Quick answer: On Joe Rogan Experience #2581, Protect Our Parks 18, Ari Shaffir describes a solo trip in which, he says, "I stayed in Luke Skywalker's house." The interiors, he tells the table, were shot "right outside Tatooine," in "Berber homes that were built into these caves," a "normal way to live" that "keeps you cool in the summer" and "warm in the winter." After two nights in a hostel, he was told "the biggest coliseum outside Italy is there." "But nobody's there," he says. "You can run on the fields." The used clips do not name Tunisia, Matmata, Hotel Sidi Driss, or El Jem. The Viral Podcast Shorts title places the trip in Tunisia.
Clip: Viral Podcast Shorts YouTube Short from the full source linked below.
The episode was uploaded November 13, 2026, at about 1:30 p.m. Eastern. The official description identifies Shaffir as the host of the You Be Trippin' podcast and lists Shane Gillis and Mark Normand as the other guests. This article follows only the two travel segments used in the Short. It does not take up the rest of the episode.
"I stayed in Luke Skywalker's house"
Someone at the table asks whether anybody recognized him. Shaffir answers with the stay. "Yeah, I stayed in Luke Skywalker's house." When the others land on "Tatooine," he agrees: "Yeah, right outside Tatooine. This is where they shot the interior." He says they "shot the interiors" and "left it all there."
Rogan asks whether "they built that up there just for the movie." Shaffir points to the houses themselves. "Yeah, they have these Berber homes that were built into these caves like that. That's a normal way to live. It keeps you cool in the summer, warm in the winter."
He was alone on the trip. "Solo? Yeah. Just driving rented a car, driving the transit trans-African highway." He was "stopping for ciggies and tea and coffee and trying to talk to people."
In the clips used for the Short, he does not name the hotel or the town. Film-location accounts, including movie-locations.com's page on Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope, identify the interior of Luke's Lars homestead as the Sidi Driss Hotel in Matmata, Tunisia, a troglodyte hotel of homes cut into the local sandstone. That identification is from those sources, not from his wording in the Short.
A coliseum with nobody there
The second cut starts at the hostel. "Stayed at a hostel my first two nights. So, I was like, 'Get intel from them.' They told me the the biggest coliseum outside Italy is there." Then: "But nobody's there. So you're just like in the coliseum. You can run on the fields."
He is looking at images with the others. "Look at that. That's a coliseum outside of Italy. So the Romans 3/4 the size. Yeah. That means the Romans were there for long enough to decide we're going to be here. Let's build this over 75 years and let's use it." He comes back to how empty it looks. "Look, nobody's there."
He does not name the monument. UNESCO's listing for the Amphitheatre of El Jem, in the Tunisian town of El Jem, calls it "the largest colosseum in North Africa," a 3rd-century amphitheatre "among the largest" in the world, with a capacity judged at 35,000, inscribed in 1979. UNESCO describes the building as begun around 238 AD and never completed. It does not use the hostel's "biggest coliseum outside Italy," and it does not describe a 75-year construction period. Those two details stay as Shaffir told them, or as he was told them, in the clip.
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FAQ
Does Ari Shaffir name Tunisia in the Short?
No. The used clips do not say Tunisia, Matmata, Hotel Sidi Driss, or El Jem. The Short's title places the trip in Tunisia.
What does he say about the "Luke Skywalker house"?
He says he stayed there, "right outside Tatooine," where "they shot the interior," and that "they left it all there." He describes Berber homes built into caves that stay cool in summer and warm in winter.
What does he say about the coliseum?
Hostel guests told him it was "the biggest coliseum outside Italy." He says almost nobody was there, and that "you can run on the fields." He also calls it "3/4 the size" and says the Romans built it "over 75 years."
Was he traveling alone?
Yes. He tells the table it was a solo trip: a rental car, the "trans-African highway," and stops for "ciggies and tea and coffee."