Chris and Jonathan welcome back to the show journalist Brooke Binkowski from Truth or Fiction to discuss the Joe Rogan/Spotify controversy and how we got here. The discussion includes what makes someone a journalist in 2022 and how reactionaries and extremists were early adopters of the Internet.

 

2:10 Addressing common accusations

3:44 The saga

5:26 The mainstreaming of falsehoods

8:21 Lack of responsibility and JAQing off

10:06 The aesthetics of masculine rationality and The X-Files

15:15 From harmless folklore to antisemitism

18:35 What makes someone a journalist

26:31 Moderating audio content

29:20 The 1988 Internet and surf Nazis

36:14 Monster Island, Galt’s Gulch, and Ram Ranch

42:13 The Spotify seal of approval and YouTube’s feeble moderation

46:08 The next five years of reactionary populism

 

 

* Theme music: “Fall of the Ocean Queen“ by Joseph Hackl.

 

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Links:

1) The Daily podcast on the Joe Rogan saga: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/podcasts/the-daily/joe-rogan-spotify.html

2) Jonathan’s article on Joe Rogan: https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-health-and-nutrition-pseudoscience/science-vs-joe-rogan

3) The open letter to Spotify: https://spotifyopenletter.wordpress.com/2022/01/10/an-open-letter-to-spotify/

4) Aaron Rabinowitz’s article on Monster Island: https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2020/10/monster-island-free-speech-experiment/

5) God Awful Movies’ review of Atlas Shrugged, Part 1: https://www.stitcher.com/show/god-awful-movies/episode/337-atlas-shrugged-part-one-90134592

6) Truth or Fiction: https://www.truthorfiction.com/

7) Brooke on Twitter: https://twitter.com/brooklynmarie