Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

Taylor Frankie Paul is a Bingeable Trainwreck and ABC and the Bachelorette Knew That Going Into This

20 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

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...... ...

How the Right Won the Attention Economy

17 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

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 spo...

Sunday Nice Things: Creation Myth

15 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Women Are Being Gaslit About Birth, a Chat With Dr. Jennifer Lincoln

13 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

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 b...

How Reality TV Changed How We Consume Stories with Survivor's Stephen Fishbach

12 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

What’s harder: winningSurvivor or writing a novel? According to former Survivor runner-up Stephen Fishbach, it’s writingthe novel by a billion...

Is This Actually a Love Story? JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, the Nineties and Parliament Lights

10 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

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 B...

Not Having Kids Is Not a Tragedy

05 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

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...

How Vulnerable Kids Became Clickbait

03 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Content featuring sick, sad, or injured children usually performs best online. Let that sink in. That insane fact is just one of the unsettling real...

How History Erased Mothers

26 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Motherhood makes history, but history keeps trying to erase mothers. In this episode of Under the Influence, feminist cultural historian Elinor Clegho...

Grab Bag: Where Did Love Taza Go?

24 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Who was your gateway influencer? For us, it was Love Taza—Naomi Davis—the Juilliard-trained ballerina (yes, a different one) turned mommy blogger...

Sunday Nice Things: Birth With Babylist

22 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

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 v...

Can You Actually Retire Early When You Have Kids?

19 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Financial advice for parents usually lands in extremes, either panic-inducing warnings about how expensive kids are, or unrealistic frameworks that do...

How to Be a Rich Old Lady

17 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

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 yo...

Toe Pick!

12 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

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 p...

Grab Bag: The Ballerina Farm Raw Milk Scandal, Hating on the Katies & Intellectual It Girls

10 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

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 Balleri...

Moms Drive the Economy. So Why Are They Still Underpaid?

05 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Moms drive the majority of household purchasing decisions. Recommendations from mom influencers outperform traditional ads. They even convert better ...

Why Planning Summer Has Become a Nightmare

03 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

From Momfluencers to MILFs: Who Gets Labeled a Bad Mother

29 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

If you’ve had kids, you’ve probably wondered at some point if you’re a bad mother. I would say this is true for 99.9 percent of us. And the othe...

Moms Just Want (Deserve) to Have Fun

27 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

No one is going to check in with you to make sure you're enjoying your life. What if fun—not self-care, not optimization, not doing more—is t...

Perimenopause, GLPs, and the Medical Gaslighting of Women

22 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

There are only a few topics women in their forties can’t stop talking about right now: perimenopause, hormone replacement therapy, and GLP medicatio...

The Heated Rivalry Episode

20 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Three things are happening in the group chat right now: perimenopause, ICE, and Heated Rivalry. That’s it. That’s the list. And yes, I am late to ...

Sunday Nice Things: Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

18 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

I’m really excited to introduce you to a new show today. It’s a smart podcast about trashy books: Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, created by my good...

Just a Busy Season and Other Lies We Tell About Motherhood

15 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Taylor Wolfe, better known as The Daily Tay, has built a massive following online by helping us laugh about the hardest parts of motherhood. In this ...

My Most Anticipated Book of the Year

13 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

There are so many “most anticipated” lists about what to read this year. We have one book at the very top of ours: The Fountain by Casey Scieszka....

More Joy in January

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

January should officially be Women’s Rest and Recovery Month, because after December most of us are sick, behind on work, emotionally fried, and try...

Tidying up in the New Year with Tidy Dad

06 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

January feels like a real dumpster fire so far. It's supposed to feel like a reset, but instead it feels chaotic and messy and exhausting. Today we a...

What We Want Less of in 2026

01 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

We’re kicking off the new year by talking about something we both love and hate: “resolutions.” Or, more accurately, a list of what we don’t w...

Holding Rosie: A Mother’s Story of SUDC and Survival

30 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this heartfelt conversation, Dr. Florencia Segura shares her personal journey of losing her daughter Rosie to Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood...

How to Build Deep Friendships Without Burning Yourself Out

25 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What does friendship actually look like in the messy middle parts of midlife, when time is scarce, energy is finite, and relationships have to earn th...

How to Travel with Kids

23 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Traveling with kids is not a vacation. It’s work. It’s labor. It’s also one of my absolute favorite things to do. In this episode I talk about h...

Sunday Nice Things: Dissecting Tradwives and Feminism

21 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today I'm dropping an interview that I did with the Love-ly⁠ podcast into our feed. This week on Love-ly, Mehak sits down with bestselling author,...

We've Reached Peak Tradwife

18 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The trad wife trend has finally hit its ceiling. After years of algorithm-friendly homemaking, the movement is showing the cracks in its seams. The p...

Holiday Rage, Hormones, and the Power of No

16 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Holiday joy is supposed to feel cozy and magical. Instead, a lot of women spend December simmering with quiet (or not so quiet) rage. Let's dig into w...

Sunday Nice Things: Inside the World of a Teenage Tik-Tok Star

14 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In light of the news about Australia's social media ban for teenagers we are resurfacing an episode with a young creator. This is a deep dive into t...

Australia Just Banned Social Media for Teens. What Happens Next

11 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Australia just became the first country in the world to ban social media for anyone under sixteen. It’s a sweeping, messy and imperfect law. But it'...

The Books by Women History Tried to Forget

09 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Quite Literally Books is doing something rare in publishing. They are bringing back books by American women who were once widely read, widely praised,...

Sunday Nice Things: The Nanny Wars

07 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week we’re bringing back one of my favorite episodes because it has only become more relevant. On the surface, it is a story about “bad nanny...

The Author Who Took On AI and Won

04 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when a thriller writer discovers her novels have been quietly fed into AI without her consent and decides to fight back. In this episode,...

You're Not Broken, Our Idea of Motherhood Is

02 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

W're told that motherhood is supposed to feel natural, fulfilling and instinctive. If it does not, our culture tells you the problem is you. Jo and li...

All the London Recommendations with Three Feral Kids

27 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode dives into the joy of planning a trip, because there really should be a German word for the absolute delight that the anticipation of tra...

Sunday Nice Things: Uncover

23 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

You may think you know the NXIVM story. The secretive self-help empire. The sex cult headlines. The downfall of its leader, Keith Raniere. But the mos...

Do I Need a Hobby?

20 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Do you actually have hobbies, or do you just have things that feel like self-improvement projects? In this episode, Jo kicks off an “Adventure Year”...

The Women History Forgets

19 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The stories we tell about women matter. How we amplify and promote those stories matters. To that end we are considering how to resurrect a history se...

Can Instagram Ever Be Safe for Teens?

18 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Can parents ever really know what’s happening inside their kids’ phones? This episode takes a hard look at how Instagram says it’s protecting te...

Guns & Gossip: My So Called Life Rewatch Episode Three

13 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We’re heading back to 1994 for My So-Called Life episode three, “Guns and Gossip.” A gun goes off at school, rumors spread, and Angela Chase is ...

Rewatch My So Called Life With Me

11 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s been thirty years since My So-Called Life premiered—thirty years since Angela Chase fell for Jordan Catalano and quietly redefined what teena...

We’re Not Going Quietly Into Perimenopause

06 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, menopause has been treated like a medical afterthought—a punchline, a whisper, or something to “just get through.” But millennial w...

The Antidote to Tradwife Economics

04 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Tradwife influencers are selling women a dangerous fantasy — that dependence is aspirational. It’s not. In this episode, we dig into the real cost...

How to Unf*ck Your Conditioning as a Mother

30 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Therapist, writer, and content creator Vanessa Spinarsky helps women untangle the cultural scripts that shape how we mother. Her viral message to “u...

How to Find an Agent and Sell a Book

28 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The publishing world can feel like an exclusive club: one where the rules are unwritten and the gatekeepers speak a different language. In this episod...

Sunday Nice Things: Heart Trouble

26 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Our friends at Tink Media and the Resonate Podcast Festival have launched something called Pitch Party—a brilliant idea that gives independent audio...

Want to Feel Human Again? Break Your Phone Addiction

23 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

So Your Parents Are Old

21 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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, fr...

Sunday Nice Things: Taylor Isn't a Tradwife

19 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Gabrielle Hamilton on the Myths That Make a Family

16 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 Hamilt...

I Bought a Vintage Trailer… How Can I Turn it Into a Bookstore?

13 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 u...

Divorcing Heterosexuality (and Other Data-Driven Decisions)

09 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Wharton economist Corinne Low wrote a viral article for The Cut titled “This Economist Crunched the Numbers and Stopped Dating Men.” Low, the aut...

The Original It Girl: What Jane Birkin Can Teach Us About Fame, and Influence

07 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jane Birkin invented effortless cool before Instagram, before influencers, before French-girl chic was even a thing. But behind the Birkin bag and the...

Sunday Nice Things: Book Journey x Alka Joshi

05 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today we're dropping an episode of Book Journey into the feed, a behind-the-scenes podcast from editor and Northern California Writers Retreat directo...

I Miss the 90s. What I Really Miss is Real Life

02 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We are living in peak nineties nostalgia. Everywhere you look there are slip dresses, scrunchies, bucket hats, even Tamagotchis making a comeback. But...

The Bright Side of Not Drinking

30 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Sunday Nice Things: Let's Talk About Birth with Lo & Behold

28 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

The Mental Load of Family Life: The Work You Can’t See But Always Feel

25 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Strong Enough to Survive Toddlers With Andre Crews

23 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Parenting is the hardest workout of all. Trainer and dad Andre Crews went viral for calling toddlers terrorists who hold their whole family hostage (s...

Sunday Nice Things: Women's Work

21 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 influ...

The Messy Truth About Potty Training

18 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 abo...

How We Divide Household and Parenting Labor in Our House

16 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 episod...

Can Creativity and Motherhood CoExist?

11 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

How Patagonia Rewrote the Rules of Influence With David Gelles

09 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ac...

Sunday Nice Things: Broadway Husbands

07 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Here's What No One Tells You About Freezing Your Eggs With Danielle Robay

04 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when your peak career years collide with your peak fertility years? Journalist Danielle Robay shares her unfiltered story of freezing her...

Forget Perfect Parties—Here’s How to Celebrate Every Day With Grossy Pelosi

02 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve been sold the myth that entertaining means a spotless house, endless cooking, and perfection. Dan Pelosi—aka Grossy Pelosi—believes the op...

Sunday Nice Things: Totally Booked with Zibby

31 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, we are sharing my recent interview on the Webby Award-winning daily podcast Totally Booked with Zibby. Hosted by Zibby Owens, Totally Booked ...

What No One Teaches You About Taking Care of a House

28 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Most of us don’t know how to put on a duvet cover without swearing, let alone clean a dryer vent before it catches fire. Enter Casey Finn, creator o...

Why Dads Get a Medal and Moms Get Judged—Parenting Double-Standards and Back to School

26 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week’s episode is part back-to-school survival guide, part summer highlight reel, and part investigation of parenting double standards. We ref...

Instagram Made Me Feel Like a Bad Mom — So I Started a Podcast

21 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Five years ago, I was a new mom recording a podcast in my closet, wedged between a toddler and a baby who wouldn’t sleep. For the past few months I ...

Attainable Over Aspirational: How Kate Strickler of Naptime Kitchen Keeps It Real

19 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When Kate Strickler started Naptime Kitchen in 2015, it was just a way to share the meals she cooked while her baby slept. Now it’s a thriving brand...

Sunday Nice Things: Death Virgin

17 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

My friend Kristen is a woman in her fifties who has never lost anyone close to her. So her decision to embark on the journey of becoming a death doula...

Breaking the Cycle of More

14 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We live in a culture of more. More toys. More shoes. More jumpsuits buried in the back of the closet. But what happens when you try to break free from...

The Patriarchy’s New Branding: From Tradwives to Soft Girls With Dr. C. Nicole Mason

12 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The patriarchy is getting a rebrand. From tradwives to “soft girl” culture, conservative influencers are using the language of feminism to sell wo...

Sunday Night Things: The Billionaires Who Want to Live Forever

10 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week I am bringing back one of my favorite episodes of Too Much Money, the show I created with Doree Shafrir of Forever 35 about the ridiculous s...

Sleep Is Not Self-Care (It’s Survival)

07 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sleep is not a luxury, a reward, or a wellness trend. It's a biological necessity. In this episode, writer and sleep coach Lindsay Scola shares her jo...

The Best Celebrity Memoirs (And the Worst, Sorry Not Sorry) with Chelsea Devantez

05 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sometimes the only thing that gets you through real life is diving headfirst into someone else’s dumpster fire. This week we’re talking about the ...

Sunday Nice Things: Starter Marriage

03 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Rain on your wedding day is supposed to mean good luck, but for Allison and John, it meant they were about to have the worst year of their lives. From...

Can Plastic Surgery Keep Up With AI?

31 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when filtered faces look more real than real ones? This episode dives into the strange collision of plastic surgery, social media, and AI...

Gwyneth Paltrow: First Influencer or MAHA Godmother? With Amy Odell

29 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What if the entire wellness internet—bee venom facials, jade eggs, raw dairy—could be traced back to one woman? Gwyneth Paltrow didn’t just win ...

Sunday Nice Things: LEAD

27 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

So many of us are wondering why our government is not working for us today. Why our representatives are so ineffectual - simple bills that would prote...

All Your Perimenopause Questions Answered with Dr. Kim Einhorn

24 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If you’ve said the word perimenopause anywhere near your phone lately, you’re probably being served a firehose of hormone hackers, estrogen patch ...

The Italian Lady Assassins, Spies, and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis

22 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, we're diving into the untold history of four women who risked everything to fight fascism in WWII Italy. Author Suzanne Cope joins Jo to talk a...

Sunday Nice Things: Unladylike

20 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Unladylike is an absolute delight. Host Cristen Conger dissects the myths, messes, and media shaping modern womanhood—and un-womanhood. From bisexua...

Content Creation Is a Business. Grace Atwood Treats It Like One.

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There are very few influencers who can actually influence me these days, but Grace Atwood is one of them. And that's because I trust her. The business...

Sunday Nice Things: The Messy Parts with Katie Sturino

13 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

While social media feeds overflow with‬‭ polished success stories, a new‬ ‭ podcast is asking: what if the biggest career breakthroughs come f...

The Smart Woman’s Guide to Escaping Into Reality TV With Kate Casey

10 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Reality television isn’t just escapism—it’s a sociological goldmine. In this episode, Reality Life host Kate Casey breaks down why the smartest ...

Friend Breakups Will Stick With You Forever

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We don’t have rituals for breaking up with friends.  Romantic breakups come with scripts—we know how to mourn them, process them, even joke about...

Sunday Nice Things: Mental Health Rewritten

06 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mental Health Rewritten, is a recently released nonfiction narrative podcast tackling stigma in mental health head on. Host Dominic Lawson and his gu...

Out of F*cks to Give with Carla Sosenko

03 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Carla Sosenko grew up with a rare vascular disorder, a body that didn’t conform and a deep love of fashion that helped her feel seen. In this intima...

She Turned Geology Into a Content Goldmine

01 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There’s an influencer for everything—including the intersection of geology, volcanology, academia, and queer joy. This week, we are chatting with ...

Sunday Nice Things: Fierce

29 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Many years ago I made a podcast about the bad ass women left out of too many history books. Today I am dropping Fierce in your feed. This episode is ...

All of Our Thoughts on Poop Cruise with Nick Aster

28 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The number one show on Netflix right now is Poop Cruise. What happens when a Carnival cruise ship loses power in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico and ...

Real Talk on Weight Loss Drugs

26 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We get real about weight loss drugs in this episode—no shame, no BS. Journalist Kara Baskin joins me to talk side effects, societal judgment, and t...