Spotify has pulled more than 100 episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” as of Saturday, with some featuring Canadian public figures.
According to the website JRE Missing, 113 episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” had been taken off of Spotify, many of them recorded before Rogan’s COVID-19 controversy.
Some of these episodes have Canadian guests such as Concordia University marketing professor Gad Saad and “2 Drink Minimum” co-hosts Mike Ward and Pantelis.
Saad said he suspects his episode was removed simply because it involved Rogan speaking the “N-word” in naming the title of a book.
“Hence, rather than recognizing the context, @spotify has deemed that singular word to be a nuclear attack even when uttered in an utterly non-racist manner (e.g., stating the word as part of a book’s title),” said Saad in a tweet on Saturday. “This infantilizes human beings in a manner that is grotesque.”
Saad added that Rogan “does not have a racist bone in his body.”
On Friday, Rogan addressed having said the N-word “in context” on his show multiple times over the years.
“I know that to most people, there’s no context where a white person is allowed to say that word, never mind publicly on a podcast,” he said in an Instagram video on Friday. “I agree with that now.”
He said that he has not said the N-word in years. For a long time, he said that he felt it was acceptable to use this word in context.
This new controversy facing Rogan comes after Spotify removed Canadian-American rock singer Neil Young’s music from the streaming platform after the artist told them to choose between “The Joe Rogan Experience” and his songs.
Young made the ultimatum to Spotify in January after claiming that “The Joe Rogan Experience” pushes COVID-19 misinformation on impressionable youth.
“They can have Rogan or Young,” he said. “Not both.”
Within days, Spotify had begun to remove Young’s music.
