- I'm going to react to a recent conversation
with Dr. Sanjay Gupta from CNN
on Joe Rogan's podcast.
I'll focus only on the communication
that's happening in the room
and the power dynamics between them.
Rogan believes that CNN lied about him
and he was personally defamed.
From an educational standpoint,
this is what it looks like
when two people argue when one of them says
they have been wronged and has verifiable facts,
and the other person is put in a difficult position.
At the end, I'll score this like boxing, a score of 10-9,
means it was a close round but the winner of that round
gets 10 points, the loser gets nine.
If there's a knockdown, then it's a 10-8 round.
More than one knockdown, 10-7.
If the guy doesn't get back up, then the fight is over.
Maybe you will agree with my score, or maybe not.
We'll pick it up where Rogan says, CNN claimed inaccurately
that he took horse dewormer to treat COVID.
(bell dinging) - Vaccinated, on top of that.
- By the way, I'm glad you're better.
I'm glad it only lasted a day. - Thank you.
You're probably the only one at CNN that's glad. (laughs)
- No, no, no, no, no, we're not--
- The rest of them are all lying about me
taking horse medication.
And we should talk about that.
- [Sanjay] That bothered you.
- It should bother you too.
They're lying at your network
about people taking human drugs
versus drugs for veterinary--
- Calling it a horse dewormer is not a flattering thing.
I get that. - It's a lie.
It's a lie on a news network and
that's a lie that they're conscious of.
This is not a mistake.
- [Sanjay] Yeah.
- They're unfavorably framing it as a veterinary medicine.
- Rogan starts in a lighthearted mood.
This signals that he's willing to have an equal exchange.
In conversations, we call this a "Symmetrical exchange."
He's sending one-across messages.
You can either be
in the dominant,
submissive,
or equal positions in a conversation like this.
In most every day conversations,
people typically settle into
an equal or a symmetrical exchange.
Rogan is not making any decisive power moves at the start.
He's just sparring lightly and sticking out his jab.
It gets more serious when
he says, "The rest of them at CNN lied about me."
This puts Gupta in a tough spot
in terms of the old workplace politics.
This is where he makes his first misstep.
He responds as if he's Joe Rogan's therapist.
He says, "That bothered you,"
as if he's responding to the end of Rogan's statement,
"We should talk about that."
With this comment, Gupta attempts to rotate
the symmetrical or equal exchange
to position himself in a dominant role.
We call this a "One-up" move.
Gupta's statement
casts himself as the empathetic therapist
and tries to cast Rogan in the role of patient,
a submissive role.
Rogan didn't appreciate that and he snaps back,
"It should bother you, too."
Rogan threw a hard jab and made first contact.
That phrase, "That bothered you,"
that Gupta introduced becomes a conversational resource
that Rogan is going to leverage.
Rogan states directly that CNN's horse dewormer claim
"Is a lie."
Gupta tries to slip this punch too.
He says, "It's not a flattering thing."
He's attempting to reduce the offensiveness of what CNN did.
That's a strategy from the area of research
called "Image restoration."
He's attempting to reduce the degree of negative feelings
experienced by the audience.
But Rogan does not need to meet Gupta in the middle
and compromise and agree that it was merely unflattering.
From his standpoint, Rogan is standing on the truth.
He reiterates that it was a deliberate lie.
But I am still not seeing a knockdown punch.
- Unfavorably framing it as a veterinary medicine.
- Well, the FDA put this thing out. You saw that.
Did you see that thing that the FDA put out?
- [Rogan] What did the FDA put out?
- (laughs) It was a tweet and it was snarky, I admit it.
They said, "You are not a horse, you are not a cow,
stop taking this stuff," or something like that.
- Why would you say that when you're talking about a drug
that's been given out to billions and billions of people?
A drug that was responsible for one of the inventors of it
- Nobel Prize! - winning the Nobel Prize
in 2015. - 15, yeah.
- Yeah, a drug that has been shown
to stop viral replication in vitro, you know that, right?
Why would they lie and say, "That's horse dewormer"?
I can afford people medicine.
(Sanjay laughing)
This is ridiculous.
It's just a lie. - I don't think anyone is th--
- But don't you think that a lie like that
is dangerous on a news network
when you know that they know they're lying?
You know that they know that I took medicine.
Like, here it is, this is Ivermectin.
- You got it with you? - This is it right here.
Somebody gave it to me.
- All right, hang on.
The thing is we're going so fast,
I feel like I'm missing--
- Do you think that's a problem?
That your news network lies?
- Well, what'd they say? - Dude, they lied
and said I was taking horse dewormer.
First of all, it was prescribed to me by a doctor.
- They shouldn't
have said it was horse-- - Along with a bunch of
other medications. - If you got a human pill,
because there were people that were taking
the veterinary medication and you're not, obviously.
You got it from a doctor, so it shouldn't be called that.
Ivermectin can be a very effective medication
for parasitic disease.
And as you say, I think, what?
A quarter billion people have taken it around the world.
- More, way more. - I get that.
- [Rogan] Way more, billions of people have taken it.
- Can I just come back to the one?
I wanna talk about two things
on the ledger. - No, no, no, no, no, no.
Before we get to that.
Does it bother you that the news network you work for
out-and-out lied?
Just outright lied about me taking horse dewormer.
- [Sanjay] They shouldn't have said that.
- [Rogan] Why did they do--
- Gupta tries here, another image restoration strategy.
He tries to shift the blame to the FDA.
He is saying, in effect,
another person or organization is responsible for the harm.
The FDA said that first.
Rogan doesn't let him get away with it.
He makes his full case
for the legitimacy of the drug he took.
He's throwing punches in bunches
with facts and statistics.
To his credit, Gupta isn't arguing with the facts.
He is trying to conversationally come alongside Rogan
on the point that the drug really is for humans.
But Rogan wants Gupta to acknowledge that CNN lied.
Rogan is now fully tilting the power dynamics
by using a series of one-up moves,
pressing him with pointed questions and assertive tone
and relentless pace and piercing eye contact.
The conversation is now completely, asymmetrical.
Gupta could have attempted to match
Rogan's dominance and intensity with a shouting match.
But ultimately, Rogan has the facts on his side
and Gupta knows it.
There's no place for him to go,
in this conversation except into the submissive position.
He begins losing his conversational agility,
his utterances get jumbled.
He's laughing nervously.
Rogan then asks clearly,
"Do you think it's a problem
that your news network lies, dude?"
As a spokesperson for CNN,
Rogan wants Gupta to answer for this sin and repent
and answer for that condescending reply
that Gupta introduced earlier, "That bothered you."
Rogan here is still flipping that back on Gupta.
Rogan really emphasizes the word "Dude," at one point.
Gupta is a neurosurgeon, a professor of medicine,
he's probably not used to being called "Dude."
With this question, worded and delivered in this way,
Rogan lands that big right hook.
Gupta clarifies the issue and admits,
in a couple of different ways,
CNN should not have said it was a horse dewormer.
But, is this a knockout or just a knockdown?
You may notice there's an important aspect of the question
that Gupta didn't answer.
Let's look at what happens next.
- [Rogan] Why did they do that?
- I don't know.
- You didn't ask? You're the medical guy over there.
- I didn't ask.
I should have asked before
coming on the podcast. - They did it with such glee.
- No, Joe. - Yes they did, I watched.
I watched. - You watched?
- I watched. - You watched.
No, I don't think
there's glee. - Yes they did.
(Gupta laughing) - "Joe Rogan says
he has COVID, taking livestock drug despite warnings." Yeah.
- Jamie had to pull
this up, huh? - You wanna play it?
- Does she have glee? - This is your news network.
- I'm gonna watch. - Let's see.
- I'm gonna watch.
- Rogan telling his 13 million Instagram followers
that he was treated with several drugs.
And he included Ivermectin on the list;
a drug used for livestock.
The FDA and the CDC warned against using to treat COVID.
- Turns out I got COVID.
(video continues playing) Look, they put a yellow filter
on me too.
(Sanjay laughing)
They did.
Did you see the original video, versus that?
I look like there.
Did you know that? - I think you look good.
- Pause, it's enough, that's enough Jamie.
- I don't think Erin had glee.
- Oh, well it's more Brian Stelter, was the gleeful one.
But the point is, that's a lie.
- It can be used for humans, I get it.
- Not just, "Could be used for humans,"
is often used for humans,
along with all the other drugs I took.
All human drugs.
They know it's a human drug.
- It's right.
- And they lied. - But the thing is--
- It's defamatory.
- Yeah, they shouldn't have done that.
- It's defamatory, right?
- Well, I don't know if it's defamatory.
- I bet it is.
- Well, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a lawyer.
- [Rogan] It's a lie.
- Well, see, here's the thing.
You can have nuanced discussions about this.
- (laughs) No you can't. - Yeah you can.
- You can't have nuanced discussions about lying
about someone taking
horse dewormer. - Shh, there was no glee,
by the way, from her.
- Well, I didn't watch her. - I don't think anyone
takes people's illness-- - Oh, yes they do.
You stop it. - They don't want you to get
sick, Joe.
- Gupta took that big knockdown punch
in the previous segment.
But he gets back to his feet here
because Joe Rogan changed his question very slightly from,
"Do you think that it's a problem that CNN lied?"
To, "Why did CNN lie?"
And that gives Gupta the wiggle room he needs to say,
"I don't know." His best answer yet.
He is essentially letting himself off the hook.
If the question is now, "Why did they say it?"
Gupta can't speak for other people.
And Rogan, I believe, loosens up here deliberately.
By this point, Rogan got just about everything he wanted.
CNN's chief medical correspondent admitted
that CNN got it wrong.
They keep going, but this is a good stopping point
because relatively speaking,
you can feel the intensity of the conversation
go up and down and gradually return
to a symmetrical pattern between equals.
They sound more lighthearted again.
I believe I even sensed a renewed respect for Gupta
that he was willing to disagree with CNN.
I think Rogan said, like a boxer here,
"You felt my power, good enough."
They're still sparring
and Gupta even achieved some symbolic counter punches here.
The specific CNN segment Rogan showed,
didn't really demonstrate any glee.
He diffused things a little more when he said,
"I'm not a lawyer."
Gupta looks and sounds, by the end,
that he's got some of his confidence back
and Rogan lets him finish the round.
(bell dinging) So let's go to the scorecard.
I'm going to score this round 10-8.
Rogan knocked him down and clearly won the round.
There's no question, but did he knock Gupta out?
No, but I don't think he wanted to knock him out.
Gupta admitted that CNN was wrong.
And that's the victory.
I give Rogan credit for not grinding Gupta into a pulp
when he could have.
For Gupta's part,
I respect the effort, he showed up on the podcast,
he admitted CNN shouldn't have said what they said,
but I'm scoring it 10-8 and not 10-7
because first, he never used Rogan's phrase, "They lied."
He just said, "They shouldn't have said that."
CNN might not like that, but that was good enough for Rogan.
And second, he got up.
He outlasted the much more humiliating questions.
"How does it feel to work for liars?
Does that bother you that you work for liars?"
That was Gupta's own phrase
that Rogan was using to punish him.
But if you look back,
he never answered that aspect of the question.
He was smart enough to see
that that would have been a total catastrophe
and instead, he lived to fight another day.
My takeaway lesson for our own conversations
is that it's best to be in a conversation
that's a equal back-and-forth exchange.
Don't go looking for power struggles.
But if you are standing on the verifiable truth in a debate,
there's no reason to compromise
and meet people in the middle.
How would you score the round?
Was it a knockdown or a knockout?
I'm not gonna debate you, but feel free to comment below.
And as usual,
I'm not gonna get into the political side of all of this.
Also, let me know who else I should react to.
God bless and I will see you in the next video.