At this point, I tend to average 1-2 podcasts a week. I’m in hybrid work mode, which means I drive to an office on a local college campus two days out of the week and work remotely from my home office the other three days. That gives me time for about 90 minutes of podcasts on my commute. My number one selection currently is Not Dead Yet (Apple Podcasts) hosted by Ben Sasse and Chris Stirewalt. As Ben Sasse undergoes treatment for his pancreatic cancer (and faces his own mortality), he’s been interested in discussing what comprises the good life.
Sasse is relatable on his own and as a cancer survivor, I understood a bit of what he is going through. I’m impressed by his courage and drive when going through a harsh course of chemo with so many side effects (including some that are very visible). He’s still moving and he’s determined to live life while he can. He and Stirewalt have interesting guests and strong engagement with the subject matter.
Although I’ve been enjoying some podcasts, I also find myself nodding along to the piece How Podcasts Ruined America by Michael Tracey. Tracey takes issue with the fact that wild claims — that wouldn’t be made on more traditional media outlets — are often made on podcasts. To a large extent, those claims made on podcasts go without serious examination.
I’m not exactly secretive about my dislike for The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Tracey takes issue with the claims made by one of Rogan’s guests, former biology professor Bret Weinstein.
Despite widespread recognition of the cultural and political power commanded by podcasts, there still seems to be some residual hesitancy against subjecting the medium to the kind of thoroughgoing critique that is more commonly targeted at traditional media organs. Any critical observation ever made about Joe Rogan, or his acolytes like Weinstein, is typically met with a chorus of nitpickers protesting that he’s “just a comedian”— or in Weinstein’s case, just a humble “scientist”—and “doesn’t claim to be a journalist.”
In other words, it’s easy to state things that no one is going to fact-check on these shows, and if you are called on your statements, just claim you’re not an expert. Immediately upon reading the quoted paragraph, I started thinking about the similarity to the tactic taken by The Daily Show With John Stewart. Whenever the show was called out for something, the defense was that it was a comedy show that aired before a puppet show called Crank Yankers. So I was primed for the next paragraph.
Eerily similar rationalizations were once offered on behalf of Jon Stewart at the peak of the Daily Show’s formidable influence. “Just a comedian, bro!” was supposed to insulate Stewart from sustained critique, even as more and more viewers were coming to acquire their primary political information directly from the Daily Show entertainment product. Today, Joe Rogan is many orders of magnitude more influential than Stewart ever was, with an entire podcast superstructure spawned in his likeness, and the all-purpose conspiracism he pioneered now so deeply instilled (whether consciously or not) as the secret sauce for attaining algorithmic glory. Surveys show Rogan is regarded by millions as an eminently trustworthy news source, not unlike similar findings about the Daily Show during its heyday.
I know someone who takes serious medical advice from guests on the Joe Rogan show. This kind of thing can even be dangerous. I’m all for the democracy of the medium, but people have to know what they are listening to.
