Recent reports surfaced that Spotify removed over 100 Joe Rogan Experience episodes with no explanation, alongside Rogan himself apologizing for past use of ‘the n-world’ from his show.
A fan-run website named JRE Missing has been created to track the status of all episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience, and while Spotify removed over 100 Joe Rogan Experience episodes, so far neither Rogan nor Spotify have issued statements on why the episodes were removed.
In total 113 episodes have been removed from the streaming service, and a number of them include guests that been largely cast out from big tech like Alex Jones, Michael Malice, Owen Benjamin, and Gavin McInnes, among others.
The episode removals go back as far as episode four, which featured guest co-creator and producer Brian Redban. Fellow comedian Tom Segura also had several shows he guest appeared on removed from Spotify as well. To put this to scale, episodes as old as 2009 were removed, including a dozen that featured former co-founder Redban.
Rogan has long teetered on the edge of what the powers at be considered acceptable as a comedian, however he drew particular ire from “fact-checkers” when he began hosting doctors and/or scientists that have been openly criticizing response to COVID-19, including its controversial vaccines.
Despite cries to stop “misinformation” from Rogan’s podcast via a cavalcade of mostly old musicians pulling their music from the streaming service, Spotify held firm. Rogan also pushed back saying he wasn’t trying to spread “misinformation.”
It wasn’t until soul musician India Arie shared a video of clips with Joe saying ‘the n-word’ from old podcast episodes, which prompted Rogan to post a public apology and Spotify to nuke tons of old episodes from the show. A handful of previous episodes were removed but nothing to the scale of this new purge.
Rogan’s apology starts with him saying he is “making this video to talk about the most regretful and shameful thing I’ve ever had to talk about publicly” and noted he hasn’t used the word ‘in years’ but explained when it came up previously, he would just say it instead of saying ‘the n-word’ and that people would understand in context.
He then went on to explain that since this previous stance, he feels differently and now thinks a white person can never say that word, even in context when speaking on something that involved the use of that word. It still remains unclear how many of the deleted episodes actually have Joe or others saying that word.
As the Joe Rogan Experience nears its 1775th episode since its launch back in 2009, it also remains unclear what will be off limits for Joe and his guests now that he’s signed a $100 million contract to give Spotify timed-exclusive content.
It’s worth noting Spotify’s new content guidelines, updated January 30th (around the same time that India Arie shared the superclip of Rogan saying the n-word) notes they prohibit “dangerous” content that “advocates or glorifies serious physical harm towards an individual or group.”
This obviously does not specify racial slurs, but it does prohibit content that “glorifies” breaking the law. So, again, it remains to be seen what Spotify will and will not allow in terms of content that is on the very edge of what is considered acceptable or not acceptable.
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