Last July, there was big news, at least for the podcast world. Bobby Althoff signed off. In 2023, the then 25-year-old started The Really Good Podcast. At the time, she had a large following (approximately 1.2 million) on TikTok, which she had built by posting parenting and pregnancy-related content, but she had not stepped into the world of podcasting. So it was hard to believe that just a few months later, she would be interviewing Drake. This was a major acquisition for the fledgling host, making her a source of fascination across the internet and spurring the explosive success of her show. By the end of last summer, The Really Good Podcast had 8.2 million followers on TikTok and 3.9 million followers on Instagram, and also counted Scarlett Johansson, Offset, Jimmy Kimmel, and Michael Cera as guests.
She said goodbye but didn’t actually leave. Althoff, now 28, was already planning his next show before announcing he was ending his podcast. Not This Again debuted less than two months later in September. The new pod gave Althoff a chance to rebrand, returning to her sarcastic roots with a larger team, higher production values, and wisdom gleaned from the first show. The Really Good Podcast started on a lark, but Althoff is building Not This Again more deliberately. The second season, which debuts on February 18, will take place in parallel to Althoff’s life-changing moments. As part of her desire to pursue a career in comedy, she is appearing at the Netflix Is A Joke Festival in May, a show called “Bobby Althoff Tries Stand Up.”
Working in the entertainment industry was unexpected for Althoff himself. She grew up in California as the second oldest of six children in a family that lacked financial stability. Her father is a construction contractor, and her parents divorced when she was in high school. After graduating, Althoff worked as a nanny and earned a two-year degree in political science from Santa Monica College before marrying her now ex-husband in early 2020 and welcoming their first child soon after. She had planned to transfer to the University of California, Davis, but postponed that due to the pandemic and the birth of her daughter. Instead, she found success in 2021 by joining TikTok and posting funny videos about motherhood. An early post of her dancing with a banana was a hit. But making a living as an influencer meant constantly going viral, which became exhausting over time. So she decided to give podcasting a try. I never imagined it would be this difficult.
Althoff still can’t believe that a podcast he created without much planning became such a huge hit. She started The Really Good Podcast by playing characters who were dry, sarcastic, candid, and often completely hostile to her guests. It was weird, but it seemed to work. It featured comedians Rick Glassman and Fanny Marco, and Althoff was thrilled when Marco’s video went viral.
Then something even more amazing happened. “Marco called me one day and said, ‘Look, who’s been following you?’ I went to look and it was Champagne Papi,” meaning Drake. She quickly seized the opportunity while Artov followed her, stunned. She says the eternal online mystery of how she was able to book Drake wasn’t actually all that complicated. “I DMed him and asked if he wanted to be on the podcast. He said yes and that was it,” she says. “That was really it.” Althoff hopped on a plane and flew to Memphis, where he met Drake mid-tour.
This interview went viral and became a source of endless conversation. Unlike previous episodes, which were filmed in a studio, the two recorded this song while sitting in bed. However, it wasn’t actually a bedroom, but a set built backstage at the arena before his show. (Mr. Althoff said he liked that by interviewing Drake “in bed,” it gave the impression that he was so eager to do the interview that he didn’t interrupt him in bed.)
The exchange from the jump was awkward. While Drake was drinking cocktails, Althoff insulted Drake’s name, criticized his unmarried status, and questioned his talent. (This was a year before Kendrick Lamar went viral for his Drake-dissing song “Not Like Us.”) The song became wildly popular, garnering more than 10 million views on YouTube, far more than any other episode of the podcast. And for Althoff, then a mother of two young children and recently separated from her husband, many parts of her that had been a source of fascination turned dark. People called her an industrial plant, suggested she was sleeping with Drake, and questioned her age and parenting choices.
“‘Not This Again’ was just a great name. Because who would have wanted this? No one would have.”
For Althoff, her role on The Really Good Podcast was a parody. But as viewership skyrocketed, maintaining that persona became increasingly difficult. “There was a character I was playing that worked really well, but over time I kind of abandoned that character,” she says. “The comments got to me. I had enough people calling me a bitch, and I was done. I was going to try to be nice and friendly and whatever… At some point, my podcast had become something I made fun of.” A new, honed, common, less sarcastic approach might not have made things so complicated, but it just didn’t work. Perhaps there was less anger directed at her online, but without the weird moments, the episode just wasn’t as fun or original.
When she ended The Really Good Podcast last summer, she needed a reset. “The name wasn’t something I put a lot of thought into,” she says. “It exploded and I was like, I’m really connected to this now. Last summer, I thought, let’s get rid of that name and start a new podcast, and it’s going to be loftier and more professional.” Althoff considered keeping the name, but thought “Not This Again” was a good fit. “It was just a funny play, because when I finished ‘The Really Good Podcast,’ a lot of people were like, ‘Finally.’ ‘Not This Again’ was just a great name.” Because who wanted this? There’s no one there. ”
With the new pod, Althoff is “going back to the characters and making them dry and witty. It’s more humor-based and we don’t know as much about the people,” she says. “It’s going to be more pretentious, which is what I was originally doing, and it’s going to be asking very intrusive questions and making people very uncomfortable.” She also goes back to previous guests. At least one of them, anyway. In the first season of Not This Again, Althoff and Drake returned to bed for another interview, this time in Switzerland, where he was on tour.
In the two years between episodes 1 and 2 of “Drake,” Althoff has been exposed to a lot. Her daily life is stable in many ways. When she’s not working, she typically spends time at home with her two daughters and boyfriend Tyler Hawkins, an NBA G League basketball player, and remains close with the same group of friends she had before TikTok. She loves interviewing people and has found herself forming real connections with some of the celebrities who have appeared on her show. But Althoff also learned that fame has a scary side. “TikTok has really opened a lot of doors for a lot of people, and it’s really great to see the results, but it can also be scary,” she says. “Life changes so quickly. One month I was just a mom in Laguna Beach taking my kids everywhere, and a month later I was being recognized everywhere I went.”
She has to be careful what she says on the podcast. When a close family friend was detained by ICE this fall, Althoff told the story on TikTok, calling the situation a human rights issue. She faced a hostile reaction and feared for her family’s safety. “If I wasn’t afraid, I could speak up more,” she says. “That’s not possible because anxiety rules my entire world.”
The risks are so great that it’s just not worth it for a mother of two young children whose safety is paramount. She keeps her children’s lives mostly private, keeping them off social media and calling them by nicknames. “There are a lot of people who are angry about politics, and my first priority is to keep our children safe,” she says. “When I get a lot of evil, evil messages, I think, ‘You guys are scary.’ I don’t want anyone to try to find me in real life because they’re so angry that I don’t agree with them.”
Althoff never expected her idea to become so important, but much of her career has unfolded in ways she never expected. She makes decisions as needed, not as purposefully as you might expect. “I’m really disorganized and just do it. I like to just throw myself into things that I’m not prepared for or equipped to deal with,” Althoff says. When Netflix approached her team about doing a live version of her podcast at a comedy festival, she suggested doing a stand-up performance instead. They asked her if she had done stand-up before. “I was like, ‘No, but I’m going to do it, so let’s see how it goes.’ Then I went to a few shows and I was like, ‘I’m not ready for this at all.’
But time and time again, her fears were dispelled. She’s made a career out of it. I hope she does it again. “It was one of those things where I stood up, waited, and thought, “This might be one of the things I really like. Interviewing people was something I never thought I’d do. It was so stressful and I panicked. I was so anxious,” she recalls. She knows that those feelings will eventually go away, and that one day her fear of stand-up may as well. She is once again trying something no one asked her to do, for reasons that make no sense to anyone but her. “I know that the stress I’m feeling right now could very well go away,” Althoff said. “I hope that happens and I hope I can get up there. Then this is really fun and I want to keep doing this.”
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