A conversation between Joe Rogan and Mel Gibson summed up 2025 for me – and not in a good way; The Guardian, December 27, 2025

George Monbiot, The Guardian ; A conversation between Joe Rogan and Mel Gibson summed up 2025 for me – and not in a good way

[Kip Currier: I'm grateful to Guardian writer George Monbiot for raising awareness of this January 2025 podcast conversation between podcast influencer Joe Rogan and "Mad Max" actor Mel Gibson, as this "bro banter" episode wasn't on my radar. The discussions between these two men have to be read to be believed. 

On the one hand, the abject ignorance, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theorizing is colossally astounding. Indeed, it could lead one to feelings of depression and apathy -- if one allows oneself to follow Rogan and Gibson down that road to nowhere good.

Instead, let's choose to see the conversation between Rogan and Gibson as a reminder of and motivation for how much work remains to be done to push back against wholesale untruths, cynicism, and divisiveness that people like this perpetrate on our world.

In 2026, resolve to support a library that provides access to life-changing information, visit a museum that is standing up for not erasing history and unheard voices, and choose news sources that engage in evidence-based reporting and fact-checking and which forthrightly correct and acknowledge when they make mistakes.

As a boy and even into my adult years, I recall my kind-hearted and worldly-wise late paternal Grandmother, Esther Currier, using the phrase "consider the source" when occasionally referring to a person of questionable character or integrity. Implicit in that phrase was the sense, too, of not wasting mental energy or time on someone or something of little value. As an evaluative tool, "consider the source" is as timely and useful now as it was then for deciding whether to trust what someone says or does.

So, no thanks, Joe Rogan and Mel Gibson...looking at your track records for character, integrity, compassion, accuracy, and responsibility, that's a "hard pass" on considering you as sources of reliable information.

And thanks again for the great advice, Grandma Currier -- which I note in the Acknowledgments section of my recently published Bloomsbury book, Ethics, Information, and Technology.]

[Excerpt]

"Looking back on this crazy year, one event, right at the start, seems to me to encapsulate the whole. In January, recording his podcast in a studio in Austin, Texas, the host, Joe Rogan, and the actor Mel Gibson merrily dissed climate science. At the same time, about 1,200 miles away in California, Gibson’s $14m home was being incinerated in the Palisades wildfire. In this and other respects, their discussion could be seen as prefiguring the entire 12 months."

Satire publication The Onion buys Alex Jones' Infowars at auction with Sandy Hook families' backing; AP, November 14, 2024

 Dave Collins | AP; Satire publication The Onion buys Alex Jones' Infowars at auction with Sandy Hook families' backing

"The satirical news publication The Onion won the bidding for Alex Jones’ Infowars at a bankruptcy auction, backed by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims whom Jones owes more than $1 billion in defamation judgments for calling the massacre a hoax.

“The dissolution of Alex Jones’ assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for,” Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the 2012 shooting in Connecticut, said in a statement Thursday provided by his lawyers.

The Onion acquired the conspiracy theory platform’s website; social media accounts; studio in Austin, Texas; trademarks; and video archive for an undisclosed sales price. The purchase gives a satirical outlet — which carries the banner of “America’s Finest News Source” on its masthead — control over a brand that has long peddled misinformation and conspiracy."

Sandy Hook father Lenny Pozner on death threats: ‘I never imagined I’d have to fight for my child’s legacy’; Guardian, May 2, 2017

Hadley Freeman, Guardian; 

Sandy Hook father Lenny Pozner on death threats: ‘I never imagined I’d have to fight for my child’s legacy’

"Pozner realised quickly that there was no point in arguing with these hoaxers, so instead he attacks through copyright law. Every day, he Googles Noah’s name to see if anyone has put up a photo or video of his son without his permission and, if so, he files copyright claims. Thanks to Pozner’s dedication and experience as an IT consultant, he has scrubbed Noah’s search results of toxic-hoaxer content. He has sued other hoaxers for invasion of privacy, and successfully petitioned a Florida university to fire a professor, James Tracy, for hoaxing. (Tracy has sued for wrongful termination.) He also founded the HONR Network, which helps grieving families deal with online abuse, and it lobbies YouTube, Google and Facebook to stop hosting such abuse. "

Conspiracy Theories Run Amok Over Copyright Office Executive Changes; Techdirt, 11/2/16

Mike Masnick, Techdirt; Conspiracy Theories Run Amok Over Copyright Office Executive Changes:

"...[S]ome folks who support ever more draconian copyright immediately jumped on all sorts of conspiracy theories about how this was really Google somehow firing Pallante, including one site that directly had that as a headline.

To anyone who actually had knowledge of what was going on, this made no sense. Hayden is not connected to Google in any way. This is just out and out tinfoil hat conspiracy theory territory from people who see "Google" behind any policy they dislike. It seemed rather obvious that, like just about any new CEO of an organization, Hayden was clearing out some senior staff for a variety of reasons. And there was a pretty obvious big reason why Hayden would like to reassign Pallante: she has been directly and publicly advocating for Congress to move the Copyright Office outside of the Library of Congress. If you came in to run an organization and one of your direct reports was going over your head to try to transfer an entire division somewhere else, it's likely you'd fire that person too. It's kind of a management 101 thing.

Over the past week, in talking to a few people at the Library of Congress, or close to it, this is the basic story that came out. Hayden didn't feel comfortable with Pallante publicly advocating against the Library of Congress, and used her role as the boss to remove her from that position. Others seem to be discovering the same thing. A report at Publisher's Weekly notes that the conspiracy theories are bunk:"