Joe Rogan Experience #1808 - Dan Soder
Narrator, Joe Rogan (host), Dan Soder (guest), Narrator, Narrator, Narrator, Narrator, Narrator
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Narrator and Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan Experience #1808 - Dan Soder explores dan Soder and Joe Rogan Swap War Stories on Comedy, Fighting, Madness Joe Rogan and Dan Soder spend the episode telling long-form stories and riffing about stand-up comedy, fighting, extreme sports, drugs, and truly evil people. They dig into the psychology and grind of becoming a great comic, from brutal early bombs and check spots to watching masters like Attell, Colin Quinn, and Gable-type obsessives in other fields. The conversation repeatedly detours into combat sports, from Fedor and Mayweather to leg‑break knockouts and Dagestani dominance, as a lens on toughness, discipline, and risk. Interwoven are darkly comic tangents about conspiracy villains, rats, wolves, Saddam’s sons, and extreme falls from planes, all contrasted with the sanity and humility that come from hard work and losing often.
Dan Soder and Joe Rogan Swap War Stories on Comedy, Fighting, Madness
Joe Rogan and Dan Soder spend the episode telling long-form stories and riffing about stand-up comedy, fighting, extreme sports, drugs, and truly evil people. They dig into the psychology and grind of becoming a great comic, from brutal early bombs and check spots to watching masters like Attell, Colin Quinn, and Gable-type obsessives in other fields. The conversation repeatedly detours into combat sports, from Fedor and Mayweather to leg‑break knockouts and Dagestani dominance, as a lens on toughness, discipline, and risk. Interwoven are darkly comic tangents about conspiracy villains, rats, wolves, Saddam’s sons, and extreme falls from planes, all contrasted with the sanity and humility that come from hard work and losing often.
Key Takeaways
Bombing on stage is an essential part of becoming a great comic.
Soder describes vivid early disasters—open mics, casino gigs, brutal check spots—as painful but necessary reps that taught him how to win back dead rooms and survive humiliation, which later made normal shows feel easy.
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Applied, focused practice—rather than just time—creates elite performance.
They reference Malcolm Gladwell and ‘Talent Is Overrated’ to emphasize that greatness in comedy, fighting, or music comes from deliberately working on weaknesses (e. ...
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Sobriety and changing your relationship to substances can dramatically upgrade your work.
Rogan points to Dave Attell as a clear example of someone who got sharper and more prolific after quitting drinking, while Soder notes that not smoking before headlining improved his shows, saving weed for short sets and post-show fun.
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True toughness is mental as much as physical.
Stories of wrestlers like Dan Gable, Dagestani fighters like Khabib, and high-level MMA athletes show that the real edge isn’t freak genetics but an almost religious commitment to suffering, discipline, and staying calm in adversity.
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Power without checks reliably breeds monstrous behavior.
Their dive into Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam’s sons, plus historical kings and modern dictators, illustrates how inherited, unaccountable power often produces psychopathic cruelty—from feeding people to lions to elaborate torture games.
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The internet and streaming fundamentally shifted control away from legacy gatekeepers.
They use Comedy Central’s mishandling of Ari Shaffir’s ‘This Is Not Happening’ and the rise of Netflix/podcasts as a case study in how old institutions lost leverage by clinging to control instead of embracing wider platforms.
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Exercise and hard effort are powerful mental health tools, not just physical ones.
Rogan explains that intense cardio and regular training give him clarity, reduce anxiety, and make him more patient and kind; he frames working out as the closest thing to a reliable “pill” for psychological resilience.
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Notable Quotes
“Bombing is like sucking a thousand dicks in front of your mother.”
— Joe Rogan
“It’s a scary neighborhood up here and you’re all by yourself.”
— Mike Tyson (as recalled by Dan Soder about the mind)
“You can’t be afraid to lose. If you’re afraid to lose, you’re never gonna try to get better.”
— Joe Rogan
“All I do is win is boring. The best part is learning from a loss.”
— Dan Soder
“You don’t play fighting.”
— Joe Rogan
Questions Answered in This Episode
How much deliberate ‘bombing’ or taking bad gigs do you think is necessary today for a young comic, given podcasts and social media can bypass some of that grind?
Joe Rogan and Dan Soder spend the episode telling long-form stories and riffing about stand-up comedy, fighting, extreme sports, drugs, and truly evil people. ...
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Where’s the line between healthy obsession and self-destructive extremism in pursuits like stand-up, fighting, or wrestling?
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Do you agree that comedy is safer than ever as a career, or do you share Soder’s worry that the boom could fade the way it did in the ’90s?
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What responsibility do networks and streamers have when they ‘own’ shows that were clearly created and developed by specific comics?
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After hearing the stories about Uday Hussein and other dictators’ children, do you think absolute power can *ever* be handled responsibly over generations?
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Transcript Preview
(drum music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) All good, Dan Soder, all good, we're up and running. What's happening, brother? How are you?
So, Joe, what's up, Joe Rogan?
Very nice to meet you officially.
Very nice to officially meet you.
I've, I've enjoyed your comedy online.
Thanks, man.
It's nice to, nice to see you in person.
Friend of a friend of multiple friends.
Yeah. You're in the tight group of, of excellent people, so-
Yeah, thanks.
... you're respected.
Yeah. I got, I got a lot of funny friends that are also fucking weirdos.
(laughs) Yeah. Well, I don't know a funny one that's not a weirdo.
Yeah. Show me someone that's funny, and they're not gonna be, you know-
Who-
They can be, they can be quiet, but they're weird.
Everyone who tells jokes for a living is fucking weird.
Psychos and phonies.
Yeah. (laughs)
I said that to Santino. We're all either psychos or phonies.
Is there any phonies that are good, though?
They get found out.
Yeah, but they're only psychos then.
Here, here's the thing. No, the phonies, they can trick you for a little. It's got-
Hm.
... 'cause you gotta have a little sweetness in it.
Right.
And then they, then they, like, whip it into... You know what it is? It's a Oz.
Ah.
The phonies are Oz.
Oh, okay.
They have, like, the big booming voice, and everyone's like, "Oh."
Ah.
And then there's just a guy behind a curtain and you're like-
Mm.
... "the fuck?"
Well, the phonie- the scary for the phonies must be when they get caught stealing jokes, 'cause then they have to write all their own jokes afterwards and they don't really know how to do that.
That's hard.
It's the hardest.
To writing jokes?
It's the hardest. Coming up with premises, fleshing them out, trying to figure out the right way to do them.
Seeing people with better jokes.
Oh.
There's nothing more of a-
Oh.
... a dick pusher in-
(laughs)
... than seeing someone with a great bit and you're like, "Oh, fuck, that's so good."
Especially on a subject that maybe you were thinking about talking about, and then this guy has this fucking perfect bit about it and you're like, "Oh, my God, I missed it."
I was just in Nashville and I saw Chris Porter do this bit about, uh, people that are worried about being chipped. I'm not gonna give away the bit, but I watched it and I watched the angles, and he got off stage, and I was like, "I was mad at you by, like, the third tag."
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