My 27 yr old sibling is a hard core follower of Joe Rogan 💩
What are some progressive channels/people/content that I could have my sibling start watching instead?
Preferably something that has a similar flavor - example: male host, muscular, easy to digest. I think that will make the transition easier.
My personal preferences are Seth Meyers and John Oliver, but Last Week Tonight (John Oliver) is even a heavy watch for me sometimes!
[No Andrew Hubbard. He’s another fake.]
Thank you!
Behind the Bastards
Seconding this rec, seems like a good fit
The Weeds and The Gray Area are also decedent topic driven interviews. Except generally with actual experts and well researched interviewers.
In the same CoolZone Media vein, Hood Politics might fit the bill as well.
If he’s a “hard follower” of Joe Rogan than he likely won’t be interested in other content. Rogan is a fool, but that’s why people find him appealing. Content that is insightful and educational is the opposite of the junk food of Rogan.
Maybe instead, when Rogan says something like “Bro did you know like the pineal gland of the chimpanzee produces anti-covid hormones? This is just what I’ve heard. Look it up. By the way did you see the tree growing in my toilet?” You can help your sibling by teaching them ways to think, reason, and critically evaluate the BS that freely flows from the Roganverse.
Hey be careful when you are blatantly misquoting Joe Rogan to benefit your own exaggerations.
He clearly says that the pineal gland produces DMT. And you know how much Joe Rogan loves DMT.
when Rogan says something like “Bro did you know like the pineal gland of the chimpanzee produces anti-covid hormones? This is just what I’ve heard. Look it up. By the way did you see the tree growing in my toilet?”
I’m a fan of Joe Rogan and I gotta say, I don’t think he says things like this. And I don’t think you’ve ever listened to Joe Rogan, if you think he does.
Doesn’t that bother you even just a little bit, that you form strong opinions about things with no direct knowledge of them?
Preferably something that has a similar flavor - example: male host, muscular, easy to digest. I think that will make the transition easier.
You don’t think much of your sibling do you?
I mean if they listen to Joe Rogan, they don’t seem to think much of themselves either tbh. That counts as self-harm.
Would you?
Depends on whether one wants to practice love or control I guess. Much easier to maintain efforts to control another person when you can convince yourself they’re contemptible.
Their sibling might be young. Young people are gullible idiots.
Their sibling is 27 in this case, I think well past the age of “gullible young”.
You’ll find that folks can be gullible at any age. My step-kids, who live with their dad in Texas, are in their early 20s and get about 99% of their information from either YouTube or TikTok. For the youngest, church plays a big part. Generally speaking, they are good kids, but they are both gullible AF. I’m betting OP’s sibling has a similar diet of media consumption.
Yeah, the unbiased style of debate/news reporting is very dangerous.
What are you gullible about?
I’m sure there’s something, and I try to remind myself when talking to the kids that they’re figuring out the world around them all the time just like i did when I was their age. It’s really hard getting them to look outside of YT and TikTok for information. Awhile back, the younger one got into the Atlantis mythology and started talking about it a lot. Theories of Atlantean origin are pretty common in white supremacist circles, so that was kind of stressful!
Not to mention the entire premise of the post being, essentially, “I don’t approve of the entertainment my sibling chooses to consume. Please make suggestions for me as to other entertainment that I can then use to regulate said adult sibling, removing their entertainment that I don’t like and forcing them to consume something I find more acceptable.”
Like…I think Rogan’s whole thing is stupid and most I’ve talked to who like his stuff are similarly ridiculous…but to go from that to full out “I plan to take it away from them and force them to do something I find more acceptable” is really quite a leap.
Or maybe it’s “I love my sibling and don’t want to see them slip further into this conspiracy rabbit hole. How can I offer them similar content that isn’t as harmful?”
“Could it be loving and listening to my sibling? No it’s the media that’s the problem!”
Make him watch early Joe Rogan content. Back when he actually had an open mind and interesting guests.
Back when he used to be curious about his guests.
I just listened to about 50% of his last episode with Tulsi Gabbard. You know, the Presidential candidate? The whole episode, the entire thing at least up to the 1:45 mark where I gave up, was Joe ranting about shit and Tulsi saying “yeah”.
The Hasan Abi Broadcast
This comes off a little negative but totally get the desire to show a sibling something different,as someone who uses to listen to rogan regularly…
Find whatever guests he liked and nail down what it is he’s actually interested in. For me it was history and comedy.
History of Rome with Mike Duncan then lead to youtubers like sandrhomanhistory and the operations room. If he’s into more military and masculine show him forgotten weapons also on YouTube.
If you go as left mainstream as John Oliver it’s gonna be an uphill battle. Even though I more than likely agree with what he would say have 0 desire to watch it.
Comedy wise the early cumtown episodes are goofy classics.
What I love about Mike Duncan is that you can hear him radicalizing in real time during the Revolutions podcast. By the time he reached the Haitian Revolution he’s done with everyone’s shit.
Before COVID Rogan’s show was fantastic. As soon as the end of 2019 ramped up it was all down hill from there.
He went full Alex Jones.
Yeah it’s easy to hate Joe Rogan now but there’s a reason why he was the #1 most downloaded podcast for years. Huge range of guests and Joe’s, “Jack of all trades master of absolutely nothing besides MMA” knowledge base of questions got some good stories out of people.
He went full meth addict. All he does is talk at his guests. He doesn’t listen any more he just rants at them.
Or he has a comedian on, and they spend two hours mentioning names from back in the day.
I’ve never listened to Rogan*, but I think https://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcasts does an excellent job of talking about current news and science items in an easily digestible format that mostly avoids bullshit while probably filling the same gee-whiz niche that people expect from Rogan? It’s a panel, so not a single muscular male host, but I think if your sibling is pursuing Rogan because they think it’s helping expose them to new interesting ideas, SGU is a vastly superior route to that end.
*I actually think my only Rogan exposure has been the SGU talking about how he more or less just believes the last thing anyone told him, whatever that might be, which seems… less good?
Your preference is your preference, but SG1 and SGA are far better than SGU in my opinion.
I assume this is a Stargate thing and that there aren’t actually that many Skeptical Guide podcasts out there.
I haven’t got any dog in the Stargate fight, I’ve seen the original movie (good) and watched the Richard Dean Anderson TV series (better than the movie) for a while before it just fell off my radar? I’ll take your word for it that Stargate Universe is the lesser of the Stargate properties.
SGU in my comment obviously is referring to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe aka, the linked podcast.
Beau of the fifth column on YouTube is just for this he tries to reach people at that level and doesn’t talk down to them and is great on foreign policy concepts.
J Aubrey is a very entertaining long format YTer that explains many of the internet’s worst villains. His take down of grifters don’t target Joe himself, but help inoculate people from the “natural” hierarchies that dominate conservative thought.
Good God, he has some of the most cringey clickbait thumbnails I’ve ever seen.
And just watching the first 5 minutes of the Steven Crowder episode, he’s for sure not someone the Joe Rogan crowd would be interested in watching.
most cringey clickbait thumbnails I’ve ever seen.
My man, is this the first YT thumbnail you’ve ever seen?
he’s for sure not someone the Joe Rogan crowd would be interested in watching.
Why, because popular YT formats are something the millions of normie Joe Rogan viewers all despise? I don’t know man, you do you. But popular formats by definition are something the masses are comfortable with.
Modern Wisdom
Edit: Going through all the suggestions now - thank you! I hadn’t heard of these before. I appreciate it!
I read it here before but the best way is deconstructing a specific case of the person in question choosing. The problem is that replacing one influencer with another one won’t change the understanding issue of misplaced trust in media/people.
I think that these things should be voluntary by the way. Both for success chances and pure respect for your sibling.
Ask him if they would be interested. Then make them choose an episode. Prepare yourself. Ask them to prepare a little document in which they express their understanding and lesson that they learned from the episode. Ask them if they are willing to investigate how true these things are. Look for evidence together or alone. When done, get together and talk about the truthfulness of the ideas.
Alternatively ask yourself if they have some kind of expertise in something and look if there is a Joe Rogan episode about and suggest them to watch it. The deconstruction would happen automatically. You can help by ask them questions about it. Having to vocalize criticism towards something is an amazing reflection exercise.
Would Lex Fridman fit the bill? He runs in the same circle as Joe Rogan with similar guests, but generally just let’s his guests speak instead of actively pushing nonsense, and especially not with the degree of confidence that Rogan does while being wrong. It’ll still require you to listen critically, but that might be easier if you don’t have someone actively pushing you in one direction.
Tom Segura
