The Joe Rogan Experience is downloaded almost 200 million times a month and brought in US$30 million last year, making the comedian and UFC commentator the highest-paid podcaster of 2019, according to Forbes. Rogan’s podcast guests have included Tesla CEO Elon Musk, US Senator Bernie Sanders, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and actor Robert Downey Jnr.

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Rogan, whose eclectic career has spanned various industries, from comedy to martial arts, is no stranger to controversy. Before his Spotify deal he was criticised for hosting guests like alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones – who called the Sandy Hook mass shooting a hoax – on his podcast twice.

Here’s what we know about Rogan’s life, career, and his new deal with Spotify.

Rogan reassured fans his podcast wouldn’t change or dumb itself down as a result of the Spotify deal

On the day the Spotify deal was announced, Rogan wrote on Instagram that his podcast will remain free.

“It will be the exact same show,” he said. “It’s just a licensing deal, so Spotify won’t have any creative control over the show. They want me to just continue doing it the way I’m doing it right now.”

Rogan’s YouTube channel, where all 11 years of his podcast have been released, will no longer host full episodes starting in September, but short clips will still be uploaded to YouTube.

The host has almost immediately come under fire during the first few weeks of his podcast becoming available on Spotify

Last week in an all-hands meeting, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek addressed concerns raised by some employees that certain episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience were transphobic, Vice reported.

The meeting came after Rogan joked on one of his episodes that Caitlyn Jenner’s trans identity was inspired by the Kardashian women. After the episode’s release, Jenner called Rogan a “transphobic a**” in an interview with TMZ.

Also last week, Rogan apologised for repeating a false claim that “left-wing activists” had been arrested for setting forest fires in Oregon – reports the FBI had already debunked.

“I need to make an apology and a retraction,” Rogan said in a video posted to his Instagram account. “I said something on the podcast with Douglas Murray about people getting arrested for lighting fires, and I got duped. It’s wrong.”

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Rogan claims his confidence comes from learning martial arts at a young age

Originally from Newark, New Jersey, Rogan had a somewhat nomadic childhood. His parents divorced when he was five and he and his mother spent time in San Francisco and Florida before settling in Newton, Massachusetts.

Rogan started practising martial arts at age 13, which he said in a 2014 interview with SB Nation was “the best decision I ever made in my entire life”.

He added that martial arts “gave me not just confidence, but also a different perspective of myself and what I was capable of. I knew that I could do something I was terrified of and that was really difficult, and that I could excel at it. It was a big deal for me.”

Rogan has had every job under the sun – from limo-driver to builder to TV actor

In the 1980s and 90s, Rogan worked as a stand-up comedian in Boston and New York City. On the side, he taught martial arts at Boston University, drove limousines, did construction work and even got a gig as a driver for a private investigator who’d had his license revoked after a DUI, Rogan has said previously on his podcast.

Then, in 1994 he moved to Los Angeles and landed his first major acting role in the Fox sitcom Hardball. He also starred in the NBC sitcom NewsRadio from 1995 to 1999.

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Rogan also hosted Fear Factor, a game show that challenged contestants to compete in physically and mentally challenging stunts, from 2001 to 2006.

He returned to host the seventh and final season of Fear Factor as late as 2011 when the show was briefly revived. (MTV revived the series yet again in 2017, with rapper Ludacris as the host.)

Rogan said that although he made “tons of money” from his TV career, it didn’t bring him as much satisfaction as stand-up comedy: “One of the things I realised while this was all going on is [TV is] not nearly as fun as the live stand-up comedy,” Rogan told the Globe and Mail in 2007. “Live stand-up comedy is always better, it’s more exciting, it’s more enjoyable when it’s done right. It’s definitely more entertaining.”

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He’s done stand-up comedy specials for both Netflix and Comedy Central and was slated to do several US shows in April, May and June 2020, but they were rescheduled for autumn due to Covid-19, according to his website.

Rogan has said he talks about “all sorts of things” in his comedy routines. “I talk about drugs and life and sex, the mysteries of space, and the way we look at the world,” he said in a 2008 interview with The Boston Globe.

Rogan’s interest in comedy began when his parents took him to see legendary comedian Richard Pryor when he was about 13 years old. “I was looking around the theatre at people falling out of their chairs, slapping the chairs in front of them, and I’m thinking, ‘How is this guy doing this? He’s just talking,’” he said in a 2006 interview with UFC. “And that experience profoundly influenced me. That was the first exposure I ever had to stand-up comedy.”

Rogan has been a UFC commentator since 2002

Rogan started working at the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) in the late 1990s, doing backstage and post-fight interviews for the martial arts promotion company. By 2002, he had started doing commentary.

Rogan has interviewed some of the biggest fighters in the industry and “played a major role in propelling the sport to where it stands today”, Vinayak Manoj wrote for Essentially Sports.

“He’s educated more people in mixed martial arts than anybody ever,” UFC president Dana White told Rolling Stone magazine in 2015. “He’s the best fight announcer who has ever called a fight in the history of fighting.”

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His podcast is popular with American men for a reason

Rogan launched his podcast in December 2009. Today, The Joe Rogan Experience consistently ranks at the top of Apple’s Top 100 Podcasts, and his YouTube channel has 8.44 million subscribers.

As Devin Gordon wrote for The Atlantic last year, Rogan is particularly appealing to many American men.

Rogan is “a tireless optimist, a grab-life-by-the-throat-and-bite-out-its-oesophagus kind of guy, and many, many men respond to that”, Gordon wrote. “I respond to that. The competitive energy, the drive to succeed, the search for purpose, for self-respect. Get better every day. Master your domain.”

On his podcast, Rogan is known for putting his guests at ease and getting them to speak candidly

In September 2019, Rogan famously appeared to smoke marijuana with Elon Musk, as the Tesla founder opened up about his childhood.

According to The Atlantic’s Devin Gordon, Rogan is adept at captivating audiences because he is patient enough “to let his interviews be an experience rather than an inquisition. And, go figure, his approach has the virtue of putting his subjects at ease and letting the conversation go to poignant places”.

Rogan regularly courts controversy

In one of his podcast episodes in 2013, Rogan talked about going to see one of the Planet of the Apes movies and described the neighbourhood he saw the movie in as “Planet of the Apes”.

“We walked into Planet of the Apes,” Rogan said. “We walked into Africa. We walked in the door, and there was no white people. There was no white people.”

He later said on his podcast that it was a “racist thing for me to say”, but added “It wasn’t a negative experience,” according to The New York Times.

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Rogan has also been widely criticised for hosting his long-time friend Alex Jones – the right-wing conspiracy theorist and InfoWars host who called the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting that killed 20 first-graders a hoax – on his podcast twice, once in 2017 and again in 2019.

While Rogan and Jones reportedly had a falling out about Jones’ Sandy Hook claims, the pair later made up, culminating in Jones’ second appearance on the podcast. Jones later acknowledged that the killings occurred.

When asked, a Spotify spokesperson recently declined to comment on Rogan’s controversies but noted that all music and podcasts on Spotify are subject to their content guidelines.

Rogan has made it clear he is not part of a plan by the UFC to rent out a private island for fights during the coronavirus pandemic

In early April, UFC president Dana White said he had secured a private island at an undisclosed location for a forthcoming UFC 249 event, which had originally been slated to be in New York City but had to move due to the pandemic.

“I won’t be able to get international fighters, all of them, into the US, so I have a private island,” White told TMZ Sports. “I’m going to start flying them all into the private island and doing international fights from there.”

On his podcast, Rogan distanced himself from the plan: “I guess someone’s gonna commentate,” he said. “It’s not gonna be me.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, White’s private island plans didn’t pan out. UFC 249 was postponed until May 9 and took place at the empty VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida, after the company formulated a safety plan that included Covid-19 antibody blood tests and no face-to-face interviews.

At the event, Rogan interviewed fighters face-to-face and shook their hands as usual, without maintaining social distancing or wearing a mask, The New York Times times pointed out.

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Rogan was once challenged to a cage fight by Blade star Wesley Snipes

According to Rogan, Snipes was looking for a “quick payday” to pay off his IRS debt.

“I think when he researched it and found out I’d been doing martial arts my whole life,” Rogan later told Men’s Journal. “If I’d fought Wesley Snipes, I was 99.9 per cent convinced all I had to do was grab that guy and choke the life out of him.”

Rogan said he’s often been asked why he doesn’t fight professionally instead of just commentating. “And I say, ‘Why – so I can get my a** kicked?’” he explained to Men’s Journal.

Despite not fighting professionally, Rogan maintains an intense training regimen

He trains with the legendary Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructors Jean-Jacques Machado and Eddie Bravo in Los Angeles.

Apart from martial arts, Rogan trains mainly with kettlebells in routines adapted from the teachings of “kettlebell gurus” Mark Cheng and Steve Maxwell. He often spars with friends in the Octagon ring in his garage.

Rogan has said he prefers doing fewer repetitions more often than pushing your muscles until they temporarily give out: “I don’t believe in going to failure,” he said on his podcast. “What I think you’re best off doing is less repetitions but more often … And you’ll get stronger quicker.”

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Rogan is also known for his unconventional diet and enthusiasm for psychedelic drugs

Rogan’s website describes him as a “psychedelic adventurer”. In 2015, Rogan told Rolling Stone he starts his days with a Vitamix smoothie of kale, spinach, celery, ginger, garlic, apple and coconut oil.

In January 2020, Rogan announced he would be starting a carnivore diet, eating nothing but meat and eggs for the month. Less than halfway through the month, he wrote on Instagram that he noticed a boost in his energy levels, but that the diet also gave him severe diarrhoea.

Rogan is a proponent of nootropic supplements, which are said to enhance cognitive function. But scientists say there’s “no strong evidence” they work as intended, per WebMD.

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The podcaster is also a self-professed fan of DMT, an illegal hallucinogenic drug with effects similar to LSD and magic mushrooms. In the same Rolling Stone interview, Rogan said his experiences with DMT were difficult to put into words.

“It’s a billion roller coasters, plus aliens,” he told the magazine. “It is whatever it is. I don’t know what it is. A chemical gateway to another dimension? A portal of souls you can tap into? I don’t see any negative to it.”

Rogan also told Rolling Stone that he floats in a sensory deprivation tank in his basement a few times a week.

He admires US Senator Bernie Sanders

In a podcast episode with conservative New York Times opinion writer Bari Weiss on January 21, Weiss asked Rogan who he planned to vote for in the presidential primary.

“I think I’ll probably vote for Bernie,” Rogan said. “He’s been insanely consistent his entire life. He’s basically been saying the same thing, been for the same thing his whole life. And that in and of itself is a very powerful structure to operate from.”

Sanders had previously been a guest on the Joe Rogan Experience in August 2019. Rogan has also said on his podcast that he would rather vote for Donald Trump than Joe Biden because he believes Biden is struggling with dementia. He added that “it’s not an endorsement of Trump”.

Rogan has been married to Jessica Ditzel since 2009 and has a golden retriever named Marshall

Ditzel is a model-turned-producer, MarketWatch reported. The couple reportedly lives in Bell Canyon, Los Angeles, in a home Rogan bought for US$5 million in 2018.

Rogan’s golden retriever, Marshall Mae Rogan, has more than 633,000 Instagram followers and has snuggled with Robert Downey Jnr.

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This article originally appeared on Business Insider.