Douglas Murray, Joe Rogan and the peak podcast moment

I imagine my small but treasured audience has little crossover with Joe Rogan’s, so picking him as a subject feels oddly risky. That said: whether we like it or not, this podcast is effectively now the world’s biggest media slot, so for anyone interested in culture, engaging with it occasionally feels unavoidable.

I tuned in recently to listen to a figure I fear readers will have even less sympathy for – the right-wing writer and journalist, Douglas Murray. Perhaps it’s because I’m from the fag-end of Gen X, and thus unfashionably laid back about verboten views, but I like to hear people of all stripes express themselves in a stylish and articulate way. I could watch William F Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal debate all day, for instance. Incidentally, Murray has praised Buckley, and I believe you can detect some of his mannerisms in Murray’s – though they don’t include his trademark ‘eye-flare.’ (Full disclosure: Murray shares the same agent as me – he’s just much, much more successful.)

But the reason for writing about this podcast may please Rogan sceptics. During it, Murray – hitherto a friend and beneficiary of the new constellation of podcaster stars – actually exposed the problems with this potent new media; with its disregard of fact checking and expertise, and its credulousness towards tedious conspiracy theories. We’ve all heard the upsides of podcasting: points of view expressed in depth and at leisure, without the interruption and brutally enforced time windows of traditional news interviews. Perhaps podcasts have allowed the disinfectant of sunlight to shine on various unpleasant opinions too, as opposed to the ‘no platform’ style that’s become fashionable in other quarters.

But most of us have also noticed the downsides. For example: the endless musical chairs between the same cast of characters, with its untoward sense of orchestrated, you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-do-your-podcast self-promotion. Or the chronic-listener friend who’s suddenly an expert on geopolitics or epidemiology, but seems to be developing some odd ideas.

But the biggest downside, as Murray demonstrated, is that at worst, these podcasts are like little more than two stoner bros chatting in a living room, riffing and rambling across all the great issues of the day, while occasionally treating Google as the oracle. That’s not a problem if they’re talking about music or martial arts or the latest catchy nonfiction title. But before you know it, they’re talking about vaccines and Israel and Ukraine and shadowy forces and the truth – and suddenly a great many people are treating them as experts.

This Rogan episode contained a perfect example: When discussing the idiotic claims of ‘amateur historian’ Darryl Cooper, whose unique (i.e. clickbaity) appeal is claiming Winston Churchill was the real WWII baddie, Rogan decided to provide some evidence:

‘You don’t know about Operation Unthinkable?’ he asked Murray, with a mild suggestion of ‘gotcha.’

‘No,’ Murray replied, understandably already looking tired. ‘Debating’ a comedian looks exhausting.

‘Pull it up Jamie,’ Rogan told his long-suffering, off-screen assistant Jamie. ‘Pull it up’ doesn’t mean ‘check that highly regarded book by the renowned historian, and then cross reference with another one.’ No, it means ‘Google it.’

The Wikipedia entry for Operation Unthinkable appeared onscreen. Rogan had billed it as a dastardly, secret British plan to attack Russia after defeating Germany. Actually, it appeared to be admirable forethought as to how the free world might, in 1945, battle the world’s latest murderous, totalitarian empire – the sort of thing it would be alarming for British leaders not to have considered. In fact, one could say it would be unthinkable. Murray patiently explained this, and it was hugely satisfying to hear him do so.

And that’s when it began to dawn on me: maybe, just maybe, this is all over. Perhaps we’ve reached peak podcast. Maybe, before too long, the insurgency will be proper journalism. It’ll appear in a different form, but that’s where the action’s going to be at.

The most electric and hilarious moment of the Rogan podcast came when Murray asked Smith if he’d ever been to the Israeli and Egyptian checkpoints he was opining on. Smith’s anger was evident, if suppressed. ‘So what? What’s the point?’ he asked, when he could simply (presumably) use Google? Didn’t Murray know he’d listened to a lot of podcasts about this, and watched a whole load of shouty Piers Morgan YouTube shows? It’s often when people get angry during a debate that we see their weakness exposed – they’re angry because they know they’re wrong.

The answer to Smith’s question could be phrased as others: Why do we have the noble and brave tradition of war reporting? Why, in the study of history, do we elevate firsthand sources over those written later? Why have proper journalists at all?

This reminded me of footage of the late, great David Carr defenestrating Shane Smith from Vice, way back in 2011.

‘I don’t know Liberia,’ Smith says, foreshadowing the podcast bros of a decade or so later. ‘And I’m not an expert, but…’ Yep – you guessed it – he’s going to give you his opinions anyway. These include that the New York Times isn’t focused on the real (i.e. clickbaity) story of Liberia: cannibalism!

Thankfully, Carr – a writer of genius and a real reporter – is there to give him what he deserves:

‘Time out,’ he says. ‘Before you ever went there, we’ve had reporters there reporting on genocide after genocide. So just because you went there and put on a fucking safari helmet and looked at some poop, doesn’t give you the right to insult what we do.’

‘I’m not a journalist,’ Smith reiterates.

‘Obviously,’ Carr replies.

The so-called mainstream media has left a lot to be desired in recent years. It has pushed the sort of crazy idea that has led a lot of sensible people to vote in ways they might not have, and many other people would have preferred them not to. That said, I trust my newspaper over a podcast, a trained journalist over a comedian. If something important happens in the world, I don’t turn to social media, YouTube, or a podcast app.

If 2024 was the peak podcast moment, the time one changed the world, then isn’t it likely that 2025 will be when the paradigm shifts? Whatever you think of Douglas Murray, he has the knack of being at the fore of things. Perhaps the radical, counter-cultural position in 2025 is that firsthand reporting, serious history and journalism are where it will soon be at. After all, remember what happened to Vice? Nothing lasts forever.

The mainstream media might not be coming back – not in a way we recognise. But neither is real journalism going anywhere.