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- [00:00]
A
Buying a car in Carvana was so easy, I was able to finance it through them. I just. Whoa, wait.
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B
You mean finance?
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A
Yeah, finance.
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B
Got pre qualified for a Carvana auto.
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A
Loan, entered my terms and shot from thousands of great car options, all within my budget. That's cool. But financing through Carvana was so easy.
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B
Financed, done. And I get to pick up my.
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A
Car from their Carvana vending machine tomorrow.
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B
Financed, right?
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A
That's what they said.
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C
You can spend time trying to pronounce financing, or you can actually finance and buy your car today on Carvana financing.
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B
Subject to credit approval.
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A
Additional terms and conditions may apply Only.
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C
Murders in The Building Season 5 the.
- [00:33]
A
Hit Hulu Original is back. The night Buster died, he was talking with this mobster.
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C
Was he killed in a hit?
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A
We need to go face to face with the mob. Get ready for a season. Buongiorno, signore. This is how I die. You can't refuse.
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B
You're gonna save the day like you always do by being smart, sharp, and.
- [00:50]
A
Almost always by mistake. The Hulu Original Series Only Murders in The Building premieres September 9th. Streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney for bundle subscribers Term supply New episodes.
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C
Tuesdays Foreign hey everyone. Welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience and authoritarian extremism. I'm Derek Barris.
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A
I'm Matthew Remsky.
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B
I'm Julian Walker.
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C
You can find us on Instagram and threads at conspiritualitypod, as well as individually on Blue Sky. You can access all of our episodes ad free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on patreon@patreon.com conspirituality we also post our bonus episodes on Apple Podcasts, so if you want to find them via Apple subscriptions, that would be great because we are independent media creators and we really appreciate all of your support.
- [02:00]
B
Conspirituality274 is Rogan really Running a Death Cult? If it wasn't all so tragic, today's politics might seem like a bad joke. But how did comedy become so unfunny and so politically toxic? From his hideout in a remote mountain cabin with excellent wifi, the anonymous video collage artist and essayist behind The Elephant Graveyard YouTube channel has finally cracked the code. You see, Joe Rogan has created a doomsday death cult that demands absolute loyalty while it feeds the dad shaped hole in the hearts of its followers. In this allegory, his comedy mothership theater in downtown Austin is like the alien spacecraft zooming in from behind the Hale Bob Comet to take the Heaven's Gate group suicide victims home, freed from their Earth suits. But it's not just Rogan. According to elephant graveyard tech, oligarchs like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are really behind it all. First, Derek jumps on the bandwagon to point out how everyone's favorite independent journalist, Bari Weiss, is set to do Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen's bidding as she potentially lines up a pivotal role at CBS News. And they all take a hugely overvalued payout from the imminent sale of the free press.
- [03:18]
A
But before all of that, we just have to say congratulations to Derek because his big New York Times byline dropped today. The article is out. Well, actually, it's a documentary film that's 15 minutes in length. It's incredible work. What's it about, Derek? How does it feel? And are you leaving us for the big leagues now?
- [03:38]
C
Oh, yeah, this is my last episode, so peace, guys. No, no. But last November, I was approached by the opinions team to write op ed about Maha because after Trump won like two days later and I gave him my pitch. And then Alex Stockton over on the video team saw it and an idea of doing something similar. And so basically we show how Maha influencers, the people that are in his orbit, really bring people in through the conspiratorial lens into their downlines, essentially. So it's called you might have already fallen for Maha's conspiracy theories. It is a 15 minute, 40 second documentary. We've been work. We've been working on it all year. And I'm going to be dropping the brief this Saturday where I talk a little bit about the behind the scenes of it. But I think it's the closest thing to a video version of our health coverage on this podcast that we've yet seen. And I'm super excited and really honored that they'd asked me to partake in this. And just on a personal level, if I would have seen something like this from them without our inclusion in some capacity, I would have been a little bummed because we've been covering this for five and a half years now. So I was really happy that, you know, they were able to include it and, and give conspirituality a shout out too, on the page.
- [04:57]
A
Yeah. Well done.
- [04:58]
C
Thank you.
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B
Yeah, it looks incredible. Congratulations. So much work obviously went into it. Even if we weren't behind the scenes, we'd be able to see that.
- [05:12]
C
This week. In spirituality, power doesn't know what enough entails. Power almost always seeks more of itself. There's a great scene in season two of Mr. Robot where one of Philip Price's lackeys asks the Evil Corp CEO what his real game is. This role is played by the excellent playwright Michael Christopher and his character. Price replies that he always needs to be the most powerful person in the room, and right now he says, there's one person. Then he laughs and he says, okay, two people more powerful than him. And he just cannot let that be. For decades, the American Right has built in an alternative media ecosystem to, in their words, challenge the narrative of mainstream media. They would be fair and balanced while injecting their own narrative into the mainstream. When Fox became the most powerful media entity in the nation, they still had to play the victim and pretend to be powerless, a ploy everyone in the Trump administration continues to do until this day. Of course, they've been fed a steady diet of Fox for over a generation now. The goal has never been just to challenge the status quo, but to become it. And we're one step closer with the news that Paramount, who owns CBS News, is considering buying the Free Press for a reported 1 to $200 million. The little upstart was founded to challenge mainstream media by former New York Times columnist Barry Weiss, who has long adopted a contrarian stance to political issues and built a, quote, quite valuable brand doing it. Apparently, not only will she be bought out, but she may also be given a leading role in guiding CBS's coverage. I posted a screenshot of an article in the Nation on our Instagram feed last week with the lead quote, if we lived in a less terrible time and place, Barry Weiss would be dismissed as a crank and a bigot, writes Jack Merkinson. But we live in the waking nightmare that is the United States in 2025. Most of our followers agreed in the comments and likes, and a few push back, which is what I want to address in this twic. First, London wrote, what are the issues with Weiss? Steven Feldman asked. How is she a grifter? Specifics, please, and I mind stuff wrote. I've seen so many bad takes about Weiss from people who haven't listened to a word she said the last few years. Well, we have eight episodes at least on Weiss in the Free Press by now.
- [07:57]
B
We've listened to her quite a bit.
- [07:59]
C
Yes, I've also done a few bonus episodes on her organization. And yes, the Free Press does publish a range of issues, and Weiss does try to play centrist in her own work. But I have to say I agree with the Nation on this 1 There are two main reasons. First, the funding. Her main beneficiaries include Marc Andreessen, Paul Singer, and David Sacks. All three men are activist investors interested in funding libertarian and right wing operations. Sachs is Trump's current AI and crypto czar and he previously wrote the Diversity Myth alongside his co founder at PayPal, Peter Thiel. While he did donate to Hillary Clinton in 2016, more recently he's backed J.D. vance, Blake Masters, and he even put up some money for RFK Jr. When he was running for president in 2023 and then he later hosted fundraisers for Donald Trump. Singer has donated to a lot of LGBTQ plus issues and he actually thinks the rich should be taxed more. But the vulture capitalist is hawkishly pro Israel and his firms are the top source of contributions to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. And we've covered Andreessen quite a lot. Most recently he was a key networker and talent recruiter for doge. Now all three men position themselves as free speech advocates except when it comes to issues that they oppose, and all three stand to make a lot of money if the Free Press is sold. So the question in terms of grifting is does Barry Weiss cater her content to appease them? And we can't really answer because her politics seem to align with them anyway. But this brings me to my second major issue with her site and that's her constant platforming of COVID and science contrarians who she barely ever challenges and lets spread a lot of health misinformation on her podcast and on the site as well. Recently she hosted Jay Bhattacharya and Mark Hyman who have covered both of them on this podcast and suffice to say they were able to push Covid rewriting and anti Vax talking points with all almost no pushback. And even when she did push back a little, Weiss just does not have the scientific literacy skills to effectively make a case. And this is also true with her wife Nellie Bowles, who wrote one of the most laughable health columns I've ever read on the Free Press earlier this year.
- [10:33]
B
Yeah, and I would nominate Weiss as well as being the single most consistent proponent of the lie that the lab leak theory of COVID has been proven to be true. She says that every chance she gets. And they also did a big puff piece the you know the main guys that RFK Jr has put into positions of extraordinary power since he's gotten in charge of the hhs basically saying these are the heroes from the COVID era and they've all been proven to be right, which is complete garbage.
- [11:04]
A
Well, the grift isn't necessarily about whether or not she agrees with, you know, Thiel et cetera's politics. The grift is that she poses as a centrist or as somebody who is objective. Right. Like the grift is the, the pretense of journalism.
- [11:17]
B
It's also the pretense of independence when really there's a straight line between her and her billionaire tech oligarch funders that, you know, you won't find in the kinds of more established quote unquote mainstream media that she's saying is so biased and corrupt.
- [11:32]
A
So how does she pull that off? Is it just saying it over and over again? I'm independent, you know, I try to find the middle way. Or like, what does she. Like how does she actually pull it off? What is, what are, what's the trick there?
- [11:45]
C
Well, she does host some liberals and she does allow some liberals to write on her site. And of course we on this podcast always have discussions about where we are on the spectrum of liberal to left politics. But I will say she is firmly in the camp of center left when it comes to who she decides to platform. I've never seen her actually give any voice to actual leftist politics, but she does give voice to hard right politics. So the idea that it's any sort of fair and balanced is a misnomer. That's a really good point, Matthew. In terms of I don't know how much she's grifting personally, but you are correct, because one thing I do know, having worked in Startup World for almost a decade of my career with different companies, is that the investors behind startups want a return on their investment. And those three investors and more. She has something like 30 investors right now behind the Free Press. They're mostly activist investors. The Free Press caught the eyes of a specific type of right wing investor. So that seems like a big part of the grift to me. And I can very clearly state that the site and its accompanying podcast, Honestly with Bari Weiss, have heavily favored Maha level health misinformation without any real fact checking on the political front. Just in the last week they've published essays defending inequality, spotlighting all the supposed failures Zoran Mumdani is certain to implement if he becomes mayor of New York City with an accompanying article titled why Won't Socialism Die? And she excerpted Amy Coney Barrett's new book as well as interviewed her live on stage at Lincoln center, which was accompanied with an article as well titled Amy Coney Barrett. There's no constitutional crisis in America.
- [13:37]
A
You know, I want to ping death panel's excellent recent analysis of a Free Press Eugenics headline from the last couple of weeks. The headline was they became symbols for gauze and starvation, but all 12 suffer from other health problems. So where Weiss and the team use the fact that some starving children in Gaza pictured in news reports, had other manageable ailments, they used that to downplay the impacts of level 5 famine. They basically are suggesting that, well, you know, they were already weak, which is kind of the line they took about, you know, fat or old people during the pandemic, you know. And additionally, I just want to say, and maybe this flips the focus for a moment. We've put, as you said, Derek, so much energy into tracking the cursed rise of Barry Weiss. But in the end, this is a deal if it happens. That wouldn't be happening unless the top echelons of US Media didn't want to give her money and power. And I think that tells us a lot about where we're at and like, how valuable actual independent media is.
- [14:45]
C
The move towards media. I mean, so just think, for example, about how the attention economy changed media and changed headline writing and changed the way that media is approached. I'm still seeing this constant practice of, you know, my, my home paper, the Oregonian, does it and it really pisses me off. They'll, they'll do something like, this company is going out of business after 35 years, but they won't list the company until like four paragraphs down. Like, the clickbait model really changed media. And I feel like what we're experiencing right now, to your point, is the sort of contrarian centrist to right. Media that puts itself out as being a true free speech. We're going to platform everyone sort of media is pulling in people. And if you're legacy media and your, your numbers are tanking, this is where you're going to turn to because they have the biggest numbers. I mean, our main segment today is going to look at another example of this through the Rogan sphere. Basically.
- [15:48]
B
Yeah. So we can see it as like legacy media failing and panicking and going, what's working? And how do we align ourselves with what's working? But there's also something happening from both directions. Right? There's the, the rise of people who are doing the model that you're referring to and who are appealing to a certain sector of the, of the, of the consumer class. But at the same time, you've got these big mergers and these big takeovers and billionaires buying news outlets that before had been had operated under good journalistic standards. And you know, this whole thing with with Paramount and CBS is largely happening because of the merger with Skydance. And you know, as part of the reason why we saw Colbert get fired, that there's, there's, there's a changing of the guard happening at the top and from underneath.
- [16:33]
C
Right. And so Matthew's point about independent media being more important than ever, I mean, we do it, but I also feel that that is just going to continue to be the trend until some company is ready to buy us out for 200 million.
- [16:54]
A
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- [16:57]
B
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A
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B
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- [17:09]
A
And sweatshirts shop Abercrombie Kids this season.
- [17:12]
B
In the app, online and in store.
- [17:22]
D
This episode is brought to you by FXX and Hulu. Futurama returns on September 15. Blending heartfelt moments with razor sharp humor while accidentally saving the day, the Planet Express crew is back, defying gravity and common sense. From the creator of The Simpsons comes 10 new episodes where the romance is hotter, the threats are bigger, and the action hits harder. Don't miss the all new season of Futurama returning September 15th at 8pm Watch it on FXX or streaming on Hulu.
- [17:53]
C
I'm Scott Hanson, host of NFL Red Zone. Lowe's knows Sundays hit different when you earn them, we've got you covered with outdoor power equipment from Cobalt and everything you need to weatherproof your deck with Trex decking. Plus with lawn care from Scotts and of course pit boss grills and accessories, you can get a home field advantage all season long. So get to Lowe's, get it done and earn your Sunday Lowe's official partner of the NFL.
- [18:22]
B
Okay, so today for our main segment, we're looking at this hugely viral YouTube piece that was released about three weeks ago now. It's called How Comedy Was Destroyed by an Anti Reality Doomsday Cult and it appears on a channel called the Elephant Graveyard. The video laments the dominance of Joe Rogan's juvenile, anti woke and unfunny comedy circle and says that it perpetuates authority and conformity instead of speaking truth to power like comedy used to do. This may, he asserts, all have been deliberately engineered by tech oligarchs like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel to create A simulacrum that disconnects us from reality and human decency. Now, the video also compares this whole phenomenon to doomsday cults like Heaven's Gate, who enacted a mass suicide in 1997 based on their belief that an alien mothership was coming to take them home. That sounds like a stretch, but the poetic license is strong with Elephant Graveyard. This is, as it turns out, the latest in a series of widely viewed videos that skewer the old comedy scene. The channel has almost 340,000 subscribers, but it's safe to say that these particular videos are punching way above their weight. Like, the top five on the channel have over 1 million views. Number one is a takedown of Joe Rogan's truly bad 2024 special, Burn the Boats. I watched it so you don't have to.
- [19:46]
C
Oh, I watched like five minutes just because we cover him so much. And I have enjoyed previous specials by him to varying degrees. And I was like, okay, let me just. Let me just go in with an open mind. And my God, my wife was like, no, get this off.
- [19:58]
B
It's so. Aw. So that takedown, which was released like a week after the show went up on Netflix, has 4.7 million views. And then in second place on the channel is the piece we're discussing today, which got more than 2 million views in just two weeks. The content has a well formed style and a consistent tone. The analysis itself is very intellectual, despite also leaning into satirical whatever, man kind of moments of irony. All of which made me wonder, who is this guy? And there's a lot of chatter about this on the Internet because it's an anonymous channel. So, as corny as it may sound, the Elephant Graveyard is shrouded in mystery. The person behind it is anonymous. It seems to have originally been started as a music channel, and the handle is still Elephant Graveyard Music. When I select the order of videos from oldest to newest, the oldest video is from three years ago. And yet the channel includes another playlist called Elephant Graveyard Radio Hour, which has videos that go back as far as 10. So this is me just trying to, like, figure out what's going on here. When I search for information on Elephant Graveyard Radio Hour, Google tells me it's a fictional podcast radio show based around a radio host named Randy who has faked his own death. And then that playlist also has a curated selection of music uploads, including a song by the Boomtown Rats called the Elephant Graveyard. So excavating this particular archeological site reveals the digital bones of earlier incarnations of this particular Elephant's Armor online presence, but nothing more than that.
- [21:32]
C
Well, you're not the only one because there's Reddit threads about this as well. There's a lot of speculation, there's a lot of guessing. One is Canadian rapper named Buck 65 aka James Turfrey. If that is him, he hasn't posted a rap video in a decade. And that's a good thing because it's horrible. But you know, if this is your pivot dude, good job because you needed to get out of that Another guest is Anthony Jelnick. The host doesn't sound like Jnick. He's a comedian. I love his work, but I could actually believe that he wrote the content. He's one of the most vocal anti Rogan comedians out there. He regularly goes after him and his crew for Punching down and second, his humor is extremely dark and often sarcastic and it really fits the bill of the sort of tone of his work.
- [22:20]
B
Yeah, those are strong contenders. Another one that gets mentioned I found is Tom Green, given how strongly he's actually positioned in some of the videos as the actual legit and decent guy from whom Rogan allegedly stole stole the idea to start a podcast. A comedy podcast. But what's happened with Elephant Graveyard is that over the last three years the channel has trended toward mostly these longer form video essays, with the last four averaging about 80 minutes each. These cultural commentary art films are centered around critiquing the old comedy scene with Joe Rogan at its center. Other comedy targets have also included Jerry Seinfeld and his recent anti Woke and pro Israel turn, and then second rate Rogan associates like Brendan Schaub and David Lucas. If you don't know, don't bother looking them up.
- [23:08]
A
I am pretty interested in the anonymity piece. Not because I think it's like some sort of mystery to unravel, but just the notion of being a nobody living in a cabin in the woods. Who am I? And also added to that the immersive B roll and the kind of dread audio format it seems to be appropriate for targeting one of the most massive egos in the world. Or at least a place of high egotism if we're talking about the Mothership or the JRE studio itself. Because the effect is that it kind of presents this zeitgeist of a silent majority view of well, this is what we all actually think of Rogan, who is now waging class war on the entire world. And and a lot of that's reflected in the almost 35,000 comments so far on the video that we're looking at. And I think it's pretty effective at countering what increasingly appears to be maybe a passive majority of 10 to 20 million or million listeners per episode of the Rogan Experience.
- [24:18]
B
So to be clear, Matthew, you're saying it's appropriate because the anonymity doesn't get involved in, like, some kind of charisma contest with the narcissism of Rogan.
- [24:30]
A
Yeah, it's like that. I mean, I'd even argue that the piece isn't really about Rogan, personally, because the claims are so, like, Dadaist. Right. They're absurd. I think it's about the legion of followers for whom Rogan is an everyman.
- [24:46]
B
Yeah.
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A
You know, we've noted for a lot of years that Rogan's top skill, or one of his top skills, is kind of a parasocial ease, that he seems to invite every listener of a particular demographic into his den or garage, and he makes all of them feel like they have a friend, that they're hanging out and. But then the corollary to that is that he can come to represent them more than even host them. And so I think in this video essay, I get the sense that Elephant Graveyard is arguing against those multitudes. Like, they're calling out, like, why have you accepted this? Why has everybody accepted this? And I think anonymity serves that project. And, you know, we're also gonna get to the rhetorical and art strategies and whether and how this guy is using conspiracism as an artistic device.
- [25:33]
B
Ye.
- [25:34]
A
But for me, the stable core of the whole thing is this clear portrait of Rogan that Elephant Graveyard paints, which is, as the talking head enabler of a kind of faux populist fascism, that he's this cursed man baby American anti hero. He's an all around terrible person and terrible role model, and he's relieving all of his insecurities by punching down.
- [26:00]
B
Yeah. Oh, it's great analysis. I mean, I feel like watching the video, there's this sense of. Of the narrator basically saying, this is who this guy really is, and this is why you identify with him. He's played a trick on you that makes you think he's really special, but he's actually pandering to the most kind of unconsciously wounded, insecure, desperate parts of you and trying to tell you that you can be powerful if you go along with his sort of shtick.
- [26:29]
A
Right? Yeah, totally.
- [26:32]
B
Yeah. So I have a hunch he'd find what you're saying dead on in terms of your description. He goes further with regard to speculating about Rogan and his circle's psychology, as I was just saying, and proposing a semi ironic, darkly conspiratorial rationale underneath their cultural impact.
- [26:49]
A
Yeah, and that's really interesting for us because we deal with conspiracies all the time. Like what happens when that becomes a rhetorical weapon. I haven't watched much of Rogan's standup, but Elephant Graveyard's main refrains about it check out against what I've seen, which actually wasn't ever that memorable. Now, maybe you guys have different impressions because you've watched more, but what Graveyard says is that, you know, Rogan presents as resentful, unhappy, angry, secretly hating himself, but without the capacity and self awareness to turn those qualities into self deprecation. So there's, there's terrible jokes, the content is unoriginal, there's a lot of ignorance. It's motivated, as you said in the intro, Julian, by a dad shaped hole in his heart. You know, Rogan lost his dad when he was 7. So there's a lot of, like, patriarchal dysfunction and toxic masculinity that's always under the surface of this critique. And, you know, the fact that Rogan seems to always be seeking endless instant gratification and that he's found himself a place in the culture where he can get that, and he can get that through really low effort, content and audience capture pandering, which is why it has no moral core and why he shows no interest in comedy in its classic democratic leveling form. He's driven by whining. Elephant Graveyard says he looks for stuff to whine about, like a pathetic cigarette junkie scouring the sidewalk for butt remnants to smoke. And I found that really poignant too, because it's like, you know, that's like the end of the line for the person, right? That's the poorest of the poor, the most unhoused of the unhoused. And that's what he's comparing him to, this guy who lives in a mansion and, you know, whatever. So the whole drive of the content that we've covered here since 2020 is really about how Rogan seems to clout chase in news relevance while converting all of this entitlement and resentfulness into unfunny grievances against the mommy state. And then finally, Elephant Graveyard makes the point quite strongly that there's this hypocrisy, and it's related to what we were talking about with Weiss, of maintaining the outsider shtick. While making more money than God.
- [29:02]
C
I do have a slightly different impression. I have seen a lot of his stand up. I saw him live once at the Comedy Store when I lived in la and Elephant Graveyard pointed out some really horrible, tasteless jokes. But it's also not his entire catalog. A few specials ago, he did an entire bit about how his cat dominates his home and it was hilarious. Like, objectively, I think a lot of people would find it funny if you had no idea who he was. That said, I. He's obviously taken a severe turn. I know his haters will say he's never funny, but I don't think it's fairer if when Elephant Graveyard flattens his entire career with this sort of psychoanalysis from afar. Yes, he has talked on his podcast about l losing his father and what that did to him. So that is open game. It's just as likely to me that he's a lifelong gym bro who's not that self reflective and he's overly confident and who at times is pretty funny, but who is also, to Elephant Graveyard's point, he's been responsible for a tragic turn in comedy and through that medium, politics and health as well. And I know you're gonna talk about Sarah Stein Lubrano in a little bit, Matthew, and I just wanna say, you know, one of her most recent videos, she was pointing to sociological work where people on the left tend to be less happy than people on the right. Except if you're doing activism is her specific point.
- [30:26]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [30:27]
C
Great video. And, but she's, she points out that, you know, people on the right are showing over and over again to not really have as much. They're happier. That's, that's where it comes out to. So for me, Rogan could very well be in this blissful state where he's just satisfied with a lot of what he puts out. And, you know, he sees the noise, but he doesn't pay a lot of attention to it. So that's just kind of why I get a little iffy about psychologizing from afar.
- [30:58]
A
Yeah, I get that. I think that, you know, there are these, there are these personality differences as well with regard to, you know, when somebody sort of crosses over certain lines or they are, you know, I don't know, they've, they've, they've contributed to the anti vax crisis or they've put Trump over the top or something like that. It's really hard for me personally to, even in retrospect, like, if I had watched a special of Rogan's and laughed at something. The instinct that I have once I see what's happening in the present moment is to feel this sense of betrayal. Right. Like to say, oh, I got taken in by something. I got taken in by somebody whose politics or intentions or morality actually really doesn't sit well with me. And. But that's like. I think it's a real sort of personality difference. I know that I have it. I think it's common among leftists because there's a suspicion. Right. Of, oh, I had the sense that something wasn't right about this entire scenario. And so I think that's interesting.
- [32:17]
C
Well, that brings in a little bit to my point about the rewriting. Like, people who might. Like, I was a Rogan fan over a decade ago, and I no longer am. But I don't want to go to the point of being like, no, he was never funny, or, no, I didn't agree with his points on things like when he interviews some of the people that I used to listen to, I can still look back at them, be like, oh, those were fantastic interviews. And I just don't have that issue with. With recognizing that and recognizing. I think he's done a lot of damage at the same time.
- [32:45]
A
Yeah. What I'm not hearing in that is the sense of betrayal that I'm talking about. Right. It's not that I would say, oh, he was never funny. I would recognize that I laughed and I would go, I think there was something about that that was deceptive. That's the feeling.
- [33:00]
C
Yeah. I guess it's just because I don't know him.
- [33:02]
A
Yeah.
- [33:03]
C
Like, I don't. I will never feel betrayed by someone I don't know personally.
- [33:06]
A
Right.
- [33:07]
C
Because if they do, then that's on me because I don't actually have a relationship. I can only feel betrayed by someone in my own life who promised or did something to me personally.
- [33:17]
B
And you might not say he was never funny, but I think you might also not say, oh, he was always an ultra conservative fascist enabler. Right. And to me, Matthew, I think you're pointing at something that is a real personality difference. You go, oh, there was something deceptive about that. I was deceived by him. I look at it and go, oh, this guy, over time himself became deceived and deluded into some very bad ideas and beliefs that ended up taking him down this road where he spends a lot of time with, where everyone he's surrounded with, that he respects, who's. Who's big upping him all the time, are now really conservative in Ways that I find incredibly gross.
- [34:01]
A
I think cutting the difference between those two perspectives is really hard. Obviously. Obviously, they're going to be. There's going to be a mixture. I think what my brain goes to is, did I feel or hear any kind of guardrails or sort of set of commitments or allegiances or loyalties in that particular environment that would have predicted to me that actually, when push came to shove, he wasn't going to punch down. And maybe that's the thing that I will feel a little bit guilty about if I look back and I go, oh, yeah, I used to laugh at that shit. Because what it'll mean will be, oh, I wasn't really aware that I was in an environment in which certain sort of principles weren't taken for granted. I don't think there was a point in George Carlin's career, for example, where he punched down and people were sort of laughing at that, and then he sort of changed his politics and they got wise or something like that. No, he came onto that stage with a fully formed morality that of course he's going to explore and he's going to perform over time and he's going to work out and change things and whatever. But there's something there from the outset that I think announces itself right as, like, my project is I'm not going to punch down, because that sucks.
- [35:26]
B
Yeah, I agree with you about Carlin, but I also think there is a possible universe in which something happens with Carlin that we didn't predict, and then we go back retroactively and say, oh, yeah, I think some of the signs were there that he was in a kind of realm.
- [35:44]
A
That's a great thought experiment. My initial impression is, no fucking way. But you're right, you're right. It could happen to anybody, right?
- [35:54]
B
I guess. I guess, yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting. Thanks for unpacking that a little. I mean, one unpopular opinion that I'll float here is that Rogan has been quite open about being on TRT since his actually late twenties and going from creams to intramuscular injections. And we know that testosterone in particular has profound effects on personality, emotional reactivity, aggression. I think it's at least one possible factor contributing to his arc if he's been needing to take more of it over time. That's speculative, too. And I agree, Elephant Graveyard does paint the picture of Rogan's psychology that you just described. Indeed, he suggests that the comedians around him and many in the audience may have this kind of daddy trauma that they are dealing with in toxic ways. And he goes into that, that more deeply along with the beginnings of this Heaven's Gate death cult illusion, which we'll talk about in a bit in the previous video, which is that the thumbnail says comedy Czar on it. It's from about six months ago and it precedes this one. I find all of this plausible. I don't mind so much that it is armchair psychoanalyzing, I think, you know, we do that in different ways at different times quite frequently. As I watch the film along with the others he's done about this particular scene, I'm struck by just how much work goes into every minute of what he's doing, including not only the video collage and editing time, but also this really this gift for a kaleidoscopic intuitive access to the archive of relevant footage that he's locating and then stitching together so creatively. It feels like an artifact of our content creator time that we're living in. And also like it is the latest in a lineage of independent, low budget Internet propaganda films. And I use that word, propaganda in the sense that there's a focus on persuading the viewer toward a very particular interpretation of the world.
- [37:54]
C
I've done a lot of video editing and I would imagine this took dozens, if not over a hundred hours of work. Even just identifying all the clips he uses is colossal. And it could have been sped up if he used AI to find key moments from the news, for example. But even then he had to know where to look. It's very impressive. It's definitely a full time job for this person.
- [38:15]
A
I would guess that he pulled together more than a thousand assets. But you can also farm that video mining out these days with various online services. But then there's a question of copyright searches.
- [38:31]
C
I highly doubt there are any copyright searches on this video.
- [38:34]
A
Well, that's. And that's kind of. It's fascinating.
- [38:37]
B
You'd need a full time team.
- [38:38]
A
Well, but that's the thing is that is that, you know, Every upload to YouTube now is running through a copyright detection. And so I'm wondering what's going on there.
- [38:48]
B
Yes, for very specific things. I mean, there's tons of fair use that people get away with. Right.
- [38:54]
C
There's tons of fair use in a.
- [38:55]
B
Lot of the AI.
- [38:56]
C
I know the copyright. Some of the copyright strikes I've gotten have to do with music. It seems to be more tuned in for music than it is for news. He does use some movies, which is interesting. I think movies would be, would be A little more challenging, but. But again, fair use is a thing. And if you notice his style is very quick. There are, there is certain amount of time you can use, even with movies. So he might know those guardrails, right?
- [39:21]
B
Yeah. And he finds great obscure clips. I'm in there going, what is this movie? Quoting it to Google to see if I can find it. So in this lineage of what I just referred to of like low budget Internet propaganda films, I would put 2005's Loose Change and 2007's Zeitgeist, both of which advanced alternative conspiracy theories about 9 11. Hugely, hugely impactful. And they established the now familiar combination that you've already referenced. Matthew of ominous music, evocative B roll, the voiceover narration, and that narration unfolds how we've been lied to. In the case of Zeitgeist, it's not only about 9 11. It's about astrology and religion and banking and taxes. And perhaps this style works because it's really borrowing from the 1990s Ken Burns PBS historical documentary aesthetic, but then drowning it in paranoia. And I have to also say here, former BBC documentarian Adam Curtis is also very important, coming strongly from the political left, I would say in films like 2004's The Power of Nightmares, 2016's HyperNormalization, those are standouts from his catalog. He's got quite a few films. He uses all the same elements to advance a narrative about how consumer culture, individualism, media and political manipulation are used to disempower and confuse the masses and to normalize war, to perpetuate elite power. But critics of Curtis point out that he too is using a kind of conspiracy logic that employs emotive audiovisual techniques to then make intuitive connections in lieu of robust evidence or journalism, you know, creating very strong connections with Elephant Graveyard. It can be hard to tell if he's deliberately being on the nose with how he uses this style. Perhaps to ironically mock the conspiracy friendly vibe of the Joe Rogan experience. I did have that sense a couple times. Or if he is presenting some of his more big picture connections in an earnest way.
- [41:37]
A
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C
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A
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C
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A
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B
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C
Five, my mom used to say, are you, are you playing me off? That's what's happening, right?
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B
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A
New customer offer first 3 months only. Then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See mint mobile.com does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? But with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers. A network of 130 million of them. In fact, you can even target buyers by job title, industry, company seniority, skills and. Did I say job title? See how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Get started at LinkedIn.com campaign terms and conditions apply. Derek, we've got some clips to play, but I'm stuck on this statement that you made that like, I never feel betrayed by somebody that I don't personally know. Like, that's a, that's a very interpersonal experience. But, but like, for me, betrayal is also a function of politics. I attach it to leadership figures. I mean, people that I've never met, people that I don't know, but people who tell me one thing or tell us one thing and then do another. You don't feel betrayal there or do you just see inconsistency?
- [43:39]
C
I feel let down.
- [43:40]
A
Okay.
- [43:40]
C
I think betrayal, it could just be semantic, but I feel that betrayal is. Betrayal to me implies that I take it very personally. Personally. And I don't. I take it personally in a sense of, huh, Well, I should pay attention more if someone's going to say something. And it's also part of the culture that I come from in New Jersey. I know we, we laugh about it a lot, but it is true. Like, I don't immediately trust someone that has to be earned and built.
- [44:05]
A
Right?
- [44:05]
C
So I don't go into things trusting and then be like, oh man, it's, it's kind of like, oh, you know, you meet someone, you're like, how can you possibly me over and then, and then over time that changes and shifts. So that's, that's also from my experiences there. But no Definitely feel let down. Like, there have been politicians and figures, and then you have to go and look, though. I think of my own experiences, even, you know, having some platform with this podcast. Sometimes I'll receive DMs from people, and I'll be like, who? Who do you think I am? Like, they create figures of me based on their own imagination. And so I've taken that and been like, how do I do that to others as well? And I try to be careful about that.
- [44:45]
A
That got it. Yeah.
- [44:46]
B
Yeah, it's interesting. Like, I hear this question, Matthew. I always hear the way that you're framing this sense of betrayal as being that someone was lying, that they secretly were the bad thing, but they presented themselves as the good thing. And then when you find out actually they're the bad thing, you're like, oh, my God, I'm so. I feel so betrayed. Right, Yeah.
- [45:07]
A
I don't really think of it in terms of lying. I did use the word deceived, but it's more like, did that person come from my community of shared values, and did I think they did or didn't they? And if I find out they didn't, but I thought they did, then that's the problem. It's not that like, oh, you were intentionally trying to fuck me over. It's more like, I thought we were on the same page, and it's clear that we're not. And really, that actually involves examining a lot of my own assumptions about, like, well, why did I assume we were on the same page?
- [45:43]
B
Okay, guys, we are deep, deep into this episode. We've established plenty of context. Let's now turn to the actual film itself. So Elephant Graveyard spends the first eight minutes establishing that as a comedy lover, he's trying to make sense of what has gone wrong. Perhaps the best quote here is, I tried putting a comedy podcast on, but all of it was just interviews with, like, the CIA or the FBI or some other guy who works for the President.
- [46:10]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [46:11]
B
And so then he's like, okay, I'm gonna make the pilgrimage to Rogan's comedy club in Austin called the COMED Comedy Mothership. And then after an awful experience there, he goes home to his mountain cabin to think deeply about his core question.
- [46:25]
D
To answer the question of how comedy got. So we need to go back about 375 million years to the first of those migrations we mentioned earlier. Migration is baked into our DNA, guys. I don't know if you knew that in advance, but I am seeing on my YouTube analytics here that 87% of you only got your grade 10. So in case you weren't aware, humans began as simple tubes, a mouth, and an purest form of a proper organism just floating in the ocean somewhere. And eventually that tube evolved into this fish kind of thing. And this fish, this was the first in our lineage to become a new guy and to migrate. The ocean where he was was all up and he looked around and said, I gotta get the hell out of here. And he migrated out of the water and onto the land, becoming a land guy. He then somehow transformed into a little rat kind of thing with nipples. And the nipple rat evolved into like a monkey chimp thing or whatever. And then the chimp or ape or whatever, it, it became a human guy. And it wasn't long until those human guys like that fish before them looked around, around and said, I gotta get the hell out of here. And they migrated to every corner of the Earth. A lot of animals have these built in mechanisms. We are no different. Just like how birds have like a magnet in their brain or something which tells them when and where to migrate somewhere else. It's obvious from these historical records that the human instinct to say this, I gotta get out of here, becomes activated in times of fear. Fear is processed in the most ancient part of our brain. It puts us into a fight or flight mode, just like the fish guy.
- [48:04]
B
So it feels like he's very deliberately parodying evolutionary psychology with a lot of his language choices. I feel very deliberately done. And then how that evolutionary psychology informs bro culture. He's also alluding to the alienated conditions under which people, especially men, become susceptible to a certain kind of political manipulation. And we're less than two minutes from the first organisms emerging in the ocean. And elephant graveyard segues into describing today's wars and social unrest, the climate crisis, et cetera. Men losing their jobs, they can't pay their bills. They're anxious about microplastics, which feels like a little bit of a. I mean, it's like somewhat earnest, but also a dig at Maha. And so at this point, after continuing through his narrative of the entire history of human beings, he introduces real villains behind the scenes and he. I here gives a nod to Adam Curtis, but also to Jean Baudrillard.
- [49:04]
D
And then he says it. Ah, this. I gotta get out of here. Except this time, they've got nowhere to go. Not physically anyway. But lucky for them, some of humanity's most powerful visionaries, the techno wizards, have constructed a psychic arc to sail the seas of your mind and take you away from your Problems and out on to a new frontier, a new reality. Here's where it gets crazy. It's a reality where there is no such thing as reality Lion. The Techno Wizards use their machines to ramp up your own uncertainty about what's real and what's fantasy. To the point where you're so anxious that you do anything just to be certain. Once you've lost connection with classic reality, you're just a guy floating out in the open ocean, desperate to find something to grab onto to save yourself. Stranded and surrounded by a sea of danger. That is when the Techno Wizards begin their most perverted sorcery. They throw you a life preserver in the form of a new world. A new virtual world. In this virtual world, you're still going to be angry all the time, but at least you'll be certain. And that feels good. And because it feels so good, you just want to stay in there forever until eventually you've been in there so long that your new virtual world feels more real than your old classic reality. And once it's become more convincing than classic reality, it just becomes your new reality. Congratulations. You've migrated to a new place. It's a new reality, except it's anti reality. It's what's called a hyper real similacrum.
- [50:38]
A
That's beautiful writing, man.
- [50:39]
B
Right. He's found a way to talk about something that's so complex and so meta, so intellectually sophisticated and very down to earth language. Having almost done a bait and switch with the sort of humorous way that he got into it.
- [50:51]
A
Yeah. And if you throw enough whatevers into it, it's just that much more accessible.
- [50:56]
B
Yeah, interesting. So some of the people in the images that go with this audio, of course, include Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. I have to say, rewatching the film in preparation for today and to find these couple clips where I think he's really sort of laying out the main thesis of the. It's so good. The connections he's making, I think, are culturally and psychologically insightful at the same time. There's this conspiratorial implication that makes it seem like everything he's describing has been planned. Like Rogan is almost a creation of the Techno wizards. We won't have time for more clips about all of this. It's long, it's complex. But Elephant Graveyard also does a lot of work here. Comparing Rogan's comedy mothership to the Heaven's Gate cult, which we've talked about on the show. I did a bonus episode about them. A long time ago. He uses clips of that cult leader, Marshall Applewhite, who convinced his followers that they were spiritual aliens in human Earth suits and that the mothership was riding behind the Hale Bob comet and the tail of the comet, which was visible in the 1997 skies for the first time in 2,500 years. And so 39 members, several of whom had gone through voluntary castration in the years previous, died after ritually eating applesauce and pudding laced with phenobarbital. And they lay down in their uniform like Nike sneakers, famously to be beamed up and taken home. Now, Rogan's statements about the world falling apart are intercut with this, as well as Musk's obsession with leaving Earth. And this is all linked in the. In the sort of allegory that's being laid out here to the Heaven's Gates religious beliefs. So I find myself feeling that the tricky part about this kind of art is that it's inevitably blurring the lines between metaphorical and literal descriptions. And then when you add the ironic and satirical layers, as well as the highly enjoyable creative self indulgence, the cultural criticism and political analysis can sometimes get a bit muddled. And it can start to feel like it's relying on a stack of intuitive premises that feel true, but have also perhaps been taken on board as true because of the power of the music and the imagery. And it's something we would critique in people who are espousing points of view that we disagree with.
- [53:20]
A
Exactly.
- [53:20]
B
Or conspiracy theories that we find really destructive. And so I find myself, yeah, just in an interesting place of going. Like, I really like what this guy's doing, but I also notice some of the tricks of the trade that more toxic influencers use.
- [53:34]
A
Yeah, it's fire with fire for sure. But I mean, is he really saying that Rogan is running a death cult and he's like Marshall Applewhite of Heaven's Gate, that he's going to push all of his sad acolytes off a cliff? Was he set up by tech giant overlords? It is soaking in irony. And so I think it's. No, but I do think the metaphor is appropriately morbid. Yeah. And it defamiliarizes something that's become utterly normalized, which is the world of jre. I think one instinct of the conspiracist that I think a lot about is the Cassandra instinct. Or what will you say? What will you do when you know something is terribly wrong and no one seems to notice or care? And so you know, would it be enough for, you know, elephant graveyard to just lay out the. The revolutionary argument that this is how power builds and consolidates in the hands of a few, and these are the fascist techniques deployed to maintain it? I make that argument all the time and I think there's a place for it. But I'm never going to score 2 million views on anything in two weeks. Sometimes the sober political analysis walks so that surrealism can fly. And I think that's what happened with all of the degenerate art of the Weimar period. A lot of the surrealists and satirists were popularizing Marxist or anarchist analyses of. Of crumbling empires, but then the cabaret was calling for different types of expression.
- [55:02]
B
Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. I totally agree. The use of art and metaphor and storytelling is such a powerful way to communicate cultural and political messages that would otherwise perhaps be boring or require too much academic level reading and interpretation. I do think it's a bit of a double edged sword because as we've covered extensively, propaganda can be used to advance any ideology or any set of beliefs. James Joyce has this fascinating distinction that stuck with me every time I heard it between. Stuck with me ever since I heard it between kinetic, didactic and static art. So he compares kinetic art to pornography in that it evokes a desire to possess something. And we could perhaps put advertising or the fetishized fictional representations of certain opulent lifestyles in the entertainment sphere under that heading. And then there's didactic art, and that's his category for propaganda, which he describes as generating interesting rejection and loathing and being moved to action against something. But then his third category, which he values more, is static art, which he says creates a sense of aesthetic arrest, a kind of contemplative reverie that's almost spiritually transcendent in its wonder.
- [56:17]
A
I think that he misnamed it. I think he should have called it the arresting art or something like that, because it's not static. I don't think you mean static, actually.
- [56:24]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not in the way that we probably use the word today. But you know, of course, for the ad man, that moment of art that just creates aesthetic arrest is a sales opportunity lost. And for the revolutionary, it's an opiated enabling of the status quo. Right. You're not actually pushing humanity in the right direction.
- [56:42]
A
Yeah. I mean, I think if anything, the metaphor he constructs between JRE and Heaven's Gate, it might not go hard enough. Like heaven's gate was 39 people. But elephant Garden is saying that Rogan has effectively podcasted fascism into the mainstream and this is already a mass casualty event. I think we started using that phrase about six months ago, especially as the eugenics program of RFK junior got off the ground.
- [57:08]
D
Yeah.
- [57:08]
B
And as we were talking about the potential impacts of Long Covid.
- [57:12]
A
Right.
- [57:12]
B
And yeah, Elephant Graveyard is using Heaven's Gate as a metaphor for everything you just described. But Heaven's Gate wasn't using the mothership and ritualized group suicide as a metaphor for anything they believed. It was literally true. But it sounds like your point is that, that Rogan's impact is much worse than 39 people eating poisoned applesauce.
- [57:32]
A
Yeah, 1,000% much worse. Like 39 people rest in peace, a terrible, terrible event. But, you know, I mean, did Rogan push Trump over the top? Maybe did he help create an epistemic shit show in which fascism was permissible and deniable? I mean, even from the point of view of vax hesitancy, like how many deaths do we put on this guy or you know, the network that he, that he enables.
- [57:58]
B
So just by putting those ideas and beliefs and perspectives out into the world in a non critical way, exposing huge audiences to them, you're calculating an incredible destructive impact on the world.
- [58:14]
A
Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah. And everybody who podcasted Trump into office has blood on their hands, in my opinion. For sure. So one main reason that I find this video effective is the, that the Joe Rogan experience is a mood as much as it's anything else. And this video is a mood. And Rogan does two or three hour immersive and to my ear, sometimes hypnotic experiences. I think Elephant Graveyard is reflecting that back. I think that he's fighting affect with affect, fire with fire. And so the question for me becomes, what is the overall impact in an artistic sense? And my worry is not that it's going to scramble people's epistemology, because I don't think anybody's going to that this type of thing for, you know, a way of thinking they're going for a particular mood. I think that mood is black pilled and heavy handed. It offers very little relief. I think, you know, you'd have to survey the viewers to get a read on the general impacts. But what I get from it in general is doomerism. And as an anti fascist myself, I worry about that. Because if you're really worried about a literal or metaphorical death cult or a state turning into a death cult, it's a form of compliance to maintain a consistently defeated posture, or if You're a content provider to kind of guide people into that place and maybe leave them there. And I'm also sure that because he loves comedy so much, Elephant Graveyard has a sense of comedians who are still artists of punching up while also punching inwards at themselves. Or else I don't think he would go so hard on this one. But I'm not getting the feeling from him that maybe guys like Josh Johnson or Matt Lieb matter that much. Like, he doesn't reference them. I know it's not about them, but he doesn't throw any sort of light. He doesn't say like, oh, but you know, there is some piece over here that's, that's, you know, doing something different. Maybe they're just too small beans from his point of view, given Rogan's influence. And my understanding of black pills is that they have a temporary therapeutic benefit for a person discovering that, you know, something about their world that they suspected was always true is actually true. Like, if you're in a cult and Steve Hasson runs down the 10 point checklist of why cults are irrevocably and uniquely bad, that can jostle some things clear for a person. If you're in a bad marriage, it can be helpful to consume Instagram content on malignant narcissism, even if diagnostically it's an overreach. And if you're trying to figure out why the cops are obligated to protect capital, first and foremost, hearing someone yell all cops are bastards can give a jolt of awareness until you like really think about it. You finesse it, you depersonalize it. You acknowledge that all cops are also human beings. But we're all playing variously compromised and sometimes self betraying roles in society. But this video tries to resolve the relentless depression of the content by talking about, you know, getting out to touch grass, you know, because he's out in the woods. But it kind of seems tacked on. It's like he's almost apologizing like, I dragged you through shit and like, you know, why don't you go out and walk in the forest? It's little bit individualistic to really provide anything motivational, but, you know, I might be overly worried about that particular kind of thing because one of the top comments on YouTube that had 115,000 likes is quote, this video legitimately helped me remember that I'm being pulled into negativity all the time and that I should be kind to others again. So great.
- [61:48]
C
Yeah, well, again, it's a place where we have differences. I Think to my music reviewing days and the hundreds, if not thousands of albums I reviewed. It's like, you don't pull in all of these other things you wish the album was. You treat it for what it is. And you might weigh it against the artist's catalog and maybe the culture they're speaking to. But. But once you get into the form of I, because I feel this way, then I think it should be this. That's. That's what. I personally don't really have a temperament for that. I don't think he's really trying to offer solutions. I mean, the title of the video didn't have an addendum that's said, this is how to fix the problem.
- [62:24]
A
No, no, it didn't.
- [62:25]
C
So I appreciated the analysis without requiring it to be prescriptive in any form. And I personally find a lot of value of that as its own piece of art.
- [62:34]
A
Right.
- [62:34]
C
I will give an example here because I was aware of Tony Hinchcliffe, one of Rogan's besties. I did not know how shit of a human being was. And we should mention that the last half hour of this film is focused on Hinch Cliff. And so for me, it's just like, you know, he's got a big deal with Netflix, with Kill Tony, and he's much more in the. In the mainstream right now. Of course, a lot of people know about him because at the Trump rally, he said puerto Rico is a floating island of garbage. And then Hinchcliffe did the thing where he's like, oh, people can't take a joke. Well, no, you're. You're a douchebag, actually. And I think Elephant graveyard did a really good job. I think you called him Elephant Garden before Matthew. Yes, Right. He did a really good job of showing his douchebaggery.
- [63:24]
A
You know what I. What's in my brain is a song by Beirut called Elephant Gun. So I might have said that, too.
- [63:31]
C
But I just want to say I'm. I'm reminded of this whole discussion of Stephen Colbert when he discussed free speech and comedy with Jon Favreau in his podcast Offline about this, about the Hinchcliffe moment, which was that everyone has a right to say whatever they want, but they also have to take responsibility for the reactions to their material.
- [63:53]
B
And.
- [63:53]
C
And this whole thing, like both Hinchcliffe specifically, but also to your broader point about blood on your hands, that you said, matthew Rogan's never going to take responsibility for that. None of them are going to actually take responsibility. And I think that was a big Takeaway for me from the film project overall is showing how malicious as humans they are in Hinchcliffe's regard, oblivious to the broader political landscape in Rogan's regard. And there will be no self own to the damage that they do.
- [64:23]
A
You know, to close out. I. I kind of want to refer to this book that I'm really loving right now by the social scientist and philosopher Sarah Stein Glubrano. It's called Don't Talk About Politics. And I want to just bring it up here in the end because I think it factors into the discussion that we are having that's ongoing about some of the underlying stakes involved in our analysis of the Joe Rogan experience. In our book, we actually track the basics In a section on him, we looked at the guests, the beliefs, the false information spread, the techniques, the plausible deniability of being a comic. I think the toughest question we struggled with was intention. Like, is he a believer, a booster or a grifter? And I don't recall us coming to a clear answer, do you guys?
- [65:10]
B
Yeah, I don't think we did. I think our. Certainly I'll speak for myself. My tendency was to see him more as a booster who was just kind of like at sea and didn't have well formed beliefs. I think that's changed over time.
- [65:25]
A
Yeah.
- [65:26]
C
And I just always think it's really hard to tell intentions, you know, how much you believe, how much you've radicalized yourself, how much you're grifting. Like, those questions, unless they come out and admit it, you can never really tell. So it's always going to be a sort of nebulous territory.
- [65:40]
A
I think it hangs around for a lot of people, including me, because the parasocial nature of the relationship, relationships really depend upon, I think, a kind of, I don't know, read of intention. Right. Like, people don't listen parasocially to people they don't trust. Right?
- [65:58]
B
Yeah. Perceived authenticity.
- [65:59]
A
Yeah, exactly. Right. I don't think I've had the tools to examine this question of whether the landscape in which Rogan excels, which I think is where his apologists really come in, which is the marketplace of ideas or the notion of, you know, debate. I haven't really had the skill or the tools to evaluate whether that's the place where the problems of misinformation or political ignorance are best confronted. And that's what steinlebrano does. In their book, steinlebrano says that these two particular models of discourse, so marketplace and debate, especially debate as war, cannot and have never Selected for the best ideas about the marketplace. She says, do we really believe that the best ideas emerge from the marketplace? And that because look at what we have about debate, especially presented as war, instead of mutual discovery. She says the research, the social science research finds that people very rarely change positions after witnessing or participating in a debate. And we can run a test. I think, Derek, because I think you're going to be on stage with Dave Asprey coming up soon, debating on the relevance or the power of seed oils, and he's going to sell you some blue light glasses and maybe have you do something with your nuts.
- [67:16]
C
Well, I asked him for a pair in advance, but yes, I'm going to be debating Dave, aspirin, seed oils, and I'm gonna be debating. It looks like a holistic dentist on fluoride.
- [67:24]
A
That's awesome. So we'll see. This is a test. We'll see if you change anybody's mind.
- [67:29]
C
I don't expect to, because it's predominantly a wellness summit, but for years I've said we need to have conversations with people. Like, we can't just speak to ourselves. And the fact that I was given this opportunity, I'm very excited about it.
- [67:41]
A
Yeah. So about debate, like, especially, you know, as presented as war, she says this thing that, like, positions very rarely change. And that's what the bulk of the research suggests, because conceptual word based conflict doesn't tend to change mind so much as strengthen cognitive biases, or at least it doesn't get around cognitive biases. And she admits that this is a really hard idea for all of us because, you know, the marketplace and debate principles are baked into the fabric of every liberal tradition and institution from schooling to parliament. Like the high school essay basically is training you to debate on paper. And so what happens, I wonder, when the podcast world flows out of and then mimics that space that basically that institutional hegemony, or even pretends that it's an upgrade on it. Right. Which I think, you know, a lot of people sort of say that about the podcasting world. It's like, now we have more open, open debate.
- [68:43]
B
But. But the point, the point is there's no debate going on.
- [68:46]
A
Right.
- [68:46]
B
These podcasts are not debate platforms. Joe Rogan Experience is not a place where people go to debate. It's a place where people go to express contrarian perspectives on highly consequential matters that the, the scientific consensus has already ruled out.
- [69:02]
A
Right. So I guess maybe the application here is that the debate around what's presented on an episode of JRE Takes Place outside of the actual episode. Of course, he's not pushing back. He's not. I mean, sometimes he puts people opposing each other. He had the archaeologist and the non archaeologist on. Right. That sort of thing. Right?
- [69:21]
B
That's true. It's rare. But yeah, that does happen occasionally, as.
- [69:24]
A
Listeners enter this with the preconditioned notion that the serious conversation that they will listen to is part of knowledge production. It's part of social change. But do listeners change? Do they actually develop new opinions? I think one assumption with Rogan that I've had is that his platforming of the Weinsteins or Kelly Brogan or Terrence Howard or anti vax schools or even Trump himself has a measurable effect on the beliefs of listeners. And it may have that. But Stein Lubrano argues that for the most part, podcasts and TV only really strengthen beliefs. And so this makes me think, what does this mean for the project of engaging with it all? And I spoke to her recently and I asked her all that, and she basically said that podcasts mainly educate people who are already convinced, and they allow listeners to sound a little smarter at dinner parties, which is really good. That builds community and solidarity. It's helpful. But it's not necessarily the fact that this combats misinformation in the sense of changing the minds of Rogan fans. And one point that she makes is that the value of resisting something is its own good, but not because you win, especially against, you know, a set of political opponents. For instance, her reading of the research suggests that protests in themselves tend to change little, except for strengthening the social bonds of protesters, leading to happier and more connective lives. Also, a lot of trouble on the way. So one of you referenced, like, oh, yeah, you know, she talked about how, you know, leftists are actually less happy unless they're involved in activism. But of course, that comes along with, you know, the person who really gets activated and goes to protests and starts getting really radical. They'll probably also get divorced. They're probably also going to, like, change their social sets. Their lives are going to be ruined before they get better. So she's pretty funny about that. The general advice then of the book is that for all the time one spends building solidarity in discourse, you spend a certain amount just doing helpful stuff in your neighborhood, which I don't think think is like a hugely revolutionary idea. But, like, if you really take it seriously, I think it proposes a real challenge because the argument is that the strongest thing that really changes minds is social experience. And maybe that's part of what Elephant Journal is getting at in his focus on elephant graveyard. No, I did that on purpose. Yeah.
- [71:56]
C
All right.
- [71:57]
A
Maybe that's part of what Elephant Graveyard is getting at in his focus on the shitty social culture of the mothership. Especially for somebody who, it sounds like they are really, really invested in comedy as kind of like a community experience. The whole video seems to be crying out over the ruin of, or the absence of wholesome community in comedy. And I guess that is the place where solidarity is built, because everybody is agreeing that they're only ever going to punch up. So one reason I find this really rich to think about is that all the time spent thinking about, reviewing, debunking, refuting, it's a lot, a lot. It's a lot of what I do that's partly out of professional necessity. And the rest of my life is like childcare, and that has to be good enough for now. But sometimes it feels, you know, a little bit insular and disconnected. But the other thing that Steinlebrono told me about persuasion is that to change anyone's minds, this I found really moving, you have to establish you're doing something good for. For them, that you're changing material circumstances. And you probably have to do that long before you ever talk about politics, because that's how politics are actually formed through, like, social experiences. So maybe the silver lining in the Joe Rogan experience cloud is that Rogan is not doing shit for his listeners, Right? He's just talking, like, for a very long time. And. And if that's one of Elephant Garden's main takeaways, maybe he nailed it.