Jon Stewart backs Joe Rogan's open dialogues on Spotify podcast

On Apple TV's "The Problem with Jon Stewart," Stewart stood by the public need for people like Joe Rogan to have open conversations with people about the ideas they believed. He stressed on his program the net benefit to what Rogan provides, versus what'd it be like without him around.

In this February 3 episode, he had a serious conversation with Comedian Jay Jurden and Chelsea Devantez about the situation.

Jon Stewart introduced his answer by admitting how much of a Neil Young and Jodi Mitchell fan he was. But even so, the fact that this current situation was allegedly worth $4 billion in market value to Spotify seemed to astound him. Chelsea Devantez said the likes of Taylor Swift had the real star power to make change. In response, Stewart quipped about the intensity of fanbases like hers and other current high-profile names.

"I’ve gotten less blowback from Israel Palestine than I did for like a One Direction joke," Jon Stewart said before giving a more serious response.

"Don’t leave. Don’t abandon. Don’t censor. Engage," was Jon Stewart’s blanket response to the Joe Rogan Spotify situation that has several musical artists pulling away from the platform amid claims of Rogan spreading "disinformation" through the guests he has on.

Jon Stewart directly denounced the notion that podcast host Joe Rogan was some kind of political ideologue. He backed up that point by mentioning a previous exchange between Rogan podcast Josh Szeps and Rogan where Joe made a claim about myocarditis being worse from the vaccine than COVID itself in kids, and ended up being proven wrong.

But in the end Joe Rogan accepted the fact he was wrong, head-on. "And that to me says oh that’s a person you can engage with."

Jon Stewart emphasized it’s a matter of fact that misinformation exists on this planet. "But this overreaction to Rogan… I think is a mistake. I really do." To him it’s more important to identify the "dishonest bad actors" in the world in the first place.

The current dispute over Joe Rogan and Spotify comes from a pair of guests that he had on his show that were COVID-19 experts that went against what’s being pushed by mainstream forces. The backlash led artists like Neil Young to cut ties with the streaming service altogether. Even though Spotify eventually acquiesced to introducing content labels, this hasn’t stopped other artists from following Young’s footsteps.

In private, CEO Daniel Ek told staff they can’t actively try to censor content creators.