>Except Rogan isn't necessarily even good at that.
That's a subjective assessment. I think Rogan is very good actually, and there was circumstances when he skewered the interviewee by simply asking them to clarify their position. The recent example of this was his interview with Bari Weiss, who had the self-inflicted misfortune to simply assert that Tulsi Gabbard is an "Assad Toadie" and Joe Rogan, politely, asked her to clarify - and Bari fell over herself and couldn't even define what 'toadie' meant in context. I've never seen that kind of politie (and unintended) evisceration on network TV.
>All you'll really learn about are the talking points they want to present to the world.
It's actually quite hard to delegate to talking points in a 3 hour freeform conversation. I would argue that the alternative, the 60 Minutes-style interview format which wholly consists of talking points and sharp edits to fit a narrative. Those kinds of interviews are much more prone to simply generic speech as the interviewee tries as hard as they can to be uncontroversial because they know the interviewer is actively trying to catch them buggle some phrase, and then push this sound bite in every preview of the interview.
>Without pushing them on some issues or asking them to argue or defend those points it's impossible to understand how they actually think about the issues.
That's what makes him great. He's humble about his level of knowledge. He knows he's ignorant about many things. Referencing the Bari Weiss interview, how many interviewers would ever admit to not understanding a word or a concept and genuinely asking for a definition. This is in sharp contrast to "mainstream" interviewers pretending they are experts, when it is painfully obvious they are not.
>Or as someone else in this thread put it, if you're not pushing back at any point then it's just an infomercial.
You say that and maybe it feels that this should be true, but if you actually listen to his interviews, it just doesn't come of as an infomercial. I keep going back to contrasting mainstream interviews which in fact, do come off fake, wooden and infomercial-like.
That's a subjective assessment. I think Rogan is very good actually, and there was circumstances when he skewered the interviewee by simply asking them to clarify their position. The recent example of this was his interview with Bari Weiss, who had the self-inflicted misfortune to simply assert that Tulsi Gabbard is an "Assad Toadie" and Joe Rogan, politely, asked her to clarify - and Bari fell over herself and couldn't even define what 'toadie' meant in context. I've never seen that kind of politie (and unintended) evisceration on network TV.
>All you'll really learn about are the talking points they want to present to the world.
It's actually quite hard to delegate to talking points in a 3 hour freeform conversation. I would argue that the alternative, the 60 Minutes-style interview format which wholly consists of talking points and sharp edits to fit a narrative. Those kinds of interviews are much more prone to simply generic speech as the interviewee tries as hard as they can to be uncontroversial because they know the interviewer is actively trying to catch them buggle some phrase, and then push this sound bite in every preview of the interview.
>Without pushing them on some issues or asking them to argue or defend those points it's impossible to understand how they actually think about the issues.
That's what makes him great. He's humble about his level of knowledge. He knows he's ignorant about many things. Referencing the Bari Weiss interview, how many interviewers would ever admit to not understanding a word or a concept and genuinely asking for a definition. This is in sharp contrast to "mainstream" interviewers pretending they are experts, when it is painfully obvious they are not.
>Or as someone else in this thread put it, if you're not pushing back at any point then it's just an infomercial.
You say that and maybe it feels that this should be true, but if you actually listen to his interviews, it just doesn't come of as an infomercial. I keep going back to contrasting mainstream interviews which in fact, do come off fake, wooden and infomercial-like.