Joe Rogan, Hasan Piker, and the Art of the Hang

Summary

Critics at Large | The New Yorker
Episode: Joe Rogan, Hasan Piker, and the Art of the Hang
Release Date: March 27, 2025

---

Introduction

In this thought-provoking episode of Critics at Large, The New Yorker's staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz delve deep into the evolving landscape of long-form media and its profound impact on contemporary culture and politics. Centered around prominent figures like Joe Rogan and Hasan Piker, the discussion explores the concept of the "manosphere," parasocial relationships, and the intricate blend of entertainment with political discourse.

---

Joe Rogan and Hasan Piker: Titans of Long-Form Media

The episode kicks off with an exploration of Joe Rogan's podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, highlighting its immense popularity with over 14 million followers on Spotify. Rogan's show is characterized by its casual "bro-hang" atmosphere, where he engages with a diverse array of guests—from comedians like Theo Von to moguls like Elon Musk. Rogan's ability to oscillate between light-hearted conversations and serious political discussions positions him as a pivotal figure in shaping public discourse.

In contrast, Hasan Piker emerges as the "Rogan of the left." As a wildly popular Twitch streamer, Piker offers a leftist perspective, often discussing pressing political issues in a manner that mirrors Rogan's engaging style but with a decidedly different ideological stance. Piker's streaming schedule, reportedly live from 11 AM to 8 PM daily, underscores the demanding nature of his medium and its role in fostering continuous audience engagement.

Notable Quote:
Vincent Cunningham ([04:15]): "Rogan's part of a whole new ecosystem of political content that's attracting specifically young men."

---

Understanding the Manosphere and Its Impact

A significant portion of the discussion is dedicated to unpacking the term "manosphere." The hosts reference Andrew Marantz's article, "Battle for the Bros," which profiles Hasan Piker while surveying the broader manosphere landscape. The manosphere is depicted as a complex ecosystem where young men, grappling with issues like education dropouts, addiction, and high suicide rates, find solace and community through platforms like Twitch and podcasts.

Notable Quote:
Hasan Piker ([25:51]): "The statistics on this are pretty grim. Like the education dropout rates, the addiction rates, the suicide rates, like the, all that stuff for men is surprisingly high..."

---

Parasocial Relationships: The One-Sided Connection

The concept of parasocial relationships—where individuals form one-sided emotional bonds with media personalities—is central to the hosts' analysis. Rogan and Piker exemplify this phenomenon, offering audiences a sense of companionship and belonging. However, the hosts express concern over the depth and implications of these relationships, questioning whether they serve as genuine social substitutes or exacerbate existing societal issues.

Notable Quote:
Hasan Piker ([05:15]): "I'm interested, you know, specifically when Piker... just the sort of nature of that as a job struck me... a kind of bleak proposition."

---

Blending Entertainment with Political Discourse

The episode delves into how Rogan and Piker seamlessly integrate entertainment with political discussions, creating a unique blend that resonates deeply with their audiences. This fusion mirrors past shifts in media, such as the rise of radio talk shows and television pundits, but with a modern twist that leverages digital platforms for real-time engagement.

Notable Quote:
Hasan Piker ([35:10]): "I do think that it is a skill set that is actually kind of required for national office now."

---

Personal Reflections and Reactions

Throughout the episode, the hosts share their personal experiences of engaging with Rogan's podcast. Alexandra Schwartz recounts her initial apprehension, particularly when encountering controversial topics like modern slavery analogies in Rogan's discussions. Similarly, Andrew Marantz expresses discomfort with certain segments, especially when factual inaccuracies emerge during interviews with influential figures like Elon Musk.

Notable Quote:
Alex Schwartz ([12:32]): "I found myself surprised when I got to the Elon Musk episode. Okay, and now we're gonna talk about all of this."

---

Cultural and Political Implications

The discussion culminates in an examination of the broader cultural and political implications of long-form media figures. The hosts debate whether this medium represents a mere technological evolution akin to radio and television or if it signifies a transformative shift that could influence political ideologies and social structures in unprecedented ways.

Notable Quote:
Andrew Marantz ([40:09]): "I think it's definitely real and can have potentially profound implications."

---

Conclusions and Final Thoughts

In wrapping up, the hosts ponder the future trajectory of long-form media and its role in shaping public opinion and political landscapes. They acknowledge both the potential benefits—such as fostering authentic conversations and providing platforms for diverse viewpoints—and the inherent risks, including the spread of misinformation and the deepening of societal divides.

Notable Quote:
Alex Schwartz ([49:36]): "I think this can be used for ill as well. I'm thinking of Rogan's recent conversation with Mark Zuckerberg."

---

Key Takeaways

• Long-Form Media's Influence: Figures like Joe Rogan and Hasan Piker wield significant influence by blending entertainment with serious discourse, shaping audience perceptions and ideologies.

• Manosphere Dynamics: The manosphere serves as both a refuge and a breeding ground for addressing and sometimes exacerbating issues faced by young men.

• Parasocial Relationships: While fostering a sense of community, these one-sided emotional bonds can impact social behaviors and mental health.

• Cultural Shift: The integration of entertainment and politics in digital platforms marks a significant evolution in media consumption and its societal impacts.

• Future Implications: The ongoing development of such media forms necessitates a critical examination of their long-term effects on democracy, public discourse, and social cohesion.

---

Final Note:
For a deeper exploration of these themes, including Andrew Marantz's insightful article "Battle for the Bros," listeners are encouraged to visit newyorker.com and explore related content at Critics at Large.

Transcript

[Nomi Frye]

This is a message from sponsor Intuit. TurboTax Texas was getting frustrated by your forms. Now taxis is uploading your forms with a Snap and a TurboTax expert will do your taxes for you. One who's backed by the latest tech which cross checks millions of data points for absolute accuracy. All of which makes it easy for you to get the most money back guaranteed. Get an Expert now on TurboTax.com only available with TurboTax Live full service. See guarantee [e-mail] guarantees this message is brought to you by Apple Card. Apple Card is everything a credit card should be. It's easy to manage, built to be secure, and gives users up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase. The best part about Apple Card is applying is quick and easy. Apply in the Wallet app on iPhone and see your credit limit offer in minutes. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch Bank Remember FDIC terms and [e-mail] Somewhere along the line.

[Vincent Cunningham]

One Alex Schwartz mentioned that she had a background as some sort of political streamer.

[Alex Schwartz]

It was back in November of 2020, and my friend Claire asked me if I might appear on her Twitch stream where she and her boyfriend, also a friend of mine, both French, were trying to explain to a group of people in France what was happening with the American election. And I was called in. There was a period of days when I was using my adequate but imperfect French to try to explain a situation that was truly inexplicable. People wanted to know, when would we know what was happening? When you tried to start explaining the electoral college in a foreign language, then you're going to feel. You're gonna feel parts of your brain working you didn't even know were there.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Wow.

[Andrew Marantz]

Wow.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. You know, I wanna just say this with modesty. They loved me.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Wow.

[Alex Schwartz]

There was much clamor for Alexandra to return.

[Andrew Marantz]

Would you say you're part of the manosphere?

[Alex Schwartz]

You know, as we reach the end of Women's History Month, I've been thinking on this question.

[Andrew Marantz]

You were really the Upper west side's own Hasan Piker.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's right.

[Andrew Marantz]

Welcome to Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Nomi Frye.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm Alex Schwartz.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And I'm Vincent Cunningham. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. How you guys doing?

[Alex Schwartz]

Doing great.

[Andrew Marantz]

Doing well.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Very good. Very good. I would like to talk a little bit today about a part of the world that is in some ways, pretty near and dear to our own hearts as famously, podcasters, you know, new forms of media and their impact on the wider world. Now we have a podcast. Obviously, we're here talking on one right now, but there's a part of this whole universe that feels, or I hope it feels, totally separate from the one that we work in. I'm talking about something like Joe Rogan's podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience. Maybe you're familiar.

[Andrew Marantz]

Yes, a bit. A bit familiar.

[Alex Schwartz]

Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

[Vincent Cunningham]

All right, we're rolling.

[Hasan Piker]

Good to see you, sir.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It tops podcast charts. It has over 14 million followers on Spotify. Sometimes the episodes are these casual kind of bro y hangs, maybe, you know, toss around some conspiracy theories, usually with, like, buddies from comedy or other UFC other parts of the world. But sometimes they also feature interviews with really the most powerful people in the world right now, certainly in politics. J.D. vance, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Trump.

[Hasan Piker]

They had a couple.

[Theo Von]

Well, they canceled the Apprentice when you were running for president, correct?

[Hasan Piker]

No, they had Arnold Schwarzenegger do it. I was involved in that, and I had enough of it. And we did great. It was doing great.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Rogan's part of a whole new ecosystem of political content that's attracting specifically young men. And obviously young men as a demographic group are very much in the spotlight of our politics right now. More and more, we're seeing these massive audiences form around figures like Rogan on the right. But also, we're gonna talk today about a guy I'm just coming to know, Hasan Piker, who is a wildly popular Twitch Streamer.

[Julian Lennon]

Folks, we are live, we are alive, and I hope all the boys, girls, and NBC are having a fantastic one.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And he's often referred to as the Rogan of the left. Instead of hanging out with his buddies like Rogan does, Piker seems to be hanging out with you. He's in front of his computer screen, sometimes talking about his workouts, but often talking about the issues of the day from a leftist perspective. What struck you guys? We've been immersing ourself in all of this. What struck you guys about the way that these guys kind of, and they usually are guys tend to engage with their audiences.

[Andrew Marantz]

I'm interested, you know, specifically when Piker, he has a Twitch stream that he is on every day from 11 to 8, I believe. And just the sort of nature of that as a job struck me. I mean, I know it's not unique. I know people do it. I'm not an idiot. But it just struck me as a kind of like, bleak proposition. The kind of like day in, day out, like locked in a cage. Nature of it.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Time. Just time. The length of time.

[Andrew Marantz]

Time.

[Alex Schwartz]

I did not know that going in for the Joe Rogan experience, which in my mind is like a kind of, you know, like a log flume or something, like, I'm about to go on the Joe Rogan experience. I did not know that three hours would be required of me on any given episode. I quickly learned. Yeah, I quickly learned.

[Andrew Marantz]

Well, not so quickly.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, I slowly learned. That's true. And your sense of time? First I freaked out. I had an 18 minute freakout. I couldn't believe how much time was required. Then you adjust.

[Andrew Marantz]

Whoa.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, you're like in outer space or something. You don't have the same gravity anymore. So just the nature of the hang, the hanginess of what's going on is something that struck me. Whether it is with a fellow comedian, as you say, Vincent, someone who's a peer, or whether it's with Elon Musk, who's having a great deal of influence on all of our lives. The hanginess of it that's, you know, salient.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I would say hang with us and we're gonna talk about figures like Rogan and Piker and the audiences that they have, minute by minute, hour by hour, assembled around themselves. The big question I have is whether this new form of media engagement, the sort of durational podcast, the 8 Hour Long Twitch stream, is just one in a long line of technological developments that we could sort of place in line with the radio and the television, or. Or whether there really is something to change our whole ways of thinking about whether there's either a panic warranted or if this is a way to be saved somehow in our politics. So that's today on Critics at Large, Joe Rogan, Hassan Piker and the Art of the Hang. We've been trying to figure out how to address the Joe Rogans of the world for a while, and one great reason to do it now, one occasion is that our colleague and friend Andrew Morantz has just published a piece called the Battle for the Bros in the New Yorker. The piece is, on some level, a profile of Hasan Piker, but it's also a survey of this topography right and left. So he's delved deeper into the manosphere than any of us and he's gonna try to help us today to figure out, first of all, what to do with men. He's gonna solve men and how to listen to this new media.

[Alex Schwartz]

Here he comes.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Here he is.

[Hasan Piker]

Hey, guys.

[Andrew Marantz]

Hi.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I hear that voice.

[Alex Schwartz]

Andrew Marantz is here. He has.

[Andrew Marantz]

He has a bag.

[Alex Schwartz]

What's in the bag?

[Hasan Piker]

We're getting into the manosphere.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, shit.

[Hasan Piker]

Some monster energy drinks.

[Andrew Marantz]

Not the monster energy drinks are coming.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Out of the bag. Red Bulls.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh my God.

[Hasan Piker]

Obviously.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh my God.

[Hasan Piker]

No, but we're like, what is it?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Somebody's gonna have a heart attack at the end of this, dude. Cast.

[Hasan Piker]

We're gonna find out what bang is.

[Alex Schwartz]

Bang Blue rag.

[Andrew Marantz]

No, I.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's like you looked into the zin.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah. Guys, welcome to the manosphere.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Sorry.

[Alex Schwartz]

Wow.

[Andrew Marantz]

Okay, okay. What is in bang? Should we read the line?

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm gonna tell you what to bang.

[Andrew Marantz]

Please.

[Alex Schwartz]

First of all, I'm seeing some words that are written in all caps and two of them are essential aminos.

[Andrew Marantz]

Oh, yeah, I thought about that.

[Alex Schwartz]

Three more are fuel your destiny.

[Andrew Marantz]

No, I don't want to.

[Alex Schwartz]

And I'm hearing that Bang Energy does the following by combining cutting edge sports nutrition ingredients with time tested energy drink formulation and innovative new flavor combinations.

[Hasan Piker]

I'm sold.

[Alex Schwartz]

Bang Energy rocked the beverage world. In fact, all Bang Fitness products are PhD formulated and sports trainer endorsed.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Bang.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm going in. Bang.

[Hasan Piker]

Bang.

[Andrew Marantz]

Oh my God.

[Alex Schwartz]

Bang. It's open.

[Andrew Marantz]

Guys. Is it. Would it be okay? I know. I'm so worried. Would it be okay if I don't like fruity?

[Vincent Cunningham]

You don't want to do Zynast?

[Alex Schwartz]

No, no, no. Don't worry. You're so worried. I'm not doing bang of my own volition.

[Hasan Piker]

Just say, I'm not a chicken, you're a turkey.

[Andrew Marantz]

I am revealing myself as a nerd who can't hang. I'm a libtard liberal scold. I'm a liberal scold.

[Hasan Piker]

Well, I'm revealing myself as someone who does not know how to open a Zin. I have no idea.

[Alex Schwartz]

I think if you do Zinn for the first time here, you may not be coherent.

[Hasan Piker]

Oh, yeah, yeah. The first time I've ever done Zinn was for the closing meeting of this piece and I had to leave so I didn't vomit.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's very like you're 15sm of like.

[Andrew Marantz]

Putting a nicotine pouch in my. I don't know, it's just.

[Alex Schwartz]

What I'm getting here is that Nomi wants to just finish her nice episserie bulu iced coffee, which is what's on the table.

[Andrew Marantz]

God, I'm really.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Coastal elite.

[Andrew Marantz]

But let us not pretend we are like Three. Four coastal podcasters who work for the New Yorker. Three Jews, one black guy. We're not.

[Alex Schwartz]

I mean, would this be an appropriate for us all to hold hands?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Kumbaya, my Lord.

[Andrew Marantz]

I don't know. I don't know, you guys.

[Hasan Piker]

This is solidarity.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Thumbs up. Cheers.

[Andrew Marantz]

Solidarity. Cheers. Cheers, everyone. Okay, Andrew, so God, that's disgusting.

[Hasan Piker]

Okay, so now that I have dragged you guys into the Rogan sphere against your will, what is your first Rogan impression?

[Alex Schwartz]

Okay, here I go now, buoyed by bang. I'm ready to lay. Booyah.

[Hasan Piker]

Take him down, drag him.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Bang. This Joe Rogan statement.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's it. Well, first of all, I just want to say I had never listened to Joe Rogan before. I don't know if that's different for you guys. I'm feeling that I can tell no lies with some bang running through my veins. I'm not going to try to front when I was first listening to him and Thea Vaughn, because this is one of the episodes that Andrew recommended me listen to. I was not sure who I was hearing. I was not sure which was which.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Marantz]

And then I was like, you didn't recognize Theo's twang?

[Alex Schwartz]

I just didn't know much about Theo Vaughn. And now I've, you know, rapidly been educating myself.

[Andrew Marantz]

You were not a viewer like myself of Real World Road Rules Challenge, the Gauntlet on MTV. I sadly wasn't around the year 2005.

[Alex Schwartz]

I believe I missed out on that.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Everybody has a history, you know.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. So I just had not experienced the Rogan thing before. And because he's been so talked about and so discussed, I was nervous. I was a little scared. I'm putting this guy in my ears. I'm gonna get on the subway. What's gonna happen when I get off? And it's true.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Storm the capitol.

[Alex Schwartz]

Exactly. At 18 minutes in, I did text Andrew and I said, I can't go on. And Andrew was like, you're respectful. You're 18 minutes in, and you have three hours to go for a single episode.

[Andrew Marantz]

What was it about it that struck you as kind of, like, impossibly?

[Alex Schwartz]

I think it was. I was listening to the recent episode of Thea Vaughn. It was the affable chattiness overlaid with some bananas claims that would just pop out of nowhere. Just pop, pop. And you're like, oh, okay. And, you know, in fact, I took notes of some of my favorite things. But of course, it started to win me over a little bit, because now I look back affectionately, my notes. Here's One, I wouldn't say that fyre festival was a form of slavery.

[Hasan Piker]

Something that fair checks out.

[Andrew Marantz]

None of us would say that Rogan.

[Alex Schwartz]

Said this, because this happened when Rogan was acknowledging. And this is the other thing I found interesting. I know we're going to talk about this. Sometimes Rogan's saying stuff I totally agree with, like, slavery was really bad. I'm like, oh, yes, we don't have to argue about that. That's wonderful. And, you know, then he goes on to say, oh, but did you know modern slavery is a lot worse.

[Theo Von]

They would just have shift after shift, and once it was completed, they took all the workers, put them back in the boat, put them right back to China. So what was that? Was that slaves?

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's slavery.

[Theo Von]

I mean, it seems like slaves. Like, it seems like unless they paid those people in exorbitant amount.

[Alex Schwartz]

And somehow Theo Von's sweet mind goes to a similar situation of people trapped against their will at a fyre festival.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah, Fyre festival. Remember Fyre fest or whatever.

[Theo Von]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

What the fuck was that, dude?

[Theo Von]

That was a dude trying to make money.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Right.

[Alex Schwartz]

But still, at which point Rogan, who has to play the straight man to this, tried to gently suggest that the fyre festival was not, in fact, one of the forms of modern slavery.

[Andrew Marantz]

So, in fact, you do agree with Joe Rogan in this case?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes. Yeah. I mean, there were. I took a note here. When Joe Rogan said that was what the Jim Crow laws were all about, man, I noted actually doing decent job explaining Jim Crow. Question mark.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

I thought I was gonna go in and just immediately be fired upon. And I found myself surprised when I got to the Elon Musk episode. Okay, and now we're gonna talk about all of this. But anyway, I was confused by my whole reaction.

[Andrew Marantz]

For me, that was the biggest jabber on so, you know, Theo Von. I didn't. I have to admit, I didn't listened to the whole three hours of Theo Vaughn, but I did listen to a chunk of it. And I happen to like Theo Vaughn as a. As a big fan of the Gauntlet on MTV and a big fan of.

[Vincent Cunningham]

People with the brains of golden retriever. Never thought about anything.

[Andrew Marantz]

He is just, you know, very likable. You know, there's a kind of like, bro ish affability to it where as long as it stays away from anything that might have any effect on policy, I'm like, sure. But when I listened to parts of Joe Rogan's interview of Elon Musk, a February pod that he Had. I was like, okay, now I see why this is really pernicious and scary because they were talking about USAID and about DOGE and about, you know, Musk axing literally and figuratively these agencies. And Rogan was kind of firing him up and saying, yeah, basically, like, I'm not quoting exactly, but, like, what did these agencies even do? They were, like, electrocuting beagles.

[Hasan Piker]

Literally mutilating animals. Mutilating animals in demented studies.

[Theo Von]

Yes.

[Hasan Piker]

That are, like, the worst thing you could possibly imagine from a horror show.

[Theo Von]

The Beagle One, the Beagle Puppy, where they covered their head in a basket and put fleas on their heads and eat them alive. And then they studied these beagles and then killed them. Like, what are you gonna learn from that? That's good for anybody.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah, this some really some psychotic stuff that happens.

[Andrew Marantz]

And I was like, okay, hold up. This is simply not true and has a pernicious effect on the way things are going. And I was like, okay, I'm not liking this anymore.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, I feel very similarly to everything that's been said. Although I will just, like, just sonically, I will admit, just people talking back and forth for a very long time actually just works on me on a deep level. Just like it sits in my ears. I could listen to three episodes of this in a row, which is why I like, film my time in other ways. Otherwise, I know that I would be the poster boy or whatever we want to talk about. Could you tell us about that sort of aspect of the appeal, but also just about Rogan himself and how he sort of stepped into this role?

[Hasan Piker]

So I think I totally agree with the distinction you guys are making between is this a kind of affable dorm room chat, or is this the most powerful people in the world setting extremely damaging policy? And unfortunately for our timeline, it's both of those things. So one sort of step back question that I had going into this was like, what medium is this? Like, what are we. What is this? What are we talking about? Because if you were like, this guy interviewed Trump and asked him three hours worth of questions, I would put that in the category of political journalism or, you know, public service interview. And by that standard, I'd be like, oh, this was a swing and a miss. Like, you had three hours with the most powerful people in the world. You didn't ask them a single tough question. You validated their sort of propaganda narratives. If you're approaching it from the standard of journalism, that is not the genre of thing that is happening. It is a different thing. Nor Is it like comedy, really, which we can also get into. What they're doing is a different thing. So, like, if you go back to how this all started in 2009, Christmas Eve 2009, Joe Rogan puts out his first Joe Rogan experience, which it's, like, hard to say, but that is the name of the show. And it's just like, him sitting in front of a sign that says, make me hard, which was, like, a thing that he had from the man show. It's all what it is right from the beginning.

[Theo Von]

A legal prescription in the state of California for marijuana. And then you go to these places, and some of them, you can pay with a fucking credit card. It's the trippiest thing ever. You buy weed with a credit card, and you're like, what year is this? It's 2009. But the rest of the country's still living in the dark ages. Colorado is catching up. Colorado has a lot.

[Hasan Piker]

Smoking weed, calling things gay, being whatever, kind of making jokes, but it's really just a parasocial hang. Like, the concept of this being not comedy, not social media, but parasocial media, what I call it in the piece is essential from the first moments. I mean, one of, I think, Rogen's superpowers, to me, the thing that makes him not, I think, at all the best comedian and not definitely the best political journalist, but, like, arguably the best podcaster, is that he performs his authenticity in a way that makes me feel like who he is in his studio is who he is when he goes out to dinner afterwards. And that's, like, incredibly rare to be able to perform that. I don't know if it's true, but you get the feeling that the hours you've put in with him parasocially are, like, actually getting to know him as a person.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, well, part of this, like, fetish for authenticity is, like, it sort of runs in parallel to something that's actually ideological, which is, like, if you had to isolate one belief of Joe Rogan's, it's that people are often lying to you and that the average person needs to look for alternative channels to find the truth. This is, like, he's a famous UFC guy, fitness guy. He talks about this in terms of nutrition. They're putting this in the food. You gotta look at this. You gotta. Whatever, deer, whatever the hell. He's talking about, certain kind of proteins. I eat elk meat or whatever. But in the political arena, people are feeding you a bunch of bullshit. People are lying. Call this conspiracism. Call it whatever you want, but therefore somebody's mode of presentation, he says or seems to believe is a key or a sort of illuminates their relationship to, like, the truth. This is why he's, like, obsessed with Trump, like, releasing the JFK files and stuff. It's like, what don't we know? And what kind of personality is more likely or less likely to deliver it to us?

[Alex Schwartz]

But I have a question. I'd be listening, cringing, and then I'd hear something like, election Day should be a federal holiday, a paid holiday. Wouldn't that make so much more sense? And people wouldn't have to freak out about missing work and you get voter participation up. And I start nodding, and then he's talking about health care, universal healthcare being a good idea. And I continue nodding. And yet he's a Trump guy.

[Hasan Piker]

And then he's like, jews run the media. And you're like, what? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

And also that the media is receiving another one that I just love. Is the media receiving, like, one set of talking points? I'm like, from whom? From the Jew in charge? I'm trying to figure it out, truly. I'm trying to understand how it works.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It seems to me, like many of our fellow Americans, he was just, like, totally radicalized by the pandemic. That's what it seems like to me. It seems to me that he actually changed and became more party line.

[Alex Schwartz]

So talk about that, Vincent, because that's a piece.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, the thing that he continues to talk about is, to him, the lie of vaccinations. And they should have told people that if you get sunlight and you take vitamin C and you do this and you do that, this could be an alternative to be. He's like, very part of his sort of body fascism and an essential streak of libertarianism within. He was totally galled by the code regime from moment one. And I think that he and his audience together sort of, like, pilled each other into therefore being anti establishment, which leads into. I mean, the moment you're like, they're lying to us, the next thing is gonna be something anti Semitic. And I think, you know, like, no matter what. And I just think that that, to me, was the cause. You know, I used to watch it sometimes if, like, a comedian I liked was on there. Like when Dave Chappelle went on there before, like, total anti trans turn or whatever. I'm like, oh, check this out, you know. But to me, that's when it became, you know, the watchword back then was do your own research. And Joe Rogan was the king of do your own research in a minute. Critics at Large goes where it's never gone before. Twitch to see what the streamer called the Joe Rogan of the left is up to. Critics at Large from the New Yorker will be right back.

[Candice Lim]

I'm Candice Lim and I'm the host of icymi Slate's podcast about Internet culture. My guests and I are like your Internet historians of the past, present and future. Fyre Festival as one of these monocultural Internet events of the good, the bad, and the truly unhinged, I would rather work at Walmart on Black Friday. From nuanced takes to trending stories to ones you wish you heard about. In case you missed it, that's icymi, the podcast that's extremely online so you don't have to be follow now wherever you're listening.

[Deborah Treisman]

One of the hardest parts about B2B marketing is reaching the right audience. We've all seen things pushed into our feeds that clearly weren't right for us. For instance, I keep getting ads for hiking and camping equipment, despite being a person who very much prefers her outdoor experience to involve sidewalks. Those ad dollars are wasted on me, and the stakes for B2B ads are even higher. So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals, and that's where it stands apart from other ad buys. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority, skills, company revenue, all the professionals you need to reach in one place. Stop wasting budget on the wrong audience and start targeting the right ProfessionalsOnly on LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn will even give you $100 credit on your next campaign, so you can try it yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com new yorker that's LinkedIn.com newyorker terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn AD.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So we've heard a lot, Andrew, about the term manosphere to describe Rogan's audience. In your piece, you talk a lot about how people in politics are worried about men, right? Men are now less likely to go to college than ever. Obviously we can all conjure up an idea of a guy at home playing video games, smoking weed, falling out of society right out of that anxiety. I think this most of us think of the manosphere as something corresponding to that. I mean, what to you is the manosphere and how has it come into being?

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah, I think anecdotally there is some connection. I mean, so the statistics on this are pretty grim. Like the education dropout rates, the addiction rates, the suicide rates, like the, all that stuff for men is surprisingly high when you look at the numbers relative to men in previous generations or women now. And so is there like a direct one to one link for every person? No, but I think in aggregate, when men have fewer meaningful relationships in their lives, less likely to be doing something like holding down a job, keeping a family together, they're like playing video games with their imaginary friends on Twitch. This streaming platform was bought by Amazon for about a billion dollars in 2014, back when that was a lot of money. And it's sort of like, you know, parasocial is kind of classically just like you sort of project a one way friendship onto someone who you're listening to or watching. So a lot of especially young men would watch guys mostly play video games and kind of talk through it and they'd be like, oh, this is a hang where I can sort of feel like I'm part of something. And then from there it kind of evolved into more like what one person called the talk radio for the extremely online. Like instead of just playing video games all day, people would sit on Twitch and talk through the news. And most like, way, way, way, most of those people sort of drifted into the maga, right, over the years.

[Andrew Marantz]

Okay, so let's talk about this Hasan Piker guy. In this kind of cosmology of the manosphere and Twitch and parasociality.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the cosmology, it's all the stars are on one side of the sky and Hasan is alone on the left side of the sky.

[Andrew Marantz]

Okay.

[Hasan Piker]

He's, he's, I should say up front how handsome he is. He's a tall, strapping, handsome lad, which is part of the brand. We just have to be real about it.

[Andrew Marantz]

Tall drink of water, would you say?

[Hasan Piker]

Oh, yeah, I would definitely say that. Okay. And he lives in West Hollywood. He's Twitch streaming all day long. He sometimes plays video games, but he's mostly just talking. And he's talking from a leftist, like leftist, like socialist leftist perspective. Came up through the Young Turks, which was kind of a, you know, YouTube politics show. Went solo on Twitch in 2020. In the year 2020, he was on Twitch so much that he was streaming for 42% of the hours of the year of like all the hours of the year.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Not the waking hours, not the waking.

[Hasan Piker]

Hours, the all the hours.

[Andrew Marantz]

Right.

[Hasan Piker]

So I did not really get it. Like I went to LA to, you know, spend a few days with him and he said, okay, so When I'm not live, we can talk. And I was like, okay, you know, show up at the lax.

[Andrew Marantz]

At the crib. Oh, before you showed up at the crib, Sorry.

[Hasan Piker]

Land at lax, get the lift to the crib. Show up at the crib. And he like sprints to the door and is like, okay, I'm live. I can't be off camera for more than 60 seconds. Like just come in and sit next to the screen and don't make any noise. And then I proceed to sit there for an hour, two hours, three hours. He's talking about Syria, he's talking about NATO, he's talking about Internet drama. And then it's like 8pm he has more live viewers than like a lot of cable networks while he's doing this. From the coveted youth demographic.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Hasan Piker]

I will say though, I got pretty lucky with when I was there because the first full day I was there was Luigi day. Was the day they caught Luigi. It's a biggie. And he was just like piggin shit. I mean, he was just like popping.

[Andrew Marantz]

A bottle of champras.

[Hasan Piker]

Totally. I mean. Cause he was sort of going through tabs like, should I talk about reorganization at cnn? Should I talk about. And then he was like, whoa, we've got our A block, B block and C block. And he just went for six hours. And that was the day that I actually understood the appeal of the live news coverage. Because I wanted.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Because then you're picking things up as they go. It's happening live right in front of you. Yeah, he's reacting. Speaking of authenticity, he's reacting in real time from his gut.

[Hasan Piker]

And it's a crazy tightrope act because he has to not get kicked off. Twitch. So he can't like glorify murder, but he also doesn't want to be a finger wagging hall monitor. So he can't not fully glorify murder. So he has to like walk that line. And meanwhile you're looking through Luigi's Goodreads and all this stuff that I was like doing on my phone. Anyway, it's so that line.

[Alex Schwartz]

So why not do it together?

[Hasan Piker]

Why not do it parasocially?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I have some big news for us. Hasan's on. Whoa.

[Andrew Marantz]

Do you want to.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Here he is.

[Julian Lennon]

Ladies and gentlemen, this is personal news time. This is part of the broadcast where I quickly tell you what's going on in the world of Hasan. Hasan. I have a piker in between the time period where I press the stock streaming button and press star streaming button. So help me God.

[Alex Schwartz]

But will you turn the screen around so we can.

[Hasan Piker]

We got to see the fit. The fit is a big part of it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

He's got a very lovely sort of. Oh, a jacket that looks like a Turkish rug.

[Alex Schwartz]

See, even seeing before I even see him, just seeing the comments fly by, I feel like I've drunk four bangs.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, the aesthetics of it are crazy, right? You see, the largest camera is on him. On the right, you see just the flood of comments that come in that he's often, like, responding to in real time.

[Julian Lennon]

Are you feeling better? Maybe a little bit better. I did.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And then when he wants to, instead of, you know, having some amanuensis who brings up the screen for him, he also just can show you his own screen, and then he'll play videos. So it's like you're seeing usually three things at once.

[Hasan Piker]

It's totally frenetic.

[Julian Lennon]

Went to bed last night, woke up early in the morning only to do what I know. The one thing I know, and that is to get Brolic, of course, usually talks about working. And obviously I posted a bunch of stuff as well here.

[Andrew Marantz]

I should say he is ripped under that.

[Vincent Cunningham]

His Instagram. He posts a lot of gym selfies and a lot of, like, weight updates. He's gone on this, like, weight loss journey recently.

[Julian Lennon]

We need to get ready with me. TikTok brother. Here's a titty pic for you guys, for all you savages. It was really nice, House.

[Andrew Marantz]

Okay, there we go.

[Alex Schwartz]

Looking right at nip Jim.

[Andrew Marantz]

The pecs are pecking, and then it's a nip selfie.

[Alex Schwartz]

Nip forward selfie, Ashton Hall.

[Julian Lennon]

You know what I mean? I don't have titties like that.

[Alex Schwartz]

Okay, so that's. Yeah. I think we can mute Hasan for a second, because what I'm getting right now is that actually I feel very comfortable in the manosphere right now because I'm getting a lot of beauty blogging stuff. I'm getting. Here's, you know, did I put ice on my face? How did I sleep? Did I masturbate before bed? We're talking about routine. There's a huge crossover now.

[Andrew Marantz]

There is.

[Alex Schwartz]

In the world of. I mean, whatever you want to call it, Beauty influencing.

[Andrew Marantz]

It's true.

[Alex Schwartz]

And this guy coming out, showing us his packs.

[Hasan Piker]

So you can already see aesthetically how this is not like a DNC keynote speech.

[Andrew Marantz]

Oh, really?

[Vincent Cunningham]

This is maybe the place to make some fine distinctions. He is not pretending like Joe Rogan is that he doesn't care about politics.

[Hasan Piker]

Correct.

[Vincent Cunningham]

He's never saying, I don't know anything about politics. He has highly worked out views and it takes a very internationalist scope. Often he'll be talking about the war in Gaza, which he has a very defined perspective on and is trying to.

[Alex Schwartz]

He's anti, to be clear.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Right. And he. So he is very much styles himself, even though he's, you know, incidentally talking about Jim and whatever, as a dispenser of political. Not only information, but perspective, by the.

[Julian Lennon]

Way, none of which justifies Israel's actions. So it doesn't even matter. Palestinians have a right to dignity, a right to emancipation, a right to live fucking free. Lives free from this occupation. Doesn't matter.

[Andrew Marantz]

Yeah, I wanted to say something about that. Like, when I was watching his Twitch stream yesterday, preparing for this, I had never watched before. I knew who he was, but I had never actually watched him like, in Twitch mode. It was interesting to me because it felt like it was very different from something like Rogan or from Theo Vaughn. It was like, if Rogan's thing is like, I'm not. Whether this is real or whether this is kind of like an act, like, I'm not better than you. I'm just another guy who's like, of course I'm like a multimillionaire, extremely successful, etc. Etc. But I'm just hanging with you. We're just shooting the shit. But Hasan is gonna tell you, tell you what's up. What's up.

[Hasan Piker]

Totally.

[Vincent Cunningham]

One really interesting part of your piece was you kind of cite this preexisting idea that has a lot of currency on the right. But I think actually many people in political life believe this, which is that politics, as they say, is downstream from culture, that the kind of TV people watch, the sort of ambient atmosphere that we sort of by osmosis bring into our brains, then affects electoral results. But in this world, culture and politics are happening at the same time, right? This blending, as you say, of like, entertainment on the one hand, ideology on the other. Maybe one way to state Trump's appeal is that he's able to be a cultural figure at the same time as he is a political figure. I just wonder what you think this new blend then means for politics. Is there just a new way that a politician has to be when all of this, like, I don't know, all this ideology, all these ideas are being formulated in real time on Twitch. Whatever.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah, I do think that it is a skill set that is actually kind of required for national office now. Like in the way that after the 1960 election, you learn that JFK is good on TV and Nixon is not. And from now on, being good on TV is a thing. You have to be part of the job.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Hasan Piker]

And 2016, Trump takes over Twitter, and it's like, oh, being good at Twitter is now a thing that you or someone around you has to figure out. I think being able to hang in a kind of unscripted way. I mean, look, it was always useful. It was always like a deficit if you were Al Gore or John Kerry and you were perceived as being stiff and out of touch. But I think it just becomes more and more essential that, like, there turns out to be a huge voting bloc of people who will, number one, vibe with you and number two, think about what you're saying.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. I think part of what is challenging about that, of course, is what does it mean to be good at podcasting? Like, we've. We're good at hanging. You know, we've just seen Gavin Newsom, the California governor, drop a new podcast, the Gav. It's a humiliation on a grand scale, my friends.

[Vincent Cunningham]

But he doesn't think it, and that's the problem.

[Hasan Piker]

Now I'm taking those conversations even further on my new podcast. Each week, I'm inviting voices from across the political spectrum, including those I fundamentally disagree with, to discuss the most pressing and challenging issues of our time.

[Alex Schwartz]

I think the thing that's really revealing about this podcast is he, Gavin Newsom, of course, Democrat, probably wants to run in the next election.

[Hasan Piker]

You heard it here.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yep. You heard it here first. And he just wants to show that he's cool too. It's like the saddest instance of bootlicking I can imagine. There's no part of him that's bringing a distinct charisma or point of view. It's more like, you're so popular. How did you become popular? Literally? It's the song popular from Wicked in Reverse.

[Andrew Marantz]

Literally, accidentally.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, my God. Go home. Put yourself in bed. Just enough.

[Hasan Piker]

I mean, so, yes, that is an important illustration of how just hanging is not.

[Andrew Marantz]

Not for everyone.

[Hasan Piker]

It's not being a good hang. Hanging and being a good hang are different things.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes, Andrew, you're both.

[Andrew Marantz]

Oh, nice.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You're both. Thank you.

[Hasan Piker]

Thanks, guys. I'll be taking my bangs with me.

[Vincent Cunningham]

My chest is gonna be hurting until the day after tomorrow because of this.

[Alex Schwartz]

Monster, but I'm feeling a beard buzzing in my ear.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Andra's Peace is on new yorker.com right now. It's called the Battle for the Bros. Give it a read. In a minute. We will not be sharing our deadlift Max we will not be telling you what supplements to use, but we will be asking questions about the manosphere critics at large. We'll be right back.

[Richard Lawson]

Hi, I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of the New Yorker and host of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast. On the podcast, I ask a great contemporary writer to select a favorite story from the magazine's almost hundred year archive to read and discuss. Together, we delve into the story, exploring its themes, its style, and what makes fiction work. You can listen to authors like Ottessa Moshfegh talk about why we write story.

[Alex Schwartz]

Or attaching a story or creating a story. Is this inclination that we all have to stop spinning.

[Richard Lawson]

And you can hear writers like George Saunders discuss the nature of storytelling on the first read.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You accept these things as descriptions and they make you see the scene, but.

[Andrew Marantz]

Every line is a chance to inflect the reader's mind.

[Richard Lawson]

You'll discover new favorite authors and read old favorites in new ways. Episodes of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast are released on the 1st of every month. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So I mentioned at the top of the show, it's true that this stuff, just the rhythm of conversation in my ear, on demand. It works on me, right? For me, it is like the boob tube. It's just like I can listen to this stuff, not necessarily Rogan, but this medium is something that I do not, could do, walk around with quite a lot. And like the boob tube, which was once like, you know, the. The big panic of the day, parents scurrying their children away from the tv, from the radio, which was at some point supposed to make you fascist. Does this strike you now that we've kind of broken it down a little bit? Does it strike you as something new and particularly dangerous or kind of. Where does it sit in that mix for you?

[Andrew Marantz]

I don't know if it's particularly dangerous. I think it's one of those things. Yeah, it's the. The last or the most recent in a long line of technological media innovations that have caused different varieties of panic. But I can see I do have a part in me that does feel a little bit alarmed that if I listen to it, you know, just like were I a teenager in the early 80s and listened to Judas Priest, I would become like a Satan worshiper. And I say this because when I've listened to Rogan, when it's things that don't have directly to do with someone like Elon Musk, who I despise and I'm scared of, and that Feeling is strong enough in me that not even a friendly conversation with Rogan would. Would budge that. And I think it might have to do also with, like, Musk's total inability to hang like a normal quote, unquote, human being. But when I listen to the softer, softer power, let's say, segments when he's talking to Theo Vaughn or something, where it's kind of shooting the shit, where it's like, oh, this is. This just makes sense. You know, we're just two guys who are just hanging out. We're just hanging out, and we're just saying what's on our mind, and we don't need to calculate or overthink. I do find myself being drawn into things like a warm bath. And I don't know if it's a new thing. I don't know if it's especially dangerous or more dangerous than the previous innovations and political correspondences to these innovations that we've experienced, but I think it's definitely real and can have potentially profound implications.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

As a twitch streamer yourself, Alex, what do you think?

[Alex Schwartz]

I think it's enormously powerful. And Vincent, you're talking about earlier. You mentioned earlier media panics, the idea that, as you said, radio might turn you fascist. Well, guess what? It did, of course. Father Charles Coughlan on the radio talking to a bunch of people about how the Nazis aren't so bad, Hitler's not so bad. Yeah, it had an influence, the conservative radio talk show, which, interestingly, was really fueled by anger. I think when I think of people like Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, I'm thinking of people who have grievances and real anger. And now 2024 has been called the podcast election in part because Trump very savvily went on a bunch of different podcasts very close to the election and just hung out. And I think this feeling that you're really just hanging out with someone, getting to know them matters a lot. It clearly matters a lot on a visceral level. In the episode that we all listened to where Rogan was recently talking to Theo Vaughan, they were batting around names of people who now have quite a lot of political power, but who are their pals, Like Bobby. Bobby Kennedy.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I'm really happy for Bobby.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm really happy for Bobby. He's a great guy. And Theo Von was saying, I just know because I've known him for a long time, that he's just a great person, and I trust him because I think he's a great person. Joe Rogan came in with Tulsi Gabbard. She's just a great person.

[Vincent Cunningham]

She's a friend of mine.

[Alex Schwartz]

She's a friend I know because she's a great person, that she's gonna do good things. And I think when you get to know people in this way, doesn't surprise me that you could warm up to someone or have a certain reaction to someone. It's a very, very, very powerful tool.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. And the part of this that does correspond to whatever is real about the crisis of men. That, to me, I'm worried about. And I'm worried about how any politician or policymaker or just person that's alive to the culture can offer something to young men without becoming reactionary. It seems to one of the unspoken premises of this stuff is the only way to talk to men is to lead them down a trail of. And this is how you've been marginalized, or this is how the culture has lied to you, or this is why actually white men are the great victims of our culture or something like that. That, to me, seems to be one of the more seductive aspects of some of this stuff. That's like, everybody else wants to leave you out, and the only way for you to sort of be plugged back in is to put on your headphones for hours at a time, no matter what. The valence of the message, something that isolates you and puts you in a room by yourself and with a pretend friend for that long, does seem to me to be, like, only exacerbating whatever problem there actually is. I mean, I don't know. Is that simplistic of me?

[Andrew Marantz]

No, I think that's totally right. And I think on the one hand, Andrew was talking about this. Was writing about this in his piece that the Democrats, especially. Part of the difficulty was toeing that line. We have a problem with young men, and young men are in crisis, and. And this needs to somehow be addressed. But then that dovetails with the ongoing crisis of women, you know, which we can't forget about. It's hard, still hard, socially, culturally, politically to be a woman. And it's seen, I think, by politicians, especially maybe Democratic politicians, or has been seen to be a zero sum game. You know, we have to choose between talking about the problems of women and talking about the problems of men. And we can talk about the problems of men, because then, you know, that would be unwoke, say, quote, unquote.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Andrew Marantz]

And that has left the faction, that faction open to be picked up by the manosphere. And I don't know where we go from here. I Think. Thinking about ways in which it's not a zero sum game in which both. Both men and women can. Can kind of recognize each other's issues would be good. But how to do that?

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, it's the question. I mean, part of me wants to speak for the manosphere, please. You know, like the Lorax speaks for the trees. I mean, I understand, of course. Look, I'm a graduate of a girls school. I get how it can feel to have like your protected space where you don't have to worry about being. That's actually a big part of the manosphere. And there are interesting moments on a show like Rogan where some of the aspects of what could be positive about that come through. Here's a random example. It's not about politics. He had spoken to Julian Lennon, John Lennon's oldest child. Julian Lennon is talking about putting out an album not that long ago called Jude. Just like the song hey Jude, written by Paul McCartney was addressed to Julian Lennon when his parents were getting divorced. And he's talking about finally claiming this label of Jude and kind of dealing with having been in the public eye in this way and dealing with feeling like this person. And he said his album was totally ignored. And he's talking about the pain of it, how he felt that no one wanted to have him on a show. No one wanted to talk to him. Okay, yes, he's speaking as a very specific person, but he was vulnerable, guys. The V word, the big V word. He was vulnerable. He was going there. And actually, I think, like, this sounds like a cliche now, but performing that kind of vulnerability and by performing it, I mean, just letting yourself.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Living in it.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes, living in it. There. There was a moment for that, for just kind of saying, yeah, I felt this way. Okay, I'm into that side of the manosphere doing that kind of stuff now. I think this can be used for ill as well. I'm thinking of Rogin's recent conversation with Mark Zuckerberg. He is saying things that sound like vulnerability, that sound like masculine vulnerability, but they're about his unique position as one of the most powerful people in the entire world. He says running this company is not for the faint of heart. There's definitely all this pressure from all these different governments.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, no.

[Alex Schwartz]

Something in this, and you know, you're getting a sympathetic ear. Something has convinced you that that enormous responsibility is actually something to feel a bit weepy about. So it's sort of like extend the sympathy. Like, I'm trying to think of solutions. Extend the sympathy. But Also know when to question.

[Andrew Marantz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I think, you know, what you're describing also is just a marker of true sociality, when you know how to, like, exist in conversation with people. Right. Like, so what's good about this, I think, is that it encourages or at least models a form of sociality. Right. But what's bad about it is that it also presents itself as a substitute for that in real life.

[Alex Schwartz]

Absolutely.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I don't wanna tell young men to go have a conversation, but I sort of do.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, exactly. And the other.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Go to a bar, dude, and talk to somebody.

[Alex Schwartz]

So we talked about Piker. We talked about Joe Rogan. Politics aside, because this is all about hanging. Who's a better hang?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Given the choice between Piker and Rogan, I'm definitely gonna hang out with Piker. No question.

[Andrew Marantz]

I mean, honestly, I'd probably not hang with either of them.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That is a given for me in this question.

[Andrew Marantz]

But they wouldn't wanna hang out.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I'm hanging with you.

[Andrew Marantz]

But they wouldn't wanna hang out with me, so that's okay, you know?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, you don't know that.

[Alex Schwartz]

I can't hang out with someone whose availability is 6am to 9am then who streams all day and is again available.

[Andrew Marantz]

At 8pm it's not gonna work between you and Hasan, you're saying?

[Alex Schwartz]

I don't think so. Unless you know Hasan, Reach out. If you'd like to make it work, let me know. Joe Rogan, I think you should have me on your podcast just to find out a little bit about the life of a literary critic.

[Andrew Marantz]

I would tune in for that.

[Alex Schwartz]

What's it like? I'll tell you about Close Reading. We're gonna go there.

[Andrew Marantz]

You know who I'd hang out with? The Ovan.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, God, he. To me, he's the worst.

[Andrew Marantz]

Oh, my God.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I just.

[Alex Schwartz]

Look, his smooth, smooth brain.

[Andrew Marantz]

I find it comforting and groovifying somehow. Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

I mean, it is amazing to be with someone who has no problem admitting utter ignorance of the most basic things.

[Andrew Marantz]

I don't know. It relaxes me.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Guys, in all cases, I'd rather hang with you.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, we're always gonna hang.

[Andrew Marantz]

Yeah, we're gonna choose the critics.

[Vincent Cunningham]

This has been Critics at Large, a shorter podcast than the one you heard about. Our senior producer is Rhiannon Corby, and Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Conde Nast's head of Global audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Cuadrado composed our theme music, and we had masterful engineering help today from James Yost with mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every episode of Critics at [e-mail] critics. See you next week.

[Hasan Piker]

Working at Vanity Fair, our entire lives revolve around press screenings, premieres, film festivals, Q&As, set visits, award ceremonies.

[Alex Schwartz]

Not that we're complaining. It's pretty great. But you know that feeling when you see a new film or show and you want to talk about it with everyone immediately? We feel that all the time.

[Hasan Piker]

Yes, we sure do. I'm Richard Lawson. I'm David Canfield.

[Alex Schwartz]

And I'm Rebecca Ford.

[Hasan Piker]

On Little Gold Men, Vanity Fair's flagship entertainment podcast, we discuss today's most exciting films and TV shows.

[Alex Schwartz]

David and I are fresh off attending the LA premiere last night.

[Hasan Piker]

Break down the latest developments in the awards races. Gomez and Grande split the pop girly vote and catch up with Hollywood's biggest movers and shakers. Demi Moore, welcome to the show.

[Alex Schwartz]

Thank you for having me.

[Hasan Piker]

Whether you're a casual viewer or an industry buff, this is the podcast for you. New episodes are published every Tuesday and Thursday. Follow and listen to Little Gold Men wherever you get your podcasts.

[Andrew Marantz]

From. PRX.