Today, Explained - Hasan Piker explains himself

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

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

Last week we at Today Explained brought you an episode titled the Joe Rogan of the left. The Joe Rogan of the left was in quotations it was mostly about a guy named Hassan Piker who some say is the Joe Rogan of the left but enough about Joe. We made an episode about Hassan because the Democrats are really courting this dude. So Hassan 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 cosign, 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.

Craft is where function meets style. It's where precision meets performance. It's where precision meets performance. It's where doing it yourself meets showing the world what you're capable of. The all-new Acura ADX is a compact SUV crafted to take you where you need to go without any compromises. With available Google built-in all-wheel drive

and a 15-speaker bang and all of some premium sound system, the all-new ADX is crafted to be as alive to the world's possibilities as you are. The all-new ADX, crafted to match your energy. Acura, precision crafted performance. Learn more at Acura.com. This episode is brought to you by FX's Dying for Sex on Disney+. Based on the podcast of the same name, Dying for Sex tells the story of Molly, who is diagnosed

with stage 4 breast cancer. Determined to feel everything she can before she can't feel anything, she decides to leave her unhappy marriage to explore her sexuality with some encouragement from her best friend Nicky. FX's Dying for Sex, streaming April 4th only on Disney+. Sign up now at DisneyPlus.com. Hello. I have something huge I wanted to tell you. My name is Sean Ramosverm.

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. If you would like it in your life, go to Vox.com slash members right now.

Vox.com slash members. You're going to support Vox. We're going to give you the show without ads. Enjoy. This is Today Explained. I'm Hasan Piker, also known as Hasanabi online. I go by many names, Hasan the Hawn on Twitter, Hasan D. Piker on TikTok,

but Hasanabi primarily on Twitch. I'm live on Twitch every day from 11 a.m. Pacific time, usually around 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific time, every single day, seven days a week, no matter where I am around the world. I try to hit that same timeframe. And yeah, I'm a political commentator. People call me many different things.

Radical, sometimes even a terrorism lover. Just you know, slander to I think designations that I would not see fit for myself such as like activist, organizer, or even journalists really. 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, like 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 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. Yeah. 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, like, we literally have a surplus of food supply, for example, like 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.

Like 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 caucusing 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. And I oftentimes find myself at odds with the Democrats because I feel that they also make way for this growing rightward shift in this country rather than oppose it, whether

it be under the Trump administration, as we've seen so far with Chuck Schumer refusing to fight back against the the the quote unquote clean continued resolution bill and and maybe even pushing for a government shutdown in an effort to use the only minority power minority party power position that they have, 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 US citizens are. So the the the notion that 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 big and that might be part of the problem the party's having right now? No, I think that there's a difference between like growing your tent and then I guess like what kind of 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 with her interest in continuing like the the Biden agenda So they didn't like you don't really need to court Dick Cheney in that regard He just came on board because it makes sense. You're following, you know, 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. 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. 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 most people would be like, yeah, that's fine. Like even you might not even be able to get away with that with like GW, but you could get away with that with Dick Cheney. Like he is a, he is a monster and also deeply, deeply disliked. Like 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. Like the, 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.

You know, me and Liz Cheney and in hand. And it's just like, doesn't make any sense. Cause no one is a Liz Cheney head. Yeah. Like even the MSNBC watchers are like, I guess this is good because someone else might like it. That's always the marketing for the Democrats. Someone else is gonna like this, I promise. I asked Tim Walz how many votes he thought Liz Cheney won, the Democrats or won Kamala Harris, and he dodged the question.

Yeah. I wish Tim was a little bit more of a fighter. That's the problem with a lot of these Democrats who I think are much better politicians in general than the ones that get highlighted. The fighters are so technocratic and so invested in this third-way neoliberalism agenda, like they're zealots. But then the actual good left populists or left left populist adjacent Democratic Party politicians are unfortunately too soft Like Bernie Bernie is way too soft. I love him. I have so much respect for him, but this was my criticism of him in

Both 2016 and 2020 is just like he was way too soft. He loved well in 2020 He also loves Joe Biden personally does another issue but soft. Soft how? Like, how do you mean? You think his policies aren't hard? No, no, no, no, no. Nothing's gonna compromise less? That more, his policies, I mean, yeah, his policies are great. I think for the time they are fairly normal demands

that every American would agree to. It's just that the entire media apparatus, and I would say that the party apparatus considers it to be like a Maoist Third World disposition or something when they're like, hey, can we get like social democracy, Nordic style? And they're like, you want to kill every landlord, I think. Like it's insane the way they treat the most basic stuff that every other competent OECD nation offers unconditionally to all of it, all their citizens.

But no, I mean, he needs to be more of a fighter as like, he needs to be more adversarial with the media. He needs to be more adversarial with, with, with the other establishment Democrats in a way that's not dissimilar to, 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, they will never be able to own a home and that most of their 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 and pain 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 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 organizing their communities and unionizing their workplaces so that they

can see some immediate benefits to that through collective bargaining. Hassan will return to tell us more about self-improvement in a minute on Today Explained. Support for the program today comes from Better Mint. You thought I was going to say something else. Better Mint asks, do you want your money to be motivated? Do you want your money to rise and grind? Do you think your money should get up and work? Better Mint has a lot of questions for you and for your money. Better Mint is an automated investing and savings app that they say makes your money hustle. That's a fun

visual. Their automated technology is built to help maximize returns meaning when you invest with Betterment your money can auto adjust as you get closer to your goal, rebalance if your portfolio gets too far out of line and your dividends are automatically reinvested. And according to the company that can increase the potential for compound returns. Visit betterment.com to get started. Investing involves risk. Performance is not guaranteed. Weight loss.

It needs to be fast and sustainable. Noom GLP-1 starts at just $149 and ships to your door in seven days. Take it from Clay Vossier, who lost 35 pounds on Noom. It's a psychological thing too. They're definitely teaching how to live a better, healthier lifestyle. Noom is teaching me the habits so I do not have to be on weight loss meds forever. Don't believe it? Take it from Lauren, who lost 22 pounds on Noom is teaching me the habits so I do not have to be on weight loss meds forever. Don't believe it? Take it from Lauren who lost 22 pounds on Noom. If I come off of the GLP-1, it's not gonna automatically make my weight yo-yo back. I'm gonna have good skills and know what to do to take care of myself. $149 GLP-1s? Now that's Noom Smart. Noom, the smart way to lose weight.

Get started with Noom GLP-1 at Noom.com. Real Noom, the smart way to lose weight. Get started with Noom GLP One at Noom.com. Real Noom users compensated to provide their story. Individual results may vary. Not all customers will medically qualify for prescription medications. Compounded medications are not reviewed by the FDA for safety, efficacy, or quality. VOX Creative.

This is advertiser content from Mercury. Hey, I'm Josh Muccio, host of The Pitch, a Vox Media podcast where startup founders pitch real ideas to real investors. I'm an entrepreneur myself. I know and love entrepreneurs, so I know a good pitch and a good product, especially if it'll make an entrepreneur's life easier. So let me tell you about a good product called Mercury, the banking service that can simplify

your business finances. I've been a Mercury customer since 2022, from the beginning, it was just so clearly built for startups. Like there's all these different features in there, but also they don't overcomplicate it. Here's your balance, here are your recent transactions, here you can pay someone or you can receive money.

These days, I use your recent transactions, here you can pay someone, or you can receive money. These days, I use Mercury for everything, like managing contractors, bill pay, expense tracking, creating credit cards for my employees. It's all in Mercury. Mercury. Banking that does more. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column NA, and Evolve Bank and Trust, members FDIC.

Today Explained is back with Hassan 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 a skinny dude. Do you look at me and be like,

why is this guy self-improving more? Why isn't he fully actualized himself? No, not at all. I mean, first of all, self-improvement doesn't mean like reaching a final stage or anything. It means like improving yourself in both invisible and visible ways and bettering yourself from where you were the day prior. It has nothing to do with like where you have gotten to. I mean, it's great. It's definitely fantastic for your confidence if you do improve yourself and then you

start seeing those benefits. But it has nothing to do with 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? Uh, 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. I think it, I think initially in left to circles, it's a negative. People look at me and immediately assume that I am a right-wing dude. I mean, at this point, it's like hard to say that because obviously most people know what my politics are. But if you don't know

who I am from afar, you think like, oh, that's like an alpha bro, potentially right wing kind of guy. What is your read on why this male optimization getting, you know, really beefed up has like a left rightright divide. And what is that divide about? I mean, I think, there's a bunch of different reasons for it. But I mean, I think a lot of these guys,

they don't think too hard about politics and then they find themselves trapped in this right-wing bubble. And then I think that they they just like associate that with they associate like self improvement and self help with that in general. It's not self help inherently is not like a like a leftist or a right wing thing. I don't think. But but it does seem like a lot of the content creators that are promoting that and presenting themselves as that are definitely the very least right wing.

But I think part of it is because that's just the domineering attitude in general. If you don't really think about things too much. You just, you kind of find yourself susceptible to social conditioning. And that does have a right wing slant. You know, the whole common sense narrative. It's like, oh, this is just common sense. I don't understand two genders, common sense. Like, you didn't put a lot of thought into it. That's just what you learned your entire life.

So of course, like, you know, you kind of slot yourself into the right wing in that regard. I guess the other reason is because self-improvement can turn into hyper individualism very quickly, which is also another incredibly American attitude in general, but like, that's what it is. That's, those are the two main factors, I think. in general, but like, that's what it is. Those are the two main factors, I think.

And you tried to couple self-improvement with helping others, which feels really critical in this moment, where a lot of people feel lost, but that leads to them becoming more inward, introverted, even angry. How do you feel like you're faring in that battle right now to not just improve yourself inside and out, but to be more considerate of those around you? I don't know. I mean, I'm just a stubborn dude. And I also am not, like, you know,

doing deliberate gym content specifically because, like, I want to penetrate, like, the alpha bro fitness space. doing deliberate gym content specifically because like I wanna penetrate like the alpha bro fitness space. It's just like something that I have always liked to do organically and you know, the content creators that I watch from this space are people that I end up collaborating with or have at least like some some mutual interests with like mutual shared interest with.

So that's what it is. It's not it's not me just being like, oh, if I work out and like present myself as this guy, then, you know, more Alphabros will listen to me because a lot of people, a lot of people will still, especially something I've seen online is that like people would rather hear your output and then make up their minds rather than like look at you or genuinely understand whether you care about certain things or not. Like they there's this phenomenon online where like Ben Shapiro says the masculine things, so he's more masculine than someone like myself.

I'm soy, I'm gay, I'm lame, because I think you shouldn't be mean to trans people. Ben on the other hand is mean to trans people, and that means you're alpha. It's like, what the fuck are you talking about? He's like five foot, you know? I think that the reason why the right is so successful at capturing the attention of young men in particular is because they are at the, they're taking a lot of the worst

aspects of the hopelessness that I was just talking about that everyone in the next generation is experiencing. And right wing commentary is, is like a warm blanket that you can surround yourself with that says you're right to be angry and you should be angry at vulnerable populations. You should be angry at people who have no power over you. And then if you dominate them a little bit, then that gives you a little bit of power, right? It's a... it reminds me of the... was it the LBJ quote about, you know, telling the lowest white man that he is higher than than any black man?

If you can convince the lowest white man he he's better than the best colored man. He won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on and he'll empty his pockets for you. Well, we see different versions of that even today, more evolved version of that with like DEI. People will be like, Bill Burr's wife is a DEI wife. And I'm like, what do you mean by that?

DEI wife? DEI wife, hmm. Oh. Is it because she's black woman? Is that why you're a DEI wife, and I'm like, what do you mean by that? DEI wife? DEI wife, hmm. Oh. Is it because she's black woman? Is that why you're saying DEI wife? Yeah. He seems to really love her. But I think what you're getting at here

is the vision that the right is selling to young men is very compelling, because it doesn't necessarily involve growth or progress. It just affirms what they already believe or, or maybe what their, their fathers and their fathers before them believed. But you seem to do something special, which is you create an alternate vision for young men, for young people. And it bummed me out a little bit when you said the vibe that you get from most young people

is that they're losing hope, because that's a shitty place to be when you're young. What keeps you hopeful? The one area of hope that I have right now is the momentum that I've seen from AOC and Bernie Sanders, who are going out and speaking in front of tens of thousands of people, people that may have not even voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries, right?

Like people from all different walks of life that are, you know, both Democrats and maybe even some not Democrats coming together and being like, yeah, everything is messed up. We need to do something about it. So there's definitely a lot of interest, I think, right now amongst the American working class to change things. Some people have associated that change with Donald Trump. I find that kind of change to be worse because I think Donald Trump is like further breaking the system that was broken previously prior to this. But the fact that some people recognize

that there must be a different mechanism for change and they find Bernie to be a vehicle for that is somewhat positive, but it entirely depends on where it goes from here. Does the Democratic Party turn around and go, okay, we got to do that enough with this, you know, third way neoliberalism, enough with the zealotry that we've demonstrated, constantly talking about true market centrism hasn't been tried. True neoliberalism hasn't been tried yet. It will happen one day, we will unleash the markets

and we will free the people, it will be amazing. True neoliberalism cannot fail, it can only be failed. This kind of attitude is ridiculous. And I think it's academic, it's smug, it's elitist, and it's wrong, it's demonstrably wrong. And I think people don't want to hear it anymore. So I hope the Democratic Party recognizes that. And then more and more people run for office and say,

no, I don't want corporate donations. I'm done with the billionaires and millionaires. I'm done with you. I'm done with the rest of the Democratic party. I'm going to be a Democrat, but I'm done with the Democratic party. That's what Republicans did over the course of many, many years as well. And they feared their base. They did not worry about the potential political repercussions of pushing for incredibly unfavorable

and unpopular policies and look where they're at now. They got rewarded consistently time and time again for at least doing something like that's the attitude that many Americans have. They're just like, yeah, everything is, everything is messed up. At least this guy wants to, you know, break the system. And I don't really like the system anyway. I don't like the institutions anyway. They've what have they done for me? So let's let's test this out. Hassan piker. I know you're a very busy man. I know you got like eight hours of streaming

right ahead of you. Thank you for sitting down with us before you got started. Yeah, it's no problem. I love yapping. So that's all I do. I could tell. I appreciate it. All right. Have a good one. I've met all the best to you. Take care. Hassan Piker, Hassan the Hun on Twitter, Hassan D. Piker on TikTok, Hassanabi on Twitch and YouTube. Not a difficult person to find online. Producer Milos made the show today, Miles Bryan is his government name,

Laura Bullard coasted, André Christensdottir, and Patrick Boyd mixed. Amina Alsadi edited with a little help from Miranda Kennedy. I'm Miranda Kennedy, and this is Today Explained. is today explained.