Joe Rogan Is the New Mainstream Media
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
At the same time, it's super interesting that Rogan negotiated a deal which appears to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars for Spotify to licence his content for 3 years, after which point he could put it all back on YouTube if he wanted. The fact that he had that kind of leverage as an independent creator who started by recording his friends clowning around at his house and now has presidential candidates knocking at his door begging for an interview shows the power of independent media
I think the JRE brand will be diminished but only time will tell.
Yep, I'm still pissed about removing long press to preview
As long as I can get Rogan on my podcast app, nothing really changes for me.
My point was that you could enjoy JRE the way you wanted to. Now you’ll have to enjoy it the way Spotify tells you to. As far as I know his episodes will be pulled off other platforms in September.
Stern was at his height in 2001-2004 I think was peaking at 25m listeners in the mornings on terrestrial radio. Which was fucking massive. Dropped off huge on day 1 at Sirius and I don't think ever recovered most of his audience.
Interesting that audience size != what's a good deal for the broadcaster. Like music however I suspect the REAL value is in the 'back catalog'.
Really?
As a semi frequent JRE listener, if I missed an interesting guest I'll still go back and listen, but I'm not particularly motivated to go and listen to an interview from 1 year ago, or any historical one for that matter.
It needs to be current for me, I'm not convinced it has the replayability of music, or a tv show like friends say.
He has almost 1500 episodes covering thousands of hours. Many people listen to the back catalog while waiting for the latest episodes or more content from the interesting guests and topics.
Yes, as in "it's possible", the same as it's possible for an unknown author to be a best selling author (like JK Rowling). No as in it's an outlier or the exception. How many cases like this do we have? , esp. considering the consolidation of mass media in a few companies?
With moves like this one, and also the acquisition of Gimlet for 200+ million, I think we're starting to see the shift of these kinds of outlets from the periphery to the center of media.
As of 2015 his contract was worth $80 million PER YEAR and the estimates were that his audience is around 3.5 million highly engaged listeners. Yes, a fraction of what JRE gets in downloads, but hey...$80 million per year.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/16/business/media/howard-ste...
Now that might be just fine for Howard Stern, like it might be just fine for Joe Rogan, but I think it's fairly likely that this kind of deal does come down to trading cultural cache, and one's status as a household name for cold hard cash at the end of the day. In that sense, Rogan's move to spotify might be more like a popular touring act being put to pasture as a headliner in Vegas than it represents him taking on the mantle of mainstream media.
I suspect Rogan will see somewhat less of a drop-off than stern since the barrier to entry for Spotify is significantly less than satellite radio, but I suspect we will see that the medium has been a major component of his success: his show is pretty good when it's free and when it's everywhere. In other words, like Howard Stern was the best thing you could find when flipping channels on the way to work, Joe Rogan's content is often worth a click in a sea of mediocre content. Whether people will actively seek it out remains to be seen.
I have premium, so one gotcha maybe whether you can download podcasts for free? I would be annoyed if I had to sit through both Spotify's ads and the product placement in podcasts. (does Spotify insert inline ads into podcasts as well?)
It’s assumed that the second phase is to allow podcasters to embed ads to allow them to monetize their podcasts, but it will be opt in.
Also, most podcast ads are for direct response ads where the effectiveness of the ad campaigns can be tracked somewhat via coupon codes and that either are for large purchases (Casper, Warby Parker) or for subscriptions where the lifetime value of the customer and churn rate can be estimated.
You don’t hear that many brand advertisements on podcasts. That’s the market Spotify wants to go after.
Besides, an advertiser doesn’t need fine grained targeting to know that for instance anyone listening to “The Talk Show” or “Accidental Tech Podcast” is a probably a computer geek with lots of disposable income.
Yeah and stephen marbury went to china and made millions, but he became irrelevant. We all know why stern went with sirius, for the money. But he became culturally irrelevant in the process. But the writing was on the wall. He was getting old and "shock jock" is a young man's game. So he was going to get irrelevant no matter what.
In my case, I'll probably stop listening because my specific podcast app (podkicker) doesn't look like it can pull from spotify (maybe none can).
I think that might be the takeaway for me: modern companies have over-optimized for political correctness. I wish more companies would be honest about their politics and that of their employees.
It's not that long ago that workers discussed so much politics that they got together and had shootouts with their employers.
Up until 1860 or so, most people across the world were working on farms. And most of those people were at best sharecroppers, if not serfs or slaves. Something tells me there wasn't a lot of freedom going around :-)
Sure, but said Facebook employee has a greater chance of having action taken against him for wearing a MAGA cap than for wearing an Antifa shirt. Of course Facebook have all rights to do so since they're a private corporation but that sort of thing is what GP was talking about.
What has always confused me about this discussion about say, a left leaning bent at Facebook or whatever is that this has always been the norm in virtually every conservative place, which is like 90% of provincial small towns, from which all the liberal and creative people have to run away in the first place.
(But admittedly, this is spoken as someone who mostly has exposure to more liberal workplaces - so I'd be happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.)
I go to work to do my job and get a paycheck, ideally without drama. I don't give a day's ass about your MAGA hat.
Most modern media is too stimulating. Massive budget 3 hour long movies, epic TV series, clickbait websites kaleidoscopic with ads, shrieking tabloids, overproduced hypersexualised pop music... podcasting is just two people talking. It’s a relief, a comfort, it’s humanising. But it will no doubt develop the same perversions as other forms of media now that serious $$$ have arrived. I suspect this will really come into play as the US election approaches.
Podcasts AFAIK (or as far as I experience) are largely discovered by word-of-mouth. If I discover a podcast, it is probably because one particular episode was interesting enough that someone brought it up in a conversation. Relevant, thought-provoking conversations lend themselves much better to that form of discovery than cheap emotional appeals. Podcasts are a lot like books in that way.
Except that Rogan's 3-hour-long interviews are massively popular on Youtube, which undermines your point. (The interviews include video.)
Downvoting because you like Joe Rogan? Fitting there's no actual RESPONSE, because what I posted is accurate. Joe Rogan: "Alex Jones is just misunderstood" - the guy who ran with the Sandy Hook conspiracy and was likely a major contributing factor in one of the parents committing suicide. Joe Rogan's "unbiased" approach is toxic.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/14/joe-rogan-s...
I feel like this because the alternative is having a gatekeeper who tells everyone whose opinion is worth spreading and whose should be silenced and I prefer living in a non-totalitarian society.
Unless I'm that gatekeeper of course: I'm down for subjugating society to my personal preference of what's right and wrong.
edit: I may think that Alex Jones is an idiot but I still want him to be able to get as much exposure as someone I like.
You can't possibly expect people to make rational decisions about science they don't understand. And letting people straight up LIE and expect the common man to spend hours researching a topic they probably don't even understand to figure out they're being lied to is RIDICULOUS. There's a reason why we have ethics in journalism...
Who decides what’s misinformed? Science, the same thing that allows you to post on HN.
When people discuss creationism they're usually talking about Young Earth Creationism which is absolutely a fringe idea
> When asked the single-question version, just 18 percent of U.S adults say humans have always existed in their present form, while 81 percent say humans have evolved over time.
For example, most of these folks wont say the Earth is 10,000 or 6,500 years old. When asked they'll say the planet is much older.
Would I prefer to live in a nazi or communist society? No, but I prefer to live in a society that in theory can, in a worst case scenario, turn into either of those eventually than in one that cannot.
edit: unless we include some sort of utopian society where we're ruled by some perfect AI or where everyone has perfect information access and decision-making of course but that's science fiction.
I downvoted because of this comment:
> Unfortunately that generally consists of bringing on nut jobs like Alex Jones and pretending their fabricated claims are just as worthy of discussion as actual subject matter experts bringing facts and logic.
By what process did you arrive at this conclusion (which I assume is a personal opinion, even though it is presented in the form of a fact)? In a system as complex as global human society, where we have almost no understanding (or even knowledge of the existence) of some of the most important sub-processes contained within, how do you believe that you have individually arrived at the objectively correct ("what I posted is accurate") assessment of what "is" "worthy of discussion"?
> "Alex Jones is just misunderstood" - the guy who ran with the Sandy Hook conspiracy and was likely a major contributing factor in one of the parents committing suicide. Joe Rogan's "unbiased" approach is toxic.
Do you actually think that Alex Jones' comprehensive worldview is fully understood, both by yourself and others? What data have you used to arrive at your conclusion? The the single "fact" that he "ran with" the Sandy Hook conspiracy and "was likely" a major contributing factor in one of the parents committing suicide? Surely you wouldn't form a confident conclusion on an infinitely complex subject (the understanding of someone's comprehensive worldview) based on one individual data point, would you?
I don't pose these questions in a rhetorical manner by the way - I would genuinely like to hear an "actual RESPONSE", if you are willing to provide one.
You need a model with predictive power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_power
>> The concept of predictive power, the power of a scientific theory to generate testable(!) predictions, differs from explanatory power and descriptive power (where phenomena that are already known are retrospectively explained or described by a given theory) in that it allows a prospective test of theoretical understanding.
>> A classic example of the predictive power of a theory is the discovery of Neptune as a result of predictions made by mathematicians John Couch Adams and Urbain Le Verrier, based on Newton's theory of gravity.
>> If a theory has no predictive power, it cannot be used for applications.
Considering this, does:
>>> "A MAGA hat is just another way of saying "Mexicans are rapists"
...have predictive power? A useful technique I use to measure the intelligence of a theory is to implement it in the form of a boolean function. Try it out with that statement, just for fun, and see if your opinion on it changes at all.
Or, before we get ahead of ourselves...what does that sentence actually mean? It's purpose and origin are rather obvious (at least to me), but I'm interested in its literal meaning. Since the original author seems to have lost interest in the discussion (despite the prior "Fitting there's no actual RESPONSE..." complaint), perhaps you can decipher the literal meaning for me?
> Surely, I don't need to understand the infinitely complex workings of the entire universe to form a confident conclusion.
You need to understand the complex workings of whatever system you are working with well enough to produce testable predictions. If you do not have that, then you should not be forming confident conclusions. Very often, "it is not known" is the correct answer, and it wasn't all that long ago that most technical people could manage that stance. But as they say, time marches on.
> That's not how any decisions regarding our "global human society" is made.
You are absolutely correct - and observe the result: a scary number of people who work largely in pure logic all day long, are no longer able to differentiate between actual facts and heuristic predictions their subconscious spits out, at least on certain topics. A large percentage of the population is no longer capable of applying logic across diverse domains in a mentally disciplined manner, and they are also unable (and unwilling) to realize this. How did this happen seems like a good question.
> Even science (we can debate (and epistemologists do) whether this is truly the case or not; there is no complete theory of knowledge) does not present itself as having absolute facts
Science itself doesn't present itself as having absolute facts, but people who believe they are followers of science, or scientific thinkers, regularly speak as if science does have absolute facts, including here on HN on certain topics (generally, anything culture war related).
> but I think we can mostly agree that scientific knowledge has a more accurate representation of of the correlation between "chem trails" and the sexual orientation of frogs that Alex Jones does
Bravo.
If anything listening to Alex Jones for half an hour made me realize how nutty Jones is. Because I never would have searched out Jones on my own. Nor am I interested in what Vox has to say about Jones.
It's a good thing to hear other points of view without frothing at the mouth and demanding they are shut up. It's also a good thing to separate the point of view from the person. Because you disagree doesn't mean the person is evil and should be stricken from the book of life. This point seems to be lost in much of modern discourse.
Because I disagree? Of course not, disagreement doesn't make someone evil.
What makes him evil is running around claiming the parents of the Sandy Hook massacre were lying about their children dying as a conspiracy theory to take people's guns away. I can't think of a more spineless, thoughtless, ridiculous thing to do than attack people who just lost their children. He parroted that shit again and again for money. "Disagreement" has nothing to do with the stain on society that is Alex Jones being an evil person.
It's refreshing.
There are plenty of people I would never have listened to otherwise, because they are outside my bubble or just because they would represent something against my view of the world.
But because I also saw people I view as interesting or people I already knew from somewhere else, and because they have the time and space to elaborate, I gave the others a chance.
This allowed me to be exposed to new topics, points of views, etc, in a relaxing and human format.
Just like regular media, it's full of bullshit. But I'm full of it too.
It does, however, feel way more genuine than regular media.
I personally think of him as King of the Bros and think it's kind of sad that he's become the model man, but it is what it is.
If some people out there has Rogan as role model I honestly, comparing him with most media figures, I can't be bothered.
He has a format that people enjoys, and he's not trying to make people swallow any narrative. That's good in my book.
For anyone that enjoys the medical / health guests on Rogan's podcast, I'd recommend "The Peter Attia Drive" podcast. (Not to be confused with Peter Attia's appearance on Rogan's podcast).
Many of the same guests are on both, but on Attia's, they are speaking to an MD and start at a way higher level.
It's a great fit for my 100/200 college level basic understanding of biology and chemistry, it usually starts from there and goes up. There's quite a bit I don't follow exactly because of that, but I certainly prefer that than a dumbed down version of everything.
Agreed, but those were not the only things Musk did in each of those episodes and they contained a lot of content (that didn't involve just smoking weed) that was probably interesting to people outside of the HN crowd who wouldn't watch Musks's actual Neuralink presentation or the original MCT/ITS talk.
- He gets high-profile guests across a decently wide spectrum and at an overall high volume. >95% of his interviews don't interest me, but for the 5% that do - say, John Carmack - the name is the main draw. These people just don't get interviewed all that often so it's an event regardless of the MC. Probably the same for his entire audience, just different 5% slices.
- If you know the old mystery TV anthology show Columbo, he does a similar routine to the titular character: He plays the unassuming everyman and then asks unexpectedly smart/pointed questions, using simple terms but with reasonably deep implications. His interviews seem generally well-prepared. They don't go particularly deep on any subject matter, but if you're familiar with the subject matter they still prompt interesting responses from the guests - you can see someone like Carmack or Musk go into rubber-duck debugging mode trying to digest complicated thoughts into succinct answers and that has an interesting information side-channel to it (it tells you what they really think is important to say or highlight, and Rogan seems to be aware of this - he is good at getting the bits they personally find important).
- Related to the above, the macho/masculinity slant aside he acts humble and un-obnoxious. I might feel differently if I watched any episode with a guest I really dislike (because he seems to be more accommodating than challenging/critical, for sure), but in the episodes I watched I wasn't annoyed with him.
- Part of his prep is also clearly to read up on recent/controversial things related to a guest and probe for it during the interview, so there's the shock value/titilation factor that adds to the entertainment. His skill is that both him and the interviewee anticipate this but he still puts his subjects at ease enough in the moment to make the responses compelling. It has your brain constantly working to sort through what is guarded and what is not (=real), just like quality reality TV (everyone knows reality TV is scripted -- the entertainment is in trying to identify the sliver of authenticity in people's emergent behavior on camera).
Classical liberalism / neoliberalism are not left-wing ideologies. They are, at best, centre-right if the Overton window is set to Western standards.
Edit: I love being downvoted because I care about the meaning of words. I clearly stepped on some American nerves. Thanks HN.
Interestingly, you see this most in Australia, where the Centre/Right party is called the Liberal Party.
But it hasn't been used like that since the 1970s really, except in the "Liberal Democracy" sense. I think that has actually caused a lot of issues where the US right says they don't support Liberal Democracy, whereas - generally speaking, with the exception of the authoritarian arm - they mostly do.
The whole reason you think the meaning depends on the context is because you have been mislead to believe that liberal == left-wing, or something approaching that.
This is completely and utterly false, hence my "nitpick". Changing the meaning of these words causes the exact type of confusion you seem to be suffering from!
Left-wing is a term with a very loose definition, and depending on the Overton window, "liberal" places somewhere on the left/right axis. "Liberal", however, does have a well-defined meaning, since it refers to a specific ideology, unlike "the left".
TLRD: "liberal" is not a direction on an axis, rather it's a point on an already existing axis, the left/right one.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/24/politics/bernie-sanders-joe-r...
"Rogan, a libertarian-leaning broadcaster with a public persona in the mold of Howard Stern"
- No gotcha questions. On TV, the interviewee might be on for 5 minutes and the interviewer asks a bunch of preloaded questions, especially "gotcha" questions if there's a political divide. Rogan never tries to undermine his guests.
- The conversations usually last as long as they need to. His show sometimes go over 3 hours if it's necessary. I don't ever listen for 3 hours and feel like I've wasted my time.
- Joe is clearly good at making his guests feel comfortable, which brings out a different side of people that you might not see in a traditional setting. How is anyone supposed to be uptight around a pot smoking, MMA fighting comedian who asks you if you've used DMT?
It's like saying serving good food and making your guest feel at home is a trick for a successful diner.
In British English 'trick' can mean many things. You can do a trick on a skateboard but the usage I have is
a clever or particular way of doing something.
"the trick is to put one ski forward and kneel"
I hope that clarifies the British English usage. Elsewhere 'trick' probably means deception but in British English there are other uses, e.g. the trick to explaining something is to cite Wikipedia.
When I see mainstream media interview people that are expert in topics I'm well versed in, the questions are cringe worthy at best.
For comparison with someone trying to create a similar show, Lex Fridman regularly asks some stupid, stupid questions. He's clearly approaching his guests from his own personal perspective, and not letting the individual perspective of their guests be front and centre.
Elon Musk: We need some kind of like, mind-viral immunity. So that’s, that’s a bit concerning.
Joe Rogan: Mind-viral immunity. Meaning that once something like Neuralink gets established, the real concern is that it’s something, that, I mean you said it’s Bluetooth, right?
I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that way.
I had high hopes for Fridman's podcast after the JRE revered him as a sort of young, genius, intellectual version of JRE. He's highly respected among JRE online communities, I think because he presents himself the way most JRE listeners expect a generic smart person to sound. Yet every time I listen to him, I'm left scratching my head.
It feels like he's working hard to copy-and-paste the JRE format, but like many other imitators it exposes why Rogan is so popular in the first place: Rogan is a expert conversationalist who makes both the guest and listener feel at ease, like the listener is part of the conversation. His charisma isn't entirely obvious until you start comparing him to imitators.
I'm still hopeful that Lex Fridman's podcast will get more enjoyable over time as he relaxes a bit and masters the art of the podcast. He's been able to get some high profile guests on his show, so the potential is there.
Too often he can't quite put the question he wants to ask into words, and if he prepared slightly better it would improve the podcast a lot.
I've quite enjoyed the episodes I've listened to, however they can be difficult to parse at times - somewhat defeating the oft-mentioned benefit of listening to a podcast while performing other activities.
He is obviously very intelligent, but often uses language and analogies that appear to be aimed more at showing off this intelligence than engaging the guest or audience. It distracts from the point he or his guest is attempting to make, which is frustrating.
This is not something you see on mainstream media, where everyone is carefully crafting their words and hedging every statement to ensure they offend as little people as possible, ultimately saying little of interest and disillusioning the public because everyday people feel that no one in power is a real human being who understands them. When someone will just bluntly say the obvious that for whatever reason the establishment won't, it's refreshing.
In addition, he is radically open-minded in a way that's very rare from these kinds of hosts, and people in general. Most people are very rigidly set in their ideologies, which leads to many people sounding like carbon copies of one another (boring). Rogan will consider any idea no matter how outlandish. And he is very curious and asks insightful questions, while knowing when to shut up and let the guest speak (helps that the interviews last 1.5-3 hours).
Also as a comedian, he's significantly more entertaining than your average dry newscaster.
I'm not glorifying Rogan here, just trying to articulate why I enjoy his show, despite the fact that I don't really listen to many other podcasts. He certainly is not perfect and has his weaknesses - for example when discussing technical topics he doesn't dive as deep as I'd like (eg. Elon Musk, John Carmack, Neil DeGrasse Tyson). But overall, he does a great job of bringing interesting guests and getting interesting conversations out of him, so it's not surprising to me that he's so successful.
Edit to add: it's pretty hard to imagine a TV broadcaster would try to tap into this niche, imagine a TV channel that has 3 hour interviews uninterrupted by ads (experience using ad blockers), on a wide variety of topics, no filter, across a wide varity of political views.
High profile guests, long form content. Rogan's not really a great moderator (for example, he doesn't even read the books of his guests). He's not asking insightful questions. He can even be a bit dense. But he's open-minded, curious and "normal".
If I'm settling into some work and don't want to listen to music, I can put on Rogan and know I've got 3 hours of filler. You can pay attention only to the parts you want to and not be concerned you're missing anything important. After hundreds of hours, part of what makes it special is continuity and familiarity.
I don't really like Rogan personally but this behavior is intentional and quite smart in my opinion. Rogan (and his team) preps quite a bit, the vibe he is going for is an everyman who does not know anymore about the situation than you do. This is not reality. The idea is that this style makes the listener not feel stupid or embarrassed to learn about the viewpoints of the interviewee. He's among the most listened to interviewers in the world, so I guess it works.
"His listeners get him, like him; maybe even want to be him. He's not a show-pony, or a light-entertainment phoney: he's the all-American do it yourself modern man, tough but intelligent."
Does he lie when he claims he has? I've heard him discuss books with guests on many occasions, though I'm sure he hasn't read everyone's books given the number of guests he has now.
In a 3 hour interview format, I don't think he really needs to. The interview itself is a similar medium, and by not already knowing all of the details, it probably makes it easier to genuinely bring along listeners from zero information to a full picture.
He has a lot of humility, he admits when he is wrong or if he doesn't know something. But also he is not shying away from calling BS when he hears it.
I would divide his show into 3 categories: - his comic fiends - a casual convos with a bit insight into comedians world + tons of shit talking - MMA + hunting guests/talks - random invitational guest - literally random - he would talk to dem/rep candidate, dieting, book writers etc. anything that is interesting.
also he has fight companion shows for mma fights.
I listen primary to invite guest shows, occasionally to others but those get bit repetitive.
I once heard him half-jokingly say he's at the intersect between the meat-heads and the pot-heads. I.e., those into MMA, bodybuilding, cars, hunting (a giant audience) and those into psychedelics, new-age philosophy, yoga, nature (also a giant audience). And there's a lot in between those categories (people into more mainstream science/astronomy, entertainment, business, politics, health etc).
I probably only listen to 1 out of 10 or 15 of his episodes, but that still has me listening to him for an hour or two every week or two, and so I still feel more familiar with him than most other media/public figures these days.
So you would expect to see a fair bit of mentions. Finally, he interviews people from many walks of life, so you can expect an episode to be relevant to a variety of conversations.
So I don’t think he necessarily has an outsized share of the HN/reddit demographic. He’s just damned popular, and easy to mention.
Take Jimmy Fallon for example. Can't watch 1 minute of that guy without wanting to smash my TV. His incessant laughing, at everything the guest says whether it really is funny or not is insufferable.
I don't know if Jimmy is fake laughing or not, but the net result, is that the show's flow is constantly interrupted by that cackle. Also, Jimmy is kind of a sycophant. Afraid to disagree or challenge and opinion. It makes for a boring show.
Then you got other hosts like Kimmel and/or Colbert who are trying to be super political which is obnoxious.
Then you've got people like James Corden who are, again, not comfortable shutting up but need, instead, need the center of attention along with the guest and instead of having real conversations, they need to do segments that are essentially games like the carpool karaoke.
I know it's different formats but it's an example how certain hosts drown out the guest whether intentionally or not.
The appeal of Joe's podcast is in the conversations and the minutiae of those conversations, and even when the guest, isn't necessarily interesting at first, if they converse long enough they're bound to go into an interesting topic.
Also, I don't necessarily agree with Joe's politics or other opinions but I always enjoy his podcasts mainly cause he's a good conduit for his guests to open up and start waxing about whatever they normally wouldn't on other shows.
Also, let's not forget, Joey Diaz. So many classic moments with Joey and Joe.
1) He is a good listener, that asks questions that non journalists would ask. Listen to Ezra Klein interview the same guest and you see the exact opposite type of interview. Klein comes off as more "intelligent" and more "informed", his questions are more journalist in nature, and he has usually read the book (opposite of Rogan). I like both Rogan and Klein, but I get the Rogan appeal, and I think Klein interviews can come off annoying sometimes (the 10th "That's a great question Ezra" is trite)
2) He is not a political partisan. It is refreshing to hear someone who is not "toeing the dem/rep line" (or is it towing). A lot of people in here are saying he is alt-right, which is a joke, he is not at all.
3) He has great guests for all walks of life
4) He comes off as a normal guy (but clearly is actually in the top 1% at this point)
5) He is a comedian, and does not care about political correctness and gives two shits about cancel culture
-He is pro-pot-smoking, drug-taking, conspiracy talk, and generally being open-minded about everything, sometimes to his detriment. Especially early on he was very curious about a wide range of things, but as he has aged and bought into his own press I think he's become a bit less openminded.
-His podcast format is basically a couple of friends shooting the shit, often while stoned or drunk, but his "friends" are typically smart interesting experts in a particular subject matter. When that is the case he will usually let them do most of the talking.
-Due to the above format, Rogan rarely questions or challenges his quests in a manner that might make them look bad or feel uncomfortable/defensive. Though if what they are saying goes against his own internal beliefs or views, no matter how ill-informed, he will push back aggressively. In general, he's not very knowledgable or well-read outside of Twitter/YT/etc which helps the conversation flow.
-At the same time due to his success and the power of his show most of his guests will bend over backward to not question anything he asserts as fact or make him look dumb/misinformed. They all want to be invited on again as its massive for their career/product they are selling/etc. This helps make the conversations interesting but also light and fluffy to be easily consumed.
-He appeals to an overly male skeptic type audience that is fascinated by the fringe across news, information, media, science, history etc.
-He cranks out a ton of content with lots of different guests which is really the key to his success. Rogan has been wealthy and successful since the 1990s and has a unique and interesting lifestyle that affords him the ability to do his show exactly how he wants, invite any guest he wants, and do it often. So whether you are into MMA, hunting, scientists, tech CEO's, alt-right political figures, comedians, conspiracy wonks, etc...there is a sub-genre of content available for you to binge.
Rogan reportedly makes 30 million per year from the show already. He makes more than TV talk show hosts. He really is the new mainstream.
And how much Spotify paid him is not a reflection of his mainstream popularity. It's a reflection of how much the LTV of his audience is worth. Two very different things.
That may not be it exactly either. What they are paying him to do is bootstrap the spotify podcasting ecosystem. Spotify hopes the publicity will bring in people who don't listen to Joe Rogan as well.
Similar to what Sirius paid Howard Stern to do for them, circa 2004 (for $500 million), for their personality / talk content. Sirius needed a major anchor.
Now the money is guaranteed and they can just focus on the content in the show. Sounds like an amazing deal.
I think this is a big problem for him. I cherry pick some episodes to listen to (depending on the guest). I listened to the Alex Jones interview and was totally appalled by how much he agreed with Jones' wingnut theories. But I've also heard his interview with Alex Honnold (free solo climber) and it was great. I'm afraid his openness with some guests, and his wide audience will just introduce more people to people like Alex Jones.
First of all, Jones didn't just happen to show up for the recording that day; he was either invited on the show on purpose or his publicist asked and Rogan's production said yes. You're responsible for the sort of people and ideas you expose your audience to, especially when it's predominantly teenage boys.
Second, as you mentioned, he didn't challenge any of Jones's insane beliefs.
Providing an unquestioning platform for dangerous people like that really does a lot to whitewash their reputation and make their ideas more palatable to a wider audience. It's very dangerous.
At best it's lazy brohangs masquerading as journalism.
But it's NOT masquerading as journalism. That's Rogan's excuse, whether you accept it or not: He's just a bro having conversations with interesting people.
>At best it's lazy brohangs masquerading as journalism
This is the problem: people coming to the podcast expecting it to be some intellectual journalistic endeavor, when Rogan has never promised anything of the kind. It's a bro-y meat head drinking and smoking weed with some guests. People take it way too seriously and impose their ideas of how Rogan should run his own show.
Im also curious why you think he didnt when i've seen that episode and he basically laughs in his face about it.
You got the timestamp for this where he just lets alex run his mouth with unsubstantiated bullshit?
This misconception is furthered by some of his fanbase (who apparently have never experienced actual high-level intellectual dialogue). I have repeatedly seen discontented young men contrast Rogan to content for women and claim that the latter is just vacuous cosmetics talk and gossip, while "Rogan is all about deep stuff like philosophy".
2) stupid people like ‘X’
3) X should be banned.
People can think for themselves, they don't want a self-righteous gatekeeper to spoon feed them the bits of information that they think are correct, relevant, or acceptable. People don't want more spin and more production value and more hot takes and more dunking. Censorship is ultimately counter productive in the same way that sterilizing everything in your environment is for your immune system, you need exposure to a variety of information and viewpoints including incorrect, toxic and down right whacky ones in order to learn the metacognitive skills that you can use to think about how that information impacts you and the viewpoints you hold. If you just funnel the "correct" information into people you wind up with a bunch of infantile paper tigers that can only parrot back what they've heard and collapse in a heap of sputtering rage the moment their prepackaged world view is challenged. Nobody is pretending that Joe Rogan is a journalist, least of all himself. He isn't there to challenge anyone's beliefs or to discover the truth or fiction of what his guests are saying. That's your job you lazy fuck, as he would say.
Clearly the likes of anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists have done some amount of the above and come to the wrong conclusions, so something is obviously wrong in their thought process that led them thinking in such a way.
I'm not sure what is the best way of correcting people's broken though processes and beliefs like those are, I don't think just stating evidence at them really works. At the very least I fail to see what value is to be gained by letting such thoughts be granted a platform to continue the cycle of flawed reasoning.
People acquiring and holding wrong ideas is entirely the point. Because otherwise you need to have an entity deciding that an idea is wrong and should be suppressed. Do you trust Google with that power? Do you trust Facebook with it?
The only trustworthy judge of an idea is reality and its consequences.
Some people think that 5G causes coronavirus? Let them ban 5G from their towns, from their countries. Other countries will not, and after a few years they will not be any sicker and be a little ahead in technological infrastructure. The 5G-phobics will eventually give up, or worst case, they will die of old age and their children will learn.
I mean take anti-vaxxers for example, if enough people become anti-vaxxers and don't have their children vaccinated - herd immunity is compromised, children get sick, some of them die. I do not see how easily preventable deaths can ever be held as worth the unfettered spread of the ideas that directly contributed to them.
The other gripe with consequences as the sole value metric of an idea is just because an idea doesn't work when carried out, doesn't mean the idea is discarded everyone at large. Some awful ideas keep resurfacing again and again despite all evidence to their contrary.
You are right though that suppressing such opinions would have to be done by large, controlling institutions like governments or corporations. However as much as I distrust such institutions like anyone else, I think the compelling interest of society is enough to grant them the ability to censor - at least in specific instances of universally condemnable opinions like anti-vaccinations, eugenics, etc.
Take from this what you will.
>He voices far out opinions to take advantage of his audience and doesn't have anything actually interesting to say.
Agreed, though corporate mass media in general also takes advantage of their audience and likewise has nothing interesting to say.
I listened to a clip of Alex Jones on the subject of drugs and how they are used to fracture communities. He drew parallels between the crack epidemic in the black community in the 70s/80s and the opium epidemic that is mostly affecting the white community now. He argued that crack was a "beta test" so to speak of techniques to create a permanent underclass of malleable serfs, with the "production environment" rollout being opioids and prescription abuse. I think he also argued other methods of controlling slaves went back to chattel slavery in the US and even the Roman Empire.
That might sound kooky but around the same time I also read about this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenji_Doihara#Criminal_activit...
Doihara waged a deliberate campaign to undermine the social and political cohesion of Manchuria, and he did it with opium. People understood these methods of breaking communities as far back as the 1930s (and into the 1800s, depending on how deliberate the Brits were leading up to the Opium War). Are there lessons that can be learned from Doihara that can shed light on malicious people in power from the 1970s to the present? Especially since many of America's politicians and business leaders cover both US epidemics (example: the Sacklers). Alex Jones argued that the parallels between America's drug epidemics are too similar to be coincidence. The guy has a VERY low signal-to-noise ratio but if you ignore EVERYTHING he says you will miss out on some thought-provoking gems that are rarely discussed by anyone else.
Like if some equally famous podcaster didn't find some Joe Rogan guest as "interesting" as Joe Rogan does, it isn't censorship when they don't invite that guest on.
Of course, "Joe Rogan has bad taste" is a different criticism than the one made up thread.
I call this "rotten cherry" picking, where you scour someone's background and find the top 10 worst things about them, and use that to introduce the person. The conversation goes like this.
T: "Frederick Douglass wrote insightfully about slavery during the..."
C: "Frederic Douglass? You mean that sexist, anti-immigrant, anti-native American guy?"
T: "Wait, what? What did he say?"
C: "Well let me tell you", (gleeful in C's eyes pulls out his laminated card of the worst 10 things Douglass said about women, Irish immigrants, and condescending jokes about American Indians).
See, a lot of us have been through enough of this that we'd like hear for a few hours from the person who just got cancelled through rotten cherry picking. And yeah, this means that now and then, we will end up hearing out someone who shouldn't have been (an this, in turn, will be rotten cherry picked against the person who gave them that platform).
If you don’t believe me, ask the guy who went there with a semiautomatic weapon and discovered the complete lack of truth for himself.
edit: as in killed by HN downvoters
One of the most amusing conspiracy theorists is David Icke, I don't know if you've ever read any of his books. They're hilarious and crazy, but as always you can find elements of truth in between everything.
Holding an abstract truth in your head is tough when it's pitted against simplistic narratives pumped out by cross-spectrum mass media. Creating and subscribing to an unsubstantiated story with glaringly baseless details is ultimately harmful to understanding (for one, it's a straw man), but appeals to most people's need for straightforward answers. They know they're being had, they know the (competing) mainstream narrative is false, and so they congregate around a popular counter-narrative regardless of its truth.
And Podesta's pizza map handkerchief for another 0.000001% as well. [3] Throw in Marina Abramovic and her creepy spirit cooking [4]and other antics[5]...yeah, you'll definitely end up at a non-zero number. An infinitesimally small number..... but non-zero.
[1]https://steemit.com/pizzagate/@rebelskum/james-alefantis-onc...
[2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13033946
[3]https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/32795
Its a hilarious episode, and the comic comentary bits are gold.
This line of thought that he has some social responsibility is fucking moronic.
This very article points out that he is so well listened too because it is uncensored, unlike the main stream media of today, where they report of very narrow views and dont dare to explore anything interesting.
Dont the new york times have a social responsibility to do some fucking journalism? Cant they say, im a journalist, im just reporting facts, shut the fuck up about whatever idiologic bullshit your whinging about in my twitter feed?
The hypocrisy is astounding.
Blind spots generally persist because someone isn't held to account for reality. In this case, perhaps the editors are not being held to account. But how can that be fixed without just perpetuating the media meta-argument?
I guess the answer is variety: if you don't like the editorial decisions here, go somewhere else. That is a necessary solution with a free press, but ideally would not be the first line of defense.
The answer in this case is that Joe Rogan is simply taking on all of the roles: editor, interviewer, commentator, and sometimes the subject. But I have to imagine the separate roles were created for a reason... is it a net win?
I hope that Spotify works out for Joe Rogan. He seems like a very nice guy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/podcasts/rabbit-hole-PewD...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/tech...
Just proves nothing has replaced old mainstream media exactly, it has merely dwindled the more slack it gets for willfully risking a misunderstanding to take place.
The definition of Mainstream Media is still the same, as a setter and destroyer of definitions, since it has vast retrospective powers for editing out context to control the degree of controversy seen by the masses. Helped along by a collective of adversarial journalists able to limit discussion with a barrage of assertions and hold sway over mass sentiment through an implied consensus.
A one man interviewer does not give any semblance of consensus, it is at best a battle of convictions, but at least you can argue a conviction head on, no arguing with a consensus -- no learning from one either.
Some of these ideas are genuinely worthwhile, but when those same thoughts are given even equal weight to the ravings of Alex Jones or Ben Shapiro - I don't see how anyone who is looking for intellectual rigor can derive value from consuming his podcast. If that's a good or bad thing is a value judgment someone has to make personally.
I agree, but many vocal fans on Twitter and YouTube disagree.
One thing about Joe Rogan is that he covers a far broader spectrum of people than anyone else. Who has Alex Jones/Elon Musk/Neil deGrasse Tyson on?
To be frank I find most "robust intellectual discussion" stultifying e.g. hacker news has exactly this problem.
Sam Harris and Tim Ferriss have great long form interviews with interesting people.
Never really paid much attention to Sam Harris so might have another look at him.
One of the most interesting things about Joe Rogan is that he's not a one trick pony e.g. Comedy/Fighters/TV personality etc. I find him more interesting as a result.
Rogan doesn't self-promote on his podcast, and he creates space for his guests to go deep on their specialties.
I do not think Jones and Shapiro are equal on every front, I think Shapiro is certainly the more sane and sensible one of the two, but as I mentioned in another comment - I think both are equal commentators selling a specific narrative and view of reality to a specific demographic. To me they both twist and bend the truth, or simply flat out lie, to sell their view of reality to a type of person.
Bonus for Rogan is controversy/media coverage which attracts viewers. Rogan is savvy about the media and Internet.
I mean from all the conspiracy theories to asking Eddie Bravo to choke him out... It is absolutely hilarious.
So who's going to let him rave for 3 hours? Someone who wants to entertain millions of people. This isn't a criticism of Rogan, more that that main stream media would never allow that type of thing. For a start they don't have 3 hours. Yet it's at 19m views as of now.
A list of stuff that leaves out...
Joe Garrelli on NewsRadio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewsRadio
If you had told me that the guy who plays Joe Garrelli was going to be a superstar I would have been surprised, but only a little.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Joe+Garrelli+NewsRadio&iar=videos&...
NewsRadio Trivia: Joe Rogan wasn't the first Joe Garrelli, a different actor played him in the pilot.
Examples: https://yarn.co/yarn-clip/73188705-1624-4d6a-9d25-6508f82c0b...
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/2e4d1f95-e913-43b6-b41b-74822ea...
My sister just dug out from storage the complete box set of DVDs of the series! Binge watchin' those this week. :)
And joe rogan has almost 1500 old episodes (did they take them down?)
Iirc, it's planned by the end of the year. His podcast will be Spotify exclusive from then.
On the other hand i am sure people will keep uploading his stuff ti youtube.
But, on the other hand, I am glad I have Spotify subscription cause now I get to continue to enjoy him.
That being said, he will occasionally have politicians on, and those discussions are interesting as it's not the superficial 5-minute interviews you see on cable news, buttressed by 5 minutes of ads for cars and ED pills.
I've really enjoyed Patriot Act w/ Hasan Minhaj on Netflix. 25-minute deep dives into a specific topic, and often international in scope. Great production value, often humorous interviews and I love the on-screen graphics.
More voices like that will help to keep them honest, which is dearly needed at times.
Is this whole thing just trying to paint joe rogan as alt right again?
But here's an interesting sequence of events:
- The alt-right emerges as an influential bloc
- Our self-appointed explainers and meaning-makers try and fail to understand it; unable to understand it they're completely unable to explain it
- The term "alt-right" is bandied about more or less carelessly, often as an insult or as a way to discount ideological opponents, until:
- The term "alt-right" loses much of its meaning and is applied to people with only the most tenuous links to the original group.
The same basic thing has happened before and since: think of the neocons and the dirtbag left for example.
So, yes, they probably are trying to paint him as alt-right, but not at a level much above "lololol Bro Rogan sux !!!!!!!!". Reassured?
Rogan is an extension of that phenomenon, and it's the reason he makes lots of money. He's a lot like Limbaugh or Hannity in his career path; by showing a willingness to cater to authoritarian reactionary views, he's opened himself up to a lot of media opportunities.
What's weird about the narrative around Rogan is that he was ever "alternative" to begin with. He's been indistinguishable in methodology from the average conservative pundit for some time. His guest lists are very similar to the average conservative pundit. That he used a different broadcast media isn't that significant. He panders to the same sorts of audience segments in a younger audience.
> He has described himself as being "pretty liberal" and supports gay marriage, gay rights, women's rights, recreational drug use, universal healthcare, and universal basic income, while also supporting the Second Amendment. He also has criticized American foreign policy of military adventurism.
He’s basically Howard Dean; and to the left of Joe Biden for the most part.
Bernie Sanders is a slightly left-of-centre person in a global context with slightly left-of-center politics which appeal more to the libertarian landscape then to the Communist, Anarchist or even Mutualist landscape.
The fact that the average American can have this conversation and not seeing any contradiction and labeling Bernie Sanders far left as opposed to, say, Sweden or Finland just shows how distorted this conversation can become.
This is disputable. Did you have thoughts on the story a from a couple months ago about the Swedish journalist making the point that Sanders supporters would be considered far left in Sweden: https://theweek.com/speedreads/896948/democratic-socialist-b...
At least on the issue of taxation, it's clear that he is to the left of that country (and basically every other country on the globe).
2) He also is for virtually abortion on demand where in Sweden it is largely prohibited after the 22nd week.
3) On health care Bernie Sanders has said that individuals should have "no premiums, no deductibles, no copays" which is also to the left of Sweden where individuals are expected to pay for some of their own medical care (before the government steps in to cover all expenses past a certain point).
To be honest I can't think of any issue off the top of my head where Bernie Sanders is to the right of Sweden's current policies.
Do you seriously think that if Bernie moved to Sweden he would start calling their politics too left wing and start arguing for conservative market reforms? That is very hard to imagine.
Sorry, but the basis for comparison isn't "What policies currently exist" but "what the 'left' in those regions claims is the next course of action." Otherwise, you're suggesting Sweden is somehow the yardstick of the global left, which is confusing. They're somewhat famously on the wrong side of several issues associated globally with the left, like sex work.
> 2) He also is for virtually abortion on demand where in Sweden it is largely prohibited after the 22nd week.
Sanders's platform remained extremely light on details of this policy. Anytime a critique of a policy includes the words "virtually" you're equivocating.
> 3) On health care Bernie Sanders has said that individuals should have "no premiums, no deductibles, no copays" which is also to the left of Sweden where individuals are expected to pay for some of their own medical care (before the government steps in to cover all expenses past a certain point).
It's not clear to me if this is "left" or "right". "The Government Pays for Everything" is not inherently a "leftist" position or even a Libertarian (classical) position. Nor is, "The Individual Is Responsible For Health Care" essentially a rightward or authoritarian (classical) position.
> Do you seriously think that if Bernie moved to Sweden he would start calling their politics too left wing and start arguing for conservative market reforms?
I uh... really can't engage with a hypothetical like this? I have no idea what fictional New Somehow Fully Citizen Bernie Sanders would do? But I suspect he'd advocate for the use of military force against other countries to secure prosperity for his new hypothetical fellow citizens, since he holds that position in America.
I didn't suggest this. You did: "labeling Bernie Sanders far left as opposed to, say, Sweden".
You also mentioned Finland. TBH I just picked the first one on your list. I could have made very similar comparisons between Sanders and Finland. I stuck to only one for brevity.
Sanders's platform remained extremely light on details of this policy.
"Oppose all efforts to undermine or overturn Roe v. Wade, and appoint federal judges who will uphold women’s most fundamental rights." (under Women's Rights on https://berniesanders.com/issues/)
Also the sentiment on his twitter feed is clear:
https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3ABernieSanders%20abortion...
Finally, Planned Parenthood gives Sanders a 100% rating: https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/congressional-scorec...
It's not clear to me if this is "left" or "right".
It is generally accepted that the greater government intervention in the health care system the more "left" you are. The more health care is left up to individuals and private enterprise the more "right" you are.
Sorry, that was unclear. Swedish leftism in politics. Not currently enacted Swedish law.
> It is generally accepted that the greater government intervention in the health care system the more "left" you are. The more health care is left up to individuals and private enterprise the more "right" you are.
This is just flatly wrong. Chomsky, for example, believes in non-government health care solutions and cites numerous ways individual communities have pursued this. We might imagine short-term pursuing these interventions because they reduce harm, but there are massive segments of the left that are deeply uncomfortable with a state run health care system.
You shouldn't, but you certainly can. It's why so many Americans don't realize that their country's politics doesn't even have a left.
EU members (a broadly popular and enviable status) have much more open borders and broader refugee responsiblities that anything that has gotten out of draft status in the house or Senate.
What's more, leftists are split on the actual subject of borders. Communists like them, everyone else hates them, excepting decolonialists who essentially want them enforced only for indigenous peoples.
It's very odd to suggest that the EU open immigration policy and One Currency is somehow not an open borders policy.
For example, US progressives want to decriminalize illegal entry. But illegal entry is a crime in the three largest EU countries (France, Germany, and the U.K.) and all of the Scandinavian countries: https://www.loc.gov/law/help/illegal-entry/chart.php. Likewise, progressives want free healthcare for people here illegally. That’s left-wing even by European standards. Spain’s socialist government restored universal healthcare for undocumented immigrants, which a previous conservative government had eliminated. Macron is trying to reform France’s universal healthcare to restrict benefits for illegal immigrants. And Germany and most of Scandinavia only provide undocumented people emergency services, just like in the US. Countries like Denmark and New Zealand have recently combined left-wing economics with right-wing immigration policy. New Zealand’s Ardern, a darling of American liberal media for her liberalism in healthcare and women’s and LGBT issues, campaigned in reducing legal immigration, and came to power by forming a coalition government with the “New Zealand first” party. Denmark’s new social democrat PM is to the right of Trump on immigration issues.
The platform espoused by people like Sanders and Warren is very liberal in comparison to mainstream ideologies in other western countries. Not only do they want to spend 50-60% of GDP on the government, like the Scandinavian countries, but they want to enable massive immigration, which the Scandinavian countries generally do not support. They are also anti-corporation and anti-free markets, which the Scandinavian countries generally embrace.
The peculiar part about the comparisons you're making is that even the German AfD, who are regarded by everyone outside the AfD as only slightly to the left of the Nazi Party, would back away from putting as many immigrants in camps and prisons as we've done. The Fox News/AM radio listener demographic will experience a lot of heartburn in the months and years after the Trump administration as we unwind our current immigration policy and replace it with something sane - and literally anything we do will probably be viewable through a certain kind of lens as a move "leftward" - but none of that should be regarded in isolation as a measurement of the country's political leanings. It will just be about repairing damage.
While the loss of life is extremely unfortunate, the timely object lesson of America's ridiculously inferior health care infrastructure is on full display globally right now. Despite being one of the wealthiest nations in the world we also can't deal with aglobal pandemic because we simply lack the infrastructure for Public Health and we've spent 20 years arguing about whether we should have it.
Bernie Sanders's policies are slightly right of Macron, and he's pretty much the poster child for neoliberal centrism globally. He wants the same thing many other similar capitalist Nations have, which is essentially using tax dollars to ensure business prosperity by offsetting high-risk costs like healthcare.
The US is currently expected to have fewer per capita deaths from COVID19 than the UK, France, Spain, Italy & Sweden.
Sweden deliberately elected not to use their infrastructure. Italy was the first critical European outbreak and their difficulties were information most other nations had.
Why not look at South Korea or Mongolia? You know, actual success stories.
South Korea's success does not have anything to do with left versus right--which is the topic at hand--or even really health care infrastructure. South Korea has experience dealing with respiratory virus outbreaks from China. It also has a population that is able to follow instructions and defer to authority, unlike people in western countries.
Comparisons of the US to South Korea or Japan are "outrageous, bordering on disingenuous." In terms of social organization and ability to get things done, comparing New York City to Italy is actually very generous.
Quite the opposite. You're the one doing that. I didn't name specific mechanisms and instead said "infrastructure" precisely to avoid this conversation. It doesn't matter how it's implemented; what matters is that effective medical care and clear information can reach citizens in times of crisis.
All the examples folks have named have clearly shown a total failure to do this. So despite how many great resources they may have amassed, they could not mobilize that into an effective civic infrastructure.
You're the one who wants to argue about socialized medicine. From the look of it, that's because you want to gloss over the profound failure of the US to do anything resembling a credible disaster response or address the profound inequalities that exist in American health care.
> South Korea's success does not have anything to do with left versus right
I agree!
> which is the topic at hand
No, the topic is, "Is Rogan a reactionary?" The answer there is yes, and even recently he's been sympathetic to the ludicrous claims that doing nothing is a reasonable strategy during this pandemic. The man is a conspiracy theorist. He has been in the past and he'll continue to be so in the future because he's a reactionary and that's how they operate.
> South Korea has experience dealing with respiratory virus outbreaks from China. It also has a population that is able to follow instructions and defer to authority, unlike people in western countries.
South Korea had to enact an emergency law letting cities detain people for violating stay at home and mask orders because compliance was bad. I don't know why you think these pacific asian counties are "obedient" but that's... Not a good characterization. I will follow the site guidelines and assume you have an unconscious bias there as opposed to an active one.
> Comparisons of the US to South Korea or Japan are "outrageous, bordering on disingenuous." In terms of social organization and ability to get things done, comparing New York City to Italy is actually very generous.
New York was a worse individual outbreak than any Italian city from the last numbers I saw, so doesn't this invalidate harryh's comparison?
Also I don't think it's a fair comparison to compare the entire countries given the enormous size differences, the drastically lower population density of the U.S. (outside NYC), and again the lack of testing which is definitely drastically underestimating the real amount.
Also the bigger problem in the U.S. is that tens of millions are uninsured and/or have health plans tied to jobs that they lost, have no sick leave, and are criminally overcharged for basic health services leading to medical disaster being the #1 cause of bankruptcy. This kind of precarity and suffering isn't captured in coronavirus case statistics.
Comparing us to Sweden (which has essentially elected to do nothing at all except politely suggest large gathering should be cancelled and decline to enforce that suggestion) or Italy (the first European pandemic outbreak site, with a large population of older people who cohabitate with younger families, and extremely dense outbreak zones)seems like a low enough bar to be called "failure" given the economic resources the US has at its disposal.
Macron is also an excellent example of why the notion that American politics is significantly more conservative Thani n Europe is overstated. In the first round, Macron won 24% of the vote. Fillion (center-right), Dupont-Aignan (Gaullist), and Le Pen (far-right) together had 45% of the vote. That is, nearly half the French electorate was to the right of Macron. The same is true in the UK, Ireland, Germany, and the Netherlands. All are headed by staunch neo-liberals, and have been for some time. Boris Johnson just blew out his socialist challenger; Merkel's hand-picked successor is now a leader of one of Germany's right-wing parties.
Sanders' brand of liberalism is antediluvian. The "social-democratic" countries he admires have moved to a model better described as "welfare capitalism." See: https://www.acton.org/publications/transatlantic/2019/01/17/.... The conservative Heritage Foundation consistently ranks Denmark in the top 10 when it comes to economic freedom. While Sanders rails against corporations and calls for sweeping regulations, Denmark, Sweden, etc., have lowered corporate taxes to below U.S. levels and dramatically deregulated their economies. Over the past two decades, while Sanders stood still, almost the whole of Europe became more like America: they privatized state-owned industries, pursued aggressive deregulation, and increased individual choice. For example, while Sanders opposes charter schools, Sweden and Denmark have school vouchers for private schools, just like American Republicans want to do.
As to COVID-19: it has been an eye-opening illustration of how socialized medicine doesn't help a whit when it comes time to dealing with a global pandemic. COVID-19 deaths per day per million peaked in the U.S. at half of what it did in Spain, Italy, and the UK: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-mi....
It has to do with if the systems in place are accessible and capable of responding in times of crisis. South Korea and Mongolia have very different looking political structures and medical infrastructure, but their ability to effectively provide and enable their infrastructure to those who need it sets them leagues apart from the US and Sweden.
America still isn't testing at sufficient scale. Contact tracing isn't happening at scale. The federal government is actively discouraging these effective strategies.
Also: Italy faced a national outbreak, New York did not. It's simply a category error to expect overflows even if those numbers do matter to you.
America is now running more tests per capita than the socialized healthcare systems of Western Europe. These systems don’t do contact tracing either.
The argument here is not that the US healthcare system is perfect, but rather that socializing it is not going to solve any problems it has.
Also testing in the U.S. during the last couple months of the coronavirus pandemic was very hard to get and extremely inadequate. None of my friends in NYC who requested tests were able to get access to tests.
Anyways I think this is a stupid argument. My point wasn't to debate his progressiveness, just to point out how absurd it is to call a Bernie Sanders supporter "conservative".
The truth is that Sanders cut across a different axis than a lot of Democrats.
I think an awful lot of American leftists disagree strongly with you. Being left of Biden is hardly an accomplishment.
If your entire engagement here has been to dispute that I said this, then wow have we both wasted a lot of time.
As an extreme example Richard Spencer said he was an atheist in many of the violent Nazi communities don't refer to a literal or specific God but rather a racial will. It's difficult not to call those people reactionary.
I do think people are misunderstanding my comparison. I think Joe Rogan is a reactionary, but I don't know if he's a conservative. I know that he profits and Norma sleep from the same machine that creates other conservative media. In that sense I don't think he's very different from Limbaugh, Hannity or Crowder or Shapiro.
"and Norma sleep" is a hilarious interpretation of "enormously".
While we're not used to hearing a ton from that wing of the libertarian party in the media, they've been regaining ground in their political spaces over the last 5 years.
Part of his schtick is that he claims to be a leftist while concern trolling for the alt-right.
Not saying Joe does this but claiming to support Bernie and then publicly saying you'd prefer to vote for trump than Biden doesn't make me confident in his progressive bonafides.
American politics is shifted so far to the right that any honest categorization of it suggest that almost no "leftism" actually exist in the politics. America's notion of liberalism is largely defined economically.
Looking is clearly a Centrist with strong reactionary leanings. He has all the hallmarks of this. For example he's historically been very soft on conspiracy theory culture and is even been part of some of those movements himself. He clearly profits from the same system that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Ben Shapiro also profit from.
Nor do hosts of said shows need to believe the profitable aspects of their work to profit from them. Ben Shapiro does not seem like the kind of person who's so stupid that he believes that a permanently flooded house could be resold, but he's definitely said that and then subsequently defended it. I also suspect that Crowder doesn't believe many of the things that he says, but it's his business.
I saw this and stopped reading. Just about spit out my coffee. Do people really think American politics are shifting to the right, when somebody like Bernie Sanders for President was unimaginable 15 years ago, yet is somewhat popular today?
But it's worth noting Obama was considered a "progressive" candidate. While his appointment was a meaningful milestone for American race politics, his actual politics were... disappointing to many leftists and progressives.
He's voting for Bernie Sanders, and you think he's a "conservative pundit"? I don't think you know what you're talking about.
And if you think for a few minutes I'm positive you can proposed people who are much further "left" of the political spectrum in American politics then Bernie Sanders. AOC comes to mind.
Sure overall perhaps he's still a "conservative" on the global scale, but by that definition the entirety of U.S. politics is conservative (including CNN, MSNBC, etc), and that speaks more to the state of politics in the country itself than Joe Rogan.
Fair, but please note I called him a reactionary. I said he profits from the same sources as conservatives. I've said elsewhere in this thread, I think he's a "centrist" which is "conservative" anywhere else.
UBI has an interesting status in Libertarian circles, but I'm not going to go any further off topic here.
This has to do with a scarcity of friendly and popular media outlets for authoritarian, reactionary, and conservative views.
I really wish we could get an editorial/opinion tag on articles.
If you classify Joe Rogan as a 'shock jock', then I can only assume you've never listened to the show. The content is nothing like those you mention.
If the institutional gate keepers want to declare a new main stream than also embrace people with a more nuanced point of view instead of this fully scripted narrative they publish 24/7.
When was the last positive article published by the NYTimes about Russia, the Republican party or even number 45?
I wish the main stream isn't as compromised as it is. Until then I have to listen to Joe Rogan & the portal to tap into nuanced thoughtful content.
The Overton window doesn't magically shifts when millions of people are serviced by a 3th party outside the Overton window.