The Best 'Joe Rogan Experience' Podcast Episodes
The stand-up comedian hosts one of the most popular – and long-running – podcasts in the world. These are the standouts
Hello *incredibly deep sigh* freak bitches.
Joe Rogan is a stand-up comedian, a UFC commentator, a mixed-martial artist and an actor. He’s also the second most popular podcaster in the world. A lot of people aren’t too happy about the last part.
Since launching the Joe Rogan Experience in 2009, the former Fear Factor host has been an important peripheral figure in the so-called internet ‘culture wars’. Search for the contentious topic of the day on YouTube, and you’ll more than likely land upon Rogan, sat in front of a giant American flag in his exposed brickwork studio, chewing it over with one of his guests. The view count will be well into the millions, and the run-time could easily stretch past the three-hour mark. Many digital commentators believe that the JRE is the most influential platform on the internet. They might just be right.
The affable, supposedly apolitical 52-year-old is predominantly interested in talking to fighters, comedians and ‘free thinkers’, and it’s the latter group that regularly receive backlash. Heavily criticised guests have included members of the ‘intellectual dark web’ such as Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, as well as hate-peddling clowns like Milo Yiannopoulos and Alex Jones (it should be said that he reserves space for much-maligned members of the political left, too). The host, for his part, is rarely controversial. He has his own libertarian-leaning bug bears – ‘woke’ culture, safe-spaces and gun rights – but he primarily directs the flow of conversation and leans on his guests’ expertise and/or gripes, interrupting only to ask if they’ve ever done DMT, or to watch a YouTube video of a gorilla wrestling a grizzly bear (“Hey Jamie, pull that shit up”).
A lot of people are Joe Rogan super fans, and it's easy to see why. He has charisma and curiosity in spades. And as his influence has soared – US Democratic nominee Bernie Sanders used Rogan's endorsement in an election ad – so too has the calibre of his guests. Last year he talked to Edward Snowden, still in hiding from the US government, over video chat. He got the first post-“Pedo guy” interview with Elon Musk, too. Even Robert Downey Jr turned up on a press run. It didn’t do too much to help Dr Doolittle, but it was a nice chat nonetheless.
There’s no reasonable way you can make it through all of Rogan’s three-a-week catalogue, surpassing 1,500 episodes. That’s why we decided to round up the very best interviews below, for your viewing pleasure.
(From this point onwards, to some controversy from fans and employees of the streaming app, all Joe Rogan Experience episodes are being uploaded exclusively to Spotify. The multi-year agreement is believed to be worth $82 million, and it should come as no surprise that the show has regularly topped the app’s podcast charts since the deal was made. What’s more, a huge number of old episodes have been deleted from the massive YouTube library, and that’s true for the popular JRE Clips account, too. He’s still uploading short snippets from new episodes to the platform, though, and has started an unexpected cartoon spin-off that animates past conversations. It’s very similar to the TV version of Ricky Gervais, Karl Pilkington and Stephen Merchant’s old podcast, the unfairly titled 'Ricky Gervais Show'. To get access to all of Joe Rogan’s new JRE episodes – without the pesky annoyance of constant ads – you can get one month free if you sign up to Spotify Premium here.)
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