Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - February 03, 2024


A Taste of The Sicilian Inheritance

Attack of the Fitfluencers Sunday Nice Things： This American Ex-Wife

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

166.62

Word count

1,175

Sentence count

98

Harmful content

Misogyny

7

sentences flagged

Toxicity

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.240 Hello. Hi. Happy Saturday. I have had a day so far. I really have. I put up new wallpaper
00:00:09.860 in the podcast area. It's bright orange with cheetahs on it. And it is the most mob wifey
00:00:18.740 aesthetic thing that I could think of. And it is bringing me so much joy that I just
00:00:24.220 put my butt in this chair and I was like, I'm going to do something weird. And that weird thing
00:00:31.220 is that I decided to read a portion of The Sicilian Inheritance for you. Now, I am not
00:00:40.000 an audiobook author. The people that do that are very, very, very good at that. I did read the
00:00:47.280 audiobook for How to Be Married because sometimes nonfiction authors do that. And I was eight
00:00:53.300 months pregnant when I did it with Charlie. And you can actually hear me burping in some parts
00:00:59.040 of How to Be Married. So if you've listened to that, sorry, sorry. So I wanted to read a part
00:01:05.880 of Sicilian Inheritance. And again, I just just decided to do this randomly. Nick is downstairs
00:01:11.160 with the kids and I can kind of hear them yelling and I also kind of don't care. But I thought this
00:01:18.960 would be fun. And why not? A bunch of you tell me that you're looking for something short and sweet
00:01:24.960 to listen to in your feeds on a Saturday afternoon. And this is about five more minutes.
00:01:31.500 So I chose a part of the book where our main character, Sarah, has just returned to her
00:01:36.920 family's village in Sicily. It's called Caltebalessa. Sarah is a chef from Philly,
00:01:42.680 and she's in Sicily to try to claim her family's land and her birthright.
00:01:47.540 She is going to a restaurant with her Sicilian host, a woman named Juicy.
00:01:53.440 Juicy is the greatest character I have ever written. 1.00
00:01:56.940 She is a badass, complicated, lovable, hateable woman in every way.
00:02:04.000 And in this scene, they have met for the first time and they're going to a restaurant and
00:02:08.660 there is a lot of food in it, which I think is why I wanted to read it because I'm kind
00:02:13.940 of hungry.
00:02:14.880 So here's just a taste.
00:02:16.060 pun intended a taste of the sicilian inheritance i hope you love it as always when you pre-order it
00:02:23.380 and let me know you get a lifetime subscription to the over the influence sub stack and tomorrow
00:02:28.980 we will be giving away a ton of books we do it every sunday we're also going to start giving
00:02:34.180 away swag like sweatshirts and just some fun random stuff i picked up in sicily so buy your
00:02:39.440 hot Sicilian today. I'm in here, just hanging out with my mob wife wallpaper, and here is a
00:02:45.980 little excerpt of the book to tickle your ears. We took a left on the other side of the square
00:02:52.900 and finally stopped in front of a rough wooden door with a bold brass knocker in the shape of
00:02:57.860 a dragon's head. A tricolor Italian flag shuddered in the breeze from a pole above the door,
00:03:03.220 but a much larger Sicilian flag eclipsed it. I gazed up at the billowing yellow and red fabric.
00:03:10.480 Juicy smirked at me. I love that the head of Medusa is on our flag. Don't you? She was a monster, 0.85
00:03:18.860 I replied. Was she? Or was she a brilliant woman with the ability to turn men to stone 0.99
00:03:25.360 when they abused her or tried to take everything away from her? I never thought about it like that.
00:03:32.340 Life is all about perspective, American. 0.98
00:03:36.580 Juicy placed both palms flat on the door and pushed.
00:03:40.200 The waiter, standing just beyond the entryway, was so handsome,
00:03:43.900 I stumbled a little as I followed him through the crowded room to the one empty table. 0.96
00:03:48.880 Juicy caught me and pinched my hip.
00:03:51.260 I get it. It's hard to look at him, she whispered.
00:03:54.140 He is a beautiful, sexy boy. 1.00
00:03:56.280 You'd think he'd leave this town already, but he has a sick mama and a slutty sister 1.00
00:03:59.960 and nieces and nephews with no papas. They need the money and a man to stay with them. 0.99
00:04:05.480 The beautiful, sexy waiter pulled out both of our chairs and whisked away the centerpiece on the 0.95
00:04:09.980 table, a bowl holding absurdly large plastic fruit. What do you want to drink? he asked.
00:04:17.000 A cappuccino? I replied. No, Juicy exclaimed sharply, horrified, then in a lower voice that
00:04:24.260 only I could hear. Cappuccino is only a breakfast drink. Espresso? I tried. We will have all the
00:04:33.120 wine, she said, shooing the waiter away. There was no menu. Juicy told me that the food would
00:04:39.720 just appear. No one asked if we had preferences or nut allergies or gluten-free diets. I loved it.
00:04:46.620 The waiter brought platters of anything he wanted from inside the kitchen. Eggplant prepared three
00:04:51.080 different ways, stuffed cuttlefish and anchovies fried in crispy breadcrumbs, a busiati pasta with
00:04:57.400 boar ragu and black truffles, spaghetti with black squid ink and toasted almonds.
00:05:03.160 A platter of what looked like deconstructed cannoli, a pyramid of cannoli shells separated
00:05:08.620 by thin layers of amaretto cream and smothered in a dark chocolate sauce, had barely graced our
00:05:14.620 table when a new guest pushed his way through the beaded entryway. He had to duck as he entered
00:05:19.640 and shift his body sideways because his torso was as wide as two men.
00:05:24.820 The man didn't just fill the doorway.
00:05:27.040 He filled the entire room.
00:05:29.560 Now that's who you need to talk to, Juicy nodded in the man's direction.
00:05:34.880 About what?
00:05:36.300 He's in charge of the local police.
00:05:39.160 Her words startled me.
00:05:41.120 I glanced nervously over at him.
00:05:43.700 Why would I need to talk to the police?
00:05:45.620 Don't furrow your brow. You'll clench your asshole. 1.00
00:05:54.500 No one wants to walk around with a clenched asshole. 1.00
00:05:58.320 I'd had too much wine, and it was scrambling my thoughts. 1.00
00:06:01.800 But when Juicy looked at me, her gaze was sharp like something inside her brain had just decided to wake up,
00:06:07.680 and I grasped that I was much, much drunker than my host.
00:06:10.980 I was a woman alone in a strange country without a full grip on my faculties.
00:06:16.580 I cursed myself for making such bad decisions, while Juicy kept talking. 0.69
00:06:20.960 You go over there and you talk to that man.
00:06:23.780 I don't understand what you're saying.
00:06:26.600 When she spoke again, I realized that Juicy knew much more about me and why I'd come to Sicily than she'd previously let on.
00:06:33.460 Who else are you going to ask about your great-grandmother Serafina's murder?
00:06:39.780 And that's it.
00:06:40.980 that's, that's, that's where we're going to end. It's a cliffhanger, right? Thank you for letting
00:06:47.380 me tickle your ears on a Saturday. I hope that you're having a good one, a good weekend. I'm
00:06:53.060 going to go downstairs and relieve Nick and take the kids to go get some ice cream. And by that,
00:06:58.120 I mean, I'm going to go take me to get some ice cream. Have a great one, guys. Bye.