Marshall McLuhan once said that “the medium is the message” and the podcast is no exception. Podcasts are more loosely regulated (if they’re regulated at all), compared to radio and television, and their content can be more specific in catering to the whims of their audience. And what “the people” want to hear is an independent thinker, free from the shackles of show business or any established authority. 

For more than a decade, the sometime mixed martial arts commentator and stand-up comedian Joe Rogan has hosted what’s now believed to be the world’s biggest podcast. “The Joe Rogan Experience” features a wide variety of guests, whether they be MMA fighters, comedians waiting for their big break, scientists on the fringes or political commentators – or politicians – from the left and the right. Each episode can run from two to four hours, and Mr. Rogan’s ability to bring a wide variety of guests to his Austin studio and let them go wild – in an era when most media audiences are splintered and siloed – has been widely praised, Recently, Mr. Rogan had Elon Musk and Bill Murray on his show, back-to-back, and the format didn’t budge. His next guest was Ian Carroll, a low-grade social media influencer who spreads antisemitic conspiracy theories. Why Mr. Rogan gives a berth to people like Mr. Carroll – he hasn’t offered much of an explanation – is increasingly dogging Mr. Rogan as the host’s profile grows. 

Signalling a new era for the podcast, Mr Rogan– whose politics in the past could have been described as progressive –  has drifted toward the MAGA coalition. While liberal critics have long argued that his podcast disseminates so-called “misinformation”, particularly regarding the pandemic, transgenderism and various conspiracy theories, that hasn’t seemed to bother Spotify, which gave Mr. Rogan a $125 million contract. His largely supportive interview with President Trump during the 2024 campaign burnished Mr. Rogan’s MAGA bona fides and made clear to the political establishment that he carries enormous influence –  political and cultural –   particularly with young men, who are typically the most difficult voters to reach (and who came out strong for Mr. Trump in November).

In the past, the podcast was usually guided by the guest’s immense knowledge of their specialty topic, aided by Mr. Rogan’s expansive curiosity. The interview with Mr Musk begins with him playing around with Grok – his new AI platform –  having it curse at him. He then tells Mr. Rogan about what he, as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is planning to cut, how Social Security is the biggest scam in American history, and how he’s crusading against the legacy media following his ill-advised salute on Inauguration Day. Among other things, Mr. Rogan and Mr. Musk discussed pump and dump meme coins being, allegedly, a scam.

Joe Rogan attends the inauguration of President Trump in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025. Saul Loeb – Pool/Getty Images

Mr. Musk has been on Mr Rogan’s show numerous times, up and into the present while he’s  working alongside the President. When Mr. Musk first appeared on the podcast in 2018, there was a novelty to hearing the billionaire spew forth, especially as he smoked a joint with the host, inspiring numerous memes. But in each subsequent episode, Mr. Musk comes off looking more impulsive and erratic. And at the same time Mr. Rogan, seemingly in awe, pushes back less and less. 

The episode with Mr. Murray runs in a similar vein, missing many opportunities to capture the  full profile of the guest. Mr. Rogan fawns over Mr. Murray, even after the famously reclusive actor wryly jokes that he has never heard of Mr. Rogan’s podcast. Throughout, he talks about meeting Hunter S. Thompson, whom Mr Murray played in “Where The Buffalo Roam”. Other topics discussed include the guest’s love for golf and classic cars (it’s a pretty typical Rogan episode). In one of the few viral moments, the two men discuss their shared dislike for the political journalist Bob Woodward, who wrote the Jim Belushi biography “Wired” (Mr. Murray was close friends with Belushi and considers the biography’s sources terrible and completely inaccurate) . Mr. Rogan even brought up the unverified allegation, raised by Tucker Carlson, that Mr. Woodward was a CIA asset used to bring down President Nixon (the national security establishment is therefore corrupt by default). 

This kind of daisy chain  – from Murray to Belushi to Woodward to Nixon to the CIA – is both the podcast’s biggest strength and weakness. On the one hand, it demonstrates the show’s compelling ability to navigate and indulge in a guest’s zaniness. On the other hand, it reveals Mr. Rogan’s weakness for conspiracies, which ironically has let the podcast succumb to its own kind of groupthink. Mr Rogan’s producer sidekick Jamie Vernon, who is known for fact checking him and his guests live, has of late seemed to have felt present.

The episode ends on the subject of San Francisco’s woes, and while Mr Murray does seem sympathetic to Mr. Rogan’s views on the matter,  he gets talked over by his host who addresses the subject in absolute terms. Overall, we don’t learn much about Mr. Murray’s career, what he might have coming next, or what’s going on in his closely guarded life. All that matters is what’s on Mr. Rogan’s mind.  

Ian Carroll, known for spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories, appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast. JoeRogan.com

The episode featuring Mr Carroll is far more questionable. Ten minutes into the interview, Mr. Carroll says that he is “new to the game” when it comes to conspiracies, which further reduces his credibility. Unlike Mr Rogan’s friend and fellow Texas, Alex Jones, Mr. Carroll became prominent because of Tiktok, where editorial standards for its sizable body of news content are nonexistent. Mr. Carroll made the false claim that a group of Israelis celebrated the 9/11 attacks. and also brought up the bonkers idea that Jeffrey Epstein was part of a Jewish cabal working on behalf of Israel. For his part, Mr Rogan didn’t push back nearly enough, and began the episode with the alarming tidbit that Mr Murray told him to give some credibility to Mr Carroll’s claims. While Mr Rogan has platformed guests –  like Mel Gibson and Roger Waters – who are prone to peddling antisemitic conspiracies, what’s baffling is why he takes such a low-level influencer like Mr. Carroll  seriously at all. Unlike Mr. Waters and Mr. Gibson, who are world-famous entertainers, this person came out of nowhere.

The pattern of inviting public figures from the fringes continued. Afterwards, he brought in the “history” podcaster Darryl Cooper to regurgitate the Holocaust denier David Irving’s myths about World War II –  – downplaying the content in Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” or saying that the dictator’s antisemitism is based on his love and patriotism of “the German people” – and Suzanne Humphries, an anti-vaxxer doctor who denies that polio was prevented by the vaccine and that rusty metal can cause tetanus. Again, with each interview, there’s no dissent, but rather, a validation of the guests’  belief that they’re otherwise being silenced.

The issue with Mr Rogan isn’t only that he supports hateful ideas or brings on guests who make provably false claims and doesn’t challenge them. It’s that at his worst, he’s overconfident about his limited knowledge of the world.  His naivety makes him more susceptible to sensationalism than the mainstream media he despises.

American institutions are currently undergoing a vibe shift away from the liberal groupthink, censorship and political correctness that dominated society for a long time. Mr. Rogan is fast solidifying his status as a new kind of cultural gatekeeper. Unfortunately, the views he wants to bring forward and which guests he will embrace have narrowed. He doesn’t want to invite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on, and told him to “go f**k himself” when missiles were launched into Russian territory. He, according to recent reporting, made it difficult for Kamala Harris to appear on his show toward the end of the 2024 campaign.   

Elon Musk famously smoking marijuana during an October, 2018 appearance on Joe Rogan’s show. JoeRogan.com

If Mr. Musk’s and President Trump’s agenda backfires, Mr Rogan’s role as their messenger could backfire on him, as well. He’s no longer an open-minded centrist, who has his head in the clouds, but a man who’s bought into Trumpism and has delivered countless young men to the movement. As he grows in power and influence, and allies himself with the country’s most powerful men, Mr. Rogan has shed his MMA ringside, outsider status, and his podcast has lost some of its charm. As he becomes more authoritative, he also becomes less responsible and, increasingly, boring. And that’s the worst malady that can ever befall a podcast.