Joe Rogan’s Podcast Left Out of Golden Globe Nominations

“The Joe Rogan Experience” was notably absent from the list of nominees for Best Podcast at this year’s Golden Globe Awards, despite its status as the most popular podcast across major streaming services in 2025.

The nominations for the newly created award included “Call Her Daddy,” “The Mel Robbins Podcast,” “SmartLess,” “Up First,” “Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard,” and “Good Hang With Amy Poehler.” With the exception of NPR’s “Up First,” which focuses on current news but isn’t heavily political, the nominated podcasts leaned away from political themes.

Interestingly, a few political podcasts made the preliminary list, such as “The Ben Shapiro Show,” Candice Owens’ “Candice,” “The Daily” from The New York Times, and the left-leaning “Pod Save America,” but they ultimately did not make the final selection.

As noted by some sources, true crime podcasts also received attention, with nominees including “Crime Junkie,” “Morbid,” and “Rotten Mango.”

When inquiries were sent to the Golden Globes regarding Rogan’s absence from nominations, the response indicated that for a podcast to be considered, submission by studios or distributors is necessary.

Interestingly, this exclusion isn’t the first time Rogan’s show faced such scrutiny this year. In July, “The Joe Rogan Experience” did not appear on Time magazine’s “100 Greatest Podcasts of All Time,” even as other shows with far fewer listeners gained recognition.

Despite these oversights, Rogan’s podcast retained its crown, topping Spotify’s “Spotify Wrapped” for the fifth consecutive year, highlighting the podcast’s consistent popularity.

For context, unlike the Golden Globes or Time’s lists, Spotify’s rankings are purely based on user engagement metrics, where users must listen to at least half of an episode for over two minutes.

Rogan also claimed the top position on Apple Podcasts in 2025, surpassing “The Daily,” which was the leading podcast in 2024.