Joe Rogan used a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience with guest MrBallen to launch into an unfiltered take on pit bulls, dismissing the breed’s popular defense as wishful thinking dressed up as fact.
The conversation had drifted into a discussion about human nature, engineering and behavior when Rogan pivoted to dogs as an example of how breeding can hardwire aggression into an animal regardless of upbringing.
“I’ve had pitbulls and I know people will tell you pit bulls are great dogs and they’re sweet dogs and I love them. Don’t get me wrong. However, they’re sketchy dogs. They’re sketchy dogs. They’re sketchy dogs, period,” Rogan said. “And you can love them. Oh, it’s all how you train them. F**k you. Those dogs are designed to attack other dogs.”
Rogan backed up the claim with a personal story, describing an incident where two of his own female dogs turned on each other.
“I had my dogs that had to separate once. You never should have two females together. I realized that after,” he said.
He explained that male dogs typically settle into a clear hierarchy once dominance is established, but females do not resolve conflict the same way.
“That’s not how it works with females. The female dogs, they keep trying to decide who’s the boss,” he said, recalling how he had to hose the animals down and get help pulling them apart while they were “wagging their tails” and “biting each other’s face and neck” mid-fig ht.
Rogan drew a distinction between pit bulls and wolves, arguing that wolf aggression at least follows a logical survival pattern shaped by evolution. Pit bulls, in his view, do not fit that same natural framework because they were shaped by human hands for a specific purpose.
“Pit bulls don’t make any sense. They make no sense,” he said.
However, actor Jon Bernthal has offered a sharply different perspective on the breed. During a conversation on The Howard Stern Show, Bernthal pushed back against what he called the “myth” surrounding pit bulls, arguing that fear of the breed amounts to “dog racism.”
“To be afraid of a breed of dog is completely ridiculous,” he said, comparing it to judging someone based on “their race or their sexual orientation.” While acknowledging that a pit bull bite can be serious, Bernthal argued that the dogs are no more likely to bite than other breeds and instead blamed irresponsible owners, saying, “A lot of knuckleheads, unfortunately, are attracted to that breed of dog.”
