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
August 3, 2025 • 62 mins
Rain on your wedding day is supposed to mean good luck, but for Allison and John, it meant they were about to have the worst year of their lives. From John experiencing a life-changing set-back in his career, to Allison losing her beloved mother to a rare neurological disease, their time as newlyweds was anything but peaceful. But in the inaugural episode of the podcast, John and Allison dissect how this rough patch ultimately stre...
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July 31, 2025 • 51 mins
What happens when filtered faces look more real than real ones? This episode dives into the strange collision of plastic surgery, social media, and AI. Why are celebrities suddenly confessing to nose jobs and boob lifts? And how is the algorithm shaping what we think we’re supposed to look like? We talk to top plastic surgeon Dr. Jonathan Zelken about what’s actually possible—and what’s pure fantasy.
When perfection is everywhere, ...
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July 29, 2025 • 49 mins
What if the entire wellness internet—bee venom facials, jade eggs, raw dairy—could be traced back to one woman? Gwyneth Paltrow didn’t just win an Oscar and marry a rock star. She built Goop, turned luxury wellness into a global machine, and maybe even helped create the Maha influencer pipeline. Journalist Amy Odell, author of the brand-new biography Gwyneth, spent three years and 200 interviews uncovering Gwyneth’s meteoric rise, ...
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July 27, 2025 • 25 mins
So many of us are wondering why our government is not working for us today. Why our representatives are so ineffectual - simple bills that would protect so many vulnerable children from lead exposure like The Lead Paint Right to Know Act get stuck in committee and never brought to the floor for a vote regardless of the fact that it passed the assembly with the largest margin yet: 106 to 40. You're about to listen to LEAD, an audio ...
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July 24, 2025 • 46 mins
If you’ve said the word perimenopause anywhere near your phone lately, you’re probably being served a firehose of hormone hackers, estrogen patch evangelists, and protein-powder miracle cures. I hate most of these influencers and their content. But I also love that we’re finally talking about what’s happening to our bodies.
In this episode, I talk to OB-GYN Dr. Kim Einhorn founder of The Menopause Collective about all the stuff we...
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July 22, 2025 • 43 mins
Today, we're diving into the untold history of four women who risked everything to fight fascism in WWII Italy. Author Suzanne Cope joins Jo to talk about her new book Women of War, which profiles badass resistance fighters who smuggled weapons, organized underground strikes, and wrote radical newspapers while the men were often hiding in the hills. These women didn't wait for permission to lead—they just did it. Jo and Suzanne exp...
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July 20, 2025 • 48 mins
Unladylike is an absolute delight. Host Cristen Conger dissects the myths, messes, and media shaping modern womanhood—and un-womanhood. From bisexual imposter syndrome to tall girl therapy, gun culture to birth control backlash, she gets into it all—backed by deep research, sharp interviews, and just enough unseriousness to demystify the uncanny valley of 21st-century patriarchy without doomspiraling.
I'm actually on this episode ...
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July 15, 2025 • 46 mins
There are very few influencers who can actually influence me these days, but Grace Atwood is one of them. And that's because I trust her. The business of influencing has changed a lot and Grace has been navigating those changes for 15 years. From Blogspot to Substack, affiliate links to brand deals, she’s built a full-fledged media brand by being transparent, trustworthy and having impeccable taste.
In this episode, we talk about...
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July 13, 2025 • 50 mins
While social media feeds overflow with polished success stories, a new podcast is asking: what if the biggest career breakthroughs come from the moments we’re least likely to share? The Messy Parts cuts through the highlight reel to explore the raw, unfiltered reality behind achievement.
Host Maryam Banikarim, a powerhouse executive with 20+ years in the C-Suite at Nextdoor, Hyatt, NBC Universal, and Univision, created...
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July 10, 2025 • 46 mins
Reality television isn’t just escapism—it’s a sociological goldmine. In this episode, Reality Life host Kate Casey breaks down why the smartest people she knows are watching Love Undercover, Jury Duty, and The Keepers. Plus: the archetype of the aspiring influencer, what Mariska Hargitay’s new doc reveals about legacy and loss, and how Jeff Bezos turned his wedding into an extravagant PR stunt. This is your sharp, funny, wildly sat...
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July 8, 2025 • 40 mins
We don’t have rituals for breaking up with friends. Romantic breakups come with scripts—we know how to mourn them, process them, even joke about them. But when a friendship falls apart, we’re left in a strange cultural vacuum.
I still think about the women I’ve lost as friends more than the men I’ve dated. I still stop myself from texting them, still wonder if they think about me, still carry the unresolved ache of the loss. Thei...
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July 6, 2025 • 63 mins
Mental Health Rewritten, is a recently released nonfiction narrative podcast tackling stigma in mental health head on. Host Dominic Lawson and his guests are challenging narratives around sex, suicide, and cultural identity. Here's the first episode, which covers sex addiction and porn.
Listen to Mental Health Rewritten here.
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July 3, 2025 • 46 mins
Carla Sosenko grew up with a rare vascular disorder, a body that didn’t conform and a deep love of fashion that helped her feel seen. In this intimate conversation, the author of the new memoir I'll Look So Good in a Coffin opens up about navigating shame, self-worth, and beauty standards in a culture obsessed with thinness. We talk about what it means to dress a body that defies expectations, how weight-loss drugs like semaglutide...
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July 1, 2025 • 55 mins
There’s an influencer for everything—including the intersection of geology, volcanology, academia, and queer joy. This week, we are chatting with Denali (@dykanite), a PhD student and science communicator with nearly 300k Instagram followers whose viral posts make earth science funny, fierce, and deeply human. They dig into how a geology joke launched an entire platform, why science isn’t neutral, and what it means to be an openl...
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June 29, 2025 • 48 mins
Many years ago I made a podcast about the bad ass women left out of too many history books. Today I am dropping Fierce in your feed. This episode is about Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress.
Years before the United States ratified the 19th amendment, a woman from Montana had already infiltrated Capitol Hill. Jeannette Rankin rose through the ranks of the women’s suffrage movement, bringing an electric energy to...
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June 28, 2025 • 24 mins
The number one show on Netflix right now is Poop Cruise. What happens when a Carnival cruise ship loses power in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico and thousands of passengers are left with no food, no working toilets, and no way out? You get a poop cruise.
In this special episode we break down the gloriously grotesque Netflix documentary Trainwreck: Poop Cruise, a surprisingly funny, bizarrely moving, and fully revolting story of ...
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June 26, 2025 • 48 mins
We get real about weight loss drugs in this episode—no shame, no BS. Journalist Kara Baskin joins me to talk side effects, societal judgment, and the weird, wonderful, often infuriating experience of being a woman in a changing body. This isn’t about chasing skinny. It’s about reclaiming comfort, confidence, and control in a culture that tells us we can’t win either way.
Read Kara's work here.
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June 23, 2025 • 45 mins
This week, we're talking to journalist EJ Dickson of The Cut about what really happens at Turning Point USA’s Young Women’s Leadership Summit, where thousands of Gen Z girls gather to hear influencers tell them the future is feminine, submissive, and off the grid. But here’s the twist: it doesn’t look extreme. It looks aspirational. It looks like a lifestyle brand.
We break down how the conservative movement is packaging tradition...
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June 22, 2025 • 41 mins
Today I am dropping an episode of my new mini-series (Re) Committed here. (Re) Committed dives into stories of love lost and found again when people least expect it. This series was inspired by Christine Pride's new novel, All the Men I've Loved Again, which is based on her own second chance romance when she fell in love with the same two men in her twenties and again in her forties. Today we hear Christine's story of how she fell...
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June 19, 2025 • 40 mins
What happens when the U.S. government slashes one-third of PBS Kids' funding? Shows get canceled. Summer camps disappear. The most vulnerable kids lose access to free, educational media. Today we're talking with Sara DeWitt of PBS Kids about what Trump's recent cut what that means for shows like Daniel Tiger and Molly of Denali, and why public media is still one of the most powerful tools we have to reach and teach all children—esp...
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