Did Joe Rogan, in an episode of his podcast, say that a U.S. Navy ship was attacked by a megalodon? No, that's not true: Narration that sounds like Rogan telling a tale of a Navy ship being ambushed by an ancient, giant shark is covered by images other than any showing Rogan's mouth, so that viewers can only hear the narration and see the statements transcribed on screen. There is no evidence he ever made the comments on his podcast. The megalodon was a species of megatooth shark that has been extinct for several million years, and there is no new evidence these giant sharks are still alive.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) where it was published on Facebook on February 26, 2024. It opened:
Guys, have you heard about this? So apparently the US Navy was attacked by a megalodon during a secret mission.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Mar 4 18:04:04 2024 UTC)
The caption on the post reads:
So apparently the US navy was attacked by a Meg! And it's scary! 😱 #theory #usa🇺🇸 #usa #conspiracytiktok #megalodon #joerogan
The video of Rogan uses footage of him from his podcast but the audio is stilted and appears to be AI-generated. The video created an impression that this is from an episode of his show.
The video opens with Rogan saying, "Guys, have you heard about this? So apparently the US Navy was attacked by a megalodon during a secret mission," but his mouth is covered by the microphone, obscuring whatever he might actually be saying. The audio is stilted and has a mechanical sound to the words. When the audio begins discussing the megalodon, the video cuts away from Rogan to footage of a large shark in the water and other footage of naval ships, a man in military fatigues and an explosion on a ship.
The video cuts back to Rogan saying words like "right," and "so, this is the story," but those are non-specific phrases that he could have said at any point in his episode about any topic. The video ends with the teaser telling viewers to follow the account to find out what happens next.
Using a screenshot of Rogan from the video posted on Facebook, a Google images search (archived here) showed his outfit matches the one he wore on The Joe Rogan Experience episode #2084 that aired on January 9, 2024, featuring an interview with comedian Jim Breuer (archived here).
A search (archived here) of the Google News archive of thousands of reliable information sites, using the keywords "joe rogan So apparently the US Navy was attacked by a megalodon during a secret mission," yields zero credible results.
Rogan is often used in AI-generated content that makes him say things he never said. Lead Stories has previously debunked claims that he spoke about the mythical creature wendigo here and secret tunnels under Disneyland here.
While Rogan did not say that a U.S. Navy ship was attacked by a megalodon, we are noting that there is no new evidence that megalodons are currently alive on earth as of March 4, 2023.
There is some scientific question regarding how long ago megalodons became extinct, based on the age of megalodon fossils. An academic article (archived here), "The Early Pliocene extinction of the mega-toothed shark Otodus megalodon: a view from the eastern North Pacific," published on February 13, 2019, carefully reviewed records of megalodon fossils from around the world. After review, their hypothesis pushed the estimated time of extinction back by about 1 million years from 2.6 Ma to 3.6 Ma -- Ma stands for "mega annum," (archived here) representing 1 million years.
OLE [optimal linear estimation] analysis of a revised global dataset of Otodus megalodon occurrences strongly suggests that Otodus megalodon was extinct by the end of the early Pliocene (3.6 Ma)
Other Lead Stories fact checks about Joe Rogan can be found here.
