Episode 1033: Owen Benjamin | The Brogan Report

Why This Episode Is Problematic

Episode 1033 platformed Owen Benjamin during the exact week his transphobic outbursts on Twitter were getting him dropped by his talent agency and having tour dates cancelled. The episode included a now-infamous discussion attacking gender-affirming care for transgender youth.

TL;DR: Joe Rogan gave a three-hour platform to Owen Benjamin in November 2017 just as Benjamin was being publicly cancelled for transphobic rhetoric — and the episode amplified those exact talking points. Benjamin would go on to become one of the most extreme antisemites and conspiracy theorists on the internet. Spotify later removed this episode from the JRE catalog.

Who Is Owen Benjamin?

In 2017, Owen Benjamin was still positioned as a mainstream conservative comedian with credits in The House Bunny and Sullivan & Son. By the time of this episode, he had just begun his public radicalization.

October 2017: Benjamin tweeted that parents of trans children were “child molesters,” opposing gender-affirming hormone therapy.
Result: His talent agency dropped him. The University of Connecticut cancelled his show.
November 2, 2017: The Joe Rogan Experience #1033 airs.

The ADL now describes Benjamin as a propagator of “white supremacy, homophobia, Neo-Nazism, antisemitism, and transphobia.” (ADL)

Key Problems With the Episode

1. Platforming a Public Bigot During His Cancellation Cycle

Rogan booked Benjamin precisely during the public backlash to Benjamin’s anti-trans tweets. Rather than challenging him on those statements, the episode functioned as rehabilitation.

Benjamin’s tweets had called an NPR host raising a trans child a “child molester.”
(Wikipedia: Owen Benjamin)

2. Anti-Trans Discussion of Youth Healthcare

The episode features a segment where Rogan and Benjamin discuss parents of transgender children and gender-affirming care, echoing the same framing that had just gotten Benjamin dropped from his agency.

The discussion treats medically established care as suspect.
Neither participant is qualified to comment on pediatric endocrinology.

What the medical consensus actually says:

American Academy of Pediatrics (2018): Gender-affirming care is supported, with puberty blockers described as reversible and life-saving for many trans youth. (AAP Policy Statement)
Endocrine Society: Endorses age-appropriate gender-affirming care protocols. (Endocrine Society Guidelines)
The Trevor Project (2022): Gender-affirming care is associated with lower rates of depression and suicidal ideation in trans youth. (Trevor Project National Survey)

3. Joe Rogan’s Role

Rogan did not push back on Benjamin’s framing in this episode. He:

Treated Benjamin’s anti-trans positions as a reasonable comedic perspective rather than as the documented bigotry his talent agency had just identified.
Provided three hours of friendly conversation that helped Benjamin pivot from cancelled comic to far-right podcast personality.
Did not return to challenge any of Benjamin’s claims when Benjamin’s radicalization accelerated.

The Aftermath: What Owen Benjamin Became

The platform Rogan provided helped accelerate Benjamin’s transition into the far-right ecosystem. By 2019:

Banned from YouTube, Facebook, Instagram for antisemitic content. (Daily Dot)
Began calling the Holocaust the “Holo-hoax.” (ADL)
Defended Hitler as trying to “clean Germany” of “parasites.” (ADL)
Promoted flat earth, moon landing denial, COVID denial, and anti-vaccine conspiracies.
Used racial slurs against President Obama.
In a 2023 special, called gay people “sodomites.”

In 2022, Benjamin publicly attacked Rogan as well — biting the hand that originally fed his audience. (Newsweek)

Spotify Removed This Episode

When the JRE catalog moved to Spotify exclusively in 2020, episode 1033 was one of more than 100 episodes Spotify removed. The Benjamin episodes (#998, #1033, #1093) were among those scrubbed. (Newsweek)

This is one of the rare cases where the platform itself acknowledged the episode was indefensible.

Why It Matters

Anti-trans rhetoric kills. Trans youth face dramatically higher rates of suicide; affirming care is protective. Platforming opposition to that care, by a non-expert, in a three-hour friendly conversation, contributes to a hostile environment.
Rehabilitation effect. Booking a guest during their cancellation cycle, without challenging the conduct that got them cancelled, signals that bigotry is just another opinion.
Pipeline to extremism. Benjamin’s trajectory — from mainstream comedy to open Holocaust denial in roughly two years — illustrates the danger of giving early-stage radicalizers large, uncritical platforms.