Podcast Sunday: The Joe Rogan Experience
A shadow of its former self
“Rogan Signs $250M Deal with Spotify”, read the headlines this past week.
I read that and had to spit out my Bulletproof Coffee, ruining my glass of AG1 in the process.
Obviously, the people at Spotify know what they’re doing though. They made this latest deal having crunched the numbers - they had 3+ years of data from exclusive Rogan episodes to go on, for which he’s made between $180-$200M already. One possible explanation is that he at least brings listeners to the Spotify podcast platform, where they presumably discover more interesting shows:
Did you catch the latest Aaron Rodgers appearance this past week? If you didn’t, not to worry. It’s just like every episode the past 3 years, covering the Rogan greatest hits playlist of Covid, Epstein, Alex Jones, UFOs, alternate medical treatments, Biden, conspiracy theories (doesn’t matter which ones), etc etc.
So yeah, how he’s able to still command insane amounts of money is baffling.
I say this as a pretty big fan from around 2010-2018. Rogan was a guy who hosted a broad range of guests, he was (and still is) an effortless interviewer, and he was curious about so many things that the regular media wasn’t even discussing. Many people learned a lot from him and his guests.
These days, it’s more instructive to find out what he’s extremely not curious about. January 6th? No guests that come to mind who could speak about it with any experience of that day, from law enforcement or from the people who were there.
62 lawsuits filed by Trump in two months after the 2020 election, in an obvious attempt to overturn it. Nothing to speak about, it seems. Russia/Ukraine, from serious people who know the history of the region? Not curious in the least.
It’s easy (and lazy) for a lot on the Left to say he’s right-wing or - lol - far-right. He’s not. But he has definitely shifted since his stellar days, preferring to dabble in conspiracies and the same tired topics and guests over and over again.
The learnings aren’t there, the humor has dried up, and the overall wide-ranging curiosity is really gone.
How he’s worth hundreds of millions is also kinda, well, curious.
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