The guest
Jesse Welles: Arkansas-born indie folk singer-songwriter who went viral writing topical, news-driven protest songs (United Healthcare, philanthropy) on Instagram, in the Woody Guthrie 'sing the news' tradition. Fiercely independent, no label.
What this episode covers
Joe Rogan talks with viral protest folk musician Jesse Welles about how he turns big news stories into catchy punchline-driven songs, sparked by the United Healthcare CEO shooting. The conversation sprawls into the for-profit healthcare 'racket,' lobotomy history (Rosemary Kennedy), the violent settling of the American West and scalp bounties, war as a money racket (Smedley Butler), false-flag operations from Nero to the Gulf of Tonkin, and conspiracy theories around Las Vegas and Oklahoma City. It closes on the music industry as a vampire-filled racket, the freedom of being an independent artist, and the unsettling rise of AI-generated music.
Recommended on this episode
BookRecommendedISBN verified
War Is a Racket
Smedley D. Butler
“It's really good”
“Did you ever read um that uh War is a racket? Smedley Butler. It's really good. It's not long. It's really good.”— Joe Rogan
MediaRecommended
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Milos Forman
“That's a great movie”
“That's a great [ __ ] movie, too. That's a eyeopening movie about healthcare speaking which”— Joe Rogan
MediaRecommended
American Primeval
Peter Berg
“Really good. Really good.”
“Have you seen American Primeval? The Netflix series. Really good. Really good. And uh it's about the settling of the West.”— Joe Rogan
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
BookReferencedISBN verified
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy
“I imagine it like blood meridian like McCarthy's book where basically follows a story of this kid who goes on a scalping mission.”— Jesse Welles
BookReferencedISBN verified
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
“it's written on this premise of a book that was written in like 1899 by Joseph Conrad like Heart of Darkness.”— Jesse Welles
MediaReferenced
Apocalypse Now
Francis Ford Coppola
“do you ever see a this Hollywood, but uh Apocalypse Now? he's got Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando and Dennis Hopper and Robert Duvall”— Jesse Welles
BookReferencedISBN verified
The Man in the High Castle
Philip K. Dick
“Is that the premise of Man in the High Castle? Philip K. Dick.”— Joe Rogan
BookReferencedISBN verified
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
John Perkins
“you're an economic hitman like John Perkins you ever read that book what they do is they would give enormous loans to countries that definitely couldn't pay it off”— Joe Rogan
BookReferencedISBN verified
Wired: The Short Life & Fast Times of John Belushi
Bob Woodward
“he read Bob Woodward's um story about his good friend John Belushi. he read five pages of it. I was like, Oh my god, they framed Nixon.”— Joe Rogan
MediaReferenced
All the President's Men
Alan J. Pakula
“I didn't see that aspect of it in all the president's men. Who was that? Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford.”— Joe Rogan
MediaReferenced
Charlie Wilson's War
Mike Nichols
“he's just explained so much to us over the years with Charlie Wilson's War. It's like here's how the saving private.”— Jesse Welles
MediaReferenced
Forrest Gump
Robert Zemeckis
“Forest Gump is kind of a nostalgia fest about the Vietnam War. It kind of makes light of it.”— Jesse Welles
MediaReferenced
The Polar Express
Robert Zemeckis
“you know, The Polar Express. I actually don't know about the Polar Express animated movie.”— Jesse Welles
MediaReferenced
Everything's a Rich Man's Trick
Francis Richard Conolly
“a documentary I used to watch uh by Francis O' Connelly, I think is his name, but it's called Everything's a Rich Man's Trick”— Joe Rogan
ProductReferenced
Suno
Suno
“the crazy thing is that AI makes this in seconds. you watch this guy put in the prompts. You watch it make this song.”— Joe Rogan
Big reveals from this episode
- Welles admits he held an 'unpopular opinion' that celebrating the United Healthcare CEO's murder was disturbing.
- Welles explains his songwriting method: write 2,000 words of research, boil it to 300 sung words, make it rhyme.
- Rogan reads the graphic account of Rosemary Kennedy's 1941 lobotomy, performed without her mother's knowledge.
- Rogan strongly recommends Smedley Butler's 'War Is a Racket' as the blueprint for understanding the war-profit machine.
- They cover the 1933 'Business Plot' to overthrow FDR and install Butler as dictator, no one was prosecuted.
- Discussion that 12 of 14 people in a governor-kidnapping plot were government agents.
- Welles reveals he was signed to a label at 22 and walked away to stay fully independent.
- Rogan plays an AI-generated indie song made in seconds and admits it's 'better than most of these songs.'
Worth remembering
- Welles' United Healthcare song notes only 2% of people win a coverage dispute.
- Ibogaine trials with soldiers in Texas show ~80% success for one dose, 90s% for two, for quitting addiction.
- Historic scalp bounties of 150-200 Mexican pesos equate to roughly $8,200 per scalp today.
- Around 94% of the world's heroin came from Afghanistan during the US occupation of poppy fields.
- Nancy Pelosi is cited as being worth an estimated $400 million.
- Claim that WWI soldiers avoided aiming at the enemy, so war movies were made to condition them to shoot.
- Operation Northwoods: the Joint Chiefs signed off on a false-flag plan Kennedy vetoed.
- Welles' United Healthcare video racked up roughly 6.7 million views.
- John Mellencamp personally emailed Welles to invite him to Farm Aid.
- Welles wrote about a hundred songs in 2024 and released them all independently.
More from Joe Rogan
All 6342 recommended