Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

Latest Episodes:

The Last Free Women of Afghanistan Sep 24, 2026

Show notes

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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Chasing Cozy: The Birthday Episode With Jane Green Sep 22, 2026

Show notes

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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Can a Chatbot Love You Back? Sep 17, 2026

Show notes

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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The Lone Liberal on Fox News Wrote the Book on Disagreeing Better Sep 15, 2026

Show notes

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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How Can We Save Child Stars ? Would You Buy Sydney Sweeney's Underwear? And a New Royal Tell-All Sep 10, 2026

Show notes

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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"How Not to Look Like Shit": Bobbi Brown on Makeup, Aging, and Being Scrappy Forever Sep 08, 2026

Show notes

Bobbi Brown started Bobbi Brown Cosmetics out of her garage while pregnant in 1990. Four and a half years in, Estée Lauder called and said we want to buy you, and she said okay, mostly because she did not really know what a brand was yet. She stayed on for 22 years as an employee of the company that owned her own name. When she finally left, she still had four and a half years left on a non-compete, which meant she was legally not allowed to make a single beauty product. So she renovated a hotel, sold vitamins at Walmart, did an eyeglass line, and then launched Jones Road in October 2020, one week before the presidential election, when everyone told her she was out of her mind.

Bobbi is a force of nature and her memoir Still Bobbi: Lessons on Building a Beautiful Life is a book club must read.

We talk about the lab screwup that turned into Miracle Balm, what she does instead of Botox and which laser she will never touch again, why the phrase anti-aging makes no sense to her, and what 38 years of marriage plus running a company with your husband actually looks like.

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Sunday Nice Things: Did Emily Ruin Paris? Sep 06, 2026

Show notes

Today we're sharing an episode from another podcast I think you'll enjoy: The Global Story from the BBC.

The question they’re tackling is a great one: Did Emily Ruin Paris?
Whether you love Emily in Paris, hate-watch it, or just can't escape it, there's no denying it's had a huge impact. The show has turned cafés, streets and neighbourhoods into tourist hotspots, and even won praise from French President Emmanuel Macron for putting France in the global spotlight.
But what happens when a TV show becomes so popular that it starts changing a city in real life? Are all those new visitors a blessing... or a headache for the people who actually live there?

In this episode, co-hosts Asma Khalid and Tristan Redman - who lives in Paris himself - dig into what’s been named the "Emily effect”, and explore the surprising ways TV shows and movies can shape how we see places, sell places, and sometimes transform them altogether.

Have a listen, and if you enjoy it, search for The Global Story wherever you get your podcasts - every day they cover one big story at the intersection between America and the world.

Here's Did Emily Ruin Paris? from The Global Story. Listen to more at https://link.mgln.ai/Influence-TGS

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The Tradwife Era Is Over. So Why Are We Still Obsessed? Sep 03, 2026

Show notes

Why are smart, progressive, left-voting women are still watching tradwife content? Even after the trend has peaked?

Author Claire Swinarski has also written a tradwife novel entitled The Supper Club Saints. Today we're chatting about how Yesteryear became such a phenomenon and whether the book's success is really about giving women a socially acceptable place to put their rage. We also get into why the girlboss-versus-tradwife binary is failing everybody.

Claire's new novel is The Supper Club Saints. Find her at claireswinarski.com.

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An OBGYN's Cheat Sheet for Getting Taken Seriously Sep 01, 2026

Show notes

Dr. Tracy Shevell is an OBGYN who has spent 25 years in women's intimate spaces, and she has watched the system fail women over and over. Her goal is to help women get them better care by telling them how to work within a broken system.

Tracy tells us the exact phrasing to use going to the doctor or walking into an emergency room, and why describing your symptoms honestly and expecting the system to respond correctly is not always the best strategy. She talks about why many OBGYNs are not trained to treat menopause, what is genuinely changing in endometriosis research right now, and the maternity care deserts spreading across most of the country.

Her first book, Labor and Deliverance: Reclaiming the Healing in Women's Health, is out January 26. It's nine patient stories plus the decade she spent being dismissed by other doctors while working as one herself.

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Pour Yourself a Cup of Ambition: Remembering Dolly Aug 26, 2026

Show notes

Dolly Parton died on Tuesday at 80, and she may have been the last thing Americans agreed on. We're replaying this episode in her honor. Our conversation with Will Bonfiglio, the WashU lecturer behind a wildly popular college course on Dolly, is about how the country icon became a cultural unifier across politics, class, gender, and generations. From Dollywood to "9 to 5" to her million-dollar vaccine donation, this is a conversation about kindness, capitalism, and why Dolly Parton was an uber influencer in the best possible way.

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