Is Theo Von the Next Joe Rogan?

Von’s This Past Weekend is huge. It’s currently the eighth-most-popular podcast in America, sandwiched between This American Life and The Ben Shapiro Show. No. 1 is of course The Joe Rogan Experience, where the bros burble for hours on end. Where cigars are smoked and theories are floated. Von has been on Rogan’s show multiple times, and while This Past Weekend is fully inside the Rogan algorithm—partaking of the same vibe of heady masculinity and unsanctioned speech; tapping the same world of canceled professors, polar plungers, hungover stand-ups, supplement salesmen, moonlighting mystics, grifting neuroscientists, and gleaming mixed-martial-arts warriors (and wouldn’t the ultimate Rogan guest be all of the above?)—it’s also … different.