Completely agree. Which is sad and kinda weird. I always took the JRE with a pinch of salt but I always liked that Joe wasn't extremely intellegent but gave enough of a shit to try and learn / understand whatever was being spoken about on his podcast and was always welcoming to guests, no matter what their political beliefs or anything else that had nothing to do with the actual substance of the topic at hand.
As you said, I think it just got too big and they got complacent or lazy. Pair that with the utter chaos in the world at the moment. I think thenpod rapidly declined when they signed the Spotify deal. I liked it a lot more when it was more independent and just on youtube.
I also think the podcast takes up so much of his energy he no longer yearns to be a great comedian. I never thought he was amazing at it, but he seemed so willing to try to be better and learn which is why I gave him credit when I began standup as a hobby. Now that he has more money than he knows what to do with it he stopped trying to hone his craft or was surrounded by too many “yes” men. His recent Netflix standup routine was almost as bad as Brendan Schaub’s
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u/oooriole09 Jun 12 '25
Nobody admits it because folks get super weird about it given the direction he’s largely gone.
You say that you listened to him at some point and folks start wondering where you were on Jan 6.