I warn you this is an utterly pointless, annoying, fact-check effort post that I wrote and researched on my phone, whilst bored in a car waiting for someone to get home from a funeral. You are free to dunk on me and the effort I needlessly expelled on it.

After seeing the 20 millionth person on my timeline quote this figure for the official podcast of insufferable people at the gym I am forced to attend to do physical therapy, I began to wonder where this number was from and if anyone had actually checked it out - and it seems like no one had and everyone is just copying everyone else saying it. So I went looking for where its from.

Now previously I had taken a tweet that said the number was from a research firm and included double and triple counting as gospel - I even quoted it here - but that's abject nonsense and the person deleted said tweet because they clearly made that up and someone must have called them on it. This is what I get for listening to someone with a sock emoji in their twitter name. I'm a fucking idiot.

So where is this number actually from?

Most people are getting it from this chart made by someone called ChiefNerd who has now been suspended from twitter for hate speech according to people I could find whining about it (I suspect it was actually covid misinfo but they all said "hate speech" in their tweets so fuck it he's Nazi now and they can blame themselves for that characterisation). Which is a good sign for any account. But where did he get it from?

Using the wayback machine, I found that he said he got it from this newsweek article from November 2021 which, OK. But where did they get it from? That number can't have come from nowhere surely?

It seems that they likely got it from this Washington Post article from May 3rd 2021, which is the only earlier mention of this 11 million number I can find through Google. However, this article actually has a source for the number, which is this article from something called Supercast in May 2020, and they also list their source for the figure - an interview Joe Rogan did on Jordan Peterson's podcast in June 2019. So the source of this number is Joe Rogan himself, a man who has repeatedly demonstrated his inability to be a good source on anything, including his own career.

So now that I'm at the end of that particularly annoying game of telephone that I apparently just played and forced the rest of you to experience, is there any reason to doubt that figure, even if it is two years old at this point?

As it turns out, yes. The 11 million number is not only two years old but notably, it predates the Spotify deal. In August 2021, 6 months into the Spotify deal, the Verge published a report showing that Rogan's influence since going exclusive had more than halved and was trending downwards, basing this on the amount of attention his guests got in the period after a Rogan appearance, alongside social media mentioned and Google search numbers; In just six months the clout he wielded had almost halved. What is also perhaps noteworthy is that the only times Rogan's engagement numbers returned to pre-Spotify levels is when he was in the news for covid misinformation. What a strange coincidence that ramped up in the months following.

But that's actually not all, we have something way more concrete to suggest the number isn't as close to 11 million as presumed; A leaked internal Spotify newsletter showed JRE with 3 million global listeners an episode. Which, seems low but that's what the data says, and if accurate this suggests that 11 million is being really, really fucking generous.

TL;DR - Rogan doesn't get 11 million listeners an episode, I am really fucking bored, I don't know why I did this, this was an absolute waste of my time and effort but it did help fill an hour. You may now dunk on me for doing this.