Joe Rogan had on a known conspiracy theorist who claimed last year that Israel did 9/11. Image by screenshot/YouTube

By Louis Keene March 6, 2025

A known conspiracy theorist who claimed last year that Israel was responsible for 9/11 joined Joe Rogan’s podcast on Wednesday to peddle more unverified claims, telling Rogan that Israel was the reason Americans would never learn the full truth of the Jeffrey Epstein sex abuse scandal.

Ian Carroll, a do-your-own-research type with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, said on The Joe Rogan Experience that Epstein was merely an employee of “organized crime rings that work on behalf of the CIA, the Mossad and British intelligence.”

“Jeffrey Epstein was the world’s most evil and prolific sex trafficker that we know of so far — ever,” Carroll said. “And he was clearly a Jewish organization [sic] working on behalf of Israel and other groups.”

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The claim recalled an earlier post on X in which Carroll stated, “When I see an Israeli flag I immediately know that they support Jeffrey Epstein and want to rape my children.”

Rogan often hosts controversial guests with fringe ideas, and has a reputation for sharing or amplifying misinformation on the show. He’s invited on conspiracists Candace Owens and Alex Jones, promulgated widely debunked COVID-19 falsehoods, and last June he hosted Jake Shields, an MMA fighter-turned-far-right commentator who had said the previous month that Jews control America.

The I’ll-listen-to-anyone formula has fueled Rogan’s unrivaled success in the podcast space: He recently inked a $250 million deal with Spotify, which did not respond to a request for comment.

As Carroll went deeper into his Epstein conspiracy theory Wednesday, Rogan did little to challenge him. “Keep going,” he said at one point.

Later, Rogan seemed to agree. “You can talk about this now, post-Oct. 7, post-Gaza,” he said.

Carroll was notorious for false claims about the Holocaust, Israel and Jewish power long before he joined The Joe Rogan Experience.

He wrote last year that the U.S. was “controlled by an international criminal organization that grew out of the Jewish mob and now hides in modern Zionism behind cries of ‘antisemitism’”; claimed Jews control the media; and said that Israel had manipulated the Holocaust for its own gain.

Carroll’s conspiracy theories are wildly successful on the social platform X (formerly Twitter). One video claiming that Michael Jackson was framed for child sex abuse — by the Jewish media, of course; “the people that own the record companies also own the media publishing businesses,” Carroll said — received 29,000 reposts and garnered 21 million impressions on the platform, which pays creators according to how much engagement they produce.

But he had never been given a platform as mainstream — or a microphone as loud — as The Joe Rogan Experience, which has 14 million subscribers on Spotify alone, more than double any other podcast.

Wednesday’s episode, which had some 750,000 views in the first 12 hours after it was posted on YouTube, appalled people familiar with Carroll’s agenda.

“Having Ian Carroll on is beyond defensible for @joerogan. Probably the most malicious person he’s promoted. Completely disgusted,” one person wrote on X.

“Wow, Joe Rogan really had Ian Carroll on his podcast? Massively disappointed that Joe is platforming people like him,” said another.

But most of the YouTube comments seemed thrilled by the conversation.

“Ian Carroll on Joe Rogan is such a big deal,” read one comment that received more than 1,500 likes. “Thank you! I love you guys, man keep telling the truth!”

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