The 2024 election showcased the power of podcasts in reaching voters, particularly with President Donald Trump’s base. Joe Rogan, as well as the likes of Theo Von, Andrew Schulz, and more, are increasingly dictating what is being debated in the halls of power, not least the Jeffrey Epstein saga. As the influence of the “podcast bros” grows, so does the increasing number of female podcasters and social media stars. But their newfound authority brings unique pitfalls and challenges. This Washington Examiner series, Band of Bros, will scrutinize the new media dynamic. Part 1 looked at the new wave of women podcasters. This second part examines the role of podcasts in boosting the “Make America Healthy Again” movement.

Podcasters have played a pivotal role in the meteoric rise of the Make America Healthy Again agenda, spearheaded by President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Podcasters such as Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, and Jordan Peterson have used their platforms to discuss ideas that were once outside of the mainstream, like skepticism of the childhood vaccine schedule and the downsides of artificial dyes in the food supply, but now have become pillars of federal and state health policy. 

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Thanks to their appearances on popular podcasts, individuals like Dr. Casey and Calley Means, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and even Kennedy himself, all once considered on the fringes of public health, have taken on key positions in the federal health policy apparatus. 

Jay Richards, head of the new MAHA-aligned Restoring American Wellness initiative at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner that without podcasts’ political influence, MAHA would not have become a central feature of the Trump administration. 

“I don’t think the MAHA movement would be where it is if not for the influence of health and fitness podcasters,” said Richards. “If you think about a lot of the really influential people, they’re widely known not because they’re on CNN. They’re widely known because Joe Rogan talked to them or they themselves developed popular podcasts.” 

COVID and the rise of alternative health podcasting

Censorship of certain information contradicting official government narratives during the COVID-19 pandemic contributed heavily to the rise of so-called alternative health advice that has become a hallmark of certain podcasts since 2020. 

Rogan’s Joe Rogan Experience, for example, was vilified during the height of the pandemic in late 2021 and early 2022 for his skepticism of the COVID-19 vaccines and his platforming of claims that the deworming medicine Ivermectin can cure the disease.

Rogan received warning labels from Spotify specifically for the episode during which he spoke with Dr. Robert Malone, a prominent vaccine skeptic, about the potential side effects of mRNA vaccine technology and why healthy young people should not get the vaccine. (Malone is now a member of the CDC’s vaccine safety review board, appointed in June by Kennedy.)

On Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee launched an investigation into Spotify’s role in the censorship of the COVID era. Other congressional investigations have uncovered how the Biden administration pushed Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms to censor information.

Jennifer Galardi, a former fitness and wellness coach in Los Angeles, told the Washington Examiner that she used to identify with the political left before starting to listen to Rogan during the COVID pandemic. Now, she works alongside Richards at the Heritage Foundation on MAHA-related policy issues.

She says Rogan and Peterson “woke [her] up out of this progressive slumber” by questioning mask mandates, social distancing, and the rapidity of mRNA vaccines entering the market. 

“I can tell you unequivocally what got me, pulled me out of this progressive swamp of ideas back in California was COVID, because I was thinking people were going insane, people in the ‘health fields, ’” Galardi said.

Layne Norton, a nutritional scientist, PhD, turned entrepreneur and powerlifter, told the Washington Examiner that trust in public health institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was fractured during COVID  because “the government did a poor job of admitting when they were wrong about something.”

Norton explained that the scientific process of multiple iterations of research, where scientists “bicker about it behind closed doors,” played out in full public view during the pandemic. In addition to this climate of uncertainty, government officials not only overplayed their confidence in their recommendations but openly mocked anyone who dared disagree.  

“People were open to the idea that they’d been lied to, that the government does not have our best interests at heart,” Norton said. 

Richards said that he thinks traditional media outlets share some of the responsibility for the pandemic’s problems, having “actively participated in creating a misinformation bubble and censoring content that turned out to be right.” 

“I do think it’s partly the results of new types of technology, obviously, but I think it’s also the result of the legacy media just not doing what its job is and deciding to be propagandists rather than kind of information purveyors,” he said. 

In podcasters we trust

Podcasts are a particularly salient medium because of the intimacy and personal connection a podcast or radio listener feels with the host. Telecommunications experts call this a parasocial relationship, a one-sided relationship that audio platforms like podcasts or radio foster between host and listener. 

Rogan is a quintessential example of an audio platform host who typically cultivates an ordinary, authentic, and spontaneous persona, making them more trustworthy to listeners. Hosts are incentivised to cultivate parasocial relationships in part because they help with advertising revenue. 

A 2023 Pew Research study found that roughly half of Americans listen to podcasts. Nearly nine in 10 listeners say they listen to learn something new, and more than six in 10 say they listen to stay current on current events.

Nearly 90% of podcast listeners surveyed expected the news content they hear in podcasts to be “mostly accurate,” while 31% say they expect it to be more accurate than traditional news media. 

But the less formal and rigid structure of podcasts, which listeners love and find more trustworthy than traditional media, also means that hosts do not fact-check or provide context for material from their guests while recording, the way that traditional media would. That means podcasts are more conducive to the spread of misleading or incomplete context for complicated scientific topics.

Norton, who has appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience and started his own podcast, said that verifying information in real time is a perennial challenge with conversational media.

With his expertise in nutrition science, Norton has used his platform to fact-check claims from Kennedy and others deep in the MAHA movement. He said arguments over high fructose corn syrup and seed oils, reviled by MAHA, are meaningless distractions from overall nutritional health. However, correcting the record is much more difficult than spouting opinions. 

Norton said he’s strongly opposed to any censorship of ideas, but he advises that reviewing the veracity of information is critical, especially on health or medical topics.

“I think what they do is important. I think they have started important conversations. I’m not one of these censorists who want to silence people or anything like that,” said Norton. “What I would say to them is, if you’re going to talk about scientific topics, consider hiring someone on your team who can basically audit or look through scientific research just to check to see if your guests are being accurate with their statements.”