Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

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 doing to our relationships, our sex lives, and our ability to feel joy. Jo and Nick join her for a brutally honest conversation about how to break the habit, rebuild intimacy, and reclaim the parts of life that can’t be lived through a screen. Learn more about Thekla's work here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 Vanessa Grigoriadis on her new show So Your Parents Are Old for a crossover episode about what happens when the people who raised you suddenly need you to raise them. We get honest about the third shift—the invisible labor of caring for everyone at once—about guilt, burnout, and what it means to have zero minutes left to spare. If you want to subscribe to So Your Parents Are Old you can do it here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 man. My best girlfriend Jackie Cascarano of Juno Women's Collective and I dig into why Taylor and Travis’s relationship is such a powerful example for young women, and why it’s time to stop calling every woman who wants marriage and kids a tradwife, as if wanting those things somehow cancels out your feminism. We also get into the fragile male ego, the madness of Bama Rush, and the weird ways social media keeps shaping what it means to be a woman right now. Read the WSJ story about Bama Rush here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 beauty and the violence, the humor and the heartbreak — to see what still holds true after all these years. This episode is about how family becomes material, how humor masks survival, and how writing it all down can both preserve and transform the people we come from. Next of Kin is out now. Grab your copy here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 without dying of overhead, the brutal realities of book margins, how I’m curating a tiny but mighty selection, and why the magic is the experience as much as the sale. This episode is my love letter to community, discovery, and saying yes before I feel ready. Part two is coming. Visit Bluebird here. Find their clothing new arrivals here. (Use our code TRADWIFE20) Follow Bluebird on Instagram here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 that wasn’t working, and fell in love again—this time, with a woman who gets it. We also unpack how social media’s tradwife aesthetic gaslights women into unpaid labor, why “having it all” is still a rigged game, and what it means to finally take ownership of your time, money, and happiness. Get a copy of Having it All here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 magnetic, self-doubting yet endlessly stylish. We explore why her aesthetic still defines generations of women, how her personal struggles shaped her art, why she continues to haunt our cultural imagination and the surprising ways Birkin’s legacy speaks directly to our influencer-saturated world today. Get your copy of It Girl here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 like, how contracts and covers happen, and how a thousand book clubs powered word of mouth. About the Northern California Writers Retreat: a juried fiction retreat held four times a year in Carmel Valley. Each session brings together 18 writers, literary agents, an editor, and an author in residence for an intensive, practical immersion in the craft and business of publishing. Founded and directed by Heather Lazar, the retreat blends hands-on editorial guidance with real-world industry access. Applications are open until November 7. I’ll serve as author in residence for the third session, April 8–12. Listen to more episodes of Book Journey here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 millennials and Gen Z are craving the decade that gave us dial-up internet, landlines, and the last gasp of an unplugged childhood. From malls to music videos, beauty trends to sitcoms like Friends (and even the new series Osadid and Friends), the nineties are everywhere right now. Maybe that is not just nostalgia. Maybe it is the medicine we need for our current screen burnout. Read Glynnis's piece on why we are doomed to keep reliving the nineties here. (Gift Link) Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 out mommy-wine culture, the myth of moderation, and the billion-dollar marketing machine that sold women on rosé as a personality. This episode is about what happens when an influencer puts sobriety through a full rebrand—and why so many women are ready for the shift. Buy The Sober Shift here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 with zero experience in the medical industry and it deserves a real convo. In this episode Lo dives into the complexities and realities of labor pain. No B.S. Listen to all of Lo's episodes here. Follow Lo here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 personality differences are really gender training in disguise, and how we can raise the next generation to share the mental load. Get Allison's book here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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' kids in twenty-five years. Follow Andre on Instagram here. Join his training community on Ladder here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 influencing other women to attempt to lead more perfect lives. We start in 1896 with the creation of Vogue, wonder if Lucille Ball was actually the first mom influencer, and scroll all the way to the the beautiful mess of the early Mom Internet. Moms have been commodified since the beginning of moms, the only difference now is who is making the goddamn money. And if past is prologue, will answering all these questions help Jo figure out how to become the influencer of her dreams? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 process. We talk about readiness, deadlines, daycare pressures, and why social media has made potty training so much harder than it needs to be. If you’re in the trenches — or about to be — this conversation will change the way you think about one of parenting’s messiest milestones. Laura’s new book Good to Go is out October 2, 2025 from Bloomsbury and available for preorder now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 patience and energy. What starts as a list of chores becomes a deeper look at marriage, parenting, and the hidden labor that shapes family life. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 your art. Learn more about Pen Parentis at penparentis.org. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 Empire Hotel. They talk candidly about their four-year surrogacy journey, the emotional rollercoaster of becoming parents, and the ways fatherhood has reshaped their relationship, their boundaries, and their priorities. We also get into how they balance Broadway careers, creative projects, and parenting, while still making space for each other as partners. And yes—there’s singing, laughter, and plenty of joy. Stephen and Brett’s love story is not just a Broadway tale, it’s a human one—about resilience, partnership, and building a family against the odds. Follow the Broadway Husbands here. You can see Bret's Go Fund Me here. Binge all the episodes of Committed here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices