Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

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

Corinne Low, a Wharton economist and author of 'Having It All', shares her transformative journey from a traditional marriage to finding love with a woman. She delves into the economics of burnout and the detrimental effects of gendered division of labor on intimacy. Corinne critiques the 'tradwife' aesthetic and emphasizes the importance of both partners in a relationship treating it like a business. She discusses practical strategies for reclaiming time and happiness, teaching men to appreciate domestic contributions, and reshaping the concept of 'having it all'.

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