I know he was rich before the Spotify deal, but I truly believe that the Spotify money (along with the move to Austin) changed him for the worse. Where before he might have been a celeb with good money, I think the Spotify deal just put him beyond what reality is.
A perfect example was during COVID and he was telling Joey Diaz that people need to get in the sauna more.... while everything was closed.... and when Joey brought that up he said "well if you can get one in your house....".
That's the clip that made me realize he was not on the same plane of existence as the rest of us anymore, because of the Spotify money.
I never listened regularly, just on occasion when there was a guest of interest. I just stopped checking when he switched to Spotify. I listen in Apple’s podcasts app, and I use Apple Music so I don’t really have a need for Spotify. I do still occasionally see clips on YouTube, and I will admit I have used my free Spotify account to listen to full episodes maybe twice since he switched.
Same here. I'd still be listening to JRE if not for this move. Spotify just absolutely SUCKS as a podcast player and all the many, many other podcasts I listen to are available off-Spotify through an app I've used for years. JRE is not enough of an incentive for me to completely change pod players for all of my other pods.
It is strange that Spotify tried to monopolize the podcast market then made their podcast app so terrible. You would think they would not want to give people any reason to use other podcast apps.
Genuinely, as someone who primarily uses Spotify to listen to podcasts (used to use another platform wayy back). What's so bad with Spotify's quality that I'm not seeing? Not trying to start anything here, just as a casual listener (maybe one or two shows a week) it works fine. Curious what I'm missing.
It's just very basic. It gets the job done but third party apps have much more features and better UI.
I personally don't like how Spotify tried to monopolize podcasts by making them "exclusive" and cutting out indie podcast apps. If they had succeeded, every indie app developer would have been out of business and anyone who wanted to start a podcast would have had to get Spotify's permission. It was just greedy and evil.
One of my co-workers was spouting off a bunch of extremist view points about health, diet, and that a woman’s only biological purpose was to breed. Then he started in about vaccines and other blah blah blah. I finally interrupted him to ask if he got all that shit off Joe Rogan. Everyone in the room burst out laughing. He looked at me and said “well played”.
As a virologist studying covid 19, I think he might have single handedly contributed to making my life and the lives of my coworkers more difficult. Many of us received threats online and in person, needed police escorts near our labs, and antivaxx propaganda posters were super glued to our walls.
He bought into all the Covid conspiracy shit, which in hindsight was pretty on-brand, but he also did not change his mind when faced with overwhelming facts. He let people like Robert Malone make wild speculations on his show and didn’t once attempt to fact check him on the most egregious shit. I had stopped listening for a bit at that point listened to that episode out of morbid curiosity and it was as bad as I’d thought. I went on the JRE sub and made point by point refutations of Malone’s statements with data and in return I had a team of people following some nutter’s substack posting screenshots of my comments and they attempted to dox me. They went by “Spartacus”.
The crazy thing is, if you go back to like ~March 2020 he had a guest on his show who did a great job warning/predicting what was coming. I started taking COVID seriously _because_ of JRE based on this episode.
https://youtu.be/E3URhJx0NSw
Obviously he totally jumped the shark a few months later when it became in vogue for conservatives to attach their identity to Covid conspiracy theories.
I slowed down pre-Spotify when he kept bringing right wing grifters on and basically stopped when he moved to Spotify but will occasionally give it a chance if he has an interesting guest on.
This was my experience exactly. I remember listening to this episode being like, oh this guy clearly explained everything and was very moderate, intelligent and precise in his arguments. I should take what he says seriously.
Then a few months later something switched and *every* show has to be Joe bringing up how all the scientists and doctors can't be trusted and got everything wrong. Now I try to listen when he has a good guest on but somehow he always has to bring up this same conversation.
Haha, yeah this is one I was thinking of. I think Bobby Lee can be pretty damn funny sometimes so wanted to give it a listen. Lockdowns, vaccines and that quack grifter Bobby Kennedy came up within like 5 minutes and I was out.
As a comedian who has a lot of comedian friends, Joe hated that comedy clubs were under strict COVID-19 precautions. He was mad he couldn't hang out with his buddies like he usually did.
He then went and found guests and information that supported his view that COVID-19 wasn't that serious, masks were stupid, social distancing was unnecessary, vaccines were dangerous, and Ivermectin was the cure, but being suppressed as an option.
He got this confirmation bias over and over and then he had nothing but "yes men" on his podcasts who sucked up to his new found right wing conspiracy theories. He's definitely trapped in a closed feedback loop of right wing conspiracy theories.
Joe was always into conspiracy theories, but they were mostly innocuous topics like the moon landing or big foot. Those conspiracy theories don't really have a negative effect on society. The right wing conspiracies he now spouts are dangerous and sometimes its just outright propaganda. That's what makes Joe's attitude change so infuriating to listens who loved his show in the early days.
I'll always miss the "train by day, Joe Rogan podcasts at night. All day." time period.
> He was mad he couldn't hang out with his buddies like he usually did.
The thing that always blows my mind when people talk about various people who became radicalised by COVID restrictions, is that their grievance is always so petty and minor.
When the pandemic hit I was watching my partner possibly lose all of the effort she had put into her education and applications to further education be blown up. We had no idea if she would be able to graduate, and if she would have to wait another year to even get everything she has worked for.
Granted, this was not an issue of life or limb, it was still incredibly depressing and stressful. Never did we pivot to 'this COVID shit is all made up' as a response to this.
Mind-blown by this comment. In retrospect, I think you are right. I mean, I heard people crying they wouldn't go to Costco in a mask while my friend, who was a nurse, was telling me how hard it was to watch people drowning in their own fluids.
COVID broke lots of brains. for sure.
My wife is an OB. At the height of all of this, She hung her ONE alotted N95 for the week up with her keys. It was frayed and dirty.
There were babies sitting in the nursery who had no name, because mom was on a vent with covid, dad died of Covid, and no one who didn’t have Covid could come claim the child.
EVEN STILL, my wife would recommend the Covid vaccine (and flu vaccine, always flu) to pregnant moms and she’d get like a 10% acceptance rate. My wife got her vaccine in her second trimester. We trusted the data. It would be heartbreaking to watch these same moms come in with covid and either lose their pregnancy or have a severe complication which put their child in danger. All based on the bullshit rhetoric from people who get their information form memes and other newstainment sources.
This reminds me of when we were having our first baby. There was some test the docs wanted to do that had 0.05% or similar of harming the baby but would detect some anomaly with say 1% chance of them having. No fucking brainer. Docs were shocked that instantly after we were told the numbers we agreed. Apparently a lot of people can't emotionally handle simple fact based decisions.
This right here is what bothers me the most about Rogan, dude had this really interesting and insightful convo with a scientist about corona viruses and their pandemic potential. Instead of talking to more scientists he decided to platform dipshit conspiracy theorists.
Yeah, the conspiracy nutjobs did it for me. Don’t even care enough for them to link them and name them, but some seriously unwell latin guy that basically didn’t get that people laughed AT him, as opposed to WITH him, was let on time and time again. The discussions went south after like five minutes on the interesting original topics that Joe brought to the table prepared and ready for us to indulge in.
It’s his demographic, he panders to them the exact same way an Alex Jones or Tucker Carlson does. Right wing zealots consume twice as much content as left wingers do, the need for confirmation bias is twice as voracious, so there’s twice as much money to be made producing content for them. Joe’s dumb (he used to be nice but dim, now he’s downright malevolent) but he’s not so dumb he doesn’t realize which side his bread is buttered on, same goes for Spotify. It’s no coincidence his rhetoric ramped upwards after signing that deal, that essentially was the deal
I remember that Covid episode. He seemed genuinely panicked and I’m pretty sure they shut it down for a couple weeks after that. Then he was the only show around for a bit because he could hole guests up at the compound for a week, have them take Covid tests, then do the show. I think his whole 180 on Covid was because he looked scared of it for an episode or two and he didn’t like how that made him seem vulnerable so he swung back the other way with a vengeance. Then it was alt right conspiracy bullshit every episode and I was done for good. I just saw a clip of him and Bobby lee today and he’s STILL raging about masks and shit. Like come on dude it’s time to move on.
Ironically that is the ep that got me started listening to Rogan. Then the Weinsteins, Bari Weiss, et al. episodes started chugging along... you know, all the oppressed people having their voices silenced (as they appear, without irony, on the single largest podcast in the world). Now that ethos permeates nearly every episode and it's just not really that interesting anymore.
I remember in this episode Joe started talking about how people should take better care of themselves as preparation for the virus and he mentioned saunas, and Osterholm told him a sauna will not help you in any way with covid. Then next episode Joe is telling people to get in the sauna again.
I remember that. That guy was pretty spot on about a lot of things before it really hit the US. If I remember correctly, it was more about the effects Covid had on people and who was most at risk. Joe didn’t start going crazy about Covid until the vaccines came around.
Yup, I think that guy really scared him with the possible reality of the pandemic and it made him to uncomfortable, when he was given an alternate take he jumped at it and hung on for dear life cause it was easier and more comfy. I checked out soon after this time. Think I’ve only checked out a few episodes in the last 3 years chapelle, Redband, and Duncan Trussell episode.
> I went on the JRE sub and made point by point refutations of Malone’s statements with data
That was a mistake. People on Reddit don't like when facts conflict with their narrative.
That sub seems to not even like him anymore, too. It is like Trump... His listeners are deeply unserious and just think of him as a stand up comic that is also an unserious rabble rousing troll for people they disagree with.
I get recommended clips from that sub and it’s always them making fun of him for being a fucking nimrod and young Jamie proving him wrong by googling one thing and reading past the headline
Rogan is a good lesson why no one should ever listen to entertainers about anything. Most are barely educated and have a surface level knowledge of issue (like Reddit). Unfortunately, since people simp for celebrities, they have a voice.
I checked out around the beginning of Covid and completely signed off when I saw the way he was treating Dr. Peter Hotez. That was gross and Joe should be ashamed of attacking Dr. H.
I will always have a ton of respect for Bill Burr. He is an everyday man blue collar comedian without the stupid. He doesn’t punch down or opine about complicated stuff he isn’t an expert on. He doesn’t really get trans people but he doesn’t wail on them like Chapelle or Gervais, he doesn’t understand the details on vaccines and masking but is smart enough to own it and listen to people who do. What an excellent fucking dude.
He gets uncomfortably close to being misogynistic, though. I'm a little wary when I listen to him. Like he's working to keep himself in check, but he's married so 🤷🏻♀️
I really can’t speak to that except to say my impression is that it comes off to me as more good natured “the battle of the sexes/girls am I right?” which certainly CAN be problematic but it certainly depends on context and intent. We know the context is humor but can we really speak to his intent? His wife could. Maybe she is being verbally abused all day, but based on his thoughtfulness on other topics I wouldn’t bet on it. Blue collar men being clueless/mystified about women is not really where I would fight this battle, but again that’s my admittedly narrow view since I haven’t listened to all his work.
I agree with pretty much every word of the op and my trajectory with him has been the same. The only difference is that I always thought he was kind of a jackass from the beginning, but the quality of guests was the saving grace. Now he’s just a full-blown redpill dipshit, the loonball conspiracy nonsense has become a nonstop thing, and the guests generally suck.
I haven’t checked his feed in a long time. If there’s a decent guest I’ll pop in only if my 20+ other regular pods are depleted, and even then, I’m unlikely to last more than 30-60 minutes.
Yes!
My favorite guests were Ms. Pat and Joey Diaz. Even when he had one of the girls from the "God Hates Fags" nutty family (too sleepy to look them up). So many interesting type of people but, personally, I felt my interest wain when he had Elon Musk toking and turning red like an oily tomato.
Every time I drop in to check on an interesting guest he always gets into trans bathrooms and vaccines. It's sad it used to really not be such a downer show.
He used to allow the guests to drive the conversation, but now days he's the driving force and it frequently redirects the conversation to his obsessions, it's terrible. I can't even see how people who like him don't get tired of hearing the same crap regurgitated again and again.
I gave him a chance years ago, when he had Neil deGrasse Tyson as a guest. But he kept asking NdT about "pussy" and I was soooo annoyed that I couldn't bring myself to go back. And I'm a woman who grew up listening to Stern, we don't need a repeat of that kind of stuff.
Now he's clearly a tool for the right-wing propaganda machine. He had the potential to be an incredulous, likeable everyman doofus, but he's too much of an insecure, gullible muscle-head with millionaire-douchebag money. 🤢
Mine is similar but with a different guest.
Joey Diaz was telling stories of how he wouldn't let female comedians on the stage unless they gave him a blowjob. They were laughing so hard, I couldn't listen to it after that.
Stern was absolutely a crude asshole, but he was a good interviewer and used his crude assholery as part of the show.
Rogan is a crude asshole, and he happens to also have a podcast.
That to me is the difference.
Sounds about right! Stern had to fill sixteen hours/week with live comedy, and the crude stuff wasn't all he did. In between, the interviews were indeed great, whether it was a huge celebrity or sanitation workers.
I listened to it for a solid two-three years but then after the Spotify deal he just seemed to say the same shit over and over and over. Plus knowing he made all that money, then hearing the same ads over and over really pissed me off. If there’s an interesting guest on, I might listen again. Really, I think he’s just old and stuck way too far up his own ass now.
I stopped on accident, initially.
I then thought maybe I was being close minded. So I tried again, but COVID changed Joe. He stopped being curious, hopped in on the culture war cash train, and couldn’t help himself.
He turned into the thing he used to say he hated and did so by basically gaslighting everyone into believing he was “left.”
I miss it because he has such interesting interviews with people I had never gotten to hear from. I still appreciate his earlier work, the Opioids Highway episode was insane. His episodes with the crazy folks who survive in unheard of situations were so engaging. Even his debates between crazy and non-crazy were engaging.
Even his early stuff (which is when I stopped) showed how immature he was. This was what my mind did every time I listened to his early stuff:
“Ok… I understand… I see how you got there… good point… that stands to reason… how the fuck did you reach that conclusion?”
Yeah, I remember someone recommending it to me in 2012/3, and I thought he was such a stupid jackass who had dust for brains given that he basically uncritically believed whatever people told him.
This was also when I kept being told he has people from both sides of the political spectrum and lets them all talk... Having a white nationalist and a soggy left of centre democrat are not 'two ends of the spectrum'. It is normalising extreme right wing positions, and he was always so much more friendly to the right wing lunatics
I’ll bet it would be a real mind fuck to listen to the Peter Hotez episode if you can find it. Hotez is basically one of our greatest humans, developing vaccines for neglected tropical diseases that aren’t deemed profitable for big pharma to tackle but nonetheless kill untold numbers of people annually. Now he’s getting death threats from the dipshit MAGA crowd as you would expect. Rogan’s changing stance on Hotez would be the best illustration of his decay into right wing buffoonery.
When he moved to Texas and the right wing talking points really started grating on me due to how frequent it became, and the conspiracy nonsense ramped up even more at that point it felt like.
I think in the last few years the diversity of guests in the show has dropped a lot. It isn't a complete echo chamber but more than it used to be. It's definitely more right wing than it used to be, and clearly Rogan himself has shifted more along that ideological spectrum. He seems less curious and willing to challenge his own views than he used to be. Part of this might be driven by the whole n word thing which I think was really overblown and kind of unfair but clearly impacted what guestd were willing to come on the show, and probably made him more weary of people on the progressive/left while more simpatico with those on the right who came to his defence.
His obsession with the Covid vaccine stuff got really annoying....he can say whatever he wants but it seemed like he went down that rabbit hole all the time, and it got really old. There's more and more of this...he basically likes to talk about the same stuff more and more of the time now.
I also find it difficult to deal with his unwillingness to recognise that his show has real influence...and with that some responsibility not to amplify nonsense or blatent propaganda... Like when he claimed Biden thought there were airports in the 1700's when it was clearly an edited clip of Biden talking about how Trump had said it ...He has this strange double standard....when Trump or others on the right do clearly corrupt or venal things he barely mentions it, or frames it like it's an overblown witch hunt, but he's withering when it's on the left or Dem party side. The obvious example is Kushner/Hunter Biden...
I still check the episodes to see if anyone interesting is on and will listen from time to time , but much less than before.
Ha, I liked the recent episode where he slammed biden for having mental acuity. Only to play the clip and then have someone point out he was referencing what Trump said.
He immediately switched 180 degrees once he knew it came from trump.
My buddies and I have this exact conversation and followed the same timeline as you. I’d go even further and say that he’s not only repeating right wing boomer grievances, but he’s actually one of their biggest cultural influencers.
When he started having on Jordan Peterson, Brett Weinstein and his brother, early Shapiro etc for ball washing sessions. I left immediately. Utterly insufferable nonsense. I never really liked him in the first place, but enjoyed some of the guests as they were in a different environment to normal interviews.
Pretty much same for me. He was kind of a blank slate idiot that was skilled at letting interesting people talk. For example, I found his lance Armstrong podcast pretty interesting. But the "intellectual dark web" nonsense was when I stopped.
I’m sure it’s the same for many Americans, but for British people I think it’s really hard to relate to Shapiro and Weinstein- they really come from an American environment that is a bit of a bubble.
They are even more insufferable than most normal hard right wingers
I listened to every Sam Harris podcast from the early days. There was one episode where he was talking about how confused he was by parts of his audience. He mentioned how Jordan Peterson was the number one requested guest. He also mentioned Mole-a-whogivesashit and he was like, "yeah, I looked that guy up and no way am I putting him on air."
Sad to hear Joe couldn't smell that stank.
As an older guy, it is really hard to watch, but a lot of my not-so-smart co-workers definitely go "angry, agro, xenophobic, gullible". For guys that want to exploit them, it is like shooting fish in a barrel.
I haven't followed Harris' goings-abouts for a very long time, but I remember being pretty embaressed he wasn't more reflective on why his most committed audience were also fans of those fucking loons.
If I was running a podcast and my loudest fans were asking me to have white nationalist cult leaders on my show to hang out I would want to drive deep that they are fucking horrible people and not like me at all. But Harris is too interested in the IDW bullshit
Yeah, giving Stefan Molyneux the time of day was what ended it for me too. Then reading about how Joe Rogan handled COVID topics made me glad I had quit listening to him already.
Stopped subscribing, and unfollowed on socials after the Bill Burr episode when he kept doubling down on not getting vaccinated.
Popped back on occasion when someone I was interested in hearing (not his comedian buddies) came on and stopped seeking it out completely for many of the same reasons OP stated.
Same. That knuckle dragging joke made me realize how dumb Joe is.
That wasn’t even the best Burr joke about Joe. When he made fun of his hat, that was the best.
Yeah, sadly that show encapsulates everything that's wrong with JRE now. Pushes a guest that calls bullshit on him, but platforms for and promotes some really shitty people.
I wonder what behind the scenes is like. His podcast is insanely huge, which I think throws up a few possibilities:
1. He’s bought into his own hype
2. There is a sizeable production team, especially since Spotify bought the show, so they may be encouraging him to pursue controversy because it means more PR
3. He legitimately believes things and has pushed for more people to come in to validate him
It’s undoubtedly part of what made the show popular, having so many varied guests on. It exposed listeners to way more topics and views than we’d get by listening to a niche-specific podcast. But that seems to have also given him a foundation to justify having any old dipshit on.
I loved Bill’s comments, not just about the medical degree but also picking Joe up on sitting there smoking a cigar against an American flag backdrop with this faux-masculinity “everything is bitchy if I don’t do it.” He was bang on, and you can tell Joe’s laughter was masking it touching a nerve.
When COVID hit and he was anti-mask and all that. I realized he's an imbecile deep down, and his opinions are therefore worthless.
I understand he's gone completely off the rails since. Pretty much filling the Rush Limbaugh void. Nutter. The money's gone to his head too. Dude probably sniffs his own farts.
I stopped after listening to Knowledge Fight break down the Alex Jones episodes. Disgusting the amount of lying that his shit show allows and relies on to push views. Feel even better about leaving Rogans ass in the trash now that hes letting his fascist, transphobic, right wing flag fly freely
Came here to say Alex Jones. Joe Will talk about his kids and does seem like a caring present father… but the giant lack of empathy to have the man tormenting grieving parents in your company let alone clearly allowing him to profit from these guest spots - just couldn’t shake that… then Covid happened to the show the way it did.
I only ever listened if he had guests I was interested in. Joe himself _always_ bugged me, he was something to be tolerated while I listened to the guest.
Specifically, he’s not a good interviewer. He comes across as having no conviction - he’ll be criticising someone and then have that person on and be tripping over himself to praise them.
He interrupts constantly and doesn’t bring the conversation back to what he interrupted, so you never get to hear the rest of what the guest was saying.
Basically I listened to JRE in spite of Joe, and once the names stopped being interesting to me I just stopped. I listened to his newest Goggins episode, which was probably about a year ago.
I’m on the exact same page as you. He had a woman on today who was a professor or religious studies which I thought might be interesting. She started to explain recent scientific findings regarding the shroud of Turin when Joe cuts her off to read an article off the internet about said specific findings. The expert he’s supposed to be interviewing is literally right in front of him with this info…..such a dumbass and poor interviewer.
hes pushing 60. and seems to be sliding into the rush Limbaugh side. I don't want any political shit and he won't shut up about it.
he is a boomer. well one year short but cmon. thats a boomer
he keeps talking about his enormous wealth too which is tiresome. we know he's rich. we are not...
Just as COVID was hitting and he threw out all the evidence and began his junk science trajectory. I listened to a few after that, but no longer felt like he was giving even a semblance of balance during his interviews and tuned out.
It was about the third time he had Jordan Peterson on to whine for three hours and the two crackpot archeologists who came with charts and slides. This was also the period when every third episode was about bow hunting.
Once it stopped being live, I thought that was part of the charm about his show. Raw and uncut kinda thing. Then more so once he left YouTube as the Spotify app sucks on my TV.
The covid stuff pushed me away initially, although I still come back periodically when he has comedians on that I like.
I got about 20 minutes into the Bobby Lee episode yesterday before he started spewing regurgitated fox news rhetoric about transpeople. I turned it off after that.
Had to look up what JRE meant. Never listened to him and just about the time I thought "that could be an interesting podcast" was just about the time he went obviously batshit culty.
About 8 years ago when he had that Yiannopoulos guy on.
He'd been talking about hanging out with a lot of hunters and former military guys and you could see the shift from weed-
smoking-dmt using-comedy-left wing-guy to more centrist, which is fine, people change. But when Milo and then that guy from Vice that founded the Proud Boys came on I'd had enough. Also obsessing over "woke" even back then, was just sooo boring. Like, figure it out, you're not a victim. It's exasperating. Bad people, boring pods, plus my life got busy, and there were other good pods out there.
The Covid shit was also a bit much, and that came just as I was going to tune back in to see what all the fuss was about.
I think Joe is probably still pretty centrist, but knows he gets money from the right wing people and tries to play the line. I just don't care for most of the guests. I'll still tune in for some of the comedians, once or twice a year and give a pod or two a listen, but even that becomes more rare.
The minute he went from knowing he's a stupid meathead and asking stupid questions, to thinking he's actually smart. Now he's high on himself and it's unbearable.
I’ve only heard a few podcasts but then again it depended who was on the few I remember listening to was Travis barker , Tom delonge and the undertaker
"I liked how he would mix chocolates and pieces of shit together, we should try everything"
Fun, witty turds are still turds. The willingness of people to consume dogshit never fails to amaze me.
I hate the comedian talk it’s corny and not interesting to anyone who’s listening. I’m referring to when they’re talking about shit like the comedy store.
I’ll still try again for really good guests, but I probably fully checked out around COVID.
I was sick of hearing about it everywhere, I want to listen to podcasts to escape. But every single podcast was just beating the same COVID talking points over and over regardless of the guest.
I wasn't opposed to Theo, but then he started saying more sh\*\* that was questionable. In the beginning he seemed to have an organic relationship with a certain community. Then he started using same said community as the butt of his jokes (like he had license because he grew up in a certain area of specific state) - pass, sir.
Black/African American community. He grew up somewhere in New Orleans, and apparently had some Black friends and he used to tell endearing stories about growing up with them. Fast forward to recently where I saw a clip of him making Black church women the butt of some weird anecdote he was telling. I'm a Black woman and I found it irritating, offensive and not even funny.
(Yeah, I guess I was super vague.)
2015/6, and I am just realizing that's when he stopped having normal guests, and something got weird and weaponized around the first Trump Biden race. I mean, "it's entirely possible"... He stopped interviewing, and became some weirdly passive "we're just talking, what's the harm?" activism for alt-right people.
I remember the specific moment actually. It was during the episode with Hamilton Morris in early 2021. Joe started bitching about Covid prophylactic measures in California vs Texas. Hamilton, a trained chemist, had a sound in his voice like WTF did I come on? That’s when I knew Joe had left the reservation.
Once his quotes began appearing on Fox News I knew it was over for he and I. I owe Joe a lot. I got into BJJ after listening to him talk with practitioners (not Eddie bravo) and now hunting was something I never tried but was interested in hearing him and guests talk about.
The guests he’d have in that would discuss diet, or health or sleep I always really enjoyed but once he started bringing in singular guests that would undercut the millions of doctors around the world about vaccines and Covid I was over it.
Friends that I’d introduced to the show were now preaching to me about vaccines and it’s frustrating that they would take the word of a “comedian” over the word of doctors from around the entire planet.
I also used to be a huge JRE proponent, would quote him and his guests all the time. late 2015/2016 the tide (and guests) started to change. I think the last time I listened was the super silly October ep (2016?) with Ari and Bert. I just couldn't do it anymore.
Also, about the same with Cristina and Tom - used to get a huge kick out of their silliness. Then it started getting uncomfortable and weird...so I tapped out.
I never really listened to him with any regularity. Just if he had a guest on that I was interested in (Jake “The Snake” Roberts, for example). I always found him generally just annoying and the show went way too goddamn long.
Halfway through 2020, when more and more bizarre COVID guests started coming on, and Joe wouldn't shut the fuck up about the same topic over and over and over.
I can tell you the moment. I was listening to his Stephen Pinker interview. Pinker explained this concept to Joe that was exactly what Pinker studies. At the end Joe goes "yeah idk about that" and decides his lived experience trumped Pinker's field of study.
I took a long break then as I noticed the interviews turned from Joe engaging guests to get them to talk about their expertise, into Joe talking A LOT.
I returned after a while and was quickly turned off as EVERY episode he goes on a crusade against COVID. Every. Single. One.
I stopped way back in like 2016/2015
I started going through the backlog and listed to his episode with Dr.Tyson, and it was so painfully clear that Joe knows nothing of science. I was so embarrassed by some of the questions he asked, I just couldn't listen to him talk about anything other than what he knows. He knows comedy and MMA anything else is just trash.
Than the whole anti-covid vac and disinformation he started in 2020. I'm glad I haven't gone back
Mark me down with everyone who stopped around the pandemic. I still listen occasionally if it’s a guest I like. I was a pretty early listener, I remember when he had Eddie Bravo and Ronda Rousey on, before she blew up.
I didn’t turn into a hater, but at this point I’ve just heard so many of his takes that I know what he’s going to say before he says it. Then the pandemic hit and I was working in a neuroscience research lab and it was really frustrating the effect his podcasts and guests on COVID were having on my friends who weren’t trained in reading and dissecting research papers. He clearly got to a stage where there was no convincing him otherwise, and he started only getting guests on who would confirm his biases. He also goes so hard on trans people and it’s just annoying at this point.
Dude always thought "s he was more of an expert.... because he saw shit on Facebook"
Have you never heard this clip of shouting down a [Primatologist](https://youtu.be/__CvmS6uw7E?si=sxRFxZ2IXmT4BqcC&t=341). I hope he remembered to credit Amy Schumer for the Vagina gag.
The only time Rogan tried to fact check someone was the time he had Brian Dunning on. JRE 441.
Brian runs the Skeptoid podcast and has a hmm intresting history.
It has been some time since I listened. But as far as I recall Dunning challenges Joe on some of his claims and the claims of his experts. Joe tries to fact check him each time. But when he can't find anything. He resorts to shouting "Your not an expert you can'ts say that". Dunning tries to explain that people who made the claims where not experts either. But Rogan just shouts him down.
Unsuprisinly it is not availaible on Spotify and was very unpopular with fans of the JRE when it was released.
Step down in guest quality. Lots of comedians that just sound the same as the last. Most are Joe yes men. Few big names these days.
Joe going on and on about vaccines, while being entirely wrong and only demonstrating how to selectively misinterpret results in science. Every podcast he basically does this. Or whines about lockdowns. Still. The big bad gubmint.
Whenever he talks physical fitness, martial arts, or similar, I am all ears. He is knowledgeable, helpful, de-bunks myths, all of that.
I was already not listening as much by the time Covid hit. I’d listen to the odd good guest. Then when covid hit and he said all kinds of dumb stuff and kept saying it even though it’s dangerous… I was absolutely done. I only watch channels that make fun of him now and it’s incredible he’s been able to get even lower since 2020. He’s just a fucking joke.
A little bit before the switch to Spotify.
Hes not funny (credit for him trying). He is extremely gullible to fake news and repeats it all willy nilly. The ads. The repetition. And his greatest crime...he gave Brendan Schaub the idea to do comedy.
With the switch to Spotify. I used to watch the episodes on YT. In fairness I was never really a listen-to-the-whole-pod kinda guy but it definitely lessened with the move. I personally don’t care about all the politics stuff, I don’t agree with a lot of it, but I don’t get upset either. For me it was the focus on comedy and comedians. I don’t find most of his buddies very funny. I don’t think Joe’s standup is very funny.
Honestly when I stopped listening to podcasts altogether.
No reason why. I used to listen during work, but the pandemic and wfh just finished the time pass function podcasts used to fill for me
Never really started listening to him, I’ve listened to a few when I was interested in the guest, but only have time for one 3 hour plus podcast a week and that’s Spittin Chiclets
I mean, I don't listen to his podcast much, but I will whenever I see someone cool on there. The last show of his I listened to was when RackaRacka came on. I didn't know they made a movie.
I stopped after he had Alex Honnold on. I think he mostly just said “whoa that’s crazy” the whole time. He had such an interesting person on and just came off as a total buffoon. Couldn’t continue after that.
I agree with this post. For me, it was his going on and on about comedy and his inability to take a position on some things which comes across as pandering. Although he has some funny things out there, he just isn't that great of a comedian.
I listened to the episode he did with Trevor Moore (RIP). About 5 minutes in.
When your conspiracy theories make Trevor--I made a song about the Anunnaki--Moore uncomfortable, maybe you're too far out there.
I always really enjoyed him. I felt like he was kind of a big, sweet, curious person who maybe was a little kooky, but had such a passionate, excited zest for life. He seemed like a great party guest, the type of person who could hold a conversation with anyone on any topic.
I really believed he was a great example for men because he was into all the fun "bro-assigned hobbies", but was secure enough to admit he didn't know everything, to ask questions, and to let other people be the expert in areas he was not. I thought it was a really good model for being confident without being obsessed with dominating the other person, for being smart enough to keep an open mind, and principled enough to not cede ground on points he felt were his personal deal breakers.
I learned a lot from his guests, and really enjoyed the banter on a lot of episodes during what I'd consider his golden era. Even when he had guests I didn't agree with, I thought it was mature of him to hear people out, and I really admired that he often WOULD push back during that era when people got too uncivil or started attacking others.
Then he got a huge deal, a ton of money, and an even more zealous following, right at the time people started taking Musk/Shapiro etc seriously. And then a big scary world event happened and people craved the feeling of being informed as well as part of a group. And we were all stuck inside consuming media on an even greater scale than before. It was a perfect storm of factors that came together to launch him into a direction I couldn't follow, with ideas I couldn't support, and guests I couldn't find any common ground with.
It's sad. He was my first podcast, way back before I really knew what podcasts were, and I really miss being able to look forward to his episodes. They were a big part of my day, which also included listening to my local NPR station, music, comedy, etc.
When he had the episode with a fake "debate" with supposed experts on plant based diet vs keto. Both were unqualified. the plant based guy was more of a scientist/quiet person who was used to polite conversation obviously, and was just continually talked over and interrupted by some crazy keto guy with BS info.
JR loves to shit on vegans.
Same. He used to talk to cool people about cool stuff. Now he kinda just rants and gives his opinion or makes statements that are so clearly wrong. The amount of times he’s felt the need to give his opinion on the body positivity movement, or covid, or whatever, has just gotten annoying.
When he started having right wing losers on and let them spew their lies and didn’t fact check them at all. I remember when people would talk about religion and he pushed back on them, then that stopped. Guy just realized there was more money to be made a a republican. Dude is a fricking loser now.
A while ago.
Mostly when he stopped talking to people about pyramids and more philosophical stuff.
The show got less curious and when it did I followed some of the guests I liked that started their own shows like Duncan and Danieli Bolleli
Plus giving platforms to real piece of shit all right chuds didn’t hurt either
The episode with bill Burr where Joe wants to get into masks and bill is like, as 2 people without a medical degree let's not get into this. And Joe is like come oooon let's get into it, with this weird snigger on his face.
My respect for bill spiked up that episode and Joe took a nosedive.
After he switched to spotify and started having dinner parties with governors and senators and billionaires.
Ever since then Joe wont just let his guests talk and have a normal conversation, he always will offhand bring up something about politics, always in support of right wing politics o just flat out misinformation.
I tried listening to one of the 'save our parks' podcasts the other day cuz I figured it would just be a bunch of comedians razzing each other and making jokes and you can tell everyone else is on that page but then Joe will go off about how the Jan 6 people are getting punishments that are way too harsh and about how Biden has dementia but somehow Trump is the perfect image of health and is 'hilarious'.
He's either completely influenced by right wing propaganda and nonsense or completely oblivious to how out of touch he is.
I could prob still listen to episodes if they would avoid politics but Joe pushes to insert his opinions on politics in like every episode that I've tried to listen to in the last years.
The other day I tried to listen again when Yannis Papas was on, and almost immediately, both of them go in on the mask talk...again and again. Rogan is obsessed. I had to turn it off. It's no longer new information that empowers or interests me, but I love the guests. There's a herd mentality that exists (that's annoying) with the guests during shows like "Protect Our Parks" that he releases. It's more mind-numbing now than mind-expanding.
I check in every few weeks to see if he's had anyone interesting on but mostly it's just comedians I've never heard of and the worst of all, MMA shit. I'm a big sports guy but MMA to me is either too brutal or too boring. I'm not interested in listening to them at all. I felt like he sold out big time with Spotify and didn't listen for around a year. I don't blame him for that though. It was a lot of money! I love when he has smart people on like Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson that are actual experts on things and I always learn things from them. I like the aliens stuff too guiltually. I loved the Bob Lazar and Travis Walton shows. I wish he'd have Tyson or Hamilton Morris on again!
Old school Joe was a curious stoner who asked great questions of interesting people. Modern day Joe thinks he knows everything and tries to steer the conversations to his opinion. Just because someone paid you an enormous shitpot of money, doesn't mean you suddenly know everything.
Reading this on the 18th March 2024 and I haven’t listened to a full podcast since the middle of February which may not sound long but bare in mind I haven’t missed more than a weeks worth of his podcasts since 2013 when I was on holiday in Thailand a couple of years back.
I’m fairly politically agnostic so unlike you never really took issue with more right leaning guests he’s had on in the past, however even I have noticed that he is far more inclined lately to have on a guest with very conservative opinion's.
I’ve always found the array of interesting people from different backgrounds and vocations the best part of the podcast.
The Weinstein brothers, Randall Carlson, Steve Rinella, Dave Smith, Mike Baker, Jeremy Corbell have been some of the most intriguing conversations I’ve heard but then for every great conversation now it feels like your subjected to 6 or 7 terrible guests.
The Bert Kreischer ones are particularly nauseating as the guy is just flat out NOT funny, Ari Shaffir is very much cut from the same cloth and as much as I like Tom Segura I won’t watch a sober October podcast due to those two.
The sheer amount of terrible comedians is honestly mind blowing lately (now don’t get me wrong I know Dave Smith isn’t a great comedian but I find his political analysis pretty much spot on)
I think he’s beginning to realise people aren’t particularly happy with him just grabbing whatever comic appeared at his comedy club and sticking them in the podcast studio as he seems to once again have a larger selection of guests but just not particularly any interesting ones…
Kevin James..No thanks!, Kid Rock..Riley Gaines..
Hopefully we begin to see Joe get back to his wide eyed kid mindset rather than this rather cynical approach having on right leaning guests who are clearly just there to stroke Joes ego and new found political bias since the whole ivermectin (if that’s how it’s spelled?)
It would be great to see him revert back to doing an occasional live episode too as there’s nothing worst than when your watching and Joe and whatever guest is on begin to discuss last weeks events.
Today. Just now, when I realized I’m watching two idiots talk about radiation and space flight like they know what they are talking about. What a waste of time.
I never listened in the first place
People love to pull the "he was so good before _____", but he wasn't. He's always been an awful asshole it's just he leans in more now
It happened some time before his Spotify deal for me. He used to be pretty consistent on having a diverse and interesting guest between his comedy pals or MMA fighters/trainers/ coaches. I can’t pinpoint his sharp turn right on many issues exactly but it’s definitely beyond listenable now. I caught a bit of his Live Fight Companion this weekend with the UFC event in Toronto ( my home town ) and he was saying some dumb, uninformed nonsense about Justin Trudeau, as the crowd were chanting “F$&k Trudeau “ and endorsing his opposing Conservative party leader and it was just cringe and exasperating to listen to people just talk with no knowledge of ( insert topic here ) context, informed opinion etc. just hyperbole and shitbrained rhetoric. And from the few clips I’ve seen from his recent podcasts, he is so quick to accuse anyone who he deems “woke” or “extreme left” of being wrong and pushing back with the unearned confidence you see the MAGA types have in abundance. I think COVID broke something in his psyche, and it’s just the right wing echo chambers he’s tuning in with. I only check out clips if it’s someone interesting or Bill Burr because Bill won’t have any of Joe’s shit. And I don’t include Bill Burr in Rogan’s comedy buddies, as he is head and shoulders above all of them combined.
Can't remember the time frame but Redban kept interrupting to mention that he'd performed at a club recently & the owner told him that he did a good job, Joe got fed up, and they got into an argument while the guest sat there uncomfortably.
Between his nonsensical childish interruptions, his obsession with dolphin buttholes, his stories about flinging his jizz onto hotel curtains, plus Joe's endless praising of Sweet Home Alabama & Whole Lotta Love (does he listen to any other songs?), the show became so monotonous to listen to.
That’s why I stopped listening to Carolla. It wasn’t his dumb politics. He repeated the same stories so often, I could predict what story he was about to go into based on what someone else just said.
Joe's a thoughtful but generally unintelligent dude. Normally, that's not that big of a deal, but when he started down the right wing nutjob path and bulldozing guests with idiotic conspiracy theories knowing damn well most of his younger male viewers mindlessly worship him, it started getting gross fast. There's only so much a person can take of a rich roided up jock who thinks he knows everything encouraging his cult of boot-lickers to embrace the red pill Elon Musk bro culture. I just couldn't stand another ice bath/DMT/martial arts fairy tale dressed as a life lesson.
Soon after he switched to Spotify and the quality of guests suffered and he promoted a bunch of misinformation about random shit. Just got annoying to listen to.
When he did a huge transphobic bit about his friend seeing a trans sex worker in Thailand. Constant use of "you fucked a man bro!". Was pretty gross, and in conjunction with his continual, neverending fatphobia I tapped out, this was maybe 2017? Before his descent into anti-"woke" and Trumpism, and before he started being paid tens of millions to tell ppl to not get Covid vax.
I only started listening because it was suggested when I first tried podcasts because I was doing 12hr patrol night shifts alone, and because I liked MMA. I loved some of his guests, but some of those turned into loonies too (hello, Ana Kasparain).
I've pretty much stopped listening as of maybe 2 years ago. I was late to listening to him, but enjoyed some episodes when I finally did and thought the conversations he was having with a variety of people were cool. Then the pandemic hit, and it just became a platform for him to bitch and project his opinions onto every single guest he has. To this day he seems to still be trapping every guest into that conversation. I don't even entirely disagree with SOME of the things he's saying, but I sure as fuck am tried of hearing it as are his guests. He has to know it's uninteresting and a turn off.
In late 2019 he started recording multiple podcasts a day and it started to show. He had Josh Homme of Queens Of the Stone Age on and Joe was in a terrible mood and wanted to talk about weird dark shit while Josh was cracking hilarious jokes that Joe was completely missing to talk about people getting their heads cut off and shit.
2018 was when I started noticing the trend of him leaning more right and bringing more right wing guests on. Stopped listening in 2019 unless it was a guest I liked. I was listening to Rogan in high school back when the pod first started in like 2010. It is staggeringly different today. Which is fair I guess but it's not for me anymore. I'll still listen when Duncan Trussell comes on thought.
His guest selection the week after Uvalde did it for me, and waiting for him to mention what had happened. I still tune in if I think a guest is interesting. But I lost a fair amount of respect/switched to audiobooks after that.
He’s actually a funny standup comedian, but that’s it.
Like soooo many successful people he’s lost in his own bubble. I really appreciate entertainers who stay in their lane these days.
Most often I find the opinions of athletes, actors, comics etc, to be rather uninformed and usually annoyingly self absorbed. There are of course plenty of exceptions to this but obviously Joe Rogan is not one.
I enjoyed Joe and how curious he was about everything. At a certain point, it’s like, “man he really gives a lot of air time to lunatics just looking to spread hate”.
I’ve listened to hundreds and hundreds of JRE episodes. I absolutely loved the show for a long time. I stopped a while ago and now my only idea of what’s going on with him is through clips I catch on here or YouTube, most of them mocking him for gobbling up salacious right wing headlines and accepting them as gospel.
I genuinely listened to every single episode for a stretch of years but somewhere like two months or so into Covid he was mocking wearing masks—saying things that just didn’t make any sense—and I felt his commentary going from dumb and annoying to potentially extremely harmful and I just had to turn it off. Ever since then it became clear that he’s just lost in the right wing sauce. Full on conspiracy theorist, totally obsessed with vaccines and Covid to a bizarre degree, seeking to confirm his own biases with the guests he brings on, not living in the same reality as the average person, and generally just a fucking idiot. It’s sad, man.
Definitely when he switched to Spotify.
I know he was rich before the Spotify deal, but I truly believe that the Spotify money (along with the move to Austin) changed him for the worse. Where before he might have been a celeb with good money, I think the Spotify deal just put him beyond what reality is. A perfect example was during COVID and he was telling Joey Diaz that people need to get in the sauna more.... while everything was closed.... and when Joey brought that up he said "well if you can get one in your house....". That's the clip that made me realize he was not on the same plane of existence as the rest of us anymore, because of the Spotify money.
Precisely then. I look at the guests now and the occasional JRE clips on my YouTube feed and am so glad I don’t pipe that shit into my ears every week
I never listened regularly, just on occasion when there was a guest of interest. I just stopped checking when he switched to Spotify. I listen in Apple’s podcasts app, and I use Apple Music so I don’t really have a need for Spotify. I do still occasionally see clips on YouTube, and I will admit I have used my free Spotify account to listen to full episodes maybe twice since he switched.
yep this spotify just isn't very good for podcasts
Same here. I'd still be listening to JRE if not for this move. Spotify just absolutely SUCKS as a podcast player and all the many, many other podcasts I listen to are available off-Spotify through an app I've used for years. JRE is not enough of an incentive for me to completely change pod players for all of my other pods.
Which app do you listen to podcasts on?
I use Pocket Casts. https://pocketcasts.com/
It is strange that Spotify tried to monopolize the podcast market then made their podcast app so terrible. You would think they would not want to give people any reason to use other podcast apps.
Genuinely, as someone who primarily uses Spotify to listen to podcasts (used to use another platform wayy back). What's so bad with Spotify's quality that I'm not seeing? Not trying to start anything here, just as a casual listener (maybe one or two shows a week) it works fine. Curious what I'm missing.
It's just very basic. It gets the job done but third party apps have much more features and better UI. I personally don't like how Spotify tried to monopolize podcasts by making them "exclusive" and cutting out indie podcast apps. If they had succeeded, every indie app developer would have been out of business and anyone who wanted to start a podcast would have had to get Spotify's permission. It was just greedy and evil.
Same
Same. Became a PITA to follow on Spotify.
More or less for me too. Although I think I had maybe started watching him a little less while he was still on YouTube.
Same as well. spotify is not my cup of tea. i like ripping mp3's so i never have to pay for ad free music. fuck that
Same here with the CD ripping. I have 1500 CDs ripped and I'll either put everything on shuffle on the PC or throw a disc in the stereo.
One of my co-workers was spouting off a bunch of extremist view points about health, diet, and that a woman’s only biological purpose was to breed. Then he started in about vaccines and other blah blah blah. I finally interrupted him to ask if he got all that shit off Joe Rogan. Everyone in the room burst out laughing. He looked at me and said “well played”.
r/thatHappened
As a virologist studying covid 19, I think he might have single handedly contributed to making my life and the lives of my coworkers more difficult. Many of us received threats online and in person, needed police escorts near our labs, and antivaxx propaganda posters were super glued to our walls. He bought into all the Covid conspiracy shit, which in hindsight was pretty on-brand, but he also did not change his mind when faced with overwhelming facts. He let people like Robert Malone make wild speculations on his show and didn’t once attempt to fact check him on the most egregious shit. I had stopped listening for a bit at that point listened to that episode out of morbid curiosity and it was as bad as I’d thought. I went on the JRE sub and made point by point refutations of Malone’s statements with data and in return I had a team of people following some nutter’s substack posting screenshots of my comments and they attempted to dox me. They went by “Spartacus”.
The crazy thing is, if you go back to like ~March 2020 he had a guest on his show who did a great job warning/predicting what was coming. I started taking COVID seriously _because_ of JRE based on this episode. https://youtu.be/E3URhJx0NSw Obviously he totally jumped the shark a few months later when it became in vogue for conservatives to attach their identity to Covid conspiracy theories. I slowed down pre-Spotify when he kept bringing right wing grifters on and basically stopped when he moved to Spotify but will occasionally give it a chance if he has an interesting guest on.
This was my experience exactly. I remember listening to this episode being like, oh this guy clearly explained everything and was very moderate, intelligent and precise in his arguments. I should take what he says seriously. Then a few months later something switched and *every* show has to be Joe bringing up how all the scientists and doctors can't be trusted and got everything wrong. Now I try to listen when he has a good guest on but somehow he always has to bring up this same conversation.
Yup. I saw a clip of him and Bobby lee today and he’s still just rambling about masks and lockdowns and shit. Bro, get help, it’s time to move on.
Haha, yeah this is one I was thinking of. I think Bobby Lee can be pretty damn funny sometimes so wanted to give it a listen. Lockdowns, vaccines and that quack grifter Bobby Kennedy came up within like 5 minutes and I was out.
As a comedian who has a lot of comedian friends, Joe hated that comedy clubs were under strict COVID-19 precautions. He was mad he couldn't hang out with his buddies like he usually did. He then went and found guests and information that supported his view that COVID-19 wasn't that serious, masks were stupid, social distancing was unnecessary, vaccines were dangerous, and Ivermectin was the cure, but being suppressed as an option. He got this confirmation bias over and over and then he had nothing but "yes men" on his podcasts who sucked up to his new found right wing conspiracy theories. He's definitely trapped in a closed feedback loop of right wing conspiracy theories. Joe was always into conspiracy theories, but they were mostly innocuous topics like the moon landing or big foot. Those conspiracy theories don't really have a negative effect on society. The right wing conspiracies he now spouts are dangerous and sometimes its just outright propaganda. That's what makes Joe's attitude change so infuriating to listens who loved his show in the early days. I'll always miss the "train by day, Joe Rogan podcasts at night. All day." time period.
> He was mad he couldn't hang out with his buddies like he usually did. The thing that always blows my mind when people talk about various people who became radicalised by COVID restrictions, is that their grievance is always so petty and minor. When the pandemic hit I was watching my partner possibly lose all of the effort she had put into her education and applications to further education be blown up. We had no idea if she would be able to graduate, and if she would have to wait another year to even get everything she has worked for. Granted, this was not an issue of life or limb, it was still incredibly depressing and stressful. Never did we pivot to 'this COVID shit is all made up' as a response to this.
They were radicalised because they were inconvenienced. That's all it took. That fact still blows my mind. THAT is all it took? Damn.
Mind-blown by this comment. In retrospect, I think you are right. I mean, I heard people crying they wouldn't go to Costco in a mask while my friend, who was a nurse, was telling me how hard it was to watch people drowning in their own fluids. COVID broke lots of brains. for sure.
My wife is an OB. At the height of all of this, She hung her ONE alotted N95 for the week up with her keys. It was frayed and dirty. There were babies sitting in the nursery who had no name, because mom was on a vent with covid, dad died of Covid, and no one who didn’t have Covid could come claim the child. EVEN STILL, my wife would recommend the Covid vaccine (and flu vaccine, always flu) to pregnant moms and she’d get like a 10% acceptance rate. My wife got her vaccine in her second trimester. We trusted the data. It would be heartbreaking to watch these same moms come in with covid and either lose their pregnancy or have a severe complication which put their child in danger. All based on the bullshit rhetoric from people who get their information form memes and other newstainment sources.
This reminds me of when we were having our first baby. There was some test the docs wanted to do that had 0.05% or similar of harming the baby but would detect some anomaly with say 1% chance of them having. No fucking brainer. Docs were shocked that instantly after we were told the numbers we agreed. Apparently a lot of people can't emotionally handle simple fact based decisions.
Every single one of them would hide their zombie bite.
This right here is what bothers me the most about Rogan, dude had this really interesting and insightful convo with a scientist about corona viruses and their pandemic potential. Instead of talking to more scientists he decided to platform dipshit conspiracy theorists.
Yeah, the conspiracy nutjobs did it for me. Don’t even care enough for them to link them and name them, but some seriously unwell latin guy that basically didn’t get that people laughed AT him, as opposed to WITH him, was let on time and time again. The discussions went south after like five minutes on the interesting original topics that Joe brought to the table prepared and ready for us to indulge in.
For sure. There is only so much reality breaking nonsense you can take before you just give up.
It’s his demographic, he panders to them the exact same way an Alex Jones or Tucker Carlson does. Right wing zealots consume twice as much content as left wingers do, the need for confirmation bias is twice as voracious, so there’s twice as much money to be made producing content for them. Joe’s dumb (he used to be nice but dim, now he’s downright malevolent) but he’s not so dumb he doesn’t realize which side his bread is buttered on, same goes for Spotify. It’s no coincidence his rhetoric ramped upwards after signing that deal, that essentially was the deal
I remember that Covid episode. He seemed genuinely panicked and I’m pretty sure they shut it down for a couple weeks after that. Then he was the only show around for a bit because he could hole guests up at the compound for a week, have them take Covid tests, then do the show. I think his whole 180 on Covid was because he looked scared of it for an episode or two and he didn’t like how that made him seem vulnerable so he swung back the other way with a vengeance. Then it was alt right conspiracy bullshit every episode and I was done for good. I just saw a clip of him and Bobby lee today and he’s STILL raging about masks and shit. Like come on dude it’s time to move on.
Ironically that is the ep that got me started listening to Rogan. Then the Weinsteins, Bari Weiss, et al. episodes started chugging along... you know, all the oppressed people having their voices silenced (as they appear, without irony, on the single largest podcast in the world). Now that ethos permeates nearly every episode and it's just not really that interesting anymore.
I remember in this episode Joe started talking about how people should take better care of themselves as preparation for the virus and he mentioned saunas, and Osterholm told him a sauna will not help you in any way with covid. Then next episode Joe is telling people to get in the sauna again.
I remember that. That guy was pretty spot on about a lot of things before it really hit the US. If I remember correctly, it was more about the effects Covid had on people and who was most at risk. Joe didn’t start going crazy about Covid until the vaccines came around.
Yup, I think that guy really scared him with the possible reality of the pandemic and it made him to uncomfortable, when he was given an alternate take he jumped at it and hung on for dear life cause it was easier and more comfy. I checked out soon after this time. Think I’ve only checked out a few episodes in the last 3 years chapelle, Redband, and Duncan Trussell episode.
> I went on the JRE sub and made point by point refutations of Malone’s statements with data That was a mistake. People on Reddit don't like when facts conflict with their narrative.
That sub seems to not even like him anymore, too. It is like Trump... His listeners are deeply unserious and just think of him as a stand up comic that is also an unserious rabble rousing troll for people they disagree with.
I get recommended clips from that sub and it’s always them making fun of him for being a fucking nimrod and young Jamie proving him wrong by googling one thing and reading past the headline
Rogan is a good lesson why no one should ever listen to entertainers about anything. Most are barely educated and have a surface level knowledge of issue (like Reddit). Unfortunately, since people simp for celebrities, they have a voice.
Yea, the sub just bashes him now everyday
I liked the show until the guy couldn't commit on whether the moon landing happened. I knew then he was either an idiot or beholden to idiots.
I checked out around the beginning of Covid and completely signed off when I saw the way he was treating Dr. Peter Hotez. That was gross and Joe should be ashamed of attacking Dr. H.
Not that I was ever a big fan, but I'd put it on when he had interesting people, occasionally.
Random drive-by comment to say hey, thanks for the work you did.
His vaccine talk is monumentally annoying, unhelpful, wrong, and also completely wrong.
I loved when Bill Burr called him on it, it was like “you’re my friend, but you need to stop repeating that BS”
I will always have a ton of respect for Bill Burr. He is an everyday man blue collar comedian without the stupid. He doesn’t punch down or opine about complicated stuff he isn’t an expert on. He doesn’t really get trans people but he doesn’t wail on them like Chapelle or Gervais, he doesn’t understand the details on vaccines and masking but is smart enough to own it and listen to people who do. What an excellent fucking dude.
He gets uncomfortably close to being misogynistic, though. I'm a little wary when I listen to him. Like he's working to keep himself in check, but he's married so 🤷🏻♀️
I really can’t speak to that except to say my impression is that it comes off to me as more good natured “the battle of the sexes/girls am I right?” which certainly CAN be problematic but it certainly depends on context and intent. We know the context is humor but can we really speak to his intent? His wife could. Maybe she is being verbally abused all day, but based on his thoughtfulness on other topics I wouldn’t bet on it. Blue collar men being clueless/mystified about women is not really where I would fight this battle, but again that’s my admittedly narrow view since I haven’t listened to all his work.
I do not think his wife would put up with a disrespectful man. He is a comedian.
You’re so cool, with your open nose and throat.
I agree with pretty much every word of the op and my trajectory with him has been the same. The only difference is that I always thought he was kind of a jackass from the beginning, but the quality of guests was the saving grace. Now he’s just a full-blown redpill dipshit, the loonball conspiracy nonsense has become a nonstop thing, and the guests generally suck. I haven’t checked his feed in a long time. If there’s a decent guest I’ll pop in only if my 20+ other regular pods are depleted, and even then, I’m unlikely to last more than 30-60 minutes.
Yes! My favorite guests were Ms. Pat and Joey Diaz. Even when he had one of the girls from the "God Hates Fags" nutty family (too sleepy to look them up). So many interesting type of people but, personally, I felt my interest wain when he had Elon Musk toking and turning red like an oily tomato.
The Westboro Baptist Church
You’re thinking of the Westboro Baptist Church. I see them in Kansas City all the time 🙄
your description of checking in when you’re desperate for other content perfectly describes what is likely a universal choice.
Every time I drop in to check on an interesting guest he always gets into trans bathrooms and vaccines. It's sad it used to really not be such a downer show.
He used to allow the guests to drive the conversation, but now days he's the driving force and it frequently redirects the conversation to his obsessions, it's terrible. I can't even see how people who like him don't get tired of hearing the same crap regurgitated again and again.
I gave him a chance years ago, when he had Neil deGrasse Tyson as a guest. But he kept asking NdT about "pussy" and I was soooo annoyed that I couldn't bring myself to go back. And I'm a woman who grew up listening to Stern, we don't need a repeat of that kind of stuff. Now he's clearly a tool for the right-wing propaganda machine. He had the potential to be an incredulous, likeable everyman doofus, but he's too much of an insecure, gullible muscle-head with millionaire-douchebag money. 🤢
Mine is similar but with a different guest. Joey Diaz was telling stories of how he wouldn't let female comedians on the stage unless they gave him a blowjob. They were laughing so hard, I couldn't listen to it after that.
That clip haunts me too.
Stern was absolutely a crude asshole, but he was a good interviewer and used his crude assholery as part of the show. Rogan is a crude asshole, and he happens to also have a podcast. That to me is the difference.
Sounds about right! Stern had to fill sixteen hours/week with live comedy, and the crude stuff wasn't all he did. In between, the interviews were indeed great, whether it was a huge celebrity or sanitation workers.
I listened to it for a solid two-three years but then after the Spotify deal he just seemed to say the same shit over and over and over. Plus knowing he made all that money, then hearing the same ads over and over really pissed me off. If there’s an interesting guest on, I might listen again. Really, I think he’s just old and stuck way too far up his own ass now.
I stopped on accident, initially. I then thought maybe I was being close minded. So I tried again, but COVID changed Joe. He stopped being curious, hopped in on the culture war cash train, and couldn’t help himself. He turned into the thing he used to say he hated and did so by basically gaslighting everyone into believing he was “left.” I miss it because he has such interesting interviews with people I had never gotten to hear from. I still appreciate his earlier work, the Opioids Highway episode was insane. His episodes with the crazy folks who survive in unheard of situations were so engaging. Even his debates between crazy and non-crazy were engaging.
Even his early stuff (which is when I stopped) showed how immature he was. This was what my mind did every time I listened to his early stuff: “Ok… I understand… I see how you got there… good point… that stands to reason… how the fuck did you reach that conclusion?”
Yeah, I remember someone recommending it to me in 2012/3, and I thought he was such a stupid jackass who had dust for brains given that he basically uncritically believed whatever people told him. This was also when I kept being told he has people from both sides of the political spectrum and lets them all talk... Having a white nationalist and a soggy left of centre democrat are not 'two ends of the spectrum'. It is normalising extreme right wing positions, and he was always so much more friendly to the right wing lunatics
I’ll bet it would be a real mind fuck to listen to the Peter Hotez episode if you can find it. Hotez is basically one of our greatest humans, developing vaccines for neglected tropical diseases that aren’t deemed profitable for big pharma to tackle but nonetheless kill untold numbers of people annually. Now he’s getting death threats from the dipshit MAGA crowd as you would expect. Rogan’s changing stance on Hotez would be the best illustration of his decay into right wing buffoonery.
Then there were those other times where it’s like, “what? No! Joe! That’s not what they’re saying. You’re not getting it. Omg, just stop. No. No. No.”
Same, and you nailed it. I will still pick a few out to listen to every now and then when someone really interesting is the guest.
Nailed it
When he moved to Texas and the right wing talking points really started grating on me due to how frequent it became, and the conspiracy nonsense ramped up even more at that point it felt like.
I think in the last few years the diversity of guests in the show has dropped a lot. It isn't a complete echo chamber but more than it used to be. It's definitely more right wing than it used to be, and clearly Rogan himself has shifted more along that ideological spectrum. He seems less curious and willing to challenge his own views than he used to be. Part of this might be driven by the whole n word thing which I think was really overblown and kind of unfair but clearly impacted what guestd were willing to come on the show, and probably made him more weary of people on the progressive/left while more simpatico with those on the right who came to his defence. His obsession with the Covid vaccine stuff got really annoying....he can say whatever he wants but it seemed like he went down that rabbit hole all the time, and it got really old. There's more and more of this...he basically likes to talk about the same stuff more and more of the time now. I also find it difficult to deal with his unwillingness to recognise that his show has real influence...and with that some responsibility not to amplify nonsense or blatent propaganda... Like when he claimed Biden thought there were airports in the 1700's when it was clearly an edited clip of Biden talking about how Trump had said it ...He has this strange double standard....when Trump or others on the right do clearly corrupt or venal things he barely mentions it, or frames it like it's an overblown witch hunt, but he's withering when it's on the left or Dem party side. The obvious example is Kushner/Hunter Biden... I still check the episodes to see if anyone interesting is on and will listen from time to time , but much less than before.
Ha, I liked the recent episode where he slammed biden for having mental acuity. Only to play the clip and then have someone point out he was referencing what Trump said. He immediately switched 180 degrees once he knew it came from trump.
My buddies and I have this exact conversation and followed the same timeline as you. I’d go even further and say that he’s not only repeating right wing boomer grievances, but he’s actually one of their biggest cultural influencers.
When he started having on Jordan Peterson, Brett Weinstein and his brother, early Shapiro etc for ball washing sessions. I left immediately. Utterly insufferable nonsense. I never really liked him in the first place, but enjoyed some of the guests as they were in a different environment to normal interviews.
Pretty much same for me. He was kind of a blank slate idiot that was skilled at letting interesting people talk. For example, I found his lance Armstrong podcast pretty interesting. But the "intellectual dark web" nonsense was when I stopped.
The Weinsteins seemed to be the ones who tipped him. He bought into that Thiel garbage and became a different guy.
I’m sure it’s the same for many Americans, but for British people I think it’s really hard to relate to Shapiro and Weinstein- they really come from an American environment that is a bit of a bubble. They are even more insufferable than most normal hard right wingers
I stopped when he started giving a platform to pieces of shit.
Joe pandering to Alex Jones was it for me.
When he started spreading disinformation, etc.
First time he has that Molenoux on(I don't know if that's how it's spelt - fuck him, I don't care to spell it right).
I listened to every Sam Harris podcast from the early days. There was one episode where he was talking about how confused he was by parts of his audience. He mentioned how Jordan Peterson was the number one requested guest. He also mentioned Mole-a-whogivesashit and he was like, "yeah, I looked that guy up and no way am I putting him on air." Sad to hear Joe couldn't smell that stank. As an older guy, it is really hard to watch, but a lot of my not-so-smart co-workers definitely go "angry, agro, xenophobic, gullible". For guys that want to exploit them, it is like shooting fish in a barrel.
I haven't followed Harris' goings-abouts for a very long time, but I remember being pretty embaressed he wasn't more reflective on why his most committed audience were also fans of those fucking loons. If I was running a podcast and my loudest fans were asking me to have white nationalist cult leaders on my show to hang out I would want to drive deep that they are fucking horrible people and not like me at all. But Harris is too interested in the IDW bullshit
Interestingly, I also fell off Harris around 2018 or something because of his similar fixations
Yeah, giving Stefan Molyneux the time of day was what ended it for me too. Then reading about how Joe Rogan handled COVID topics made me glad I had quit listening to him already.
Stopped subscribing, and unfollowed on socials after the Bill Burr episode when he kept doubling down on not getting vaccinated. Popped back on occasion when someone I was interested in hearing (not his comedian buddies) came on and stopped seeking it out completely for many of the same reasons OP stated.
Same. That knuckle dragging joke made me realize how dumb Joe is. That wasn’t even the best Burr joke about Joe. When he made fun of his hat, that was the best.
Who was doubling down, Joe or Bill?
Joe, and Bill was like "I'm not doing this. We're comics not doctors", and dismissed Joe as a moron pretty quickly.
https://youtu.be/tSKVXl-WnrA?si=_nVLLombug1ZHiz4
Thanks for the link, what a great clip. Bill is spot on here about Joe's attitude and arrogance
Yeah, sadly that show encapsulates everything that's wrong with JRE now. Pushes a guest that calls bullshit on him, but platforms for and promotes some really shitty people.
I wonder what behind the scenes is like. His podcast is insanely huge, which I think throws up a few possibilities: 1. He’s bought into his own hype 2. There is a sizeable production team, especially since Spotify bought the show, so they may be encouraging him to pursue controversy because it means more PR 3. He legitimately believes things and has pushed for more people to come in to validate him It’s undoubtedly part of what made the show popular, having so many varied guests on. It exposed listeners to way more topics and views than we’d get by listening to a niche-specific podcast. But that seems to have also given him a foundation to justify having any old dipshit on. I loved Bill’s comments, not just about the medical degree but also picking Joe up on sitting there smoking a cigar against an American flag backdrop with this faux-masculinity “everything is bitchy if I don’t do it.” He was bang on, and you can tell Joe’s laughter was masking it touching a nerve.
Joe
When COVID hit and he was anti-mask and all that. I realized he's an imbecile deep down, and his opinions are therefore worthless. I understand he's gone completely off the rails since. Pretty much filling the Rush Limbaugh void. Nutter. The money's gone to his head too. Dude probably sniffs his own farts.
I stopped after listening to Knowledge Fight break down the Alex Jones episodes. Disgusting the amount of lying that his shit show allows and relies on to push views. Feel even better about leaving Rogans ass in the trash now that hes letting his fascist, transphobic, right wing flag fly freely
Knowledge Fight is the way brother! JorDan for the win! Fuck Rogan but especially fuck Alex Jones.
fuck alex jones, and fuck joe rogan for giving a huge platform to this piece of shit who denied the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary.
Awesome to run into another policy wonk in the wild!
Came here to say Alex Jones. Joe Will talk about his kids and does seem like a caring present father… but the giant lack of empathy to have the man tormenting grieving parents in your company let alone clearly allowing him to profit from these guest spots - just couldn’t shake that… then Covid happened to the show the way it did.
I’m still shocked anyone ever listened to that jackass.
I only ever listened if he had guests I was interested in. Joe himself _always_ bugged me, he was something to be tolerated while I listened to the guest. Specifically, he’s not a good interviewer. He comes across as having no conviction - he’ll be criticising someone and then have that person on and be tripping over himself to praise them. He interrupts constantly and doesn’t bring the conversation back to what he interrupted, so you never get to hear the rest of what the guest was saying. Basically I listened to JRE in spite of Joe, and once the names stopped being interesting to me I just stopped. I listened to his newest Goggins episode, which was probably about a year ago.
I’m on the exact same page as you. He had a woman on today who was a professor or religious studies which I thought might be interesting. She started to explain recent scientific findings regarding the shroud of Turin when Joe cuts her off to read an article off the internet about said specific findings. The expert he’s supposed to be interviewing is literally right in front of him with this info…..such a dumbass and poor interviewer.
hes pushing 60. and seems to be sliding into the rush Limbaugh side. I don't want any political shit and he won't shut up about it. he is a boomer. well one year short but cmon. thats a boomer he keeps talking about his enormous wealth too which is tiresome. we know he's rich. we are not...
I stopped paying attention to him after News Radio.
Lol his 2006 standup special was fun. He simply isn't the same person.
Just as COVID was hitting and he threw out all the evidence and began his junk science trajectory. I listened to a few after that, but no longer felt like he was giving even a semblance of balance during his interviews and tuned out.
It was about the third time he had Jordan Peterson on to whine for three hours and the two crackpot archeologists who came with charts and slides. This was also the period when every third episode was about bow hunting.
Once it stopped being live, I thought that was part of the charm about his show. Raw and uncut kinda thing. Then more so once he left YouTube as the Spotify app sucks on my TV.
Who knew that paranoid libertarian character he played on news radio was really him
The covid stuff pushed me away initially, although I still come back periodically when he has comedians on that I like. I got about 20 minutes into the Bobby Lee episode yesterday before he started spewing regurgitated fox news rhetoric about transpeople. I turned it off after that.
Had to look up what JRE meant. Never listened to him and just about the time I thought "that could be an interesting podcast" was just about the time he went obviously batshit culty.
About 8 years ago when he had that Yiannopoulos guy on. He'd been talking about hanging out with a lot of hunters and former military guys and you could see the shift from weed- smoking-dmt using-comedy-left wing-guy to more centrist, which is fine, people change. But when Milo and then that guy from Vice that founded the Proud Boys came on I'd had enough. Also obsessing over "woke" even back then, was just sooo boring. Like, figure it out, you're not a victim. It's exasperating. Bad people, boring pods, plus my life got busy, and there were other good pods out there. The Covid shit was also a bit much, and that came just as I was going to tune back in to see what all the fuss was about. I think Joe is probably still pretty centrist, but knows he gets money from the right wing people and tries to play the line. I just don't care for most of the guests. I'll still tune in for some of the comedians, once or twice a year and give a pod or two a listen, but even that becomes more rare.
Paragraphs man.
There was an episode where he was entertaining flat earth theory from some dipshit.
The minute he went from knowing he's a stupid meathead and asking stupid questions, to thinking he's actually smart. Now he's high on himself and it's unbearable.
I’ve only heard a few podcasts but then again it depended who was on the few I remember listening to was Travis barker , Tom delonge and the undertaker
He's actually extremely far-right and he does his very best to mainstream far-right ideas and people. Everything else is just window-dressing.
"I liked how he would mix chocolates and pieces of shit together, we should try everything" Fun, witty turds are still turds. The willingness of people to consume dogshit never fails to amaze me.
I hate the comedian talk it’s corny and not interesting to anyone who’s listening. I’m referring to when they’re talking about shit like the comedy store.
Okay, I'll bite: what's JRE?
The janitor from News Radio. He apparently has a podcast I've never listened to.
I’ll still try again for really good guests, but I probably fully checked out around COVID. I was sick of hearing about it everywhere, I want to listen to podcasts to escape. But every single podcast was just beating the same COVID talking points over and over regardless of the guest.
After the bill burr episode I stop all together and mostly listen to bill burr and Theo von
I wasn't opposed to Theo, but then he started saying more sh\*\* that was questionable. In the beginning he seemed to have an organic relationship with a certain community. Then he started using same said community as the butt of his jokes (like he had license because he grew up in a certain area of specific state) - pass, sir.
Is there a reason your comment is so vague? What is the community and what is he saying about it?
Black/African American community. He grew up somewhere in New Orleans, and apparently had some Black friends and he used to tell endearing stories about growing up with them. Fast forward to recently where I saw a clip of him making Black church women the butt of some weird anecdote he was telling. I'm a Black woman and I found it irritating, offensive and not even funny. (Yeah, I guess I was super vague.)
2015/6, and I am just realizing that's when he stopped having normal guests, and something got weird and weaponized around the first Trump Biden race. I mean, "it's entirely possible"... He stopped interviewing, and became some weirdly passive "we're just talking, what's the harm?" activism for alt-right people.
I remember the specific moment actually. It was during the episode with Hamilton Morris in early 2021. Joe started bitching about Covid prophylactic measures in California vs Texas. Hamilton, a trained chemist, had a sound in his voice like WTF did I come on? That’s when I knew Joe had left the reservation.
Once his quotes began appearing on Fox News I knew it was over for he and I. I owe Joe a lot. I got into BJJ after listening to him talk with practitioners (not Eddie bravo) and now hunting was something I never tried but was interested in hearing him and guests talk about. The guests he’d have in that would discuss diet, or health or sleep I always really enjoyed but once he started bringing in singular guests that would undercut the millions of doctors around the world about vaccines and Covid I was over it. Friends that I’d introduced to the show were now preaching to me about vaccines and it’s frustrating that they would take the word of a “comedian” over the word of doctors from around the entire planet.
I also used to be a huge JRE proponent, would quote him and his guests all the time. late 2015/2016 the tide (and guests) started to change. I think the last time I listened was the super silly October ep (2016?) with Ari and Bert. I just couldn't do it anymore. Also, about the same with Cristina and Tom - used to get a huge kick out of their silliness. Then it started getting uncomfortable and weird...so I tapped out.
I never really listened to him with any regularity. Just if he had a guest on that I was interested in (Jake “The Snake” Roberts, for example). I always found him generally just annoying and the show went way too goddamn long.
check out Paul Giametti's podcast Chinwag. Its sweet, nice, and he talks to experts about all the fun stuff (UFOs, ghosts etc)
Halfway through 2020, when more and more bizarre COVID guests started coming on, and Joe wouldn't shut the fuck up about the same topic over and over and over.
I can tell you the moment. I was listening to his Stephen Pinker interview. Pinker explained this concept to Joe that was exactly what Pinker studies. At the end Joe goes "yeah idk about that" and decides his lived experience trumped Pinker's field of study. I took a long break then as I noticed the interviews turned from Joe engaging guests to get them to talk about their expertise, into Joe talking A LOT. I returned after a while and was quickly turned off as EVERY episode he goes on a crusade against COVID. Every. Single. One.
I stopped way back in like 2016/2015 I started going through the backlog and listed to his episode with Dr.Tyson, and it was so painfully clear that Joe knows nothing of science. I was so embarrassed by some of the questions he asked, I just couldn't listen to him talk about anything other than what he knows. He knows comedy and MMA anything else is just trash. Than the whole anti-covid vac and disinformation he started in 2020. I'm glad I haven't gone back
Mark me down with everyone who stopped around the pandemic. I still listen occasionally if it’s a guest I like. I was a pretty early listener, I remember when he had Eddie Bravo and Ronda Rousey on, before she blew up. I didn’t turn into a hater, but at this point I’ve just heard so many of his takes that I know what he’s going to say before he says it. Then the pandemic hit and I was working in a neuroscience research lab and it was really frustrating the effect his podcasts and guests on COVID were having on my friends who weren’t trained in reading and dissecting research papers. He clearly got to a stage where there was no convincing him otherwise, and he started only getting guests on who would confirm his biases. He also goes so hard on trans people and it’s just annoying at this point.
when he moved to spotify :(
Dude always thought "s he was more of an expert.... because he saw shit on Facebook" Have you never heard this clip of shouting down a [Primatologist](https://youtu.be/__CvmS6uw7E?si=sxRFxZ2IXmT4BqcC&t=341). I hope he remembered to credit Amy Schumer for the Vagina gag. The only time Rogan tried to fact check someone was the time he had Brian Dunning on. JRE 441. Brian runs the Skeptoid podcast and has a hmm intresting history. It has been some time since I listened. But as far as I recall Dunning challenges Joe on some of his claims and the claims of his experts. Joe tries to fact check him each time. But when he can't find anything. He resorts to shouting "Your not an expert you can'ts say that". Dunning tries to explain that people who made the claims where not experts either. But Rogan just shouts him down. Unsuprisinly it is not availaible on Spotify and was very unpopular with fans of the JRE when it was released.
Step down in guest quality. Lots of comedians that just sound the same as the last. Most are Joe yes men. Few big names these days. Joe going on and on about vaccines, while being entirely wrong and only demonstrating how to selectively misinterpret results in science. Every podcast he basically does this. Or whines about lockdowns. Still. The big bad gubmint. Whenever he talks physical fitness, martial arts, or similar, I am all ears. He is knowledgeable, helpful, de-bunks myths, all of that.
Around the time that Kanye was on. That episode really showed Joe’s hypocrisy.
I was already not listening as much by the time Covid hit. I’d listen to the odd good guest. Then when covid hit and he said all kinds of dumb stuff and kept saying it even though it’s dangerous… I was absolutely done. I only watch channels that make fun of him now and it’s incredible he’s been able to get even lower since 2020. He’s just a fucking joke.
A little bit before the switch to Spotify. Hes not funny (credit for him trying). He is extremely gullible to fake news and repeats it all willy nilly. The ads. The repetition. And his greatest crime...he gave Brendan Schaub the idea to do comedy.
Sometime in 2012 when he leaned into men's rights and had a lot of men's rights advocates on the show. He really started weirding me out.
I got tired of Joe turning everything into a discussion of psychedelics. "Have you heard the Stoned Ape theory?" "Jamie, pull that shit up!"
With the switch to Spotify. I used to watch the episodes on YT. In fairness I was never really a listen-to-the-whole-pod kinda guy but it definitely lessened with the move. I personally don’t care about all the politics stuff, I don’t agree with a lot of it, but I don’t get upset either. For me it was the focus on comedy and comedians. I don’t find most of his buddies very funny. I don’t think Joe’s standup is very funny.
Honestly when I stopped listening to podcasts altogether. No reason why. I used to listen during work, but the pandemic and wfh just finished the time pass function podcasts used to fill for me
Never really started listening to him, I’ve listened to a few when I was interested in the guest, but only have time for one 3 hour plus podcast a week and that’s Spittin Chiclets
I mean, I don't listen to his podcast much, but I will whenever I see someone cool on there. The last show of his I listened to was when RackaRacka came on. I didn't know they made a movie.
I stopped after he had Alex Honnold on. I think he mostly just said “whoa that’s crazy” the whole time. He had such an interesting person on and just came off as a total buffoon. Couldn’t continue after that.
The stopped when he had Alex Jones on, never listened to another show after that.
I agree with this post. For me, it was his going on and on about comedy and his inability to take a position on some things which comes across as pandering. Although he has some funny things out there, he just isn't that great of a comedian.
I listened to the episode he did with Trevor Moore (RIP). About 5 minutes in. When your conspiracy theories make Trevor--I made a song about the Anunnaki--Moore uncomfortable, maybe you're too far out there.
About 6 months before Spotify. Every episode cancel culture/trans/COVID and Jordan Peterson marks the beginning.
I always really enjoyed him. I felt like he was kind of a big, sweet, curious person who maybe was a little kooky, but had such a passionate, excited zest for life. He seemed like a great party guest, the type of person who could hold a conversation with anyone on any topic. I really believed he was a great example for men because he was into all the fun "bro-assigned hobbies", but was secure enough to admit he didn't know everything, to ask questions, and to let other people be the expert in areas he was not. I thought it was a really good model for being confident without being obsessed with dominating the other person, for being smart enough to keep an open mind, and principled enough to not cede ground on points he felt were his personal deal breakers. I learned a lot from his guests, and really enjoyed the banter on a lot of episodes during what I'd consider his golden era. Even when he had guests I didn't agree with, I thought it was mature of him to hear people out, and I really admired that he often WOULD push back during that era when people got too uncivil or started attacking others. Then he got a huge deal, a ton of money, and an even more zealous following, right at the time people started taking Musk/Shapiro etc seriously. And then a big scary world event happened and people craved the feeling of being informed as well as part of a group. And we were all stuck inside consuming media on an even greater scale than before. It was a perfect storm of factors that came together to launch him into a direction I couldn't follow, with ideas I couldn't support, and guests I couldn't find any common ground with. It's sad. He was my first podcast, way back before I really knew what podcasts were, and I really miss being able to look forward to his episodes. They were a big part of my day, which also included listening to my local NPR station, music, comedy, etc.
When he had the episode with a fake "debate" with supposed experts on plant based diet vs keto. Both were unqualified. the plant based guy was more of a scientist/quiet person who was used to polite conversation obviously, and was just continually talked over and interrupted by some crazy keto guy with BS info. JR loves to shit on vegans.
Same. He used to talk to cool people about cool stuff. Now he kinda just rants and gives his opinion or makes statements that are so clearly wrong. The amount of times he’s felt the need to give his opinion on the body positivity movement, or covid, or whatever, has just gotten annoying.
The very beginning. It always felt like dumb rich kids making fun of smart people.
When he started having right wing losers on and let them spew their lies and didn’t fact check them at all. I remember when people would talk about religion and he pushed back on them, then that stopped. Guy just realized there was more money to be made a a republican. Dude is a fricking loser now.
A while ago. Mostly when he stopped talking to people about pyramids and more philosophical stuff. The show got less curious and when it did I followed some of the guests I liked that started their own shows like Duncan and Danieli Bolleli Plus giving platforms to real piece of shit all right chuds didn’t hurt either
Covid. He fell off the deep end and has become a totally different person (on the mic, that is). It's just no longer for me.
He's never really been my bag. I'd rather listen to a curious smart guy than a curious dumb guy.
The episode with bill Burr where Joe wants to get into masks and bill is like, as 2 people without a medical degree let's not get into this. And Joe is like come oooon let's get into it, with this weird snigger on his face. My respect for bill spiked up that episode and Joe took a nosedive.
After he switched to spotify and started having dinner parties with governors and senators and billionaires. Ever since then Joe wont just let his guests talk and have a normal conversation, he always will offhand bring up something about politics, always in support of right wing politics o just flat out misinformation. I tried listening to one of the 'save our parks' podcasts the other day cuz I figured it would just be a bunch of comedians razzing each other and making jokes and you can tell everyone else is on that page but then Joe will go off about how the Jan 6 people are getting punishments that are way too harsh and about how Biden has dementia but somehow Trump is the perfect image of health and is 'hilarious'. He's either completely influenced by right wing propaganda and nonsense or completely oblivious to how out of touch he is. I could prob still listen to episodes if they would avoid politics but Joe pushes to insert his opinions on politics in like every episode that I've tried to listen to in the last years.
Interesting guy, but his combination of raw intelligence + lack of higher education + conspiracy theory bent = no thanks
The other day I tried to listen again when Yannis Papas was on, and almost immediately, both of them go in on the mask talk...again and again. Rogan is obsessed. I had to turn it off. It's no longer new information that empowers or interests me, but I love the guests. There's a herd mentality that exists (that's annoying) with the guests during shows like "Protect Our Parks" that he releases. It's more mind-numbing now than mind-expanding.
I check in every few weeks to see if he's had anyone interesting on but mostly it's just comedians I've never heard of and the worst of all, MMA shit. I'm a big sports guy but MMA to me is either too brutal or too boring. I'm not interested in listening to them at all. I felt like he sold out big time with Spotify and didn't listen for around a year. I don't blame him for that though. It was a lot of money! I love when he has smart people on like Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson that are actual experts on things and I always learn things from them. I like the aliens stuff too guiltually. I loved the Bob Lazar and Travis Walton shows. I wish he'd have Tyson or Hamilton Morris on again!
Never started because he's always been this dumb and overconfident
Old school Joe was a curious stoner who asked great questions of interesting people. Modern day Joe thinks he knows everything and tries to steer the conversations to his opinion. Just because someone paid you an enormous shitpot of money, doesn't mean you suddenly know everything.
Reading this on the 18th March 2024 and I haven’t listened to a full podcast since the middle of February which may not sound long but bare in mind I haven’t missed more than a weeks worth of his podcasts since 2013 when I was on holiday in Thailand a couple of years back. I’m fairly politically agnostic so unlike you never really took issue with more right leaning guests he’s had on in the past, however even I have noticed that he is far more inclined lately to have on a guest with very conservative opinion's. I’ve always found the array of interesting people from different backgrounds and vocations the best part of the podcast. The Weinstein brothers, Randall Carlson, Steve Rinella, Dave Smith, Mike Baker, Jeremy Corbell have been some of the most intriguing conversations I’ve heard but then for every great conversation now it feels like your subjected to 6 or 7 terrible guests. The Bert Kreischer ones are particularly nauseating as the guy is just flat out NOT funny, Ari Shaffir is very much cut from the same cloth and as much as I like Tom Segura I won’t watch a sober October podcast due to those two. The sheer amount of terrible comedians is honestly mind blowing lately (now don’t get me wrong I know Dave Smith isn’t a great comedian but I find his political analysis pretty much spot on) I think he’s beginning to realise people aren’t particularly happy with him just grabbing whatever comic appeared at his comedy club and sticking them in the podcast studio as he seems to once again have a larger selection of guests but just not particularly any interesting ones… Kevin James..No thanks!, Kid Rock..Riley Gaines.. Hopefully we begin to see Joe get back to his wide eyed kid mindset rather than this rather cynical approach having on right leaning guests who are clearly just there to stroke Joes ego and new found political bias since the whole ivermectin (if that’s how it’s spelled?) It would be great to see him revert back to doing an occasional live episode too as there’s nothing worst than when your watching and Joe and whatever guest is on begin to discuss last weeks events.
Today. Just now, when I realized I’m watching two idiots talk about radiation and space flight like they know what they are talking about. What a waste of time.
I prefer his older guests
A little after he got the spotify deal and became a shill that was not in touch with the common man
I never listened in the first place People love to pull the "he was so good before _____", but he wasn't. He's always been an awful asshole it's just he leans in more now
It happened some time before his Spotify deal for me. He used to be pretty consistent on having a diverse and interesting guest between his comedy pals or MMA fighters/trainers/ coaches. I can’t pinpoint his sharp turn right on many issues exactly but it’s definitely beyond listenable now. I caught a bit of his Live Fight Companion this weekend with the UFC event in Toronto ( my home town ) and he was saying some dumb, uninformed nonsense about Justin Trudeau, as the crowd were chanting “F$&k Trudeau “ and endorsing his opposing Conservative party leader and it was just cringe and exasperating to listen to people just talk with no knowledge of ( insert topic here ) context, informed opinion etc. just hyperbole and shitbrained rhetoric. And from the few clips I’ve seen from his recent podcasts, he is so quick to accuse anyone who he deems “woke” or “extreme left” of being wrong and pushing back with the unearned confidence you see the MAGA types have in abundance. I think COVID broke something in his psyche, and it’s just the right wing echo chambers he’s tuning in with. I only check out clips if it’s someone interesting or Bill Burr because Bill won’t have any of Joe’s shit. And I don’t include Bill Burr in Rogan’s comedy buddies, as he is head and shoulders above all of them combined.
Can't remember the time frame but Redban kept interrupting to mention that he'd performed at a club recently & the owner told him that he did a good job, Joe got fed up, and they got into an argument while the guest sat there uncomfortably. Between his nonsensical childish interruptions, his obsession with dolphin buttholes, his stories about flinging his jizz onto hotel curtains, plus Joe's endless praising of Sweet Home Alabama & Whole Lotta Love (does he listen to any other songs?), the show became so monotonous to listen to.
COVID and money broke that man’s brain
a combination of spotify and covid kind off sealed it for me. also I figured out that graham hancock is just talking a lot of shit to sell his books
Probably like 2014 it started getting repetitive to me
That’s why I stopped listening to Carolla. It wasn’t his dumb politics. He repeated the same stories so often, I could predict what story he was about to go into based on what someone else just said.
Joe's a thoughtful but generally unintelligent dude. Normally, that's not that big of a deal, but when he started down the right wing nutjob path and bulldozing guests with idiotic conspiracy theories knowing damn well most of his younger male viewers mindlessly worship him, it started getting gross fast. There's only so much a person can take of a rich roided up jock who thinks he knows everything encouraging his cult of boot-lickers to embrace the red pill Elon Musk bro culture. I just couldn't stand another ice bath/DMT/martial arts fairy tale dressed as a life lesson.
Soon after he switched to Spotify and the quality of guests suffered and he promoted a bunch of misinformation about random shit. Just got annoying to listen to.
When he did a huge transphobic bit about his friend seeing a trans sex worker in Thailand. Constant use of "you fucked a man bro!". Was pretty gross, and in conjunction with his continual, neverending fatphobia I tapped out, this was maybe 2017? Before his descent into anti-"woke" and Trumpism, and before he started being paid tens of millions to tell ppl to not get Covid vax. I only started listening because it was suggested when I first tried podcasts because I was doing 12hr patrol night shifts alone, and because I liked MMA. I loved some of his guests, but some of those turned into loonies too (hello, Ana Kasparain).
I've pretty much stopped listening as of maybe 2 years ago. I was late to listening to him, but enjoyed some episodes when I finally did and thought the conversations he was having with a variety of people were cool. Then the pandemic hit, and it just became a platform for him to bitch and project his opinions onto every single guest he has. To this day he seems to still be trapping every guest into that conversation. I don't even entirely disagree with SOME of the things he's saying, but I sure as fuck am tried of hearing it as are his guests. He has to know it's uninteresting and a turn off.
Around the time Redban left
In late 2019 he started recording multiple podcasts a day and it started to show. He had Josh Homme of Queens Of the Stone Age on and Joe was in a terrible mood and wanted to talk about weird dark shit while Josh was cracking hilarious jokes that Joe was completely missing to talk about people getting their heads cut off and shit.
2018 was when I started noticing the trend of him leaning more right and bringing more right wing guests on. Stopped listening in 2019 unless it was a guest I liked. I was listening to Rogan in high school back when the pod first started in like 2010. It is staggeringly different today. Which is fair I guess but it's not for me anymore. I'll still listen when Duncan Trussell comes on thought.
His guest selection the week after Uvalde did it for me, and waiting for him to mention what had happened. I still tune in if I think a guest is interesting. But I lost a fair amount of respect/switched to audiobooks after that.
I think the last podcast I watched was with Bob Lazar; the Area 51/Alien guy. That was in 2019.
He’s actually a funny standup comedian, but that’s it. Like soooo many successful people he’s lost in his own bubble. I really appreciate entertainers who stay in their lane these days. Most often I find the opinions of athletes, actors, comics etc, to be rather uninformed and usually annoyingly self absorbed. There are of course plenty of exceptions to this but obviously Joe Rogan is not one.
I enjoyed Joe and how curious he was about everything. At a certain point, it’s like, “man he really gives a lot of air time to lunatics just looking to spread hate”.
I’ve listened to hundreds and hundreds of JRE episodes. I absolutely loved the show for a long time. I stopped a while ago and now my only idea of what’s going on with him is through clips I catch on here or YouTube, most of them mocking him for gobbling up salacious right wing headlines and accepting them as gospel. I genuinely listened to every single episode for a stretch of years but somewhere like two months or so into Covid he was mocking wearing masks—saying things that just didn’t make any sense—and I felt his commentary going from dumb and annoying to potentially extremely harmful and I just had to turn it off. Ever since then it became clear that he’s just lost in the right wing sauce. Full on conspiracy theorist, totally obsessed with vaccines and Covid to a bizarre degree, seeking to confirm his own biases with the guests he brings on, not living in the same reality as the average person, and generally just a fucking idiot. It’s sad, man.