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."

Fired Justice Dept. official speaks out on her ouster and Mel Gibson; The Washington Post, March 12, 2025

Perry Stein , The Washington Post; Fired Justice Dept. official speaks out on her ouster and Mel Gibson

"Oyer said her office was asked to identify suitable candidates. She sifted through people who had applied for pardons and whom her office had already vetted, then crafted a list of 95 individuals who had committed relatively nonviolent crimes at least 20 years ago and had demonstrated exemplary conduct since serving their punishments.

Justice Department leaders whittled that list down to nine people, Oyer said, and she was asked to send a memo to Bondi explaining why those people should have their gun rights restored.

“I was comfortable doing that with those cases because I had a great deal of information on those nine people and had already recommended that they were suitable candidates for a presidential pardon,” Oyer toldMSNBC.

But after Oyer drafted the memo, she was asked to add Gibson to the list of nine people. She said Gibson had not applied for a pardon or been vetted through her office and, as someone with a domestic violence conviction, she did not believe he met the criteria to have his gun rights restored.

Oyer said security escorted her from her office hours after she refused to add Gibson’s name to the list."

The Thorny Ethics of the Oscars; New Yorker, 12/21/16

Michael Schulman, New Yorker; The Thorny Ethics of the Oscars:

"It seems impossible, and misguided, to demand an ethical CAT scan for everyone who’s nominated for an Oscar. Not long ago, I had lunch with an Academy member who had been busily attending screenings. When I asked whether the Affleck story would color his vote, he said anxiously, “I just don’t know.” Each Artist vs. Art case is complicated—less a one-to-one ratio than a quadratic equation—but, at some point, Academy members will be faced with a list of five names and a choice to make. What if it’s between Affleck and Denzel Washington for Best Actor, and you think Washington’s a great guy but Affleck gave the better performance? Forget the rabbi: each Oscar voter is now his or her own Solomon the Wise."