Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

What if everything we were told about midlife is wrong? This week, we’re talking to Gabrielle Moss, co-author of The Midlife Plot Twist, about why your 40s can be the moment you finally stop living according to decisions you made at 22 and start asking what you actually want. We talk about our culture’s bizarre obsession with youth, why women are allowed to age but apparently not look like they’re aging, and what pop culture still gets wrong about women in their 40s. We also get into disappearing career ladders, the reality of having nine jobs, marriages that need a reboot, retirement anxiety, and why changing your life doesn’t have to mean burning the whole thing down and moving to Italy. Plus, we revisit Cathy, Murphy Brown, The Idea of You, This Is 40, Judy Blume, and the Babysitters Club women we desperately want to see in midlife. Because maybe a midlife crisis isn’t a crisis at all. Maybe it’s the moment you finally have enough information to build a life you actually like. ORDER The Midlife Plot Twist here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happens when boys learn about masculinity from the internet before they learn how to understand their own emotions? Jo talks with Peggy Orenstein, author of Boys & Sex, about the forces shaping young men long before they reach college, the locker room or the frat house. They dig into the extraordinary influence of figures like Andrew Tate, how social media algorithms can turn curiosity into increasingly extreme ideas, and why simply keeping kids away from harmful content is no longer enough. The conversation also explores why boys are often taught to see anger as their only acceptable difficult emotion, and what gets lost when they learn to shut off everything else. It’s a conversation about how we raise boys, what the internet is teaching them, what parents can still influence, and why some of the answers may begin much earlier than we think. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week we start a two-part series on how not to blow up your life in midlife, with Gabrielle Moss, co-author of The Midlife Plot Twist: How to Reboot Your Life Without Burning It Down, Even If You Really, Really Want To. Gabby spent her career writing about pop culture, so she knows exactly how badly it has served women over forty. We get into why the midlife crisis went from a serious idea to a punchline about men and convertibles, why the '80s sitcoms were doing this better than anything on streaming right now, and why Anne Hathaway in a string bikini is not quite the representation we were hoping for. We also talk about the question at the center of the book, which is whether the life you built is actually yours or just the one you were told to want. Plus the nine-job economy, the career ladder that no longer exists, what retirement is even supposed to mean for our generation, and the surprisingly hard question of what you actually like. Part two with co-author Lindsey Goldwert is coming next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rebecca Blumenstein helped get 124 people out of Kabul when the city fell. Diana Kapp had been reporting on Afghan girls since 2012. Their new book, The Last Free Women, follows four of those young women through five years of starting over in America, learning English, going back to college, and carrying the weight of everyone they left behind. We talk about what's happened to women in Afghanistan since 2021, why the five-year anniversary went almost uncovered, and why this story deserves a spot on your book club list. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’re coming to you poolside on Jo's birthday from Marrakech with bestselling author Jane Green for a conversation about the things we learn as we get older, wiser and more bad ass. We talk about choosing the people who choose you, trusting your gut, learning the art of discernment and realizing you’re allowed to build the life you actually want. We get into raising independent kids, why they need room to fail, friendships that have seasons, learning to say no and why aging makes it much easier to walk away from people and situations that don’t feel right. Jane also opens up about leaving her marriage, finding herself again in midlife and the story behind her memoir Rewilding. Then we get into her new novel, The Many Private Lives of Missy Cooke, female friendship, Working Girl, our feelings about plastic surgery and identical Instagram faces, Fleabag and how many tagines are simply too many tagines. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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, written with social scientist Michael S. Amato and published by Simon & Schuster Audio Originals. We cover the numbers, which are bigger than most people assume, and the surprise in the research, which is how many women are using AI for romantic and erotic role play and why the romance matters more than the sex. Bridget describes trying to talk ChatGPT into bed herself and discovering she had to lie, neg, and wear it down, which felt uncomfortably familiar. We talk about why the people living these relationships almost never get asked about them, why shame is blocking the regulation we need, and where kids fit into all of this, including the day a nine-year-old typed a question into Google and had Gemini start asking him how he felt about it. And Bridget talks about the part she never intended to report. After her mother died suddenly and she became her father's caretaker, she found herself unloading everything into a chatbot at three in the morning rather than calling the people who love her. She is still working out what that cost her. Love at First Prompt is available at loveatfirstprompt.com and wherever you get audiobooks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 with Jessica about building a data-based worldview, the hardest days she has ever had on air, and why staying silent is often the most powerful move in an argument. We also get into the lie our generation was sold about leaning in and having it all and the tightrope women walk every time they open their mouths at work. I Disagree is out now wherever books are sold, and it belongs in your book club, ideally with people you disagree with. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 to make child stardom less toxic. Could AI be the answer? One expert says yes. We're also talking about Sydney Sweeney's lingerie brand and whether it can compete in a very crowded celebrity market, the strange business of the Beckhams owning the commercial rights to their children's names, and whether the British royals are ever going to kiss and make up. Plus a new royal tell-all from Diana's brother. And finally, the answer to a question no one asked: what does Harry Styles think about in the shower? ⁠Subscribe the Celebrity Intelligence newsletter here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 allowed to make a single beauty product. So she renovated a hotel, sold vitamins at Walmart, did an eyeglass line, and then launched Jones Road in October 2020, one week before the presidential election, when everyone told her she was out of her mind. Bobbi is a force of nature and her memoir Still Bobbi: Lessons on Building a Beautiful Life is a book club must read. We talk about the lab screwup that turned into Miracle Balm, what she does instead of Botox and which laser she will never touch again, why the phrase anti-aging makes no sense to her, and what 38 years of marriage plus running a company with your husband actually looks like. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 putting France in the global spotlight.But what happens when a TV show becomes so popular that it starts changing a city in real life? Are all those new visitors a blessing... or a headache for the people who actually live there? In this episode, co-hosts Asma Khalid and Tristan Redman - who lives in Paris himself - dig into what’s been named the "Emily effect”, and explore the surprising ways TV shows and movies can shape how we see places, sell places, and sometimes transform them altogether. Have a listen, and if you enjoy it, search for The Global Story wherever you get your podcasts - every day they cover one big story at the intersection between America and the world. Here's Did Emily Ruin Paris? from The Global Story. Listen to more at https://link.mgln.ai/Influence-TGS Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 binary is failing everybody. Claire's new novel is The Supper Club Saints. Find her at claireswinarski.com. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 always the best strategy. She talks about why many OBGYNs are not trained to treat menopause, what is genuinely changing in endometriosis research right now, and the maternity care deserts spreading across most of the country. Her first book, Labor and Deliverance: Reclaiming the Healing in Women's Health, is out January 26. It's nine patient stories plus the decade she spent being dismissed by other doctors while working as one herself. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 conversation about kindness, capitalism, and why Dolly Parton was an uber influencer in the best possible way. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 biggest myths, including the lie that it hurts small businesses, celebrate the wins in 42 states and DC, and talk about why paternity leave might help fix the male loneliness crisis. Plus: raising boys in the age of the manosphere, AI anxiety, and exactly how to hold your elected officials' feet to the fire. Learn more about Paid Leave for All here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 been lost or overlooked. Plus, spell jars, the power of belief, and why we could all use a little more magic and sparkle right now. If you love Practical Magic, fierce women, gentle men, plant magic, mythology, and a delicious escape from the dumpster fire of the news, add this one to your fall reading list. ORDER SIREN SAYS HERE Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 with Christian conservative women across the country. What she found challenges almost everything we think we know about who these women are and how they wield power. We chat about the influencer ecosystem shaping political beliefs, the pageant-to-politics pipeline, why appearance can be a political strategy, and why reducing conservative women to tradwives may be blinding us to what's actually happening. Because while everyone was busy making fun of the aesthetic, these women were building institutions, winning elections, shaping culture, and changing the country. Order Esther's Army here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 Nicer. We're chatting about the cultural expectations placed on women, the pressure to be endlessly grateful, and why so many of us are pushing back against the idea that being pleasant should be our highest calling. Find Ophira here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 why so many smart, successful women stay in unhealthy relationships, what Sabrina calls "light" and "dark" feminine energy, the mother wound, people-pleasing, and how childhood experiences shape the way we show up in adult relationships. Along the way, we unpack anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, why emotionally unavailable people can feel so magnetic, and what it actually takes to build healthy relationships without abandoning yourself in the process. Order The Feminine Code here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 patriarchy’s long, weird history of ruining everything. Grab Emily's new novel The Revenge Party. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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). Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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. Binge Get a Life here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 the next promotion, bestseller list, milestone, or parenting phase isn't the thing that's finally going to make you happy? This week we're talking about the pressure women feel to constantly strive for more and to achieve external validation. We chat about the "arrival trap" that keeps so many of us convinced that real life begins after the next achievement, why motherhood can completely upend our sense of identity, and how to stay ambitious without tying your self-worth to your accomplishments. Order Making It Without Losing It: How to Stay Motivated in a World Where We Are Never Done here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 husbands seem biologically engineered to sleep through anything turns into a much bigger discussion about ambition, burnout, publishing, found family, and why some of the best ideas arrive in the middle of the night. Buy The Insomniacs here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 challenge of holding onto your own identity while navigating a role with no job description. We chat about Iceland's approach to gender equality, the famous Women's Day Off, social media's effect on how we see ourselves and one another, and why Eliza came away from her years as First Lady feeling more optimistic about humanity than ever before. Pick up Eliza's book The First Lady Nextdoor here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 phenomenon known as Paris Syndrome, the very real psychological crash that happens when reality fails to live up to our fantasies about the City of Light. Together we explore why Paris remains one of the world's most powerful forms of escapism, why women are increasingly drawn to stories centered on pleasure rather than productivity, and what our obsession with escape says about our modern lives. We also discuss Danielle's delicious new Paris-set mystery Murder Most Delicious, plus: French lingerie, literary ambition, writing routines, perimenopause, and why we all need to be doing more nothing. Order Murder Most Delicious here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The art market is one of the most secretive, least regulated wealth machines on the planet. Billions of dollars change hands between billionaires, oligarchs, and dynasties with almost no oversight, and behind almost every famous man in that world is a woman who did the work and got written out of the story. This week I'm sharing my conversation with my brilliant friend Farnoosh Torabi from her podcast So Money, where we get into: the shadowy families who control what art is worth, the real-life scandals that inspired the rich people behaving very badly in The Parisian Heist, and the untold true story of Jo van Gogh-Bonger, the widow who single-handedly made Vincent van Gogh the most famous artist in the world. We also talk about why women still hand over financial control to the men in their lives, what the end of the tradwife era means for all of us, why I love writing unlikable women (who I still want to have drinks with), and my honest thoughts on Belle Burden's Strangers. Binge more episodes of So Money here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wilder is back in the Under the Influence feed. A brand new Little House on the Prairie just landed on Netflix and obviously Glynnis and I had thoughts. I talked to Executive Producer Joy Gorman Wettels, who had her whole team listening to Wilder while they made this show, about how she spent years getting the rights from the Friendly family, why this version centers Laura instead of Pa, how they wove in the Osage story, and why Laura Ingalls Wilder might be one of the few things that can actually get people talking to each other again. Little House on the Prairie is on Netflix July 9th. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why do we all root for art thieves? This week we're joined by Anthony Amore — director of security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the heist expert behind the heist in The Parisian Heist — to bust every myth Hollywood ever taught us. We get into the real story of the unsolved 1990 Gardner heist (two fake cops, 81 minutes, 13 masterpieces, none recovered), why the empty frames still hang on the walls, the Robin Hood myth of art heisting, the woman who masterminded a Vermeer heist in 1974, the greatest art thief who ever lived, and what the Louvre heist means for museums everywhere. Plus: why most heists are inside jobs, how AI is changing museum security, and why you could not, in fact, pull a heist off. Grab all of Anthony's wonderful books here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We were promised that if we worked hard enough, checked all the right boxes, and built successful careers, we'd eventually arrive at some stable version of adulthood. So why do so many women in midlife feel like we're teetering on the edge of a cliff. This week we're joined by writer and cultural critic Amil Niazi, author of Life After Ambition, for a chat about the modern midlife crisis. Not the cliché dude version with sports cars and dramatic reinventions, but the reckoning happening to so many women who have spent decades chasing success only to discover that the old definitions no longer fit. We chat about aging in industries obsessed with youth, the anxiety of work in an increasingly unstable economy, why ambition may need a complete rebrand, and what happens when we stop measuring success by titles, promotions, and external validation. Most of all, we explore the things that actually sustain us: friendship, community, creativity, family, and the freedom to build an actual life and not just the idea of one. Get Amil's book Life After Ambition here. Read her story about Midlife Crisis-ing in End Times here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Summer is supposed to be relaxing, so why does it feel like five summers' worth of stress before July even hits? This week, we're pushing back on the algorithm's demands that we all have a "'90s summer" or a "nonna summer" and making the case for opting out of any kind of perfection or summer archetype entirely. We're joined by creator, blogger, and debut novelist Chassity Evans. We dig into Chassity's wild path to authorship, why she chose self-publishing over the slow grind of querying and traditional publishing, and what it's like to have real-time sales data as an indie author. Plus: our quest to bring badminton back and a tease of a very sexy Sound of Music retelling. Pre-order The Parisian Heist and grab Pink Sand Summer wherever you get your books. Join our newsletter community here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why does Parks and Recreation feel more necessary now than when it first aired? We're chatting with bestselling author and pop culture journalist Jennifer Keishin Armstrong about the enduring appeal of Leslie Knope, Pawnee, and the sitcom that accidentally became a blueprint for rebuilding community. We talk about why audiences have embraced earnestness over cynicism, how Amy Poehler helped create one of television's most iconic feminist characters, and what the show's message about friendship, local government, and collective action can teach us today. This episode is about much more than television. It's about what happens when good people decide to build something together. Get Jennifer's Book Parks and Rec: The Underdog TV Show That Lit'rally Inspired a Vision for a Better America here. Subscribe to Ministry of Pop Culture here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kate Casey, host of Reality Life with Kate Casey returns to the show with recommendations for what to watch right now, from buzzy new documentaries to true crime rabbit holes and reality television that is deliciously bonkers and addictive. We chat aboutThe Crash, Should I Marry a Murderer?, the surprisingly emotional Martin Short documentary, Kate's latest Housewives obsession, the Martha Moxley case, Spencer Pratt's political future (ed note: we recorded this before the primary), and why some stories stay lodged in our collective imagination for decades. Listen to Kate's podcast here. Read Kate's Vanity Fair piece on Martha Moxley here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our friend Stephanie McNeal wrote a truly great piece for Vulture this week called BALLERINA FARM IS HAPPY WITH HER CHOICES. Steph went to the farm and sat down with Hannah inside the homeschooling schoolhouse to talk about everything from being called a tradwife to Yesteryear to who does what in her marriage. It's the best profile of BF and Neeleman we have ever read so we had to get Steph on the show ASAP to chat through it. Read the piece here. Subscribe to Steph's Substack here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bestselling author Jane Green spent decades looking like she had the perfect life: a beautiful house, a successful career, a long marriage, children, stability, all of it. But behind the scenes she was drowning in financial fear, people pleasing, resentment, perimenopause, and the terrifying feeling that she had completely lost herself. Then she walked away. She Rewilded herself. In this deeply honest conversation based on Green's new memoir Rewilding, Jane talks about leaving her marriage, running away to Marrakech, experimenting with mushrooms, tattoos and reinvention in midlife, navigating the hormonal and emotional earthquake of menopause, and learning how to stop caring what everyone else thinks. Thanks to Bellesa for sponsoring the show! EVERYONE who signs up wins a FREE toy or gift card! Just click the link! https://www.bboutique.co/vibe/undertheinfluence-pod Get Jane's book REWILDING here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sad beige motherhood helped inspire this podcast. This week we're diving into the internet aesthetic that convinced an entire generation of mothers that parenting should look like a luxury hotel lobby in Denmark. We talk with Hayley DeRoche, aka The Official Sad Beige and author of Dress Your Baby in Sage and Taupe, about how influencer culture turned motherhood into a perfectly curated performance built on guilt, consumption, and extremely expensive neutral-toned stacking cups. We get into the rise of sad beige motherhood, stealth wealth aesthetics, why every stroller suddenly costs as much as a used Honda Civic, and how social media sold women the lie that if we just bought the right swaddle, sleep suit, or baby carrier, we could somehow control the total chaos of early parenting. There’s also a lot about community: why modern motherhood feels so isolating, why moms desperately need real-life support systems instead of influencer advice, and why we may all need to start forming feminist mom communes immediately. Follow the Official Sad Beige here. Order Dress Your Baby in Sage and Taupe here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What if the women from Girls Gone Wild finally got the mic? This week we go all the way back to the horrifyingly normalized misogyny of the early 2000s with author and podcaster Courtney Kocak, who spent seven deeply unsettling weeks working on the actual Girls Gone Wild tour bus. Courtney takes us inside the world Joe Francis built: drunk college girls signing contracts they didn’t understand, creepy power dynamics disguised as “fun,” and the moment she realized the entire machine was designed to separate women from their agency while making terrible men rich. We get into feminism’s branding problem, the manosphere, abortion shame, sex positivity after trauma, why women are exhausted from watching men face zero consequences, and whether the left needs to stop eating its own alive every five seconds online. Get Courtney's book Girl Gone Wild here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So excited to drop Family Money from Babylist into your feed! Having a baby comes with real money questions, no matter where you're starting from. Welcome to Family Money, a new podcast from Babylist, because it shouldn't feel like only some people know how to play the game. Family Money is the podcast about the financial side of family life that parents think about constantly but rarely say out loud. Childcare costs. Saving strategies. What it actually means to give your kids a good life. Each episode brings together parents, economists, therapists, and financial advisors for the conversations you've been carrying around. No judgment. No shame. Just honest answers. In our very first episode, we're tackling the question every parent asks: are kids actually more expensive than ever? Yes—but the reason might surprise you. We hear from an economist who reframes what that actually means for your family's finances (hint: you're not burning money, you're investing it), and a mom of three who proves you don't need a huge home, a fancy car, or a perfectly curated nursery to raise a happy family. Because here's the truth: kids will flip your finances upside down. And they're worth every penny. Subscribe to Family Money here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Before there were influencers, there were royals. For centuries, the British royal family has provided the world with fashion trends, family feuds, public scandals, doomed romances, and enough gossip to fuel generations of headlines. Long before social media, people were obsessing over what royals wore, who they married, and what happened behind palace walls. Bestselling author Melanie Benjamin joins us to talk about her new novel, The Windsor Affair, which revisits one of the most consequential scandals in modern history: King Edward VIII's decision to give up the throne for Wallis Simpson. Together we unpack why we're still fascinated by the royals, how the monarchy became the blueprint for celebrity culture, and what really happened between Wallis Simpson and the future Queen Mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. They also dig into the parallels between Wallis and Meghan Markle, the media's obsession with pitting women against one another, and why history keeps recycling the same female archetypes. Get The Windsor Affair here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

 The greatest scam of the last 20 years is that women were told if we just worked harder, leaned in more, woke up at 5:00 AM, negotiated better, practiced enough gratitude, optimized ourselves hard enough, and girlbossed with enough intensity, equality and equity would finally be ours. That didn't happen, did it? This week we're talking about why the entire promise of girl power failed so many women. Not because our ambition was wrong or dangerous, and not because women did anything wrong or dangerous or because we failed, but because the systems around us just never actually changed to support us. Order The Ambition Penalty here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There’s a reason so many people are tuning out politics right now. Every day feels like another terrible headline, another scandal too big to process, another moment where you wonder whether we live inside The Onion. But while everyone is overwhelmed and exhausted, the right has built one of the most sophisticated media ecosystems in modern history. Emily Amick returns to the podcast to talk about Trump’s new loyalty settlement fund, the influencer-to-political operative pipeline, why “independent” MAGA creators are shaping public opinion more effectively than traditional media, and whether the MAHA moms are gonna jump ship. Buy Emily's book Democracy in Retrograde here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why does success still feel so empty for so many women? Executive coach Brooke Taylor says the answer is something she calls “the success wound”: the pain that comes from tying our self-worth to achievement, productivity, perfection, and external validation. In this episode, we unpack why so many high-achieving women are burned out, anxious, over-functioning, and terrified they’re never doing enough. We get into Google hustle culture to addiction, motherhood, ambition, burnout, and the panic spiral that starts with one weird email from your boss. We also talk about the deeper cultural forces shaping women’s relationship to work, why so many women are rethinking ambition in midlife, and how we raise daughters who know they are worthy even when they fail. Order The Success Wound here. Follow Brooke here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Years ago, Spencer Pratt was dismissed as a fame-hungry reality TV idiot with frosted facial hair and a crystal obsession. But looking back? He may have understood modern media better than almost anyone else on television. Now he’s running for mayor of Los Angeles. Jo digs into the strange pipeline from reality TV to political power, why audiences are drawn to “outsider” candidates they already feel connected to, and how the attention economy changed politics forever. Because as ridiculous as Spencer Pratt for mayor sounds, it also feels deeply, painfully American. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you loved Yesteryear — or absolutely hated it — a lot of you have been asking the same question: what should I read next? This week on Under the Influence, we’re diving into the ultimate post-Yesteryear reading list, from influencer thrillers and feminist rage novels to nonfiction deep dives into tradwives, Christian patriarchy, mommy influencers, and the very real cost of turning domesticity into content. We’re talking The Stepford Wives, A Well-Trained Wife, Like, Follow, Subscribe, Such a Bad Influence, The Mad Wife, and why Little House on the Prairie still has a chokehold on all of us. And because so many listeners are newly entering the tradwife discourse, we’re also resurfacing an older episode from the archives that you might have missed: a fascinating conversation with journalist Clara Bingham about the real history behind the tradwife fantasy. Together, we unpack the myth of the happy 1950s housewife, the backlash against feminism, Phyllis Schlafly’s political machine, and why so much of today’s influencer culture is recycling old propaganda in aesthetically pleasing beige linen packaging. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Social media has changed pregnancy in a big way. Between picture-perfect bumps, “effortless” births and endless advice, it’s easy to feel like you’re not measuring up. But it’s also made space for more honest and authentic conversations—the parts of pregnancy that aren’t camera-ready. In this episode, we talk with journalist Fortesa Latifi, author of Like, Follow, Subscribe, and Ayla Woodruff, an influencer and mom with millions of followers, about the realities of sharing your pregnancy and motherhood online, from deciding what to share to curating your feed to protect your mental health. Featuring Ayla Woodruff and Fortesa Latifi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

 There's a very specific kind of rage that comes from realizing that the rules were rigged against you the entire time. As women, we were told that we could have ambition, careers, power, money, independence, all of the things, that we could have it all, but only if we managed to pursue all of it while we also remained endlessly agreeable, attractive, maternal, selfless, accommodating, emotionally available, and completely non-threatening to men. Even if we checked all the boxes, we still weren't gonna get all the things. Today we're chatting about the new book, The Ambition Penalty, with Stephanie O'Connell. Buckle up, this one is a wild ride. Order The Ambition Penalty here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Happy weekend! Here's a sneak peek of the first chapter of Jo van Gogh's story in The Parisian Heist. Just in case you needed a little taste before getting your orders in. In the past timeline of this book we are telling the untold story of Jo van Gogh, Vincent's sister in law who inherited his hundreds of worthless paintings and dedicated her life to making him a household name. She is the reason you know him so well today. ORDER YOUR COPY OF THE PARISIAN HEIST TODAY Join our newsletter community here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A Wall Street Journal headline about a powerful female executive spending “only” three hours a weekend with her kids turned into an internet blood sports. So we unpack why. In this episode, we get into the outrage around Skims executive Emma Grede, the impossible standards put on mothers, and why no one ever asks dads to account for every minute they spend parenting. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happens when you step inside the internet? In this episode, we head to the Ballerina Farm farm shop in Midway, Utah and the Ballerina Farm Dairy (and get a tour with none other than Daniel Neeleman himself). Come, watch and listen in real time as the branding does exactly what it’s designed to do: make you believe that if you just buy the gingham tote or the sourdough starter or the beef tallow, maybe your life could look like this too. Then we go to the dairy. And here’s where it gets complicated. Because behind the prairie dresses and soft-focus Instagram lies a highly technical, data-driven farming operation with robots, trackers, and a whole lot of money powering the dream. It’s not Little House on the Prairie. It’s Silicon Valley with cows. The reality is both more interesting and less idyllic than the feed suggests. Also, yes, everything has protein now. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Art has a branding problem. Somewhere along the way, we decided it was only for rich people, or academics living in their ivory towers Liz Lidgett is changing that. Liz opened a gallery right before the world shut down during the pandemic, started putting art on Instagram when no one could leave their homes, and built a following by making the art world feel way more human. We talk about how to live with art instead of being intimidated by it, how to figure out what you like, why your first piece doesn’t need to be expensive. And why the best art is usually the one you can’t stop thinking about, not the one that matches your couch. We also detour into perimenopause. Briefly. Promise! Can't stop, won't stop. Buy Liz's book here. Follow her here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does it mean to move through the world at a human pace? To ramble and wander and chat up strangers in real life? This week, we sit down with writer Isaac Fitzgerald to talk about his new book American Rambler and what happens when you decide to walk across America and follow in the footsteps of Johnny Appleseed. These great American yappers get into the idea that midlife is a second coming-of-age, why wandering might be the antidote to our screen-obsessed lives, and how the definition of “adventure” changes when you’re not twenty anymore. Spoiler: It gets better. ORDER AMERICAN RAMBLER TODAY Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices