Joe Rogan

1967–present

Joe Rogan is the host of the eponymous hit podcast The Joe Rogan Experience. A longtime stand-up comedian, Rogan first gained widespread recognition as the host of the reality TV competition show Fear Factor in the early 2000s and as a UFC color commentator. He continues to appear at and call bouts for the mixed martial arts promotion. Rogan was an early adopter in the podcast world, launching JRE in 2009. His show is now incredibly popular, having topped the Spotify streaming list for five straight years. His unfiltered interviews and commentary on divisive political topics have made the podcast controversial in recent years.

FULL NAME: Joseph Rogan
BORN: August 11, 1967
BIRTHPLACE: Newark, New Jersey
SPOUSE: Jessica Ditzel (2009–present)
CHILDREN: Kayja, Lola, and Rosy
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Leo

Joseph Rogan was born on August 11, 1967, in Newark, New Jersey. His parents are Joe Rogan Sr., a former police officer in the nearby town of Harrison, and Susan Lembo.

When the younger Rogan was around 5 years old, his parents divorced. He has since accused his father of domestic violence against his mother, describing him as a “psychotic person” during an episode of his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. Rogan remains estranged from his father, who has denied all of his son’s allegations. “Nothing bad ever really happened to me. It was just confusing, you know?” the podcaster said in a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone. “He was just a very violent, scary guy. After the split, [my mother and I] moved to San Francisco, and that was it. Never heard from him again.” Rogan also isn’t in contact with his half-sisters Bridget and Rosa on his father’s side.

In addition to the Bay Area, Rogan lived in Gainesville, Florida, before eventually settling with his mother and stepfather in Newton Upper Falls, Massachusetts. He played baseball and began practicing martial arts in his early teens as a way of defending himself against bigger kids. “Nobody really hurt me, but I got pushed around a little, like teenage boys do to each other,” he said. “I was terrified of conflict, because I didn’t know how to handle it.” Rogan quickly excelled, winning four Massachusetts state Tae Kwon Do championships. At age 19, he became the U.S. Open Tae Kwon Do grand champion.

After graduating from Newton Upper South High School in 1985, Rogan enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He dropped out after a few years and decided to pursue a new interest: comedy.

After he left UMass Boston, Rogan picked up a variety of jobs to pay his bills, including delivering newspapers, assisting a private investigator, and teaching martial arts. In August 1988, his friends persuaded him to try a stand-up comedy set. Rogan gave his first performance during an open mic night at a Boston club called Stitches.

Rogan has cited Richard Pryor as one of his primary comedic inspirations. “I remember when I was a kid, I think I was like, 12, or something, my parents took me to see Live at the Sunset Strip, and I was literally bent over with laughter,” he recalled.

Because of the mature subject matter in his jokes, Rogan primarily performed at smaller venues such as bachelor parties and gentlemen’s clubs. However, he began working with a manager after one of his Boston sets and moved to New York City in 1990 to advance his career. In 1994, Rogan booked a nationally televised set on MTV’s Half-Hour Comedy Hour.

Rogan, who had relocated to Los Angeles that year, began booking TV projects. He filmed several episodes of the short-lived Fox sitcom Hardball before earning a recurring role as Joe Garrelli on the NBC sitcom NewsRadio, which featured SNL star Phil Hartman. “I got to make tons of money in relative obscurity and learn a lot about the TV biz and work on my stand-up act constantly. It was a dream gig,” Rogan said of the show, which aired from 1995 through 1999.

However, Rogan’s next role would soon pull him from obscurity.

Host of Fear Factor

Rogan gained national recognition in 2001 when he debuted as host of the NBC reality show Fear Factor, in which contestants attempted to complete three extreme stunts for a $50,000 grand prize. Although Rogan said he joined the show primarily to find inspiration for his comedy routines, he quickly became a key piece of the show’s success thanks to his charismatic personality and playful banter with competitors. He helmed the program for its initial six-season run through 2006 and returned for a rebooted seventh season that ran from late 2011 to 2012.

Rogan parlayed his stint on Fear Factor into a series of minor TV and movie roles in the following years, including the made-for-TV film It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002), Zookeeper (2011), Here Comes the Boom (2012), and a cameo on the TV series Silicon Valley in 2015. He has also continued to work as a comedian, and Netflix has released three stand-up specials starring Rogan: Triggered in 2016, Strange Times in 2018, and Burn the Boats in 2024.

UFC Commentator

Joe Rogan has been a UFC commentator and correspondent for more than 25 years.

Rogan’s budding TV resume and martial arts background helped him garner a prominent role in sports broadcasting during his Fear Factor days. He had developed an interest in the mixed martial arts promotion Ultimate Fighting Championship and through a shared connection landed a role as a backstage correspondent for UFC in 1997. Five years later, he began serving as a ringside color commentator for major events—a position he still holds today.

Rogan initially took the role for free, working his first 15 assignments in exchange for ringside tickets, before joining the payroll. He has called fights featuring some of the biggest names in the UFC, including Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey.

“I think it’s the greatest sport in the world, and it’s an amazing way to decipher and decode human behavior and psychology, and to learn about people in a very deep way,” Rogan told CagePotato.com in 2012. Rogan leaned on this natural curiosity for his own project, which would provide even more exposure.

The Joe Rogan Experience podcast has recorded more than 2,200 episodes since its debut in 2009.

In December 2009, Rogan debuted The Joe Rogan Experience, a longform interview podcast featuring prominent guests including politicians, scientists, entertainers, and more. Rogan has invited a number of high-profile guests to the show, including Tesla and SpaceX cofounder Elon Musk, who appeared in 2018. In October 2024, Rogan sat down with current President Donald Trump for a nearly three-hour interview that dropped 11 days before the presidential election. The episode drew more than 38 million views on YouTube within three days.

As of February 2025, the series has spanned more than 2,200 episodes and is the most popular podcast on Spotify five years running. The supplementary YouTube channel, featuring clips and full episodes, has amassed more than 19.2 million subscribers and nearly 6 billion views.

Since 2020, Rogan has hosted and filmed episodes at a studio inside his $14.4 million home in Austin, Texas. The podcast is a huge moneymaker. Rogan signed an exclusivity deal with Spotify in 2020, later found to be worth at least $200 million. In February 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported Rogan and the streaming service extended their partnership for a new deal up to $250 million but no longer with exclusivity.

Controversies: Racial Slurs and Political Views

While the podcast is known for leaving no topic off-limits, the blunt banter between Rogan and his guests has drawn criticism for spreading misinformation. In December 2021, Rogan posted an episode with Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist who claimed to have expert knowledge of mRNA technology used to make COVID-19 vaccines. Malone shared multiple unfounded conspiracy theories, prompting 270 science educators, doctors, and physicians to sign an open letter calling for Spotify to increase its safeguards against misinformation. Rogan had previously discouraged young adults from receiving the COVID-19 vaccine and touted ivermectin’s efficacy as a treatment despite contrary evidence.

In February 2022, Rogan issued a public video apology on Instagram after a compilation spread on social media showing him using racial slurs in previous episodes. According to CNN, Rogan used the N-word more than 20 times in a series of clips spanning 12 years. “I know that to most people, there’s no context where a white person is ever allowed to say that, never mind publicly on a podcast, and I agree with that now. I haven’t said it in years,” Rogan said.

Shortly after the footage emerged, Spotify unpublished 70 episodes of the podcast with no official explanation. The service announced in June 2022 that it created an 18-member council to advise the company on policies regarding harmful content on the platform. Rogan also agreed to add content warnings to certain episodes.

Over the years, Rogan and his podcast have become increasingly popular among conservative-minded listeners. He supports the Second Amendment and gun rights and has been vocal about his disdain for “cancel culture.” He has also criticized transgender women competing in women’s sports, including mixed martial arts.

However, Rogan has previously described himself as “socially very liberal.” He supports marriage for same-sex couples, LGBTQ rights, and is a proponent of socialized healthcare. Rogan is also candid about his cannabis use and supports its legalization for recreational purposes. He was featured in the documentary films The Union: The Business Behind Getting High (2007) and The Culture High (2014). “I realized, oh, this is an incredible tool for creativity, if you use it correctly,” he said in 2019.

After supporting independent candidate Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential election, Rogan endorsed Republican candidate Donald Trump in 2024.

Celebrity Net Worth estimates Rogan’s total fortune at around $200 million as of August 2024. This is largely due to his two lucrative podcast contracts with Spotify.

Joe Rogan and his wife, Jessica Ditzel, have been married for 15 years.

Rogan is married to Jessica Ditzel, a former cocktail waiter. The couple wed in 2009, a year after their daughter Lola was born. “I had to [marry her]. Not really had to but, you know, she made a baby. [It’s] like, ‘God, all right, I’ll sign a silly legal contract.’ What she did was way more of a commitment,” Rogan said in 2009.

Lola is one of the couple’s three children. Their daughter Rosy was born in 2010, and Rogan is a stepfather to Ditzel’s daughter from a previous relationship, Kayja. The family lives in Austin, Texas.

Although Rogan prefers to keep details of his personal life private, he has spoken about his connection with his wife. “You wanna be with someone who’s like genuinely kind. That’s one of the things that I really love about my wife,” he said. “She is a dedicated, disciplined person. She is also really nice. That’s one of the things I like the most about her.”

Rogan’s stature has been the subject of ongoing internet debate. In 2015, he stated his height is 5 feet 8 inches in response to people changing the information on his Wikipedia page. Still, unproven speculation remains that he could be shorter than that. The discourse turned particularly humorous in 2021, when an aerial marriage proposal in Los Angeles featured a series of messages including: “Joe Rogan is literally 5 foot 3.”

• I was terrified of being a loser. Super terrified of being someone who people just go, “Oh, look at that f––ing loser.” You know? I was always thinking that the other kids were going to turn on me at any moment.
• I’m aware that people look at me as a source of information, but I feel a responsibility just as a human being—whenever I find out about something that I feel is important—to tell other people, especially if I find it fascinating.
• I’m a guy who likes to do a lot of different things; I like doing martial arts, podcasts, stand-up comedy, making TV shows, hunting, archery, writing, drawing, and I like to play pool. If I had a million lives, I’d have a million different professions.
• On his UFC commentary: It always means something when a guy kicks you in the head or is choking the blood out of your brain. That always means something. And when someone slams you on the ground it always means something. It’s universal. It transcends languages and cultures. There’s nothing like it.

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Tyler Piccotti

News and Culture Editor, Biography.com

Tyler Piccotti joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor and is now the News and Culture Editor. He previously worked as a reporter and copy editor for a daily newspaper recognized by the Associated Press Sports Editors. In his current role, he shares the true stories behind your favorite movies and TV shows and profiles rising musicians, actors, and athletes. When he's not working, you can find him at the nearest amusement park or movie theater and cheering on his favorite teams.