Joey Diaz on Saunas, Sleep, Wild Stories and Ending His Career as a Stand-Up

High-Level Overview

Joe Rogan welcomes back his longtime friend, comedian Joey Diaz, for a loose, profane and very funny catch-up. They start with health: fading eyesight, red light, saunas, cold plunges, cryotherapy, sleep tracking and weight-loss shots. From there Joey tells one wild story after another: a ketamine night that went too far, Russians in a Hollywood YMCA sauna, an underground casino in a New York parking garage, and a childhood spent as a lookout for his mother's bookmaking. The middle of the episode turns to politics (the border, COVID lockdowns, the Trump prosecutions and a viral bathroom video). The last stretch is the most reflective: Joey talks about why he moved back to New Jersey, grieving his mother decades late, and how Mitzi Shore and the Comedy Store saved his life. He also says he wants to finish his career doing only stand-up.

The tone is high energy and irreverent, with real warmth between two friends who have known each other for decades. The conversation swings between wellness talk, crime stories, food, politics and a heartfelt look back at comedy.

The Discussion Explores:

• Joe's routine for his eyes (a macular support supplement and a red light bed) and Joey's claim that his eyesight went when he quit cocaine
• The risks of very high doses of cannabis and edibles, and how different drugs feel
• Sauna, cold plunge and cryotherapy for recovery, sleep and cardio, including the Finnish sauna research Joe cites
• Sleep tracking with a Whoop strap and how alcohol shows up in recovery scores
• Weight-loss shots (semaglutide), protein intake and resistance training
• Joey's childhood and criminal-era stories, from bookmaking apartments to police raids
• Politics: the southern border, sanctuary cities, lockdowns and the Trump indictments
• The Comedy Store, Mitzi Shore, the Comedy Mothership, Kill Tony, and Joey's plan for a residency

Deep Dive into Main Ideas

Eyes, Red Light and the Drugs That Change How You See

Joe opens by explaining two things he started doing for his eyes. He takes a supplement blend from Pure Encapsulations called Macular Support, and he uses a red light bed after a podcast guest explained how red light can revitalize the capillaries. After about six weeks he says he needs reading glasses less for his phone and, more importantly, his vision has stopped getting worse; around age 46 it had seemed to drop off a cliff. Joey says he made the mistake of giving in to reading glasses at 43 or 44, and Joe adds the idea that staring at close things all day weakens the eyes' ability to shift focus to the distance.

Joey then says, half joking and half serious, that his eyesight was perfect while he was doing cocaine and went downhill when he stopped, and he wonders if it was blood flow. That leads into a tour of drug stories: people testing their cocaine for fentanyl in New York bars, a woman who fell into a "K hole at one of his shows, and his own night on ketamine after a podcast, when a six-minute drive home turned into a battle and he sat in front of the TV sweating while his wife watched a crime show. Joe connects this to edibles. He says that above roughly 200 milligrams the world became very slippery," and he mentions Alex Berenson's book Tell Your Children about high doses of cannabis and psychosis. His view: cannabis can be beneficial in low to moderate doses, but at high doses, in the wrong person at the wrong time in life, it can push someone over the edge.

Alcohol, Recovery and What a Whoop Strap Reveals

Joe says that when he trained jiu-jitsu every day, cannabis never left him wrecked, while drinking the night before made him feel about 30 percent worse in class, so he stopped drinking. He recommends an Oura ring or a Whoop strap: have two glasses of wine, and your recovery score will be way down. Because it tracks heart rate variability, it gives honest feedback whenever you cut sugar, stop drinking or drink more water.

Joey says he bought his Whoop for soreness, but what improved most was his sleep. Everyone thinks they sleep eight hours, he says, but his tracker showed about five to six. He now aims for eight and takes a one-hour nap every afternoon at four or five, something he had never done in his life. Joe says he can function on five hours, does well on six and is at his best on eight or more. When he gets short sleep, he says, "that's a check I have to pay," so that night he skips alcohol and uses the sauna and cold plunge to sleep deeply.

Sauna, Cold Plunge and Cryotherapy

If he had to choose, Joe says, he would pick the sauna over the cold plunge because there is more data behind it. He describes a 20-year Finnish study in which people who used the sauna four times a week saw what he recalls as about a 40 percent drop in all-cause mortality. Joey credits Rhonda Patrick for the figure that about an hour a week in the sauna cuts cardiac risk. Joe adds that sauna works like a static form of cardio because the heart rate climbs so high, and he repeats Dan Gable's observation that Russian and Eastern European wrestlers always used saunas; Gable compared the endurance boost to a mild version of EPO.

Joey goes to a wellness studio called Chill before his harder jiu-jitsu classes. He does about 30 to 40 minutes in an infrared sauna, with breath-of-fire breathing, stretching and warrior poses, and takes a short break halfway for an electrolyte drink. Both men compare cold plunges and cryotherapy: Joe finds the plunge harder and says it leaves him cold for a long time, while Joey jokes that his only regret about cryotherapy is not finding it during his drug years. Jamie confirms that modern cryotherapy was developed in the 1970s by a Japanese rheumatologist, and Joe points to Fedor Emelianenko's banya routine (the sauna, being beaten with leaves, then a frozen lake) as an old version of the same idea.

Weight-Loss Shots, Protein and Diet

The men discuss semaglutide and similar GLP-1 shots. Joe notes that Brian Simpson had a bad reaction with severe gastrointestinal pain and quit right away. Joey says he is still wary of anything that seems to have just appeared. Joe says Brigham supports the drugs for weight loss but argues that the loss of muscle and bone comes from using them wrong: people should add resistance training and eat enough protein. Joey's trainer told him the same thing. Eat protein first, because the shot makes you full fast. Jamie finds a figure that 1.7 percent of people in the US were prescribed semaglutide in 2023.

Joe asks about Joey's diet. Joey says he is down to two meals a day plus a protein shake, eats three eggs with avocado toast and fruit for breakfast, and can only manage a steak of about 8 to 10 ounces at night. That's a big change from his old breakfasts of six eggs, white bread and a pack of bacon followed by McDonald's. Joe's advice is simple: cut out sugar and bread and eat only meat and vegetables. The talk then drifts happily into New Jersey Italian food: escarole and beans, fresh mozzarella, chocolate bread from a Staten Island bakery, and the way Peter Luger broils and finishes its steaks.

Stories From a Wild Life

Much of the episode is Joey's storytelling. He remembers going to the Hollywood YMCA at 4:45 in the morning when he weighed 426 pounds because he was embarrassed to be seen, the Y telling him to come back after losing 50 pounds, and a trainer who told him to walk and tap one more mailbox each day. He describes an underground casino on 181st Street that you reached by driving into a car elevator, a childhood spent as a lookout for his mother's bookmaking operation, which moved to a new apartment every few weeks, and the day he warned his stepfather about unmarked police cars near a card game. His stepfather stayed home, the game was raided, and he gave Joey 50 dollars. There are also stories about sneaking across the Canadian border before 9/11 and fainting at the sight of needles, including once in prison and once at acupuncture, where he tore his meniscus falling off the chair.

Joe adds stories of his own and some research. A friend blacked out behind the wheel after shoveling snow, which leads to a study showing heart rates above 85 percent of maximum after just two minutes of shoveling. There's also the Titanic's chief baker, who, according to the account Jamie reads, drank heavily, helped load lifeboats, threw deck chairs overboard as flotation, and survived about two hours in the freezing water.

Politics: The Border, Lockdowns and the Trump Cases

The conversation turns to politics when Joe talks about taxes and how little say people have over where the money goes. He criticizes the amount sent overseas and argues that spending it at home could have rebuilt American cities. They discuss the border: Jamie finds a report that Border Patrol processed nearly 50,000 people in five days, with daily apprehensions passing 10,000. Joey says the cost is hitting New York city workers; a friend who is a sanitation supervisor lost thousands in overtime pay.

Joe goes after the COVID lockdowns. He says the six-foot rule was made up, that outdoor dining in Los Angeles was closed with no evidence of outdoor spread, and that small businesses like Tony Hinchcliffe's father's restaurant in Youngstown never recovered. He argues that many Trump supporters are simply fed up with open borders, censorship, corporate influence and endless wars, and that calling them all bigots is wrong. Joey says he usually stays out of politics but is struck that a man facing so many indictments still leads the race, and he says Cuban Americans in Miami are strongly Republican because they lived under socialism. They also discuss a viral video of a bearded man trying to enter a women's restroom. Joe calls it crazy and a disservice to real trans people, then notes that commenters say the clip may be staged.

Why Joey Stepped Back and What Comes Next

The most personal part comes near the end. Joey explains that he moved to New Jersey to take an extended breather from comedy and process the past 40 years. He started in 1983, and by 2020 he found himself among top comics at the Comedy Store, even though, as he puts it, "I was pre-programmed to be in jail by now." When his mother died when he was a boy, he told himself she had just gone away for a couple of years. Only when he visited her grave after moving back to Jersey did he realize he had carried that lie for decades. He also says Los Angeles, with its agents, felt more dangerous than the criminals he grew up with, because you never knew where you stood. Joe answers with the Mike Tyson line: "It's okay to have a snake in the room as long as you keep the lights on."

Joey's plan is to work up ten spots, then do a residency (Philadelphia, Atlantic City and the Mothership all come up) and end his career doing stand-up only, with no more podcasting or ads. He does not want long flights anymore and praises semi-private JSX flights. Joe offers him the Comedy Mothership any night of the week and describes the club's philosophy: "This club was never to make money." The goal is "the best environment for developing stand-up comedy, for both professionals and for amateurs." He praises Kill Tony, whose hosts sold out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row, because the one-minute format has no pandering: "And the currency is funny."

The Comedy Store, Mitzi Shore and Finding Your Voice

Joey says he arrived in LA on January 29, 1997, and became a Comedy Store regular on February 19, 1997, a record, after Doug Stanhope and others vouched for him. Of Mitzi Shore he says: "She saved my life, brother." Without the club, he believes he would have gone back to crime within a year or two. Everything good in his life, from his daughter to his friendship with Joe, came out of the Comedy Store.

Joe remembers Joey as "the funniest guy in the parking lot" who could not at first get that onto the stage. Then one day, fed up with agents, lies and failed auditions, he stopped trying to please anyone and simply became himself. Joe says agents once told him Joey had no talent, and he argued that great comedy comes from wild people. Joey remembers being buried by the clean, precise AJ Jamal, and says what finally worked was energy: "Energy and enthusiasm will kick your fucking ass." He paces his sets like a roller coaster, hitting hard in the first five minutes, then letting the crowd breathe before building again. The episode ends with the news that Joey will join Joe, Eddie Bravo and Brendan Schaub for the next Fight Companion.

Conclusion

This episode works on two levels. On the surface it is two old friends riffing about saunas, sleep trackers, sandwiches and outrageous stories, with practical takeaways along the way: track your sleep, notice what alcohol does to your recovery, use heat and cold, and pair weight-loss drugs with protein and lifting. Underneath is a moving portrait of Joey Diaz taking stock of his life: the childhood lies he told himself to survive grief, the gratitude he feels toward Mitzi Shore and the Comedy Store, and his decision to spend his last working years doing only stand-up. For fans of either man it is a warm, chaotic and often touching conversation about health, survival and the power of simply being yourself on stage.

This is a summary of "#2089 - Joey Diaz" from The Joe Rogan Experience, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST. Listen to the full episode.