Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2488 - James McCann
Uploaded: 2026-04-23T17:00:53.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2488 - James McCann' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-04-23. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2488 - James McCann' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-04-23. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2488 - James McCann

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
Thank you for having me back.
Good to see you, my brother.
How are you?
Always great to see you.
I'm good.
It was fun having you at the clubhouse last night.
I was fucking terrified.
You just look like you're back.
No, I thought that's it.
I've been away for too long.
I'm going to suck.
None of the new stuff is going to work.
They'll see me.
They'll go, he was wrong to come back.
Fuck him off.
It was so nice.
It was so nice.
You were telling the story.
I said, hold these thoughts.
Yeah.
I didn't know we'd never spoken about it.
No.
Tell me the story.
That's why I came to America to start.
I got offered a job hosting a Catholic podcast.
And they fired me.
I packed up everything in Adelaide.
This was like two and a bit years ago.
I had the kids and the wife.
And on the way to America, I got fired.
And they said, we'll still pay you rent.
It's in Steubenville, Ohio.
Beautiful Appalachian town, just outside of Pittsburgh.
And yeah, it's where we were.
Three months I was there.
So what did they see that they fired you for?
Oh, a lot.
They made a compilation video.
No, the guy who showed up, they were right to find me.
No, no, they weren't.
No, because it was a good, clean Catholic podcast.
And then the business manager was like, there was a sketch about stabbing
someone in the throat
with an AIDS needle.
They're like, he uses the word cunt all the time.
They're like, this is a sponsorship nightmare.
Get him out.
So I said, okay.
But they still said, we'll pay you rent for three months and you can figure
something out.
You still got a visa.
And I was terrified.
I was just in the snow.
With kids and a wife.
Three kids, no job.
I didn't have the money to go back home.
Oh my God.
We couldn't afford to go back home.
Oh my God.
And I didn't know that I had been passed at the mothership because I didn't
know how the
system worked.
So on the way in to go to Steubenville, where I was like, I'll figure something
out.
I stopped in at Austin to see Shane.
Shane said, go and do the mothership open mic.
I did it.
Adam Higgott said, if you're ever in town, come back.
We'll pay for spots.
I didn't know that meant I was passed.
I didn't know I could work here.
I just thought he was like, I could audition again.
And then, so I had three confronting months in the snow.
Beautiful part of the world.
It was the most terrified I've ever been in my life.
He says that I was an Australian.
That's from Ohio.
No, I loved it.
I wouldn't say that's the most beautiful part of the world.
I loved it.
I went back and watched that Wild Whites of West Virginia.
Yeah, that's where you're at.
It looks exactly like that.
Well, that area is gorgeous.
It's God's country, but also so abandoned by, like, the potholes are crazy.
I saw real heroin addicts.
Never really seen heroin addicts before.
Just sleepy people.
I saw street prostitutes.
That's still going on.
And this is a small town, right?
This is a small town.
This is, uh, I went there.
There are Catholics have moved there to try and, like, fix it.
It was where Dean Martin was from.
The Wu-Tang Clan kind of started out there.
There's Staten Island.
No, yes, but I think it's, like, the RZA's auntie lived there, and they moved
out there, and then they got involved in rap in the Pittsburgh state.
I've got to ask.
RZA's on real soon.
I'll ask him about that.
I believe I'm right about that.
They don't have a mural for them.
Wow.
Um, but it's great.
There's, uh, yeah, there's a lot of Catholic content creators there.
Um, and they're trying to take over town.
There's, uh, I went there originally because my, New Polity is, like, my
favorite magazine, and I got to meet the guys who made it, and I was so excited.
So, how did they hire you?
Wu-Tang's RZA found his second chance in Steubenville.
Wow.
And they all come over to visit him.
This, uh, he discussed a largely undocumented era of his life in which
Pittsburgh played a role.
Wow.
And that's one of the first conversations we had.
I was like, you said something about Pittsburgh that wasn't flattering.
I said, I love Pittsburgh.
And you're like, you don't know anything.
You're a foreigner.
You don't know anything about America.
Pittsburgh is a horrible place.
I was like, I don't know, I had much time to get, I thought it was good.
Uh, it's just a little depressing.
See, like, the thing about, uh, a lot of those sort of industrial kind of towns,
there's not a ton of options for people.
No.
Pittsburgh more so than, like, the place that you were in.
But, like, when you get to a place where there's not a lot of options and then
you see real poverty, like, this is poverty with no solutions.
You know what I mean?
Not Pittsburgh.
You know, Pittsburgh is obviously.
Oh, no, just outside of Pittsburgh.
I was more fucking with you.
No, I saw things in West Virginia that were, uh, pretty confronting.
And, like, you know, that are, like, caked in.
And some of it's great.
Some of the things from the poverty are wonderful.
Drive-thru cigarette shop.
You like that?
I loved having drive-thru cigarettes.
So, you know, just, like, trying to get the kids to sleep.
My wife's upset because I got her in a foreign, like, again, she never signed
up.
Let's move to America.
She was like, we'll go for three months.
Right.
And I was like, oh, fuck, I'm unemployed.
I better quickly figure out how to be a stand-up comedian.
I was busing out of Steubenville.
I would, like, I caught the, I went, I got it.
Someone gave me a lift to Pittsburgh.
This is when I saw the worst stuff.
I got a lift to Pittsburgh.
And then I caught the Greyhound from Pittsburgh to Cleveland to open for Sam
Talent, who let
me open, who, unbelievably, let me open for him.
He's the best.
I met him in Australia, yeah.
Such a good guy.
And, uh, but, like, that bus trip from Pittsburgh to Cleveland was, it was the
most upsetting.
Oh, man.
I was, people were spitting on the ground at the bus station.
Like, an immigrant, like, an illegal immigrant woman came and tried to give me
a phone.
I remember that vividly.
Give you a phone?
She tried to give me a free phone.
She's like, you can have this.
Because, she said, she said, you're on benefits.
Everyone on benefits gets a free phone.
It was some, like, policy.
She just assumed I was on benefits because I was at the Greyhound bus station.
And she was illegal?
I don't know if she was illegal, but she had a strong accent and, like, a weird
dress and
a baby on her back and a sack full of phones.
A sack full of phones?
She had, like, a sack of phones.
So she was somehow in charge of distributing free phones to people?
I'll never truly know what that was about.
Boy, I would have investigated further.
There was, uh, I was scared.
I was just scared.
There were, like, huge African guys spitting on the ground.
Who tries to give you a phone?
Oh, it was, and then after that, I sat next to a guy who was having a full
psychotic episode.
I think we follow each other on Instagram now.
He's gotten rid of his Instagram.
Really?
But, yeah.
And he told me the secrets about Chris Benoit.
That he was a good man.
The wrestler?
He killed his family.
Yeah.
But this guy tried to tell me he only, he was, I, it's like, burnt, he said he
only killed
his family to send them to God, and you can't blame a man for that.
Oh.
It's like, all right, let's, this is only a three-hour bus trip.
We're going to get through this.
Oh, boy.
We're going to be fine.
Oh, boy.
Oh, man.
But I did, I did enjoy my time in that part of the world.
Well, you probably enjoy it now that it's over, that you survived it.
You make a good point.
Yeah.
There's some things.
If you asked me at the time.
Yeah.
There's some things that are not fun while they're happening, but are really
fun once
you got through it.
I mean, I remember the people I met along the way.
I remember driving to Austin, and like, it was like spring was, like, the
further south
we got, the more lush it became.
Yeah.
It was like, fuck, I might be okay.
And then someone let me stay in their house.
I didn't have a house to stay in, so my, a podcast listener's friend let us
stay in
their house.
With your family?
With my whole family.
Let us house sit for them while they were in Japan.
Oh, my God.
That's crazy.
The whole time it was like, if I don't get, if I don't get past the mothership
now, I,
I don't think people should come here and live in their cars with their family,
but
it does, you know.
Lights a fire under your ass.
It worked.
Well, that's the thing.
It's like, if you're forced into action.
Yeah.
Like, you had no, not just yourself, like, you could go, oh, woe is me, but
when you're
a father and a husband, you have children.
Yeah.
And people who do not have children do not understand the drive that it gives
you to protect and care
for those little people.
It's kind of crazy.
So, if you'll find something.
Well, I don't understand how people do it without, like, I meet men who are
really driven and
motivated and they have no kids, but they're like, every day they're working.
I don't know what their motivation is.
Before I had kids, I was just, what are you going to buy things?
They're in a, they're in a game.
They're playing a game.
No.
Yeah.
They're just playing this game of accumulate the most stuff, be able to brag
about the
most stuff you have.
So much rather lie down.
I would rather not do anything if I had a choice.
But not really, because you love doing comedy.
I love doing comedy, but I never, before I had kids, was trying to do comedy
that people
would enjoy.
Do you know what I mean?
I think that is also, though, because you were living in Australia and there's
limited
options.
Right.
I had no options.
Can you explain, like, the Australian system is very different than America?
It's very...
It's mostly festival-driven, correct?
It's festival-driven and it's, to a much greater extent, I've thought about
this, it's, like,
industry-driven.
Like...
Industry?
Yeah, we don't have...
Which industry?
Like, managers and agents, which is one role in Australia, but they are
deciding who's
succeeding, and TV people are deciding who's succeeding.
Whereas, like, in America, everybody is on the road, everybody has one or two
openers,
and there's a whole lineage of who brought who up in the business.
Like, Dan Soda had Nick Mullen, Tim Dillon, and Shane Gillis open for him.
Like, those were his openers.
Right.
And not because they were successful or someone wanted them to thrive, he just
thought they
were funny people.
Right.
And they got to be his openers.
And you, I don't know who you were opening for, but you have people who come up
and
you get to pick them on.
I didn't really do it...
I didn't have it that way.
I do it that way, but I didn't have it that way.
I didn't really come up with anybody where I opened for anybody.
But I had a very weird path to success.
You also, you got to go to LA and just be in the milieu.
Like, there's a scene there.
There's a lot of people.
Well, I came out to LA with a job already.
Okay.
I was on a sitcom already.
You started in Boston, though.
Yes.
Started in Boston.
Look, it's very embarrassing how lucky I am.
I'm, like, one of the luckiest people that's ever lived.
Like, it's stumble upon success after success.
So when I was six years into comedy, I was already on TV.
So I was three years into comedy.
I was basically barely getting paid.
I was barely a professional.
Like, I was getting some spots in bars and stuff like that.
I was making money.
But I was driving limousines.
I was doing odd jobs, doing different things.
And I was also still teaching at the time.
I was still teaching Taekwondo.
For the first maybe six months or so when I was 21, I think I kept teaching.
And then I eventually had to quit because I realized I could not commit to
doing both things.
I don't want to half-ass my students.
Yeah.
And I don't want to.
So for the first two, three years of comedy, barely, you know