Russell Crowe — Oscar-winning Australian/New Zealand actor (Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, L.A. Confidential), owner of NRL rugby team South Sydney Rabbitohs, and co-owner of the Muff Liquor Company. He stars as Hermann Göring in the new film Nuremberg.
The gist
Crowe and Rogan open on his new film Nuremberg, in which he plays Hermann Göring, and dig into the historical and psychological work of humanizing a monster. The conversation roams widely: a punishing year in which Crowe shot five movies and 'broke his brain,' his lifelong avoidance of gambling rooted in a family gambling addiction, and the dangers of normalizing betting apps. They explore Nazi-era methamphetamine and opiate use via Norman Ohler's book Blitzed, Australia's invasive-species disasters (cane toads, feral cats, wild horses), and Crowe's decades-long project rewilding his bush property. The episode closes on health: Crowe's weight loss and regenerative-medicine treatments at Ways to Well, and a critique of America's broken, advertising-captured healthcare system.
Big reveals
- Crowe recounts a near-disaster in 1990s Reno where he lost almost all his cash gambling and could barely afford gas back to LA.
- His mother revealed his great-grandfather was a professional gambler who gambled away the family house, keeping them poor for two generations.
- Crowe met Henry Cavill as a schoolboy, signed a Gladiator photo for him, and is now cast as his mentor Ramirez in the Highlander remake.
- Crowe admits he spends large parts of every day scrolling TikTok and is probably addicted to social media.
- Says he expects to receive his first ever screen writing credit, for The Beast in Me.
- Reveals his nuanced research into Göring, including that he was a WWI flying ace with 22 kills and a pioneering mountain climber.
- Discloses he weighed 126 kg after reading Rogan's book and is now down to 100.9 kg, crediting regenerative treatments at Ways to Well.
- Crowe and the cast playing Nazis sang the Bavarian song 'Muss i denn' together each day to decompress before filming court scenes.
Things worth remembering
- Crowe co-founded the Muff Liquor Company (potato-based spirits) with Jimmy Carr and Ed Sheeran, now sold in roughly 40 US states.
- When arrested, Hermann Göring had around 40,000 pills on him, with a habit of 40 to 50 a day.
- Nazi troops were issued methamphetamine in graded doses, with tank crews getting the most to fight through nights.
- Cane toads, introduced to Australia in 1937 from a couple hundred animals, now number an estimated 200 million.
- The lone star tick's bite produces 'alpha-gal,' which can make people allergic to red meat.
- Yellowstone elk fell roughly 75% after wolf reintroduction, from about 17,000 in 1995 to under 4,000 by 2013.
- Kudzu was introduced to the US southeast from Japan in 1876 as an ornamental plant before taking over.
- Crowe says new regenerative methods can grow cartilage in bone-on-bone joints, and his shoulder arthritis has reduced by 70 to 90%.
- Crowe notes 600,000+ Americans will go bankrupt from medical bills in a year, versus zero in Australia.
- A cricket test match is played over five days, with breaks for morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea.