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Home » Transcript of Joe Rogan Podcast: #2448 w/ Andrew Doyle

Transcript of Joe Rogan Podcast: #2448 w/ Andrew Doyle

Editor’s Notes: In this episode of the Joe Rogan Experience #2448, Joe Rogan reunites with author and satirist Andrew Doyle to discuss the shifting landscape of modern culture and authoritarianism. Doyle introduces his latest book, The End of Woke, exploring how “woke” ideology has manifested as a new form of social control and what the burgeoning counter-revolution might look like. The conversation dives deep into the erosion of free speech in the UK, highlighting the staggering number of citizens arrested for social media posts and the subjective nature of “grossly offensive” language laws. Together, they analyze the dangers of using compassionate language as a mask for exclusion and the vital importance of protecting open debate in a free society. (Feb 4, 2026)

TRANSCRIPT:

Reconnecting After Six Years

JOE ROGAN: Yes, Andrew.

ANDREW DOYLE: Hello.

JOE ROGAN: Good to see you, brother.

ANDREW DOYLE: Good to see you, too.

JOE ROGAN: It has been, you said, six years. Almost to the day. Almost to the day last time. So lots changed right before everything went crazy.

ANDREW DOYLE: That’s it.

JOE ROGAN: Right before.

ANDREW DOYLE: Yeah. The whole world sort of shifted.

JOE ROGAN: Everything went kooky around March, right?

ANDREW DOYLE: Yeah. So it was February 2020. And then we have Covid and then we had Trump in between that. We had BLM that summer of 2020. Everything just exploded. Yeah, and then everything shifted.

The End of Woke and the Pendulum of Authoritarianism

JOE ROGAN: And then you wrote a book. It’s called The End of Woke: How the Culture War Went Too Far and What to Expect from the Counter Revolution. Isn’t that how it always goes, though? It goes like we go too far and then we overcorrect and we become Nazis.

ANDREW DOYLE: Yeah, that’s it exactly.

JOE ROGAN: Well, you know, it’s the opposite. We go socialist.

ANDREW DOYLE: You know, it’s a big pendulum. I get that sort of goes back and forth. I mean, I was trying to, in that book, I’m trying to make the point that what woke was was like a kind of the latest manifestation of a kind of innate authoritarian impulse. I think human beings are by default quite inclined towards just shutting people up if they don’t like them.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ANDREW DOYLE: Just imposing their authority. And so woke, I mean, a lot of people are annoyed that I’ve called it The End of Woke. I’m not saying it’s all over. Let’s just go home, forget about it. It’s still going on. But the point about it is that in its current manifestation, things are changing now so rapidly. We are moving into some sort of new phase.

And that authoritarianism, which we’ve associated with the left, might come up from the right. It could come up from anywhere. It’s what you say about the pendulum. So you just have to be kind of vigilant about it. I don’t think we were vigilant. I think that’s why woke happened. We weren’t vigilant against this prospect that, you know, authoritarianism could emerge in what we thought was a free society.

JOE ROGAN: Well, authoritarianism, it snuck in through a sheep costume.

ANDREW DOYLE: Yeah. A wolf in a sheep’s costume.

Authoritarianism Disguised as Compassion

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. It was a costume of being more inclusive, being more open minded, being a better society, being kinder. You know, it led to child trans surgeries, led to chaos. It led to a lot of really f*ing freaky things that you would have never expected. People saying that the First Amendment’s not important, what’s more important is protecting people.

ANDREW DOYLE: Well, that was the key, wasn’t it? The point was that the way it worked was that it was gulling people through language that sounded really sweet and kittenish and fluffy. You know, things like equity. Well, that sounds a lot like equality, doesn’t it? But it doesn’t mean equality. It means treating people unequally to ensure equal outcomes according to group identity. That’s a very different thing.

You say you’re talking about let’s make everything inclusive, but what you really mean is let’s exclude anyone who disagrees with what we’ve got to say. So you’re using language to mean the exact opposite. They say “gender affirming care.” Do they mean that or do they mean affirming what is effectively a pseudo-scientific belief among vulnerable people? So it’s all about misusing language.

Because most people I think, or I like to think are pretty decent. Yeah, most people want to be kind and want to be fair. And when you hear these activists saying, “be kind, be compassionate or else,” you kind of think, okay, well, maybe their intentions are good, but also they’re pretty scary.

I mean, there’s a weird thing with the woke thing, which was that on the one hand, it proclaimed to be this sort of great, virtuous, kind, progressive “right side of history.” How often did you hear that phrase? And at the same time, they’re like dangerous dogs. You’re like, I better not piss them off. I better not say the wrong thing in the workplace because they’ll destroy you.

JOE ROGAN: Well, I always find that the most preposterous the idea is, and the least capable it is to stand up to scrutiny, the more violent the enforcement of that idea will be, because you cannot combat that. You can’t defend that idea with logic, so you have to defend it with fear and force and just shouting people down. And that’s what we saw.

And that it’s a natural impulse of human beings. When you’re arguing with a kid, you know, when you’re a kid and you’re arguing with a kid and you say something, you don’t even know, you shut the f* up, like they just started scaring you.

The UK’s Failure to Protect Free Speech

ANDREW DOYLE: So why is it, though, that some countries and some societies seem to protect themselves better than others against that, against that impulse?