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Joe Rogan is one of the most powerful men in America.
“The Joe Rogan Experience” is the No. 1 podcast in the world, providing a place in which he gets to sit back, smoke weed and ruminate with pals including Elon Musk and a slew of scientists like Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.
But there are rumblings about the podcaster’s future with Spotify — with which he signed a rumored three-year, $200 million deal in 2020. As the clock winds down, the Sweden-based streamer won’t confirm when his deal is up, only telling The Post that his contract doesn’t end this year.
It was announced this week that Max Cutler, the point person who looked after Rogan at Spotify, is leaving the company.
Rogan, who is on a non-exclusive deal, walks a fine line with Spotify. The company has no creative control over his content, but he still has to adhere to its guidelines.
The 55-year-old father of three — who has previously said, “I talk s–t for a living” — made headlines back in 2021 for his controversial comments about the COVID vaccine. He claimed, then later apologized for saying, that healthy young Americans didn’t “need to worry about” getting the jab.
Rogan has also faced backlash over his use of the N-word in older episodes of his podcast, and his comments on transgender people.
And The Post is told that some Spotify staffers were antagonized by his most recent comments on Jews, including saying: “The idea that Jewish people don’t like money is ridiculous. That’s like saying Italians aren’t into pizza. It’s f–king stupid.”
As Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the Anti-Defamation League, told The Post: “It’s disturbing that, at a time of rising anti-Jewish violence, when growing numbers of Americans believe in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, Joe would use his immense platform to spew ant-Semitic tropes about Jews and money. For centuries, people have used these longstanding tropes to spread vicious lies about the Jewish people.”
Reached at his New Jersey home this week, Rogan’s estranged father, Joe Rogan Sr., 81, had a message for his son: “Who are you to judge people? Who made you God last night?”
Rogan Sr. told The Post, “I’m not prejudiced. Everybody has got to live and I teach my kids that. This bothers me. The money went to his head and his head got bigger than his hat — he fools people.”
Multiple sources confirmed that Rogan did not breach any Spotify guidelines on the episode, which has not been pulled, but one highly placed Spotify source said staffers are indeed unhappy with his comments. Another insider revealed that talks are ongoing inside the company about whether the guidelines should be amended.
The Spotify source said the music streaming giant is a “complicated platform” and that higher-ups have “stuck by” Rogan.
“His comments did adhere to the company’s policies,” the Spotify source said, while noting that “not everyone inside the company” was happy with the policy.
Spotify guidelines released last year state that content should be avoided if it “incites violence or hatred towards a person or group of people based on race, religion …” or makes “dehumanizing statements about a person or group.”
Greenblatt added that although the ADL does not “typically” recommend potential punishment or penalties, except in extreme cases like Kanye West’s anti-Semitic remarks, “It’s extremely disappointing that Joe has not even bothered to address the issue, let alone apologize, and Spotify has pretty much ignored the issue entirely.”
To this, a Spotify spokesperson responded: “Spotify has made — and will continue to make — significant investments in both human and algorithmic detection measures to help ensure our platform provides a safe experience for all, and we remain committed to rigorously enforcing these platform rules.”
Rogan first rose to fame as a stand-up comic, a sitcom actor (“NewsRadio”), host of the game show “Fear Factor” and a UFC commentator. But it wasn’t until 2009, when he started the podcast — which now draws in a reported 12 million listeners — that Rogan became a cultural phenomenon.
It’s not bad for someone who once said, “I’m not a doctor … I’m a f–king moron.”
In 2020, he left Los Angeles, his home of two decades, and moved to Austin, Texas, with his wife, Jessica, and their daughters, Rosy and Lola. He also adopted his stepdaughter, Kayja Rose, 25, an up-and-coming singer, after marrying Jessica in 2009. The family share a sprawling, $14.4 million mansion, where the podcaster also has a studio.
Rogan’s parents, Susan and Joe Sr., divorced when he was a young child, and Susan took Joe and his sister, Laura, to San Francisco in 1974, when he was 7 years old. Joe Sr. said that, against his own wishes, he never saw his kids again.
Rogan has accused his father of domestic violence and described Joe Sr. as a “psychotic person who beat the f–k out of my mother.”
Joe Sr., a former Harrison, NJ, Police Department officer, denies all the claims and told The Post he had sent his son and Spotify a legal letter last September to force the podcaster to stop talking about him.
He still wants to see his son, however, and wants Rogan to meet his twin half-sisters, Bridget Carselda and Rosa, both 43.
The girls reached out to meet their brother when they were 19, but he rebuffed them, Joe Sr. claimed.
The Post has reached out to Rogan for comment.
As for now, Rogan spoke to Jewish mathematician Eric Weinstein in his podcast released Tuesday — but has still refused to apologize for his comments.
In February 2022, Spotify removed 70 episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” that included “racially insensitive language,” which Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said were pulled at the host’s request.
Last year, Courtney Holt, who was head of Spotify’s studios and video, and who recruited Rogan to the platform, left — severing a key link for Rogan at the company, according to Semafor.
Rogan’s frustration with public demands to curb what he can say on his podcast boiled over last year, prompting him to threaten to quit the streaming giant.
“I will quit. If it gets to a point that I can’t do it anymore, where I have to do it in some sort of weird way where I walk on eggshells and mind my p’s and q’s, f–k that!” Rogan said during a March 2022 episode.
But as Joe Sr. claimed: “He’s a drama queen. He loves drama.”
Additional reporting by Alexandra Steingard
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