The John-Henry Westen Show - Media Boss Comes Out as Trad Catholic： Why Young Men Are Converting – It's the FUTURE!

00:00:00.000 What if I told you one of the biggest names in online media, the man who actually manages

00:00:06.300 the huge YouTube presence called The Sidemen. It's a YouTube collective with more than 23

00:00:14.220 billion views. That's billion with a B. This guy has come out as a traditional Catholic. 0.83

00:00:23.480 No, I kid you not. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

00:00:28.520 So, he's not come out as some spiritual but not religious, not as a casual cultural Catholic

00:00:36.460 like some celebrities and politicians we know very well. Nope. He is explicitly and openly

00:00:43.700 and even with conviction and a lot of smarts staked himself out as a traditional Catholic.

00:00:50.700 And from the way he talks, you know that he actually knows what he's talking about. His

00:00:57.400 name is Jordan Schwarzenberger. Now, you might not have heard of this name. He's 28 years

00:01:04.440 old. He's the manager and co-founder of Arcade Media. He's recently started speaking openly

00:01:12.040 about the Catholic faith and he's been laying it all out from original sin to the Second

00:01:19.480 Vatican Council. So, today we're going to look at who he is and what he said and why this moment

00:01:26.920 matters, not just for the church but for the whole online world that shapes our whole culture today.

00:01:34.220 So, first of all, for those of you who don't know, particularly in America, who are the Sidemen 1.00

00:01:39.900 and who is Jordan Schwarzenberger anyway? So, to understand the significance of this story,

00:01:46.040 we need to know who Jordan Schwarzenberger is and who the Sidemen are. So, if you don't know,

00:01:52.500 you haven't heard of them already, the Sidemen are a wildly popular British YouTube group.

00:01:58.760 Essentially, it's a superstar collective of internet personalities. They're known for their comedy skits

00:02:05.560 and challenges and gaming videos. If you've been on YouTube and you've seen advertisements for videos

00:02:11.820 by Mr. Beast, it's the same sort of thing. So, across their various channels, they have millions

00:02:18.560 and millions of subscribers and even more views globally. In the UK and beyond, the Sidemen are 1.00

00:02:26.140 basically, they're a household name for most young people. Their influence on internet culture

00:02:32.600 is really hard to overstate. Jordan Schwarzenberger is the man behind the curtain helping to run this

00:02:40.220 empire. He co-founded Arcade Media and began managing the Sidemen brand and its business. Now,

00:02:48.220 despite being only 28 years old, he's already a Forbes 30 under 30 entrepreneur and even serves

00:02:56.100 as an advisor on the British government's Small Business Council at 10 Downing Street.

00:03:01.660 Before Arcade, Jordan cut his teeth in digital media as a creative at, and get this,

00:03:09.060 vice and lad Bible. Um, yeah, that's not exactly bastion of Catholic virtue. And as a talent manager

00:03:18.000 at YMU. In other words, he's been deeply immersed in the secular media world for years. And he wasn't

00:03:26.140 a Catholic at that time. In short, he is a high-achieving young executive in mainstream entertainment,

00:03:32.880 managing some of the biggest online stars of our day. It's precisely because of Jordan's prominence

00:03:40.540 in the digital entertainment space that his recent public statements about embracing traditional

00:03:46.300 Catholicism is making waves. Not so many yet, but it's going to. And this isn't some guy starting a

00:03:53.540 Catholic YouTube channel and generating an audience. No, it's the manager of one of the world's

00:03:58.820 biggest YouTube groups, a well-connected media insider. And he's sort of, you might say,

00:04:05.900 suddenly proclaiming deep, orthodox, counter-revolutionary Catholic beliefs. It's

00:04:12.640 incredible on a whole new level. So how in the world did this all come about? Well, it was on a BBC

00:04:21.200 interview in which Jordan's faith became public. Very unlikely place, BBC. It was with a podcast

00:04:30.720 called Radical with the host Amal Rajan. Now Rajan, he's a well-known BBC journalist. He invited Jordan

00:04:41.300 for an in-depth interview as part of a series showcasing radicals, pioneers, and innovators.

00:04:46.980 The conversation was released in two parts. The first half was a discussion about how to achieve

00:04:52.000 big league social media success, and Jordan's career, and how he built the Sideman brand, and all

00:04:57.900 of that. Normal, fair, that's what you'd think. But it was in the second half that things took such a

00:05:04.660 surprising turn with Jordan speaking out about his faith publicly for the first time. And Rajan himself

00:05:12.360 was surprised by the turn in the discussion. He said that although his team do a fair amount of

00:05:18.920 digging into the background of the guests, no one had discovered that Jordan was a Catholic, let alone

00:05:25.600 this kind of a Catholic. So it all started when Rajan picked up on Jordan talking about decadence and

00:05:33.820 decadent society. Take a listen to what Jordan said in reply.

00:05:38.980 Well, I think it comes down to the loss of religion and the loss of purpose in life and meaning in any

00:05:43.860 depth. And also it comes down to materialism. So I think decadence in culture and society is a fruit

00:05:48.180 of liberalism, a fruit of the French Revolution principles, led their way through Europe in the

00:05:53.860 19th century, and then through into the 20th century after the World Wars, etc.

00:05:57.540 So Jordan went on then to explain how he'd converted to Catholicism in 2020, after having been a dedicated

00:06:06.180 atheist for most of his life by his own account, his journey to faith began in a very unexpected

00:06:13.380 place. A Kanye West album launch party in 2019. Yep, you heard that right. A Kanye West album launch

00:06:25.460 party. So it was at a listening event for Kanye's gospel-themed album. Remember when Kanye was gospel-themed?

00:06:33.380 It was called Jesus is King. Jordan had an experience there that got him thinking about

00:06:38.820 Christianity. Part of it was actually seeing Americans taking God seriously, which he had

00:06:44.900 never seen before. And that is something about America. When you see Christians taking God seriously, 0.99

00:06:50.340 even in the mainstream, that does strike. So in that BBC interview, Jordan recounts that his moment

00:06:58.900 sparked a process that led him away from atheism. And after that, he started seeking truth and meaning

00:07:06.820 beyond the sort of hedonistic media lifestyle. He says that within about a year, he found his way

00:07:14.980 into the Catholic Church. He received baptism alongside his infant son in December of 2020. And this all took

00:07:22.980 the interview into a very unexpected territory. Once the host, Amal Rajan, opened the door by asking

00:07:30.580 about Jordan's change in outlook, Jordan didn't hold back. He began to take apart the modern secular 0.99

00:07:36.580 worldview that he used to share, he used to believe. And at one point, Jordan shocks Rajan by insisting

00:07:44.420 that culture follows the church and not the other way around. And that the world wasn't changed by

00:07:52.420 the 1960s, but by the Second Vatican Council. It's actually pretty funny. Watch this.

00:07:59.300 The loss of the church as the light of the world, which was done, and this is a whole nother podcast,

00:08:04.580 one for another day, but done, you know, was really destroyed, I would argue, revolutionized at the

00:08:10.180 Second Vatican Council, which when that stripped out of society, you can see almost social collapse

00:08:14.820 on a global level from 1960 onwards, which is why people say the 60s was, you know, a totally

00:08:19.220 revolutionary decade. People point to the wrong things. And when you look at that decline,

00:08:23.140 it's a decline of its power of its kind of grip on society in relation to not through any force,

00:08:29.060 but in relation to morality, and what was considered normal and good and true, because the church has

00:08:33.860 always held itself as the light of truth in the world coming from, from, from God himself,

00:08:38.900 as I would serve to our Lord Jesus Christ.

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00:09:10.020 God bless you. I don't know about you, but for me, this is awesome to hear this witness on mainstream

00:09:17.700 media, on the BBC, but especially from someone in Jordan's position. And he just went on from

00:09:24.980 there explaining the Enlightenment roots, the modernist idea of imminence, which means that

00:09:29.860 all religions come from sort of inside us. Honestly, if you turned on an explicitly Catholic

00:09:37.460 podcast explaining some of these points, you wouldn't find a better explanation of it than

00:09:42.500 that which Jordan Schwarzenberger ran on the BBC that day. Which is also tells you something about

00:09:48.740 Jordan. I mean, super smart guy. It's no wonder he's doing so well in his field, but that same smarts,

00:09:55.700 that same brilliance, that same willingness to pursue things to great success is what also led

00:10:03.540 him to the church and what enables him to describe and invite people to look at the glories that he found.

00:10:12.660 He told Rajan that today's world has fallen into, and I quote,

00:10:16.580 deep holes of pleasure and oversatisfaction of pleasure and so on, which is crippling society

00:10:22.900 and makes people really unhappy, he said. He insisted that only a return to God and the Catholic

00:10:29.620 Church could solve anything. And those are really strong words to say on the BBC.

00:10:37.540 It's just gorgeous. It's not a perspective that the BBC audience would expect to get from a young

00:10:45.140 media entrepreneur. This is evangelization at its peak. And this was actually back in August. And I

00:10:54.420 think most of the world missed it. He appeared on another big podcast called Internet Dads, hosted by

00:10:59.860 YouTubers Rory Jennings and Spencer Owen. They're well known for their sort of soccer commentary.

00:11:06.180 And so, unlike the BBC show, Internet Dads is a more sort of casual, chatty podcast about parenting in

00:11:14.420 the digital age. And yep, Jordan has some parenting matters to share. He suggested having kids is the

00:11:21.060 best hack for work. He mentioned it forced him to be more disciplined and efficient. Right now, by the

00:11:27.620 way, his wife Millie is expecting twins, which will make him dad of five under the age of six before

00:11:34.500 hitting 30 himself. Good luck on that, Jordan. And let me give you one piece of advice if you're watching

00:11:40.180 this. I don't care how crazy it seems. Enjoy this time. I swear to you from personal experience,

00:11:47.700 you will wish for it back not too long from now. And although a chatty podcast with a couple of

00:11:56.740 soccer dads isn't perhaps the place you'd expect deep religious discussion, well,

00:12:01.220 the presenters had obviously seen the interview with Rajan and wanted to go there. And Jordan,

00:12:07.700 it seems, was happy to oblige. He again took the opportunity to share how Catholicism has transformed

00:12:14.420 his life. Here's how he described it. I got baptized, I remember 20th of, no 19th of December,

00:12:20.820 2020, me and my son actually at the same time. And it was just this amazing thing of like, oh wow,

00:12:25.940 like the transformation interiorly from the person that I was in 2017, 18, the person that I was in

00:12:33.140 2020 was miraculous, like absolute night and day. And I ended up effectively reading and learning my way

00:12:40.420 into from totally, totally atheistic and antagonistic point of view for religion into

00:12:46.180 Catholicism and now into like quite deep traditional Catholicism that has been this end game of 0.79

00:12:50.500 four or five years of, of total kind of immersion into the ultimate question.

00:12:55.700 And from there, he goes on to describe his experience of seeing evil in the media world

00:13:00.420 and how that pointed him to conclusions about God. Listen to this.

00:13:06.020 Always going to exist in a fallen world, which is ultimately run by, uh, by Luciferianism,

00:13:11.140 Satanism and by evil. That is the core, that is the root of this world. This world is plagued,

00:13:15.140 as I said, plagued by sin and plagued by original sin. Now the only way to counteract that is through

00:13:20.340 Christ and is through the faith. And here's what he experienced on reading the Holy Bible.

00:13:27.860 I ended up buying a Bible and I never read a Bible in my life at all at 21, 20, 22, whatever it was.

00:13:34.420 And I remember just reading for the first time. It was almost like this perfect, uh, I guess,

00:13:38.740 encasing of all of my experience in the world and my experience of good and evil, my experience of,

00:13:43.620 uh, I guess, voices in your head, uh, the spiritual reality that I didn't really know too much,

00:13:49.460 but I had a sense of it almost perfectly meshed in. And I'd never seen it explained like that before.

00:13:53.780 And there was just a moment where I was like, oh, I really didn't know. I really was wrong.

00:13:58.660 So in both these interviews, Jordan is given a solidly Catholic take on how he thinks

00:14:04.580 society has gone wrong and what is needed to fix it. Whether it's the reality of original sin,

00:14:11.780 the need to fight against concupiscence, denouncing modernism and modern philosophy,

00:14:17.620 Jordan staked out the Catholic church's position and stood ready to defend it. He completely dismissed

00:14:25.300 the idea of spiritual fulfillment without God. And he challenged listeners to research the arguments

00:14:31.220 for Christianity, promising them that they could stand up to any and all compelling claims.

00:14:39.620 But maybe the most edifying part was his explanation of the meaning of life.

00:14:46.820 The ultimate purpose of life and in any catechism is to know love himself,

00:14:50.820 God in this life, to be eternally happy with him in the next. That's it. There's nothing else.

00:14:54.980 So ultimately it's to not get caught up in the world too much, to not fall into grave sin,

00:15:00.260 to stay in a state of grace, to live a truly Catholic life and to enjoy materially and spiritually the

00:15:08.340 fruits of that, which are enduring peace, happiness and kindness to others, a charitable existence that

00:15:14.500 gives and that doesn't take and a sense of restraint on my inclination to sin and my concupiscence.

00:15:20.020 And if I can do that each and every day, then I'm good.

00:15:22.820 Did you ever think you'd hear that on mainstream media, on the BBC?

00:15:28.100 This is a big moment. Really, it's the kind of moment we've been praying for, we've been waiting for.

00:15:35.140 A voice from inside the machine telling the truth about God and about the soul.

00:15:40.980 Here we have a young man who sits at the heart of Gen Z, internet culture, managing YouTube superstars

00:15:48.660 who command massive audiences online, and he's openly declaring that the modern secular world has it wrong.

00:15:56.420 He's explaining why and responding by saying that the Catholic Church has it right.

00:16:03.220 That alone is massive news. Think about the typical narrative in the entertainment, in the tech world.

00:16:11.540 I'm against organized religion. Young people aren't interested in dogma. 1.00

00:16:16.260 Be spiritual on your own terms. No, no, no, says Jordan Schwarzenberger.

00:16:22.420 He turns those narratives, those false narratives, inside out, upside down.

00:16:28.260 Nope. He says, actually, the old time religion is exactly what we need. 1.00

00:16:34.340 And he's doing it in a way that's informed, that's educated, that's so, it's so intellectual.

00:16:41.380 It's super impressive, but it's also really accessible. This is real genius.

00:16:48.820 No one can say, oh, what a dumb guy. He's not dumb. He's got the success to prove that he is not only smart, 1.00

00:16:59.060 he's super talented, and he's pulling it all, he's putting it all in the line for the church, for the truth.

00:17:06.020 For the church today, this is a massively hopeful sign. It's not every day that someone with so much

00:17:14.420 mainstream influence speaks up for tradition so clearly, using words like modernism and criticizing

00:17:21.220 Vatican II on a major platform. Until now, this sort of thing has been, yeah, as it's discussed on forums,

00:17:28.580 or specialist websites that deal with this, but almost never on national media. It shows that these

00:17:35.380 viewpoints can get a hearing. And in terms of the digital influencer space, Jordan's example could be

00:17:44.660 groundbreaking. We might see much more of this. Let's pray we do. The sidemen's audience skews very

00:17:52.100 young. Millions of teens and 20-somethings who consume their weekly content. They're the ones that are

00:17:59.380 going to be hearing this. And while Jordan himself is mostly behind the scenes and dealing with business

00:18:05.140 rather than with the content, some of which, by the way, Catholics might find difficult to reconcile with his

00:18:10.740 comments, his role is well-known to fans. And it's those fans, those millions of fans that are going to be

00:18:20.820 seeing headlines like, Sidemen Manager comes out as a traditional Catholic. It could prompt some of them 1.00

00:18:26.740 to wonder, what is traditional Catholic? What is that? What's it all about? Why would a guy at the top

00:18:34.820 of the social media game feel that faith is so important? Even if it's a small percentage of those

00:18:43.780 who know the sidemen, hear about this, and become curious about it, that's still a big deal. He's

00:18:50.020 effectively witnessing to people who may have never encountered a serious faith perspective at all.

00:18:57.300 It's amazing. But we should also acknowledge that going public with these kinds of ideas

00:19:05.380 it puts a target on your back. The world that Jordan lives in especially, it isn't exactly friendly 1.00

00:19:12.820 or open to Christianity at all, let alone someone challenging the sacred cows of liberalism.

00:19:18.900 If he carries on down this line, he may face skepticism, criticism, backlash, or God forbid,

00:19:25.460 the cancel culture. He's basically put a target on his back. And that's why we, as his fellow Catholics,

00:19:33.380 need to support him with our prayers and encouragement. Let's pray that Jordan stays 1.00

00:19:38.260 strong in the faith, continues to grow in wisdom and holiness, and uses his considerable influence

00:19:44.740 for the greater glory of God as he already has. For LifeSite News and Sign of the Cross Media,

00:19:51.220 I'm John Henry Weston, and may God bless you.

00:19:53.700 Hi, I'm Liz Yor. I'm really urging all the audience to continue to follow LifeSite News for all

00:20:05.380 information, news about life, for a great perspective on all the breaking news in the world.

00:20:13.220 Thank you for watching and continue to watch and follow LifeSite News.

The John-Henry Westen Show - February 06, 2026

Media Boss Comes Out as Trad Catholic： Why Young Men Are Converting – It's the FUTURE!

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