Philip DeFranco

About

Philip James DeFranco (born Philip James Franchini Jr.; born December 1, 1985), commonly known by his online nickname PhillyD, and formerly known as sxephil, is an American media host and YouTube personality. He is best known for The Philip DeFranco Show, a news commentary show centered on current events in politics and pop culture.
DeFranco has also been involved in the creation of other successful channels on YouTube, such as the YouTube-funded news channel SourceFed and its nerd culture spinoff SourceFed Nerd. His primary channel has accumulated over 6.6 million subscribers and 2.5 billion views, as of January 2026. Having been involved on YouTube for nearly two decades, he has been cited as a pioneer of YouTube and news coverage online, and has won various awards for his online content.

== Early life ==
DeFranco was born Philip James Franchini Jr. in The Bronx, New York City, New York. He is of Italian descent.
He was a student at the University of South Florida (USF), a biology student at Asheville–Buncombe Technical Community College, and later a junior at East Carolina University. In 2007, DeFranco lived in Tampa, Florida, and later Atlanta, Georgia. Once in Florida, he used…