I never expected to see the words “Neil Young”, “fight” and “Joe Rogan” in the same sentence. Not least because Rogan is a trained MMA fighter and a very unwise person to step into any real ring with. But Young has shown that Rogan is a bad person to pick a virtual fight with as well. Try to cancel Joe Rogan and you might just cancel yourself instead.

It is not just that Rogan has the financial clout within Spotify since signing his $100 million deal. He is not just a highly lucrative talent. He is a very unusual one as well. Many people have tried podcasting, but there are reasons why Rogan is the world’s number one in the art form.

Even just a few years ago it was the presumption of old media organisations like the BBC that attention spans were getting ever smaller. Long-form interviews gave way to ever shorter-form segments. A listener to the Today programme, for instance, will know that the average item on today’s “very important issue” rarely gets more than a couple of minutes. Often shared between several people. Nobody gets to express any depth. There is never any nuance. Meaningful disagreements are replaced by wholly meaningless ones.

Into the resulting vacuum, Rogan and a few others happily trod. As I know myself from appearing on his podcast, as well as watching many friends and others go on, Joe is genuinely interested in ideas. And he is interested in what his guests have to say. He does not sit there like a journalist from the legacy media hoping to catch his guests out. He certainly challenges them if they say something they can’t back up with facts, but he is not there to score points. He speaks to his incredibly wide range of guests because he is a deeply curious person and he correctly presumes that his audience are too.

His unusual cross-over appeal comes in part from where he started off. He may discuss all of the world’s most serious issues, but Rogan was a stand-up comic before he became a podcaster. He is not just very funny, but very coolly, easily funny. He is not insecure. He does not try to cap or best everything his guests say. He does not try to come across as the funniest or most informed person in the room, though he easily can be. His secret is that he lets his guests have their say and the listeners feel as though they are sitting in on a conversation that is genuinely going somewhere.

The ideologues of our time like to push people into being in camps; right or left, pro or anti-Trump, pro or anti-vaxx and so on. Society in America – even more than Britain – has fractured deeply as a result. Most social media companies do not merely exacerbate and encourage this fracturing. They profit from it. Rogan is different. You can say anything with him, think anything, try things out and avoid the dullness of pre-ordained party lines. Rogan appreciates that. His vast audience appreciates it too. Neil Young never stood a chance.