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.
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Who Told Us Our 20s Were the Best Part? (The Midlife Plot Twist Part Two)
Tuesday, October 6, 2026 • Duration 45:36
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.
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In the Wake of the Cornell 7, How Can We Raise Good Men?
Thursday, October 1, 2026 • Duration 42:02
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.
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You Don't Have to Burn It Down: The Midlife Plot Twist, Part One
Tuesday, September 29, 2026 • Duration 43:27
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.
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The Last Free Women of Afghanistan
Thursday, September 24, 2026 • Duration 41:01
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.
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Chasing Cozy: The Birthday Episode With Jane Green
Tuesday, September 22, 2026 • Duration 42:18
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.
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Can a Chatbot Love You Back?
Thursday, September 17, 2026 • Duration 44:47
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.
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The Lone Liberal on Fox News Wrote the Book on Disagreeing Better
Tuesday, September 15, 2026 • Duration 47:36
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.
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How Can We Save Child Stars ? Would You Buy Sydney Sweeney's Underwear? And a New Royal Tell-All
Thursday, September 10, 2026 • Duration 45:55
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?
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"How Not to Look Like Shit": Bobbi Brown on Makeup, Aging, and Being Scrappy Forever
Tuesday, September 8, 2026 • Duration 44:03
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.
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Sunday Nice Things: Did Emily Ruin Paris?
Sunday, September 6, 2026 • Duration 33:55
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
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