Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

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

This week we start a two-part series on how not to blow up your life in midlife, with Gabrielle Moss, co-author of The Midlife Plot Twist: How to Reboot Your Life Without Burning It Down, Even If You Really, Really Want To. Gabby spent her career writing about pop culture, so she knows exactly how badly it has served women over forty. We get into why the midlife crisis went from a serious idea to a punchline about men and convertibles, why the '80s sitcoms were doing this better than anything on streaming right now, and why Anne Hathaway in a string bikini is not quite the representation we were hoping for. We also talk about the question at the center of the book, which is whether the life you built is actually yours or just the one you were told to want. Plus the nine-job economy, the career ladder that no longer exists, what retirement is even supposed to mean for our generation, and the surprisingly hard question of what you actually like. Part two with co-author Lindsey Goldwert is coming next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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. 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 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. 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

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices