Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

Today we're talking about one of our favorite things in the world. BOOKS.

Lauren and Garri from The Everygirl Book Club join us to talk about how to build a more bookish life, even when you're juggling kids, work and everything else. We're talking about finding time to read, where to get great recommendations, why it's perfectly fine to abandon a book halfway through, and why audiobooks absolutely count as reading. Plus, the importance of always having a book handy, preferably in a pocket big enough to accommodate some cheese.

Then author and former book editor Christine Pride joins us to celebrate the release of our new novel, I Never Knew You at All. We talk about writing a book with your best friend (not always advisable!), the secrets we keep in marriages, what makes a book marketable, and what aspiring authors should know before trying to get published.

A little something for everyone who loves reading books, talking about books or dreaming of writing one.

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Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something and author of When We’re in Charge, joins us to talk about what the hell we can actually do when everything feels terrible. How do you run for local office? How much does it cost? Can you do it while working a full-time job? And what if you don’t want to run but still want to help?

We talk about why local races matter so much, why younger candidates may have a real advantage right now, where your time and money can actually make a difference, and why Amanda thinks we might actually win. Most importantly, what can each of us do right now to help make that happen?

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What if you're not having less sex because of perimenopause? What if you're just tired of your husband and the pile of dirty laundry on your bed? And while we're at it, how the hell is everyone on Instagram affording those vacations?

Our friend Lindsey Goldwert is here to talk about my two favorite taboo subjects: SEX AND MONEY.

Lindsey is the co-author of The Midlife Plot Twist and writes the excellent sex newsletter Dear Star 69. We talk about why perimenopause gets blamed for every sexual problem in middle age, why you might still be horny but not particularly interested in having sex when there's a mountain of dirty laundry on the bed, and why Lindsey thinks we should replace maintenance sex with maintenance intimacy. Because nothing says romance like a calendar invite for intercourse.

Then there's money. Why are we all convinced everyone else is richer than us? Why are we still measuring success by houses, marriages, children and retirement accounts? And what if your dream retirement doesn't involve golf or a condo in Florida but playing drums in an all-women band called Pelvic Ultrasound?

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What happens when boys learn about masculinity from the internet before they learn how to understand their own emotions?

Jo talks with Peggy Orenstein, author of Boys & Sex, about the forces shaping young men long before they reach college, the locker room or the frat house. They dig into the extraordinary influence of figures like Andrew Tate, how social media algorithms can turn curiosity into increasingly extreme ideas, and why simply keeping kids away from harmful content is no longer enough.

The conversation also explores why boys are often taught to see anger as their only acceptable difficult emotion, and what gets lost when they learn to shut off everything else.

It’s a conversation about how we raise boys, what the internet is teaching them, what parents can still influence, and why some of the answers may begin much earlier than we think.

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This week we start a two-part series on how not to blow up your life in midlife, with Gabrielle Moss, co-author of The Midlife Plot Twist: How to Reboot Your Life Without Burning It Down, Even If You Really, Really Want To.

Gabby spent her career writing about pop culture, so she knows exactly how badly it has served women over forty. We get into why the midlife crisis went from a serious idea to a punchline about men and convertibles, why the '80s sitcoms were doing this better than anything on streaming right now, and why Anne Hathaway in a string bikini is not quite the representation we were hoping for.

We also talk about the question at the center of the book, which is whether the life you built is actually yours or just the one you were told to want. Plus the nine-job economy, the career ladder that no longer exists, what retirement is even supposed to mean for our generation, and the surprisingly hard question of what you actually like.

Part two with co-author Lindsey Goldwert is coming next.

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Rebecca Blumenstein helped get 124 people out of Kabul when the city fell. Diana Kapp had been reporting on Afghan girls since 2012. Their new book, The Last Free Women, follows four of those young women through five years of starting over in America, learning English, going back to college, and carrying the weight of everyone they left behind. We talk about what's happened to women in Afghanistan since 2021, why the five-year anniversary went almost uncovered, and why this story deserves a spot on your book club list.

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We’re coming to you poolside on Jo's birthday from Marrakech with bestselling author Jane Green for a conversation about the things we learn as we get older, wiser and more bad ass.

We talk about choosing the people who choose you, trusting your gut, learning the art of discernment and realizing you’re allowed to build the life you actually want. We get into raising independent kids, why they need room to fail, friendships that have seasons, learning to say no and why aging makes it much easier to walk away from people and situations that don’t feel right.

Jane also opens up about leaving her marriage, finding herself again in midlife and the story behind her memoir Rewilding. Then we get into her new novel, The Many Private Lives of Missy Cooke, female friendship, Working Girl, our feelings about plastic surgery and identical Instagram faces, Fleabag and how many tagines are simply too many tagines.

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Bridget Todd used to read the headlines about people proposing to ChatGPT and write those people off as sad and strange. Then she heard tech leaders describe AI companionship as the future they are building for everyone, and realized dismissing it was not a plan.

This week we talk with the award-winning podcaster behind There Are No Girls on the Internet about her new audiobook, Love at First Prompt: AI and the Future of Intimacy, written with social scientist Michael S. Amato and published by Simon & Schuster Audio Originals.

We cover the numbers, which are bigger than most people assume, and the surprise in the research, which is how many women are using AI for romantic and erotic role play and why the romance matters more than the sex. Bridget describes trying to talk ChatGPT into bed herself and discovering she had to lie, neg, and wear it down, which felt uncomfortably familiar. We talk about why the people living these relationships almost never get asked about them, why shame is blocking the regulation we need, and where kids fit into all of this, including the day a nine-year-old typed a question into Google and had Gemini start asking him how he felt about it.

And Bridget talks about the part she never intended to report. After her mother died suddenly and she became her father's caretaker, she found herself unloading everything into a chatbot at three in the morning rather than calling the people who love her. She is still working out what that cost her.

Love at First Prompt is available at loveatfirstprompt.com and wherever you get audiobooks.

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Jessica Tarlov has one of the strangest jobs in American media. Five days a week she sits at a table on Fox News' The Five as the lone liberal, arguing in front of millions of people who mostly do not agree with her. Everyone asks her the same question, and it comes from both parties: how do you do that without losing your mind?

Her new book, I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends, is her answer. This week we talk with Jessica about building a data-based worldview, the hardest days she has ever had on air, and why staying silent is often the most powerful move in an argument. We also get into the lie our generation was sold about leaning in and having it all and the tightrope women walk every time they open their mouths at work.

I Disagree is out now wherever books are sold, and it belongs in your book club, ideally with people you disagree with.

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We're dropping an episode of a brand new celebrity news podcast in your feed today. Celebrity Intelligence: The Lowdown. Jo's a lead producer and host on this one and she's joined by her longtime colleague and dear friend, Dan Wakeford.

What happens when you become famous before you know who you are? This week on Celebrity Intelligence: The Lowdown, we dig into the darker side of growing up famous and ask whether there's any way to make child stardom less toxic. Could AI be the answer? One expert says yes.

We're also talking about Sydney Sweeney's lingerie brand and whether it can compete in a very crowded celebrity market, the strange business of the Beckhams owning the commercial rights to their children's names, and whether the British royals are ever going to kiss and make up. Plus a new royal tell-all from Diana's brother.

And finally, the answer to a question no one asked: what does Harry Styles think about in the shower?

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