Joe Rogan has been a lot of things in life. He’s been an actor, a comedian, a high-level martial artist, a reality TV host, a commentator, among other things. He also hosts the most listened to podcast on the planet.
In May 2020, Rogan announced that he had inked a multi-year licensing deal with Spotify. The deal was reportedly worth $100 million and made The Joe Rogan Experience exclusive to the Spotify platform.
The podcast features an array of guests that discuss a wide range of topics. Some of his guests are considered controversial figures expressing fringe views by some while others view Rogan’s podcast as a beacon of truth and an alternative source of information.
A recent podcast featured an interview with Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist who was involved in early mRNA technology research. Malone had been banned from Twitter for allegedly spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines. The interview was taken down by YouTube.
The interview motivated 270 doctors, scientists, professors and healthcare workers to pen an open letter to Spotify. The letter accused Rogan of “broadcasting misinformation, particularly regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.”
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The letter characterized the episode featuring Dr. Malone as “highly controversial,” and “promoting baseless conspiracy theories.”
The group did not ask for Rogan’s podcast to be removed from the platform, but wants the company to adopt a policy that discourages what it consideres “misinformation.”
“With an estimated 11 million listeners per episode, JRE, which is hosted exclusively on Spotify, is the world’s largest podcast and has tremendous influence,” the letter read. “Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform, though the company presently has no misinformation policy.”
One author of the letter, Katrine Wallace, PhD, an epidemiologist at University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health, said that she considers Rogan “a menace to public health.”
You can read the full letter here.