Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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