Joe Rogan Isn't Openminded—He's Bad
By Abe Greenwald

Joe Rogan is the most popular podcaster in the world. Last year, Spotify said that 14.5 million people listen to his show on that platform alone. Add in those who listen elsewhere or watch him on YouTube, and he’s an all but inescapable element of the air we breathe. As Rogan’s influence has grown, however, he’s become an atmospheric pollutant. 

Yes, I know that the old media gatekeepers were biased and censorious and kept important dissenting opinions out of public discussions. Conservatives have been complaining about that since before Rogan was known as the guy on Fear Factor. And, yes, there’s much virtue in airing a wider range of beliefs in a less sanctimonious ecosphere.

But Rogan commits the sins of the old narrow-minded gatekeepers in reverse. He lets in anyone who shows up on his radar. He exercises no discernment. The problem isn’t that Rogan is indifferent to his guest’s ideological positions. It’s that he’s indifferent to the quality or legitimacy of their work and claims. As a result, his show has become little more than a vessel for cranks to reach the mainstream.

This week’s crank was Darryl Cooper, who first intruded on our lives when he explained to Tucker Carlson a few months ago that Winston Churchill was the real villain of World War II and that the Nazi extermination machine was a humane project gone wrong. On Rogan’s show, Cooper offered more fake history aimed at rehabilitating the image of the Nazis, and he threw in some blows at Zionism, as well.

In response, Rogan expressed outrage. Not at Cooper—but at those who call Cooper a Nazi-apologist. Rogan also voiced his general frustration with people who, he believes, are “exaggerating” the problem of anti-Semitism to impose censorship. “Turning everyone into a monster so that everyone is scared to talk at all,” he says, “is the main objective.”

Tens of millions of people will hear this grimy sociohistorical discourse. How many of them will disagree with it? Even if it’s a majority—if—that leaves millions who will accept it at face value.

There are, it turns out, few true natural-born skeptics. Most people who claim to be skeptical about what they hear are really just mistrustful of one side. They’ll swallow whatever the opposing side feeds them, no matter how rotten. “Skeptics” of religion are dupes for atheist activism, “skeptics” of the U.S. government are dupes for conspiracy theories, “skeptics” of Israel are dupes for Hamas, and so on.

But Rogan is just openminded, right? Isn’t that why his audience loves him? No, he’s skeptical of the establishment in all its permutations, and so are they. That makes them dupes for crackpots and zealots.

In the end, Rogan isn’t opening up the discourse. He’s refocusing it on the intellectual fringe, which, given his popularity, ceases to be the fringe at all. And he’s far from alone. The podcast universe is practically designed for “skeptical” listeners. It grew into behemoth because media consumers had become skeptical of mainstream media. So all those lovely benefits of removing the guardrails and fostering ideological diversity have met their end in a market that prizes screwballs and extremists. We’re no better off than we were. We’re just in a different nightmare.

Abe Greenwald is the executive editor of COMMENTARY.