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The recent disagreement on The Joe Rogan Experience—between journalist Douglas Murray on one hand and Rogan and comedian Dave Smith on the other—has exposed a problem with the populist media ecosystem: the casual normalisation and celebration of opinions untethered to knowledge. In what follows, I offer eight brief reflections on this trend and its hazards.

I. Ortega y Gasset and The Revolt of the Masses

Ortega y Gasset’s La Rebelión de las Masas offered one of the most enduring diagnoses of modernity’s afflictions. The Spanish philosopher identified the emergence of the “mass man”—not merely the working class, but any individual who believed that competence was unnecessary for opinion. The señorito, a term he used with stinging irony, is the self-satisfied amateur who regards his ignorance not as a defect to be corrected, but as a virtue to be celebrated.

In the world of populist podcasting, this archetype is frequently given centre stage in the name of heterodoxy. When Dave Smith declares his right to discuss Israeli-Palestinian history without deeply studying it, or when Joe Rogan defends such expressions as authentic and valuable purely for being unfiltered, they manifest the worst tendencies of the señorito.

Rogan’s open-door policy is not problematic in itself, but the framing of every viewpoint as equally valid—regardless of depth or rigour—aligns chillingly with Ortega’s vision of an anti-intellectual cultural slide. “The characteristic of the hour,” Ortega warned, “is that the mediocre soul, recognising itself as mediocre, has the audacity to assert the rights of the mediocre.” He foresaw our dilemma—when the only qualification for being heard is the will to speak.