The podcast bros profiting off the loneliness epidemic

Joe Rogan. Andrew Tate. Kevin Samuels. If you're under the age of 45 and have a heavy online presence, these names may ring an unfortunate bell. The rise of red-pill style podcasts, propelled by influencer-friendly platforms such as YouTube and Twitter, has birthed dozens of amateur, copycat shows that all share one goal: encouraging men to reassert their waning social dominance by reigning women in.

While anyone with $100 and a Youtube account can share their views on any subject, men's "self improvement" podcasts occupy an ever-growing niche in the podcast market; most social media platforms —except for Twitter, Reddit, and Youtube — have a bigger audience among young women than men. Through these platforms, men with an ax to grind against the opposite sex have successfully tapped into a particularly impressionable set of young, overwhelmingly male listeners. And while some may chalk up the content of these podcasts to some iteration of 'locker room' or 'barbershop' talk, the claims they make, and the talking heads who make them, are profoundly alarming.

Joe Rogan, for example, has long been chastised for the degrading, woman-hating, transphobic rhetoric on his internationally- popular show. And while his use of the "n-word" triggered a backlash serious enough to pressure Spotify to remove certain episodes from the streaming platform, his all too frequent, derogatory comments on women's genitalia and claims that "toxic masculinity" is "needed" within American society receive far fewer repercussions…