As Joe Rogan continues to court controversy, streaming service Spotify has quietly pulled over 100 episodes of his podcast.
Spotify has pulled more than 100 episodes of controversial podcaster Joe Rogan’s show, according to a tracking website.
On Saturday, JRE Missing reported 113 episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience, many of them older and recorded before his recent Covid-19 controversy, had been removed from the streaming service.
Among the missing shows are those featuring well-known conservatives, far-right pundits or conspiracy theorists, including Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, Michael Malice, Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos, as well as comedians like Rich Vos and Little Esther and Bulletproof Nutrition founder Dave Asprey, the New York Post reports.
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Bloomberg reported that it was Rogan’s decision to remove the episodes after consulting with Spotify.
All but one were dated from before the coronavirus pandemic, making it unlikely their removal was to do with Rogan’s recent controversy over accusations of his podcast spreading Covid misinformation.
Instead, it is more likely linked with backlash over his past use of racial slurs which came to light on Friday in a viral video.
After a rush of performers last week pulled their music from Spotify and accused the podcaster of spreading Covid misinformation, Rogan, 54, apologised and pledged more balance on his wildly popular but controversial podcast.
Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, singer/songwriter India Arie, Mary Trump and writer Brene Brown are among those who removed their work from the platform.
But on Friday, Rogan was forced to apologise a second time when Arie showed a now-viral clip of the podcaster uttering the n-word numerous times in his podcast over the years.
He called the instances of him saying the n-word “regretful and shameful”.
On his return to the platform on Friday, Rogan, slammed a 10pm curfew which had been enacted in Montreal last month as Covid infections surged, calling the restriction, “wild”.
“It’s been pretty clear up until this point that all these lockdowns don’t work. They don’t stop the spread,” he said.
A recent study released by experts at Johns Hopkins backed up Rogan’s assertions, finding that lockdowns and other restrictions in the first wave of the pandemic reduced Covid deaths by just 0.2 per cent.
This article originally appeared in the New York Post and was reproduced with permission
Originally published as Spotify removes 113 episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast
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