Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

Art has a branding problem.

Somewhere along the way, we decided it was only for rich people, or academics living in their ivory towers

Liz Lidgett is changing that.

Liz opened a gallery right before the world shut down during the pandemic, started putting art on Instagram when no one could leave their homes, and built a following by making the art world feel way more human.

We talk about how to live with art instead of being intimidated by it, how to figure out what you like, why your first piece doesn’t need to be expensive. And why the best art is usually the one you can’t stop thinking about, not the one that matches your couch.

We also detour into perimenopause. Briefly. Promise! Can't stop, won't stop.

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What does it mean to move through the world at a human pace? To ramble and wander and chat up strangers in real life?

This week, we sit down with writer Isaac Fitzgerald to talk about his new book American Rambler and what happens when you decide to walk across America and follow in the footsteps of Johnny Appleseed.

These great American yappers get into the idea that midlife is a second coming-of-age, why wandering might be the antidote to our screen-obsessed lives, and how the definition of “adventure” changes when you’re not twenty anymore. Spoiler: It gets better.

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Ask Jo anything this week. We've got a grab bag of audience questions and completely unfiltered responses to things like:

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There's nothing I love more than quietly reading. I love it alone. I love it in groups. But I especially love doing it in public, with the rest of the world buzzing around me, all absorbed in their own little worlds. What if the antidote to burnout, loneliness, and the attention economy was… sitting in a room with strangers and reading quietly?

This week, I’m talking to Guinevere de la Mare, the co-founder of Silent Book Club, a global movement that started with one exhausted mom who just wanted to read a single uninterrupted chapter and somehow turned into thousands of chapters in more than 60 countries.

We chat about why reading in public started to feel weirdly indulgent, how phones became the more “acceptable” way to check out, and why focusing on a book will actually bring us back to ourselves. There’s also detours into late-stage capitalism, wealth inequality, and why women keep finding themselves fixing broken systems on their own. Raises hand. Me, me, me.

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We’ve become an indoor species and it is making us sick and burnt out.

Today we're chatting with Dr. John La Puma about the indoor epidemic and what happens when we spend almost all of our time inside under artificial light and on screens.

We break down what that’s doing to sleep, mood, and focus. Dr. La Puma explains how something as simple as stepping outside each day for 17 minutes can reset your brain, improve sleep, and help you think more clearly.

We also get into kids, screen time, and why the way they're living now isn’t setting them for happiness.

Please listen to this one outside.

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Jo’s new true crime obsession started with a trip to Midway, Utah.

She was there for an event at Folklore bookstore and a visit to Ballerina Farm Dairy, and within about five minutes of driving around town someone pointed at a house and said, “that’s the murder house.” At which point she needed to know everything.

This is the story of Kouri Richins, the Utah mom who poisoned her husband with fentanyl (after sending a text to her drug connection asking for the "Michael Jackson drugs") and then wrote a children’s book about grief after he died.

Jo talks with author and Folklore bookstore owner Lindsey Leavitt, who lives in Midway and walks her through the entire thing from the house to the lore to all the completely bananas details.

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A third of Gen Z men think wives should obey their husbands. This generation of young men, ages 14 to 29, is getting more conservative by the day. How? Why? And can we reverse it?

To figure it out, we talk with Gen Z strategist and creator ⁠Haley Lickstein⁠ about what the hell is going on with young men and how much of it is the internet’s fault. And what about the women? Are they fighting back or also moving backwards? From the rise of the manosphere to tradwife thirst traps to the slow-drip messaging around birth control, we break down how conservative ideas have been seeded, scaled, and sold to a generation that was supposed to be more progressive than the ones before it.

We also get into why the right is winning the culture war online, what progressives are getting wrong about influence and messaging, and how algorithms are shaping belief systems, relationships, and even who people date.

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How does something marketed as healing, empowerment, and connection start to slide down the slippery slope of becoming a sex cult?

That's just one part of Star Stone’s story inside OneTaste, the sexual wellness company built around “orgasmic meditation,” that sits right on that blurry line between wellness program and cult.

Star takes us from the Bay Area wellness scene of the 2010s to today’s influencer-driven “healing” economy, where the same patterns of coercion and manipulation keep showing up.

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How do you make a move when you have no idea what comes next?

Jen Shahade has spent her life inside the world of chess as a two-time U.S. women’s chess champion and the author of many books about chess including her latest Thinking Sideways, a book that uses chess as a way to think better, live better, and stop pretending we can plan ten moves ahead in a world that changes nineteen times a day.

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We're often told or indoctrinated to believe motherhood is supposed to be magical, fulfilling, your highest calling, the thing that finally makes everything make sense. And yet so many women are quietly unraveling and filled with rage.

This week we sit down with Libby Ward—the hilarious creator behind Diary of an Honest Mom, and author of Honest Motherhood—to talk about the reality of parenting colliding with the expectations we’ve all absorbed.

Libby shares the moment she realized she couldn’t keep doing it all, the years of carrying everything for everyone, and how that eventually turned into a massive online community of women admitting the status quo isn’t working.

We get into:

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