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Spotify appears to be removing controversial episodes of its wildly popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast from its service.
According to a report from The Wrap, 42 episodes of the podcast from the MMA commentator and comedian have been removed from the platform since it purchased the podcast for $100 million in May 2020, though some of the original uploads remain on YouTube.
Four episodes with comedian Chris D'Elia, who has been accused of pursuing underage girls on social media, are among the removed episodes, The Wrap reported. Another six episodes featuring conspiracy theorist David Seaman have also been removed.
Rogan has frequently made offensive statements, shared misinformation, and hosted problematic guests on his podcast. In 2020, he made the false claims that Caitlyn Jenner could have been transgender as a result of living with the Kardashian women, that the Portland forest fires were started by "left-wing" activists, and described transgender identity as a "social contagion."
The most recent removal of content occurred on April 6, according to The Wrap, with two old podcasts being taken off the platform. One of those episodes, first released in 2013, featured Bulletproof Coffee founder David Asprey, who has shared controversial scientific misinformation, like that with stem cell injections you can live to be 180-years-old. Rogan himself did call out Asprey's misinformation on his podcast, saying in episode #459 with Dr. Rhonda Patrick that "he gets s--- wrong and I don't know if he's always so good at recognizing when he has done that and correcting himself."
There are currently 1,632 episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience created since 2009, with less than 3% having been removed.
Some episodes recorded before the Spotify acquisition never made the move over to the streaming service from YouTube, as Variety reported, including those with conservative YouTuber Sargon of Akkad, Proud Boys extremist-group founder Gavin McInnes, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos.
During a February episode with guest Fahim Anwar, Rogan alluded to the fact that some of these episodes were taken down. "They haven't given me a hard time at all," Rogan said. "There were a few episodes they didn't want on their platform, I was like 'okay, I don't care.'"
Spotify did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
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