What did Jimmy Carr say about Mitch Hedberg and comedy rhythm on Joe Rogan?

Jimmy Carr says comedy has a natural rhythm of about 92 beats a minute, like a comfortable walking pace, with a key word every two and a half seconds. He calls Mitch Hedberg pound for pound the best joke writer of the last 30 years. But Hedberg's pacing was uneven, so he killed half the time and died half the time, and Carr says a hack with good rhythm would beat him 99% of the time. Joe Rogan added that Hedberg was a heavy heroin user who would not quit.

• Carr opens his shows with about 20 minutes of three or four big laughs a minute before taking questions from the crowd.
• Rogan recalled that Hedberg nearly died around 2003, while Rogan and Doug Stanhope were doing The Man Show.

▸In their words

“But his rhythm, his pacing was inconsistent, which is worse than being fast or slow.” Jimmy Carr · at 1:14:58 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on The Joe Rogan Experience (2026-10-28). Read the whole episode summary →

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