I love long-form content. My long-form comes in book form. I love to read. I don’t listen to many podcasts, short or long, and I don’t listen to Joe Rogan, but I know many people who do. I give Rogan huge props for building his media empire in the face of traditional media. I don’t listen because I don’t find the show that interesting, detest “bro-culture,” and I feel like the content is targeted at underdeveloped boys. I should be saying “men,” but I’m not, and that is purposeful. Rogan’s audience, those likely to make the podcast rounds to people like Theo Von and Andrew Schulz, is underdeveloped, which means they are likely to believe what they hear without question. That doesn’t work for me, especially when the host is an MMA commentator, not a doctor, scientist, or investigative journalist.(I love MMA.) In addition, his interview skills aren’t great. (He is better than Von and Schulz, who are borderline terrible.) Subjects come to Rogan’s show with what feels like preconceived stories, stories that are allowed to play out without question. There are rarely any follow-ups.
Along came Malcolm Gladwell.
If my memory serves, I read one Gladwell book. I don’t remember the book or the title, but that doesn’t mean much. I read a lot. Certain books resonate while others don’t, and that doesn’t mean the non-resonant books aren’t good. It just means my mind was elsewhere, or maybe I was hysterical over my YouTube analytics. I was looking for a link and up popped the film you see here. What caught my attention was that the film was on YouTube, but was an audio file and not a motion piece. I knew that Gladwell had been a guest on Rogan, so I was curious what he meant by “intervention.” (I did not listen to their interview.)
Gladwell’s Rogan Intervention starts with Rogan’s interview with RFK Jr., the current United States Secretary of Health and Human Services and arguably the most unqualified cabinet member in United States history. A man who routinely spouts conspiracy theories, pseudo-science, and outright nonsense, and someone who was allegedly popping nicotine pouches DURING HIS CONFIRMATION HEARING. Take that, health and human services. His appointment is no surprise. You must be inept to get a cabinet post. Qualified people push back and get fired.
Gladwell brings up the Rogan interview and begins to dissect where things went wrong, namely in the form of Rogan failing to do what an interviewer needs to do: ask questions. He allows RFK to reference bogus studies and also allows his misinterpretations to go unchallenged. The topic of choice is the Spanish Flu of 1918, which happens to be Gladwell’s favorite thing, so listening as Rogan and RFK butcher history, fact, logic, science, and basic biology that any high school biology student should know is quite fascinating. Gladwell does it with poise and precision.
I’m not a fan of the “take down” approach that many online, pseudo-journalism types are so fond of. These films do NOTHING to help anyone. They are clickbait fodder for shallow people who don’t function all that well. This is NOT what this piece is. This is a piece about how someone interviews someone else. What makes a good interview, a good question, and how to ask those tough follow-ups that lead to real meaning.
America loves lies, indiscriminate partisanship, and revisionist history. We always have, but things have gotten far worse since 2016. Heck, the COVID-19 revisionists have reached a professional level. I know someone who was in the emergency room twice with C19 who now says, “I never had C19, that’s a Democratic hoax that was fabricated to make Donny look bad.” As they say, you can’t fix stupid. As a history lover, I don’t look to the past to see what I can change. I look to the past to see what I can learn, but I’m also not trying to con anyone, so perhaps this is easier for me than it is for a modern politician or successful podcast host.
I listened to this piece over an entire day. I noticed that the Revisionist History podcast channel has 59,000 subscribers. Rogan has 19.7 million. Perversely, this sums up our entire nation. This feels like the country saying, “I give up.” “Sedate me.” Congress gets rich on insider trading, people who would never get hired or hold a job in any company get elected to positions of power, retirement accounts and healthcare are put on the chopping block, and The Land Of The Scam teeters on the brink of something grim. It feels like people are saying, “Just give me a new iPhone and Netflix and I’m good.” Underdeveloped. Uninterested. “I’d educate myself, but it’s too much work. Let me listen to the bros.”
The last thing I’ll mention is something that comes early in this film. Gladwell describes going to the Rogan podcast back when Joe was living in SoCal, a place he now bashes in traditional right-wing ways. It’s funny how the Mel Gibsons and Joe Rogans of the world bag on the place where they made their fortunes, but this is a story for another day. Gladwell mentions he can’t say where the location was because he was forced to sign an NDA. (Non-Disclosure Agreement.) Hmm, interesting. Why? Why would a podcast host need guests to sign a location NDA?
I guess that Joe knows a lot more than he lets on. Joe is playing a part, just like any political actor, and he knows that what he enables has as chance of coming back on him, and he knows that some of these things he’s enabled have the potential to unravel in a major way. I think this is why you see him at least attempting to half-heartedly backtrack on some of his recent moves. I just hope it’s not too little, too late.
On an overall note, Gladwell’s piece, whether you agree or disagree, is well produced. I would LOVE to be able to craft something like this, but you know me and my lack of skill, training, focus, and everything else required for production value. I muddled through a portrait a few days ago, and the lasting shame of not being sharp and on my game held a firm grip on me for at least two days. I don’t like sloppy, and this is why I found Gladwell’s piece so much “fun.” He kindly and calmly, and with humor, I might add, points out the sloppiness of a Rogan interview. Were I to play a Rogan interview for the professor of my freshman Journalism 101 class, he would look at me in disgust and ask, “How can you not follow up?”
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Daniel-san: I read a great quote a few months ago. A critic was talking about the Joe Rogans and Jordan Petersons of the world, and said “these guys are a dumb person’s idea of a smart person”.
Joe Rogan knows better. He doesn’t ask hard questions because he doesn’t want to offend any of his audience “bros”, and jeopardize his income stream.
He sold out long ago…
Author
That is SO good. A dumb person’s idea of a smart person, and that massive legion of underdeveloped boys is a perfect example.
Thanks for sharing this. I know next to nothing about Malcolm Gladwell, but found this interesting – the art of the interview (vs. “only asking questions” but with no follow-up questions). Have never listened to a Joe Rogan podcast, but have heard very many excerpts in the context of valid critiques. Sam Seder does a particularly good job of that – including a great response to Rogan’s “interview” with Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year (search for “Billionaire Oligarch Plays Dumb With Joe Rogan”). Rogan is dangerously stupid (if not stupidly dangerous). The fact that he is even slightly backtracking (i.e., surprised that people have been deported without due process) is illustrative of this.
Just curious, though… something got me thinking… How do you define (or what are the typical elements of) a “take-down approach” (when you say, “I’m not a fan of the ‘take down’ approach that many online, pseudo-journalism types are so fond of”)? Where is the line between that and legitimate critique?
Thanks. Have a good weekend!
Author
It feels like Mark might be on the sociopathic spectrum. He has a long and storied history of less than truthful behavior. But his guru stage is particularly alarming. The long hair, necklaces, etc. As for takedown, I mean “Trump gets destroyed on such and such a podcast.” The left and right love these short YT nonsense films that are only seen by people from said party.
Oh, yes. All those annoying verbs in capital letters: “DESTROYED”, “TAKEN DOWN”, and the most irritating one, “OWNED”.
Author
Just preaching to the choir clickbait but it clearly works.
Finally, someone said it! I used to think I was the only person who didn’t relate to Joe Rogan’s podcast. I like listening to podcasts. I have learnt new things and have gained realizations from several different podcasts. But I have never understood or liked Joe Rogan’s interviewing skills. Neither have I admired the fact that the ambience of his podcasts always relies on being ‘macho’. Maybe I am wrong. However, if I really want to gain some wisdom, I would normally go for philosophy books, or books accounting historical events, etc.
To be a great interviewer, one must push some limits and be a little disagreeable to draw out the answers from the guest. At the same time, maintaining compassion, empathy, understanding, and open-mindedness. I think, there should be a healthy balance between questioning the ideas of the guest and showing maturity through understanding and follow-up. Agreeing to everything or not followin-up with a critical question is just booooring.
Though from the soup of mediocre podcasters and wanna be interviewers, I love the videos by Lex Fridman (aside from you, of course master Daniel XD)
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He is the embodiment of macho. I can’t stand macho. My father was macho and it was so awful. Luckily, I did not get that gene. And most of the Rogan style macho stuff is all of the useless components, times ten.
Yeah I caught the Gladwell podcast when it came out and he nailed it, as did you in this commentary. Rogan doesn’t even pretend to be balanced and interested anymore, he looks old, out of ideas, and completely checked out. Podcaster know that the right wing bullshit garners a ton more views than progressive views. A ton more. So play the game, don’t make an effort to be intellectually honest, and laugh all the way to the fucking bank. Thanks Dan.
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That’s why he has an NDA for location. Blowback is probably on their mind.
An interview that recently impressed me was with Rory Stewart on Jon Stewart’s podcast “The Weekly Show”, also available on YT.
Author
I’ve read Rory’s books.
History debunked…. It’s a YouTube channel out of England. A few subscribers and a man sitting in his gravy stained jumper attempting to dismember facts that don’t suit his political agenda.
My son is in has last year studying history at Oxford university, his college formed in the 13th century and drenched in history in its own right.
He feels he is acquiring knowledge that in a stroke of a key is dismissed by the debunker brigade.
He’s moving on to do an MA in broadcast journalism… both his history degree and pending journalism MA are now somewhat questionable in both fact and integrity. Trump’s knowledge of history is what he had for breakfast this morning. If they distort the facts, there is no learning, but that suits them; ignorance is bliss.
I don’t know if any of this is recoverable. Do facts matter anymore if they can be refuted without factual backup? Historical facts dismissed to casually fence in the zeitgeist. Journalism challenged and shaped to suit the media of social scepticism. Both history and journalism struggle to have deep roots. When you have the leader of the ‘free’ world changing history at will and the media dancing to his tune, truth and integrity, the backbone of democracy are broken.
Hi Neil. A few thoughts in response to your interesting comments. (1) I’m not sure that giving up history because of the “debunker brigade” is the right approach. WE NEED GOOD HISTORIANS, e.g. to confront the BS of Rogan and the ultra-BS of his holocaust revisionist guest of earlier this year. And the likes to the channel you mentioned (I just looked it up….far-right apparently). Good historians as school teachers, as scholars, as YouTubers. Without good historians, the morons control history. However, an MA in broadcast journalism also sounds good. We also need good journalists! Therefore, a history degree and a journalism MA are really not “questionable”! They’re really important. Because: (2) Facts do matter – it’s just that for every minute or page of nonsense, it sometimes takes five minutes or five pages to explain methodically why it is nonsense. Skilled people (historians, journalists) who care about facts are as important as ever. (3) “The media” – the homogenisation of “the media” is part of the problem. Corporate media has not done a good job overall; could have done much better. Still, there are still a few people on MSNBC who are constantly using facts from history and facts from US law to explain and contest what is happening. Then there are those who were pushed out, like Mehdi Hasan, who is still doing important work. Channel 4 News in the UK (and now available internationally) does a reasonable job. But Fox has managed to convince too many people that Fox is not “mainstream media” (when I think it sometimes has higher primetime viewer ratings than MSNBC and CNN combined?), and therefore it has managed to convince too many Americans that they should trust Fox (“the outsider”) but distrust “the mainstream media”. To lump together Channel 4 News, Mehdi Hasan (MSNBC days), and Tucker Carlson as “the media”, and come to the conclusion that “the media” is a problem and so a journalism degree lacks integrity… this is what “Fox and friends” want people to believe. We’re counting on your son to do good work!
Thanks SW. I appreciate your words, and yes, Channel 4 news is the best here in the UK. We do need good journalism and knowledge, truth and integrity. My fears are that it it so easy to dismiss truth and factual reporting. When you have such online sewers as ‘Truth Social’ they seem to make so much noise, presumably to cut through truth with a blade of loathing.
Nevertheless, it is important to persevere with delivering factual reportage. I very much appreciate your positive prose and hope that it does in fact bear fruit. I’m sure it will.
As Shakespeare said…” The truth will out.”
The “Revisionist History” channel on YouTube has nothing to do with Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast. They share the same name and that’s all.
Author
I love channels with people in stained jumpers. You had me at that.
If you have the patience its worth a listen to the recent appearance of Douglas Murray on Joe’s podcast. It sums up pretty much all that is wrong with his format (despite his incredible success at growing his brand and audience), the current culture of podcastistan and non experts. As opposed to Gladwell (not a big fan), Murray takes his attempt at an intervention directly to the source, in real time, face to face.
You might also indulge in the Murray vs Gladwell Munk debates on “Mainstream Media”.
Author
Non experts who know one small piece of misinformation and tens of millions of people file it away as fact.
Rogan is basically Völkischer Beobachter meets FHM. Sad that this is a source of news and opinion for Americans.
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It is incredible that a guy like that can question the media and seemingly no one in his base questions him.
Heard Gladwell’s podcast last week and found it great. But there’s a better one on RFK Jr!! https://youtu.be/EErAC4HBgyg?si=oT-ymc5RaQDjZM8j
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I heard about this one.
Oh wow, the ending of this episode! Like a truck, so so so good. Vital listening for someone trying to be a good interviewer. Thank you so much for highlighting this one.
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I’ve got some interviews coming up….