Of course, not Tomi Lahren though...
this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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I don't go out of my way to listen to him, but some of his episodes with people like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Brian Cox come up in my YouTube feeds. As long as Rogan isn't talking then they're ok.
And that is exactly the problem. He did some episodes with reputable media figures/science communicators, so it seems to a naive listener, like these are just regular interviews. And then he has a bunch of weirdos that just spout conspiracies, bullshit and hate, but since it's in the exact same style as the interviews with reputable people, a naive listener might assume that the conspiracy nut is as trustworthy as all the other people. And that's dangerous.
The appeal of his show is that he has a wide range of guests who are all willing to sit down and have a fun conversation. His podcast isn't NPR, and he has no reason to exclusively seek out "reputable" people. He said many times that he hosts people who he thinks are interesting enough to have a conversation with. Besides nobody in their right mind thinks that Bob Lazar is as reputable as Neil deGrasse Tyson or Alex Jones is as reputable as Jon Stewart. The naive listener that you're talking about doesn't exist anywhere but in your head.
Sorry, but this is utter garbage.
Rogan's audience are primarily young men. They have no idea, who Lazar is, not because they're stupid, but because they are young and Lazar simply does not exist in their world - because he's fringe. But since Rogan does not object even the most outrageous arguments, for someone who knows nothing about a field, this can seem pretty plausible - that guy's an expert after all.
... and then takes every of their arguments at face value. If he'd be even a tiny bit of a journalist, he would ask actual questions and maybe even contextualize some of their arguments. He treats even the most obscure, deranged ufologist just like a proper astrophysicst. And that is what adults call false balance.
He legitimizes dangerous people, his stupidity is not a persona - he is actually stupid. That's extremely problematic.
As a contrast: In Germany there's a podcast called Jung&Naiv (young & naive), where the host plays a naive young person and asks naive, seemingly stupid questions, and he has a pretty wide range of guests. But in actuality he is not stupid and unprepared, but highly intelligent and actually really really well prepared - he managed to force the ukrainian ambassador to be recalled for not being willing to admit that a ukranian nazi in WW2 was, in fact, a nazi.
Somehow I highly, highly doubt that your average typical 20 year old is going to seriously think that a guy talking about spooky aliens in area 51 is an expert, let alone accept what they say as true. Even in the extremely rare off chance that somebody does believe someone like Bob Lazar, they're literally a 10 second Google search from figuring out that he's a nut. Again, the premises that you give don't exist anywhere but in your mind. If you can figure out that Bob Lazar is a nut and I can figure out he's a not, then so can anybody else.
He's not a journalist... I'm not sure why you're having difficulty grasping this. His podcast is not about fact checking his guests or grilling them with hard questions or making them uncomfortable. His podcast is literally about having interesting conversations with interesting people. Like normal, lighthearted, organic conversations.
No he doesn't. I'm sure you listen to a few podcasts and watch a few TV talks shows, do you legitimize every guest that comes on them? If you don't then it's the same for others, and if you do really legitimize every person you see on the shows you consume then your statement applies more to you than to him.
Again, Joe Rogan's podcast is not meant to be political or journalistic or anything of that nature. It's meant to be interesting and entertaining. You can't compare it to some political podcast in Germany because they're not even the same thing. It's like questioning why Family Guy isn't like Painting with Bob Ross. Like yes, they're both podcasts, but they do completely different things, serve different audiences, and have different intentions behind them.
That's why his podcast is as popular as it is. He's a very good conversationalist, he knows how to navigate through a conversation while letting the guests do most of the talking.