Carrot Top: Stage name of Scott Thompson, the red-haired prop comedian who has held a long-running headline residency at the Luxor in Las Vegas for nearly 20 years and was a Tonight Show regular in the Leno era.
What this episode covers
Joe Rogan and Carrot Top trade long-form comedy and showbiz stories across nearly three hours. They cover Carrot Top's nearly 20-year Luxor residency, the strange world of Vegas, and his many surreal Tonight Show appearances with prop bits performed in front of guests like Dick Cheney and Bert Reynolds. The conversation drifts through nostalgia for pre-internet life, the genius of older musicians and comedians (Prince, Billy Joel, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy), and how AI is now recreating voices and songs. They also riff on the craft of comedy via Kill Tony, why bombing teaches you, the rise of comics selling out arenas, and modern obsessions with plastic surgery and Ozempic.
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
Smokey and the Bandit
Hal Needham
“By the way, that's it is one of my only movies that I own on my iPod.”— Carrot Top
Deliverance
John Boorman
“That was an insane role. That was when you get to see him as an actual actor. You're like, oh, this guy was good.”— Joe Rogan
Eddie Murphy: Delirious
Eddie Murphy
“We watched Eddie Murphy Delirious. I couldn't believe how funny it was. I was like, this is insane.”— Joe Rogan
Sideways
Alexander Payne
“No more fucking Merlot. What was that? Sideways. That guy came to my show, he's a brilliantly nice, sweet guy.”— Joe Rogan
Succession
Jesse Armstrong
“Kieran Culkin, he's great in Succession. Great. He's amazing in everything.”— Joe Rogan
The Original Kings of Comedy
Spike Lee
“When he did Kings of Comedy with Bernie Mack, that was like Bernie Mack in his prime.”— Joe Rogan
Big reveals from this episode
- Carrot Top recounts a Tonight Show booker telling him 'not a chance in hell' because Johnny Carson hated variety acts.
- Carrot Top says his brother was an Air Force F-16 pilot who flew the secret 'red stripe' planes out of the Area 51 strip and would never reveal anything.
- Joe credits Ron White with talking him into opening the Comedy Mothership after a 2020 set that got a standing ovation.
- Carrot Top reveals Jay Leno fell, cut his face open, and still did his Vegas show that night, holding the mic over the wound.
- Carrot Top did a full set of Dick Cheney 'shot a guy' prop jokes with Cheney sitting right there on the Tonight Show desk.
- Cheney's daughter reportedly lost her mind not over the shooting jokes but over a 'gay piggy bank' prop.
- Carrot Top says he was banned from Fox 'for life' for saying 'Taco Bell' on a Taco Bell-sponsored awards show.
- Carrot Top tells of Prince yelling at him to fetch his tea backstage, then his assistant insisting Prince doesn't drink tea.
Worth remembering
- Carrot Top has performed at the Luxor for nearly 20 years, one of the longest residencies in Vegas.
- Joe theorizes Las Vegas got legal gambling partly as a deal allowing the government to detonate dozens of nukes in the nearby desert.
- John Wayne and much of the crew of his Genghis Khan film reportedly got cancer from filming downwind of Nevada nuclear test sites.
- The Vegas 'Bodies' exhibit's plastination requires bodies within 48 hours of death, yet 'unidentified' status requires 30 days, suggesting the claims don't add up.
- An AI cover turned 50 Cent's 'Many Men' into a soulful 1960s-style song, which both hosts found unsettlingly good.
- Billy Joel was an amateur Golden Gloves boxer, reportedly going 22-2.
- Billy Joel's label dropped him after he wrote 'The Entertainer' as a jab at their demand for a hit.
- Tom Segura now weighs about 187 pounds after significant weight loss.
- GLP-1 drugs curb appetite via the hypothalamus and slowed gastric emptying; a pharmacist friend says pairing with peptides like IGF-1 can reduce muscle and bone loss.
- One man has gone under the knife more than 190 times for over 340 cosmetic procedures, including a $21,000 back implant.