More than 70 episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience have been removed from Spotify.
And it seemingly has nothing to do with COVID-19.
Of course, the big controversy surrounding Spotify and their heavyweight podcaster, Joe Rogan, in the past couple weeks has been relating to his controversial podcasts with Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Robert Malone, two accomplished doctors whose views on COVID-19 treatment and prevention differ from the mainstream.
Of course, he’s had podcasts with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Dr. Rhonda Patrick, Dr. Michael Osterholm, and Dr. Peter Hotez… all of which who supported the use of the COVID vaccines, but nevertheless, he was charged with the “spread of dangerous misinformation” by people like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, who have since removed their music from Spotify.
Joe promised to try and book differing opinions closer together and we all moved on… right? Nope…
Then this past week a compilation video surfaced of Joe Rogan using the n-word numerous times over the course of his 12-year podcasting career.
He has since released a video himself, apologizing:
“Hello friends, I’m making this video to talk about the most regretful and shameful thing I’ve ever had to talk about publicly.
There’s a video that’s out that’s a compilation of me saying the n-word… clips of me that have been taken out of context from 12 years of conversations on my podcast, and it looks fucking horrible… even to me.”
He went on to provide some context for some of the clips, whether it was Quentin Tarantino movies, or Richard Pryor comedy albums.
He continued:
“I know that to most people, there is no context where a white person is ever allowed to say that word, nevermind publicly on a podcast, and I agree with that now.
I haven’t said it in years, but for a long time, when I would bring that would up, instead of saying the N-word, I would just say the word. I thought as long as it was in context, people would understand what I was doing.”
Grammy-winning singer India Arie shared the compilation video condemning Rogan for the use of the word. She has since pulled her music from Spotify.
It’s unclear if the removed episodes are related to the previous use of the n-word or not.
“There’s been a lot of shit from the old episodes of the podcast that I wish I hadn’t said, or had said differently. This is my take on the worst of it.”
