Rogan warns he’d get arrested hosting podcast in UK due to speech laws

Podcast giant Joe Rogan said Wednesday he would probably be arrested if he tried to host his program from the United Kingdom.

For crises ranging from grooming gangs to arresting people for online speech, the U.K. is often touted by American critics as a cautionary tale of liberal government that restricts speech and lets violent criminals run rampant. Guest and fellow podcaster Chris Williamson, who recently left the U.K. for the United States, spoke on “The Joe Rogan Experience” about a study claiming it is the second-most miserable country in the world.

“It can’t just be the weather,” Rogan said.

“Maybe it’s the Online Safety Bill,” Williamson quipped, referring to the U.K.’s Online Safety Act that many critics argue is a nightmare for free speech.

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“Could be,” Rogan said. “That would get me depressed. I’d be so depressed if I lived in England right now. I’d be like, ‘I’m f—–, like legitimately f—–.’

“Like, imagine if I was running this podcast in the exact same way out of England,” Rogan proposed. “I’d get arrested. I saw them. They arrested a teacher because he refused to refer to one of his students as a ‘they,’ and this was like his second infraction. And, so, they arrested him for failure to recognize a singular plural.”

“I don’t like s—-ing on the U.K. because it feels like I’m pulling the ladder up after I’ve just got out of it,” Williamson lamented. “But it’s just, I don’t know how many more ways you can face-plant over and over again.”

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Williamson added that the U.K. seems to be running on borrowed time and nostalgia, and it could look back years from now with shame at some of its current policies. 

He recalled the appalling treatment of mathematician Alan Turing for being gay, even though he played a crucial role for the Allies in World War II by helping crack German codes, and the posthumous apology he got from the British government.

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