Fox News exists, talk radio exists, because there was a GIANT GAP IN THE MARKET for news that served not-lefty people something other than lefty-elite views and news. Many such people! The media got leftier and leftier, later infused with the social justice warrior spirit of academia, which led to further drain and removal of right-leaning voices bc those people are icky and the perspective they bring is icky and also facts they bring that we don't want to cover are icky and in the Trump era, unique danger, normalizing, blah, blah. The bubble got more insulated. It got so insulated that it became totally incurious. Joe Rogan is not a conservative. He was a Bernie supporter. But he is a curious guy and there was a GIANT GAP IN THE MARKET for curious people who felt free to talk about the icky ideas the lefty press had decided should be verboten. Listening to him and Vance NOT self-censor and hedge through a discussion of trans and gender politics the other day was so refreshing. When Rogan got too successful talking about the icky ideas, the press spent several weeks of nearly 24/7 coverage trying to get him fired bc they don't like when anyone else has the power to elevate issues they think are icky or have debates they say are already settled. They don't like when anyone outside their tribe decides what matters. They see the ability to pick and choose who is marginalized, whose pain and problems matter, and completely disregard the rest as theirs and theirs alone. And it's always a bunch of very rich, powerful people picking, congratulating themselves for being very enlightened, and then telling the normies to shut up and live with their grocery prices or lockdowns or "hateful" concerns with trans politics. Joe Rogan, and other alternative media (@thefp, @FreeBeacon, Breaking Points, @TheYoungTurks, @rumblevideo) work because they're an actual ALTERNATIVE. Rogan is curious and interesting and chill and not obsessed with policing language or enforcing a viewpoint. He does not communicate, as this panelist does, that merely being young and male is a problem that must be solved with a pipeline to feminism. They say they don't have the infrastructure as they sit on almost every panel of every major news source and all agree with each other after all voting exactly the same way (with notable exceptions who are notable precisely bc there are so few of them). The condescension, the impugning of character, the gaslighting. It's all there. You can build some more podcasts that do the same thing, I guess. But it won't be alternative because almost everyone will still be saying the same thing. There is no GIANT GAP IN THE MARKET for this because y'all are the market!