Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

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Gabrielle Hamilton on the Myths That Make a Family Oct 16, 2025

Show notes

Every family runs on a kind of mythology — the stories we tell about who we are, where we come from, and what we’ve survived. For Gabrielle Hamilton, those stories fueled both her cooking and her writing.

The James Beard Award–winning chef behind Prune and the author of Blood, Bones & Butter has spent her life turning memory into art. In her new book, Next of Kin, she returns to the chaos and brilliance of her childhood — the beauty and the violence, the humor and the heartbreak — to see what still holds true after all these years.

This episode is about how family becomes material, how humor masks survival, and how writing it all down can both preserve and transform the people we come from.

Next of Kin is out now. Grab your copy here.

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I Bought a Vintage Trailer… How Can I Turn it Into a Bookstore? Oct 13, 2025

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I finally did the thing. After years of dreaming about a Philly bookstore, Nick and I bought a vintage trailer and christened it The Bookcase, a pop up mobile shop we’re rolling around the Catskills this winter. To figure out how any of this actually works, I called my friend Flannery of Bluebird Bookstop, whose own trailer grew into one of my favorite brick and mortar stores. We talk about why a trailer lets you test the market without dying of overhead, the brutal realities of book margins, how I’m curating a tiny but mighty selection, and why the magic is the experience as much as the sale. This episode is my love letter to community, discovery, and saying yes before I feel ready. Part two is coming.

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Divorcing Heterosexuality (and Other Data-Driven Decisions) Oct 09, 2025

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Wharton economist Corinne Low wrote a viral article for The Cut titled “This Economist Crunched the Numbers and Stopped Dating Men.”

Low, the author of the new book Having it All, is here to talk all about it. In this episode, we chat about the real economics of burnout, motherhood, and why gendered division of labor destroys intimacy. Corinne shares how she turned her own research into a blueprint for survival, left a marriage that wasn’t working, and fell in love again—this time, with a woman who gets it.
We also unpack how social media’s tradwife aesthetic gaslights women into unpaid labor, why “having it all” is still a rigged game, and what it means to finally take ownership of your time, money, and happiness.

Get a copy of Having it All here.

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The Original It Girl: What Jane Birkin Can Teach Us About Fame, and Influence Oct 07, 2025

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Jane Birkin invented effortless cool before Instagram, before influencers, before French-girl chic was even a thing. But behind the Birkin bag and the famous love affairs was a woman battling depression, heartbreak, and the relentless pressure of being an icon.

Journalist Marisa Meltzer joins me to talk about her new book It Girl: The Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin, which peels back the myth to reveal the real Birkin: fragile yet magnetic, self-doubting yet endlessly stylish. We explore why her aesthetic still defines generations of women, how her personal struggles shaped her art, why she continues to haunt our cultural imagination and the surprising ways Birkin’s legacy speaks directly to our influencer-saturated world today.

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Sunday Nice Things: Book Journey x Alka Joshi Oct 05, 2025

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Today we're dropping an episode of Book Journey into the feed, a behind-the-scenes podcast from editor and Northern California Writers Retreat director Heather Lazar about how writers become authors. This conversation follows Alka Joshi, international bestselling author of the Jaipur Trilogy from first pages to agent to editor to a breakout debut. You will hear how a voice becomes a manuscript, what a real revision process looks like, how contracts and covers happen, and how a thousand book clubs powered word of mouth.

About the Northern California Writers Retreat: a juried fiction retreat held four times a year in Carmel Valley. Each session brings together 18 writers, literary agents, an editor, and an author in residence for an intensive, practical immersion in the craft and business of publishing. Founded and directed by Heather Lazar, the retreat blends hands-on editorial guidance with real-world industry access. Applications are open until November 7. I’ll serve as author in residence for the third session, April 8–12.

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I Miss the 90s. What I Really Miss is Real Life Oct 02, 2025

Show notes

We are living in peak nineties nostalgia. Everywhere you look there are slip dresses, scrunchies, bucket hats, even Tamagotchis making a comeback. But this revival is not just about clothes or hair accessories. It is about a collective longing for a pre-digital era, before we were glued to our phones and before algorithms decided what we should see, wear, and want.

In this episode of Under the Influence, we dig into why millennials and Gen Z are craving the decade that gave us dial-up internet, landlines, and the last gasp of an unplugged childhood. From malls to music videos, beauty trends to sitcoms like Friends (and even the new series Osadid and Friends), the nineties are everywhere right now. Maybe that is not just nostalgia. Maybe it is the medicine we need for our current screen burnout.

Read Glynnis's piece on why we are doomed to keep reliving the nineties here. (Gift Link)

Buy The Sober Shift here.

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The Bright Side of Not Drinking Sep 30, 2025

Show notes

How do you make sobriety cool? Suzanne Warye was one of the first influencers asking that question. On her account The Sober Mom Life and in her new book The Sober Shift, she shows why quitting alcohol isn’t about rock bottom, it’s about building a life you don’t want to escape from.

A longtime lifestyle influencer, Suzanne used her branding savvy to reframe what it means to live alcohol-free. In The Sober Shift, Suzanne calls out mommy-wine culture, the myth of moderation, and the billion-dollar marketing machine that sold women on rosé as a personality. This episode is about what happens when an influencer puts sobriety through a full rebrand—and why so many women are ready for the shift.

Listen to all of Lo's episodes here.

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Sunday Nice Things: Let's Talk About Birth with Lo & Behold Sep 28, 2025

Show notes

Today I'm dropping an episode of Lo Mansfield's show Lo & Behold in the feed. Lo is a former labor and delivery nurse and current birth educator. You can follow her @TheLaborMama. I love Lo's informative, fact-based information about birth, postpartum and all things making babies. This episode is about whether a pain free birth is actually possible. This is something we see constantly on social media now, often posted by people with zero experience in the medical industry and it deserves a real convo.

In this episode Lo dives into the complexities and realities of labor pain. No B.S.

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The Mental Load of Family Life: The Work You Can’t See But Always Feel Sep 25, 2025

Show notes

Why does it feel like moms carry a running scroll of everything — the playdates, the vaccines, the permission slips, the damn pile of laundry on the stairs? Sociologist Allison Daminger calls it cognitive labor — the invisible mental work of family life — and her new book What’s on Her Mind shows why women do so much more of it, even in couples who want equality. We talk about what cognitive labor actually looks like, why personality differences are really gender training in disguise, and how we can raise the next generation to share the mental load.

Get Allison's book here.