November 3, 2023 • 60 mins
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.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Welcome to Stephan Never Told You plecture Ihart 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 3 (00:27):
I'd love that.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
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 3 (00:38):
I have.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
I have.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
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 1 (00:50):
That would be fun, That would be a delight. I
was gonna say for me because I have. I was
not on when you came on, but I'm like, you
have a celebrity to me because I'm like, in our world,
podcast world, you're such a big name. So I'm like, ooh, oh,
we're gonna get the insight we wouldn't get like the
real pro tip.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
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 1 (01:21):
To be honest, I don't know. Those are pretty big skills,
Like someone needs to tell the stories when all of
us but one person dies, you have to leave that story.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Just guys. I just pictured me running around chasing zombies
with like a microphone, with like my zoom microphone, me like.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Hey, do you feel the day?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Are you feeling at the end of the world.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
You get on social media.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Today, braids, braids frads, 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
(02:03):
to our listeners?
Speaker 3 (02:04):
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
(02:25):
an author. I write novels about kick 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 1 (02:40):
So the delicious romp makes me know that you really
are an author.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Exactly, exactly, just a delicious romp everyone, of a murder mystery,
of a murder mystery.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
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 3 (03:01):
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
(03:23):
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 it's 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
(03:46):
returns 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 fields.
Sarah Fina from nineteen o eight is trying to be
a doctor. Sarah is a restauranteur who you know, she's
(04:08):
a chef 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 2 (04:22):
No, that was great.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
You got me hooked. 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? How
much of it?
Speaker 3 (04:31):
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
(04:54):
it was safer for a while, and she was killed
before she came over. It's just family life. 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
(05:20):
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 went back to
Sicily this summer to try to solve the murder and
I'm I'm closer to doing it that I know. I
(05:43):
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 so Cilian Inheritance will be your next favorite novel
and also maybe your next favorite podcast. Again, I'm just
(06:06):
I'm a monster, I'm a content monk.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I let it know that was gonna be. My next
question was like, did you actually try to solve this murder?
And here we are with a great teaser, and so said,
I have to wait until next year.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
But as an adventure, it's 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.
(06:37):
So I'm just I'm really excited about about these these
things coming into the world.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
That's amazing. 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.
(07:06):
But also 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. No, no, I please explain.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
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,
(07:42):
some of it was the same. Isn't that creepy? It's creepy.
But so 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 And she's an outliner and I drive
(08:02):
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 going to 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 come when you just
(08:25):
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 know exactly what's
(08:47):
gonna happen. It does drive my editors crazy sometimes too,
because they're like, so, what's gonna happen at the end
of this book that we just bought, And I'm like,
I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Your guess is as good as mine.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
There will be an ending, but I don't know what
it is. They're like, Okay, we have a lot of
faith in you, okay.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Okay, well by now, yes obviously, because you've written a
ton of books that have been successful. So I'm sure
they're like, yeah, okay, we know where we get it.
We don't want this process.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
But we know very anxious with this process, but we
will get it.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
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 3 (09:36):
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
(09:57):
is going, and like you just wrote to it. And
that's fine, but they you feel a little less magical.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
To me, right. 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
it happened.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
There was nothing that left up to it, but it
didn't deliver, didn't.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
So it's a balance. It's a balance.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Its balance, 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 2 (10:31):
One of those that's fun, like.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
A good cry at the end.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
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, like I would have one meal, like,
(10:57):
oh my gosh, we have to put these to write
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, a nice cheese plate, because
(11:18):
you will be starving the second you start reading it.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
You're gonna eat all things. Well, when you described it
as a delicious romp, I was going to ask, is
it including a lot of descriptures for Italian food, because
that's like the first thing that pops into my head.
But no, no, no, that's too cliche.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
It is soche 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 1 (11:43):
And from an Italian, I'm like, I just want to.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Deliver man like and you're like, I'm kind of like,
this is what I hope for. You're gonna get it.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Right, and if it's really well written, that the script
is gonna make you want that pasta immediately, like I'm
gonna need to fly to Sicily. Actually she's writing about.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
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, canola 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
(12:24):
eat food and stare at each other.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
You're gonna give us a personal invice. You're there friends.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
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
(12:51):
nine canolis. That's what makes me happy as.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
You talk about the book. Maybe maybe not as it
would make everybody else happy as well.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Who doesn't want a cannoli?
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Everyone wants a cannoli? 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.
(13:25):
No one wants it's a crime. It's like, what's 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,
(13:46):
they don't have wine for me, And like, what do
you want me to do for an hour?
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Here?
Speaker 3 (13:51):
I don't know anything people, And so just to stare
at my children's sober makes small to other parents. 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 like go in the park across
the street. Like I will not like you know, throw
like a bar mitsv level party for these children at
(14:14):
this point, but I will make a signature of cocktail
for that event. I will indeed for.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
The grown nuts.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Then it's really just and a poloma is what it's
going to be.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
The three pieces, three piece, very important.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Delightful, so important.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
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 what to do there. But if they offer drinks, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
And I hate it. But it's like a.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
No, you don't have open bars off we with our wedding,
we decided to keep the bar open during the vows.
So Glennis 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
(15:10):
to go get some more champagne. Cool, Like 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 1 (15:21):
Yeah, agreat 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. Yeah, let's heave it.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
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 dropes.
Like we did we like sat on chairs and people
hoisted us up. And we're definitely not Jewish, but there's
(15:58):
so many Jewish friends that they were so skilled about
it that they're like, yeah, of course we want to
do this at your wedding.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
We'll help.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
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
(16:24):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Now that's amazing. 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 3 (16:48):
I know, 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 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 4 (17:08):
Yes, I don't get it, agreed.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
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 3 (17:21):
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, at pre order it and
then you'll be like, oh my gosh, this cheese plate
(17:42):
from do Bruno brother just arrived. I guess it's time
to sit down and read the Sicilian Inheritance and eat
some cheese.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
That sounds so cooky.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Now that I LEAs me want to order like five
so I can get five.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I have.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
It's a special delivered from the author.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Because I'm because she's good. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
I'm so excited about it, honestly, so.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
With the book. Has any of your family read it yet?
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Yeah? They have? My mom has read it. She just
I just gave her. She stole a galley from my house,
wasn't 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 cheese with your copy
(18:42):
of the book.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
But no wine, white wine only.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
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 an chio that guide that 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
(19:09):
she likes 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.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Joanna, I can't believe that you're you're digging up these
old wounds and this could be this could be really dangerous,
like I can't go back to Sicily and end this vendetta.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
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 1 (19:51):
Yeah, oh my goodness. Yeah, he's sounding full gangster at
this point.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Because he still smokes like nine packs of Marlborough's a
day again, Judge Iowa, And yeah, and the whole family,
like 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 instantly during the research. But I also worked
(20:15):
with Ellis Island and they're amazing. Their researchers are bad.
So they could pull like the exact dates and ship
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
(20:37):
the end they're like, well, I think this mighty what happened.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Everybody has a theory.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
I love that everybody has a theory, and like I
still I have a couple of theories. We're 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 will love keep records. The
coolest thing really was we found what is their book
of deaths, which is a handwritten but interesting with every
(21:08):
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 1 (21:24):
Yeah, so there is a bigger mystery.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
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 1 (21:36):
Okay, did I miss it? Did you actually solve it?
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Or I haven't solved it. I'm still on the road.
I'm still on the road to solving it. No, so
we're going.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Back in January multiple seasons.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
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 like solve family mysteries
for them, that could be fun.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
I mean, this is the like intriguing and fascinating journey,
especially since it's your great grandmother.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
And we found so many crazy cool pictures of her too,
like she looks she looks like a bad like she
looks like she could kill you with her eyes.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
So maybe she was a witch, which is even I know,
I know, if you find out that she's a witch,
you have to take that title on, like somehow put
that into.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Business cards. No shame Anywerelian witch?
Speaker 4 (22:33):
Hi?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Thank you uh in the lineage of.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Witches exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
It's amazing. I'm excited to hear both the podcasts and
read this book. Phenomenal. I'm also excited for the cheese
plate in the wine that goes with both and showing up.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
At your house and like cozy pajamas with both of
them being like heyes.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Please, it's time to read. That's the way, and he
does that. She'll just show up with pajama pants.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
And do you really do you like? Do you Kimmy Gibler?
I call it giblering from full House, where you just
show up unexpectedly at a friend's house.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Expect always in pajama pants.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Pajamas so.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Maybe last night.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
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 1 (23:25):
Yeah yes, yes, but they would surprise me if I
saw you at the door, like hey I'm here. I'm like, okay, come.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
On, yeah, okay, great, 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. She's like,
I'm gonna get my nise done. Do you want to
get your nails? And I'm like, yeah, I do. And
then we just like walked around into errands together and
(23:52):
that was really fun.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
It was really a perfect day.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Yeah, it was a perfect day.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
It's nice and I love that I have a friend.
There's so 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. 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
(24:19):
your name be where I jumped in, I knew about
your shows committed it was an amazing show and it
was so amazing, Like, the concept.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Was so amazing people, the people were so good.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
You as a podcaster, you really do bring in some
brilliant adventures in itself, like in this conversations that you have,
including what you're working on today right now, which is
Under the Influence. Can you talk a little bit about
that podcast?
Speaker 3 (24:44):
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
(25:05):
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
(25:28):
them were covered in pee or puke 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
(25:52):
that in the first season some of the world of
mom influencers and influencers in general is absolutely bull shit.
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
(26:14):
the algorithm in all social media platforms is constantly, 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.
(26:38):
And 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
(26:58):
these ideals 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,
(27:20):
because it 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
(27:42):
trying to 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
Everything with Jesus, Everything with cheese is better. We should
let's make t shirts that say that.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Yes and think you get us.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
I think you do. I think you do.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Everything is better what she's I'm gonna make one right now.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
I need this, need you know 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 talk about it and
just kind of how we got here because you tried
to expose it. What is it? And how are we here?
Speaker 4 (28:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:30):
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 of
(28:50):
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 among
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 early Internet,
(29:11):
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 photography apps.
(29:32):
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. So selling
(29:55):
us things, selling us those beautiful linen nursing dresses, selling
us all manner of the 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
they will play with that box. And then you could
(30:16):
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. That's the rule in my house.
Get out of your sister's box. Oh, golden rule, gold
(30:40):
golden rule. People. 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
(31:02):
a career 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 have them do
(31:23):
all sorts 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 1 (31:31):
You know what, I agree with the children of.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
This, including my husband. My husband was crying. Everyone was sad.
So 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 their entire
(31:56):
lives put on as a show for complete changers 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 that women are making
(32:18):
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 we have a
(32:41):
full time caregiver here who is 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 to an office from nine to six every
day and also having these three children.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
I think Jo, you and I are very similar in age.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Yeah, I think everyone's my age. By the way, it's
something that happens after you turn like forty. Maybe maybe
you're like.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
In my world, everyone's younger than me.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
See, I like I've started be like I'll talk to
see like thirty five year old and I'm like, we're
the same age, and they're like we're not. We're 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 1 (33:21):
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 3 (33:31):
The truth that different? Yeah, yeah, well I I'm forty
three now, Yeah, we're the same age, the same age. Yeah, Okay,
I know.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
We've been through something including seeing this play out, like
we were at the very beginning with the Facebook, with
the Facebook, with the Facebook, with Facebook, with the Facebook,
and yeah, my space. I was talking about my zena
site at one point, which is still I thinks floating
out there that I can't find anymore.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
So bad but.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
It will 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 faith place in my space,
uh to Instagram to now TikTok and now we're having
this comeback conversation of what happened to those kids? Uh
where we're going back to like how they're reacting to
(34:26):
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 big narratives like
this could be a good thing, but it's not broadening
as it's as we would had hoped with the Internet world.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
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 I 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 aspirational
(35:11):
images even though it breaks our brains. And so I
have a lot of people ask me, no, well, I know,
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
(35:33):
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
(35:56):
the Instagram algorithm doesn't think that they are similar to you.
So it's like you have to dig a little deeper.
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
(36:19):
the world. But it only chooses to show you parenting
that it thinks is very similar to you.
Speaker 4 (36:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
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, Somantha and
I are not moms.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Do people mistake that.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
All the time, We've been put on list for moms
who listen.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
To mom influencers.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Just because the word mom is in it in Twitter. Yeah,
on Twitter unfortunately, this mom podcast or mom stuff podcast.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Yeah, that's a bad like it was way back when.
I think stuff mom never told you was taken or
something like that.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
So I've always thought of it as like your people
human beings in the world with mothers.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
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. We've gotten,
we've had to. We we not had to, but we advertise,
which we don't mind because we still obviously want to
talk about mothers because they are a part of this
conversation in the But like the fact that we're not. Yeah,
like I'm not excluding that, But at the same time,
(37:49):
I'm yeah, but we're not experts. We don't know. I
was a nanny, yes, and I've 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 completely different.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
But again, well, and being a caretaker also hard, also
a pain. It's all a penny to be honest. I
love my children so much, but they're a.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Lot, that's honest. I like it.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
So, yes, you're not mothers, but we do talk about
motherhood a lot on the show, and we have. We
had a friend of the show guest Bridget come on
and she did a whole thing about influencing and how
it impacts children. She talked about that, but one of
the things I find really interesting about this conversation is
(38:39):
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, that you're never
mad at your kids, you never have this anger. But
(39:01):
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 3 (39:22):
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
(39:43):
picture 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 his picture
of my children, then I will not post it on
social media because that is clearly in my audience. And
(40:04):
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 know, like I tell them, like,
you guys are filthy animals, and I'm very tired from
being your mother, and so I think those things are okay.
(40:27):
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 1 (40:46):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
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 pajamas, and what if their friends saw that, So,
you know, putting yourself in your kid's shoes. But I
(41:09):
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 making 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 I try
to be really honest that, like, I love my kids
(41:29):
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, yeah, it's important,
(41:53):
so I have to leave. That's that's why I show
up ATR house with cheese plates. But they yes, I
think it's it's a double edged 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 should
(42:17):
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 1 (42:26):
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
(42:49):
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 them saying like there's no litigation or a
law saying that they can't use it. So that's even scarier.
That's something that people need to realize. I don't think
(43:11):
when we as we use 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 3 (43:20):
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 post an image of my child, that image will
likely be used by AI in some way, shape.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Or form, right, yeah, which is scary.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Which is scary? Yeah, yeah, which is a whole different cover,
a whole 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?
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Wait? Did you not be like wait, fine.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
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 them
(44:26):
and their kids to try to pull their kids out
of school. Oh wow, but they 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 1 (44:47):
It is.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
It is.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Oh, speaking of creepy.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Dark places, my favorite.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
This is my transition because also I looked into your
sub sec and one of the things that we've talked
about recently is 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 moms and tradwives. Yes,
we had this whold like we went to the red
(45:13):
pill of everything, and you have been talking about trad
wives 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 in Istoriam to
look at these amazing costume that she has created. You
done an amazing job. I loved your descriptor about having
the helmet, the bike helmet. Yeah, it was so good.
(45:40):
And then by the way, I loved your book.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
Being the baby love crazy thing. So I will say,
but I've for under the influence of the podcast, I
have been talking about trade wives for the past two weeks.
These like most mainly pretty conservative Christian influencers who are
submissive to their husbands. They you know, they have all
(46:04):
of these rules of like I don't do anything without
asking my husband permission, 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 tidwife is
not stay at home mom. They're very very different things.
(46:26):
We've been talking about a lot of them, and they
also they're very into homesteading, 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
(46:50):
all of the beautiful baked 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 house 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
(47:11):
attention every time they get pregnant. And also they likely
don't believe in birth control, and so yeah, there's that
part of it. And so I was like, I 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. Yes,
(47:32):
but it was 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 trigger 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 offered to get me a chair and I'm like, no,
I'm a conservative Christian influencers kind of like oh what okay.
(47:59):
And then it didn't help that that I was carrying
a can of beer down the street and I forgot
that I had this pregnant belly, and so then people
are really looking at me and I'm like, what's Halloween.
Everyone's drinking here. And then I'm like, oh, they think
I'm mind pregnant. So yeah, that was It was a
great costume. But I as I was dressed up, I
was like, I know that this will break the d
(48:20):
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,
(48:42):
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, knew you knew
what you were getting into. I wrote a book about
(49:04):
our first 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
(49:25):
outside my feed, 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 1 (49:44):
That's too much work. It's too much big and smy,
I won't have to worry about me doing that. That's okay,
I'll just benn. It's okay, good.
Speaker 5 (49:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
Oh, back to the trad wives, because it is. It's
a fascinating conversation. We had that conversation about a lot
of the reason. Part of the reason that they're having
so many children is part of their conspiracy. Could lead
(50:16):
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 is shorter than you would.
Speaker 3 (50:32):
Sure then you would expect, you would expect.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Can you kind of talk about all of that there?
Speaker 3 (50:36):
So there's something also called soft girls on on the
tiktoks and the instagrams. I'm so old and like the
tiktoks and they so soft girls are. They're like soft
girls are very similar to and not all so it's
kind the language is so confusing, and I'm constantly convinced
I'm gonna get canceled. At this point, in time. I'm like,
(50:56):
I don't care, but like I'll go do something else.
It's fine, you can't see me. I'll become like a
dog walker or something. I don't give a show, but
I just 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 and lay
(51:17):
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 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 for the
(51:39):
boyfriend all day. And you know that does seem to
then evolve often into the tradwife's 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,
(52:01):
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
(52:22):
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
(52:43):
the place. Why would you ever want to be on
the birth control pill? And I meanwhile, I'm like, do
you want to look at my house? Because that'll make
you get a sec to me. I mean, there's a
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 all old when that happened,
but we were just old. It's perfect, no, never too
(53:06):
old apparently to make a third baby Inargo, 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 I have so many people that
listen to uh under the Influence or followed the pot
(53:27):
the substack, Like I didn't know anything about this. Screw you.
I've now lost hours of my 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.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
Right, we all suffer together, we.
Speaker 3 (53:39):
All suffer together. Yes, we suffer equally.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
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 which the internet is harmful in ways that
(54:04):
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 3 (54:15):
Ultimately the goal for most people as money. That's the thing.
Like 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
(54:36):
started following a lot of cancer influencers and at first
it was great because she's like, oh my gosh, like
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
(54:59):
was getting was very con inflicting. There were people who
were telling her not to do traditional 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
(55:20):
them 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 2 (55:37):
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
(55:59):
this at work for me. But if there's 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 3 (56:09):
Yes, irresponsible and dangerous exactly exactly. Oh, guys, from cheeseplates
to irresponsible and dangerous dark places of the Internet.
Speaker 2 (56:19):
We did. We should all get a cheese after this.
Speaker 3 (56:26):
Let's all just go eat cheese. It's all eat cheese
and drink wine in a dark room. In a dark room.
Speaker 2 (56:32):
Yeah, yeah, I'm just gonna whisper these pajama pants. Absolutely absolutely, I'm.
Speaker 3 (56:39):
Wearing pajama pants right now. I haven't gotten out of
my pajamas today.
Speaker 2 (56:43):
Is how in Atlanta right now?
Speaker 3 (56:46):
It's cold and hiley right now.
Speaker 2 (56:50):
Yeah, I will.
Speaker 3 (56:53):
I will be doing something in Atlanta for when the
Sicilian inheritance comes out, So we.
Speaker 1 (56:58):
Will cheese plate.
Speaker 3 (56:59):
Well, I mean there's that, That's the reason I'm coming.
But then 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.
Speaker 2 (57:11):
Let us know.
Speaker 3 (57:14):
On the show, Yeah an cheese and yeah, perfect follow
She'll bring you cheese.
Speaker 1 (57:21):
She'll bring you cheese. She endorses everything with live of
the followers. Well, it's gotten all the followers and me
as the best. Yeah, I've got please got you.
Speaker 2 (57:37):
No, I don't want.
Speaker 3 (57:39):
To make such of influence people.
Speaker 1 (57:41):
You've learned for me, it's just to stalk them and
tell them with friends until they the cheese approaches better.
Speaker 5 (57:49):
I mean better.
Speaker 1 (57:50):
That's how I made friends with Annie.
Speaker 2 (57:51):
You also do the cheese approach. You also do the
cheese approach, Samantha, I did.
Speaker 1 (57:55):
That's how I got friends with Annie.
Speaker 2 (57:57):
It's true, and now she's on the show.
Speaker 1 (57:59):
I had two giant platters. Look at it and now
show Jesus the way, Jesus the way.
Speaker 3 (58:06):
That is a pun Jesus the way, anyway, Jesus the way.
Speaker 2 (58:13):
We We did have more questions for you, but we've
already taken it up so much of your.
Speaker 3 (58:17):
Time, so you just you'll just have to come back,
come back, guys, I will always come back. I love
it here ken.
Speaker 2 (58:24):
Awesome, awesome.
Speaker 1 (58:25):
You know, I think we've been talking for a good
two hours.
Speaker 3 (58:27):
We've been talking for an hour and a half. Guys,
keep going. You never Actually I have to go pick
up my kids from school at some point.
Speaker 2 (58:33):
So yeah, well all right, then I can always pick
everything up. Well, can you tell the good listeners where
they can find you, what they can look forward to
from you?
Speaker 4 (58:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (58:49):
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, those
events are going to have wine 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
(59:10):
that the best place to find me is Instagram 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 2 (59:31):
Yes, awesome, awesome, Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3 (59:35):
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 2 (59:39):
Oh yes, yes. And if you would like to find
us listeners, you can. We have an email at a
stuff media Momsteff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can find
us on Twitter at mostaf Podcasts, or on Instagram and
TikTok at Stephane never told you. We do have a
tea public story. You can get merchandise, and we all
have a book. You can get it wherever you get
(01:00:01):
your books or audio books. Thanks as always to our
super producer Christina, our executive producer Maya, and her contributor Joey.
Thank you and thanks to you for listening. Stefan never
told you the production of I Heart Radio. For more
podcasts or my Heart Radio, you can check out the
Heart Radio, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Welcome to Stephan Never Told You plecture Ihart 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 3 (00:27):
I'd love that.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
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 3 (00:38):
I have.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
I have.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
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 1 (00:50):
That would be fun, That would be a delight. I
was gonna say for me because I have. I was
not on when you came on, but I'm like, you
have a celebrity to me because I'm like, in our world,
podcast world, you're such a big name. So I'm like, ooh, oh,
we're gonna get the insight we wouldn't get like the
real pro tip.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
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 1 (01:21):
To be honest, I don't know. Those are pretty big skills,
Like someone needs to tell the stories when all of
us but one person dies, you have to leave that story.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Just guys. I just pictured me running around chasing zombies
with like a microphone, with like my zoom microphone, me like.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Hey, do you feel the day?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Are you feeling at the end of the world.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
You get on social media.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Today, braids, braids frads, 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
(02:03):
to our listeners?
Speaker 3 (02:04):
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
(02:25):
an author. I write novels about kick 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 1 (02:40):
So the delicious romp makes me know that you really
are an author.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Exactly, exactly, just a delicious romp everyone, of a murder mystery,
of a murder mystery.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
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 3 (03:01):
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
(03:23):
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 it's 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
(03:46):
returns 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 fields.
Sarah Fina from nineteen o eight is trying to be
a doctor. Sarah is a restauranteur who you know, she's
(04:08):
a chef 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 2 (04:22):
No, that was great.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
You got me hooked. 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? How
much of it?
Speaker 3 (04:31):
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
(04:54):
it was safer for a while, and she was killed
before she came over. It's just family life. 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
(05:20):
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 went back to
Sicily this summer to try to solve the murder and
I'm I'm closer to doing it that I know. I
(05:43):
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 so Cilian Inheritance will be your next favorite novel
and also maybe your next favorite podcast. Again, I'm just
(06:06):
I'm a monster, I'm a content monk.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I let it know that was gonna be. My next
question was like, did you actually try to solve this murder?
And here we are with a great teaser, and so said,
I have to wait until next year.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
But as an adventure, it's 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.
(06:37):
So I'm just I'm really excited about about these these
things coming into the world.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
That's amazing. 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.
(07:06):
But also 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. No, no, I please explain.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
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,
(07:42):
some of it was the same. Isn't that creepy? It's creepy.
But so 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 And she's an outliner and I drive
(08:02):
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 going to 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 come when you just
(08:25):
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 know exactly what's
(08:47):
gonna happen. It does drive my editors crazy sometimes too,
because they're like, so, what's gonna happen at the end
of this book that we just bought, And I'm like,
I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Your guess is as good as mine.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
There will be an ending, but I don't know what
it is. They're like, Okay, we have a lot of
faith in you, okay.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Okay, well by now, yes obviously, because you've written a
ton of books that have been successful. So I'm sure
they're like, yeah, okay, we know where we get it.
We don't want this process.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
But we know very anxious with this process, but we
will get it.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
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 3 (09:36):
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
(09:57):
is going, and like you just wrote to it. And
that's fine, but they you feel a little less magical.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
To me, right. 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
it happened.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
There was nothing that left up to it, but it
didn't deliver, didn't.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
So it's a balance. It's a balance.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Its balance, 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 2 (10:31):
One of those that's fun, like.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
A good cry at the end.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
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, like I would have one meal, like,
(10:57):
oh my gosh, we have to put these to write
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, a nice cheese plate, because
(11:18):
you will be starving the second you start reading it.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
You're gonna eat all things. Well, when you described it
as a delicious romp, I was going to ask, is
it including a lot of descriptures for Italian food, because
that's like the first thing that pops into my head.
But no, no, no, that's too cliche.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
It is soche 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 1 (11:43):
And from an Italian, I'm like, I just want to.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Deliver man like and you're like, I'm kind of like,
this is what I hope for. You're gonna get it.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Right, and if it's really well written, that the script
is gonna make you want that pasta immediately, like I'm
gonna need to fly to Sicily. Actually she's writing about.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
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, canola 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
(12:24):
eat food and stare at each other.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
You're gonna give us a personal invice. You're there friends.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
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
(12:51):
nine canolis. That's what makes me happy as.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
You talk about the book. Maybe maybe not as it
would make everybody else happy as well.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Who doesn't want a cannoli?
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Everyone wants a cannoli? 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.
(13:25):
No one wants it's a crime. It's like, what's 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,
(13:46):
they don't have wine for me, And like, what do
you want me to do for an hour?
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Here?
Speaker 3 (13:51):
I don't know anything people, And so just to stare
at my children's sober makes small to other parents. 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 like go in the park across
the street. Like I will not like you know, throw
like a bar mitsv level party for these children at
(14:14):
this point, but I will make a signature of cocktail
for that event. I will indeed for.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
The grown nuts.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Then it's really just and a poloma is what it's
going to be.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
The three pieces, three piece, very important.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Delightful, so important.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
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 what to do there. But if they offer drinks, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
And I hate it. But it's like a.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
No, you don't have open bars off we with our wedding,
we decided to keep the bar open during the vows.
So Glennis 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
(15:10):
to go get some more champagne. Cool, Like 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 1 (15:21):
Yeah, agreat 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. Yeah, let's heave it.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
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 dropes.
Like we did we like sat on chairs and people
hoisted us up. And we're definitely not Jewish, but there's
(15:58):
so many Jewish friends that they were so skilled about
it that they're like, yeah, of course we want to
do this at your wedding.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
We'll help.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
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
(16:24):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Now that's amazing. 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 3 (16:48):
I know, 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 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 4 (17:08):
Yes, I don't get it, agreed.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
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 3 (17:21):
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, at pre order it and
then you'll be like, oh my gosh, this cheese plate
(17:42):
from do Bruno brother just arrived. I guess it's time
to sit down and read the Sicilian Inheritance and eat
some cheese.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
That sounds so cooky.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Now that I LEAs me want to order like five
so I can get five.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
I have.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
It's a special delivered from the author.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Because I'm because she's good. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
I'm so excited about it, honestly, so.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
With the book. Has any of your family read it yet?
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Yeah? They have? My mom has read it. She just
I just gave her. She stole a galley from my house,
wasn't 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 cheese with your copy
(18:42):
of the book.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
But no wine, white wine only.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
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 an chio that guide that 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
(19:09):
she likes 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.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Joanna, I can't believe that you're you're digging up these
old wounds and this could be this could be really dangerous,
like I can't go back to Sicily and end this vendetta.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
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 1 (19:51):
Yeah, oh my goodness. Yeah, he's sounding full gangster at
this point.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Because he still smokes like nine packs of Marlborough's a
day again, Judge Iowa, And yeah, and the whole family,
like 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 instantly during the research. But I also worked
(20:15):
with Ellis Island and they're amazing. Their researchers are bad.
So they could pull like the exact dates and ship
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
(20:37):
the end they're like, well, I think this mighty what happened.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Everybody has a theory.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
I love that everybody has a theory, and like I
still I have a couple of theories. We're 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 will love keep records. The
coolest thing really was we found what is their book
of deaths, which is a handwritten but interesting with every
(21:08):
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 1 (21:24):
Yeah, so there is a bigger mystery.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
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 1 (21:36):
Okay, did I miss it? Did you actually solve it?
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Or I haven't solved it. I'm still on the road.
I'm still on the road to solving it. No, so
we're going.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Back in January multiple seasons.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
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 like solve family mysteries
for them, that could be fun.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
I mean, this is the like intriguing and fascinating journey,
especially since it's your great grandmother.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
And we found so many crazy cool pictures of her too,
like she looks she looks like a bad like she
looks like she could kill you with her eyes.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
So maybe she was a witch, which is even I know,
I know, if you find out that she's a witch,
you have to take that title on, like somehow put
that into.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Business cards. No shame Anywerelian witch?
Speaker 4 (22:33):
Hi?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Thank you uh in the lineage of.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Witches exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
It's amazing. I'm excited to hear both the podcasts and
read this book. Phenomenal. I'm also excited for the cheese
plate in the wine that goes with both and showing up.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
At your house and like cozy pajamas with both of
them being like heyes.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Please, it's time to read. That's the way, and he
does that. She'll just show up with pajama pants.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
And do you really do you like? Do you Kimmy Gibler?
I call it giblering from full House, where you just
show up unexpectedly at a friend's house.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Expect always in pajama pants.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Pajamas so.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Maybe last night.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
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 1 (23:25):
Yeah yes, yes, but they would surprise me if I
saw you at the door, like hey I'm here. I'm like, okay, come.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
On, yeah, okay, great, 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. She's like,
I'm gonna get my nise done. Do you want to
get your nails? And I'm like, yeah, I do. And
then we just like walked around into errands together and
(23:52):
that was really fun.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
It was really a perfect day.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Yeah, it was a perfect day.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
It's nice and I love that I have a friend.
There's so 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. 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
(24:19):
your name be where I jumped in, I knew about
your shows committed it was an amazing show and it
was so amazing, Like, the concept.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Was so amazing people, the people were so good.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
You as a podcaster, you really do bring in some
brilliant adventures in itself, like in this conversations that you have,
including what you're working on today right now, which is
Under the Influence. Can you talk a little bit about
that podcast?
Speaker 3 (24:44):
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
(25:05):
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
(25:28):
them were covered in pee or puke 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
(25:52):
that in the first season some of the world of
mom influencers and influencers in general is absolutely bull shit.
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
(26:14):
the algorithm in all social media platforms is constantly, 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.
(26:38):
And 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
(26:58):
these ideals 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,
(27:20):
because it 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
(27:42):
trying to 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
Everything with Jesus, Everything with cheese is better. We should
let's make t shirts that say that.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Yes and think you get us.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
I think you do. I think you do.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
Everything is better what she's I'm gonna make one right now.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
I need this, need you know 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 talk about it and
just kind of how we got here because you tried
to expose it. What is it? And how are we here?
Speaker 4 (28:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:30):
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 of
(28:50):
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 among
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 early Internet,
(29:11):
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 photography apps.
(29:32):
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. So selling
(29:55):
us things, selling us those beautiful linen nursing dresses, selling
us all manner of the 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
they will play with that box. And then you could
(30:16):
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. That's the rule in my house.
Get out of your sister's box. Oh, golden rule, gold
(30:40):
golden rule. People. 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
(31:02):
a career 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 have them do
(31:23):
all sorts 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 1 (31:31):
You know what, I agree with the children of.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
This, including my husband. My husband was crying. Everyone was sad.
So 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 their entire
(31:56):
lives put on as a show for complete changers 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 that women are making
(32:18):
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 we have a
(32:41):
full time caregiver here who is 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 to an office from nine to six every
day and also having these three children.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
I think Jo, you and I are very similar in age.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Yeah, I think everyone's my age. By the way, it's
something that happens after you turn like forty. Maybe maybe
you're like.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
In my world, everyone's younger than me.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
See, I like I've started be like I'll talk to
see like thirty five year old and I'm like, we're
the same age, and they're like we're not. We're 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 1 (33:21):
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 3 (33:31):
The truth that different? Yeah, yeah, well I I'm forty
three now, Yeah, we're the same age, the same age. Yeah, Okay,
I know.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
We've been through something including seeing this play out, like
we were at the very beginning with the Facebook, with
the Facebook, with the Facebook, with Facebook, with the Facebook,
and yeah, my space. I was talking about my zena
site at one point, which is still I thinks floating
out there that I can't find anymore.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
So bad but.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
It will 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 faith place in my space,
uh to Instagram to now TikTok and now we're having
this comeback conversation of what happened to those kids? Uh
where we're going back to like how they're reacting to
(34:26):
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 big narratives like
this could be a good thing, but it's not broadening
as it's as we would had hoped with the Internet world.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
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 I 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 aspirational
(35:11):
images even though it breaks our brains. And so I
have a lot of people ask me, no, well, I know,
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
(35:33):
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
(35:56):
the Instagram algorithm doesn't think that they are similar to you.
So it's like you have to dig a little deeper.
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
(36:19):
the world. But it only chooses to show you parenting
that it thinks is very similar to you.
Speaker 4 (36:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
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, Somantha and
I are not moms.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Do people mistake that.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
All the time, We've been put on list for moms
who listen.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
To mom influencers.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Just because the word mom is in it in Twitter. Yeah,
on Twitter unfortunately, this mom podcast or mom stuff podcast.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Yeah, that's a bad like it was way back when.
I think stuff mom never told you was taken or
something like that.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
So I've always thought of it as like your people
human beings in the world with mothers.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
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. We've gotten,
we've had to. We we not had to, but we advertise,
which we don't mind because we still obviously want to
talk about mothers because they are a part of this
conversation in the But like the fact that we're not. Yeah,
like I'm not excluding that, But at the same time,
(37:49):
I'm yeah, but we're not experts. We don't know. I
was a nanny, yes, and I've 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 completely different.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
But again, well, and being a caretaker also hard, also
a pain. It's all a penny to be honest. I
love my children so much, but they're a.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Lot, that's honest. I like it.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
So, yes, you're not mothers, but we do talk about
motherhood a lot on the show, and we have. We
had a friend of the show guest Bridget come on
and she did a whole thing about influencing and how
it impacts children. She talked about that, but one of
the things I find really interesting about this conversation is
(38:39):
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, that you're never
mad at your kids, you never have this anger. But
(39:01):
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 3 (39:22):
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
(39:43):
picture 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 his picture
of my children, then I will not post it on
social media because that is clearly in my audience. And
(40:04):
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 know, like I tell them, like,
you guys are filthy animals, and I'm very tired from
being your mother, and so I think those things are okay.
(40:27):
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 1 (40:46):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
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 pajamas, and what if their friends saw that, So,
you know, putting yourself in your kid's shoes. But I
(41:09):
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 making 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 I try
to be really honest that, like, I love my kids
(41:29):
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, yeah, it's important,
(41:53):
so I have to leave. That's that's why I show
up ATR house with cheese plates. But they yes, I
think it's it's a double edged 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 should
(42:17):
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 1 (42:26):
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
(42:49):
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 them saying like there's no litigation or a
law saying that they can't use it. So that's even scarier.
That's something that people need to realize. I don't think
(43:11):
when we as we use 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 3 (43:20):
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 post an image of my child, that image will
likely be used by AI in some way, shape.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Or form, right, yeah, which is scary.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Which is scary? Yeah, yeah, which is a whole different cover,
a whole 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?
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Wait? Did you not be like wait, fine.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
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 them
(44:26):
and their kids to try to pull their kids out
of school. Oh wow, but they 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 1 (44:47):
It is.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
It is.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Oh, speaking of creepy.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Dark places, my favorite.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
This is my transition because also I looked into your
sub sec and one of the things that we've talked
about recently is 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 moms and tradwives. Yes,
we had this whold like we went to the red
(45:13):
pill of everything, and you have been talking about trad
wives 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 in Istoriam to
look at these amazing costume that she has created. You
done an amazing job. I loved your descriptor about having
the helmet, the bike helmet. Yeah, it was so good.
(45:40):
And then by the way, I loved your book.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
Being the baby love crazy thing. So I will say,
but I've for under the influence of the podcast, I
have been talking about trade wives for the past two weeks.
These like most mainly pretty conservative Christian influencers who are
submissive to their husbands. They you know, they have all
(46:04):
of these rules of like I don't do anything without
asking my husband permission, 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 tidwife is
not stay at home mom. They're very very different things.
(46:26):
We've been talking about a lot of them, and they
also they're very into homesteading, 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
(46:50):
all of the beautiful baked 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 house 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
(47:11):
attention every time they get pregnant. And also they likely
don't believe in birth control, and so yeah, there's that
part of it. And so I was like, I 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. Yes,
(47:32):
but it was 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 trigger 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 offered to get me a chair and I'm like, no,
I'm a conservative Christian influencers kind of like oh what okay.
(47:59):
And then it didn't help that that I was carrying
a can of beer down the street and I forgot
that I had this pregnant belly, and so then people
are really looking at me and I'm like, what's Halloween.
Everyone's drinking here. And then I'm like, oh, they think
I'm mind pregnant. So yeah, that was It was a
great costume. But I as I was dressed up, I
was like, I know that this will break the d
(48:20):
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,
(48:42):
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, knew you knew
what you were getting into. I wrote a book about
(49:04):
our first 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
(49:25):
outside my feed, 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 1 (49:44):
That's too much work. It's too much big and smy,
I won't have to worry about me doing that. That's okay,
I'll just benn. It's okay, good.
Speaker 5 (49:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:54):
Oh, back to the trad wives, because it is. It's
a fascinating conversation. We had that conversation about a lot
of the reason. Part of the reason that they're having
so many children is part of their conspiracy. Could lead
(50:16):
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 is shorter than you would.
Speaker 3 (50:32):
Sure then you would expect, you would expect.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Can you kind of talk about all of that there?
Speaker 3 (50:36):
So there's something also called soft girls on on the
tiktoks and the instagrams. I'm so old and like the
tiktoks and they so soft girls are. They're like soft
girls are very similar to and not all so it's
kind the language is so confusing, and I'm constantly convinced
I'm gonna get canceled. At this point, in time. I'm like,
(50:56):
I don't care, but like I'll go do something else.
It's fine, you can't see me. I'll become like a
dog walker or something. I don't give a show, but
I just 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 and lay
(51:17):
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 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 for the
(51:39):
boyfriend all day. And you know that does seem to
then evolve often into the tradwife's 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,
(52:01):
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
(52:22):
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
(52:43):
the place. Why would you ever want to be on
the birth control pill? And I meanwhile, I'm like, do
you want to look at my house? Because that'll make
you get a sec to me. I mean, there's a
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 all old when that happened,
but we were just old. It's perfect, no, never too
(53:06):
old apparently to make a third baby Inargo, 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 I have so many people that
listen to uh under the Influence or followed the pot
(53:27):
the substack, Like I didn't know anything about this. Screw you.
I've now lost hours of my 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.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
Right, we all suffer together, we.
Speaker 3 (53:39):
All suffer together. Yes, we suffer equally.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
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 which the internet is harmful in ways that
(54:04):
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 3 (54:15):
Ultimately the goal for most people as money. That's the thing.
Like 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
(54:36):
started following a lot of cancer influencers and at first
it was great because she's like, oh my gosh, like
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
(54:59):
was getting was very con inflicting. There were people who
were telling her not to do traditional 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
(55:20):
them 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 2 (55:37):
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
(55:59):
this at work for me. But if there's 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 3 (56:09):
Yes, irresponsible and dangerous exactly exactly. Oh, guys, from cheeseplates
to irresponsible and dangerous dark places of the Internet.
Speaker 2 (56:19):
We did. We should all get a cheese after this.
Speaker 3 (56:26):
Let's all just go eat cheese. It's all eat cheese
and drink wine in a dark room. In a dark room.
Speaker 2 (56:32):
Yeah, yeah, I'm just gonna whisper these pajama pants. Absolutely absolutely, I'm.
Speaker 3 (56:39):
Wearing pajama pants right now. I haven't gotten out of
my pajamas today.
Speaker 2 (56:43):
Is how in Atlanta right now?
Speaker 3 (56:46):
It's cold and hiley right now.
Speaker 2 (56:50):
Yeah, I will.
Speaker 3 (56:53):
I will be doing something in Atlanta for when the
Sicilian inheritance comes out, So we.
Speaker 1 (56:58):
Will cheese plate.
Speaker 3 (56:59):
Well, I mean there's that, That's the reason I'm coming.
But then 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.
Speaker 2 (57:11):
Let us know.
Speaker 3 (57:14):
On the show, Yeah an cheese and yeah, perfect follow
She'll bring you cheese.
Speaker 1 (57:21):
She'll bring you cheese. She endorses everything with live of
the followers. Well, it's gotten all the followers and me
as the best. Yeah, I've got please got you.
Speaker 2 (57:37):
No, I don't want.
Speaker 3 (57:39):
To make such of influence people.
Speaker 1 (57:41):
You've learned for me, it's just to stalk them and
tell them with friends until they the cheese approaches better.
Speaker 5 (57:49):
I mean better.
Speaker 1 (57:50):
That's how I made friends with Annie.
Speaker 2 (57:51):
You also do the cheese approach. You also do the
cheese approach, Samantha, I did.
Speaker 1 (57:55):
That's how I got friends with Annie.
Speaker 2 (57:57):
It's true, and now she's on the show.
Speaker 1 (57:59):
I had two giant platters. Look at it and now
show Jesus the way, Jesus the way.
Speaker 3 (58:06):
That is a pun Jesus the way, anyway, Jesus the way.
Speaker 2 (58:13):
We We did have more questions for you, but we've
already taken it up so much of your.
Speaker 3 (58:17):
Time, so you just you'll just have to come back,
come back, guys, I will always come back. I love
it here ken.
Speaker 2 (58:24):
Awesome, awesome.
Speaker 1 (58:25):
You know, I think we've been talking for a good
two hours.
Speaker 3 (58:27):
We've been talking for an hour and a half. Guys,
keep going. You never Actually I have to go pick
up my kids from school at some point.
Speaker 2 (58:33):
So yeah, well all right, then I can always pick
everything up. Well, can you tell the good listeners where
they can find you, what they can look forward to
from you?
Speaker 4 (58:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (58:49):
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, those
events are going to have wine 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
(59:10):
that the best place to find me is Instagram 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 2 (59:31):
Yes, awesome, awesome, Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3 (59:35):
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 2 (59:39):
Oh yes, yes. And if you would like to find
us listeners, you can. We have an email at a
stuff media Momsteff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can find
us on Twitter at mostaf Podcasts, or on Instagram and
TikTok at Stephane never told you. We do have a
tea public story. You can get merchandise, and we all
have a book. You can get it wherever you get
(01:00:01):
your books or audio books. Thanks as always to our
super producer Christina, our executive producer Maya, and her contributor Joey.
Thank you and thanks to you for listening. Stefan never
told you the production of I Heart Radio. For more
podcasts or my Heart Radio, you can check out the
Heart Radio, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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