The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 1.31 WOW! GUESS WHO GOT BANNED! Joe Rogan, Maus, The Rock, Russia Ukraine, Bungie Sony & More in the News

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

Go to http://ridge.com/defranco and use code DEFRANCO to get 10% off site-wide today! News You Might Have Missed: https://youtu.be/ahIUoWOKYkM TEXT ME! [phone] Get More Phil: https://linktr.ee/PhilipDeFranco – 00:00 - ‘Maus’ Book Sales Surge After Tennessee School Board Bans Graphic Novel 04:06 - Sony to Buy Bungie 05:20 - Sponsor 06:07 - Joe Rogan Addresses Spotify Misinformation Controversy 12:16 - U.S. and Russia Clash at U.N. Security Council – ✩ TODAY’S STORIES ✩ ‘Maus’ Book Sales Surge After Tennessee School Board Bans Graphic Novel: https://roguerocket.com/2022/01/31/maus-book-sales-surge-after-tennessee-school-ban/ Sony to Buy Bungie: https://www.theverge.com/22910846/sony-bungie-acquisition-playstation-destiny-halo Joe Rogan Addresses Spotify Misinformation Controversy: https://roguerocket.com/2022/01/31/joe-rogan-responds-spotify-controversy/ U.S. and Russia Clash at U.N. Security Council: https://www.politico.eu/article/us-russia-clash-at-un-security-council-debate-ukraine/ —————————— Executive Producer: Amanda Morones Produced by: Cory Ray Edited by: James Girardier, Julie Goldberg, Maxwell Enright Art Department: Brian Borst, William Crespo Writing/Research: Philip DeFranco, Brian Espinoza, Maddie Crichton, Lili Stenn, Ben Wheeler Production Team: Zack Taylor, Emma Leid ———————————— #DeFranco #JoeRogan #TheRock ———————————— Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sup you beautiful bastards, welcome back to the Philip DeFranco show and today's show starts with the question of why is there such a big concerted effort right now to ban books in the United States? Obviously this question and news it stems from last week It was widely reported that a school board in Tennessee voted to ban Mouse a graphic novel about the Holocaust and more specifically It's a Pulitzer Prize winning book that tells a story of author Art Spiegelman interviewing his father about being a Polish Jew and a Holocaust survivor. And the book, which depicts Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, has remained highly popular since its publication in 1980, especially as a tool to teach younger audiences about the Holocaust.

But earlier this month, a 10-member board in McMinn County voted to remove Maus from its eighth grade language arts curriculum. This because they said it included eight minor curse words like damn and a picture of a naked female Maus. And notably here, while the board made this decision so quietly that even though they voted to remove the book on January 10th,

this move wasn't widely reported until last week when it absolutely exploded in the media. With Spiegelman himself saying he didn't even learn that his book had been banned until Wednesday, literally the day before Holocaust Remembrance Day. And unsurprisingly, this news prompted a ton of backlash from free speech advocates, Jewish organizations, and others. This including Spiegelman himself, who has spoken widely about the ban over the past week. And while he's made a lot of very powerful remarks his most Notable on the subject focus around what this move represents more broadly I'm saying that the Tennessee School Board's decision is by no means a one-off adding It's part of a continuum and just a harbinger of things to come the control of people's thoughts is essential to all of this and Adding that these efforts are part of an intentional and strategic effort to limit what people can learn and what they can understand and think

About them going on to say that quoteAt least one part of our political spectrum "'seems to be very enthusiastic about banning books,' and adding, "'This is a red alert. "'It's not just how dare they deny the Holocaust, "'they'll deny anything.'" And that comment is in reference to the incredibly alarming and rapidly growing attempts to ban books in schools that have been driven

by conservative parents, advocacy groups, and lawmakers. In fact, according to the American Library Association, efforts to ban school library books were 67% higher in September of 2021 than the year before. With the organization saying in a preliminary report that last fall it received an unprecedented number of reported attempts to ban books. But educators and librarians say it's not just the frequency

of book bans that have changed, but also the kinds of books that conservatives want to be removed. Or saying that in the past books have been banned with the intention of protecting children from inappropriate sexual content or offensive language. Schools have also removed books that present religion in a way that some Christians disapprove of or ones that contain witchcraft like Harry Potter, which has been one of the most commonly banned books. Recently most of the books that people are trying to ban center around

LGBTQ issues and race, with reports saying that many conservatives have targeted the books under the pretense that they teach so-called critical race theory, but the vast majority of those texts were just written by people of color, specifically black authors, and focus on their communities and experiences. And these efforts have only continued to grow as politicians continue to politicize so-called critical race theory for political gain, because it teaches that one group acted as an oppressor and another was a victim.

Even though, as we talked about extensively last week, CRT isn't even taught in most primary schools, what people are actually pushing to be removed is basic history lessons about subjects like slavery. With a free speech expert telling the New York Times, many of these groups leading these efforts have basically taken lists of books intended to promote more diverse reading material and argued that all of them should be banned. And so with these trends, many have argued that the McMinn County School Board didn't ban Maus because of a couple of odd dams and a naked mouse, but because they wanted to censor the subject matter.

But ironically, it seems like the ban of Maus has actually had the opposite effect right the Streisand effect since last week sales of mouse have absolutely Skyrocketed I mean some booksellers are just giving away the graphic novel for free also as of recording three different editions of the book were in the top ten books on Amazon with two of them ranking second and third which is a Drastic change because according to reports none of the versions of the book were even in the top 1,000 bestsellers early last week which also isn't actually surprising Spiegelman himself noting that there is past precedent for this and telling reporters the school board could have checked With their book banning predecessor Russian president Vladimir Putin He made the Russian edition of mouse illegal in 2015 under the guise that this was because he was banning swastikas and the small publisher Sold out immediately and had to reprint repeatedly, but ultimately that is where we are with this story right now

Though it does appear that the book banning trend will continue. So with that I want to pass the question up to you What do you make of all this? What are your thoughts? I mean, personally, I'm very concerned. Though, thank you to the McMinn County Board for giving me a new book to add to my reading list. This was one I missed out on. Yeah, whether you disagree or you agree with me, I'd love to know.

Personally, I'm of the mindset that when we start just removing history, we're more inclined to repeat or rhyme it. There's a lot of fucked up history. I'd rather not us go down the same road. And then in massive business news, oh my God, another massive acquisition in the video game world.

Like really, what a January. On January 10th, you had Take-Two, right? The publisher for Grand Theft Auto announcing, "'Hey, we're gonna buy Zynga for $12.7 billion.' Then just eight days later, January 18th, we learned Activision Blizzard's gonna be bought by Microsoft for $68.7 billion. And now, today, while the lowest in the number of dollars,

but still massive news, Sony announced they plan to acquire the creators of Destiny and the original Halo games, Bungie. Reportedly, they're buying Bungie for $3.6 billion. And if you play Destiny 2, do not fret. Literally one of the first statements made is that Destiny 2 will remain multi-platform with cross-play. All right, so with this seemingly Sony trying

to keep Microsoft from nipping at its heels, like we talked about last time, as far as the biggest players in the gaming space, you have Tencent, Sony, and Microsoft. And while this Bungie acquisition is obviously much smaller than Activision Blizzard, it's still massive and important. It just shows the further and rapid consolidation we're seeing in the gaming space.

And while the cynical gamer in me is like very wary about this, worried about in the future, this is just gonna lead to more and more platform exclusives, but the hopeful gamer in me is that yes, they stay true to their word this is all about multi-platform and it's really about just making their offerings better in like Xbox Game Pass or PlayStation Plus. Because that world, yes, while not perfect and there are reasons to complain about certain things, far more advantageous for the gamers. But from that I want to take a second to thank the fantastic sponsor of today's show, Ridge. You know, I've had a Ridge wallet before they even became a sponsor,

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involving Joe Rogan, Spotify and misinformation. So the last time we talked about this, Neil Young had asked his representatives to have his music pulled from Spotify over vaccine misinformation on the platform with him specifically citing Joe Rogan. And since then a ton has happened. Spotify ended up pulling Neil Young's catalog

and released a statement saying, "'They have a great responsibility "'in balancing both safety for listeners "'and freedom for creators,' and claiming, "'We have detailed content policies in place, "'and we've removed over 20,000 podcast episodes "'related to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. "'We regret Neil's decision to remove his music

"'from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon.'" We also had a number of critics immediately pushing back on that statement, saying, "'If true, it's great that you removed "'over 20,000 podcast episodes episodes that were spreading COVID-19 misinformation But what about the thing that is getting millions if not tens of millions of views that you paid a hundred million dollars to exclusively bring To your platform, but it didn't stop there He saw other artists speaking up Joni Mitchell and Bruce Springsteen's guitarist Nils Lofgren also requesting that their music be removed from Spotify

Also while not saying that it is the specific reason it happened Spotify has also lost $2 billion in market value over the three days following Neil exiting the streaming service. And so now the biggest updates is that Spotify and Joe Rogan have now addressed the situation. Yesterday, Spotify CEO, Daniel Ek released an open letter about the company's rules and approach regarding COVID-19

saying, we know we have a critical role to play in supporting creator expression while balancing it with the safety of our users. In that role, it is important to me that we don't take on the position of being content sensor while also making sure that there are rules in place and consequences for those who violate them. Also saying that while the company has had policies

in place about misinformation, it's not been transparent about them. And continuing, based on the feedback over the last several weeks, it's become clear to me that we have an obligation to do more to provide balance and access to widely accepted information from the medical and scientific communities

guiding us through this unprecedented time. And so with that, the company announced three steps to address concerns. The first simply being the publication of its platform rules. Secondly, saying they'll add a content advisory to any podcast episode that discusses COVID and the advisory will direct listeners

to Spotify's COVID hub. And finally saying the company will also begin testing ways to highlight their rules to creators to raise awareness and help creators understand what is acceptable and what they should be held accountable for when it comes to their content. As far as Joe Rogan, he posted a video to Instagram responding to the controversy. It starts with him citing that people took issue with two specific episodes of his show

that included interviews with controversial scientific figures, Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Peter McCullough. And while it is true that those episodes in particular did have a massive spotlight on them, they did ignite backlash, it is also worth noting that criticisms that Joe Rogan promotes vaccine misinformation extend way past just those two episodes. He has faced backlash for a variety of other things that he has said regarding COVID-19 over a long period of time. But also when it came to those two guests, Rogan said, 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. Now regarding that

section in the video as a whole, we saw a lot of people supporting Joe Rogan, a lot of blue check marks, including people like The Rock. But also at the same time, we saw a lot of people pushing back and criticizing the statement that many of the things that we thought is misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact. With those people saying yes for some things, but not for a number of the things that you're talking about. With people pointing to an example that Rogan tried to make in the video. 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. With that, you had people pushing back saying, no, we've always known that there can be breakthrough cases. That's what the health experts said. And yes, there are examples of people like Rachel Maddow using absolute definitive language, but that was very stupid on her part. But the main thing with this was,

hey, the health experts have communicated from the beginning, breakthrough cases can and will happen. So they were saying their criticism here was this was either a disingenuous argument from Rogan or an ignorant one. Saying that is not an apples to apples comparison. You did not have main health experts saying there is no chance you're gonna get COVID.

There is no chance you're going to spread it if you get the vaccine. The efficacy of the vaccine when they came out against that variant was very, very high. Without getting into the nitty gritty, I mean, just at the top surface level, if you do not get COVID, you are not going to spread it. But now a year later,

we're not dealing with the same variant of COVID, we're dealing with Omicron. And I think that now everyone's pretty much on the same page of vaccines and their efficacy as far as are you going to get COVID, they're just a lot less effective compared to the original strain. But even with that, looking at the real world data,

we see that, oh, even though you could get COVID, you could still spread COVID. If you have the vaccine, you know, you're looking out for yourself. The hospitalization rates are much lower. These are changing situations and you're either ignorant or knowingly spreading false information

by comparing Omicron to the original variant. And with those arguments aside, you had Rogan kind of saying, you know, what I do, yes, it's flawed, I'm human, I'm flawed. What I'm trying to do is just sit down and talk with people of different beliefs. Saying, for example, when he invited Dr. Malone and Dr. McCullough on to hear their opinions, he doesn't

know if they were right and added, 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. With Rogan also echoing support for Spotify's decision to include disclaimers before podcast episodes about COVID-19 and saying that if an expert has an opinion contradictory to what is widely accepted, that should be noted. Brogan also outlining steps that he might take himself, saying, If there's anything that I've done that I could do better is have more experts with differing opinions right after I have the controversial ones. I would most certainly be open to doing

that. But the malls are thanking Spotify and his fans, also apologizing to Spotify for them having to deal with this. Again, I'm not trying to promote misinformation. I'm not trying to be controversial. I've never tried to do anything with this podcast other than just talk to people. But ultimately, that is where we are with this story right now. Obviously, right now, a lot of people having a lot of different reactions.

As far as the stock market, the market's actually responded very well to what's happened over the last 24 hours. As of recording, Spotify is up 11.4%. Still, it's down 17.6% if you look at just the last month, but this could be a rebound. But with that said, especially because everyone seems to have an opinion on this,

I wanna pass the question off to you. What are your thoughts regarding all these Joe Rogan Spotify updates right now? For Spotify, do you think this is just them trying to put a bandaid on the situation to stop the bleeding? Is it just PR? Or do you think they're making them trying to put a bandaid on the situation to stop the bleeding? Is it just PR? Or do you think they're making meaningful moves here?

Regarding Joe Rogan in general or his response to this controversy, what are your thoughts about that? Also, do you think any other artists are gonna be joining Neil Young and leaving the platform anytime soon? And or do you think it'll even matter? And then finally today we have the latest edition of,

oh God, what the hell is happening with Ukraine and Russia now? And the big update is that there was a UN Security Council meeting and it was a shit show. It's a first off Russia and China tried to block the meeting but they ended up getting outvoted in a 10 to two vote. And it kind of just hit on some of the highlights you had US and Russia accusing one another of stoking

the Ukraine crisis. You had a Russian ambassador saying of the United States, they themselves are whipping up tensions and rhetoric and are provoking escalation and adding the discussions about a threat of war is provocative in and of itself. You're almost calling for this, you want it to happen, you're waiting for it to happen. To which US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield responded,

I cannot let false equivalency go unchecked. The threats of aggression on the border of Ukraine, yes, on its border, is provocative. Our recognition of the facts on the ground is not provocative. At the same time, for their part, Ukraine seemed to kind of take swipes at both the United States and Russia,

though not in an equal manner. Even before this meeting, on Friday, you had President Zelensky of Ukraine saying, I'm to kind of take swipes at both the United States and Russia, though not in an equal manner. Even before this meeting on Friday, you had President Zelensky of Ukraine saying, "'I'm the president of Ukraine. "'I'm based here and I think I know the details "'deeper than any other president.'" With Zelensky, as Axios explained, "'Contending that the current Russian troop buildup

"'on Ukraine's border is not a significant escalation "'from the large military exercises Moscow carried out "'in April of 2021, but that the media coverage "'is far more intense.'" But also today in this meeting, Ukraine's ambassador to the UN rebuked Russia and other diplomats for trying to speak on their behalf. And I hope this translation is correct.

Accused them of acting like Humpty Dumpty, the wall sitting egg in Lewis Carroll's, Alice in Wonderland, who gave his own meaning to words. Also insisting that Ukraine would do nothing to justify any military action by Russia. And ultimately that is where we are with this. And we'll continue to watch it. I've obviously, hopefully cooler heads prevail

that we don't just see an invasion and war. For now we have to wait and see what happens next. But ultimately that is where that story and today's show ends. As always, thank you for watching, hitting that like button, subscribing and joining the family. I love yo faces and I'll see you tomorrow.