The Political Battle For The Bros

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Speaker 3 This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 5 This is Gavin Newsom.

Speaker 5 And this is Steve Bannon. And this is Michael Savage.

Speaker 5 And this is Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 3 The Democratic governor says the purpose of his new podcast is to have unfiltered conversations with people he doesn't always agree with.

Speaker 3 And so far, he's had on far-right media stars, many of whom were instrumental in Donald Trump winning the election.

Speaker 3 Well, my guest today, the New Yorker staff writer Andrew Morantz, looks at how Democrats are attempting to win back the support of young men in America. those they lost during the 2024 election.

Speaker 3 And for his piece, Morant spent time with several high-profile podcasters and streamers, like Hassan Piker, a leftist star on the live stream platform Twitch with more than 3 million followers, who's known for modeling modern masculinity with progressive politics.

Speaker 3 Morantz'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.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much, Tanya. So good to be back.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so...

Speaker 3 As we just heard so far, California Governor Gavin Newsom has had on a couple of right-wing notables, including activist Charlie Kirk, who is the founder and president of the right-wing student organization Turning Point USA.

Speaker 3 And I actually want to play a clip from that particular interview. Kirk had just finished an event at the University of Southern California.

Speaker 3 And for the first few minutes of the podcast, Governor Newsom talks with him about how his niece and son both know Kirk and how his son was especially excited that Kirk would be on Governor Newsom's show.

Speaker 3 Let's listen.

Speaker 2 I'm honored to be on the show. Thank you.

Speaker 6 You were just down at USC?

Speaker 2 I was at USC yesterday. It drew a big crowd.

Speaker 5 By the way, I knew you were at USC early early because my niece, who's graduating.

Speaker 6 She was the one with the MAGA hat on. She was, by the way, I do have to watch, but she was down there and she was like, she said, you never know.
These kids are going to the right.

Speaker 5 I'm aware. She said, this crowd's crazy.
I said, she said, and she had, and the only reason she said, she would have said it perhaps otherwise, but she knew you were coming on.

Speaker 5 The worst part, though, Charlie, no BS, true story. Literally last night, trying to put my son to bed.
He's like, no, dad, I just, what time? What time is Charlie going to be here?

Speaker 6 What time?

Speaker 5 And I'm like, dude, you're in school tomorrow. He's 13.
He's like, no, no. This morning, wakes up at six up.

Speaker 6 Then he's like, I'm coming.

Speaker 5 I'm like, he literally would not leave the house.

Speaker 6 Did you allow him to take off school? No, he did. Of course not.
He's not here for a good reason. But the point is.

Speaker 7 He canceled school for like two years. Once one year, once it's one year.

Speaker 5 The point is the point, which is you are making a damn debt.

Speaker 2 Thank you. I'm kidding.
I'm not.

Speaker 6 No, but I know.

Speaker 5 But I appreciate that.

Speaker 5 I mean, it's the reason you're here because I think people need to understand your success, your influence, what you've been up to, and the fact that you're on these college campus doors.

Speaker 5 And to your point, man, you just open up. I mean, you're like, ask me anything, anything.

Speaker 3 That was a clip from California Governor Gavin Newsom's new podcast with conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 3 Andrew, the big response and some of the criticism, particularly from the left, is that The governor is trying to find common ground versus challenging someone like Kirk who has said some pretty inflammatory and offensive remarks.

Speaker 3 It actually appears that the governor is almost deferential. I'm wondering from you, how does this fit into what you've been writing about and researching about the Democrats' battle for the bros?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's interesting. I listened to that episode and

Speaker 2 he was being very deferential.

Speaker 2 I think it's also really funny the way

Speaker 2 you introduced it as Gavin Newsom joining the manosphere because it's not clear what that means exactly other than people talking in an unscripted way.

Speaker 2 So I understand the reaction to things like Gavin Newsom deferring to Charlie Kirk too much. My guess is that what he's trying to show is kind of modeling a,

Speaker 2 I'm not afraid, I can swim into uncharted waters.

Speaker 2 You know, actually later in that episode, Charlie Kirk makes the assertion that, you know, we, the MAGA movement, dominated the podcast space and the live streaming space because we're more masculine.

Speaker 2 We're unafraid of adventure and we're unafraid to go into deep waters and all this stuff.

Speaker 2 Now, politically, I think people like Newsom are guessing that they'll fare better if they are willing to go out and engage and show that they're not afraid.

Speaker 2 And I mean, this is something that I heard from multiple people in the piece.

Speaker 2 Just the idea of showing up and holding your own and humanizing yourself, in many instances, is almost more important than what you say, at least to a certain type of voter.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 They're more likely to drop out of college, languish in the workforce, or die by overdose or suicide.

Speaker 3 How did the right not only tap into that grim reality, but also offer a space for male grievance?

Speaker 2 Yeah. So just to start from defining terms.
So manosphere is, like a lot of internet terms,

Speaker 2 pretty ill-defined, and it keeps changing. So often originally when people use the term, it was for really, really extreme, hateful stuff, right?

Speaker 2 So it was for Andrew Tate, who is a proud misogynist, defines himself that way,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But then it kind of migrated into people who are conservatives on gender roles or who don't even have gender content that they often bring up, but maybe are just into things that are commonly coded as dude stuff, video games or hunting or lifting weights or whatever.

Speaker 2 So all of that is kind of, depending on who you're listening to, contained within that category.

Speaker 2 There's no reason that the right has a monopoly inherently on being down to earth or being relatable.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 Well, relatable is a word that just keeps coming up in your piece. And you write about several notable personalities, influencers, streamers, podcasters.

Speaker 3 One of them is comedian and podcaster Theo Vaughan, who I personally have known since he was on MTV's Real World Road Rules back in the 2000s.

Speaker 3 So for most of his career, though, he has been apolitical. Can you talk about the power and that built-in trust through familiarity? Theo has been around for like 25 years.

Speaker 3 I mean, Donald Trump is a perfect example of this. He built a relationship with Americans as an entertaining figure for decades.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. And Joe Rogan has been around since he was telling people to eat worms on Fear Factor.

Speaker 2 And I think you nailed it with the word trust and authenticity.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Often what it comes down to is who do you trust? And so you hear a lot of conflicting, competing information.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And then you hear Joe Rogan or Elon Musk or Theo Vaughan 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

Speaker 2 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 Vaughan.

Speaker 2 To my mind, he is a funny, really affable, kind of goofy guy.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I mean, he, within the span of a week last summer, interviewed Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 Could you Google that?

Speaker 3 They're the proxy for the audience.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And so they'll just Google it for you in real time. And often that's why it takes takes two or three or four hours because they're really not in a hurry.

Speaker 3 I want to play a clip from Theo's show, but did he invite Kamala Harris during that time period when he was having all of the candidates on last summer?

Speaker 2 You know, I believe he said he wanted to speak to her. Joe Rogan definitely said he wanted to have her on, but then there was some scheduling.

Speaker 2 He wanted to have her in studio for three hours. And reportedly her campaign offered him one hour in another city.
And they were kind of still negotiating the details.

Speaker 2 and then it ended up not happening. There are many people who, I mean, sort of, should Kamala have gone on Rogan

Speaker 2 was one of the main Monday morning quarterback topics after she lost the election. And there are people who said she would have been great on Rogan because he wouldn't have asked her tough questions.

Speaker 2 He's not generally a very tough interviewer. There are other people who said she might have had a tougher time because she is more of a kind of buttoned-up politician than Trump is, certainly.

Speaker 2 Actually, Joe Rogan was talking to Theo Vaughan on his podcast and he said, he sort of crystallized this. He said, look, man, I didn't want to ask her about policy.

Speaker 2 I just wanted to get her in a room, get her talking for a couple hours. And I'd feel like if you start talking for that long, I'll just start to see if your mind is calculated or if you're just free.

Speaker 2 And so that seems to be, for people like Rogan and Theo Vaughn, and I think for a lot of their listeners and for a lot of potential voters, that seems to be like the main criterion.

Speaker 2 Are you calculated or are you just free?

Speaker 3 Well, that's part of what you wrote about in your piece is that also this perception that Democrats are elitist.

Speaker 2 Definitely. And it did not used to be the case.
Liberals used to be the counterculture. They used to be the upstarts.
And liberals now have become defenders of norms and institutions.

Speaker 2 But it's now the case in the data and in the perceptions as well that the base of the Democratic vote is the educated vote.

Speaker 2 And if you're a working class voter, you know, white, black, Asian, Hispanic, et cetera, you're starting to see in the numbers that people do not feel as at home in the Democratic Party.

Speaker 2 It's still not, obviously, across the board, and the Democrats still win a majority of votes of people of color and women and all these things.

Speaker 2 But it's clear that the Democrats have lost this connection to being unassailably the party of the working class.

Speaker 2 And sometimes that has to do with policy and raising the minimum wage, and sometimes it just has to do with a vibe of feeling snobby or feeling like you're always being second guessed or you're always being fact-checked or I've heard it said that people don't even necessarily vote for the politician they like they vote for the politician who they think likes them likes them right right yes you know I mean Trump was was embraced by pop culture by appearing at UFC fights and football games and appearing alongside celebrities.

Speaker 3 I mean, the left did that too. Harris also had many appearances and was alongside celebrities.

Speaker 3 But do podcasters and influencers you spoke with really feel like it would have made a difference for Kamala Harris to make those same appearances at those same places?

Speaker 3 I'm just also thinking about while there is like this offense against identity that it does play such a huge role in all of this as well. I mean, many of the podcasters you feature are male.

Speaker 3 Many of them are white male.

Speaker 2 I guess my sort of like really rudimentary rubric on this would be it's not, you know, how many celebrities can you line up on your side. It has more to do with kind of what does it signify.

Speaker 2 And, you know, to your point about identity, showing up at a UFC fight is not just a random room with a lot of people in it. It's about brutal combat.
It's sending a very, very specific message.

Speaker 2 Certainly there was more that the Harris campaign could have done. For example, she tried to get booked on Hot Ones, the show where you eat.
really spicy wings. Hot wings, yeah.

Speaker 2 And that would have been, I think, a great humanizing moment for her. She could, you know, place for her to hang, be a human being, be relatable.
You know,

Speaker 2 yes, I think there is more that any politician can do to get out there, but a lot of times, you know, just speaking purely from a kind of media, new media, social media angle, it's not always...

Speaker 2 can you get the biggest celebrity? Because often that doesn't have the spontaneity, the authenticity, the feeling of, you know, this is really what people are like in a room.

Speaker 2 Beyonce is many, many things, but she's not spontaneous and authentic. She's very controlled about her image.

Speaker 2 I mean, the sort of viral behind-the-scenes moment that was working, as far as I could tell, the best for Kamala Harris was

Speaker 2 when she was giving someone cooking tips before she went on camera. Do you remember this? When there was like

Speaker 2 she was about to get interviewed, and it was a kind of behind-the-scenes, almost like hot mic moment where, you know someone asked her how do you you know brine a turkey and she said okay you want to get some salt and pepper you want to really rub it in there it wasn't about anything it wasn't about what she would do as president but she seemed like a human being and i just think it's an element of campaigning that when you're too controlled too risk averse and too cautious and you let it fall by the wayside you're leaving votes on the table okay i want to play a clip from uh theo vaughan'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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And here's Theo's response.

Speaker 8 I don't know if ever in my life there's been like a

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 8 I always think back to like women and children first, like when the Titanic was sinking or something, or, you know, and something like that, it's like women and children first, right?

Speaker 8 And that's probably what most men would want as well. But at a certain point, you're like, hey,

Speaker 8 we exist. What are we doing here? You know?

Speaker 3 That was podcaster and comedian Theo Vaughn and social scientist Richard Reeves on Theo's podcast this past weekend.

Speaker 3 Andrew, you write about how at one point during this particular conversation, Theo said, I'm not speaking against any other group.

Speaker 3 I'm just saying you can't make white males feel like they don't exist.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Is that something that you heard during your reporting often?

Speaker 2 Definitely. There was a really interesting moment on Theo Vaughan that I spoke to Stavros Halkias about.
He's another comedian who's actually a much more leftist comedian.

Speaker 2 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 stuff that sounded pretty xenophobic.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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 Theovan, who had kind of just been at Trump's inauguration and almost seemed to be in his corner.

Speaker 2 And it wasn't contentious, it wasn't heated, it was real disagreement, but it was in a kind of amiable,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 It takes, you know, prior relationship often. It takes trusts, the word you brought up.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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 room service at a hotel and find something quirky and new and maybe a little bit taboo to say about it.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 It's not social media in the sense of, you know, an algorithmic feed.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I mean, I feel like I know them.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I feel feel like they've now learned it about social media, but they're a little behind the ball on parasocial media.

Speaker 3 Today, our guest is Andrew Morantz with the New Yorker. We'll be right back after a short break and continue our conversation.
I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 3 Let's talk a little bit about Hassan Piker. He's a Twitch star.
He has millions of followers on Twitch.

Speaker 3 And for those who don't know, it's a popular streaming platform that started off being for gamers, but it's kind of really blown up and blown out of that as well. Like to be much more expansive.

Speaker 3 What is Piker's background and how did you two meet?

Speaker 2 I first encountered him in 2020 while I was covering the Bernie Sanders campaign for The New Yorker and he was covering the Bernie Sanders campaign for his Twitch channel, which he had just launched.

Speaker 2 So he started out on a YouTube show called The Young Turks, which was one of the first online sort of populist left shows. It's been around forever.

Speaker 2 And it just happens to have been started by his uncle.

Speaker 2 Hassan was born in New Jersey, but he grew up mostly in Turkey. So he's kind of been back and forth between between Turkey and the U.S.
his whole life.

Speaker 2 And when he landed in LA, he got a job at the Young Turks, and he eventually went solo on Twitch. And what that meant was just basically streaming all the time.

Speaker 2 I mean, I thought I knew the basics of what Twitch was, but I really didn't get just how constant it is. So when I encountered him in 2020, I was...

Speaker 2 as I put it in the piece, a kind of youngish reporter from an old-ish outlet doing the traditional thing of taking notes and then, you know, writing writing about it days or weeks later.

Speaker 2 And what Hassan was doing was he had a backpack on, an IRL backpack with a camera rigged up to it, and he was just live streaming it.

Speaker 2 And there were all these people in his chat, these kind of commenters who were constantly offering him comments in the chat. He was monitoring them on his phone.

Speaker 2 And people kept coming up to him out of the crowd and wanting to get selfies with him and get him to sign stuff. So it was kind of half journalism, half kind of celebrity influencer.

Speaker 3 How often is he streaming too? Because I think that's really interesting, like just the span of time and the frequency.

Speaker 2 It's completely incredible how often. I mean, so that year, that was 2020, that year he was live on camera for 42% of the hours of that year, like all the hours of the year, not waking hours.

Speaker 2 And he doesn't like film himself sleeping. Like this is him hosting a show for 42% of his life.

Speaker 3 And you have an example of that. Like you came to his door, you visited him and you kind of saw this happen in real time.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. I flew to L.A.
and I took a lift to his house and rang the bell. And he showed up at the door and he said, all right, sit out of the shot.
Don't make any sound.

Speaker 2 I'll talk to you when I'm done. And then he just sat down and kept going for four more hours.
This was already four hours into the stream that day. That was a Sunday.
And so

Speaker 2 he's just doing it. all the time.
And he's getting numbers that are like, you know, that day, it was a Sunday. It was kind of of a slow news day.

Speaker 2 He had maybe 30 something thousand people watching him simultaneously, which is like better than some cable networks. And especially in the, you know, coveted youth demographic.

Speaker 2 And he was covering the overthrow of Assad in Syria, which had just happened. He was covering a YouTube documentary about NATO.

Speaker 2 You know, just whatever he's looking at on his screen, you're looking at with him. And it actually sometimes can be really exciting.

Speaker 2 Like the next day when I came to his house, you know, he went to play basketball in the park and then he came back and said, okay, what should I talk about today? Maybe I'll talk about this.

Speaker 2 Maybe I'll talk about that. And then about, you know, a few minutes before he went live, Luigi Mangioni was arrested, the suspect in the United Healthcare assassination.

Speaker 2 And he said, okay, this is what we're talking about. And for six straight hours, he just went through all the things his commenters were sending him.
You know, what was Luigi looking at on Twitter?

Speaker 2 What was he looking at on Goodreads? Can we watch his valedictorian speech from high school? And it's kind of thrilling to watch someone dig through it in real time and be making live commentary.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's kind of a high wire act. He's trying not to say something too erratic, but he's trying to be erratic enough to be entertaining.

Speaker 2 He was trying to be careful not to, you know, actually explicitly glorify murder, which is against Twitch's rules, but he was not exactly condemning Luigi either, or he was kind of doing it, but doing it semi-sarcastically.

Speaker 2 So it's kind of an incredible thing to watch someone do that for that long.

Speaker 3 He is one of the few left-leaning stars on Twitch. Why do you think he's successful? And I should say he kicks off the thesis of your article.

Speaker 3 Like, what did you find most interesting about him as it relates to trying to lure young men who have gone MAGA to the left?

Speaker 2 Yeah. He's really the only leftist star on Twitch.
I mean, it's kind of hard to overstate how thoroughly platforms like Twitch have become MAGAfied.

Speaker 2 And so Hassan Piker is really the only outspoken leftist. There are other people who probably have progressive politics, but they don't talk about politics all day.

Speaker 2 They talk about video games or something. He's like a real leftist.
I mean, he's kind of like a socialist, Marxist leftist.

Speaker 2 And so he has a lot of views that put him to the left of the Democratic Party's leading politicians.

Speaker 2 You know, throughout the 2024 election, he was sort of taking this position that Trump is really terrible, so you should probably cast a vote against him. But

Speaker 2 I can't exactly defend what Harris and the Democrats are doing either. So it was this kind of critical support outlook.

Speaker 2 And we didn't end up having space for this in the piece, but I was reporting from the DNC in Chicago last summer. Hassan Piker was there.

Speaker 2 He was actually kind of given a seat of honor by the DNC because they realized that he's this very prominent voice in their coalition.

Speaker 2 And then he started saying these very, very, very edgy things about Gaza. And then they took his credential away.

Speaker 3 Okay, I want to actually play a clip of Piker. He's talking about California Governor Gavin Newsom's new podcast in this clip.
Let's listen.

Speaker 10 Gavin Newsom started his own podcast. It feels like the Democrats kept asking the question, like, who's the Joe Rogan of the left?

Speaker 10 And then instead of hearing my answer to it, which was you can't podcast your way out of this problem, they decided, oh, shut the f ⁇ up. We just need to be the Joe Rogan of the left ourselves.

Speaker 10 The solution to the Democratic Party's crisis right now is not to flood the market with more social media. The solution to the Democratic Party's problem right now is to change its policies.

Speaker 6 It's a policy thing.

Speaker 2 Yes, it's 100% a policy thing.

Speaker 10 And address the real material harm that people are experiencing every single day. Recognize the hurt and showcase the ways in which the Republicans are not helping people.

Speaker 3 Okay, that was streamer Hassan Piker talking about California Governor Newsom's new podcast.

Speaker 3 And Andrew, one of the interesting things he says is that Democrats don't need to focus their attention on podcasting, but on addressing the needs of everyday people.

Speaker 3 And then he makes the point to say they should showcase the ways the Republicans are not helping people.

Speaker 3 Well, that one way to do that would be through platforms like this or social media, even though he doesn't say that.

Speaker 3 But what has stopped the Democratic Party from flooding the digital discourse with messaging in the ways that Republicans have?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think there's a bunch of stuff going on here. I think it's a really important set of issues.

Speaker 2 So when someone like Hassan Piker says you can't podcast your way out of this problem if you're the Democrats, I think it means a few things.

Speaker 2 So I don't think he is saying stop all podcasting, stop all streaming, right? It would be hypocritical of him to say that in the middle of his 10-hour stream.

Speaker 2 So he is not saying to pull out of the battlements that the left is currently in and is currently losing. I think what he's saying is you can't exclusively podcast your way out of the issue.

Speaker 2 So when he's objecting to someone like Gavin Newsom, it sounds like what he's objecting to is Gavin Newsom apparently saying, well, instead of rethinking what about our policies is driving people away, let me just start a podcast and that'll fix it, right?

Speaker 2 So it's sort of a question of is this a Band-Aid solution. But Piker is like a really committed leftist, and he really thinks that the Democrats do not have adequate solutions.

Speaker 2 So I think what he would probably say is, okay, great, someone like Kamala Harris should go on Joe Rogan.

Speaker 2 But when Rogan asks her, how are you going to fix the health care system, instead of having a really simple answer, like Bernie, like, we'll just give everyone health care, she has this sort of ticky-tack, you know, technocratic answer, like, if you make under $60,000, we'll do this, right?

Speaker 2 So I think he would sort of say that the policy doesn't make for good messaging because it's not universalist policy. It's not clear, simple policy.

Speaker 2 Now, you can agree or disagree with the sort of, you know, Bernie Bro Democratic Socialist policy platform, but it is empirically the case that when someone like Bernie Sanders goes on these shows, he doesn't have to struggle with how calculated to be.

Speaker 2 He says what he says, which is what he says when he's talking to NPR or the New York Times or Fox News, because he just says the same thing every time.

Speaker 2 So I think the Democrats can't podcast their way out of this means if your policies are unpopular, the messaging can only get you so far.

Speaker 3 Let's take a short break and we'll get back to this part of the conversation. If you're just joining us, my guest is Andrew Morantz, a staff writer for The New Yorker.

Speaker 3 And we're talking about his latest piece, 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. This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 3 I want to follow the money just for a minute. Are a lot of wealthy donors funding these podcasters and influencers on the right?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 So to kind of play out that argument, the way that argument would go is, okay, let's say some

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 But what it wouldn't do is have the authentic feeling of an organic, trusted, authentic, weird voice, right?

Speaker 2 So you were saying before, people who've known parasocially someone like Theo Vaughan or Joe Rogan for years, they have a kind of trust in them.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 He supported Bernie Sanders for president. And then between 2020 and 2024, he was lost.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 So, Andrew, one thing, President Trump always talks about how he is unfairly covered by mainstream media.

Speaker 3 What does the coverage look like in contrast to the way he is portrayed on these social platforms? You mentioned how he's just hanging hanging out with many of these guys.

Speaker 3 And there's a very fine point to make here that the freestyle nature of Trump's persona is that what we're seeing is real and what we're being packaged in mainstream media is just that, like a packet.

Speaker 3 Just edit it to feed an agenda.

Speaker 2 The way Hassan Piker put it to me is, yeah, Trump lies constantly, but at least people get the sense that he's saying what he really thinks.

Speaker 2 So it's kind of a tricky double-edged sword because I think a lot of his supporters don't even necessarily believe that he's being truthful, but they believe that he's authentically speaking his mind.

Speaker 2 And actually in his flagrant interview with Andrew Schultz, who I also spoke to for this piece, when Trump was interviewed on that podcast, he at one point said, you know, I'm basically a truthful person.

Speaker 2 And the host, Andrew Schultz, laughed in his face and was like, what does that mean, a basically truthful person? But I think there is, ironically, some truth to it.

Speaker 2 I think Trump does constantly say things that are demonstrably false, but he gives the sense that what's happening on the inside of his brain is coming out of his mouth.

Speaker 2 And I think if the rubric you're using is, are you calculated or are you just free, it's very hard to beat Donald Trump at that game.

Speaker 2 And I should also just say on the Rogan thing, we were talking about the, you know, did Kamala Harris try to do? Rogan and all the miscommunications there.

Speaker 2 One thing I found interesting when they were debriefing, the kind of top campaign staffers debriefed after the election, they actually, on a podcast, they went on Pod Save America, and they were talking about the different decisions in the campaign and what they could have done differently.

Speaker 2 And they were asked

Speaker 2 this sort of big question of the day, why didn't she go on Rogan? And they claimed that it was because of scheduling and they couldn't get to Texas that many times. Texas is not a battleground state.

Speaker 2 But another thing they said that just has stuck with me is they said, you know, we did want to do it not so much for the conversation itself, but just because it would have broken through, through, meaning like presumably it would have gotten attention in the mainstream media.

Speaker 2 And I just thought that's such a mistaken old school way of thinking. I mean, even now you're thinking the point of a Joe Rogan interview is to get a headline on CNN.com.

Speaker 2 Right. It doesn't, it's just backwards.
But, you know, yeah, I think it's going to take a few years for people to catch up.

Speaker 3 Have you been listening to these podcasters since Trump took office, since we've been seeing the massive disruption in government, and how are they approaching it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, Elon Musk was on Rogan a week or two ago talking about all this stuff. And

Speaker 2 it was after the Doge stuff had started, after they had made these massive cuts to USAID. And Rogan asked him, what's going on with this, man?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Again, this is not a journalistic standard of pushback. This is not a, you know,

Speaker 2 I'm coming in with the receipts and I'm going to make you answer.

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 here you said you cut a billion dollars, but it was actually a million dollars. Your explanation, please, you know?

Speaker 2 But I just don't think that is what someone like Joe Rogan sees his job as. I think he sees sees it as a hang.

Speaker 3 There's so much more to your article. We've scratched the surface, but really I just want to know from you.
I mean, the title is The Battle for the Bros. Young Men Have Gone MAGA.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 2 I think it is.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 what do we mean by the left is actually a very live question. So

Speaker 2 when people talk about the, you know, can there be a Joe Rogan of the left or can the left win back young people?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 So I think it's trying to deliver a coherent policy agenda that will actually benefit people and make their lives better and more meaningful.

Speaker 2 And then also showing up in these spaces, both online and IRL, to tell them how you're going to do that. So easier said than done.

Speaker 2 And as I say, luckily, it's not my job to do it, but it's possible for sure.

Speaker 3 Andrew Morantz, as always, thank you so much.

Speaker 2 Thank you, Tanya. This is great.

Speaker 3 Andrew Morantz is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His latest article is The Battle for the Bros.
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Speaker 3 Rock critic Ken Tucker has been listening to new music releases and has reviews for new songs by Teddy Swims, nominated as Best New Artist in this year's Grammy Awards, and Benjamin Booker, who is doing interesting things with volume and distortion in his new songs.

Speaker 3 There's also an old pro in the mix, Neil Young, who has a new band, as well as a new song that Ken says heralds some big changes. Here's his review:

Speaker 4 Something's gotta hold on me lately, though I don't know myself anymore.

Speaker 4 Feels like the walls are all closing in, and the devil's knocking at my door. Whoa,

Speaker 4 out of my mind.

Speaker 7 Teddy Swims had a big hit last year with the song Lose Control, which showcased his gruff but supple ballad singing.

Speaker 7 The Georgia-born singer has clearly been influenced by southern soul men like Al Green and Bobby Blue Bland.

Speaker 7 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?

Speaker 7 He's so swept away, he wonders whether he's dreaming the object of his adoration.

Speaker 4 Scared

Speaker 7 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.

Speaker 7 On his previous albums, Booker grappled with then-current events such as the Black Lives Matter protests.

Speaker 7 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.

Speaker 7 There's a beauty in the kind of musical chaos Booker creates. One of the best examples of this is Same Kind of Lonely.

Speaker 7 dream like this,

Speaker 7 me and you

Speaker 7 alright,

Speaker 7 alright.

Speaker 7 Love,

Speaker 7 love while we

Speaker 7 have a chance

Speaker 7 love without

Speaker 7 moving

Speaker 7 Alright,

Speaker 7 alright.

Speaker 7 If I could make it out

Speaker 7 tomorrow,

Speaker 7 if I could start a game

Speaker 7 on my own,

Speaker 7 if I could be the same kind of lonely,

Speaker 7 if I could be the same kind of lonely.

Speaker 7 A few years ago, Benjamin Booker opened for Neil Young on a few of Young's tour dates.

Speaker 7 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.

Speaker 7 To judge from the band's booming first single Big Change, however, Neil Young isn't seeking out pop or country sounds.

Speaker 7 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.

Speaker 7 Big change is coming.

Speaker 7 Big change is coming.

Speaker 7 Big drums are drumming.

Speaker 7 Heading up the long parade.

Speaker 7 Big change is coming.

Speaker 7 Coming right through your game.

Speaker 7 Big guitar is drumming.

Speaker 7 The Sarah said no delay.

Speaker 7 Big change is coming. Could be bad.
It could be great. Big change is coming.

Speaker 7 Big change is coming, Young chants over and over.

Speaker 7 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.

Speaker 7 Like Teddy Swims and Benjamin Booker, Neil Young is letting loose with some big emotions, but letting you judge how to interpret them.

Speaker 3 Ken Tucker reviewed new songs by Teddy Swims, Benjamin Booker, and Neil Young.

Speaker 3 If you'd like to catch up on interviews you've missed, like our conversation with Seth Rogan, who co-created and stars in the new Apple TV Plus series The Studio, or with investigative reporter Gary Rivlin about the promise and peril of AI, check out our podcast.

Speaker 3 You'll find lots of fresh air interviews.

Speaker 3 And to find out what's happening behind the scenes on our show and get our producers' recommendations on what to watch, read, and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at whyy.org slash freshair.

Speaker 3 Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
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Speaker 3 Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorak, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krinzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Yakundi, and Anna Bauman.

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With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.

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