A guide for getting the best out of the popular men’s podcast
The Joe Rogan Experience is one of the most popular podcasts available today, and for good reason. The show takes a long-form, 1 on 1, conversation-not-interview format, and Rogan’s wide range of interests brings in an eclectic range of guests. On top of that, Rogan’s powerful personality and prominent masculine lifestyle appeal to a lot of young male listeners…. But that’s also where he can get into trouble.
Here’s a list of the 10 best Joe Rogan podcasts to listen to if you want to increase your brain power while still engaging in the Grizzly Bear vs. Gorilla death-match debate. Consume good content! Nourish the mind!
Joe Rogan Experience #989 – Dorian Yates
DMT, Life-planning, and excellent workout tips from the six-time Mr. Olympia make this one a must-see for anyone looking to bulk up. Want the secret to body-builder muscles? Focus on the negatives of your reps.
Joe Rogan Experience #1169 – Elon Musk
This episode is famous for the billionaire tech tycoon smoking weed on air while discussing his theory that we all live in a matrix-like simulation. Joe ate it up. You can’t make a list of Joe Rogan home runs without the episode that dropped Tesla’s stock 9 percent.
Joe Rogan Experience #835 – Louis Theroux
Louis Theroux is a famous BBC documentary host who specializes in putting himself in very strange social situations. If you want to see how good at his job this guy is, watch “The Most Hated Family in America,” his one hour special on the Westboro Baptist Church. In this episode Louis and Joe do a deep dive on Scientology, which Louis spent a great deal of time researching. Plus Louis’s British accent is next-level pleasant.
Joe Rogan Experience #974 – Megan Phelps-Roper
On the topic of the Westboro Baptist Church, here’s another must-see. Megan Phelps-Roper is an apostate (or deserter) of this uniquely hateful, family-based church. If you don’t know them, they’re the people that became famous for protesting soldiers funerals and incredibly hateful speech about LGBT+ community. Megan’s insights into her psychological experience of the church and childhood indoctrination into the worldview is creepily enlightening.
Joe Rogan Experience #1201 – William von Hippel
William von Hippel is a psychology professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. Joe had him on the podcast upon the release of his recent book, The Social Leap. The book, like most of the podcast, focuses on Hippel’s pioneering research into how human social interactions have evolved into their current state, and how they helped us survive across time. If you’re one of those people that always relates every single human action to a long gone evolutionary necessity, this is the episode for you.
Joe Rogan Experience #1227 – Mike Tyson
“My son wants to be a fighter. I tell him you can’t be a fighter! You’re a joke. You went to private school!” So says Mike in Joe’s incredible talk with the former heavyweight champion of the world, and probably the second-most famous boxer to ever live. Tyson is a controversial figure, and for good reason, but this episode is an excellent take on how an old lion became gentler over time, and how he looks back on his past mistakes.
Joe Rogan Experience #965 – Robert Sapolsky
This episode is a deep dive on the nature of the parasite toxoplasma gondii with Stanford University neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky. Turns out toxoplasma gondii defies every rule we know about how intention functions in microscopic organisms. This virus takes over the minds of mice to make them want to get eaten by cats, because the virus survives better inside cat intestines. Wild. And for a bonus, check out Sapolsky’s publicly available Stanford lectures on YouTube. He’s an amazing lecturer.
Joe Rogan Experience #956 – Guy Ritchie
“People say they hate the game. Don’t hate the game. Love the game. Win the game.” This episode focuses on self-actualization and the power of personal narrative with the famed writer/director of Snatchand Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The podcast came out as Ritchie was promoting King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, which the director sees as an ideal story for today’s young men.
Joe Rogan Experience #410 – Sam Harris
Sam Harris has been a guest on the Joe Rogan Experience almost as many times as Joey Diaz and Eddie Bravo. You can pick almost any episode and get what you’d expect: two intellectual men discussing current events with a fair amount of comedy and even more divisive perspectives. 410 is one of the earlier episodes featuring the prominent atheist author. If you’re looking for dozens of hours of content to consume over time, start here.
Joe Rogan Experience #1259 – David Wallace Wells
David Wallace Wells is a climate change journalist and author of The Uninhabitable Earth. This episode is a detailed, harrowing look at the present and future realities of global warming. It is also at times an uplifting call for all of us to step up into responsibility for the Earth’s climate future. One of the most interesting moments is when Wells discusses the ancient pathogens that will be released into the atmosphere as the polar ice continues to melt.
