It is well known by now that months before the election, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance cozied up to a small army of hyper-male podcasters. You’ve probably heard of Joe Rogan, Charlie Kirk, and Tucker Carlson; but some of the others, like the Nelk Boys, Adin Ross, Theo Von, or Bussin’ With the Boys, may not be as familiar. Yet, collectively, they dominate a vast and growing media landscape, where the studio space itself has become as significant as the voices within it.
The godfather of them all is undoubtedly Rogan, who hosts the world’s number one podcast. Unlike traditional broadcasts, his “bro-casts” are streamed in both audio and video. In the visual format, you get a glimpse of his studio, decked out with antlers, sports gear, and energy drinks. It’s all a bit messy but also carefully curated, signaling peak performance and rugged masculinity.
Rogan’s recording studio looks like a man cave, that uniquely gendered space in American suburbia. Usually tucked away in the basement of a Home Depot dad’s oversized house (perhaps Tim Walz’s?), this is where he can bask in a low-lit sanctuary of leather recliners and half-remembered dreams of high school conquests. As a masculine version of Virginia Woolf’s “room of one’s own,” the Rogan audio den stands as the alpha-male’s response to fifty years of feminism. His podcast studio is a space where ideas are forged—or perhaps just flexed.
Podcast studios today are designed to reflect the values and aspirations of their creators. One podcast that Kamala Harris appeared on was Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy. Now here’s a millennial answer to Woolf: a sleek, minimalist setup with pastel tones, soft lighting, and artfully arranged plants. Her vibe projects millennial aspirations of empowerment and sophistication. Then there’s the popular duo Trixie Mattel and Katya Zamolodchikova’s flamboyant set, with its retro furniture and gaudy décor—a drag queen’s studiolo, celebrating camp and queerness.
Tucker Carlson’s studio offers yet another variation. His version of the man cave trades suburbia for the country workshop. A bottle of wood glue sits small, full, and dripless on the bench, next to a pristine, empty toolbox. A reel of duct tape hangs neatly, as if waiting for someone to actually use it. Though Carlson usually leans into the New England preppy elite aesthetic, here he dons a red-flannel shirt, signaling a rugged authenticity as carefully curated as a L.L. Bean catalogue model.
Such podcast studios blur the lines between workspace and stage. Their design elements are more than props; they are symbols of identity. Rogan’s antlers, Cooper’s plants, and Carlson’s duct tape are the modern equivalents of the books and artifacts that filled Renaissance personal libraries, spaces carefully curated to reflect the aspirations of their owners.
The studiolo, or private study, emerged during the Renaissance as a must-have for the European elite. From the fourteenth century onward, a well-stocked library and well-furnished study became symbols of intellect, wealth, and power. These spaces were often adorned with books, globes, and intricate woodwork, but their most important feature was their ability to project an image of their owner’s mind. For Petrarch, the study was a refuge from the chaos of the world. Seeking solace from the ravages of the plague, he described his study as a place where he gathered the voices of Rome and Athens: “Here I have established my spiritual fatherland.” And the minor aristocrat Montaigne wrote all his famous essays in a circular tower of bookish solitude deep inside his Bordeaux wine estate.
In an evocative letter written by Machiavelli in 1513, the disgraced writer finds himself fallen from the apex of power. (He had the second-to-top post in the Florentine government.) He’s now exiled to his family villa outside the city. Machiavelli describes his typical day, bored by vulgar games with butchers and innkeepers, his mind simmering in a thick stew of human quarrels and rural gossip. But nothing compares to the thrill of what he does at the end of the day. As evening descends, he describes how he returns home and enters his study. He sheds the dirty clothes of the day, and puts on “regal and courtly garments” suited for the company he’s about to join—a pantheon of ancient authors. “And for the space of four hours, I feel no boredom,” he writes, “I deliver myself entirely to them.”
If we compare Machiavelli to Rogan, there appears to be a parallel if you squint hard enough: Both have constructed spaces that blur the line between solitude and sociability, or what during pandemic people called being “alone together.” In Machiavelli’s solitude, he is among his equals and betters, absorbed in questions of statecraft, justice, and power. Rogan, too, crafts a ritual in his studio, trading his hoodie for a headset as he enters a space that is as liminal as any Renaissance study.
The “man cave” is the least-examined sanctum of the American male soul. While the Old-World humanist secluded himself with the intellectual heroes of history—his shelves stacked with Cicero, Seneca, and Dante—the man cave is a thoroughly American affair, stocked with the stuff of modern mythmaking: sports jerseys, old vinyl, beer fridges, and neon signs proclaiming allegiance to favorite teams. The modern midwestern dad might have an odd volume of World War II history, a biography of LBJ or the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen, or if you like, Paul McCartney. Each item is a totem of self that declares, loudly or subtly, what kind of man occupies this space.
Yet spending too much time, whether in a man cave or a library, can be a dangerous thing. Don Quixote, for example, was driven mad by his overindulgence in chivalric romances, while Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest lost his dukedom because of his obsession with books. Doctor Faustus got so fed up with his scholarship that he made his famous pact with the devil. The library, for all its promise of enlightenment, can also become a site of delusion.
These dangers echo in today’s podcast studios. Rogan’s space, for instance, has been criticized as a gateway to misinformation, its casual tone masking the potential for radicalization. Carlson’s faux-workshop aesthetic reinforces a carefully constructed populist image, even as he operates from a position of elite power. (He broadcasted his election night show from Mar-a-Lago.) The infinite Spotify and YouTube libraries, like the bookshelves of Renaissance libraries, promise abundance but can become closed systems, sealing listeners in echo chambers.
It’s no coincidence that many of Rogan’s guests are modern Stoics, fitness enthusiasts, or warrior-scholars—figures who project an aspirational vision of self-mastery and intellectual rigor. (And yes, 90 percent are male, white, and straight. They all have what a friend calls “big dick energy” or BDE, slang from 2018 that is new to me). On the opposite end of the spectrum, Trixie & Katya’s set creates a queer cultural space where taboos are gleefully dismantled, while Alex Cooper’s studio normalizes frank conversations about female desire and empowerment.
What makes these spaces so powerful is their duality. On the one hand, they offer intimacy: Rogan’s studio feels like a private conversation, even as it’s streamed to millions. On the other hand, they are highly performative. Every object on display is carefully chosen to signal the host’s identity. The warlord Federico da Montefeltro’s study (now at the Metropolitan Museum), with its portraits of Solomon and Plato and inlaid woodwork, served a similar purpose. It projected an image of its owner as both a man of intellect and a man of action.
For the disenchanted young man, fed up with NPR’s earnestness and TikTok’s triviality, Rogan offers something deceptively simple: three-hour audio marathons (versus Machiavelli’s four hours of deep reading), mercifully free of PowerPoint slides, punctuated by “Dude, that’s crazy,” and shades of incredulity. Each episode begins innocuously, as if you’ve dropped in mid-conversation. With his baritone voice and decent questions, he’s a good listener—until the path leads to UFOs and conspiracy rants.
In his eventful life, Machiavelli encountered tyrants first-hand. The Medici and Sforza dynasties ended long ago but princes are still very much with us: They are the tech billionaires and political titans who rule over empires of data and algorithms that make the squabbling Italian city-states puny in comparison. Their influence of power is not measured by territory or army sizes but by downloads and social media followers. Machiavelli’s sharp humanism reminds us that the true strength of the studiolo—or even the suburban man cave—is its capacity to provide not only solace but also arms for resistance. After all, the ultimate lesson of humanism is not how to rule but how to confront those who do.