The guest
Matt Damon & Ben Affleck: Oscar-winning actors, longtime friends and creative partners since Good Will Hunting, and co-founders of the production company Artists Equity. They were promoting their Netflix film The RIP, directed by Joe Carnahan.
What this episode covers
Joe Rogan sits down with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for a wide-ranging conversation anchored by their new Netflix film The RIP. They dig into how streaming has reshaped Hollywood economics, why they built a crew-bonus profit-sharing model into their deals, and how algorithms are starting to dictate the way movies get made. The talk pivots to the craft of acting, improvisation, and what makes a performance feel real, with extended praise for Dwayne Johnson in The Smashing Machine. The back half drifts into MMA, the science of testosterone and peptides in fighting, brain damage in combat sports, ibogaine therapy for veterans, and the psychological cost of being great at anything.
Recommended on this episode
BookRecommendedISBN verified
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Hunter S. Thompson
“Fear and Loathing changed my life”
“Fear and Loathing changed my life. Like reading that book was like, "What the fuck?" Like, "What is this guy doing?"”— Joe Rogan
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Hell's Angels
Hunter S. Thompson
“is some of the best writing”
“I mean those books Hell's Angels and and you know, Fear and Loathing is some of the best writing.”— Ben Affleck
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The Rum Diary
Hunter S. Thompson
“Rum Diary was spectacular”
“Rum Diary was spectacular, you know? It was like really descriptive and punchy and interesting”— Ben Affleck
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Adolescence
Netflix
“I think that's one of the best things ever done”
“You have adolescence. I don't know if you saw. I think that's one of the best things ever done.”— Ben Affleck
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Narc
Joe Carnahan
“terrific great movie”
“he did a movie his first movie is called Narc I don't know if you ever saw terrific great movie”— Matt Damon
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The Beast in Me
Netflix
“That lady terrific”
“Did you see um uh The Beast in Me, Claire Danes? ... That lady terrific.”— Matt Damon
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The Smashing Machine
Benny Safdie
“it's a great movie. The scenes are fantastic. The acting is so good”
“it didn't get the credit it deserved... But it's a great movie. The the the scenes are fantastic. The acting is so good”— Joe Rogan
MediaRecommended
The Smashing Machine (documentary)
John Hyams
“It was amazing documentary. It's really good”
“It was amazing documentary... It's really good.”— Joe Rogan
MediaRecommended
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Rian Johnson
“It's great. I really liked it”
“you were telling me to see uh wake up dead man, the knives out the third knives. It's great. And I watched I really liked it.”— Matt Damon
MediaRecommended
Saving Private Ryan
Steven Spielberg
“the most realistic depiction of war that's ever been made”
“Saving Private Ryan. That opening film, The Storming of the Beach. Unbelievable. That might be the the most realistic depiction of war that's ever been made.”— Joe Rogan
MediaRecommended
Malcolm X
Spike Lee
“made me want to be a better man”
“I remember where I was when I saw Denzel Washington play Malcolm X. Went to the movie, watched that movie and I remember leaving... I want to be a better man.”— Joe Rogan
MediaRecommended
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Larry David
“curb your enthusiasm is so great”
“It's one of the reasons why curb curb your enthusiasm is so great cuz Larry David just gives you a place to get to.”— Ben Affleck
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BPC-157
(peptide)
“If you ever get injured, get immediately on BP157”
“The Wolverine stack. BP157 and TB500... If you ever get injured, get immediately on BP157 and TB500.”— Joe Rogan
The guest's own work
MediaBy the guest
The RIP
Joe Carnahan
“I really enjoyed the rip. It's great. And uh everybody go see it. It's great. I loved it.”— Matt Damon
MediaBy the guest
Good Will Hunting
Matt Damon & Ben Affleck
“when we wrote the first movie that Goodwill Hunting, it was like we knew that had to be a cheap movie.”— Ben Affleck
MediaBy the guest
Air
Ben Affleck
“even my real like Matt was the lead in the last movie I did air that I directed.”— Matt Damon
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
MediaReferenced
Taxi Driver
Martin Scorsese
“he told me about the experience of seeing Taxi Driver in New York for the first time, right, in 76”— Ben Affleck
MediaReferenced
Le Mans
Lee H. Katzin
“I watched Lemon's the other night, Steve McQueen, and there's no one talks for like five minutes.”— Joe Rogan
MediaReferenced
Avatar
James Cameron
“Like Jim Cameron's Avatar, I'm going to make my three-hour movie and people are going to come and great.”— Ben Affleck
MediaReferenced
K-Pop Demon Hunters
Netflix
“then K-pop Demon Hunters came along and actually did that. That's the first movie that's ever”— Matt Damon
MediaReferenced
Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan
“you can go, well, you know, Oenheimer is a billion dollars or whatever”— Matt Damon
MediaReferenced
The Crown
Netflix
“Joshua Connor that who played the priest. I because I first saw him on uh on the crown.”— Joe Rogan
MediaReferenced
King of Comedy
Martin Scorsese
“what are you watching? King of Comedy. Like last week I watched Baxi Driver, King K, all these Scorsese movies”— Ben Affleck
MediaReferenced
Joe vs. the Volcano
John Patrick Shanley
“It reminds me of Joe versus the volcano where he goes in to buy luggage... it's the greatest scene.”— Matt Damon
MediaReferenced
Rocky
John G. Avildsen
“when Rocky came out and I I saw it and immediately ran around the block... I'm like this is going to change my life.”— Joe Rogan
MediaReferenced
The Sopranos
David Chase
“one of the most interesting things about the Sopranos is that the main character The guy that you loved was a murderer.”— Joe Rogan
MediaReferenced
A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams
“a very famous story about Marlon Brando when he did street car Named Desire and Tennessee Williams who wrote it”— Ben Affleck
MediaReferenced
Cocaine Cowboys
Billy Corben
“Did you ever see Cocaine Cowboys? ... The entire graduating class of the police academy one year either wound up murdered or in jail.”— Joe Rogan
MediaReferenced
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
Alex Gibney
“Gonzo. Gonzo. That's right. In that documentary, Gonzo, he talks about it.”— Joe Rogan
MediaReferenced
The Odyssey
Christopher Nolan
“do I want to see the Odyssey on on a big screen? def. I went to a theater to just watch the trailer for that movie”— Matt Damon
MediaReferenced
One Battle After Another
Paul Thomas Anderson
“when I went to see one battle on IMAX like you know that feeling there's nothing like that feeling”— Matt Damon
MediaReferenced
Marty Supreme
Josh Safdie
“If you want evidence that he shot Marty Supreme, he was a camera opera in one battle after another.”— Matt Damon
ProductReferenced
Thorne supplements
Thorne
“approved supplements through like really high level labs like Thor, like Thorn supplements where it's third party tested.”— Joe Rogan
Big reveals from this episode
- Damon and Affleck built a crew bonus structure into their Netflix deal so the whole 1,200-person crew shares in the film's success.
- Netflix gave them five escalating success tiers; the top tier was jokingly impossible until K-Pop Demon Hunters actually hit it.
- Affleck argues AI text generation is plateauing, says GPT-5 is only ~25% better than GPT-4 but costs 4x the electricity.
- Damon recounts Dwayne Johnson revealing the personal trauma (his alcoholic father, his mother's cancer diagnosis) behind a key Smashing Machine scene.
- Affleck and Damon describe an unscripted, improvised confrontation scene in The RIP that genuinely frustrated Affleck in real life.
- Damon calls watching Scorsese films with his 13-year-old son 'the happiest I may ever be in my whole life.'
- Rogan recalls Denzel Washington's Malcolm X making him want to be a better man at 19.
- Both say appearing on Rogan's podcast is more meaningful for promoting the film than the entire week of traditional press combined.
Worth remembering
- A $25M movie has to gross about $100M theatrically to break even because studios split box office with theaters and spend roughly the budget again on marketing.
- Americans watch about six hours of TV a day and spend much of their streaming time on library classics like Seinfeld, Friends and Suits, not new releases.
- Spielberg cut the scripted dialogue and shot the first 27 minutes of Saving Private Ryan with no talking, using open-shutter motion-blur techniques.
- Off Bimini, dozens of drug-smuggling Cessnas still sit submerged in shallow water where pilots deliberately crash-landed them.
- Jon Jones reportedly beat Alexander Gustafsson without training, and reframed his game around the spinning back kick after moving to heavyweight.
- Hunter S. Thompson admitted on the Dick Cavett show that he personally started the false rumor that candidate Ed Muskie was using ibogaine.
- Texas, via former Governor Rick Perry's ibogaine initiative, is using the drug to treat veterans and police officers for PTSD and addiction.
- Rogan touts the 'Wolverine stack' of peptides BPC-157 and TB-500, claiming a football player healed a hamstring in two weeks instead of three months.
- During the legal-TRT era, Vitor Belfort tested far above normal human testosterone levels, fueling his terrifying late-career run.
- Rogan notes Johnny Knoxville was knocked unconscious 16 times, illustrating the long-term brain-damage risks in combat and stunt work.
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