I’m no fan of Joe Rogan at all, but, as a podcast host, I’m not leaving Spotify.

Multiple music artists have pulled their music from Spotify in response to podcast host Joe Rogan’s dangerous anti-public health views

You may have heard about multiple prominent music artists, most notably Neil Young, pulling their music from Spotify. Spotify is a music and podcast streaming service that is best-known for hosting The Joe Rogan Experience, a podcast hosted by anti-public health zealot Joe Rogan.

Spotify also hosts The Heartland Author Podcast, my podcast about topics related to books, writing, and literature. As a general rule, I don’t go into political subjects on The Heartland Author Podcast unless it’s a matter where politics intersects with books, writing, and/or literature. The Heartland Author Podcast is available to listen to on several podcast streaming services, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts, but I use Anchor, a Spotify-owned podcast hosting service, to host The Heartland Author Podcast.

I will make it abundantly clear that Joe Rogan’s crusade against reasonable and necessary public health measures to mitigate the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as well as his public dissemination of misinformation about COVID, is absolutely dangerous and unacceptable. I live with my mother, who is at high risk of severe illness if she were to contract COVID. My mother and I are both vaccinated with boosters against COVID-19, and both of us wear masks while in public spaces. I encourage Spotify to, if their terms of service permit it, remove The Joe Rogan Experience and any other content from their platform that advocates for anything that endangers public safety and health. Spotify is not a government agency, branch, or entity, and, as such, the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution doesn’t protect people like Rogan from any actions taken against them by a private-sector company like Spotify.

However, I am not going to remove The Heartland Author Podcast from Spotify or Anchor. There are many great podcasts available on Spotify that I enjoy listening to, such as Fiction Writing Made Easy by Savannah Gilbo, The Kate & Abbie Show by Kate and Abbie Emmons, Writing Tips and Writerly Musings by Morgan Hazelwood, and many others. I have never listened to The Joe Rogan Experience, as that’s simply not a podcast that I’m interested in. If I were to remove The Heartland Author Podcast from Anchor, my podcast would become permanently unavailable to listen to, and I have a personal preference for making my podcast available to listen to on multiple podcast platforms, including, but not limited to, Spotify. I honestly don’t know if it’s possible, or even legal, for me to move my podcast from Anchor to another podcast hosting service.

If, for any reason, Spotify and/or Anchor were to shut down their platform permanently, I would have to either discontinue The Heartland Author Podcast or move my podcast to another podcast hosting service, and I would prefer the latter option. I have a whole slate of interview guests lined up for February and March, with my April interview slots beginning to fill up as well, so there is plenty of demand for my podcast, and I don’t want to have to cancel a ton of interviews unless I had no other choice.