Joe Rogan has built one of the largest media platforms in the world by letting conversations wander wherever his guests take them, but a recent episode has pulled that freewheeling format into a much more serious spotlight.
Doctors across the country are now raising concerns after a wave of patients, many of them battling cancer, began seeking out unproven treatments following a single conversation on his podcast.
The episode in question aired on January 9, 2025, when actor Mel Gibson sat down with Rogan for a wide-ranging discussion. During their talk, Gibson described three friends who had been diagnosed with stage four cancer and said they recovered after using Ivermectin and Fenbendazole.
Both d**gs contain a compound called Benzimidazole, which Gibson claimed does not “afflict disease” in humans.
That comment did not stay contained to the podcast studio. In the months that followed, medical professionals and health organizations began noticing a real world shift in behavior, with patients, including those already combating cancer, purchasing Ivermectin on their own and without a prescription.
Data cited by CIDRAP showed the scale of the interest, with electronic medical records revealing that 68,373,949 patients across 67 health systems had searched for information on Ivermectin and Benzimidazole.
UCLA Health dug further into the numbers and found a pattern that lined up closely with the episode’s release. Prescriptions across all patient groups doubled when comparing January through July of 2025 to the same stretch in 2024. Among cancer patients specifically, that increase reached two and a half times the prior year’s figures.
Dr. John N. Mafi, an associate professor in residence of medicine and senior author on the research, connected the surge directly to the podcast’s reach. He explained what the shift means for patients trying to make sense of their options.
“As a primary care doctor, I want my patients and people across the country to have the chance to get treatments we know can help them live longer, healthier lives,” Mafi said, according to UCLA. “When prescribing for an unproven cancer treatment more than doubles after a single podcast, especially among men and people in the South, it raises a concern that patients may be skipping or delaying treatments we know work in favor of something that hasn’t been proven to help them.”
That warning captures the core worry among physicians. It is not simply that people are curious about alternative options, but that some may be turning away from established cancer care in favor of a treatment popularized by a celebrity conversation rather than clinical evidence.
This is not the first time Rogan’s platform has pushed him into territory usually reserved for policy makers and medical researchers. On April 18, he appeared at the Oval Office as President Donald Trump signed an executive order focused on using psychedelics in d**g treatment programs aimed at mental illness. Rogan, who has spoken about the subject for years, used the moment to make the case for ibogaine as a tool against opioid use.
“We have a gigantic opiate problem in this country,” Rogan said during his remarks at the Oval Office. “In 2024, more than 80,000 people d*ed of overdoses. It’s a horrible number. And there are more than 5 million people that are addicted to opiates right now in this country. With one dose of ibogaine, more than 80% of people are free of that a*diction. With two doses, it’s more than 90%.”
Some clinics in South American countries have in fact used ibogaine as part of a**iction treatment, giving Rogan’s comments a foundation beyond pure speculation. Still, the dr*g has not received approval from the FDA, and critics argue that promoting it on a platform with Rogan’s reach skips past the rigorous testing that typically precedes any medical recommendation reaching millions of listeners.
Rogan’s conversations are casual, unscripted, and rarely positioned as medical advice, yet they carry enough weight to visibly shift prescription patterns and purchasing behavior on a national scale.
