Then you cannot listen to many. Joe speaks so much bollox with an authoritative air that if you didn't know the subject you would think that Joe did, when many many times he clearly does not.
I agree they are interesting when he lets the guest speak (even if completely disagree with them) or it is on something Joe does know about / has researched. But that is far from all the time.
Joe also has a habit of ignoring the guest at times and carrying on down his own little conversation alley, usually when he got too stoned - which ruins the conversation IMO
Connover, to his credit, went so far as to provide additional context for his defense of trans people’s agency post-interview:
https://www.adamconover.net/adding-evidence-to-the-discussio...
The stance that it is wrong that there should only be male and female sports leagues AND that trans people should automatically be included in whichever their identification maps to, is a completely defensible and not misinformed stance. It may be wrong, but so might the opposite stance held by trans activists (which is also likely completely defensible and not misinformed).
I could be wrong, but I am almost positive that this is what was being argued.
Rogan himself was holding back from joining in, and I think some of the commenters here mistook my comment as critiquing Rogan for being transphobic, which I did not observe. It was the skinny guy (whose name I don't know).
I think the purported advantage of puberty blockers is that they help “waiting a few years so you’re sure” while taking the path that’s the lesser of evils.
You can't be that surprised that in a situation like this, most people would tend to be very conservative (not republican conservative, but careful, do no harm, don't rock the boat kind of conservative).
Most people are "conservative" on this issue because they have no idea what they're talking about, just like every almost every other issue related to trans people.
My mom said something similar about "curiosity" to try and convince me that I couldn't be trans. As it turns out, what she meant was "when I was your age, I wanted to cut my hair short." Likewise, pretty much every story I've heard like this turns out to be either obvious lies meant to discredit trans people, or something that would have been easily sorted out by a psychologist. Eg. I've heard of gay people wishing they were another gender so that they wouldn't get bullied for their orientation. No decent professional would mistake that for genuine dysphoria.
But even supposing that your psychologist was incompetent, you still would have socially transitioned in some capacity before you ever started hormones. This almost certainly would have let you know if transitioning was really right for you. And even if it didn't, and you went all the way to starting estrogen, you could always stop if you didn't like what it was doing. Estrogen works very slowly. I've been on it for three years, and I know cis men whose boobs are bigger than mine. If I changed my mind, I could easily start living as a man again.
It's absolutely unfair to impose life-ruining misery on trans teens because of the off-chance that it might do a fraction of the same harm to a cis person.
Case in point: Rogan talks a lot about fighting. But in that particular case, we already discriminate by weight. So it might be possible to make things more fair by giving a weight penalty to male-to-female fighters that want to compete in the women's league.
My point is, there are options to explore besides an outright ban. For example, a trans woman that goes through HRT will lose some of the advantages of her birth sex. However, she might still enjoy the advantage of the male frame, hence my suggestion of an additional penalty.
A unisex league as you suggested could also be a posibility, and one could think about introducing not only weight classes, but testosterone classes as well.
The reality is that female leagues was a cultural hack that worked well enough in the 20th century. But in a world where we recognise that neither sex not gender fit neatly into binary categories, it is impractical to assume that we can fit people into two sporting categories.
Before the higher level of testing, there were plenty of rumors that fighters would overtrain (or cycle on steroids) to the point of plummeting their testosterone levels to be given a TRT exemption. By the time their baseline levels recovered by fight day, they could still be on TRT
Trans women are rare, and transition dramatically reduces muscle mass and other attributes related to performance. In fact, trans women typically have a lower testosterone level than cis women due to hormone treatments. There's absolutely no reason to believe that allowing trans women to participate in sports would prevent cis women from being able to compete. Trans women have been allowed to participate in women's Olympics events since the early 2000s, and not a single one has won a gold medal. You use the term "biological males" to refer to two completely different sets of people, which is dishonest and despicable.
Hearing someone vent/whine about the orientation and life choices of others is just not my cup of tea.
It was the kind of commentary one might overhear from a table of not-so-bright senior citizens at a Denny’s.
I've been listening to him forever and watch MMA every single weekend. I have hard time imagining him saying this. Infact, one of his MMA pet peeves is over training.
i've never heard him say anything like this. i've also watched the entire Firaz episode.
To me this is as good as it gets for a talk show that has a wide ranging set of topics like the JRE. Joe Rogan isn’t an expert and doesn’t pretend to be unbiased on all issues. His community, I think, understands his limitations. He just runs a good conversation, and that’s all I want to hear.
Other listeners I've spoken to feel the same way. And I reckon Rogan knows that too
But he knows a lot about nutrition as well.
Most of our current long-term (>1 year long) studies about diets deal with the problem of "subjects not sticking to the diet" by just saying that X% of participants stopped the diet and then proceeding to analyze the health benefits for the Y% that stuck to it.
That's a fair thing to do, but what's not supported from those results is the conclusion that such a diet would have worked very well for the X% had they stuck to it.
I agree that he tends to bring up his favorite topics all the time, which gets a bit repetitive but it's ok. You can't expect him to run hundred of conversations without being repetitive.
The Ezra Klein Show - Ezra Klein
Making sense podcast - Sam Harris
80000 hours podcast - Rob Wiblin
[1] https://www.vox.com/ezra-klein-show-podcast [2] https://samharris.org/podcast/ [3] https://80000hours.org/podcast/
Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman is also a very good interviewer, but her guests are often too niche for me to recommend to a general audience.
The other day he set up a debate on nutrition where he covered the topic of heart disease, and he put a cardiologist (Dr. Khan) with 20 years of experience debating with an acupuncturist (Kris Kresser) on the causes of heart disease.
And he kept interrupting the doctor and taking the acupuncturist side on the most absurd claims.
He is also into things like moon landing conspiracies and all that good stuff that generate a lot of internet traffic, but I think in a bit of a hypocritical way as I'm pretty sure he doesn't really believe in any of that stuff and just talks about it for the clicks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mmlmxamw_k
He used to believe that, and now he doesn't.
He will gladly give his huge platform to the most complete wacko as long as it makes a good story and gets him his clicks, spreading a ton of misinformation and reinforcing common ignorant beliefs in the process.
Well, it wasn't really an example at all as he's petty open about how silly he was to believe it, but ok.
Rogan invites anyone on who he finds interesting. Yes, he has a proclivity to want to believe things that are a bit out there, but he challenges a lot of those "wackos" as well. He also brings on many field experts just to hear what they have to say.
I think you're wrong about Joe fishing for clicks. He's been doing this a long time now and his format hasn't really changes. He's not purporting to be an expert of any kind (hell, he doesn't even claim to be intelligent) and he's an intellectually open person.
His show is not a platform for guests who won't offend your sensibilities, and he has no obligation to censor for you. If you don't like what a guest is saying then great; make up your own mind. He's not trying to convince you.
When he invites a guest he gives them a platform, many people hear what some of those quacks have to say and take it at face value.
He should take more care in not spreading so much misinformation and ignorance to a gigantic audience, there is too much of that in the world already.
It's a shared responsibility, between him and the guests and the people that listen and take it at face value that should know better.
He can very well balance better the entertainment aspect with the accuracy of the information, especially on topics that have an actual impact on people's lives like health-related topics.
What? If people stop liking what he has to say, they'll stop listening to him. I don't know what your point is. Set up federal regulations on the Joe Rogan Podcast because you disagree with some things he says?
What? If people stop liking what he has to say, they'll stop listening to him. What's your solution? Set up federal regulations on the Joe Rogan Podcast because you disagree with some things he says?
Or maybe he just finds it interesting? I find myself on paranormal sites from time to time even though I know it's 100% (or at least 99.9%) bullshit. It's still fun to read.
There is already so much scientific ignorance in the general public, there is so much misrepresentation of science already.
A ton of people actually believe thinks like the Earth is flat, Joe many times gives a voice to that type of quacks for clicks.
His podcast many times acts as a vehicle for spreading ignorance, other than that yes its entertaining and people should know better. But often they don't and that's the problem.
> The other day he set up a debate on nutrition where he covered the topic of heart disease, and he put a cardiologist (Dr. Khan) with 20 years of experience debating with an acupuncturist (Kris Kresser) on the causes of heart disease. And he kept interrupting the doctor and taking the acupuncturist side on the most absurd claims
I haven't listened that episode, or really many Joe Rogan podcasts at all. But isn't that kinda the opposite of an echo chamber? He had two guests on with opposing viewpoints, and gave both of them a fair shake, even when one of the guests had an minority (absurd) opinion?
In reality, the show is an excellent avenue to mainstream conspiracy theorists and people who want to sell their latest books or products or whatever, and the people who will listen to it will get a hugely distorted view of what the actual consensus on certain topics is.
This is the same sort of dynamic that recently cropped up around a certain youtube 'educator' who claimed to teach people ML and to have disrupted the cartel of higher education, only to turn out that he had plagiarized a lot of his content and that the education was actually of extremely low quality. The same mentality, gatekeepers are evil, listen to the pot-smoking show-host who brings you the real information that they don't want you to know, yada yada.
Medical science is able to speak with brilliant clarity hard-earned from centuries of experimentation on the topic of heart disease.
If I hear a discourse involving a cardiologist and a layperson, and it's not really made apparent who is the expert and who is not, then I call that an echo chamber.
> an environment in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own, so that their existing views are reinforced and alternative ideas are not considered
Counterpoint:
Be brave about hearing stupid arguments. They are a whetting stone for your own thoughts.
It is not smart, courageous, healthy or prudent to prevent yourself from being exposed to bad ideas.
But as a whole, I do find that he has a very wide variety of guests which show all sorts of view point. Just don't take what you hear in any single podcast as absolute truth.
Chris Kresser is not an "acupuncturist". And this is a classic ad-hominen ;-)
Joe kept interrupting Khan because Khan was avoiding answering the asked questions.
And Chris kept mentioning the elephant in the room, which is that the randomized-controlled trials (the gold standard in nutrition) don't show a statistically significant link between heart disease and meat or saturated fat consumption and that's a fact, being also the subject of recent meta analysis, that used GRADE to reach the conclusion that there is no good evidence for the claim that meat causes cancer and that adults should probably continue their current meat consumption:
https://examine.com/nutrition/red-meat-is-good-for-you-now/
This isn't to say that meat or saturated fat is good or bad, but if listening to such a podcast causes anger at the people daring to question a "cardiologist with 20 years of experience", then maybe you should consider that you yourself have stepped in the land of ideology / religion and that's just not compatible with science or health for that matter.
The problem of putting someone with acupuncture training debating a cardiologist is that, in the eyes of that huge audience, he presents those opinions as perfectly equivalent, alternative to each other and equally valid.
When in fact, one person has basically no idea of what he is talking about, but in the eyes of the public, and because they are put side by side, they are seen as equivalent when they are not.
Why not put him against a non-vegan cardiologist then? Someone at least with equivalent training.
From a scientific point of view, the only diet that as ever shown to stop the progression of heart disease is a whole-food plant-based diet.
Khan replied to the questions, not sure why you are saying he avoided anything. It's obvious that Joe took Kresser side during the debate.
What kind of tough questions did he ask Kresser compared to Khan?
This is an extremely closed minded view—not everyone with formal training is automatically an expert. This is the appeal to authority fallacy, and a poor one at that.
> From a scientific point of view, the only diet that as ever shown to stop the progression of heart disease is a whole-food plant-based diet.
This is not true either, and I find it ironic it’s stated authoritatively with no sources.
Why is Joe Rogan asking about heart disease to a licensed acupuncturist in a podcast with 60 million downloads a month? It's like asking for legal advice from a massage therapist.
If you had heart disease or someone in your family had it, would you ask an acupuncturist for advice?
For the sources:
"proved decades ago that heart disease could be reversed solely with diet and lifestyle change"
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/our-number-one-killer-can-b...
The video is a summary of the studies listed via the "Sources cited" button, that you find scrolling down after the video.
I have no bone in this particular fight. I'm inclined to agree with you, most of the time, but it's clearly possible to be an expert in nearly anything without formal training:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan
Lots of absolutes in this discussion, but reality is usually far more nuanced.
For asking someone to do some web design or a logo, I don't think it's necessary either, but there is a limit somewhere.
Think about this way, if you yourself or someone in your family would have heart disease, would you take advice from an acupuncturist?
I bet you wouldn't. What are the odds that Kris Kresser without any formal training or experience managed to better understand the science behind such a complex topic like heart disease than full-time scientists and cardiologists?
Self-learning is great for a lot of things, but heart disease is likely not one of them.
They said that although a link exists, its not worth it for people to change their diet, which has triggered outrage on the scientific community.
One of the authors of the studies meta-analysed complained that he never saw such as misrepresentation of the data.
The author of the meta-analysis is someone with strong financial links to the meat industry, so thay study is suspect, to say the least.
When you open someone up after a heart attack, what do you find clogging their veins? It's cholesterol. What happens when you eat cholesterol? Your cholesterol serum goes up.
If Joe could have found a serious cardiologist that would claim that cholesterol has nothing to do with heart disease, he would have long invited him to the show.
But the best he could come up with is Kris Kresser, which kind of says it all.
That’s an incorrect oversimplification of the situation. Like most of what is being bandied about here.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you...
Most people eat more than just an egg a day in terms of cholesterol. They eat dairy, meat, eggs, and fish multiple times a day typically one or more of those at every single meal.
So dietary cholesterol does add up over the day, combined with a bad mix of processed carbs and fats it's a recipe for disaster.
Yes, you can eat one egg day and get away with it, but most people eat way more cholesterol than that every single day.
Chris Kresser, M.S., L.Ac. - "M.S. L.Ac." means Master of Science, Licensed Acupuncturist. This is his formal training, all I'm saying is that he shouldn't be presented as an expert to Joe Rogan's audience in the topic he was interviewed on.
He's the best out there now as he's got the pick of his guests (the result of a forward feedback loop of being a good interviewer).
But view/listen to enough of them and you'll learn to pick the gems from the drivel, like almost everything.
There are of course the interviews which are actually him being interviewed (he does most of the talking)... But I think that's part of why it makes for good listening. He keeps the conversation going. Even with a reticent guest, most interviews go for 2 hours or more. So in the end you extract something useful out of it.
He mentioned this actually few times and its interesting that he learnt to be patient and non-combative no non-issues.
Half of the time i pay attention to how he runs the podcast instead of actual conversations.
Joe does little research on most guests (mostly due to the sheer volume of guests I'm sure), which could be a more stylistic choice if he were a deft interviewer who could think on his feet and dig deep anyway, but he's not. He's an everyman and asks very surface-level questions. As you say guests are (usually) given wide latitude to own the mic, which works great when it's a guest with a compelling narrative. It works terribly when the guest is very ideological or has some sort of agenda they are adept at selling.
The times he does challenge a guest (sometimes way too aggressively as others in the thread have shown), oftentimes he has missed the point entirely, and the guest has to back up and try to patch the conversation. Once that happens a couple times the flow of the interview is really disturbed and it takes a long time to recover.
I like Joe as a person, and admire his discipline, but to call him a master interviewer would be as accurate as calling him a master comedian because he has been grinding so long.
Peter Thiel on “The Straussian Moment” (Sept 2019)
At the very least in terms of doing proper research on a subject, I think there's no one better.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMyvB2wAXYI
And A$AP Rocky
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8IYpVF_S5M
He also seems to be able to 'find' people just before they really make it big/mainstream, like Kendrick Lamer, Billie Eilish, and Tyler the Creator. I heard about them from Narduar before anywhere else.
His guests routinely compliment him on his prep and the questions he ask. The show would be just as good without the hot sauce gimmick.
The Hot Ones episodes I found the most entertaining were the ones where the guest was the dominant one, steering the conversation, and the questions were incidental / not necessary.
He honestly doesn't add that much by being in the room vs if someone else had the same questionnaire sheet. And in some ways his wooden demeanor can even be detracting instead of some of the best interviewers who can melt away and give the interviewee the space and direction to shine.
For a supremely frustrating example of Rogan not 'getting it' listen to the last hour-ish of JRE#1350 with Nick Bostrom, where Joe simply can't wrap his head around The Simulation Argument.
But yeah, Rogan’s a mediocre interviewer at best, though he can be entertaining himself. And the long format of the podcast means that interviewees can sort of talk themselves out, which can give real insight into what they think.
That one was not well-reasoned or patient, but other than that, I've found almost all of Joe's podcasts to be very good. He's definitely one of the greatest interviewers on the planet right now.
I don't see how it is any worse than when Crowder mocks Trump's braggadocios by imitating his common catchphrases. Such material is low comedy, for sure, but not cancel-worthy.
There are plenty of intelligent conservatives/whatever that don't do the stuff he does that's just intended to be offensive/get attention.
That's also because most news networks don't have the luxury (or the willingness) to do 2 hours interviews with a single person in the first place. They need to make things short so they can drown you with ads at every break.
On the other hand, it feels like most of the podcasts have a shallow content level if you are already familiar with the subject, and sometimes the conversation/questions tend to go into the stoner mysticism realm.
But mostly Joe gets it spot on and does a great interview. What this does to popular discourse? When a small % of the population watch these types of long form interview and get deep, thoughtful and insightful answers to complex ideas .... and some % of the population watch Fox and read tabloids to get their news.
How does society fix this huge knowledge divide?
I also imagine on some other forum out there someone is lamenting the popularity of the Joe Rogan Experience while the media of their liking gets even less exposure, and wondering how they fix that knowledge divide in society.
- Why should it?
- Isnt the divide inevitable anyway (X knows about Shakespeare, Y knows about quantum theory, Z knows how to grow corn...)
Average number of words per article was 764.
While you can get long form fewer and fewer people read it, myself included. If a major player like the BBC resort to news in an average of 764 words the majority of people are not getting deep/insightful/challenging news or information.
In my 20s I used to read long form broadsheet articles on a Sunday, I don't seem to have the attention for it any more. Even articles from hacker news that are too long I just go straight to the comments to get a digest. I suspect my mobile phone addiction is to blame, even last week I signed up for blinkist after I tried to read Ray Dalios Principles for the third time and didn't have the attention for it when I saw an ad for the summary on blinkist and just signed up.
Not sure what point I'm trying to make but I just believe super shortform, dopamine induced hit of information may be detrimental to me/society in the long run.
*edited as table of data not displaying correctly
Bostrom really failed there. He simply did not explain the argument very well. Everything Bostrom said is clear to someone who already understands the argument or has experience with statistics, but it was not at all a good explanation for someone who doesn't have the necessary intuitions to understand why they are more likely to be a simulated agent.
How would one "con" so many intelligent people for so many years with purely logical arguments, exactly? An argument is either coherent and valid and sound or it isn't. There's no room for conning or personal charm or anything related to the person themselves.
When he interviews people from tech, it’s usually cringeworthy for me. And very entertaining in fields I know little of.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
You should check out #947 - Ron Miscavige [1]. It is the one episode that comes to mind where JR's behavior and impatience really bothers me. The guy's story is quite sad and Joe seemed distant and distracted the entire time.
Where do you think he was trying to shirk responsibility? I've listened to a lot of his podcasts and that was also the only one where I couldn't understand why Joe was acting so harshly towards him. Once his son was absorbed into the cult, I don't think there's anything he could've done. Not to mention how hard it is even to get yourself out of it, as he explained in great detail.