Spotify podcaster Joe Rogan says liberals who moved to Texas should think twice before trying to remake the state into the places many of them fled.
Rogan’s Tuesday warning was aimed at left-leaning Texans and transplants who want to push the state’s politics blue.
Rogan put it more directly for left-leaning Texans and transplants.
“The liberals that want to turn Texas blue, like, don’t. You’re going to ruin it,” he cautioned.
Rogan was not arguing that Austin should lose its liberal streak. Rogan framed the city’s oddball appeal as something that survives because it sits inside a much redder political environment.
He said the people pushing hardest to change Texas would end up hurting themselves.
“You’re going to ruin it,” he said. “You’re going to ruin it for you too. You don’t get it. Balance is important.”
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Rogan compared the politics to an ecosystem, saying the balance breaks when one side wipes out the other.
“You can’t kill all the predators because then the deer get overrun, and you’re hitting them with cars. And you can’t kill all the deer because then there’s no food,” Rogan said.
The larger point, he argued, was stability. “Balance. And you need balance with humans, too,” he said.
For Rogan, Austin works because it is the exception, not the rule.
“The Austin balance is a great balance,” Rogan said. “It’s a liberal city surrounded by, like, hardcore Republicans with guns and tigers.”
That led into a local phrase Rogan brought up during the conversation.
“There’s this saying about Austin: ‘Keep Austin Weird … and surrounded,’” Rogan said.
Forrest Galante stopped him on the last part of the phrase.
“Surrounded by red people. Like it’s all red states around you, and it’s this pocket of blue that’s in the center of this red state,” Rogan explained. “I think that’s good for everybody. I think that’s good. It’s a balance.”
Rogan said outsiders often miss that distinction, especially the “coastal elites” and “coastal snobs” who assume Texas is packed with “rednecks and ignorant people and foolish people.”
“It’s not that way at all. Especially Austin. Austin is like one of the most, like, liberal, easygoing, progressive cities, but even the progressives here, they’re like, more reasonable,” he said.
He described Austin’s progressives as different from the left-wing politics associated with Los Angeles and New York, even after liberal Texans moved somewhat left in recent years.
Rogan also recently revisited a far darker podcast moment.
The moment involved Sheldon Johnson, a former guest whose reform-story image later collided with a gruesome murder case.
Sheldon Johnson appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience” in 2024 with civil rights attorney Josh Dubin, who leads an organization focused on advocating for people who have been wrongly convicted.
Johnson had left prison in 2019 after serving 25 years for armed robberies from 1999 and later worked as a client advocate for the public defender’s office in Queens.
While talking about sociopaths with physician Zach Bush last Wednesday, Rogan brought up what happened after Johnson’s appearance.
Rogan recalled Johnson’s later arrest in grisly shorthand.
“We had a guy in the studio that cut a guy’s head off after the podcast. He killed a guy and cut his head off,” Rogan said.
Johnson then allegedly visited a man he had “a beef with,” killed him, put him in a suitcase, wore a wig and tried to escape through a hallway caught on camera, Rogan claimed.
Johnson’s spring 2024 arrest came after the death of 44-year-old Collin Small. Prosecutors accused him of second-degree murder, and Johnson pleaded not guilty.
The allegations were gruesome. Small was accused of being shot inside a New York City apartment before his body was cut apart and hidden in multiple places.
Inside a Bronx apartment, police found a torso in a blue bin and a head in a freezer. The call that brought authorities there came from neighbors who had heard gunshots and noticed a stranger moving in and out with cleaning supplies.
The New York Post reported that a man could be heard pleading before two gunshots inside the apartment building.
Surveillance evidence added to the disturbing timeline. Investigators said video showed a man matching Johnson’s description arrive on the sixth floor, look around and enter the apartment.
Other footage showed him with cleaning supplies and later leaving around 2 a.m. with a blue bin before returning in different clothes and a blond wig.
New York Department of Corrections records added one unresolved wrinkle to the case. Johnson and Small had both served prison time, but the nature of their relationship remained unclear.
Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark described the alleged killing in brutal terms.
“The defendant allegedly shot the victim in the head and then carved up the man’s body, taking drastic measures to hide the evidence,” Clark said. “This crime was as cruel as it was gruesome.”
Johnson had sounded very different during his Rogan appearance, talking about his GED, his criminal justice reform work and the decision he claimed to have made after prison.
“I made the decision that I was going to walk away, and I didn’t care about what the consequences was,” Johnson told Rogan. “And I said to myself, ‘I’ve been doing bad for so long. I’m going to try to do something good.’”
He also spoke about his family and the reputation he no longer wanted to carry.
“I had a wife, I had kids, I had family still. My son was growing up, hearing stories of my so-called notoriety. I just didn’t want to be that dad.”