The New Yorker:

New forms of media that invite intense parasociality are capturing the attention of young men. What does it portend for our politics?

With Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz

The first episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” released in 2009, consisted mostly of its host smoking weed, cracking jokes, and futzing with technical equipment. But Rogan quickly proved adept at the kind of casual, nonconfrontational interviews that have made the show such an enormous success in 2025: it regularly tops podcast charts and features hours-long conversations with the most powerful figures in politics. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz are joined by fellow staff writer Andrew Marantz to discuss where Rogan’s podcast sits within a growing new-media ecosystem that hinges on parasociality. Marantz recently profiled the Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who spends hours online every day addressing a viewership of tens or hundreds of thousands, to whom he issues leftist takes on the news in real time—alongside a healthy dose of gym content. Figures like Rogan and Piker, both of whom have won the loyalty of young men, stand to shape not only the views of their audiences but the art of politics itself. “Being able to hang in a kind of unscripted way. . . I think it just becomes more and more essential,” says Marantz. “There turns out to be a huge voting bloc of people who will, No. 1, vibe with you, and, No. 2, think about what you’re saying.”

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