The Most Influential Gen Xer of All Time
And why he deserves to be
When it began 15 years ago, the Joe Rogan podcast was just hours of clowning around. It was vulgar, disgusting, profane, and explicit entertainment— party animal stuff, wild and loopy nonsense, entirely vacuous, with a boatload of weirdness.
And then somewhere along the way arrived the transformed and mature Joe Rogan. The man developed a deep and thoughtful curiosity about the world and began having meaningful and intellectually engaging conversations with a diverse and impressive array of thought leaders.
The mature Joe Rogan is an exemplary man — authentic, empathetic, and wise. No facade. No pretending. Very little ego. A mature sense of humor. A nearly perfect personality. And his podcast is better than anything on television.
The mature Joe Rogan shows us how to genuinely engage with people who are different than us, because he shows respect as he listens to his guests’ views even when he totally disagrees with them.
The mature Joe Rogan encourages each of us to stay interested in learning, to consider alternative views, to question authority, and to challenge groupthink like mainstream narratives. His curiosity and open mind deepen ours. His thoughtful and skeptical questioning sharpens ours.
And there is Rogan’s overarching theme — his message of self-betterment and lifelong learning:
Take control of your journey. Cultivate a growth mindset. Engage in continuous self-improvement. Be resilient. Develop a toughness of mind. Learn from struggle. Overcome your fears. Face adversity head-on. Push yourself beyond your comfort zones. Find your true passion. Pursue what inspires you. Explore, go on adventures, seek out new experiences, and enjoy a fulfilling life.
Rogan is correct that mainstream views and societal expectations are sometimes wrong — or wrong for us personally — and that we should examine the status quo, never stop asking questions, and keep on thinking. Along multiple paths, Rogan is showing us how to more powerfully use our own minds.
A couple of his other major themes are his defense of free speech against censorship and cancel culture — he hates the way ideology-based narratives box us in so we no longer think for ourselves — and his interest in both consciousness and psychedelics.
For at least eight years now, Rogan has been delving into intellectual movements and debates, approaches to our core values, and matters of concern to our civilization as a whole. He’s even been talking about brotherly love and he recently expressed his view that psychedelic experiences (in general) result in ego dissolution, love, compassion, and community and can lead to a loving and cohesive society.
His show still offers up conspiracy theories I find ludicrous. I don’t agree with all his views and wouldn’t ever expect to. Some of his guests express views I find wacked.
But I’d have to say that when CNN tried to discredit him when Rogan got COVID and cured himself in two days with six medical remedies, CNN ended up discrediting itself (even posting a fake filtered image of Rogan appearing almost dead) and Rogan came out of the exchange looking informed, intelligent, wise, and effective.
Rogan and other podcasters often make television news shows look ridiculous. It’s impossible to listen to Rogan and go back to the shallow excuse for news we get from the likes of ABC and its anchor David Muir. Rogan’s reality is far more valid and valuable than the homogenized, dumbed-down, controversy-free realities packaged for us by the television news-entertainment corporations.
Whatever the reasons, Joe Rogan has become deeply conscious, intelligent, insightful, and empathetic. Along with his matured sense of humor, it’s a powerful combination of personal qualities that make him well-deserving of his vast influence and well worth listening to.
