Joe Rogan Experience #1531 - Miley Cyrus
Miley Cyrus (guest), Joe Rogan (host), Narrator
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Miley Cyrus and Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan Experience #1531 - Miley Cyrus explores miley Cyrus on pain, fame, drugs, and rebuilding herself publicly This long-form conversation between Joe Rogan and Miley Cyrus delves into her evolution from child star to self-aware adult artist. Miley explains how vocal surgery, touring abuse, substance use, and a traumatic house fire changed both her literal voice and her outlook on life and work. She is candid about genetic addiction risks, mental health, brain scans, diet changes (including leaving strict veganism), and the pressures of growing up famous and sexualized in public. Throughout, she balances dark, self-critical honesty with humor, resilience, and a clear desire to manage her “demons” constructively through discipline, therapy, animals, and art.
Miley Cyrus on pain, fame, drugs, and rebuilding herself publicly
This long-form conversation between Joe Rogan and Miley Cyrus delves into her evolution from child star to self-aware adult artist. Miley explains how vocal surgery, touring abuse, substance use, and a traumatic house fire changed both her literal voice and her outlook on life and work. She is candid about genetic addiction risks, mental health, brain scans, diet changes (including leaving strict veganism), and the pressures of growing up famous and sexualized in public. Throughout, she balances dark, self-critical honesty with humor, resilience, and a clear desire to manage her “demons” constructively through discipline, therapy, animals, and art.
Key Takeaways
Your voice and body carry the history of how you live.
Miley describes her deeper, raspy voice as a kind of ‘scar’ from years of over-touring, late nights, smoking, and emotional trauma, emphasizing that like wrinkles on a face, your voice and body reflect lifestyle and experiences.
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Recovery and maintenance are as crucial for artists as for athletes.
She notes that, as a teen star, there was no concept of recovery days despite heavy schedules, and only later did she realize she has to treat herself like an athlete—prioritizing rest, diet, supplements, and mental health to have a long career.
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Knowing your brain helps you understand your behavior and risks.
After anxiety, intense drug use, and a childhood head injury, Miley worked with Dr. ...
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Not all sobriety is about total abstinence; it’s about honest fit.
She’s sober from weed and hard drugs and mostly avoids alcohol because of hangovers and genetic addiction risk, but rejects rigid moralizing—saying people should experiment carefully, be informed, and understand their own limits and vulnerabilities.
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Strong boundaries are often mislabeled as “cold,” especially for women.
Miley worries she’s “too tough” because she can move on from relationships decisively, but Joe reframes this as resilience; the ‘cold bitch’ label often comes from partners who can’t accept that someone can let go and still be a good person.
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Creative control demands firmness without sacrificing kindness.
She describes insisting on specific lighting and keeping a handheld mic at the VMAs, pushing back when assertiveness was called ‘diva’ behavior, and contrasting that with how male artists are praised as ‘creative geniuses’ for similar demands.
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Rigorous physical outlets can channel manic energy and reduce pain.
With chronic hip/back pain, high mental energy, and stress, Miley realizes she needs intense, regular exercise—like running, bag work, and strength training—to ‘exercise the demons,’ reduce inflammation, and avoid destructive coping behaviors.
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Notable Quotes
““The voice can be like a face. It collects wrinkles and it tells a story.””
— Miley Cyrus
““If I’m gonna be doing this kind of abnormal lifestyle, then I have to do everything else right.””
— Miley Cyrus
““When it’s over, it’s over and you’re dead to me. I’ll do a lot of things, but I don’t fuck dead guys.””
— Miley Cyrus
““People are not designed to be famous. That’s why kings are all tyrants.””
— Joe Rogan
““If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love anybody else?” (quoting RuPaul)”
— Miley Cyrus, citing RuPaul
Questions Answered in This Episode
How did Miley’s vocal surgery and understanding of her voice change the way she structures touring, rest, and creative work now?
This long-form conversation between Joe Rogan and Miley Cyrus delves into her evolution from child star to self-aware adult artist. ...
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In what ways does Miley’s story complicate the usual ‘Hollywood ruined the child star’ narrative, especially given her family’s genetic history with addiction?
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How might realistic, age-appropriate conversations about drugs and sex for teenagers differ from current school approaches, based on what Miley and Joe discuss?
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What are the psychological costs of filters and social media comparison for young women, and how can public figures like Miley push back against those pressures without exiting the platforms entirely?
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How can other high-achieving or highly visible people adopt Miley’s mix of therapy, brain science, diet, exercise, and boundaries to manage stress and maintain a sense of self?
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Transcript Preview
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (heavy guitar music) Hello, Miley Cyrus.
All right.
How are you?
I'm good. Joe, how you doing?
Pleasure to meet you.
You also. I'm happy to be here.
I'm happy to have you here.
Thank you very much.
You have a fantastic voice. Not just a singing voice, but your talking voice is very unusual. It's like it makes you step back a little bit like, "Oh."
I've actually ... Uh, recently, I was walking around in Boston, and I went to a museum. And this, like, older man walked up to me, had no idea who I was. He was just enjoying the art also in the museum and started talking to me forever about my voice. And my ... And then there was a college, some sort of trip to the museum, and then everybody started freaking out. And it was so cool just to have someone stop me about my speaking voice 'cause that had never happened to me before. I think it's 'cause I was turned around, and I had the mullet, so I could've been, you know, anybody. I could've been anyone from Tennessee.
It's a heavy voice.
It's a heavy voice. Um-
You didn't always have a heavy voice though. Like, when ... Uh, my kids love Hannah Montana, by the way.
Yeah.
So when I, I would watch, your, your voice was different.
It's definitely changed. I actually ... I kind of learned a lot about the voice and how our experiences affect our voice. I had a surgery in November on my voice.
Oh.
I had something called Raikhi's edema, which when my doctor told me about it, he said, "No one shy ever has this. This is for abuse of the voice."
(laughs)
"This is for people that talk way too fucking much." And usually, this happens when you're, like, in your 60s or 70s, a couple other singers.
How do I not have that?
I don't know. (laughs) I don't know.
(laughs)
Mine, I think honestly, really, I, I started touring, you know, at probably 12 or 13, and not only was I ... The adrenaline that you have after a show, it's not really the singing that affects your voice as much. It's afterwards. You're totally on, and then it's really hard to get that sleep. You stay up, talking all night. Later, the talking all night turn into smoking all night, and now this is kinda where we're at.
(laughs)
We got some dirt on her. You know, she ...
Yeah.
The, the voice can be like, like a face. It collects wrinkles, and, and it tells a story. If you look at yourself, and you go, "Oh, I didn't have this until these- this trip. You know, I sat out in the sun," or, "I partied too much," or whatever, and your voice does the same thing. It collects dirt.
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