The other comics called him ''Little Ball of Anger'' -- semi-affectionately, never to his face -- a man flammable by bearing and branding, it seemed, with his taekwondo muscles and a scorching conviction that the Bible had some holes.

''Noah was 600 years old and a drunk!'' Joe Rogan told his Los Angeles crowds some two decades back, in one favored bit about the implausibility of the scriptural ark. Then he'd spar afterward with a waitress who was raised Catholic -- and mindful of divine wrath.

''Stand back,'' Eleanor Kerrigan, the Comedy Store waitress who became a comedian herself, would say to Mr. Rogan, blessing herself as he left the stage. ''You're going to burst into flames.''

''It's not sacrilegious!'' Mr. Rogan protested, according to Ms. Kerrigan. ''You're not hearing what I'm saying!''

Now, for better or worse, many millions of people are hearing what Joe Rogan is saying. He's still not sure they're always getting the joke. But he has yet to burst into flames.

Mr. Rogan, 53, is one of the most consumed media products on the planet -- with the power to shape tastes, politics, medical decisions -- a fact well-known to legions of men under 40, nonsensical to the many Rogan-unaware over 50 and befuddling, by his own admission, to the man himself. His podcast, ''The Joe Rogan Experience,'' is effectively a series of wandering conversations, often over whiskey and weed, on topics including but not limited to: comedy, cage-fighting, psychedelics, quantum mechanics and the political excesses of the left. The show was licensed to Spotify last year in an estimated $100 million deal, boosted by a conceit that can at times seem self-fulfilling: The host is dangerous, at least in the way that comedians like to be dangerous. He should probably not be taken at face value, except when he should, and the discerning listener should be trusted to tell the difference. And if the establishment had its way, Mr. Rogan would surely be chastened, ''canceled,'' reeled in.

''I got through the net,'' he said in one recent episode, cursing before ''net'' in what felt like a statement of purpose, ''and I'm swimming in open waters.''

It can all feel like something of a system breakdown in his telling, at once a testament to the trust deficit plaguing mainstream institutions and the durable allure of convincing people they are listening to something subversive and undiluted.

In 2019, Mr. Rogan said his podcast was downloaded about 190 million times in a month. Some single episodes have reached tens of millions, including interviews with Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive whose rollicking, joint-smoking appearance coincided with a discernible slip in the company stock price, and Alex Jones, the far-right conspiracy theorist with whom Mr. Rogan has long been friendly. The most popular host in cable news, Tucker Carlson of Fox News, might expect about three million live viewers per night.

''We worship this guy,'' Kristian Khoury, a 20-year-old student at Oklahoma State University, said of Mr. Rogan,...