Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

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. Get Jen's book here! Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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: the mental load and invisible labor no one accounts for the myth of the “good mom” and why it’s so hard to shake why loving your kids isn’t the same as having the capacity to care for them what it actually looks like to start setting boundaries why saying no feels so uncomfortable at first Order Libby's book Honest Motherhood here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Time to do a deep dive into breaking celebrity news and what it’s revealing about our culture right now. Our guest is Dan Wakeford, a longtime force in entertainment journalism and one of the smartest editors to come out of the celebrity magazine era. He’s now launching a new newsletter, Celebrity Intelligence, built on real reporting, no rumor-chasing and no AI sludge. We dig into the cancellation of The Bachelorette after the Taylor Frankie Paul scandal and the difference between what audiences say they want and what corporations can actually tolerate. Is the cancellation of the Bachelorette the best thing that could actually happen to taylor? Then there’s the Justin Timberlake DUI footage, which was supposed to be damaging and somehow makes him more relatable. We're also chatting as longtime entertainment reporters and good friends about how gossip is anthropology, sociology and modern storytelling that can actually be good for you! Subscribe to Celebrity Intelligence here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why have women been told the only choices are girlboss or tradwife, lean in or opt out, burnout or retreat? We're chatting with author and coach Megan Hellerer about why that binary is so false and so seductive, especially for women who did everything “right” and still wound up exhausted, anxious, and unhappy. Megan shares how she went from Stanford to a dream job at Google to panic attacks on the bathroom floor, and how that breakdown led her to build a different framework for ambition and success. We get into burnout, misalignment, why five-year plans can keep us stuck, and why there has to be a third way for women who want meaningful work, a real life, and something more honest than either extreme. Plus: how Megan’s “directional living” framework helped a young bartender named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez find her path. Get Megan's book Directional Living here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An emergency episode is needed because the Bachelorette just got canceled before it even started and it's just so Secret Lives of Mormon Wives...... ABC pulled Taylor Frankie Paul’s entire season after a video resurfaced from a 2023 incident that was already public and very much part of her story on Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. None of this is new and ABC knew exactly who they were casting to try to revive the corpse of the Bachelor franchise. Also the bigger thing that is driving me insane, which is how fast women get shut down for being messy or angry while men just keep on… going. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The internet is full of terrible birth advice, and pregnant people are paying the price. This week, we’re joined by OB-GYN Dr. Jennifer Lincoln to bust the myths, misinformation, and guilt that swirl around labor, delivery, epidurals, C-sections, and motherhood online. We talk about why so many women go into birth wildly underprepared, why shame has become its own cottage industry, and why dads and partners need to stop treating birth like a side quest and start showing up from day one. Dr. Lincoln’s new book, The Birth Book, is the guide we all wish we’d had sooner. Order The Birth Book here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The right did not accidentally win social media and the internet. They built an entire influencer machine, and the left is still acting like a few sponsored posts during election season might somehow be enough to compete in the attention economy. We're chatting with Emily Amick about how conservatives turned podcasts, wellness influencers, mommy bloggers, TikTok creators, and pop culture accounts into a political ecosystem that shifts peoples' politics and shapes culture. We talk about the anti-birth-control messaging spreading through MAHA and wellness spaces, the money gap between right-wing and progressive media, why the left keeps talking mostly to itself, and what has to change before the midterms. Read Emily's piece on the influencer economy here. Follow Emily here. Buy Democracy in Retrograde here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You all loved hearing Helena DeGroot's episode about not having kids so I wanted to drop the first episode of her series Creation Myth here for you to listen to. The show explores what life's purpose looks like without having children. After the decision not to have kids ended her marriage, 40-year-old Helena grabs her mic to find out: did she make a mistake? We hear from friends and family, and even a total stranger who reveals how he regrets his decision to have a child. Listen to more of Creation Myth here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What’s harder: winningSurvivor or writing a novel? According to former Survivor runner-up Stephen Fishbach, it’s writingthe novel by a billion. In this episode we talk with Stephen about his sharp new thriller Escape, which pulls back the curtain on the reality TV machine and the people trying to control the story behind the scenes. We get into why Survivor is still one of the most powerful storytelling engines on television, how producers turn a chaos machine into narratives and contestants into characters characters, and why reality TV was basically the beta test for the influencer economy we’re living in now. Order Stephen's book Escape here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Are you watching Love Story? This week we're chatting with our resident ’90s guru Glynnis MacNicol about Hulu’s depiction of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette's tragic romance and why that title feels either deeply ironic or just flat-out wrong. We talk about the mythology of John John and Carolyn , the downtown NYC glamour of it all, the slip dresses, the cigarettes (the sweet, sweet cigarette, and the media machine that chewed women up and spat them out. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What if you do not want kids, but everyone acts like you are making a mistake? This week, we’re talking with Helena DeGroot, creator of the podcast The Creation Myth, about choosing a child-free life in a culture that refuses to believe that choice can be valid. Helena knew early that she did not want children. Her husband said he was on the same page, until he was not. After years of pressure, their marriage ended and she went on a deep, audio-documentary style search for the truth of what she actually wanted, without the noise of strangers, expectations, and the myth that motherhood equals fulfillment. We get into doubt, identity, the “mother or selfish” binary, and why you can love kids, show up for them, and still not want to be a parent. Also, why the deepest personal stories often become the most universal mirror. Listen to more of Helena's story on The Creation Myth. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Content featuring sick, sad, or injured children usually performs best online. Let that sink in. That insane fact is just one of the unsettling realities journalist Fortesa Latifi uncovered while reporting her new book, Like, Follow, Subscribe, a deep dive into the world of kid influencers and the children growing up as brands. In this episode of Under the Influence, Latifi explores why vulnerable childhood moments go viral, what happens to parent-child intimacy when a phone is always present, and how some kids say they stopped confiding in their parents because private experiences were turned into content. The conversation also examines the murky legal landscape around child influencer profits, the rise and reinvention of former kid star Piper Rockelle, and the growing fear around AI and deepfakes manipulating children’s images online. Like, Follow, Subscribe is available wherever books are sold. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Motherhood makes history, but history keeps trying to erase mothers. In this episode of Under the Influence, feminist cultural historian Elinor Cleghorn discusses her new book A Woman’s Work: Reclaiming the Radical History of Mothering and unpacks how motherhood has been written and rewritten to strip women of agency. From ancient birth rituals and the long, maligned history of midwifery to the Virgin Mary as an impossible maternal ideal and the witch trials as punishment for women who refused the “good mother” role, this is a conversation about why telling the real story of mothering is still an act of resistance. Grab a Copy of A Woman's Work here Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Who was your gateway influencer? For us, it was Love Taza—Naomi Davis—the Juilliard-trained ballerina (yes, a different one) turned mommy blogger and social star who made New York City look like a candy-coated dream of red lipstick, tiny apartments, and five kids in technicolor. And then she disappeared. This week’s episode welcomes author Ali Hoff Kosik to talk about her new book Too Blessed to Stress, to dig into some weird Love Taza conspiracy theories, and to explain the correlation between pickleball and Evangelical Christian TikTok. You’re welcome. Follow Ali here. Order Too Blessed to Stress here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jo has been working on a brand new podcast about birth for the past year and she is so excited to share it with you all. Today we are sharing the very first episode of Birth with Babylist. In our first episode, we walk through what birth actually looks like, from early labor through delivery. We talk to experienced OB-GYNs and midwives as they break down the stages of labor, what’s normal, what’s unpredictable and what you can prepare for. And because no two births are the same, real parents share what it was really like for them. You can listen to all the episodes of Birth With Babylist here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Financial advice for parents usually lands in extremes, either panic-inducing warnings about how expensive kids are, or unrealistic frameworks that don’t account for how life actually unfolds. This week’s guests, Christy Shen and Bryce Leung became well-known after publishing Quit Like a Millionaire and retiring at 30 with over a million dollars invested, but their path started from a place of real financial precarity. Christy grew up in deep poverty, at one point living on just cents a day, which shaped how she thinks about risk, security, and the appeal of financial independence. Now parents, their new book Parent Like a Millionaire Without Being One turns that framework toward family life, breaking down how to spend intentionally without getting pulled into the high-pressure baby economy. They talk about buying secondhand gear that holds value, building childcare swaps and babysitting co-ops, and leaning on community rather than defaulting to commercial solutions. Grab a copy of Parent Like a Millionaire Without Being One here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Close your eyes (not if you’re driving) and picture your old lady life. You wake up when you want. You wear glorious caftans. You’re strong and you’re rich because you built yourself a safety net. Today we’re chatting with Amanda Holden, the personal finance educator behind the new book How to Be a Rich Old Lady. We get into why women are trained to feel “bad at money,” how that keeps power in someone else’s hands, and what it looks like to take it back. Amanda breaks down her “10-minute missions,” the order of operations for getting financially stable and then secure and how to start investing without turning your life into a spreadsheet. We also talk about financial “influencing,” scammy advice, and the kind of money resistance that hits corporations where it counts without blowing up your future. Get Amanda's wonderful book here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In celebration of the Winter Olympics (the best thing to ever happen to Peacock) we are bringing back one of our favorite episodes of Committed with professional figure skaters Chris and Alexa Knierim. These two shared the same dream when they fell in love and got married—get to the Olympics... together. They didn’t let broken bones or a mysterious illness get in their way. Their love story is even better than every Gen X woman's favorite romantic comedy, The Cutting Edge. You can binge Committed here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s episode is a grab bag — a hodgepodge of the stories people have been asking me about in my DMs for the past week. First up: the Ballerina Farm raw milk scandal. We break down the failed raw milk tests, the health concerns, and why the internet reacted with such gleeful ferocity. This isn’t really about unpasteurized dairy with cow poop bacteria in it. It’s about influencer perfection and the collective desire to take it down a notch. Then we get into “Hating on the Katies” — the online backlash against lifestyle influencers and everyday women who are only now speaking up politically and why progressive s might be getting this one very wrong. And finally: the rise of the Intellectual It Girl. From celebrity book clubs to “becoming disgustingly educated,” we unpack why smart is suddenly chic again and why I hope it destroys the soft girls, stay-at-home girlfriends trends. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Moms drive the majority of household purchasing decisions. Recommendations from mom influencers outperform traditional ads. They even convert better than celebrity endorsements. And yet, they’re still treated like they should be grateful for a free product and an affiliate link. This week we talk with Chelsea Clark, founder and CEO of Momfluence, an influencer marketing agency built specifically around mom creators, about how the mom-influencer economy really works and why it continues to undervalue women’s labor even as it explodes. We get into why moms chronically undercharge, how the lack of transparency mirrors other female-dominated industries, and the uniquely brutal experience of having your work publicly judged every day while also parenting. Learn more about Momfluence here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Every January, parents are asked to plan the entire summer for their kids months in advance, spend a lot of money, juggle waitlists, and pretend this isn't a hellscape of doom. In this episode, we chat with journalist Katherine Goldstein about the overwhelming amount of summer planning we all seem to be doing and why so much of it falls on moms. There are a ton of reasons for this that are uniquely American. We have long summers, very little paid time off, a culture that expects constant supervision, and a childcare system that’s mostly private and wildly expensive. Put all of that together and summer often ends up being more logistical nightmare than break. Katherine also pushes back on the idea that kids need nonstop structured programming to have a “good” summer. She talks about why the pressure to optimize every week is exhausting, and about what happened when her family opted out of the camp scramble and tried something totally different. Follow the Double Shift substack here. Get 20% off Katharine's Summer Budget Travel Guide here with the code UNDER20. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you’ve had kids, you’ve probably wondered at some point if you’re a bad mother. I would say this is true for 99.9 percent of us. And the other 0.1 percent is Ruby Franke. On today’s episode of Under the Influence, we're joined by Cut culture writer EJ Dickson to talk about her smart, sharp and wildly satisfying new book One Bad Mother: In Praise of Psycho Housewives, Stage Parents, Momfluencers, and Other Women We Love to Hate. “Bad mom” is one of our culture’s favorite labels, and EJ pulls back the curtain on where it came from, how it evolved, and who it’s actually attacking. We talk about why the moral panic tends to land on women (and especially women of color), and how the modern parenting advice industry and influencer economy keep moms perpetually off-kilter. We also get into Mommie Dearest and maternal mental illness, the pressure to perform “good motherhood,” and why even the most self-aware among us still find ourselves blurting out, “I don’t usually give them this much screen time.” This one is a lucky, a permission slip to stop chasing impossible standards and let ourselves just be moms. Order One Bad Mother here Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

No one is going to check in with you to make sure you're enjoying your life. What if fun—not self-care, not optimization, not doing more—is the thing missing from modern motherhood? This week on Under the Influence, we’re talking about why moms feel guilty for wanting joy, adventure, and pleasure that doesn’t serve anyone else. Our guest is Kelly Conroy, the creator of Your Mom Races Rally (YOMO), who went from feeling invisible and depleted in early motherhood to learning how to race rally cars—yes, actual rally cars—on dirt tracks at high speed. This episode is about the lies we’re told about motherhood: that it should fulfill every need, that good moms are selfless, and that fun has to be earned, justified, or monetized to be allowed. We talk about why women feel pressure to prove the “ROI” of their hobbies, why dads are never asked to account for their leisure time, and how reclaiming adventure can radically change how we parent, partner, and exist in our bodies. Kelly shares how racing became a form of deep presence, confidence-building, and community—and why modeling joy, risk, and selfhood for our kids might be one of the most important things we do as parents. This conversation is about identity, autonomy, and why choosing fun isn’t frivolous—it’s revolutionary. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are only a few topics women in their forties can’t stop talking about right now: perimenopause, hormone replacement therapy, and GLP medications. In this episode, we sit down with physician Dr. Mary Brandon for a no-bullshit conversation about what’s actually happening in our bodies—and why so many of us feel like we’re losing our minds. We break down how GLP medications really work (and why many women feel better on them beyond weight loss), the role inflammation plays in joint pain, sleep, mood, and energy, and what the next generation of these drugs could look like. We also get into hormone replacement therapy—what it actually does, why testosterone is so often ignored in women’s care, and how decades of fear, shame, and misinformation have made this phase of life harder than it ever needed to be. Follow Dr. Brandon's practice here. Follow Dr. Brandon here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Three things are happening in the group chat right now: perimenopause, ICE, and Heated Rivalry. That’s it. That’s the list. And yes, I am late to this particular party because this is a show I have to watch alone, in the daylight, with no children within a one mile radius. So let’s talk about why this Canadian, low-budget, nipples-everywhere hockey romance has basically taken over the brains of American women in this exact moment. I brought in the only person I wanted to unpack it with: Sarah Wendell, co-founder of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, who has been taking romance seriously since before the rest of the world decided it was cool. We get into what makes the show feel so different from American TV, why it probably couldn’t have been made here, and how it became a global obsession without a celebrity tentpole (hahaha tentpole). We talk about what it means to watch two men do their own emotional heavy lifting for once, with no woman managing the feelings, and why that turns women on. This episode is funny, smart, extremely not safe for kids, and designed for anyone who has ever loved “delicious trash” and also wanted to talk about it like it's Proust. Read EVERYTHING Smart Bitches, Trashy Books here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I’m really excited to introduce you to a new show today. It’s a smart podcast about trashy books: Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, created by my good friend Sarah Wendell. Sarah has been talking about romance novels in a smart, generous, deeply thoughtful way since long before the current romance renaissance. She’s brilliant, she’s an absolute delight, and she has produced more than 700 episodes of this podcast. Typically, Sarah talks with authors, readers, reviewers, and bloggers about romance novels, which happen to be one of the most popular genres in fiction worldwide. But today’s episode is a little different. Her guest is our mutual friend Amanda Matta, best known online as a royal-watcher and pop culture historian, and the host of The Art of History podcast. In this episode, Amanda brings her Art of History treatment to classic old-school romance novel covers. Yes, there is Fabio. And yes, it’s as fun as it sounds. Listen to more Smart Podcast, Trashy Books⁠. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Taylor Wolfe, better known as The Daily Tay, has built a massive following online by helping us laugh about the hardest parts of motherhood. In this episode, we talk about Taylor’s new book Just a Busy Season, a brutally funny and deeply honest look at postpartum life, breastfeeding shame, marriage after kids, and how the so-called “busy season” never truly ends. We dig into how she went from a 2009 blogger to running a full-blown media business, why the word “influencer” still feels condescending, and what it’s like when satire goes viral and strangers decide they know who you are and decide to crap all over your life in the comments section. We also get into mom shaming, why one cruel comment can outweigh a hundred kind ones and how women end up policing each other online. Order Just a Busy Season here. Follow Taylor on Instagram here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are so many “most anticipated” lists about what to read this year. We have one book at the very top of ours: The Fountain by Casey Scieszka. Casey is one of our closest friends, and this is the novel we’ve been quietly recommending for years before anyone could actually get their hands on it. The Fountain, out in March, is set in the Catskills and follows Vera, a woman who looks like she’s in her mid-twenties but has been alive for more than two hundred years. She comes back to her hometown to figure out what happened to her and whether she can finally stop living forever. It’s a page-turner, but it also asks bigger questions about aging, power, womanhood, and building a life with purpose and love. We also talk about friendship and books as a form of survival, the high-stakes insanity of swapping early drafts with someone you’re just getting to know, and what it looks like to build a creative life while parenting, running a business, and juggling more jobs than anyone should have at once. Plus, we get into writing process, imposter syndrome, and what actually makes someone a writer. If you’re choosing a March book club pick right now, this is one to put at the top of your list. ORDER The Fountain here. Request that Casey Zoom into your book club here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

January should officially be Women’s Rest and Recovery Month, because after December most of us are sick, behind on work, emotionally fried, and trying to pretend that carrying the mental load of not just our own families but everyone we care about was somehow restful. In this episode, we’re joined by Jackie Oña Cascarano, founder of Juno Women’s Collective, an executive career coach, entrepreneur, and former attorney who works with women navigating transition, burnout, and big life shifts. Jackie brings language, research, and real-world experience to the question so many of us are asking right now: how do we rebuild joy when we’re exhausted. The conversation moves through what joy can realistically look like in daily life, from mid-January getaways and intentional planning days to micro-pleasures that quietly make everything feel lighter, like good coffee, using the nice olive oil, burning the candle instead of saving it, and clearing clutter that fuels anxiety. Follow Jackie 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

January feels like a real dumpster fire so far. It's supposed to feel like a reset, but instead it feels chaotic and messy and exhausting. Today we are zooming in on why the urge to fix everything at once backfires every time and why the smallest changes are often the ones that actually stick. We're joined by Under the Influence tidying guru Tyler Moore, aka Tidy Dad to walk through his five-to-ten-minute approach to tidying just your own stuff. Not the whole house. Not your partner’s drawers. Just yours. because being the boss of other people feels like too much right now. Follow Tidy Dad on Instagram here. Grab his book, Tidy Up Your Life 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’re kicking off the new year by talking about something we both love and hate: “resolutions.” Or, more accurately, a list of what we don’t want in our lives in 2026. With bestselling author Glynnis MacNicol, we get into why this week is useful for taking stock, even if you refuse to “manifest” anything, and how writing things down (by hand, in a real planner) can make your brain take it more seriously. We talk about setting boundaries with toxic people, getting clearer about what projects and workplaces we’re willing to say yes to, and why “less screen time” isn’t really the point—it’s less social media, less surveillance of our own lives, and a better approach to being online: go in with a list, do what you need to do, and leave. We also get into news diets, the complicated reality of stepping away from your phone when you have kids, and the way social media magnifies the sense that everything is on fire, all the time. Then the conversation turns to something bigger: relational retirement economics—the idea that friendships and community function like long-term savings, and that investing in relationships is often the most practical kind of security. Subscribe to Glynnis's wonderful substack 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

In this heartfelt conversation, Dr. Florencia Segura shares her personal journey of losing her daughter Rosie to Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood (SUDC). She discusses the lack of awareness surrounding SUDC, the role of social media in her grieving process, and how she keeps Rosie's memory alive. Dr. Segura emphasizes the importance of research and community support in understanding and preventing SUDC, while also navigating the complexities of grief within her family and marriage. Ultimately, she encourages listeners to live fully and love deeply, inspired by Rosie's spirit. Learn more about Rosie, SUDC and Florencia's mission 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

What does friendship actually look like in the messy middle parts of midlife, when time is scarce, energy is finite, and relationships have to earn their place? This episode with journalist Anya Kamenetz explores how friendships change in your forties, why many people feel lonelier even as they crave deeper connection, and what it really takes to build rich, sustaining friendships as an adult. Read Anya's story and subscribe to her Substack 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

Traveling with kids is not a vacation. It’s work. It’s labor. It’s also one of my absolute favorite things to do. In this episode I talk about how we actually make it happen as a family, from taking my “lumpy babies” to Sicily to hauling three kids through London while one of them pukes all over an Uber and then immediately asks for sushi. I’m joined by my family travel guru, writer and travel journalist Regan Stephens, founder of the travel guides Saltete and mom of three girls who spends a month every summer exploring the world with them. We dig into the real mechanics of traveling with kids: choosing one anchor activity a day instead of trying to see everything, letting each kid pick something so they feel invested, and embracing grocery stores, metros, and playgrounds as essential cultural experiences. Subscribe to Regan's newsletter here. Browse the Saltete guides here. Get your free Saltete guides at these links: Where to Eat + Drink in Philadelphia A Guide to Visiting Philadelphia with Kids Jo Piazza’s Ultimate Guide to Traveling in Sicily Jo Piazza’s Family Guide to the Catskills Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today I'm dropping an interview that I did with the Love-ly⁠ podcast into our feed. This week on Love-ly, Mehak sits down with bestselling author, journalist, and podcaster Jo Piazza, widely considered one of America’s sharpest observers of women, motherhood, and the influencer economy. Together, they unpack the increasingly visible and controversial world of “trad wives”—women who embrace and promote full-time homemaking on social media. Mehak and Jo explore why the aesthetic is so magnetic, what’s intentionally left out of the picture-perfect narrative, and how domesticity is often repackaged as empowerment. Along the way, Mehak and Jo discuss a viral TikTok from @cortneygetsfit, a stay-at-home mom navigating life post-divorce after years of financial dependence on her husband. Piazza opens up about the realities of feminist choice, financial independence, and how her own views on marriage and partnership have shifted over time. Pulling from her years of reporting and her latest book, Everyone Is Lying to You, the conversation gets into shifting gender roles, the pressure cooker of modern womanhood, and the glossy myths social media keeps feeding us. You can listen to more episode of Love-ly 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

The trad wife trend has finally hit its ceiling. After years of algorithm-friendly homemaking, the movement is showing the cracks in its seams. The performance is shifting. The ambition underneath is no longer hiding and that reveal says everything about where the culture is headed next. Brands like Ballerina Farm and Nara Smith are now openly embracing the CEO role instead of pretending domestic perfection happens without childcare, staff, or structure and that transparency matters. But what happens when the influencers who sold “traditional femininity” as a lifestyle pivot to empire-building in plain sight? 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

Holiday joy is supposed to feel cozy and magical. Instead, a lot of women spend December simmering with quiet (or not so quiet) rage. Let's dig into why the holidays can feel especially brutal for women in midlife, and what our hormones, our brains, and the unpaid mental load of the season have to do with it. Her guest is Dr. Kim Einhorn, an OB GYN and founder of the MP Collective, a personalized menopause and perimenopause practice. Kim explains how hormone fluctuations in perimenopause can hijack your mood, why you suddenly cannot stand the way your partner does just about anything, and how sleep, stress, and resentment collide to tank both your patience and your libido. Kim gets into practical ways to lower the mental load, use the power of no, rethink self care, and protect your joy this season, without burning your life down or making one more cheese plate for people you do not like. Learn more about Kim and the MP Collective 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

In light of the news about Australia's social media ban for teenagers we are resurfacing an episode with a young creator. This is a deep dive into the world of a 16-year-old TikTok star who wants to change the industry as we know it and ensure that the next 20 billionaires are females under 25. Sloane Price is wildly ambitious in ways I couldn't have imagined possible when I was a teenager. And today we're talking about her business plans, the ways that brands and agencies take advantage of teen girl influencers (plus how she wants to fix it) and why the teenage influencers today are the future of celebrity marketing. 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