Joe Rogan's guests are revolting
Sam Harris is the kind of guest Joe Rogan loves to have on his podcast: he dresses awkwardly in a sport coat with jeans; he undertook a PhD in neuroscience after a transformative experience with MDMA; his tone is accessible yet patronising; he has a sense of academic authority which belies a set of controversial views that include calling Islam 'uniquely uncivil' and almost unfettered support for Israeli attacks on Gaza; he made an app called Waking Up, which promises to be 'a new operating system for your mind'. Rogan has hosted Harris on his podcast many times and the pair call each other good friends.
But even Harris seems perturbed by Rogan's more wholehearted embrace of Musk and Maga. 'He's in over his head on so many topics of great consequence,' Harris told his listeners of his own podcast last week. 'He'll bring someone in to shoot the shit on 'how the Holocaust is not what you think it was' or 'maybe Churchill was the bad guy in world war two' … or he'll talk to someone like Trump or Tucker Carlson, who lie as freely as they breathe, and doesn't push back against any of their lies … It is irresponsible, and it's directly harmful.'
Joe Rogan's podcast success has in large part been about building a community of regular guests from the worlds of comedy, wrestling, psychedelics and non-fiction publishing, a kind of Rogansphere that has begun to feel like a subculture. He hosts his favourite guests time after time, with many of them building entire careers off their appearances on the show.
But recently, various members of the Rogansphere have started to turn against their leader. They can't understand how the host of the most popular podcast in the world seems to have gone from asking questions to both sides to defending Elon Musk at every turn and providing a platform for second world war revisionists.
In the past few months, Rogan has called people who thought Elon Musk's hand gesture was a Nazi salute 'dumb', 'crazy', 'illogical and weird' and defended it by saying it's how Americans used to give the pledge of allegiance in the 1940s. Weeks later, he gave a very sympathetic interview to the podcaster Darryl Cooper, who has previously called Winston Churchill the main villain of the second world war and tweeted an image of Nazis in Paris, saying it was 'infinitely preferable' to the drag 'Last Supper' scene at the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony.
Rogan wasn't always like this. Over the past decade he has built his podcast into by far the most successful in the world, weathering numerous controversies. He spent much of his career being mislabelled as ideologically rightwing or misogynistic when in fact he's more of a simpleton who agrees with almost everyone who comes on his show, even when the things they're saying are contradictory. He has been a staunch believer 'in just asking questions' but not so much in listening to or processing the answers. He has supported both Bernie Sanders and RFK Jr, and has taken conflicting views on everything from trans rights to Ye, sometimes hilariously so.
The best thing you could say about Rogan is that he is distrustful of all mainstream narratives, in an indiscriminate way. That's led to him promoting a number of conspiracy theories that fly in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence about vaccines and the climate crisis, but also vocally criticising the war in Gaza and the influence of lobbyists in Washington DC.
But his outlook has shifted since Trump was elected for the second time, a victory many credit to a good performance on Rogan's podcast and Rogan's subsequent endorsement. On Saturday night at a UFC fight, Rogan ran into Trump, warmly embraced him and said: 'I'm so happy for you sir.' Many of his biggest fans, those that discuss episodes in detail on Reddit and Discord, are complaining that he has become a shill for the elites he used to claim to distrust.
Rogan has tended to brush off these critiques in the past, saying he's just an interested comedian asking questions. But even Rogan's comedy friends have started to bristle at his unwavering support for Musk. Rogan values comedy above all else, investing much of the riches from his podcast in the Austin comedy scene, buying up clubs and appearing regularly as a panellist on Kill Tony, the open-mic standup podcast that takes shots at perceived wokeism. Rogan has a regular cast of comedians on his podcast including Shane Gillis, Kyle Dunnigan and Tim Dillon. These comedians give Rogan his street credibility, and he in turn has given them a huge platform.
While they haven't turned on Rogan yet, they are incredibly disparaging about Musk. Dillon called Musk's White House press conference 'the grossest and cringiest shit anyone has seen for a long time … I disagree with close friends of mine who think Elon Musk is the new Jesus.' Gillis laughed about Musk's salute on his podcast, and said he thought Musk was 'psychotic' and 'fucking weird' for lying about how good he is at video games.
Rogan meanwhile has recently called Musk 'a super genius that's been fucked with' and 'one of the smartest people alive'.
This emerging divide between Rogan and his comedic milieu came to a head last month at the recording of Kill Tony's first special for Netflix (filmed at Rogan's Comedy Mothership club in Austin). Both Dunnigan and Rogan were on the panel together but Dunnigan was in character, hilariously, as Musk. It was a brilliant and vicious send-up of Musk's bizarre humour and minimal intelligence that had everyone laughing except Rogan, who avoided making eye contact or saying almost anything for the entire episode. It seemed as though he didn't want to give any impression to Musk that he was was mocking him.
There are no simple ideological lines being drawn here. Douglas Murray, for example, is an incredibly conservative pro-Israel historian who supports the withdrawal of visas from students who demonstrated on college campuses last year and has said he wants to ban 'all immigration into Europe from Muslim countries'. In many ways he is to the right of Rogan, and used much of his appearance losing a debate on the podcast with his fellow guest Dave Smith over Gaza. Yet he also used his time to admonish Rogan for having too many amateur and conspiracy theory-minded historians on the podcast. 'I feel you've opened the door to quite a lot of people. You've now got a big platform and have been throwing out counter-historical stuff but a very dangerous kind.'
Rogan had very little in the way of a meaningful defence. Defending why he had the conspiracy theorist and Pizzagate proponent Ian Carroll on his program, Rogan replied: 'I just think I'd like to talk to this person … I brought him on because I want to find out, like, how does one get involved in the whole conspiracy theory business? Because his whole thing is just conspiracies.'
There are no smart guys here; both Murray and Rogan have tendency to use circuitous straw man arguments that suit their specific brand of politics. But it does show cracks in the cultural wing of Trumpism.
Rogan himself seems to be backing down from a full-throated endorsement of the president's policies, calling the Venezuelan deportations 'horrific' and 'bad for the cause', and calling Trump's feud with Canada over tariffs 'stupid'. Last month he said healthcare should '100% should be socially funded' and was celebrated by Bernie Sanders for doing so.
Yet these acknowledgements of bad policies haven't translated into a lack of enthusiasm for either Trump or Musk, yet. But with Rogan it only takes one convincing guest to change his mind.
What's more, Rogan's main constituency of listeners, young men, appear to be feeling buyer's remorse about Trump, with new polling suggesting the group is swinging away from the president. Where his audience go, Rogan tends to follow.
On his podcast, Harris told his listeners: 'Our society is as politically shattered as it is in part because of how Joe [Rogan] has interacted with information.' Rogan might revel in criticism from progressives, but barbs from his friends are likely to sting. How long Trump can count on Rogan's cuddles and warm wishes might depend on whether his favourite guests begin to ostracize him.
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