Article
The Most Famous Italian American Nobody Thinks of as Italian: Joe Rogan
America’s biggest podcaster got his Irish surname from one grandfather. The other three were Italian. Here’s the heritage behind the name, and why it so rarely comes up. Ask most people to guess Joe Rogan’s background and they’ll probably say Irish. The name gives that away. It’s also only a quarter of the story. “I’m 3/4 Italian 1/4 Irish,” Rogan wrote on Twitter years ago, explaining that his father’s father, “Pappy Rogan,” came “straight off the boat from Ireland.” His other three grandparents were of Italian descent. That makes the host of America’s most popular podcast, the No. 1 show in Edison Research’s rankings every quarter since 2019, one of the most widely heard Italian Americans alive. He is also one of the least recognized as one. “I’m 3/4 Italian 1/4 Irish.” — Joe Rogan, on Twitter A Newark kid Joseph James Rogan Jr. was born on Aug. 11, 1967, in Newark, New Jersey, a city whose Italian neighborhoods were once among the largest in the Northeast. His mother was Susan Lembo. His parents divorced when he was 5, and he has said he hasn’t had contact with his father since he was 7. Rogan’s childhood kept moving: to San Francisco at 7, to Gainesville, Florida, at 11, and finally to Newton Upper Falls, Massachusetts, where he graduated from Newton South High School in 1985. He found his footing in martial arts. He started karate at 14 and taekwondo a year later, won the U.S. Open taekwondo championship as a lightweight at 19 and was a Massachusetts full-contact state champion four years running. On Aug. 27, 1988, friends from the gym talked him into an open-mic night at a Boston comedy club. He never really stopped. The grandfather Rogan rarely talks about his family on the air. One exception came in 2024, during a conversation with the author Sebastian Junger about death and near-death experiences. Rogan recalled moving to New York at 23 to chase a comedy career and living with his grandfather, a man he said he “loved very, very much.” He described his grandmother’s aneurysm: doctors gave her 72 hours, and she lived 12 more years, bedridden. He described his grandfather’s last years, lonely and depressed in a neighborhood that had changed around him. “It was agony, it was depression,” he said. Seeing his grandfather’s body at the funeral, he said, was what first made him think seriously about the soul. It was an unusually tender moment from a host better known for elk hunting and UFC commentary, and it drew coverage well beyond his usual audience. Heritage behind an Irish name Rogan is far from the only Italian American whose heritage hides behind a name. In the 20th century, the pressure often ran the other way: Dino Crocetti became Dean Martin, and Anthony Benedetto became Tony Bennett, to sound more American to record buyers. In families like Rogan’s, the Italian side often comes down through mothers and grandmothers, shaping kitchens, holidays and family lore without ever showing up on a marquee. Bruce Springsteen, whose mother was born Adele Zerilli, is another famous example. Rogan never had to make that choice. The name made it for him. But the family behind it was mostly Italian, and the story of a Newark boy raised largely by his mother, close to his grandparents and restless to make something of himself, is a familiar one to a lot of Italian American families. Part of the story You don’t have to like what Joe Rogan says to see that he belongs in the larger Italian American story. That story isn’t only about names that end in vowels. It also includes a Newark baby with a Lembo mother and three Italian grandparents who grew up to become, for better or worse, one of the most listened-to voices in American media.