Joe Rogan Experience #1586 - Tony Hinchcliffe
Narrator, Joe Rogan (host), Tony Hinchcliffe (guest), Guest (guest), Guest (guest), Guest (guest), Guest (guest), Guest (guest), Guest (guest), Guest (guest), Guest (guest), Guest (guest)
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Narrator and Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan Experience #1586 - Tony Hinchcliffe explores joe Rogan and Tony Hinchcliffe Plan Austin Comedy Takeover Amid Chaos Joe Rogan and Tony Hinchcliffe dive into pandemic-era life, contrasting California’s strict lockdowns and economic damage with Texas’s more open, pragmatic approach. They talk through how policies have devastated restaurants, live entertainment, and ordinary workers, while politicians and media figures often flout the rules they impose.
Joe Rogan and Tony Hinchcliffe Plan Austin Comedy Takeover Amid Chaos
Joe Rogan and Tony Hinchcliffe dive into pandemic-era life, contrasting California’s strict lockdowns and economic damage with Texas’s more open, pragmatic approach. They talk through how policies have devastated restaurants, live entertainment, and ordinary workers, while politicians and media figures often flout the rules they impose.
A large part of the conversation centers on standup comedy: the grind of starting out, the culture and community of The Comedy Store, and how the art form is harmed when it’s tethered to Hollywood and constrained by political or corporate sensitivities.
They celebrate Austin’s emerging role as a new comedy hub, with major comics like Rogan, Ron White, Segura, and Hinchcliffe relocating and planning clubs and live shows to rebuild the scene on their own terms.
Along the way they veer into side topics—health, fitness, testosterone and training, pop culture (Batman, Borat, John Wick, Kill Bill), drugs and mushrooms, police, CNN, and the “Galactic Federation” UFO story—always circling back to freedom, hypocrisy, and the need for comics to protect their own art form.
Key Takeaways
Lockdown policies have massive unseen costs, not just health benefits.
Rogan and Hinchcliffe argue that officials focused almost solely on virus metrics (cases, deaths, ICU beds) while ignoring business closures, mental health crises, addiction, crime, and decades-long family businesses disappearing overnight.
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Letting people work with safeguards is often safer than shutting everything down.
They point to rapid testing, outdoor setups, masking, and N95 use as ways to keep restaurants, clubs, and golf open, contending that targeted precautions beat blanket bans that leave people broke, idle, and desperate.
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Standup thrives when comics, not studios or networks, control the culture.
Both emphasize that the best comedy communities come from comics running their own rooms (like The Comedy Store), tolerating risk and offensive jokes, and resisting pressures from TV/film or “woke” gatekeepers that narrow what can be said.
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Austin is being intentionally built into a comedy capital.
With Rogan, Hinchcliffe, Ron White, Tom Segura, Tim Dillon and others moving in, plus shows like Kill Tony relocating, they see Austin as the place where open clubs, new comics, and a supportive staff culture can be grown from scratch.
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Long-term excellence in standup requires years of grind and constant risk-taking.
They describe waiting hours for open mics, bombing at bizarre gigs (like a 7‑Eleven owners convention), and abandoning once-great bits that stop working—underscoring that real mastery usually emerges after a decade or more.
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Physical and mental optimization matter for performers as they age.
Rogan details bloodwork, nutrition, sleep tracking, cutting back on alcohol, and carefully monitored testosterone/growth-hormone protocols, stressing that older comics can stay sharp and energetic if they treat their bodies like long-term projects.
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Hypocrisy from political and media elites corrodes public trust.
They blast figures like Gavin Newsom, the Austin mayor, Chicago’s mayor, and CNN’s Cuomo brothers for breaking their own COVID rules or staging fake moments, arguing that this double standard encourages cynicism and noncompliance.
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Notable Quotes
“Government has never, ever in the history of the United States had the power to shut all the gyms down.”
— Joe Rogan
“It’s like being on vacation and then going to boarding school… that’s what going from Texas back to California feels like.”
— Tony Hinchcliffe
“Standup’s the last frontier when it comes to saying wild shit.”
— Joe Rogan
“You have to invest in a scene. If you just look at it like a business, you’re not gonna invest in the scene.”
— Joe Rogan
“All these rich progressive people that wanna keep everything shut down—except delivery drivers, hospital employees, Uber drivers, Postmates…”
— Joe Rogan (paraphrasing/endorsing Whitney Cummings’s tweet)
Questions Answered in This Episode
How should governments more realistically balance virus control with the economic and psychological survival of citizens?
Joe Rogan and Tony Hinchcliffe dive into pandemic-era life, contrasting California’s strict lockdowns and economic damage with Texas’s more open, pragmatic approach. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What specific structures or safeguards could ensure that future comedy hubs like Austin avoid the gatekeeping and creative constraints of Hollywood?
A large part of the conversation centers on standup comedy: the grind of starting out, the culture and community of The Comedy Store, and how the art form is harmed when it’s tethered to Hollywood and constrained by political or corporate sensitivities.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
In what ways might the post-vaccine ‘party time’ Rogan predicts change audience behavior and the content comics are willing to do?
They celebrate Austin’s emerging role as a new comedy hub, with major comics like Rogan, Ron White, Segura, and Hinchcliffe relocating and planning clubs and live shows to rebuild the scene on their own terms.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Where is the ethical line between ‘just trying to be funny’ and causing real-world harm, and who gets to define that line for standup?
Along the way they veer into side topics—health, fitness, testosterone and training, pop culture (Batman, Borat, John Wick, Kill Bill), drugs and mushrooms, police, CNN, and the “Galactic Federation” UFO story—always circling back to freedom, hypocrisy, and the need for comics to protect their own art form.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
How can artists and small business owners better protect themselves from abrupt, one-size-fits-all policy decisions in future crises?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Transcript Preview
(drum roll) Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. (energetic music) Ladies and gentlemen, you're listening to right now is my guest. He is the one of the hottest up and coming standup comics in the world. You might know him from the Kill Tony Podcast or numerous other things. Please welcome Tony Hinchcliffe.
Yeah.
That's my attempt at, uh, an intro.
(laughs)
I'm gonna do that for every episode, just introduce the people while they're right there so they have to look at me-
(laughs)
... and make a weird, uncomfortable moment.
You can do the radio voice and I just leave the logo on.
Hey, I can. Very nice. All right.
Ladies and gentlemen.
Yes. Radio voice.
Do you guys have sound in your headphones?
You don't hear anything?
Is it on for you?
Not really.
Oh, I turned yours down.
It's like-
Oh, crank the volume up. See the volume?
Two, two, two, two, two. Okay, there it is.
All the way.
Yeah.
There you go.
Yeah, there was some weird crackling, so we had to ... Jamie had to monkey with some things, make it happen. Hey, buddy, how you doing?
Hey, good to be here. Yeah.
Welcome to Texas. You're here. Dude, we need to have a celebratory adult beverage.
Okay.
You're, uh ... You said, you said okay like you're about to get punched in the arm. (laughs)
Texas whiskey. Here we go again. (laughs)
Come on, bro. This is your ... You live here now.
It's very exciting.
Amazing transition. Dude, it's begun. Salud.
Here we go.
Mm. Woo. So many things are happening, ladies and gentlemen, that we can't totally talk about yet. But things are moving. We got, we got pieces in play. We got a lot of stuff happening for standup comedy here in Austin, Texas. It's on the way, kids. Woo.
Very exciting stuff.
So exciting. Yeah, so, uh, Tim Dillon is, uh ... He's in. You're in. Segura's in. Segura, poor Segura. Did you see Segura broke his fucking arm-
(laughs) Yeah, what happened?
... and blew his knee out?
I don't, I don't even get it. I-
Dunking. Him and Bert were playing basketball, getting real competitive, and he was dunking, blew his patella tendon out, which is the huge tendon in the front of your knee that connects your kneecap. And then on his way down, fell and snapped his arm in half.
It's crazy that that would happen.
Look at that. That's his arm.
Obese guys dunking basketballs.
How dare you.
(laughs)
How dare you when, when he's injured.
I mean look at the ... Look how swollen. That's just not even swollen. That's just fat above his elbow there.
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