I wonder why they didn’t nominate him…
The Golden Globes introduced a new category this year, presenting an award for Best Podcast for the first time ever.
According to the show, the award recognizes “the extraordinary and diverse talents in podcasting.” Except when the nominations came out, there was one glaring omission: The biggest podcast in the world.
The nominees this year included Good Hang with Amy Poehler, Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, Call Her Daddy, The Mel Robbins Podcast, SmartLess, and Up First, a daily news podcast from NPR.
Immediately it became apparent that right-wing podcasts, or podcasts perceived as right-leaning, were being shut out of the category: Several conservative podcasts that made the initial short list, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Megyn Kelly Show and The Tucker Carlson Show, all ended up not making the list of the final nominees.
But the biggest name left off the list was Joe Rogan.
The Joe Rogan Experience first launched back in 2009, back in the very early days of podcast’s popularity. The show was groundbreaking for featuring unfiltered, longform interviews with guests from across the spectrum, and it quickly began racking up millions of listens per episode.
Since starting his podcast, Rogan has recorded over 2,400 episodes, featuring everybody from presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders to athletes, artists, comedians, scientists…pretty much anybody you can think of. And Rogan is unique because he’s not afraid to push back on what his guests are saying, with the freewheeling interviews and long form format allowing for deep conversations that you don’t get from a traditional interview.
It’s not an understatement to say he completely revolutionized the medium of podcasts. It’s the most listened to podcast in the world, and in 2020 Rogan signed a $200 MILLION deal with Spotify for exclusive rights to his show, which he followed up with a $250 million contract in 2024 that kept him with Spotify but also allowed the show to return to YouTube.
The importance of the show was on full display in the 2024 election, when then-presidential candidate Donald Trump sat down for a 3-hour long interview with Rogan. All eyes were on Kamala Harris to see if she would do the same, but ultimately she never appeared on the show. On election day, Trump performed exceedingly well with male voters, leading many to question why Harris never appeared on Rogan’s show in an attempt to speak to his largely male audience.
Yet apparently that wasn’t enough to be nominated for a Golden Globe – and pretty much everybody knows why: Rogan is seen as a “right-wing” podcast, moreso because he doesn’t push either party line and welcomes conservative figures as well as liberal ones.
Honestly, it discredits and cheapens the award for all of the nominees when they don’t have to go up against the best of the best, but let’s be honest: There was no shot the Golden Globes was going to welcome and recognize Joe Rogan as one of them.
(The first award for Best Podcast ended up going to Amy Poehler for her podcast Good Hang with Amy Poehler).
Well left-wing comedian and political commentator Bill Maher also took issue with Rogan being left out of the category, blasting the Golden Globes during the most recent episode of his own podcast, Club Random.
During a conversation with David Spade and Dana Carvey, Maher called out the Golden Globes for living in a “Bluesky bubble,” despite admitting that he identifies with them politically:
“They only nominated like the super woke stuff… I’m sure there are good shows, but it was glaring that Joe Rogan was not nominated. I mean, it is kind of popular, and it is known, and he’s very good at what he does.
So if you’re going to have an inaugural podcast category, maybe… It just speaks to living in the Bluesky bubble. But get out of your f—ing bubble.
I want to be one of you. I am one of you. But you’re just so hard to defend, because you’re just such smug a–holes. And this town is the epicenter of the problem. It really is.”
I mean, he’s kind of spot on. The kind of people who vote for awards like the Golden Globes look down on people like Rogan because he doesn’t automatically dismiss views that they disagree with, and he doesn’t simply parrot the latest woke talking points.
Because of that, chances are Rogan will never be considered for a Golden Globe. But that only makes the whole award look even more meaningless to those outside of the Bluesky bubble.
