Best Of: Seth Rogen / Can The Dems Win Back The Bros?

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From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley.
Today, my guest is Seth Rogen. He created a new Apple TV Plus series, The Studio, which is a satirical look at how executives in Hollywood make decisions on what movies get made.
Seth Starrs is the head of a fictional Hollywood studio who is trying to save the struggling company. And he says the job of a studio executive in real life is the funniest in all of Hollywood.
Yeah, it's a very tragic job. I think tragedy is comedy in a lot of ways.
Also, New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz joins us to discuss his latest investigation into how right-wing podcasts, streams, and YouTube channels have become the platforms where men who feel disillusioned and alienated go to feel seen and heard, and the battle on the left to win them back. Plus, rock critic Ken Tucker reviews new songs by Teddy Swims, Benjamin Booker, and Neil Young.
This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley.
Let's go back to the year 2000. A young Seth Rogen and his writing partner, Evan Goldberg, have arrived from Canada, and they're meeting a studio executive to go over a screenplay they've written together.
During the meeting, the executive makes a cynical confession. I got into this job because I love movies, he says,

and now I feel like my job is to ruin them.

Rogan and Goldberg never forgot what that executive said,

and 25 years later, they've made it the basis

of a new satirical comedy series on Apple TV Plus called The Studio.

Rogan plays Matt Remick, a Hollywood executive

who gets an unexpected promotion as the head of the fictional Continental Studios after his boss is fired. In this scene, the studio CEO, played by Bryan Cranston, offers Matt the job, but asks if he has what it takes to do it the Continental way.
Patty's time has come and gone, and I'm seriously considering you to replace her. Oh, my God, yes, yes.
I'm the guy. I'm the guy for the job.
Why are you... Tell me that.
Why are you the guy? Well, um... I've worked at Continental for 22 years.
I bought the original spec script for MKUltra, which, as I'm sure you know, spawned a franchise that's made us over $3 billion for the... Hey, Rene, where the f*** is my green juice? You want a green juice? Uh, yeah, I'd love one.
Two green juices. Now.
Yes, sir. Sorry.
Continue. Film is my life.
Ever since I came to the studio as a kid and went on the tour, being the head of Continental is the only job I've ever wanted. That is adorable.
All right, well, listen, I honestly just have one strong reservation about you. Oh.
I've heard you are really into artsy, fartsy filmmaking bulls**t. You're obsessed with actors and directors liking you rather than being obsessed with making this studio

as much money as possible.

Me?

Yeah.

That could not be further from the truth.

I am as bottom line oriented

as anyone in this town.

I believe you.

Great.

Good.

Good.

Because at Continental,

we don't make films.

We make movies.

Movies! That people want to pay to see. Yes.
From there, the audience is taken on a funny but also absurd and often cringeworthy adventure as Matt, always flustered and desperately needing to be liked, has to find ways to keep the studio afloat. Seth Rogen has produced, directed, written, and starred in many films, including Superbad, Knocked Up, This Is the End, Sausage Party, and the limited series Pam and Tommy.
He founded the production company Point Grey Pictures, along with his writing and directing partner Evan Goldberg, and the two have founded the cannabis products and home goods company, Houseplant. And Seth Rogen, welcome back to Fresh Air.
Thank you. What an intro.
Well, I really want to go back to this time, 2000. You and Evan are in this executive's office.
And he says this thing to you, like, I now ruin movies. Like, what was your reaction? I was shocked by the honesty.
Honestly, he like, I really could tell that he was in a position in that point in his career. And that person still works in Hollywood as one of the heads of one of the major studios in Hollywood.
So he stuck around. And it was it was an ancient Roman teen sex comedy.
Oh, really? Okay, so this wasn't Superbad or something. What's funny is we had written Superbad and no one was making it and that's how we got the job for this movie.
And honestly, we were like, let's just put all of our ideas from Superbad into the movie basically. And so that's how desperate we were to make something.
And so we sort of became like an ancient Roman version of Superbad, which as I say it is insane. But – and it was very dirty.
It was very dirty. And what I recall, I think at the point in this process, yeah, we had handed in a draft that he really thought was funny and we thought was funny and was ridiculous and crazy.
And he was telling us in this notes meeting that like, it couldn't be so dirty. And it was clearly the notes he had been given from on high.
And so in a very honest moment, he said that. And I don't know if the execs I've worked with over the years would agree, but I've always had a sympathy for, I think because of that, I've always felt like it really humanized the job in a lot of ways.
And made me understand, you know, from a pretty young age, yeah, that like a lot of these, not all of them, but a lot of them are people who love movies. But who are constantly put in positions where they have to either, you know, maybe be fired or do something kind of risky.
And I think more of them should do something risky and that will actually lead to better things. But, you know, I understand why they don't.
I don't agree with it necessarily, but I understand it. And it's a very comedic situation to be in.
Right. I mean, that's the thing.
You have a lot of sympathy for them because of this very formative experience for you yeah but also you say it's like the funniest job in all of hollywood yeah it's a very tragic job and i think tragedy is is comedy in a lot of ways you know and and a lot of them yeah like because they love movies and they grow up now i'm at the age even where like some of the people I work with grew up watching our movies and stuff like that. You know what I mean? And for the first time in my life, like I'm older than the execs I'm working with at some of these companies.
And so they, I'm one of the people they probably grew up watching and they are constantly put in a position where they have to say things that make me really mad at them. And I would imagine that's a huge bummer.
And I've seen it over and over. I remember an exec, like, hiding from a movie star, like, literally in his office because he was avoiding – because the movie wasn't tracking well.
And he was avoiding seeing him on the lot. He didn't want to be the one to tell it.
And he knew he was mad. He knew the movie star was there for a meeting and was mad.
And he didn't want to get yelled at basically.

And he's like – I remember him being like, I love that this guy is one of my favorite actors of all time.

And he wants to scream at me.

And like that to us was – it was just funny.

It just always struck us as very funny.

Is it true that you interviewed almost every Hollywood executive for this series?

Yeah, we interviewed a lot of them whether they knew it or not. of them, it was just like us milking information from them without them.
And some were very formal interviews where they came in. But a lot of the stuff from those interviews worked their way directly into episodes of the show.
Yeah. Okay.
Let's get into the series because I think you said something like 85% of what is in it is actually true to some extent.

Yeah, for sure.

And talking about interviewing these executives.

Yeah.

If this stuff is true, oh, my gosh, because it's like the cringiest scenarios ever. I think we're actually, and like, if anything, I think we paint like a pretty sympathetic picture of the situation that, you know, I think to a lot of people's experiences is probably, you know, an optimistic view of what Hollywood is.
Okay. The characters are phenomenal.
I mentioned Catherine O'Hara, who is, she was your boss. She was fired and you take over her job.
Ike Barinholtz, who plays this powerful lower level executive, desperate, Desperate for Power. He is hilarious.
Yeah, he's great. Katherine Hahn, who plays this aggressive marketing chief with lots of opinions.
Chase Sui Wonders, who plays an ambitious young executive. And she does a couple of shady things to light it over.
As an ambitious young executive, we'll do. And then there's the host of actors and filmmakers with very, very fragile egos.
And then how would you describe your character, Matt Remick? I would describe my character as someone who grew up loving movies and who worked very hard to be someone who got to make movies. And I think he's someone who wishes he was very creative, but is not, and who kind of views himself as creative, but simply isn't.
And so his avenue to filmmaking, quote unquote, I guess, became being a studio executive. And he's very ambitious and very self-preservational and someone who will do the thing that allows him to keep going rather than to perhaps lose it all.
And he's someone who's constantly put in a position to really disappoint both himself and the people that he idolizes and the medium that he idolizes. He's also walking around all the time terrified.
Yes, he's very panicked and stressed out and wears it on his sleeve and does not. And that's based on some specific people I know is that they wear their panic, like, clearly, like they have a bad poker face.
And that is very much something my character has, you know. But that's like the great tension of the series.
So it's set in present day. And all of these executives, like, they're up against the real challenges of the moment.
AI plays a big role.

Racial sensitivity. Like there's all these different things.
But your character, he wants to make art. He really does.
He wants to make film. Yeah.
And it's really making fun of me in a lot of ways, you know. And I don't have like the delusions of grandeur I think my character in the show has.
But I think it's inspired by the same belief that like one movie can change the entire course of Hollywood. And I don't think I'm going to be the person to make that movie necessarily.
But did you want to at one time? Yeah. And for sure.
And I think if you're an ambitious executive who's obsessed with Robert Evans, then you really think you could do that, you know? And so I think it's a silly goal to have. And my character has specifically that goal.
I think he wants to be viewed as like the savior of this town, you know, and that is not an ambition I specifically have, but it's something that I understand where that idea comes from. Okay.
I want to play a clip. In this scene, Matt, your character, goes over to his old boss's house, played by Catherine O'Hara, Patty, to seek some guidance.
And the two talk about how he's handling being the new head of the studio. And O'Hara speaks first.
So how do you feel in all this you know i've worked obviously a long time to get here my you know my parents are very thrilled very proud i think griffin is you know optimistic with with the plan matty not one of those words is about how you feel. Yeah, I feel miserable, honestly.

I'm anxious, stressed out, panicking pretty much all the time. I was so much happier two weeks ago when I was just angry and resentful that I didn't have this job.

I would give anything to be angry and resentful compared to how I feel right now.

You know, I walk past the tour guide every morning,

and they say that the office was built as a temple to cinema, but it feels much more like a tomb. Heavy as the head, Matty.
Yeah, and I'm honored, obviously, to be one of the people that gets to choose, you know, which movies get made and which ones don't. That's huge.
And I got into all this because, you know, I love movies, but now I have this fear that my job is to ruin them. The job is a meat grinder.
It makes you stressed and panicked and miserable. One week you're looking your idol in the eye and breaking his heart.
And the next week you're writing a blank check for some entitled nipple baby in a beanie. But when it all comes together and you make a good movie, it's good forever.
That was Catherine O'Hara playing the role of Patty in the studio and also my guest today, Seth Rogen. And that's the basis for this whole series.
But, you know, I wanted to – this particular scene was really powerful because we understand, like, his motivations. And then she as a wisdom, you know, person with wisdom gives kind of the larger context there.
But it's also so beautiful. It's so interesting.
Like you guys are standing on an overlook, overlooking LA. And the show and the characters wardrobe is all very much old Hollywood.
It's just interesting, the juxtaposition between the visual and then the current day struggles that they're dealing with. Yeah, exactly.
Like the characters, especially mine, like longs for days of yore. And that was sort of a big part of the idea was to like also anchor the show in like a real feeling history for this studio and sort of like a real culture that this studio and like an identity that this studio has kind of.
And so, yeah, we really used color palettes that were very 70s inspired. And you can tell that the characters kind of long for like there's a nostalgia for a time that isn't there anymore.
They're not trying to be on the cutting edge of things. They're actually trying to kind of go back to how things used to be, you know.
And yeah, we shot a lot of old homes from the 50s and 60s and 70s. That house is a John Lautner house.
It's a very beautiful, beautiful house. And in the show, it's as though we kind of have a storyline as though Frank Lloyd Wright designed the studio that we are in because he was in California making, you know, Mayan Revival buildings like at the time that these studios were made.
And that it sort of has this like grandeur to it, you know, and this like kind of thing that you're trying to live up to. And, you know, I remember it's a name drop, but I was at 30 Rock Ones with Lorne Michaels and I was saying what an amazing building it was.
And he was like in his way, like, well, you know, when any industry is new, they build cathedrals for it. And I always remember that.
And it was so true. And like the studios feel that way a lot of them.
Like they're these beautiful places. And they were built at a time when they were kind of like unabashedly like lauding and trying to like bolster the importance of the industry, you know.
And so that to us was something very important. And we got really lucky with that shot because we shot the show where basically every scene is one take, which was very hard to do.
But what it allowed us to do is a scene like that, for example, it's all one shot and we shot it maybe 15 times. And the first like 10 times it was like rainy and gray and cloudy.
And we kept having to go inside because it was raining on us. And it just looked miserable.
But we had a very specific shot we wanted to do. And so we literally just sat inside and waited for it to stop raining as the sun was going down.
And then it's, like, this magical thing happened. We're, like, right as the sun was going down, the rain stopped and rainbows appeared.
Yeah, I'm like, is that a rainbow? You could see the whole city. And whole city we were just like let's go shoot now and to me it was like a real magical hollywood moment kind of it feels like a love letter to los angeles which feels especially just watching it for me um a tinge of like sadness a bit just and with all that has happened for sure you know definitely And I think that it always was a love letter to Los Angeles.
And I think if anything, it is like, we, like I love living in Los Angeles and I've lived here for a very long time and I love the architecture. I love the landscape.
Like I love that there's Franklin Wright buildings and John Lautner houses. And, and I think that's one of the things that Hollywood kind of has afforded me over the years is just like access to like these very beautiful spaces, you know? And so, and as we were pitching the show, that was always something that we would say the pitch is like a lot of our experience in Hollywood is like being in very beautiful places, having very stupid arguments with one another.
And like, that was something that we really, it was a funny juxtaposition as well. It's like we would be at a movie premiere at the Ace Theater that was the United Artists Theater that Charlie Chaplin opened in some back room that was literally the dressing room that Charlie Chaplin would use before coming out of the theater and just screaming at each other over the dumbest fart joke or something like that.
And to us, that was always just very funny. My guest is Seth Rogen.
We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
So there's this particular episode, and there's a scene in the episode where your character is dating a doctor. And she takes him to, I think it's like a cancer fundraiser.
Yeah, like a medical cancer gala. Yeah, gala.
And he, while talking to fellow doctors and researchers who are looking for cures for cancer and stuff, he gets into an argument and he says to a group of them – something like, you all save lives. But we make life worth living.
You all save lives, but we make life worth living. That is like the most absurd, non-self-aware statement ever.
But, Seth, it also is kind of true. I mean, that episode is probably threading a needle more than any of them as far as as far as rooting for my character or at least even understanding where my character is coming from in any way, shape or form.
That to me is actually, I think, like in many ways, I personally find it to be the funniest episode because it's sort of based on, it's kind of based on me because, and I understand, obviously I understand it's comedic and ridiculous, but I would, I have a charity with my wife, Hilarity for Charity, and it's an Alzheimer's charity. And so we find ourselves at a lot of medical galas.
And I find myself at a lot of tables with doctors who save lives.

And what's funny is often they have like a blatant disrespect for the film industry. As maybe as they should, but I don't think so necessarily.
And they... So there's no deference for you.
No, and they think it's funny. And I think they think it's funny.
I think... And they're obviously smart enough to know that I exist in a world where there is deference.
And they're showing no deference. And they seem to revel in being in a position where they can sort of maybe subtly at times diminish the career of another person who clearly views what they do as important even though maybe it isn't.
How does that feel for you to do that? Well, I mean, I personally understand that it's not a thing I should be upset about, but I comedically understand the feeling that you wish you could fight back against that and assert that what you do is as important. And it's not something I would ever do in real life, but it's something that I – it's obviously an instinct I had somewhere in my brain because that's where the idea for the episode came from.
But I know it's ridiculous and I know my character is wrong generally. But I think that the inspiration for that episode was definitely based on like feelings that I've had sitting at tables with doctors.
There's also, like, this storyline about being scared about whether something is racist. And that's hilarious because, like, it just goes through all these different iterations.
Is that a situation that you've had to deal with in real life? For sure. I'd say that episode has more actual conversations that we've had to sit in rooms and watch than most of the episodes.
And what's funny about it is it's like all people care about is the perception. They themselves have no ideological, like, thing that they are trying to get across.
And they don't care at all. They just don't want to look bad.
And that is the thing that we would notice the most when these types of things came up was that like, oh, no, none of these people care. They just don't want to look bad.
Is there a story that comes to mind that happened in real life? It's not a thing we got made, but it was like we were making a comic book and there was like an alien character. The alien had been like traditionally voiced by someone of a certain race.
And so all of a sudden like that became a big topic of conversation. It was like, what race is this alien? And we kept being like, well, it's an alien.
But it didn't matter because like in people's heads, there was a certain like race ascribed to the alien due to the voice that people associated with the alien and then we were like well is that racist like and and so that was something in the last few years where again i found just a lot of people having at the end of the day no one involved cared no one no one could be like you know what i strongly believe that it should be this everyone was just like what maybe will maybe will people yell at us for? Yeah. Yeah.
There's also the funny scene where to make sure, so in the case like the alien, like in the voice, you go to like the one person of color in the place. Oh, yes.
Is this okay? Yes, that happens a lot. I've been there as well.

I've had people call me and ask me Jewish things before. It's happened to me.
I've been that person. Because so much of your material comes from a personal place, have you ever gotten a note from an executive that felt like an insult? Oh, yeah.
Many, many, many times. We've gotten notes that just like, this scene isn't funny, which is insulting.
You know, I think – I actually understand notes about likeability because like I think that's like an easy note for an executive to give. It's like this – often there will be a character based on me and they'll be like this character is not likeable.
Well, wasn't there that note from that executive or something about Jonah Hill's character is super bad? Yeah, that was the thing. Yeah, that Sony – well, it was Sony, like corporate Sony.
Sony made the movie. You know, Sony owns Columbia Pictures.
And so Sony made Superbad. And there's a scene in Superbad where it was supposed to be Michael Cera and Jonah's character, Seth and Evan, based on us playing PlayStation together.
And then we got a note from Sony Corporate, yeah, that Jonah's character couldn't interact with a Sony product basically. It was even worse on Pineapple Express where they wouldn't even let us put a PlayStation in the movie altogether.

And we had a scene where a kid was playing a video game and we had to, like, invent a console that didn't exist.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, like, Sony on that one was like, we don't even want to be in this movie.

But the thing about the Superbad one, I mean, Jonah's character is based on you.

It is based on me.

And they were like, yes, this character is too reprehensible to be touching a PlayStation. And I was like, that hurts.
Seth Rogen, this has been such a pleasure to talk with you. And thank you for the studio.
Thank you. Seth Rogen's new satirical comedy series, The Studio, premieres on Apple TV Plus on Wednesday, March 26th.
Rock critic Ken Tucker has been listening to new music releases, including new songs by Teddy Swims, nominated as Best New Artist at this year's Grammy Awards, and Benjamin Booker, who Tucker says is doing interesting things with volume and distortion. There's also an old pro in the mix here, Neil Young, who has a new

band and a new song that Tucker says herald Lose Control, which showcased his gruff but supple ballad singing. The Georgia-born singer has clearly been influenced by Southern soulmen like Al Green and Bobby Blue Bland.

On his new album, titled I've Tried Everything But Therapy, Part 2,

Swims offers a new set of love songs that demonstrate the depth of his romanticism.

On Are You Even Real, he's so swept away, he wonders whether he's dreaming the object of his romanticism. On Are You Even Real, he's so swept away,

he wonders whether he's dreaming

the object of his adoration. But I can't get enough.
You're so beautiful, spiritual, more like a miracle. Ride at me, scared that you might be invisible.
It's good to be true to me. Are you? Are you? Where Teddy Swims offers up his vocals with glowing clarity, Benjamin Booker opts to reduce his singing to just another instrument in the mix of songs and styles found on his new album called Lower.
On his previous albums, Booker grappled with then-current events such as the Black Lives Matter protests. The lyrics on his new album are more obscure,

hinting at deep emotions whose rawness is either matched by

or buried beneath layers of distorted guitars and keyboards.

There's a beauty in the kind of musical chaos Booker creates.

One of the best examples of this is Same Kind of Lonely. All right Love, love Love while we have a chance Love without All right All right If I could make it out tomorrow.
If I could start again tomorrow. If I could be the same kind of lonely.
If I could be the same kind of lonely. A few years ago, Benjamin Booker opened for Neil Young on a few of Young's tour dates.

Young himself is now showcasing a new band called the Chrome Hearts that includes Willie Nelson's son Micah on guitar

and the great organist Spooner Oldham, who was part of the legendary Muscle Shoals rhythm section and co-writer of hits like the Box Tops' Cry Like a Baby. To judge from the band's booming first single, Big Change, however, Neil Young isn't seeking out pop or country sounds.
He aims to have the Chrome Hearts sound at least as grungy as his usual backup Crazy Horse, and the noise they make is powerful. Big change is coming.
Coming right home to you. Big change is coming.
You know what you gotta do. Big change is coming.
Could be bad and it could be good. Big change is coming.
It's coming to run home where you stood. Big change is coming.
Big change is coming. Big drums are drumming.
Heading up the long parade Big change is coming Coming right through your game Big guitar strumming The singer said don't be late Big change is coming Put me back and it could be great Big change is coming, Young chants over and over. Given the timing of the release and the image of Young waving an American flag in the video, there's an inescapable feeling that he's talking about the recent presidential election, though it's impossible to tell whether he thinks the changes are welcome or ominous.
Like Teddy Swims and Benjamin Booker, Neil Young is letting loose with some big emotions, but letting you judge how to interpret them. Ken Tucker reviewed new songs by Teddy Swims, Benjamin Booker, and Neil Young.
Coming up, we'll talk with the New Yorker writer Andrew Marantz about his latest article, The Battle for the Bros, which is a look at why many young men in America have gone MAGA and the battle on the left to bring them back. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
California Governor Gavin Newsom recently joined the Manosphere, the world of political podcasts, streams, and YouTube channels where young men have become the new MAGA vanguard. This is Gavin Newsom.
And this is Steve Bannon. And this is Michael Savage.
And this is Charlie Kirk. The Democratic governor says the purpose of his new podcast is to have unfiltered conversations with people he doesn't always agree with.
And so far, he's had on far-right media stars, many of whom were instrumental in Donald Trump winning the election. Well, my guest today, the New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz, looks at how Democrats are attempting to win back the support of young men in America, those they lost during the 2024 election.
And for his piece, Marantz spent time with several high-profile podcasters and streamers, like Hassan Piker, a leftist star on the livestream platform Twitch with more than 3 million followers, who's known for modeling modern masculinity with progressive politics.

Marantz's article, The Battle for the Bros, Young Men Have Gone MAGA, Can the Left Win Them Back? appears in the current copy of The New Yorker.

And Andrew Morantz, welcome back to the show.

Thank you so much, Tanya.

So good to be back.

Democrats lost support with nearly every kind of voter,

but the defection that alarmed strategists the most

was this significant jump in young men

who voted for Trump or no candidate.

And this comes at a time when men are in crisis,

as you write, relative to their forefathers

and their women counterparts,

May the men who voted for Trump or no candidate. And this comes at a time when men are in crisis, as you write, relative to their forefathers and their women counterparts, men are more likely to fall behind in school, they're more likely to drop out of college, languish in the workforce, or die by overdose or suicide.
How did the right not only tap into that grim reality, but also offer a space for male grievance.

Yeah. So just to start from defining terms.
So manosphere is, like a lot of Internet terms, pretty ill-defined and it keeps changing. So often originally when people use the term, it was for really, really extreme hateful stuff.
Right. So it was for Andrew Tate, who is a proud misogynist, defines himself that way, has been accused of human trafficking, really, really, really bad dude.
And so often when people talked about the manosphere, they would talk about that. But then it kind of migrated into people who are, you know, conservatives on gender roles or who don't even have like gender content that they often bring up, but maybe are just into things that are commonly coded as dude stuff, you know, video games or hunting or, you know, lifting weights or whatever.
So all of that is kind of, depending on who you're listening to, contained within that category. And there's no reason that the right has a monopoly inherently on being down to earth or being relatable.
You know, it's been mentioned many times that people like Bernie Sanders

have no problem going onto these shows and in fact have been criticized for going onto these shows.

So it's a bit of a caricature, but it's definitely one that's stuck. And I think

we can now see in the data, it's definitely one that hurt Kamala Harris in the last election.

Well, relatable is a word that just keeps coming up in your piece.

And you write about several notable personalities, influencers, streamers, podcasters.

One of them is comedian and podcaster Theo Vaughn, who I personally have known since he was on MTV's Real World Road Rules back in the 2000s. So for most of his career, though, he has been apolitical.
Can you talk about the power in that built-in trust through familiarity? Theo has been around for like 25 years. I mean, Donald Trump is a perfect example of this.
He built a relationship with Americans as an entertaining figure for decades. Absolutely.
And Joe Rogan has been around since he was, you know, telling people to eat worms on Fear Factor. And so, and I think you nailed it with the word trust and authenticity.
I mean, a lot of times, and I think this is true for everyone, but I think it's especially true of listeners who don't think of themselves as political people, people who I think are sometimes pejoratively called low information voters, but people who just don't think it's their job to study up on the ins and outs of politics. Often what it comes down to is who do you trust? And so you hear a lot of conflicting, competing information.
You know, you hear one source telling you, Doge is just a scam and it's just, you know, a way for Elon Musk to enrich himself. And then you hear Joe Rogan or Elon Musk or Theo Vaughn saying, I don't know, it seems cool to me.
You know, we're cutting waste from the government. And if you don't want to embark on the really difficult project of sifting through the conflicting evidence, you can just trust one source and not the other.
So, you know, you mentioned Theo Vaughn. To my mind, he is a funny, really affable, kind of goofy guy.
He presents himself as basically so curious that he almost seems to see it as his job to go in with no prior information into any conversation. And you can hear him from one week to the next.
I mean, he, within the span of a week last summer, interviewed Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. And with each of these interviews, his stance is to kind of just sit back and go, oh, well, that's interesting.
I never heard of that before. He kind of copied this format from Rogan where when something new comes up that they don't know about, they have a production assistant or an intern or someone kind of sitting in the studio and they'll go, oh, could you pull that up? Could you Google that? I mean, I was listening when someone in a Theo Vaughn interview mentioned FDR and the New Deal.
And Theo Vaughn went, oh, what is that again? Can we pull that up? And they Googled New Deal and started reading the Wikipedia article. So the vibe is very much not, you know, we've done our research, we've studied up, we've pre-fact checked everything.
It's really the opposite. It's like a- They're the proxy for the audience.
Yes, very much. It's a dorm room kind of sitting around at a diner kind of conversation.

They are a proxy for the audience who may or may not know all the proper nouns. And so they'll just Google it for you in real time.
And often that's why it takes two or three or four hours because they're really not in a hurry. I want to play a clip from Theo Vaughn's show.
It's when he had on social scientist Richard Reeves, who you also spoke with. Reeves is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and president of the American Institute for Boys and Men.
And he talked to Vaughn about how men are struggling to find purpose in today's world and how during the pandemic, there was lots of research being reported about how the isolation would impact women and girls, but not necessarily men and boys. And here's Theo's response.

I don't know if ever in my life there's been like a,

like a lot of organizations where it's like,

hey, men need help, you know?

It's like everything is that women need help with this,

children, you know, and it's certainly that makes sense.

I always think back to like women and children first,

like when the Titanic was sinking or something,

you know, when something like that, it's like women and children first, right? And that's probably what most men would want as well. But at a certain point, you're like, hey, we exist.
What are we doing here? You know? That was podcaster and comedian Theo Vaughn and social scientist Richard Reeves on Theo's podcast. Andrew, you write about how at one point during this particular conversation, Theo said, I'm not speaking against any other group.
I'm just saying you can't make white males feel like they don't exist. He's saying basically that mainstream media primarily focuses their attention on the plight of people of other identities, and no one is really telling the stories of the disaffected male.
Is that something that you heard during your reporting often? Definitely. There was a really interesting moment on Theo Vaughn that I spoke to Stavros Halkius about.
He's another comedian who's actually a much more leftist comedian. A lot of these guys are professional comedians for, I think, interesting reasons.
And when Stavros went on Theo's show, Theo started to say a lot of stuff that I think is frankly pretty offensive about, you know, why we need to close the border and, you know, stuff that sounded pretty xenophobic. And because Stavros is his friend, he didn't say, how dare you, sir, and get up and leave and storm out.

You know, he kind of laughed along and yes-anded the joke in a way that kind of steered him away from the xenophobia parts and toward a kind of more common understanding to the point that by the end of that interview, Stavros was offering a kind of very concise explanation of why he thought Trump and the Republicans were terrible and delivering this to Theo Vaughn, who had kind of just been at Trump's inauguration and almost seemed to be in his corner. And it wasn't contentious.
It wasn't heated. It was real disagreement, but it was in a kind of amiable, bro-y way.
So I don't know. I mean, if that's the manosphere, then it's not as scary as all that.
But it's not always possible to model that kind of agreement. It takes, you know, prior relationship often.
It takes trust. So it's not like this is a kind of cure-all for, you know, all the cultural ills of America.
But I do think it's worth it for at least Democratic politicians to take note the kind of pearl-clutching aesthetic is just very, very off-putting to people. I mean, I heard that more times than I could count.
You said you had a theory or you found it interesting that many of these guys are comedians. Why is that? Have they just found their lane within the podcasting space or? Well, I think there's something about when your job is to talk for a living and to kind of push boundaries for a living, you, I think, kind of over-index for that.
I mean, a lot of the comedian's craft is to look at something you've seen a thousand times, you know, the line to get into the airplane or the, you know, room service at a hotel and find something quirky and new and maybe a little bit taboo to say about it. And so it kind of makes sense that if you're on one of these long-form podcasts, it's not going to sound like, okay, here's a very tidy, efficient summary of the negotiations yesterday over the budget shutdown.
It's going to sound like, man, like what even is a budget? Like, why do we even give money to each other? Have you ever thought about that? You know, it's like sort of radically open. And I think a lot of Democrats underestimated how powerfully affecting that is for people.
I mean, in the piece, I kind of refer to this as parasocial media. It's not social media in the sense of, you know, an algorithmic feed.
It's parasocial in the sense that, I mean, that word means basically a kind of imagined one-way friendship that the listener has with the host. So if you're listening to Theo Vaughn or Joe Rogan for tens or dozens or hundreds of hours while you're at the gym or while you're folding laundry or whatever, you'd feel like you know them.
I mean, I feel like I know them. And so then when they tell you something or they start a line of questioning, you have a certain amount of trust and a certain amount of generosity, like, oh, let's see where he's going with this.
And that's a very, very, very powerful tool in culture and in politics. And I think for a long time, there's been this assumption that, oh, politics is one thing, and Spotify is another.
And they're just not separate things at all. And I feel like it took way too long for political consultants to learn that about social media.
I feel like they've now learned it about social media, but they're a little behind the ball on parasocial media. I want to follow the money just for a minute.
Are a lot of wealthy donors funding these podcasters and influencers on the right? Yeah, there's definitely money going into the right wing podcast sphere, some of it from political donors, and some of it just, you know, Joe Rogan got a massive deal from Spotify, just because he was very popular. And part of what, you know, when Hassan Piker says, you know, the Democrats can't podcast their way out of this, I think part of what he means is you can't just have a kind of astroturf solution where you throw a bunch of money at sort of randomly selected people whose views you like, and that'll do it.
Right. So to kind of play out that argument, the way that argument would go is, OK, let's say some left of center donor decided to give hundreds of millions of dollars to whichever, you know, TikTok star was kind of supporting the Democrats.
Would that boost awareness of the Democrats? Probably. But what it wouldn't do is have the authentic feeling of an organic, trusted, authentic, weird voice, right? So you were saying before, people who've known parasocially someone like Theo Vaughn or Joe Rogan for years, they have a kind of trust in them.
And a lot of what that trust comes from is not just putting in the parasocial hours, although that's important, but also, frankly, how weird and idiosyncratic these people's interests are. You can't grow Joe Rogan of the right in a lab because Joe Rogan wasn't the Joe Rogan of the right until a few months ago.
In 2020, Joe Rogan was the Joe Rogan of the left. He supported Bernie Sanders for president.
And then between 2020 and 2024, he was lost. But the point I'm making with that is if you had decided to astroturf your way to Joe Rogan, you wouldn't have been looking in the right place because you wouldn't have been funding Joe Rogan.

So a lot of where the trust and authenticity comes from is, you know, this is someone whose interests I actually just vibe with at a totally apolitical level.

And then when they start talking about politics, maybe I'll take some advice from them. That's a very hard thing to kind of recreate from the top down.
Have you been listening to these podcasters since Trump took office? And how are they approaching it? Yeah, I mean, Elon Musk was on Rogan a week or two ago, talking about all this stuff. And it was after the Doge had started, after they had made these massive cuts to USAID.
And Rogan asked him, what's going on with this, man? People say that, you know, like babies are dying and all this terrible stuff is happening. And Musk just said, oh, no, that's not really true.
And then they kind of moved on. You know, again, this is not a journalistic standard of pushback.
This is not a, you know, I'm coming in with the receipts and I'm going to make you answer. I think that could be really illuminating, actually, if someone could get someone like Elon Musk to sit down for four hours unedited with receipts and say, here you said you cut a billion dollars, but it was actually a million dollars.
Your explanation, please. You know, but I just don't think that is what someone like Joe Rogan sees his job as.
I think he sees it as a hang that, you know, we're just hanging. And it would be weird if you were hanging with your friend and you kept badgering them with receipts.
So that's not what he's going to do. there's so much more to your article we scratched the surface but really i just want to know from

you i, the title is The Battle for the Bros. Young men have gone MAGA.
Can the left win them back? What did you come to after all of your reporting? Is it possible for the left to win them back? I think it is. Luckily, I'm not a political strategist, so I have no idea how to do it.
But one thing we haven't mentioned, which I think I should just explicitly say is, what do we mean by the left is actually a very live question. So when people talk about the, you know, can there be a Joe Rogan of the left? Or can the left win back, you know, young people? Are the left and the Democrats the same thing or are they actually at odds in many ways? A lot of what Hassan Piker does is criticize the Democrats from the left.
And often what he says is I'm a leftist, not a liberal. So one thing that has to be sort of resolved or at least the tension has to be, I think, recognized is what do we mean when we say the left? And then I think to the second part of the question, can the center-left Democrat anti-Republican coalition win young men back? I think yes.
And I think it, you know, based on the conversations I've had with various people, you know, it's a combination of material factors and kind of cultural factors. So I think it's, you know, trying to deliver a coherent policy agenda that will actually benefit people and make their lives better and more meaningful.
And then also showing up in

these spaces, both, you know, online and IRL to tell them how you're going to do that. So easier

said than done. And as I say, luckily, it's not my job to do it, but it's possible for sure.

Andrew Marantz, as always, thank you so much.

Thank you, Tanya. This was great.

Andrew Marantz is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His latest article is The Battle for the Bros.
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