- 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
-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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.