Peter Thiel's 2024 "The Joe Rogan Experience" Appearance

Overview

Peter Thiel's 2024 "The Joe Rogan Experience" Appearance refers to the August 2024 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) podcast in which tech billionaire and investor Peter Thiel appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast. Their three-and-a-half-hour conversation touched on a variety of topics and spawned a number of memes by both fans and critics of Thiel. In particular, Thiel's stammering answer to a question about climate change was widely memed by users on social media over the following days.

Background

Joe Rogan's podcast, one of the most popular in the world, has attracted many prominent figures in tech over the years, such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who were prominent collaborators of Peter Thiel. However, Thiel himself had not made an appearance prior to August 2024.

Peter Thiel, one of the most influential venture capitalists and tech investors of his era who played a pivotal role in the creation of Facebook, PayPal and Palantir, as well as the career of politician J.D. Vance, had done public appearances in the past but never ran an active social media presence to the degree that many other tech leaders did.

Thiel's appearance on the August 16th, 2024, episode of The Joe Rogan Experience (#2190), ultimately totaled three and a half hours of discussion between the guest and host of the podcast. The official YouTube release of the interview (seen below) received over 1 million views in the course of three days.^[1]

Media coverage focused on a number of political remarks made by Peter Thiel, including his analysis of California as similar to Saudi Arabia and his analysis of American cities in which he concluded that Miami was the best one to live in.^[2]

Online Reactions

Following the JRE episode's release on August 16th, 2024, many on X / Twitter and elsewhere expressed enthusiasm for Thiel's appearance, posting Sigma Male and Patrick Bateman memes to represent Thiel's devoted following in the tech and finance communities.

For example, on August 16th, X user @0xgaut posted a meme (seen below) commemorating Thiel's appearance on JRE, earning over 8,000 likes in the course of three days.^[6]

Global Warming Exchange

At one point during the interview, Rogan asked Thiel point-blank if he believed in human-created climate change. Thiel's response was:

It's… it is, um… it's, it's, um… well, the… lemme.. it's… I-I-there's several different things one could say, it's uh… I.. it's possible climate change is happening, it's possible, we don't have great accounts of why that's going on.^[3]

Following the episode, posters then used the 15-second audio of Thiel saying filler words to illustrate difficult questions that they might be asked. For example, on August 17th, 2024, X user @netcapgirl posted an imagined response of Thiel answering a question about the status of a relationship, earning over 4,200 likes in two days.^[4]

ThielCore Edits

Some posters also made edits of Peter Thiel's appearance in mid-August 2024, including X user @bitcloud (seen below) on August 18th, 2024, who posted a "1 hour of ThielCore to build and accelerate to" meme, which featured an edit of Thiel using filler words during the podcast paired with music and images of various corporate and industrial activities, receiving over 5,700 likes in a day.^[5]

Related Entries

Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel is a German-American billionaire investor and tech mogul who co-founded PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and he was also an important early investor in Facebook. During the late 2000s and 2010s, Thiel was involved in a high-profile feud with the news site Gawker and notably funded Hulk Hogan's sex tape lawsuit. Over the years, Thiel has also funded a variety of right-wing political campaigns and cultural projects that have caused him to be a contentious figure among some online.

Search Interest

External References