“I’m not trying to promote misinformation,” Rogan said. “I’m not trying to be controversial. I’ve never tried to do anything with this podcast other than just talk to people and have interesting conversations.”
UFC color commentator Joe Rogan, who parlayed his media success into the world’s No. 1 podcast, has been accused of spreading misinformation regarding the COVID-19 vaccine. In fact, several artists — like Grammy winners Joni Mitchell and Neil Young — have threatened to walk if Spotify continues to let Rogan run rampant.
“I’m not a doctor, I’m not a scientist, I’m just a person who sits down and talks to people and has conversations with them,” Rogan said. “Do I get things wrong? Absolutely. I get things wrong, but I try to correct them whenever I get something wrong. I’m interested in finding out what the truth is, and I’m interested in having interesting conversations with people that have differing opinions. I’m not interested in only talking to people that have one perspective.”
The outspoken Rogan was already taking significant heat from the LGBTQ community after several of his shows left Spotify’s transgender employees feeling “alienated and unwelcome” at the workplace, though it appears recent threats to strike have fallen on deaf ears.
“My pledge to you is that I will do my best to try to balance out these more controversial viewpoints with other people’s perspectives, so that we can maybe find a better point of view,” Rogan continued. “I don’t want to just show the contrary opinion to what the narrative is. I want to show all kinds of opinions so that we can all figure what’s going on. I do all the scheduling myself, and I don’t always get it right.”
Spotify has quietly removed certain episodes from the Rogan library, drawing cries of “censorship” from longtime listeners. That said, the former “Fear Factor” host is no stranger to apologies, having botched the narrative of the Portland fires back in late 2020.
“These podcasts are very strange because they’re just conversations, and oftentimes I have no idea what I’m going to talk about until I sit down to talk to people, and that’s why some of my ideas are not that prepared or fleshed out because I’m literally having them in real time,” Rogan said. “But I do my best. If I pissed you off, I’m sorry. And if you enjoyed the podcast, thank you. Thank you all the supporters and even thank you to the haters because it’s good to have some haters. It makes you reassess what you’re doing and put things into perspective and I think that’s good too.”
Perhaps there will come a time when Joe Rogan no longer “questions everything.”