Joe Rogan on the Craziest Fear Factor Stunts

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. We just did three. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe did 99 something like that. But, um, I did 148 fear factors. Wow. Then I did six more than we did when, when it came back and six or seven more. I think it did. We did 748. Yeah. That was preposterous. That was when I was losing my mind. Was it even one a day or was it less than one? No, no. One took three days. Sometimes you could bang out one in two days. Like you could have the B stunt early in the day and the C stunt at night, like the final stunt at night. How was that process? Um, you know what? Again, very fortunate. It was a great gig, plenty of money and it was all good and it definitely helped my stand up because it gave me fuck you money too. It gave me the, the ability to not worry about like having money in the bank because I'm not, I don't have like extravagant tastes. I'm not too ridiculous with money, but I, I like feeling like I don't have to worry. Like as soon as you don't have to worry about it, okay, good. Don't think about that anymore. Now think about other things. So it, it really helped me there. And also the preposterousness of it was a boundless source of material. Yeah. Which is such a ridiculous show. I love it. I hosted a spin-off that didn't get picked up. What was it called? Say Uncle. Herwitz's show too. Was it? And I was writing on the man show and that's how I knew David Herwitz who was produced in Fear Factor. And they had a show called Say Uncle, which I later parodied in the De Niro movie I wrote, The Comedian called like Stop Uncle or whatever it was. But anyway, the big, one of the big things was a guy, a contestant got in a turkey pen and we like put maple syrup all over him and he rolled around and these like birds like pecked at him and he's, his family's there watching and he starts bleeding and she, and I stopped the thing and the producers were mad. Like you can't stop in the middle. I'm like, the guy's crying. I go and it was just a total disaster. You could tell it was going to be a big hit, but it was risky. And then I remember going to Jimmy Kimmel's like premiere party for Jimmy Kimmel Live. And I saw the head of ABC there. And I had never done this in my entire life. He was like getting a drink and I walked over and I said, please don't pick it up. And I said, yeah, it's, it's rough. It's going to be, it's going to be too hard to stand behind torturing people. Whoa. And they didn't pick it up. And he just kind of looked at me and smiled and this would have been 2003. Yeah. That was right after Fear Factor was first launched. When, when those shows, what happens is you get used to one thing and so you have to do something that's bigger and better than next year. And so when we came back, I felt uncomfortable with a lot of the shit. They know how to do it. Like these stunt guys are top of the food chain. They, but they were doing some sketchy shit. Like one of them, we had these people chained to a tree with a bungee cords that were attached to a helicopter. Okay. And they had to figure out the right locks to unlock the bungee cord that they're the straps that keep them to the tree. And then as soon as they do, they undo the strap and they go fucking shooting out into space into the center of this gigantic Canyon. And they're bouncing underneath this helicopter. And I remember thinking like this, we could do this a thousand times. One of them, someone's going to die. Of course. One of them, someone's going to die and it might be the next one. But it never happened. We got lucky, dude. I really feel like we got lucky. I really, really honestly, 100% feel like we got lucky. There was a few things. First of all, you, there's a certain amount of risks that you take whenever you're doing anything like jumping your car off of a building roof, which we did. We had people fly cars across a train, a moving train. Okay. There's risk involved in that. Right. But the one that scared the shit out of me the most was bull riding. We had people ride bulls. It was the only time I told contestants, don't do it. I'm like, if you, if you want to ask me, I would say, don't do it. On air. No, no, no, no. Before we know on air. I mean, I gave them the standard, but when, you know, what I would talk to them, I'd say, look, this is up to you. Right. I mean, if you want to go on me, people do know how to ride bulls, but you don't know how to ride a bull. We're not teaching you how to ride a bull. You're not going through classes. You're not slowly but surely building up your techniques. You're just going to ride a bull. Don't do that. Don't do that. That's what I would say. And we had this girl, she was like 98 pounds. She got launched off the back of this bull. And she looked at this, these people went fucking flying. That thing's kicking. You got to know how to fall too. Yeah. Barely misses them when it's kicking. I mean, they're wearing helmets and shit, but look at this. Look at this. I mean, come on, man. Look at this. I mean, that's that default, the way she felt like that, that is like getting hit in the back of the head with the world. Yeah. So like my personal feelings about trauma and about what's dangerous and shit like this, this is a no, no, especially for a 90 pound woman like this poor lady. Oh my goodness. And she got up cute little fella I was back then. Yeah, she got up man. She was tough as shit, but everybody, I feel like in that one, I feel like we got lucky. I feel like we rolled the dice because if they stomp you, they, they lacerate livers and crush, crush spoons and they can stop you. The funny thing was those stunt guys are so fucking tough. Those guys are so used to putting their ass on the line that they don't think anything about someone doing something risky to them. That's what you do. You show up for work. Right. And, that's definitely a different in your head, like alpha something animals have to do that. They're like fighters crave that or like, I don't wonder what the family is saying, you know, does it keep them from having a family? There's a, who's going to marry you if you're throwing your life in the line unrelated to war or famine. Wow. I think there's a certain allure to it. I remember that, that TV show, the fall guy. Yeah. How about evil? Can evil women love them. Women loved evil. Can you, that's a good point. Women love risk takers. They like being a Mexican guys that do those flips and shit. And those guys are those guys really shit. And now they have the parkour guys where they like climb up a building with no, any, any, any, uh, any kind of, you should do Dave. So you could smoke. You should do parkour on a, on a, on a iron iron grid.