Bachelor Happy Hour - Digital Tea with Bachelor Data — Part 2

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

Today on “Happy Hour,” we’re back for part two with Suzana, aka Bachelor Data! We jump right back where we left off with a deeper look at Joey’s season and the effect it had on the franchise. Then, we dive into the elements of screen time, including moments where things have gotten a little heated for Suzana. We also discuss the differences between “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette,” who typically performs best, and her thoughts on “Paradise.” Plus, Suzana gives YOU some pointers on how to grow your own social media. Tune in now and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. I'm Jamel Hill, host to the Sports and Politics podcast, Spolitics. And on the latest episode of Spolitics, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries joins me for a candid conversation about the state of the Democratic Party. What do Republicans say to you privately that they won't say publicly? Many of them are in fear of their political lives. We continue to say to them, you were elected to defend your constituents. And there's life after Congress.

Make sure to listen to this episode of Spolitics. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. The U.S. Open is here, and on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain, I'm breaking down the players, the predictions, the pressure, and, of course, the honey deuses,

the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very wonderfully experiential sporting event. To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain, an IHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports Network. I was diagnosed with cancer on Friday and cancer free the next Friday. No chemo, no radiation, none of that. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast,

I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy-winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. Professionally, I started at Death World Records. From Mary, Mary to Jennifer Hudson, We get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it.

Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Kurt Brown-Oller. And I am Scotty Landis, and we host Bananas, the podcast where we share the weirdest, funniest, real news stories from all around the world. And sometimes from our guest's personal lives, too. Like when Whitney Cummings recently revealed her origin story on the show. There's no way I don't already have rabies. This is probably just why my personality is like this.

I've been surviving rabies for the past 20 years. New episodes of bananas drop every Tuesday in the exactly right network. Listen to bananas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is bookmarked. by Rees's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and IHeart Podcasts, where we dive

into the stories that shape us, on the page, and off. Each week, I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TVR pile. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Books is the official audio book and ebook home for Reese's book club. Visit apple.co forward slash Reese Apple Books to find out more. Hey everyone. Welcome back to Bachelor Happy Hour. I'm Joe. And I'm Serena. And we are back for part two with Susanna, who you also may know as Bachelor Data. Let's get into it. Can we talk about, because we've been touching on, you know, Daisy, Maria, Joey's season. It's no secret that

like Peter's season was huge. Obviously you said like the fastest, biggest, biggest, follower growth we've seen. And then there was kind of this decline. And, you know, we had the year with the two bachelorette seasons. And we had COVID and we had TikTok coming and like so much kind of happened in that pocket of time. And then we saw this crazy spike that kind of felt like out of nowhere with Joey's season. Can you kind of walk us through that trajectory and like maybe why that happened the way it did? Yeah. That was truly such a crazy season with social media growth. I was expecting it to do well, but not as well as it did. So to talk about social media growth, the best, one of the data points that I love to look at

is the average follower count of the final four contestants the night before hometown airs. So I have that for like, gosh, 15, 20 seasons now. Like there's been a lot of seasons since I started to track every single day that I have this data consistently. I don't have it for Becca's season, unfortunately. but I do for Colton and on. And what's interesting is we saw that big increase up until Peter's season. So that average went from 2018 to 2019.

So from who was just before Colton? Ari. Ari. From Ari's season, the final four contestant average was 163,000 followers. Then Colton's season was 460,000 followers. So that's 180% growth from that season to that. next. Then going from Colton to Peter's season, the next season it was 481,000 followers. That was just a 3% jump, but they did see bigger growth those last few weeks. Then there was a big dip

after that. So it dropped by 60% most years. So it went down 62% from Peter to Matt's season, and then 64% from Matt to Zach's season. And then from Zach's season to Joey's season, It jumped 555%. So it went from Zach's season, his final four contestants, their average, the night before hometowns, was 37,000 followers, which was nothing. Going back to Peter's season, it was 481, and then it dropped to 37K. What was the average for Matt's season? Matt's season was 182,000.

Okay. Yeah. Which, by the way, I can send you all of your follower counts from your season. oh my god i'm too scared so but why do you think that is i mean i i have my reasoning why i think it was personally is i think i think people just love joey i think joey has somewhat of uh like a a little bit of an it factor to them that people just and i think i think the younger generation like that gen z generation really just found joey attractive yeah they were crushing and they were crushing on joey and i think that was a

big a big reason for that job yeah we we also have to remember that joey's season just came came right after golden bachelor and golden bachelor set crazy records it brought so many viewers back to the franchise i think i if i remember his average viewer like total viewers for his season was like six million followers which was crazy because we were at the point where other shows were getting like two million viewers not followers viewers um so that that That brought a lot of viewership back. And then I think the casting of Joey, you know, Joey was an amazing lead. And I think he doesn't give himself enough credit.

I remember listening to him on Taylor Lautner's podcast and Taylor Lautner's podcast. And he was talking so much about learning about what imposter syndrome meant. And like, he was a lead that really fed to both generations who watched this show. He really fed to the older generations who were like, oh, this is such a cute young man, blah, blah, blah. Like that's what my mom would say, right? Yeah. Like, he's so sweet. He's so genuine, blah, blah, blah.

But then you also had the Gen Z who are just standing over him because he has like emotional intelligence and everything. And he was so, you know, respectful of all the women on his season. And then we also had the contestants who were embracing not only TikTok, but Instagram and really bringing those audiences in. And then I also think it was a big reason that it really took off was that fact that Daisy got that first one-on-one date. It was a really strong storyline that made people fall in.

love with her. And then seeing how Joey also handled the fact that she got the helicopter date, the festival, and then a concert, which were all very loud things. I forgot about that. With the cochlear implant. Oh, my God. Yeah. And then seeing how Joey handled that conversation just made people fall in love with his season and then starting to really fall in love with all the contestants. I think it was just a perfect storm season that everything went perfect. And so many people were back from Golden. Yeah, that's so interesting. The Golden element of it. I didn't even think about that. Yeah, that makes sense. Do you think

there is something to, I mean, I think there has to be, but I always feel like people are more engaged in a season, especially at the beginning of a season when they choose a lead who's in the top three. Who's like,

because like sometimes when they do like Grant, for instance, he was like, you know, I think he was like six or seven. Yeah. There's a few leads that haven't made it to hometowns. I mean, Katie Thurston didn't make it to hometowns. Grant didn't make it to hometowns.

I think Hannah Brown's the only one I can think of that didn't make it to hometowns that still ended up with like a massive season. But I'm sure a lot of that also was like timing and she was just people loved her. But you actually remember, Hannah's season actually had some pretty low ratings at the beginning. It was kind of a slow start before it took off. But yeah, normally most leads are chosen from Final Four. And there is a lot more audience momentum whenever they choose from Final Four. Because just realistically, they're going to get more screen time.

When you get to the final four contestants, that screen time is pretty evenly split between just four people instead of the typical format of each week's episode leading up to hometowns is two people get a one-on-one date where they get a lot of screen time. And then the last third of that screen time is split up between anywhere from five to 30 people. Yeah. Yeah. So I remember actually Brie Springs and I laughing because you had posted. a like screen time graph chart.

And she was like, it was a few weeks before hometowns. And she was like, you realize that our screen time combined doesn't even come close to Sarah Trott, who went home like week two. Yeah. And it's like, I feel like you see that. It's not uncommon to see like a storyline from the beginning really take charge of the screen time because it's, it's drama or whatever it may be. They have like a heartfelt past. and then up until home tones, like things don't really even out. Is that correct? Yeah. And it's really interesting. People haven't seen my page yet. I track something that we call featured screen time.

So the way that I track it, so it was initially me, but now I have a team that helps me. The way that we track this is let's say there's a group of women sitting on the couch and two women are having a conversation back and forth. Let's say they're arguing about something and they're, you know, and then Jesse's going to come in and be like, there's a two on one day. And then we're like, oh, who's it going to be, right? The camera is going to go back and forth between the two women who are arguing on the screen, right? And there's women around them. Those women don't get screen time because they're not actually featured in that moment back and forth.

So we literally, some of our screen time segments are literally one second because it'll be going back and forth between two contestants. But it's whoever's the focus of that screen time. And the way that we use this data, it's really interesting to see, especially before hometowns, Who gets the most screen time of the season and how far they made it or how early they were eliminated? And yeah, on Matt's season, so much of the screen time, the big thing, too, about Matt's season is that one of those first episodes, that one week was split into two weeks' worth of episodes. So it really, like, it was like a to be continued episode and then the rest of it aired the following week. And a lot of that screen time went to Sarah because, you know, she was considering leaving the show and she was kind of putting heads with a lot of the women in the house. and then Katie pulled her and then they talked.

There was a lot of time focused on that. And what we typically see most seasons is that pre-hometowns, the person who gets the most screen time didn't actually make it to hometowns. And that's because there was some other major storyline that led to them not making it there. I'm Jemel Hill, host of the Sports and Politics Podcasts, Politics. And on the latest episode of Politics, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries joins me for a candid conversation about the state of the Democratic Party. What do Republicans say to you privately that they won't say publicly? Many of them are in fear of their political lives, and that's been part of the challenge.

But we continue to say to them, you were elected to defend your constituents, to stand up for your constituents. And there's life after Congress. And you should be willing to actually want to be able to look back on your time in the House of Representatives, knowing that you can keep your head held high because you did the right thing. Donald Trump is gone in three and a half years, but their legacy or their failure to stand up to the extremism and the unprecedented assault on America as we know it will be with them forever. Make sure to listen to Spolitics on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Have you ever wished for a change but weren't sure how to make it? Maybe you felt stuck in a job, a place, or even a relationship. I'm Emily Tish Sussman, and on she pivots, I do. dive into the inspiring pivots of women who have taken big leaps in their lives and careers. I'm Gretchen Whitmer, Jody Sweeten, Monica Patton, Elaine Welteroff. I'm Jessica Voss. And that's when I was like, I got to go. I don't know how, but that kicked off the pivot of how to make the transition.

Learn how to get comfortable pivoting because your life is going to be full of them. Every episode gets real about the why behind these changes and gives you the inspiration and maybe the push to make your next pivot. Listen to these women and more on show. Pivot's now on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The U.S. Open is here, and on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain, I'm breaking down the players from rising stars to legends chasing history, the predictions, well, we see a first-time winner, and the pressure.

Billy Jean King says pressure is a privilege, you know. Plus, the stories and events off the court, and of course the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open. The U.S. U.S. Open has gotten to be a very fancy, wonderfully experiential sporting event. I mean, listen, the whole aim is to be accessible and inclusive for all tennis fans, whether you play tennis or not. Tennis is full of compelling stories of late. Have you heard about icon Venus Williams' recent wildcard bids or the young Canadian, Victoria Mboko, making a name for herself? How about Naomi Osaka getting back to form?

To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain. I heart women's sports production in partnership with deep blue sports and entertainment on the IHart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHart Women's Sports. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. I would love for you to share your breakdown on pivoting. We feel sometimes like we're leaving a part of us behind when we enter a new space, but we're just building. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us, I was joined by Volisha Butterfield, media founder,

political strategist, and tech powerhouse for a powerful conversation on storytelling, impact, and the intersections of culture and leadership. I am a free black woman who worked really hard to be able to say that. I'd love for you to break down. Why was so important for you to do C? You can't win as something you didn't create. From the Obama White House to Google to the Grammys, Malicia's journey is a masterclass in shifting culture and using your voice to spark change. A very fake, capital-driven environment and society will have a lot of people tell half-truths. I'm telling you, I'm on the energy committee. Like, if the energy is not right, we're not doing it, whatever that it is.

Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Kurt Brown-Oller. And I am Scotty Landis, and we host Bananas, the Weird News Podcasts with wonderful guests like Whitney Cummings. And tackle the truly tough questions. Why is cool mom an insult, but mom is fine? No, I always say, Kurt's a fun dad. Fun dad and cool mom, that's cool for me. We also dig into important life stuff, like why our last names would make the worst hyphen ever.

My last name is Cummings. I have sympathy for nobody. Yeah, mine's brown-olar, but with an H, so it looks like brown-holer. Okay, that's, okay, yours might be worse. We can never get married. Yeah. Listen to this episode with Whitney Cummings and check out new episodes of bananas every Tuesday on the exactly right network. Listen to bananas on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you think you, if you went back to, let's just call it, let's just go back to 2018 and you reviewed all.

those seasons, do you think the person with the most screen time ended up with the most followers? No. And it's typically the villain. So somebody who got like a villain type edit where there was some type of conflict in the house. They were getting along with the women or they had some big fight with the lead. That's typically the person who gets the most screen time before hometowns. But then once it gets to hometowns, it totally changes. It just goes to the final four contestants and then final three and then they really take off i also do have a data point by the way if we look at women who were chosen to be the next bachelorette from the bachelor um the only women who were chosen who were not who didn't make it to hometowns were katie thurston brit if people don't remember

britt was chosen to be a co-bachelorette with uh kately bristow yes and then the men voted the first night on which woman they wanted to actually be the lead so britt Horrible. We actually, what a horrible. We did like a recap of that episode because during like the off seasons, we did a couple like episode one rewatches like premiere episodes and we recap those. And one of the ones we did was Caitlin and Brett. And yeah, truly, truly nuts. Yeah. And then it was Hannah Brown and then Jen. So those were the ones who were chosen pre hometowns. But the rest of them, they were, most of them actually came from fantasy suite elimination. So whichever person was eliminated at the fantasy suites, that person typically became the next Bachelorette. And that was also a really nice format, too, because then at the finale in AFR, they were at that episode because they were typically shown being eliminated just before that. But they were eliminated after the tell all episode. So they were there that night to be announced as the next lead. Wow.

Okay. I'm going to throw out a hypothetical. So let's say I'm your college friend or whatever. And I'm like, Susanna, listen, I'm going on, going on the Bachelor, or a Bachelorette, from a data standpoint, what do I want to grow on social media? Like, what do I, what do I need to happen? Or what could I do? Including things that obviously are completely out of the contestants control, which is a lot of things. Yeah, yeah.

It's really just about like start making content yesterday. And this also goes beyond Bachelor, by the way. Like anybody who wants to make content, I'm still kicking. myself in the butt that I did not create Bachelor data back when Colton season started because the amount of followers that I could have gained back then on my page discovering. But like, start making content yesterday and don't be scared about the way that people are going to judge you or anything. Start a new account. Don't tell people about it. You know, I, I'm sure people made fun of the work that I did. I mean, Tino's dad on Gabby and Rachel's season made a whole post

calling me, who's this loser? Really? What? Yeah. Yeah. Wait, I feel like I saw this. Or I saw something about this. It sounds kind of familiar. Why was he mad at you? The screen time analysis. It was like, what kind of loser has the time to do this? And it's like, well, the loser that made a social media falling was able to quit their six-figure job to do this full time. Yeah, yeah, the loser that's making money off of this. You know, and that's what I say. Why was he so mad about it? I think it was because he got less. So a funny data point that I will do. I don't know if I did this during y'all's bachelor in paradise season. But a new data point that I'll do is the contestants you got less screen time than like the llama on grant season or the crabs on paradise or something

like that. And I think that episode he had like gotten less screen time than like the luggage card or something. Nice. Gotcha. That's fun. So I was just try to find fun data points like that that we can analyze like or you know like analyzing the impact that the like economic environment has. on the number of sparkly dresses that we see on the show and stuff like that. Like, I was trying to find some fun correlations that we can analyze on the show. And, yeah, I mean, what I tell people, though, is just start making content yesterday. Like, the best time to start was months ago. The second best time is to start today.

And, like, your first few videos are probably going to be pretty bad. If I go back and look at my old videos, especially back when my account blew up, like, and covering y'all season, for example, like, my content back then was horrible. like but you end up growing your craft and now like I'm now invited to be a Microsoft content like I'm part of their creator program I like my charts are way better I've now launched an Excel Google Sheets course where I teach other people how to use Excel and how to use Google Sheets but through really fun content there's so many different amazing things that are going to happen if you just start now and just don't be hard on yourself if you're going on the show start recording

your content as soon as like on the way to the airport to go film like start recording that content now, if you can. And then when you get back, like, just start, start recording everything because us viewers that really are excited about the show, we're going to want to see everything. Yeah, like, if people started doing like, pack with me to go on The Bachelor, and then obviously posting it like. I don't think they can. Yeah, but they could post it later, right? Yeah. You could post it before night one air is like throw back to six months ago. I mean, it's fun. It's engaging. Yeah. Like, I would love to see, like, how do you fit all of those dresses plus everything you need? And then How are you going to do your nails during the show?

Like, I want to know how you're packing for that. As somebody who also, like, loves to pack for things and go on vacations. Like, I would love to see that content. Yeah. Are there, I was going to say, obviously, so much can be quantified as you've shown us through your account. Are there elements that you're like, there's these things that you just cannot put into data? Like, for example, I in my eyes, Joe blowing up after.

night one like there i'm sure there's so much data to explain why that happened but i would assume there's also an element of just like the stars aligned and timing was crazy and etc etc well with joe that one made sense right because it was kind of like um with brenden and piper on their bachelor in paradise season but the opposite the way that the audience who watches this show can just suddenly latched themselves onto one specific thing that happens on the show. And in Joe's case, it was very positive. It was, we are standing this man that Becca should have not eliminated. He was amazing, blah, blah, blah.

And then when everybody starts making content about it, it's just going to propel Joe's name even more. And then on the flip side with Brendan and Piper, with their whole moment where they went on the show, they were caught on Hot Mike talking about how many followers they'd gain, how much screen time she would get people talking about her before she even got there and stuff like that. You know, that, then the audience picked up and was like, hey, that's not cool.

We are going to ride you guys down into the ground. And it became this whole social media moment. I think, honestly, throughout all the years, the things that I have analyzed that I found trends in, I typically find a reason there. Like, there are certain dates that if you get that date, you're going to make it to final four pretty much. And there are dates that you get that you're not going to make it far. And it makes sense, right? like let's save the bigger dates like the bachelorette the men who get the fireworks date most of them make it to final four and that makes sense like those are very expensive dates right but on the

bachelor it's a little different only rachel kirkconnell and juliana won um you know there there's there's a reason behind a lot of the trends that we end up finding that makes sense and then other things like villains pre 2020 they used to gain tons of followers like demi she demi bernette she gained tons of followers, and most people forget this, on The Bachelor, she got a villain edit. Like, she, the women were really not liking her in the house. She's now gotten since a better edit because of Bachelor Paradise and other shows. But we don't see that as much anymore. Villains now, it's a very different world post-2020, especially with social media and how critical we're being of contestants who, not me, but just like the audience are being of people

who get specific edits. The one that's really interesting to me is the first impression. Rose on The Bachelor versus the Bachelorette. That one is just, that was one of the first trends that people found before, even my account, was on The Bachelor, when the guy is the lead, it is like the kiss of death to get the first impression was, which is so funny to watch all the women night one be so disappointed that they're not going to get it because up until Grant's season, if you got the first impression rose, not only were your odds of make it to Final Four pretty low, but your odds of getting a one-on-one date were pretty much.

like zero because most of them wouldn't get one and then they changed it for grant season that the woman who got the first impression rose would get the first one-on-one date but on the on the flip side on the bachelorette nearly 50% of men who get the first impression rose win the show wow women's intuition it is so powerful do you do you think that anything that you have put out there in the world as far as data, the show has picked up on and switched some things up. Like, for instance, the person getting the first one-on-one also now all of a sudden gets the first date.

The first impression rose. Yeah, I do think that they probably changed the one. I don't know if it was my account because that had been, I think, people picked up on before my account. But it does make sense. I mean, look at the corporate world, right? The people who work in Excel, the data analysts, the people who do this type of work. We are the ones who drive decision-making at companies. You don't make a decision at a company

based off of your gut. You make it based off of data. So using this type of data to be able to drive decision-making, I mean, it makes sense. And I'm always happy to share that data with anybody who needs it. But one other really interesting stat that you can kind of put two and two together is like Bachelor in Paradise. The first date of the season, they rarely work out. Out of all the seasons of Bachelor in Paradise, only 22% of them are technically considered successful. But season two, the first date went to Ashley and Jared. And technically, they didn't get together until years later after yet another season of Paradise. So if you don't want to count that one, it's even less. And our season was Abigail and Noah was the first one-on-one date of the season. And I mean,

obviously, they're happily married now, but they did break up at the end of the show. Yeah. And again, like, again, you can pull that one out. There's so many people who like to be like, well, that person doesn't count because, you know, Ari changed his mind and Becca was technically the winner or people want to be like, well, technically Becca wasn't the winner. So people like to look at it different ways, but like Bachelor in Paradise, for example, that makes sense. Like, it's the beginning of the season. You know, you had Claire and Graham, you had Jubilee and Jared. Also, Jared is the only contestant to ever go in Paradise and get that first date twice, by the way. And like, Tia and Chris, Tia got the first one-on-one day and she invited Chris, but she was like really hung up on

Colton and like possibly I was there I was there for that yeah yeah there's and it makes sense right so a lot of these data points a lot of people be sitting at home and be like well my gut tells me this but and I'm the count there that's like yes your gut is right this is the data behind it I never envision being with a woman I'll just be honest I'm Jamel Hill host of the sports and politics podcast Spolitics on this week's episode I'm joined by basketball legend, Candice Parker, who stops by to discuss her candid new book, The Can Do Mindset, in which she shares why she waited two years into marriage to come out. Like when I close my eyes at night, every night, I was like, I need to find my prince charming.

Like, it was never a princess. Like, that never entered into my mind. But, you know, as I learned, sometimes life gives you things wrapped in a package that you didn't expect it. And that was just, you know, and honestly, it took me a long time to be okay with myself. Make sure to listen to this week's episode of Spolitics on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Have you ever wished for a change but weren't sure how to make it? Maybe you felt stuck in a job, a place, or even a relationship. I'm Emily Tish Sussman, and on she pivots, I dive into the inspiring pivots of women who have taken big,

leaps in their lives and careers. I'm Gretchen Whitmer, Jody Sweeten, Monica Penn, Elaine Welteroff. I'm Jessica Voss. And that's when I was like, I got to go. I don't know how, but that kicked off the pivot of how to make the transition. Learn how to get comfortable pivoting because your life is going to be full of them. Every episode gets real about the why behind these changes and gives you the inspiration

and maybe the push to make your next pivot. Listen to these women and more on She Pivots, now on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcasts. The U.S. Open is here. And on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain, I'm breaking down the players from rising stars

to legends chasing history, the predictions, will we see a first-time winner, and the pressure. Billy Jean King says pressure is a privilege, you know. Plus, the stories and events off the court,

and of course the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very fancy, wonderfully experiential sporting event. I mean, listen, the whole aim is to be accessible and inclusive for all tennis fans, whether you play tennis or not. Tennis is full of compelling stories of late.

Have you heard about Icon Venus Williams' recent wildcard bids? Or the young Canadian, Victoria Mboko, making a name for herself. How about Naomi Osaka getting back to form? To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain, an IHeart Women's Sports Production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner

of IHeart Women's Sports. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. I would love for you to share your breakdown on pivoting. We feel sometimes like we're leaving a part of us behind when we enter a new space, but we're just building. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us, I was joined by Volisha Butterfield, media founder, political strategist,

and tech powerhouse for a powerful conversation on storytelling, impact, and the intersections of culture and leadership. I am a free black woman who worked really hard to be able to say that. I'd love for you to break down. Why was so important for you to do C? You can't win as something you didn't create. From the Obama White House to Google to the Grammys, Malicia's journey is a masterclass in shifting culture and using your voice to spark change. A very fake, capital-driven environment and society will have a lot of people tell half-truths. I'm telling you, I'm on the energy committee.

Like, if the energy is not right, we're not doing it, whatever that it is. Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Kurt Brown-Oller. And I am Scotty Landis, and we host Bananas, the Weird News Podcasts with wonderful guests like Whitney Cummings. And tackle the truly tough questions. Why is cool mom an insult, but mom is fine? No. I always say, Kurt's a fun dad.

Fun dad and cool mom. That's cool for me. We also dig into important life stuff. Like, why our last names would make the worst hyphen ever? My last name is Cummings. I have sympathy for nobody. Yeah, mine's brown-oiler, but with an H. So it looks like brown-holler.

Okay, that's, okay, yours might be worse. We can never get married. Yeah. Listen to this episode with Whitney Cummings and check out new episodes of bananas every Tuesday on the exactly right, listen to bananas on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts is there a piece of data or a few pieces of data that have been the most shocking to you or anything that you were like wow like i thought it was this and now looking at the

data, it actually proves something different? Yeah, I think. But again, all of them, it's like my gut was there. Like the age gaps, for example, on the bachelor versus the bachelorette between the lead and the winner, the average age gap on the bachelor is six years, whereas the bachelorette, when the woman is the lead and she's choosing a man, the average age gap is that he's a year older. It's one year versus six years. And on the bachelor, they're typically choosing women who are six years younger than them. I think that was the one that really shocked me the most. That was my age gap when I was on The Bachelor.

He was six years older than me. Yeah. What about how about for people, who does better after the show couples or like people that leave heartbroken? Because I feel like the heart broke for. Oh yeah, for Paradise. Let's do Paradise. Yeah.

I mean, Paradise has an insane success rate. Like absolutely insane. It is the show that's. going to just push out the most couples. Because also statistically, on The Bachelor of the Bachelorette, the maximum number of couples that you can get is one, because there's just one of that gender. But Bachelor in Paradise, it's pretty much 50-50. So you have a lot of potential couple pairings. I do think, especially in recent years, we've seen a lot of contestants that leave like Becca and Thomas, Abigail and Noah, because they're not ready to commit at that point, but then they keep dating and then

they end up, you know, rekindling later. You know, I definitely think the ending of paradise to be able to like, well, if you guys want to continue on past this point, you got to get engaged. And it's, you know, it is tough for a lot of couples people make that decision. But it's just, it's such a wildly successful show data-wise that even if you leave her. Like, Kaylin and Dean, like they left partway through the season. Right. And now they're married in Aspen.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they both have big social media following. Yeah. I mean, they're also great on social. But do you see like if something crazy happens on the show, like let's go back, I guess, to Piper and Brendan, right? Like there was a lot of talk around that. And I remember you creating a lot of posts around that. If a crazy incident happens on the show, do you see your own social media growth happen as well? Absolutely. And that was the craziest moment during Brendan and Piper. I gained in 24 hours 14,000 followers. followers, just covering that. And it was so funny, too, because I have the most supportive partner. He went out to go get me balloons because I had hit, like, I think it was like 70,000 followers. And he went out to go surprise me to get them. I had no idea where he was going. And I honestly

didn't even notice him leaving the house because I was just like on my phone, like creating content here. Because it is like, so my data to especially with social media growth during that time, if people didn't watch that season, Brennan and Piper had kind of been seeing each other before the season, uh, started to air. And Brendan was seeing Natasha until Piper got there. And basically what happened in this moment and they got caught in the hot mic, were called out on the beach, et cetera, is that social media momentum picked up. And everybody was on this. I, I was not calling for it. But a lot of people were making content on unfollow Brendan and Piper. And they were losing thousands by the, by the every few minutes. And Natasha was gaining.

Natasha was the opposite way. And actually my video popped off because at this time, Loki was airing on Disney Plus and that was a really popular show. I was obsessed with it. So I took the theme song for that and was like showing the chart changing over time. It was so fun to cover that just data-wise. Like it's really exciting when something like that happens. And then my videos were blowing up as well. And I also saw that like during Matt James season with the controversies that happened there that blew up my account. But it was really funny. My partner, he went out to go get the balloons. And before he went back, I passed 70,000 and we got home. I was already at 75,000. And they were like, the blooms.

balloons were wrong at that point. Oh, it's the thought that counts. It was pretty cool. But yeah, these, whenever you see these big moments that happen on the show, positive, negative, whatever they are, whenever they go viral, us content creators also see it whenever we cover it. I'm going to assume based off of your father telling you, you know, you should cover something that you enjoy, that you enjoyed watching reality TV. Yeah. Doing what you do now, does that take away some of the enjoyment when you watch? Yeah, like when you're tracking, are you ever like, I'm tired of this grandpa? Like, I don't want to track follower counts today.

Yeah. Well, I have an amazing person on my team that takes the screen time data. And that's what it was like during. So I've had people help me on and off. So back when I first started tracking screen time, it was really hard on me because I was working as a technology director. I ever saw a team of 40 people. It was a big school district, especially like this.

was coming out of COVID. We were working on a big project in our district, migrating our student information system. My life was really busy. And I'd basically worked like 10 hours at my day job and then come home. And then I would work on Bachelor data. So I've had amazing people have helped me along the way with the screen time collection. But the times that I took that on to do myself, it really, it did take away from it. It was like a four hour job early on for me to do because it's an Excel spreadsheet. And it's a lot of stop, start, rewind. tedious.

Yeah. And I know a lot of people have approached me and they're like, why don't you just like machine learning like train a thing? And it's like, well, this takes the human element of figuring out like who, like you have to really discern who is the focus of this moment that the audience is going to be focusing on. And then how do we split it if it's really multiple people in this moment or do we just do one second every time it changes? It does take that human element. And that really did drain me for a while. I will say it is tougher on season. where I know the spoiler and I'm not excited about who wins, that kind of impacts it. I do, I always look forward someday to be able to like watch a season and not be spoiled. But it's really hard to as a content creator for this show because so many people will, even like on my Instagram account, I haven't said that the only people who can comment are people who follow my page because like it does get pretty bad with people just commenting Spoilers. Yeah.

But I do really want to watch a season someday without knowing the spoilers because I do think that that will change it. But I will say on the flip side, sometimes I know the spoiler. Like Daisy, Daisy Joey Kelsey, like that whole season, I knew Daisy Joey were, or Daisy and Kelsey were final too. And based on their social media presence, I was like, this is going to be an awesome season. Like, I got so much more excited for it.

But I've had my moments. I think 2023 was a tough year. but also because I was seeing the data and like social media growth was low so I wasn't having a lot of fun analyzing it and every week it was like oh wow the most growth we saw this week was like 800 followers and like back in the day we used to see like you know like Joe you gain 10,000 followers overnight like yeah that's got to be much more thrilling to like watch us like crazy yeah you want to see anomalies you want to see like highs and lows and like big changes I guess, versus like the creepy crawly of it all.

But what do you think about them not doing the Bachelorette this year? Listen, I get it. I get it from the business perspective, right? Like last year was tough. There were, you know, we had Golden Bachelorette. We had Jen's season. You know, we all saw what happened with certain people getting cast on the show. You know, ratings have been tough the last two seasons.

So it makes sense for them to kind of regroup. let's figure out casting how to make this you know how to really get casting right um especially because we saw casting get right for joey's season and we saw how perfect and amazing of a season it was and it also makes me excited because it means that there's more budget now that they can put into bachelor in paradise which is personally i've always much more enjoyed bachelor paradise than the other shows like i i do love the other shows but i love paradise because it's you get so many more potential couples from there and it's really exciting because so many end up moving on and getting married and having kids.

And now we have lots of paradise babies and stuff. So I think it makes sense from the business perspective. Personally, I miss it. Like, I would have loved to see a Bachelorette season. Even if they had brought in, you know, there were rumors that they were possibly going to bring on Victoria F from Peter's season. She would be a great. She would be so good.

Man, that mess, it would have been so fun to cover that season. Like, the way that, she just generated so much fun mess back then. Like, I would have really enjoyed that, you know? And I also think, I mean, like, there's obviously exceptions on either side of this, but she's been on The Bachelor. She went far. She went all the way to Fantasy Suite. She's been on Paradise. I do think there's something to be said for a lead that has experience being on the show and, like, their ability to kind of bring more to the position just because they've been on once and went far or twice, you know, like Colton, I think.

I mean, I personally think if you bring, if the show and we're running out of time, so we got to wrap. But if the show brought Victoria Fuller is the next Bachelorette, I think it would be the biggest season they would have. Maybe, maybe ever. Because I think every, I feel like 95% of Bachelor Nation fans would watch the season. And then you would get so many new people as well. I think it would be great. That's what I would do if I was in general.

Just throwing out his own stats. Yeah. Yeah, just, I'll just make a shit up here. Susanna, thank you so much for coming on our podcast. Yeah, before we let you go, is there anything else you want to touch on or talk about? Yeah, absolutely. I'm so excited for Paradise this summer. I'm so excited to see what they're going to do, what they're going to shake up.

Maybe they'll let the contestants film content while they're there, fingers crossed. I think that'd be so fun. But yeah, and if people are new here and if they haven't seen my page, come check me out. I also have Excel and Google Sheets courses. If you guys are interested in learning how to use those platforms in an actual fun way and not with boring people on YouTube, you guys can come check. that. I actually have a sale running right now too. Can you tell people where they can find that and then also your Instagram handles? Yeah. It's just going to be in my bio. I'm Bachelor data

across all platforms, Instagram, TikTok, and then occasionally on Twitter, or I guess X is what they call these days. But yeah, come follow, come have fun and send me your data requests. I'm always so excited when somebody finds a new piece of data for us to analyze so we can find some new trends. Awesome. And to our listeners, thank you guys for tuning in the Bachelor. hour. Make sure you download and subscribe to the podcast. Yeah, and be sure to go follow about your data. She truly posts the most engaging, cool, fun, exciting content if you're interested in this stuff. And be sure to continue listening and subscribing to Bachelor Happy Hour as well. Thank you so much for listening. Bye.

I'm Jamel Hill hosted the Sports and Politics podcast, Spolitics. And on the latest episode of Spolitics, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries joins me for a candid conversation about the state of the Democratic Party. What do Republicans say to you privately that they won't say publicly? Many of them are in fear of their political lives. We continue to say to them, you were elected to defend your constituents. And there's life after Congress. Make sure to listen to this episode of Politics on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you get your podcast. The U.S. Open is here. And on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain. I'm breaking down the players, the predictions, the pressure. And, of course, the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very wonderfully experiential sporting event. To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain, an IHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports Network. I was diagnosed with cancer on Friday and cancer free the next Friday. No chemo, no radiation, none of that. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy-winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. Professionally, I started at Deadwell Records.

From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it. Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Kurt Brown-Oller. And I am Scotty Landis, and we host Bananas, the podcast where we share the weirdest, funniest, real news stories from all around the world. And sometimes from our guest personal lives, too. Like when Whitney Cummings recently revealed her origin story on the show.

There's no way I don't already have rabies. This is probably just why my personality is like this. I've been surviving rabies for the past 20 years. New episodes of bananas drop every Tuesday in the exactly right network. Listen to bananas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. great books take you places, through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello

Sunshine and IHeart Podcasts, where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week, I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Books is the official audio book and ebook home for Reese's Book Club. Visit apple.co-forward slash Reese Apple Books to find out more. This is an IHeart podcast.