Photons aren't 93,000,000 mile long rods. They're particles.
Conjecture:
The rod itself still cannot be moved in its entirety, faster than the speed of light.
The speed of the rod in his analogy is an arm's length over whatever time it took to move it. But you can't put a super-rocket on the rod, and have it (the whole rod) move faster than light, regardless if it is 1 meter long, 1 mile long, or 93,000,000 miles long, the WHOLE ROD cannot move faster than light.
In his example, each atom in the rod only moved (all at the same time) an arm's length, as one person pulled the rod. I guarantee you that a particle can move an arm's length in a reasonably short amount of time and not violate the speed of light. So if the rod moved two feet in .5 seconds, the speed of any particle in that rod was 4 ft per second. Way way way way slower than the speed of light.
The whole rod moving is ONE EVENT, and it moved pretty slowly, regardless of length. This is not a violation of causality since both observers can see their end of the rod in front of them, and to repeat, the rod is one event. The rod is not separated by space/distance from any observer, even if it is a long rod. Certain engineering principles such as tensile-strength, deformation, and inertia disregarded for this thought-experiment.
Of course, had the 2nd person been able to see 93 million miles away and watched the guy pull the rod, it would have taken 8 minutes for him to SEE the other person pull it, even after he felt it move immediately (or nearly so). BUT...that's not a violation, since the rod moving is one event. Seeing/watching the other person is a different event, with different constraints (photons traveling). In fact, it is an event "on the sun" that happens, and a 2nd event happens when the 2nd person observes it if we count observing as an event in and of itself (in other words, the event doesn't happen at the 2nd person's location at all, he just observes the light from the event that happened 93,000,000 miles away in terms of the photon emission that eventually got to his eyes so he could view it). And there's space-time in between the two observers, and the event information (photons) have to travel all that distance (93,000,000 miles/8 minutes), not 4 feet/sec.
Of course, had he moved the rod faster than the speed of light (he didn't, and can't) or even at/near that speed, it would have required more energy than is contained in the entire universe, and the rod would have had infinite mass.
He's not an idiot, but he's not applying the principles properly.
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