No “Triggered” Warnings For Joe Rogan’s New Netflix Special

When Joe Rogan isn’t commenting on UFC fights or discussing issues with comedians and friends on his hit podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the comedian and actor has a tendency to enjoy a psychedelic ride via drugs or isolation tanks to expand his consciousness and explore his thoughts.

Don’t think his new Netflix stand-up special, Joe Rogan: Triggered, was going to stop him from getting high before taking the stage at The Fillmore in San Francisco this summer. Rogan practically couldn’t keep a giddy smile off his face at the start of his 63-minute performance. But he did have a caveat for his fellow Californians.

“The people making edibles need to slow the fuck down,” he joked, adding: “A gummy bear shouldn’t be able to steal your soul.”

Rogan goes beyond the hackneyed when joking about marijuana, diving down into the different scientific and anatomical processes involved between smoking weed versus swallowing an edible version. He’s quick to point out the benefits of the latter, too. “And it lets you talk to dolphins!”

Which not only offers an amusing observation, but an excuse for Rogan to delve into the relative intelligence of the friendly marine mammals, as well as how dolphins relate to each other could teach us about how we interact as humans, and how we might not be as different or as unique as we think we are.

“What if everyone is exactly the same? We’re just living life through different bodies. What if that’s the secret of happiness? Treat everyone as if it’s you, living another life.”

The audience erupts in cheers.

“And then I thought, Goddamn, how good is this weed I’m getting in California!?!”

Among Rogan’s other observations: Women cannot accomplish some tasks as well as men, but then, neither can he. It’s not sexist to point out that all people are not created with equal talents or abilities in everything. He illustrates his declaration with a tale about how someone broke into the White House while a woman was guarding it, then imagines how office politics in every office sometimes results in a lesser qualified person getting a key job. It’s all just posturing.

“Because a lot of people think there’s some grand conspiracy, there’s some cabal of evil geniuses that’s pulling the strings on everyone in America. It’s most likely that people are just dumb as fuck, in all sorts of walks of life.”

How else can you explain a woman with eight million Instagram followers when all she posts are photos of her butt? “This is a new kind of human!” Rogan observes. Study her!

A riff on Scientology allows him to offer a clever one-liner explaining the difference between a cult and a religion. And that, in turn, provides Rogan with a segue to the difference between the “nice, friendly one” cult of Mormons and the “radical, crazy people” who’ll kill you for drawing a cartoon of their God. “Over cartoons!” The reactions to radical religious fanatics intrigues Rogan even more than the fanatics themselves.

And if you think that’s something, just get a load of how he describes Americans: Stubborn folk stayed on the East Coast, “smart ones made it all the way to California,” leaving behind the rest in the middle of the country, and especially Texas.

He’s self-aware enough to laugh it all off.

“Imagine if I had real points,” Rogan acknowledges.

As a father, though, Rogan now has to explain the world to his six-year-old daughter, and wonders when’s the right time to tell her about Santa, and about the rest of the world, as well. “If you’re teaching your kids nonsense, you have to keep teaching them nonsense,” he explains. But you can’t be too mean with them, either. “You can’t talk like that,” he jokes. “You’ll make strippers.”

Over the past year, comedians have said plenty about Bruce Jenner’s transgender transition to Caitlyn, and the vast majority have not feared being politically incorrect about it. Rogan’s take? “If you spend that many years among the Kardashians, you’ll become a woman, too.” His closing bit acts out the Kardashian women as demons emerging in the dark of night, climbing atop his stool and wrapping his body around it as the demons growl at Bruce, persuading him to transition.

By the end, Rogan’s face has reddened in color, his shirt sleeves and torso moistened by sweat, and his voice roaring with excitement.

But at the same time, he has acknowledged that living in a home surrounded by women has softened him, too. And that’s not a bad thing. “No one’s honest about how much we need other people,” Rogan says, noting that we admire loners and rogues in movies, while in real-life, the worst punishment a prison can dole out is solitary confinement.

“Are we happy? I’m not sure,” he says at one point.

A man in the audience shouts out: “Life can kind of suck!”

To which Rogan responds: “Maybe it’s how you’re living it.”

Get it together, people. Get together, people. You don’t have to make America great again, because it’s already greater than it ever has been.

“When has it been better?” Rogan asks.

We should have nowhere to go but forward.

[Watch Joe Rogan: Triggered on Netflix]

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.