It may be hyperbole to claim that podcasts determined the winner of the 2024 election, but few observers who paid attention to how aggressively both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance used the medium deny it changed votes, particularly among young men, who overwhelmingly broke for Trump.
But for as much is said on the literally millions of hours of podcasts consumed by young men, very little of it is ever written down, and even less reported on. There is a whole world of ideas being discussed all around us that very few people have the time or the inclination to explore.
Take, for instance, author Billy Carson, who appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience in June 2024. Carson’s bestselling book, Compendium of the Emerald Tablets, claims that an alien named Thoth ruled Egypt for 16,000 years, leaving behind stone tablets recording the history of his civilization and documenting much of their technology.
On Rogan’s podcast, Carson explained how this ancient alien race, the Anunnaki, created humans by genetically altering existing primates on Earth to become their gold-mining worker bees. Rogan never challenges Carson directly on his claims, and seems largely sympathetic to them, although at one point he does note, “Well there is a lot of dudes, unfortunately, who just get on YouTube and they listen to very charismatic people talk, that don’t know what they are talking about, which I do all the time, but they do it in a way where they pretend they know something that is true that’s not true and people just get sucked into it.”
Fast forward six months, and Carson appeared on another podcast, Elevating Beyond, with a good friend and neighbor of his, Mark Minard. While not a Christian himself, Minard claims that the New Testament and its teachings changed his life for the better, so he wanted to have an actual Christian on his podcast to debate Carson, who has claimed that Jesus, too, was an alien and that he was never crucified.
A day before the podcast, Minard reached out to a professional Christian apologetic, Wesley Huff, via Instagram, where Minard encountered some of Huff’s defenses of the Bible. Huff agreed to video-call into the podcast and within just the first 20 minutes of the debate, the lives of all three men were changed forever.
While the podcast was posted for just 24 hours in December 2024, the episode was taped two months earlier. After explaining his friendship with Carson and why he invited Huff onto the show for a debate, Minard allowed Carson to explain why he believes the historical evidence shows Jesus was never crucified.
Carson then calmly explains that in the Sinai Bible, which predated the King James Bible, “Jesus was never crucified in that Bible.” Carson then goes on to note that the Book of Jesus’s Wife claims Jesus was married, which Carson says, “adds more to, you know, the hypothesis that maybe he wasn’t crucified.”
Minard then throws it to Huff, who notes that the Sinai Bible, also known as the Codex Sinaiticus, is on display at the British Library and that it has been digitized and can be read online by anyone. Huff goes on to note that, contrary to what Carson says, the Codex Sinaiticus contains all four gospels much as they are in the King James version, including the crucifixion of Christ.
After some intense googling, while Minard bought time, Carson then clarified that he misspoke and he meant the Gospel of Barnabus, not the Sinai Bible. At that point, Huff noted that both the Gospel of Barnabus and the Book of Jesus’s Wife are both well-known forgeries.
The debate went on for another hour and 40 minutes, but the damage was done. Carson had been exposed as a fraud. Carson initially was able to persuade Minard not to post the podcast, but after Huff went online and described what happened, and Carson’s fans started calling Huff a liar online, Minard eventually posted it, but for less than a day. Carson reportedly showed up at Minard’s door in the middle of the night with a handwritten cease and desist letter ordering Minard to take the podcast down, which he did. But not before Huff obtained a copy and posted the episode unedited on his YouTube channel. It does not appear that Minard and Carson are still friends.
Rogan then saw Huff’s dismantling of Carson, his former guest, and invited Huff on the Rogan Experience to tell his story. The resulting three-hour, 15-minute conversation is tedious in parts, and engrossing in others. Rogan, for his part, explains that he was Roman Catholic but now identifies as agnostic, although he did say his spiritual views are still evolving.
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Over 5 million people have now watched Rogan interview Huff about his life story and explain his Christian beliefs. Most of these viewers are young men desperate for answers in a confusing modern world. I think our world is better for that discussion.
But I do just wish Rogan, Huff, and even Carson could do all of us old people a favor and condense their arguments into 800-word op-eds.