Cale Ensminger
First Draft
Introduction
The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) is a Spotify exclusive podcast that has created its own lane in the midst of a competitive world of social media. Hosted by Joe Rogan, the show has become one of the largest and most popular pieces of cultural media to emerge in the podcasting industry. JRE is valued at around one hundred million dollars, and it draws in a few million views per episode. The show’s highest viewed episode was with guest star, Elon Musk, that earned nearly forty-two million watches. The podcast is not just popular though, it is becoming influential and important. “The show was Apple Podcasts’ second-most-downloaded podcast in both 2017 and 2018. It also routinely sits near the top of Stitcher’s weekly most-popular-podcast rankings” (Peters). Since Rogan signed a contract with Spotify making them the exclusive medium for viewers or listeners, the show has been ranked as the most searched for podcast on the platform as well as the most watched new podcast. JRE was also ranked as the most popular podcast in 2020 by Spotify which could be some of the reasoning behind the huge deal they offered to Rogan. A very interesting and intriguing part of the show to me lies in the discourse.
The communicative abilities that Rogan possesses keeps his audience engaged in the podcast and coming back to hear and/or see more. Rogan has a career in stand-up comedy and has a past in reality television which contributes to his charismatic personality and to the popularity of the show. JRE is a very insightful and thought-provoking podcast that is full of discourse regarding human behavior, pop culture, socio economic issues, and many things in between. Guests on the show range from professional athletes, and high profile politicians to renowned scientists and prosperous business moguls. I’ve learned a great deal of genuinely new information and ways to think and/or communicate from aspects of the podcast that have made an impression on me and I feel it is important to acknowledge considering the draw it has brought and the positive reception the show receives. One thing that strikes me about Joe Rogan is his ability to communicate, articulate, and connect with total strangers over long periods of time. His podcasts are pretty much all done in person, and usually last at least two hours long. He’s now got a few episodes that were filmed and put out virtually due to the pandemic, but Rogan moved from Los Angeles,
CA to Austin, TX so he could continue to meet with his guests without as many regulations as
California. He also moved for reasons of his comedy career as he’s said in several episodes since the move. It’s been a couple years since I first started listening to the show and there has barely been any moments of intermission, or disconnection, between him and his guests. And not only does Joe keep engaged in every conversation, he seems to hit a point with every guest where the conversation is unconstrained, and sincere discourse takes place. Regardless of the guest profession, race, gender, class etc. I think the people that come on his show feel comfortable with him or with what his show offers which is an opportunity for open dialogue within mass media.
His guest can come on the show and talk about whatever they like and for however long they desire, which creates an environment that is honest and understanding and able to share and amplify someone’s voice. There’s many cases of the show where a guest comes on with baggage whether it be from the past or the media. On JRE these individuals can identify themselves and have their voice heard and, at times, actual facts over rumors or opinions about them. Joe builds relationships with these people if he did not have one previously before having them on the show.
Research Questions:
In this paper I will be engaging subjects that surround the podcast, such as the publics and counterpublics it creates, or how constitutive rhetoric is used. I aim to engage the reader with an understanding of how JRE interpellates its audience through the formation of a culture and subcultures. I also want to explore how these digital mediums like Spotify are structured around podcasting and how JRE has been a large impacting factor in form and content for the digital community. Some preliminary research questions of mine are: 1) How does JRE effectively maintain and interpellate its audience? 2) How is constitutive rhetoric used in the style and processes of JRE and how does that affect the reception of the show as a whole? 3) What are the publics and counterpublics forming around these episodes? How do people identify with them and what do they mean for culture and the podcasting industry?
This angle of analysis is important, I believe, because there hasn’t been much if any scholarly research on this show or podcasting in general. Coincidentally, the audiences that are viewing and listening to podcasts have not been studied either.
Context & Description
The Joe Rogan Experience is one of the highest consumed and most popular podcasts to have ever emerged in modern social media and culture. The podcast was founded, hosted, and is produced by Joe Rogan himself, with the help of his longtime friends, co-founder and co- producer Brian Redband and Jamie Vernon. Rogan came up with the idea and started JRE in 2013, and by 2015 the podcast was one of the most viewed podcasts in the world averaging around a million views per episode (Warren). Today, the podcast is still considered one of the most popular podcasts in the world. It is a unique show that operates with an open ended style discussion and features new guests on each episode. These guests have included the likes of professional athletes, scientists, politicians, billionaires, and even just friends of Joe Rogan. As the show has evolved over the years, spanning over 1,500 episodes and multitudes of guests; the format, one Rogan describes as “listening and learning” has forwarded him to superstardom.
Now with that being said JRE is also one of the most criticized and distinguished media platforms to be characterized as a podcast. As a fan of JRE, I would say that it would be a difficult task to be a completeist, as we see the volume of episodes that are made and put out.
And Rogan is know to dish out a heavy amount of content with around three episodes dropping per week on average, an attribute to keeping engagement of the JRE audience. Since playing as a leading piece in the surge of podcasting and the formation of culture and subcultures that surround it on Youtube’s medium, JRE has caught the attention of other multimedia platforms looking to make their way into this flourishing industry. Rogan just recently signed an exclusivity agreement for the podcast with Spotify’s company. Katy Warren at Business Insider said that, “Spotify announced in May that Rogan's podcast would be available on the platform starting September 1st, 2020 and that it would become exclusive to Spotify in 2021. The multiyear licensing agreement could be worth upwards of $100 million based on the podcast's performance metrics and other factors…“The Joe Rogan Experience" is downloaded almost 200 million times per month and brought in $30 million last year, making the comedian and UFC commentator the highest-paid podcaster of 2019, per Forbes”(Warren). The signing of this deal could potentially be one of the biggest moves made in the short history of the podcasting industry, and for Spotify’s business. As for Rogan he get to continue on his own course in this deal, Warren wrote, “On the day the Spotify deal was announced, Rogan wrote on Instagram that his podcast will remain free”… “It will be the exact same show,” he said. "It's just a licensing deal, so Spotify won't have any creative control over the show. They want me to just continue doing it the way I'm doing it right now.” The fact that Spotify has made out an agreement like this is a key factor, in my opinion, to truly understanding the significance that JRE holds for the podcasting world, and culture as a whole. It is apparent and valuable to analyze the metaphorical weight that the podcast holds for this industry. And can give a better overall understanding and picture of what ways online culture is shifting and how that has and will make an impact in the future. I think a reason Spotify offered Rogan such a large and long term deal is because they see some of this impact happening now, even if it be only from the lense of more dollar signs for the company, that speaks for something doesn’t it? JRE has an effect on the culture and for those who engage in its content because it offers things in exchange for the time you spend tuning in.
Rogan is very good at forming this dynamic and grabbing his audience's attention through his discourse and tone. Each episode of the show is used as a new opportunity for Rogan to talk to someone he is interested in, having conversations with which have some kind of impact on its viewer, may it be big or small. Rogan didn’t do almost any of the things that successful podcasters do on his path to success. Even though he has a ton of industry connections, he didn’t join a network. That makes it a lot harder for a small podcast to take off. Most people who start their own podcast might not have the option of joining a network, but Rogan likely did. A network provides artists with support and infrastructure needed to grow listenership. In some cases, the network may do some or all of the marketing work, meaning all the artist has to do is create. Not joining a network means that Rogan did a lot of the work himself. He also didn’t listen to experts who say that podcasts should be short and sweet. The recommended length is 22 minutes. Rogan’s typically run longer because he wants to get all the material in, no matter how long it takes. Each episode spans anywhere from two to three hours, and Rogan owns an additional channel where shorter clips of the long conversations are uploaded. When Rogan originally launched JRE on Youtube, Christmas Eve of 2009, he wanted to create an environment where Rogan and his friends could address the fans and followers and have fun and open discourse on whatever they may please. With that being said, Joe didn’t pay for any marketing for his podcast in the beginning, or even try to monetize it right away. Instead, he let the show grow organically. He let listeners find him, and they usually like what they find. Joe has also never asked for reviews for his podcast which is important because he knows a lot of famous people, and a simple shoutout from one of them could have boosted his podcast’s numbers, but it wouldn’t have been organic growth. Rogan claims to have been influenced and attracted to the idea of the open discussion style podcast from appearing on the Opie and
Anthony comedy radio show. This style of podcasting is unique because it has brought a different dynamic to its mediums. Its success has signified a somewhat profound shift in podcasting and surrounding culture. Joe Rogan has become a figure that is trusted by people on all sides of the social spectrum. With guests that range from voices like Elon Musk and Bernie Sanders to Kevin
Hart and even Alex Jones, he sits down and listens to everyone, regardless of whether or not he is familiar with them. Rogan is also very difficult to put into a political box. He has described his views as being mostly liberal, with the exception of his feelings about gun rights. However, I think that it is more complex than that. When he sits down with somebody that doesn’t see the same politically, he tries to find out everything that they agree on. As he focuses on that, we find that he and his guests usually share a lot of ideas in common. It’s not that he is afraid of confrontation. In fact, he welcomes it at times and some of his podcasts take a turn for the uncomfortable side every once and a while for the sake of ideological integrity. It seems to me that he believes that if people tried to understand each other’s views rather than attack them, discussions would become much more effective. That being said, in today's climate, Rogan has curated a new way of viewing for his audience that they can’t access or experience anywhere else. By adapting to the new ways that we consume information Rogan’s been able to capture the audience, captivated by the conversations. Joe is not new to catching others attention either, as he has been a stand up comedian since the late 1980’s, he found success in this field early, performing his first show at just 21 years old and continues on to perform and tour today. He's done stand-up comedy specials for both Netflix and Comedy Central and is a part of The Comedy
Club which was started by a group of comics in LA. Rogan talks about all sorts of things in his comedy routines, drugs, life, sex, mysteries of space, and the world. I think his comedic background is a very important detail in analysis of JRE because Rogan’s background plays very heavily into his discourse throughout the podcasts. The ways his comedy plays a role in the way
Joe receives and interprets the world in his experience is a theme worth digging deeper into during the analysis. Rogan has also had success as a national television host for the show Fear
Factor and a commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC) since the late 90’s, early 2000’s. His fighting background runs deep as he pursued a kick boxing career for the early portion of his life. He has said on the podcast that martial arts gave him confidence and a different perspective of looking at what he was capable of. Rogan started working at the UFC doing backstage and post-fight interviews for the martial arts promotion company. By 2002, he started doing commentary. UFC Founder, President, and close friend of Rogan told Rolling
Stone Magazine, “He's educated more people in mixed martial arts than anybody ever, he’s the best fight announcer who has ever called a fight in the history of fighting.” I think this is a very bold and controversial statement by him but one worth arguing. Rogan has interviewed some of the biggest fighters in the industry over the years and played a major role in the faces and development of the sport today. Some intrinsic details about Joe’s personal life and career like these all have an effect and will be used as stepping stones to convey my ideas and points that I want to highlight on JRE, podcasting, and culture.
The JRE podcast seems to be one of the longest running and undoubtedly influential pieces of media in recent years given the success and crowd it has drawn. Rogan’s conversational skills seem like perfected art in the midst of these episodes, as he leaves room for real life and honest stories. During the podcast Joe asks guests questions they might not want to answer or were even expected to be asked, but he lets people tell their side of the story, where the public may have only gotten one side of a story. Yet, Joe is also known to keep a high integrity in the show and has gotten better at that since its beginnings. He aims to create a platform that is in equal parts educational, entertaining, motivational and amusing. With the JRE
Youtube channel having just under 8.5 million subscribers, with videos collectively pulling in more than 2 billion views, the video addition to a podcasting format has helped bring in an entire new audience for JRE and its guests platforms. Rogan videos give the ability to not only hear what is being said, but see it simultaneously. That makes it more enjoyable for some people who like to see the genuinity and feel the energy of their conversations, as well as those who are tuning in because they are fans of guests. Many similar podcasts are only available in audio, this is where I think JRE separates itself from the pack, having the video option for listeners to watch the conversation adds an extra engaging feel to the show. I also believe that being on Youtube brought in viewers who would not typically be a part of the podcasting community, which is heavily dominated by audio mediums like Spotify, Apple Music, and Pandora. Now as I mentioned before, JRE is now exclusively available on Spotify only, the deal is assumed to be a multiple year licensing agreement valued at 100 million dollars, the deal made Rogan “the highest paid broadcaster” The Guardian reported. Spotify has more than 700,000 podcasts on its platform and reaches nearly 300 million monthly users, and has been investing heavily in the podcasting format, looking to turn itself into some kind of Netflix for audio. I think Spotify sees a massive business opportunity around podcasts. For one, there is now no single competitor that can take the company on by itself. They have been making big waves in the recent year with podcasting and have taken over the lead from Apple as the most widely used podcasting medium, despite them dominating this space for years.. Apple doesn’t make shows at this time, and they also don't sell any ads, because it would go against their position on privacy anyway.
Therefore Spotify has a chance to own this space. Even if Apple wanted to compete, it now would have to find other big podcasts to acquire, and Spotify has a huge head start. And now that
JRE has sole access to Spotify’s massive listening audience, there will most certainly be some worry for other competitors like Youtube, ITunes, and Pandora Radio. In fact, there are many ways Spotify can and will be able to double and triple revenues from the podcasting industry and
JRE directly. For example, whenever someone streams a song on Spotify’s platform, Spotify has to pay the record label for that listen. But with podcasts, Spotify doesn’t have to pay a third party. With exclusive deals like with JRE and their own way of uploading content, Spotify will actually make money off each podcast listen because of the ads it puts in them. Even premium users hear ads in Spotify podcasts, so Spotify double ups with revenue in those cases. As we see from that example podcasts can be lucrative, which is why even though Spotify spent hundreds of millions of dollars on acquiring talent and tools for its platform, it’ll likely recoup that money very quickly. Rogan has previously said that JRE reaches 190 million downloads per month, meaning he would, on the low end, bring in $3 million in ads per month on Spotify. And
Rogan’s show will still be free to listen to on Spotify, people don’t need to pay for Spotify
Premium to hear or watch it. With their deal JRE and Spotify will sell ads together, so free users will hear Rogan’s ads, plus any additional ads that run in the course of using Spotify’s platform.
Spotify ends up not needing everyone to subscribe annually because it makes money off listens either way. Spotify will also allow Rogan to keep his personal JREClips Youtube page which has a collection of shorter clips from the original full length interviews. Which is generous and strategic of them to do because it will allow for JRE to continue to interact, advertise, and market with their fans on the medium and bring more viewers over to Spotify’s platform. Rogan is doing great at aligning the JRE into a perfect position for the future that Spotify is carving out. To put it in context, JRE’s listening numbers, if put up against a musician, would have to equal 23 billion streams, that’s 23x diamond if you are familiar with musical plague certifications. There are only two musical artists, who are competing on the same mediums as JRE, that have more streams than it, those include Drake with over 30 billion and Ed Sheeren with 27 billion. As the numbers go, JRE will fare very well on Spotify, as of today they are the most searched for show on the platform and have only been exclusively available since January 1, 2021. Spotify is reaping the financial rewards of betting on podcasts, but they have received some backlash for condoning some of the JRE material. But Spotify has opened itself up to controversies and criticism as it invests more in the podcast industry. A recent issue that was brought up to Spotify was JRE hosting conspiracy theorist Alex Jones multiple times on the podcast. And Rogan got scrutiny from Spotify employees and consumers. Even prior to the Spotify deal, Rogan faced controversy for inviting personalities such as Jones, who appeared in episodes in 2017 and 2019, that push conspiracy theories to his massive audience. When Spotify first added JRE to the platform, the episodes that feature Jones and Gavin McInnes were absent. Moving forward Spotify will be at a great advantage, there’s never been a single podcasting medium that sells ads, makes shows, has an already popular podcasters, and offers the tools to make new series. Spotify now has all of that, and the deal with Rogan means it also offers a hit podcast that guarantees millions of people will regularly use its platform for podcast listening.
The Joe Rogan Experience always offers a very open and free environment. Rogan makes his guests feel comfortable, at times by offering them marijuana and alcohol, and he always keeps them talking for hours until they inevitably open up to have real conversations and productive discourse. Discussions are usually laid back at the beginning, especially when it is with a brand new guest, but they always seem to take form. Rogan appeals to listeners who are open enough to hear from a diverse range of ideas and cultures, and smart enough to see that media consolidation is a questionable thing happening today. Yet ignorant, not all, but some followers of Rogan mistake him for someone that has escaped his privilege and can be given a pass in situations that are not necessarily debateable. There is no doubt he has said things that are questionable and at times unacceptable to say especially considering his social stature.
Regardless I aim to layout every aspect of how JRE is, can, and could be viewed as an object in the media. Rogan brings on a widespread number of individuals who are all skilled and creative in some fashion, they often draw in viewers of their own. With over a thousand JRE episodes now, we can identify the guests who can be categorized in a variety of genres, the podcast website actually has their own layout that numbers every episode and guest that they’ve had on and what category they fall under. I will be focusing my research on four of these categories for the sake of showing the podcasts diversity and range. Those four categories are all labeled under different categories on JRE’s website. I’ll be looking at episodes under the categories of:
Political, CEO, Athletes, and Scientist.
Literature Review
Angelina Russo talks about the keys to building and establishing these types of relationships in social media spaces and “the question of cultural exchanges and creative connections within these existing communities” (Russo).
Russo did her studies on the commemoration of the centenary of the beginning of World War I, a process by which museums can connect with design communities to facilitate discourse on contemporary issues, in Transformations in Cultural Communication: Social Media, Cultural
Exchange, and Creative Connections. In this article she describes what she calls “design communities,” and explains how and why they connect to culture and the social issues that she’s confronting. She explains a community she calls “social design” she says, “essentially, social design is a result of informed ideas, greater awareness, larger conversations, and the desire to contribute valuable design solutions to society.” I think JRE applies to this design in its own way, it explores the ways in which we can contribute to new solutions and perspectives on society which insofar helps create them. The creative connection that is going on between Rogan and his guests foster a unique space for new ideas and perspectives to emerge and outreach to the public. “Extending these relationships and formalizing networks of design communities could encourage users to co-create new products and services in ways meaningful to them. In doing so, such connections could capture the social value of the participative web and explore ways of empowering audiences in a publicly engaged society” (Russo). Networks are established through an engaged society or audience. In The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms
Markets and Freedom the author, Yochai Benkler, talks about how people can be empowered through social networks and cultural productions. Podcasts are new pieces of media that I feel could be categorized as cultural productions. Their recent surge in popularity across streaming mediums brings questions about how they are being viewed and their impact socially. Benkler says, “a series of changes in technologies, economic organization, and social practices of production in this environment has created new opportunities for how we make and exchange information, knowledge, and culture.” JRE, being one of the most popular podcasts among a very wide and growing range of options, provides its audience with these new opportunities that
Benkler mentions and insofar creates a network for its audience. This network enables a shift to happen “from the mass-mediated public sphere to a networked public sphere. This shift is also based on the increasing freedom individuals enjoy to participate in creating information and knowledge, and the possibilities it presents for a new public sphere to emerge alongside the commercial, mass-media markets” (Benkler 11).
The podcasting community is where this shift can be seen alongside the likes of cable television and paid streaming services, podcasts including JRE are at the forefront of that cultural change that is taking place. JRE’s following, similar to other of these larger podcasts audience, is part of a sort of collective identity formed through sharing characteristics and perception invoked from the show. In Chatting with Peers: Bridging Motivations of Internal Social Media Use, Online
Interaction, and Organizational Identification, “Social identity scholars used the concepts of belongingness to explain identification forming; groups provide people with a sense of belonging to a society, which becomes the fundamental motivation of human beings” (Bi & Zhang 100).
Similar to any other social groupings people belong to, we start to identify with those public’s and surrounding communities. In an article titled Cultures of Circulation: Utilizing Co-Cultures and Counterpublics in Intercultural New Media Research the authors Melanie Loehwing, and
Jeff Motter bring up some interesting points on new media technologies and how they have an affect on our socialization and expansion of communications. They say, “At home, we have come to expect an ever-evolving role that media plays in our everyday lives, anticipating an accelerating progression of the means by which emerging technologies shape nearly all elements of our daily interactions, both public and private” (Loehwing & Motter 29). And they question what this could mean for culture, do new media productions like podcasts simply host channels where existing cultures interact and communicate? Saying yes to that question implies that new media doesn’t fundamentally change or have a lasting effect on our identities or social groups.
“Destabilizing the status of culture in intercultural new media research leads us to two core concerns in communication scholarship: the role of power relations in structuring communicative practices and the construction of identity through communicative exchanges. We offer this essay as a call for interrogating the influence of power and the constitution of identity as new media users engage in virtual intercultural interaction. Namely, we are concerned with two interrelated questions: How do existing power asymmetries constrain intercultural communication in the context of new media developments? How do new media transform traditional processes of identity construction and circulation?” (Loehwing & Motter 30). These several points and questions are really good to think about in relation to my research, how or in what fashion does
JRE interpellate it’s audience? What is one's self identification or socialization motivated by?
And how do the public’s and networks we belong to affect our identity if it does at all?
Methodology I will address these questions and the analysis of my research object through a somewhat
Marxist lense, using interpellation, constitutive rhetoric, publics and counterpublics and identification as framings to add to the already present scholarly conversations surrounding my topic. Because my object is one that has not been directly studied in the publics of communicative scholars, I have had to base my research on many sources that revolve around these frameworks and media. Theorists that’s studies are most pertinent to my research are
Warner, White, and Sherlon. Their original works on social identity and behavioral theories are what I will be basing my thesis on. By showing the ways in which JRE has carved out new dimensions of media culture in the medium of podcasting, I hope to display how and in what ways the show has interpellated its audience and curated interconnected publics and counterpublics across various cultures. This research will also focus on the production of podcasting itself, its recent surge in popularity, cultural contributions, and studying the mediums they are consumed on. I have found sources that talk about language and its relation to culture and constitutive rhetoric which brought me a new way to look at my life research, “In broad terms language has become more salient and more important in the range of social processes.
The increased economic importance of language is striking. It is well known for instance that the balance of economic life has shifted increasingly from production to consumption and from manufacturing industries to service, culture and leisure industries” (Dijk 254). Which makes me think, is JRE, and podcasts that are using language and dialogue as their content for consumption vital to these publics they’ve created? And are they intentionally interpellating their following? I want to touch on a few areas of thought that question agenda setting and hegemonic discourse within JRE as well. In all I hope to bring a new perspective to this side of communicative theory and study and show how this subject matter is relevant to modern cultures.
Analysis
Formation of Publics and Counterpublics
In characterizing different public and counterpublic cultural discourses revolving around
JRE I first directed my attention to what I could observe of the audience, whether it be in the form of comments on social media or online forums such as Reddit and Quora. The first pattern I noticed when diving into comments from the JREClips page was the fan’s responses to Rogans ability to communicate and drive conversations forward. I started by looking at comments of episode #1216 with guest Sir Roger Penrose. This particular episode is very intriguing and thought provoking as Penrose is a mathematician and quantum physicist who talks about many things the common person, or mainstream media would never hear about without a platform like
Rogan has provided. Rogan brings many guests onto his show similar in peculiarity and in their distinctive contributions and expertise in certain industries, businesses, publics and therefore cultures. When watching the Penrose episode I was introduced to a brand new perspective and set of ideas just by listening to this individual. And as a third party viewer of the show I definitely got the impression that Rogan was feeling the same way as me while interviewing
Penrose. The things the two were talking about was very new information for Rogan, and for his audience, and he became a great listener as Penrose spoke about literal out of this world ideas.
Rogan always seems to ask the right questions at the right time and fosters an environment where free thinking can occur. Username “TenThumbs Productions'' had the first comment on the
JREClip titled “Sir Roger Penrose on Blackholes and the Big Bang” from episode #1216 saying, “Joe's ability to take interest in literally anything and everything is what makes him so good at what he does.” The second comment directly below came from username “J S'' which says
“Kinda nuts to think that if Einstein were to live in our time I’m sure Joe would interview him.”
So just from these first two comments we can see a sort of pattern of response that Rogan receives from what I would assume are fans of his work. People enjoy what he is doing on the podcast, and they are fans of listening and watching him communicate the way that he does.
These comments began to answer some of my questions on exactly who and what publics are paying attention to JRE. I know that people are tuning in to episodes to listen and watch Rogan, he has this ability to keep them interested and intrigued by the conversations. I also think this could be a reason we’ve seen Spotify get involved with JRE and podcasting in general. When
Rogan signed his agreement with Spotify it gave fans a chance to have a listen only experience with the podcasts; not just a viewing option like on YouTube. Spotify sees and understands some of the patterns I’m attempting to display in the JRE fan base, and they saw a podcast they could finally capitalize on with JRE. Rogan draws in enough listeners to add that listen only option to the show, and he got there because he attains the capacity to appeal and connect with a part of everyone who engages with the show. Username “The Rest Of Us” had a lot to say about Rogan and JRE in his comment on the clip saying, “Big props to Joe Rogan for this interview! I knew
Joe could have great conversations with comedians like Bill Burr and entrepreneurs like Elon
Musk, but here he is asking intelligible questions to a physicist and producing a fantastically enjoyable conversation on a different level. Increased my respect for him.” This comment really stood out to me because it represents and highlights that distinct connection between Joe Rogan and his audience members. Not only did this person watch the show because they were intrigued by the guests and the conversation it would bring; but he was fascinated by Rogan's intelligence and coherence especially with someone like a quantum physicist like in Sir Roger Penrose.
Username “The Rest of Us” mentioned that he enjoyed the conversation and gained increased respect for Joe. Many viewers and critics of JRE go through these same progressions, I once did myself. In looking at the highest viewed and most popular of JRE podcasts I noticed a pattern as well. Those episodes seem to be ones that are expected to be viewed many times because of equally or predominantly more mainstream and popular guests. But JRE is not one of the most viewed and highest grossing podcasts in the world because of their popular episodes but because the collection as a whole is regarded as popular and somehow even mainstream despite the critics. The audience engages with this show at many levels, maybe at first they are watching because they’re favorite celebrity is a guest and it's their only interview in the last year. Or maybe they are tuned in to hear what Elon musk has to say about his life and latest inventions.
But at some point most viewers venture into episodes that they are unfamiliar with.
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