Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

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

Want to Feel Human Again? Break Your Phone Addiction

October 23, 2025 • 46 mins
We spend nearly two months a year on social media. Two months!!!!That’s how much time the average person gives to an algorithm built to hijack their attention, flood their brain with dopamine, and quietly rewire how they connect, focus, and feel joy. In this episode, clinical psychologist and addiction medicine expert Dr. Thekla Ross breaks down the science of how our phones became “sophisticated attention traps”—and what that’s d...
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So Your Parents Are Old

October 21, 2025 • 55 mins
We talk a lot on this show about women doing too much. About the impossible math of modern life—motherhood, work, ambition, marriage, self-care, friendship—and then one day, another full-time job sneaks in: caregiving for your parents. That’s where I am right now. Squarely in the sandwich generation. Raising three small kids and moving my own mom from the suburbs into the city. This week, I’m joining the brilliant reporter Vane...
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Sunday Nice Things: Taylor Isn't a Tradwife

October 19, 2025 • 37 mins
Taylor Swift isn’t a tradwife. She’s the opposite. She’s a woman who waited, who dated the douchebags, found herself, built an empire, and then finally chose a partner who celebrates her, supports her, and will never be her glass ceiling. That’s the story we should be talking about, the one that actually matters for young women. If you are a person who wants a partner, it is wonderful to wait for the right person and to find a good...
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Gabrielle Hamilton on the Myths That Make a Family

October 16, 2025 • 55 mins
Every family runs on a kind of mythology — the stories we tell about who we are, where we come from, and what we’ve survived. For Gabrielle Hamilton, those stories fueled both her cooking and her writing. The James Beard Award–winning chef behind Prune and the author of Blood, Bones & Butter has spent her life turning memory into art. In her new book, Next of Kin, she returns to the chaos and brilliance of her childhood — the beau...
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I Bought a Vintage Trailer… How Can I Turn it Into a Bookstore?

October 13, 2025 • 50 mins
I finally did the thing. After years of dreaming about a Philly bookstore, Nick and I bought a vintage trailer and christened it The Bookcase, a pop up mobile shop we’re rolling around the Catskills this winter. To figure out how any of this actually works, I called my friend Flannery of Bluebird Bookstop, whose own trailer grew into one of my favorite brick and mortar stores. We talk about why a trailer lets you test the market wi...
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Divorcing Heterosexuality (and Other Data-Driven Decisions)

October 9, 2025 • 43 mins
Wharton economist Corinne Low wrote a viral article for The Cut titled “This Economist Crunched the Numbers and Stopped Dating Men.” Low, the author of the new book Having it All, is here to talk all about it. In this episode, we chat about the real economics of burnout, motherhood, and why gendered division of labor destroys intimacy. Corinne shares how she turned her own research into a blueprint for survival, left a marriage t...
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The Original It Girl: What Jane Birkin Can Teach Us About Fame, and Influence

October 7, 2025 • 47 mins
Jane Birkin invented effortless cool before Instagram, before influencers, before French-girl chic was even a thing. But behind the Birkin bag and the famous love affairs was a woman battling depression, heartbreak, and the relentless pressure of being an icon. Journalist Marisa Meltzer joins me to talk about her new book It Girl: The Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin, which peels back the myth to reveal the real Birkin: fragile yet ...
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Sunday Nice Things: Book Journey x Alka Joshi

October 5, 2025 • 52 mins
Today we're dropping an episode of Book Journey into the feed, a behind-the-scenes podcast from editor and Northern California Writers Retreat director Heather Lazar about how writers become authors. This conversation follows Alka Joshi, international bestselling author of the Jaipur Trilogy from first pages to agent to editor to a breakout debut. You will hear how a voice becomes a manuscript, what a real revision process looks li...
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I Miss the 90s. What I Really Miss is Real Life

October 2, 2025 • 48 mins
We are living in peak nineties nostalgia. Everywhere you look there are slip dresses, scrunchies, bucket hats, even Tamagotchis making a comeback. But this revival is not just about clothes or hair accessories. It is about a collective longing for a pre-digital era, before we were glued to our phones and before algorithms decided what we should see, wear, and want. In this episode of Under the Influence, we dig into why millennial...
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The Bright Side of Not Drinking

September 30, 2025 • 51 mins
How do you make sobriety cool? Suzanne Warye was one of the first influencers asking that question. On her account The Sober Mom Life and in her new book The Sober Shift, she shows why quitting alcohol isn’t about rock bottom, it’s about building a life you don’t want to escape from. A longtime lifestyle influencer, Suzanne used her branding savvy to reframe what it means to live alcohol-free. In The Sober Shift, Suzanne calls ...
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Sunday Nice Things: Let's Talk About Birth with Lo & Behold

September 28, 2025 • 46 mins
Today I'm dropping an episode of Lo Mansfield's show Lo & Behold in the feed. Lo is a former labor and delivery nurse and current birth educator. You can follow her @TheLaborMama. I love Lo's informative, fact-based information about birth, postpartum and all things making babies. This episode is about whether a pain free birth is actually possible. This is something we see constantly on social media now, often posted by people w...
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The Mental Load of Family Life: The Work You Can’t See But Always Feel

September 25, 2025 • 40 mins
Why does it feel like moms carry a running scroll of everything — the playdates, the vaccines, the permission slips, the damn pile of laundry on the stairs? Sociologist Allison Daminger calls it cognitive labor — the invisible mental work of family life — and her new book What’s on Her Mind shows why women do so much more of it, even in couples who want equality. We talk about what cognitive labor actually looks like, why personali...
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Strong Enough to Survive Toddlers With Andre Crews

September 23, 2025 • 49 mins
Parenting is the hardest workout of all. Trainer and dad Andre Crews went viral for calling toddlers terrorists who hold their whole family hostage (so damn true), and he’s built a massive following by mixing fitness with brutally honest parenting advice. This episode dives into why motivation is a lie, how discipline actually sticks, and why the real goal isn’t a bikini body but a grandma body strong enough to pick up your kids' k...
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Sunday Nice Things: Women's Work

September 21, 2025 • 50 mins
Today we are revisting the second ever episode of UTI! Mom influencing is a multi-billion dollar industry. How the hell did we get here? How did influencing become a job? Why doesn’t Wikipedia mention mom bloggers in their history of women and what does the 19th Century economic philosopher Thorstein Veblen have to do with why we are so enchanted by people who seem wealthier than we are. Consider this your history lesson of women i...
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The Messy Truth About Potty Training

September 18, 2025 • 43 mins
Potty training has been sold to parents as a finish line — three days, one weekend, no more diapers. But what if that’s the wrong way to think about it? In this episode, Laura Birek, co-author of Good to Go: A Fresh Take on Potty Training for Today’s Intentional Parent, explains why potty training isn’t a binary, why “naked weekends” don’t work for every family, and how a rehearsal period can ease kids (and parents) into the proces...
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How We Divide Household and Parenting Labor in Our House

September 16, 2025 • 34 mins
So many women are exhausted by carrying more of the household labor, both the visible chores and the invisible work no one talks about. In this episode Jo and Nick sit down to map out how it really happens in their own home. They talk through who does the laundry, who puts it away, who manages school forms and grocery runs, and who gets stuck with the trash. And then there is bedtime, the nightly ritual that drains every ounce of p...
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Can Creativity and Motherhood CoExist?

September 11, 2025 • 36 mins
The world loves to tell parents—especially moms—that kids and creativity can’t co-exist. Writer M.M. De Voe thinks that’s B.S. and so do I. M. founded Pen Parentis to help writers keep creating after they have kids. In this conversation, we get into what really happens to creativity when you add a baby to the mix: the productivity spurts, the guilt, the comparisons, the shame. And why community might be the single thing that saves...
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How Patagonia Rewrote the Rules of Influence With David Gelles

September 9, 2025 • 41 mins
Patagonia isn’t just an outdoor brand. It’s a company that has quietly shaped how we dress, how we think about the planet, and how business can act in the world. Today we're talking to New York Times reporter David Gelles about his new book Dirtbag Billionaire, tracing Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard’s journey from dirtbag climber to the creator of a brand with outsized cultural influence. Grab a copy of Dirtbag Billionaire he...
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Sunday Nice Things: Broadway Husbands

September 7, 2025 • 25 mins
Stephen and Bret—aka the Broadway Husbands—have spent their careers lighting up the stage, from The Little Mermaid to Billy Elliot. But their most moving performance is the life they’ve built together as husbands and now as dads. In this episode, they join Committed to share their story: how they met in sobriety, fell in love over Christmas parties and theater trips, and eventually tied the knot with a rooftop proposal at the Empi...
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Here's What No One Tells You About Freezing Your Eggs With Danielle Robay

September 4, 2025 • 50 mins
What happens when your peak career years collide with your peak fertility years? Journalist Danielle Robay shares her unfiltered story of freezing her eggs—the painful parts no one talks about, the aftermath, and what she wishes she’d known before she started. Listen to Danielle's Podcast Question Everything here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Lear...
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