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The “Call Her Daddy” podcast empire is built on intellectual deceit, teaching that promiscuity is freedom and that a woman’s prime years should be spent mastering how to manipulate men sexually instead of discerning dating and marriage. It’s no wonder that the company’s internal dynamics reflect the toxicity of the propaganda that’s been peddled since the beginning.
Several young women who once idolized Alex Cooper and her vision for a feminist media company are now disillusioned after working for her directly. In an incriminating report published by Vanity Fair, sources that include over 20 former and current employees of the Unwell Network, the parent organization of popular podcast “Call Her Daddy,” revealed that the sisterhood was not at all what it was marketed to be. While maintaining a public boss-babe image, Cooper allegedly deferred to her domineering husband on business matters and managing personnel. Instead of encouragement, verbal abuse and boundary-crossing were what the female staff said they experienced.
But why would they expect to get professional nurturing from Cooper? Right from episode one, titled “Sext Me So I Know It’s Real,” Cooper sets up a relationship with her listeners that is sabotage masquerading as mentorship. To be fair, the show’s description says of its cohosts: “In their 20s, the two exploit the f*ck out of their lives, making you feel a hell of a lot better about yours.” It was a bit like reality TV but with some self-awareness, in which the actors know they are making fools of themselves for your entertainment value. No doubt they drummed up the provocative outbursts — such as “you’re just a hole” — to generate more buzz.
But at what point does it go from being titillatingly weird content that’s hard to tune out of — like Alex Jones for sex and dating — to ideas you start to take seriously and internalize? Cooper often spoke in a paternalistic way, literally, to her loyal fans with her signature opening catchphrase, “What is up daddy gang, it is your founding father!”
After co-host Sofia Franklyn’s unceremonious exit from the podcast following the pair’s separation from Barstool Sports, Cooper tried to adapt the show into something more sophisticated, in theory. She appeared to be aiming for a millennial version of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” giving hot celebrities the safe space to spill their secrets. In reality, the only thing that changed was the aesthetics — boucle chairs and a proper microphone instead of a fratty corner office set-up. The same problematic topics persisted, whether it was threesomes, blackmail in the context of orgies and escorts, or the joys of single parenthood from a wealthy guest for whom the cost of childcare is immaterial. It mainly only matured in the sense that the horrible advice was in glossier packaging. But even if Cooper thought she had achieved the rebrand of the century, that doesn’t excuse the degenerate level she stooped to to get the show to take off.
When the show declared in an early episode, “If you’re a 5 or 6, die for that d*ck,” the implication was that women of average attractiveness by contemporary standards should overcompensate with their bedroom skills to keep a partner’s interest. Cooper and Franklyn provided a lesson on how to go through a significant other’s phone in search of evidence of impropriety. In another episode, they warned their audience that if they’re not performing oral sex on their man, “someone else is.” For practical application, they described in the seminal “Gluck Gluck 9009” episode a technique that is “every man’s kryptonite.”
Does this sound like a cute trust circle or like a cult leader stoking fear in women that their sexual prowess is their only hope of keeping a man’s attention, which is likely divided among other women anyway?
Some of their advice is just laughably contradictory, but no less insidious. In episode 24, they talked about “how to cheat or catch a cheater.” How can you advance both positions simultaneously? You wouldn’t need to learn how to catch a cheater, which they imply is nefarious enough that it’s worth doing detective work to uncover, if cheating were in short supply in our culture. But here they were, giving step-by-step instructions on how to commit infidelity. This hamster wheel logic, like most of the show’s themes, was the opposite of empowering.
In episode 28, the hosts addressed faking pregnancies. The show had a baseline premise that most men are only seeking out sexual satisfaction, so the smartest strategy women can adopt is to weaponize their sexual nature to maximize their own pleasure and make mischief along the way. In the creators’ worldview, living among men is not about friendship or courtship but a game where there are only winners and losers. And winning, in the spirit of Samantha Jones in “Sex and the City,” meant achieving the best sex and then discarding the man before he could discard you.
It’s hard to quantify the aggregate harm such a message has on the trust between young women and men in society today. If I were a young man, knowing that so many young women are disciples of a show that explicitly tells them men can’t be trusted so they have to be played, I would stay far, far away.
Then there’s the matter of the message just not comporting with scientific reality, that women chemically bond to men during sex, making casual affairs almost impossible. Cooper and Franklyn seemed to acknowledge this truth, while insisting to women that they had to figure out how to fight it, in episode 30 where they “discuss the tricky art of how to not catch feelings…” What if you’re supposed to catch feelings for the person you’re intimate with, according to biology? The most prudent advice is to secure commitment as the price of that intimacy, so that the woman is not left with the bag, emotionally.
Some of the disgruntled Unwell staff reported that their interactions with Cooper’s husband were suggestive and uncomfortable. Again, how is this unusual, given the show’s history? In episode 23 titled, “Cuckolding, Everyone’s Doing It,” Cooper and Franklyn shared “a technology hack to help you get away with murder or better yet, cheating!” If anything, Kaplan was just being consistent, taking cues from the show’s legitimization of open relationships and polyamory. Their entire business model was trafficking in engagement on raunchy stories that do the opposite of dignifying women or men. The show didn’t inspire better behavior on the part of either gender; it brought both down to new lows.
A common conservative argument since Cooper got married and pregnant has been that she pursued the most tried-and-true paths to sustained human happiness while offering her audience garbage dressed up as candy, the epitome of a luxury belief. Cooper defends: What’s wrong with “having fun” in your 20s and then settling down in your 30s? But “Call Her Daddy” was not merely about having fun; it perpetuated a degrading hookup culture that leaves scars more than it builds character. Gender relations and happiness levels were better when sex was still something reserved for a one-and-only, something sacred. Based on the Vanity Fair story, it seems the couple behind Unwell is surrounded by moral and marital trouble. I imagine it’s hard to be a part of an operation like that without it finding you.
They made their bed; now they have to lie in it.
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Caroline Downey is a columnist and video personality at National Review. She is also a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum and a 2025-2026 Novak fellow with the Fund for American Studies.
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