SMNTY Classics: An Interview with Jo Piazza

Author, podcaster and friend of the show Jo Piazza offers a future cheese plate while discussing her upcoming book The Sicilian Inheritance and her podcast Under the Influence. We chat about family history, murder, motherhood, and the influence of the internet, good and bad in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha and welcome to stuff
I've never told you a productive of iHeartRadio. And as
we enter the final stretch of twenty twenty five, the
holidays barreling down towards us, we're bringing back some of

(00:28):
our favorite episodes as classics for the year, and we
have a lot. We both chose some and the list
is quite long, so we get excited about some of those.
I'm still toying with the idea of the now that
terminus our fiction is over doing the playlist.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Gotta do that.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
But in the meantime, we thought we'd bring back this
interview we did with Joe Piazza, and this was when
her book The Sicilian Inheritance had just come out and
she was also talking about her pots cast under the Influence. Unfortunately,
we have not been able to meet up in person,
nor have a cheese and wine book hangout thing that

(01:10):
we've discussed, and it is a travesty, but I have
faith Joe. She's around, She's always doing stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
She's been busy. She's busy.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
I see her name pop up all the time. Yeah,
and she's also we talk about childwives in here, which
is a big conversation that is still happening, and I
do think.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
My mom asked me about this other day. She said,
do you still like reading?

Speaker 1 (01:36):
You used to love reading, and I when it gets
cold outside it's rainy like it is now, I do
like like getting in a blanket and reading a good book.
So if you haven't read this yet, I would recommend,
And if you have any book suggestions, please let us know.
But in the meantime, please enjoy this classic episode. Hey,

(02:03):
this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stephone never
told you plecture. iHeart radio, and today we are so
thrilled to once again be joined by friend of the show,
hopefully real life friend you can never meet in person.

Speaker 4 (02:25):
I'd love that.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Oh my gosh, me too, Joe Piazza. Welcome, Joe, Hi,
thank you for having me, Thank you for coming on.
You have been on the show before.

Speaker 4 (02:36):
I have, I have. It has just it's been a minute,
and it's been too many minutes, I think, because I
love chatting with you and we should just be friends
in real life too. We should just do this in person,
like in a bar.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
That would be fun, that would be a delight.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
I was gonna say for me because I have I
was not on when you came on, but I'm like,
you have celebrity to me because I'm like, in our world,
podcast world, you're such a big name. So I'm like, oh,
we're gonna get the insight we wouldn't get like the
real pro tip.

Speaker 4 (03:04):
Here because I've been doing this forever and mostly because
it's the only skill that I have. I can make
podcasts and I can write books, and in the zombie
apocalypse or the chat gpt apocalypse there I have nothing left,
Like I have no skills. I'll just be irrelevant.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
To be honest, I don't know. Those are pretty big skills.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Like someone needs to tell the stories when all of
us but one person dies, you have to leave that story.

Speaker 4 (03:27):
Just pick guys. I just pictured me running around chasing
zombies with like a microphone, with like my zoom microphone.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
Be like, hey do you feel today?

Speaker 4 (03:33):
How do you feeling at the end of the world.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
You get on social media today, braids.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Braids, Well, oh my gosh, you have been on here before,
but it has been a minute. Yes, But for people
who don't remember because that was before the apocalypse or
missed that episode, can you introduce yourself to our listeners.

Speaker 4 (04:02):
Hi listeners, I am Joe Piazza. As we mentioned, I've
been making podcasts for a while, for about seven seven
years now. I started out making the podcast Committed, and
now I produce Under the Influence, which is about all
of the ways that the Internet and social media are
ruining our lives on a daily basis. And I'm also

(04:23):
an author. I write novels about women doing adventurous things,
and the latest one is The Sicilian Inheritance, which is
just a delicious romp and murder mystery in Sicily that
comes out in April.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
So the delicious romp makes me know that you really
are an author.

Speaker 4 (04:42):
Exactly exactly, just a delicious romp everyone, of a murder mystery,
of a murder mystory.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
That's amazing.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Okay, Well, on that note, can you tell us more
about the book, because I was reading the description and
I'm very interested.

Speaker 4 (04:59):
Oh my gosh, guys, it's so good. So I will
tell you this, and I don't say that lightly, but
The Sicilian Inheritance is the best book that I've ever written,
and I've written a lot of books. At this point,
I finally just sat down and I wrote the book
that I would want to read. I want to read
something that is fun, that is fun, but also that

(05:21):
doesn't make me feel gross or bad about myself. So
not just a bunch of smut, even though we've got
some smut in the book, but not not too much,
and that you walk away feeling kind of smart. So
it's set in two different timelines, and it's loosely based
on my own great great grandmother's murder in Sicily about
one hundred years ago, and the modern day protagonist returns

(05:44):
to Sicily to try to solve her own great grandmother's murder,
and they both are confronted with the nefarious forces of
the modern day mafia. And they're both strong, headstrong women
trying to make it in very male dominated field. Sarah
Fina from nineteen o eight is trying to be a doctor.
Sarah is a restauranteur who you know, she's a chef

(06:06):
in the very male restaurant world. And it's all set
on the beautiful, rugged, and sometimes slightly terrifying island of Sicily.
Oh okay, can you guys tell I'm still perfecting my
elevator pitch.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
No, that was great, you got me hooked.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
I'm like wait what, I have so many questions because also,
like you said, loosely and I was like, loosely based
on what how much?

Speaker 3 (06:28):
How much of it?

Speaker 4 (06:29):
So so loosely based actually, so it's really and we're
gonna we're about to get into podcast territory here. So
we all I knew was that my great great grandmother
Lorenza had been murdered back in Sicily. Her husband came
to America, all her children came to America, she stayed behind.
We didn't know why, maybe to sell land or because

(06:52):
it was safer for a while, and she was killed
before she came over. It's just family lore. And for
all I knew, it could have been made up because
my family's Italian American and their liars they just like
they make up stories, right, And so I didn't know.
But I was fascinated by this idea of this woman
alone in Sicily, and I based my book off that
without knowing anything else. But because I'm a massive ambition

(07:18):
podcast monster, I decided to create a true crime podcast
where I try to solve the actual murder. Oh that
we'll be coming out in March before Sicilian Inheritance. The
book comes out in April. And we we went back
to Sicily this summer to try to solve the murder,
and I'm closer to doing it that I know. I

(07:41):
found out so much but digging around in town records,
like we found like the entry for her death in
the book of deaths in this little Sicilian town. And
my producer, Kate Osborne came with me and she recorded everything.
So Sicilian Inheritance will be your nextavorite novel and also

(08:01):
maybe your next favorite podcast. Again, I'm just I'm a monster,
I'm a content monk.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
I let it know that was coming me. My next
question was like, did you actually try to solve this murder?
And here we are with a great teaser, and I'm
so sad to have to wait until next year.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
But then as an adventure, it's.

Speaker 4 (08:16):
It's actually an adventure, and I think, I mean, I
genuinely think all of us kind of want an adventure
right now. Life has been weird, so weird lately that
I just wanted to create some things that would bring
people joy and the right amount of escapism, and I
think that we managed to do it. So I'm just
I'm really excited about about these these things coming into

(08:39):
the world.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
That's amazing.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
So I have I have many follow up questions about that,
but one of them, oh, I will. So you have
written a lot of books. You have written a lot
of books in a lot of different genres. How was
this different? You've said like, it was nice to get
to write something you really want to read. But also

(09:04):
every time I watch like any kind of mystery or
a murder mystery, I'm always like, how did did you
know the ending? When you started out like leaving all
these clues?

Speaker 3 (09:14):
No, no, I please explain.

Speaker 4 (09:18):
So I am not woo woo about anything, except now,
after doing all of this research, I think I may
be like a Sicilian witch or something because some of
the stuff that I wrote without in the novel again
fiction fiction. It's the Sicilian Inheritance is fiction. But then
when I started reporting out my great great grandmother's murder,

(09:39):
some of it was the same. Isn't that creepy? It's creepy.
But so I when I write, and sometimes I co
write with another person, my co writer, Christine Pride, and
we've done two novels together. We are not like them
and you were always mine and she is an outliner.

(10:00):
I drive her crazy because I won't outline. I have
a general idea and then I sit down and I
write two thousand words, and I don't know what's gonna
happen next, like have a vague But with the Sicilian
Inheritance especially, I did not know the ending, like it
just popped into my head. And I'm only woo woo
about the fact that I think that ideas like come

(10:22):
when you just like start putting in the work, when
you start creating the characters in your head, and it did.
It just started coming to me in bits and pieces.
And the ending is a real banger. But it was
not where I thought we were going. Okay, yeah, yeah,
so I know. But most writers that I know like
to plot and outline the whole thing and like really

(10:44):
know exactly what's gonna happen. It does drive my editors
crazy sometimes too, because they're like, so, what's gonna happen
happen at the end of this book that we just bought,
And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (10:58):
Your guests is as good as there.

Speaker 4 (11:00):
Will be an ending, but I don't know what it is.
They're like, Okay, we have a lot of faith in you.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Okay, okay, Well by now, yes, obviously, because you've written
a ton of books that have been successful.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
So I'm sure they're like, yeah, okay, we know where
to get it.

Speaker 4 (11:15):
We don't want this process, but we know very anxious
with this process, but we will get it.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
That's interesting because I sort of do both. Samantha knows.
I'm a planner, like I plan, I outline, but a
lot of times when I write, I'm like, you just
have to write and see what happens.

Speaker 4 (11:33):
That's the thing, right, Like you don't know what I
just I think that there's magic in it. I really do.
I think there's magic in the process and that the
reader can also kind of feel that magic. But I
will say that I read some novels and I'm like, oh,
I can tell you were like sticking to a script,
like you had you had an idea of where this

(11:54):
is going, and like you just wrote to it. And
that's fine, but they do feel a little less magical
to me, right.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
But then on the other side, you can read things
and you're like, you clearly had no plan and thought
this was such a moving ending, but there was nothing
that led up to it.

Speaker 4 (12:10):
But it didn't deliver, didn't.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
So it's a balance. It's a balance, its balance.

Speaker 4 (12:16):
Although I will say so I have a lot of
the book is out with early readers right now and
we've got I've got a lot of people telling me
they end up in tears, and I'm like, good, that's
what I want to make you cry. I want to
make you cry, so.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
One of those that's fun, like.

Speaker 4 (12:32):
A good cry at the end. Right, I was invested
in this and so I had a good cry. It
also makes people hungry, so it's so filled with food.
And when I went I wrote it. I wrote most
of it before I went back to Sicily this summer.
But the only things that I added, and I kept
pulling it back from my editor, were more and more food,

(12:53):
Like I would have one meal, like, oh my gosh,
we have to put these like buttery delicious, like cornetto's
in there. And she's like really, and I'm like, yeah,
it matters. So I'm telling people like I'm issuing a warning.
I'm like, don't read this book if you don't have
access to food, like right next to you, like cheese,

(13:14):
a nice cheese plate, because you will be starving the
second you start reading it.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
You're gonna eat all things.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
Well when you would described it as a delicious romp.
I was going to ask, is it including a lot
of the scriptures for Italian food, because that's like the
first thing that pops into my head.

Speaker 3 (13:28):
But I was like, no, no, no, that's too clear.

Speaker 4 (13:30):
It is so and that's the thing. I'm like, you
know what, I love it filled with food, filled with wine.
There's like a sexy Italian dude who's kind of mysterious,
like it's got all of the things that you want.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
And from an Italian, I'm like, I just want.

Speaker 4 (13:44):
To deliver, man, And you're like, I'm kind of like,
this is what I hope for. You're gonna get it right.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
And if it's really well written that the scripture is
going to make you want that pasta immediately, Like I'm
gonna need a fly to Sicily.

Speaker 3 (13:59):
This actually that she's writing about.

Speaker 4 (14:00):
Well, so when I do all my book clubs, because
I've also i mean, I've written a lot of books
and I've done a lot of book events and they
can be really boring, and I don't want to do
boring book events anymore. So I'm going to be doing
Sicilian wine tasting, cannoli making, pasta making classes or just
events where we just eat and we could talk about
the book, but we don't have to. We could just

(14:21):
eat food and stare at each other.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
You're going to give us a personal invice. You're there friends?

Speaker 4 (14:28):
Yes, yes, because we're friends in real life. Now exactly,
I'm just nothing. I think now that in my approach
to middle age, I have decided I'm not going to
do things that don't bring me joy anymore, and like
just standing in front of a crowd and reading a
book and hate it. So I want to stand in
front of a crowd and eat a cannoli or eat

(14:49):
nine canolis.

Speaker 3 (14:50):
That's what makes me happy as you talk about the book.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
Maybe maybe not as it would make everybody else happy
as well. Yeah, exactly, know who doesn't want a cannoli?

Speaker 4 (14:59):
Everyone wants a like what brings you, what brings my
reader's joy? Food? So yes, I will bring that to them.
Blows my mind that ninety percent of the events that
I have, either they've been my events or I've gone
to other people's events, ninety percent of them don't have
any wine. And I'm like, this is ridiculous. No one

(15:25):
wants it's a crime. It's like with a crime, I
compare it to children's birthday parties that don't have adult beverages. Oh,
I go to a lot of them because I've been
breeding for seven years. So I have a six year old,
a four year old, and an almost a year old.
And when I show up at a kid's birthday party
at a play space or something, they don't have wine

(15:45):
for me, And like, what do you want me to
do for an hour?

Speaker 1 (15:48):
Here?

Speaker 4 (15:48):
I don't know any people, and I just stare at
my children's sober makes small.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
Of our parents.

Speaker 4 (15:56):
I'm not here for that. I am not here for that.
I have my four year old's birthday party this week
which we we just go in the park across the street.
Like I will not, like you know, throw like a
bar MITZVLL level party for these children at this point,
but I will make a signature of cocktail for that event.
I will, indeed for the grown ups, for the grownuts.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
It's really just.

Speaker 4 (16:22):
And a poloma is what it's going to be.

Speaker 3 (16:24):
The three piece, three piece, very important.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
Delights, so important, and that's the one I would go to.
Like I typically don't go to gatherings in general if
they have children, I'm not probably not gonna come just
because I'm like, I don't know what to do there,
but if they offer drinks.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
Yeah, yeah, and I hate it, but it's like.

Speaker 4 (16:49):
You don't know about the bar off we with our wedding,
we decided to keep the bar open during the vows.
So so Glenness McNicol, who you know is like my
collaborator on so many things and my best friend. She
married us. But she was encouraging people. She's like, if
you'd like to go get some more champagne. Cool, Like

(17:10):
this is part of it isn't really for you, it's
for them. So like you know, mill about get some
more drinks. And like people still say it was the
best wedding they've ever been to.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
Yeah, a great.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
The first so formal host Kristin Conger. I went to
her wedding and they had a pre bar opening so
that we wouldn't just stand there and we would have
drinks when they were walking down the all was like, yes, this,
I'm in favor, Yes, let's have it.

Speaker 4 (17:32):
Yes exactly. I had champagne while we were sitting up there.
Well yeah, yeah. We did a Quaker ceremony. We're not Quakers.
I'm just a fan of them. And in a Quaker ceremony.
We brought in all of my favorite cultural and religious jopes.
Like we we did we like sat on chairs and
people hoisted us up, and we're definitely not Jewish, but

(17:55):
there's so many Jewish friends that they were so skilled
at it that they're like, yeah, of course we want
to do this at your wedding.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
Will help.

Speaker 4 (18:01):
But we borrowed parts of the Quaker ceremony where anyone
can stand up at any time and say anything about you.
So it's like the whole crowd does your vows with you,
and it's it's really weirdly beautiful, like and people say
the wackiest things, like my husband's much older half brother

(18:22):
so up and was like I will always help both
of you sort out your frequent fire miles. And I
was like, thank you. That is also appreciated. Appreciate it,
Like I feel like a welcome member of your family now.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
Like this entire wedding sounds like another adventure that I'm like,
did you write about this as well as part of
like a novel, because it should be.

Speaker 4 (18:46):
I did write. I wrote about it. I wrote the
book How to Be Married, where I traveled around the
world asking for advice on how to be a married
person because it's so weird, And I did. I wrote,
I wrote a little bit about about the wedding in there,
but it was it was just a good wedding. It
was just fun. Again, like, why would you do something
that's not going to be fun?

Speaker 3 (19:06):
Yes, I don't get it, agreed.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, And now I'm I'm kicking myself that I've never
had a night where I just have a cheeseplate and
wine read a book. Why have I not done that?
That sounds amazing?

Speaker 4 (19:18):
Exactly exactly. You deserve that. Everybody deserves that. If I'm
just gonna I'm gonna start randomly when people start pre
ordering the book, if they let me know, if they like,
send me a receipt, I'm going to make sure that
a cheese flight is delivered to their house when the
book gets delivered, Like, yeah, pre order it, and then
you'll be like, oh my gosh, this cheese plate from

(19:40):
do Bruno brother just arrived. I guess it's time to
sit down and read the Sicilian Inheritance and eat some cheese.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
That sounds so okay now that I needs me want
to order like five so I can get five.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
I have.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
It's a special delivered from the author because.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
I've got exactly Oh my gosh, I'm so excited about it. Honestly,
so with the book.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
Has any of your family read it yet? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (20:19):
They have. My mom has read it. She just I
just gave her. She stole a galley from my house.
I was I had limited galleys and one was missing,
and I'm like, Mom, did you just take this? And
she's like, yeah, I did it. I'm like fine, but
like I might have to reuse it. I might have
to give it out, like you know, maybe don't eat

(20:39):
cheese with your copy of the book.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
But no wine, white wine only.

Speaker 4 (20:44):
So she's texting me, she's texting me constantly to be like,
oh my god, this is really good. And I'm like,
why do you sound surprised in all of your texts
and I know how to how to write a book
at this point. But then also she's like, wait, wait,
is this person Cheero that guide we had when we
were in Sicily, And I'm like, no, it's a totally
different person. It's fiction. It's a novel. But she likes

(21:07):
it so far. She's she's very into it. And my
family is also very into the fact that I'm solving
the murder because all of them are on the podcast.
I invited all of them to come on the podcast
to tell their version of the story, all of which
are completely different. And my uncle Jimmy is the best
because he starts out our conversation saying, Joanna, I can't
believe that you're you're digging up these old wounds and

(21:31):
this could be this could be really dangerous, Like I
can't go back to Sicily and end this vendetta. And
I'm like, what are you talking about, Uncle Jimmy. You're
a like eighty year old judge in Iowa. You're not
going to Sicily to do anything.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah, oh my goodness. Yeah, he's sounding full gangster at
this point.

Speaker 4 (21:52):
Because he still smokes like nine packs of Marborough's a
day again judge in Iowa, and yeah, and the whole family. Everyone.
Some people are like, well, she was definitely a witch
and that's why she was killed. And other people are like, well,
it was the mafia and that's what happened. It was
a hit job. But I also I was insistly during
the research. But I also worked with Ellis Island and

(22:15):
they're amazing. Their researchers are bad, so they could pull
like the exact dates and shit manifests for when all
of her children came and her husband, And they also
checked to see if her husband went back, to see
if maybe he was the one that murdered her. Like
there were all these little things and they got like
weirdly invested in it too, Like by the end there, well,

(22:36):
I think this might be what happened.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
Everybody has a theory.

Speaker 4 (22:42):
I love that everybody has a theory, and like I
still I have a couple of theories where Kate, my producer,
and I are going to go back I think in
January and like do some final digging with the police.
Reports are really hard to find if they exist at all,
but they might because Italians love keeping records. The coolest
thing really was we found what is their book of deaths,

(23:02):
which is a handwritten interesting with every death recorded in
the town. It doesn't say how they died, that's the thing.
But there are two books of deaths, and I'm not
giving too much away here. One book is for people
that died in the home of natural causes, and the
other book is for people that died outside of the
home of unnatural causes and she was in the second book.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah, so there is a bigger mystery.

Speaker 4 (23:24):
Yeah, yeah, so she was definitely definitely was not natural causes, Like, yeah,
there's there is the mystery is indeed there. So that's
what we're and we know where she died. We went
to the place where she died.

Speaker 3 (23:34):
Okay, did I miss it? Did you actually solve it.

Speaker 4 (23:37):
Or I'm still on the road. I'm still on the
road to solving it. No, So we're going back in
January multiple seasons. I think that we're going to have
some good answers in this first season that'll start in
March for multiple seasons. I do want to do other
family mysteries though, because I feel like all so many
families have unanswered weird questions that like if we can

(23:57):
like solve family mysteries for them, that could be fun.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
I mean, this is like intriguing and fascinating journey, especially
since it's your great grandmother.

Speaker 4 (24:07):
On the top of that, and we found so many
crazy cool pictures of her too, like she looks them
and she looks like a bad like she looks like
she could kill you.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
With her eyes. So maybe she was a witch, which
is even.

Speaker 4 (24:19):
Better she was a witch. I know, I know.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
If you find out that she's a witch, you have
to take that taddle on like somehow put that.

Speaker 4 (24:25):
Into business cards. No shame anywhere, witch.

Speaker 3 (24:32):
Thank you? Uh in the lineage of witches.

Speaker 4 (24:36):
We're good exactly exactly.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
Well, I'm excited to hear both the podcasts and read
this book.

Speaker 3 (24:45):
Phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
I'm also excited for the cheese plate in the wine
that goes with both and showing up.

Speaker 4 (24:51):
At your house and like cozy pajamas with both of
them and be like, heyes.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
Please, it's time to read.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
That's the way, and he does that. She'll just show
up with pajama pants and I.

Speaker 4 (24:59):
Will do you really do?

Speaker 2 (25:00):
Like do you?

Speaker 4 (25:01):
Kimmy gibbler? I call it gibblering from full House, where
you just show up unexpectedly at a friend's house.

Speaker 3 (25:09):
Always in pajama pants. Pajamas, so maybe last night.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
And when when I was a kid, my friends and
I used to do that. We would just like read together. Yeah,
so I would be very into it.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
Yeah, yes, yes, something would surprise me if I saw
you at the door are like hey, I'm here.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
I'm like, okay, come on, Okay, great.

Speaker 4 (25:31):
Let's sit on the couch. All I want to do
now is sit on the couch with my friends or
have low key hangs with my friends. One of my friends,
I ran Intoor. We were both working at a coffee
shop the other day, just like I'm gonna get my
nis done. Do you want to get your nails done?
I'm like, yeah, I do, And then we just like
walked around into errands together and that was really fun.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
A perfect day.

Speaker 4 (25:52):
Yeah, it was a perfect day.

Speaker 3 (25:54):
It's nice and I love that I have a friend.
There's so much.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
I'm again very excited about this book. I'm very excited
about this whole concept because it's such deep, like such
a deeper meaning. It's not even though it's fiction, is
bigger than fiction. Yeah, that means it's just expanding, it
continues to grow. But kind of in general, again, like
I said before, you are to me a kind of
the celebrity podcaster in my world because I knew your
name where I jumped in, I knew about your shows.

(26:20):
Committed it was an amazing show. It was so amazing, Like,
the concept was so amazing.

Speaker 4 (26:26):
People, the people were so good.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
You as a podcaster, you really do bring in some
brilliant adventures in itself, like in these conversations that you have,
including what you're working on today right now, which is
Under the Influence.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
Can you talk a little bit about that podcast.

Speaker 4 (26:42):
Yeah, Under the Influence is also also a ton of fun.
I started it three years ago when I had my
second baby, or I'm like, oh my gosh, it must
be four years ago because I'm having her Pinata's Paloma's
birthday party tomorrow. Yeah, four years ago. Wow. So she
wouldn't sleep, she was a really crappy sleeper, and I

(27:03):
would hold her because all I could do at night
while she was screaming is hold her. But then my
only appendage available was my thumb. So I'd also be
scrolling through Instagram because I'm a very involved in present parent,
and I would all I was getting served on Instagram
were picture perfect images of influencer moms in their beautiful
white linen dresses with they're all white houses. None of

(27:26):
them were covered in pee or pugh or anything, and
like their kids were all very well behaved. And my
kids have feral animals. And I wanted to start reporting
on it because I was so confused by it and
the original intention of Under the Influence was to expose
this world of mom influencers to be like, this is
all both and some of it is. And we discovered

(27:49):
that in the first season some of the world of
mom influencers and influencers in general is absolutely bullshit, but
we learned a lot more about what it means. And
so many women are dropping out of the workforce because
the workforce is not kind to women and mothers and
becoming content producers so they can be entrepreneurs and work
for themselves. And we learned a lot about how the

(28:12):
algorithm in all social media platforms is constantly manipulating all
of our brains and telling us what to think and
telling us how they think we should be. And so
the podcast just expanded from there into looking at all
kinds of digital influence, all kinds of social media, everything
from teacher Graham to nurse Graham to Sobriety Graham. And

(28:36):
we relaunched two months ago, going from seasonal to weekly
and now do two shows a week of Under the Influence,
and we're just doing interviews with everyone from tradwives who
are conservative Christian influencers who portray womanhood as these ideals

(28:57):
from the nineteen fifties to experts who will tell you
how to talk to your kids about sexting and in
a really empowering way, and it's so fun. I learned
something in every episode. And I think it's really important
for us to cover influence and cover social media the
same way that journalists would cover anything else, because it

(29:19):
impacts way more of our lives than any of us
want to admit. In the same way that I used
to be a celebrity journalist, and I thought that job
was very important because celebrities like do have such a
huge impact on humanity and culture and what people think
that they deserve a check and balance system, and I
think influencers deserve that now too, So we're trying to

(29:40):
do that on the show with an also a dose
of joy and hilarity. So I also recommend people eat
cheese while they're listening to Under the Influence.

Speaker 3 (29:50):
Everything with Jesus, everything with cheese is better.

Speaker 4 (29:52):
We should let's make T shirts that say.

Speaker 3 (29:53):
That, yes, our friends, that you get us. I think
you do, I think you do.

Speaker 4 (30:02):
Everything is better what she's I'm going to make one
right now.

Speaker 3 (30:07):
I need this, I need it, you know.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
Before we kind of jump because there's other things, Like
you said, so many things that I want to talk about,
including your Halloween costume. But before that, can you kind
of break down mom influencing a little bit because you'd
talk about it and just kind of how we got
here because you tried to expose it.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
What is it? And how are we here?

Speaker 4 (30:27):
Yeah, mom influencing And it started to get really big
about eight years ago. Mom blogging has been a thing
since the beginning of the Internet, and in fact, it
was the mom bloggers that were among the pioneers blogging.
And there were women who were writing really openly and
honestly about the good but a lot of the bad

(30:47):
of motherhood and kind of breaking down the stigmas of
how difficult it can be to be a mom, and
their sites took off like wildfire, and they were really
am some of the most popular bloggers out there. And
I don't think they get enough credit for that. In
the early in the histories of early blogging and the

(31:08):
early Internet, I think mom blogging gets very ignored. And
then when social media came around, it started morphing into
less words and more images and particularly beautiful images, and
Instagram was launched with the intent of being a beautiful
photography app. It was supposed to be the vogue of

(31:29):
photography apps. That's what the ten year old male founders
wanted it to be. So mom blogging in a lot
of ways. The trajectory then moved into this imagery of
motherhood that wasn't as much talking about the things that
are difficult, but just posting beautiful pictures of it, and
in addition to those pictures, adding branded content to it,

(31:51):
so selling us things, selling us those beautiful linen nursing dresses,
selling us all manner of organic pacifiers and blankets and
things none of your kids actually need. Because kids would
be happy sleeping in a box and playing with a
box is my best wisdom as now a mom of three.
And like literally they will sleep in a box and

(32:12):
they will play with that box, and then you could
flip that box over and use this as a table
and they'll eat off the box. You just need one box,
one box for child. They can't share the box because
they love their own box. Can not share the box.
But one box per kids.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
That's the rule.

Speaker 4 (32:27):
That's the rule in my house. Get out of your
sister's box.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
Oh, golden rules, gold golden Leeople.

Speaker 4 (32:39):
So yeah, so I mean it took off, and now
the mom influencing industry is a multi billion dollar industry
of brands desperate to work with these very popular mom
bloggers who can have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands,
millions of followers. And also they've set up, you know,
this kind of idea that this can be a career

(33:01):
for a lot of women, and it's a lot harder
than you think it's going to be. In the first season,
I tried to be a mom influencer. I hired. One
of the secrets of it is none of these pictures
are taken in real time. They hire professional photographers to
take an entire week of pictures and videos or an
entire month of pictures and videos where they change the
kids outfits constantly and they have them do all sorts

(33:21):
of different things. And we tried to do that in
my house and everyone put their foot down after about
ten minutes, Like everyone was crying.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
You know what, I agree with the children of this.

Speaker 4 (33:30):
One, including my husband. My husband was crying. Everyone was sad.
So it was it was a lot, and we talk
a lot about the dangers for these kids too, like
content babies, kids that are being used as content, and
what are the implications down the road for their privacy,
for their self esteem, for just you know, generally having

(33:53):
their entire lives put on as a show for complete
changers for eighteen years and there are a lot of
concerns with that. The first kids of mommy bloggers and
early instagrammers are finally starting to talk about it, and
they're saying, I'm not happy. I'm not happy that my
potty training was out there on the internet for everyone
to see. But again, the flip side of this is

(34:15):
that women are making their own money and staying home
and taking care of their children, which often feels completely impossible.
I've pulled it off by making podcasts after podcasts and
writing books, but I can't imagine being able to juggle.
And we have full time help too with the babies.
My mom lives right in the next town over, and

(34:38):
we have a full time caregiver here who's wonderful, who
we'd love, and we've been working with for four years now. Like,
we have so much help, and it's still I couldn't
imagine going down office from nine to six every day
and also having these three children.

Speaker 3 (34:53):
I think, joy you and I are very similar in age.

Speaker 4 (34:55):
Yeah, I think everyone's my age. By the way, I
think that's something that happens after you turn forty.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Maybe maybe you're like in my world everyone's younger than me.

Speaker 4 (35:05):
Oh see, I like I've started to be like I
also see like thirty five year olds and I'm like,
we're the same age, and they're like we're not. We're
like fifty year old women and I'm like, we're definitely
the same age and They're like we're yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yeah, I think that for some reason, But when they're
younger than me and like, yeah, you're were definitely because
I'm like I think back when I like when I
was thirty five, I did do things like that today
that makes me tired, Like.

Speaker 4 (35:28):
The truth that's truly different tired.

Speaker 3 (35:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (35:32):
Yeah, well I'm forty three now.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
Yeah, we're the.

Speaker 4 (35:35):
Same age, the same age.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
Yeah, Okay, I know.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
We've been through something including seeing this play out like
we were at the very beginning with the Facebook, with the.

Speaker 3 (35:47):
Facebook, with the Facebook, with Facebook, with the Facebook spaces
and yes, my Space.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
I was talking about my zinga site at one point,
which is still I thinks floating out there that I
can't find anymore so bad but well it will haunt
me one But like we did. We saw this trend
go from uh the blogs to to the to faith
to the face face to my Space, uh to Instagram
to now TikTok and now we're having this comeback conversation

(36:19):
of what happened to those kids? Uh where we're going
back to, like how they're reacting to Also the one
extreme of like this was a beautiful thing because it
did give uh so many women opportunity. Unfortunately, this beautiful
thing was limited to very heteronormative CIS white women, and
so that look like there was a big narratives like

(36:39):
this could be a good thing, but it's not broadening
as it's as we would had hoped with the internet world.

Speaker 4 (36:45):
Yeah, yeah, it's not. And it's the the Instagram algorithm
is so specific. It also shows you images of people
that it believes are like you and so or people
that it believes are perhaps aspirational to you because the
algorithm tells you that, that tells them that that will
keep you scrolling as we're constantly trying to look for

(37:08):
aspirational images even though it breaks our brains. And so
I have a lot of people ask me no, Well,
they say, I never see influencers of color, And the
fact is, yes, like the highest paid influencers are shame
shamefully typically these white women who look like the white

(37:31):
women that were put in commercials in like the eighties, right,
And that's finally starting to be exposed. But the fact is,
there are so many awesome mom influencers out there, women
of color, queer women, There's like so many. It's just
if you happen to be a white CIS woman, you're
probably not being shown them by the Instagram algorithm because

(37:53):
the Instagram algorithm doesn't think that they are similar to you.
So it's like you have to dig a little and
that sucks, right, because I want to be shown so
many different types of mothers, so many different models of parenting.
I want. I want to see two moms, I want
to see two dads. I want to see all of
these different ways of being a parent in the world.

(38:17):
But it only chooses to show you parenting that it
thinks is very similar to you.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
Yeah, one thing we talked about a lot on the show,
to be clear, even though a lot of people mistake
this because of the name of the show, So matha
and I are not moms.

Speaker 4 (38:46):
Do people mistake that.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
By all the time women put on lists for moms
to listen to mom influencers just because the word in Twitter.
Yeah on Twitter. Unfortunately this mom podcast or mom stuff podcast, Yeah,

(39:11):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (39:11):
Yeah, that's a bad like it was way back when
I think stuff mom never told you was taken or something.

Speaker 4 (39:19):
So I've always thought of it as like your people,
human beings in the world with mothers.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
Yes, yes, if you read the title, yeah, that makes sense.
But then like a lot of just and then we
get advertisers who really think we are too.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
We've gotten, we've had to. We we not had to,
but we advertise, which.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
We don't mind because we still obviously want to talk
about mothers because they are a part of this conversation.
But like the fact that we're not Yeah, like I'm
not excluding that. But at the same time, I'm like, yeah,
but we're not experts.

Speaker 3 (39:47):
We don't know.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
I was a nanny, yes, and I worked with children.
That was my whole like field as a social worker,
I worked with children. But I'm like, that doesn't mean
I know it looks like to be a mother, I
can be a caretaker that is completely different.

Speaker 4 (40:01):
But again well and being a caretaker also hard, also
a pain. It's all a penance to be honest. I
love my children so much, but they're a lot.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
That's honest.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
I like it well, So, yes, you're not mothers. But
we do talk about motherhood a lot on the show,
and we have. We've had a friend of the show guests,
Bridget come on and she did a whole thing about
influencing and how it impacts children. She talked about that.

(40:32):
But one of the things I find really interesting about
this conversation is there's sort of a dichotomy and a
complexity and a nuance with Yes, there is a power
of showing the mess of motherhood. There is an absolute
power of talking about that, not having this perfect thing,
because the pressure for so long that we've seen in
all kinds of media is to be the perfect mother,

(40:54):
that you're never mad at your kids, you never have
this anger. But at the same time, it's also like
you're bringing the kids to show in that mess. So
it's sort of like the complexity there of there is
something that is really helpful in that, but what are
the ways to do that without harming the kids in question.

Speaker 4 (41:19):
Without harming them absolutely. I mean I think about everything
that I say, and I post way less of my
kids than I ever did before, since I started reporting
on the impact of them emotionally, psychologically and also just
the creepiness of strangers following you on the internet. My
rule is that before I post, I look at the picture,

(41:42):
and I'm like, if I would not walk up to
the creepiest dude in Starbucks, like the guy who's like
sitting there staring on his phone, drooling a little bit,
if I wouldn't show this picture to that dude and
be like, do you want to look at this picture
of my children, then I will not post it on
social media because that is clearly in my audience. And

(42:02):
I so I do post a lot less. But I mean,
like I said, I talk about them all the time
and like, my kids are filthy animals, which they are.
So I also think I'm like, all right, I am
I saying anything that I would be uncomfortable if they
heard me say about them, And no, like I tell them,
you guys are filthy animals, and I'm very tired from
being your mother, and so I think those things are okay.

(42:24):
But there's other lines that I see crossed all the time,
and I try not to be judgmental. I think I
think it's creepy to post pictures of your kids when
they're sleeping. You do, just like you know, they're so
innocent and they don't know what you're doing, like potty
training pictures and videos will come back to haunt them later,
or they'll just be embarrassed.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (42:44):
I was talking to a parenting expert, or a social
media parenting expert the other day, and she said, you know,
even things as little as posting a picture of your
eight year old in their footy pajamas with their stuffed animals,
they might not want you to do that because their
friends might not think they still sleep with stuffed animals
or footy pitch and what if their friends saw that, so,
you know, putting yourself in your kid's shoes. But I

(43:06):
do agree that I think it's important to share the
hard parts of motherhood and the messiness because the Internet
has just gone too far into maying it seem like
we have to be perfect all the time, and perfect
and beautiful and also smart and brave and funny and
just the best and also sexy, and so now I
try to be really honest that, like, I love my

(43:27):
kids so much more than I thought I would love
having kids. Like I was never a person that was like,
oh my gosh, I must must approcreate. But I love
them and now there's three of them, which is way
more children than I expected to be in my house.
But I'm also exhausted and it's hard, and I wouldn't
not be their mother for anything, but like, sometimes I
also leave and I go on vacation without them and
my husband and that's really nice. So yeah, no, it's important,

(43:50):
so I have to leave. That's that's when I show
up at your house with cheese plates. But they Yes,
I think it's a double edged sword, like how much
should we post about our lives as mothers and how
much should we protect our children? And it's something everyone
needs to figure out for themselves. But also I do
think that these companies that are just making money off
of the images of our children Instagram, Facebook, TikTok really

(44:14):
should put more guardrails in place about what kinds of
images of children are allowed and also then how early
children themselves are allowed to be on social media.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Yeah, there's this, there's a whole different level of conversation
when it comes to who has access, who has control,
who's making money. Now with AI, it's even scarier because
people are able to use images to create their own
fantasy world. We recently talked with one of the I
guess they work with one of the bigger AI companies

(44:47):
right now, imaging companies, and I have someone that I
know has worked with them as well. And the amount
of real images they can backtrack to see some of
the images that are on their AI and no one's
stopping them. No, some of them saying like there's no
litigation or a law saying that they can't use it.
So that's even scarier, and that's something that people need

(45:07):
to realize. I don't think when we as we used
as the internet started and we were like, this is cool,
we can share things with our friends, ever thought that
this would be the point that it could become.

Speaker 4 (45:17):
No, No, we did, We didn't. And I think about
that note now too, And that is something I did
not think about even six months ago, that every time
I posted an image of my child, that image will
likely be used by AI in some way, shape or form.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
Right, Which is scary, which just scary? Yeah, yeah, which
is a whole different coversation a whole.

Speaker 4 (45:36):
Different conversation and also everything is I mean my when
that list came out from the Atlantic recently, of the
books that AI was using or that these companies were
using to train their AI machines, four of my books
were on there, and my first thought was what was
wrong with my other books? Wait?

Speaker 3 (45:56):
Did you not?

Speaker 4 (46:02):
Fine? But yeah, it's terrifying. I think you know, our
children's faces can be used to train AI or they
to make deep fakes of our children. I heard some
really scary stories from influencers with large followings where strangers
had tried to imitate them because they knew enough about

(46:24):
them and their kids to try to pull their kids
out of school.

Speaker 3 (46:27):
Oh wow, but they.

Speaker 4 (46:28):
Know it because you post the first day of school picture.
They know the kids teacher, they know where they go
to school, they know what they like and what they
don't like. They have a picture of it, and they
have a picture of the parents, and they know everything
about the parents. So like, yeah, it's creepy. It's a creepy,
creepy dark place.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
It is it is? Oh, speaking of creepy.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
Dark places, my favorite this is my transition because also
I looked into your sub sec and one of the
things that we talked about recently is a lot about
Christian nationalism in our country. We've talked about religious trauma
in itself, and of course that brings us to the
conversation of uh moms and tradwives. Yes, we had this

(47:09):
whold like we went to the red pill of everything,
and you have been talking about tradwives as well as
In fact, if listeners, if you have a chance, go,
If you're not already following Joe, you need to follow
her both substack and Instagram to look at these amazing
costume that she has created.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
You've done an amazing job.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
I loved your descriptor about having the helmet, the bike helmet.

Speaker 3 (47:36):
Yeah, it was so good. And then by the way,
I loved your book being the Baby.

Speaker 4 (47:44):
A crazy Thing. So I will say I've for under
the influence of the podcast. I have been talking about
child wives for the past two weeks. These like most
mainly pretty conservative Christian influencers who are submissive to their
husband's They you know, they have all of these rules
of like I don't do anything without asking my husband permission,

(48:05):
I don't have my own finances, I don't work outside
the home, very devoted to being in the home and
raising children. And I like to make the distinction that
is very different than a stay at home mom. Like
I respect the out of stay at home moms. You
are the CEO of a household that is a hard job,
like that is childlife is not stay at home mom.
They're very very different things. We've been talking about a
lot of them. And they also they're very into homesteading.

(48:29):
They make a lot of their own food from scratch.
But they also project all of these what I think
can be very dangerous values. A lot of them are
anti vaxers. A lot of them are very anti LGBTQ.
You know, there are behind all of the beautiful baked

(48:50):
sourdough loaves, there are some nefarious influencers there, influences there,
and I've been talking about it so much. I was like, well,
this is obviously my Halloween costume. What else would I
be for Halloween? And so I put on an applaid
nap dress and I stuffed. A lot of them are
pregnant constantly. They have a lot of content babies because
they get more attention every time they get pregnant, and

(49:11):
also they likely don't believe in birth control, and so yeah,
there's that part of it. And so I was like,
it looked like I was thirteen months pregnant with this
bike helmet in, my spanks in under my nap dress.
And then I made like an Instagram frame to go
around me.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
Yes, but it was.

Speaker 4 (49:30):
Really funny because that is a costume, and I couldn't
carry the Instagram frame, like I had a cardboard cutout
of like hashtag chad wife. I couldn't carry it while
I was tuggar treating with three kids, and so it
was a hard costume to explain to people. And like
a lot of people just assumed I was pregnant and
like offered, ton't get me a chair, and I'm like no,
I'm a conservative Christian influencer and they're like, oh what okay.

(49:57):
And then it didn't help that that I was carrying
a can of beer down the s Street and I
forgot that I had this pregnant belly, and so then
people are really looking at me and I'm like, what
is Halloween? Everyone's drinking here? And then I'm like, oh,
they think I'm pregnant. So yeah, that was it was
a great costume. But as I was dressed up. I
was like, I know that this will break the d

(50:18):
like break my Instagram feed because the Instagram algorithm loves
pregnant bellies. They love pregnant bellies. They love it when
you say that like a baby was just born, birth announcements,
they love newborns. So I was like, what if I
with it because my book posts about Sicilian inheritance, like
get like moderate attention because Instagram doesn't think that's interesting.

(50:40):
And so I'm like, what if I pretend I'm giving
birth to my book? And so I do that as
like a book reveal. I originally had like a whole
home birth like video that I was gonna do it.
I'm like, it's too much, it's too much, and my
husband's like it's already too much. Stop and I'm like,
you know who you married, It's okay, you knew what
you're getting into. I wrote a book about our first

(51:02):
year of marriage. But yeah, I but then I did
do a book reveal of me holding the book like
it was a newborn baby, and my Instagram feed went wild.
I got it's not just that people liked it, like
and people liked it because it was funny, it was
a joke and like a lot of my friends liked it,
but you can look at the insights and the statistics,
and Instagram showed it to more people outside my feed,

(51:23):
and it's ever shown to people outside my feed. It
chose to share that content, and I think that's what's interesting,
Like it chooses to give you more reach if you
are this constantly pregnant woman showboating your newborn baby, and
that's a problem, and that's something that we should all
talk about.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
That's too much work, it's too much bad, and so
may I won't have to worry about me doing that.

Speaker 3 (51:47):
That's okay, I'll just be unknown. It's okay.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
We good, Yeah, oh no, back to the trad wise,
because it is. It's a fascinating conversation. We had that
conversation about a lot of the reason. Part of the

(52:10):
reason that they're having so many children is part of
their conspiracy. Could lead to the fact that they think
that the supreme race is dying off, so now more
white people need to be having babies, and that being
a part of that conversation. The pipeline from being a
yoga mom to trad wives is very It's shorter than
you would.

Speaker 4 (52:30):
Sure than you would expect, would expect?

Speaker 3 (52:32):
Can you kind of talk about all of that there?

Speaker 4 (52:34):
So there's something also called soft girls on on the
tiktoks and the instagrams. I'm so old and like the tiktoks, however,
and they so soft girls are They're like soft girls
are very similar to and not all So it's kind
of language is so confusing, and I'm constantly conce I'm
gonna get canceled at this point in time. I'm like,

(52:54):
I don't care, but like I'll go do something else.
It's fine if you can sold me. I'll become a
dog walker or something. I don't give a show, but
I should to say what I want. But so there's
soft girls who say, I want to drop out of
the workforce. I don't want to hustle, I don't want
to be your girl boss. I'm just gonna like do
my yoga and my pilates all day and like meditate

(53:15):
and lay in the grass with my lover and stay
at home girlfriends who are the trad wife version of
a girlfriend, where they're just they live to serve their
their boyfriend. And there's all these videos of like my
boyfriend takes me on expensive vacations if I pack for him,
and if I do all of this stuff, and like
videos of them cleaning the house all day and cooking

(53:37):
for the boyfriend all day, and you know, that does
seem to then evolve often into the tradwife submissive wife lifestyle.
And like you said, there is this undercurrent of, you know,
restoring the patriarchy, restoring a very male dominated white world. Yes,

(53:59):
you should have more white babies. Why aren't you out
there pro creating for the race? And there is it's
a dark, scary rabbit hole to go down. And I
think the messaging is so hard to parse sometimes because
it comes in a beautiful package. And that's what I

(54:19):
think is the most dangerous about it. And when I
say beautiful, I mean, you know, not even beautiful in
my definition, but in this esthetic that the internet likes,
and so it comes in that package. That's like, you too,
could stay at home and look like this and have
all of your lovely, quiet children running all over the place.

(54:41):
Why would you ever want to be on the birth
control pill? And I meanwhile, I'm like, you want to
look at my house because that'll make you get of
a sectomy. I mean, for the reason Nick finally got snapped.
He's like, well, you're not doing this again. We didn't
think it was going to happen the third time. We
were old when that happened, but we were just old.
But it's perfect no, apparently to make a third baby

(55:07):
in Vardo, North Dakota. But they yeah, it's a it's
a really, it's just it's it's a scary part of
the Internet and also a fascinating one. Like so many
people that listen to uh Under the Influence or follow
the pot the sub stack, like I didn't know anything
about this. Screw you. I've now lost hours of my

(55:29):
life going down this rabbit hole. And I'm like, yeah,
I know, sorry, not sorry, I mean now that I
see everyone will see it. Right.

Speaker 3 (55:36):
We all suffer together.

Speaker 4 (55:37):
We all suffer together. Yes, we suffer equally.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
Yes, yes, And I think listeners you should definitely go
check out Under the Influence because you do talk a
lot about mom influencing, but you also talk about cancer
influencing or just various ways like tradwives and and all
these ways in which the Internet is harmful in ways

(56:01):
that you think like there are benefits to it, but
also these real dark sides because people are trying to
make money ultimately, like they're trying to make money.

Speaker 4 (56:12):
Ultimately. The goal for most people as money. That's the thing.
I think that's just what everyone has to remember. I
think you can still enjoy social media, but you have
to think about who makes money off what. Yes, right,
So it's and I, like you mentioned, I just did
an episode on cancer influencing when I had on this
woman Kelly, who was diagnosed with breast cancer and she

(56:33):
started following a lot of cancer influencers And at first
it was great because she's like, oh my gosh, there's
a community here and that that should be wonderful. And
she was getting tips on diet and tips on coping
with different kinds of chemo and things like that. Again,
good things, right, And then all of a sudden, she
just kept following more people and the advice that she

(56:56):
was getting was very conflicting. There were people who were
telling her not to do tradition treatment, that doctors were
the devils, convincing her to essentially eat nothing but raw
vegetables all the time, so that she just had a
fear of any other kind of food and it got
to be too much, and she said she saw a
lot of people in the cancer community reject a lot
of traditional treatments, and then she saw some of them

(57:18):
even pass away, and she's like, these influencers have so
much power, so much power, and none of it is checked.
No one is saying, hey, you're an expert in this,
go forth and talk. It's just like anyone can say
anything they want on the internet.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
Yeah, and that's is terrifying and has been the case.
Lawsuits have been brought against people. But it's true, like
you trust people that you see online, you form these
parasocial relationships and if they're telling you like, oh no,
I you know, I'm with you. This is community by this.

(57:57):
It worked for me.

Speaker 3 (57:58):
But if there's.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
No checks on that, if they're just saying that because
they're going to get that day check, then it's irresponsible
and dangerous.

Speaker 4 (58:07):
Yes, irresponsible and dangerous, exactly exactly. Oh, guys went from
cheeseplates to irresponsible and dangerous dark places of the internet.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
We did. We should all get che after this.

Speaker 4 (58:23):
Let's all just go eat cheese. It's all eat cheese
and drink wine in a in a dark room. In
a dark room.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Yeah, yeah, I'm just gonna whisper these pajama pants absolutely absolutely.

Speaker 4 (58:37):
I'm wearing pajama pants right now. I haven't gotten out
of my pajamas today.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
Is how Atlanta right now?

Speaker 4 (58:43):
It's cold and hilly right now? Real?

Speaker 3 (58:48):
Yeah, I will.

Speaker 4 (58:50):
I will be doing something in Atlanta for when the
Sicilian Inheritance comes out.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
So we will cheese plate.

Speaker 4 (58:57):
Well, I mean there's that. That's the reason I'm coming,
but that I may also obviously be doing a book
event and Alive under the Influence podcast event down there.
So we're planning all these things. So you will have
to come and be on the show with me. Let
us know, watch on the show. Any cheese, yeah, perfect,
follow She'll bring you cheese.

Speaker 3 (59:19):
She'll bring you cheese.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
She endorses everything with cheese and live the followers. It's
gotten all the followers and me as the best.

Speaker 4 (59:30):
Yeah, I've got wine.

Speaker 3 (59:33):
Please got you.

Speaker 4 (59:34):
No, I don't want to make sunch of influence people.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
You've learned for me, it's just to stalk them and
tell them we're friends until they know the cheese approaches better.

Speaker 4 (59:47):
I mean better.

Speaker 3 (59:48):
That's how I made friends with Annie.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
You also do the cheese approach. You also do the
cheese approach, Samantha.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
Dude, that's how I got friends with Annie. It's true,
and now she's on the show.

Speaker 2 (59:56):
I had two giant platters of show, look at it,
and now Almo's effective.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
Jesus the Way, Jesus the Way.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
That is a pun Jesus the Way Anyway, Jesus the Way.
We did have more questions for you, but we've already
taken it up so much of your time, so you
just you'll just have to come back.

Speaker 4 (01:00:18):
Come back, guys, I will always come back. I love
it here.

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
Awesome, awesome. You know, I think we've been talking for
like a good two hours.

Speaker 4 (01:00:25):
We've been talking for an hour and a half. Guys,
keep going, so you never. Actually I have to go
pick up my hands from school at some point, So well,
all right, then I can always everything up.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
Well, can you tell us the good listeners where they
can find you, what they can look forward to from you?

Speaker 4 (01:00:47):
Yeah, of course, Like we talked about a lot, The
Sicilian Inheritance is coming out in April, but you can
all pre order it now, which really matters because it
determines where we go for events, and like I said, uh,
those events are going to have one and cheese, So
order your copy now. Let me know I'm on the
Instagram at Joe Piazza author. I always think that it's
ironic that the best place to find me is Instagram

(01:01:09):
because I hate it so much, but it is. It works,
and until there's something that works, you know, in the
same way, I'll just keep doing it. But I'm also
I also have a sub stack over the Influence that
is linked to the under the Influence podcast, which comes
out twice weekly and is everywhere that you find your podcasts.

Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
Yes, awesome, awesome, Thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 4 (01:01:33):
Guys. This was so fun. I can't wait to see
you in person. We're gonna have so much fun when
I come to Atlanta.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Oh yes, yes, And if you would like to find
us listeners, you can. We have an email at stephan
mediam momsteph at iHeartMedia dot com. You can find us
on Twitter at mamsa podcasts, or on Instagram and TikTok
at Stephane Never told you. We do have a tea
public story. You can get merchandise, and we also have
a book. You can get it wherever you get your

(01:01:59):
book or audio books. Thanks as always to our super
producer Christina, our executive producer Maya and your contributor, Joey,
thank you and thanks to you for listening. Stefan never
told you the production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts
on my heart Radio, you can check out the heart Radio,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,