Skip to content
The Joe Rogan ExperienceThe Joe Rogan Experience

Joe Rogan Experience #1199 - Tom Segura & Sean Anders

Tom Segura is a stand-up comedian, and hosts his own podcast with his wife, Christina P called "Your Mom’s House." Sean Anders is a writer and director, and his new movie "Instant Family" premieres November 16 in theaters.

Tom SeguraguestSean AndersguestJoe RoganhostGuest (brief interjection)guest
Nov 12, 20181h 55mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Adoption, comedy, and clickbait: inside ‘Instant Family’ and beyond

  1. Joe Rogan talks with director Sean Anders and comedian Tom Segura about Anders’ film *Instant Family*, inspired by his real-life adoption of three siblings from foster care.
  2. Anders details the chaotic, emotionally difficult early stages of adopting older kids, and how that experience evolved into both a functional family and a heartfelt studio comedy.
  3. They also dig into Hollywood press culture, media training, clickbait journalism, and how out-of-context soundbites can damage careers.
  4. The conversation branches into broader topics like CTE in sports, language and culture, and the unexpectedly collaborative way Segura was cast and shaped his role in the film.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Adopting from foster care is brutally hard at first, then transformative.

Anders describes the early phase with his three adopted kids as a ‘nightmare’ of chaos, fear, and second-guessing, but says that once the family bond took hold, it became unequivocally the best thing that ever happened to him.

Teenagers in foster care are highly overlooked and deeply stigmatized.

At an adoption fair, Anders saw teens literally standing off to the side because prospective parents were afraid of them; that experience inspired the teen character in *Instant Family* and pushed him to highlight positive teen-adoption stories.

Comedy can be an effective gateway into serious, ‘scary’ social topics.

Anders and his writing partner realized that framing foster-care adoption as a comedy would let them reach a wider audience and counter the usual horror-movie narrative that foster kids are ‘damaged’ or ‘unreachable.’

Modern press dynamics reward traps and out-of-context quotes.

The guests recount interviews where seemingly innocent questions were designed to create clickable scandals, underscoring why media training now focuses on staying on-message and refusing bait rather than just ‘being yourself.’

Clickbait is eroding trust, but it’s also creating demand for depth.

They argue that while low-effort outrage and gossip dominate traffic, there’s a parallel appetite for deeply researched journalism and long-form conversations—one reason podcasts and substantial investigative pieces still thrive.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

The beginning of it was a nightmare… and then when it came online and we became a family, it really became the best thing that ever happened to me.

— Sean Anders

I always thought of people who do that—adopt kids—as nameless, faceless angels. Like, they’re not real people.

— Tom Segura

So much of media training now is just about: don’t go out and get yourself into trouble by talking about some ridiculous area that people are trying to drag you into for clickbait.

— Sean Anders

If you were a doctor and did what some of these ‘journalists’ do, they’d pull your license. But as a journalist, there’s a lot of wiggle room with being a piece of shit.

— Joe Rogan

You guys are saving my child’s life right now… I had to YouTube lacrosse to even see how you play it.

— Sean Anders

Sean Anders’ early film career and the under-the-radar cult film *Sex Drive*The real-life story behind *Instant Family* and adopting three foster siblingsChallenges, stigma, and misconceptions around foster care and teen adoptionHollywood press junkets, media training, and predatory “gotcha” journalismClickbait culture, long-form journalism, and the rise of podcastsSports concussions, CTE, and parental anxiety around kids’ contact sportsCasting Tom Segura in *Instant Family* and the craft of auditions and comedy acting

High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

Add to Chrome