Alex Cooper, Alix Earle, & the Business of Relatability

Summary

Diabolical Lies — Episode Summary

Episode Title:

Alex Cooper, Alix Earle, & the Business of Relatability

Hosts:

Katie Gatti Tassin & Caroline “Caro” Claire Burke

Release Date:

June 28, 2026

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Overview

In this incisive, irreverent episode, hosts Katie and Caroline dive into the intertwined rise, rivalry, and business philosophies of Alex Cooper (Call Her Daddy) and Alix Earle (influencer/TikTok/"Hot Mess" host). The discussion goes beyond the clickbait headlines to analyze how relatability is marketed, monetized, and weaponized by and against women in media. They explore how similar archetypes—white, blonde, attractive, ambitious—are cast as rivals and how parasocial dynamics and gendered narratives shape public perceptions. The episode also interrogates media double standards, the “mean girl” vs. “girl’s girl” dichotomy, and the fundamental truth that, for women in power, likability is currency—and a trap.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why This Story Matters

• Media Double Standards: Male-run media companies of equivalent size to Unwell/Barstool aren't the focus of exposés or meta-narratives in the same way ([01:49], Katie).
• The Power of Narrative: The same facts can be twisted to tell diametrically opposed stories, especially when parasocial relationships or women are involved.

2. Alex Cooper’s Rise & Call Her Daddy Backstory

• Rapid Ascent: Caller Daddy went from unknown to mega-hit in three episodes, acquired within a month by Barstool Sports ([07:23], Katie).
• Original Vibe: The podcast was “locker room talk for girls”—explicit, crass, groundbreaking for its time, and heavily sexualized ([08:14] compilation).
• Public Persona: Early coverage cast Cooper as a “Big Sister” to millions of young women, offering unfiltered relationship/sex advice ([10:32], Caroline).
• Business Savvy: Cooper lands a $60M Spotify deal in 2021, making her the highest-paid woman in podcasting ([05:52], Katie).

3. Barstool Breakup & the Origination of Public Feuds

• Contract Drama: Messy public fallout between Cooper and ex-cohost Sophia Franklin over intellectual property, business priorities, and money ([45:00]–[66:32], Katie & Caroline).
• Dave Portnoy’s Role: Barstool’s founder weaponizes the Call Her Daddy RSS feed during contract negotiations—in a move described as "catty and hysterical" by the hosts ([49:23], Katie), and used the media attention to Barstool’s advantage.
• Gendered Double Standard: Portnoy was never painted as the villain or subjected to “mean girl” or “girls’ girl” discourse, despite controlling everything ([58:28], Caroline).

4. How Relatability Is Performed, and for Whom

• Authenticity or Artifice?: Both Cooper and Earl are expert operators in cultivating relatability, but use contrasting tactics:
  • Cooper: Adopts the mastermind/businesswoman archetype, eventually embracing her “shark” reputation ([37:05], Katie; [70:55], Katie).
  • Earle: Exudes “I’m just along for the ride,” Teflon positivity, and purposeful inertia, shielding herself from criticism and accountability ([95:12]–[108:05], both).
• Wealth and Aspiration: Both women are conventionally attractive and financially privileged, yet Earle is hailed as relatable, thanks to carefully titrated “realness” ([101:32], Katie).

5. The Business of Being a Girl’s Girl

• Monetization Models:
  • Relentless engagement and audience-building lead to equity stakes, high-value brand deals, and personal tech/beauty lines for Earl ([111:32], Katie; [115:43], Caroline & Katie).
  • Hidden Sophistication: Earle, with help from her “dadager,” takes sophisticated equity deals (e.g., Poppy, $20M estimate) while maintaining an “unbothered” public persona ([111:49], Katie).
  • Cooper’s “Mistake”: By foregrounding her ambition/strategy, she exposes herself to “mean girl” accusations.

6. The Recent Beef: Alex Cooper v. Alix Earle

• Unwell Drama: Vanity Fair (and prior Bloomberg) expose allegations against Unwell—mostly about Cooper’s husband, Matt Kaplan, not Cooper herself ([12:24], Caroline; [17:27], Caroline reads VF quotes).
• Talent Rift: The rupture between the two Alexes (when Earl leaves Unwell) sparks waves of “mean girl” allegations, online speculation, and media coverage—fueled by public in-fighting and social media posts ([14:57], Katie & Caroline; [121:03], Cooper’s video).
• Dave Portnoy’s Meddling: Continues to narrate/be profit-center for the drama with “Tea by the Sea” commentary ([77:50], Dave Portnoy), stirring the pot and revealing private employee messages.
• How They Handle Drama:
  • Cooper goes direct, confrontational (“Say what you’ve got to say”; [121:03], Cooper).
  • Earle remains noncommittal, positive, nonengaged—her official response: “ok on it” ([122:44], Caroline).

7. Relatability as Performance & Weapon

• Key Paradox: Audiences reward women for appearing not to want success, money, or power—women like Earle who are master operators but feign accidental ascent ([114:20], Katie); punish women like Cooper for acknowledging similar ambition ([70:55], Katie).
• The Only Lens: Female ambition is metabolized through likability. You’re either a “mean girl” or a “girl's girl”—there’s no in-between ([131:16], Katie).
• The Faustian Bargain: When you trade on relatability, you agree to relatability as your yardstick for judgment ([129:15], Katie).

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

Opening Disclaimers and Self-Awareness

• “Suspend your intellect for the next two hours… circle jerk of mediocrity…” — Katie ([03:22])
• “Four humble white women podcasters.” — Caroline ([03:19])

On Gendered Media Coverage

• Katie: “We simply just do not see this kind of coverage or interest in media companies of this size owned by men.” ([01:49])
• Katie: “There is no girls, girl or mean girl conflict when the man is a boss… He's like, fully leaning into this: no, I own you.” ([55:59])

The Mean Girl / Girl’s Girl Binary

• Katie: “You’re either a mean girl or a girl’s girl.” ([131:16])
• Caroline: “It is bizarre the way we classify women based off how nice they are. They weren’t even friends... They didn’t owe each other anything from the jump.” ([131:16])

On Relatability and Performance

• Katie: “Transparency and authenticity are artifice... transparency itself is performance.” ([53:27])
• Katie: “When relatability and parasociality are the terms that you are selling yourself according to, those are then the terms you are agreeing to be judged against…” ([129:15])
• Katie: “You can have money and success and acclaim and still be relatable and still be a girl's girl. You just can't be seen wanting any of those.” ([114:20])
• Caroline (on Earle): “She is unbelievably unrelatable. But she does a magnificent job at performing relatability to people online.” ([92:46])

Cooper vs. Earle—Contrasting Success Styles

• Katie: “Cooper is both the highest paid woman in podcasting and also seems unable to replicate her own success in shows that are not directly tied to her own persona… characterized as both the most successful woman in media and actively flopping.” ([39:30])
• Katie: “Alex Earl managed to do all of this without ever looking like she was trying too hard to get any of it right.” ([113:41])

On the Barstool/Portnoy Issue

• Katie: “For a media company CEO to hijack the talent's platform and use it to talk shit about them during a contract negotiation is completely unheard of.” ([49:06])
• Caroline: “He is by far the most catty and hysterical and mean girl of this entire conversation.” ([85:50])

On Narrative Control and Backlash

• Caroline: “No matter what happened next, Dave Portnoy had already won. He was going to make sure that this benefited him in some way. And predictably, he knew that emphasizing how much money they were being paid was going to enrage people.” ([54:45])
• Katie: “The feeling of betrayal, I thought was really, really fascinating because betrayal is like a very emotionally loaded word. This is like, you feel like your friend has let you down all the while. This was a business, right?” ([55:59])

On the Career Arc for Women

• Caroline: “Women can't start out confident. You have to start out being like, aw shucks, thanks for having me. And then you also can't stay that way… The best business women do both because it keeps it interesting.” ([38:33], [132:18])

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Important Timestamps & Segments

00:55 – Main Topic Introduction: “Alex Cooper, Alex Earle, and the Business of Relatability”

05:52 – Alex Cooper Bio and Career Trajectory

14:57 – Breakdown of the Vanity Fair Unwell Allegations

49:06 – Dave Portnoy Weaponizes the Call Her Daddy Feed (must-hear moment)

70:55 – Analysis: How Cooper and Franklin Played Negotiations and Public Perception

77:50 – Dave Portnoy’s “Tea by the Sea” Segment (Alex v. Alex drama, Portnoy’s manipulation)

95:12 – Alix Earle Deep Dive: Biography, Brand, and Appeal

113:41 – Earl’s Sophisticated Business Moves and the “Alex Earl Effect”

121:03 – Cooper’s Confrontational TikTok Video to Earl (“Say what you’ve got to say…”)

131:16 – Conclusion: The Media’s Only Lens—Mean Girl vs. Girl’s Girl

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Tone & Language

• Self-aware, meta, irreverent, and sarcastic with frequent pop-culture and internet snark.
• Frequent callbacks to the hosts’ own white woman status and podcasting “mediocrity.”
• Language is often tongue-in-cheek, oscillating between incisive critique and gleeful gossip, but always anchored in clear, original analysis.

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Essential Takeaway

Alex Cooper and Alix Earle have each mastered the art of selling relatability while pursuing immense wealth and influence. But for ambitious, conventionally attractive women in media, likability is not just an asset—it’s a precarious performance. Both are astute businesswomen; only one is punished for showing it. And in the end, the stories we tell about them say as much about us as about them.

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Transcript

[Katie]

Okay. 3, 2. What is up, Daddy gang? It is your founding one. I've always wanted to do that. Today's episode was brought to you by a nearly 50 year old man named Dave Portnoy. Barstool Sports and the lack of exposes about their company culture. The people in the publishing and film industry who anonymously send us documents like Sophia Franklin's book proposal. The two years of Alex Earl TikTok videos I had to scroll through before she went viral for the first time so I could establish the timeline for her mega stardom. Matt Kaplan, Vanity Fair. Matt Kaplan's lawyer threatening Vanity Fair and the never ending mean girl versus girls girl dichotomy.

[Caroline]

Ooh, I'm so excited.

[Katie]

We are talking about Alex Cooper, Alex Earle and the business of relatability, also known as white on white crime. Caro, I'm so sorry. I know that you told me that you never wanted to think critically or deeply about Alex Earle's cultural influence, but unfortunately the time has come. So I do feel like I am in a unique position to discuss this story because I have worked in a media company of a similar size to both Unwell and Barstool on. On a talent contract, and I think that that perspective is going to allow me to add like a little bit of personal color today.

[Caroline]

I thought you were going to say you're in a good position because you don't care.

[Katie]

Well, that.

[Caroline]

Because I am one of the last blonde white women in America who truly does not care about this feud.

[Katie]

As a blonde white woman, these are my people. Okay.

[Caroline]

My culture is not your costume.

[Katie]

Yeah, okay. I think the obvious and like, maybe as a result, least interesting framing that I could use today is that we simply just do not see this kind of coverage or interest in media companies of this size owned by men. Like the media brand that I worked for was about the same size, had roughly the same amount of revenue, and was co founded by guys that are Alex Cooper's age. And there really weren't like, there was never media interest in like the meta narrative of our company. There was never coverage of employee drama or executive turnover and there was plenty of that. I do think that the and fall of the Girlboss episode explored that theme in a lot more detail. So that's not the framing that I am looking to use today. I'm also, before we get started, gonna just throw it out there that I'm not interested in like determining from afar whether any of the people in this story are like good women or bad women or mean or nice. The last disclaimer I will make is that I think it is worth a little bit of a fourth wall break at the start start. Just to say that while I was working on this episode, I did have this distinct feeling of like, this entire thing is so dumb.

[Caroline]

Hey Katie, I thought your fourth wall break was going to be that it's two hot white women talking about two hot white.

[Katie]

As you can see, you have the most humble people in the world hosting

[Caroline]

four humble white women.

[Katie]

Four humble white women podcasters in just a circle jerk of mediocrity and indistinguishability. So today we're going to have a fun conversation. So everybody suspend your intellect for the next two hours and we're going to have. We're going to have a nice, fun, light convo. As superficial as this story might seem, I think there are two main reasons why I ultimately decided that it was worth an episode. Number one, it seems to me to be like a perfect illustration of how you can argue the exact same set of facts to tell two completely different stories, which is useful for interpreting all discourse when parasocial relationships are involved, as they are here and as they often are when women are at the center of a story. And number two, and maybe more importantly, it is a perfect example not just of the double standard between how women and men are discussed in media, but the way in which almost comically similar women are depicted as somehow worlds apart in their motivations and legitimacy. So with that, we are going to start with some background. Caroline, what do you know about Alex Cooper?

[Caroline]

Thank you for asking. Okay, so what I know about Alex Cooper. I actually became involved in the Alex Cooper cinematic universe when she and Sophia Franklin split up. And I actually remember the first time I had ever watched anything that Alex had done was in her video that she posted to YouTube where she basically explained why she was taking the podcast that she had up until that point co hosted with Sophia Franklin and why she was basically keeping it with Barstool Sports. And then since then, I have listened from time to time with certain celebrity interviews. So I wasn't really around for like the Gluck Gluck 5000 phase. I will say right now I. It will surprise no one that I am not the core demographic for Barstool Sports. So I don't think I would have been paying attention to it at that point. But like, for example, I really enjoyed her interview with Hailey Bieber. I like her interview with Ellen Pompeo. I think that there have been some great interviews along the way.

[Katie]

So you wouldn't say you were an original Daddy gang member.

[Caroline]

No.

[Katie]

But you came into the picture.

[Caroline]

No, I'm Catholic. I have way too much. No, my relationship to my own sexuality is not there yet.

[Katie]

Okay, cool. I also became aware of Caller Daddy and Alex Cooper and all of this with the split as well, which is a critical piece of this story that we are going to come back to. So Alex Cooper is a 31 year old podcaster and businesswoman from Pennsylvania. She is currently the highest paid woman in podcasting. We are coming for her throne following a famed statist $60 million deal with Spotify in 2021. She is a former Division 1 college athlete like you, Caro. So I guess the competitive athlete to superstar pipeline is alive and well. And she moved to New York after graduating from Boston University to work in advertising and sales. So she moves to New York and once there, she essentially co creates this massively popular podcast called Call her daddy in 2018 with her roommate at the time, Sophia Franklin. Together they sold it to Barstool Sports. I don't know if it was technically like a sale or if they just like got, you know, kind of absorbed by Barstool Sports just one month after their first episode. I believe they had only released three episodes by the time they got subsumed by Barstool. I cannot emphasize enough how rapid the ascent of Call Her Daddy was. It collected over 2 million downloads in just two months. So like eight weeks.

[Caroline]

And they were nobodies.

[Katie]

They were nobodies. They had no audience. Alex had tried to become a vlogger, but they did not have like an existing audience. It. It essentially became an overnight success and it was obvious from the jump that they had something extremely valuable. Now, the show was originally pitched or framed as locker room talk for girls. So it was extremely crass. It was really the only, like, female focused entertainment at Barstool at the time. We are going to play a little compilation clip to give you a sense for just how pornographic this show really was. So if you're not interested in listening to extremely graphic sexual content today, hit the skip button three times, go forward by like 90 seconds.

[Alex Cooper]

Talk about questions. Okay, so I was having some bomb sex with my boyfriend in my room. My roommates then sent a text in the group chat with all of our friends and told me to stop moaning. I think I've heard you before. Oh my God. I'm sure you've heard me. You've heard me.

[Caroline]

And you know what?

[Alex Cooper]

When I hear Alex, you know what I do? I take advantage of this situation. I'M like, I'm gonna get my lube out and I'm gonna just be right there with her. When my boyfriend was eating me out, I accidentally farted. This happened a different time also. And he got pink eye. And now he thinks from eating girls out, he's gonna get that all the time, and so he doesn't anymore.

[Caroline]

Fuck this girl.

[Alex Cooper]

Honestly, she's making the rest of us look bad. You couldn't hold it up. That's, like, in his mouth.

[Caroline]

I was gonna say he literally should

[Alex Cooper]

have been like, you just shit in my mouth. At least, like, push his head away and be like, I have a cramp, and then fart. Just don't do it directly into his mouth.

[Caroline]

Jesus Christ.

[Alex Cooper]

I had a threesome with my wife and her sister.

[Dave Portnoy]

Hold on.

[Alex Cooper]

Wait, wait, wait.

[Caroline]

We're fucking losing it, guys. I was gonna be like, that's kind of hot. Shut the fuck up.

[Alex Cooper]

Inbreeding or whatever, okay? He said, we all got drunk and it kind of just happened. I mean, her sister ate my ass while I was balls deep in my wife. I mean, that's a level of kinky. That's.

[Caroline]

Whoa.

[Katie]

Own it.

[Alex Cooper]

Yeah, you guys did it. Why cry over spilled milk? Do we just not talk about it at holiday dinners?

[Katie]

The lane that Alex Cooper is in is interesting because she is covered in the news both as, like, a young female celebrity herself. Like, she almost gets the pop star treatment, but she's also covered in prestige business media because she is the second highest paid podcaster behind Joe Rogan, and the way in which that happened is part of her original lore, which we'll talk about shortly. So you've kind of already alluded to this. There was, like, a very messy public breakup between the two co hosts. So early coverage of Cooper really emphasized her connection with her young women fans and her quote unquote, Big Sister energy. If you will, please read an example of this type of coverage from 2021 in time.

[Caroline]

Cooper and I are sitting in the lounge of the Greenwich Hotel in New York City. She leans in conspiratorially as she tells the story, while keeping one wary but eager eye on a group of girls in the lobby who have either spotted her by happenst or tracked her down based on clues from her frequent Instagram stories. Though she's the youngest of three, Cooper exudes a Big Sister energy that attracts young women, mostly ages 18 to 26, according to her agent, and she cultivates these relationships. Between recording sessions in her Los Angeles home, she's often direct messaging one of her 2.2 million Instagram followers who call themselves the Daddy Gang about their sexual quandaries and romantic woes. Recently, after a listener found out her boyfriend had cheated on her, Cooper advised her what to do in real time. Quote, I'm like, get your stuff. Call an Uber, get out of there, go to a friend's place. I would have loved to have someone do that for me in high school or college. End quote.

[Katie]

Yes. Okay. So there's very little in the way of boundaries between Cooper and her fans. Even with millions of them, she is DMing them relationship advice, like in the midst of a breakup. In 2023, she co founded the Unwell Network with her fiance, now husband, Matt Kaplan, and essentially declared her intent to expand the success of Call Her Daddy to even more original programming and other forms of entertainment. So her first talent acquisition after starting unwell was TikTok star Alex Earle, who was Caroline's favorite parasocial connection, who was given a show on this network called Hot Mess. But we are talking about Cooper today because of a recent Vanity Fair article. So, Caro, can you describe this article? What you remember of it?

[Caroline]

Is this the one about the workplace allegations?

[Katie]

It is. It's like the big expose that. I guess there were, like, rumors leading up to it for months that a journalist was working on this story.

[Caroline]

Yes. This is not the bombshell piece of information. I think there have been articles about it for weeks. But this was like the big expose about a running story that Unwell is basically like, not a healthy workplace, that there are a lot of employee harassment allegations, that things aren't going well, that people are being treated poorly, and I'm pretty sure that in the original headline, I don't know if it has since changed, it's Alex Cooper's name in the headline. But all of the accusations are against her husband. I don't think there are any accusations against her.

[Katie]

Yes, that is, I would say, fair. I mean, the. The extent of the allegations against Cooper are that she has been in the room for his temper tantrums before, that she has been present and not done anything to stop him. Sure. So on June 12, a journalist named Clara Milott published an article called Daddy Issues Trouble behind the Scenes of Alex Cooper's Unwell Media Empire, in which she includes statements from, according to her, over 40 sources. Here is how the piece opens. If you will.

[Caroline]

Please read, quote, we do not stand for mean girls at this company. Alex Cooper declared. It was February 2025, and the call Her Daddy podcaster had convened the staff of her Gen Z Media empire Unwell to announce the news. Alex Earle was out. They had gathered in the conference room in Los Angeles, a cement and glass space designed in collaboration with West Elm and possessed of that particular brand of minim minimalism, Negoti style lamp and all that young founders dream up and design firms deliver. The staff was is mostly young women dressed in LA's take on office casual. Uggs cherry baseball caps, Cartier love bracelets, mad happy sweats, or a thrifted leather jacket. Take your pick. The air tinged with the scent of Sol Janeiro. Sol de Janeiro was still as the girls waited for answers. But that one vague remark, we do not stand for mean girls was quote, all we got, recalls one former employee. Like other staffers, she had been desperate to learn why the network was parting ways with its biggest talent other than Cooper herself.

[Katie]

Yes. Okay, so this opening anecdote refers to what I would say is like the origin of this story's latest development, in which Alex Earle, who is a different Alex that we will be discussing shortly.

[Caroline]

Alex.

[Katie]

Alex, with an eye for unknown reasons, departed from Alex Cooper's Unwell network. This is central to why Cooper has been under fire so much this year. Do you remember when this happened, Cara? Were you following this as an Earl girl yourself?

[Caroline]

Was I fucking follow this? Of course I was following. Yeah, Katie, I'm not doing well, you

[Alex Cooper]

know what I mean? Like, it's been.

[Caroline]

Was I following this? Have I been following this? It's been a pretty up and down few years for me personally. So yeah, I've been following this. And I should also state, like, I think you and I actually both have a healthy interest in Alex Cooper as well. So, like, I've been following both of these women for a while now. And yes, I did notice. I noticed that these allegations came after basically the rupture between Alex and Alex and Alex had become public. And that immediately made me feel skeptical for reasons that I'm sure that we're going to talk about today.

[Katie]

So wait, to clarify, all of this kind of heat on Alex Cooper started coming out after the rupture and that made you feel skeptical, is that what you're saying?

[Caroline]

Yes. I mean, for very obvious reasons, I've become quite skeptical both on this podcast and also in my personal life with the stuff that I've gone through with yesteryear. Like, you watch how waves of discourse work and it is very rarely organic. And I think it was just interesting to see the sentiment kind of shift quite dramatically and to see like, again, these allegations roll out and then other people started to pile on. So, like, a slightly less popular influencer started to reveal their own allegations against Alex Cooper, which is something that I also tend to be skeptical of.

[Katie]

And now you have the D list podcasters like you and me being like, all right, folks, coming in with the

[Caroline]

cleaning crew, picking up the scraps. Gobble, gobble. Buzzards discourse. Buzzards coming in.

[Katie]

The discourse, of course. Buzzards circling the wreckage. All right, here we are. Well, in that case, please continue.

[Caroline]

Katie is so humiliated to be talking about this today, and I'm so fucking pumped. I've literally been texting Katie asking us to do this forever.

[Katie]

We started this podcast, and I was like, I'm gonna intellectually stretch myself. And now I'm like, is Alex Cooper mean? Yay or nay? Hot or not? Ladies, what do you think?

[Caroline]

Look, you either you either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain.

[Katie]

Okay, I just texted you the next chunk.

[Caroline]

At the time, we believed it. The former employee says not of Earl, but of Cooper's stated ethos. This staffer was one of dozens of young women drawn to Unwell because they have seen its founder as someone who would help nurture the next generation of female media moguls. Now she and several former colleagues say they see things differently, see Cooper as the very kind of mean girl she publicly rejects. And that's before they even get to the issue of Cooper's husband and business partner, Matt Kaplan.

[Katie]

Okay, so the article goes on to detail some alleged workplace abuses. If you will. Please continue reading this section.

[Caroline]

Former employees describe a company where Cooper is indeed the talent, but where executive decisions are largely made by her husband, whom several described as having a leadership style that has felt like a volatile mix of unprofessional and caustic, at turns flirtatious or given to screaming. Some women characterized his behavior as, quote, just Matt being weird, while others said they were more significantly affected by it. Several women who have worked at Unwell say that Kaplan referred to employees as, quote, stupid or, quote, retarded and threatened to ruin careers. Several alleged that he made employees uncomfortable with comments about physical appearances and questions about people's sex. Many describe the feeling that lines were crossed, though they weren't always sure where those lines were supposed to be drawn, a confusion compounded several noted by how new they were to the workforce. Yeah, flag that. One source says that Kaplan thinks of his young female employees as, quote, little sisters and suggests that feelings of discomfort may be misplaced. Most, even those with more experience or who no longer work at Unwell were reluctant to speak on the record for fear of retribution. But taken together, their accounts paint a picture of a workplace marked by fear, anxiety, and paranoia.

[Katie]

Yeah, not great. Okay. Any thoughts?

[Caroline]

Yeah, I have a few thoughts just to rattle them off quickly. Number one, I mean, I think that a young employee is pretty relevant, like the fact that these were people who were probably freshly out of college, people who haven't worked at a lot of places, and who also have a parasocial relationship with the founder. So I think going in and thinking like, oh, this is Alex Cooper, I think that there might be expectations about a certain experience that are not in line with what it's going to be like. They do think that. Your point at the beginning is really important to state that, like, there are so many companies where this is happenstance, and it is really interesting that it's Alex Cooper's company that's being targeted. Like, I'm sorry, do you think Joe Rogan's podcast company doesn't say the arsler like. Like, even using that as, like, an antagonistic explanation for they don't employ women, which is there.

[Katie]

That. That's. This is Unwell's first m. Seriously?

[Caroline]

Well, and the other thing I was gonna say is you immediately see this expectation, not that she behaved like a founder.

[Katie]

Does she behave like your big sister?

[Caroline]

Right, right.

[Katie]

So Claire and Ashley, on good noticing, said something about this article that I thought described it perfectly, which is that it's one of those stories where the journalist breaks the fourth wall and the process of writing the story becomes the story. So Milott describes how her interviewees were suspicious of her and wonder she wasn't a plant sent by the company to essentially sniff out moles.

[Caroline]

Oh, my God.

[Katie]

She also describes receiving preemptive legal correspondence of a vaguely threatening nature from who I believe is Kaplan's attorney.

[Caroline]

Yeah, okay. Yeah, here we go. Vanity Fair received a letter from attorney Brian Friedman, who has represented Justin Baldoni against Blake Lively, Tucker Carlson, and Megyn Kelly against their respective networks, Kevin Spacey in his Me Too saga, and both Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo in professional matters. The letter sent on behalf of Cooper, Kaplan, and Unwell accused this magazine of assigning this story to a, quote, novice journalist. Wait, sorry, air quotes, novice. And then additional quotes inside of that journalist. So, like, are you even a journalist alleging that I.

[Alex Cooper]

The.

[Caroline]

This is from her perspective, alleging that I have, quote, connections to Earl, a, quote, direct competitor of our clients in the podcasting and influencer spaces. The letter included a threat if the story so much as suggests any sexual impropriety on Mr. Kaplan's part. I will make it my life's mission to ensure Vanity Fair's days are numbered. That's a crazy thing for a lawyer to say that. That is like, that. That is. I respect it. That is truly unhinged.

[Katie]

You're like, hey, not that I have any reason to think that you would be doing this, but in the event that you suggest he's sexually harassing everybody, I'm gonna fuck up your employer. It's like, oh, okay. Well, I wasn't gonna. But now I.

[Caroline]

Journalist.

[Alex Cooper]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

You're like, I guess I'm gonna look into that thread that you just dangled in front of me.

[Katie]

Yeah. And also ridiculous to assume that something like that wouldn't end up in the piece. I'm like, that's. That's really crazy to send to somebody that's working on an expose about your company culture. So Milott also references a woman named Tatiana Siegel reporting for Page Six, about Milotte working on the story. She wrote about how Siegel basically called her own journalism experience into question in this Page Six article, saying maybe Melot upped her journalism game over the past two years. But some on Team Cooper are skeptical, given that she has only been a reporter, quote, for five minutes, and then she attributed the comments to someone on Team Cooper. So essentially, this was a Page Six article that came out when the rumor mill started running that, like, hey, there is a Vanity Fair journalist looking into this company. And I noticed when I was pulling together all my citations for this episode, which are like tiktoks from someone named Brianna Chicken Fry. I'm like, what the fuck is my life become?

[Caroline]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was who I was thinking of.

[Katie]

Alex Cooper made a TikTok about me. We're going to watch that one, too. That Tatiana Siegel is also the byline for the Variety piece that announced it had the exclusive on the fact that Earl's show had been dropped by Unwell. So I was like, that's kind of an interesting coincidence. Essentially, like, you have this person who I would assume is, like, the journalist that the Unwell camp is, like, leaking their own stories to.

[Caroline]

Tatiana Siegel sounds like the name of a pop star in a 30 Rock episode.

[Katie]

It's like Robin Sports Sparkles.

[Caroline]

It's like the Rural Juror, but for a journalist.

[Katie]

What is this Robin Sparkles song? Let's go to the mall. Sandcastles in the sand. That's what it is.

[Caroline]

Sandcastles in the sand. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Katie]

Sand castles in the sand. Yeah. So I'm calling This out because I have, like, a meta theme of this episode is, like, how discourse works and so. And, like, how these stories kind of come together. So I just found it notable, okay? The same journalist that is, like, breaking the exclusive that Unwell dropped, Alix Earle, is also the one publishing the Page Six thing. That's like getting out ahead of the Vanity Fair piece, being like, yeah, well, that journalist isn't even really a journalist, and trying to kind of undermine her credentials ahead of time. So there was one line in this piece that jumped out at me more than anything else the first morning that I started working on this outline that when I read it, I went, that is it. That is the episode that both Cooper and Earl quote, have the uncanny ability to work relentlessly while making millions of young women feel as though they are listening to Good Friends. So the central theme of the piece is this gap between the feminist company that Cooper purports to operate and the reality of working there. So you see the language of the quote, unquote, mean girl, a phrase that kind of harkens back to school age friend drama invoked by Cooper herself, allegedly, in the opening paragraph to describe an employment dispute. And then Lot points out that both Cooper and Earl quote, make millions of young women feel as though they are listening to Good Friends. So there's a lot of undertones here about female friendship kind of being like a critical piece of this.

[Caroline]

I'm just listening to this being like, at what point did Alex Cooper state that she wanted to run a feminist company? She's just a woman running a company. And I know that this is obvious, but it is worth stating explicitly, like, this is. This is something we do where, like, if a woman writes, writes, you know, a book or has an album or runs a company, it's assumed that this is an inherently feminist project. And it's like. Or it just could have been like, a capitalist enterprise. And even her saying, I want to empower the next generation, that's what Meta says on their careers page. Like, that's just what companies say. That's not distinctly feminist. Her first hire was a white blonde woman who looked just like her. Like, it's not. This isn't confusing.

[Katie]

Intersectional queen Alex Cooper. There was a lot more to this article than I had originally anticipated. Not in the sense of claims or specific accusations, but just so many thematic layers to tease apart. I think it's fair to say the piece is largely about Kaplan's bad behavior and Alex not doing anything to stop him. But it ultimately asks the question, what does it mean when a man appears to be in charge of it. All right, but that question's never really answered. Like we don't really get an answer in this piece. We don't really know what it means yet. It's kind of left open ended to the reader, this implication of like it's this feminist company run by this woman. The subtext is she's not your big sister, she's a pick me. Basically, she's kind of been, she's lying to you. It's like what the conservative media ecosystem is saying, she's been lying to you.

[Caroline]

I think the implication as well was that there is something misleading about a company that's about women being run by men. And again, as someone who worked in media, I'm like, every single one of these media companies is run by men. Every single media company is owned by men. There is a male CEO at the top of bdg, at the top of Cosmopolitan, at the top of all these different companies. And so once again, like, I understand that it seems, seems disingenuous. And I think that is the implication.

[Katie]

What that's making me think of is the fact that the implication is that he's running it. But as far as we know, she is still a co owner, which actually is a departure. So you can say, well, he's running it because he's CEO.

[Caroline]

Yeah, you could argue she's more involved,

[Katie]

but she is a co owner. She's benefiting from. From it just as much. She's not an employee, she is a capitalist. Right, Right. So this was not the first piece of this nature, which I think is kind of critical to your earlier point about how waves of discourse works. This article was preceded by a Bloomberg article about a month earlier called Inside Alex Cooper's Unwell. Tears, Screaming and Employees Looking for the Exit by Ashley Carmen.

[Caroline]

Very feminized language, screaming and crying.

[Katie]

This Bloomberg article similarly emphasizes Unwell's young staff who are attracted to the company because of Cooper's star power and the sense that they already know her and they already look up to her. They already feel connected to her. And this one provides a sense for how the workload at Unwell is distributed. So it sounds like Cooper is running the day to day of her show and other creative projects, while Kaplan is the operator who runs the day to day of the network, which is a pretty standard split, that the person who is working on the creative direction is not also the operator. It also sounds like formal complaints have been lodged against Kaplan for aggressive workplace behavior like yelling at people on set and making them uncomfortable. Executive turnover at the company is characterized as high, including the company's head of brand marketing, head of network, and chief growth officer. I will just add here as context that in the first two years that I was at Morning Brew, there was at least that much executive turnover, probably more. Honestly, I'm not sure if the repeated emphasis in these pieces on the executive level turnover is in itself necessarily indicative of the issues. I think it's probably less telling than what the lower level employees are reporting. I think that is more indicative of employee culture. Turnover at the lower levels is far more likely to tell you whether a place is toxic than at the highly paid, highly specialized level where people are being brought in to drive specific results and if it is not working, they are going to leave or they are going to be replaced quickly. That's just how startups work. So I think that in my reading of these pieces I'm like, I buy that there's a toxic culture, but I don't know that this particular emphasized point is really supportive of that.

[Caroline]

Right?

[Katie]

Carmen then publishes three pieces of follow up reporting after this one goes out. The first was about an all hands meeting that occurred after the story came out and I'm gonna send you a little snippet from that one.

[Caroline]

T.J. marchetti, Unwell's chief Marketing officer, hosted the gathering. He discussed the continued expansion of the company's leadership team as well as plans to grow the business. He acknowledged there have been employee departures, but said Unwell's turnover is below that of other startups. Cooper and Kaplan, who serve as co chief executive officers, were not present at the meeting, according to people familiar with the discussions.

[Katie]

Okay, and then the next one was basically just rehashing the same facts as the first story, but positioned it as like the key takeaways from what we know about on, well, network. And then the last one, this one was like the biggest reach and the one that I thought was like the most obvious, just like a clickbait grab. It was called Building a Podcast Empire is Hard, Even for Alex Cooper. But the piece isn't about Alex Cooper. The piece is about the guy who started Freakonomics and how he has expanded his universe of content. The beginning paragraphs essentially just restate some of the high points from the earlier three pieces. So you kind of get the sense of like, this is clearly a beat that is really effective for publications like Bloomberg, but we're going to take a step back and we're just going to cover quickly what Unwell is. It is one branch of a larger umbrella company called trending that Cooper and Kaplan co founded. So Unwell bills itself as the media and lifestyle brand, but in practice it really has a few main pillars of revenue. So currently they have 10 podcasts in production, which is a fuck ton for a company of this size. Call Her Daddy is the crown jewel. None of their other shows have replicated the success of Call Her Daddy. And it is actually sort of unclear to me how successful Alex Earle's Hot Mess really was when it was just a podcast. Because those numbers aren't public.

[Caroline]

I don't think it was that successful.

[Katie]

I don't think so either, but I just don't have a way to confirm that. Bloomberg piece said that Podscribe estimates that most shows on their network receive under 100,000 downloads per month, but call her daddy receives 13 million.

[Caroline]

I'm looking at her podcast on Spotify right now and there are a number of posts that don't even have the 50k mark, which means you're getting less than 50k downloads on.

[Katie]

On Spotify.

[Caroline]

Yeah, yeah.

[Katie]

Which is really like the main platform for those shows.

[Caroline]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Katie]

So I'm not sure how trustworthy the numbers from podscribe really are because a, you can purchase downloads to like fluff numbers. And at the same time, I looked up our show on podscribe to cross reference and be like, well, I know what our numbers are because I can see all of the dashboards. Is this accurate? And it was way off.

[Caroline]

Oh, really?

[Katie]

It was really underestimating.

[Caroline]

Hell yeah.

[Katie]

Based on, like, what we can see on the aggregators on the back end. So I don't know how trustworthy those estimates are, but I do think the Spotify metric is a good one to go off of. So all that to say, while Call Her Daddy does continue to be a very successful podcast, the other shows on the network are doing good. Not great great. They're doing fine. But there has been a lot of turnover. They've had a lot of shows start not take off and then kind of get replaced. Then there's the production house side of the business, which releases Netflix films. This is what Kaplan was doing before he got together with Cooper. They also have a line of beverages. I don't really get that, but whatever. And then finally there is the Unwell Creative Agency, which is a small ad agency agency.

[Caroline]

It's giving Ryan Reynolds.

[Katie]

Oh, it kind of is, actually. Yeah. And Cooper said, let's see. She said sales in that ad agency are now nearly on par with the revenue from the podcasting side of the business. So it would appear that, like this is their most lucrative new line of business. The ads this end of their business appears to be working quite well right now. So when it launched, Unwell was the subject of a lot of positive coverage, like this piece from E.J. dixon for rolling Stone, which I'm gonna send you a little blurb.

[Caroline]

Over the past three years, Cooper has grown Call Her Daddy to the point that it's the number two most listened to podcast on Spotify, and she has become a Gen Z Barbara Walters of sorts, the head of a multimillion dollar franchise. Her $60 million Spotify deal made her the highest paid woman at the brand, as well as the Unwell Network, a podcast company she launched in August. Season four of Call Her Daddy is kicking off this Wednesday featuring TikTok IT girl Alex Earle, who is also set to launch a podcast with Unwell. I don't think there's been a lot of people that have been able to quite literally take a brand, transform it into something essentially completely different, and not only stay successful, but grow even bigger, she says. And I'm really proud of that. A large part of her appeal can be attributed to her ability to appear open and relatable to her viewers. Viewers despite having inked a high profile deal and looking like someone who would make you cry in gym class. That's funny. Call it the Kelly Ripa effect. Tailor made for the Zoomer era. In my conversations with my guests, you're always going to feel comfy, cozy, she says. That's where my personal skills as a human come in. I can literally talk to an acorn outside. I can talk to anyone.

[Katie]

Okay, so those types of interviews with her used to be very common. Similarly, you have this from time in 2021 after the Spotify deal closed. This like very kind of infamous 60 million dollar deal. I'm gonna send you this.

[Caroline]

As she tries to evolve and expand the brand, Cooper seems sure she can thread the needle and bring her fans along with her. I want to be the biggest podcaster in the world, she says. I've got this great big deal now. I want to prove to the world that I'm worth this. While her comments on her podcast may sound off the cuff, they're carefully thought out and scripted. When Call Her Daddy launched, Cooper says she outlined every episode, pre writing the intros and outros, re recording single words she believed had been said in the wrong cadence or anything that might have been taken out of context, editing the show and devising promotion strategies on social media this did not happen by mistake, she says, or because I fell into it. Oh, can I just say I'm really relating to Alex's desire to be like, I earned this girl. Give up, girl. Don't try to prove it. Just move on.

[Katie]

How would you describe Alex Cooper's attitude and self concept on the record?

[Caroline]

She's dogged. I think she's very dogged. And I think that she. And again, I. I mean, it's worth noting that this is her vibe post $60 million deal. So I don't know if she would have had this posturing when she was just doing Call Her Daddy. I think in those interviews, I would guess she would have been more humble and been like, yeah, we're just two girls. You know, it depends on what stage of your career that you're in. And so it's a very specific time frame for her.

[Katie]

I'm sure she is unafraid to talk about herself as a successful businesswoman, to say this didn't happen by accident. Yeah, no, I schemed my way here a hundred percent. She's a Mastermind episode that sounded like it was off the cuff. I was actually writing all of it. I was architecting this relatability from the jump. Who knows how true that is? I mean, it's. We have no way to know whether that is, you know, kind of a retconning of the early days of Caller Daddy. But regardless, it's pretty clear that she wants. Wants people to know that she didn't, quote, unquote, fall into this.

[Caroline]

This really makes me think of Taylor Swift in addition to myself. I'm like, this is why I'm like, Taylor Swift.

[Katie]

No, this is a fifth blonde white woman.

[Caroline]

I mean, I think about Taylor Swift talking, obviously, like, she now has in her discography and, like, in her lyricism, become increasingly outspoken with saying, like. Like, no, I am in control and being self aware. Like, saying, I put narcotics into my songs. I'm a mastermind. Like, I'm scheming, you know, like Machiavellian. And I. I really do think you see, number one, a need for women to reinvent themselves throughout their careers. So, like, women can't start out confident. You have to start out being like, aw, shucks, thanks for having me. And then you also can't stay that way. And again, I think of the Taylor Swift where everyone got sick of her being, like, surprised at awards shows. And so I do think that you do see this with a lot of famous women where you go from being almost outwardly and maybe, like, hyperbolically modest because that is what is expected of women as they slowly achieve success. And then once you're successful, you have to transform again. It feels like a very consistent archetype.

[Katie]

Yeah, it's interesting to draw the Taylor Swift parallel. I hadn't really thought about that. I would be terrified to be that sort of confident or that quote unquote self aware of how unusual it was that I had done something like that. So I just want to point out though, that there is a little bit of an interesting paradox that appears to be happening here. She is both the highest paid woman in podcasting and also seems unable to replicate her own success in shows that are not directly tied to her her own Persona. This is what enables that sort of double speak that often happens in these conversations where she manages to be characterized as both the most successful woman in media and like actively flopping because a lot of these unwell shows are like not really taking off in the same way. So I told you earlier that Caller Daddy was acquired by Barstool after its third episode. So essentially it was almost like the pilot got picked up up. Barstool Sports is a frat boy coded media company led by Dave Portnoy, who founded it in 2003. He is now an extremely wealthy man. Like, he's worth hundreds of millions of dollars because of Barstool. He is almost 50 years old, which is what makes his continued involvement in some of this beef so funny. Like, he has a little video series called Tea by the Sea where he literally sits in his beach chair and just stirs the pot. We're going to watch one later. Anyway, it is now relatively well understood that Alex and Sophia's original deal with Barstool was not good. Alex and her co host, Sophia Franklin, were given a $75,000 per year talent contract with bonuses if they beat download averages. So I believe it was tiered where it was like, year one is 75, year two is 85. I think year three was 95. Now that is a completely respectable salary. But it paled in comparison to what their show was reportedly bringing in. Which is why I say it was really known to be a bad deal. One estimate I saw was that the ad revenue on Call her daddy was $11 million per year for Barstool.

[Caroline]

Oh my God.

[Katie]

I know that at one point they were doing $10 million just in merch. So 75, 85K. It's like you're really not seeing any of it and it's basically all you.

[Caroline]

Oh my God.

[Katie]

Another estimate, which came from Dave Portnoy himself said that when the show went on hiatus, during the protracted contract negotiations in 2020 that we're going to talk about, they were losing $100,000 per episode in ad revenue. So if they're publishing once per week, that's 5.2 million per year in top line revenue. If you're at twice Weekly, there's your 11 million. Now, to be fair, their downloads were so high that thanks to the structure of their bonuses in the talent contracts, I believe they both actually ended home closer to 500,000 each after year one. But still, like, given the amount of money that Call Her Daddy was making at the time, this was still, I don't know, 10 to 20% of the total between them. So Barstool was still by far the largest beneficiary of that podcast of that IP at the time. Sophia actually has a memoir about all of this coming out this November. And we received a copy of the book proposal from someone who is involved in the auction process. And according to this document, which is allegedly the proposal that was shopped around, Sophia basically explains that the office environment of Barstool was really unusual. It's not like what you would expect working in an office to be like. Working there involved signing release forms that basically said you agreed to be filmed if you were in the office, and that there were essentially no rules about crass or derogatory behavior in pursuit of clickbait. So according to this source, Franklin felt out of place in this environment that was sort of old money, New England Americana vibes, which sort of makes sense when you consider the type of work environment that would ultimately produce and support a show like this one.

[Caroline]

This is also. I'm going to draw another comparison here which is to Kim Kardashian. Like, as we're talking about this, I'm thinking quite a bit about how Call Her Daddy or the, the. The call her Daddy 1.0 that was profoundly sexual, really tapped into like the. The billion dollar industry that is porn and allowed people to basically partake in porn in a way that was mainstream accessible and mainstream acceptable. And I think about Alex Cooper and I mean Sophia Franklin, but far more so Alex Cooper for now, parlaying essentially the equivalent of a sex tape into this profoundly respectable career. I think all the time about Kim Kardashian and the fact that. Fact that there is currently you can watch Kim Kardashian having sex online. It is not like she has a sex tape that will never go away. And she has managed to totally transcend that in A way that I think is so beyond impressive, it's hard to even conceive of. Like, this is someone who has a sex tape with a guy named Ray J and now is a billionaire who is, like, on the COVID of Forbes. And the same goes for Alex Cooper. That is, like, kind of unbelievable when you think about how misogynistic our culture is and how unwilling we are to let the stain of sexual impurity leave women.

[Katie]

Oh, my God. That is such a good point.

[Caroline]

Thank you.

[Katie]

I had not thought about the sexuality like that, that entry point. So Alex and Sophia do the show at barstool from 2018 until 2020, at which point, according to the Call Her Daddy lore, Sophia begins dating an HBO executive named Peter Nelson.

[Caroline]

What'd they call him? Suitman.

[Katie]

Suitman, that's right. He essentially told Alex and Sophia, you two are getting screwed. Your deal sucks. You need to shop this show around.

[Caroline]

Arguably the most feminist person here.

[Katie]

Thank you.

[Caroline]

I'm like, unproblematic king.

[Katie]

So the contract negotiations got very messy, and this is central to Call Her Daddy. Legend Dave offered ultimately the kind of. After they've been negotiating and negotiating, and Alex kind of tells them the her version of the story in this YouTube video that you referenced earlier, he offers them $500,000 each, with upside, I believe, and then said, you can walk away with the IP after one year. So stay for a year, make half a million, and then at the end, you can have the IP. Now, bear in mind, they did have 18 months left on their original talent contracts at this point. So to hear Portnoy tell it, he was like, oh, well, I'm doing them a favor. I'm cutting six months off the deal, and I'm bumping up their minim. Guaranteed a half a million. I also got a copy of his forthcoming memoir. It comes out this week. And I don't want to, like, scoop this book, but there's one specific accusation that he makes about Alex and Sophia's, we'll say, intentions. As this negotiation over, the IP became more contentious that I do think are probably going to cause some waves this week when it comes out, just given the heat on Cooper already, but we'll see. So, as legend goes, Alex wanted to take this deal, thought this was the best way forward for them. Sophia did not, because she figured they could do better on their own and that they were still getting screwed, essentially. So she was saying, like, no, we need to get more. Now, the way that this played out publicly would go on to shape both of their careers in ways that are Hard to overstate State. When the show went off the air during negotiations that turned contentious, Dave released an episode in the Call Her Daddy RSS feed, essentially airing all of this out, calling them, quote, unprofessional, disloyal, and greedy.

[Caroline]

Jesus.

[Dave Portnoy]

Millions of dollars waiting for them. If they just fulfilled their contract. Nothing. Didn't hear anything back from lawyer. They went. They're like, we want 90% of the alcohol. It's like, well, what? What the fuck are we getting out of this? I actually sent Alex a text after we had that conference call with the lawyer the first time that in my 17 years of doing this, I had never dealt with anybody as unprofessional and disloyal and greedy as those two. I'm paraphrasing. That was essentially it. I didn't talk to the Call Her Daddy girl, who, prior to that, I thought I had a good relationship with, I don't know, for four or five months. And as everybody knows, they just stopped coming into the office. They just stopped doing their podcast. And then they had the gall to be like, oh, we're not legally allowed to talk about it. You can talk about whatever the fuck you want. People who know me know I love controversy. I love talking about it. I was still trying to get them back here. And by the way, the timing of all this with Corona and all that shit. Shit was very good. Cause if you don't know me, I fucking have sold barstool sports twice. I'm worth a hundred million dollars, at least till the stock market crashed. I don't fucking need their money, but I'd love to have revenue streams to help pay the bills here during this time. So it worked out in an advantageous manner because if this is just me, I would have told them to fucking kick rocks and go fuck themselves a long time ago. Like, I don't need this fucking headache and this ungrateful bullshit in my life.

[Katie]

This is fucking unthinkable. Ok? For a media company CEO to hijack the talents platform and use it to talk shit about them during a contract negotiation is completely unheard of.

[Caroline]

Arguably, quite catty and hysterical, if you want to think about it. Arguably, tears were shed and screaming ensued, and all of it happened by day four.

[Katie]

Importantly, I have been through a negotiation that was not materially dissimilar from this one to get back intellectual property.

[Caroline]

Seriously, you are the Kim Kardashian comparison.

[Katie]

It was by myself and it took a full year. There is so much back and forth and so many individual terms that have to be Hammered out in so many meetings with lawyers and advisors and like sending the same redline document back and forth. I mean, it's. If someone at Morning Brew had gone on my feed and shit on me like that to essentially force my hand saying, you're ungrateful.

[Caroline]

I cannot even imagine you're so obviously weaponizing the public's perception of money to just be like, well, I'm giving them half a million. Is that not enough? And it's like, that is really beside the point. The point is what they're worth. Are they driving half a million dollar in profit for you? I almost wish Sophia had gone on the offensive and been like, like, I'm Giving Dave Portnoy 10 million. Is that not enough for him? Like, it's crazy.

[Katie]

Yeah. No, he knew exactly what he was doing. Now, by this point in the timeline when he released this episode in the Call Her Daddy feed, I believe the deal had already been determined behind the scenes. And the sticky piece of the story is that I guess Cooper took the deal the the 500k plus getting the IP in a year behind Sophia's back. Or Sophia didn't know that she was taking it. And originally the deal was supposed to allow Franklin and Cooper to split call her daddy 50 50. And Portnoy said he offered it to Franklin as well. Well, apparently she didn't get back to him for like three days. And then when she finds out that Cooper took it, she goes back to Dave and she's like, okay, I'll take it. I want to take it too. But Cooper had already told Dave, actually, I don't want to split it 50, 50 with Sophia. I want to do Call Her Daddy myself. Now, in his memoir, the one that comes out this week, he alleges that there was a rift between Cooper and Franklin long before any of this happened. I think Sophia actually references this in her book. He basically says the girls really didn't like each other. But to convey that that point to the reader, he tells a story about Cooper coming to him and saying essentially, like, she can't deal with Sophia anymore. The proposal for Sophia's memoir does not really indicate before all this went down that she like, didn't like Alex Cooper. But you do get the sense from her side of the story that she didn't quite trust her or there were some things that had gone down between them where you maybe get the impression that Sophia understood that for Alex this was first and foremost a business. But this whole story really speaks to the model of attention capture and no limits environment of Barstool, if you will, please read from a story that came out at this time in the New York Times.

[Caroline]

While most traditional publishers and media brands would balk at litigating a contract dispute in public, Mr. Portnoy and Barstool Sports have proven themselves adept at leveraging online attention. Attention in their favor. A lot of companies would try to sweep this under the rug and put out a press release, but in this new world of media, where these people are huge personalities, people expect transparency. Mr. Robbins said, this is a Barstool gold mine. They want these storylines. They can now create these competing podcasts between the Call Her Daddy hosts and I have no doubt that both would do really well. I just also. Can we pause here for a second? People expect transparency. That is, it's the whole thing of, like, people want accountability and authenticity. And it's like, no, you fucking don't. What you want is a show. The people you like the most are not the most transparent. They're not the most authentic, and they're not the most relatable. They are the best fucking circus performers. And I feel like that is like an ongoing discussion that we have on this podcast as well.

[Katie]

The whole thing is like, transparency and authenticity are artifice. Like, we. I feel like we talk about this all the time. That transparency itself is performance. Performance is performative.

[Caroline]

Sure.

[Katie]

Okay. So fan response was mixed, but one distinct thread is that one or both of them were greedy. Okay. This is the narrative that Portnoy really emphasized. This was great for Barstool. It created so much, earned media attention and shatter online. It magnetized eyeballs to their brand. You and I both have said, this

[Caroline]

is how I heard about it. Yeah.

[Katie]

How they found out about Call Her Daddy, was the. This contract dispute, was it a scop.

[Caroline]

Was it a false flag operation?

[Katie]

Oh, my God.

[Caroline]

False flag operation.

[Katie]

Bush did call her daddy.

[Alex Cooper]

Yeah.

[Katie]

No matter.

[Caroline]

Osama bin Laden's letter about Call Her Daddy, he's like, you steal our download numbers, you extract from our audience, and you give us nothing in return.

[Alex Cooper]

Yeah.

[Katie]

Oh, my God. Get like, blackout footage from Alex Earl's compound.

[Caroline]

Like Jessica Chastain stars in the. In the film adaptation of the Caller Daddy breakdown. Okay, that's a Zero Dark Thirty reference for those who were confused.

[Katie]

No matter what happened next, Dave Portnoy had already won. He was going to make sure that this benefited him in some way. And predictably, he knew that emphasizing how much money they were being paid was going to enrage people. And the response to the news that Portnoy shared, that the Girls were pushing back against. Against. $500,000 each was covered as well. If you will please read.

[Caroline]

Oh, God. Did they. Did they get Sheryl Sandberg, which is the new word for being woman. I feel so bad for what I did to Sheryl Sandberg that I'm actually gonna. I'm gonna do what Trump did with the Kennedy center, and I'm gonna replace woman with Sandberg. Okay. In his tell all, Mr. Portnoy said that Ms. Franklin and Ms. Cooper each had taken home nearly $500,000 last year, a figure far higher than many fans imagined. Ooh, that's a. That's a load bearing sentence. They'd frequently talk in the podcast about being broke girls in their 20s, which is relatable. Ms. Rose said. Then it came out how much they were making.500k a year to talk about sex once a week, and that's not good enough for you. Imagine having it that easy. Feel betrayed as a fan. Tbh. Another fan tweeted. Jesus Christ.

[Katie]

So basically, what you have here, the. The feeling of betrayal, I thought was really, really fascinating because betrayal is like a very emotionally loaded word. This is like, you feel like your friend has let you down all the while. This was a. This was business, right? Like, they are running a podcast for Barstool Sports. They are. They are employed by Barstool. They are on talent contracts. Like, this is their job to make you feel that way. Okay. But in this move, Portnoy is explicitly owning the fact that he is in control. He is emphasizing and flaunting that these women work for him, which is notable considering the parallel to the hot water that Cooper finds herself in now. There is no girls, girl, or mean girl conflict. When the man is a boss, he clearly has no qualms about letting it be known who is in charge and who works for who. He's like, fully leaning into this. Like, no, I own you. Like, these girls are so greedy.

[Caroline]

And I want to raise the flag again here that like, 500k a year to talk about sex. The implication that we all accept that sex does not have value and you should not equate it with having value, when, of course, the opposite is true. Sex is one of the most valuable things on the planet. Our entire. I mean, our film industry relies on sex. Our porn industry is bigger than anyone will acknowledge. Like, the idea that talking about sex cannot and should not be lucrative feels like a distant cousin to being like, sex work is disgusting. It's like this whole idea of being like. And they're just talking about sex.

[Katie]

Well, and what's interesting, too, about that is to suggest that it's easy to talk about your own sexual. We can't talk about sex for hundreds of thousands of people. I'm like, right.

[Caroline]

It's like, the one topic that I would never touch.

[Katie]

There are a lot of taboos that you are up against where, like, if that had not worked out, they were, like, going to be unemployable. It wasn't like it was on Only Fans where it was, like, behind a paywall or, like, maybe a little bit hidden. It was like they were blasting it out on a huge media platform. So there was really no coming back from that if it didn't work. That was a huge risk.

[Caroline]

Huge risk.

[Katie]

Okay, so we're gonna watch a video that Dave Portnoy posted because I really want this to come across clearly, like, how he was behaving and the things that he was saying during this, the tone that he took toward this entire negotiation.

[Caroline]

Keep in mind that there is a fucking flurry of articles right now about Alex Cooper's empire that are all related to allegations about a man. Have we ever seen allegations about Dave Portnoy's behavior? Like, are you joking me? For the media empire that was. That had the women at the face like you? This literally started with a guy behind the scenes running everything, profiting off of everything, and there was no conversation about that. It's incredible.

[Katie]

Well, it almost reminds me of, like, how people will say that the Trump administration's fraud and corruption is, like, so out in the open that people almost don't know what to do about it. Yeah, because he's just, like, clearly taking bribes and, like, publicizing it, and everyone's like, ah. And it's. It's kind of the same thing with Dave Portnoy. Like, his public Persona is so much that of an asshole that he's almost just permitted to be that. His book. Book is coming out in two days. It's called cancel me if you can. This is his shtick. We're gonna watch the video that he posted on the call her daddy Instagram after he had basically come out and said, these girls are greedy. Here's the offer. Take it or leave it.

[Caroline]

Oh, my God. It's, like, beyond me that people like this guy.

[Dave Portnoy]

I made more. More today than that suit guy from HBO who thought he was gonna with me. Bro, you work for a network. I am the network. What are you going against me for? Stay in your lane, suit. Everything is so green.

[Katie]

Okay, so I'm gonna now. Have you read one More excerpt from the New York Times article.

[Caroline]

Okay, this is one of the first times in this new personality driven media world that we've gotten insight into how the contracts are actually str structured. Mr. Robin said, Dave and Barstool clearly do bring something to the table because they're. Because they're making this into one of the most talked about things in pop culture. That's another load bearing sentence.

[Katie]

Another load bearing sentence.

[Caroline]

They're in control. They're the reasons why. They're the reason why this is successful.

[Katie]

So from there, cooper posts a YouTube video telling her side of the story. And I want you to listen to how she describes this negotiation process with Dave.

[Alex Cooper]

So Peter puts together this entire term sheet and he has us hire a lawyer that he gave us two options and we picked one of his lawyers that he got for us and he puts together the term sheet. The term sheet, as you heard from Dave, is one of the craziest term sheets. And it had all these outrageous asks. The 1 million. We wanted to be independent contractors. Like, it goes on and on and on.

[Caroline]

So we.

[Alex Cooper]

I knew Sophie and I were both nervous to send it. We're like, 1 million. And we were told, yes, in the industry, this is how it goes. You go really high in negotiation and then they'll come and like, meet us in the middle. Clearly, that didn't happen. So we sent it to Barstool, and in a very roundabout way, Dave Portnoy essentially told us to go F ourselves in every single single hole possible. We were like, all right, all right. It was. It was awful. I mean, we were like, exp.

[Caroline]

We were like, so excited.

[Alex Cooper]

We're like, oh, my God. Like, everyone's telling us like, this is the deal. And then we send it to Dave and he was like, you're cute. You guys are really cute. So that was a humbling moment. And so that document essentially pissed Dave off so much because he was like, I don't need to even need to renegotiate with you guys. Like, I own the ip. This is the fucking brand that I own. Like, I don't really need to do anything. So after that, he essentially was like, you guys are not going to get the ip. I don't really. I'm not intending to do anything on that term sheet. It's ridiculous. And so that is where in the timeline all negotiations stopped. Yes. So this is about four to five months into our second year. Year now. Okay. And all negotiations stop. We continue to do the podcast and we are not talking to Barstool about Renegotiating our contract. We are not talking to them at all. We just continue to do it. Contract is on hold. This is when Peter Nelson started shopping around the industry for deals for us. He was like, girls, I'm gonna put feelers out. I'm gonna, you know, go talk to all my friends in the industry. I'm gonna get you girls the deal that you guys deserve, yada, yada, yada. And would, like, send us all these text updates about, like, this is what they said about you. Like, the. Everyone loves you guys. This is great. It's going to be great. It's going to be great. It's going to be great. And it sounded great. I mean, I think at the time, it sounded like our only option because Barstool was not really willing to negotiate with us. So. So then the rooftop meeting comes. We had offers in the industry, and we were like, all right, let's go have one more conversation with Dave Portnoy.

[Katie]

So I thought that was pretty interesting because she is essentially, I don't want to say defending Portnoy's position, but it is clear that she understands the power dynamic here. And I think that that video, to me, strikes me as just as much for her listeners as it is to kind of smooth over the relationship with Barstool. And to make it clear, like, I'm on Yalls side. Like, I know that y' all own this ip. Like, the fact that Peter Nelson was, like, shopping around the show, he can't really do that. Like, Barstool owns it and it's not for sale.

[Caroline]

But they could have started a new podcast, right?

[Katie]

Totally, totally.

[Caroline]

So I'm surprised. Number one, I agree with you. And I think it's interesting that she's framing it as, like, everyone said we could. We should get a million. Dave Portnoy says to fuck ourselves. And, like, he was right. And it's like, well, wait, why not continue negotiating? But I think the implication there that she's implying is that they had no leverage. And I'm watching that being like, of course you do.

[Katie]

You've had all the leverage.

[Caroline]

You have all the leverage. You think he isn't gonna stress out if you guys don't go back on the air as by far their most lucrative podcast, like, you have. And, like, yes, it would suck to not get your ip, and that's something that you have far more understanding than I do about. But, like, you could very well parlay your audience into another podcast with, like, very similar branding, a very similar title for a shit ton more money. They probably could have gotten 2 or 3 million with another company. Especially again, since there was so much attention surrounding this fight. So it is really interesting to watch that in retrospect. And I also want to say, I mean, what was she like 24 or 25 when this happened? So I want to give Alex Cooper that grace as well. As well as Sofia Franklin, like, who knows? Because God knows I would not have known how to make any of these decisions either.

[Katie]

I think what is interesting about this is that we know that Cooper takes this deal. We know that she gets the show. And in retrospect, it would appear that she made the wise business decision that she chose right and Sophia chose wrong. Right. You accept the IP that you are being offered. You do what you need to do to get it, you move on. And it is true that Sophia's career has not exploded in the same way. And some have interpreted that to mean that Cooper was the mastermind all along. That's possible. Another interpretation is that Cooper played the original split better in the court of public opinion and everything came after stemmed from that. I would just point out that while we know Cooper's decision ended up netting her this amazing career, I would argue that Sophia Franklin, based on the information they had at the time, was also making a good business decision. It just ended up being the wrong one in this particular situation.

[Caroline]

Well, her business partner screwed her, right? And like no shade to Alex Cooper, but like Alex Cooper took the deal behind her back. I think she says that in the YouTube video.

[Katie]

We know a year later that Cooper sold the back catalog and the exclusive rights for $60 million. So Franklin pushing for more money in that negotiation and not accepting Portnoy's terms of half a million, that's. I mean, in a sense you could say she was completely vindicated by the eventual sale. It was worth way more. They should have pushed for more. But at the time she was especially portrayed as greedy and shortsighted.

[Caroline]

You have like the selective narrative deployment of a man behind the scenes architecting things. Like, Sophia Franklin's boyfriend is manipulative and controlling everything. But not Dave Portnoy. Like he's. He's just your everyday spider man eating pizza on the side of the road or whatever the fuck he does. I don't know. I don't spend time watching Dave Portnoy

[Katie]

on come content eating pizza on the side of the road.

[Caroline]

Doesn't he have some bit where he like rates bullshit? Yeah, yeah, I think he rates pizza.

[Katie]

The reality is that if they would have held strong and continued negotiating together, they probably would have gotten a better deal somewhere else. Who knows what this brand would have turned into? I don't know. But I do think that the public narrative at the time and then, like, what Cooper's career has become basically cemented for a lot of people that, like, she was really the business person and this ordeal. And I'm like, I actually think they both were making, like, relatively smart business. You could have justified either one of their.

[Caroline]

It could have gone either way.

[Katie]

Yeah, it could have gone either way. Okay, so Sophia tells her side of the story in an episode of her new show, Sophia with an F. Not too long after that. But by that point, the story was kind of already over. Public opinion had come down on the side of Alex Cooper. You know, Cooper had kind of aligned herself with. With Barstool and Portnoy again. And this is an excerpt about it

[Caroline]

from Forbes about four months ago, Franklin says at one point during the first episode of Sophia with an F, in true 2020 fashion, I lost my best friend, I lost my show, and I lost my career virtually overnight. And not only that, but I became the subject of a very public, very aggressive smear campaign where I was publicly attacked, attacked, bullied, and humiliated for months. End quote. No sooner had Franklin departed, call her daddy, than the trolls cranked up the meme machine to 11, flooding Reddit with anti Sophia images threads and the like. Sophia Franklin's ego has ruined her career. One such Reddit thread declares, you can't change my mind.

[Dave Portnoy]

Wow.

[Caroline]

At a basic level, she goes on to tell her listeners what happened is that she and Cooper were negotiating their contract with Barstool. Franklin says that one of the problems is that they are making far below the industry standard, and everyone from co workers to both of their agents and lawyers apparently knew it.

[Katie]

Okay, so it's fascinating that in retrospect, the man who encouraged them to get more money, Peter Nelson, who could clearly see that they were being ripped off and, like, tried to intervene, became the villain. Yeah, and by extension, so did Sophia. So this is a perfect example of narrative control wielding attention and how the same set of facts can be argued to make opposite cases. Cooper tells her side in this video, Franklin writes hers in the book Proposal. And frankly, the facts don't really diverge all that much. What's different is how each woman reports feeling about it in the moment and what was motivating their decisions, what they were prioritizing. So FIO was prioritizing their friendship and essentially staying together and getting as much as they could, and Cooper was making More mercenary business decisions about like, this is what I think is going to allow me to keep this show. So that's what I'm going to do.

[Caroline]

Well, and the great irony too is that something that Alex did, I remember very well in her video explaining what happened is basically elevate the Daddy Gang. You know what I mean? Like her whole thing was like, I want to get back to you guys. Like we're missing weeks and weeks of shows. Like I'm, yeah, you know, I'm like, I want to keep the Daddy Gang alive. Like it was really the, it was again similar to what Taylor Swift does. This idea of like elevating your fandom and being like all of this is for you when in fact you're making very shrewd business decisions.

[Katie]

Yes. So this original sin of call her Daddy cements the dual sided Alex Cooper narrative. On the one hand, she is painted as this sort of shark in business, this real operator who knows how to command and wield attention and see the whole chessboard and like kind of make good long term plays. On the other hand, she betrayed her friend and co host. Right. So it's important to keep at the fore here that this was not merely a fight between friends. This was a dispute about the ownership and value of a multi million dollar business. But to be very clear, it is not as though Cooper publicly has always described this as a business transaction. As you heard in the Vanity Fair piece we opened with, she herself is talking in the terms of, of we don't tolerate mean girls. So there's a real kind of like leaning into it in some cases when it's going to kind of serve the narrative and kind of distancing yourself from it when it's not. And I think in that video there was a real effort to make it clear that the decisions that were being made were to serve both the community, the Daddy Gang, and like the long term existence of the this business. Here's how she ends her video explaining what happened.

[Caroline]

God, she looks so young in this video.

[Katie]

I know, it's crazy.

[Alex Cooper]

I mean, I know, I've read like all the comments and I know people are mad at certain people, but I do know that this is also like a really shitty thing for the Daddy Gang. I lost a friend, you guys lost the duo that you were invested in the show and it fucking sucks. I think anyone on the Internet, anyone watching this, anyone listening to the podcast has, one, lost a friend. Everyone's lost a friend in their life. Or two, probably what hurts even more, losing your friend to A boyfriend or a girlfriend? Yeah. I mean, like, it's literally the weirdest thing because when I saw that the person that I thought I was in business with had a posse of people that significantly, significantly affect her decision making, I had to make a decision for myself in my own career. And that's why I'm sitting here alone right now. I didn't have a boyfriend make my decisions. I didn't have an agency make my decisions. I had to make a decision for myself. I think at the end of the day, what it comes down to is I am very aware that this brand, the Daddy Gang, is bigger than Sophia and me. Much bigger.

[Caroline]

Okay.

[Katie]

So she says she knows it's much bigger, and she was right. It was. It was much bigger. In Franklin's book proposal for Daddy Issues, she makes a point of noting how Cooper always knew she wanted to be famous and was very hungry for power and money and essentially that she was going to do whatever it took to get it. So you get the impression from Franklin that there was really nothing accidental about how Cooper got from point A, the host of this podcast that really popped off to point B, you know, considered this media mogul just five years later. So, yeah, that clock that you hear ticking in the background is Franklin's forthcoming November memoir. I think we're probably going to end up doing an episode on it, like a bonus episode. I think that depending on how the next couple months of press go for Alex Cooper and how this book hits, it could really damage Alex Cooper's career.

[Caroline]

Because you think Sophia could make that type of a comeback back?

[Katie]

I think based on the narrative that is unfolding around Alex Cooper right now, and based on what I read in the proposal that essentially paints her as, like, fame and money hungry, I don't think that we have a lot of tolerance for women who go into business with the explicit intention of making money. I think that the way that the framing is already coming together where Cooper is the mean girl and she is the shark, I think it's going to be a bad couple of months for Alex Cooper if it hasn't been already. What do you think? Do you disagree?

[Caroline]

I don't know. I'm thinking about it right now. I think she has an uncanny ability to pivot, and so I wouldn't underestimate that. Like, it really is kind of remarkable the way that she totally, almost overnight, completely rebranded, call her Daddy, and, like, not only kept her original fan base, but grew it. I can see this damaging Alex Cooper. I don't yet see how this could Elevate Sophia Franklin. Like, I think that would require a lot of work.

[Katie]

Fair. The dynamic underpinning the continued interest in this story and in Alex Cooper more broadly is not of a business dispute, which is what it technically is, but of a friendship gone wrong and whether she is a snake. Basically, like the question of who is the mean girl here? Is she the mean girl or not? And still somehow at the fucking center of it today is Dave Portnoy still in the middle, making money off of all of it. So we are going to jump forward in the timeline a little bit to watch a recent Tea by the Sea speculating about the Alex Cooper, Alex Earl drama. Portnoy is going to reference a video that Cooper shared. We're going to watch that too. But that's what he's talking about. But just to be super clear, since I know we just spent a ton of time talking about Alex Cooper and her former co host Sophia Franklin and a bunch of stuff that went down in 2020, this clip that you're about to hear is about Alex Cooper and her rumored beef with her former employee, Alex Earle. So referencing stuff that happened more recently. This is. This is Dave Portnoy talking about Alex Earle in Tea by the Sea.

[Caroline]

Wait, what is Tea by the Sea? Is that a segment he does? Tell me he doesn't have branded segments.

[Katie]

It is, is. It is a great segment. God, it has merch. It has merch. He is 49 years old, folks.

[Caroline]

Oh my God, it is. So how does he not get. Here's what I don't get. The stuff he does is so feminized. How does he not get called homophobic Slurs by his homophobic fan base. Like how is he doing this? Barstool is such a broy culture and he's running a branded segment on social Media As a 50 year old man called T by the Sea. Like, what is, what is this? The toast? Like what is going on here? Oh my God. Even the, even the screen grab of this. All right, am I clicking? Am I watching the whole thing? How much am I watching?

[Katie]

You are watching the whole thing.

[Caroline]

Oh my God. He has branded hats. Oh my God.

[Dave Portnoy]

All right. T By the Sea. I could start over, but I'm not. I may have gotten out my eyes. T By the Sea. So Alex Earl was on CBS Sunday, CBS Good Morning or NBC Today show. And the host is like, so, all right, what's this dirt going on with you? And the other, the other Internet person referring to Alex Cooper, kind of disrespectful not to be like what's going on between you and Alice Cooper? Like Al Scuber is big enough. Say her name. There's been this, this back and forth

[Katie]

between you and another, the Internet personality,

[Dave Portnoy]

a podcaster as well. Seems to be a bit of online beef there. What's, what's actually happening? What's really going on, you know?

[Katie]

Well, I'm trying to keep things pretty positive today, you know, we don't have that much time here, honestly. And also, you know, it's like why ruin such a good day with something so great, you know? But is there legitimate, is there some

[Dave Portnoy]

sort of legitimate contentiousness or has it always been exaggerated?

[Katie]

No, it's exaggerated. I love everyone.

[Dave Portnoy]

Now listen, I get all the girlies love Alex Earl. Like if you go on TikTok on the Internet, if you're in girly world, which some of my feed is like it's 95 5. It feels like Alex with an eye. She's a girly girl, they love her, they've been following her. Alice Cooper, this ruthless businesswoman, all these hit pieces on her.

[Caroline]

I just need to pause this and say I just to like just reorient us in reality here. Okay, I need to take a moment because I know we can get lost with the Internet and lose ourselves, but this is a 50 year old man with credible allegations of sexual assault talking about the way a 24 year old girl acted on morning television.

[Katie]

Okay, go.

[Dave Portnoy]

I've said I like both girls. I think the way Alex Earl with an eye has handled this is dog. Like she was taking shots at Alex Cooper relentlessly. Reposting, retweeting just like you couldn't miss it. The girl calls Alec1, the one person calls Alex Cooper like an ambulance chaser and she's bad for women. Alex Earl reposted. Finally, Cooper's like, you know, enough of this. Enough of you just being this petty little like girly and taking shots at me non stop. If you, if you have beef with me, say what it is Alex Earl's like, I'm on it. I said, maybe it's hypothetical, maybe it's sarcastic, maybe she's not on it. But I'll tell you this, maybe I'm old school and I'm sure Alex with an eye has like 3, 000 people advising her and rolls around with like a team of like 40 PR people. But if you're gonna talk whack, whack, whack and talk the talk and take shots and you better answer that bell, ding, ding, ding. When somebody calls balls like that's just me. I don't need a team. I don't need a script. If I have to say about you, I'm gonna say with my chest. I'm not gonna, like, take these veiled shots at somebody and then when the other person's like, all right, let's, let's go. Let's, let's hear what it is. Just disappear. So I, I, I don't. I'm on Alex Cooper's side now. At this point, I still don't know what the actually happened. Maybe Alex Earl is waiting for a Netflix show. Also think this makes me think, think the whole thing's pr. But if you're gonna chirp, chirp, chirp, just answer the bell. Like, you can't, don't. Oh, we all get along. And how much time do you have? You've had plenty of time to say your piece and you've said zip. So you shouldn't have been taking shots if you're not ready to back it up. At least that's how I come from. But they want everyone to be happy. Go lucky and crafted image. It's like Platypus man. Do you know I have a book coming out? There's a little t. I do. It's called Can. Hands up if you can. It's like the barstool story out June 30th. Yeah, June 30th. It'll be in your hand. June 30th. It's a book read Fourth of July. The book companies, in my being, like, you better sell a lot of books. We paid a lot. Well, I spent a lot of time writing it, so buy the book. Anyways, they want me to go on a press tour, and they gave me a list of all these places to go on. And Platypus is on. I'm like, dude, there's no shot Platypus is going to let me on his podcast. Jake's Shane. Why? Because I am too unfiltered. Like, I'm not happy. Go Lucky. I'm not everyone's friends. I just spit it. Tell the truth as it is how it comes off. So, yeah, Platypus boy said no.

[Katie]

Okay, so he's still in the middle. He's kind of, he's kind of stirring the pot. I will say. He posts this video speculating. Okay. He posts screenshots of DMS from a third woman who is allegedly close with Alex Earl and basically drags her into it, too. That third woman is also one of his employees. Okay. Her name is Brianna lapaglia. Brianna Chicken Fry has entered the chat.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Katie]

This woman is a barstool employee, and he essentially drags her into this drama by posting their private messages and being like. Like pretending to scratch out her name and being like, I'm hearing from my sources that are.

[Caroline]

So again, what does she say in the private messages?

[Katie]

Messages basically like, that Alex Earl is going to destroy Alex Cooper. She says she is going to destroy her. Okay, so La Paglia Chicken Fry, whatever the we want to call her, she, as far as we know, was not actually going to comment or get involved in this at all.

[Caroline]

Right. And then she had to, but Dave

[Katie]

drags her into it. Okay, so we are gonna watch her video.

[Alex Cooper]

From what Alex Earl told me, Alex Cooper is a very, very mean, mean person. Or maybe when Dave called me, when

[Caroline]

Alex signed Grace to unwell and she

[Alex Cooper]

called Dave and said, I don't give a about Grace.

[Caroline]

I don't give a about Brianna.

[Alex Cooper]

All I care about is making money. Yeah, maybe my narrative switched on you

[Katie]

after I found things out about you. I used to be a fan. Clearly, I'm not anymore.

[Alex Cooper]

I'm patiently sitting here and waiting for Alex Earl to come and say her side of the story.

[Caroline]

And that video that you made, that was deep.

[Katie]

That was mean girl 101. That was mean Girl.

[Caroline]

Finally boss video. This is awesome. This is what I want our podcast to do all the time. I'm having. I'm so sick of talking about terrorism and the police state and Gaza and feminine whatever. I want to watch Dave Portnoy just. Just burned to a crisp on a beach in, like, Delray, Florida, and just talk about teenage girls. Unbelievable.

[Katie]

All right, we're going to throw it now to our next game guest, Briana Chicken Fry on your favorite leftist.

[Caroline]

Yeah, seriously. Do you guys want us to, like, bring experts on? No, absolutely not.

[Katie]

I'm pivoting expert for you.

[Caroline]

I'm 100% going to do a pivot on our behalf. I'm an Alex Cooper.

[Dave Portnoy]

You.

[Caroline]

You're out. I'm going to do this solo, and then I'm going to pivot and I'm going to talk about Dave Portnoy in perpetuity.

[Katie]

So again, again, this is referencing a video Cooper posted that we have not gotten to yet. But there's the mean girl language again. And the point about how Cooper allegedly told Portnoy, all I care about is making money. You know, she doesn't care about her employees. She doesn't care about me. She doesn't care about Grace, which was another podcaster. She just wants to make money. And, like, sure, that sounds pretty callous, but to be clear here, the conversation in question was about signing new talent in a business deal where Cooper was poaching one of Barstool's podcasters. So, like, they were discussing an actual transaction. And as the accusations of Mean Girl fly back and forth, Portnoy just sits there in his fucking beach chair completely unscathed.

[Caroline]

So, okay, she's a Barstool employee, but then wouldn't she be incentivized to defend Alex Cooper? Like, like, why is it good for Dave Portner? Is he just, like, genuinely just stirring the pot?

[Katie]

He is a chaos agent. I don't think. Like, again, and this is maybe the, like, meta element of all of this. This, I don't think this man is really, like, loyal to anybody. But again, there's no, like, wow, Dave Portnoy is so mean. Or he's so this. It's like, no, I don't think he cares. He dragged another one of his employees into it. Again, talk about workplace culture.

[Caroline]

Wait, Katie, are you telling me that we don't care if men are unlikable? He is by far the most catty and hysterical and mean girl of this entire conversation.

[Katie]

Thank you. Exactly. Oh, my God. You just articulated it better than I could. There's all this speculation about, like, is Cooper saying this about Alex Earl? Is Alex Earl going to talk about. It's like, and then you have Dave Portnoy, who's just talking shit about everybody being like tea by the sea, capitalizing on it once more. I'm like, this man is going to capitalize on these women until he dies.

[Caroline]

Yeah, he is. He's sucking off of their content.

[Katie]

But Portnoy is very direct. Okay? He has a very particular way of conducting business. Business which is kind of like intimidation, bullying, but bullying you to your face, being like, I'm going to go in your pot. I'm going to rub it in your face that I own you. I'm going to make it very clear. It kind of like, flex my muscles here. I'm going to drag my other employee into it. Who cares, right? We're in the business of eyeballs. We're in the business of attention capture. That's the job. Right? And Cooper quite obviously and explicitly cites him as a mentor and a friend. They operate similarly. They have similar talents. Cooper is close with Dave Portnoy and has all but stated explicitly that he is the person who taught her how to run a media company and manage talent. Okay, so in that video, or in maybe one of the other Tea by the Sea videos, Portnoy talks about a conversation he had with Alex Cooper where Cooper, I guess, apologized to Portnoy and said, sorry we were such dicks to you and played such hardballs during our negotiation. Now I see how hard it is to manage talent. And one thing that Portnoy says in this video that I found to be useful for the conversation we're having right now is that the Occam's Razor is that the beef between Alex Cooper and Alex Earle, who we are about to transition and talk about, is essentially petty contractual shit, and that large sums of money are involved that probably would not translate to a very sympathetic public narrative, that it's probably a financial thing that got personal. And at one point he says, alex Cooper is a savage. And I don't mean that negatively. So the irony is that Earl and Cooper's brands are in some ways essentially identical. Like, that is sort of the running joke about this beef, is that people didn't even realize these were two different people. People thought these were the same person. So, like. Like, in some ways, they're literally indistinguishable from one another. They have the same fucking name. And in other ways, their brands could not be more different. Cooper is constantly fighting mean girl allegations, whereas Alex Earl is nearly universally beloved for being a true girl's girl. You even sort of hear this mirrored in the language that they both use for their branding. Alix Earl has the Earl girl. Girls compare that to Cooper, who runs a podcast called Call Her Daddy and calls herself Father Cooper. So it's like pretty explicit about her self concept as a woman who sees herself as like a mastermind in a man's world. So all that to say, in their dynamic at Unwell, they were embodying kind of an impossible paradox because they were supposed to look like friends or like big sister, little sister, like mentor, mentee, when in reality the power dynamic was that Alex Earl worked for Alex Kuk Cooper. Alex Earl was like quasi employed by Alex Cooper. It was like a Dave Portnoy Alex Cooper dynamic. So now we're going to talk about your. Your best girl, Alex Earl. Okay, you want to do this part? Do you want to do the bio? What do you know about Alex Earl?

[Caroline]

Yeah, can I? Okay, so Alex Earle was born in New Jersey, and her childhood.

[Katie]

Caroline's grinning.

[Caroline]

Born in New Jersey as a brunette. That's a fun plus. Some people don't know that.

[Katie]

That she was originally British. That we know.

[Alex Cooper]

We know.

[Caroline]

Okay. So actually, though, she was born in New Jersey. And she used to work at an ice cream shop. Her dad is like a really. Her dad is a businessman who does like. Does he does like construction work and the baby. Big sordid stuff is that her parents got divorced when she was in high school and her dad was publicly exposed for having an affair with a woman who was the escort at the time, was publicly involved in the Anthony Weiner scandal.

[Katie]

Spitzer.

[Caroline]

Oh, Elliot Spitzer, who was Anthony Weiner, was it? Didn't he also have a different scan?

[Katie]

A different. Yeah, a different prominent American man with a sex scandal. A different New York politician that was having an affair? Yes. Okay.

[Caroline]

She was an escort with one of them anyways, that was big in public. It kind of like caused her family to dissolve. He then would actually go on to marry her and have more children with her. So Alex Earl now lives with a mixed family. This is important because it goes into the content that she posts. So she became famous when she was, I think, a sophomore at the University of Miami. And she would do like, Get Ready with Me videos basically, and was very good at her. Her makeup for people who liked that style of makeup. And so she would do like long Get Ready with Me videos. And I think it wasn't until she was a senior at University of Miami that she started to go viral. But since then, she has become beloved for this really bizarre mix of wholesome and unbelievably aspirational content. So, like, she's flying on private jets. She is very clearly partying until, like, dawn and then somehow going to like a Harvard Business School. Like, she has, like an unbelievable energy and drive to just, like, get everything done in a day. And she's also posting videos of, like, when she was in a relationship, she had this whole thread with her boyfriend and she has this, like, pit bull that she adopted who was 7 years old. And she has, like, her family content. And speaking of being a girl's girl, stop smiling at me. This is interesting. And we're talking about this, so don't make fun of me. Where this is an official episode.

[Katie]

Caroline's whole body is red. Her whole body is red.

[Caroline]

I'm also breathing heavily because I'm seven months pregnant. So anyways.

[Katie]

Oh, don't.

[Caroline]

Don't blame your baby for this girls girl. She's a girl's girl. And she often like, her friends and the way that she includes them in her content have become another storyline. So she has, like, friends who have since become famous essentially because she will do TikTok videos of, like, them going out Together and them hanging out together. And so she just has like a very multi pronged content approach that really, like you said, creates an image of her being like, unflappable, always in a good mood, doesn't sweat the small stuff, like, shows her imperfections. She has this whole thing around her acne and now she has like an acne skincare line. It's just she is unbelievably unrelatable. But she does a magnificent job at performing relatability to people online.

[Katie]

So how does Alex Earle make you feel?

[Caroline]

I'm like, I'm like, pause. I'm close. You like you're a vibrator. Go on. Hold on. I'm not there yet. I'm not there yet. Wait, pause, pause. Okay.

[Katie]

How does she make me feel? Yeah, like, like why? Okay, last year, when we were joking about, like, things that we didn't want to think too hard about, what is it about Alex Earl that makes you feel that way?

[Caroline]

I think a lot of it is contextual to, to the last few years that I've had, which is like, I am not on TikTok right now. I don't know if I ever will be again. But for about a year and a half, I was a very active on TikTok and for, like, things that felt very high stakes to me. Like, I was talking about things like the presidential election and feminism and things that just felt quite like I would feel elevated, my heart rate would feel elevated when I was posting these videos. And Also I think TikTok felt scary to me in general because my following was growing and like, it just felt like a very elevated place for me. And so her content was growing at that exact same moment. And so she was one of the only, only tick tock accounts that I would go to look at when I was on the app. And I think that there was something about the way that she obviously does, like, she has all the visual cues that relax you of, like, oh, this is like a beautiful blonde woman and she's easy to look at, but she. I really think that there is something about the way that she in her videos, does not let anything get to her. And even when, like, she will do a video of herself crying, but even then it's like, there is something about the way that she performs positivity that feels very effortless to me. And so it was kind of like ambient and I wouldn't have to think hard about it. And quite frankly, I learned a lot about makeup from her, but just generally it was just like, oh, this is Just like a nice Republican girl who adopted a pit bull. And so I guess I'm gonna enjoy following her in Miami.

[Katie]

Okay. Unflappable is a perfect word. I actually love, love that you use that word because I have my, like, comfort creators as well, who kind of serve the same purpose where, like, their content, style and niche can really only be construed as, like, stay at home mom consumption core. And I'm like, I fucking log on. Like, when I start to hit a low point. There is something ambiently comforting about watching these women where I'm like, I have a parasocial relationship with influencers like this too.

[Caroline]

I want to just be clear. I am under no illusions that I would be friends with Alex Earl in real life. She parties so hard. I am a loser. Like, I. I don't. There is no world in which I think that we would get along. I just like her content. Yeah.

[Katie]

Yeah, totally fair. Okay. So Alex Earl, while physically very similar to Alex Cooper, is actually sort of her foil in a few ways. She is a 25 year old from New Jersey who started growing on TikTok rapidly in 2022 when she was a rising senior at the University of Miami. She said it was her junior year when she realized it could be a job when she started making money from linking things in her Amazon storefront. And she attributes her virality to showing her acne and get ready with me. Okay. So this would later become like the foundational plot point for her skincare brand, Real Actives. And the significance of that is in the name real. So it is like an anagram of, of, you know, her last name, Earl. But it is the sense you get when you watch Alex Earl that she is your friend, that she is, in other words, a girl's girl, if the hottest girl you've ever seen was actually nice to you. And that has created an enormous fan base. So I spent hours one day scrolling backward through her TikTok. Her first viral video got 126,000 likes. That was in September 2021. It is a talking makeup tutorial that she shared after about 18 months of dancing in bikini. Videos that didn't win Nowhere, like, had no traction whatsoever. By summer 2022, she was posting four videos per day.

[Caroline]

Oh, my God.

[Katie]

And getting a few thousand likes pretty consistently. But she was, to use your word, dogged. It was clear that she was working really hard, hard at becoming a TikTok star. Sometimes at this point, the videos would still dip under a thousand likes. Okay, this is summer 2022.

[Alex Cooper]

Yeah.

[Dave Portnoy]

Wow.

[Caroline]

Oh, My God, I should go back to TikTok. I could have like a million followers on TikTok by now if I hadn't left. Jesus Christ. I got. I do not have a nose for business. I'm here. I'm here on this podcast with you. Clearly I don't have a nose for business.

[Katie]

Hey, off. We're successful. Well, people like us.

[Caroline]

People like us.

[Katie]

People like us, people listen to us. Okay, yeah. Bear in mind by this time in 2023, she would have 5 million followers. Okay, so like Summer 2023, 5 million followers. Summer 2022, she's like sometimes not even hitting a thousand likes.

[Caroline]

Right.

[Katie]

She would do talking videos occasionally, but they weren't really taking off. She started showing how she covers her acne in July of 2022. After that she began going viral ish, a little more frequently, but it's really the first of her senior year where she really blows up. Getting ready for tailgates and parties at the University of Miami. This was, I remember the first time that she came up on my for you page was like, get ready with me to go to a tailgate. It's 8am so we're pre aiming at 7am and it like immediately transported me back to Saturday 11am Games. And I was like, holy shit, I cannot believe what I'm watching right now. And suddenly, seemingly overnight, she's doing a hundred thousand likes per video. Video. So Alex Earl really becomes Alex Earl in August 2022 after two years of posting consistently on Tick Tock. But like I said, once it took off, it was an unheard of rate of ascension. Not dissimilar from the way Call her daddy Caught hold. It's my 24th birthday today, so let's get ready. I'm actually so happy to be turning 24. I feel like 23 was a really confusing year for me. I would say I. I'm a different person than I was a year ago today, but a little more mature in Paris. I'm gonna want to party after Paris, Louisiana, back to Miami, then we're doing a rave weekend, then to New York, then back to la, then to New Orleans. I'm like a grandma now because I haven't gone out in.

[Alex Cooper]

I don't know.

[Katie]

Then I'm going home to Jersey. I'm going to see my family in Wisconsin. I went out last weekend and it took me out for like two days straight to tomorrow night.

[Alex Cooper]

New York City.

[Katie]

All around the world. All around the world. I've been a little too responsible lately. Need a little bit of the disastrous Alex back. We're going to be out until like 9 or 10am I'm getting old. I can't party like this anymore. Taylor Swift has to have the most stamina in the entire world. I'm hosting friends getting tonight and I just got back from the airport. I am so excited for Halloween season coming up. We are driving to Jersey to go home for Christmas birthday. There is no better feeling than being back home. It's really healing my soul. I love going home and just feeling like everything can be taken care of. I'm just gonna lay in bed, sit on the couch. Like my mom's gonna cook for me. I came back from New York yesterday and my little siblings were just making little Christmas cards. I think I'm gonna go to the mall tomorrow to do some last minute Christmas shopping. I love giving gifts. I think that's like my love language. I have not gotten lip filler and soap long that my lip filler lady texted me. I'm going to do like a smoky brow. I really like this concealer because it's skin like puffy eyes that look like vaginas. The real test is covering my acne. I go in with a lighter shade just to show you how we can like brighten the eyes. The most important step before going out is thinning out your eyebrow. I might go no mascara again. I'm going to do like a little bit of lip gloss. Here's the final makeup. I'm back for the outfit video. I think it's cute. Thanks so much. Love you guys. Something that jumped out at me in the early videos is that this person was obviously from a wealthy family. It does always interest me when people who are 20 years old have Range Rovers and carry Dior bags and have Louis Vuitton luggage and like wear Fendi crop tops to bars. And that those women become famous for being relatable. Like there's a really obvious contradiction that. That has always fascinated me about influencers. And it's clear from the very beginning of her presence online this preceded the wealth that she would go on to accumulate from like her own. Like she was already very rich. And it just always kind of interests me when women who seemingly like have everything going for them in such a way that that unrelatability would make them unpalatable to people. They're somehow able to spin that in a way that then she becomes known for being real and relatable.

[Caroline]

I think about this quite a bit and I feel like I've talked about this lot on tour. The idea of like wealth obviously in relation to trad wife influencers and all of that. And I think something that's worth keeping in mind is that virtually all major influencers are already wealthy to begin with. And so when you're on social media, I feel like when you're scrolling through your reference point for normalcy adjusts so quickly that you no longer think of her as rich. You just think of her as like one of the many people that you're following online. And so I think that it's like she doesn't have to be relatable in real life. She has to be more relatable feeling than the other influencers that you're following.

[Katie]

Yeah, your reference set expands. That makes sense. So we're going to talk about the two. Alex's joining forces now in August 2023. So bear in mind this is about one year into what I would call the the current phase of Alix Earl's influence and career. Cooper launches on well network Network. She signs Alex Earle as her first talent contract. And at the time this move looked incredibly savvy. So Veronique Hyland et al writes this piece in August 2023 about Earl's first year of fame. And this was my favorite piece of journalism that I read about Earl because it captured something that I felt like the mainstream business journalism sort of misses about the paradox of both her appeal and the distance that she still maintains. So Hyland writes something that I've actually been studying for another longer term project. So it kind of jumped out at me. She says she has mastered the precise titration between aspirational and relatable. So I'm gonna have you read One

[Caroline]

night this past July, Earl posted a get ready with me for a Drake concert at Brooklyn's Barclays Center. But she's bright eyed and bushy tailed the next day. Day. She is 22 after all. Fresh faced in a white button down. She recalls that tipping point. Quote my manager at the time said to me people are calling you the TikTok it girl. I was like, no they're not. That's crazy. Fans started approaching her in real life. Quote I couldn't believe what was going on because I had such a love for posting on social media for so long. It was like watching my dreams come true all at once. She says it was good and I wouldn't have changed anything about about it. Her statements often have the self contained, stands it off quality of a political sound bite. After reading and conducting countless interviews with young celebrities who claim to be Borderline traumatized by social media. Yeah, this is why I'm not good at this. It's refreshing, if jarring, to encounter someone who professes to love every aspect of it. Is there anything she wouldn't. Share quote I mean, I share a lot, obviously, conversations with my friends and in relationships and with my family. All of the. That's private. But I kind of give the brief overview of everything. I don't think that there's anything specific I try to stay away from.

[Katie]

Okay.

[Caroline]

They're just like us.

[Katie]

So Earl speaks about her rocket ship career in a very Alice in Wonderland tone. I can't believe this is happening to me. This is crazy. All my dreams are coming true. Oh my gosh. No, they're not. I'm not a knit girl. It is a far cry from Alex Cooper being like, yeah, no, actually I am good at this. I want to be the best. And none of this was an accident. Accident.

[Caroline]

It's not dissimilar to Alex Cooper's tone of, like, gratitude in her first video of Leaving Daddy Gang when she was earlier on in her career, like, I wonder if Alex Earl will hold on to this. Or as she becomes a businesswoman now that she's doing all this skin care, I wonder if she will be prified to look more and sound more like someone who is confident and in control.

[Katie]

Well, you'll see what we're leading up to. Okay.

[Caroline]

Okay.

[Katie]

Elsewhere, when asked in those dumb little interviews where people are like, so why does your content resonate? Like, why are you successful?

[Caroline]

Oh my God.

[Katie]

Earl will often say things like, I just try to be myself. Or like I'm just like authentically sharing about my life. Or she'll reference her acne journey and being real about that. You know, showing, showing the real, the real parts of her, her, her life, her face, her relationship, whatever. There's this sense that whether it's true or not, Earl presents her mind boggling success as sort of accidental or like ancillary too. Just like, I'm here because I love social media, right? And she is very much on the. The never complain, never explain train of thought. Everything that comes close to a controversy for Alix Earle essentially blows over because she virtually always declines to comment.

[Caroline]

And she's, she's had a few.

[Katie]

She does not include.

[Dave Portnoy]

Engage.

[Caroline]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Katie]

She does kind of seem like Teflon. Nothing sticks to her. The, the most kind of egregious thing that I saw that I thought was going to blow up for her. In 2025, it was reported that Earl and her team had settled out of court with the athletic brand gymshark for a million dollars after she sued them because they had dropped out of a contract with her after backlash about one of her posts Supporting Israel after October 7th, this story just came and went okay, though the timing of it coming out in the media was interesting. March 2025 kind of noteworthy given the suit was filed in 2023 and settled in 2024. So I'm like, okay, given what would then transpire between her and Alex Cooper publicly, like, wouldn't shock me if someone from Cooper's camp had leaked that lawsuit. And like the fact that that happened because it all happened kind of under. It was like under raps for a long time. I guess the point is, like, she has a very particular way of engaging with this stuff publicly, which is often just not engaged at all. Like, not to acknowledge it, not to address it. Okay, I'm gonna have you continue reading from Hyland's reporting.

[Caroline]

Another critique, one that goes beyond Earl herself but often uses her as an avatar, is that her virality was aided by the fact that she's a thin, blonde, conventionally attractive white creator. Creator. I'll flag that. I have a note about that. Whether that's the fault of, quote, the algorithm or the humans who use it is up for debate, but some black women have found themselves asking, where's our Alex Earl? And questioning why it's so much harder for black creators to go viral simply for being, quote, relatable. Earl tells me, I always want to uplift other creators and support them and help them in any way I can. There are a ton of other creators that I'm friends with and I met through work, which has been really cool. I don't know. I never really think of things like that too much. This is why I love her. I just want to support everyone and lift them up and do what other creators did for me when I was starting out. Reposting or sharing my stuff, giving me advice.

[Katie]

I don't know. I don't really think about it. It's interesting. This is totally a tangent, but it is something I've been thinking a lot about lately in the context of how we treat women on the Internet. Women who express values of any kind are held to a different standard entirely than those who appear to stand for nothing.

[Caroline]

I have no idea what you're talking about.

[Katie]

I don't know how much of this I don't know. I don't think about it. Everything's great thing is an act versus genuine. I Have no idea. I am increasingly of the opinion that Earl is much, much smarter than she lets on. But regardless, it is effective, right? When Alix Earle gets into trouble for stuff, there is so much plausible deniability because she has never really gone out on a limit. Like, you know, Alex Cooper, you can find, you know, sound bites of her.

[Caroline]

She.

[Katie]

She did an episode about abortion during the Dobbs thing. She interviewed Kamala Harris. Like, she has planted a political stake in the ground. And so anything that she does that is perceived as like, anti progressive or anti feminist is like a much. It is a news story because it seems contradictory to her stated interests and values. Whereas with this, it's like, well, why do you think that you've gone viral and many young black women that are making very similar content to you have not. She's like, no, I don't really think about it. I just want to uplift everybody. And it's like, okay, cool.

[Caroline]

Seriously, it's. I think Teflon is a really, really great example. This is where the Neilman's got into trouble with Ballerina Farm was that they actually did have political statements that they had to account for. And I think that that is why their account has become so much more generic. They are not talking about God, God on their account. And it's because if they don't talk about it in that way, they don't really have to answer for it. They can just refuse questions like that now. And I do think that that's a lesson. And I think if you then attack these people for being ignorant or for being, you know, for not caring about the issues of the world. You really do sound like an annoying nag. You know what I mean? Like, I think people, people very fairly are like, why are you expecting Alex Earl to speak up on race relations in America? And it really is an effective way for her to insulate herself from that type of criticism.

[Katie]

So in May 2025, the Wall Street Journal publishes a feature about Alex Earle with the sub headline How a University of Miami Student Became Gen Z's Savviest Pitch Woman. There is a bit of a disconnect between Earl's public Persona as someone who is just grateful to be along for the ride, who's like very shambly, very drunk, still, like getting up and doing her thing, but, but like, you know, we'll post videos where it's like, you can see vomit on her bed. I mean, she's, she's not like putting herself out there as like, put together Queen. It's kind of a Joke. She's a hot mess. Like that is kind of the brand, but she's hapless.

[Caroline]

It's like an innocent mess.

[Katie]

And communicating this ethos of not really being too bothered by the business side of things. Contrast that, if you will, with the perceptions of Cooper as being a shark, as being a savage, as only caring about money. Right. One of the things that the Wall Street Journal piece points points out is that Earl took an equity stake in Poppy, the beverage company, which meant that when it was acquired by Pepsi for $2 billion, she received a percentage payout. I have no idea what her deal terms were. Most armchair detectives online estimate her stake was probably worth around $20 million.

[Caroline]

Wow.

[Katie]

Because they think she probably owned about 1% based on her promoter agreement. It could be far less, it could be more. We really have no idea. But the point is she has talked about this investment in Get Ready with Me. Her dadager has also referenced that this was like a significant payout for her.

[Caroline]

I was gonna ask if you were gonna talk about her dad managing her.

[Katie]

Yeah, it is interesting. I mean he seems like a very good manager. He's. He's gotten her a lot of really good deals. But I also think it's interesting that we don't know everyone who followed the caller daddy story even a little bit knew that Cooper eventually sold it for $60 million. That was in every headline headline. When the serious deal was signed for over a hundred million dollars, those numbers were also published. That would not have to be public. That stuff is not public by default. Someone is giving that information to the press. Earl conspicuously keeps that stuff under wraps. She keeps the money piece of this very vague. But it does sound like she's been navigating more brand deals in this very. I'm just to going to maybe call it sophisticated way. Taking equity and getting really involved in the marketing of these companies is a much bigger, like you are thinking, way bigger than just taking cash for videos. I think she has a similar deal with Sips Margs, which is another brand where like she has taken on a larger deal than just endorsing them. It's a very like natural fit for her. Now she has her own skin care line, her own brand. And. And so at this point, I actually think it would not be hard to argue that Alex Earl has actually surpassed Alex Cooper based on the size of their respective brands and businesses. I think Earl has a more diversified portfolio than Cooper does at this point. She has really proven her ability to succeed across verticals. She is in entertainment and media like Alex Cooper. She also does drinks like Alex Cooper. But, like, I have no doubt that her Poppy deal and sips Mars deals are worth more than like the unwell water energy drinks or whatever they're doing. And now Earl is in skincare too, and succeeding.

[Caroline]

That has done really well too.

[Katie]

I think it sold like $16 million worth of product in like, you know, a week. And crucially, Alex Earle managed to do all of this without ever looking like she was trying too hard to get any of it right. It appears to come very easily to her. And I think this is a key point. You can have money and success and acclaim and still be relatable and still be a girl's girl. You just can't be seen wanting any of those. This is how you get the narrative that Alex Cooper only cares about money and Earl is a girl's girl. When if you really step back and think about it, Alex Earl is extremely rich because she is constantly selling shit to her audience.

[Caroline]

Right?

[Katie]

And I think you actually have to be an incredibly savvy operator to elide that fact, to position yourself as the BFF to your parasocial audience such that they will buy anything that you sell them without at any point the narrative shifting to.

[Alex Cooper]

To.

[Katie]

Man, it seems like she's really working hard to build a pretty fucking lucrative business here.

[Caroline]

I mean, this is to say nothing of the money that she makes from her social media views and also from her Amazon products page. I mean, she could be making millions of dollars from her Amazon page alone.

[Katie]

As far as we know. I believe she charges $400,000 for a single Instagram story.

[Dave Portnoy]

Wow.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Katie]

Like a sponsored Instagram story is 400,000. I will have to double check my. I'll put all the sources in the show notes. Um, I have not been able to like confirm that with a media, but that is her market value. That is how valuable her audience is. So I'm not including that number to be like, she's greedy. I mean, that number to say she has built a fudgeing empire, her personal brand, she has made it so fudgeing valuable in really no time at all. I mean, that took what, 24 months? And brands have started to call this the Alex Earl effect. The fact that she. Anything she sells to her audience, they will buy and sell out. That is now like the gold standard in the influencer marketing industry.

[Caroline]

Well, and I want to return to something we said about the data of it all. I think that there is. That is a very powerful thing here that is also worth noting with the Alex Earl vs Cooper of it all. I will again think about Taylor Swift. Like, I think this has been become kind of part of the Taylor Swift lore. Not just that her parents were supportive. That basically became a family business. And you have this very, very specific, specific cocktail where your family is involved, but they also have private wealth. And so they aren't incentivized to take money from you, to exploit you, to manipulate you. They are truly savvy operators.

[Katie]

It's just a multiplying play at that point.

[Caroline]

Yeah, exactly. There are people with financial holdings of their own who understand deals of their own. Alex Earl's father has absolutely taken a role, and I think they've spoken about it not just in her business, but in her sister's business, Ashton Earle. They are now doing the Netflix show where it's going to show the whole family. So obviously he is benefiting as well. But it's very apparent that he has helped her make these decisions. And again, and I don't say that in like, a patriarchal, like, she doesn't have any control way. It's just in the same way that Alex Cooper was mentored by Dave Portnoy. It's very clear that Alex Earl was taking advice from her father. And she has said as much that he's on the phone with every business partner. And I actually think that he was involved in the Alex Cooper controversy. Like, the whole thing is that allegedly he thought she was being taken advantage of in certain early business deals.

[Alex Cooper]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

And that has played a role in that.

[Katie]

That is Occam's razor. I think that the story that I have heard that sounds the most plausible to me is that Earl was offered this podcast deal and that her initial contract was worth a million dollars and that she wanted to take the deal because she really liked Alex Cooper and she wanted to, like, be associated with her. And essentially something goes down behind the scenes. We're not sure what. I'm sure it'll come out at some point, but that eventually it becomes clear that she's worth way more than that. If she can charge 400,000 for an Instagram story slide, why is she going to produce a year's worth of podcast content for a million? If that is what happened, it makes sense why it has not come out yet. Because call back to Dave Portnoy. They want more. I offered them half a million dollars, and they, you know, they're too greedy. They keep pushing for more. It's like if. If it comes out that you thought, like, you should have been paid more than a million Dollars for the podcast. It's not, again, super conducive with, like, the image of, I'm just happy to be here. You being a shark in business and you making all these very wise decisions and having a really good management team and essentially, like, building a gold mine on the back of your own personality, it directly undermines the likability of that personality.

[Caroline]

Well, and I think the. The point that you've made that is so salient here is, like, there's really no incentive for her to get into this at all. And I think she has realized that as well. Like, Dave Portnoy and Alex Cooper exist in a different, sloppy universe that does obviously benefit them in some ways, but it really just. It just cannot stick on her. And, like, the more that she refuses to engage with it, I think the more powerful that becomes, where it's just like, oh, she's actually never gonna talk about it. I do think that it would be at this point a mistake for her to talk about it because she just looks so good by not taught. I really think that she has come out on top with the way that she has just refused. And again, as much as a lot of people know about this, I would be willing to bet that she has a team who's saying, hey, we looked into this and only 30% of your audience base is really talking about this. Like, do you want to activate? And so there really is something to be said about just being like, yeah, actually just keep on keeping on.

[Alex Cooper]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

And sell stuff to Page Six or whatever the fuck is happening behind the scenes.

[Katie]

Yeah, true. Truly. So now we're going to talk about how it all comes to a head. So after the news broke that Cooper and Earl had parted ways, there was speculation that something had gone south, but nobody would confirm it. Cooper and Earl share both a publicist and an agent.

[Alex Cooper]

Whoa.

[Katie]

Which is very messy still, it seems that way. I mean, I learned that from Tea by the Sea, Shout Out Portnoy. Apparently they have the same publicist and the same agent, so that's messy as fuck. Kaplan and Cooper are releasing tons of stuff on Netflix, and Earl has a Netflix show coming out soon, produced by the same production company that made the Kardashians. There is still a lot of weird business crossover between these two women.

[Dave Portnoy]

Wow.

[Katie]

So over the last few months, people noticed that Earl was responding to comments saying passive aggressive things, seemingly about Alex Cooper. And then finally she reposted a pretty harsh video about Cooper. You heard Portnoy referring to it. It was basically this woman calling Alex Cooper an Ambulance chaser and analogizing her interview style and her content strategy to ambulance chasing. This appeared to be the final straw for Alex Cooper. And it prompted her to fire off the shot heard round the world, which kind of like catapulted this into the center of the conversation. This is the video that both Portnoy and La Paglio were referring to. This is what La Paglia called mean girl 101. Mean girl final boss video. So we are going to watch it now. I'm going to have you watch it in full.

[Alex Cooper]

Hey guys. You guys know I don't usually address this kind of stuff because it feels like a waste of time. And honestly it's embarrassing to participate in this. But I am obviously seeing the videos, I'm getting tagged. I see the DMs, I see the comments. So at this point it just feels long overdue. Alex Earl. Hey girl. The passive aggressive repost and the likes and the commenting on things. I gotta call you out here. You're gonna need to get specific and just say what you gotta say about me. There's no NDA. No one is stopping you. Stop hiding behind other people and just say it yourself. What's the beginning? Cuz I'm really tired of waking up and seeing you using this fake drama to distract from other going online for you. Not interested. I know what happened and so do you. So talk. Unless the fake narrative that you're creating happens to be way more more interesting than the truth, I have nothing to hide when it comes to you and me. So unless you actually have something to say, I'm out. This is over. Have a good Monday everyone.

[Katie]

Thoughts?

[Caroline]

Well, first of all, Alex Earl famously commented on this video saying okay on it in April. So three months ago. Have not said anything. I mean my, my first thought, first and foremost, this video has 1.2 million likes, which is a ton of likes. Alex Earl's comment on the video has 730,000 likes. If you're Alex Cooper, that's a scary ratio. That's a lot of likes for a comment on a video. What do I think? I mean, I think it's emblematic of how Alex Cooper deals with confrontation and how she also manages the Internet. And I think that the way that Alex Earl has replied is also emblematic. There they are. Both.

[Alex Cooper]

Both.

[Caroline]

It's like watching two Pokemon in a battle and you're like, well, they're both, they're both playing their greatest skill set. So I don't know if one is winning more than the other. I think we have no clue at this point.

[Katie]

And in some ways, I think this is really a page out of Dave Portnoy's playbook. This is her going onto the feed and saying, you're being a bitch and I'm not going to pay you what you want. It's very direct. She's basically calling her bluff. She's saying, if you're going to vaguely take shots at me, people are going to wonder what's going on and if you're not going to tell them what your problem is, then just stop talking about it.

[Caroline]

Well, and I also think that Alex Cooper very well could be moving into the, the realm of a Kardashian esque empire where, like, she is farther along in her career. I do think she has more stability in what she is doing. And I do think, like, again, the Kardashian playbook is you ride out audience sentiment. You know, they're going to hate you one month, they're going to hate you, they're going to love you the next. This month, you don't give a shit. Like, you're like, I have my company.

[Katie]

Way to weave that thread back in.

[Caroline]

Absolutely. I'm like just going back and forth between Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift. But, like, sincerely, I. And Taylor Swift is good at this too, but Kim Kardashian, I think, has made this a gold standard where she like, does not care if she is not liked this year because she has such a long game vision for her business. And I do think that that could be a little bit of an element of the Alex Cooper world. World.

[Alex Cooper]

Yeah.

[Katie]

You're probably onto something, especially when you consider how much she has already built and how loyal her audience is.

[Caroline]

Right. Like, there is a stability to her podcast that I think will weather certain things.

[Katie]

So at this point, people think that Alex Earle is intentionally saving this for her Netflix show, which is allegedly forthcoming. Although the date has not yet been announced. No one check in on Caroline.

[Caroline]

The night that that drops, I'm just sweaty and exhausted. Busted. At a Motel 6

[Katie]

Hitachi Magic Wand just out of battery in the corner. All right, I'm gonna have you read this from the show's announcement on the Netflix site.

[Caroline]

Gen Z's Ultimate It Girl, Alex Earl is giving her fans an unfiltered look at her life like never before in Earl Meets World, a new unscripted series arriving in 2026. Oh, so it's got to come soon. Featuring Earl's blended family, including her sister and fellow creator Ashton Earle, as well as her vibrant group of friends, the series Will document the real time messiness of a young woman in transition.

[Katie]

The real time messiness of a young woman in transition.

[Caroline]

I'm not a girl.

[Katie]

Is that how you would describe Alex Earl?

[Caroline]

Yeah, she's just. She's just a girl. She's just a girl. She's a tree grows in Brooklyn. Brooklyn. She's just figuring it.

[Katie]

A messy woman in transition.

[Caroline]

A young woman.

[Katie]

That is the brand. The brand isn't a 25 year old who has already had at least one $20 million exit from an angel investment, who sold out her first skin care line in a day. The woman who has established what is arguably the most impressive online career of this decade, if not this century. The woman who's Alex Earl at her job. I know, I was like, jerking it

[Caroline]

under the table, okay? I gotta say, I don't have an effective businesswoman of the century, but.

[Katie]

No, that's not what I said. I said the most impressive online career of this decade. Who's better? Maybe Mr. Beast, but Kim Kardashian? That's humiliating.

[Caroline]

I think we're splitting hairs at this point, but I see your point. I mean, she is.

[Alex Cooper]

By.

[Caroline]

She is. There are very few people who have reached that level of fame and financial success from talent TikTok so far. I think, of course it's true that. That algorithms are racist. And of course she had to be white and blonde to do this. But it's worth noting, there are millions of white blonde girls who are doing exactly what she was doing. Like, it is still unprecedented to be the one who. Who makes it. To be the pony who wins the race, so to speak.

[Katie]

Yeah. And to do all of that, navigating the almost unachievable balance between being or appearing likable and relatable and like a girl's girl despite, ach. Massive success as a young woman.

[Caroline]

Right.

[Katie]

But no, this is a show about a normal girl in the messy middle of transition. It's like, that's bullshit. No, she's not. But if we were to really acknowledge how absolutely and totally she has won the game, well, there it all goes, Right? We don't want to see that. If this were truly an authentic depiction of her life, it would be a show about an extremely savvy businesswoman with an incredible management team who has the world on a fucking string, but you can't be seen wanting it. You can't be seen. Knowing you, that's mean girl shit. Okay? You can't be seen making hard decisions and choosing work over friendship. Mean girl shit. That's the mistake Cooper made. And it is one that Earl seems wise enough to avoid at this point. Cooper's big blunder was believing that she could operate like her mentor Dave Portnoy and get away with it. So I found this payroll piece in a trade publication called Status News that included some reporting I had not seen elsewhere. Apparently this comes from someone on Earl's team. If you will please read Cooper's public

[Caroline]

challenge for Earl to come forward with her complaints. Quote was like Christmas came early for the show and Netflix. One person familiar with the project told Status Quote originally she was not allowed to discuss Alex at all on the show. And this gift came out of nowhere. Okay, I wonder what that means. She was not allowed and now she is like. Like she can now respond to the TikTok and not the deal itself.

[Katie]

So it's. It's looking a whole lot like she baited her into saying something so she could talk about this on the show. I think Alex, Earl is operating with a level of savvy that she completely obscures. And that is what is so ironic about how this story has been broadly metabolized where Cooper is the manipulative strategist and Earl is just like the caught in the middle chick. I think they're both fucking operators. I think they've both made a lot of money on our cultures. We willingness to make young women rich and famous on the basis of their ability to perform disclosure and relatability very convincingly. And you know what? I don't fault them for that. And this is the Faustian bargain that I think a lot of these women make, whether they realize it or not. Because when relatability and parasociality are the terms that you are selling yourself according to, those are then the terms that you are agreeing to be judged against by that audience. So when you were saying assert, as Alex Cooper has many times, well, no, actually, this is a business, and I am in business, and I am making decisions accordingly. Something that has been true the entire time and is true for both of them. It feels like a betrayal. And I think they are both very smart and have excellent business instincts. And I think where Earl has succeeded in ways that Cooper has failed in the court of public opinion is that Earl is smart enough to hide that. She is smart. She is smart enough to pretend that this is all happening by accident. She is smart enough to pretend that it's not really about business for her. Because on some level, and maybe it's subconscious, I think she appears to understand that we really only have that one language for Understanding women, we only have this one lens, especially in the world that they have agreed to perform in the way that they have gotten famous. There is one lens and it is likability. You are either a mean girl or a girl's girl. So that is the language that we use to describe and debate what are ultimately business disputes between two business women.

[Caroline]

I agree. I freaking agree. I couldn't agree more. I know that it is the most obvious thing, but I, I, I do think that, like, it's something that you have to say again and again, which is just, it is bizarre the way we classify women. It is so bizarre that we are classifying them based off of how nice they, they weren't even friends. Like, they actually didn't owe one another anything from the jump. This wasn't even like a, an Alex and Sophia thing where there's the illusion of friendship or like, I'm thinking about Summer House where it's like the friends are pulled apart. They were never even friends. They, they didn't even know each other. But I will say, I mean, Alex Cooper is pregnant. And I, I've been thinking about that quite a bit because there is her opportunity to rebrand once again. Again, that is going to be a massive opportunity for her in the court of public opinion. It is very hard to scandalize a new mother that makes you look really bad. And so I do think that there is another moment for the shifting of tides, the half life for these kinds of stories and the length with which, like, the dog years with which a woman's career plays out online. I mean, in a year, we could be in a totally different scenario. Scenario. Alex Earle could date the wrong guy. Alex Cooper could become a little mommy blogger. Like, a million things could happen where all of a sudden, again, it's flipped. And the, like, the, the mean girl and the girls girl moniker are only as fresh as your most recent piece of content. They are not eternal brands. And women move between them as frequently as they do between, like, the Madonna and the, I mean, again, you see this. Kim Kardashian has gone through a million rebrands with this moving between these two things. Things Taylor Swift, every success, I mean, Beyonce, all of these women move so cleanly between, like, these conservative, traditional visions and getting racy. And I think the best business women do both because it keeps it interesting.

[Katie]

That is such a critical point. Yeah, I'm so happy you said that. And, and you know what? Part of the deal, part of the bargain, I think, is that you recognize and accept that you're going to get both. It's like you said about Kim Kardashian, and it's like part of the entertainment is allowing them to hate you. People want to feel right. Part of Alex Cooper's entertainment value is the fact that she kind of stabbed her former co host in the back.

[Caroline]

And like, it's so true.

[Katie]

Getting to be picked apart in that way as like, are you Team Alex or Team Sophia? This is I think that that's what's going to make it really interesting for Earl.

[Caroline]

You know that it's a feature, not a bug.

[Katie]

Yeah. Yeah. And like, that you are going to move back and forth. And you're right that it is really about the last controversy that determines where you are. Nothing is permanent. I think that's a really, really good point. Okay, cool. That's it.