Comedian Harland Williams returned to the Joe Rogan Experience for his second appearance, and this time he arrived with a long game already in motion.
Williams, known for keeping a rubber tapeworm in his trousers during his first visit, spent the years between appearances rebuilding his career on the Tony Hinchcliffe podcast, where he won guest of the year and appeared at a sold-out Madison Square Garden pulling limes out of his pants.
Now he was back on JRE, and he had something far more elaborate ready.
Williams builds comedy through slow-burn setups. He constructs elaborate backstories, lets them sit, and pays them off long after the room has moved on. His second JRE appearance followed the same approach, turning the full episode into one long standup set with callbacks and delayed punchlines, with Rogan sitting in the middle of it all.
The episode opened with Williams running a submarine gag. He spent the early exchanges explaining the American nuclear submarine fleet in authoritative detail, dropping a running sonar noise routine whenever he wanted to derail the conversation.
Then came the main event. Williams began flattering Rogan about his physique, slowly convincing him to remove his shirt.
“You have a beautiful body and you work so hard at it, and no one gets to see it,” he told Rogan. “It’s like if you did this podcast but didn’t put it out, what’s the point?”
Rogan obliged, peeled off the shirt, and immediately launched into a detailed account of his workout routine. Williams listened patiently, then announced he had something to share about his own fitness regimen.
He described a practice involving garuffa fish with “vibrating lips” that sculpt the lower extremities, paired with four years of malaria pills that had worked his body into what he called “a new race.”
He took his time, letting the story build across several minutes, before finally standing up and dropping his pants to reveal a pair of plastic bronze bodybuilder leggings with a gourd stuffed in the front.
Rogan stared for several long seconds.
“Are those your real legs?” he asked. “They look like plastic.”
“What are you talking about?” Williams replied.
It took another full exchange before Rogan finally caught on.
The gag was designed around its specific target. The bronze legs and the gourd only land because Rogan is the type to take his shirt off on a podcast and frame it as generosity toward his audience.
