It's a Tuesday night in downtown Austin, and Joe Rogan is pretending to jerk off right in front of my face. The strangest thing about this situation is that millions of straight American men would kill to switch places with me.
Centimillionaires generally pride themselves on their inaccessibility, but most weeks you can see Rogan live at the Comedy Mothership, which he owns, in exchange for $50 and a two-drink minimum.
About 250 tickets for each "Joe Rogan and Friends" show go on sale every Sunday at 2 p.m. central time, and disappear within seconds. When you arrive at the Mothership, the staff locks your phone in a bag, which both ensures that you cannot leak footage online and makes you think you're about to see some really forbidden shit.
You are not. What you will see is four comedians, plus Rogan himself, with routines that might shock the Amish, the over-80 set, college students, Vox staffers, or John Oliver superfans-but not anyone who, say, went to a comedy club in the 1990s.
Of the many recent failures of the American left, one of the greatest is making entry-level battle-of-the-sexes humor seem avant-garde.
(Did you know that women often run relationship decisions past their female friends? Bitches be crazy! That sort of thing.) As Rogan himself says after he emerges in stonewashed jeans, clutching a glass of something amber on ice: "Fox News called this an antiwoke comedy club.
That's just a comedy club!" To underline the point that these jokes can survive outside the safe space of the Mothership, much of the material I saw Rogan perform ended up in his latest Netflix special, which was released in August.
Denne historien er fra October 2024-utgaven av The Atlantic.
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Denne historien er fra October 2024-utgaven av The Atlantic.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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JOE ROGAN IS THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA NOW
What happens when the outsiders seize the microphone?
MARAUDING NATION
In Trumps second term, the U.S. could become a global bully.
BOLEY RIDES AGAIN
America’s oldest Black rodeo is back.
THE GENDER WAR IS HERE
What women learned in 2024
THE END OF DEMOCRATIC DELUSIONS
The Trump Reaction and what comes next
The Longevity Revolution
We need to radically rethink what it means to be old.
Bob Dylan's Carnival Act
His identity was a performance. His writing was sleight of hand. He bamboozled his own audience.
I'm a Pizza Sicko
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What Happens When You Lose Your Country?
In 1893, a U.S.-backed coup destroyed Hawai'i's sovereign government. Some Hawaiians want their nation back.
The Fraudulent Science of Success
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