Instagram Made Me Feel Like a Bad Mom — So I Started a Podcast

Instagram Made Me Feel Like a Bad Mom — So I Started a Podcast

Author: Jo Piazza August 21, 2025 Duration: 42:40
Five years ago, I was a new mom recording a podcast in my closet, wedged between a toddler and a baby who wouldn’t sleep. For the past few months I had been exhausted, leaking milk, hating my husband and endlessly scrolling Instagram, wondering why my messy, chaotic life didn’t look like the linen-clad perfection of the moms in my feed. So I decided to start reporting on the world of mom influencers. That reporting turned into a revelation. Those “perfect mothers” weren’t just moms, they were marketers. They weren’t just sharing their lives, they were selling them. That was the start of this podcast. At the time, mom influencing was still dismissed as fluff. Now it’s a multi-billion dollar industry shaping how we shop, vote, and even think about gender roles. But the mission of Under the Influence has never changed. It has always been to pull back the curtain on the industries and ideologies that tell women who we should be, and to ask what’s really being sold when we scroll. So in celebration of our five-year anniversary, we’re rerunning the very first episode, A More Perfect Mother, the blueprint for everything we’ve built together. 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 Under the Influence with Jo Piazza, journalist and mother Jo Piazza pulls back the curtain on the multi-billion dollar world of social media influence. This isn't just another show about viral trends; it's a critical exploration of the aspirational marketing that haunts our feeds, where perfectly posed lives in spotless homes mask a complex economy. Jo examines how this ecosystem fundamentally reshapes our culture, our families, and our personal sense of self, especially for parents and kids navigating this curated reality. Each episode of this podcast digs into the forces that brought us here, asking what it means to live, parent, and consume under this constant, monetized influence. You'll hear specific stories and analysis that connect the dots between the content we scroll past and the larger societal machinery at work. The conversation naturally extends beyond the screen to question the real-world impact on our journals, our relationships, and our understanding of value. Under the Influence with Jo Piazza provides the context often missing from the comments section, offering a necessary perspective for anyone who has ever scrolled and wondered about the true cost of that airbrushed perfection.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

Under the Influence with Jo Piazza
Podcast Episodes
The Bright Side of Not Drinking [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 51:21
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 b…
Sunday Nice Things: Let's Talk About Birth with Lo & Behold [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:09
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 info…
Strong Enough to Survive Toddlers With Andre Crews [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 49:09
Parenting is the hardest workout of all. Trainer and dad Andre Crews went viral for calling toddlers terrorists who hold their whole family hostage (so damn true), and he’s built a massive following by mixing fitness wit…
Sunday Nice Things: Women's Work [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 50:12
Today we are revisting the second ever episode of UTI! Mom influencing is a multi-billion dollar industry. How the hell did we get here? How did influencing become a job? Why doesn’t Wikipedia mention mom bloggers in the…
The Messy Truth About Potty Training [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:10
Potty training has been sold to parents as a finish line — three days, one weekend, no more diapers. But what if that’s the wrong way to think about it? In this episode, Laura Birek, co-author of Good to Go: A Fresh Take…
How We Divide Household and Parenting Labor in Our House [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:29
So many women are exhausted by carrying more of the household labor, both the visible chores and the invisible work no one talks about. In this episode Jo and Nick sit down to map out how it really happens in their own h…
Can Creativity and Motherhood CoExist? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:11
The world loves to tell parents—especially moms—that kids and creativity can’t co-exist. Writer M.M. De Voe thinks that’s B.S. and so do I. M. founded Pen Parentis to help writers keep creating after they have kids. In t…
How Patagonia Rewrote the Rules of Influence With David Gelles [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:10
Patagonia isn’t just an outdoor brand. It’s a company that has quietly shaped how we dress, how we think about the planet, and how business can act in the world. Today we're talking to New York Times reporter David Gelle…
Sunday Nice Things: Broadway Husbands [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 25:21
Stephen and Bret—aka the Broadway Husbands—have spent their careers lighting up the stage, from The Little Mermaid to Billy Elliot. But their most moving performance is the life they’ve built together as husbands and now…