man we're trusting with billions of dollars?

this is the man we're trusting with billions of dollars. And it's at the height of his popularity in May of 2020, when Joe Rogan announces, Hello, everybody. I have an announcement. The podcast is moving to Spotify. That his show is being acquired by Spotify. I'm not going to be an employee of Spotify. We're going to be working with the same crew,

doing the exact same show. The only difference will be, it will now be available on the largest audio platform in the world. They are paying him something like $100 million for the rights to exclusively distribute his podcast on their platform. And Kevin, what makes Joe Rogan worth that much money to Spotify? Well, it's important to put this in context of what was happening to Spotify at the time. So Spotify started as a music streaming service. And the way it made most of its money was by

basically getting people to pay a monthly subscription fee. And then Spotify streams this music, and it pays a percentage of whatever it makes to music labels and to artists. And this was a fairly good business model, but not a great one, because it means that the more people use your service, the more money you have to pay out to musicians and labels. And eventually they were kind of stagnating. But they noticed that there was this other audio format, the podcast, that was very attractive to them for business reasons. Podcasts had these like super loyal audiences. And they noticed that the

people who listened to podcasts tended to also stick around and listen to a bunch of other music, like something like twice as much music as people who don't listen to podcasts tended to also stick around and listen to a bunch of other music, like something like twice as much music as people who don't listen to podcasts. And Kevin, here we should say many people listen to The Daily on Spotify. Yes, it's fairly likely that if you are listening to this right now, you are using Spotify, you may be a paying subscriber. And after you get bored and turn this episode off, you're probably going to go stream some music. But it's not enough for Spotify just to carry podcasts because podcasts are available on every podcast app.

They want to build up their own exclusive library of podcasts. Podcasts that you can't get on YouTube or Apple or other podcast apps. Things that you have to join Spotify to listen to. And that is suddenly what Joe Rogan is for them. An exclusive podcasting property of Spotify. Exactly. They figure if we bring over all of Joe Rogan's millions of listeners,

he's the biggest podcaster in the world at this point, some number of them will turn into paying subscribers. We will make money from the ads on his show. And this will all make our platform way more attractive and way more distinctive from every other audio app out there. Okay. And does it work? Yeah, it really works as a business strategy decision. Spotify's stock price goes up, investors love it, and it does attract a lot of listeners of Joe Rogan's to Spotify.

And in the years following this deal, Spotify eventually surpasses Apple to become the biggest podcast platform in the years following this deal, Spotify eventually surpasses Apple to become the biggest podcast platform in the world. But there are some people who are skeptical of this. They kind of understand what Joe Rogan's all about. And they see Spotify getting into business with someone who can sometimes address pretty controversial topics with controversial guests as a potential danger. But it's such an obvious win for Spotify from a business perspective until Joe Rogan and his, I would say, unique style of interviewing collides with a global pandemic.

We'll be right back. So Kevin, how does Joe Rogan approach COVID? Well, early in the pandemic, Joe Rogan kind of does what Joe Rogan does. Like he has on scientists, people who are fairly mainstream. He talks about how great vaccines are. But he also invites on these kind of fringe guests who talk about COVID and do so in ways that are counter to mainstream health authorities. And he kind of indulges these curiosities he has about lockdowns and masks and other kind of conventional wisdom that he's kind of open-minded about, shall we say.

And eventually he gets really into this idea of ivermectin, which we've talked about on the show before, this sort of anti-parasitic drug, limited usefulness on COVID, but useful in other contexts. And in December of last year, he has this man named Dr. Robert Malone on his show. So, first of all, thanks for coming and a very nice tie. Thanks. Christmas present. And Dr. Malone is a credentialed doctor. I got an MD-PhD scholarship at Northwestern University in Chicago. He, you know, did some early research into mRNA science. But he's since become a character who is basically a pariah among the medical establishment. He's a darling of the kind of Republican right. And he has these kind of extreme anti-vaccine

conspiratorial beliefs. Because there's all these rumors that you would hear about what a hospital gets paid per COVID death and that the government gives them money and that they're incentivized to make something. It's not rumors. It's not rumors. It's not rumors. That he lends credibility to with his medical credentials. The hospitals receive a bonus from the government.

I think it's like $3,000. a bonus from the government, I think it's like 3,000 bucks, if someone is hospitalized and able to be declared COVID positive. They also receive a bonus, I think the total is something like 30,000 in incentive, if somebody gets put on the vent. Then they get a bonus if somebody is declared dead with COVID. So in this interview with Joe Rogan, Dr. Malone repeats some pretty wild conspiracy theories about COVID treatments. So are you saying, or are you implying that perhaps one of the reasons why they're removing monoclonal antibodies is to enhance the amount of people that are sick? I'm saying it is in the spectrum of the range of possible, just the same as the withholding of early treatments is inexplicable. And just other, like, really wacky out there stuff.

And before this appearance on Joe Rogan's show, like, Dr. Malone had kind of a fringe following, but after going on Joe Rogan, he really gets exposed to this huge national audience. Right, because we're talking about 10 million or so listeners. Well, Robert, thank you very much. Just thank you for everything,

and I hope this helps. And Kevin, we've established that Rogan is not a journalist, proudly so, Thank you for everything, and I hope this helps. And Kevin, we've established that Rogan is not a journalist, proudly so, that he sees himself as a curious conversationalist. But what is his rationale for having this kind of conversation and giving a platform to this kind of person in such open defiance of public health consensus in the middle of a public health crisis, a deadly public health crisis. Well, what Joe Rogan would say about this and what he did say is that he was just basically doing what he always does, like bringing on guests who challenge the mainstream orthodoxy. And he saw Robert Malone as someone legitimate, an expert with his own view on the topic. And he wanted to have him on to hear him out. an expert with his own view on the topic, and he wanted to have him on to hear him out.

But Joe Rogan also has his own views about COVID and the vaccine. I mean, Joe Rogan actually got COVID last year and treated it with ivermectin and doesn't appear to have gotten vaccinated. And as the pandemic wore on, he started expressing a lot more skepticism about the efficacy of COVID vaccines. So this isn't really just a just asking questions situation. By having Dr. Malone on his show, and also by his own statements, Joe Rogan is expressing his own skepticism and doubts about the vaccines. And what is the response to this interview? This interview causes a big blowback. As you can imagine, a lot of people are extremely mad. And what is the hear about this interview, listen to it, and really see it as quite dangerous.

More than 250 scientists, doctors, nurses, and researchers wrote a letter to Spotify about the misinformation on COVID vaccines and the pandemic spread on Joe Rogan's podcast. A group of about 250 public health officials actually writes an open letter to Spotify. The group wants Spotify to take action against Rogan's wrong information by developing a misinformation policy. And this letter gets a lot of attention from the media. And also gets the attention of the musician Neil Young. And now to an upheaval in music streaming.

Legendary singer... And Neil Young gets very offended by this. And... Neil Young threatened to pull his music from Spotify, saying they can have Rogan or Young, not both. His response is basically that he says to Spotify, you have to pull down all of my music off your service. And for anyone who understands Spotify's business or where their priorities lie, it's a pretty obvious choice. Like Neil Young is an important artist.

Lots of people love him. But compared to Joe Rogan, who's bringing in millions and millions of people every time he puts out a podcast, Neil Young is kind of a nobody. If you go on Spotify this morning, you won't find most of Neil Young's music. So they choose Rogan. Right, but it doesn't stop with Neil Young. A few days later, another Canadian legend, Joni Mitchell, followed suit. Joni Mitchell says, you know, Spotify should take down my music.

Personally, that was very devastating to me. I've been going through a big Joni Mitchell phase. And one day, I just couldn't get it anymore. And what is Spotify's response to that? So suddenly Spotify has a PR crisis in its hands. And its first response is basically to just say, look, we are a neutral platform. We don't endorse the stuff that appears on our platform. It doesn't mean we agree with it.

They say, look, we have plenty of rappers who have their music on Spotify, who have all kinds of offensive things in their lyrics, and we let them stay on the platform. And that's because we are not going to be a censor or an arbiter of what you can say and what you can't. Right, and of course, this is a very familiar position for companies. Kevin, we've talked about Facebook making a similar claim

when it is criticized for the content on its platform. It says, we're a platform, we're not a publisher. But is that really the case with Spotify? And especially when it comes to Joe Rogan. Well, for a lot of people, it is the case with Spotify, and especially when it comes to Joe Rogan? Well, for a lot of people, it is the case with Spotify. I mean, Spotify does have millions and millions of artists and podcasters on it. And there's, you know, a reasonable claim that it, you know, should be neutral when it comes to the contents of those songs and podcasts.

But it's really different with Joe Rogan, because not only is Spotify the exclusive distributor of his show, but it's made him an extraordinary sum of money for the right to distribute that show. It has gotten into business with him. They are not neutral when it comes to Joe Rogan. And eventually... The streaming service Spotify has promised to take action to combat COVID-19 misinformation. streaming service Spotify has promised to take action to combat COVID-19 misinformation. The CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek, releases a statement where he basically says, look, we're not going to de-platform Joe Rogan. We are going to continue carrying his show. The company has now said it will add advisory warnings to podcasts that discuss COVID-19.

We are going to put warning labels on podcasts about COVID-19. We're going to publish our internal guidelines for moderating COVID-19 misinformation. And then... Hello, friends. Joe Rogan himself comes out with a statement. He releases this Instagram video. I wanted to make a video to address some of the controversy

that's been going on over the past few days. Basically apologizing or half apologizing. What do you mean? Well, it's sort of interesting. So in this video, he kind of does what he always does. 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 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. You know, I'm not a journalist. I'm just a guy. I'm just asking questions. No one should rely on me for medical advice. But he also acknowledges that the approach that he's had for a long time,

this kind of open-ended, kind of just asking questions format where you don't really challenge people. Like maybe he needs to change that. 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. He talks about maybe preparing more for his interviews, maybe doing a little bit more fact checking, maybe having more mainstream guests on his show who disagree with the guests that previously came on his show.

All right. Much love to you all. Thank you to everyone. And I'm going to do my best. So his message is, I'm willing to change. Right. And that might have been the end of it. Then the controversy really escalates a few days later when...

Hey y'all, I want to leave a short message here about why I decided to ask my music be pulled off of Spotify. India Arre, the singer, posts a video online saying that she is taking her music off Spotify. I empathize with the people who are leaving for the COVID disinformation reasons, and I think that they should. Not because of COVID-19 misinformation, but because there's this compilation going around of instances on his podcast in which Joe Rogan has said the N-word. This is why. Watch this. You know, the n***a saying the word n***a.

You've already said n***a. She's calling you a n***a. It's like this boy that he's a n***a that starts calling him a n***a thing. Yeah, saying the word n***a. You've already said n***a. She's just like, n***a. She's calling you a n***a. It's like this boy that he's a n***a that starts calling him a n***a. Usually in the context of describing other people saying the n-word, but actually saying it out loud on his show. And in the process, crossing a line that, to many, is entirely unacceptable. Yeah, it's a really shocking thing to hear someone say

over and over again in that format, no matter what the context is, and it becomes this really big deal. Hello, friends. Joe Rogan actually releases another video. I'm making this video to talk about the most regretful and shameful thing that I've ever had to talk about publicly. There's a video that's a much more somber video in which he's really straightforwardly apologizing for using this word. My hope is that that this can

be a teachable moment for anybody that doesn't realize how offensive that word can be coming out of a white person's mouth in context or out of context. And after that, he pulls down a number of episodes from his archive on Spotify, presumably because he's not proud of what's on them. Hopefully, at least some of you will accept this and understand where I'm coming from. So Kevin, at this point, in a span of what, as I recall, is about a week or so,

Joe Rogan and his freewheeling show have come under fire for the way he talks about two of the most sensitive subjects in American life today, race and the pandemic. Right. And the outrage isn't just outside Spotify. Spotify's own employees, many of them are outraged about this. They are confronting Daniel Ek, the CEO, and saying, you know, why are we paying this guy millions and millions of dollars

to distribute his show? Why are we in business with someone like this? This is against our values and what we stand for as a company. And yet, Spotify does not back down. It says it's sticking by Joe Rogan. It does say that it's going to allocate $100 million to audio programming from underrepresented minorities, but Joe Rogan is going to stay on the platform.

I'm struck, Kevin, by the fact that so far, this story is not unfolding in the way that so many of these situations have unfolded over the past 18 months or so, which is that a prominent media personality is found to have done something, in some cases, many things that deeply offend a group of people and pressure mounts for their employer to take action. And that action, in most most cases is to part ways with that person or to put them on ice.

That's not what's happened here. And why? Why does this one seem to be going differently? Well, I would put a caveat in there, which is that it's going differently so far. This is still ongoing. Things could change. We could be looking at a very different picture a week or two from now. But I agree that so far this is not going the way of a typical content moderation scandal.

And I think a lot of that at base is about money and power and leverage. You know, Joe Rogan is a very important person to Spotify's business. He brings in a huge amount of money for them and a huge number of listeners. Inside the Spotify app, if you go to the podcast section, for a long time he had his own category. It was like news, sports, culture, Joe Rogan. He was that important to them. And that's very different from, say, a platform like YouTube

where if they take down one creator, even a very popular one, for violating their rules, that's not really going to make a dent in YouTube's overall business. No single person is that important to them. But Joe Rogan is extremely important to Spotify and its podcasting ambitions. But it's also about Spotify kind of taking a stand for its own neutrality, saying, like, we don't want to be an ideological media company or company that picks and chooses who we support and who we don't. We want to have the most popular music and audio content in the world on our platform. And that includes Joe Rogan,

this guy with 11 million listeners per episode. They're saying basically what he's doing is not beyond the pale, and he's important enough to our business that we feel like it's worth sticking by him. So you're saying that at this point for Spotify, Joe Rogan is kind of cancel-proof. Yeah, it does look like that for now.

And I think it's not just Spotify and their reliance on him for their business ambitions that kind of makes him hard to cancel. It's also just this persona that he's cultivated as this guy who's just willing to say what no one else will say, who will step on the third rails of our culture and poke at the most sensitive parts of American life, who isn't afraid to offend people

or say the unwoke thing. That's the personality that he's cultivated, and that's why there are millions of people who tune into his show. Like, they don't want him to follow the prevailing orthodoxy. They think the culture is already too restrictive and censorious. They want more dissenting views, not fewer, even when it comes to something as serious as a pandemic. And, you know, maybe for good reason, they aren't finding those contrarian voices in the mainstream media. Well, this is part of what I find so fascinating about this story, Kevin, because Joe Rogan is literally the most listened to podcast in the world. I mean, it pains me to say

it, but we're second, and it's not even close. And so in some ways, it's funny to talk about him as at odds with the mainstream media. How can you be any more mainstream than 11 million listeners per episode and $100 million deals with a huge audio company? Right. I mean, that's kind of the fundamental paradox of Joe Rogan is that, you know, he is a massively popular, extremely wealthy mega celebrity with one of the biggest audiences in the world. And yet, he positions himself as kind of this normal guy outsider who is punching up at the establishment. And that's why I actually don't think this phrase we keep talking about, mainstream media, is actually all that useful. Because

in reality, there are kind of two versions of the mainstream media. There's the one that, you know, we all sort of use as shorthand, which is like the corporate legacy media, which has, you know, standards, fact-checking processes, and tries to synthesize the best information from experts and get it out there in a responsible way. And then there's this kind of new mainstream, this emerging mainstream, which is made up of people like Joe Rogan, extremely popular contrarian voices who have kind of built their reputation by going against the establishment, by questioning the experts, by allowing a much wider range of views. And now you have in the middle of all this, Spotify, which has to essentially choose which mainstream they want

to cater to. And the question basically is whether a company like Spotify can give a platform to this rising contrarian mainstream while also adhering to the standards of the old mainstream. And Spotify and Joe Rogan are both kind of testing the theory that maybe you can. But so far, we haven't really seen a lot of successful examples of that. Usually, people end up choosing one mainstream or the other. So it's actually not clear whether this will work or even whether it can work. Kevin, thank you very much. Thank you.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The Times reports that the House committee investigating the January 6th assault on the Capitol has discovered gaps in the official White House telephone logs involving former President Trump. Members of the committee have found few records of calls from Trump, even when they know he was making such calls. Those gaps are making it difficult for the committee to accomplish a key goal, to reconstruct what Trump was doing at crucial moments as the attack unfolded. And New York City is expected to fire up to 3,000 workers today for refusing to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. That represents less than 1% of the city's labor force, but appears to be the largest set of layoffs in the country tied to a vaccine mandate.

Today's episode was produced by Sydney Harper, Rochelle Banja, Chelsea Daniel, Lindsay Garrison, and Eric Krupke. It was edited by Michael Benoit and engineered by Chris Wood. Original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.