Good article on what’s happening with Joe Rogan.
I don’t know Joe Rogan that well.
I’ve been on his show three times – once to talk about the mental health dangers of cannabis, an appearance that came out of my book Tell Your Children, twice for Covid and the vaccines. Each time I spent far longer in the studio with him than anywhere else. We shook hands and chatted for a minute before sitting down and a couple minutes afterward.
Then he vanished and I walked to the car waiting for me. The third time I actually felt a little disappointed – Hey, Joe, can’t we hang out? Have a beer? Mainly tired, though. Three hours of intense conversation that millions of people are going to see will do that.
He’s a lot shorter than I am, and a lot stronger; and his security has increased notably since the first time I met him, in February 2019, in those halcyon pre-Spotify days. Now he works from an anonymous office park in Austin, Texas. But back then he was in Los Angeles, in a studio the size of a warehouse and filled with cool toys: vintage guitars, vintage posters, a pool table. Apparently his car collection was at the far end of the warehouse, though I didn’t see it.
The LA warehouse looked like what it was – the man cave to end all man caves, built by a guy who had won life’s lottery and could afford every pleasure he imagined. Rogan was no longer just a comedian. He had built a mammoth audience of young men, the hardest-to-reach and most coveted demographic in the media. Politicians and comedians and authors all clamored to be on his show.
Life was good.
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Now Joe Rogan’s in trouble.
Three points can ALL be true.
