TIME Magazine Called Out For Leaving Joe Rogan Off Their List Of 100 Most Influential Podcasts

Seems like they’re forgetting a big one here…

TIME Magazine released their list of the 100 best podcasts of all time yesterday, recognizing the shows that they say are the “most innovative, influential, and informative listens in the history of the medium.”

Yet somehow, they didn’t include Joe Rogan on their list.

The Joe Rogan Experience first launched back in 2009, back in the very early days of podcast’s popularity. The show was groundbreaking for featuring unfiltered, longform interviews with guests from across the spectrum, and it quickly began racking up millions of listens per episode.

Since starting his podcast, Rogan has recorded over 2,300 episodes, featuring everybody from presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders to athletes, artists, comedians, scientists…pretty much anybody you can think of. And Rogan is unique because he’s not afraid to push back on what his guests are saying, with the freewheeling interviews and long form format allowing for deep conversations that you don’t get from a traditional interview.

It’s not an understatement to say he completely revolutionized the medium of podcasts. It’s the most listened to podcast in the world, and in 2020 Rogan signed a $200 MILLION deal with Spotify for exclusive rights to his show, which he followed up with a $250 million contract in 2024 that kept him with Spotify but also allowed the show to return to YouTube.

The importance of the show was on full display in the 2024 election, when then-presidential candidate Donald Trump sat down for a 3-hour long interview with Rogan. All eyes were on Kamala Harris to see if she would do the same, but ultimately she never appeared on the show. On election day, Trump performed exceedingly well with male voters, leading many to question why Harris never appeared on Rogan’s show in an attempt to speak to his largely male audience.

But somehow, Rogan didn’t make TIME’s list of the top 100 podcasts.

Included on the list were true crime podcasts like Serial and Dirty John, as well as news podcasts like The Daily from The New York Times. There was also Call Her Daddy, a female-centered podcast that started at Barstool Sports before signing a $60 million deal in 2021. (It was also one of the few podcasts that Harris appeared on during the 2024 campaign). And there was even a country music podcast on the list, Cocaine & Rhinestones from Tyler Mahan Coe.

Yet somehow, TIME didn’t think Rogan was worthy of being included on the list.

I was wondering if there was a good reason based on their criteria that Rogan might not be on the list, so I decided to dig a little deeper into how they chose their 100 podcasts. Based on their own explanation:

“Much of collating this list, when it came to this particular breed of pod, involved sorting out who can conduct an insightful interview or piece together a compelling monologue from who is just a big name.”

I mean, I’d say getting millions of views on a 3-hour podcast would count as “conducting an insightful interview,” but what do I know.

Of course I’m not alone in noticing the glaring omission. After releasing their list, TIME was immediately called out for their bias in leaving Rogan off the list, which automatically destroys its credibility and makes it look like nothing more than a partisan or biased ranking:

So the biggest podcast of all time The Joe Rogan Experience did not make the top 100 podcasts that shaped a genre? Do you understand how damning that is to your journalistic credibility?

— Mr.Cuse (@Mrcuse1) July 23, 2025

Of course some people think that Rogan was intentionally omitted as ragebait to get people to talk about the list (like I’m doing right now). And many pointed out that there were several other influential podcasts that were left off the list, like Barstool’s Pardon My Take and conservative commentator Ben Shapiro’s podcast, which would seem to indicate a left-leaning bias towards the list. (Not that the media would ever have a left-leaning bias…)

But it really does destroy any credibility to leave Joe Rogan out of the conversation when it comes to podcasts. He changed the game, whether you like it or not.

And to leave Whiskey Riff Raff off the list? Come on now…The post TIME Magazine Called Out For Leaving Joe Rogan Off Their List Of 100 Most Influential Podcasts first appeared on Whiskey Riff.