And, This Is Gaming Culture & Gen-Z Nihilism With Content Creator Brandon "Atrioc" Ewing

Summary

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Podcast Summary: This is Gavin Newsom

Episode: "And, This Is Gaming Culture & Gen-Z Nihilism With Content Creator Brandon 'Atrioc' Ewing"

Host: Gavin Newsom
Guest: Brandon "Atrioc" Ewing
Date: September 25, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Governor Gavin Newsom sits down with content creator and streamer Brandon “Atrioc” Ewing to explore the dynamics of gaming culture, the rise of online communities, and the economic roots of Gen Z nihilism—particularly among young men. The conversation moves beyond stereotypes about gaming and social media, highlighting their roles as outlets in a landscape marked by economic precarity, lack of opportunity, and growing resentment. The episode also discusses the intersection of politics, policy failure, and the need for real economic reform to address generational despair.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Gen Z Men and Nihilism: Root Causes, Not Scapegoats

• Opening Frame (00:00-05:00):
  • Atrioc challenges the “blame gaming culture” narrative, emphasizing that economic and societal conditions, not video games, are driving disaffection among young men:

    "Young Gen Z men...they range from angry to openly nihilistic. They can't go back to the status quo, Gavin. They just can't." (00:00, Brandon Ewing)

• Both agree that blaming video games for violence is “an easy scapegoat” with no real data to support it. The true driver: a lack of opportunity, social disconnection, and economic instability.

  "South Korea, Japan, the UK, Germany, France—they all have the same rate of video game playing, and they have none of the violent crime or a small fraction." (05:39, Atrioc)
  “There is no real correlation with it.” (06:13, Atrioc)

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2. Gaming as Social Connection, Not the Cause of Isolation

• Parenting and Gaming (07:00-08:30):
  • Newsom shares his own experience with his sons and Fortnite:

    "Every single day I am battling, man, battling them on YouTube, watching someone else play Minecraft." (07:30, Gavin Newsom)

  • Atrioc reframes gaming as modern socializing:

    "If you told them they can't play Roblox or Fortnite, you would make them less socially able to connect to their friends nowadays." (07:42, Atrioc)

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3. Explaining Online Platforms: Twitch, Discord, YouTube

• What is Twitch? (08:19-17:07):
  • Atrioc details Twitch’s evolution—from game streaming to all-purpose live conversation, explaining its unique power for young people seeking authenticity and community:

    "The biggest thing on the website is not games at all. It’s just people talking to the camera about their lives, about the news..." (10:21, Atrioc)

  • Discord demystified as a “chat room,” not a radicalization platform:

    "Discord is just a chat room. It's not uniquely brewing people like this…The idea that discord is uniquely brewing people like this is unsubstantiated." (12:38, Atrioc)

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4. Economic Roots of Disconnection

• Job Prospects & Financial Insecurity (14:05-19:09):
  • Atrioc shares how economic pressures today were far lighter when he entered the workforce, but for new grads:

    "I have a friend who's graduating from Berkeley, computer science…It's not his fault. He didn't do anything different…it's tough to say that.” (14:18, Atrioc)

  • Broader despair, not platforms, is at issue:

    “They are more and more desperate for a direction to go.” (15:44, Atrioc)

• Nihilism and Growing Anger:
  • Atrioc links these forces to a turn away from political engagement or toward populism and “open nihilism”:

    "They range from angry to openly nihilistic. And the nihilism is what's coming, is what I sense growing a little bit where they're disillusioned..." (25:36, Atrioc)

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5. Esports, Branding, and the Shift in Sports Culture

• Esports Economics (19:09-23:29):
  • Atrioc is skeptical about the sustainability of current esports investments:

    “A lot of them are going to lose their shirt on this...It's really hard to monetize the user...it's a grassroots thing. It's growing.” (19:49, Atrioc)

  • on “streamer culture” overtaking traditional sports broadcasts:

    "They make an official broadcast and then a million people will restream it and add their own commentary. Those guys get way more viewers than the official broadcast." (22:44, Atrioc)

  • Online spaces are “where people are finding friends and connection... it's filling a void that they need filled.” (23:29, Atrioc)

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6. Covid’s Accelerant and the Digital Shift

• Pandemic as Turning Point (24:07-25:27):
  • Stimulus, inflation, and lockdowns drove more people into digital worlds and escalated trends that were already brewing.
  • Online events (GameStop, Twitch/YouTube booms) became “cultural flashpoints.”

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7. Politics, the Manosphere, and Generational Alienation

• Manosphere Politics (30:33-36:16):
  • Trump’s success among young men wasn’t about policy, but engagement and presence in male-dominated online spaces.

    "Trump...did invest time and energy to meet people where they are...We didn’t see that commensurate investment from the Democratic Party." (30:33, Newsom)

  • DNC has failed to adapt:

    "It seems like the DNC as a whole is trying to run a very similar playbook that didn't work and is wondering why they're not getting different results." (31:14, Atrioc)

  • “Difference is—they are equally as upset with them [Democrats], which I think is the problem.” (32:06, Atrioc)

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8. What is the Manosphere? Socioeconomics, Not Just Social Anxiety

• Definition:
  • "They [Republicans] invested in those spaces [sports, gaming, UFC]...then, ‘hey, you like this, also on the side, let’s stop the woke mind virus…’" (36:16, Atrioc)
  • The “main thing” for Gen Z men is cost of living, inflation, and housing—social issues follow material ones.

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9. Housing, Wages, College: Structural Barriers to Upward Mobility

• Economic Stagnation and Dissatisfaction (40:27-52:41):
  • Atrioc describes the “ladder with fewer and fewer rungs,” and why housing and inequality are central to generational anger:

    "If it doesn’t change, we’re screwed. This is an angry, nihilistic generation that wants change." (40:28, Atrioc)

  • College premium disappearing, even for “practical” degrees:

    "Unemployment for Gen Z men who are college graduates is the same as those that have not...Computer science and they can’t get a job." (50:45, Atrioc)

  • College is more expensive, online-oriented, and less rewarding than ever:

    “To pay way more than your parents ever paid to go to Zoom College—what a sucker punch.” (51:39, Atrioc)

  • AI and cheating in education are rampant and part of the broader malaise.

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10. Gender, Dating, Resentment, and the Root of Inceldom

• Gendered Impact (53:26-55:41):
  • “Young women are adapting more...getting to college, getting on the corporate ladder... Men who can’t get on the economic ladder...that makes them more disengaged.” (53:26, Atrioc)
  • Societal resentment translates into anti-women sentiment in online spaces (misogyny a symptom, not a cause):

    "Misogyny...is probably amplified by this, but it’s because they are resentful and someone is going to fill that void and tell them it’s this person’s problem." (57:41, Atrioc)

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11. Algorithms, Echo Chambers, & Online Radicalization

• Algorithms Facilitate Extremes (57:41-59:39):
  • “You have a direct financial incentive at all times to feed into people’s resentment and to feed into their anger—it’s just the way the algorithms work." (56:34, Atrioc)
  • These online platforms have made radicalization “faster, more virulent,” but the historic cause is economic despair and inequality, not Discord or Reddit.

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12. Crypto, Gambling, and Economic Exploitation of Gen Z

• Dangers of Speculation (65:36-68:38):
  • Atrioc is passionate about how crypto and sports gambling are truly harming young men—far more than games:

    "Crypto and gambling, sports gambling particular. These two things are a viral cancer that are just ripping these people's ability to get a financial leg up apart...If you are financially stuck…you have to take that 100x bet..." (65:36, Atrioc)

  • “Putting a casino in everybody’s pocket is just a stupid idea.” (67:17, Atrioc)
  • Newsom shares with frustration about his son’s obsession with easy-money gambling apps.

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Notable/Memorable Quotes

• On Misguided Blame:

  “It is frustrating—the endless pointing to Discord, Reddit, Twitch…This has nothing to do with it.” (15:44, Atrioc)

• On Generational Disillusionment:

  “They can’t go back to the status quo, Gavin. They just can’t. They will continue to grow more upset and populist and nihilistic unless things seriously change.” (33:03, Atrioc)

• On Economics as the Core Issue:

  “It all comes back to economics…We can fight forever on social issues and we always will. But we have to really focus on the economics, ’cause that’s where we’re gonna make a difference.” (48:58, Atrioc)

• On Misogyny and Online Radicalization:

  “The misogyny…I mean, it’s probably amplified by this, but it’s because they are resentful and someone is going to fill that void…” (57:41, Atrioc)

• On Scapegoating Platforms:

  “If they’re there to point the finger—that discord caused this, or Twitch caused this—I promise you, it’s absurd. I promise you it will change nothing.” (70:07, Atrioc)

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Key Timestamps

• [05:39] – The international comparison and refuting video games as a cause for violence
• [07:42] – Social connection through gaming for Gen Z
• [10:21] – Twitch shifts from games to lifestyle and conversation
• [14:18] – Economic pressures on new graduates
• [25:36] – The spectrum from anger to nihilism among Gen Z men
• [31:14] – Critique of DNC’s engagement (or lack thereof)
• [36:16] – The “manosphere” in online culture and politics
• [40:28] – Inequality as the existential generational challenge
• [50:45] – College degrees losing value; even STEM can’t guarantee jobs
• [53:26] – Gendered impact on dating and social life for young men
• [56:34] – Financial incentives for outrage online
• [65:36] – Crypto and gambling “cancer” for young men’s finances
• [70:07] – Congressional scapegoating of tech platforms will only deepen the problem

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Closing Reflections

• Podcast Purpose: Newsom’s aim to foster real dialogue, meet criticism directly, and unpack difficult social questions shines through. Atrioc, meanwhile, offers frank, nuanced insights from the front lines of digital youth culture and online entrepreneurship.
• Overall Tone: Open, candid, sometimes irreverent, yet always grounded in a call for real, structural economic change as the solution to youth despair.
• Lasting Message:

  “Pay attention to the thing that is the thing that explains all of the other things…Tectonic plates of wealth and income inequality…if we don’t address this, the whole fabric of society is going to fray apart.” (72:02, Newsom)

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Missed the episode but want to understand Gen Z’s malaise, the real role of gaming culture, and what’s fueling nihilism among young men? This engaging, honest, and jargon-free conversation is the place to start.

Transcript

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

I do want to start talking about Gen Z men. They range from angry to openly nihilistic. They can't go back to the status quo, Gavin. They just can't. Seems like the DNC as a whole is trying to run a very similar playbook that didn't work and is wondering why they're not getting different results.

[Gavin Newsom]

This is Gavin Newsom and this is Brendan Ewing aka atriot.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

This is an iheart podcast.

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[Gavin Newsom]

All right. Brandon Yuen. Hey, welcome brother.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Having a pleasure.

[Gavin Newsom]

It's good to be with you. AKA Atrion.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

You got it right.

[Gavin Newsom]

Your online name which we'll get to in a minute. And for folks that don't know you, millions of people do because they watch you religiously. You're a rock star on YouTube. Content creator Twitch live streamer speedrunner. We'll talk about what the heck that means. People are wondering what am I talking about. But also really focused on building community around marketing, around business. And that's what your background represented working Twitch, working in Nvidia. We can talk about AI chips but I really wanted you on because with so much focus on what happened a few weeks ago with Charlie Kirk and and Tyler Robinson Person has been accused some of the gaming questions and issues that came up, some of the memes that were allegedly part of of of some components of the investigation, the broader we're having in this country around the manosphere and what's happening with gaming culture generally issues of boys and men, everything about this and it kept coming back to you. So I'm great.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

I hope it didn't all come back to me.

[Gavin Newsom]

I all came back to you as a guy that can explain to unpack.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah.

[Gavin Newsom]

All of this stuff we know we.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Talked about this before this and I wanted to first of all, I want to say you mentioned millions of people might know my stuff maybe a little less than that. But the people that know me, I think they'll like me. People that don't know me when they hear content creator or youtuber Twitch streamer I think they have an instant dislike and I don't really blame them. Like I don't I don't think that's. I think most people have an instant distrust of someone who has that as their job. And I get it. So I want to try and get across why people are turning to this, why this is becoming a new form of media, and also understand that like, if you don't, if this is not for you, I get it. It's not.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah, no, but it should be. But people, I mean, it explains more things in more ways on more days, particularly to parents. I mean, I've got, I've got four young kids and it's pretty overwhelming, the gaming culture that's out there. So I mean, what is it? I mean, 70 plus percent of teenagers are active gamers. Is that among men?

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

I assume it's higher.

[Gavin Newsom]

I think it's a lot even higher.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Right, yeah. So I wanted to start with that, you know, and I don't think this is your stance, but it's like really important for me to get across early. It feels like in the wake of what happened with Charlie Kirk, there is a reignition of old, old, old debates around how video games, violent video games are the problem. And I just want to be so clear from my POV and from the POV of my audience, who's again, younger Gen Z Man. That's an insane, insane way to look at this. You know, South Korea, Japan, uk, Germany, France, they all have the same rate of video game playing and they have none of the violent crime or small fraction of the violent crime.

[Gavin Newsom]

That's exactly right.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

There is no real correlation with it.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yep.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

So what I'll say is it's an easy scapegoat. It is a really easy scapegoat. And we can go into this for a while.

[Gavin Newsom]

But no, by the way, full stipulate, could not agree with you more. Is someone that's deeply focused on the issue of gun violence, mass shootings and all these things and sort of the lazy punditry that comes back to this gaming culture has been completely debunked 100%. So could not agree with that more. Just stipulating an alignment of thinking on that.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

No, sure. And then, you know, now they're saying, I think they're about to haul the head of Reddit and Discord and Twitch and all these people in front of Congress. Listen, these, the addiction to these things. And there's some of these. Is addiction, I will say some, some young men are spending a large percentage of their time on these platforms. This is a symptom. This is a symptom of them having Almost nowhere else to go.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

And especially I want to talk about gaming. The idea that gaming is driving isolation and not isolation is leading to people trying to find an escape or connection through gaming. It's the other way around. I mean, that is what's happening. So I don't know if you have children.

[Gavin Newsom]

You have young boys, Four or four young kids. Yeah.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Can I age.

[Gavin Newsom]

Your boys are oldest, just turned 16. And the two boys, 9 and 13, are they gamers?

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Are they Roblox? Are they Fortnite?

[Gavin Newsom]

Every single day I am battling, man, battling them on YouTube. Watching someone else play Minecraft.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah.

[Gavin Newsom]

Watching someone else play a video game. They're obsessed, buddy.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

And so what I would say is, you know, I assume you do the normal thing parents are doing, especially in sf, they limit screen time, things like that. But to be honest, if you told them they can't play Roblox or they can't play Fortnite, you would make them less socially. Like they are less able to connect to their friends nowadays. Yeah, that is how they're doing. That is. I know it's a generation disconnect, but that is not the problem. The young, the young men that are turning to Discord servers and gaming are trying to find friends and connection. They are logging on after work and hanging out in voice chats and their friend and having a good time. This is like the one thing that's keeping them sane and in a world that is going, I think, increasingly insane and not offering them economic opportunity.

[Gavin Newsom]

I love that. Let's unpack. Because, you know, I think a lot of people, obviously YouTube people are familiar with. There's a sort of generation though that that's heard of Twitch.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah.

[Gavin Newsom]

That's heard of Kick, that's heard of Discord, but they don't know what these things are. Reddit, maybe people are a little bit more familiar with. But talk to me. And when I, when I started, I mean, you. Twitch is sort of a go to for a lot of folks in the gaming space. But explain what these are, what these platforms represent, how they started and what they become.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah. So I worked at Twitch right around the time it started. And it was a very lucky thing for me. Cause I was a asu, Arizona State University, the Harvard of the Southwest, they call it Graduate and you know, middling grades. And I played a lot of games and it was very, very lucky that I found this route into Twitch, which was a website which allowed gamers to broadcast themselves online. That was the idea. I'm playing the game. Maybe I'm Particularly good at it. Maybe I'm funny while I play it. And people that also played the game found that to be entertaining and they would start to build communities and audiences.

[Gavin Newsom]

And it would tell me what, what time were people starting over there? I mean, was it. Was it a particular individual that said, hey, I'm going to put myself online? Was there a moment that marked consciousness of this whole. I mean, because it's become a gigantic business and we'll get to that in a moment. But was Twitch really the first to really popularize as a platform?

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah, Twitch was the one that, that, that found this niche early for, you.

[Gavin Newsom]

Know, what years are we talking about?

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

2014. Ish. That's around when I. When I joined. And it grows, and then around Covid, it explodes. Explodes because everyone's stuck at home and it just hits the right time in the right place.

[Gavin Newsom]

Let's back up a little bit. You discovered Twitch as someone not just doing content, but someone that was marketing the content. Were you working for Twitch?

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

I never had any interest in doing content myself. I was at Twitch and they needed someone to go on camera every now and then, and I was the one stupid enough to volunteer, and I got some training and I was using the program.

[Gavin Newsom]

And you got a camera and you started doing what? You started explaining the video.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Talk about this now. You know, here's the thing. So what I'm saying might sound completely unwatchable to someone who doesn't play video games.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

But over the. Since 2014 to now, the platform has changed dramatically. The biggest thing on the website is not games at all. It's just people talking to the camera about their lives, about the news, about what's going on in the world. People are just using it because it's a real direct connection.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Okay. And so that has become the main. The gaming is still a big part of Twitch, but it's, it's. It's in the culture. You might play games a little bit during the day, then Switch, talking about the new Switch, talking about watching YouTube videos. You can do anything. So that. That's the path that we went on.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

At the time. I'm sorry, what was.

[Gavin Newsom]

Sorry, no, just a bit. At the time, you were. What was the biggest content that was being provided at that time? Was it. Was there a particular game that was mostly popularized or that was disproportionately being popularized?

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Blew it up. So again, first it was Covid, and then I would say, you know, celebrities started to go on every now and then, and I think Drake played with Ninja some Fortnite. And that every, every, every day I saw every little step would blow Twitch up a little bit more. And then it started to get bigger and bigger.

[Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

But what I would say is it's spread beyond Twitch now. It's got kick, it's got YouTube, it's TikTok Live. What I'm saying is people right now are just engaging through content creators because they have this more direct one to one connection. Actually, what I'll say what it is, is, and you probably deal with this as a challenge when you're trying to speak. People are very, very tired of inauthenticity. Yeah, that's what I, that's what I feel. People feel like everyone's out to sell them something, everyone's out to get them and even consecrators are doing this.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

But they're trying to find somebody they can trust. That is the main thing is trust.

[Gavin Newsom]

And so, so you're saying kids are going online and they, and they end up looking for that. They see someone they can identify with through a medium that they're already identified with a game that they have in common or something in common that they have in. And so Twitch figured this thing out and you made an important point. Twitch is not, is not just a platform exclusively for gaming.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Not even close. The biggest thing on the platform is not gaming. Just. I think that's a shock to some people, but it really is just people talking, people having fun and it's these.

[Gavin Newsom]

Sort of areas of interest where you get into these group chats and there's sort of an interactivity. People are engaged in a two way conversation, not just one.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah, yeah, it's live. I mean at a big enough chat you're not really talking one to one. But the idea is people feel like their voice is somewhat being heard.

[Gavin Newsom]

And what's the difference between Twitch and Discord?

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

So Discord is just a chat room. And that's why it's kind of funny. You know, there's a lot of, among Gen Z, there's these memes going around about people getting messages from their parents. I heard you're using Discord. Were you talking to this like it's just a chat? It's nobody's. It's your own private little room with your friends. Discord is the platform. It's like saying, I heard you're using an iPhone. Did the killer use an iPhone? Did you? You know what I'm saying? It's just a met. You're not in the same.

[Gavin Newsom]

And you're referring to. Because there was, I mean you, you hear about Discord often in the context of some of these more high profile instances. Yeah, obviously this Tyler Robinson is accused of, of accused of shooting Charlie Kirk used a Discord.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah, but he used a Discord chat room with his friends. Nobody else is. It's, you know, and it's. Any, any medium could have done this. The idea that discord is uniquely brewing, people like this is, Is unsubstantiated.

[Gavin Newsom]

Got it. So the gaming area, the gaming, most of the gaming platforms, YouTube's sort of dominant in this space along with Twitch. Who else is sort of emerging in the gaming space as the platform, the sort of to go platform?

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah, I would say YouTube and Twitch is the vast, vast majority of people doing this. You could talk about kick, you talk about rumble, you talk about the more fringe, wild ones, but Twitch and YouTube. And YouTube is the 800 pound gorilla in the space. It really is mostly YouTube. That's where people are getting. That's why I'm putting out my content online. That's where most people are getting it.

[Gavin Newsom]

And so you started just as you just were there in Arizona. You just getting good on games. You just, you know, you found this sort of a proclivity for it. You're loving it. You remember the first game, you were like, deep into, like you're just obsessed with.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Okay, well now here's what I want to say is like this is me in Arizona. I've graduated. I'm trying to find a job. I had okay grades and the college is not some incredible degree. Okay. So I'm, I'm figuring it out. And thanks to a lucky opportunity and thanks to the economy being in a better spot at the time, I get this last chopper out of nom. It feels like where I get a decent chance to, to go off and make enough money to now I can, you know, I'm married. I have, I have a house that I'm paying down. It's expensive, but so I have friends now who are younger than me that are like, I have a friend who's graduating from Berkeley, computer science. Smart guy. He's graduating in an environment that is 100 times harder to get a job than it was in 2014, 2015. It's not his fault. He didn't do anything different. So that is gonna make him more likely to be nihilistic. It's more likely to make him disengage from the system, more likely to make him angry at politicians left and right. It's just, it's not, it's tough to say that. Like, I just find it. And you're not doing this, but I'm saying I'm finding it frustrating. The endless pointing to discord, Reddit, Twitch, it's. This has nothing to do with it. It is. It is the situation where people are. Are more and more desperate for a direction to go. So, yeah, I can tell you about a game I played. I mean, I played, I played. I wasted my college on a game like League of Legends. I wasted, you know, but.

[Gavin Newsom]

But you didn't waste your. Because I created a career.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

I got lucky. Gavin, I don't think that's. And what I do now has almost nothing to do with gaming. I'll be honest with you. My audience hates when I game.

[Gavin Newsom]

But you're a world record holder. Just so people have an understanding who we're talking to here. You crushed it. World record holder. What, for Hitman, right? Yeah.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

There's a game called Hitman where you, you know, you're flying around and listen, that is a time of my life where I was here. I started doing this when I was working at Nvidia. I was working some insane hours and I wanted to come home and disengage. I wanted to just play video games and I wanted some friends in the chat that do it. That did pretty well. And it started to take off. Then after Covid, I started talking about, you know, I'm an avid reader, I'm reading the news every day and I want to talk, I just give my thoughts. That started to take off and eventually that was enough that I could leave a job that was really stable and good at Nvidia to try and do this full time.

[Gavin Newsom]

And you started to be able to monetize it at that level working for one of the great chip companies in planet Earth.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah.

[Gavin Newsom]

Now one of the biggest market cap companies quite literally in human history world. Yeah. And you started making the kind of money that you said, man, I'm just full time now. Yeah. On this. Nothing majority about a content creator. Quite the contrary. Just the opposite. I mean, no, it's. You're an entrepreneur, you're a small business person, you put something out there, took a risk, you're on a platform, you're taking a passion, you're sharing it in a very public way, you're building an audience, marketing it. I mean, that's pretty.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

I appreciate everything you're saying and it's nice of you to say. But there as with all things, there's some aspect of hard work and some aspect of luck and there's a. And the idea that this is the path that everyone could just, you know, I, I, I, I, I can think of so many times things could have gone a different way.

[Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

And I'll be in a different spot.

[Gavin Newsom]

And, and you'll acknowledge, I mean, and I think it's just important to illuminate. I mean, but a lot of people are finding this path, right? I mean, this is becoming the opportunity.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

You kind of are lately, huh?

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah, well, I know, I mean, I'm not. We'll see what happens. But in terms of my future. Jesus. But it's. No, but it's, but it's interesting to me. I mean, it's, I think it's people just to understand and absorb sort of this digital first experience. I mean, there's a whole generation that frankly, they're digital. Obviously we talk about digital immigrants versus digital natives in sort of a lazy vernacular, but this whole digital first experience is radically changing everything, including sports. And we're going to get to that in a moment. But, but the gaming culture is real. It's growing. You've got stadiums now, quite literally filled physical stadiums with people watching these esports and other people playing games to a degree that I don't think most people fully absorb or understand.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah, that's how I started. I went to study abroad in South Korea and they had these big tournaments and I was blown away and I was like, let's get this in America. Let's start. It happened without me. But I came back and started to work in that space and that blew up. But again, I can't tell you enough. This, like the esports is really a small part of what is becoming this online influencer first culture. If you were to spend some time browsing Twitch, you would not see as much gaming as you're thinking on. It really is people just looking for human connection, humans to talk to. And I'm not saying this is all a good thing. I'm not saying everyone should be spending all their time on these platforms. I am just saying that it's, it's a very natural response to, to things getting more expensive, to looking for, to finding people who share some similar values or ideas as you across the world. So, no, I love that I want.

[Gavin Newsom]

To get to all that because, I mean, there's those deep issues, generational issues that we've been talking about on the podcast with a number of people in the past, and it's off the chart, particularly for men. And so I just want to unpack it a little bit more. Just again, for people that are not fully, that just don't have the level of understanding the space. But you talk about esports and I just think it's an interesting space in this context. You say it's a relatively small space, but it's not a small amount of investment that it seems people are making. I was just reading about Michael Jordan, Shaquille o', Neal, Beckham folks putting tens of millions of dollars into esports teams. I mean, this thing's growing.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah. But what I'll tell you is being dead honest, Gavin, a lot of them are going to lose their shirt on this. You know, I've been around the esports space a while and a lot of people have gotten burned. The problem is it's really hard to monetize the user. They, they, they love watching it. They love watching it for free. They don't, you know, there's not a, there's not a lot of in person stadium buying merch going.

[Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

The business economics of esports are interesting, but it is growing in terms of viewership and it'll get there. But they got way ahead of their skis. I think a lot of people are, are coming down off the highs. You know, it's like it was one of those things. Almost every business there's some story about 2021. It was crazy.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

And then it's. That's, that's happening with these.

[Gavin Newsom]

It was kind of, it was at a peak. 2020.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah. 2021. It was like you could, the salaries were insane. They were getting paid absurd amounts for these players to sit in the room and play games. It's less now. You know, it's, it's. And I, you know, Rick Fox of the Lakers put a bunch of money into a team lost, you know, had to get out. And I'm saying it'll happen, but I'm not going to be one of those guys. It's like esports is right here. Get your money. You know, it's, it's a grassroots thing. It's growing.

[Gavin Newsom]

And so you're, what's interesting about you is not only your history and how you've evolved in terms of your own career path and going into these aspects and disciplines, but the marketing background and the business background and the work you're doing on a new podcast, Lemon. It was Lemonade Lemonade Stand and talking about business and branding etc. But you mentioned just in, in reference, in passing something that I think is interesting and, and for folks again may not be familiar with on Fortnite in particular, which I just Remember my kids watching religiously, to your point, during COVID excessively as a parent from my perspective, but from their perspective, they were. I just got on it, dad. What do you mean? I've only been on for two minutes, but I remember turning it on one day and they're listening to a concert. I'm like, what are you guys listening to? It's like. I think it was marshmallow or.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Oh yeah, they were concert. Yeah.

[Gavin Newsom]

And they so. And that fascinated me, this integration for live concerts. Travis Scott, that is. I think Ariana Grande may have done one also. Brands, right? I mean you got Nike now working on those and those platforms, Louis Vuitton, I mean, tell me a little bit about that. Give us a sense of what that integration as well.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah, I mean it is as crazy as it can sound from someone outside of it. It's people all over the world in a digital world watching these concerts together. They can see each other, they're jumping around, they're having a good time and it's just becoming more of the culture. That is where I think there is such a line if you grew with it or you didn't. And I think that is what allows me to talk about other things with the lingo and the references that they use because it's just something they're native to 100%. But you know, I think people will come around to it. You know, here's an example for esports, all of the biggest ways to watch it are not, you know, how you watch the NFL through the NFL's official broadcast.

[Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Or a pirated version if you're young. But you're watching the official commentators.

[Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

For esports, it doesn't happen that way. They make an official broadcast and then a million people will restream it and add their own commentary. And those guys get way more viewers than the official broadcast.

[Gavin Newsom]

Right?

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

And we're starting to see that happen with sports where they'll have like the Manning cast for the NFL, a lot of rights issues are in the way, but eventually they're gonna crack the code. Cuz the average person wants to see this stuff filtered through someone they trust and understand and is speaking to them like a regular person.

[Gavin Newsom]

Right?

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

That's gonna happen in sports. It's gonna happen all over. The democratization of all this stuff is happening and it is reaching sports now and it's gonna, it's gonna happen to things you understand as well. But yeah, it's weird seeing it live. You know, gaming has been on the cutting edge of this because again, Back to my original point, it's just where people are finding friends and connections, where they can find it.

[Gavin Newsom]

Right.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

It's filling a void that they need filled.

[Gavin Newsom]

So this. So let's go back to that and we'll go back to your reference. Sort of this, these moments that sort of mark the accelerant. And obviously Covid was just off the charts in terms of just people trying to connect, feeling totally isolated, disconnected. And they can find those relationships online. They could find those groups of interest. They can, they can literally develop friendships and, and relationships online that they otherwise wouldn't have had necessarily the opportunity, particularly during COVID Talk to me about, you know, those years. You talk about 2021 representing sort of a peak of consciousness. But what do you see start to really take shape during those Covid years?

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

I mean, so after 2020, there's a lot of new money, both from Trump and Biden, floating around the economy. They both did a lot of stimulus and printing, and that went into tech startups and that went into esports and that went into Twitch and that went into all this stuff. And there was a lot of it floating around. There was, you know, I remember there was the gamestop stock craze and everyone wanted to find someone to watch on that. And that was. These things became cultural flashpoints that were taking place entirely online. And then after 2021, we started to get inflation, a lot of inflation that made doing things that weren't online more expensive and more difficult. That's combined with COVID And so these things, I think, combined to push people more into online spaces than perhaps natural law would dictate. I mean, that. That is what happened. And so it's good and bad. You know, as a content creator, Covid was exposure to an entirely new audience. It grew a lot bigger, but it's not. I wouldn't say it was a good thing for overall, you know, that's not how I'd frame it.

[Gavin Newsom]

In what way is it not? I mean, the unhealthy aspects are what you try to get offline so you can get back into a line and reconnect, connect with people back in the real world. I mean, in what way was it? Was it.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

What I'm saying is I think people, people want to do that naturally.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

They just can't. They just. It is just more difficult. You know, I don't know if we want to get to it now, but I. I do want to start talking about Gen Z Men.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

And the issue I'm seeing, not all of them are like, this, it's a broad, diverse group, of course, and, and it's a huge point of my audience. And I'm hearing them, I'm hearing their, their thoughts a lot. They range from angry to openly nihilistic. And the nihilism is what's coming, is what I sense growing a little bit where they're disillusioned. You know, I think around 22, 3, 4, you probably saw this on the political side, they drifted more conservative because they thought that would be the solution. And as Donald Trump has proven to be, not the answer to any of their problems. And in fact making a lot of them worse, making the inflation worse, making the economy worse, making then they are now just drifting into open nihilism. And that, that is what I'm saying and I'm not to blame that on the, the methods they're using to try and not be. That is crazy. It's not, that's not the issue. It's not the discord. It's not the.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah, right. No, I know. I appreciate that.

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[Gavin Newsom]

But it does beg sort of the larger consciousness that came out of the Trump campaign as it relates to. You're right, he obviously dominated, particularly with young men, but did outperformed in ways that I think surprised a lot of folks and invested a lot of time and energy into spaces where a lot of young men were and where a lot of young men are. We talk about podcasts, we talk about this sort of manosphere, broadly defined, which is something that needs to be unpacked. But he did invest that time and energy to meet people, quote, unquote, where they are. And we didn't see that commensurate investment from the Democratic Party. Certainly didn't see it from Biden or Harris.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

We're not really seeing it now. I appreciate what you're doing here and I like this podcast is a good step. But, you know, I saw a piece from Ezra Klein the other day where he. He talked about how it seems like. And again, I'm gonna be candid here. It seems like the DNC as a whole is trying to run a very similar playbook that didn't work and is wondering why they're not getting different results. It is shocking to me that with as bad as Trump is doing, and it really is, again, if I want to be your Gen Z whisperer for a second again, I'm millennial. I'm 34. They're gonna call me old, my hairline's bad, call me old, bald, trust me, old man. They are turning on Donald Trump in a way that will come apparent pretty soon, but they're not turning towards the Democratic Party.

[Gavin Newsom]

Difference. Yeah.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah. They're equally as upset with them, which is what I think the problem is. And it's kind of crazy that it's not being capitalized on more. And I will give you credit, I think what you have been doing is kind of breaking through the noise. It's showing a little bit of, I don't know, a spine of like a willingness to stand up to what he's doing. But, you know, if I can be honest. All right, here's what I'll say. And you haven't announced anything. And this is not. But there's a theoretical world where you're gonna run for president. I'm just gonna say it. You don't say anything. I'm okay.

[Gavin Newsom]

Virtual world.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah, yeah, virtual world. Maybe the betting markets have you leading. Okay, There's a theoretical world. And if I can get somebody who's not militarizing the National Guard and someone who's not shutting down TV shows that disagree with them and someone who's not threatening free and fair elections. That's a huge win already. It's a low bar to clear. It's an easy clear.

[Gavin Newsom]

Pretty low bar. But I get it.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

But realistically from the audience that I'm talking about, cuz again, I think I got lucky. I got the last chaparral. I'm feeling fine. They can't go back to the status quo, Gavin. They just can't. They will continue to grow more upset and populist and nihilistic unless things seriously change. Like they have to change on a more fundamental level.

[Gavin Newsom]

Look, so let's start to unpack this because, I mean, I love the clarity as you painted this picture. I mean, it's, you know, it's pretty black and white terms as you painted, I mean, just like this notion of nihilism.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah.

[Gavin Newsom]

Of just like not giving a shit about anything and blowing the whole goddamn thing up.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

And the most extreme example would be someone like Tyler Robinson. If you look at, you know, his. And again, I'm not a psychoanalyst, not an expert, but there seems to be a nihilism to these kind of actions and from young people in general that is rising where it just feels like if I can't get a house, if a young man, I can't get a partner, I can't find a way to be a. To feel roots in the society that I'm in, then I'm gonna drift out of it. I'm going to disengage. And they would find any tool to do this. In fact, I would say that one of the healthiest things they can do is gaming and discord. Cause that's with other people. They are finding friends. The discord chats that I'm in are not making me radicalize. I'm connecting with people all over the world. It's great. In fact, here's an example. I don't know if you've heard about what happened in Nepal recently. Can I.

[Gavin Newsom]

Of course. Nepal. Remarkable. With Instagram.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah. Yeah. So Nepal, their Gen Z youth, youth was deeply upset about rising youth unemployment, rising poverty. And they were posting about on social media and they were getting angry. Then the government tried to ban social media. And that's when they took the streets. That's when they're going. That's when they're. They're rioting. That's when they're going crazy. Because these are the last outlets people Have. So I just want to give that perspective here, is that if Congress is going to haul discord and Twitch and Reddit up there and think that restricting them or banning them is going to solve this problem, it is not to be so clear. It is not. It's gonna make it more virulent.

[Gavin Newsom]

No, look, I think what you're saying is profoundly important, and I'm not trying to go back, but I want to paint this picture because I want to.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Land Alan here from your pvt.

[Gavin Newsom]

Exactly where you're going. Because I think what you're saying needs to be said because there were these trend lines that predate all of this for decades and decades. And we have the first generation, this Gen Z that literally is poised to do much worse than their parents generation. This is the first generation in our lifetime, my lifetime, certainly, but literally in American history where that would be the case. And so this is code red. And it's led to suicides, it led to dropouts, it's led to all kinds of related issues. And it's. These guys are screaming disproportionately. Men in some respects. And no one's paying any damn attention. And now we're looking at things. And I love what you're saying. We're looking at the platforms and not the underlying damn issues.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah, a couple stats. Oh, sorry, sorry.

[Gavin Newsom]

No, but, yeah, but I want to get. And I want you to hold those stats because I think they're incredibly important, but I want to go back just so again, just because so many people want to understand. And these are not root causes, but they're component parts of this larger conversation. We talk about the manosphere. What does that mean to you? I mean, what is it?

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

You know, this is the investment that I think Trump and the Republicans made into spaces that are not even inherently political. They are spaces where people are talking about wrestling or UFC or video games or just finding connection, often with other men and just trying to understand similar experiences in the world. And they invested in those spaces. And then, hey, you like this Also on the side, you know, let's stop the woke mind virus. Or you know what? It would be something like that. It would be, you know, kamala Harris is not gonna help you out. Like, that's the idea. And they would mix that in with things people already like, and it became very easy to slide in. And what's crazy, I don't think it's that hard for the Democrats to join these spaces. Most people like watching sports. Most people like. It's not rocket science. And I Think again. I can't overstate how it feels like a ball somewhere is being dropped when you can't speak even semi authentically to people that are not from a different world. They're not that crazy. So that's a problem that I would to point out, and I think they did a good job with it. But I will also say this. Listen, we're gonna fight in this country about social issues left and right forever, it seems. And I really noticed that in the wake of this Charlie Kirk thing, where it's just an endless amount of noise from every direction, you are inundated with it on social media. Every take goes viral in every direction and nobody's making any progress and no one's making any forward motion. But what I'll say is the main thing that I am seeing and feeling was a deep resentment around costs and inflation and housing. And I truly think whichever side can solve those problems will dictate, not dictate, but will take the lead on social issues. People will go whatever direction is gonna offer them solutions on that. And because Trump has not done that like he promised, there's already a reverse boomerang starting. Okay, it's gonna go the other way. Regardless of whether or not anyone reaches out to podcasts, there will be a reverse boomerang. But if it goes this way and that isn't solved again, it'll be an even stronger. That is how it's going to play out. I'm certain of it. So, yeah, so you're talking.

[Gavin Newsom]

I mean, it's, you know, unpacking this a little bit. It's not just about politics. I mean, you talk about nihilism more broadly defined. I mean, this is just, you know, despair.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

It's economics.

[Gavin Newsom]

It's economics.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

And so, you know, one thing as a goal of mine on this podcast is to try and get you not. Because I understand you have to win. Not a win. Okay. I'm just like, you have to gain support. You're a politician. You have to represent more than just some individual base. And I think what you're doing, talking to people politically different than you is a big step. And that's awesome. And I think that's cool. To gain voters.

[Gavin Newsom]

And gain more and understanding. Yeah, no B.S. gain understanding. I mean, Charlie Kirk on this show is my. When we launched this podcast is the first. And I mean, and I got. People were pissed.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

And you know what's funny is I respect it more for that. Again, I tried to do some research and watch some of these. Some of the comments are brutal. On you and you did it anyway, and I respect you to keep doing it.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah, but.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

So I'm not here to, like, push you in a direction that is going to make it harder to get a broader base. I think politicians should try to represent people that aren't directly aligned with them. What I'm trying to get you to understand is, like, I think I want to push you a little bit more economically on, you know, in this country from like the 40s to the 80s, we had an extremely low Gini coefficient of inequality. It was low and flat for years. A strong rising middle class and people broadly feeling were proud of their country. They were. And it wasn't like Marxism. It wasn't, you know, so it was a capitalist country and businesses could thrive, but people felt like they had a real chance. And since we've allowed this increased consolidation, since we've continually used government funds to prop up the stocks and housing of elderly boomers that own it all, it has become more. It's a ladder that is fewer and fewer rungs to get on.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yep.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

And so if there isn't substantive change on that front, nothing else matters is what I'm saying. I really believe that nothing else matters. It won't break through. And I understand that. You know, these boomers vote too. Again, people give you a lot of crap for California housing. It's a tough problem. The more I look into it. I used to be someone who just threw around blame really easily, and now I read more. It gets me depressed because it's like it's an impossible, complex problem. People that have the housing, they put their life savings into it. That's their retirement. If you try to bring housing prices down. Well, now this person's mad. I get it. But if it doesn't change change, we're screwed. There's no getting around this. This is an angry, nihilistic generation that wants change back.

[Gavin Newsom]

No. And what was the quote, unquote, California housing crisis going back decades and decades. Supply, demand imbalance, NIMBYism, issues around localism. Now it's one. Now it's across the board, all across the United States, people are feeling those pressures. And that's why I think, as you brought up Ezra Klein a moment ago, we had him on the podcast too, the whole abundance agenda and focusing on away from process paralysis and lawfare and all of the n to a yimby, yes, in my backyard, not no, in my backyard mindset, in order to break through that and to start to address that supply, demand imbalance, to lower costs, to ultimately provide more points of opportunity. So I think you're 100% right and I think it's only reinforced the broader analysis by the fact there's a lot of Trump supporters that otherwise would be Bernie supporters or. Well, absolutely as well, or vice versa. So this sort of notion of populism, and not in the pejorative sense, but truly representative sense, recognizing what's missing and giving voice to that. Now the question is the prescriptions that, that Trump's offering, as you suggest, I couldn't agree with you more, are sort of proven to do precisely the opposite. I mean, the largest tax increase on middle class and working folks, I. E. Tariffs, inflation that's now starting to go back up, and Fed policy that is actually not accelerating in terms of decline in interest rates, but because of those uncertaint, particularly as it relates to pressure, inflation now is not necessarily moving as quickly to lower borrowing costs as we had otherwise hoped. So I totally agree with that. So let's talk just about that. I mean, Scott Galloway is.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

I took his class when I was at Nvidia. I was in Scott's class and he's one of the people. The way he spoke, not even the content of what he said, the way he presented, I was like, that is something I can learn from. And I took to that to when I was starting to stream. Yeah.

[Gavin Newsom]

And Scott, you know, Scott, for those that don't know, we also got in the pod as well. He's, I mean, he really speaks to the Gen Z generation. He speaks in generational terms as theft. You look at this big beautiful bill and all this massive tax cuts that are burdening the generation that is increasingly already feeling like no one gives a damn about them.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah.

[Gavin Newsom]

So it just reinforces, I think the call to arms that you're suggesting here in terms of consciousness, that is as it relates to the moment.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah. And think I again, I think these trends were in a bad direction before Trump, but he has done absolutely nothing to help. I mean, the big beautiful bill is a disaster. It is a massive multi trillion dollar credit card swipe that we younger people are gonna have to pay. And I don't know, I'm not suggesting getting rid of Social Security or anything, but it is frustrating as a young working person that the biggest line item on the government budget is checks to older people, many of whom have houses and have paycheck 204. You know, it is just, I think we are not seeing enough go to people that are trying to get started in the country and get on the ladder.

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[Gavin Newsom]

Where do you see the business actually heading?

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[Gavin Newsom]

Of course.

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[Gavin Newsom]

And do you see it from. I mean, so there's tax policy that's obviously profound and outsized. You know, it's interesting, we had Steve Bannon on as well. And you know, he was arguing for progressive tax policy. I said at certain point, I said, steve, you sound like you're governor of California arguing for California's progressive Bannon tax policy.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah. He argues for Lina Khan as well. It's a shocker to me. I'm a huge Lina Khan fan and I want to, I wanted to push that with you as well. Listen, those years, I'm talking about those low inequality years in America again, probably golden years of America. Maybe social policy we can improve. But that's the golden years of economically, the key things of that era. We had strong unions. We had a progressive tax policy that had high tax rates on the richest people. We had an antitrust enforcement that stopped constant consolidation. Again, this Jimmy Kimmel thing. People aren't talking enough about how it's so clearly nexstar trying to merge with Tegna to get an inordinate amount of affiliates in this country. And they're just saying whatever Trump wants to hear so that they can get this bill signed.

[Gavin Newsom]

Amen.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

It all comes back to economics is what I'm trying to really get across. And it's a core part of my content is we can fight forever on social issues and we always will. And in the social media area, I just realized how useless it is because algorithms will give you the opinion you want and the one you hate and they'll make that one look stupid and they'll give you the comments that support you and it's just no point in arguing. I'm tired of it. Most people are tired of it. And so I just think we have to just. We gotta really reign it like focusing on the economics. Cuz that's where we're gonna make a difference. People can feel that change. They can feel rents are going down in la. I've noticed it. I saw Statley. People do feel it. It takes a while. They probably don't give everybody credit. They're not giving. But it happens. If you guys could get in California the high speed rail built. I know it's like an impossible legal challenge and everyone blocks it every step. I'm not.

[Gavin Newsom]

We're on the other side of the legal. We're on the environmental. We're actually starting to lay track. We're actually decades and decades. I can't make up for the past but I have to be accountable to the present. And we're finally laying tracks. We're finally moving forward on the dam project. 2,270 parcels had to be procured through eminent domain and other means. Decade of just, just moving like in quicksand. And then all the environmental, all that now is behind us finally moving to lay the damn track.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

And I want to say when someone gets on that train and rides it and it makes their life 5, 10% more convenient, they notice, they feel it, that stuff does matter. And I just.

[Gavin Newsom]

It's a. You talk about housing rents. Rents too damn high.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Sure.

[Gavin Newsom]

Housing, transportation, what else? I mean how about wages? I mean is that.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Sure. So Gen Z men.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Unemployment for Gen Z men who are college graduates is the same as those that haven't graduated college. They're getting this degree and getting no material benefit in terms of the stats, you know.

[Gavin Newsom]

No, that's just, and that's just start. We're just starting to see that take shift shape. There was always that college premium.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah.

[Gavin Newsom]

And now for the first time with these remarkable. It's. This was not quote unquote as people said, oh, you've got this sort of useless philosophy degree and you can't get a real job with it. No, these are folks with actual.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

No, there's computer science. Computer science and they can't, they can't get a job.

[Gavin Newsom]

And, and, and by the way, philosophy is not useless. In fact in many ways philosophy is the preferred course nowadays which is stream it. Yeah.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

No, so, so yeah they are, they are. Sorry.

[Gavin Newsom]

No, so I mean you're entering a job market's more difficult than ever. People. Oh now people don't even want to go to college. Right. I mean you get this Peter Thiel frame.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

So look, not only did they not getting the premium from going to college, college has never been more expensive for these young men. Especially for these Gen Z people who had to go to college during COVID I can't tell you what a sucker punch it has to be to pay way more than your parents ever paid to go to Zoom College. Where.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

And. And this is not. You know, we talk about discord and Reddit and gaming changing the world. I gotta talk to you. Well as well about AI and ChatGPT. Listen, Governor, I don't know if someone else that your staff is telling you this. Every high school in California and there's great ones. Every college in California, people are cheating with ChatGPT. Professors are writing rubrics ChatGPT and then grading with ChatGPT. People are paying absurd amounts of money to get to do not. It's all a farce. And I'm not saying it's everybody. People are very smart and learning. But this is happening and we have again, this is a bigger problem with Trump. But our secretary of education is like from the wwe. It's.

[Gavin Newsom]

It's literally.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

It's ridiculous. Literally.

[Gavin Newsom]

I think you're making that up. Actually was the co founder.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

It's Linda.

[Gavin Newsom]

She and her husband of. Yes.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

And I see a speech with her and she's talking about how these kids need to learn about A1. She doesn't even know what. She can't even pronounce it A one. And this is changing education rapidly. So again, I hate to put it all on you. You're one person. But I'm just. This is my ID screaming out to the void that I'm hearing is like things are changing rapidly and I don't feel like the DNC particularly is like throwing out the old playbook.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah, that's.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

That's just won't work.

[Gavin Newsom]

And are you. And when you, when you folks that you're interacting with, are they. Is this a gender issue as well from the perspective.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

That's an interesting question. Definitely. It feels like young women are adapting more to the society we have now. They are just finding a way to get to college, get on the corporate ladder. And you know, I think Scott Galway talks about this. There's an idea generally that men are fine dating socioeconomically equal or down, and women generally want to date equal or up. So it reduces the amount of partners available for men who can't get on the economic ladder, which makes them more disengaged. And more, you know, it's a snowball effect. Again, it's not women's fault, but this is what's happening. And it creates this simmering misogyny in online spaces and it creates this, this. But it comes back to economics. All I can say over and over again is it comes back to economics. And again, if I could boil it down to one word, it's like radicalism is when no house. If you can't get a house, if you don't see a path to get a house. And I hear this all the time. They're. They're. Some of them are working. They're working decent jobs, they're working hard. It's not even feasible in a lot of these cities to ever get a house. You can't save up enough without taking on an absurd amount of debt, ever. It's just not possible. And if you picked one thing to focus in on, that would be it. Because that's the biggest thing to put you as part of society or outside of society. Once you feel like you can get on that ladder, you're okay. You can calm down, you can find a party, you can vote. But if you can't see that, what's the point? Why am I doing it? Why am I working this job for a boss I hate? For wages that are only. Okay. I'm never gonna get another step up, up. So, yeah, yeah, I feel like I've said that enough.

[Gavin Newsom]

No, no, look, again, I appreciate it. And again, bouncing back and forth because it's. I think it's important you talk about. You brought up the frame, the word misogyny.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah.

[Gavin Newsom]

And finding back to this sort of manosphere, it comes in many forms and manifestations. So I think there's sort of a laziness quote, unquote, the manosphere, what it means or doesn't mean. But there are misogynistic aspects of the manosphere, and there are people that have been very successful in that space. The sort of Andrew Tate's the world in some respects. I mean, the fair, unfair, Adrian Ross and, you know, the Joel Peterson type.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Sure, yeah.

[Gavin Newsom]

I mean, what do you make of that? In the context of the vernacular of the world that you've been navigating and generationally what your sort of understanding of all that.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah. I'll tell you the worst part about Consecration Gavin Newsom is that. That's funny. My. My dad's a lifelong Republican. He not. Not a Trumper, thank God.

[Gavin Newsom]

But.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

But he. So I don't think he's the world's biggest Gavin Newson fan. Maybe. But I did a very small interview with you a while ago. Live Stream.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

And I called you Gavin. Yeah, he called me afterward. He said, you call him Governor.

[Gavin Newsom]

Okay, I appreciate him. But I also appreciate you. Gavin works. I'm called New scum. Buddy from the Treasury.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

I think you can take.

[Gavin Newsom]

I could handle Gavin better than new scum, which the six year olds used to call me. Hell of a thing when an 86 year old's calling me that. 89, Mr. Trump. You're 89.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

The misogyny. Okay, here's the thing about Consecration is you have a direct financial incentive at all times to feed into people's resentment and to feed into their anger and defeat into it is just the way the algorithms work. I thought about this deeply in the wake of Charlie Kirk. I was thinking about what I wanted to say and I was looking around the Internet and I realized it doesn't matter what I say, it'll just be fed to the person that agrees with me. It doesn't. If I say something that pisses somebody off, they'll never see it again. It'll go into the void. We are going through an algorithm that just decides what you want to see. So in that case, there is a strong financial incentive to tell people who can't find a house or a partner that it's immigrant's fault or it's women's fault or it's, you know, whoever it's. Or it's the woke mind virus or what. They'll tell you it's someone's fault. And that's very comforting. Yeah, it's very, very comforting if you're in that spot, to have an enemy, to have someone you can rally around and get angry at. And again, on the space I'm in in Twitch, the most right wing aspects of Twitch are mostly talking about how, man, these woke people are ruining gaming. You know, because it's. People want to play games. They'll be like, oh, there's these female characters leading the game. And it's like, again, this is a tiny problem, but it unites these people. Something to rally around. And so, yeah, yeah, it's a symptom. Is what I'll say though, is the misogyny. I mean, it's probably amplified by this, but it's because they are resentful and someone is going to fill that void and tell them it's this person's problem.

[Gavin Newsom]

So is that. I mean, is that why Tell me. I mean, a lot of these spaces, I mean, then there's Sort of that echo chamber. And then you get that confirmation bias, the algorithms reinforcing that your worldview is colored in, it's amplified, it becomes, becomes bigger and you become more convinced or ideological.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah.

[Gavin Newsom]

In that space at the same time. And in some places that leads you to, you know, comfortable place. Other places can leave you a radicalized place. Yeah. Which could manifest offline in pretty, you know, pretty significant ways. Right.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah. What I'll say is people have gotten radicalized in human history without these platforms.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

And it's because, you know, it's usually when inequality has reached a breaking point, you go to the 20s and 30s or whatever. In Germany, I don't think they were, I don't think Germans were a different people. They were just, they had hyperinflation, they had bad economic problems and it led to radicalization. This happens in human history all over. People feel like they can't get on the ladder. They start going to edges. I do think that the Internet has made it faster, it's made it quicker, it's made it more virulent, it lets people get larger groups quick. I, I, there's a danger to that, but it's not the, it's not the core of the problem. It's not banning it will not change things. What I'm trying to say.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah. You know, and the example of Nepal is a cautionary. Yeah, that's a hell of a cautionary tale. People don't, not familiar with it. I mean, just look that.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah. Look it up.

[Gavin Newsom]

And to see what happened. Just in almost, just. They lit a match.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

No, they did.

[Gavin Newsom]

And how almost overnight that radically has changed the course of history.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

It's actually incredible because, you know, I'm in Nepalese. Their Gen Z movement is all in a giant 800,000 person Discord server. And they're voting to decide the next prime minister, which they. Interim prime minister. They're gonna have an actual vote. But it is a wild small example of how the Internet is going to fuse with these actual resentments to create change whether people like it or not, unless they're addressed.

[Gavin Newsom]

What are you just in terms of addressing more broadly what's going on in the Internet? What's your sort of broader sense of social media's responsibility in that space? To police itself. To police. To police. Well, speech. To deal with the extremes. To, to have at least some cues that express some concern.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah.

[Gavin Newsom]

If things, I mean. Or is it just complete hands off.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

It's a very tough question. I don't know if I have the answer to it. Because the answer everyone will give you is obviously there's some speech that is too far, but nobody knows people have such different views. And so one person's this is a totally normal, fair thing to say is the other person that's horrible disinformation that needs to be banned. And we've seen the shoe on both feet now. We've seen people that are really mad about the way Twitter handled itself during COVID are now hyper defending the President's right to take down a late night host for making a mild jab in his direction. I mean, it's people are very hypocritical on this front because free speech sounds great when it's the speech you like. So I don't have the I'm not the guy to give you the right answer on that. I would just say, you know, human history has shown time and time again the censorship is, is a tool for people that cannot win in the public sphere. They can't find a way to get their point across.

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah. So is violence.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah. And violence. Yeah. 100%. Yeah.

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[Gavin Newsom]

Where do you see the business actually heading?

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[Gavin Newsom]

What about you? Let's go back to just AI generally. I mean how is that And I'm just curious in terms of just what's happening in the gaming space as well, more broadly even in the esports space. What's happening as well, gambling and how. It just seems to me that's sort of an iterative part of all of this as well. We talk about, about, you know, kick and others. It sort of seems like they're moving more and more in that direction. Crypto gaming, I mean or Gambling. What? I mean just maybe illuminate a little bit.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah, I would love to talk to you about, you know, people are talking about how video games are the problems with young men. I'll tell you the biggest two things that are destroying young men's ability to get financially on their feet is crypto and gambling. Sports gambling particular. These two things are a viral cancer that are just ripping these people's ability to get a financial leg up apart. Young men are attacked with ads nonstop on offering because again if you are financially stuck, if you don't see a path to, with your normal wages getting a house, then you have to take that 100x bet. You have to take that odd. You have to take that crazy bet. And whether that's punting all your money on a, a weird meme coin and praying or it's putting it on seven leg parlay on DraftKings. That is why they're doing this and that is just stealing their money every day and it's making them more frustrated and depressed. Again I find those two things, I speak about them all the time. Those two things and buy now, pay later. These buy now, pay later companies are just offering people the ability to buy things they cannot afford and putting them on stuck in debt cycles early on small purchases people are buying out pay later in groceries and all these three things. Yeah, crypto gambling. I'm glad you brought this up. These things are what I'm seeing among Gen Z the most are just attacking them financially and at the time when they really don't need it more than any boomers can take this Gen Z cannot take loss of this month's paycheck on a, a crypto. They just can't do it. And so yeah, I am strongly. I mean it's so crazy because we barely regulated crypto under Biden. We were making some progress and now it's out the, it's out the window, Kevin. I mean it's. The president made 5 billion off a meme coin. It's, it's ridiculous. I find it so deeply frustrating when I see these crypto grifters or David Sachs as a crypto czar with all these business interests. It's so frustrating to see them just milk regular people dry on crypto and then every sports thing you watch is 500 gambling ads. I don't know. Yeah, sorry I went on a rant there. Those two things actually I'm very passionate about because I don't see the upside. I really don't. I don't see who's Benefiting outside of, you know, putting a casino in everybody's pocket is just a stupid idea.

[Gavin Newsom]

No, look, I mean, I'm dealing with it with my son right now. That 13 year old is like, really, you know, why are you working? You know, you're such a loser. You know, like teach you. You only make, you know, 170 grand a year as governor. So pathetic. You know, I'm making, I made, you know, 50 bucks. Look at this. 15 minutes, you know, and look at what now I'm down to three bucks. Wait, no, I make 75. Like literally. It's like an addict waking up at late at night giving the phone. Give me the phone. Just one second to see if he's up.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Check stocks, $3 or Robin, 100%.

[Gavin Newsom]

Damn.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

That is what's happening. And that idea of like, why the hell would I work? Why would I add up my money over 30 years.

[Gavin Newsom]

No, he thinks I'm the biggest idiot in the world.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Yeah, yeah, that's what I've seen all the time. You know, I talk finances to my audience a lot. It's a big part of my content is business and finances. And man, they just, they're being fed this idea that like the saving money is stupid. It's stupid. It'll never work. Inflation's gonna eat that away. You have to take these high risk bets, but they don't frame them as high risk. They frame them as guarantees. They frame them as sure.

[Gavin Newsom]

I made the mistake of. Of buying, getting YouTube videos of Warren Buffett. Bored. He was bored. Getting him then coloring books that are version of Warren Buffett's lessons. He's like, boring.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Who's this old guy?

[Gavin Newsom]

Yeah, who is this guy? What is. What the hell is he know? There's this dude that's online, man that just told me, like literally, I don't even remember who his financial advisor is, but he's some guy, like literally some YouTube guy. Yeah, that is a. That is. Luckily we only have a thousand bucks that he's been able to save, so we'll survive his lesson. But hopefully I'll have an early lesson. Look, I appreciate the lesson though you're trying to preach here. At least express is a deeper understanding of these more systemic issues and that we can get caught up in finding scapegoats. We can get caught up in finding conspiracy theories or just the easy out. And as you suggest, I mean, if the oversight, if the lessons on what, what is alleged to have occurred with this tragedy with Charlie Kirk is to then haul up people on discord and the CEOs of Twitch and all of these things, we're missing a deeper, deeper point.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

I think it's a massive wrong direction that is just going to lead to more of what we're already seeing. More spiraling, more anger, more feel like the politicians don't hear the voice, don't understand. If they want to haul up these CEOs and ask them about how the platforms work, get a better understanding, that's sure. But if they're there to point the finger, that discord caused this, or Twitch caused this, I promise you it's absurd. I promise you it will change nothing. They'll go deeper into the Internet. They'll just burrow deeper somewhere else. These are relatively safe, moderated platforms. These are not the problem. This is, is it's just people using the Internet to try and find connection where they can't find it in real life because there's. There's not opportunities.

[Gavin Newsom]

Lemonade Stand. What's the. What's the goal with the podcast? Is it. Is it to illuminate an entrepreneurial mindset? The notion of a lemonade stand. Many of our first business experiences was selling lemonade, differentiating our brand, decommoditizing a commodity, selling it for an extra 5 cents, 25 cents, or, you know, fresh lemonade versus the sugar version. What's. What's the idea behind it?

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Lemonade Stands, our podcast. It's myself, my friend Aiden, and my friend Doug, all of my content creators.

[Gavin Newsom]

Doug, Doug, Doug, Doug. You're doing your homework, buddy.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

And the idea was we are three guys who are only qualified to run a lemonade stand. We're not. We're not bringing deep expertise here. We have business backgrounds. We have, you know, backgrounds of our own. We've started these media, these small media companies, but really, we are just gonna do our best to understand and read about what's going on and present it in a way with the lingo and the slang and of what this audience wants to hear it in. That's the idea. We're not gonna be right about everything, but we're not gonna be trying to sway you. We're not gonna be trying. We have no ulterior motive. We're just interested in talking about it with each other.

[Gavin Newsom]

I love it. Well, it was fun to talk about everything we just talked about with each other. I appreciate you bringing your authentic voice and perspective on this, and I also appreciate your st. Pay attention to the thing that is the thing that explains all of the other things and that are these sort of tectonic plates of wealth and income inequality that are growing and growing in a divide that is not just a political divide, that is a societal divide. Unless we address forget which party you're associated with, but the whole fabric of our society is going to fray apart. Aidra, thank you. Thanks man for being with us.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Thank you, thank you.

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[Commercial Announcer (LG X Boom)]

Stop settling for weak sound. It's time to level up your game and bring the boom. Hit the town with the ultra durable LG X Boom portable speaker and enjoy vibrant, vibrant sound wherever you go. Elevate your listening experience to new heights because let's be real, your music deserves it. The future of sound is now with LG XBoom and for a limited time, save [e-mail] with code fall25 bring the boom XBoom.

[Commercial Announcer (Variety Podcast)]

There's a lot going on in Hollywood. How are you supposed to stay on top of it all? Variety has the solution. Take 20 minutes out of your day and listen to the new daily Variety podcast for breaking entertainment news and expert perspectives.

[Gavin Newsom]

Where do you see the business actually heading?

[Commercial Announcer (Variety Podcast)]

Featuring the iconic journalists of Variety and hosted by co Editor in Chief Cynthia.

[Commercial Announcer (Washablesofas.com)]

Littleton, the only constant in Hollywood is change.

[Commercial Announcer (Variety Podcast)]

Open your free iHeartradio app, search daily Variety and listen now.

[Justin Richmond (Broken Records Lexus)]

This is Justin Richmond, host of Broken Records Record. Lexus is a company that believes in the importance of setting a standard, which I can appreciate as someone who holds themselves to lofty, if not ridiculous standards, especially with the car I drive. The standard Lexus has set for themselves is to experience Amazing. Lexus measures success by the feeling and emotions evoked in a driver, like exhilaration and joy. Amazing can only be achieved by knowing people on a deeper level. The standard of amazing results in a feeling in drivers that their car was built in anticipation of them. Machines that make you feel more human. Because a car that doesn't make you feel something is a car that stops short of amazing experience. Amazing at your lexus dealer.

[Commercial Announcer (Homes.com)]

At homes.com we do whatever it takes to get you the in depth info on local schools you won't find anywhere else. Things like student teacher ratio, test scores and school programs. And sometimes, sometimes that requires attending school recitals. So many recitals.

[Gavin Newsom]

That's my son.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Isn't he terrific?

[Commercial Announcer (Homes.com)]

Yeah, a real prodigy. Homestock.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

Com.

[Commercial Announcer (Homes.com)]

We've done your homework.

[Brendan Ewing (atriot)]

This is an iHeart podcast.