I Tried to Live Like Joe Rogan
Every morning of my Joe Rogan experience began the same way Joe Rogan begins his: with the mushroom coffee.
It’s a pour-and-stir powder made from lion’s mane and chaga—“two rock-star mushrooms,” according to Joe—and it’s made by a company called Four Sigmatic, a regular advertiser on Joe Rogan’s wildly popular podcast. As a coffee lover, the mere existence of mushroom coffee offends me. (“I’ll have your most delicious thing, made from your least delicious things, please,” a friend said, scornfully.) But it tastes fine, and even better after another cup of actual coffee.
Next, I took several vitamin supplements from a company called Onnit, whose core philosophy is “total human optimization” and whose website sells all kinds of wicked-cool fitness gear—a Darth Vader kettlebell ($199.95); a 50-foot roll of two-and-a-half-inch-thick battle rope ($249.95); a 25-pound quad mace ($147.95), which according to one fitness-equipment site is a weapon dating back to 11th-century Persia. I stuck to the health products, though, because you know how it goes—you buy one quad mace and soon your apartment is filled with them. I stirred a packet of Onnit Gut Health powder into my mushroom coffee, then downed an enormous pair of Alpha Brain pills, filled with nootropics to help with “memory and focus.”
For my breakfast on the go, I would eat an Onnit Oatmega brownie crisp protein bar, “crisp” being less a description and more a warning. After that, I brushed my teeth with the only toothpaste Joe Rogan will let near his teeth, Onnit’s MCT Oil toothpaste, which is made of “bentonite clay and a touch of theobromine.” It promises “a completely new approach to oral care,” which I can confirm. It tastes like wet sand and looks like loose stool, and it’s hard to think of anything worse you might deliberately put in your mouth at 7 a.m.
Then I would go to the gym and crush it for about 18 to 20 minutes. Joe Rogan used to be a tae kwon do state champion. He enjoys grilling elk that he shot with a bow, and he works out with the maniacal zeal you’d expect from someone who has favorite mushrooms. Aside from weed, which he very much enjoys and whose legalization he supports, and whiskey, which he enjoys maybe even more, and that awful brown toothpaste, Joe Rogan’s body is a temple.
Few men in America are as popular among American men as Joe Rogan. It’s a massive group congregating in plain sight, and it’s made up of people you know from high school, guys who work three cubicles down, who are still paying off student loans, who forward jealous-girlfriend memes, who spot you at the gym. Single guys. Married guys. White guys, black guys, Dominican guys. Two South Asian friends of mine swear by him. My college roommate. My little brother. Normal guys. American guys.
e has been the No. 2 most-downloaded podcast on iTunes for two years running. Rogan’s second Netflix comedy special, , dropped last year. His interview last fall with Elon Musk has been viewed more than 24 million times on YouTube, and his YouTube channel, PowerfulJRE, has 6 million subscribers. An indifferently received episode will
