Alex Cooper said in the summer of 2023 that she was going to turn Unwell into a real media network. She did this with the kind of hope that founders often feel when they first start out. There were two blondes walking into a boardroom, that’s what the Instagram caption said. The world wasn’t ready. But now that I think about it, the more interesting story was never really about Cooper. It was about Alix Earle and Madeline Argy, the two women she brought in with her, and the competition that has grown between them since then but hasn’t been talked about.
Cooper said at the time that Earle and Argy each have a “unique presence” but treat content in “very different ways.” At first glance, that phrase seemed complimentary. Now that I think about it, it seems more like a careful admission that these two weren’t in the same lane, even though they were riding under the same flag. Earle walked in loud. She is the GRWM girl on TikTok and came in second place on Dancing With the Stars. Her reputation is based on oversharing in the best way possible. Argy came in with a different pull. Peaceful. Smarter. British. A lot of people didn’t want to hear her podcast Pretty Lonesome under Unwell. It was more like a conversation you weren’t supposed to hear.
There’s a feeling that the London part is more important than people thought. People in the UK, especially young women, have been slowly but surely becoming more interested in podcasts. The desire is there. The audience is getting bigger. Because she is good at being vague and has a dry sense of humor, Argy has become a sort of default voice in that space. Earle has been moving in the same direction, even though she has a huge fan base in the US. The Hot Mess audience wasn’t just made up of Americans, and she’s talked about her connection to European listeners in public. It’s possible that neither of them was ever completely happy with the overlap.
Fans of Earle and Unwell had something to talk about when they broke up in February 2025. Earle’s video response, in which she said she “had no idea what’s going on,” was a mix of being genuinely confused and carefully calibrated. And it didn’t matter if she was surprised or not—she was free now, and Argy stayed. Since then, that quiet difference has been hanging over both of their paths. Cooper is still keeping an eye on Argy. Earle has been rebuilding outside of it. He started the YouTube show Get Real With Me, got a reality show on Netflix, and is still building something that looks less like a podcast and more like its own small media company.
You can’t help but notice that they haven’t called each other by name in public. There’s a lot going on in that silence. Sometimes rivalries don’t come out in the open, and the ones that don’t are often the most instructive. Two content creators from different backgrounds and with different content instincts are competing for the same space that is changing. It doesn’t have to be dramatic for it to be real. To connect the dots, sometimes all you need is time and people who are paying close enough attention.
It’s really not clear what happens next. Earle’s fame hasn’t gone down since she left Unwell, and Argy’s fans have grown even stronger. If there is such a thing as the London podcasting crown, it’s not something that is given out. But it’s likely that someone will take it. That race is already going, even though it is quiet.
