Joe Rogan Experience #2552 - Ehsan Ahmad & Deric Poston
9 claims didn't hold up. False, distorted, or one-sided. Unverified claims don't count against it.
A few needed a second look. About what three hours of talking gets you.
Claim by claim(10 claims flagged)
The comedy club owner decided against building a rooftop bar because the wall height was only four feet.
This is a first person story about a private design decision at a comedy club, the kind of detail that was never written down anywhere public like a permit filing or news article. A search turns up general descriptions confirming the club has no rooftop bar or patio today, but nothing that independently confirms or contradicts the specific four foot wall detail or the reasoning behind scrapping the plan. A personal recollection like this can't be checked against any outside record.
There was a direct correlation between the purchase of Twitter and a drop in the number of children identifying as non-binary.
There is a real, documented decline in the share of young people identifying as nonbinary starting around 2022 to 2023, but researchers who study it attribute it to broader shifts like political polarization and changing social pressures, not specifically to Twitter's ownership change or a new culture of mockery. Framing this as a direct correlation with the Twitter purchase overstates a link the actual research does not draw.
Fertilizer bombs lack the potency to cause the level of structural damage seen in the Oklahoma City bombing.
Ammonium nitrate and fuel oil bombs are plenty capable of the damage seen at the Murrah building. Investigators used the crater the truck bomb left, nearly 7 feet deep and 28 feet wide right next to the building, to calculate the device held roughly 2,000 to 4,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, which lines up with the destruction it caused.
The Oklahoma City bombing explosion blew the building's facade outward rather than creating a crater at the base.
There was a crater at the base of the blast, not just outward damage to the front of the building. Investigators documented a crater about 28 feet wide and nearly 7 feet deep just feet from the building's north entrance, and used its depth to estimate the bomb's size.
The Patriot Act resulted in the loss of significant rights and enabled ubiquitous government surveillance.
The Patriot Act expanded federal powers for surveillance and intelligence gathering, which civil liberties organizations argue infringes on constitutional protections like the Fourth Amendment. Proponents argue these measures are necessary for national security, making the characterization of the law's impact a matter of interpretation regarding the balance between security and privacy.
The 2012 NDAA authorizes the indefinite detention of individuals, including American citizens, without charge or trial.
The 2012 NDAA does let the military hold people connected to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces without charge or trial, but the law itself says it is not meant to change existing law on detaining U.S. citizens one way or the other. That ambiguity was fought over in court, and the appeals court ultimately ruled the section says nothing about the government's authority over citizens, so stating flatly that it authorizes detaining Americans overstates a provision that courts found deliberately unresolved.
It was not until the 1500s that the Bible was phonetically transcribed and translated into languages other than Latin.
The Bible was translated into languages other than Latin long before the 1500s. John Wycliffe's team produced a full English translation in the 1380s, more than a century before Luther's German Bible, and even earlier partial vernacular translations existed, including Old English gospel translations from the 10th century.
One investor gave the founder of Theranos $150 million.
The $150 million figure is real but it was not one investor writing one check. Court documents show the Walton family's $150 million came from two separate investment entities tied to the family, Madrone Capital Partners and Soda Springs Partners LLC, each buying shares in the same December 2014 round. So it was the largest family stake in Theranos, but split across two investment vehicles rather than a single investor's $150 million.
The Agency for International Development specializes in regime change by funding rebel groups and cultural revolutions in certain countries.
There is a real case behind this. The AP reported that USAID secretly funded a program from about 2009 to 2011 to infiltrate Cuba's hip-hop scene and cultivate anti-government sentiment among young Cubans, without disclosing US involvement. But USAID's stated mission is poverty reduction, humanitarian aid, and democracy support, and most of its budget goes to things like health and food assistance, not political destabilization. Calling regime change what the agency specializes in stretches a couple of documented covert programs in specific countries into a description of the whole agency's purpose.
The owner of the building that housed Tower 7 insured it against terrorism shortly before the 9/11 attacks and did not go to work that day.
This mixes up two different things. Larry Silverstein had owned and developed 7 World Trade Center since 1987, he did not buy it shortly before 9/11. The terrorism coverage bought weeks before the attacks was on his new lease for the Twin Towers and other buildings, and fact checkers found that was routine all-risk insurance tied to when he took on that lease, not a suspicious late addition. The dermatologist appointment that kept him home that morning is true, but plenty of people simply were not at work yet when the towers were hit.
All of this ran on its own. The claims got pulled out of the transcript, then checked against live sources.
This can get things wrong. Follow the sources and decide for yourself.
Get the check before you finish the episode.
JRE drops four or five episodes a week. We check every one and send a short note with the Jamie Meter and the claims that didn't hold up.