Joe Rogan has called himself a "hypocrite" over his stance against zoos, having taken his children to see animals at such spaces in the past.
The powerhouse podcaster, who has three daughters with Jessica Ditzel, his wife of 15 years, shared his stance on zoos when standup comic Raanan Hershberg made an appearance on a recent installment of The Joe Rogan Experience.
Hershberg spoke about how much he has enjoyed Rogan's past stand-up albums, before bringing up one of his jokes about "the tiger in the zoo, the monster in the box."
"I kind of remember it," Rogan responded, before going on to talk about incidents where animals in enclosures at zoos have attacked people.
"I don't agree with zoos at all," Rogan later told Hershberg. "I'm a hypocrite, because I took my kids to them because I want my kids to be able to see these animals because it's kind of cool to see a 2-year-old staring at a hippo. But the reality is they're prisons. They're prisons for animals that didn't do anything wrong."
Hershberg countered that "it's a little different in the sense that their life outside of prison is pretty messed up, getting killed."
"It's natural," Rogan argued. "It's not... they're not all getting killed, you know. They're doing some killing, too, which is also unnatural that you just feed these things that live to kill."
"I guess the zoo is better for the prey," Hershberg noted.
"It's definitely better," Rogan responded. "I used to have a joke about that too, about the only animal that I don't feel bad about in the zoo is giraffes. They don't seem to have any problem with it at all, like another day with no lions."
"They have a big enough enclosure and they can walk around they don't seem to have any problem with it," he added.
The former Fear Factor host then returned his focus to criticizing zoos, as he recommended that people wanting to see animals should do so at African-style safaris.
"The whole thing's crazy," Rogan said. "And I get it does protect some endangered species, but boy I think if we really care about animals we should put a lot more money into it and there should be a lot larger spaces. It shouldn't be anything remotely resembling a zoo."
"It sick," he added of zoos. "The way they do it in Africa is the way to do it if you really want to go see an animal. You should go on a f****** safari and drive through these areas where they're they're killing gazelles and they're doing normal lion s***. This is a normal lion in a lion environment and you drive through it and it's probably dangerous as s*** and [you need to] keep your f****** windows rolled [up]."
Rogan and his family have been living in Lake Austin, Texas, since 2020 after relocating from California. He also records his popular podcast in the state. Rogan built himself a state-of-the-art studio in his mansion, which is reportedly worth more than $14 million.
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