Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

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...

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...

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...

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 Chass...

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...

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...

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...

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 ho...

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 performanc...

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, cr...

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 l...

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 jo...

 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 wom...

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...

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 enou...

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 fe...

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 i...

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...

 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...

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...

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...

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 tall...

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 li...

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...

Ask Jo anything this week. We've got a grab bag of audience questions and completely unfiltered responses to things like: What’s the biggest lie women are being sold right now? Can you actually “have it all”? How do you stop feeling like you’re failing every day? How does it feel to be in your 40s (body, confidence, not giving a f*) How often do you get Botox? What’s it like bringing a kid on a wo...