Dead antivaxxers are good antivaxxers. Keep on killing them Joe!

Science vs. Joe Rogan
In the on-going match between podcasting giant Joe Rogan and the
scientific consensus, popularity is a dangerous fixer

Lot of times, we�re drinking or we�re high, you know, and I say stupid
shit.� Coming from a teenager, this statement may invoke memories of your
own adolescence. But carried by the voice of then-53-year-old Joe Rogan
defending his off-the-cuff, on-the-air remarks about COVID vaccines in
young adults, it reeks of arrested development.

Rogan, whose CV includes the television shows NewsRadio and Fear Factor,
is, by his own description, a �cage-fighting commentator� and a �dirty
stand-up comedian.� But his influence on the health landscape can be felt
the most through The Joe Rogan Experience, his long-form interview podcast
now exclusively available on Spotify thanks to a $100 million deal.

And that influence is considerable given the scale of Rogan�s podcasting
platform, which a few numbers can contextualize.

1920 and counting. That�s the number of episodes the show has released
since its beginning eleven years ago, and that number goes up by three or
four each week. The average length of these episodes is roughly 2.5 hours.
It would take close to seven sleepless months to listen to them all.

28.7 million. That�s the reported number of views on the most recent show
Rogan hosted with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

200 million. That�s the number of monthly downloads the show was asserting
in 2019, before the move to Spotify. For this same year, the episodes
still left on YouTube all have millions of views each, and they generated
additional clicks through audio podcasting apps. This regularly put
Rogan�s show above the total average prime time audiences for Fox News
(2.5 million viewers), MSNBC (1.8 million viewers), and CNN (972,000
viewers). There is indirect evidence that his audience has shrunk since
moving behind the great Spotify wall, but his reach still appears to be
immense.

The Joe Rogan Experience often feels like being a fly on the wall in a
teenager�s basement apartment. The parents are upstairs, watching Carlson,
Maddow or Cooper, and we�re downstairs, listening in on private
conversations that reveal mind-blowing facts about the world. These
conversations, serpentine and unpredictable, fill the air of Rogan�s
online and informal equivalent of a gentlemen�s club. Indeed, a whopping
88% of Rogan�s guests are men, as well as 71% of his listenership
according to a MediaMonitors survey in 2020. The average age of his
listeners according to the same survey is 24.

Rogan has an undeniable appeal to young men who are trying opinions and
ideologies on for size. To them, social media may appear superficial and
political commentators on American television may seem hopelessly biased.
Rogan comes across as a neutral, curious, and relatable host sharing deep,
unfiltered conversations with experts and celebrities. No artifice, no
sound bites. Just Joe and his inquisitiveness.

Many of his shows feature mixed martial artists and comedians but others
focus on health, and that is where his apparent neutrality crumbles and
his inclinations become hazardous. Speaking to comedian Bill Burr about
COVID-19 while smoking cigars, Rogan said, half-humorously, half-
seriously, that wearing a mask was �for b*tches, it just is.� Testosterone
is not in short supply on The Joe Rogan Experience. As Matthew Remski, co-
host of the Conspirituality podcast, wrote about bro science, �in the
rugged country of bros, there are no communities, but rather collections
of homogenous, self-contained, self-responsible individuals.� And the
gentlemen�s club of Rogan�s podcast has had a disreputable clientele of
so-called �self-responsible individuals.�

Rogan platformed Dr. Andrew Weil, one of the kings of promoting unproven
and disproven pseudomedical remedies, who ridiculed the idea that placebo
effects needed to be ruled out from studies. For the record, they have to
be subtracted, though, because they represent non-specific effects of
everything but the intervention. However, Weil claimed enthusiastically
that they should be ruled in because �that�s the meat of medicine, that�s
pure healing from within.� This shows a stunning misunderstanding of
scientific research.

Rogan also hosted Bret Weinstein, a former biology professor turned
podcasting conspiracy theorist, and Dr. Pierre Kory, a critical care
physician, for an emergency broadcast on the use of ivermectin for COVID-
19 during which the taking of this antiparasitic drug was said to yield
�near-perfect protection� against the disease. This is not the case.

Abigail Shrier was welcomed on the show to talk about her provocatively
titled book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our
Daughters. The book promotes a made-up diagnosis, �rapid-onset gender
dysphoria,� to breathe new life into the cyclical moral panic surrounding
children. The website Science-Based Medicine, following the publication of
an endorsement of the book by one of its editors, posted a number of
articles addressing the multiple inaccuracies of the book, written by
actual experts. Meanwhile, Rogan portrayed the care given to transgender
people as �stepping in to a developing baby that�s only been alive for six
years and shooting chemicals into its body [�] to hormonally interact with
their body in some sort of a random, Dr. Frankenstein sort of way.� To be
this clueless beggars belief.

Being interested in nutrition, Rogan has also aired long conversations
with people on the topic of diets. Perhaps the strangest of all was with
Mikhaila Peterson, who is not a dietitian, claiming that a diet consisting
exclusively of beef and salt cured her arthritis. There are many, many
problems with this �carnivore diet,� and it baffles me that Peterson is
someone Rogan would look to for insight on what to eat.

And then there�s Alex Jones. The shock jock has embraced every grand
conspiracy theory invented by humanity, from the existence of a New World
Order to �Hurricane Katrina was a test of FEMA concentration camps.� He
was sued for defamation by the families of ten people killed in the Sandy
Hook school mass shooting, as he had repeatedly alleged that the massacre
was a false flag operation and that the victims� families were actors. He
recently lost all of these defamation suits. Jones has been Rogan�s guest
four times.

Rogan does not necessarily endorse what his guests say�he�s just asking
questions�but he bullhorns their pseudoscientific and conspiracy-laden
views to millions of audience members. To Alex Jones, he said, �it�s f---
ing dangerous to censor you.� He subsumes calls for responsible
platforming under a general defence of free speech. �Censoring is bad,�
goes the thinking, �therefore the best thing to do is to platform as many
iconoclasts as possible, to make sure their claims reach the ears of
millions of people who can then decide for themselves where the truth
lies.� Which leads to Alex Jones telling tens of millions of people that
�they� are coming to your house demanding a COVID test and if you don�t
agree, �they� will arrest you. And although Rogan often pushes Jones for
evidence on his claims, he has still platformed a paranoid lunatic (or a
man who acts in this manner for profits) who once said that Hillary
Clinton has personally murdered children through a pedophilia ring found
in the non-existent basement of a pizza joint.

A colossal reach like Rogan�s requires maturity, especially in the middle
of an infodemic. But in clinging to the teenage desire to hear things
that�ll blow your mind, the podcaster with a golden megaphone broadcasts
lies, fantasies, and bad medical advice.
Living on the cutting edge

Joe Rogan�s attraction to pseudoscience wasn�t born with COVID. Like so
many people passionate about fitness, Rogan is always looking for an edge.
He has promoted cryotherapy in the past, even posting a photo of himself
inside a cryochamber on his personal Instagram account which has 13.5
million followers. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said this
therapy has �very little evidence about its safety or effectiveness.�
While the promoted claims may look scientific, they are based on a lot of
hot air.

Rogan has also repeatedly publicized stem cell injections as miraculous
treatments. They apparently completely healed his rotator cuff tear, and
Rogan had Mel Gibson on to talk about how a stem cell treatment in Panama
saved his 92-year-old father�s life, improving his thinking, his eyesight,
�and other stuff [�] that he would hate for me to talk about!� Anecdotes
are not hard evidence, but the confessional atmosphere of the podcast
gives these medical claims the weight of cutting-edge secrets. Make no
mistake: stem cell research holds tremendous potential, but the current
industry of stem cell tourism (and the growing creep of stem cell
staycations) is built on scienceploitation. Its claims are unsubstantiated
and the harms are very real.

The air of secrecy that surrounds these therapies�discovered through a
personal network of would-be pioneers that Rogan�s status has allowed him
to build�is also seen in the conspiracy theories he has embraced in the
past. Moon hoaxes and Roswell aliens were frequent fodder in the early
days of his podcast. One of his favourite guests is Graham Hancock, with
seven appearances on the show, who wrote one of Rogan�s favourite books,
Fingerprints of the Gods. In it, Hancock theorizes that an advanced
civilization forgotten by historians existed in our distant past and was
nearly wiped out, with survivors bringing their arcane knowledge to Egypt
and the Americas. This kind of pseudoarchaeological hypothesis pushes all
the right buttons: it�s revolutionary knowledge heretofore hidden from
view and uncovered by a Galileo figure. This is heroin for the adolescent
mind.