Joe Rogan Spent Seven Hours on an Elliptical

After the ads, Lex Fridman opens with mortality. Rogan, 53, says the thought does pop in: if everything goes well — no wreck, no freak injury — he has less than fifty years. It can still happen today. "This could be your last day." He treats that as a Stoic meditation, not a morbid hobby.

Lex brings up Ernest Becker and Sheldon Solomon, authors of *The Worm at the Core*, who argue that fear of death sits under almost everything people do. Rogan does not take the full psychoanalytic ride. He says a sense of urgency is very beneficial, and that finite life has great power because it gets you moving. Living forever would be one of the most depressing things, "particularly if everybody else was dying around you."

What makes life interesting, he adds, is that it does not last. You get a brief amount of time here. By the time you are just starting to figure out who you are and how not to screw things up so badly, time is up.

Lex asks about the world Rogan will leave his daughter. Rogan does worry. He sees protests, riots, anger, and a pandemic that put people out of work through no fault of their own. It does not even feel like the world of a year earlier. The chaos, he says, feels dangerous.

Then he scales it. Relative to a supervolcano, an asteroid, or a pandemic that actually wipes out millions, this one "really just doubles the amount of deaths on a bad flu year." What stunned him is how fragile civility is. An unprecedented shock arrives, everyone is out of work for six months, and then everyone is at each other's throats — politically, racially, on video. Five or six years earlier he would have said racial problems in the country had largely been alleviated, "way better than it's ever been." Now you could argue it is worse than it has been in his lifetime, even counting the civil rights years of his childhood in the 1960s.

His analogy is road rage. People do not explode in cars only because no one can reach them. They explode because they are already at a heightened state, moving fast, making split-second moves, already at an eight. That, he says, is what the pandemic felt like: everybody already at an eight, so anything that came along was "light it all on fire, burn it down." It gave people "a whole new motivation for chaos" he had never experienced.

Lex asks him to picture a better 2025 and the path there. Rogan says he does not know — and a year earlier he would not have said that. A year earlier, however much people hated Trump, the economy was doing great and he thought they would be fine. Today he sees no clear political solution: Trump wins and people are furious; Biden wins and people are furious. What disturbs him most is the "woke" demand for forced compliance, making people behave and speak a certain way.

He describes a video of protesters surrounding a woman outside a restaurant and forcing her to raise a fist. The woman had marched for Black Lives Matter multiple times. The people around her, he says, were all white. His friend Brian Moses, who is Black, called the movement "a white cult"; Rogan says looking at that picture, "it's hard to argue that he's got a point," while adding it is clearly not all of the movement. Any movement, he notes, cannot control who joins. There is no entrance exam.

He points to the man in Portland who murdered a Trump supporter — a white man who shot another white man, "a known violent guy" walking around looking for Trump supporters, which Rogan says has nothing to do with Black Lives Matter. That kind of madness attaching itself to any flag is what bothers him. Portland, he says, had then seen 101 days in a row of demonstrations, fires, breaking into federal buildings. Nobody saw that coming. Asked what five years out looks like, he floats Mad Max, apocalypse, foreign invasion, "a real hot war."

Lex puts some of the responsibility back on him. Since the Brian Redban days, Rogan modeled a lack of jealousy in comedy that taught a younger Lex to celebrate other people's success. With a megaphone that large, what can he do for 2025? Rogan says the most he can do is lead by example, express his hopes, and try to be as nice as he can as often as he can. After the Spotify deal he has "fallen into this weird category" — a famous rich guy, which becomes a real problem when you talk about the economy. Hearing people dismiss Elon Musk as "just a billionaire" hurts as an attack vector, even as he admits that if you are not careful you do become out of touch.

Lex asks why Rogan does not talk like a famous person, why he lacks the air some Nobel winners carry. Rogan says that air comes from drinking your own Kool-Aid: you start believing the praise, that you really are something different. It usually shows up where there is a lack of struggle. Struggle, he says, is "probably one of the most important balancing tools that a person can have."

He splits his own struggle in two. Mentally, he is not a fan of his work. He is his harshest critic; if someone says something bad, he has already said worse. That ruthlessness is, in his view, the only way to be good at comedy — you cannot think you are awesome and walk onstage. The balance is that you still need enough confidence to perform, and the confidence comes from the hours, which he puts in because he usually does not like the end result.

Physically, he uses a battery metaphor. Extra charge leaks out of the top and becomes unmanageable. That is his psyche: if he is not exerting himself in a violent, explosive way, he does not like how the world looks or how he interfaces with it — too tense, too quick to be upset. After a brutal training session, everything is fine. The kettlebells and the assault bike are not lifestyle branding. They are how he keeps the charge from spilling.

Lex remembers the first time they spoke, during Sober October, and the look in Rogan's eyes — a darkness, the competitive animal being exercised out. Rogan calls that stretch scary. Friends were talking trash in a fitness challenge that scored points for minutes above 80 percent of max heart rate. One day he scored 1,100 points: seven hours on an elliptical, watching the bathhouse scene from *John Wick* about fifty times in a row.

He went crazy, he says, but in a specific way: it brought back his fighting days. "That person came out again." He did not even know the guy was still in there. Lex says he looked like an assassin; Rogan felt like a different person. Asked if there is a violent person in there, he does not hedge. "There's a lot of violence in me for sure." He does not know how much is genetic, how much learned, and how much the years from 15 to 22 when all he did was train and compete.

His parents broke up early; his father was violent and made him feel scared. He also thinks some of who his father was transferred into his DNA — the size of his hands, the width of his shoulders, "most likely a lot of violence in my history." He sees the obsessive streak in a daughter who will not stop doing handsprings in the house, "me in a female form," without the anger and fear. Nature and nurture are tangled. He is sure there is genetic violence in him, and he describes his life as a long project in getting that monkey to sit down.

The other person in there wants to laugh; the Sober October guy just wants to get up and go. If they trained five hours, he trained eight, texted them at dawn, and told them they were going to die — and he was not joking. He has been avoiding David Goggins, who wants to run an ultramarathon with him, because that "push it" setting is super unhealthy even as it fuels millions of people. After Sober October he knows the thing is still in him. He calls the mindset a conqueror's, not an artist's, and the obsessive force "a very particular mental illness" he has to manage.

The only recent physical competition he almost had was a fight with Wesley Snipes that never happened, after months of twice-a-day kickboxing and jiu-jitsu. That mindset, he says, fucks with friendships, with comedy, with everything. It is not the mindset of an artist. It is the mindset of a conqueror.

Has he considered competing in jiu-jitsu? No, for that exact reason: he does not want to get obsessed. He had to quit video games when they were playing at the studio because he was suddenly on them five hours a day, coming home late for dinner, ending podcasts early. Friends want him to golf; he will not mess with that. Lex notes he is wise not to really take up guitar. Competitive things, especially exciting ones, are "very dangerous" for him.

If he had been young, without a clear career path, he is sure he would have become a professional jiu-jitsu fighter and then lacked the energy for stand-up. At 21 he quit teaching taekwondo at Boston University and closed his own school in Revere because he knew he could not do that and comedy. From 15 to 22 he trained almost every day unless injured or exhausted. That part of his personality was never fully put away. It sits under the surface, and anything competitive can reignite "that competitive demon."

Asked for his jiu-jitsu game, Rogan is specific. He was not a good wrestler, so he would pull guard or half guard. He is flexible, with a decent rubber guard, armbars and triangles off his back, and a strong half guard — but his top game is the best. From half guard he wants double underhooks, lockdown, massive pressure, then the "dogfight" until the other person is on their back.

Lex reads him as a control player, not a loose transitional one. Rogan agrees: once he has you, why would he let go? He would rather strangle than chase armbars, because too many people will not tap to joint locks, and everyone goes to sleep. He also likes making people quit mentally from pressure, including mounting with the legs crossed so he can squeeze.

The old question: best martial art for self-defense? Grappling, he says — jiu-jitsu, wrestling, and in a cold climate with heavy coats, judo on concrete — though you still want striking, because the worst feeling is shooting on someone who can actually fight. He has no patience for the line that sport grappling is not "real" violence. People who say they will bite you, or stab you with keys, do not understand what happens after a punch in the face and a choke. "You're way better off learning what works on trained killers." Krav Maga against untrained attackers is the wrong center of gravity: the arts that work on martial artists beat the ones that only work on people who cannot fight.

They are in Texas, so Lex asks about guns. Rogan says it is not a bad idea to have one if you have self-control; mass shootings distort the debate without erasing "the fundamental efficacy of having a firearm," and he likes the idea that the Second Amendment helps protect the First. Lex, who does not yet own a gun, says that knowing his psychology, carrying one would make him more likely to die: in West Philadelphia at night his instinct is to look down and leave, and a gun would wake a "cowboy monkey" that might create danger he could not control. Rogan splits the cases — concealed carry is a different, harder license; a gun in the home, and knowing how to use it, is another thing.

Looking back at the old studio, memories pile up past counting: Elon Musk firing a flamethrower in the hallway, Bernie Sanders in the room, the insane hours with Joey Diaz and Duncan Trussell. Rogan calls podcasting a weird art form. It sounds silly, he says, but it almost seems like something that chose him rather than the other way around. He shows up like an antenna, plugs in, twists it on, takes the signal in, puts it together, and rides as a passenger.

Lex loves the idea that human beings are carriers, that ideas breed and find a useful brain. Rogan has thought about this hard. Someone gets the idea of a toaster — heating elements, a spring, a timer — and then builds it; now the thing exists in physical form. You can call that creativity, the human knack for tools. He is not claiming magic, only that calling it "just creativity" might be simplifying something.

Bees make uniform hives. Chimps fish termites with sticks. Look at a room of electronics built on other people's inventions: the idea germinates, bounces, gets written down, meets complementary ideas, and the world changes. We think we found the ideas. It is more like the ideas found us.

That is how bits feel, which is why he keeps recommending Steven Pressfield's *The War of Art*: sit down like a professional, respect the muse, wait. He has come home from the Comedy Store, written garbage, then watched an idea arrive that he could not stop — and the next night a big laugh. If you are into yourself, your image, your ego, those ideas do not find you, which is why joke thieves dry up once they have to write. Creation requires humility and a detachment from self; when he is writing he is blank, a "weird core function," not aware of his personality. Gifts at dinner still happen, but they are not a substitute for putting in the time.

Lex now has, in his terms, fuck-you money, and 300,000 to 400,000 people an episode. He asks for advice, for himself and for people like Eric Weinstein going on the same journey. Rogan's advice is to keep doing what feels right — he would still do five-hour Duncan Trussell episodes if they were back at 2,000 views. It is resonating; Lex is good at it; do not let anybody else get involved.

That includes the tiny team. Jamie Vernon is exceptional: very little ego, does not need attention, takes good news and bad news flat, and is the best audio engineer and producer Rogan knows. The collaboration feels, Lex suggests, almost like a marriage. Rogan does not disagree.

Why no co-host? When two people are talking, Rogan is tuned in — listening, interpreting, calculating whether to speak, let the other keep going, ask a question, or disagree. "There's a dance that's going on." A third person chiming in fucks the dance up, like someone stepping into a slow dance. Sometimes three is fun, on a comedy show or in a debate, but people talk over each other, and without headphones you do not even hear the mix the audience hears.

He almost never goes to someone else's location. A handful of exceptions: he greedily snatched an hour with Robert Sapolsky in downtown Los Angeles after years of wanting him, having gotten obsessed with toxoplasmosis. Lex now uses the long-form stance as a weapon, telling CEOs including Elon Musk that thirty minutes is not the deal — three hours or no. In the beginning Rogan did long episodes because that is what he wanted and no one was listening. A friend told him he was messing it up, that he should cut it to 45 minutes. Rogan said people did not have to listen to all of it, and he liked long-form things, so he kept going.

Lex is making progress toward talking to Vladimir Putin. Rogan would not travel to him. Putin is "a dangerous character." They briefly correct a story about Robert Kraft's Super Bowl ring: Rogan thinks it may have been a display of power more than a simple theft — Putin as a tool for showing Russia still belongs among the big players. Outside the evils he may or may not have done, Lex finds him thoughtful, intelligent, funny, and a legitimate judo black belt who loves to talk about the art. It would be a good conversation. Rogan still would not go.

The principle underneath is that there is not a person he has to have on the show. He is as happy talking to Lex as to Trump, probably happier; as happy with Mike Tyson as with Joey Diaz. He likes talking to a variety of people and tries not to stack too many right-wing guests, too many progressives, or too many fighters in a row. Comedians are the exception: three, four, five in a row is fine, because that is his tribe.

Conversation, he says, is a weird skill he did not recognize until he watched people who were bad at it. A lot of comedians want to talk and do not want to listen; they wait for you to stop so they can start. When he is at his best, he is dancing: really listening, really thinking, genuinely curious, with a take and maybe a follow-up. It has to be authentic, and when it is, the listener feels locked in — "I feel like I'm in the room." That the show became the biggest thing he has ever done, after friends at the Comedy Store mocked the early Ustream episodes with 2,000 views, still blows him away.

Fans come up with love in their eyes, and it is heartbreaking because he cannot return it at scale. His daughter, at six, could not understand how a stranger knew him. The show is also, he says, uniquely unfiltered: no executive producer, no focus group telling him not to have a guest or not to talk about cars. If you do not want cars, there are 1,500 other episodes. What resonates is people "in the shit" — he will watch a PBS woodworker make furniture by hand, not because he cares about furniture, but because the passion shines through. He wants to talk to David Fravor about UFOs, David Sinclair about life extension, Lex about AI, because he wants to, and that is the whole brand.

Last question: the meaning of life, according to Joe Rogan. He does not think there is one. He thinks there are many, and a way to navigate that is enjoyable: love first — family, friends, people who care about you — then interests that actually stimulate you. That can be a subsistence life of hunting and fishing in the woods, which he has seen make people incredibly happy because action and food are directly connected. If you do not have that, you still need a passion. Too many people get sucked into a job they just show up for, which he calls a recipe for a boring and unfulfilling life.

Lex tracks back to the demons: what is the role of love in Rogan's own life? "It's very important, man," which is why he wants family, friends, and guests to leave feeling cared for, and why he tries to pass along the good advice he has gotten. The way we interact matters so much that being canceled or shamed is devastating — all that negative energy coming at you, and you feel it, however much you pretend to be immune. "There's a tangible force when people are upset at you." The more love you spread, the more comes back — a butterfly effect, and one thing he thinks the podcast has done is impart a philosophy of kindness and generosity.

Lex offers a correction: Rogan did not do it. The ideas breeding through his brain did, the ones in the air that made their way into Lex's head. "Love is a more efficient mechanism of spreading ideas," Lex says. "They figure it out." Rogan laughs: "Probably, man. Probably." Without that, he adds, you have nothing. One of the biggest failures in life is to be extremely successful financially while everybody hates you — miserable, alone, angry, depressed, sad. When rich famous people commit suicide, he thinks, they missed the mark: too many eggs in the financial or accomplishment basket, not enough in friendship and love.

The violence talk, he says, is him recognizing that force and trying to keep the boat level. If the boat lists, every wave knocks things apart. Some people can go for a walk and stay cool as a cucumber; he needs kettlebells, a heavy bag, an assault bike, "some hardcore shit," or he does not feel good. Figuring that out made him a nicer person and changed the quality of his friendships. Lex signs off with Rogan's own line: "The universe rewards calculated risk and passion" — the seven-hour elliptical and the closed taekwondo school, the '65 Corvette he walks around at night and the trip to Putin he will not take.