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I've listened to a few episodes of JRE at the request of some friends and I kind of get it but I also don't get it. Joe ask the "dumb questions." The questions

I've listened to a few episodes of JRE at the request of some friends and I kind of get it but I also don't get it. Joe ask the "dumb questions." The questions you would ask if you as a laymen were sitting in front of a Nobel Prize winning scientist like if Star Wars lightsabers are actually possible and a lot of people find that entertaining and I get it. But people have this weird way of taking things they like and not only rejecting criticism but making it their whole identity. Joe can do no wrong and if people dislike him it's because they don't "get it" and they are just being soft. Joe also likes to deflect by saying "I'm an idiot don't listen to me" which hey that's fine but if you're going to ramble about how the moon is made of cheese then say "don't listen to me" but then bring on a guest who is going to talk about how the moon is made of cheese; the line that is being pushed is pretty clear even if it is unintentional.

acadapter 4y ago
In other words, he's a glorified talk show host?
- hackerbrother 4y ago
  talk, show, host… yes, that is exactly what he is!
Jhjjjjjjjjrte 4y ago
What guest are you specifically talking about?
axg11 4y ago
> Joe ask the "dumb questions." The questions you would ask if you as a laymen were sitting in front of a Nobel Prize winning scientist This is exactly why he’s so popular. Most people are laymen. Joe doesn’t have a research team coming up with optimal talking points. He’s a regular minded guy asking regular questions. He achieves depth through the sheer length of interviews.
- mbg721 4y ago
  Joe is playing the same role as the youngest child at the Seder. It's a popular format because it serves a genuine human need. If no one asks the most basic questions, no one gets the most basic answers.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    Well sure, but if the youngest child is primarily querying the schizophrenic uncle and taking his answers with complete credulity, then pawning them off on millions of other credulous people, it’s reasonable to feel that there’s a serious downside to such an act.
    - dominotw 4y ago
      will someone think of the credulous people.
      - ethanbond 4y ago
        Doing so is essentially a hallmark of a society. Laws against fraud, for example, are among the oldest in existence, despite fraud overwhelmingly targeting the most credulous among us (for obvious reasons). This is a good thing, actually.
        dominotw 4y ago
        > Doing so is essentially a hallmark of a society. would this imply something is not right with our society because there aren't laws against listening to joe rogan.
        ethanbond 4y ago
        Nope! It implies that yes, someone should think of the credulous people. I don’t believe censoring Rogan is justified/wise/useful/etc. — even if it were it’d still be illegal anyway. But does that mean I think we should just throw credulous folks to the wolves with snarky remarks like “won’t someone think of the credulous people?!” We should think of the credulous people, and take society’s threats against them and their threat to society seriously.
user3939382 4y ago
I’ve heard Jon Stewart do this. He puts all this effort into political commentary and when he got called out on something said “Hey my show comes on after crank yankers!” Oh so when you’re wrong now you shouldn’t be taken seriously, I see.
- monocasa 4y ago
  To be fair, he was telling that to CNN presenters who were trying to deflect his accusations that they were enabling political theater by saying his show does the same thing, missing the obvious point that CNN should be held to a higher journalistic standard than Comedy Central.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  The last decade hasn't been kind to the people who I looked up to when I was a teen. Turns out the left wasn't any better than the right, they could just be honest when they weren't in power. Once they were, well it's obviously your fault for holding them to the same standards they held the other team to.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  I'm curious where Jon Stewart ever said he should be taken seriously? On his comedy show I mean. In his testimonies to congress and whatnot, he doesn't do the comedy thing. I'd also say the same thing about Al Franken - he was pretty deliberate about "de-comedying" or whatever it was he called it when he went into his first term in the Senate. I will admit that that would not have been as much work for him as it would be for Stewart.
  - mikepurvis 4y ago
    Pretty sure the GP is referring to the famous Crossfire takedown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE There's a play by play of it on Crossfire's Wikipedia page also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossfire_(American_TV_program)#Jon_Stewart's_appearance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossfire_(American_TV_program...
paulcole 4y ago
> "I'm an idiot don't listen to me" This is right out of the Jon Stewart playbook. He can say he’s a “comedian” when criticized but clearly loves the influence he has a “journalist.” Great schtick if you can pull it off.
- SQueeeeeL 4y ago
  Damn, two people in this comment section brought up some random Comedy Central late night host from the mid 2010s. I feel like this is some elaborate bit, like Joe Rogan somehow has a secret conspiracy of how to reply to that comment, and they're all gonna pop out
  - clucas 4y ago
    I'm going to take a guess... you are probably under 30, and the people who brought up Jon Stewart are probably over 35. He was pretty big (bigger than Rogan, probably) when we were forming our political opinions in high school and college, and he also blended the line of entertainment and political commentary. It's a very natural comparison. Don't be too quick to cry conspiracy.
  - paulcole 4y ago
    To be fair, I find Joe Rogan, Jon Stewart, and myself equally insufferable.
  - romanhn 4y ago
    Random host? Jon Stewart was huge, he defined political comedy for over 15 years. His audience though likely didn't overlap much with JRE due to different political leanings (well, that and age).
    - remote_phone 4y ago
      He unfortunately taught a generation of millennials that simply pointing out hypocrisy was enough. Trump’s presidency showed that it entirely wasn’t.
    - 4y ago
mattwilsonn888 4y ago
Joe is an intelligent person. One of the clear signals of that is that he is willing to bring on experts and ask basic questions without being embarrassed in an attempt to understand, that also explains why he has such a general audience - for experts its a great venue to break down and think neutrally about their topic, since Joe's main agenda is to learn. As for misinformation, the word you seem to avoid saying - you clearly don't have any problem identifying when Joe is unsure of what he is saying, so I guess you are concerned about what other people are thinking. I'm not sure your speculation about how other people think is grounds for useful feedback. In fact I'm not sure you know much at all 3 episodes in.
- hericium 4y ago
  When he doesn't understand someone, he enthusiastically agrees. When he's hosting someone with PhD or otherwise smarter than him, he just says "ooooooh" a lot and is overenthusiastic. He doesn't ask smart questions. He asks questions his audience will understand. He was "intelligent" maybe a few times in his life. Those are represented by the third eye on show's emblem/logo.
  - stoplying1 4y ago
    It's always something to watch people with certain types of relationships to online celebrities construct this entire illusory, aspirational set of attributes onto their e-celeb and then reverse integrate it as a part of their own internal identity effectively. Resulting in "asking dumb questions and thoughtlessly yielding to the last authority that spoke" being portrayed as some height of intelligence.
    - mattwilsonn888 4y ago
      It might say more how many cognitive assumptions you've built in the minds of people who enjoy a show with a fairly basic citation. How much mental gymnastics do you need to do to figure out why people enjoy hearing basic questions about complicated topics?
  - mattwilsonn888 4y ago
evv555 4y ago
>But people have this weird way of taking things they like and not only rejecting criticism but making it their whole identity. Joe can do no wrong and if people dislike him it's because they don't "get it" and they are just being soft. I see what you're getting at but I think you're putting the cart before the horse here. JRE has become a highly politicized target and criticism(or praise) of the show is a proxy narrative for half-dozen other issues. This is just more identity politics spilling over into more facets of our lives. >Joe also likes to deflect by saying "I'm an idiot don't listen to me" which hey that's fine but if you're going to ramble about how the moon is made of cheese then say "don't listen to me" but then bring on a guest who is going to talk about how the moon is made of cheese; the line that is being pushed is pretty clear even if it is unintentional. I think the diversity of perspectives is a valuable part of the show. But it's a balancing act with many pitfalls.
- threeseed 4y ago
  > JRE has become a highly politicized target He has deliberately made it that way because it is highly profitable for him.
  - WithinReason 4y ago
    So then why did he reject Trump when he wanted to come on the podcast?
    - pwinnski 4y ago
      All downside, no upside. It wouldn't boost his popularity, but would open him up to new levels of criticism.
      - WithinReason 4y ago
        It would boost his popularity with half the country, and he would get an insane amount of views on the interview. All upside no downside.
bhedgeoser 4y ago
> but if you're going to ramble about how the moon is made of cheese Examples of stupid things he's said?
Enginerrrd 4y ago
I think you're underestimating the power of dumb questions to an extent. Like, I wholeheartedly agree, he doesn't achieve good interviews by the quality of his questions. Except... that he kind of does, in a weird way. Experts on the show are happy to use those questions as a launching point to correct whatever incorrect assumptions he had in asking it. He's very good at getting people to open up and talk. Perhaps dumb questions play a role in that? Perhaps they make people feel comfortable by validating their expert status in the room or something, I don't know. But I do know that it seems to work. I also know he's a comedian. Comedy is fundamentally a weirdly manipulative art form... You carefully craft a set of jokes and then practice over and over again to make it feel like an organic, albeit funny conversation. Every little pause, intonation, turn of phrase, it's all intentional. So, being that he is a practiced comedian, it's possible some of that interview style is pretty intentional too.
- eldenwrong 4y ago
  HN is full of IYIs.
  - Veen 4y ago
    Intellectual Yet Idiot, in case anyone was wondering. It’s a favourite insult of Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
    - spywaregorilla 4y ago
      Ironic given he's perhaps the most noteworthy example of one
      - belter 4y ago
        There is a lot to criticize of Nassim Taleb, but your statement in unkind, as he did excellent work. I would say 1/3 of his audience, can't stand him because they don't like his style, but it's ultimately their loss. The other 1/3 don't like he is somewhat external to academic circles. I think [1] is a balanced evaluation. "...In short, Taleb resists categorization. If I had to pigeonhole him, I'd call him an anti-guru guru. That is, he mercilessly bashes other gurus, pundits and prophets and warns you not to fall for them. He depicts himself as a brave, lonely truth-teller in a world of fools and frauds. In so doing, he becomes a guru himself, with a cult-like following... ...even if you question what Taleb is saying—and you certainly should—he forces you to examine your own biases and assumptions. Yes, he can be irritating, but so are many of our most original thinkers..." [1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/nassim-taleb-is-annoying-but-antifragile-is-still-worth-reading/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/nassim-tale...
dominotw 4y ago
> But people have this weird way of taking things I have people in my friend circle who have opinions about joe rogan ( and his audience) even though they've never listened to him. Even top comment on this thread is a meta comment about unreasonable behavior joe rogan supporters or something.
sascha_sl 4y ago
The JREs guest roster only has two flavors. Right wing and "I'd rather not go too much in depth about my politics". There were maybe 5 episodes in the history of the show where Joe is confronted with left wing talking points, and aside from the Bernie episode it was always an accident. Notably, the one other exception is Joe calling bullshit on Ben Shapiro's claims. The show has never invited anyone in favor of affirmative trans healthcare, for instance. But they did invite Debra Soh and Abigail Shier almost purely because they were against it. But because the JRE pretends it's a free speech zone where no opinion is unheard, it creates a very biased view of public opinion in viewers. A division into "the woke mob" of ideologues and the "intellectual dark web" of people that are supposedly free of ideology. The show is massively contributing to what it says it hates.
- Veen 4y ago
  > The show has never invited anyone in favor of affirmative trans healthcare, for instance. He’s had Blaire White on.
  - sascha_sl 4y ago
    Blair White is a hardline transmedicalist who called usage of puberty blockers "child abuse" and self-describes as "center-right". She might be trans, but she really is on one ideological line with Shrier und Soh. I'm not sure if White would call for all transition to be banned when opportunistic (as some members of the GOP do now), whereas I have doubts about Shrier and Soh being honest about finding transition acceptable in principle, but that's really the only difference. Or are we not talking about the same person?
  - remote_phone 4y ago
    He also had Kristin Beck, former Navy Seal who is transgender. The parent post is someone who doesn’t listen to Rogan, and a perfect example of someone that casts Rogan as a transphobe because he dares to not tow 100% of the views that they want him to. This type of philosophical fascism is what is ruining our world today.
    - 4y ago
roenxi 4y ago
A fundamental of the human condition is we don't know who is lying and who is telling the truth. You can get a pretty good hit rate assuming everyone is lying, but the misses with that strategy are catastrophic because the rare truthful and productive people are dynamos. What people really want is someone who, as best they can, is a bit humble and a bit curious. A note which Rogan hits a lot better than most. It is irrelevant whether he is right or wrong, that isn't what people are looking for. They can't assess that and frankly most people don't prioritise the truth that highly. If they want to be told what is right and wrong they can go watch cable and get told by the likes of government officials, or the clergy. Neither are popular. People want to know what opinions are floating around. From that perspective, Joe Rogan does no wrong. He is fulfilling a role that people are desperate for. It is easy to overestimate the confident and noisy moralisers who worry about normal people hearing things that are not true - they aren't actually popular. That class of people are the sort who staff censorship bureaus.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  To add to this, Joe Rogan is higher quality questions than, eg, CNN anchors while having on heterodox specialists, eg Robert Malone. Joe Rogan also has lengthy interviews with major figures like Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, which aren’t done by traditional networks like CNN. I’m having trouble taking people who don’t see the value in that seriously — because it seems obvious to me why people would want a diversity of information.
jmyeet 4y ago
> Joe also likes to deflect ... I think there's some truth to what he says here. For some topics he actually just does let people talk. And that's fine. But there are some topics where Joe isn't just "asking questions" but is actively pushing a particular viewpoint. The first and most obvious one is vaccines. Covid has broken this man's brain. If you go back to March 2020, his interview with Michael Osterholm [1] was actually really good. It was one of the first I saw that recognized how serious this actually was. But for whatever reasons, Joe has decided vaccines are bad and he's had a parade of grifters and charlatans on to back up that view (eg Robert Malone). There is absolutely no evidence in the world that will change his mind. The second is all his manosphere [2] content. He really rode the wave of popularity of Jordan Peterson in particular and really gave him a platform with no pushback whatsoever. The recent rise of Andrew Tate is just the latest manifestation of this (fun fact: Tate dated JP's daughter a couple of years ago). The third is transgender people. Trans people broke a lot of people in a way that's reminiscent of 1990s era homophobia. Bill Maher is another example of this. So a big part of Joe's popularity isn't just a "dumb guy asking questions", it's that he pushes very normative and popular opinions. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manosphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manosphere
- remote_phone 4y ago
  You’re wrong on many levels. Joe Rogan as recently as last week said the vaccine is mostly safe and saved millions of lives. What he says is that the vaccine is more dangerous to some people than the narratives and pharmaceutical companies says. And he despises how you can’t even talk about the negative effects for some people without being cast as an anti-vaxxer. You entirely proved his point. The exact same thing applies to transgender people. He believes 100% in their ability to be treated as the gender they believe they are. But his main disagreement is pretending that it’s okay that biological males vs biological females is fair. It’s not, especially in sports like MMA which he is an expert in. Yet by talking about it, he is cast as a transphobe just like you accused him of. And to correct you further, the 90s were the period where gay rights went mainstream so you’re even wrong about that. That when people started understanding that it wasn’t a choice and was biological. Shows like Dawson’s Creek really humanized being gay for an entire generation. That’s when Canada made gay marriage legal.
vlunkr 4y ago
> Joe can do no wrong and if people dislike him it's because they don't "get it" In my experience, it’s the opposite with Joe Rogan. His fans seem pretty casual, it’s the people who don’t like the show who are extremely outspoken about it.
- mbostleman 4y ago
  Exactly. It seems like a common pattern - I often wonder how much a rise in popularity is because of those that like it vs. those that are somehow angered by it.
bnralt 4y ago
I agree with all of your points. But it's worth pointing out that most "public intellectual" interactions become a form of Kabuki theater. It might be a friendly interview, where you can guess what questions are going to be asked and what the answers are. Or it might be an antagonistic debate, where the two sides are yelling talking points at each other. But it's rarely surprising. What's interesting about Rogan is you can often find theses talking head types getting easily flummoxed by normal questions that are outside of the ritualized interactions they're used to. Watch Rogan talk to Shapiro about his criticism of Colin Kaepernick, or him asking Bari Weiss why she calls Tulsi Gabbard an "Assad toady." He seems to like both of them (perhaps even to the poitn where both are friends), but his simple questions end up making both of them look completely foolish. And because he's genuinely curious and doing it in a non-aggressive manner, it doesn't get lost in the furor of a antagonistic debate format. Again, I agree with your criticisms of him and could add several more myself. I think it's one of those situations where in the valley of the blind, the one eyed man is king. The traditional forms of public debate are so shallow that a curious guy just asking random questions can short circuit most of the folks there.
- jrumbut 4y ago
  As a disclaimer, I have not listened to his show extensively. But while he may be genuinely curious the sum of his questions and his guest choices express a thesis and for avid listeners seems to become a program of study that leads somewhere. It seems like it's always freshman year of college at the JRE and you're learning all this fascinating stuff that shows you the world is larger and more mysterious than you imagined, but he never quite gets to sophomore year when those mundane details are filled in and you see why all the quirky, obscure things remain quirky and obscure. I guess on some level it's not his job but since he has had this success I do wish he would take it on, to give the listeners more protein with their sugar.
  - snovv_crash 4y ago
    In most topics in life we are all at Freshman level and it would be good to remember that. Experience and expertise in one place often leads to overconfidence elsewhere, we see this repeatedly whether it is Elon buying Twitter or Jordan Peterson weighing in on topics outside of clinical psychology. And it affects us too, not just celebrities.
screye 4y ago
> Joe can do no wrong and if people dislike him it's because they don't "get it" and they are just being soft. I find that this is a reaction to a reaction. I have frequently heard women (and some elitist men) make fun of those who listen to Joe Rogan, long before Joe was every heralded as a hero of the masses. It is only after he started receiving what was perceived to be unjust criticism that people started leaning into the 'with him or against him' polarization.

acadapter 4y ago

In other words, he's a glorified talk show host?

hackerbrother 4y ago
talk, show, host… yes, that is exactly what he is!

Jhjjjjjjjjrte 4y ago

What guest are you specifically talking about?

axg11 4y ago

> Joe ask the "dumb questions." The questions you would ask if you as a laymen were sitting in front of a Nobel Prize winning scientist This is exactly why he’s so popular. Most people are laymen. Joe doesn’t have a research team coming up with optimal talking points. He’s a regular minded guy asking regular questions. He achieves depth through the sheer length of interviews.

mbg721 4y ago
Joe is playing the same role as the youngest child at the Seder. It's a popular format because it serves a genuine human need. If no one asks the most basic questions, no one gets the most basic answers.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Well sure, but if the youngest child is primarily querying the schizophrenic uncle and taking his answers with complete credulity, then pawning them off on millions of other credulous people, it’s reasonable to feel that there’s a serious downside to such an act.
  - dominotw 4y ago
    will someone think of the credulous people.
    - ethanbond 4y ago
      Doing so is essentially a hallmark of a society. Laws against fraud, for example, are among the oldest in existence, despite fraud overwhelmingly targeting the most credulous among us (for obvious reasons). This is a good thing, actually.
      - dominotw 4y ago
        > Doing so is essentially a hallmark of a society. would this imply something is not right with our society because there aren't laws against listening to joe rogan.
        ethanbond 4y ago
        Nope! It implies that yes, someone should think of the credulous people. I don’t believe censoring Rogan is justified/wise/useful/etc. — even if it were it’d still be illegal anyway. But does that mean I think we should just throw credulous folks to the wolves with snarky remarks like “won’t someone think of the credulous people?!” We should think of the credulous people, and take society’s threats against them and their threat to society seriously.

user3939382 4y ago

I’ve heard Jon Stewart do this. He puts all this effort into political commentary and when he got called out on something said “Hey my show comes on after crank yankers!” Oh so when you’re wrong now you shouldn’t be taken seriously, I see.

monocasa 4y ago
To be fair, he was telling that to CNN presenters who were trying to deflect his accusations that they were enabling political theater by saying his show does the same thing, missing the obvious point that CNN should be held to a higher journalistic standard than Comedy Central.
thrown_22 4y ago
The last decade hasn't been kind to the people who I looked up to when I was a teen. Turns out the left wasn't any better than the right, they could just be honest when they weren't in power. Once they were, well it's obviously your fault for holding them to the same standards they held the other team to.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
hotpotamus 4y ago
I'm curious where Jon Stewart ever said he should be taken seriously? On his comedy show I mean. In his testimonies to congress and whatnot, he doesn't do the comedy thing. I'd also say the same thing about Al Franken - he was pretty deliberate about "de-comedying" or whatever it was he called it when he went into his first term in the Senate. I will admit that that would not have been as much work for him as it would be for Stewart.
- mikepurvis 4y ago
  Pretty sure the GP is referring to the famous Crossfire takedown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE There's a play by play of it on Crossfire's Wikipedia page also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossfire_(American_TV_program)#Jon_Stewart's_appearance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossfire_(American_TV_program...

paulcole 4y ago

> "I'm an idiot don't listen to me" This is right out of the Jon Stewart playbook. He can say he’s a “comedian” when criticized but clearly loves the influence he has a “journalist.” Great schtick if you can pull it off.

SQueeeeeL 4y ago
Damn, two people in this comment section brought up some random Comedy Central late night host from the mid 2010s. I feel like this is some elaborate bit, like Joe Rogan somehow has a secret conspiracy of how to reply to that comment, and they're all gonna pop out
- clucas 4y ago
  I'm going to take a guess... you are probably under 30, and the people who brought up Jon Stewart are probably over 35. He was pretty big (bigger than Rogan, probably) when we were forming our political opinions in high school and college, and he also blended the line of entertainment and political commentary. It's a very natural comparison. Don't be too quick to cry conspiracy.
- paulcole 4y ago
  To be fair, I find Joe Rogan, Jon Stewart, and myself equally insufferable.
- romanhn 4y ago
  Random host? Jon Stewart was huge, he defined political comedy for over 15 years. His audience though likely didn't overlap much with JRE due to different political leanings (well, that and age).
  - remote_phone 4y ago
    He unfortunately taught a generation of millennials that simply pointing out hypocrisy was enough. Trump’s presidency showed that it entirely wasn’t.
  - 4y ago

mattwilsonn888 4y ago

Joe is an intelligent person. One of the clear signals of that is that he is willing to bring on experts and ask basic questions without being embarrassed in an attempt to understand, that also explains why he has such a general audience - for experts its a great venue to break down and think neutrally about their topic, since Joe's main agenda is to learn. As for misinformation, the word you seem to avoid saying - you clearly don't have any problem identifying when Joe is unsure of what he is saying, so I guess you are concerned about what other people are thinking. I'm not sure your speculation about how other people think is grounds for useful feedback. In fact I'm not sure you know much at all 3 episodes in.

hericium 4y ago
When he doesn't understand someone, he enthusiastically agrees. When he's hosting someone with PhD or otherwise smarter than him, he just says "ooooooh" a lot and is overenthusiastic. He doesn't ask smart questions. He asks questions his audience will understand. He was "intelligent" maybe a few times in his life. Those are represented by the third eye on show's emblem/logo.
- stoplying1 4y ago
  It's always something to watch people with certain types of relationships to online celebrities construct this entire illusory, aspirational set of attributes onto their e-celeb and then reverse integrate it as a part of their own internal identity effectively. Resulting in "asking dumb questions and thoughtlessly yielding to the last authority that spoke" being portrayed as some height of intelligence.
  - mattwilsonn888 4y ago
    It might say more how many cognitive assumptions you've built in the minds of people who enjoy a show with a fairly basic citation. How much mental gymnastics do you need to do to figure out why people enjoy hearing basic questions about complicated topics?
- mattwilsonn888 4y ago

evv555 4y ago

>But people have this weird way of taking things they like and not only rejecting criticism but making it their whole identity. Joe can do no wrong and if people dislike him it's because they don't "get it" and they are just being soft. I see what you're getting at but I think you're putting the cart before the horse here. JRE has become a highly politicized target and criticism(or praise) of the show is a proxy narrative for half-dozen other issues. This is just more identity politics spilling over into more facets of our lives. >Joe also likes to deflect by saying "I'm an idiot don't listen to me" which hey that's fine but if you're going to ramble about how the moon is made of cheese then say "don't listen to me" but then bring on a guest who is going to talk about how the moon is made of cheese; the line that is being pushed is pretty clear even if it is unintentional. I think the diversity of perspectives is a valuable part of the show. But it's a balancing act with many pitfalls.

threeseed 4y ago
> JRE has become a highly politicized target He has deliberately made it that way because it is highly profitable for him.
- WithinReason 4y ago
  So then why did he reject Trump when he wanted to come on the podcast?
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    All downside, no upside. It wouldn't boost his popularity, but would open him up to new levels of criticism.
    - WithinReason 4y ago
      It would boost his popularity with half the country, and he would get an insane amount of views on the interview. All upside no downside.

bhedgeoser 4y ago

> but if you're going to ramble about how the moon is made of cheese Examples of stupid things he's said?

Enginerrrd 4y ago

I think you're underestimating the power of dumb questions to an extent. Like, I wholeheartedly agree, he doesn't achieve good interviews by the quality of his questions. Except... that he kind of does, in a weird way. Experts on the show are happy to use those questions as a launching point to correct whatever incorrect assumptions he had in asking it. He's very good at getting people to open up and talk. Perhaps dumb questions play a role in that? Perhaps they make people feel comfortable by validating their expert status in the room or something, I don't know. But I do know that it seems to work. I also know he's a comedian. Comedy is fundamentally a weirdly manipulative art form... You carefully craft a set of jokes and then practice over and over again to make it feel like an organic, albeit funny conversation. Every little pause, intonation, turn of phrase, it's all intentional. So, being that he is a practiced comedian, it's possible some of that interview style is pretty intentional too.

eldenwrong 4y ago
HN is full of IYIs.
- Veen 4y ago
  Intellectual Yet Idiot, in case anyone was wondering. It’s a favourite insult of Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    Ironic given he's perhaps the most noteworthy example of one
    - belter 4y ago
      There is a lot to criticize of Nassim Taleb, but your statement in unkind, as he did excellent work. I would say 1/3 of his audience, can't stand him because they don't like his style, but it's ultimately their loss. The other 1/3 don't like he is somewhat external to academic circles. I think [1] is a balanced evaluation. "...In short, Taleb resists categorization. If I had to pigeonhole him, I'd call him an anti-guru guru. That is, he mercilessly bashes other gurus, pundits and prophets and warns you not to fall for them. He depicts himself as a brave, lonely truth-teller in a world of fools and frauds. In so doing, he becomes a guru himself, with a cult-like following... ...even if you question what Taleb is saying—and you certainly should—he forces you to examine your own biases and assumptions. Yes, he can be irritating, but so are many of our most original thinkers..." [1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/nassim-taleb-is-annoying-but-antifragile-is-still-worth-reading/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/nassim-tale...

dominotw 4y ago

> But people have this weird way of taking things I have people in my friend circle who have opinions about joe rogan ( and his audience) even though they've never listened to him. Even top comment on this thread is a meta comment about unreasonable behavior joe rogan supporters or something.

sascha_sl 4y ago

The JREs guest roster only has two flavors. Right wing and "I'd rather not go too much in depth about my politics". There were maybe 5 episodes in the history of the show where Joe is confronted with left wing talking points, and aside from the Bernie episode it was always an accident. Notably, the one other exception is Joe calling bullshit on Ben Shapiro's claims. The show has never invited anyone in favor of affirmative trans healthcare, for instance. But they did invite Debra Soh and Abigail Shier almost purely because they were against it. But because the JRE pretends it's a free speech zone where no opinion is unheard, it creates a very biased view of public opinion in viewers. A division into "the woke mob" of ideologues and the "intellectual dark web" of people that are supposedly free of ideology. The show is massively contributing to what it says it hates.

Veen 4y ago
> The show has never invited anyone in favor of affirmative trans healthcare, for instance. He’s had Blaire White on.
- sascha_sl 4y ago
  Blair White is a hardline transmedicalist who called usage of puberty blockers "child abuse" and self-describes as "center-right". She might be trans, but she really is on one ideological line with Shrier und Soh. I'm not sure if White would call for all transition to be banned when opportunistic (as some members of the GOP do now), whereas I have doubts about Shrier and Soh being honest about finding transition acceptable in principle, but that's really the only difference. Or are we not talking about the same person?
- remote_phone 4y ago
  He also had Kristin Beck, former Navy Seal who is transgender. The parent post is someone who doesn’t listen to Rogan, and a perfect example of someone that casts Rogan as a transphobe because he dares to not tow 100% of the views that they want him to. This type of philosophical fascism is what is ruining our world today.
  - 4y ago

roenxi 4y ago

A fundamental of the human condition is we don't know who is lying and who is telling the truth. You can get a pretty good hit rate assuming everyone is lying, but the misses with that strategy are catastrophic because the rare truthful and productive people are dynamos. What people really want is someone who, as best they can, is a bit humble and a bit curious. A note which Rogan hits a lot better than most. It is irrelevant whether he is right or wrong, that isn't what people are looking for. They can't assess that and frankly most people don't prioritise the truth that highly. If they want to be told what is right and wrong they can go watch cable and get told by the likes of government officials, or the clergy. Neither are popular. People want to know what opinions are floating around. From that perspective, Joe Rogan does no wrong. He is fulfilling a role that people are desperate for. It is easy to overestimate the confident and noisy moralisers who worry about normal people hearing things that are not true - they aren't actually popular. That class of people are the sort who staff censorship bureaus.

zmgsabst 4y ago
To add to this, Joe Rogan is higher quality questions than, eg, CNN anchors while having on heterodox specialists, eg Robert Malone. Joe Rogan also has lengthy interviews with major figures like Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, which aren’t done by traditional networks like CNN. I’m having trouble taking people who don’t see the value in that seriously — because it seems obvious to me why people would want a diversity of information.

jmyeet 4y ago

> Joe also likes to deflect ... I think there's some truth to what he says here. For some topics he actually just does let people talk. And that's fine. But there are some topics where Joe isn't just "asking questions" but is actively pushing a particular viewpoint. The first and most obvious one is vaccines. Covid has broken this man's brain. If you go back to March 2020, his interview with Michael Osterholm [1] was actually really good. It was one of the first I saw that recognized how serious this actually was. But for whatever reasons, Joe has decided vaccines are bad and he's had a parade of grifters and charlatans on to back up that view (eg Robert Malone). There is absolutely no evidence in the world that will change his mind. The second is all his manosphere [2] content. He really rode the wave of popularity of Jordan Peterson in particular and really gave him a platform with no pushback whatsoever. The recent rise of Andrew Tate is just the latest manifestation of this (fun fact: Tate dated JP's daughter a couple of years ago). The third is transgender people. Trans people broke a lot of people in a way that's reminiscent of 1990s era homophobia. Bill Maher is another example of this. So a big part of Joe's popularity isn't just a "dumb guy asking questions", it's that he pushes very normative and popular opinions. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manosphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manosphere

remote_phone 4y ago
You’re wrong on many levels. Joe Rogan as recently as last week said the vaccine is mostly safe and saved millions of lives. What he says is that the vaccine is more dangerous to some people than the narratives and pharmaceutical companies says. And he despises how you can’t even talk about the negative effects for some people without being cast as an anti-vaxxer. You entirely proved his point. The exact same thing applies to transgender people. He believes 100% in their ability to be treated as the gender they believe they are. But his main disagreement is pretending that it’s okay that biological males vs biological females is fair. It’s not, especially in sports like MMA which he is an expert in. Yet by talking about it, he is cast as a transphobe just like you accused him of. And to correct you further, the 90s were the period where gay rights went mainstream so you’re even wrong about that. That when people started understanding that it wasn’t a choice and was biological. Shows like Dawson’s Creek really humanized being gay for an entire generation. That’s when Canada made gay marriage legal.

vlunkr 4y ago

> Joe can do no wrong and if people dislike him it's because they don't "get it" In my experience, it’s the opposite with Joe Rogan. His fans seem pretty casual, it’s the people who don’t like the show who are extremely outspoken about it.

mbostleman 4y ago
Exactly. It seems like a common pattern - I often wonder how much a rise in popularity is because of those that like it vs. those that are somehow angered by it.

bnralt 4y ago

I agree with all of your points. But it's worth pointing out that most "public intellectual" interactions become a form of Kabuki theater. It might be a friendly interview, where you can guess what questions are going to be asked and what the answers are. Or it might be an antagonistic debate, where the two sides are yelling talking points at each other. But it's rarely surprising. What's interesting about Rogan is you can often find theses talking head types getting easily flummoxed by normal questions that are outside of the ritualized interactions they're used to. Watch Rogan talk to Shapiro about his criticism of Colin Kaepernick, or him asking Bari Weiss why she calls Tulsi Gabbard an "Assad toady." He seems to like both of them (perhaps even to the poitn where both are friends), but his simple questions end up making both of them look completely foolish. And because he's genuinely curious and doing it in a non-aggressive manner, it doesn't get lost in the furor of a antagonistic debate format. Again, I agree with your criticisms of him and could add several more myself. I think it's one of those situations where in the valley of the blind, the one eyed man is king. The traditional forms of public debate are so shallow that a curious guy just asking random questions can short circuit most of the folks there.

jrumbut 4y ago
As a disclaimer, I have not listened to his show extensively. But while he may be genuinely curious the sum of his questions and his guest choices express a thesis and for avid listeners seems to become a program of study that leads somewhere. It seems like it's always freshman year of college at the JRE and you're learning all this fascinating stuff that shows you the world is larger and more mysterious than you imagined, but he never quite gets to sophomore year when those mundane details are filled in and you see why all the quirky, obscure things remain quirky and obscure. I guess on some level it's not his job but since he has had this success I do wish he would take it on, to give the listeners more protein with their sugar.
- snovv_crash 4y ago
  In most topics in life we are all at Freshman level and it would be good to remember that. Experience and expertise in one place often leads to overconfidence elsewhere, we see this repeatedly whether it is Elon buying Twitter or Jordan Peterson weighing in on topics outside of clinical psychology. And it affects us too, not just celebrities.

screye 4y ago

> Joe can do no wrong and if people dislike him it's because they don't "get it" and they are just being soft. I find that this is a reaction to a reaction. I have frequently heard women (and some elitist men) make fun of those who listen to Joe Rogan, long before Joe was every heralded as a hero of the masses. It is only after he started receiving what was perceived to be unjust criticism that people started leaning into the 'with him or against him' polarization.