The Joe Rogan Experience has officially launched on Spotify around the same time that the host moved to Texas. He’s got the cowboy hat to prove it, but for his first podcast on the new platform (which was recorded in Los Angeles before the move), he donned a NASA suit. His guest, comedian and podcaster Duncan Trussell, wore a silvery space suit, and the whole episode was very spacey on so many subjects. Not only that, but it was five hours long (Joe took a pee break at around the 4:38 mark), but at about 3:58, the two got serious and discussed the Black Lives Matter movement and the police killing of George Floyd.
Both Rogan and Trussell agreed that Floyd’s death was an “unforgivable” act, and but Rogan wanted to stress his believe that “we need cops, man.” While Trussell (who said that he’d received backlash for posting Black Lives Matter content on Instagram) stressed that compassion was needed in order for society to move forward, Rogan wanted to dig into what went wrong with Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin:
“Any man that would do that to another man… that man needs help. I bet he didn’t think he was gonna kill that guy, but he tortured that guy for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. That guy needs a DMT trip, he needs something, he needs to recognize who he is. I think we’re asking people to do things they’re not really qualified to do.”
Rogan doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but he does believe that people must understand that institutional change takes a lot more coordination and work than simply making a change within one’s self. Of police, Rogan offered, “They don’t have the tools to handle it. They don’t have the infrastructure to handle the load of pressure that comes in… right now, we’re so anti-cop, it’s over the top.” In response, Trussell continued to press on with the need for compassion for those who experience racism in the U.S. No easy answers shall be found, of course, but these are discussions that must be had.
In the meantime, Rogan’s followers continue to press him on social media over when he might (again) host Alex Jones, whose episodes are currently absent from Rogan’s Spotify archive. Yet Jones has claimed that he has spoken to Rogan, and there’s no reason to worry because “Joe Rogan’s favorite 100 episodes of the last 10 years or so will be left on YouTube starting December 31 when he goes exclusively to Spotify. For this couple months no man’s land the content will be on both platforms and will be migrating over.” He then added, “And so that’s why the Alex Jones interview is not there. That’s why some of the other interviews are not there.”