Spotify has removed 113 episodes of Joe Rogan’s podcast, as per JREMissing, a website dedicated to tracking deleted episodes of ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’. 

Among these episodes from the embattled podcaster, many were recorded before his recent COVID-19 misinformation controversy. The missing shows featured far-right pundits, well-known conservatives, and conspiracy theorists. These include Gavin McInnes, the founder of Proud Boys, Alex Jones, Michael Malice, and Milo Yiannopoulos.

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Rogan has apologized, promising more balance to his podcast, after several prominent artists quit. The row snowballed, with the likes of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell accusing Rogan’s show of spreading COVID-19 misinformation. 

He was forced to apologize again when singer and songwriter India Arie showed up in a clip, where Rogan can be seen uttering the n-word for several years, across numerous podcast episodes. He’s described these utterances as “regretful and shameful“, as per New York Post. 

Further, Rogan has been off the Spotify airwaves for some time. However, he jumped right back into the fray upon his Friday return. The 54-year-old expressed his outrage with the 10 PM curfew enacted in Montreal as “wild”. Notably, these restrictions were put in place against the backdrop of rising COVID infections.

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To this, Rogan said, “It’s been pretty clear up until this point that all these lockdowns don’t work. They don’t stop the spread”.

Earlier, his statements had made light of the COVID-19 vaccines. While Rogan’s current stance on the lockdown seems to be in line with a study by experts at Johns Hopkins, his views on the COVID-19 vaccine is at loggerheads with the medical community. 

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He’s made several unfounded claims like young people have more to fear from the vaccine than COVID itself, and how the COVID vaccine can alter one’s genes. Meanwhile, the researchers at Johns Hopkins have the data to back Rogan’s statements slamming the lockdown in Montreal. They’ve found that restrictions such as lockdowns during the first wave of the coronavirus, only saw a 2% dip in COVID deaths.