The female version of the Joe Rogan podcast?

OMG, she's going to be the soon sister in law of Taylor what's her name and then the Swift Nation will start to open a giant tent city around her home.

Kylie Kelce’s Podcast Rules

She unseated Joe Rogan on the charts. I can see why.

By Lyz Lenz, Quartz Media

Dec 18, 202412:23 PM

A lady with long light brown hair wearing a black oversized coat.

What’s not to love about Kylie Kelce? She’s funny. She’s pretty, but in a normal suburban mom kind of way. She says “fuck” a lot. She’s charming. She wears the most normal clothes—athletic gear mostly. She’s not just the kind of girl you could get a beer with, she is the kind of girl you probably do get beers with on a regular basis. She’s relentlessly normal. And, she successfully dethroned Joe Rogan as the No. 1 podcaster in America. To be specific: Earlier this month, her brand-new podcast, Not Gonna Lie, held the top spots on the Spotify chart (where it remains No. 1 as of Wednesday) and the Apple chart (where it now sits at No. 2, below The Joe Rogan Experience). Joe Rogan had to work his way up from Fear Factor host peddling conspiracies, while Kylie Kelce has simply glided to the top with an iced Dunkin’ coffee in one hand.

If you have not yet been introduced to this woman, let me explain: Kylie Kelce is a former college field hockey player, and is married to retired center for the Philadelphia Eagles Jason Kelce. Which means that she’s also, colloquially speaking, the sister-in-law of Mr. Taylor Swift himself, Travis Kelce, who also plays football (or so I’m told). She’s a mom to three girls and last month announced she’s pregnant with their fourth child, also a girl, a fact that made national news.

Kylie Kelce didn’t want to be famous. She met Jason on Tinder, and was oblivious to the fact that he was a big-deal sports guy when she swiped because “none of his pictures showed Eagles football.” She seems to have been memorizing the words to “Love Story” in peace, just like the rest of us—until she suddenly found herself as part of Swift’s inner circle. “When I said I ‘prefer to be behind the scenes,’ I very much mean that,” she says on the first episode of her podcast. ”I don’t like attention on me.”

But tough shit, because everybody loves her. Her guest appearances on the Kelce brothers’ podcast, New Heights, where she takes no prisoners and acts as a bemused Bert to her husband’s Ernie-ish antics, endeared her to audiences of football wives (who, I would imagine, are also probably married to large adult boys). In November, she announced she was striking out on her own: “I’m just as shocked as all of you that I’m starting a podcast,” she said in an announcement.

The internet makes unlikely and unwilling stars, forcing fame on people who have no business being in the spotlight. Turning that spotlight into something more lasting is a difficult enterprise, and an enterprise she didn’t need to take on. Kylie could have stayed there in the background Getty Images, making sponsored reels on her Instagram. Her voice could have just been lost in a chum bucket of social media speculation and parasocial projections.

But she didn’t let it. Speaking on her podcast, Kylie notes that “the last two years have forced me to turn it into a positive, to figure out how to control the narrative, and embrace it.” Which is admirable, because when the hot gaze of the internet breathes down your neck, it’s easy to be defensive. But not Kylie; she’s building an empire.

Not Gonna Lie is still in its infancy, and Kylie is still finding her way through the format. But the 40-ish minute podcast (she adamantly insists it will stay short for moms who are short on time) focuses on motherhood, fame, and football. My kids are long past the baby stage, but listening to Kylie talk about her messy floors and how her kids aren’t allowed to have toys that are weapons or ones without volume control feels relentlessly relatable. She also talks about the expectations of being “team mom” for the Eagles and how women do the invisible labor of building community among NFL players and their families, which is, again, also relatable for many, many women, who are often the “team moms” at work and in their social lives.

One admission by Kylie has already kicked up controversy. In her first episode, she says that she does child care while Jason records his podcast—and now, when she records hers, she brings in child care. Jason is just not reliably on hand to watch his own kids. “When I have to do something—coaching, something for Eagles Autism Foundation, podcast, a doctor’s appointment, even—I will schedule child care,” she explains on the show. She doesn’t seem happy about that, but also not too bummed about it either. This is just the way things are, she seems to be saying. What can you do? That too feels relentlessly and depressingly normal. People got mad about it—isn’t it frustrating and embarrassing for her? But Kylie’s audience will find it relatable to just hear someone calmly state the facts about modern marriage. It’s the water so many women swim in, after all. We are trying not to drown.

Being your authentic self, while that authenticity is also sponsored by Dunkin’, is a hard balance to strike. But it’s one Kylie does well. She’s funny, but not too funny. Goofy but not stupid. Pretty but not overworked. She contains an unthreatening chumminess. She is a transmutable presence that allows people to see themselves in her.

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And as a young mother, she connects with her audience because, rich or poor, those early stages of motherhood are psychologically complex and lonely—and often deeply emotionally fulfilling. The men are gone, let’s talk, just us girls, the podcast seems to say. It’s commiseration without threatening social order. It’s complaints, without demands, that we do the hard work of changing the world around us. No sacred cows are being slaughtered, or even shoved. No gender roles are being challenged. It functions, I imagine, how daytime TV talk shows used to function for mothers of an older generation. That background noise to the regular domestic rhythms of life, a reminder of the outside world. The mom friend who drinks wine with you at a playdate. (Cherish that mom friend.)

Don’t get me wrong. I want change. I want a new world order. I want Jason Kelce to watch his damn kids. I want women to not have to do all the work that Kylie is doing. But I also recognize the value of voices like hers, that don’t challenge the status quo, but who gently and humorously reveal it back to us. I love every minute of this podcast. And I think she will continue to be successful, not just because of who she is, but because of how she reflects the zeitgeist. We are all so bone-weary. The shouting and outrage-inducing machinations of power have worn us down. After years and years of the same conversations, our husbands are still not doing child care. We are still expected to do the invisible labor of his work and our work. And no, we aren’t happy about it, but what are you gonna do? Burn it all down? Who has the energy? So, we buy some nice leggings, make some money, build a life, make some jokes, and go on a Dunkin’ run, listen to a podcast, and try to feel less alone.