I was looking for who these listeners were switching to, or what the change was relative to overall podcast listenership, and was totally surprised the authors didn't include a base rate in their analysis. Not including base rates in references to anything quantitative is like writing spam emails with spelling mistakes because being dumb enough not to notice is a good proxy for being dumb enough to buy what you are selling. Though I doubt whether the people at the Verge have the sophistication to be intentionally fraudulent. They just need enough noise or to craft a conflict around. However it's a good example of data-horoscope journalism, where you backfit your narrative to points on a line.

Rogan is probably the most successful podcaster in the world by a variety of possible metrics, and I'm not sure what a reasonable expectation of how that plays out would be. Does he transform into a being of pure light and ascend into space, or, does he just do a job he likes until he doesn't anymore, and moves on to something else?

The Verge should just say what they mean, which is that Rogan talks to off-brand people and you shouldn't be tempted by how good the conversations are because it will not align you with crumbling mainstream narratives, and instead you should spend your time engaged with their clickbait talking points factory deciphering their adolescent purple sophistry.

I listened to Joe a lot when I was doing manual labor in 2013-2014ish. Like almost every single episode. I was always able to intake the things I thought were interesting and laugh off stuff I thought was dumb or unconvincing, but I do remember thinking that one day the greater internet will realize that his podcast is littered with content that people could easily misconstrue and start a real uproar about with sufficient motivation. Based on this, I think people shining a light on some of the dumber things that a self proclaimed dumb guy says while recording himself talking for 10 hours a week, and becoming a bit of an internet meme in the process was inevitable - and that's before he started saying whatever the hell he's been saying about vaccines and masks.

I've thought about the balance between "I don't know and I'm going to think out loud here." and doing that as entertainment and ... where that leads to some responsibility for saying some stuff that you really don't know that is dead wrong and ...

I duno. It's a weird world.

yeah, i think he kind of peaked shortly before the period where he was so obsessive with his attempts to outrage people over pronouns. i seemed to stop hearing about him around that time other than the headlines surrounding the spotify deal of course.