Back Row with Amy Odell

Amy Chozick has spent her career writing about polarizing women — she covered Hillary Clinton for The New York Times, profiled Elizabeth Holmes right before prison, followed Stormy Daniels for Vogue, and wrote the widely dissected profile of Lauren Sánchez Bezos.

Her new novel, With Friends Like You (https://amzn.to/4yjRlvI), follows Emily, a broke new mom in Manhattan, who goes looking for the college friend who vanished — and finds her working as a high-end escort to billionaires.

To write the book, she researched the world of the ultra-rich obsessively. She also reveals what surprised her about Lauren Sánchez Bezos, discusses the detail everyone rehashed from that profile, and more.

00:00 Introduction

02:00 A new mother, a missing friend, and a billionaire's escort

4:00 Billionaires' Row and the empty towers

13:00 Covering Hillary Clinton, and what power does to people

17:00 Profiling Lauren Sánchez Bezos

23:00 "They stopped apologizing" — the new rich

30:00 Hillary's suits, Lauren's taped-up Vogue pages

41:00 Is fashion getting tackier?

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Follow Amy Chozick: @amychozick

Edited by Chrissi Harris.

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In a stunning move, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has cancelled "John Galliano: Horizons," the Costume Institute retrospective planned for May 2027.

Galliano's biographer and fashion journalist Dana Thomas joined Amy hours after the Met made the announcement. They discuss what this means for fashion, for John Galliano, and for the Met Gala's planner and previously all-powerful architect, Anna Wintour.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

00:30 Why Dana wasn't surprised

01:30 When you lose the politicians and the donors

03:00 "Not an aberration" — Dana's New York Times op-ed

05:00 The incidents that never got reported

06:00 The 2019 spa incident

07:30 What the comment sections revealed

11:30 Philippe Virgitti, still waiting for an apology

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Buy Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano: https://amzn.to/4cSeZHw

Edited by Chrissi Harris.

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The September Issue is R.J. Cutler's 2009 documentary about the biggest issue of Vogue ever made up to that point — 843 pages, 13 million copies sold.

Amy is joined by Kate Casey, host of Reality Life with Kate Casey and a documentary and reality TV expert, to rewatch it seventeen years later. They get into what Anna Wintour really thought of the film, why she and her Vogue team hated Sienna Miller's hair so much, how it all aged, and much more.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

02:00 13 million copies sold — and what's left now

06:00 How Anna and Grace actually met

17:30 The retailers' breakfast, when Vogue set the trends

25:00 "Your girls always look the same" - Anna at her harshest

41:00 Anna at home, and the kids who didn't follow her

48:00 The Sienna Miller cover disaster

1:07:00 843 pages, and the era that ended

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Follow Kate Casey

🎙️ Reality Life with Kate Casey:

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reality-life-with-kate-casey/id1154758766

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7iZzKUbEWAsWVkFRebb9Gu

This episode was edited by Chrissi Harris.

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Back Row is on vacation this week, so we're revisiting one of the most popular episodes of the year: a two-parter on Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, in honor of The Row's 20th anniversary.

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were on television before they could talk and millionaires before they could read. Former Us Weekly editor-in-chief Dan Wakeford, author of the new ⁠Celebrity Intelligence newsletter⁠, joins Back Row to break down the Full House casting story, the Dual Star empire, the billion-dollar licensing machine, and the NYU years that changed everything.

Part Two — revealing the secrets behind The Row — is available to Premium subscribers. Sign up at ⁠Back Row⁠ (https://www.backrow.net/subscribe) to get newsletter access included with your subscription, or in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

⁠Find Part Two in Apple Podcasts here⁠

⁠Find Part Two in Spotify here⁠

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:40 Dan Wakeford and Celebrity Intelligence

02:47 Why the Olsens are a unique case study

07:50 The Full House casting story

10:07 The reality of child stardom

16:22 How their personalities diverged early

19:49 From pennies to $80,000 an episode

26:27 The home video empire begins

33:28 The billion dollar licensing machine

48:00 Turning 18 and taking control

53:41 NYU and the paparazzi years

57:47 How everything changed

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Is everything on social media — even lifestyle content — just rage bait now? New York Magazine features writer Rebecca Jennings joins Amy to unpack her hit Vulture piece on the "influencer recession," when aspirational content no longer works and creators have to come up with "brand-safe rage bait." What does this mean both for the content landscape but also, for rage itself?

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

02:00 What is the "influencer recession"?

02:45 The clipping economy & fake virality

05:15 Audrey Peters & the $25 DoorDash coffee

10:30 Why the Alo yacht flopped

14:35 Why Birkins are embarrassing now

19:30 The OpenAI influencer farm trip

24:00 Brands manufacturing their own rage bait

30:00 How Substack changed the game

34:30 Is rage bait losing its power?

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02:30 Fashion's creative collapse: the thesis

08:30 Greedflation & the $140,000 Dior dress

13:00 The craftsmanship con

15:00 Sweatshop scandals: Dior & Loro Piana's vicuña

23:30 The death of fashion criticism

32:00 Bernard Arnault & how he industrialized fashion

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John Galliano is the subject of the Costume Institute's 2027 exhibition and will be celebrated with his very own Met Gala. Galliano's biographer Dana Thomas — author of Gods and Kings, a dual biography about Galliano and Alexander McQueen — joins the show to talk about what this means. Amy and Dana recap Galliano's fall from grace and image rehabilitation — thanks to Anna Wintour.

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"Parisian Heist" author Jo Piazza joins Amy to break down the October 2025 Louvre robbery — the suspects, the mysterious "sponsor," and why authorities aren't sure the suspects are telling the truth.

Plus: why museum security is so basic, how art gets used to launder money and fund violent crime, the billionaire families who quietly run the art market, and what a $181 million Jackson Pollock says about the state of art and wealth.

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In this special episode in collaboration with the Power User podcast Amy Odell joins tech journalist Taylor Lorenz to trace the arc of wearable tech — from the abomination that was Google Glass to Snapchat's vending-machine Spectacles and the company's recent $2,000 flop. Also, why Meta's rollout of it's new $299 fashion-first AI glasses, odious as many find them, may end up being a smash hit.

Follow Taylor's show Power User on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube, and subscribe to her newsletter, UserMag.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro — why everyone's arguing about Meta's glasses

01:36 Turning a camera into a fashion accessory

01:55 Welcome + the "hot surveillance summer" question

02:45 Google Glass and the original abomination

04:16 Snapchat Spectacles, vending machines, and a $130 flop

06:48 GoPro and how sports normalized filming everything

08:55 Ray-Ban Stories (2021) and the "creep" problem

10:57 2025: Oakley Meta and the first AI glasses

11:55 2026: low-profile frames, rhinestones, and AI as the real sell

13:25 The influencer rollout and the decline of fashion media

18:39 Why Kylie Jenner

21:40 How phones already normalized recording everything

24:56 Fashion, plausible deniability, and getting women on board

26:20 Will they actually sell? Meta's copy machine

29:19 The anti-screen crowd may be Meta's best customer

32:14 Beyond glasses: pins, pendants, and camera AirPods

35:29 Who owns the data? Facial recognition and the scary part

37:11 Zuckerberg, Bezos, the Met Gala, and OpenAI's fashion play

39:59 Snap's $2,000 flop and why ugly tech dies

43:03 Wrap-up

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Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

03:00 Young Jackie at Miss Porter's and her enduring fashion influence

08:00 What "American Love Story" got wrong about Carolyn Bessette

10:30 JFK Jr. launches George magazine

14:00 Why John wanted Diana on the cover

20:00 Diana's death: what actually happened

32:00 The conspiracy theories that still swirl around Diana's death

39:00 Why Meghan Markle keeps copying Carolyn Bessette's style

53:00 Is Jack Schlossberg the next JFK Jr.?

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Follow Caroline Hallemann: https://www.instagram.com/challemann/

Buy the book: https://amzn.to/4fVX8Bq

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