Having the talk
ALEXANDRA COOPER HAS THE POWER TO FELL DOZENS OF relationships. Just 26 years old, Cooper is arguably the most successful woman in podcasting, drawing on her own experiences to dole out sex advice to millions of listeners on her weekly podcast, Call Her Daddy. “In one episode, I was jokingly like, ‘If he does this, break up with him,’” she says. “Then I got hundreds of girls DMing me being like, ‘O.K., I did it,’ and I’m like, ‘Wait, hold on, let’s make sure that’s the right choice for you specifically.’”
Cooper and I are sitting in the lounge of the Greenwich Hotel in New York City, and she leans in conspiratorially while keeping one wary but eager eye on a group of girls in the lobby who have either spotted her by happenstance 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—ages 18 to 26, according to her agent—and she cultivates these relationships: between recording sessions in her L.A. home, she’s often direct-messaging one of her 2.2 million Instagram followers, who call themselves the Daddy Gang.
It’s that sway with a A Spotify spokesperson said the streaming service does not confirm contract figures but indicated the deal was part of a strategy to recruit big names, including the Obamas, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Dax Shepard and Joe Rogan. Unlike those other podcasters, Cooper was a relative unknown when she started her show. “There’s not a lot of people that have become big from a podcast that didn’t already have platforms,” she says. “I take great pride in that.” The Interactive Advertising Bureau predicts that podcasting ad revenue will exceed $1 billion this year, and Spotify has been expanding aggressively into this space. airs there exclusively as of July 21, and Cooper is developing future projects with the company.
