The podcast launched on December 24, 2009, on YouTube by Rogan and comedian Brian Redban. By 2015, it was one of the world’s most popular podcasts, regularly receiving millions of views per episode. The podcast has been described as a “boundary-free arena,” a platform for the intellectual dark web, and has featured a diverse ideological mixture of political guests. The podcast originally began in early 2003 when Rogan hired Brian Redban to film, produce, and edit videos for his website. After several years, Redban noticed that fans were demanding an increasing amount of content from Rogan.
This prompted the two to seek new ways of quickening what was a lengthy editing process. The show developed with Rogan having friends as guests and having lengthy conversations with them regarding various subjects. Ari Shaffir was the first guest, who appeared on episode No. 674 in 2015. It was originally recorded at Rogan’s home before moving to a Los Angeles studio in 2012. The 1,000th episode aired on August 18, 2017, and featured comedians Joey Diaz and Tom Segura as guests. In April 2020, Rogan recorded the podcast during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On May 19, 2020, Rogan announced that from September 2020, The Joe Rogan Experience would be available on Spotify in an exclusive licensing deal worth an estimated $100 million. Under the terms of the agreement, uploads of full episodes to YouTube continued until December 2020, when the podcast became exclusive to Spotify. The first new episode released on Spotify was no. 1,530 with comedian Duncan Trussell, which lasted for over five hours. Joe Rogan’s podcast was listened to by more than 11 million people in January 2015. By October 2015, it had grown to acquire 16 million downloads a month.
In April 2019, Rogan said that the podcast had 190 million downloads each month. The New York Times disclosed that Spotify had actually paid over $200 million for his podcast, much higher than previously estimated figures. The podcast became an “unlikely political influencer” in the 2020 U.S. presidential election after presidential candidates Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard saw surges in popularity and fundraising after guest appearances on the show. Research has credited Yang’s appearance with having had a considerable impact on the prominence of Universal Basic Income (UBI) in public debates. In 2019, The Joe Rogan Experience ranked the highest in the “unaided awareness” category, double that of any other podcast.
The show has engaged with a wide variety of controversial topics. One episode was cited as the inspiration for the planned Facebook event and Internet meme known as “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us”, created one week later. In another episode, guest Robert W. Malone compared the U.S. reaction to the pandemic to the rise of Nazi Germany. Neil Young threatened to pull his music from Spotify if the company did not drop Rogan, saying Rogan was disseminating COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. The podcast has been described as “an important node of the intellectual dark web”,[5] and has featured a diverse ideological mixture of political guests, including Democratic presidential candidates and conservative figures.
In August 2010, nine months after its launch, The Joe Rogan Experience entered the list of Top 100 podcasts on iTunes. In February 2014, the podcast won a Stitcher Award for Best Overall Show of 2013. In January 2019, it won Best Comedy Podcast at the iHeartRadio Podcast Awards.
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