As satirical news outlet The Onion continued to wage a legal battle to acquire the assets of Infowars out of bankruptcy this summer, it launched a streaming program that spoofed the brand and its bellowing conspiracist ringleader, Alex Jones.
Comedian Tim Heidecker took the reins of the operation, adopting Jones’ guttural and paranoid bluster as he investigated, among other unconfirmed reports, whether Jones himself had exploded in his car after eating too much Whataburger.
But Heidecker wasn’t about to stop there in his quest to transform the Infowars brand into a gonzo comedy network along the lines of Adult Swim. Now he’s taking aim at another high-profile target: Joe Rogan, the bro podcaster whose rambling, misinformed conversations with everyone from Vice President JD Vance to [checks notes] Yakov Smirnoff have somehow kept his long-running series, The Joe Rogan Experience, at the top of the charts for years. Heidecker’s companion show, The Tim Heidecker Podcast, premieres at 8 pm ET on Thursday night, and WIRED can exclusively reveal that the debut episode includes lots of complaining about pronouns, wildly dumb speculation around AI, and plugs for a supplement called “Crab Salts” that makes your “head hurt” and causes you to shout.
A representative for Rogan did not immediately return a request for comment.
Heidecker first lampooned Rogan’s discursive and disorganized interviews in 2021, with a viral 12-hour podcast (in reality, one hour of footage looped a dozen times) covering topics including psychedelics, cancel culture, and whether Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson would run for president. His guests for that show, comedy duo and Onion contributors Rajat Suresh and Jeremy Levick, return for the new episode, offering their “expert” takes on hot-button topics. (The pair have essentially perfected the art of fake celebrity web content and once even got Justin Theroux in on the joke for a mock Hollywood Reporter-style actors roundtable.)
“What is essentially happening is, in place of Christianity, we have the 10 commandments of woke,” Levick says during a discussion of DEI policies on the first episode of The Tim Heidecker Podcast. The chat veers into concerns that bearded men are dressing as princesses to visit Disneyland. Heidecker then abruptly informs the boys that he’s planned a weekend trip to Glasgow “for Scotch wrestling.”
In 2026, it’s more difficult than ever to exaggerate the absurdities of the right-wing media ecosystem, with its fact-free moral panics and bizarre alternative medicines. Though if anyone is up to the task, it’s the endlessly inventive Heidecker—who will have no shortage of grifters and lunatics to go after once he’s done with his run as a Rogan type. Luckily for him, few of those potential impressions are as rough on the voice as Alex Jones.
The post Tim Heidecker Is Bringing His Joe Rogan Parody Show to The Onion appeared first on Wired.
