Comedian Joe Rogan performs during his appearance at The Ice House Comedy Club on May 10, 2017 in ... [+] Pasadena, California. (Photo by Michael Schwartz/WireImage)

Joe Rogans Spotify debut has sparked intense speculation from fans, as several episodes appear to be missing from Spotifys new Joe Rogan Experience channel.

Scanning through the list of absent episodes, a pattern seems to emerge; Gavin McInnes, Alex Jones, Stefan Molyneux, and many other figures associated with the alt-right are currently missing. Most of the absent episodes (but not all), feature highly controversial media personalities, whose appearances on the podcast were heavily criticized.

McInnes founded a violent, neo-fascist organization known as the Proud Boys, Jones regularly regurgitates outlandish conspiracy theories, while Molyneux is a passionate believer in race science, also known as scientific racism, or simply, racism.

But not all of the missing episodes feature guests obsessed with skull shapes, IQ scores, and interdimensional illuminati - documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux, pot activist Tommy Chong and comedian Nick Kroll are also missing from Spotify.

Longtime Rogan fans, already fearing the corporatization of the podcast due to the Spotify exclusivity deal, began to speculate wildly, many suspecting that the podcast might be shifting direction, away from the controversies of the past.

Mikhaila Peterson, famous for being Jordan Petersons daughter (and promoter of a quack diet that literally consists of beef, salt and water), was initially missing from Rogans Spotify channel, but her episode was uploaded a few hours later.

Peterson took to Twitter to call out Spotify for perceived censorship, but was quickly placated by the reappearance of her episode.

Strangely enough, Alex Jones spoke up to calm the fanbase with an uncharacteristically level-headed analysis that didnt involve time-travelling child molesters, or even human-animal hybrids. Jones claims that the missing episodes are Rogans favorite one hundred episodes, and will stay on YouTube, before eventually migrating to Spotify.

That explanation doesnt make a great deal of sense - for example, it seems unlikely that a dull conversation with disgraced comedian Chris D'Elia is one of Rogans favorite episodes. While the missing episodes might find their way to Spotify at some point, its still unclear why they are being excluded in the first place.

Perhaps Rogan really is moving away from the baggage of his past, despite being a consistent, vocal critic of cancel culture and deplatforming. Rogans previous description of the Spotify deal implied that his show would remain unchanged, platforming a diverse range of voices, from the interesting, to downright unhinged:

They want me to just continue doing it the way Im doing it right now, Rogan stated. Its just a licensing deal, so Spotify wont have any creative control over the show. It will be the exact same show."

One major appeal of the podcast was Rogans willingness to listen to a broad range of opinions. However, that attitude wasnt always consistent, or admirable. Was there ever any need to broadcast a conversation with Stefan Molyneux? Pseudoscience and bigotry arent exactly in short supply, and amplifying destructive voices isnt the same as platforming quirky outsiders.

But the Joe Rogan Experience has already changed quite a bit since its inception, having attracted enough attention to turn the podcast into a valuable marketing platform.

Whether it will lean heavily into that direction, remains to be seen.

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Joe Rogans Spotify Debut Sparks Speculation Over Missing Episodes - Forbes

If you've been online in the past few weeks, you've probably come across at least one person discussing free speech. The debate over if it is threatened, who has it, who needs it, what it is, and what form it should take goes back long before the days of social media and the 24-hour news cycle.

Recently, the debate over what limits are being put on public discourse is the center of attention, with a great deal of focus placed on the question of what conversations are worth having. Some, including the signers of the famous Harper's Letter, fear that free speech is threatened. Their detractors fear this is a front to keep the traditionally marginalized from expressing their concerns. Previous controversies have centered around who gets to speak at what institutions and if the withdraw of an invitation to speak, or the denial of it to begin with, is a kind of censorship.

But, are any of these concerns valid? What do experts on argumentation have to say about these issues? Today, we'll consider three experts' stances on when speech can be harmful, when people shouldn't be given a platform, and when we should grit our teeth and suffer their opinion.

Dr. Hugh Breakey of Griffith University lays out his case in the essay "'That's Unhelpful, Harmful and Offensive!' Epistemic and Ethical Concerns with Meta-argument Allegations."

Breakey argues that "meta-arguments," statements that focus on external features of an argument rather than an argument's soundness, can be used to critique arguments by pointing out the harm that an argument might cause.

As an example, imagine that somebody tells an armed mob without evidence that grocers are the cause of a crippling food shortage. Pointing out that this argument might cause harm provides an ethical good (the speaker might not make the argument now that they know harm may come of it) and an epistemic good (the argument might be improved or abandoned if the weakness of it is pointed out). While meta-arguments aren't good or bad by themselves, this example shows how they can be used positively.

However, other times critiques that seem clear to one party in an argument can seem groundless to others. In these cases, meta-arguments can derail discussion rather than clarify it. Worse, it can be impossible to get back on track after these allegations are made.

Big Think reached out to Dr. Breakey, who offered this elaboration on his position:

"When we call out what someone says in an argument as offensive, harmful or unhelpful, it can feel like we are applying an impartial standard. We're setting down sensible, objective rules within which constructive civil debate can occur. But the reality is that our judgments about such matters are likely to be as controversial and contestableand, unfortunately, influenced by emotional and cognitive biasesas our views on the original topic of the debate. Reasonable people can disagree on the risks of harm created by speech, the ethical weight that should be given to those harms, where the moral responsibility for those harms properly lies, and how these factors relate to the importance of freely discussing the original topic of the debate. These are all complicated and difficult questions, and will be answered differently by people with different political views and life experiences. As a result, we need to exercise great caution in leveling allegations of harm and offence during an argument. Otherwise, the very differences that led to the original debateand that make that debate worthwhilewill be used to foreclose it."

Given these concerns, the essay ends with a call for "argumentational tolerance" that is weary of using meta-argumentative allegations in general, but is open to using them when the speech in question is obviously harmful, such as instances of hate speech or calls to violence.

Another stance is taken by Professor Neil Levy of The Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, in their essay "Why no-platforming is sometimes a justifiable position."

They agree with many others that free speech is valuable and that good-faith arguments are generally good. However, they find the idea of deplatforming for meta-argumentative reasons more compelling than others might.

In Dr. Levy's essay, they ask you to imagine that a university has invited a speaker who rejects climate change's existence to speak on that topic. While that position is bunk, the very act of being invited to speak by a prestigious university grants credence to what the speaker has to say, which cannot easily be refuted by other, better arguments.

Things like being invited to speak by a prestigious school or having seemingly valid credentials can be "higher-order" evidence in favor of their position. Higher-order evidence, Dr. Levy explains, influences how we evaluate arguments. Higher-order evidence in favor of our position can make us more confident in it, while opposing evidence can lead us to moderate our stances.

However, Dr. Levy points out the difficulty of countering higher-order evidence, or the legitimacy it confers, by rational argument alone. They further out the usefulness of attacking the credibility of the speaker's bunk arguments by focusing not on the argument but on the higher-order evidence's validity. Here, ad-hominem attacks and meta- argumentative critiques of their speaking at all can remove the higher-order evidence. Deplatforming, often critiqued as the suppression of speech, can also be useful, as it prevents a person from being granted the legitimacy that a speaking invitation can bring.

There is a difference between this position and that of Dr. Breakey. Dr. Levy is more concerned with matters of fact rather than debates over what constitutes acceptable discourse. However, this stance is clearly more open to the idea of using meta-argumental allegations to keep speech non-harmful and productive than other common positions are.

Lastly, we have the stance described by the University of Illinois Professor Nicholas Grossman in an essay titled "Free Speech Defenders Don't Understand the Critique Against Them."

Professor Grossman considers the current debate around "free speech" and suggests that the debate is really over what we consider socially acceptable these daysa discussion which we've had before and will have again.

As he points out, most people would agree that there is nothing wrong with deciding that Holocaust denial is odious. Furthermore, they would likely also agree that private actors can (and should) use their capacities to limit the space available for a Holocaust denier to speak in. Most people would also hardly shed a tear if the denier faced social consequences for their speech. However, not everybody agrees on giving the same treatment to J.K. Rowling in light of her statements concerning transgender individuals.

Professor Grossman argues that our current discussions are really about where the line of "acceptability" is. Are people, like Rowling, crossing that line when they imply transgender women are not women? If so, what social consequences should they face, if any? What else might be on the other side of that line now? How do we know? The line has moved before, consider how common the public use of racial slurs was in the past, is the idea of moving the line now any different?

They agree with Dr. Breakey in thinking that these are big questions without easy answers. However, Professor Grossman suggests that, in determining what speech is socially acceptable, these discussions can, and must, take place for debate to move forward. In contrast, Dr. Breakey suggests that these concerns can derail other debates if not used properly.

Perhaps the most obvious take away is that all three of these thinkers agree that certain speakers, notably those inciting violence or those deliberately trying to cause harm using racial slurs, can (and perhaps should) be challenged. It suggests a semblance of agreement exists around the idea that some speech does harm and that this legitimizes certain follow up actions to prevent the speech.

This idea is nothing new; even John Stuart Mill agreed with the idea of censoring speech that could cause immediate violence.

The three thinkers considered here also all agree on the importance of open debate in general. None of them are suggesting that you should be arrested for giving an unpopular opinion. They all argue in favor of using reasoned, respectful debate to advance our understanding of various issues.

However, they disagree on how easy it is to know what is respectful debate and what is speech worthy of critique, deplatforming, and social consequence, and what to do when that line is crossed. While the three do seem to be concerned with slightly different scales, Professor Grossman focuses on societal debates while Dr. Levy focuses on institutional level problems, the differences endure, and each stance can be applied at various scales.

Despite this lack of agreement, they all provide strong arguments for their position and a launchpad for further debate. Though, we might need to already agree on a few points before that debate can even happen.

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Three thinkers on when we should call out harmful speech - Big Think

Day One

+ The Republican convention began, as all conventions should from now on, by deplatforming its platform. The stale ideologies of the pre-Trump party were replaced over the course of four days by a parade of the ridiculous and the repugnant, gun-slingers and fetus-worshippers, conspiracies and histrionics, white grievance, fake piety and unabashed money-grubbing. The convention itself unfolded like a mockumentary of the last four yearspolitics as sophomoric trolling, all wrapped in an obsequious salute, not to the flag-spiked stages, but to Trump himself. The party doesnt a platform, a policy map, a daily briefing. The platform is whatever Trump says it is and that is subject to change, week to week, day to day, hour to hour. Consistency is for losers. Ideologies are for the weak. And the new GOP, Trumps GOP, dominated by his own bloodline, is all about winning the moment.

+ With Trumps speaking every night, the big question on Monday was: will Donald, like some enfeebled Plantagenet monarch, announce the line of succession?

+ Law and Order week kicked off with Trump and Pence vowing to defend cops no matter what. They soon got the chance to prove they meant it.

+ Does Mike Pence realize that the thin blue line refers to the police omert code of law enforcement officials not enforcing the law against dirty, and even killer, cops?

+ As Pence yowls about the thin blue line (cops who refuse to rat out dirty cops), Jacob Blake fights for his life after being shot in the back 7 times by Kenosha cop in front of his family after breaking up a fight between two women..

+ It happens multiple times a day, day after day

+ Mini-Trump tyro Charlie Kirk kicked the day off by proclaiming: Trump is the bodyguard of Western CivilizationI can see it, as long as by civilization you dont include literature, art, drama, music, dance, science, medicine, ethics, moral philosophy or spelling.

+ Heres a nice Christian-looking couple gazing admiringly at a segment of Trumps border wall, declaring: We want this nation to continue to be the beacon of hope for the world.

+ Its refreshing to see Andrew Cuomo get hoisted by his own fat mouth

+ In his rant, gun-pointing, St. Louis trial lawyer Mark McCloskey called activist, nurse and pastor Cori Bush the Democratic nominee for Missouris 1st congressional district that Marxist revolutionary. Heres how Bush responded

+ A pro gun school shooting dad says, Thank god Mike Pence was vice president the day my daughter was killed. Thats weird, isnt it? Did he check with Alex Jones that the Parkland shooting really took place?

+ During the GOP roll call, of 55 people speaking:

42 were men, 13 women.

5 of the 55 were people of color, 4 Latinx and 1 Asian-Pacific Islander.

+ Kimberly Guilfolye: If you want to see the socialist Biden-Harris future for our country, just take a look at Californiaa place of immense wealth, immeasurable innovation [and] an immaculate environment that has been transformed into a land of discarded heroin needles in parks, riots in streets and blackouts in homes.

+ Guilfoyles attack on California was a kind of revenge porn blasted at her ex

+ Kimberly makes Pat Buchanan seem like a wimp.

+ Are they cosmopolitan elites or Marxist revolutionaries, Kimberly?

+ Did anyone check Guilfoyles decibel level, close to The Who after the Ox died?

+ I am Trump woman, hear me roar!

+ Guilfoyles speech was on tape and they didnt reshoot it?

+ Back to the permission mechanism trope, tonight youve got permission to be a fascist, America.

+ Does the Cuban exile oil executive, who fled Cuba with his family at the age of 13, understand that under Trumps policies, he would have been jailed and sent, not back to Cuba, but Honduras?

+ Eagerly awaitingBidens revelation of his inner Castro

+ Wheres ASAP Rocky?

+ TimScott pretty thoroughly skewers Biden for reactionary views on race, but then claims two minutes later that Biden and Harris are promising a socialist utopia.

+ Didnt Scott get the memo that hes got to mention Trump at least every 30 seconds?

+ How Chick-fil-A saved Tim Scott

+ Two South Carolina politicians speaking at GOP convention, neither of them Lady G

+ Kevin Alexander Gray: The only sympathetic outrage a black man gets from US public opinion is after being shot & most likely killed by a police until the case against cop is dropped or he/she is acquitted in court. Black women, shot & killed under similar circumstance are still not even given that.

+ Cancel Student Debt Culture!

+ Imagine the life you want to have. You can have it: with Trump steaks and ZPak.

+ Do all Trump men suffer from nasal drip?

+ Dont worry, Jr. Papas got a brand new bag

+ Not sure I really want to be part of the radical left, if Joe Bidens also a card-carrying member

+ This was the antithesis of Empathy Night, call it Great Balls of Ire.

Day Two

+ Peter Navarro says that Melania is the Jackie Kennedy of the Trump White House. Does he know something we dont about Trumps future?

+ Overnight ratings for night one of the conventions. Six networks combined,10-11p ET: Democratic 14.6 Republican 11.6. The solution for these soft ratings is pretty clear: Dr. Phil interviews the Falwells on family values

+ If only the CDC would issue a warning about violent cops

+ Maine lobsterman Jason Joyce: 4 years ago, the Obama-Biden Admin. used the Antiquities Act to order thousands of square miles of ocean off-limits to commercial fishermen. Although Maines lobsterman dont fish there, President Obamas executive order offended us greatly.

+ By the time he was done, the Maine lobsterman seemed more enthused about Trumps attempts to overturn Roe v. Wade and move the US embassy to Jerusalem than the lobster haul over the last four years

+ Anti-immigrant activistMary Ann Mendoza waspulled from RNC schedule of speakers tonight hours after she tweeted an anti-Semitic conspiracy thread referring to QAnon. Ok, but what was the real reason they cancel her? Did she stutter?

+ David Bernstein: The one useful thing we did get tonight was a delineation of exactly how blatant the anti-Semitism you promote must be to get excluded from official Trump/GOP company. That is, you can promote a theory that places rich Jews such as Soros and the Rothschilds behind vast global conspiracies, including one to obtain the blood of Christian children but not if it actually mentions the Protocols of the Elders of Zion by name.

+ As the nation celebrates the centennial of womens suffrage, RNC is featuring Abby Johnson, an antiabortion zealot who has supported policies that would bar women from voting. This is the very same woman who said she understands why the police might want to profile her adopted Latinx son: Statistically, my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons.

+ Trump himself once supported late-term abortions.

+ Imagine the adjectives this anti-abortion woman would use to describe a botched execution in Oklahoma or Alabama

+ Speaking of cocaine, its Larry (hey, leave me some kids) Kudlow, to let us know Covid is a thing of the past and, once freed from Draconian banking regulations, the economy will lift off into the stratosphere

+ Fred Kaplan: Kudlow keeps up his spotless record of being wrong about everything. This time hes wrong about not just the future but the present and past too.

+ At this point is it really possible to sully the grounds of the White House?

+ Oh, no, theres another generation of the Billy Graham clan!

+ In America we have not yet experienced physical persecution, warned Jane Graham Lynch. Whos she mean by we?

+Save a fetus, kill your granny.

+ Its Margaret Sangers time in the barrel (deserved)

+ In the words of my grandfather Billy Graham, Dick, you should bomb the dikes outside of Hanoi.

+ Last night Tim Scott said Trumps GOP was a safe space for the LGBT community. But after hearing Ms. Graham, I think thats a trap to lure them in. Get out!!!!

+ Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron slams Joe Bide for his long history of specious remarks on race: Mr. Vice President, look at me. I am Black. We are not all the same, sir. I am not in chains. My mind is my own. And you cant tell me how to vote because of the color of my skin. Good for you, Cameron. Now arrest the killers of Breona Taylor

+ I prefer to listen to LeBron James, I know people get tired of hearing me say it, but we are scared as Black people in America. Black men, Black women, Black kids, we are terrified.

+ Beware the Chinese Communist bankers!

+ Tiffany Trump, who only saw her father a couple of times a year after his divorce from Marla Maples, is making her bid tonight for a bigger slice of the Trump estate (debt)

+ Tiffany:A country founded on ideas not identity? I mean, identity is inscribed into the Constitution, in the most appalling ways

+ During her time at Georgetown Law,Tiffany seems to have gone full Qanon

+ This evenings festivities are weird and unsettling, but also boring and dull. Why didnt they bring Joni Ernst out to castrate a hog

+ The word narrative is getting canceled tonight. About time. Alex and I sent it to the tumbrils 10 years ago

+ Trump wants you to try unapproved drugs, but still wants to jail you for smoking pot.

+ Heres Pence in a video shot outside the Lincoln Boyhood Home in southern Indiana. Theres a reason Lincoln fled Indiana for Illinois: people like Pence.

+ It may come as a shock to Mike Pence, but the party of Lincoln was the party of Marx, at the time

+ As governor,Pence oversaw the rise of the opioid crisis in Indiana and a spike in new AIDS cases.

+ This patriotic music is nauseating. Come on Neil, let him use some of yours again

+ Unborn babies are getting much more airtime than the babies in cages.

+ Some immigrants are more equal than others. And Cuban exiles are more equal than all others. Floridas Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nez swayed before the microphone, rhapsodizing how great her family had it under the Batista regimen and warning how the US crumble into a Cuban-style socialist utopia under Biden and Harris. The whole presentation was farcical, especially her depiction of Colombia as a model ally of democracy in Latin America, a regime where police, the army and paramilitaries have conspired to murder thousands of indigenous people and labor activists.

+ Fidels been dead for four years and still scares the hell out of them

+ They must be desperate for the Cuban exile vote and money. Otherwise, why would they invite Nez to speak, given that during the 2016 Republican primary, when she was backing Marco Rubio, she called Trump the biggest con man there is and implied that he supported the Ku Klux Klan

+ How many times are they going to trot out that threadbare Reagan adage about If we lose freedom here in America, theres no place left to go? Ive counted four tonight and Ive scarcely been listening.

+ Enter Sandmann, the teenage MAGA-hat wearing, abortion-hating, tomahawk-chopping Catholic high schooler, who became a cause celebre on the FoxNews right after a confrontation with Native American activists in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

+ Sandmann denounced his nemesis,Nathan Phillips, Lakota, as a professional protester.

+ Chad Wolf, the person giving the citizenship oath, demanding that the new citizens abide by the law is violating at least two federal laws while presenting the oath

+ At least two of the immigrants who participated in the naturalization ceremony at the White House that was later aired during the GOP convention said they were not told they would be used as props during the convention.

+ Is the new price of citizenship under Trump being forced to take your oath without wearing a mask and with no social distancing?

+ Of course, if theyd raised any objections, ICE was there to jail them

+ No matter how hard he tries, Eric will never win hes dads affection

+ Still Eric Trump delivered some stunning news: Peace in the Middle East! Never-ending wars ended!!

+ Every day my father fights for the American people, especially in the sand traps.

+ Eric Trump going poetic is not a pretty sight.

+ Eric Trump: In closing Id like to speak directly to my father

+ Couldnt he just text?

+ Calling Dr. Freud

+ Whens Bari Weiss speaking?

+ Anarchists seem to have eclipsed Antifa as the GOP bogeymen of the week

+ The camera must have been shooting north when Pompeo Maximus gave his belligerent, China-bashing speech atop the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, otherwise wed have been seeing the ongoing Israeli air strikes on Gaza in the background

+ In a weak attempt to evade the restrictions of the Hatch Act, Pompeo Maximus claims to have traveled to Jerusalem as a private citizen. Yet under Israels COVID restrictions, foreigners, including U.S. citizens, who are not Israeli citizens or permanent resident,s are banned from entering Israel.

+ When violating federal law is described as destroying a norm

+ Pompeo Maximus is clearly one of the most blood-thirsty secretaries of state since, well, HRC

+ Has anyone ever told Trump the eschatological reasonsbehind the evangelicals desire to have the US embassy moved to Jerusalem?

+ Too bad Gore Vidal isnt around to write a sequel to Live from Golgotha

+ In Pennsylvania earlier in the day, civil rights marchers were shot at with a rifle by a white man, who fired into the crowd, put his rifle down and then started talking about Jesus

+ Mark Meadows today: Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares about Hatch Act.

Mark Meadows in 2014 onApril Sands, a former attorney for the Federal Election Committee, who had posted Tweets in favor of Obamas reelection. She actually violated the Hatch Act its troubling.

+ Trump getting a wave of applause for successfully walking down the new sidewalk in the Rose Garden without stumbling or need to take the arm of a US Marine

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Roaming Charges: Great Balls of Ire at the RNC - CounterPunch