I don't know what "Stephen" is supposed to mean.

"What's the deal with [him]" is a pretty unspecific question. Are you asking why it is that some people don't like him? If that's what you meant, I can answer that.

He started his writing career attacking religion alongside Richard Dawkins, so the Christian Right really didn't like him. Then more recently he criticized Donald Trump quite a lot, so they got even more incensed. Then he rejected association with some former debate partners like Jordan Peterson, publicly saying that they'd gone off the deep end during the Trump years, and during Covid, and that made the right even angrier.

But the Left doesn't like him, either. While attacking religion post-9/11, he paid special attention to Islam, and how the specific tenets and beliefs of a religion or religious person can lead to increased suffering. This got people like Glenn Greenwald and Sam Seder quite angry, because they thought it supported endless war in the Middle East. More recently, as I mentioned, Sam debated Jordan Peterson about religion, and because his relationship with him during the debates was friendly, people lumped them together. Sam has also rejected most of the talking points of the social justice Left, and was labeled racist when he interviewed Charles Murray, the author of The Bell Curve, popularly believed to be a text that supports racism. Though he is no further right on race than someone like John McWhorter, who is fairly center-left politically, this label has stuck in some circles, especially after Ezra Klein debated him.

Most of his time, though, is spent talking about consciousness, the self, free will, meditation, charitable giving, and other middle of the road topics.