SIO322: Again with the Garbage Free Speech Arguments

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:11 Thomas: And welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 323. I'm Thomas, and another solo show. I've got opinions that I barely feel like are worth sharing.

0:00:24 Thomas: Marginally worth sharing! No, I want to talk about this Joe Rogan thing. I want talk about the terrible free speech arguments. But I think... This is tough, because so much of this has already been said, not only by everybody else in the world, but also by me. Me. But at the same time, there's still the same terrible arguments around this kind of thing over and over and over again.

And also, I read a million things, jotting down notes, and I feel like there's maybe some interesting and or entertaining things to say here. So we go, adding one more voice to the mix. And then hopefully next week, Lindsay will be back with some science. I think it's a good, fun balance. I don't know if I can keep this up all the time, but I'm going to try to. Anyway, let's talk about it. Here we go.

The properties of Reddit, I actually think I don't need to do a basic explainer on Joe Rogan. I think all the facts are probably known, but very quickly, immensely popular, the most popular podcast, I believe, by some measures, The Joe Rogans Show. And he has a host of men on his show. It's a very man-centric show. Virtually always men, at least a high percentage. And he talks about men's stuff. I actually love Joe Rogan as a fight commentator.

He's always been like, honestly, the best at that. But I wish he just did that. That'd be great. For some reason, for years now, I don't know, decade, more than a decade, he's just got this podcast where he just, you know, interviews, I guess, people in a way that I've always found intolerable to listen to. It's scatterbrained, but not in an interesting way. It is scatterbrained in kind of an ignorant way, kind of a gish-gallopy way.

Often his interviews would be with people that I usually don't care about. And over the years, as it got toward 2016 and all that, it tended to be the same people that I was kind of, um, to, I guess, fight against in some ways, like Brett Weinstein and those kind of, all the, all the manosphere type of people.

Um, it's weird because he's been Joe Rogan has long been very mainstream, at least for men, and that there's a component of that that I think is worth, um, with the fact that, like, much as there's people like you or I, perhaps, who don't listen to him, think he's kind of dumb and think he's doing harm in the world by the misinformation he's putting out, it's not the case that he's not popular, that he's niche, or that we can ignore him and then it'll just go away.

Like, he's, the literally might be the most popular podcaster, which is weird. I don't understand it, but that's the facts we're given. I think it's at least worth bearing that in mind, even though I think I'll later criticize some people who say that exact thing.

But anyway, I wonder if, you know, Lindsay came on here and talked about parasocial relationships with podcasters, among others, and I wonder maybe part of the key to Joe Rogan's success is that, to a large group of people, he is somebody who is well suited for a parasocial relationship. As in, maybe people, I don't know, I'm just guessing, you know, maybe people tend to have parasocial relationships with people who they, I don't feel like they could be friends with in real life.

And Joe Rogan, I think, for a lot of dudes, is that exact dude. Like, he would be, a probably, a fun dude to talk to, you know, pretty funny here and there, you know, especially speaking to them. At least, I've never found him that funny, really, but that's just me. You dude's dude, fight He's a good fight commentator. He knows what he's talking about. So has that level of expertise. It's kind of a gateway in for a lot of dudes, I think.

And then they, I guess, also listened to, like, the Moon Landing Was Faked episode that Joe Rogan will do. It's very weird. It is a weird thing that exists. Anyway, the controversy, obviously, is among other things, like, there have been a lot of controversies with Joe Rogan, but the latest one involves this vaccine misinformation and the fact that some artists on Spotify, including Neil Young and a few others now, have said they are taking their stuff off Spotify if Joe Rogan is on it.

And thus begins the great restating of terrible fucking free speech arguments that make no sense. And it's just, it's amazing that we still see them. Like, the fact that I can still go on the internet and see somebody saying, like, well, this is real, like, seeing real things. Well, weird that people don't get mad at libraries for having racist books in them, that's weird.

I see you very mad at Amazon for selling someone's book, his book, or, you know, just shit like that, and you're like, okay, um, that would be a great point if the two things were anything alike, but they're not. Like, specifically, Spotify is not a library. It It is not a neutral platform. It's already, it's one thing, we can have a debate about neutral platforms. That is a debate.

And, say, neutral platforms, I don't even know that such platforms exist anymore because of the way algorithms work online. No matter what you are now, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, whatever it is, Google even, like Google search results, there's really any such thing as neutral anymore. It's all tailored. It's all an algorithm that they can twist the knobs of and have massive effects on us, a society, just by their little algorithm knobs.

I assume when it uses knobs, whatever they, however they tweak it, has massive effects on us, you for better or worse, often worse. There's, for example, like when Twitter recently made that change that says, like, like, hey, you sure you want to tweet this article if you haven't read it? Apparently that had a massive effect. People, I think, reduced it by, like, I don't know, 40% or something. Like, just little nudges like that. Just to give an example of, like, how not neutral things are.

There isn't really such a thing as neutral in this day and age of internet platforms. You know, there's all those, there's a zillion decisions just like that one. Do we put a warning saying, should you read this article or not? Like, that's a decision. And honestly, either way is not really neutral. Neutral would just be like, yeah, you Google something and it just shows you alphabetically, or I don't know, randomly, I guess, all the results with any, but that's also useless.

Like, we wouldn't really want things to be that way. Anyway, all this is to say that Spotify is not a fucking library. Not only is it not a library, let's perfect the analogy. Let's say, yeah, no, I'm not mad at a library necessarily for hosting, for having, or like a bookstore, Barnes & Noble, I don't know, whatever. I'm not mad at a Barnes & Noble for having a book on the shelves. Jordan Peterson's dumb ass book, we'll say, or some other book like that.

I am not necessarily picketing Barnes & Noble. Now, already there is an interesting question that, Noble, a physical bookstore, is not an infinite space. So there is decisions, there are decisions being made. There is, like, thought and opinion and strategy and whatever else that will go into their decision to have a book or not have a book.

Tweaking analogy toward the Spotify end, now let's say, okay, yeah, it's a Barnes and Noble, they stock books, whatever, they kind of base it on what's popular, all right, that's sort of neutral. Now, okay, Jordan Peterson comes up with a new book and they just plaster it in the front, every window. It's all over the place. It is, like, the whole storefront is just like, Jordan Peterson, buy his book, you know.

Then it's like, well, that's not really neutral, you might be mad about that actually. And replace Jordan Peterson with somebody like, even more obviously, like Alex Jones's new book or something. If he writes, I don't even know if he writes books, but if he's, if he doesn't, then he's really missing out on an opportunity, I'm sure.

But something like that, where it's not, you're not, not only is it more than just this infinite library space that's neutral, it already wasn't quite that because you have a limited space and you got to make decisions, but now you're, like, actively promoting a thing, that seems a little different. And now let's get to, let's adjust it to Spotify.

Spotify is like if Barnes and Noble ripped off every other author that you love, like, just ripped them out, like they were the only place that any author could sell their book. Now this is sounding like Amazon, actually, would have been a better analogy. Let's pretend, though, that this Barnes & Noble is the one place, basically, where you can even sell books. Like, everything else is a drop in the bucket. There's, like, not really anywhere else to do it.

And therefore, Barnes & Noble rips off all your favorite authors. Whoever your favorite author is, they just rip them off, like, pay them nothing for their work. And then Barnes & Noble is like, wow, we have all this money from ripping off all the authors in the world. I know, let's pay some awful person a hundred million dollars to write a book that's only available here and nowhere else, exclusive, tied to our brand.

And we're going to pay a hundred million dollars for that person to do that out of the ill -gotten gains of being a monopoly power that rips off all the other people. Now, now you see why it's ridiculous to make that fucking argument. Now that we've perfected the analogy, you see how absurd that is, that to say, oh, why wouldn't you criticize a library? And that's OK, well, let's adjust the terms and get it all equal. And yes, I would.

I would actually criticize Barnes and Noble in that instance, or a library, whatever you want to do. So that's a terrible fucking argument. I can't believe I still see, though, the fact that I still see that kind of arguing online anywhere, is just a sign of how Dunning-Kruger we are as a society. Like, there are people who think, that unaware of how dumb that fucking opinion is, and I, I'm still seeing it somehow. I don't know how, like, well, that's, that's a bad sign.

That shouldn't, that's an opinion so dumb. In a perfect world, you wouldn't even encounter it because it's so fucking stupid. So let me state for the record my position on this whole Spotify thing, because yes, Spotify already, before Spotify, here's what sucks. I'm a Spotify customer, although I'm really flirting with the idea of canceling it. I just got to find an alternative, but a good alternative that has, like, all music, I will do it.

In fact, I'm open, let me know, listeners that feel free to to message me or whatever, tell me what the best Spotify alternative is. I will switch because I strong, I haven't yet, but, you know, whatever, it's maybe I haven't been charged this month, I don't know, we'll see, they'll get that extra $19 or whatever the hell, at $9, I don't know. Anyway, point is, I strongly support artists, if not people canceling Spotify, which, you know, if you want to do that, do that.

It's kind of hard because I do require listening to music, that is a very important thing to me, and Spotify is the place where all the music is, and, like, specifically lots of artists that I wouldn't really have access to, apart from, I don't know how, how else would anyone listen to music now, a CD player, I get an iPod, I could only, I, that doesn't even exist, anyway, how would you do it, YouTube or something, I'd, that sucks.

Anyway, point is, I can definitely understand people not canceling Spotify if they don't feel like they have any other options. Now, again, let me know if there's an option that has, you know, the artists I need, the Beatles, I know, all those kind of, those large artists that are often exclusive, that haven't signed on with everywhere, those kind artists.

Anyway, I do support, I absolutely do support 100%, I wish people would do it, the artists saying, like, okay, I'm not going to be a party to this, because they're already getting ripped off anyway. Already, forget Joe Rogan for a moment, artists already should have been doing this with Spotify, and I think some of them do, and I, I think there was some Taylor Swift drama about it a while ago, I think she was able to negotiate better rates.

There's a little bit of, like, last come, first... no, what am I trying to say? First come, get screwed, I don't, is there a phrase that that is? There's, there's a, there is a little, there, there was a little bit of, there a little of, like, if you resisted going to Spotify and you're an artist who has, you know, some amount of juice and are going to pull, like, a significant artist that's going to pull people to the platform, then you really could get a good deal on the backs of a lot of artists who had no other choice and just signed on for crap rates.

I mean, you have to stream someone's song a billion times for them to get, like, four cents, you know, it's just a joke for most artists. But then, like, the late comers who held out, who had the clout to be able to, like, hold out and negotiate, I think they get better deals. Um, so there's that, but anyway, it's already, so Spotify is is a crap platform.

It makes a bunch of money by ripping off all our favorite musicians, that already sucks, but, like, you know, we're in a crap world and it's like, I don't know what to do about that. They have all the music, so I kind of go along with it. So already it would be good for for artists to, uh, to this. If they could, could like, band together, if enough significant artists could get together to make a difference there. Like, unionize? I don't know, that would be cool.

It makes sense that it hasn't happened, it's kind of a challenge. But now add into the mix that not only are we ripping you the fuck off all the time, we're going to use all that money, God, we just are sitting on piles of cash over here from ripping you off for your music, artists, not only that, let's use that money to pay an asshole a hundred million dollars to spread vaccine misinformation.

You, like, you start to get any of these stupid fucking opinions about, like, oh, I can't believe, you know, Neil Young's trying to censor, trying, Rogan was, First Amendment censor, no, what are you kidding me, censor? So I'm of the opinion that if someone tells me a great alternative to Spotify, I'll also try to Google it, but, you know, it's got to be good, I will cancel my Spotify, but also I, people should cancel, people should, artists have the real power.

If there's enough of them, like Taylor Swift, I think, could end this whole thing, that would be nice. Uh, she, I think I saw a post that, like, she could end this with a tweet or something, like, yeah, do that. Please, Taylor Swift, I, that'd be awesome. Does she have enough money? She has enough money, you know, to where she could just be like, let's end this, or maybe she just needs more money, I don't know. I don't understand how the people at the top operate.

People, that much, I get it when it's like marginal, you know, like you're somebody's barely scraping by, you're an artist, you get a few bucks from Spotify, you're like, well, can't really give that up, I have to do it, I'm kind of stuck. When you're a massive artist, I don't, I don't understand the mindset or how those decisions get made. Are there just so many people running the business that is Taylor Swift that, like, this doesn't happen?

I, not to put all the pressure on her, but, like, also, equivalent, you know, estates, the Beatles, uh, whoever, Led Zeppelin, I don't know, whoever's the most, like, streamed, um, whoever, like, the biggest money makers on Spotify, by definition, have plenty of money. So I don't totally understand why they aren't more active in this. Why don't they do what Neil Young did? Is it only because, I don't know, maybe Neil Young wasn't making much money, who knows.

I wish the people at the top there would do more. Anyway, I support that. So that's my position, stating it clearly. I support that because not only as a customer do you have every right to exercise your First Amendment rights, your speech rights, to say, I don't want to support something with my dollar.

The people who are getting ripped off by Spotify have every right to use their free speech to exercise their rights to saying, I do not want money that I am being ripped off with or whatever, ripped off, ripped from, what would the preposition be there, from which you are taking, to go to funding an asshole spreading vaccine misinformation and probably a lot of other bad stuff, like that seems like a perfectly acceptable use of Amendment, your rights there, your freedom of association, your freedom of speech, your freedom of contract.

I know, is that something? You have the right to do business with whom you would like to do business. That is all fine. And the people who get selectively up in arms about that, as though, like, free speech means you have to pay Joe Rogan a hundred million dollars. That's priced in, you got it, you can't change that. For some people, it's like any change to the status quo is the thing, the threat to free speech somehow. Like, it's weird.

Nobody on my side that I know of is demanding that Spotify pay some progressive podcaster a hundred billion dollars. I mean, maybe you'll find that somewhere, I haven't seen it. Nobody thinks they have to do that. Then when it's already priced in, when it is like Spotify is already paying a guy $100 million, to not do that is like a threat to free speech. I do not understand the thinking there.

I think it is just, we get a lot of really, and this is what I hate so much about this whole discussion, we got a lot of really tortured logic and naked attempts to justify the status quo because people benefit from the status quo. So, like, we've had to see a bunch of people who know better, um, because they've been able to go on Joe Rogan occasionally and, like, profit from that massive audience, from having access to that massive audience.

We've gotten, we've been had to say a bunch of people make bad arguments about, oh, he's, it's a, he is a curious guy. And I think it's, you know, it's, I don't agree, I don't agree with most of what he says, but it's, it's a great thing that he's out there, you know, just all the crap like that. You're like, oh, okay, so you, that means you went on a show, or you're at least trying to go on a show, you know, it's just so obvious.

There's think anybody should ban Joe Rogan from existing, that's not a question, you know, like, nobody, I hypothetically, don't, if you were, like, a... me, I wouldn't say iTunes has to ban his RSS feed. I think it's actually acceptable to be a mostly neutral platform for stuff like that, because that's, you know, I understand that decision, that makes sense to me, I agree with it.

I think that if we had a threat to that, then at a certain point we'd be having corporations make these decisions about which speech gets to be heard. You know, I could imagine a far leftist podcast getting canceled by that same logic, you know, but that's a far different thing. Again, it's a far different thing from paying someone $100 million in an exclusive deal to have their podcast. It's just, it couldn't be more opposite. Like, those are comically opposite.

0:19:00 Thomas: The furthest end of the spectrum, on one hand, it is a totally neutral platform. Like, yeah, no, I get it. We shouldn't have companies deciding on their totally neutral platforms who gets to just be erased from it because they don't like their opinions, on one end. The other end is paying $100 million to exclusively host someone. Couldn't be more opposite. So then we get kind of the next round of arguments, which is like the attempt at the big brain sidestep the issue kind of thing.

We get a lot of, I love this, I had to, I saw this tweet from Edward Snowden. I read it, guess, if Edward Snowden's been on the show or not been on Joe Rogan. Yeah, Snowden tweet: "The idea that people are like emerging from their deep caves, eyes blinking against the harshness of a son whose touch they have never known, on a quest to seek specific medical advice from the glory of a white robed Rogan, is perhaps just the slightest bit forced.

I mean, just look at the logo, which part of this primes you in expectation of reliable medical advice? But sure, blame the magic third eye radio man for the decline of basic trust in institutions. Throw him in the volcano and we'll have world peace by Monday." A lot of those kind of takes, a lot of, uh, a lot of that, you know, ah, it's not about Joe. "Look, set Joe Rogan aside, we got to look at the..." A lot of people listen to Joe Rogan's.

So why do they listen to, you know? Doing all that. But again, it is one thing to look at that, as I started the show with, it's worth bearing in mind that a lot of people listen to Joe Rogan and it's worth grappling with why that is. However, it's another to say that in defense of a hundred million contract for him. Two totally different things. It's one thing to be like, yeah, why do so many people listen to him? We get, we should, you that, absolutely.

It's another to say, "Oh, these idiots trying to cancel Joe Rogan. Like it's not Joe Rogan's fault that people don't trust institutions." Like, yeah, no, I know. No, it's not probably his entire fault, but does that... there? And therefore, if so, facto, Spotify needs to rip musicians off in order to pay him a hundred million dollars, the highest contract ever for any podcast in the history of time, he has to...

It is that second step, the second step that kind of is there, throws a whole wrench in their logic. But let's look at this Snowden tweet. I love this too. Snowden, perfect, I don't know much about the guy, but just from this and this alone and by the way, if you guessed Edward Snowden has been on Joe Rogan, so just ding, ding, ting, winner, Thomas takes the bar exam points there if that's what you guessed. But let's examine this.

It falls apart with a bit of scrutiny. Uh, to have a problem with Joe Rogan spreading misinformation about the most dangerous, deadly disease in our lifetime, and indeed possibly the past hundred years, to have a problem with that does not require me to have the opinion that people are simply going to Joe Rogan for medical advice. That's actually not at all. And if you examine it a little bit, you'll see that that's actually completely fucking irrelevant.

The fact is Joe Rogan has a very captive audience of a large number, of a million, the largest audience that doesn't... It's actually worse almost that he's doling out shit medical advice to a kind of an unsuspecting audience. That's actually minus points, Edward Snowden.

For example, let's say it's the Super Bowl or something, and the network I don't know whoever has a Super Bowl this year, if they could change this decides to accept a bunch of money to run an ad, let's say, is convincing ad, for the sake of trying to equalize the arguments here, a very convincing ad that millions of people will see that is vaccine misinformation. That's just deadly vaccine misinformation.

I come out here and tweet, "Oh, the idea that people are watching the Super Bowl for medical advice, it's a bit forced." What? No, that doesn't... Yeah, okay, but that doesn't matter because the fact is you're dishing out deadly, fatal pseudoscience and misinformation to an otherwise unsuspecting audience. It's actually worse that you've gained their trust for a different thing and then are using that trust to misinform them about a thing they didn't come to you for. You see how that's worse, right?

To do the cheaty from place. That's worse, actually, Edward Snowden. Mean, just look at the logo, which part of this primes you in expectation of reliable medical..." It doesn't matter. That doesn't matter.

It's this really naive view that people have this perfectly rational, compartmentalized approach to the world, as though what happens is the six million people or whatever that listen to Joe Rogan, they listen to him because he's a cool dude with some fight stuff or whatever, like, and then when that six million people want to get medical advice, what they do is they seek a health professional and they have a conversation with that health professional, uh, who they trust and gives them the right...

That's not how anything works. Like, people don't actually do that. For one, we have a shit health care system and people don't trust doctors a lot or the system. And yes, although you are right, Edward Snowden, that people don't trust institutions, that's also part of the problem here. That doesn't absolve somebody with a large audience from contributing a lot to that problem. The thing is, I'm not sure it's so obvious that people like Joe Rogan aren't to blame for the decline in trust in institutions.

Not that any one person shoulders 100% of the blame, but I... this weird thing where we always kind of blame the victim in that case. And oftentimes, I get it, with government mistrust, the government has earned that mistrust. But also people have sown mistrust. All during the Obama administration, for example, not that it started there, but during that time, Fox News fomented just constant, nonstop misinformation all the time about what he was doing. Distrust. Yeah.

A lot of it racially motivated and all of it, you know, and some stuff in there you're like, yeah, OK, also Obama did some things wrong, yeah, sure. But it's weird to be like, are you going to blame Fox News for people not trusting institutions and distrust? In some ways, it's like, yeah, actually, I do blame them. They...

The years, malicious actors have gained audiences of millions and have profited on their fear, made money through advertising all kinds of, buy gold and, you know, like patriot meals or whatever, like food rations, cause them to be afraid of everything and misinform them, and now has them in the palm of their hand, often. A lot of these, you know, Fox News is an example, Joe Rogan's kind of an example, there's a lot of people, Alex Jones.

And it's chicken and the egg, but to sit there and be like, "Oh, the reason people go to those sources is because the institutions have failed," don't know. Or is it that the institutions are failing because those people are doing those things? I don't know. It could be the fact that... are just more boring than entertaining people like Joe Rogan. That's honestly, that's the fact.

It's a constant uphill battle for entities like, I don't know, the CDC, to always be like better at infotainment than Joe Rogan. It's just, it's hard to possibly expect that, and multiply that by a zillion with a bunch more uninteresting things, a lot less interesting things, that, that people trust a lot less, you know.

Look at it that way, and you start to see, like, I don't know, maybe it's not really the institution's fault that people aren't trusting the institution, you know, in some cases, probably, yeah, sure, I get it. The government over the years has done a lot to the CIA, all this bullshit like, done a lot to not earn our trust. That's fair. But does that mean we shouldn't trust the scientists at the CDC? Is it fair for people to have that reaction?

Is it fair to say that people like Joe Rogan or Alex Jones or other purveyors of just garbage misinformation, that they're faultless and that we ought to blame some other mysterious force for ruining institutions? I don't know, no, that doesn't seem so clear cut to me. If anything, I think it's actually more on the Joe Rogans than it is on the institutions having failed. Or all these arguments too, it's telling what people look at as inevitable.

Again, a lot of these status quo arguments, you're seeing so many status quo agreements, so many ways of people just being like, the heart of what they're saying is, "What's currently happening is great, how do I I justify that?" Well, you see, you know, people are going to listen to Joe Rogan, it doesn't matter that Spotify paid him, they're going to listen to Joe Rogen and he's going to spread misinformation, so like we just need to deal with that fact, you know.

At the same time, they're railing against cancel culture and how people are trying to cancel Joe Rogan for, you know, him saying the N word over the years and this vaccine misinformation, that kind of thing. And they never look at that the same way.

I don't hear a lot of people being like, "Yeah, cancel culture is going to happen, let's look at the underlying reasons why people maybe get mad when someone's racist on the internet," or whatever, or why people, you know, like that, cause that, that is also true. There's things that people look at as the status quo, priced in, inevitable thing, so why argue with it, stop arguing, and then the things that they look at as the behavior to be modified.

And a whole lot of people out there are looking at the behavior to be modified is "stop trying to cancel Joe Rogan," "stop trying to silence Joe Rogan. I can't believe people go and coming up with all these instances of hypocrisy and all these ways they deal with those arguments, they try to find other celebrities that have done bad things but haven't been canceled, that means we're all just hypocrites for trying to cancel Joe Rogan. All those same tactics.

That's the behavior, the trying to cancel Joe Rogan, quote unquote, is the behavior that can be modified. But to them, the Rogan is not to be modified, the listening to Joe Rogan is not to be modified, even though that's the same order of magnitude of people, both things, is some millions of people or less, I don't know. Like, you could just as easily be like, "Yeah, cancel culture, that's priced in, that's going to happen because people don't like racism and don't like vaccine misinformation.

But what we really need to change is stop listening to Joe Rogan." Those same people would never make that argument. So it's this interesting shifting of what's the thing that I noticed this a lot in these conversations, I think it's telling, I think it tells a lot about where people's assumptions are and which is the thing they're okay with and trying to defend, even if they're not outright saying it, because people don't often just outright say, they try to come up with these tortured arguments about why things are actually fine.

It's telling to notice which is the behavior and actions among the public that can be modified, and that you're arguing against, and which are the ones that you just price in and you're like, "Well, that's going to happen, that's inevitable." Along those same lines, another gem that I love lately, this one's really been grating on me every time I hear it now: Now, "Joe Rogan is just a symptom." Joe Rogan is just, that's everything, everything is somehow just a symptom.

A system Trump is just a symptom, you know, we got to look at the underlying, whatever. And it's eventually just everything is a symptom, apparently. There's no you underline, or if there is an underlying cause, it's some like nebulous thing that I don't know how we would even fight against, you know, and maybe we could. And maybe in some cases, yeah, it is valid to try to look at the underlying cause. But what if the underlying causes also something you can't do anything about?

And here's the thing about symptoms, you actually treat symptoms. I know I yelled that on Opening Arguments the other day, if you'd listen to that, but like you treat symptoms, give me a little example. I have, if I'm not medicated, I have horrendous heartburn to the point where I like lose weight and can't keep food down. It's like that bad. Bad.

I tried to go off my medication, I don't know, a year ago or two, I can't remember, I talked about it somewhere, but a doctor tried to, like, a new doctor tried to get me off this medication because he thought, you know, there's some long term risk to it. And I was like, "All right," I, you know, I have kids, I don't want long term risks, like maybe if this is gonna be bad for me I'll try to get off of it.

10 pounds in like a week because I couldn't even keep food down because it just... So here's the thing, I have horrific, horrific heartburn without medication, that heartburn's a symptom, I don't know what the cause is, I've tried to figure it out what it is, doctors have tried to figure out what is a few times, I've had the upper GI, I've had all that stuff, no one can really figure it out.

Maybe there is an underlying cause somewhere, there is, haven't found it yet, or maybe we'll find that underlying cause and we can't do anything about it. So, you know what we do? We treat the fucking symptoms. I take a bunch of medicine, listen, so that I don't have to deal with the symptoms. Yes, I know it's just a symptom.

"Oh, you know, that heartburn, Thomas, that's just a symptom." Yeah, I know, and if I don't treat it then I can't eat, so I'm good, that doesn't do anything. To say something is just a symptom does not do anything.

Now, there are cases, I'm sure, in medicine where it's like, yeah, if you only looked at symptoms and you ignored the underlying cause, that would be bad, that's not always true, I mean, I'm just tired of it, people want to say this, I think because it makes them sound smart or something, or like they have a firmer grasp on everything than we do. Everybody loves to say "just a symptom, just a symptom." Yeah, I know, but like everybody is just a victim.

Everything in this whole arena, the misinformation, the distrust, all that stuff, it's all symptoms, and it's not clear that we can even do anything about the underlying cause, cause the underlying cause might just be the internet, you know, like honestly it might be in some ways the internet slash people's kind of basic biases, basic uh proclivities to being, uh, in some way, you know, just a lot if you talk about the deep roots of the divide in our country, you know, yeah, I know there's a lot of, there are underlying causes, there's no guarantee that we can get at those.

And if we're trying to get at those, there's nothing that says we can't also try to treat symptoms of them. It would be good if Donald Trump were in prison right now for the crimes he's committed. That he might just be a symptom doesn't stop that, that would be better if he was in prison. It would be better if Spotify wasn't paying Joe Rogan a hundred million fucking dollars to exclusively host his deadly podcast, his COVID misinformation podcast. That would be better.

That was another cool thing, is there was that right-wing bullshit company that was like, "Hey, we'll pay, hey Joe Rogan, you want to come over here? We'll pay you a hundred million dollars and you don't even have to take down your N -word episodes." So, you know, great, great, sweet deal. And then people look at that and they do more of these status quo-y arguments.

"See, it's inevitable, someone else would pay him a hundred million dollars, so stop, stop trying to change anything in the world." But here's the problem with that, for one, it would be fucking great if Rumble took Joe Rogan. Are you kidding me?

Instead of Spotify, one of the most popular platforms on the internet that also has all our favorite music and is ripping off those artists and using that ill-gotten gains to pay Joe Rogan a million zillion dollars, instead of it being on that, people in order to find Joe Rogan would have to go to something called Rumble that I've never heard of. That would be fucking great, are you kidding me?

He would lose not all his audience, of course, but he would lose a significant amount of his audience if they had to download something I've never heard of called Rumble, the right-leaning YouTube rival Rumble, apparently. Yeah, that would be awesome. Acting like just because there's some other alternative that would also pay him a hundred million means he's inevitable and you have to keep paying him a hundred billion dollars at Spotify.

There's a massive difference between Joe Rogan being on Spotify with the Beatles and all our favorite music, and then being on Rumble, some fucking right wing bullshit app I've never heard of. Massive difference, are you kidding me?

We get the Jon Stewart defense, which I was going to talk about, but here's the thing, as I was researching this, I saw that Rebecca Watson had done a video on basically this exact thing, and it's really good, so I highly encourage people to check out Rebecca Watson's video on Joe Rogan recently.

And then that took a little of the wind out of my sails because I was going to say many of those same points, but I think she did a great job, and so I don't really feel like just rephrasing something someone already did better, so she made some great points.

Uh, I guess I'll just say a couple things that I was gonna say, which is, so here's the, here's the John Stewart quote, for example, he says, "Don't leave, don't abandon, don't censor, engage." I'm not saying it's always going to work out fruitfully, but I am always of the mindset that engagement, especially with somebody like a Joe Rogan who is not, in my mind, an ideologue or ideologue, I never know how you pronounce that anyway, in any way, um, he pointed as the example, the Josh Zeps exchange, which...

Passed guests to the show? Or did I just go on his show? Oh shit, maybe I just went on his, I don't know, I think he came on the show, I don't remember where he was going to, one or the other. Interesting guy, that Josh Zepps, interesting guy, I think I like him, but also he was frustratingly centrist in ways that, whatever.

But anyway, point is, there's this exchange in which he kind of fact-checked Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan had the guy look it up and, uh, proved him wrong on the spot. And Jon Stewart uses this to like defend Joe Rogan, like, "See, he kind of did that." But the fact isn't, and again, Rebecca Watson, check out her video, she goes through this really well, he, um, didn't change his mind.

Like, he, he never admitted he was wrong, he just was like, "Well, you know, the thing, here's the thing about facts," it's like here's the exchange, uh, Joe Rogan: "Thing that's wrong." Josh Zeps: "No, that's wrong." "No, that's not wrong." "Yes, it's wrong." "No, it's not wrong." "Yes, is wrong." "Here, Google facts." Joe Rogan's like, "Hey, yeah, Google facts," and then the person whoever works for Joe Rogan is like, "Yeah, here's facts," and it's exactly what Josh Zeps said, and Joe Rogan's like, "Oh, but here's the thing about facts though, is they're not right, you know, like..." that like the overview of what happened, it's like, "You never know, oh, these numbers though, man, like who's reporting what?" Okay, so you're not admitting you're wrong, you're just, again, you're retreating to the idea that you're still right somehow, in some way that doesn't make sense.

And as much as Jon Stewart is a very likable guy, I think this opinion to me is pretty crap because here's the thing, I, lately, have been certainly more of the mindset that need to do this thing, this "don't leave, don't abandon, don't censor, engage." I actually agree with Jon Stewart on that, but I agree with Jon Stewart on that if we're talking to a listener of the Joe Rogan show, and maybe you don't agree with me on that, that's okay, perfectly fine, I get it, not everybody, I don't believe anyone's required to try to engage with you, nobody should be required, I'm not saying, but lately I have felt like there's a trend that I think is not sustainable, where we're just all going to alienate everybody, we're going to just ditch, cut out everyone from our lives on both sides who doesn't agree with us, and then step three, profit, as I always say.

I don't know where that goes long-term, I am not saying I have the answers, I'm just saying I understand, and I think I agree with Jon Stewart's overall view of, like, you know what, we do kind of need to not just try to abandon everybody, because here's the thing, they've got numbers, you know, and what happens when those numbers tick above a certain percentage enough to control our government and all that, and we've completely cut ties with all of them and said they're too stupid or racist to educate and not worth our time?

I don't think that's sustainable, and it's a tough problem. Again, I don't think that means anyone is required to engage with anyone, I'm not saying that, but like as a whole, as a society, someone needs to be doing that work.

So I actually very much agree with that sentiment lately, and more than ever actually lately, that it's worth, if you can, maybe trying to keep these people in your lives, as unpleasant as that is, to try to affect them, cause I just don't know what else is going to work. Like, literally, I have no fucking idea, there's nothing else is working, yelling at them doesn't do anything, they'll only get more dumb, They only get more wrong.

So anyway, so I agree with that sentiment, but I would apply that to a listener of Joe Rogan. You know, if I talk to somebody, like, "Yeah, I love Joe Rogan," I might be like, "Oh, okay, well, you know, here's a debunking," or, you know, or whatever, of the latest misinformation, and try to convince them that way. That doesn't apply once again, I know I've said it a thousand times that doesn't apply to paying Joe Rogan $100 million to be exclusively on your fucking platform.

Not something that has to happen, it doesn't have to happen that Spotify pays him $100 million to be exclusive on the platform, that's a thing that doesn't need to be true, you know? And I absolutely think Stewart is totally wrong to utilize this defense at a time like this. And Rebecca Watson goes into further why, like, he is an ideologue, he is somebody who's, you it's not, it doesn't work out.

Yes, Josh Zepps did this, and credit to Joe Rogan, he, Josh left the episode up, he posted it, he tweeted about it, and, you there, you, somehow it always comes back to this, it's not as though Joe Rogan did an apology I was going to talk about briefly, but I don't know if it's worth it in Joe Rogan's apology, he basically bragged about how little effort he puts into his 100 million dollar podcast, and everybody like, I'm sure Lindsay Osterman and others who put just fucking unending work into like a 30 minute masterpiece that Lindsay does, that you zero people listen to, unfortunately, relative to Joe Rogan's audience, anyway.

It's a rounding error to zero on Joe Rogan's audience, must've been a real slap in the face to those people. Andrew Torres, by the way, Andrew Torres, hours of pouring through documents to get the right information, Joe Rogan's like, "Yeah, you know, here's why you shouldn't blame me for, uh, getting people killed with misinformation, I don't really try, I just cashed that a hundred million dollar paycheck, you know, and then just, I got I don't know what I'm going to talk about on a given day, I just have some pseudoscience bullshit, a, uh, misinformer person on, and then I let them talk, and that's, that's how I do my show." It sucks that that's your, that's your reasoning, that's your apology, is like, "Sorry, I'm not good at my job," but you know, I, I guess that's going to be how Joe Rogan is, um, that's going to be his approach.

But I guess the point I was making is, if it were true that he's just a dumb guy who, whatever, he's a curious guy who has on whatever and says whatever, that would be one thing. But it's as though one day he's having a dumbass vaccine skeptic, you know, who's doing horrible damage, and then the next day he has Fauci on, and, you know, and vice versa, he occasionally does have good experts on, I think, think um, but like, there's nowhere near the balance, the mistakes that get made because Joe Rogan is just, a, in his words, kind of a dumb guy that doesn't prepare anything, weird that it always tends to go a certain way, it's not, it's always stored this, like, pseudoscience, misinformation, conspiracy theory crap.

You don't get to just say, like, "I'm a broken clock," you "sometimes I'll say" I don't know, that's not a good analogy, "I'm just a whatever, I'm a dumb guy, sometimes I interview someone who's right, sometimes I interviewed someone who was wrong." It's like, no, there's a pattern here, you're constantly interviewing the same manosphere people, and sure, maybe you throw in a good interview sometimes, but for the most part, it's just the same bullshit spewers who are doing a lot to get people killed out there of COVID, that's not an excuse.

You know, and Stewart should know better, like, he's not just some unideological guy, Joe Rogan, He's, you know, he, he has an ideology, and it's why it's always the same people or along the same lines who get booked on a show. I think that shows it. All right, end of rant. I, again, I know we've had a lot of Joe Rogan content.

0:43:56 Thomas: I've been tired of it, but you know, I just had some things to get out there and I just started seeing the same dumb arguments over and over. I just want to fight back a little bit. So yes, cancel. Oh, get at me with the alternatives to Spotify. Let me hear it. Assuming they have all the music I need, and I will cancel my Spotify. I would like to do that.

So the minute I have an alternative, but also, if you happen to be Taylor, Taylor, if you're listening, can you end this whole thing? Uh, Yoko, whoever controls the Beatles these days. Uh, any any of the other giant uh, moneymakers on Spotify, can you just end this whole thing? Can you just, look, if, if Spotify wants to just be the Joe Rogan platform, that's, yeah, cool, let's turn it into that. Give, someone, move your music elsewhere.

All these major artists, move your music elsewhere, we'll all go to that for music, and then Spotify can be a bullshit podcast purveyor. Works. Anyway, thanks so much for listening. Please support the show at patreon.com/seriouspod. Really appreciate it. Um, that's how it happens, that's how the show continues, and uh, thank you so much to the supporters who do support the show. It means the world. Uh, we'll hopefully be back with another science-splainer next week. Some accurate science.

I won't just interview the first person I see who always happens to be like some conspiracy theory person. Anyway, you get the point by now. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

0:45:32 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com/seriouspod. The second best thing you can do, is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, follow me on Twitter at Serious Pod. If you would like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com/groups/SIOmembers. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.