Joe Rogan is many things — a comedian, a commentator, and a contrarian; a reality TV star and martial artist-turned-host of the most listened to podcast in America: The Joe Rogan Experience. His fans say he’s just asking questions, calling out liberal hypocrisy, and defending free speech. His critics use other terms: a conspiracy theorist and peddler of misinformation and anti-trans rhetoric, who platforms not just off-the-wall ideas, but dangerous narratives that cause real-world harm.

There’s truth in all these labels. There’s another way to think of Rogan that may help put him in his rightful context for this decade: “Joe Rogan is the Walter Cronkite of Our Era,” declared British satirist Konstantin Kisin for Quilette in 2019. “Not one established newspaper or broadcaster can now compete with a popular YouTube host conducting a conversation from his self-funded studio,” he wrote at the time, reflecting on Rogan’s three-hour interrogation of Twitter executives.

Kisin’s declaration — before the global Covid-19 pandemic, before the 2020 election of Joe Biden or the 2024 reelection of Donald Trump — might have been a bit premature. But he effectively predicted what Rogan would yet become: not just one of the most influential voices in politics, popular culture, and social commentary, but also a harbinger for a new form of media, communications, trust, and truth in a post-pandemic world. There is no monoculture in 2025; but for a huge part of America, the realm Rogan pioneered and steers is as close as we might get.

He and his show have been at the crossroads of just about every major moment and societal change that defines the 2020s, from Covid misinformation and vaccine fearmongering to the expansion of the “manosphere” universe. His show is a mirror for a country that has grown more anxious, distrustful, and paranoid in the last decade.

Like a lot of America, the pandemic changed Rogan

When Kisin made his Cronkite comparison in 2019, Rogan’s mainstream crossover was just getting started. Back then, The Joe Rogan Experience was well on its way to being the most popular podcast show in America — the second most downloaded Apple podcast in

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