Last week we talked about Hasan. Now we talk to him — about the Democrats, protein, and not giving in to nihilism. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Amina Al-Sadi with help from Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Political commentator Hasan Piker talks to Sean Rameswaram in an interview for Today, Explained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Hasan Piker and why is he influential on Twitch?
So Hasan Piker is really the only major prominent leftist on Twitch, at least the only one who talks about politics all day.
What's going on, everybody? I hope everyone's having a fantastic evening, afternoon, pre-noon, no matter where you are.
They want his co-sign. They want his endorsement because he's young and he reaches millions of young people streaming on YouTube, TikTok, and especially Twitch. But last week he was streaming us.
Yeah, I was listening on stream and you guys were like, hey, you should come on the show if you're listening. I was like, oops, caught. You're a listener. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I am. Yeah.
Thank you for listening. Hasan Piker, coming up on the show today.
Megan Rapinoe here. This week on A Touch More, we are launching our much-anticipated book club, and we're doing it with Abby Wambach and Glennon Doyle, who will introduce their upcoming book, We Can Do Hard Things, Answers to Life's 20 Questions. Plus, we've got some fun and important updates from The W and the NWSL, and of course, we've got a new Are You a Megan or Are You a Sue?
Check out the latest episode of A Touch More wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube.
Hello, I have something huge I wanted to tell you. My name is Sean Ramos-Verm. I host Today Explained along with Noelle King. You know us. We have seen, we have heard the comments about the ads. You don't love the ads or there's too many ads. Well, this one's for you guys. This ad is to tell you, you can now get this show without ads. I repeat, we now have an ad-free version of Today Explained.
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Chapter 2: How does Hasan Piker describe his political views?
You are doing a lot of stuff and spending an enormous part of your day making yourself available to people on live streams, on social media. What do you think, what's your sense of what people come to you for?
I think a lot of people see me as talk radio that's always on, but with a Zoomer slash millennial focus rather than anything else. It's not that unique. I'm not necessarily reinventing the wheel here. I think it's just like a guy that you can have in the background while you're doing your chores and you stay up to date. Maybe also sharing the feeling of catharsis
Or anger that you feel as well that is being channeled from – channeled by the guy that you're getting your news from.
And the guy they're getting their news from has some strong political opinions, beliefs, and he talks about them often but not exclusively. What would you say are your politics? How would you describe them?
I mean, I call myself a leftist, definitely an anti-imperialist. I think I am, I mean, I'm anti-war. I believe that we should not spend so much money on 800 military bases overseas and constantly bombing some of the poorest countries on the planet. And we should instead spend it on infrastructure, jobs programs, and expansion of the welfare state.
with the ultimate goal of creating a new way of organizing our economy and our society in general, an evolution from the existing form that is more egalitarian and has more benefits for as many people as possible. Because I think we're the wealthiest country on the planet. We are in the post-abundance universe. And I don't mean that in an Ezra Klein way.
I mean, we literally have a surplus of food supply, for example. 10 million people should not be dying due to famine-related diseases around the globe at this point. It's a matter of supply chains. It's a matter of not wanting to feed people.
But saying that right now, saying that in 2025 when the federal government, the Trump administration right now is cutting back aid to some of the poorest people on earth, that's like inherently a left-right question. Do you consider yourself as a leftist a Democrat?
No, I don't consider myself a Democrat. I think just like Bernie Sanders says, he finds himself coxing with the Democrats quite frequently because that's the only game in town. But I wouldn't necessarily say I'm a Democrat. I mean, it is a duopoly. They're the only game in town. They're the only counterbalance towards the growing rightward shift in this country.
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Chapter 3: What are Hasan's criticisms of the Democratic Party?
or whether it be completely caving in, capitulating to right-wing framing when the Democrats were in charge, when it came down to accelerating America's foreign policy, like the continuation of the Abraham Accords from the Trump administration, refusing to go back to the table with Iran, which was Obama's signature foreign policy accomplishment that Biden did not revert back to,
when he came into power, or most significantly, I think, the rhetoric around immigration and immigrant crime, a concept that is entirely made up. This isn't to say that immigrants are not, you know, immigrants are never doing any crimes. Of course, everyone does crime, but...
When you look at the data, immigrants are responsible for a far smaller share, both in per capita and also in totality, of crime than natural-born U.S. citizens are. So the notion that undocumented migrants are doing tens of thousands of murders a year in the way that Trump has suggested is ridiculous. It's just completely made up. And the fact that the Democrats did not actually...
actively combat this very dangerous, very right-wing, very scary narrative that was built around lying was very frustrating for someone like myself.
you make sense in that tent, which is, as you've heard a million times, a very big tent with Dick Cheney all the way to AOC, all the way to you. Do you think that tent has grown too big and that might be part of the problem the party's having right now?
No, I think that there's a difference between growing your tent and then... I guess like what kind of message you're putting out? Because the Democrats didn't really need to do too much to get Liz Cheney on board because they were basically regurgitating neocon policies in general, right? Both Biden and also Kamala Harris with her interest in continuing the Biden agenda.
So you don't really need to court Dick Cheney in that regard. He just came on board because it makes sense. You're following his dreams and his agenda to begin with, especially in terms of foreign policy. What I want is for the Democrats to actually expand its tent to... the American working class. I don't care about Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney can say he wants to vote for the democratic party.
The Democrats should probably say, yeah, we don't care. Fuck you. You're a terrorist or you're a war criminal. Your hands are bloody. Of course, they're not going to say that, but actually Dick Cheney is the one person that you could probably say that about. And like, most people would be like, yeah, that's fine. Like even you might not even be able to get away with that with like,
But you could get away with that with Dick Cheney. He is a monster. And also deeply, deeply disliked. There is no constituency for this man. Just like there's no constituency for Liz Cheney. Like, the... They just tried to make it happen. They tried to make fetch happen with Liz Cheney so hard when they're just like, yeah, no, see, you know, the country's over party. That's what we're doing.
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Chapter 4: How does Hasan view Bernie Sanders and Democratic leadership?
Soft how? Like, how do you mean? You think his policies aren't hard enough?
No, no, no, no, no, no. His policies, I mean, yeah, his policies are great. I think for the time, they are, you know, fairly normal demands that every American would agree to. It's just that, you know, the entire media apparatus, and I would say that the party apparatus considers it to be like a Maoist third worldist position or something when they're like, hey, can we get like...
social democracy, Nordic style. And they're like, you, you want to kill every landlord, I think. It's insane the way they treat the most basic stuff that every other competent OECD nation offers unconditionally to all of their citizens. But no, I mean, he needs to be more of a fighter. He needs to be more adversarial with the media.
He needs to be more adversarial with other establishment Democrats in a way that's not dissimilar to Donald Trump.
You have a lot of young people, 18 to 35, watching you, streaming you, engaging with you. What do you think their politics are?
I mean, it depends. It's a broad variety. But I would say that a lot of young people are devoid of hope. they recognize that they probably will never retire, that they will never be able to own a home, and that most of their salary, if they're lucky enough to get a job that they hate regardless, is going to go back to their rent.
And these are the issues that are, I think, creating incredible amounts of pressure on and uh and pain in in the minds of a lot of young people in this country they just don't feel hopeful and i understand it i mean how could you how could you feel hopeful when looking around at your your prospects and you're like shit looks dire and what do you say to them
I tell them to not feel, not cave to nihilism and to maintain revolutionary optimism and to remind themselves that there are things that are in their control. Self-improvement being one of those things. And that they should...
Remember that their cause is just and their demands are perfectly rational and that they should continue trying to marginally improve both their personal standing, but also organize in their communities and unionize in their workplaces so that they can see some immediate benefits to that through collective bargaining.
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Chapter 5: What political attitudes do young people have today according to Hasan?
Hasan will return to tell us more about self-improvement in a minute on Today Explained.
The regular season's in the rear view, and now it's time for the games that matter the most. This is Kenny Beecham, and playoff basketball is finally here. On Small Ball, we're diving deeper to every series, every crunch time finish, every coaching adjustment that can make or break a championship run. Who's building for a 16-win marathon? Which superstar will submit their legacy?
And which role player is about to become a household name? with so many fascinating first-round matchups. Will the West be the bloodbath we anticipate? Will the East be as predictable as we think? Can the Celtics defend their title? Can Steph Curry, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard push the young teams at the top?
Chapter 6: What advice does Hasan give to young people feeling hopeless?
I'll be bringing the expertise, the passion, the genuine opinion you need for the most exciting time of the NBA calendar. Small Ball is your essential companion for the NBA postseason. Join me, Kenny Beecham, for new episodes of Small Ball throughout the playoffs. Don't miss Small Ball with Kenny Beecham. New episodes drop in through the playoffs.
Available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
Today Explained is back with Hasan Piker. If you've never seen him, he is jacked. And we don't usually ask our guests about their appearance, but we kind of felt like we had to with Hasan because it's a big part of his persona. So here we go. You're like a bigger dude. I'm like, I'm like a skinny dude. Do you look at me and be like, why is this guy self-improving more?
Why hasn't he fully actualized himself?
No, not at all. I mean, first of all, self-improvement doesn't mean reaching a final stage or anything. It means improving yourself in both invisible and visible ways and bettering yourself from where you were the day prior. It has nothing to do with where you have gotten to. I mean, it's great. It's...
It's definitely fantastic for your confidence if you do improve yourself and then you start seeing those benefits. But, you know, it has nothing to do with like the way you look right now. There's nothing wrong with the way you look. You look great. Thank you so much.
You're very handsome. You look great too. You're very handsome as well. What's your protein intake? Is there a lot of protein going on?
Yes, I consume about 200 and at a minimum 220 grams of protein every day. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, it's all right. I eat a lot of chicken. I love chicken. So it's just fine. Just straight white chicken breasts every day.
How much do you feel like being kind of yoked is like part of your draw and your persona?
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