Joe Rogan, the host of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, has apologized for using the “N-word” many times across several episodes.
The spliced tape of Rogan repeating the racist slur over 20 times was the “most regretful and embarrassing thing I’ve ever had to talk about publicly,” according to Rogan, who is already at the heart of conversations on Spotify regarding vaccination disinformation. According to Cnet, Spotify secretly removed 70 episodes of the show off their site.
“There’s a video that’s out, that’s a compilation of me saying the N-word,” Rogan says in a clip posted to his Instagram Saturday morning. “It’s a video that’s made of clips taken out of context of me of 12 years of conversations on my podcast, and it’s all smushed together, and it looks fuckin’ horrible, even to me.”
Rogan continued, adding that he’s aware “most people” believe there’s “no context where a white person is ever allowed to say that word, never mind publicly on a podcast, and I agree with that now.”
“I haven’t said it in years, but for a long time, when I would bring that word up, like if it would come up in conversation, instead of saying ‘the N-word’, I would just say the word,” he said. “I thought as long as it was in context, people would understand what I was doing.”
Rogan then elaborated on the context of his usage of the racial slur, and said he would often be quoting or referencing points or phrases shared by comedians like Richard Pryor. As he explains, he “never used it to be racist, because I’m not racist.”