Joe Rogan & The Puzzle of Combatting Misinformation

How Rhonda Patrick Modelled Being Science-Informed

Credit is due to the Joe Rogan Experience team for publishing a 15-minute excerpt clip of Dr. Rhonda Patrick addressing vaccine misinformation to YouTube last week, though it may not ameliorate the damage done by publishing an entire “special emergency episode” in June featuring Ivermectin hustler Pierre Kory and his vaccine controversy mongering as a path to fame and influence buddy Bret Weinstein.

Weinstein was on a roll that month, having published podcast episodes with titles like “The Crime of The Century” and “How To Save The World in 3 Easy Steps” that cried wolf on the supposed calamitous dangers of Covid vaccines, and touted Ivermectin as the suppressed solution to the pandemic that Big Pharma and public health institutions are lying about.

When Weinstein and his co-host and wife Heather Heying were affected by YouTube’s policies against vaccine misinformation, they cried censorship and he rode the massive wave of new publicity onto Rogan’s show, a Tucker Carlson appearance, an article by Bari Weiss on her new substack, and quickly doubled their Patreon income-stream. All while playing the aggrieved little-guy victim whistle-blower whose livelihood was being endangered by an earnest willingness to speak truth to power, and defy the gods of Silicon…