Joe Rogan Cries During Podcast—’It Was Agony’

Joe Rogan was in tears during a rare moment of vulnerability on his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience.

The comedian was chatting with his guest, Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker, Sebastian Junger, who appeared on the podcast to promote his new book, In My Time of Dying, about near-death experiences.

The conversation eventually turned to people Rogan had lost in his life and he teared up as he spoke of his grandparents.

“He was old and she was old; they were dying and I knew she was going to die probably quicker than him and it was this transition in my life from me going forth on this great adventure to seeing this man that I loved. It’s darkness,” he said.

Rogan spoke about how close he was to his grandfather as he pursued his dreams of being on stage. The podcast host talked about how he had turned away from religion until his grandparents got sick.

”I was very close to my grandfather. I loved him very, very much. I stayed with him when I moved to New York. I was 23 years old and I didn’t have a place to stay, I didn’t have any money… I was going to chase my dream so I was living with my grandfather and my grandmother had an aneurysm. They gave my grandmother 72 hours and she lived for 12 years,” he said.

Rogan said: ”She was bedridden and I was staying with him and her and my grandfather had been dealing with his wife dying for all these years and she would moan in pain. You’d hear these sounds.”

The comedian, who also is a UFC commentator, choked up before continuing.

“It was agony, it was depression. They lived in a very bad neighborhood,” he said. Rogan described how a realtor tried to convince his grandparents to move out of the neighborhood, which had a lot of drug users there, and the “depressing” impact it had on his grandfather’s final years.

Rogan then described being at the funeral and seeing his grandfather’s body.

“He’s not there, he wasn’t there anymore, he’s not moving,” Rogan said, and described how seeing the body made him understand the concept of a person’s soul.

“I had this feeling of understanding, came across me and at that moment… I started considering a soul.”

He added: “I started thinking how arrogant it is to assume that you know more than, that all these people for thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years people have talked about souls,” describing how the concept of a soul features in many religions and philosophies.

“It’s not a universal idea, it’s not common to one specific culture… and I think it’s something that we intuitively understand… It’s intertwined with Consciousness. That’s what I think, this is just my own feeling.”

Rogan grew up in Newark, New Jersey, and is estranged from his father. He previously described being “3/4 Italian 1/4 Irish,” because three of his grandparents were from Italy and “Pappy Rogan is straight off the boat from Ireland.”