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Edward Snowden on The Joe Rogan Experience [video]

1128 points by juandazapata 7y ago

_ozde 7y ago
This guy is on a roll!
_zamorano_ 7y ago
It's not strange many interesting people want to visit Joe Rogan podcast. First, he is willing to give a voice to many who won't be able to tell their stories on mass media. Who other will let speak people like James Damore? What major broadcaster is willing to interview Jordan Peterson without protraiting him as a villain? He respects his guest, when in disagrement. His interview to Jack Dorsey (not much of his liking, I presume), was criticised for not being aggresive enough. The interviewed is not afraid of a headline out of context. Given the current political climate, I'm not suprised a MMA guy is capable of doing what most journalists don't.
- buboard 7y ago
  The reason he can be "more independent" is exactly because he's not dependent financially on media, not his MMA bg.
  - cm2187 7y ago
    But he is financially dependent on youtube, isn't he? I am not suggesting he auto-censors himself but he is not "independent".
    - LandR 7y ago
      Does the actual podcast, not the one that gets uploaded to YouTube, have Joe reading ads? I assumed it did and they got cut out?
      - Phillipharryt 7y ago
        Podcasts can also be uploaded to services that intersperse advertising (or place them at determined points) on their own, even if the host doesn't read the adverts during the podcast. Midroll is the big name in that business.
      - nradov 7y ago
        Yes if you listen through other services Joe reads ads from several sponsors at the beginning and end.
    - buboard 7y ago
      No his podcast makes more money outside of youtube. I m pretty sure he makes "F U Youtube" money to not care about self-censorship https://www.quora.com/How-much-money-does-Joe-Rogan-make-from-podcasts https://www.quora.com/How-much-money-does-Joe-Rogan-make-fro...
    - me_me_me 7y ago
      He is a world famous standup comedian. He does MMA coverage and podcasting as side gig for fun. I doubt that his life depends on the podcast.
      - cm2187 7y ago
        I doubt he is making much money doing standups in LA clubs. vs having a podcast with an audience of about 10 millions, which is more than most TV shows can claim.
        LandR 7y ago
        His standup shows on Netflix must have made him hundreds of thousands if not million I would think.
        xgd 7y ago
        His podcast approximately makes 50 million USD per year.
      - huehehue 7y ago
        He was also the host of a prime time game show for 5 years.
        dvtrn 7y ago
        Also was an actor on prime time tv before even this
    - sdan 7y ago
      Not just Youtube, he gets paid sponsors on his podcast. For example (in my case) if you listen on Apple Podcasts you can hear 5 minutes of him talking about brands. These brands probably pay him tens of thousands per episode to get a shoutout. Pretty sure YT may make a good contribution, but not so much that he relies on it.
- jsgo 7y ago
  I thought the Dorsey interview (and the round table with them, the legal/moderation lady with multiple titles, and that Pool or whatever his name is guy) were pretty good. Not a fan of Stephen Crowder (sp?), but that interview was pretty uncomfortable. Generally though, yeah, I think he does well interviewing people.
- cyborgx7 7y ago
  I question the value of letting people like James Damore and Jordan Peterson speak on such a big platform. Edit: The people downvoting me are hypocrites. The function of downvoting to make something less visible. Are you saying what I say has less value and should therefore have a lesser platform? But to be serious, everyone acknowledges that what some people say is of more value than what other people say, and should be seen by more people. We just disagree on what the things that have value are. And your insistence on arguing about the former, rather than the latter is tiresome and dishonest.
  - lagadu 7y ago
    Yes, we should selectively filter people whose ideas we don't like from being able to speak them to any audience. In fact I question the value of letting people like <person whose ideas you value> speak on such a big platform. /s Surely you understand that what you're suggesting here is totalitarian? The value you mention is the strengthening of a society where freedom of ideas is considered a core value.
    - cyborgx7 7y ago
      It's not totalitarian at all. I'm not advocating not letting them speak. I'm saying what they say has no (or negative) value.
    - john-radio 7y ago
      Your "totalitarian" remark is such a shameless misrepresentation of what the person you're talking to is saying that you might as well be talking to yourself.
  - andreaorru 7y ago
    What's wrong with Jordan Peterson? I think he's vastly misrepresented.
    - cyborgx7 7y ago
      All he has done is repackage some pretty basic self-help advice into a gross right-wing ideology. I don't think this has any value.
deleted 7y ago
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sdan 7y ago
1. First time I've seen Joe with Airpods 2. First time Joe has done a podcast with someone OTA (as far as I know)
- ekianjo 7y ago
  For 2 its not like he had a choice to do it in person...
  - sdan 7y ago
    Right. Only other scenario that would work is for Joe to fly over there... which probably wouldn't happen. Regardless, Joe's getting so many good interviews in the past two years.
    - ekianjo 7y ago
      > Regardless, Joe's getting so many good interviews in the past two years. Joe has been a better journalist than 99% of real journalists. Makes pretty much everyone else look like an amateur at this.
    - eswat 7y ago
      > Only other scenario that would work is for Joe to fly over there... which probably wouldn't happen. I wouldn’t want to see a Sean Penn/El Chapo incident[0] happen with these two. [0] https://theintercept.com/2016/01/12/sean-penn-el-chapo-opsec/ https://theintercept.com/2016/01/12/sean-penn-el-chapo-opsec...
      - lagadu 7y ago
        Different circumstances: Snowden's location is well-known, he's protected via political asylum. El Chapo on the other hand was being hunted by the local government so he was dependent on his location remaining secret.
    - raihansaputra 7y ago
      John Oliver from Last Week Tonight did fly over to interview Edward Snowden[0]. But considering the worries their team went through, it's fair others decide to not do it. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M
HNLurker2 7y ago
What is democracy?
- cjfd 7y ago
  Democracy is a system of government where the three powers: law giving, executive, and judicial are separated and at least the law giving is in the hands of (representatives of) the people. In the case of the massive spying by government we are dealing with secret laws and/or the executive branch writing its own law. This is not very compatible with democracy.
  - HNLurker2 7y ago
    T-t-thanks
    - dang 7y ago
      We've banned this account for repeatedly posting unsubstantive comments and ignoring our request to stop (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20948393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20948393). We're trying for a bit higher of a signal/noise ratio than internet default, so it's important to post thoughtfully here. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the site guidelines in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - RealityVoid 7y ago
    While I understand your definition, this is not what Wikipedia nor what Merriam-Webster use for it. The separation of powers in three branches is not strictly necessary for a democracy, just a mechanism through witch it is attained. Surely, there could be examples where the powers are slpit another way that could still qualify as democracies. If, somehow, the will of the people were to accept spying as a cornerstone of their society, trading privacy for safety, would it still be a democracy? Anyways, sorry, for nitpitcking, but something just sounds... incomplete in your answer.
andrew_ 7y ago
His podcasts are infinitely better than any amount of talking-head punditry available on the major news networks. I've not run across one yet that wasn't well-reasoned, patient, and interesting - even if I didn't agree with conclusions being made or the thought processes expressing them.
- anonu 7y ago
  Joe is a master interviewer for the reasons you mention. I'd also add he has broad interests in almost any topic and subject matter, which helps. Another technique he employs is "listening". There are many times when I want to butt in when listening to his podcasts. But Joe just waits and let's the other person speak and soaks it in. There are of course the interviews which are actually him being interviewed (he does most of the talking)... But I think that's part of why it makes for good listening. He keeps the conversation going. Even with a reticent guest, most interviews go for 2 hours or more. So in the end you extract something useful out of it.
  - me_me_me 7y ago
    I started listening to his stuff few months back. And I must say I learnt a lot about listening and having good conversations. He mentioned this actually few times and its interesting that he learnt to be patient and non-combative no non-issues. Half of the time i pay attention to how he runs the podcast instead of actual conversations.
  - 1337biz 7y ago
    I noticed that over time too. My guess is that he has a feel if a guest is entertaining or not. And if they are not he is going into story mode and just sharing the joys of bow-hunting.
  - waffle_ss 7y ago
    Joe is not a master interviewer. Compare him to someone who does a lot of research ahead of time and comes prepared with thought-provoking questions, and can keep pace with the deep conversations, like say a Tim Ferriss. Joe does little research on most guests (mostly due to the sheer volume of guests I'm sure), which could be a more stylistic choice if he were a deft interviewer who could think on his feet and dig deep anyway, but he's not. He's an everyman and asks very surface-level questions. As you say guests are (usually) given wide latitude to own the mic, which works great when it's a guest with a compelling narrative. It works terribly when the guest is very ideological or has some sort of agenda they are adept at selling. The times he does challenge a guest (sometimes way too aggressively as others in the thread have shown), oftentimes he has missed the point entirely, and the guest has to back up and try to patch the conversation. Once that happens a couple times the flow of the interview is really disturbed and it takes a long time to recover. I like Joe as a person, and admire his discipline, but to call him a master interviewer would be as accurate as calling him a master comedian because he has been grinding so long.
shusson 7y ago
Man Edward wanted to talk. Joe barely talks let alone get a question in for the first 20min.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- nabla9 7y ago
  Many of the best Joe Rogan podcasts are those where he mostly listens. Joe Rogan Experience #1214 - Lawrence Lessig is really good one.
  - mikece 7y ago
    Your point is valid and that was a great episode as well but I think the best episodes are those where he questions and prods the guest to expound far beyond talking points, to give what is essentially a statement of philosophy after which Joe then dissects the points enumerated in that statement of philosophy. What makes Joe's process of doing this so compelling is that he's not doing it with an agenda to change the guest's mind about something but to deeply and truly understand WHAT the person believes, WHY they believe it, HOW that affects and influences their live and decisions and why that person thinks other should agree with them. Another thing that is great about Rogan's guests is that he doesn't limit the guest list to people who agree with him. If Adolf Hitler were alive today (and spoke English) Joe would not only interview him but get him to not only enumerate all of his beliefs but then explain why he hold those beliefs to be true. This process of explication is IMPOSSIBLE in the mainstream media and allows the listener to get to raw, fundamental truths at the base layer. It's a shame that not all Americans (and non-Americans too) have the intellectual curiosity and patience to REALLY LISTEN to and understand why people of different political, religious, and ideological beliefs hold the positions they do and then amicably coexist with them in respectful disagreement.
  - sdan 7y ago
    Wasn't the case for the recent one with Tyson. Man, that was annoying.
heyflyguy 7y ago
This is the first time, and maybe it's just because of the length of the interview; that I've noticed Snowden's being slightly untethered from sensibility. The first 10 minutes in particular was a little worrisome. I imagine that being stuck in Russia, with the pressure he's under has contributed to this. I do wonder how much of this personality bubble was in place when he made the decisions he did. Nevertheless, I do have a love hate relationship with what he did.
- hnarn 7y ago
  Out of curiosity, what about the things he did do you "hate"?
  - heyflyguy 7y ago
    Love - revealed to us that our constitutional rights were being absolutely trampled to death. Hate - revealed to the world endless amounts of national security data that was not directly relevant to these constitutional encroachments.
    - Miner49er 7y ago
      > Hate - revealed to the world endless amounts of national security data that was not directly relevant to these constitutional encroachments. He worked with journalists in order to avoid this. He gave the government a head's up before the press released anything everytime they released something new. What more do you think he should have done?
      - dx87 7y ago
        If he really wanted to be treated as a whistleblower, he should have only leaked the specific things that he took issue with, not grab anything he could get his hands on and give it out. For example, there's no good reason for him to give documents to China that tell them which Chinese computers NSA has access to [0]. This myth that he responsibly leaked information needs to die. [0] https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1260306/edward-snowden-classified-us-data-shows-hong-kong-hacking-targets https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1260306/edward-s...
Antoninus 7y ago
TLDW; Edward Snowden: How Your Cell Phone Spies on You: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFns39RXPrU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFns39RXPrU Edward Snowden on America and Russia’s Diplomatic Woes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k19Ipq0TV8Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k19Ipq0TV8Y
agumonkey 7y ago
I can't help but feel Snowden comes off as a frustrated naive insider spilling details out of disappointment. Lacking perspective here. Most of his points are basically peter's principle, hierarchy failure, internal competition, all traits that made the response to national threats inappropriate before and after 9/11. I really don't think that his actions were clearly thought out and he won't get a pass any time soon.
- platz 7y ago
  you focus on the individual - and what of outcome, effect, and ends?
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    His logic and motives matters to me. It's true I don't know much about the effect, give me some clues about what it did change.
    - 0_gravitas 7y ago
      everyone now knows for a fact the gov is listening to everything whereas before it was just "assumed"
- cco 7y ago
  I'm not quite clear on your point, are you implying that if Snowden had more perspective on the subject he wouldn't have become a whistleblower? The second half of your first paragraph suggests otherwise so I'm kinda confused.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    Sorry, also I was only half way through the interview. My conclusion is that part of his reveal was clearly naive and that it doesn't have any value regarding citizens or national improvement (incompetence in big groups ? color me surprised). He would have been more beneficial to sleep on the knowledge for a while, filter what's important and find better leverage to make a change. Something less naive. When he talks, only very rarely I hear something relevant. At best, his good points are: - shift toward abusing surveillance technology - paradoxical laws regarding accountability of the government (you cannot have a fair assessment of government actions if it's illegal to look at it) - a bad government can abuse long stored data against you But really he's babbling for hours and very few comes out at even surprising. NSA had access to network/deep packets long before Google and even 9/11. Yes we all have smartphones.. boohoo, it's well known that these are potential privacy backdoors. People just don't care, or at best the rich enough will buy an iphone (if Apple is really that good regarding crypto and privacy). Again, that's just an opinion right now, if someone can shed a light on what's important in his case, please do, I'll read carefully. ps: there's also a lot of moments where he's mostly telling his life which I find disturbingly immature in tone.
roenxi 7y ago
There is a real lesson here about just how cavalier the American government - and to some degree the public - is about civil liberties, but that isn't the biggest problem. The problem here isn't even so much the government is being shady - that has happened before, it will happen again. I can understand people not feeling threatened by constant snooping even though I disagree. To me the real problem is how effectively the government has kept this subject from creeping into the public debate. The scary part is the secret laws and precedents that elected officials aren't allowed to even tell their constituents about. Government officials are not reliable; this is far to much unaccountable power even if people involved were allowed to discuss what is happening. Why aren't the not-technically-interesting parts of this wiretapping program legal for government agencies to talk about? If they need to be hidden, why not go straight to the logical conclusion and classify a bunch of other laws? Democracies can't handle this level of secrecy. The whole thing is going to fall apart one way or another - the path America is going down isn't stable at all; something is going to have to change radically. Either the intelligence agencies will gain supremacy over the government, the government itself will go rogue or the secrecy will have to end. EDIT I'm going to bed before I see the whole video, but around 1:46:00 - the bit with J. Clapper. Case in point that the whole system of checks and balances can't work. EDIT2 And around 2:10:00. Barbaric stuff; it is like centuries of accumulated Common Law and parliamentary legal tradition never happened. People need to be able to occasionally talk about this stuff in formal setting.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  The simplest explanation for lots of confusing events is that the intelligence agencies have enjoyed supremacy over the government for some time already. They run the media as well: just look at the glowing plaudits for their fake "whistleblower" as contrasted with the ongoing disdain for actual whistleblowers.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    That's not nearly as simple as the explanation that the public doesn't actually care about whether domestic agencies are spying on everyone. I think most Americans are in the "I have nothing to hide" line of thinking. The media won't carry a story that their numbers tell them doesn't have legs with the audience.
lawrenceg 7y ago
Someone made a comment that Joe Rogan is the dumb man's celebrity smart guy. I tend to agree, but I do enjoy some of his podcasts.
- damog 7y ago
  And if you do, and he is smart guy for you, that makes you a dumb man. Not a disrespect in anyway but that should humble everybody on the sense that nobody can know everything in depth, even when bragging about their own “unmatched wisdom”.
- buboard 7y ago
  celebrities are for dumb and smart men alike - by definition
- RosanaAnaDana 7y ago
  I would take the inverse. Joe Rogan is the smart man's celebrity dumb guy. I as well enjoy some of his podcasts.
Timpy 7y ago
Snowden is really clever with these interviews. Right away in the interview he establishes his concerns about the government, then briefly mentions the government smear campaign against him without hanging on the point too much. He calmly explains himself in an articulate way, establishing himself as perfectly sane. Then he reaches out to connect and empathize with his interviewer: > When I hear you just speak, I go "actually this is a thoughtful guy." When he validates Joe, he validates Joe's audience, and it becomes Snowden's audience. He did this with Trevor Noah too; I think he's intentional about it while very cleverly appearing not to be. It's a good thing Snowden is the one who blew that whistle, and not somebody less calculating.
- enjoylife 7y ago
  I can imagine the potential advisors/pr folks, having helped shape that type of image. It’s hard to be in the public spotlight and not have PR consultants spamming you.
- KnMn 7y ago
  Oh, man. I completely disagree. I feel like he just talks and talks about whatever he wants to talk about with almost no regard for whether his technical language is being understood or if he's dominating the discussion or anything like that. I don't think I've seen him develop a natural rapport with anyone or even make a firm, memorable point in an interview. I'll always be grateful for his leaks but over 2.5 hours he just became a soft background murmur in my room.
  - Timpy 7y ago
    That's a fair point. Maybe the technical language isn't very friendly to a wide audience, that hadn't occurred to me. I'm trying to keep a wide perspective, but I might just be fanboying.
  - RankingMember 7y ago
    I imagine being cooped up in an embassy gives you a lot of time to think and plan what you want to say and, eventually, you end up with a real fire-hose of pent-up expression.
clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
Would have been nice to have Snowden actually there in person if he were not such a coward.
- magashna 7y ago
  Is a man who chooses not to walk into a pointed knife a coward?
  - clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
    Reality winner is only serving 5 years and she showed good faith. Ellsberg won in court and served 0 years. If Snowden weren't a coward he could be there in person right now.
    - smbowner 7y ago
      "With that being said, leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are!" - POTUS Obviously this doesn't apply directly to Snowden. I would be worried about a fair trial in this type of political climate as well. I mean, it's not the US has ever inappropriately applied the judiciary to falsely imprison a man before!
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
        The act of fleeing made it harder for himself. Had he not fled overseas and really did attempt to follow proper whisleblower procedure he would most likely be a free man today.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - slenk 7y ago
      No...the US wants him dead. There is no chance in hell he gets a fair trial. The instant he would step into the US he would be arrested and sentenced for life. Very naive to think the government will let this one go
duxup 7y ago
We live in a time where the president of the United States himself questions any law that inconveniences him personally, same goes for any oversight, and he retains a great deal of support from the population and his own party. I wonder how / if it is possible to convince the public that laws and oversight are necessary for good government.
- polymatter 7y ago
  "It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls" -Aristophanes The public learns the lesson that X is necessary when they see the consequence of not-X. Hopefully there is a gap between total lawlessness and the public realising that some laws are good and not just "red tape".
  - jammygit 7y ago
    I had hoped that things under trump would have been much worse, so as to shock the public into re-evaluating their civic values.
    - ksdale 7y ago
      I've always been rather suspicious of this way of reasoning. It basically goes, "Things aren't as bad as they need to be for people to change their ways, so hopefully they get worse so people change their ways." And it is implicit in this line of reasoning that there is some terrible and inevitable catastrophe waiting to befall the people who don't change their ways. (Because why would a catastrophe be worth it, unless it prevented another, worse, catastrophe?) An alternate response to "Things aren't bad enough for people to change their ways," is to revise our predictions of the likelihood of catastrophe, and eventually decide that perhaps things aren't quite as doomed as we think. For things like climate change, where we have scientific evidence of the necessity of change, it seems like it needs to get worse before the change will happen, though I still don't hope for things to get worse. But for something as subjective as civic values, it seems especially wrong to me to hope for disaster just for the sake of shaking things up. After all, there's no guarantee that a disaster under Trump would move civic values in the right direction anyway.
pacala 7y ago
Snowden: But I didn't come forward to be safe. If I wanted to be safe, I'd still be sitting in Hawaii, making a hell of a lot money, to spy on you.
- tkifnn 7y ago
  Does the NSA actually pay well?
  - vermilingua 7y ago
    He said that he'd make ~2x at the NSA as what he'd make in an equivalent private sector job, so it seems that way.
  - watt 7y ago
    At around 52:45 he mentioned top secret security clearance will get you paid ridiculous amounts of money.
sschueller 7y ago
Let's not forget Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange who are currently unable to give interviews because of what the United States is doing to them.
- mrlala 7y ago
  Lol
- noobiemcfoob 7y ago
  Conflating of Chelsea Manning and Assange with Snowden's efforts is the crux of a very successful campaign to bury him behind claims of treason.
dominotw 7y ago
Yung Haimie killing it this week, Just finished listening to richard dawkins earlier this week https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bN4spt3744 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bN4spt3744
asar 7y ago
I have to be honest here, I was very disappointed with this episode. It's basically a very long monologue and feels like a marketing gig for his book and not like a podcast with Edward Snowden. For someone who's familiar with Snowden and his story, this had very little informational value. I would've wished they talked about a bit more about other topics to see what Snowden and his opinions are like outside of the general theme of mass surveillance. At the 2 hour mark, Joe tries to switch and asks about his current day-to-day life. But they switch back to the main theme after about 10 minutes.
- sjwright 7y ago
  I think Joe’s style benefits from being physically in the same room as the interviewee. Had it not been a remote interview I think it would have gone very differently.
- WilliamEdward 7y ago
  Ive only ever seen snowden do short 15 minute interviews with constant back and forth between himself the interviewer. To have snowden speak uninterrupted for 3 hours, especially on a podcast where Joe usually interrupts people, was a blessing.
0898 7y ago
The success of Joe Rogan is fascinating and encouraging. For a long time there was a view that attention spans were diminishing. Facebook and Tik Tok reduced content to the smallest possible dosage. But look at this. This is one of the world's most popular podcasts and it's nearly three hours long. You see it too in TV: what is a Netflix series but a 13 hour movie? I see a definite trend towards long form content right now, which I think is quite positive.
- sb057 7y ago
  With old media (specifically television and newsprint) "information bandwidth" was restricted to a limited number of channels and pages. This meant there had to be a calculation where the editors had to maximize the audience by making the content short enough to not lose the easily distracted, but long enough to be engaging. High-speed internet has blown open the information bandwidth cap so that now content can be created for every attention niche. This is just anecdotal, but it seems to me part of the decline of traditional journalism has to do with article length. People either want short, snappy headlines that tell them the essential information, or long, elaborately-written pieces thousands of words long. The only reason mid-length articles existed before was a compromise between the two groups.
  - K0SM0S 7y ago
    And a subtle but massive change is the removal of imposed formats i.e. artificial time boundaries, as if there were only a few possible lengths for any piece of content — 5 min, 22 min, 42 min, because commercials. Online audiovisual content is refreshing in that it lasts exactly as long as the creator(s) intended to treat the topic. Likewise for article length in blogs.
  - noodle 7y ago
    I feel like there's also something to be said about old media and their revenue models. Commercial breaks are written in to most shows, and show length matters. With newer media, it doesn't matter if you have a 22 minute episode 1 and a 47 minute episode 2 - you create the scene, shot and/or episode length that works for you artistically.
xrd 7y ago
Snowden's book really speaks to me on so many levels. As a hacker, as a boy growing up in the new age of the Internet. As a person who experienced 9/11 and never aligned with the direction it took the USA. As a person who questions my identity and the messages I get about identity on a daily basis. He will be remembered for a long time because of the actions he took, but if he had not done anything else, his book would be remembered on its own as a discourse on what being human means in these times. But, it will never be viewed on its own, and that is a tragedy. Pardon Snowden.
- Lendal 7y ago
  I used to agree with this but now that I've seen where this path leads, I think he should be given a fair trial and judged. Our government and the security of 350M US citizens cannot be held at the whim of a single hacker, no matter how right he believed himself to be. Our Congress has 535 members for precisely this reason, the president answers to Congress and is not a king, and even the Chief Justice does not rule absolutely. Snowden was brave, but he was also wrong. He should be judged fairly by a jury of his peers and that trial should be held in a transparent, fair and open trial for all to see. How many years now has he had to prepare his defense? It's plenty. Let's get the trial going.
  - biztos 7y ago
    Current POTUS has recently threatened a legally protected whistleblower with removal of protection, it wouldn't be crazy to call it a death threat. Previous POTUS wasn't any better disposed to Snowden. I'm not necessarily a fan, but I think it was a very rational choice on Snowden's part to choose "permanent exile and fear of assassination" over "trust the system."
    - garmaine 7y ago
      It was a death threat. He literally said the whistleblower should be killed.
      - 7y ago
repler 7y ago
The whistleblower protections that Snowden did not bother to use are the same ones currently providing the spark for the impeachment proceedings in the US House of Representatives. Really wish he had gone that route instead of the one he chose - and we'll never know for sure how pure his intentions were/are because of it.
- bsamuels 7y ago
  I often find myself scrolling to the bottom of these snowden threads just to see how often people downvote/flag opinions they don't agree with. HN doesn't seem to be much better than reddit in this regard
  - repler 7y ago
    I couldn't agree more. This issue is super duper clear but nobody seems to "get" it. Too enamored with the idea of a folk hero to consider the fallout from a long view perspective.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
      Well said.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
  I agree with everything he did except for fleeing the country.
throw51319 7y ago
This guy did this to the US gov but would never do it to China or Russia. They are not on the safe safe playing field.
wnevets 7y ago
did Rogan manage to mention trans athletes, #metoo, triggered people, gorillas or dmt in this episode?
vkaku 7y ago
Finally. This, I'm looking forward to watch. My unpopular opinion: Whistleblowers shouldn't be punished in a rogue state.
0000011111 7y ago
Snowden inspired me to immerse myself in learning more about modern information technology. He caused me to question what it means to be a patriot. He drove me to learn about the importance of open-source encryption software for storing (VeraCrypt) and transporting data through networks (VPN). Knowledge is your power over your government.
bussiere 7y ago
Just a friendly reminder : https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/us/politics/edward-snowden-at-nsa-sexually-explicit-photos-often-shared.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/us/politics/edward-snowde... Theses guys just shared naked pics of peoples ... This kind of power corrupt ...
ffritz 7y ago
This seems like the perfect post to showcase a little weekend project of mine. I kind of wanted to checkout Joes podcasts on the go, but I don’t want to listen to the whole 2 or 3 hours. Instead, a list of topics with timestamps would be much better. So I hacked together a little feed and a player doing just that. This episode is also already live: https://joeroganplayer.com/episodes/1368 https://joeroganplayer.com/episodes/1368 Granted, it’s all done manually at the moment, but I share the work with friends also interested in this.
watt3rpig 7y ago
I love the long form discussion. I feel I can actually here someones thoughts and perspectives rather than short meaningless soundbites. The lack of guests shouting over each other is great as well. He has also exposed me to some wonderful thinkers like Sean Carrol who I otherwise would not have come across.
- jsgo 7y ago
  to be honest, he's made me appreciate Ben Shapiro which didn't feel incredibly likely going in. Prior to that, my experience with Shapiro was the stupid videos people would share on Facebook of him "OWNING the libs." So I expected an absolutely terrible interview where I was going to be disgusted with the guy constantly. Granted, I don't agree with him on a lot, much at all really, but when he's just talking out his views on points, I appreciated the candor as to reasoning for various things on his end. My takeaway from it, outside of the "for the clicks" YouTube videos that are shared, is that while I may not agree with him on a lot, when he is explaining his points and not going for the jugular, I feel like he isn't questioning my intelligence by tossing various falsehoods at me constantly that I then have to go look up. Instead, it is typically analysis of a situation followed by a conclusion I don't personally reach typically. And had it not been for the Shapiro interviews on JRE, I'd have just continued to outright ignore this guy as another "provocateur" out for the clicks and shares.
  - mszkoda 7y ago
    I agree, it's very interesting to listen to Shapiro reason his own beliefs as he talks. It definitely helps me to see how other people might think about a topic which they may not be able to articulate well. He certainly reaches some strange conclusions, but it is fascinating to see how someone gets to that point and try to better understand other viewpoints.
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tlobes 7y ago
Joe Rogan's booking and showrunning team(s) needs a lot more credit where it's due. The politically and professionally diverse guests they are able to get, no doubt with the assistance of Joe himself, is absolutely incredible. You rarely see a show where you can have an extreme right wing radio host be a guest, only to have a slew of high profile left wing candidates on months later, with zero fucks given in making sure it's family-friendly.
kup0 7y ago
If I watch anymore JRE at all it's going to be in a "private" tab. Not that Youtube recommendations/suggestions are good anyway, but watching JRE absolutely destroys them Though, as much airtime as Rogan has given to conspiracy theories- I guess it makes sense that it turns my recommendations into absolute nonsense
vanbytheriver 7y ago
Joe Rogan is very pro-institution so it’s going to be a very interesting video.
gnrlbzik 7y ago
this video hit 1,712,029 views at 4:50pm, from 600,000 just around noon. omg... : )
fulldecent2 7y ago
After reading the book, the interview seems mostly like a narration of the book. I surely could have covered a lot more new ground in 2 hours.
gsich 7y ago
Is there a RSS feed of his podcast?
MacroChip 7y ago
Snowden mentioned something about Android and iOS refusing to implement his idea about cutting network access to specific apps. He said they claim it's a security risk. What is the security risk and where can I see the discussion about this feature?

1128 points by juandazapata 7y ago

This guy is on a roll!

It's not strange many interesting people want to visit Joe Rogan podcast. First, he is willing to give a voice to many who won't be able to tell their stories on mass media. Who other will let speak people like James Damore? What major broadcaster is willing to interview Jordan Peterson without protraiting him as a villain? He respects his guest, when in disagrement. His interview to Jack Dorsey (not much of his liking, I presume), was criticised for not being aggresive enough. The interviewed is not afraid of a headline out of context. Given the current political climate, I'm not suprised a MMA guy is capable of doing what most journalists don't.

buboard 7y ago
The reason he can be "more independent" is exactly because he's not dependent financially on media, not his MMA bg.
- cm2187 7y ago
  But he is financially dependent on youtube, isn't he? I am not suggesting he auto-censors himself but he is not "independent".
  - LandR 7y ago
    Does the actual podcast, not the one that gets uploaded to YouTube, have Joe reading ads? I assumed it did and they got cut out?
    - Phillipharryt 7y ago
      Podcasts can also be uploaded to services that intersperse advertising (or place them at determined points) on their own, even if the host doesn't read the adverts during the podcast. Midroll is the big name in that business.
    - nradov 7y ago
      Yes if you listen through other services Joe reads ads from several sponsors at the beginning and end.
  - buboard 7y ago
    No his podcast makes more money outside of youtube. I m pretty sure he makes "F U Youtube" money to not care about self-censorship https://www.quora.com/How-much-money-does-Joe-Rogan-make-from-podcasts https://www.quora.com/How-much-money-does-Joe-Rogan-make-fro...
  - me_me_me 7y ago
    He is a world famous standup comedian. He does MMA coverage and podcasting as side gig for fun. I doubt that his life depends on the podcast.
    - cm2187 7y ago
      I doubt he is making much money doing standups in LA clubs. vs having a podcast with an audience of about 10 millions, which is more than most TV shows can claim.
      - LandR 7y ago
        His standup shows on Netflix must have made him hundreds of thousands if not million I would think.
        xgd 7y ago
        His podcast approximately makes 50 million USD per year.
    - huehehue 7y ago
      He was also the host of a prime time game show for 5 years.
      - dvtrn 7y ago
        Also was an actor on prime time tv before even this
  - sdan 7y ago
    Not just Youtube, he gets paid sponsors on his podcast. For example (in my case) if you listen on Apple Podcasts you can hear 5 minutes of him talking about brands. These brands probably pay him tens of thousands per episode to get a shoutout. Pretty sure YT may make a good contribution, but not so much that he relies on it.
jsgo 7y ago
I thought the Dorsey interview (and the round table with them, the legal/moderation lady with multiple titles, and that Pool or whatever his name is guy) were pretty good. Not a fan of Stephen Crowder (sp?), but that interview was pretty uncomfortable. Generally though, yeah, I think he does well interviewing people.
cyborgx7 7y ago
I question the value of letting people like James Damore and Jordan Peterson speak on such a big platform. Edit: The people downvoting me are hypocrites. The function of downvoting to make something less visible. Are you saying what I say has less value and should therefore have a lesser platform? But to be serious, everyone acknowledges that what some people say is of more value than what other people say, and should be seen by more people. We just disagree on what the things that have value are. And your insistence on arguing about the former, rather than the latter is tiresome and dishonest.
- lagadu 7y ago
  Yes, we should selectively filter people whose ideas we don't like from being able to speak them to any audience. In fact I question the value of letting people like <person whose ideas you value> speak on such a big platform. /s Surely you understand that what you're suggesting here is totalitarian? The value you mention is the strengthening of a society where freedom of ideas is considered a core value.
  - cyborgx7 7y ago
    It's not totalitarian at all. I'm not advocating not letting them speak. I'm saying what they say has no (or negative) value.
  - john-radio 7y ago
    Your "totalitarian" remark is such a shameless misrepresentation of what the person you're talking to is saying that you might as well be talking to yourself.
- andreaorru 7y ago
  What's wrong with Jordan Peterson? I think he's vastly misrepresented.
  - cyborgx7 7y ago
    All he has done is repackage some pretty basic self-help advice into a gross right-wing ideology. I don't think this has any value.

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sdan 7y ago

1. First time I've seen Joe with Airpods 2. First time Joe has done a podcast with someone OTA (as far as I know)

ekianjo 7y ago
For 2 its not like he had a choice to do it in person...
- sdan 7y ago
  Right. Only other scenario that would work is for Joe to fly over there... which probably wouldn't happen. Regardless, Joe's getting so many good interviews in the past two years.
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    > Regardless, Joe's getting so many good interviews in the past two years. Joe has been a better journalist than 99% of real journalists. Makes pretty much everyone else look like an amateur at this.
  - eswat 7y ago
    > Only other scenario that would work is for Joe to fly over there... which probably wouldn't happen. I wouldn’t want to see a Sean Penn/El Chapo incident[0] happen with these two. [0] https://theintercept.com/2016/01/12/sean-penn-el-chapo-opsec/ https://theintercept.com/2016/01/12/sean-penn-el-chapo-opsec...
    - lagadu 7y ago
      Different circumstances: Snowden's location is well-known, he's protected via political asylum. El Chapo on the other hand was being hunted by the local government so he was dependent on his location remaining secret.
  - raihansaputra 7y ago
    John Oliver from Last Week Tonight did fly over to interview Edward Snowden[0]. But considering the worries their team went through, it's fair others decide to not do it. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M

HNLurker2 7y ago

What is democracy?

cjfd 7y ago
Democracy is a system of government where the three powers: law giving, executive, and judicial are separated and at least the law giving is in the hands of (representatives of) the people. In the case of the massive spying by government we are dealing with secret laws and/or the executive branch writing its own law. This is not very compatible with democracy.
- HNLurker2 7y ago
  T-t-thanks
  - dang 7y ago
    We've banned this account for repeatedly posting unsubstantive comments and ignoring our request to stop (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20948393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20948393). We're trying for a bit higher of a signal/noise ratio than internet default, so it's important to post thoughtfully here. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the site guidelines in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- RealityVoid 7y ago
  While I understand your definition, this is not what Wikipedia nor what Merriam-Webster use for it. The separation of powers in three branches is not strictly necessary for a democracy, just a mechanism through witch it is attained. Surely, there could be examples where the powers are slpit another way that could still qualify as democracies. If, somehow, the will of the people were to accept spying as a cornerstone of their society, trading privacy for safety, would it still be a democracy? Anyways, sorry, for nitpitcking, but something just sounds... incomplete in your answer.

andrew_ 7y ago

His podcasts are infinitely better than any amount of talking-head punditry available on the major news networks. I've not run across one yet that wasn't well-reasoned, patient, and interesting - even if I didn't agree with conclusions being made or the thought processes expressing them.

anonu 7y ago
Joe is a master interviewer for the reasons you mention. I'd also add he has broad interests in almost any topic and subject matter, which helps. Another technique he employs is "listening". There are many times when I want to butt in when listening to his podcasts. But Joe just waits and let's the other person speak and soaks it in. There are of course the interviews which are actually him being interviewed (he does most of the talking)... But I think that's part of why it makes for good listening. He keeps the conversation going. Even with a reticent guest, most interviews go for 2 hours or more. So in the end you extract something useful out of it.
- me_me_me 7y ago
  I started listening to his stuff few months back. And I must say I learnt a lot about listening and having good conversations. He mentioned this actually few times and its interesting that he learnt to be patient and non-combative no non-issues. Half of the time i pay attention to how he runs the podcast instead of actual conversations.
- 1337biz 7y ago
  I noticed that over time too. My guess is that he has a feel if a guest is entertaining or not. And if they are not he is going into story mode and just sharing the joys of bow-hunting.
- waffle_ss 7y ago
  Joe is not a master interviewer. Compare him to someone who does a lot of research ahead of time and comes prepared with thought-provoking questions, and can keep pace with the deep conversations, like say a Tim Ferriss. Joe does little research on most guests (mostly due to the sheer volume of guests I'm sure), which could be a more stylistic choice if he were a deft interviewer who could think on his feet and dig deep anyway, but he's not. He's an everyman and asks very surface-level questions. As you say guests are (usually) given wide latitude to own the mic, which works great when it's a guest with a compelling narrative. It works terribly when the guest is very ideological or has some sort of agenda they are adept at selling. The times he does challenge a guest (sometimes way too aggressively as others in the thread have shown), oftentimes he has missed the point entirely, and the guest has to back up and try to patch the conversation. Once that happens a couple times the flow of the interview is really disturbed and it takes a long time to recover. I like Joe as a person, and admire his discipline, but to call him a master interviewer would be as accurate as calling him a master comedian because he has been grinding so long.

shusson 7y ago

Man Edward wanted to talk. Joe barely talks let alone get a question in for the first 20min.

deleted 7y ago
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nabla9 7y ago
Many of the best Joe Rogan podcasts are those where he mostly listens. Joe Rogan Experience #1214 - Lawrence Lessig is really good one.
- mikece 7y ago
  Your point is valid and that was a great episode as well but I think the best episodes are those where he questions and prods the guest to expound far beyond talking points, to give what is essentially a statement of philosophy after which Joe then dissects the points enumerated in that statement of philosophy. What makes Joe's process of doing this so compelling is that he's not doing it with an agenda to change the guest's mind about something but to deeply and truly understand WHAT the person believes, WHY they believe it, HOW that affects and influences their live and decisions and why that person thinks other should agree with them. Another thing that is great about Rogan's guests is that he doesn't limit the guest list to people who agree with him. If Adolf Hitler were alive today (and spoke English) Joe would not only interview him but get him to not only enumerate all of his beliefs but then explain why he hold those beliefs to be true. This process of explication is IMPOSSIBLE in the mainstream media and allows the listener to get to raw, fundamental truths at the base layer. It's a shame that not all Americans (and non-Americans too) have the intellectual curiosity and patience to REALLY LISTEN to and understand why people of different political, religious, and ideological beliefs hold the positions they do and then amicably coexist with them in respectful disagreement.
- sdan 7y ago
  Wasn't the case for the recent one with Tyson. Man, that was annoying.

heyflyguy 7y ago

This is the first time, and maybe it's just because of the length of the interview; that I've noticed Snowden's being slightly untethered from sensibility. The first 10 minutes in particular was a little worrisome. I imagine that being stuck in Russia, with the pressure he's under has contributed to this. I do wonder how much of this personality bubble was in place when he made the decisions he did. Nevertheless, I do have a love hate relationship with what he did.

hnarn 7y ago
Out of curiosity, what about the things he did do you "hate"?
- heyflyguy 7y ago
  Love - revealed to us that our constitutional rights were being absolutely trampled to death. Hate - revealed to the world endless amounts of national security data that was not directly relevant to these constitutional encroachments.
  - Miner49er 7y ago
    > Hate - revealed to the world endless amounts of national security data that was not directly relevant to these constitutional encroachments. He worked with journalists in order to avoid this. He gave the government a head's up before the press released anything everytime they released something new. What more do you think he should have done?
    - dx87 7y ago
      If he really wanted to be treated as a whistleblower, he should have only leaked the specific things that he took issue with, not grab anything he could get his hands on and give it out. For example, there's no good reason for him to give documents to China that tell them which Chinese computers NSA has access to [0]. This myth that he responsibly leaked information needs to die. [0] https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1260306/edward-snowden-classified-us-data-shows-hong-kong-hacking-targets https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1260306/edward-s...

Antoninus 7y ago

TLDW; Edward Snowden: How Your Cell Phone Spies on You: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFns39RXPrU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFns39RXPrU Edward Snowden on America and Russia’s Diplomatic Woes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k19Ipq0TV8Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k19Ipq0TV8Y

agumonkey 7y ago

I can't help but feel Snowden comes off as a frustrated naive insider spilling details out of disappointment. Lacking perspective here. Most of his points are basically peter's principle, hierarchy failure, internal competition, all traits that made the response to national threats inappropriate before and after 9/11. I really don't think that his actions were clearly thought out and he won't get a pass any time soon.

platz 7y ago
you focus on the individual - and what of outcome, effect, and ends?
- agumonkey 7y ago
  His logic and motives matters to me. It's true I don't know much about the effect, give me some clues about what it did change.
  - 0_gravitas 7y ago
    everyone now knows for a fact the gov is listening to everything whereas before it was just "assumed"
cco 7y ago
I'm not quite clear on your point, are you implying that if Snowden had more perspective on the subject he wouldn't have become a whistleblower? The second half of your first paragraph suggests otherwise so I'm kinda confused.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  Sorry, also I was only half way through the interview. My conclusion is that part of his reveal was clearly naive and that it doesn't have any value regarding citizens or national improvement (incompetence in big groups ? color me surprised). He would have been more beneficial to sleep on the knowledge for a while, filter what's important and find better leverage to make a change. Something less naive. When he talks, only very rarely I hear something relevant. At best, his good points are: - shift toward abusing surveillance technology - paradoxical laws regarding accountability of the government (you cannot have a fair assessment of government actions if it's illegal to look at it) - a bad government can abuse long stored data against you But really he's babbling for hours and very few comes out at even surprising. NSA had access to network/deep packets long before Google and even 9/11. Yes we all have smartphones.. boohoo, it's well known that these are potential privacy backdoors. People just don't care, or at best the rich enough will buy an iphone (if Apple is really that good regarding crypto and privacy). Again, that's just an opinion right now, if someone can shed a light on what's important in his case, please do, I'll read carefully. ps: there's also a lot of moments where he's mostly telling his life which I find disturbingly immature in tone.

roenxi 7y ago

There is a real lesson here about just how cavalier the American government - and to some degree the public - is about civil liberties, but that isn't the biggest problem. The problem here isn't even so much the government is being shady - that has happened before, it will happen again. I can understand people not feeling threatened by constant snooping even though I disagree. To me the real problem is how effectively the government has kept this subject from creeping into the public debate. The scary part is the secret laws and precedents that elected officials aren't allowed to even tell their constituents about. Government officials are not reliable; this is far to much unaccountable power even if people involved were allowed to discuss what is happening. Why aren't the not-technically-interesting parts of this wiretapping program legal for government agencies to talk about? If they need to be hidden, why not go straight to the logical conclusion and classify a bunch of other laws? Democracies can't handle this level of secrecy. The whole thing is going to fall apart one way or another - the path America is going down isn't stable at all; something is going to have to change radically. Either the intelligence agencies will gain supremacy over the government, the government itself will go rogue or the secrecy will have to end. EDIT I'm going to bed before I see the whole video, but around 1:46:00 - the bit with J. Clapper. Case in point that the whole system of checks and balances can't work. EDIT2 And around 2:10:00. Barbaric stuff; it is like centuries of accumulated Common Law and parliamentary legal tradition never happened. People need to be able to occasionally talk about this stuff in formal setting.

jessaustin 7y ago
The simplest explanation for lots of confusing events is that the intelligence agencies have enjoyed supremacy over the government for some time already. They run the media as well: just look at the glowing plaudits for their fake "whistleblower" as contrasted with the ongoing disdain for actual whistleblowers.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  That's not nearly as simple as the explanation that the public doesn't actually care about whether domestic agencies are spying on everyone. I think most Americans are in the "I have nothing to hide" line of thinking. The media won't carry a story that their numbers tell them doesn't have legs with the audience.

lawrenceg 7y ago

Someone made a comment that Joe Rogan is the dumb man's celebrity smart guy. I tend to agree, but I do enjoy some of his podcasts.

damog 7y ago
And if you do, and he is smart guy for you, that makes you a dumb man. Not a disrespect in anyway but that should humble everybody on the sense that nobody can know everything in depth, even when bragging about their own “unmatched wisdom”.
buboard 7y ago
celebrities are for dumb and smart men alike - by definition
RosanaAnaDana 7y ago
I would take the inverse. Joe Rogan is the smart man's celebrity dumb guy. I as well enjoy some of his podcasts.

Timpy 7y ago

Snowden is really clever with these interviews. Right away in the interview he establishes his concerns about the government, then briefly mentions the government smear campaign against him without hanging on the point too much. He calmly explains himself in an articulate way, establishing himself as perfectly sane. Then he reaches out to connect and empathize with his interviewer: > When I hear you just speak, I go "actually this is a thoughtful guy." When he validates Joe, he validates Joe's audience, and it becomes Snowden's audience. He did this with Trevor Noah too; I think he's intentional about it while very cleverly appearing not to be. It's a good thing Snowden is the one who blew that whistle, and not somebody less calculating.

enjoylife 7y ago
I can imagine the potential advisors/pr folks, having helped shape that type of image. It’s hard to be in the public spotlight and not have PR consultants spamming you.
KnMn 7y ago
Oh, man. I completely disagree. I feel like he just talks and talks about whatever he wants to talk about with almost no regard for whether his technical language is being understood or if he's dominating the discussion or anything like that. I don't think I've seen him develop a natural rapport with anyone or even make a firm, memorable point in an interview. I'll always be grateful for his leaks but over 2.5 hours he just became a soft background murmur in my room.
- Timpy 7y ago
  That's a fair point. Maybe the technical language isn't very friendly to a wide audience, that hadn't occurred to me. I'm trying to keep a wide perspective, but I might just be fanboying.
- RankingMember 7y ago
  I imagine being cooped up in an embassy gives you a lot of time to think and plan what you want to say and, eventually, you end up with a real fire-hose of pent-up expression.

clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago

Would have been nice to have Snowden actually there in person if he were not such a coward.

magashna 7y ago
Is a man who chooses not to walk into a pointed knife a coward?
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
  Reality winner is only serving 5 years and she showed good faith. Ellsberg won in court and served 0 years. If Snowden weren't a coward he could be there in person right now.
  - smbowner 7y ago
    "With that being said, leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are!" - POTUS Obviously this doesn't apply directly to Snowden. I would be worried about a fair trial in this type of political climate as well. I mean, it's not the US has ever inappropriately applied the judiciary to falsely imprison a man before!
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
      The act of fleeing made it harder for himself. Had he not fled overseas and really did attempt to follow proper whisleblower procedure he would most likely be a free man today.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - slenk 7y ago
    No...the US wants him dead. There is no chance in hell he gets a fair trial. The instant he would step into the US he would be arrested and sentenced for life. Very naive to think the government will let this one go

duxup 7y ago

We live in a time where the president of the United States himself questions any law that inconveniences him personally, same goes for any oversight, and he retains a great deal of support from the population and his own party. I wonder how / if it is possible to convince the public that laws and oversight are necessary for good government.

polymatter 7y ago
"It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls" -Aristophanes The public learns the lesson that X is necessary when they see the consequence of not-X. Hopefully there is a gap between total lawlessness and the public realising that some laws are good and not just "red tape".
- jammygit 7y ago
  I had hoped that things under trump would have been much worse, so as to shock the public into re-evaluating their civic values.
  - ksdale 7y ago
    I've always been rather suspicious of this way of reasoning. It basically goes, "Things aren't as bad as they need to be for people to change their ways, so hopefully they get worse so people change their ways." And it is implicit in this line of reasoning that there is some terrible and inevitable catastrophe waiting to befall the people who don't change their ways. (Because why would a catastrophe be worth it, unless it prevented another, worse, catastrophe?) An alternate response to "Things aren't bad enough for people to change their ways," is to revise our predictions of the likelihood of catastrophe, and eventually decide that perhaps things aren't quite as doomed as we think. For things like climate change, where we have scientific evidence of the necessity of change, it seems like it needs to get worse before the change will happen, though I still don't hope for things to get worse. But for something as subjective as civic values, it seems especially wrong to me to hope for disaster just for the sake of shaking things up. After all, there's no guarantee that a disaster under Trump would move civic values in the right direction anyway.

pacala 7y ago

Snowden: But I didn't come forward to be safe. If I wanted to be safe, I'd still be sitting in Hawaii, making a hell of a lot money, to spy on you.

tkifnn 7y ago
Does the NSA actually pay well?
- vermilingua 7y ago
  He said that he'd make ~2x at the NSA as what he'd make in an equivalent private sector job, so it seems that way.
- watt 7y ago
  At around 52:45 he mentioned top secret security clearance will get you paid ridiculous amounts of money.

sschueller 7y ago

Let's not forget Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange who are currently unable to give interviews because of what the United States is doing to them.

mrlala 7y ago
Lol
noobiemcfoob 7y ago
Conflating of Chelsea Manning and Assange with Snowden's efforts is the crux of a very successful campaign to bury him behind claims of treason.

dominotw 7y ago

Yung Haimie killing it this week, Just finished listening to richard dawkins earlier this week https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bN4spt3744 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bN4spt3744

asar 7y ago

I have to be honest here, I was very disappointed with this episode. It's basically a very long monologue and feels like a marketing gig for his book and not like a podcast with Edward Snowden. For someone who's familiar with Snowden and his story, this had very little informational value. I would've wished they talked about a bit more about other topics to see what Snowden and his opinions are like outside of the general theme of mass surveillance. At the 2 hour mark, Joe tries to switch and asks about his current day-to-day life. But they switch back to the main theme after about 10 minutes.

sjwright 7y ago
I think Joe’s style benefits from being physically in the same room as the interviewee. Had it not been a remote interview I think it would have gone very differently.
WilliamEdward 7y ago
Ive only ever seen snowden do short 15 minute interviews with constant back and forth between himself the interviewer. To have snowden speak uninterrupted for 3 hours, especially on a podcast where Joe usually interrupts people, was a blessing.

0898 7y ago

The success of Joe Rogan is fascinating and encouraging. For a long time there was a view that attention spans were diminishing. Facebook and Tik Tok reduced content to the smallest possible dosage. But look at this. This is one of the world's most popular podcasts and it's nearly three hours long. You see it too in TV: what is a Netflix series but a 13 hour movie? I see a definite trend towards long form content right now, which I think is quite positive.

sb057 7y ago
With old media (specifically television and newsprint) "information bandwidth" was restricted to a limited number of channels and pages. This meant there had to be a calculation where the editors had to maximize the audience by making the content short enough to not lose the easily distracted, but long enough to be engaging. High-speed internet has blown open the information bandwidth cap so that now content can be created for every attention niche. This is just anecdotal, but it seems to me part of the decline of traditional journalism has to do with article length. People either want short, snappy headlines that tell them the essential information, or long, elaborately-written pieces thousands of words long. The only reason mid-length articles existed before was a compromise between the two groups.
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  And a subtle but massive change is the removal of imposed formats i.e. artificial time boundaries, as if there were only a few possible lengths for any piece of content — 5 min, 22 min, 42 min, because commercials. Online audiovisual content is refreshing in that it lasts exactly as long as the creator(s) intended to treat the topic. Likewise for article length in blogs.
- noodle 7y ago
  I feel like there's also something to be said about old media and their revenue models. Commercial breaks are written in to most shows, and show length matters. With newer media, it doesn't matter if you have a 22 minute episode 1 and a 47 minute episode 2 - you create the scene, shot and/or episode length that works for you artistically.

xrd 7y ago

Snowden's book really speaks to me on so many levels. As a hacker, as a boy growing up in the new age of the Internet. As a person who experienced 9/11 and never aligned with the direction it took the USA. As a person who questions my identity and the messages I get about identity on a daily basis. He will be remembered for a long time because of the actions he took, but if he had not done anything else, his book would be remembered on its own as a discourse on what being human means in these times. But, it will never be viewed on its own, and that is a tragedy. Pardon Snowden.

Lendal 7y ago
I used to agree with this but now that I've seen where this path leads, I think he should be given a fair trial and judged. Our government and the security of 350M US citizens cannot be held at the whim of a single hacker, no matter how right he believed himself to be. Our Congress has 535 members for precisely this reason, the president answers to Congress and is not a king, and even the Chief Justice does not rule absolutely. Snowden was brave, but he was also wrong. He should be judged fairly by a jury of his peers and that trial should be held in a transparent, fair and open trial for all to see. How many years now has he had to prepare his defense? It's plenty. Let's get the trial going.
- biztos 7y ago
  Current POTUS has recently threatened a legally protected whistleblower with removal of protection, it wouldn't be crazy to call it a death threat. Previous POTUS wasn't any better disposed to Snowden. I'm not necessarily a fan, but I think it was a very rational choice on Snowden's part to choose "permanent exile and fear of assassination" over "trust the system."
  - garmaine 7y ago
    It was a death threat. He literally said the whistleblower should be killed.
    - 7y ago

repler 7y ago

The whistleblower protections that Snowden did not bother to use are the same ones currently providing the spark for the impeachment proceedings in the US House of Representatives. Really wish he had gone that route instead of the one he chose - and we'll never know for sure how pure his intentions were/are because of it.

bsamuels 7y ago
I often find myself scrolling to the bottom of these snowden threads just to see how often people downvote/flag opinions they don't agree with. HN doesn't seem to be much better than reddit in this regard
- repler 7y ago
  I couldn't agree more. This issue is super duper clear but nobody seems to "get" it. Too enamored with the idea of a folk hero to consider the fallout from a long view perspective.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
    Well said.
2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
I agree with everything he did except for fleeing the country.

throw51319 7y ago

This guy did this to the US gov but would never do it to China or Russia. They are not on the safe safe playing field.

wnevets 7y ago

did Rogan manage to mention trans athletes, #metoo, triggered people, gorillas or dmt in this episode?

vkaku 7y ago

Finally. This, I'm looking forward to watch. My unpopular opinion: Whistleblowers shouldn't be punished in a rogue state.

0000011111 7y ago

Snowden inspired me to immerse myself in learning more about modern information technology. He caused me to question what it means to be a patriot. He drove me to learn about the importance of open-source encryption software for storing (VeraCrypt) and transporting data through networks (VPN). Knowledge is your power over your government.

bussiere 7y ago

Just a friendly reminder : https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/us/politics/edward-snowden-at-nsa-sexually-explicit-photos-often-shared.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/us/politics/edward-snowde... Theses guys just shared naked pics of peoples ... This kind of power corrupt ...

ffritz 7y ago

This seems like the perfect post to showcase a little weekend project of mine. I kind of wanted to checkout Joes podcasts on the go, but I don’t want to listen to the whole 2 or 3 hours. Instead, a list of topics with timestamps would be much better. So I hacked together a little feed and a player doing just that. This episode is also already live: https://joeroganplayer.com/episodes/1368 https://joeroganplayer.com/episodes/1368 Granted, it’s all done manually at the moment, but I share the work with friends also interested in this.

watt3rpig 7y ago

I love the long form discussion. I feel I can actually here someones thoughts and perspectives rather than short meaningless soundbites. The lack of guests shouting over each other is great as well. He has also exposed me to some wonderful thinkers like Sean Carrol who I otherwise would not have come across.

jsgo 7y ago
to be honest, he's made me appreciate Ben Shapiro which didn't feel incredibly likely going in. Prior to that, my experience with Shapiro was the stupid videos people would share on Facebook of him "OWNING the libs." So I expected an absolutely terrible interview where I was going to be disgusted with the guy constantly. Granted, I don't agree with him on a lot, much at all really, but when he's just talking out his views on points, I appreciated the candor as to reasoning for various things on his end. My takeaway from it, outside of the "for the clicks" YouTube videos that are shared, is that while I may not agree with him on a lot, when he is explaining his points and not going for the jugular, I feel like he isn't questioning my intelligence by tossing various falsehoods at me constantly that I then have to go look up. Instead, it is typically analysis of a situation followed by a conclusion I don't personally reach typically. And had it not been for the Shapiro interviews on JRE, I'd have just continued to outright ignore this guy as another "provocateur" out for the clicks and shares.
- mszkoda 7y ago
  I agree, it's very interesting to listen to Shapiro reason his own beliefs as he talks. It definitely helps me to see how other people might think about a topic which they may not be able to articulate well. He certainly reaches some strange conclusions, but it is fascinating to see how someone gets to that point and try to better understand other viewpoints.

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tlobes 7y ago

Joe Rogan's booking and showrunning team(s) needs a lot more credit where it's due. The politically and professionally diverse guests they are able to get, no doubt with the assistance of Joe himself, is absolutely incredible. You rarely see a show where you can have an extreme right wing radio host be a guest, only to have a slew of high profile left wing candidates on months later, with zero fucks given in making sure it's family-friendly.

kup0 7y ago

If I watch anymore JRE at all it's going to be in a "private" tab. Not that Youtube recommendations/suggestions are good anyway, but watching JRE absolutely destroys them Though, as much airtime as Rogan has given to conspiracy theories- I guess it makes sense that it turns my recommendations into absolute nonsense

vanbytheriver 7y ago

Joe Rogan is very pro-institution so it’s going to be a very interesting video.

gnrlbzik 7y ago

this video hit 1,712,029 views at 4:50pm, from 600,000 just around noon. omg... : )

fulldecent2 7y ago

After reading the book, the interview seems mostly like a narration of the book. I surely could have covered a lot more new ground in 2 hours.

gsich 7y ago

Is there a RSS feed of his podcast?

MacroChip 7y ago

Snowden mentioned something about Android and iOS refusing to implement his idea about cutting network access to specific apps. He said they claim it's a security risk. What is the security risk and where can I see the discussion about this feature?