There Are No Girls on the Internet - Is Taylor Swift a Trad Wife? The Internet Thinks So (w/ Jo Piazza)

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

Taylor Swift is getting married. And on her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, she sounds over the moon about it. But online, everyone’s asking: Is Taylor Swift a “trad wife” now? In this episode, Bridget dives into the rise of trad wife culture with author and journalist Jo Piazza, host of the podcast Under The Influence and author of the juicy new book about trad wives, Everyone Is Lying to You. They unpack what “trad wife” really means, why so many people are labeling Taylor Swift one, and what that says about how marriage, womanhood, and online identity are evolving in 2025. If you’ve seen “trad wife” trending on TikTok or wondered what it has to do with feminism, marriage, and pop culture, this conversation is for you.   Everyone Is Lying to You is one of Bridget’s favorite books of the year: Penguin Random House  Listen to Jo Piazza’s podcast Under The Influence: Apple Podcasts   If you’re listening on Spotify, you can leave a comment there to let us know what you thought about these stories, or email us at [e-mail]  Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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The story I told myself can then shape my behavior, and that can lead me to sabotage the possibility of connection. This Mental Health Awareness Month, tune into the podcast Deeply Well with Debbie Brown if you've been searching for a soft place to land while doing the work to become whole. This podcast is for you to hear more. Listen to Deeply Well with Debbie Brown from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. What is it about Taylor Swift?

Whenever she does something, it almost doesn't matter what she actually did because our reaction always says more about us than it ever could about her. Her fan base is so massive that every little moment becomes a mirror revealing all these cracks because Taylor Swift exists

at the crossroads of things like power, gender, class, race, and visibility. And that means she is basically a magnet for charged, messy, emotional, and sometimes even manipulated online discourse. Case in point, after the release of her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, the Internet is asking, is Taylor Swift secretly a tradwife? You know, the kind of woman who uses her platform to say that real liberation means marriage

and submission. But that question isn't really about Taylor. It's about us and how pop culture, politics, and patriarchy collide online. Now, I am no scholar of Taylor Swift's music, honestly gunned to my head I could probably name five songs, and I haven't heard a new album. But even I could not escape this conversation online. So I called up my friend Joe Piazza, host of the podcast Under the Influence, and the author of the new book, Everyone is Lying to You, which dives deep into the culture of trad wives to ask. What exactly is a trad wife? Why does everyone suddenly think Taylor Swift is one?

And what does all of this say about marriage today? Yeah, I mean, I did actually write the book on tradwife influencers. And it's so funny because I've also weirdly become like America's leading expert on tradwives. Like I've been interviewed in like the international press about trad wives at this point. And I'm like, I did not see this coming when I got an economics degree in college. Did not see it coming at all. So one of the things I like about your work is you kind of come at it from this orientation of tradwives. are essentially making tons of money from lying about everything on the internet.

They tell women not to work while they themselves often are running thriving, lucrative businesses. Why is it important for you to have that orientation of like, yo, these people are basically lying? Yeah, totally. And I mean, and that's like the goal of everything that I say about the tradwives. And it's the lies and the deception that really get to me because they're pushing these messages and really influencing a lot of young women saying, hey, quit your job. It's okay to be dependent on a man. A man should be the breadwinner of the family. Go off birth control. Have five kids, homestead, homeschool, just like me. Look how happy I am. When really, these women are running a multi-million dollar media business, making money off your attention span. Usually they're the breadwinners in their families and

their husbands are working for them. They have nannies. They have domestic staff. They have like all of these things behind the scenes that you're not seeing. And yet, I talk to so many young women these days that are like, why would I climb the corporate ladder? Look how happy these trad wives are. I just want to quit my job and like live a soft life. And I'm like, they're not living a soft life. Content creation is hard work and it is labor. And they are making money and running a business and pretending that they're not. I think that this message is resonating with young women. Do you see it resonating? Are women responding to this and saying, oh, yeah, why would I want to work? This person has it figured out. They've got a great life. All they do is hang out with their kids and bake bread and wear prairie dresses. I can have that. Is it working on these young women? It 100% is working. And it's really insane. Some of like the best examples we have too are that, you know, another part of the messaging that we see in a lot of trad wife accounts is you should go off birth control. Birth control is dangerous. There's definitely a right-leaning pronatalist vibe going on. And I talk to young women all the time who were like, oh, I would never take birth control. And I'm like, what? They're like, yeah, no, I mean,

I saw this TikTok and I said it's going to make me infertile and give me cancer and kill me. And I'm like, look, I didn't love the pill in my 20s and 30s. And yet I loved not getting pregnant by every douchebag that I dated. So like, there are good and bad parts of it, but that messaging is really resonating. As is, women are saying, maybe I don't need to go to college or if I go to college, I'm just going to get my MRS. I'm just going to go to find a husband. This level of influence is working on the generation that is just coming out of their teens and in their 20s right now. And also in women my age, I mean, I'm 45 who are burnt out from leaning in. Like, it was exhausting trying to like be a girl boss and have it all and do all the things because society

is not set up to support us. And so we look at these images and think, wow, that does seem easy. That does seem nice. But again, it's all a fantasy. They're cosplaying a kind of traditional America that never really existed, or if it existed, it only existed for like a very small sliver of rich white people. It's true. These women are ultimately selling a fantasy that does not really exist

and never did, because this idyllic life of comfort and bliss never really existed for most of us. But that doesn't keep tradwives from selling this lie, using a kernel of truth to sell it. For instance, birth control. It's true, birth control can have side effects for some of us. So they take that kernel of truth to the extreme, that it's better to use no birth control whatsoever

and have kids before you're really ready. Or another one, that doing wage-earning work outside the house is often hard and stressful, and most of us that do it are burnt the fuck out and exhausted and putting up with a whole handful of stuff that we'd rather rot. Yes, if you can't tell, that is true. So the extreme alternative that trad wives would offer is that getting married, bowing out of the workforce, economic, and civic life is the answer, even though that is not even what these trad wife influencers themselves are doing.

They're really exploiting this like kernel of truth and blowing it up and saying, so it will be better if you just got married, had a bunch of kids, and relied on that person for all of your economic decision-making. Exactly, exactly. And there's a kernel of truth in all of it. And that's, those are the themes that work so well, again, because, like, we are burnt out and so watching these, like, videos of sourdough or them running through a field and gardening all day.

Like, one of my girlfriends who's a lawyer said to me the other day, she's like, I think I would really like just baking bread all day. And I asked him, like, have you ever baked bread? And she's like, no. I'm like, do you like cleaning your kitchen after making anything with flour? because we never see that in the videos. We never see how messy a kitchen gets after baking bread. And there is flour everywhere.

There's going to be flour like in your hair, in your scalp, in your kid's scalps, between your toes for weeks. Weeks. But we never see that. She's like, no, I don't know. And I'm like, then I don't think you would like baking bread. I think you like the idea of this just ease. And I think that's what we're craving.

We're craving ease. And that's what they deliver in these videos. Yeah, I think what they're really saying is like, I could use a fucking break. Like that's really, I think, like, at the heart of it. We're exhausted, we're burnt out, we're stressed, we're tired. Maybe you don't want to dedicate your life to baking bread. Maybe you need a break.

And maybe you need institutional support systems to make all of this a little less impossible. Exactly. Exactly. Maybe we just, maybe we could use, you know, paid and subsidized childcare. Maybe we could use more time off. Exactly. Like, we live in a society that is not cutting us a break, that is not. trying to make life easy at all for women. In fact, it's making it harder and harder on a daily basis.

And that's what we want. We want this easy life. But we're very vulnerable because we are anxious. We are burnt out. And that's why these women can suck you in so easily. And then they're all just selling you stuff. They are selling you their $50 high protein flour. They're selling you their egg aprons and their courses on how to make money online and be more like them. You said earlier that you didn't necessarily think that this is what you would be talking about, what's your economics degree, but so much of this is an economy. Yeah, exactly. I mean, the thing is, it is an economic story. It is a business story.

When I first started the Under the Influence podcast, which is more than five years ago, which is crazy to me. Wow. And started covering influencers. What surprised me, and again, this five years ago, it was that we were in the thick of the influencer economy, but it was. so much smaller than it is today, but it was still a multi-billion dollar business run by women for women, mostly ignored by the mainstream media because it was run by women for women. And I've been to these mom influencer conferences, and I kind of satirize some of them in everyone is lying to you because the goal of the book is it's a novel, it's a thriller,

it's pulpy and juicy, it is supposed to be a lot of fun. But at the same time, there's so much reporting that I've done that went into the book. So I've been to these mom influencing conferences, and they are a masterclass in business. Multi-million dollar deals are getting made at these conferences. And also, because two things are true, there are a lot of women high on weed gummies. So it is a masterclass in marketing and branding and also mom spring break. If it wasn't for the lying to enrich yourself personally part of that, that actually sounds like a pretty good time to me. Totally. Totally. Well, and To be fair, I've got to say this, the influencer economy, not everyone is a grifter, right? So, like,

the influencer economy is the new form of advertising and marketing. It is where eyeballs are. As a person who sells books for a living, and I say this all the time, I could get a profile in a major magazine, and I have, or be on a morning talk show, and I have, and I won't sell as many books, as when an influencer just shows it on their Instagram feed. That is the world we're living in right now. And so, you know, it is a completely, you know, lucrative business. And at the same time, you have a lot of people who are grifting you and who are lying in order to capture your attention and make money off of you. Before journalists like Joe, who clocked the influencer space as important early on, started looking deeply at what was happening in these corners of the internet, they were

pretty much ignored by the male-dominated tech press. And that allowed these spaces to do two things, amass a whole lot of power and influence, and also refine the ability to use that power and influence to expose women to pretty dangerous political and social ideology. So you mentioned how this, you know, when you first started leaning into this coverage of what was going on with the influencer economy, it was really ignored, like maybe it would be in a style section or something,

but certainly the Wall Street Journal at this point was not, you know, taking a hard look at what was going on in these spaces. Do you think that that allowed for these spaces, that them being overlooked in this way, to kind of also be used as vectors to push things like telling young women not to be on birth control or, you know, really being used as a pipeline to indoctrinate young women into more odious kind of political or social ideology? Yeah. And I think that that's still the case.

For the Trad Wife accounts and the Trad Wives are short for traditional wife. a lot of them were boosted during the last election because they do push such right-wing ideologies of homesteading, strip women of their rights, strip women of their agency. So we know that they truly did grow, especially over the past four years, because they were being boosted. Some of them were even created by Turning Point USA. And I've been talking about this for a couple of years now, now, about how Turning Point incubated influencers and they've gotten so much more attention, obviously after the murder of Charlie Kirk recently, but he truly was a genius when it came to branding

these kinds of influencers, and he used to say, he's like, the left has Hollywood, they have celebrities, we have to create our own celebrities, and if we win the culture, we win the war, and it's this kind of soft proselytization of, doesn't this look beautiful? It's nicer over here.

All of you, all of you with your feminism, You seem so angry all the time. We're the party that is fun and nice and easy, breezy. And it worked to sway a lot of young women. We talk too much about how young men were swayed by like the podcast brosphere to switch parties. But I think that young women have truly been influenced by Instagram. I remember after Charlie Kirk was murdered, watching Erica Kirk gave a speech at his funeral and seeing so much chatter on. online that was like, Erica Kirk just destroyed the feminist movement. And then when I looked into

Erica Kirk's background, I thought, oh, well, this is someone who is very educated before she, she got married in her 30s. You know, before she was married, she, you know, ran her own business and was a very educated young woman. I don't know that she did destroy the feminist movement because I think that from where I'm sitting, the feminist movement is why she was able to have all of those great accomplishments and make the kinds of choices that she was allowed to make. 100%, but here's the thing. Women like Erica Kirk, Alex Clark, who's another Turning Point influencer, who's incubated in the Turning Point Universe, which I'm like, it's like the Marvel universe, but for childwives. The Turning Point Cinematic Universe. The Turning Point Cinematic Universe. Coming soon to a theater near you. It's okay for some women to benefit from all of the things that feminism has given them. But they do want other women.

out of the workforce. They do want other women to depend on men as the breadwinners of their family and to stay in the home and raise their children. And the thing that I also like to say a lot is tradwife is not a stay-at-home mom. A stay-at-home mom is the CEO of their household. The tradwife themes are that you hand over all agency to your husband, that you're not in control of your finances. You're really not in control of your life. And that's what so dangerous to me. And that's what Eric Kirk is preaching. It was very funny because I was doing an interview with La Republica, the Italian national newspaper, about the book everyone is lying to. And the journalist was in Rome, but she read the book while she was covering Charlie Kirk's funeral. And like, while she was watching Erica Kirk on stage. And she's like, there were so many parallels to the women in your book. And I'm like, I know. It's creepy. But the fact is, these women have multiple. million follower accounts. Erica Kirk, I think, I mean, I might be wrong,

but she definitely had less than a million followers prior to her husband being killed. I think it was something around like 350,000. And last I checked, she was around 6 million. I mean, that's the, like, that is power. That is currency. Well, it is power, and that is the thing. And it's something that I think we have to pay

closer attention to. again, because women are being convinced to give up their agency, to give up their rights by these kinds of accounts, or to check out of politics altogether, which is equally as dangerous. And I also talk to young women who say what I just said. They're like, all of you feminists are so mad. And I'm like, well, yes, we have damn good reason to be bad, right? But just showing the things that feminism has done for us does not make a beautiful Instagram real.

Like, I am ridiculously happy because I was able to be on birth control and not have kids until I met the man that I had my children with. I firmly believe your husband is your glass ceiling. And I married the right man who supports my career. I can be successful because I was able to have my kids when I chose to and also equal pay and also access to jobs. Like all of these feminist things created a beautiful life for me, but that doesn't look great in an Instagram rule. I've said this so many times for heterosexual women, especially women who are ambitious or have, you know, inclined toward making something of themselves or building something for themselves. You're the person that you marry is either going to be an anchor or a springboard and there's really no in between. And so it really is a very important choice who you decide to marry.

And in a lot of ways, I think that for women, marriage can be kind of a raw deal. And so it behooves us to not be pushing women into doing it quickly or willy-nilly or just to check the box. Really put some thought and intention into who this person that you are anchoring your life to what they're about. And whether or not even getting married at all is something that you actually meaningfully want for your life. It should absolutely not be something we just funnel young women to as a default. Exactly, exactly. And the messaging in tradwife accounts is get married as soon. as you can get married at 18 and start having babies before you're able to take that springboard

onto, you know, what kind of life you want. And again, maybe your choice is to be ambitious about being a mom and about being a wife. Also, awesome. What feminism is about is having those options, having those choices, having access to money and credit and the ability to live the life that you're choosing and what tradwives want to do is take away those choices. So is Taylor Swift a tradwife? Joe and I get into that after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an acapella band with their between songs,

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after being branded a childless, single cat lady in her 30s, you know, the worst thing a woman can be, Taylor Swift announced her engagement to Travis Kelsey. On her new album, Life of a Showgirl, that shift is front and center. She sings about how all she really wants what would truly make her happy is to get married, have kids,

and settle into a home with a basketball hoop in a driveway. Sure, she's a billionaire, so that home would probably be a huge mansion, but still. And all of this does sound pretty traditional. So is this Taylor Swift's big white lady, trad wife pivot? So the reason I wanted to talk to you was a criticism that I keep seeing about Taylor Swift's new album. And I should say, I don't know what time about Taylor Swift. I am not a Swifty. but I keep seeing people say, oh, well, Taylor Swift is a trad wife now because she's newly engaged.

Her new album seems to be about wanting to get married and have kids and sort of find enjoyment in a domestic life. Now, I completely kind of understand and unsympathetic to this feeling that, oh, you know, this woman who was a public example of being a single woman who had a fabulous life then decides to get married. So, like, I genuinely do get it. But I don't necessarily feel that making a record about wanting to get married and have kids, automatically make someone a trad wife, like a lot of people they're saying online. What do you think folks are missing about this conversation? They're missing so much. Just because you want to get married and have kids does not make you any less of a feminist.

It's so obscene and offensive. She is a, I think she's still 35. Maybe she's 36 now. I don't know. But like she's writing songs about her evolving desires and what she wants out of the world. I mean, I'm a married woman with three kids, and I'm like a witchy feminist, right? Out there just like preaching and screaming from my soapbox every day. And all she said was, I'm excited to get married and have kids.

With this wonderful freaking man, by the way, who supports the hell out of her career, who promotes her every chance he gets, I do not get it. I hate it so much. It makes no sense to me. How do you think we got to a place where simply wanting to be married or wanting to have kids or opining about how this might be something that would be make you happy, kind of got branded as being conservative. Well, because they were able to like capture it.

And the conservative branding is so good that they've been able to call a lot of things, quote, theirs. They've taken on femininity, masculinity, marriage, kids. Like all of these things, they're claiming are part of their platforms. because they've been really, really good at branding and promoting it. And I say this all the time. I'm like, the left can't brand itself for shit, to be honest. Like, the left is just like they have no idea who they are, what they want to be, where they want to go.

And there's a reason that we lost. And I feel like we are just like not willing to look at that and be really honest about it or to form a coalition of maybe opinions that do not all agree with each other in order to be fighting for the greater good, which is, you know, to have a country not fall into fascism. Okay, so we can't really talk about our country's slide into fascism without talking about marriage. Marriage, especially for white heterosexual women, has historically been a structure that upholds and reinforces certain conservative or patriarchal attitudes. While white women overall tend to favor Democrats in national elections, the picture changes once you look at marriage and education, because married white women, particularly those without college degrees, have

consistently voted for Republicans. And now, as women's rights are being rolled back and threatened across the country, it's that same voting block married white women that is helping to usher those restrictions into power. You really hit on why this is such a weird sticking point for me, because Taylor Swift is getting married and talking about how excited she is to be married. Not all of her fans are white women, but she is very popular with white women. I do think that especially for white straight women, structures like marriage can be kind of politically dangerous. Married white women voting against their own rights and things like that. But I do think you're right that when we just simply give things over to the right, like parenting, marriage, all of that,

that's for them. I think it means that there'll be less interrogation about what marriage actually means for folks and how you actually do these things in systems and structures that support you, right? Like I think it really limits the conversation about what parenting and marriage can look like and should look like. If you're just like, oh, well, being married means that you're a Republican now. It kind of invites us not to do any actual interrogation. It invites us not to fix the problem, not to fix the problems with marriage, not to fix the problems with not caring for parents in this country. And I think it's very dangerous because marriage isn't good. going anywhere anytime soon. I will say I do think that heterosexual marriage often fails women

because there is an issue culturally with most men, you know, not being raised to support women, the way that they should, the way that would create a more equal marriage. And culturally, we just like do not do it. When I think about it all the time, I'm raising a boy child. And he sees me work my ass off. He sees my husband support me working my ass off. And hopefully this next generation that we're raising these men will be men who support women. Not all of them, obviously. But a lot has to change in the culture. And to do that, we have to embrace the idea that there's married people are going to continue to exist. We should just fix the institution of marriage to be better for women. I have to be real here that I am not someone who puts marriage or being married on a

pedestal, mostly because I think it can be kind of a raw deal for women. And I think for all the right-wing talks trying to pressure and fearmonger women into marriages and parenthood, shocker, those same Republicans are also doing their damnedest to make marriage worse for the very women they're trying to push into it. They're stripping away the flexibility, freedoms, and support systems that make marriage sustainable in the first place. Take the efforts to roll back no-fault divorce laws. That keeps women and their kids trapped in bad or even unsafe marriages. And while people love to frame attacks on abortion rights, reproductive health,

and our lack of paid leave as identity politics, the truth is these are bread and butter economic issues. When you have less control over when, whether and how you have kids, you have less control over your household budget and finances. And every cut or attack to an already view. very fragile social safety net means fewer options for women, especially the ones carrying the biggest load at home. So if we keep seating marriage and married women as the rights territory to define, marriage will keep looking like this, or it will look worse. Especially against this backdrop

where there are very real forces trying to make the institution of marriage more harmful for women right now in very specific and clear ways. Like if we just say, oh, if you just say, oh, if you If you want to get married, you are signing up for all of this harmful stuff, good luck. I think it really just ignores the problem and we don't have to fix it. And it totally does. And it also alienates people. That is the problem here. Like I've talked to so many women who are very progressive who say to me, they're like,

I feel like I don't have a party anymore because I feel like the party has left me. I am a suburban mom with kids who wants women to have reproductive choice. but is there room for me in their tent? And the other side will let anyone in their damn tent. So Taylor Swift kind of responded and weighed into some of this. So when bands were wondering if this was going to be her last album because she was going to quit when she got married, she said, that's a shockingly offensive thing to say,

women don't get married so they can quit their job. And I remember thinking if she were really a tradwife, she might have upheld the lie. You know, she might have had something like, oh, the only job that matters for a woman is, being a wife and mother or something like that. She might have downplayed the fact that she is a working woman, but she didn't do that at all. No, no, because she's not a tribe wife. And it was the best answer ever to call out that question. It was a man who asked it, a BBC interviewer who couched it

as being like, your fans are asking. But it's like, no, really, this dude is asking her if she's just going to know, if she's just going to quit her job. It was shockingly offensive. That is the answer I now want to give, which I get asked all the time when I'm on book tour, when I was on book tour for everyone is lying to. Like, who's watching your kids? I want to be like, that is a shockingly offensive question to ask their other fucking parent, okay? Like, men never get asked that. And so no, she's not a trad wife at all. Again, it is the dumbest thing that the internet has come up with in a year of the internet coming up with really dumb things. I have this theory that we are all kind of, kind of stuck in a, I don't know, a trauma loop or something where women are being, as you said,

kind of told that we need to be married parents to have full lives on top of this like very real rollback of our rights. And I think it has created this dynamic that is very unhealthy where we're all sort of hyper vigilant. And so when this here tofore single childless woman living this great life gets engaged, I think it's inviting us in a not healthy way to see it as, something that perhaps it is not because we're all in this hellscape where we have to be so vigilant and so like hyper aware of everything all the time. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, it truly is. And what I would like people to focus more on is the man she chose. And I think that is, I think that is very interesting. I truly do. She dated some real assholes, okay,

and had some really rough relationships. This isn't a woman either. who has just been perpetually single, and then all of a sudden decide she wants to get married. There's no 180 here. She has been like a serial dater since she's been in the spotlight since she's been a teenager. And so, and yet the man that she chooses to settle down with that she says she wants to have babies with is a man who supports women. And that's what we should be focusing on. That's what we should be looking at. That should be celebrated. That is something we should want for all. people that want it to find yourself a good partner who loves lifting you up. I think that's part of this that I want a world where if you want to be married or partnered, you have good options for that

working out well for you. And if you don't want to be married, don't want to be partnered, if you want to be a single cat lady, if you want to be polyamorous, like whatever it is that you want to do that you feel supported to do that in a healthy way that's going to fulfill you. And I just don't like that we have boiled that down to, oh, in order to be a progressive woman, being a single childless cat lady is part of that. If that's not genuinely what you want, like, we should be championing and trying to build a world where people do have options that align with the things that they want out of life. I want you to have all the choices, literally all of the choices, all of the options. You know, we are in this place where I think everyone feels it, but for young

women especially, where they are being bombarded with so many conflicting messages online about who they are meant to be, what they, what kind of life they are meant to choose. Some of these things are benign, but some of them really aren't. It's like that scene from the book, the bell jar, where she sees all these different choices and outcomes for her life as figs on a fig tree that she has to pick from. One is marriage, one is being a famous writer, one is traveling the world, and she's really stuck and can't choose in all the figs wither and die on the tree. Only in our scenario, some of these

figs that young women are being offered are also actually toxic or poison. And also, the act of choosing one of the figs itself has been hijacked and weaponized by bad actors. I feel like we're living in the bell jar and I'm just banging my head against the bell jar every

day, right? We're living in the bell jar, we're living in the beginning of the Handmaid's Tale. We're just, it's not a great world to be a woman right now. But it's also, I think that there is so much virtue signaling saying, well, you have to believe in all of this. You have to behave this way. You have to speak like this, like I said, or you're out of our tent, which means that it feels like every option is toxic. Because I'm not moving to the right politically. I am a firm believer in progressive values. And yet,

I'm not seeing a ton of candidates that I think are going to fight for what I want. We have to accept nuance and we have to start giving people more grace. We truly, truly do. And expand the tent. We have to be more welcoming instead of less welcoming to people. Talk through these ideas. Talk to women and say, look, why are you following these child wife accounts? What is appealing about that?

Then really dissecting it. And that's what I do when I speak to young women. So I went on book tour this summer for everyone is lying to you. And we went to places that were very conservative. We filled an entire theater right outside Indianapolis. It was gorgeous with young women who have had their reproductive rights very recently taken away from them. And I asked them, I'm like, what is appealing about these accounts? When they say they're like, but it looks, they make life look so easy.

I'm like, okay, let's dissect that. What does an easy life mean? It means access to a good job. It means access to money. It means freedom. It means all of the things that feminism has given you. Those are the things that actually give your life ease. Let's talk about how anxiety-inducing it truly is to be dependent on a man for all of your money.

Like, would you like it if you had to ask your husband if you wanted to go, like, buy a new purse? or if you had to run your grocery list by him, is that a thing that seems nice and easy? Because that is what is actually happening in a Trad Wives home. And even when you look down the line, if your husband turns out to be abusive, if he leaves you, if he cheats on you. Or he dies. Men die.

Or, yeah, if he becomes disabled or chronically ill and you have to care for him. There are so many things that can happen. Or it gets laid off when he gets replaced by AI. Like all of these things. Yeah, I wonder if part of it is just we're living in a media criticism kind of crisis where those, you see some, you can make, I firmly believe you could make anything look shiny and nice on social media. I have done it. I have taken pictures of things, experiences that I knew were shit. And when you get the lighting and the filter just right, you could make anybody that's like, oh, I want to, I wish I was there. And I wonder if like, we have just, we have a generation that has a little bit of a hard time peeking. behind that curtain. And I want them to. It's really the point of the book is to pull back the curtain on influencing, on tradwife influencing, to say, okay, what you're looking at is not real.

You're looking at someone creating a magazine, essentially. These women, a lot of them are not even shooting the content in their actual houses. A lot of influencers rent the kitchens, farms, to do all of their content in in a single day that they would just. shoot for them the entire month. They're changing outfits 11 times in a day to make you think that it's different days and then they're posting their stuff. They have videographers, photographers, editors. And like I said, in them behind the scenes, they have nannies and house cleaners and people making this all look beautiful. But it is no one's real life. And that's the dangerous thing about social media is that we don't have media literacy around it. And we think

that we're looking at people's real lives because we're looking at our neighbor. Like our neighbor is on the feed, right? Or like our dentist or our kids teacher, but then also this influencer. So you're like, well, that's my friend's life. So it must be this influencer's real life, but it's not. It's never not funny to me when you talk to somebody who actually lives a rural farm lifestyle. I actually have a lot of people in my life who have lived on farms, grew up on farms, worked on farms, owned farms. And I will take my phone and show them these trad wife influencers. And I'll ask, is this a lifestyle that you recognize? Is this what your life on the farm looked like?

And they'll say, no, when I lived on a farm, I was up at 5 a.m. doing backbreaking labor, and I was covered in blood and poop half of the time. It's like stolen valor. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier.

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The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged. One erection.

Listen to humor me with Robert Smygel and Friends On the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear.

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And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast, Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His The IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game.

We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nass would get that thing That man, hell get the flying

He running up the court Licking his fingers why he got the ball Like, after you go through a training camp With that Isaiah, you figure it out real quick Get your ass up and down the court And you're gonna get the ball So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

You can have opinions You can have like a strong stance And then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation.

There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. It might sound strange, but if you really want to see how effective these tradwife influencers are at spitting fantasies and tall tales, just look at how they talk about what it's like to raise chickens.

They've managed to turn the messy, smelly, and sometimes even painful reality of what it's like to live amongst hens into some kind of a cozy pastoral dream. Yeah, so hen-flensing is very popular on social media. It's people just posting pictures of chickens to their millions of followers. And for some reason, they make it look so idyllic and so lovely, such that I have friends that have been tricking. into getting chickens because hen fluencers make it look so beautiful. I have, I have both a hen

fluencer and an aspiring hen fluencer and everyone is lying to you. And at every book event, someone's like, that's not real, is it? And like, let me show you these like millions of followers of hen fluencing accounts. But we watched our friends chickens up here in the Catskills while she was away for a few days. And there's nothing lovely about chickens in real life. Like they were such a-holes. My text chain with my husband is amazing because he tried to get them back in their roost one night. And the text chain is just, I'm going to need a net. I need three more adults to come here. These chickens aren't going anywhere. It was kind of a myth. And one of them bit one of my kids. It was miserable. But again, it's something that you can make look really beautiful online.

When you were researching the book and putting the book together, was there anything that shocked you where people would be? In reading the book, I was shocked to learn how many of these women are renting their farms, renting their house, batching their content. How just, it's not real. They really do make you think this is a slice of life from their like gorgeous life. And it's just not. What other experiences did you have while you were putting this book together and researching it that might surprise people about the reality of what they're seeing? Yeah. So the book was so easy to write. I wrote it in three months last summer because I have been doing the Under the Influence podcast for five years. So I had all of the reporting already done. I've interviewed thousands of

influencers. I've interviewed trad wife influencers. I've interviewed former trad wives. And I think that people would be surprised by a lot of things. I keep getting asked all the time about it being a satire. And it's really not. Almost everything in the book is very true to life. And I kept trying to push the boundaries and make it a little more bananas. So I did make up this one storyline where an influencer really wants to deal with pamper's, but she doesn't want to ruin her body. So she creates an AI baby and a fake AI, like pregnancy baby bump. Because honestly, one of the reasons that these influencers have so many kids is that Instagram and brands, there's so much money in small babies and pregnancy. And so they just like, it's very lucrative for them to keep popping

out babies. So in the book, this woman fakes a pregnancy and fakes a baby with AI. And I had a bunch of influencers read it. And they're like, oh, yes. Like, Stacey did that. I'm like, what? I'm I made this up. This is supposed to be the most bananas detail that I put in this book. No, no, no, Stacey totally did that for a pamper's deal. There's no end to how people will push the boundaries of what you think is happening to sell us shit on Instagram. No, there's no end. One of my favorite things, I think this one made it into the book, too, is that that last big hurricane to hit Florida, there was so much boosting people's accounts that were there, that were reporting from there, that a lot of influencers pretend. they were in Florida with a green screen. And that's true for some travel influencers as well and some mom influencers that if they see a

certain place is trending, they'll just completely Photoshop themselves on like a vacation on the Amalfi Coast. When you think about the advancements that we're seeing with AI, I mean, it seems like the possibilities are endless with what they can do. The possibilities are endless. Instagram has already created a lot of AI influencers and they got pushback on them. but I do think that we're going to see AI influencers really taking over very soon

because they don't have the messiness of real humans. Are the human tradwife influencers that you talk to? Are they worried about this? All influencers are worried about this, yeah. Yeah. They're all worried about the bottom falling out once AI influencers become much easier for brands to create and then manipulate.

I have a sense that the influencer economy is, I mean, it's not waning, but I just think people are sort of, of sick of it in a kind of way. We all maybe get the sense that we're not being sold reality. I wonder, are we in it? How would you describe the climate right now for influencing? I think people like us are sick of it, but it is only getting bigger every single day. And it's only, they're getting more influential. And I have this conversation with people a lot, but there are people who live in media like you and I do, right? Like we've come up through traditional

media. I came up in newspapers and magazines and now podcasts. You are an OG podcaster. Like I am. We've been doing this forever. So I think people that live in media are skeptical and then we think everyone's skeptical, but they're not. That's probably so true. I often forget when you're mired in it, you don't necessarily realize how it's coming off for like normies who are not consumed with media and thinking about it all the time and reading about it all the time and making it all the time. it can be, I can really forget what the experience of consuming this kind of media casually is like for other folks. Totally, totally. And I do too.

And that was one of the things that I wanted to show in the book, too, because the main character in the book is a journalist, is a regular mainstream magazine journalist who's seeing her career destroyed by social media. I wanted to show that perspective of a journalist is skeptical of this world. because I am also skeptical of this world, and yet and yet, and yet, the brighter side of influencing and why we see so many smart women doing it is that corporate America sucks for women. It is really hard to be a mom or a caregiver or even a person that just wants to take care of yourself in a corporate job. And that's why we're seeing so many women become entrepreneurs, and a lot of that entrepreneurism involves Instagram. I first got interested in

influencers because I was living in San Francisco. And a lot of the early influencers, one, they were Mormon because, you know, Mormon, the Mormon church does actually preach that you should be journaling your life in a very public way in order to share Mormon value. But they were also like San Francisco former tech entrepreneurs because they left the businesses because they weren't being supported once they had. kids and they became influencers in order to have a better handle on their time. And it goes back to this idea of, you know, pretending that this is all happenstance.

Somebody who left a high-powered job in tech or marketing or media, they know how to curate a digital presence that is specific, but then they do it in such a way that is like, oh, this is just a snapshot of my normal life. This is someone has happened to have a camera. on me making bread and looking fabulous. My favorite example, and this is, this happened eight years ago when I was living in San Francisco. And I knew one of these early mom influencers. And I used to have these like bonfire parties in our backyard because I had no friends in San Francisco. So if I saw another new mom on the street and like, do you like beer and sausages and fire pits come to my house on Friday? And it was so much fun. Like we made a lot of friends that way. But one day I

invited one of these mom influencers over. She didn't speak to anyone. She was miserable and sitting in the corner the whole time. She actually went up into my kitchen to get the one glass that was like photo friendly. It's like an old mason jar. I think we were using it as a drinking cup, but she decided to. She put her own little striped paper straw into it and then took a picture of it in front of the bonfire that looked beautiful and posted like had such a gorgeous time tonight at my good friend author Jared Piazza's house. I'm like, you were miserable. You didn't speak to anyone.

And yet you completely manipulated this photo to look a certain aesthetic. And that was one of my aha moments of, oh, my God, everyone is lying to you. Is that why you wanted to write the book, to just peel back the curtain and say, hey, they're all liars? You know, I didn't want to write the book for a long time. The book didn't come to me until very recently. I wanted to do the podcast to feel back the curtain. That was always the goal of the podcast.

But then the podcast became a lot more nuanced because the world of influencing is nuanced because the world of women is nuanced. I wanted to write the book when I saw the rise of the tradwives because that's what I thought was just so damn dangerous. So I guess the big question in all of this

is how do we move through our social media landscape in a way that allows us to cut through all of these lies, lies about marriage, lies about trad wives, so we don't get stopped feeling as if that is an actual truth or reality. Honestly, to, like, you really have to remind yourself on a daily basis that this isn't real, that this is no one's reality. It's not even your neighbor's reality because even if you're not an influencer online, everyone is choosing a lovely filter and also choosing what to post.

You didn't see their kid tantruming this morning or, like, the knockdown fight that they had with their husband last night. And so you really have to look at it in the same way as, if you were looking at celebrities in like Us Weekly People magazine. You know it's not their real lives or you know that like it is like life but enhanced. And the goal of the book is really to try to eliminate that shame and guilt that so many women feel when we're scrolling Instagrams or so let's scrolling whatever our social media drug of choices. Because it is a drug. And these platforms are designed to keep us coming back to keep us addicted and to keep us feeling anxious and vulnerable. Because when we're anxious and vulnerable, we buy things.

But here's the good news. You can change your algorithm. And so I have been so proactive in that I don't follow any news organizations anymore on my phone because that's not how I want to get my news. I want to get my news separately from this thing in my hand. I also unfollowed any account that makes me feel bad or guilt or shame. But I started liking and sharing things that I do want to see on social media, which is mostly otters holding hands and fat bears.

And now my feed is a lot of otters holding hands and fat bears and gay dags. These are things that I like. And in videos of Atticus Finch set the sexy back. Oh, with the glasses? Absolutely. With the glasses. When he's like in the jail and they're hurt. It really works.

I love that I know exactly what you're fucking talking about. I know. Like that's the kind of content. I want to open my scroll and that's what I want. Like I do not want to look at some woman's fake picture perfect life or fake picture perfect kitchen or someone calling me to bake my cinnamon toast crunch from scratch because I'll tell you, I tried to bake Nara Smith's cinnamon toast crunch from scratch that she posted on her TikTok or Instagram when I was doing a live segment for Fox promoting everyone

is lying to. And it did not work. It took four hours. My kitchen was so messy. My kid put it in his mouth and it spit it on the floor. I was like, where's the real cinnamon toast crunch? Time well spent. Well, I do think that your point of, you know, I think that, I think especially for women, tech companies are really exploiting us and taking advantage of us. And I like that you saying, listen, divest from content that makes you feel bad about yourself, divest from content that makes you feel shame because they have a financial incentive in making you feel shamed or anxious so that you buy things. And you can curate a more positive social media and digital experience for yourself. You do not have to succumb to that. You do not have to

succumb to that. And there are certain accounts that I love, like, I love design. I love looking into people's houses, but I'm not going to feel guilt and shame about, like, them having a more beautiful house than I am, because I know they're sponsored by freaking Westome or pottery barn or whatever, right? Or I know that they had like a set designer help them make this, like, beautiful tablescape of grapes on skewers for their kids' birthday party. They didn't just do this on their own. And so what I know that, I can still kind of enjoy the content and be like, oh, that is, that is, that is, that is pretty. I do like that. But I, but I, I don't let it make me feel like guilt or shame. We shouldn't be feeling guilt or shame about our choices because at the end of the day,

it isn't the algorithm that gets to decide who you are. You do. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoity.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are No Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.

Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy,

not quite, unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, fam, it's Isaiah Thomas.

And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast Point Game. the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was funny. You just understood. That's how personal it got.

Wow. Then after that game seven, Marquis come into it. He's like, you know I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Joey Dardano. And on my new podcast, Hope from a Hypocrite, I'll be changing lives, helping people in need. with thoughtful solutions. Sike, I'm a comedian. I'm not qualified to give good advice. Join me and my comedian friends as we riff, rant,

recommend some of the most legally dubious advice known to me. This is Help from a Hypocrite, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know. Listen to Help from a Hypocrite Wednesdays on the IHeart Radio app,

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