The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and led a “coalition of scientists, medical professionals, professors, and science communicators spanning a wide range of fields such as microbiology, immunology, epidemiology, and neuroscience” to pen an open letter to Spotify was an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience featuring Dr. But praises on high to the science gods - luckily, actual doctors are now banding together to try and stop Rogan from spreading what they deem “mass misinformation events.” And yet the cishet, white patriarchy reigns supreme, so people everywhere dutifully put in their Airpods and tune in to Rogan’s podcast while they toil away for corporate America.

It’s hard to comprehend where he gets his authority from, especially in 2022 when we’ve largely put out the bulletin that straight, white men with microphones shouldn’t be blindly trusted just because they are straight, white men with microphones. Joe Rogan’s face should be on the sides of a lot of things: cans of Manwich meat flyers for DMT legalization next to the encyclopedia entry for “bloviate.” But instead, Rogan has become associated by a subset of people as a catch-all cultural authority figure.

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