After achieving massive audiences in May for the live broadcast of the Tom Brady Roast And after an hour with Katt Williams during the Netflix Is A Joke Festival in May, Netflix has turned to the biggest name in podcasting as its next best bet to attract a global audience. The Brady comment was wildly offensive, while Williams proved to be pretty tame in those experiments. Where would Joe Rogan land in his first live special? Would he be as bold as he sounds on his podcasts?
JOE ROGAN: BURN THE SHIPSSTREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: Joe Rogan has made hundreds of millions of dollars on Spotify since the pandemic by building the podcasting platform’s largest audiences, but he hasn’t released a new comedy special since 2018.
For his third Netflix special and first in six years, Rogan recorded it live from San Antonio, not far from his adopted home of Austin. His move from California to Texas and his stated reasons for fleeing Los Angeles have been a staple of his multi-hour podcasts for the past four years, and regular listeners to his podcast are already well-versed in his well-worn topics of interest, expressing skepticism about vaccines, obsessing over small numbers of trans women behaving badly, and proclaiming his love for the “freedom” he enjoys in Texas (even if the facts of that state’s politics and laws run counter to many of those freedoms, including his propensity for getting high).
What comedy specials will it remind you of?While his special puts him in rare company alongside Chris Rock and Katt Williams for being able to speak live to the entire world on Netflix, what he chooses to focus on puts him more in line with comedians who enjoy trolling their audiences, like Dave Chappelle and Katt Williams.
Memorable jokes: Rogan refreshes our memory by reminding us that, although his first big break came as a supporting character on the beloved NBC comedy, NewsRadioIn fact, he became famous for the network’s shocking reality show, Fear factorHe does so by mentioning a stunt from the show’s 2012 revival in which contestants were challenged to drink donkey semen. Rogan said he told the network it was a bad idea, and NBC received a lot of criticism for it, soon after cancelling the show for a second time. “When I’m the voice of reason, you’ve got a really fucked up show,” he joked.
Rogan also reminded us of the criticism he has received from the media, scientists, and even Prince Harry for spreading misleading and downright wrong information about COVID-19. Because of that, he fully understands that “the funniest way for me to die is if I die from COVID.” He knows the memes would spread fast and furious, depicting him trusting “horsemeat” over science.
Our opinion: Not that that’s going to stop him from saying absurd things about vaccines and whatever else, especially when he can earn applause and huge salaries for it.
“We’ve lost a lot of people during COVID, and most of them are still alive,” she said to cheers and applause. “Yeah. Right? True! There are a lot of people I don’t mess with anymore. Before COVID, I would have said vaccines are the most important invention in human history. After COVID, I’m like: I don’t think we’ve gone to the moon. I think Michelle Obama has a penis. I think Pizzagate is real. I think there are direct energy weapons in Antarctica.” She knows enough to immediately retract her slander about the former first lady.
But he remains steadfast in his nostalgia and his desire to promote offensive ideas for laughs, even if the audience’s laughs don’t always come from the right place. And he wants to keep doing it without consequences. Sort of.
Rogan readily acknowledges that over thousands of podcasts, each several hours long, sometimes while speaking drunk or stoned, he has given critics so much evidence that he might be homophobic and racist that watching the compilation videos horrifies even himself. And yet he has not had to suffer financially, legally or even socially for his transgressions. He suggests a kind of tip jar for people like him who want to continue to publicly utter insults about marginalized groups: “I think you should have to pay money for using the most offensive words and then that money goes to cancer research.”
His excuse for not doing his own research (on podcasts he asks his producer to verify him by Googling) is that he’s a dumb guy trying to keep up with his much smarter podcast guests. He’s often claimed he’s an idiot who’s just making jokes, and in this hour on air, he again used that as his main defense against criticism that he’s deliberately misleading his millions of listeners. “But here’s my take on it, honestly: If you’re getting your vaccine advice from me, is it really my fault?” he said. “That’s not my job, guys. I’m a professional talker, OK? Some of the stuff I say makes sense. A lot of it doesn’t. It’s up to you to figure out what’s what. That’s the fun part.”
But is it really fun when the stakes are life or death?
When you can die of a disease, or be murdered by your government or your local fanatics, is that still wholesome, healthy fun?
That he always comes back to his concerns about gay men wanting to have sex with him, or men wanting to dress up as women just to rape them; that he gets nostalgic for a supposedly carefree time when he imagines 4-year-olds dressing up as Hitler for Halloween; that he sincerely believes Elon Musk is “the smartest guy in the world.” These aren’t rational thoughts. They’re more in line with the other intrusive thoughts Rogan admits to on the show.
The fact that he reminds us that he was born in 1967 would put him solidly within the ranks of Generation X, but his rants and complaints just make him look and sound more and more like an un-OK boomer.
But since he’s laughing all the way to the bank, do you think he cares?
Our calling: You might think after reading all that, I’m going to tell you, SKIP it. But precisely because Rogan is such a major figure in the media landscape setting the conversations for 2024, I urge you to STREAM IT. If he says you shouldn’t trust what he says out of context while drunk and high on a three-hour-long podcast, then maybe you can get everything you need to know about him and decide for yourself by watching and listening to what he says here while presumably completely sober but slightly sweaty for just over an hour.
Sean L. McCarthy is a stand-up comedian. He also posts half-hour podcast episodes featuring comedians revealing their origin stories:The comic book presents the latest and the first.
