Last spring, I was invited to appear on Joe Rogan’s show. My first reaction was surprise: Why me? I’m not a comedian (like Rogan), or a martial-arts fighter (ditto), or a celebrity who likes to push the envelope (Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson). I am just a nerdy college professor who writes books that very few people choose to read. (My mom says they’re very good.)
But my latest book is about free speech. That’s a special concern of Joe Rogan, of course, who is known for saying outrageous things. Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Nils Lofgren recently pulled their music from Spotify to protest COVID-related misinformation on Rogan’s show. And last Saturday, as pressure on Spotify continued to mount, Rogan apologized for his use of the N-word in prior broadcasts and vowed never to say it again on the air. Many people are calling on Spotify to cancel Rogan’s show from the platform.
Rogan was already in hot water last spring, around the time when I got invited to the show, because he claimed that healthy young people didn’t need to get vaccinated against COVID-19. That seemed like a remarkably stupid thing to say, as Rogan himself has since acknowledged. And it also made me wonder if it was safe to go on his show.
