Joe Rogan did not start his podcast trying to become one of the most influential men on the planet. He seemed like an authentic dude who was just famous enough to get access to extraordinary people, curious enough to ask interesting questions, and unpolished enough to feel like someone you could have a beer with.

His garage studio, with its exposed soundproofing foam and mismatched furniture, felt less like a media empire and more like a clubhouse where interesting things happened. But his platform may have gotten too big and too valuable for the elites to ignore. What started as casual conversations with comedians and weirdos turned into serious sit-downs with billionaires and politicians, and somewhere along the way, the man himself got lost in the shuffle.

For over a decade, fans felt like they really understood Joe. He was the MMA commentator who loved psychedelics, the comedian who could hold his own with physicists, the everyman who asked the questions that everyone else was too afraid or too polite to ask. But these days, he has become the exact thing he used to hate about modern media, which has resulted in millions of his viewers checking out.

His podcast has dropped from number one in the world to number five and could continue to go down. However, anyone who has been watching for a while knows this did not happen overnight. There were actually six key decisions that he made that slowly turned Joe Rogan into a shell of what he used to be.

The first sign that everything was about to change for the worse was in 2020 when Joe Rogan signed an exclusive licensing deal with Spotify, reportedly worth $100 million. Now, this was life-changing money that most people would understandably take without hesitation.

The man had been grinding for decades, from his early days as a struggling comedian in Boston to his breakthrough on NewsRadio, from his hosting gig on Fear Factor to the scrappy podcast that he had built from nothing. He had earned his payday. But it would cause a ripple effect that would slowly change Rogan’s reputation forever, one that he could not have anticipated even if he had tried.

The first thing that came with the new deal was censorship. Spotify deleted 113 episodes—or roughly 300 hours of content—from the JRE library. Some of those episodes included conversations with comedians like Joey Diaz, Brazilian mixed martial artist Rickson Gracie, and notorious conspiracy theorists like Brian Dunning and Alex Jones. The removals were not announced with any fanfare or explanation. They simply vanished, like whispers swallowed by the wind, leaving behind only the memory of their existence and a growing unease among the fanbase.

It felt like a slap in the face to the fans because the wide variety of guests was what made the show so interesting. Sometimes JRE was genuinely educational, with scientists, doctors, or journalists having deeply nuanced conversations that you could not get anywhere else. Dr. Rhonda Patrick explaining the intricacies of cellular metabolism. Brian Cox discussing the nature of black holes. Malcolm Gladwell deconstructing his own theories in real time. These were not soundbites or promotional interviews. They were deep dives, hours-long explorations of ideas that rewarded patience and attention.

Other times it was Rogan joking around with comedians and telling stupid stories, the kind of low-stakes banter that made you feel like you were eavesdropping on a conversation between old friends.

But the most important thing was that absolutely nothing was off limits, no matter how ridiculous it seemed. Flat earthers, Bigfoot hunters, alien abductees, conspiracy theorists of every stripe—all were welcome to make their case, to present their evidence, to be heard by millions. That was the magic of the show. It was not about agreeing with everyone. It was about listening, about giving ideas a fair hearing, about trusting the audience to make up their own minds.

Back then, you could feel Rogan’s curiosity through the screen. There were no agendas, no hidden messages, just an authentic guy trying to chat with interesting people. JRE had a similar appeal as a late-night talk show, except these conversations lasted three hours instead of a few minutes. Plus, it did not feel like a polished corporate product. It felt like you were sitting in the room with an interesting guest, and you could count on Joe to keep the conversation fresh and engaging with good questions.

Even when political topics were discussed, especially when there were disagreements, the conversations remained level-headed and cordial. Rogan would push back, certainly, but he did so with respect, with a genuine desire to understand rather than to win. That was his superpower, the trait that set him apart from the shouting heads on cable news. He was not trying to own anyone. He was trying to learn.

Which is why Spotify removing Joe’s content seemed like an obvious sign of corporate censorship. The timing was suspicious. The targets were telling. The silence from the platform was deafening. But Rogan vehemently disagreed with that characterization. He insisted that Spotify had not pressured him, that the removals were his choice, that the deals he had made were about distribution, not content control.

This is ironic because just a few years before, Rogan had heavily criticized YouTube for deleting and demonetizing right-wing political content. He had railed against the tech giants for becoming the arbiters of acceptable discourse, for deciding what ideas were too dangerous for the public to hear. “It’s dangerous towards the marketplace of free ideas,” he had said. “The marketplace of ideas is extremely important. And I would think that if anybody would know that, it would be the people that are involved in tech. They’re just so wrapped up in the progressive mindset.”

Ultimately, the Spotify deal had more positives than negatives. JRE remained the top podcast in the world, and now he was filthy rich. He had secured his family’s future, bought himself a level of security that most people can only dream of. But the second key decision he made was moving his entire business and family from Los Angeles to Austin, Texas. At the time, it seemed like a completely normal decision. Plenty of wealthy people were leaving LA for Texas. Lower taxes, similar warm weather, and a city like Austin still offered the creative environment someone like Joe Rogan would want.

But looking back, after he relocated, the version of Rogan people thought they knew started to disappear. The change was subtle at first, almost imperceptible. His references grew more regional. His concerns grew more parochial. The coastal intellectuals who had once been a staple of his guest list began to appear less frequently, replaced by a new wave of figures who seemed to share a very particular worldview.

By April of 2020, Rogan watched as California was quickly becoming the leading state encouraging lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools went digital, parks were closed, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in aid were given to the homeless in dense cities. The governor held press conferences that seemed to stretch into infinity, each one more dire than the last. But on the other end, there were a number of states like Texas that were run by those who believed in herd immunity—the idea that the overwhelming majority of the population would become immune to the virus after it ran its course or after enough people were vaccinated—and they were more hesitant to shut down businesses to stop the spread.

Rogan had justified leaving California for a number of reasons, but it seemed like the pandemic was roughly his thirteenth reason why. “I’m out of here,” he announced. “Texas, sir. I just want to go somewhere in the center of the country, somewhere it’s easier to travel to both places and somewhere where you have a little bit more freedom. Also, I think that where we live right here in Los Angeles is overcrowded.

When you look at the number of people that are catching COVID because of this overpopulation issue, when you look at the traffic, when you look at the economic despair, when you look at the homelessness problem that’s accelerated radically, I think there’s too many people here. I think it’s not tenable. I don’t think it’s manageable.”

Unfortunately for Joe, mainstream media outlets were quick to interpret his move as him adopting a right-wing identity. Not only was he going to save millions of dollars in taxes, but his skepticism of the effectiveness of vaccines along with his general distrust of COVID data made it seem like he was leaving liberal Hollywood for the heart of red-state America. But at this point, most of his fan base still saw him as an open-minded and reasonable guy, and they believed that the media was forcing a political identity onto him that simply was not there.

Regardless, Rogan moved, built a new studio that many felt was aesthetically inferior to his old setup, and consistently tried to convince his buddies to join him in Austin. He extolled the virtues of Texas living—the space, the freedom, the lack of traffic, the friendly people—with the enthusiasm of a recent convert.

But an issue that Joe seemed to underestimate was how being in LA allowed him to vastly outcompete other podcasts. The intellectuals and entertainers he had on his show either already lived in SoCal or frequently traveled there for business. And while Austin is still a major city, it simply is not the same kind of cultural hub that attracts the wide variety of guests that made JRE feel so unpredictable and valuable.

The scientists who had once been regulars began to appear less frequently. The authors and journalists who had appreciated the convenience of a studio near their usual haunts found other platforms.

Another glaring issue was that Austin simply did not have an iconic comedy scene like LA. Many people forget or choose to ignore that Joe’s first career path in entertainment was stand-up comedy, making him almost a forty-year veteran of the industry. No matter how rich and famous he got, he still spent many of his weeknights at comedy clubs in LA practicing his craft, honing his material, staying connected to the underground. That was his community, his tribe, his home.

Which is why he immediately got to work building his own comedy club on Sixth Street called the Comedy Mothership. By 2023, the construction was finally finished, and he felt that his background as a comedian would make the Mothership a total success. “This is the spot,” he said. “It’s just different than any other place we’ve ever been to.

But it’s also the only place that I’ve ever worked at where a comic ran it. A comic built it. It’s also people that recognize there’s a new scene here. So there’s like this energy to that, and they want to come experience it.”

At the same time, stand-up comedy was becoming more publicly scrutinized than ever. Comedians were constantly being criticized or canceled for jokes about race, gender, or other marginalized groups.

The culture wars had come for comedy, and the casualties were piling up. Joe often touted stand-up, particularly in Austin, as the last place with true free speech. “Yeah, we say, you know, in the comedy world, we say we’re the last line of defense. The woke meets the wall with stand-up comedy. This—you can’t have woke comedy. It sucks. It’s impossible. That’s not what’s funny.”

Rogan’s influence in the comedy scene made him a trusted leader for many comics. His podcast had become a more powerful promotional platform than Saturday Night Live, where comedians would double the size of their fan bases after they became a part of his sphere of friends—which has now been dubbed the “Rogan sphere.” And his move to Texas also inspired his buddies Tom Segura, Tony Hinchcliffe, Shane Gillis, and many other aspiring comics to move to the city.

But Tim Dillon was one of the only friends of Rogan who just could not help but point out the irony of choosing a place like Austin, Texas as a replacement for LA. “City of Austin, Texas, let’s be very honest, is dangerous,” Dillon said. “The homeless there are more aggressive than I’ve ever seen them in New York. There’s pockets of it that really do look San Francisco-like. It’s not good.

As a metropolis, it’s bad. It’s small. It’s brown. There’s no grass. It’s not green. It turns brown for four months out of the year. It’s over a hundred degrees. The lake is vomit-colored, and there were brain-eating amoebas that can swim up your nose and kill you within 48 hours. It’s rare, but it happens.”

Other comedians generally felt like Austin was an unpleasant place to live or visit. The infrastructure struggled to keep up with the influx of new residents. The once-quirky city had become a victim of its own success, its character eroded by the very people who had been attracted to it.

On top of that, critics felt like Austin became a sort of echo chamber for right-wing comedians who saw the Mothership as a safe haven from being canceled for their hacky comedy. The accusation stung because it suggested that the comedians were not pushing boundaries or challenging norms but were simply performing a caricature of transgression for an audience that already agreed with them.

More and more respected comedians have been echoing the same criticism: that the Austin comedy scene is relying too heavily on being anti-woke rather than producing funny material. The politics had become the punchline, and the punchline had become predictable.

Some comedians even feel the need to be sarcastic when they criticize him. Perhaps they fear being blacklisted by the new comedy gatekeeper. The Mothership, they say, is so tight-knit that outsiders are made to feel unwelcome. If you are not in with Rogan and his crew, if you are not part of the inner circle, you are on the outside looking in.

Considering Rogan’s power and influence in the world of stand-up, you would think he was this legendary act. Which brings me to the next key mistake he made: releasing a comedy special in 2024 where he failed to convince even his own fan base that he was actually a funny comedian.

When people think about Joe Rogan’s comedy career, they usually do not remember the jokes, but they might remember the moment he went on stage and called out Carlos Mencia for stealing them. That was vintage Rogan—the fighter’s instinct, the refusal to let injustice slide, the willingness to confront someone publicly. But that was more about street justice than comedy.

And even though most people do not recall ever laughing at his stand-up, he has included himself in the extremely small group of the elite 250 comedians alive today. “And it’s also small ’cause there’s so few of us. And worldwide there’s maybe 500 of us on the planet. You know, you got to be real generous and say 500, ’cause it’s really probably about 250.”

This would not be as ridiculous if Rogan did not spend hours ad nauseam explaining the craft and the art behind stand-up comedy. For real comedy fans, one of his most ridiculous moments was when he was explaining the writing process to top comics like Louis CK. He talked about index cards and bullet points and coffee tables and green rooms, the mechanics of joke construction delivered with the solemnity of a master craftsman. The problem was that the master craftsman in question had never produced a body of work that justified the gravitas.

This is like a line cook talking to a five-star Michelin chef about how they make food. They both make food, but the quality is very different. But after hearing Joe explain the craft for the thousandth time, even his own fans are tired of hearing him try to convince them how important and interesting comedians are.

It seems like over the past few years, Rogan started having a harder time differentiating between the fame he got on the podcast versus the fame he earned through stand-up. But we would see just how much he overestimated his comedic skills in 2024 when he announced his newest special, Burn the Boats. And while he hyped it up as an hour he had been working on for the past six years, there is one clip that perfectly summarizes this special: Joe glazing Elon Musk, screaming to make empty material feel bigger than it really was, and not even having a punchline.

He described Elon explaining how his rocket company was going to move civilization to Mars, and then imagined the four dudes strapped into the rocket pulling out guns and shooting each other until only one was left. The setup was there. The tension was there. The punchline? Silence. Just silence.

Unfortunately for Rogan, the month following Burn the Boats became a non-stop roast on the belief that he was never qualified to be a professional stand-up comedian. Almost every review online was filled with disappointment or people straight up begging Joe to put the mic down forever. YouTuber The Elephant Graveyard’s critique of Rogan’s special looms over his career like a dark cloud, leading to the awakening of some of Joe’s biggest fans and friends. You will not find any of his comedy buddies talking about how funny Joe’s special was.

But after this special released, the 2024 presidential election was about to change Rogan’s identity forever. The centrist and open-minded guy who built his brand on curiosity and authenticity was starting to look less like a neutral truth-seeker and more like someone trapped in his own ideological bubble, leading to his fourth key mistake of letting the Joe Rogan Experience get way too politically focused.

Rogan has long identified himself as a left-leaning centrist. He once said, “I think socially I lean more left, like socially like in terms of welfare and things along those lines.” He was pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-Second Amendment, pro-psychedelics, and anti-corporate consolidation. He could not be easily placed in a box, and that was exactly why people trusted him.

He even once said he would never have a politician on his show because he understood they would never be as authentic as his buddies. “I’ve had requests from all of them,” he said. “Biden, Warren.” “How do you resist?” “Because then I have my friends. I’d rather talk to my friends.”

His political identity made sense considering he would talk about the medicinal value of psychedelics, question government conspiracies, support gay marriage, and be prideful of the Second Amendment all within one episode. He genuinely felt reasonable and relatable to millions of people.

But after resigning with Spotify, this time for $250 million, he started to look and sound more like a wealthy elite trying to cosplay as the common man. That illusion became more obvious after he sat face-to-face with Donald Trump for a multi-hour conversation during the presidential campaign trail of 2024. Joe was not really challenging Trump on his policies but rather giving him an open platform to pitch himself to Joe’s millions of listeners.

Then again, Joe said that he wanted to have Kamala Harris on as well and give her the same exact platform he gave Trump, but he claims they wanted to compromise the integrity of his show. “She had an opportunity to come here when she was in Texas. And I literally gave them an open invitation. I said, ‘Anytime.’ I said, ‘If she’s done at 10:00, I’ll come back here at 10:00.’

But it was very difficult to tie it down. They wanted to travel. And the thing is, you can’t. If I go somewhere, then there’s going to be other people in the room. And they want to control a lot of things. I’m sure. My whole goal with her and with him was just talk, just have a conversation like a human being.”

With the world feeling more divided than ever and Rogan seeing record-high viewership due to having Trump and Elon Musk on the show, he believed it was time to step out of his centrist identity and use his influence to take a firm stance. “If Trump doesn’t win, this is the last election,” he said. “I think you’re right.

And a lot of people are waking up and realize that have been lifelong Democrats—guys like Bill Maher, guys like Chamath, Tulsi Gabbard switched over to the Republicans. There’s a lot of people whose whole life they’ve been left-wing. They realized, like, I can’t do this anymore. You and I used to be Democrats.”

Just a few hours before Election Day, Rogan tweeted his endorsement for Trump, citing that Elon Musk was a major influence behind this decision. Joe quickly became the outspoken comic for political justice, using his Instagram partly as a news platform to celebrate achievements of the sitting president. And with a growing network of wealthy and powerful people wanting to jump on his platform, his podcast started to resemble the end of a sitcom where they ran out of ideas and packed it with celebrity cameos and interviews that did not fit the older classic JRE everyone liked.

He started hosting people like Mark Zuckerberg, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel. And while everyone understands that JRE has always hosted people of all backgrounds to come on and talk about anything, it was the way Joe conducted these interviews that left fans disappointed, leading to his fifth key decision of cozying up with billionaires.

While the old Joe Rogan built his brand on questioning authority and challenging powerful people, the new version often seemed far more interested in protecting them because he thinks his billionaire friends are the good ones. “I’m friends now—this is a bizarre thing to say—with multiple billionaires,” he admitted. “Yeah, I know multiple guys that are billionaires and they’re very nice people.” “But you’re also friends with the cool billionaires,” his guest replied. “Yeah, well, Elon’s the coolest.”

One of the most devastating episodes to his reputation was when he sat down with Peter Thiel. Peter is a Silicon Valley billionaire who co-founded PayPal and Palantir Technologies. Palantir is a software company that was funded by the CIA’s venture capital firm In-Q-Tel. Their software can sift through billions of emails, passport records, surveillance footage, satellite images, cell phone logs, and bank transfers around the world with the intent to help the US government prevent future terrorist attacks or soldiers from getting obliterated by IEDs on the battlefield.

After they proved how effective their technology was in war zones, they started receiving billions of dollars in defense contracts, working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the US Department of Homeland Security, and the Israeli military. “Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world,” a company representative once said, “and when it’s necessary to scare our enemies and, on occasion, kill them.”

From there, Palantir created a new product to service corporate America. The same surveillance logic used for war and counterintelligence was repackaged for hospitals, banks, airlines, and major retailers, helping companies track supply chains, predict shortages, monitor employee behavior, flag fraud, and make decisions using massive amounts of real-time data. During the pandemic, Palantir software was used by governments and health agencies to help manage the outbreak response. We used to make decisions with critical thinking and intuition. Now, Palantir software tells us what decisions to make.

And all of that is very important to consider when the company’s founder, Peter Thiel, has been very outspoken about this theory that the Antichrist is going to create a new world order, take over the Earth, and enslave all humans. “My speculative thesis is that if the Antichrist were to come to power, it would be by talking about Armageddon all the time,” Thiel said. “Peter Thiel, the Antichrist would talk about Armageddon all the time. He’d scare people and then offer to save them.”

What is interesting is that Peter Thiel’s fear of the Antichrist sounds more like a projection of what he is doing, because his company sells global surveillance technology to governments that want to monitor their people for the sake of peace and safety. He also had a strange non-answer when asked if he would prefer that the human race survive. “You would prefer the human race to endure, right?” he was asked. “Uh, you’re hesitant.” “Well, I—yes—I don’t know. I would—I would—”

This was Rogan’s reaction to that response: “You ever see that interview where Peter Thiel, they ask him, ‘Should the human race survive?’ And he has like this long pause. It’s like a really funny pause, because if you know Peter, he’s a brilliant man and Peter carefully considers everything before he answers.”

And just to add a cherry on top, Thiel was referred to by Jeffrey Epstein in the files as a “great friend,” and Epstein personally invested in one of his businesses. Joe Rogan had a wide-open opportunity to ask important questions about Palantir’s technology, global surveillance, military contracts, and the ethics of building software that helps governments target, control, and kill people. But no, Joe Rogan did not ask a single question about Palantir or the Antichrist. Instead, Peter controlled the entire conversation and acted like he was not a player in the corrupt world run by big tech.

Joe had on Kurt Metzger shortly after, who tried to convince Joe that Peter Thiel was lying to his face. And Joe immediately rushed to defend his billionaire buddy. “Peter Thiel—I’ve watched you talk to Peter Thiel. I’ve never seen someone lie so artlessly and autistically in my life,” Metzger said. “What are you lying about?” “Oh, dude. I’m going to put this out about Epstein’s island.

Maybe just some guys were cheating on their wives. Yeah, maybe that’s all it was. Peter—” “See, the thing is, he’s a gay guy and he’s not interested in going to that island. So he’s probably on the outs, and allegedly—I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s supposedly ever—” “That’s not the only game in town.” “Oh, I’m sure there’s blackmail, but you can’t get a guy when a guy’s single and gay. Like, what are you going to get on him?”

It was only months later on an episode with Tim Dillon that Rogan finally came up with some interesting thoughts about Peter Thiel that he should have shared when he was sitting in front of him for three hours. “That’s what bothers people about this Palantir thing,” Dillon said. “The Palantir thing is very odd. A lot of people feel that this is the precursor to a social credit score, a digital kind of police state, and that it’s being done under the guise of security, that you will be safer.

Peter Thiel is giving a four-part lecture on the Antichrist. That seems odd. Four-part. Well, here’s what’s really wild to me: it’s not just one lecture on the Antichrist would be insane. This guy’s doing a series. If you told me there was a movie and there was a guy who played the Antichrist, zoom in on that image of him, I would say, ‘Is that him? Was that the Antichrist?’”

Another obvious example of Joe letting his platform get taken over by suspicious powerful people was when he hosted Mike Baker, a supposed ex-CIA agent who just happened to run a company that still closely collaborates with the agency to this day. Anytime Rogan got close to uncovering anything, Baker would skate around the issue and say absolutely nothing. It was a masterclass in non-answers, in saying much while revealing little.

Imagine thinking this is an underground show that tells you about conspiracies. Then half of the guests are just federal agents. Joe Rogan used to be the bro who would question aliens, the moon landing, flat earthers, Bigfoot, the JFK assassination, the pharmaceutical industry, big tech, and even the Epstein files connected to powerful elites. But now he is either so out of touch or entirely compromised that he will spend hours chitchatting with the enemy without asking any important or relevant questions or shutting down anyone going against the official narrative.

I mean, just look at how angry he gets at Michael Shermer for being skeptical about how Jeffrey Epstein died. “His cellmate is a contract killer. Why would he be in a cell with a cop who’s a contract killer?” “I mean, aren’t there a lot of—” “The night before Jeffrey Epstein died, his cellmate tried to kill him. New documents revealed Jeffrey Epstein claimed his cellmate tried to kill him in an incident before his death.” “Yeah, but we don’t know if that’s true.” “Why are you dismissing it though?” “I’m not dismissing it, Joe.

Look, maybe more evidence will come out. I’m just saying like if you look at the evidence we have—” “No, I’m saying I was confident it was a homicide and now—” “Were you aware of this?” “Of course. All that stuff.” “You were aware that he tried to kill him? You were aware that he said that?” “Of course. Of course.” “Well, how come you never brought it up before? You seemed shocked when I brought it up.” “Well, because my understanding is it was attempted eighteen days before. But if he said this guy tried to kill him, why didn’t you take that into consideration?”

Joe seems pretty hellbent on convincing his audience that questioning the official narrative around Jeffrey Epstein is loony conspiracy behavior. But in the public eye, the narrative is underage girls. And this is the thing that makes it so disgusting. When people talk about it, everyone says kids on the island. This is the big conspiracy about it. And this is the reason why people are so outraged about it. Joe Rogan has literally become the mainstream media he swore he hated so much. His inability to push back makes him look like a gullible puppet.

Then again, his obsession and reliance on AI was only making that perception worse, which is the final nail in the coffin that could kill the Joe Rogan experience for good. It is one thing to use AI as an additional tool, but Joe Rogan’s lack of skepticism towards AI is truly scary. The first warning sign was when Joe referenced an obviously fake AI video of Tim Walz dancing and wearing a “Fuck Trump” shirt, but he refused to fully accept that he was tricked by AI because it seemed like something Tim Walz would do.

“Have you seen where he had a Trump shirt on and he’s dancing and going down an elevator?” Rogan asked. “Is that really him?” “No, it’s not real. It’s AI-generated.” “No, it’s real.” “No, it’s not.” “Yes, it is.” “AI generator.” “No, no, no. It’s real. I love it. It’s real. Come on, Jamie’s compromised. Look at him dancing. That is so real.” “By the way, if this was real, he might have won.” “It’s probably a real person.

It might not be Tim Walz. The Trump shirt is AI-generated.” “No, he—” “That is hilarious.” “Oh, it’s definitely him. This is all one hundred percent real. Jamie, you’re a plant.” “The video I played on top says it’s AI-generated.” “I fell for it, too. And you know why I fell for it? Because I believe that he’s capable of doing something that insane. He’s so weird.”

Joe’s ego, along with his allegiance to big tech, has completely convinced him that AI could never be wrong. His show’s producer, Jamie, has been a part of JRE for nearly fifteen years. That entire time he was the guy behind the computer pulling up articles, old interviews, scientific studies, and source material whenever Joe needed a fact check. When conversations went off the rails into wild theories, Jamie would root the conversation in reality. But Jamie’s research has now been replaced with the blind reliance on the sponsor of the show, Perplexity AI.

But it does not stop at just sourcing information. Rogan is infatuated with an AI cover of “Many Men” by 50 Cent. There have been multiple episodes where Rogan holds his guest hostage and makes them listen to an entire AI song. He cannot wait to see the look on their faces when they hear the technology’s capabilities, as if he is revealing a profound truth rather than a parlor trick.

And even if you think it could not get worse, Joe’s new favorite thing to do is compare AI to being the second coming of Jesus Christ. “The real question is, who’s Jesus? That’s the real one. And one of the weirder ones that people think this is a stupid take, but I don’t care. Jesus was born out of a virgin mother. What’s more virgin than a computer? So if you’re going to get the most brilliant, loving, powerful person that gives us advice and can show us how to live to be in sync with God, who better than artificial intelligence to do that? Wow.

If Jesus does return, even if Jesus was a physical person in the past, you don’t think that he could return as artificial intelligence? Artificial intelligence could absolutely return as Jesus. Not just return as Jesus, but return as Jesus with all the powers of Jesus. Like all the magic tricks, all the ability to bring people back from the dead, walk on water, levitation.”

But by far the true measure of showing just how far from grace Rogan has fallen is whenever he has conversations with Theo Von. Theo will throw out these little jabs or hints at Rogan, seeing if he is still down to engage in a conspiracy theory or at least question the official narrative. But more often than not, Joe shuts it down like the exact kind of person he used to criticize.

“How much longer does Israel let us stay alive, do you think?” Theo asked. “That’s a big question.” “What are you saying? Is that AI?” “What are you saying?” “I didn’t say anything.” “What are you saying? Huh? Israel out of—” “Oh, well, he loves you. Don’t worry about it. Good call.”

And although Theo has done his fair share of platforming elites without giving the proper pushback, Theo often sounds like a guy trying to understand powerful people and question their true intentions, while Rogan sounds like someone trying to defend them. “It’s all just a cat and mouse game,” Theo said. “People are like, ‘We’ll elect the Democrats next time.’ It’s like it’s all the same has been happening forever. They haven’t been helping anybody forever. They’re letting politicians slurp on kids.

All of our money goes to Israel and they’re using it to genocide people. It’s like everybody is scared out of their wits right now. It’s like I don’t know, man.” “We got to get you off those antidepressants, son. You’re losing your marbles.” “You think I am?” “Come hang out with us. Just chill out. Just chill out at the Mothership tonight.”

Dismissing Theo Von for being upset with the current state of the world is incredibly ironic considering Joe just a few weeks ago also said how the news is too overwhelming for him now. “I’m scared of everything. I have to stay offline. I’m reading too much of the news and it’s overwhelming me. Like sometimes at night time like I can’t wind down. It’s like there’s too much news. We’re about to go to war with Iran. Everyone’s eating beef jerky and pizza. Like what are these? What is pizza?”

Many believe this is overwhelming to Joe because he knows deep down he helped endorse the guy who ran on “no new wars,” only for that to be a complete lie. “Also, he’s campaigning on stopping all the wars. That’s like his primary concern.” “Exactly. The warmongers like Liz Cheney hate him because they love war. They profit off of it.”

And now Joe is in total damage control. He is trying to go back to being seen as the centrist and not the guy who endorsed Trump and echoed right-wing talking points for the past two years. “That’s all you’re just being manipulated and you’re being manipulated by these two teams and you have to pick a team. You have to decide which team are you on. I hate that. It’s so stupid. I’m politically homeless. I’ve always been politically homeless for a long time. Neither one of them make any sense to me.”

And of course, while talking with Theo, he most certainly doubled down on his defense of Peter Thiel. “The humans are on the way out.” “I know a lot of people hate it when Peter Thiel says it. ‘Peter Thiel is a terrible person. He’s evil. He’s terrible.’ Do you think he is?” “No, I think he’s just telling you the truth. I think he’s, you know, when they said, ‘Do you think human beings should survive?’ And he had like this long pause. Oh, yeah. Remember? And then the interviewer was like, ‘The answer is yes.’ The answer is yes. Human beings, which is not how you’re supposed to do an interview.

I would let him talk as long as he wants. If you watch my podcast that I did with him, he’s like, um, uh, everything he does, he wants to be very careful before he answers it. If you ask me the same question, is it important that humans survive? Is it important that Australopithecus survived? It’s not. Is it important that Neanderthals survived? It’s not. Currently not important. Is it important that humans stay in this form? It’s not. It’s not going to be.”

Joe Rogan is one hundred percent no longer someone questioning powerful people. He treats their predictions about AI, surveillance, and the end of humanity like uncomfortable truths the public just is not ready to accept. This is a major reason why his podcast dropped from number one in the world to number five. Rogan built his entire reputation on distrusting institutions, warning people about elites, and encouraging individuality. Yet here he is, wholeheartedly accepting the idea that human beings are basically obsolete, that AI replacing us is inevitable, and that resistance is pointless because progress has already been determined by the people building it.

He is fully convinced that whatever we morph into from here is objectively better. His total disregard for the entirety of human history is alarming, even though that is how we got to where we are today. And the strangest part is how passive it feels. There is no fight in him, no concern for the loss of purpose, love, meaning, soul. Just this detached acceptance that if billionaires say the digital god is coming, that we should all just bow down and obey.

For the MMA fighter who used to question everything, Rogan today is way too comfortable submitting to the future that shady billionaires have created for him. And this is large in part to his allegiance to Elon Musk, someone that many felt was the cool and trusted billionaire for a long time. But these days, that perception has shifted. The man who once seemed like a visionary now seems like a cautionary tale, and the man who once seemed like a truth-teller now seems like a mouthpiece.

Joe Rogan does not know who he is anymore. He has become the very thing he used to warn us about. And the saddest part is that he does not even seem to realize it.