As an avid consumer of podcasts, I like most of the world, more than occasionally listen to an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience. Usually, it’s because I am interested in the guest or guests on his show.

Rogan, a former sitcom actor and stand-up comedian, is a highly influential voice in the world of entertainment and politics. Many credit his endorsement of Donald Trump as a contributing factor in Trump winning a second term presidency.

But how many people actually sit through his meandering interviews that sometimes clock up four hours of listening time?

It’s quite confounding to me that Rogan’s podcast is so popular and successful. Yes, he gets some of the biggest names in show entertainment, politics and business into his studio, but he is highly skilled at turning what should be a fascinating discussion into something often banal and boring (and very, very long).

A good example of this is Rogan’s interview with legendary film maker Quentin Tarantino and the man Tarantino wrote Pulp Fiction with Roger Avary. Both won an Academy Award for best original screenplay in 1994.

Avary has written and directed a few interesting, somewhat successful films including Killing Zoe and The Rules of Attraction, but his achievements pale in comparison to Tarantino, one of the greatest writer-directors of the last 50 years whose films include cinematic classics such as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Inglorious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

But if you were hoping to hear from Tarantino about the making of these movies or his favourite films or anything about his career, you would have left the marathon interview (3hrs and 17min) very disappointed. It’s completely dominated by Avary. Tarantino hardly gets a word in and the whole interview is a massive letdown. Rogan, as he so often does, allows the discussion to go in whatever direction it does (rather than guide it back to an even keel) and Tarantino hardly gets a word in.

Similarly, interviews with interesting actors like Billy Bob Thornton (a long discussion about jeans and fashion), Russell Crowe (a long boring story about a trip to Vegas and explanations about the rules of cricket) and Matthew McConaughey (talking about poetry and his philosophy on life) were so boring and off topic that I soon gave up.

Boring interviews

Perhaps I am in the minority, but when I listen to a famous actor being interviewed, I like to hear them talk about their craft, their experiences being creative, their iconic roles and funny, interesting and insider stories about the people they worked alongside and how they came to be who they are. Yes, I want to hear about their struggles, addictions and daily habits and get to understand their psychology, but most just waffle on endlessly.

Rogan’s interview with Lionel Ritchie started off OK but then descended into incredibly boring anecdotes and I also gave up.

In his defense, Rogan is by no means the only successful podcaster prone to waffle and self-indulgence in the name of long-form podcasting. Legendary British documentary maker Louis Theroux’s chat with Sean Penn on his podcast is a trainwreck.

And while Adam Buxton does do a lot of interesting rambling interviews, they often veer off course and into very boring territory. And they are far too long.

This is not to say that Rogan does not discuss interesting things, and some of his interviews are fascinating.

Of the dozens of episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience I have listened to, there have been a handful where I have made it all the way to the end. Probably the one I have enjoyed the most is Rogan’s chat with Joe Pistone, a retired FBI agent who infiltrated the Bonanno crime family between 1976 and 1981 and inspired the great movie Donnie Brasco (starring Johnny Depp and Al Pacino). It was a truly incredible insight into the life of an undercover agent and Rogan on this occasion did a great job steering the discussion.

I also enjoyed his interview with controversial British comedy writer Graham Linehan (creator of Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd) despite Rogan indefensibly having clearly never watched any episodes of these shows and being completely clueless about who Linehan was apart from his views on the transgender community.

I also enjoyed for a bit Rogan’s chat with independent US senator Bernie Sanders (where they surprisingly agreed on a lot of stuff) but even though it was short by JRE standards at just over an hour, I lost interest and didn’t finish it.

Wading through the waffle

It is probably the case that there is something interesting or thought-provoking in every episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, but you have to wade through so much irrelevant trivia and banter to get to these nuggets. That’s why I reckon a lot of people digest these episodes in the short soundbites that make their way onto social media. I’d love to know what proportion of listeners actually make it to the end.

It’s a shame Rogan that things aren’t more finely tuned and more tightly edited given the incredible calibre of guests he regularly has on his show. I know its long-form interviews but cutting these back to say 90 minutes maximum (still very long for an interview) would make for a much more enjoyable listening experience in my humble opinion.

Here are some of my other gripes with the show:

Lack of research

It appears to me that Rogan often does very little research about the guests he interviews, relying instead on his producer Jamie Vernon to do much of the research and have it at his fingertips when Rogan needs it during his chats. As mentioned above, I was astounded that Rogan had never watched an episode of The IT Crowd, Father Ted or Black Books before interviewing legendary British sitcom creator Graham Linehan.

Never introduces his guests

One of my pet peeves about the JRE is the lack of an even basic introduction. “Today my guest is…you may know him from such films as…He has been in the news of late for x, y and z” Instead, Rogan just begins chatting to his guest as if it’s just the two of them having coffee. Not a word of introduction. If he just took a minute or two to introduce his guest, what they have been up to most recently and set the scene it would make a world of difference. Not all of his guests are household names. I find this particularly annoying when he has a number of guests on his show, who are debating such as when he had the historian Douglas Murray debating the comedian, Dave Smith about Israel and Gaza. It would have been extremely helpful to know a bit about these guys who disagreed so vehemently.

Lack of structure

This leads into the overarching issue of a lack of structure. If you listen to really great interviewers like Fresh Air’s Terry Gross or the New Yorker Radio Hour host (and New Yorker editor) David Remnick there is sense of order and progression to their questions. They know everything they need to know about the person they are going to speak to. It feels like the interview is going somewhere, whereas with Rogan it often meanders into the most banal topics.

Very few female guests and people of colour

While he does interview women on his show, the overwhelming majority are white males. I haven’t done a count, but I wouldn’t be surprised if over 90% of his guests are from the latter category. For whatever reason, Rogan seems to find men, especially white men, the most interesting people in the world. While he can obviously interview who he likes, a bit more diversity wouldn’t go astray. And it would make for a better show, in my humble opinion.

And lastly, can we dispense with the nutty conspiracy theories that Rogan seems to squeeze into so many of his discussions?