Joe Rogan Experience #1123 - Kevin Smith
Joe Rogan (host), Kevin Smith (guest), Narrator, Narrator, Narrator, Narrator
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Joe Rogan and Kevin Smith, Joe Rogan Experience #1123 - Kevin Smith explores kevin Smith Survives Heart Attack, Rethinks Life On Joe Rogan Kevin Smith joins Joe Rogan to catch up on life, podcasting, health scares, drugs, and death, weaving humor through some very heavy topics.
Kevin Smith Survives Heart Attack, Rethinks Life On Joe Rogan
Kevin Smith joins Joe Rogan to catch up on life, podcasting, health scares, drugs, and death, weaving humor through some very heavy topics.
They trace the early days and business evolution of podcasting, discuss creative careers without hard drugs, and compare very different lifestyles—Rogan’s physical, outdoors life versus Smith’s writing and fandom.
Smith details his near‑fatal “widowmaker” heart attack, the emergency procedure that saved him, and how it changed his views on diet, mortality, and what matters.
The conversation spirals through culture-war stories like Roseanne’s Ambien tweet, AI and automation, ancient civilizations, supervolcanoes, animal attacks, and what might happen after we die.
Key Takeaways
Podcasting can be a viable, democratized career path if you’re genuinely interesting.
Rogan and Smith both started podcasting early and built careers largely “with their mouths,” arguing that there’s room for many voices, especially if you’re consistent, authentic, and niche-specific.
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Avoid glamorizing hard drugs; know your own risk profile.
Both admit they avoided cocaine partly because they suspected they’d like it too much and that it could amplify bad traits like overconfidence and compulsion—an important self-awareness check for entertainers.
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Ambien and similar drugs can radically alter behavior and memory, but don’t erase accountability.
They discuss Ambien stories (sleep-cooking, driving) and Roseanne’s tweet, acknowledging strange side effects while still concluding that public figures must treat social media as a loaded weapon when medicated.
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Massive health scares can reframe your relationship to food and time—if you let them.
Smith’s 100% LAD blockage (the “widowmaker”) pushed him into a strict plant-based diet, radical caloric control (one meal a day, fasting), and a more deliberate sense that every post-attack day is “house money.”
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Vegan or plant-based diets can rapidly improve cardiac risk markers, but are hard to sustain without planning.
Smith’s “potato-only” phase dropped 19 pounds in two weeks and halved his Lipitor dose, but he admits he hates most vegetables, relying on beans, chickpeas, and vegan comfort food to make it livable.
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Our bonds with pets are profound, but we misread them by humanizing animals.
Their stories about dogs, cats, and big cats show deep emotional attachment, but also highlight that animals have their own hierarchies and drives (dominance, jealousy, prey drive) that humans often misunderstand.
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Facing death can reduce fear of it, shifting focus to gratitude rather than terror.
On the table with 20% odds, Smith expected panic but instead felt relieved and grateful, thinking he’d “got a lifetime” and realizing death felt more like completion than horror—changing how he views risk and urgency.
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Notable Quotes
“You did this with your mouth. You talked yourself into this.”
— Kevin Smith (to Joe Rogan about his studio and career)
“If anybody’s watching or listening at home, teetering on the verge of like, ‘I wonder if I should do a podcast,’ send them a snapshot of that room… They’ll start talking.”
— Kevin Smith
“I really believe that within a few decades, racism can be almost completely eradicated.”
— Joe Rogan
“They call that artery the widowmaker. In 80% of cases of 100% occlusion, the patient dies. But you’re gonna be in the 20% ’cause I’m really good at my job.”
— Kevin Smith (quoting his cardiologist during his heart attack)
“You get what everybody gets. You got a lifetime.”
— Kevin Smith (quoting Neil Gaiman’s Sandman to describe accepting death)
Questions Answered in This Episode
How much of Kevin Smith’s post–heart attack peace with death is chemistry and shock versus a lasting philosophical shift?
Kevin Smith joins Joe Rogan to catch up on life, podcasting, health scares, drugs, and death, weaving humor through some very heavy topics.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Should we treat Ambien-like episodes as mitigating factors in public scandals, or does that create an excuse culture for harmful speech?
They trace the early days and business evolution of podcasting, discuss creative careers without hard drugs, and compare very different lifestyles—Rogan’s physical, outdoors life versus Smith’s writing and fandom.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Is a plant-based, one-meal-a-day approach realistically sustainable for most people, or is it only workable for highly motivated outliers?
Smith details his near‑fatal “widowmaker” heart attack, the emergency procedure that saved him, and how it changed his views on diet, mortality, and what matters.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What does the rise of podcasting as a primary media source mean for traditional gatekeepers—and for how people form opinions about complex issues?
The conversation spirals through culture-war stories like Roseanne’s Ambien tweet, AI and automation, ancient civilizations, supervolcanoes, animal attacks, and what might happen after we die.
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
If cataclysmic events periodically reset civilization, how should that shape our priorities today—both technologically and spiritually?
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Transcript Preview
Biatch. We're live. Dude, we always, we always say-
Yes.
... we're gonna do these regularly.
Yes.
Every, like, two or three years, we pledge that we will do these regularly. (laughs)
And then a decade goes by- (laughs)
But we're here.
... and then we don't see each other. But I hope that in your heart, just like mine, that, uh, it's not like, "Ugh, I've had enough of that fuck."
No, no, no, it's life.
It's like, you know, he... I know how f-... I see how busy you are. You're one of the few people I follow on Instagram. And I, I've said it on the previous show, I just love to look at your life 'cause I'm like, "Fuck, he's doing everything he wants and nothing I'd ever wanna do-
(laughs)
... but, fuck, he goes to the hill." And not in a judge-y way of, like, "He shouldn't be doing that," but just, like, you know, you li-... I've said it, but you live a man's life. I live a boy's life as a 47-year-old man.
(laughs)
So you do things like you got a float tank, you hunt, you got a fucking... You know how to handle a bow and arrow. I'm the guy that writes about people that shoot bow and arrows to stop crimes. They usually have boxing gloves at the end of them and shit like that.
Yeah, but that's good too. Like, we all-
Oh, believe me, I ain't shit on it.
We need it all. Like...
But I, I do, I do... I, I guess the point is, I know you're busy as fuck, and I know sometimes I get very busy as fuck, but I think we only don't do this because of-
Yeah.
... how busy we are.
Yeah, that's all it is. I mean-
My fe-... And that's, that's very kind of you to say. You're like, "That's... Yes. Yeah, I'll buy that."
No, no, it's all it is for me, for sure.
But for me, I'm like... For me, I'm like, "Fuck, I could do that once a week," because I'd walk away... I always walk away with a real, like, uh, li-... I've never done cocaine, but I imagine it's what it's like-
(laughs)
... to do a line of cocaine off, I don't know, somebody beautiful or something like that.
(Gasps) Hmm.
I always walk away with wisdom, and it's wisdom that even though it's on a podcast and recorded and there's a record of, like, "Well, that's where you learned those things," I still go out into the world, present them as my own. (laughs)
That's for-
Like I'm a smart, well-read person.
Out there, there's dudes that have done a line of cocaine off someone, and they're like, "What the fuck is he talking... I've never learned anything from that."
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