I like Joe Rogan too but I get really tired of him sometimes. He frequently gets very political, which I'm very on board for. The problem is that he believes that he is much more open to ideas than most people in the current political climate when in reality he's as strongly committed to his ideals as most people are these days. The difference is that his ideals don't toe two-party lines, but he's still shut off to opposing ideology. Still a fun guy to listen to most of the time tho and he does present interesting ideas from time to time.
I find that I end up watching bits of Joe Rogan because I like many of his GUESTS... but realistically speaking, Joe is a smart guy but he is so uninformed and unsophisticated in his political, economic, or philosophical beliefs that he doesn't really have the ability to steer the discussion in an interesting way-- and it feels like there is no progression because he doesn't really evolve conversation to conversation despite having so many interesting guests in front of him talking for hours and hours. In fact there's a lot of the time where I feel like the comments he does make end up distracting or derailing the most interesting important topics/points that come up. So I think Joe is great at getting good guests and picking interesting topics, but the greatest value of the show is having Youtube spit you the most interesting 2-5 min clips; the gold nuggests that end up coming out serendipitously.
Considering the sphere of people around Joe, some conversations I really would love to see (not necessarily on his podcast, but that's possible):
Bret Weinstein + Steve Pinker
Two highly intellectual academics who are extremely well versed in evolutionary psychology (and biology/psychology in general) and are politically very similar on the left-- but Steve and Bret have some extremely important divides in belief that would be really interesting to hash out. Bret, for all his nuanced opinions on the science, tends to say a lot of things that sound like a Blank Slater-- that with the right environment, all people would have the same intellectual potential. Steve would find that ludicrous and has a whole book (The Blank Slate) refuting that view of people. Bret thinks the world is going in a fundamentally bad direction and is dedicating himself now to investigating the problems of the current world order that will eventually prove itself unstable and result in a horrific collapse. Steve's new book "Enlightenment Now", is centered on failure of society to recognize how incredibly good the trajectory of humanity and the world is at large. These two highly intellectual people with very similar shared baselines that should align very closely... it would be incredibly interesting to watch them hash out these two fundamental divides that are defining to their respective views of the world.
Bret Weinstein or Eric Weinstein + Kyle Kolinski or David Pakman
We really need to hear Bret sit down and deep dive with an actual progressive platformer/policy speaker. I know that Bret often shuns "going to the policy layer" even as he explores building a better founding of progressive thought, but the fact is that the sentiments are aligned, and I think Kyle or David would be more than capable of listening to Bret and going with him on a deeper-dive thought experiment. They would also be able to challenge him to re-engage with true progressives who would be his allies, and push him to take his thoughts all the way to the policy layer and the here and now of the society and politic before us.
Ben Shapiro + Kyle Kolinski (or David Pakman)
Yeah, Joe's platform would not be appropriate since this would be all out war-- but I think the all-out policy clash between policy junkies from both sides, who are both capable of being reasonable and putting aside identity politics (and I mean, all of these guys are Jewish men of the same age...) would be incredibly interesting. The CNN debates between Cruz and Bernie were already incredibly interesting just because those guys actually know their shit and are dedicated to their principles-- but Cruz and Bernie are both politicians having to play the political game on national TV simultaneously. Ben Shapiro + Kyle/David would be the same dynamic, minus the political filter or need to simplify arguments for audience sake. Just raw, unfiltered, ideological clash, no detail, data, or policy off the table. I think this would be pretty damn epic.
Ben Shapiro + David Frum
So much going on here... it's even difficult to describe what you could call this clash. Neo-Con vs. Principled Conservative is probably how the Shapiro fans would put it... but while Frum is (was?) a Neo-Con, and the candidates/politics he was a part of in the past resulted in all of the terrible RNC/DNC policy we are entrapped with today, Frum is like Fukuyama as someone who was really about the ideas of neo-liberalism/neo-conservatism, but ended up being repulsed by the end results of it. The problems with neo-liberalism/neo-conservatism might be more of a product of the corruption and cronyism that emerged with it, less about the ideas themselves, and even less about the thinkers who themselves later denounced the results of that corruption and cronyism. Frum still likes mainstream candidates and appears on mainstream media, but the things he espouses-- universal healthcare, stronger social insurance, re-negotiating trade deals and massively limiting immigration-- he espouses the most radical populist policies of the right and left together in the US. On the other hand Ben Shapiro brands himself as this edgy anti-establishment figure fighting for conservative principles and constantly disappointed with Republican politicians, but the policies he pushes are extremely mainstream conservative. Frum is a harsh never trumper who despite that focuses on empathy for Trump voters, with the issues facing the working class, and populist policies. Ben is all about conservative philosophy, very little about Republican voter sentiment, who has gone from a never Trumper to sounding more and more pro-Trump as Trump has done more and more to backstab his base and move away from Populist policies. Which of these men better understands the direction that the American Right should take going forward... you probably couldn't find two "men of the right" more different from each other.
Eh, except that they're both Jews, and in fact everyone on this list are Jews ... lol
