Under the Influence with Jo Piazza
Under the Influence is a deep dive into social media, a place haunted by aspirational marketing where it feels like every other person is a social media influencer trying to sell you something, all while posed in perfect houses that never seem to get messy. And behind this airbrushed perfection is money, so much money. Billions and billions of dollars. Journalist and mom Jo Piazza looks at how we got here, what it all means and how the commodification of every single aspect of our lives is driving everyone (but mostly women and mothers) a little insane.
Episodes
September 17, 2026 • 44 mins
Bridget Todd used to read the headlines about people proposing to ChatGPT and write those people off as sad and strange. Then she heard tech leaders describe AI companionship as the future they are building for everyone, and realized dismissing it was not a plan.
This week we talk with the award-winning podcaster behind There Are No Girls on the Internet about her new audiobook, Love at First Prompt: AI and the Future of Intimacy,...
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September 15, 2026 • 47 mins
Jessica Tarlov has one of the strangest jobs in American media. Five days a week she sits at a table on Fox News' The Five as the lone liberal, arguing in front of millions of people who mostly do not agree with her. Everyone asks her the same question, and it comes from both parties: how do you do that without losing your mind?
Her new book, I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends, is her answer. This week we talk wi...
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September 10, 2026 • 45 mins
We're dropping an episode of a brand new celebrity news podcast in your feed today. Celebrity Intelligence: The Lowdown. Jo's a lead producer and host on this one and she's joined by her longtime colleague and dear friend, Dan Wakeford.
What happens when you become famous before you know who you are? This week on Celebrity Intelligence: The Lowdown, we dig into the darker side of growing up famous and ask whether there's any way t...
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September 8, 2026 • 44 mins
Bobbi Brown started Bobbi Brown Cosmetics out of her garage while pregnant in 1990. Four and a half years in, Estée Lauder called and said we want to buy you, and she said okay, mostly because she did not really know what a brand was yet. She stayed on for 22 years as an employee of the company that owned her own name. When she finally left, she still had four and a half years left on a non-compete, which meant she was legally not ...
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September 6, 2026 • 33 mins
Today we're sharing an episode from another podcast I think you'll enjoy: The Global Story from the BBC.
The question they’re tackling is a great one: Did Emily Ruin Paris?Whether you love Emily in Paris, hate-watch it, or just can't escape it, there's no denying it's had a huge impact. The show has turned cafés, streets and neighbourhoods into tourist hotspots, and even won praise from French President Emmanuel Macron for p...
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September 3, 2026 • 37 mins
Why are smart, progressive, left-voting women are still watching tradwife content? Even after the trend has peaked?
Author Claire Swinarski has also written a tradwife novel entitled The Supper Club Saints. Today we're chatting about how Yesteryear became such a phenomenon and whether the book's success is really about giving women a socially acceptable place to put their rage. We also get into why the girlboss-versus-tradwife bi...
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September 1, 2026 • 38 mins
Dr. Tracy Shevell is an OBGYN who has spent 25 years in women's intimate spaces, and she has watched the system fail women over and over. Her goal is to help women get them better care by telling them how to work within a broken system.
Tracy tells us the exact phrasing to use going to the doctor or walking into an emergency room, and why describing your symptoms honestly and expecting the system to respond correctly is not alwa...
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August 26, 2026 • 49 mins
Dolly Parton died on Tuesday at 80, and she may have been the last thing Americans agreed on. We're replaying this episode in her honor. Our conversation with Will Bonfiglio, the WashU lecturer behind a wildly popular college course on Dolly, is about how the country icon became a cultural unifier across politics, class, gender, and generations. From Dollywood to "9 to 5" to her million-dollar vaccine donation, this is a conversati...
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August 25, 2026 • 35 mins
The United States is basically the only country in the world without paid family and medical leave, and we are not okay with it. This week, Dawn Huckelbridge of the Paid Leave for All campaign joins us to break down what paid leave actually is (no, FMLA doesn't count), who it's really for (everyone — parents, the sandwich generation, gig workers, you), and why it's a winning issue with 91% of Americans behind it. We bust the ...
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August 23, 2026 • 19 mins
This week on Under the Influence Sunday Nice Things, we have a book rec you will LOVE. Jennifer Herrera’s Siren Says, a magical, sexy, gloriously witchy novel about embracing your power and finding your confidence as a woman. We have a quick chat with Jennifer about the ancient story that inspired the book, botanical magic, the wisdom women pass down through generations, and why so many of our myths about powerful women have ...
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August 20, 2026 • 40 mins
For years we've been laughing at tradwives.
We've mocked the prairie dresses, the sourdough starters, the "submit to your husband" content, and the endless parade of blonde influencers telling women to embrace traditional femininity.
Meanwhile, conservative women have been building one of the most effective political movements in modern American history.
Today's guest, sociologist Katie Gaddini, spent nearly a decade embedded wi...
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August 18, 2026 • 45 mins
What happens when good girls grow up and stop apologizing?
For generations, women have been rewarded for being agreeable, being accommodating and being grateful for what they have instead of asking for more.
And yet many women reach a certain age and find themselves less interested in being nice.
Our guest is comedian, storyteller, and longtime public radio host Ophira Eisenberg, whose new comedy special is called I Used To Be...
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August 13, 2026 • 38 mins
For years, women have been told that success means being chosen. Chosen by a partner. Chosen for the promotion. Chosen by everyone except ourselves.
This week we're joined by Sabrina Bendory, author of The Feminine Code, for a conversation about self-worth, attachment styles, toxic relationships, and the ways women are conditioned to over-give, over-accommodate, and lose themselves in pursuit of love and validation.
We talk about...
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August 11, 2026 • 43 mins
This week on Under the Influence, bestselling author and recovering MLM insider Emily Paulson joins us for a rage-filled chat about revenge fantasies, influencer culture, tradwives, motherhood, social media lies, and the absolute exhaustion of watching terrible men fail upward forever.
Plus: a huge stack of summer reading recommendations, including books about momfluencers, bad mothers, feminist rage, internet culture, and the pat...
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August 6, 2026 • 36 mins
It's been a blurry week. Jo and Nick share behind-the-scenes moments from The Parisian Heist tour, announce the Catskills Book Festival, and talk about what' books Jo is working on next. Then Nick leaves to pick up the kids and Jo digs into Arizona State's groundbreaking degree in content creation and why she actually thinks it is a brilliant idea. (And they should hire her to be a professor).
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July 30, 2026 • 41 mins
This week, we're sharing a special crossover episode with Get a Life, the new podcast from Jo's best friend, women's wellness coach and positive psychology practitioner Jackie Cascarano. Together, they explore the forgotten women who inspired The Parisian Heist, the myth of the male genius, why travel has shaped Jo's life and writing, and how curiosity, creativity, and adventure can help women build richer, more interesting lives.
...
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July 28, 2026 • 48 mins
Jess Ekstrom, the author of Making It Without Losing It: How to Stay Motivated in a World Where We Are Never Done, grew up in the shadow of one of the biggest financial scandals in American history. After her family lost everything to Bernie Madoff, she eventually sat across from him in prison and asked him why he did it.
His answer was slightly heartbreaking and it became the lynchpin of Jess's personal transformation.
What if t...
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July 23, 2026 • 38 mins
Nobody talks honestly enough about the 3 a.m. wake-up—the sweating, spiraling and sometimes creative genius that strikes women in the wee hours of the morning. This week we’re joined by bestselling author Allison Winn Scotch to talk about insomnia, midlife, creativity, and how all of it inspired her latest novel, The Insomniacs.
What starts as a conversation about melatonin, mouth guards, indica gummies, and why husba...
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July 21, 2026 • 49 mins
Eliza Reid never expected to become the First Lady of Iceland.
The Canadian-born writer and mother of four was living a hectic, but totally normal life when her husband launched a presidential campaign during a political crisis. Seven weeks later, she was a First Lady of a small Arctic nation.
Eliza is a magical human who speaks so candidly about the strange experience of becoming publicly known as someone's wife, and the challen...
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July 16, 2026 • 47 mins
Why are we so obsessed with Paris?
It is the f*cking best, but long before Instagram convinced us that a destination could transform our lives, Paris had already perfected the art of selling a fantasy with the promise that if we could just get there, we'd somehow become a more sophisticated version of ourselves.
This week, we sit down with bestselling author Danielle Trussoni (writing as Danielle Postel-Vinay) to unpack the pheno...
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