Did comedian-commentator Joe Rogan say on his podcast that scientists captured a Wendigo, a monster from Native American folklore, and tried to keep it a secret? No, that's not true: Rogan never mentioned the mythological creature on his podcast. The video animation from social media that shows an "urban explorer" searching "deep in the woods" for the Wendigo did not air on Rogan's show.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok on November 3, 2023. It opened:
Did you guys hear about this? Scientists captured the Wendigo and tried to keep it a secret.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of the writing of this fact check:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Nov 10 18:12:12 2023 UTC)
The 1:27-minute-long video opens with footage of Rogan speaking and audio that says, "Did you guys hear about this?", but the words do not match the movements of his mouth.
In the video posted on TikTok, Rogan is wearing a T-shirt that matches the T-shirt he wore on July 4, 2023, during episode No. 2005 of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Rogan did not mention the Wendigo during the episode (archived here), as the recording from his podcast website proves.
Here is a screenshot of him from the video posted on TikTok:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Nov 10 18:15:34 2023 UTC)
Below is a screenshot of Rogan wearing the same T-shirt in a video of the episode posted on July 4, 2023, on The Joe Rogan Experience's official Instagram page (archived here) :
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Fri Nov 10 18:20:54 2023 UTC)
The rest of the video is an animated video of a person in the woods finding a supposed CIA research building and discovering a Wendigo chained to a wall there. The Wendigo is a terrifying creature that eats humans, according to Algonquian Native American folklore, the reference site Legends of America (archived here) explains.
Wendigo claims can be found on TikTok with the hashtag "horrortok" or "hauntedtok," which indicate that the videos are horror-themed content.
A Google search (archived here) returned no credible results about Rogan telling his podcast audience that an explorer had found a Wendigo.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Joe Rogan can be found here.
