Joe Rogan is no fool but he’s still dangerous

Rogan’s curiosity is driven by a lust for privileged information, the stuff other people don’t know. Picture: Supplied

“When,” Joe Rogan once asked the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, “did the connection between aliens and Nazis start?” Because Rogan’s podcast is, in The New York Times’s rather envious formulation, “one of the most consumed media products in the world” (a single instalment can attract tens of millions of listeners), he can ask whatever he likes.

Earlier in the same four-and-a-half-hour episode, Rogan and Jones dwell upon the sexual attractiveness of the devil (extremely sexually attractive, Jones insists) and the possible existence of an alien base in San Francisco (Rogan sceptical; Jones adamant).

Not many people are willing to talk to Jones about the devil’s erotic appeal or whether the US military uses drugs to contact aliens, because he has been almost universally deplatformed. Of Jones’s many sins, his tormenting pursuit of the parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook massacre with the accusation that they were government-employed “crisis actors” is the most egregious.

When Rogan has Jones (an old friend) on the show, storms whirl. Staff at Spotify, the platform which hosts the podcast, complain bitterly; liberal-minded guests waste whole minutes of Rogan’s (admittedly abundant) airtime on futile but principled denunciations.

Unusually, Rogan’s present controversy is not about Jones. This time, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young have left Spotify in protest at Rogan’s promotion of Covid disinformation. But all Rogan controversies are best explained with reference to Jones.

If we live, as is often claimed, in an age of “post-truth” - a chaos of alternative facts, deranged ideas, conspiracy theories and meaningless abuse - Jones is an interesting figure because he’s far ahead of us on the dark highway to anarchy. For Jones, the truth is not even a speck of light in the rearview mirror. It has vanished from his intellectual landscape. He’s way out in the cold, nighttime desert with the aliens, the Nazis, the interdimensional paedophiles and the shapeshifting lizards. He is post-post-truth. A frightening symbol of where we might end up; a living embodiment of the internet’s chaos.

Joni Mitchell. Picture: AFP

Neil Young. Picture: Getty Images

To this chaos there are three responses. The first is to attempt desperately to bind it with rules and commandments - the standard liberal approach, which has its apogee in the “woke” movement. The second is a kind of nihilism, which in the face of so much havoc denies the value of anything and finds sincerity an embarrassing joke - the path of trolls and shitposters. The podcast Red Scare, which recently hosted Jones, has this nihilistic streak. To that show’s hosts, Jones is a comic figure. They call him a “yeti” and a “clown” to his face and giggle at his inept and growling attempts at flirtation.

Rogan’s appeal is that he offers the third way: a kind of inverse-nihilism; a gregarious, undiscriminating curiosity; a sunny openness to the idea that anything might be true. Chaos is an adventure. This is what makes him a reassuring figure for fans, like one of those manly, goodhearted heroes of Wagner plunging cheerfully into the abyss. He is a man of enthusiasms (psychedelic drugs, weed, whisky, mixed martial arts, the gym, aliens) armed with an extraordinary mix of belligerent credulity and a misguided faith in his own ability to discriminate between “alternative facts”.

Often, his faith guides him to the mainstream: Elon Musk, Louis Theroux, Bernie Sanders have been guests. But it takes him elsewhere, too: Rogan characterises Jones as “an entertaining, fun guy to be around who knows a lot of crazy shit”. He trusts himself to filter what’s worth knowing (he’s keen on Jones’s theory about elites worshipping an owl god) from what should be discarded. “I actually no longer worry about disinformation,” a recent guest said, “there are selection processes where ideas rise to the top.” Rogan excuses Jones’s Sandy Hook controversy with the not very reassuring explanation that Jones “was in a very bad place in his life, he was drinking heavily, he was going crazy . . . and he also had a serious head injury as a kid”.

Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has been a guest on Joe Rogan’s show. Picture: AFP

Why Spotify chose controversial podcast host Joe Rogan over Neil Young Spotify is standing firmly behind podcaster Joe Rogan, despite a sustained backlash against his views. There’s a simple reason why.

Rogan’s curiosity is driven by a lust for privileged information, the stuff other people don’t know. His lifestyle is a testament to this: the mushroom coffee that starts his day, the sensory deprivation chamber, his insistence on Onnit’s MCT Oil toothpaste ("tastes like wet sand and looks like loose stool” according to a journalist who tried it). All new information is exciting. On a recent episode he was almost beside himself at the prospect of a new kind of pillow that can be “activated” in the tumble dryer: “I’m curious,” he enthused.

However good-natured and interesting Rogan is, I think there is something undeniably conspiracist about this credulous craving to be in on things other people don’t know about and to believe you can get there by “just asking questions”. However charming the impulse, it leads you to owl gods and vaccine scepticism as well as to esoteric toothpaste brands.

There’s a significant-feeling moment in one of Rogan’s most recent episodes with Jordan Peterson (a regular guest) in which Peterson recalls how Richard Dawkins “stripped my skin off” in response to his suggestion that ancient shamans had drug-induced visions of the helix pattern of DNA (a very Rogan idea).

“The problem with Richard Dawkins,” Rogan sighs, “is he hasn’t had psychedelic experiences.” An interesting intellectual generation gap between reason and unreason. We’re moving closer towards the latter. Rogan’s survival of this latest scandal is another sign.”

James Marriott is The Times deputy books editor.

The Times