From the article: >>> Joe Rogan seems like an affable guy. He reminds me of many men I have met in the gym: cheerful bros who are open-minded to an alarming degree, meaning to the point where no idea is so insane that one can be sure they won’t find it persuasive. They could vote for Bernie, they could go Nazi, they could start believing in alien abductions or QAnon or chemtrails. They are not deep thinkers, so they can be excessively impressed by the fact “a study found” something, or “a doctor says” it. They are sincere in wanting to know the truth, they are not outright malicious, they change their minds (sometimes daily), but they are not trained in the research and critical thinking skills that are vital in sorting science from pseudoscience (or the loopy conspiracies from the true ones). >>>

Admission, I've listened to Rogan here and there for a few years, rarely getting to the end of a podcast. I happened to pick one randomly last month, after not listening to any for awhile, and it was the one with the doctor who claims to have invented mRNA vaccines.

I listened with an open mind, but my alarms went off as the guy started injecting more and more hyperbole and FUD into the conversation. There were a lot of things he said that made me go, "well, what about this?" E.g. my gf and my ex both missed their periods the month after the vax. But they came back, and there hasn't been some mass sterilization event that we'd surely be aware of if, as this guy claimed, the vaccine produced spike proteins in sufficient quantities and that those were attracted to and decimating womens' eggs and ovaries. What I heard was a guy trying to use his science degrees and a vague history in immunology to push a long-running antivax fearmongering tactic about women being sterilized, which as a conspiracy theory goes back to the old "great replacement" and antisemitic theory. And I was kinda angry listening to it, because my question to him would be, if it sterilizes people then how come Israel gave it to everyone? I'm pretty sure that Israel is in the business of keeping Jews alive and having (us) reproduce, and avoiding another genocide.

But Rogan didn't ask anything, and I had to turn it off after about an hour and a half, because Rogan kept just saying "oh, wow." and "oh, no really?" Like... give the guy room to talk, sure, but the whole incredulous act and like, really, doctor, you don't say thing... it just struck me as BS. As insincere.

And that episode I randomly listened to turned out to be the one that Neil Young went nuts about, and all that. So I listened to Rogan's apology and thought I'd try one more time tonight; and his newest is with a climate scientist from BP who talks like my dentist and is about as convincing, while Joe keeps going "oh no, really? And they're suppressing you? Omigod!"

At some point you have to just accept that he isn't the openminded bro with no agenda that you want him to be, and he's actually just trolling and platforming trolls. OTOH maybe this is the point where a lot of gullible people kind of realize that (myself included).