Joe Rogan, while not the best interviewer, is getting better. When he prepares, he can ask good questions and gets the guest to come out of their shell. He's one of the only places to go for good long form interviews.
His interview with Russel Brand is hilarious and deeply insightful, which was really surprising. I don't listen that often but will put it on when someone like that is on. Bound to be some entertaining banter.
Rogan’s interviews are largely a thinly-veiled excuse to push right-wing BS to the impressionable young men that comprise his audience.
As someone who’s had to talk people out of racist and misogynistic ideology that they were pipelined into through Rogan/his guests, I really wish he didn’t have so much purchase. I know he has a very polished “chill” veneer, but his long-time friendship with Alex Jones should clue people in to what he’s actually after. He even appeared on Jones’ show a week after one of the Sandy Hook parents who had been targeted by Jones’ listeners killed himself.
Rogan is not "right-wing," and people saying that have not listened to his views thoroughly. He is open-minded (sometimes to a flawed degree), and had Jones on and it was the funniest thing I've heard. Jones is a lunatic, and Rogan exposed that. The pseudo-architectural anthropologist was also pretty funny.
I’ve listened to many hours of his show, his interviews with far right types like Gavin McInnes and Stephen Molyneux. I had to in order to talk a friend down from some really dark thinking he was encouraged toward through Rogan’s show. But I’m sure that when I heard him denigrating Muslims or talking about how trans women are actually just confused gay men, I just needed to listen more “thoroughly.”
I grew up in the rural Midwest in a working class family, so spare me your appeals to the “reality of America.” Not all of us are as hateful as the right-wing grifters whose images Rogan helps launder.
As a 25+ year NPR junkie, I can say Gross brought on the trend of hosts thanking their guests "so much" for being there. This started somewhere around 2011.
I used to believe Gross was the best interviewer until I heard some Stern interviews from 2014. While Stern talks a lot more, he is able to elicit more genuine responses from the guests and his interviews are real-time, not edited. Fresh Air suffers from having to break every 10 minutes.
I believe the parent was referring to Gross's recent two part interview with Stern. It's actually reveletory to hear them discuss interview technique (for example, interviewees are physically present with Stern and are not with Gross) although it's not a major part of the interview.
One observation: Stern was not always as effective an interviewer as he has been in recent years.
