
Free Daily Podcast Summary
by Jo Piazza
Under the Influence is a deep dive into social media, a place haunted by aspirational marketing where it feels like every other person is a social media influencer trying to sell you something, all while posed in perfect houses that never seem to get messy. And behind this airbrushed perfection is money, so much money. Billions and billions of dollars. Journalist and mom Jo Piazza looks at how we got here, what it all means and how the commodification of every single aspect of our lives is driving everyone (but mostly women and mothers) a little insane.
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Work is broken for most of us. The modern office was built for men with stay-at-home wives. School lets out at 3, childcare costs a fortune, and we’ve all gone a little feral since the pandemic. But we’re also lonelier than ever, and we’re losing something real when we never see each other in person. This week we talk with economist Natalia Emanuel, co-author of In Person, about why being together makes us smarter, more creative, and less miserable. We get into why we hate a Zoom (there’s brain science behind it), how young people are supposed to find mentors and make friends when they only see their coworkers on a screen, why the fight over remote versus in-office misses the point, and what a workplace built for actual humans, not shareholders, could look like. Find the book at inpersonbook.com. 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
This week we talk with Hillary Frank, the creator of The Longest Shortest Time, a podcast that got us through the miserable, sleepless, who-is-this-tiny-alien early days of motherhood. Hillary has a new thriller out called Wedlocked, an original audiobook that is Promising Young Woman meets Get Out. The protagonist, Zara is an instructor on Uplift, a fitness app that promises to lift your weights and your spirits, and she’s married to Ezzy, the app’s founder. (Do not mix work and pleasure, people. It never ends well.) Her job is to stay relentlessly peppy no matter how sore, sad, or furious she is. Then something shifts, and Zara starts feeling genuinely, wildly happy for the first time in forever. She also starts getting scary symptoms, suspects someone is stalking her, and has to deal with an ex who shows up and thinks her new bliss is seriously weird. We won’t spoil anything, but let’s just say her happiness probably isn’t coming from a good place. We talk about why women are expected to smile through everything, from chronic pain to random dudes on the street telling is to smile to the Instagram algorithm that only promotes youth and beauty, and what it actually costs our bodies when we stuff down our anger. Plus, we found out The Longest Shortest Time is back and now covering perimenopause and reproductive health! Wedlocked is available wherever you get audiobooks, and that includes your library, y’all. 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 moms were in charge? This week we sit down with Liuba Grechen Shirley, founder of Vote Mama, who ran for Congress in 2018 while nursing two toddlers and became the first woman to win federal approval to use campaign funds for childcare. That ruling changed how parents run for office, and the fight has since spread to 41 states and DC. We talk about why there are more millionaires in Congress than moms of young kids, why childcare and paid leave are economic issues and not “women’s issues,” and what it actually takes for a regular person to run when the job is basically an unpaid two-year interview. Liuba shares stories from the trail, including a congressman who called her an “illegitimate constituent,” and introduces us to some of the incredible moms on the ballot this November. We also get into the very real safety threats women candidates face, the state legislators who earn more teaching classes at the Y than they do in office, and whether we should finally throw our own hat in the ring. With 202 Vote Mama candidates on the ballot and less than three weeks until the midterms, this is your sign to check back in. Host a Moms’ Night Out (rage rooms encouraged) at votemama.org/ready, follow @votemamalobby on Instagram, and sign up to volunteer at votemama.org. 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 had a whole different episode planned, and then Shane Gillis stood up on SNL and called women who wear shorts to the gym whores. So we’re doing another emergency episode, and this time Nick Aster joins us to talk about why this matters so much right now. We get into what a joke like this on live network television tells young men in the wake of the Cornell Seven group text, why Dan Levy’s call for more men to speak up is exactly right, and why we think the most effective response isn’t just calling this misogyny but calling it what it is: sad, pathetic, and dumb. We also talk about raising a boy and two girls in a house full of ’80s comedies and boob jokes, how a MAGA-coded comedian getting this platform before the midterms feels like a distraction, and what a more nuanced conversation could look like. Plus, our rescue kitten Geoff makes his podcast debut, and we’re putting on our whore shorts and heading to the gym. 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 we're talking about one of our favorite things in the world. BOOKS. Lauren and Garri from The Everygirl Book Club join us to talk about how to build a more bookish life, even when you're juggling kids, work and everything else. We're talking about finding time to read, where to get great recommendations, why it's perfectly fine to abandon a book halfway through, and why audiobooks absolutely count as reading. Plus, the importance of always having a book handy, preferably in a pocket big enough to accommodate some cheese. Then author and former book editor Christine Pride joins us to celebrate the release of our new novel, I Never Knew You at All. We talk about writing a book with your best friend (not always advisable!), the secrets we keep in marriages, what makes a book marketable, and what aspiring authors should know before trying to get published. A little something for everyone who loves reading books, talking about books or dreaming of writing one. Listen to the Everygirl Book Club Podcast here. Check out I Never Knew You at All 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
Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something and author of When We’re in Charge, joins us to talk about what the hell we can actually do when everything feels terrible. How do you run for local office? How much does it cost? Can you do it while working a full-time job? And what if you don’t want to run but still want to help? We talk about why local races matter so much, why younger candidates may have a real advantage right now, where your time and money can actually make a difference, and why Amanda thinks we might actually win. Most importantly, what can each of us do right now to help make that happen? Get a copy of When We're in Charge today. Visit Run For Something. 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 everything we were told about midlife is wrong? This week, we’re talking to Gabrielle Moss, co-author of The Midlife Plot Twist, about why your 40s can be the moment you finally stop living according to decisions you made at 22 and start asking what you actually want. We talk about our culture’s bizarre obsession with youth, why women are allowed to age but apparently not look like they’re aging, and what pop culture still gets wrong about women in their 40s. We also get into disappearing career ladders, the reality of having nine jobs, marriages that need a reboot, retirement anxiety, and why changing your life doesn’t have to mean burning the whole thing down and moving to Italy. Plus, we revisit Cathy, Murphy Brown, The Idea of You, This Is 40, Judy Blume, and the Babysitters Club women we desperately want to see in midlife. Because maybe a midlife crisis isn’t a crisis at all. Maybe it’s the moment you finally have enough information to build a life you actually like. ORDER The Midlife Plot Twist 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 happens when boys learn about masculinity from the internet before they learn how to understand their own emotions? Jo talks with Peggy Orenstein, author of Boys & Sex, about the forces shaping young men long before they reach college, the locker room or the frat house. They dig into the extraordinary influence of figures like Andrew Tate, how social media algorithms can turn curiosity into increasingly extreme ideas, and why simply keeping kids away from harmful content is no longer enough. The conversation also explores why boys are often taught to see anger as their only acceptable difficult emotion, and what gets lost when they learn to shut off everything else. It’s a conversation about how we raise boys, what the internet is teaching them, what parents can still influence, and why some of the answers may begin much earlier than we think. 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
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Under the Influence is a deep dive into social media, a place haunted by aspirational marketing where it feels like every other person is a social media influencer trying to sell you something, all while posed in perfect houses that never seem to get messy. And behind this airbrushed perfection is money, so much money. Billions and billions of dollars. Journalist and mom Jo Piazza looks at how we got here, what it all means and how the commodification of every single aspect of our lives is driving everyone (but mostly women and mothers) a little insane.
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