Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

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

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 work trip? What do you love about being an author? What do you hate about being an author (marketing, preorders, all of it)? How close are you to quitting social media? What does “enough” look like financially? 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 nothing I love more than quietly reading. I love it alone. I love it in groups. But I especially love doing it in public, with the rest of the world buzzing around me, all absorbed in their own little worlds. What if the antidote to burnout, loneliness, and the attention economy was… sitting in a room with strangers and reading quietly? This week, I’m talking to Guinevere de la Mare, the co-founder of Silent Book Club, a global movement that started with one exhausted mom who just wanted to read a single uninterrupted chapter and somehow turned into thousands of chapters in more than 60 countries. We chat about why reading in public started to feel weirdly indulgent, how phones became the more “acceptable” way to check out, and why focusing on a book will actually bring us back to ourselves. There’s also detours into late-stage capitalism, wealth inequality, and why women keep finding themselves fixing broken systems on their own. Raises hand. Me, me, me. Check out everything Silent Book Club here. Discover their reading retreats 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’ve become an indoor species and it is making us sick and burnt out. Today we're chatting with Dr. John La Puma about the indoor epidemic and what happens when we spend almost all of our time inside under artificial light and on screens. We break down what that’s doing to sleep, mood, and focus. Dr. La Puma explains how something as simple as stepping outside each day for 17 minutes can reset your brain, improve sleep, and help you think more clearly. We also get into kids, screen time, and why the way they're living now isn’t setting them for happiness. Please listen to this one outside. Grab a copy of John La Puma's Indoor Epidemic here. Find Dr. John 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

Jo’s new true crime obsession started with a trip to Midway, Utah. She was there for an event at Folklore bookstore and a visit to Ballerina Farm Dairy, and within about five minutes of driving around town someone pointed at a house and said, “that’s the murder house.” At which point she needed to know everything. This is the story of Kouri Richins, the Utah mom who poisoned her husband with fentanyl (after sending a text to her drug connection asking for the "Michael Jackson drugs") and then wrote a children’s book about grief after he died. Jo talks with author and Folklore bookstore owner Lindsey Leavitt, who lives in Midway and walks her through the entire thing from the house to the lore to all the completely bananas details. Find all of Lindsey's books here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist from Folklore here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A third of Gen Z men think wives should obey their husbands. This generation of young men, ages 14 to 29, is getting more conservative by the day. How? Why? And can we reverse it? To figure it out, we talk with Gen Z strategist and creator ⁠Haley Lickstein⁠ about what the hell is going on with young men and how much of it is the internet’s fault. And what about the women? Are they fighting back or also moving backwards? From the rise of the manosphere to tradwife thirst traps to the slow-drip messaging around birth control, we break down how conservative ideas have been seeded, scaled, and sold to a generation that was supposed to be more progressive than the ones before it. We also get into why the right is winning the culture war online, what progressives are getting wrong about influence and messaging, and how algorithms are shaping belief systems, relationships, and even who people date. 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

How does something marketed as healing, empowerment, and connection start to slide down the slippery slope of becoming a sex cult? That's just one part of Star Stone’s story inside OneTaste, the sexual wellness company built around “orgasmic meditation,” that sits right on that blurry line between wellness program and cult. Star takes us from the Bay Area wellness scene of the 2010s to today’s influencer-driven “healing” economy, where the same patterns of coercion and manipulation keep showing up. Learn more about Star 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

How do you make a move when you have no idea what comes next? Jen Shahade has spent her life inside the world of chess as a two-time U.S. women’s chess champion and the author of many books about chess including her latest Thinking Sideways, a book that uses chess as a way to think better, live better, and stop pretending we can plan ten moves ahead in a world that changes nineteen times a day. Get Jen's book 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're often told or indoctrinated to believe motherhood is supposed to be magical, fulfilling, your highest calling, the thing that finally makes everything make sense. And yet so many women are quietly unraveling and filled with rage. This week we sit down with Libby Ward—the hilarious creator behind Diary of an Honest Mom, and author of Honest Motherhood—to talk about the reality of parenting colliding with the expectations we’ve all absorbed. Libby shares the moment she realized she couldn’t keep doing it all, the years of carrying everything for everyone, and how that eventually turned into a massive online community of women admitting the status quo isn’t working. We get into: the mental load and invisible labor no one accounts for the myth of the “good mom” and why it’s so hard to shake why loving your kids isn’t the same as having the capacity to care for them what it actually looks like to start setting boundaries why saying no feels so uncomfortable at first Order Libby's book Honest Motherhood 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

Time to do a deep dive into breaking celebrity news and what it’s revealing about our culture right now. Our guest is Dan Wakeford, a longtime force in entertainment journalism and one of the smartest editors to come out of the celebrity magazine era. He’s now launching a new newsletter, Celebrity Intelligence, built on real reporting, no rumor-chasing and no AI sludge. We dig into the cancellation of The Bachelorette after the Taylor Frankie Paul scandal and the difference between what audiences say they want and what corporations can actually tolerate. Is the cancellation of the Bachelorette the best thing that could actually happen to taylor? Then there’s the Justin Timberlake DUI footage, which was supposed to be damaging and somehow makes him more relatable. We're also chatting as longtime entertainment reporters and good friends about how gossip is anthropology, sociology and modern storytelling that can actually be good for you! Subscribe to Celebrity Intelligence 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 have women been told the only choices are girlboss or tradwife, lean in or opt out, burnout or retreat? We're chatting with author and coach Megan Hellerer about why that binary is so false and so seductive, especially for women who did everything “right” and still wound up exhausted, anxious, and unhappy. Megan shares how she went from Stanford to a dream job at Google to panic attacks on the bathroom floor, and how that breakdown led her to build a different framework for ambition and success. We get into burnout, misalignment, why five-year plans can keep us stuck, and why there has to be a third way for women who want meaningful work, a real life, and something more honest than either extreme. Plus: how Megan’s “directional living” framework helped a young bartender named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez find her path. Get Megan's book Directional Living 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

An emergency episode is needed because the Bachelorette just got canceled before it even started and it's just so Secret Lives of Mormon Wives...... ABC pulled Taylor Frankie Paul’s entire season after a video resurfaced from a 2023 incident that was already public and very much part of her story on Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. None of this is new and ABC knew exactly who they were casting to try to revive the corpse of the Bachelor franchise. Also the bigger thing that is driving me insane, which is how fast women get shut down for being messy or angry while men just keep on… going. 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 internet is full of terrible birth advice, and pregnant people are paying the price. This week, we’re joined by OB-GYN Dr. Jennifer Lincoln to bust the myths, misinformation, and guilt that swirl around labor, delivery, epidurals, C-sections, and motherhood online. We talk about why so many women go into birth wildly underprepared, why shame has become its own cottage industry, and why dads and partners need to stop treating birth like a side quest and start showing up from day one. Dr. Lincoln’s new book, The Birth Book, is the guide we all wish we’d had sooner. Order The Birth Book 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 right did not accidentally win social media and the internet. They built an entire influencer machine, and the left is still acting like a few sponsored posts during election season might somehow be enough to compete in the attention economy. We're chatting with Emily Amick about how conservatives turned podcasts, wellness influencers, mommy bloggers, TikTok creators, and pop culture accounts into a political ecosystem that shifts peoples' politics and shapes culture. We talk about the anti-birth-control messaging spreading through MAHA and wellness spaces, the money gap between right-wing and progressive media, why the left keeps talking mostly to itself, and what has to change before the midterms. Read Emily's piece on the influencer economy here. Follow Emily here. Buy 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

You all loved hearing Helena DeGroot's episode about not having kids so I wanted to drop the first episode of her series Creation Myth here for you to listen to. The show explores what life's purpose looks like without having children. After the decision not to have kids ended her marriage, 40-year-old Helena grabs her mic to find out: did she make a mistake? We hear from friends and family, and even a total stranger who reveals how he regrets his decision to have a child. Listen to more of Creation Myth 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’s harder: winningSurvivor or writing a novel? According to former Survivor runner-up Stephen Fishbach, it’s writingthe novel by a billion. In this episode we talk with Stephen about his sharp new thriller Escape, which pulls back the curtain on the reality TV machine and the people trying to control the story behind the scenes. We get into why Survivor is still one of the most powerful storytelling engines on television, how producers turn a chaos machine into narratives and contestants into characters characters, and why reality TV was basically the beta test for the influencer economy we’re living in now. Order Stephen's book Escape 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

Are you watching Love Story? This week we're chatting with our resident ’90s guru Glynnis MacNicol about Hulu’s depiction of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette's tragic romance and why that title feels either deeply ironic or just flat-out wrong. We talk about the mythology of John John and Carolyn , the downtown NYC glamour of it all, the slip dresses, the cigarettes (the sweet, sweet cigarette, and the media machine that chewed women up and spat them out. 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 you do not want kids, but everyone acts like you are making a mistake? This week, we’re talking with Helena DeGroot, creator of the podcast The Creation Myth, about choosing a child-free life in a culture that refuses to believe that choice can be valid. Helena knew early that she did not want children. Her husband said he was on the same page, until he was not. After years of pressure, their marriage ended and she went on a deep, audio-documentary style search for the truth of what she actually wanted, without the noise of strangers, expectations, and the myth that motherhood equals fulfillment. We get into doubt, identity, the “mother or selfish” binary, and why you can love kids, show up for them, and still not want to be a parent. Also, why the deepest personal stories often become the most universal mirror. Listen to more of Helena's story on The Creation Myth. 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

Content featuring sick, sad, or injured children usually performs best online. Let that sink in. That insane fact is just one of the unsettling realities journalist Fortesa Latifi uncovered while reporting her new book, Like, Follow, Subscribe, a deep dive into the world of kid influencers and the children growing up as brands. In this episode of Under the Influence, Latifi explores why vulnerable childhood moments go viral, what happens to parent-child intimacy when a phone is always present, and how some kids say they stopped confiding in their parents because private experiences were turned into content. The conversation also examines the murky legal landscape around child influencer profits, the rise and reinvention of former kid star Piper Rockelle, and the growing fear around AI and deepfakes manipulating children’s images online. Like, Follow, Subscribe is available wherever books are sold. 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

Motherhood makes history, but history keeps trying to erase mothers. In this episode of Under the Influence, feminist cultural historian Elinor Cleghorn discusses her new book A Woman’s Work: Reclaiming the Radical History of Mothering and unpacks how motherhood has been written and rewritten to strip women of agency. From ancient birth rituals and the long, maligned history of midwifery to the Virgin Mary as an impossible maternal ideal and the witch trials as punishment for women who refused the “good mother” role, this is a conversation about why telling the real story of mothering is still an act of resistance. Grab a Copy of A Woman's Work 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

Who was your gateway influencer? For us, it was Love Taza—Naomi Davis—the Juilliard-trained ballerina (yes, a different one) turned mommy blogger and social star who made New York City look like a candy-coated dream of red lipstick, tiny apartments, and five kids in technicolor. And then she disappeared. This week’s episode welcomes author Ali Hoff Kosik to talk about her new book Too Blessed to Stress, to dig into some weird Love Taza conspiracy theories, and to explain the correlation between pickleball and Evangelical Christian TikTok. You’re welcome. Follow Ali here. Order Too Blessed to Stress 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

Jo has been working on a brand new podcast about birth for the past year and she is so excited to share it with you all. Today we are sharing the very first episode of Birth with Babylist. In our first episode, we walk through what birth actually looks like, from early labor through delivery. We talk to experienced OB-GYNs and midwives as they break down the stages of labor, what’s normal, what’s unpredictable and what you can prepare for.  And because no two births are the same, real parents share what it was really like for them. You can listen to all the episodes of Birth With Babylist here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Financial advice for parents usually lands in extremes, either panic-inducing warnings about how expensive kids are, or unrealistic frameworks that don’t account for how life actually unfolds. This week’s guests, Christy Shen and Bryce Leung became well-known after publishing Quit Like a Millionaire and retiring at 30 with over a million dollars invested, but their path started from a place of real financial precarity. Christy grew up in deep poverty, at one point living on just cents a day, which shaped how she thinks about risk, security, and the appeal of financial independence. Now parents, their new book Parent Like a Millionaire Without Being One turns that framework toward family life, breaking down how to spend intentionally without getting pulled into the high-pressure baby economy. They talk about buying secondhand gear that holds value, building childcare swaps and babysitting co-ops, and leaning on community rather than defaulting to commercial solutions. Grab a copy of Parent Like a Millionaire Without Being One 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

Close your eyes (not if you’re driving) and picture your old lady life. You wake up when you want. You wear glorious caftans. You’re strong and you’re rich because you built yourself a safety net. Today we’re chatting with Amanda Holden, the personal finance educator behind the new book How to Be a Rich Old Lady. We get into why women are trained to feel “bad at money,” how that keeps power in someone else’s hands, and what it looks like to take it back. Amanda breaks down her “10-minute missions,” the order of operations for getting financially stable and then secure and how to start investing without turning your life into a spreadsheet. We also talk about financial “influencing,” scammy advice, and the kind of money resistance that hits corporations where it counts without blowing up your future. Get Amanda's wonderful book 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

In celebration of the Winter Olympics (the best thing to ever happen to Peacock) we are bringing back one of our favorite episodes of Committed with professional figure skaters Chris and Alexa Knierim.  These two shared the same dream when they fell in love and got married—get to the Olympics... together. They didn’t let broken bones or a mysterious illness get in their way. Their love story is even better than every Gen X woman's favorite romantic comedy, The Cutting Edge.  You can binge Committed 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

Today’s episode is a grab bag — a hodgepodge of the stories people have been asking me about in my DMs for the past week. First up: the Ballerina Farm raw milk scandal. We break down the failed raw milk tests, the health concerns, and why the internet reacted with such gleeful ferocity. This isn’t really about unpasteurized dairy with cow poop bacteria in it. It’s about influencer perfection and the collective desire to take it down a notch. Then we get into “Hating on the Katies” — the online backlash against lifestyle influencers and everyday women who are only now speaking up politically and why progressive s might be getting this one very wrong. And finally: the rise of the Intellectual It Girl. From celebrity book clubs to “becoming disgustingly educated,” we unpack why smart is suddenly chic again and why I hope it destroys the soft girls, stay-at-home girlfriends trends. 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

Moms drive the majority of household purchasing decisions. Recommendations from mom influencers outperform traditional ads. They even convert better than celebrity endorsements. And yet, they’re still treated like they should be grateful for a free product and an affiliate link. This week we talk with Chelsea Clark, founder and CEO of Momfluence, an influencer marketing agency built specifically around mom creators, about how the mom-influencer economy really works and why it continues to undervalue women’s labor even as it explodes. We get into why moms chronically undercharge, how the lack of transparency mirrors other female-dominated industries, and the uniquely brutal experience of having your work publicly judged every day while also parenting. Learn more about Momfluence 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

Every January, parents are asked to plan the entire summer for their kids months in advance, spend a lot of money, juggle waitlists, and pretend this isn't a hellscape of doom. In this episode, we chat with journalist Katherine Goldstein about the overwhelming amount of summer planning we all seem to be doing and why so much of it falls on moms. There are a ton of reasons for this that are uniquely American. We have long summers, very little paid time off, a culture that expects constant supervision, and a childcare system that’s mostly private and wildly expensive. Put all of that together and summer often ends up being more logistical nightmare than break. Katherine also pushes back on the idea that kids need nonstop structured programming to have a “good” summer. She talks about why the pressure to optimize every week is exhausting, and about what happened when her family opted out of the camp scramble and tried something totally different. Follow the Double Shift substack here. Get 20% off Katharine's Summer Budget Travel Guide here with the code UNDER20. 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