Illustration: Teng Meu for Bloomberg Businessweek
Joe Rogan Invaded Austin and Became Comedy’s New Kingmaker
The world’s most controversial podcaster opened a comedy club there, snatched the stand-up title from Los Angeles and shook up an entire industry.
One day in March, during the taping of his podcast, Joe Rogan looked over at his guest, comedian Kevin James, and delivered a well-polished sales pitch. It was time, Rogan said to the former star of the CBS sitcom The King of Queens, to consider a permanent change of scenery. “Come to Texas,” Rogan said. “Come on, buddy, I got you.”
Since Rogan had relocated his family from Los Angeles to Austin four years earlier, he explained, he’d cultivated a lifestyle tailor-made for the new age of the comedy profession—one ruled by podcasts, rather than Hollywood movies and sitcoms. Comics were no longer so tightly tethered to the soundstages of New York or Los Angeles. They could live almost anywhere. But Austin, he pitched, was the new center of the comedy universe.