Episode 1139: Jordan Peterson

TL;DR: Peterson promotes the all-meat “carnivore diet” with zero scientific evidence, advances sweeping cultural claims well outside his clinical expertise, and Rogan amplifies it all without meaningful pushback.

This July 2018 episode features clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson during the peak of his “12 Rules for Life” fame. Across more than three hours, Peterson advances claims about diet, gender, postmodernism, and society that range from unsupported to actively harmful.

Key Problems

1. The Carnivore Diet Promotion

Peterson tells Rogan that he and his daughter Mikhaila have adopted an all-beef, salt, and water diet, crediting it with curing depression, autoimmune disease, and a long list of other ailments.

No clinical evidence supports the carnivore diet. No peer-reviewed randomized trial has shown an all-meat diet treats depression or autoimmune conditions.
Mainstream nutritional science flags eliminating all plant foods as a path to nutritional deficiencies (fiber, vitamin C, folate, several phytonutrients) and elevated cardiovascular risk from saturated fat intake.
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has explicitly warned the carnivore diet “could ultimately lead to nutritional deficiencies and long-term health complications.” Harvard Health
The American Heart Association continues to recommend limiting red and processed meat consumption to reduce cardiovascular disease risk.

“I haven’t eaten anything except meat and salt and water for like two months.” — Peterson

Why it matters: Peterson’s massive audience treats him as an authority. The carnivore diet trend he and Mikhaila helped fuel has pulled vulnerable listeners — many with real autoimmune or mental health conditions — toward an extreme elimination diet that no nutrition science endorses.

2. Misrepresentation of “Postmodern Neo-Marxism”

Peterson’s signature claim — that universities are dominated by “postmodern neo-Marxists” infiltrating Western culture — is a recurring theme on this episode.

The framing is incoherent on its face. Postmodernism and Marxism are philosophically incompatible: postmodernism rejects grand narratives (including Marxism’s class struggle metanarrative).
Philosopher and Peterson critic Stephen Hicks, often cited by Peterson, is contested in academic philosophy. Actual scholars of postmodernism (Lyotard, Foucault, Derrida) explicitly broke with Marxist universalism.
A 2018 piece in Current Affairs documents how Peterson’s “postmodern neo-Marxism” framing collapses under scrutiny. Current Affairs: The Intellectual We Deserve

Why it matters: This frame has become a key recruitment device for the broader “anti-woke” pipeline, dressing political grievance in pseudo-academic vocabulary.

3. Generalizations About Gender and Identity

Peterson repeats his stock claims about innate, hard-wired psychological differences between men and women, and frames left-identity politics as a near-civilizational threat.

His claims about gender differences are often presented as more settled than the actual research supports. Sex-difference research shows overlapping distributions with significant within-group variance, not the categorical contrasts Peterson implies.
Peterson’s earlier comments around this period (e.g., “enforced monogamy” in The New York Times profile) drew sharp criticism from social scientists and remain on his record. NYT: Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy

Joe Rogan’s Role

Rogan treats Peterson with deference throughout. He does not:

Ask for evidence behind the carnivore diet’s miraculous claims.
Push back on the “postmodern neo-Marxism” framing despite its known weakness.
Flag that Peterson is a clinical psychologist, not a nutritionist, endocrinologist, philosopher of science, or political theorist.

Instead, Rogan amplifies. The carnivore diet segment in particular drove a measurable spike in interest — Google Trends shows search interest in “carnivore diet” climbing sharply through 2018 in the wake of Peterson’s JRE appearances.

Real-World Harm

Diet: The carnivore trend, supercharged by Peterson on JRE, has been linked to documented cases of hyperlipidemia and gastrointestinal issues in adopters. Mikhaila Peterson herself later disclosed she’d been hospitalized for an extended period; Jordan Peterson disclosed a severe benzodiazepine dependency requiring medically induced coma treatment in Russia in 2020 — undermining the “cured everything” narrative he advanced in 2018.
Ideological: The “postmodern neo-Marxist” frame has become a recurring touchstone in harassment campaigns aimed at academics, particularly women and people of color in the humanities.

Bottom Line

A respected clinical psychologist has every right to discuss psychology. But on this episode Peterson ranges far outside his expertise into nutrition, climate-adjacent political philosophy, and sweeping cultural diagnosis — and Rogan provides a 200-million-download platform without challenge. That’s the textbook problematic JRE pattern.