During the recording of his latest show episode featuring actor Charlie Sheen, US podcaster Joe Rogan received the news that conservative activist Charlie Kirk had been shot dead.

The pair’s shocked reaction was caught live on camera as they were told of the shooting by a producer.

“This has just happened. We just got word that Charlie Kirk got shot,” the podcast host said, looking stunned and clutching at his head.

“That’s f—ing awful,” Sheen, 60, said in the video.

“Murdered for having a different opinion from somebody else. A different ideology from somebody else.”

Rogan remarked that they were unaware of the identity of the person who killed the 31-year-old Turning Point USA founder and Donald Trump supporter, or what their motive might have been.

The podcaster never interviewed Kirk on his show, but said he had met him once at a gun range.

“He’s not a violent guy,” Rogan said. 

“He was talking to people on college campuses.”

He added that Kirk “wasn’t even particularly rude. He tried to be pretty reasonable with people.”

Rogan lamented that the US was a country where people were deeply at odds with each other.

“People are so divided in this country… and there’s so many people that love it and they profit off that division.”

“One of two things is going to happen,  people are going to realise how f—ing insane this is…. or it’s going to get a lot worse.”

Kirk, a married father-of-two, was killed on Wednesday afternoon local time as he was speaking on stage to a crowd at Utah Valley University campus.

The killer, who fired the fatal shot from atop a nearby building, is still on the run.