I like how Rogan doesn't pounce on every guest to make them defend every statement, define every term, or actively try to catch them and put them on the defensive. That is the formula used by the talking-heads in the main stream interview shows, and discussions usually just turn argumentative.
He lets his guests stand out on limbs and gives them enough rope to hang themselves if they want to, which is a big part of the appeal of his show.
The real problem is the lack of mediating authority in any of these dialogs. We need some bit of common sense that can say (for example), 1. yes there is a valid concern with previously male athletes calling themselves women and competing in women's events, 2. you have a point with the pronoun thing but you're also kind of a dick, and 3. no thanks to the "Marxism" screed that I can get any time I like from my uncle.
Perhaps we're just going through a societal phase where that type of mediating authority has been distorting the discourse for too long (Aluminum tubes! Yellow Cake!) and so we've rejected them. But without any moderating judgement, debate devolves into extremism - every camp takes their reasonable foundational critiques and uses them to logically infer self-consistent nonsense. Then you either rally behind them or another camp, or you're going to get pigeonholed as doing so anyway.
We appreciate Joe Rogan for exposing us to diverse viewpoints. But without taking an active role in their explanation, is he actually doing that job? Or is he just appearing alongside a presentation that we could have sought out on our own?
What’s wrong with someone fleshing out their views for 3 hours?
And there’s another thing you are missing. Have you ever tried to lie about something or withhold the truth for 3 hours straight? Unless you are a proper psychopath it’s basically impossible.
In 3 hours you have to be authentic or the audience will know. They will feel it. You might be authentic about wrong information, but you will be authentic. People can then decide if they want to believe that or not.
A lot of people who love rogan hate the 5 minute soundbite interviews on the traditional media. It’s fake, it’s short, it’s McDonald’s of media
I don't think any of these politickers are lying. I think they start with valid critiques of pretty straightforward things, and then extrapolate them into ridiculous conclusions. In a way our polarization is a result of extreme left-brained thinking without the tempering of wisdom.
Listening to a 3 hour unfamiliar narrative doesn't give you many places to go afterwards. It's just a huge dump that binds together many various points, and whether you found it insightful or not has more to do with presentation and self-consistency rather than it making sense in a larger context.
It's definitely better than 2 minute / 140 character soundbites. But the format is an overcorrection masquerading as a middleground.
For instance, if Meghan Murphy is on as a "gender critical feminist", then why is Rogan letting her go on about "Marxism" ? I'm sure the term means something to her. But unless the best of her opponents are describing their own points in terms of "Marxism", then it's merely a straw man for her to bash.
If she really thinks her definition of "Marxist" is an important lemma for her main point and it's not going to color the conversation too much, then make her fully define that term how she's using it and elaborate whenever she uses it - don't let it be a "stop thinking" terminus as such terms are often used.
In general, guests should be spending the effort to make widely accessible points about their topic, to promote a larger understanding. I know these generally exist from my own attempts at understanding, because they gain followers somehow, and because the opposing camp goes out in their own weeds. Not pushing guests into the larger context just results in propagating the same old self-consistent-in-a-vacuum narrative that all of the political teams rely on.
An important part of having an open mind is questioning what is coming in. A closed mind doesn't take in a point. A too-open mind just lets any point pass through. There is a happy middle that forces conflicting ideas to be reconciled with one another, and we need a lot more of that. I don't know if Joe Rogan can actually be the person we want him to be, but he's certainly in the right position.