Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Girls Gone Wild Go Feral—Behind the Scenes of the Show That Shaped a Generation

00:00:00.000 Hey y'all, Jo here and you are listening to Under the Influence. Quick reminder to order

00:00:12.880 your copy of The Parisian Heist today. If everyone listening right now told three friends to order

00:00:18.740 and got a copy for themselves, well then, I mean, this is definitely going to be the book of the

00:00:24.340 summer. Now on to today's episode. There are certain things that women of a certain age

00:00:30.220 all experience together, whether we want to talk about it or not. Things like low-rise jeans,

00:00:38.420 diet culture, dressing up like Britney Spears in the Hit Me Baby One More Time video for Halloween

00:00:44.420 multiple times, and the Girls Gone Wild commercials. I mean, I feel like these commercials

00:00:51.980 somehow played constantly on television, where we were just watching like normal shows, right? 0.99

00:00:58.720 Like TGIF, and then, oh my god, look at this girl flash her boobs. If you grew up in the late 90s 0.97

00:01:05.940 and early 2000s, like me, then, you know, they were right there. They were, these videos were

00:01:12.700 the background to our sitcom watching, and they were also a cultural reference that everyone used

00:01:20.680 all the time. And somehow, the women in these videos were always called sluts. And the men 1.00

00:01:28.400 who watched these videos, who appeared in these videos, who paid, I think, like $19.99 for them,

00:01:35.980 I think they were VHS at the time, and then they were eventually DVDs. They're never called

00:01:40.660 perverts. Nope, never ever. We're digging into all that today. And for that reason, this one

00:01:47.860 probably isn't that safe for little ears. My guest today is the author, podcaster, and memoirist

00:01:54.860 Courtney Kosak. And her new memoir, Girl Gone Wild, dives directly into her experience working

00:02:02.340 on the actual Girls Gone Wild tour bus at the height of its madness. She was 21 years old,

00:02:09.780 broke, newly arrived in Los Angeles, and thought she was signing up to sell t-shirts and merch,

00:02:15.060 and instead, she found herself inside one of the most toxic cultural machines of the early 2000s.

00:02:23.180 Our chat today goes absolutely everywhere. We talk about feminism and why its branding pretty 0.98

00:02:29.120 much sucks right now. We talk about abortion shame, sex positivity, the manosphere, and why 0.99

00:02:35.040 all of us, all of us are just so freaking exhausted watching terrible men face zero consequences.

00:02:41.680 So buckle up. This is one of my favorite conversations of this year. Here is my chat with Courtney Kosag.

00:03:00.800 Hey, Courtney, how you doing?

00:03:02.800 Hello, Jo. I'm great. Thanks for having me.

00:03:05.900 I'm so happy to have you here today.

00:03:07.440 So I want to start out with a question that I like to ask a lot of people. 1.00

00:03:13.080 What does being a feminist mean to you right now?

00:03:16.780 Oh, that's a very good question.

00:03:19.960 2026, weird time.

00:03:22.480 Strange, strange.

00:03:23.900 I came into my feminism a little bit by accident.

00:03:27.880 I think I've always been a feminist.

00:03:31.660 Like I would argue with my dad at the dinner table and he would say some Archie Bunker 0.98

00:03:36.780 type shit and I would you know go back at him but I wouldn't claim that title you know it took 0.99

00:03:44.200 things happening in my life multiple sexual assaults you know selling t-shirts on the 0.99

00:03:50.620 girls gone wild tour getting an abortion that really like brought me into my feminism and

00:03:57.160 made me claim the label and then you know we had me too and there was a little bit of like

00:04:03.800 is this gonna get better and then i feel like we've been living in the backlash ever since

00:04:10.400 and you know watching the epstein emails roll out i'm just like oh we're in the same

00:04:19.320 like dumpster fire that we've been in for 25 plus years um so but the thing about it is i think there 0.59

00:04:27.600 are so many generations of women now, boomer women, Gen X women, millennial women, hopefully

00:04:34.860 Gen Z women that are not going to be put back in the box. So I agree. That's what heartens me about

00:04:43.600 being a feminist in 2026. Not the externalities, but the sisterhood. Yeah, the externalities are 1.00

00:04:51.160 absolute shit. They truly are. I mean, I think there's been a lot of bad times to be a feminist 1.00

00:04:56.240 in history this is probably all of them just always I this is yeah but I think this this time

00:05:02.860 is particularly tough because we had hope yeah we had actual hope that we were turning a corner

00:05:11.080 that things were about to get better that we would have to fight a little bit less and then that hope

00:05:16.780 was just lit on fire yeah yeah yeah right i mean and i and i ask people about feminism a lot because 0.96

00:05:27.120 one i think it's branding is total shit right yes like i do not think that we have the right 0.99

00:05:33.940 rallying cries for feminism right now and for me feminism is just freaking equity it's like can we 0.98

00:05:41.920 have equity? Can we have choices? Can we have options? And yet it still gets a bad rap in a 1.00

00:05:49.300 lot of circles. And I still speak to so many young women who are like, I'm not really a feminist,

00:05:54.760 like as as if I just called them a douchebag. Exactly. I OK. Can I raise me a perhaps a 0.98

00:06:05.100 controversial oh please do we we love we love a controversial not big okay so i think

00:06:11.940 if some people are gonna hate this i think right the more people that hate it the better 0.94

00:06:17.680 i think you know it's so hard to get any justice for all the shit that happens to women you know 0.91

00:06:27.460 So I feel like, you know, like Aziz Ansari and Louis C.K. are, you know, they did some shit that's not good, especially Louis. 0.99

00:06:41.500 But we wanted to punish them with the full force of everything because we never catch a man. 1.00

00:06:49.800 Because we never catch a man.

00:06:51.760 Epstein is, you know, not dead or maybe, but not available to be caught. And all the truly bad guys almost always get away. And so I feel like I'm trying to write about this right now, but I would love us to calibrate our way we seek justice so that men are more or less.

00:07:21.060 I don't I don't even know. This is why I haven't been able to write about it. Yeah. Yeah. But great. We're brainstorming. We're workshopping it in real time. Yeah. This is great. But like, I think if we find a better if we offer a path to restitution, that is not just like your life is over.

00:07:42.180 um for minor offenders it's going to help the conversation right is that a crazy take it's not

00:07:50.640 a crazy take no i mean and i think that we're a lot of us feel like we're living in a world 1.00

00:07:55.040 without consequences right now which is a lot yeah which is why a lot of women are almost checking

00:08:01.640 out in a way and so what if there were consequences and and also as you said a path to redemption

00:08:10.660 that doesn't just include, I'm going to go to rehab for sex addicts. We all know. That's like

00:08:18.140 my favorite Hollywood male thing. I'm a sex addict. I'm going to go to rehab now and everything will 1.00

00:08:24.160 be better. No, you're a dick. Okay. You're a misogynist. Yeah. You're a misogynistic dick. 1.00

00:08:29.360 Okay. And so, yes, like what if there were real consequences, also real conversations. 1.00

00:08:34.900 and we were able to talk about all the nuance of the different varying levels of terrible

00:08:44.120 misogyny, right? Yeah, it's so hard. It is so freaking hard. I want to go back a little bit

00:08:51.040 to your personal experience because I grew up in the Girls Gone Wild world. I thought it was

00:08:58.560 normal, very normal, to be watching TV and just normal TV, right? Like you're watching

00:09:04.300 full house on a friday freaking night and all of a sudden maybe not full house but like i mean

00:09:09.720 something on comedy central comedy central right right right regular tv okay like i'm not watching

00:09:14.700 like skinamax and you see a commercial for girls gone wild practically naked young women and just

00:09:24.180 not even

00:09:25.600 exploiting isn't even

00:09:28.400 the right

00:09:29.800 word for how

00:09:32.320 far Joe Francis was taking

00:09:34.240 this. But the branding

00:09:36.400 was. The branding was good

00:09:38.160 though. Light-hearted steel drum

00:09:40.140 music. Right? It's like this is how

00:09:42.380 all girls should be. We are fun.

00:09:44.500 It's a party.

00:09:45.960 It's a party.

00:09:48.160 And then, yes. Okay, so this is my, this is

00:09:50.360 how they got us.

00:09:52.120 Is, you know, the

00:09:54.180 on the infomercials, the boobs are censored. It looks fun. And it looks kind of innocent 0.99

00:10:00.420 compared to what they were actually selling, which was porn.

00:10:04.400 Which was porn. Which was porn and degradation, to be honest. 0.88

00:10:09.200 Yes. And, you know, it was a cultural joke. People like politicians like John Kerry,

00:10:16.220 stiff John Kerry, were making jokes about Girls Gone Wild, which made it seem like

00:10:21.240 acceptable in a way. And so when I took a job selling t-shirts on the Girls Gone Wild

00:10:27.440 tour, first of all, I was so broke. But also I had been, you know, my high school experience had

00:10:35.100 been watching these late night infomercials. And I was like, I'll party with those girls. Like,

00:10:40.720 sure. I didn't realize that I was going to be used in their coercion to making porn. That was

00:10:49.520 not i was not aware of that until i got on the bus right right exactly there's a lot of things

00:10:54.640 we're not aware of until we get on the bus i was aware of a lot of things until i got on john 0.98

00:10:58.280 edwards campaign bus to be honest oh shit i know i know talk about porn so talk give me the time 0.96

00:11:05.560 frame what year was this this what i was selling t-shirts in um 20 2005 and but the girls gone 0.95

00:11:14.640 wild brand started in the late 90s right exactly exactly so it's really it's it's hitting its peak

00:11:22.060 really in 2005 tell me everything spill the tea about what this experience was like for you

00:11:28.800 oh my god so yeah so i get to la i'm 21 i'm living on my friend's futon i do not know how to get

00:11:37.460 started in this town which i feel like the media depiction of how you get started in hollywood is

00:11:44.420 not actually how the industry works you know people are like you're waiting tables and you

00:11:50.460 you know you drop a skip a script in Danny DeVito's lap and then you're famous it's like

00:11:56.580 that's not how it works so I had no idea how to get going and I and the poverty is really driving

00:12:03.960 every decision so I was looking on Craigslist under these event gigs because I had been

00:12:08.760 doing these promotional modeling gigs they called it and mantra entertainment had this ad mantra

00:12:17.440 is the company behind girls gone wild and it was like do you want to get paid to party and travel

00:12:23.220 and i was like hell yeah i do and so i you know immediately i submitted literally like the next

00:12:30.700 day I get an interview I went to their you know big glass office on Cloverfield in Santa Monica

00:12:39.100 and I met with their VP of whatever of hand jobs or whatever and he um told me something that

00:12:51.040 I only realized kind of what it meant later but he was like you know yeah your your job you're

00:12:58.340 going to be the merch girl you're going to sell t-shirts but your job really your job is just to

00:13:03.020 make the other girls feel comfortable like enough to be exploited is what he was saying right and

00:13:09.820 this feels this feels very Ghislaine Maxwell to me yes okay whoa never thought of myself as a

00:13:17.140 Ghislaine I'm not calling you a Ghislaine I'm not calling you a Ghislaine I'm calling the job

00:13:21.000 description of Ghislaine. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. Remember, we're a safe space here. We are a

00:13:28.820 safe space. We are a safe space. Yeah. But that job description, I mean, that feels like the things

00:13:33.240 that Epstein had her doing, but he couched it like in a really, in a job description, right?

00:13:39.520 It's like, oh, these are the, these are, these are the details. These are the projects she'll

00:13:43.780 be managing. But underneath it was something else entirely. Totally. I do believe she was

00:13:50.700 more aware of what she was doing than I was. Oh, 100% she was. Okay. But maybe not the first day

00:13:56.540 he hired her or after their romantic thing fizzled out and he's like, oh, now here's your job.

00:14:02.660 Yeah. I do have a Breaking Bad version of the story of what if I went all the way with it that

00:14:09.180 i wrote as a pilot that i hope i get to make someday but that version is like a galane um

00:14:16.240 so yeah i and you know he's saying like just having a girl on the bus makes everyone feel

00:14:22.820 more comfortable and i'm like okay so i literally like the next day i'm on a plane flying to

00:14:30.040 vancouver i join up with the bus it's like this garish branded you know like eyesore of a bus

00:14:37.340 with you know it's clear that it's girls gone wild and then the first gig was in Vancouver so 0.98

00:14:45.540 it was actually pretty tame because they couldn't get away with that much shit in cities like people 0.98

00:14:51.500 were too sophisticated in Canada well Canada there's a lot of small towns in Canada but yeah 0.98

00:14:59.980 they they liked small towns because they found people easier to exploit is what I quickly found

00:15:06.940 out was kind of their game and so the next you know event we were on Vancouver Island and it

00:15:14.120 was more of a small town vibe and that already that second event I was like whoa I had discovered

00:15:23.940 we were making porn I had been shown the room at the back of the bus that we were trying to get

00:15:28.860 girls to go back there I saw a girl that night and was like overhearing kind of them working with

00:15:39.940 her and and they were and she was totally drunk they get these drunk girls to sign contracts

00:15:45.280 they are not going out that night thinking this is my main issue with the company it's like

00:15:51.000 I'm very sex positive I'm pro-sex work like I think it should there we should have legal forms

00:15:58.780 of sex work. But this is not that. These girls weren't aware of what they were getting themselves

00:16:04.440 into. There was no forethought. They were being coerced into doing this. And so I got a glimpse 1.00

00:16:10.040 of that that night. And already, just with my early discoveries, like there was a very cute,

00:16:18.960 sweet Canadian boy that wanted to take me to the ocean. And I went with him and like he tried to

00:16:24.600 kiss me. And already I was feeling like divorced from my sexuality just in the first three or four

00:16:31.860 days that I had been on the tour. I was already like, oh, this this place is gross. And I couldn't 0.53

00:16:38.600 do it. And yeah, I lasted seven weeks. We went across Canada. The Canadian portion ended early

00:16:47.800 because it was a shit show. The Booker quit. You know, we didn't have work permits. It was just 0.99

00:16:53.420 it was bad so we I flew out and I went to join up with a tour in the southeast U.S. and we went

00:17:01.480 all we went everywhere from like Ohio to Georgia to St. Louis to all these different places I met

00:17:10.080 this girl in St. Louis who was like six weeks postpartum and her baby daddy was in jail slash

00:17:18.180 prison I don't know for something meth related and she was trying to hook up with the camera guy

00:17:23.400 and it was just like the saddest story it was like this is who we're trying to coerce to

00:17:29.580 this is crazy this is crazy all the girls were my age at the time and you know I'm just out of

00:17:38.720 college and I'm like this is this is what I was so this is the real world that was so eager to get

00:17:45.820 out and be a part of, like, this is disgusting. So I've never been as depressed as I was on the

00:17:54.260 Girls Gone Wild tour. And I lasted about seven weeks. And finally, at the end, I just had to be

00:18:00.540 like, I was so scared that they were going to make me buy my own plane ticket home that I kind of

00:18:05.840 stuck it out as long as I could. But I was finally just like, I cannot do this anymore. I'm so sorry.

00:18:12.680 and the guy was like yeah you are i can tell i can tell i yeah you're you're done you're done

00:18:21.020 i mean i i can imagine it because again i graduated high school in 98 i graduated college in 2002

00:18:30.420 i feel like i lived girls gone wild at a bunch of frat parties and that is also how spring break

00:18:37.500 played out do you remember mtv's show spring oh yeah yeah kind of looked like a little bit less

00:18:43.240 booby girls gone wild that's what i thought i was that's what i thought i was gonna go do

00:18:47.240 yeah yeah but this this just this felt so normal for all of us yeah yeah but like the kind of

00:18:54.240 version that we saw on mtv it was it had moments of grossness but it wasn't the extreme

00:19:01.060 version but yeah it is crazy that culturally we were all just like

00:19:06.200 into depicting women like that and making everything a beauty pageant and and making

00:19:14.860 everything about sex and making everything about sex yeah that anything that happened as a 0.96

00:19:20.520 consequence of of being a girl gone wild uh-huh was your fault yes well i have a like rant kind 0.89

00:19:31.000 of in my book a feminist i want to hear your feminist rant but let's take a quick break and

00:19:34.840 then tell me when we get back okay okay we are back i love a feminist rant and should i get the 1.00

00:19:48.300 real rant get the real rant okay i was learning there weren't madonnas and whores there were women 0.98

00:19:55.120 and shitty societal constructs about how they should be and companies like girls gone wild 0.98

00:20:00.220 perpetuating narrow beauty standards and profiting from taking advantage of mostly women. 0.98

00:20:06.620 I wasn't against porn or sex work. I was against men making money by separating women from their

00:20:12.240 worth, taking advantage and taking away their agency, and doing it all while they were drunk,

00:20:17.600 just trying to have a good time. I'd been called a feminist before, even called myself that, 0.90

00:20:22.920 but after this, I knew it was true. While all that was bubbling below the surface,

00:20:27.820 I began to rethink what it really meant to be a girl gone wild.

00:20:31.960 Girls gone wild aren't under the thumb of a man with a private island,

00:20:35.580 a substance abuse problem, and an American Express black card, I mused.

00:20:40.220 The girls caught in the crosshairs of girls gone wild trying to make an easy buck weren't girls gone wild. 1.00

00:20:46.300 They were girls done wrong. 0.98

00:20:48.440 When girls really go wild, it's not in ways that can be easily manipulated or monetized by others. 0.56

00:20:53.980 when girls really go wild it's not spring break or a cross-country party bus tour it's a homecoming

00:21:00.700 they return to themselves and they're done with the system that oppresses them 0.99

00:21:05.080 they're done with the rules done with the lies done with the bullshit they're done with the 0.99

00:21:10.140 damned if you do damned if you don't if they're damned either way they're going to do it their 1.00

00:21:14.240 way and that doesn't look like flashing a camera so some douchebag can become a millionaire at 0.99

00:21:19.420 their expense they return to themselves and it threatens the patriarchy sometimes it takes a while 0.91

00:21:25.560 to find that wild and unleash it but when they do it's powerful they're called witches banshees 0.99

00:21:32.800 bitches they evoke fear they won't shut up they must be stopped when girls really go wild 0.97

00:21:39.260 nothing's ever quite the same i love that rant i mean it's more of it's more of a soliloquy 1.00

00:21:45.600 is what it is yes yes yes exactly okay so you quit you'd been on the road you saw some shit 0.96

00:21:55.080 what like how does this shape you how does and how old were you at this point 21 i was i literally 0.98

00:22:01.320 turned 22 the day that i got off the tour you were a baby you're a baby so how does this shape

00:22:06.020 your 20s this experience well you know it didn't happen in a vacuum there's other stuff that's

00:22:13.360 going on like prior to getting on Girls Gone Wild there were a couple sexual assaults that had

00:22:19.280 happened and shortly after the tour when I was really depressed kind of trying to put myself

00:22:26.940 back together in Minneapolis there was an abortion and I think these things are what made me a writer

00:22:34.460 like I had been chasing this dream to be an actor so hard I was willing to do anything to

00:22:42.320 achieve this dream but like I kind of didn't want to pretend to be other people at the end of this

00:22:48.440 which was really hard to admit to myself because I it had been every you know my driving force for

00:22:54.700 so long but once I had these real experiences I was like obsessed with what they meant and like

00:23:04.280 how what does that mean about where I fit into society and all these questions that I could

00:23:11.280 really only solve by, you know, bringing myself to the page. And it was, you know, it took a while

00:23:19.280 to figure that piece out. But, you know, and there was so much shame related to these experiences.

00:23:27.640 I grew up in the Midwest in a small town in Minnesota. And so and my parents were not

00:23:32.740 approving even of the dream to be an actress, much less everything else that I was doing in the,

00:23:37.140 you know, aside from that. And so I had so much shame in these experiences. And so I had to kind

00:23:45.340 of write my way out of that into, you know, today I have a sex podcast. I talk about all kinds of

00:23:54.180 feminist topics all the time. You know, I won't shut up about my abortion because I think we have 1.00

00:24:01.160 to talk about it or we're never going to get our rights back. Oh, my God. We have to talk about it

00:24:05.480 all the time i won't shut up about my abortion either um we can't we well we actually can't

00:24:11.500 because pretty much all of us know someone who's had an abortion or we've had an abortion ourselves

00:24:17.100 and the fact that we have been that that we've been taught to think that this is shameful that

00:24:24.040 it has to be a secret is part of why the i don't i hate calling the anti-choice i'm not calling

00:24:30.140 them the pro-life movement why the anti-choice movement keeps winning winning because even even

00:24:35.960 the most liberal of women still feel shame because we've been told to yeah yeah i mean

00:24:42.300 an incredible amount of shame i honestly didn't think i had so many suppressed memories

00:24:47.940 about this era of my life that i couldn't access until i started talking about it which is why

00:24:56.680 I'm such a, you know, my mom's like mortified that I wrote this book.

00:25:00.400 She's mad at me right now, actually.

00:25:02.320 But I am like, you don't get it.

00:25:05.220 Like, this is a responsibility that I have to like my younger self and to like other

00:25:11.000 young women is to talk about these experiences or like, we're never going to get out of this.

00:25:17.660 We're never going to get out of this.

00:25:18.960 We have to share all of the real stories, all of the good ones, too, because we also 0.98

00:25:24.740 see a lot of crap. 1.00

00:25:25.960 And I think that's another reason that feminism often gets a bad rap, because I talk to younger women who are like, you feminists are all so angry. 0.99

00:25:34.100 And I'm like, and they're like, and unhappy. 0.92

00:25:37.280 And I'm like, no, I'm really fucking happy. 0.59

00:25:39.440 I'm happy. 0.95

00:25:39.800 And I'm really fucking happy because of all of the things I've been able to do because the feminists fought so hard for me. 1.00

00:25:48.480 Like, my life is filled with options and choices. 1.00

00:25:51.180 And that right there is feminism in a nutshell, young friends. 1.00

00:25:54.840 Yes. Yeah, I don't get the pushback, but there is, it's just, you're right, it's just bad branding. 0.97

00:26:01.560 It's just bad branding. I mean, if Turning Point USA could be the one to brand feminism, I'm sure they do a great job. Actually, they have. They've been branding the conservative version of feminism, which actually, honestly, narrows women's choices and takes away their options, but they've still done a really great job with it.

00:26:21.100 you know what i know you love to travel maybe we need more we need like our own

00:26:27.860 girls gone wild bus but it's like the real version it's like the real it's the fun feminist version

00:26:34.180 let's call it girls gone feral yes that's the name of my my pilot you're right on okay great

00:26:40.540 see mind melt right here all right girls gone feral will obviously make it also a partial book 1.00

00:26:46.360 tour because authors always be needing to sell books yes and we're most of us are feminists and 1.00

00:26:52.320 so yeah we can go around and we can show these young ladies like actually this is amazing there's

00:26:58.340 no men on this there's a few except for good men good men yeah exactly i mean same as in my books

00:27:05.140 we have two kinds of men we have good ones and dead ones okay yeah and you can listen i my husband

00:27:12.360 amazing maybe like kind of a feminist by accident but that's okay i'm not mad at it no i'll take it

00:27:19.060 i'll take it thank you thank you for your service sir i love i love men i love sex i love men i am

00:27:24.840 raising a young man who i think is going to be a good man i'm married to a good man like this is 0.85

00:27:30.220 not like excluding or shitting on men yes sitting on bad men okay because i'm just sick of them i'm 0.88

00:27:36.320 sick of them i'm sick of the fact that there's no consequences for them and i think that's why i 0.97

00:27:40.320 write such gnarly consequences for them in my books? Because I'm like, it is, it's just like

00:27:44.760 a little bit of fantasy for me. Because I'm like, can't there be consequences for these terrible

00:27:50.020 people? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they just don't really exist. They don't exist in reality. Okay. Like,

00:27:56.880 they just simply don't. And I think that's why so many people are burnt out and exhausted

00:28:02.080 on the idea of continuing to fight for feminism. Because, again, we had so much hope. We had so 0.60

00:28:09.340 much hope. Things looked so good for us. And then it took the darkest of possible turns.

00:28:16.540 So where do we go? Where do we go? I mean, I love this bus idea, Girls Gone Feral.

00:28:20.500 We're going to do this because obviously, and if you listen to the show, you know that if someone

00:28:24.620 suggests a great idea to me, then we get started on it and we do it. Especially if it's something

00:28:30.200 that sells books because that's, I mean, guys, I love selling books. Also, pre-order The Parisian

00:28:37.520 heist right now. Stop what you're doing. Get those orders in. Come on. I'm doing Vanna White

00:28:43.080 Hands right now. Doing Vanna White Hands. Yeah. Get your get your orders in today because you're

00:28:47.260 going to love it. You're going to love it. So, yeah, I think I think that's what we do. I think

00:28:51.480 that we need more stories like yours, more voices, more podcasts. I just watched the Manosphere

00:29:00.400 podcast and my husband and I are going to do an episode on it. We need the female version 1.00

00:29:06.380 of the manosphere, right? Like we need to be aspirational, but also accessible and interesting 1.00

00:29:13.280 and fun because the manosphere did a great job. Honestly, the manosphere and then also, you know,

00:29:20.980 all of these fembots created by Turning Point USA have swayed so many people over to the other side 0.79

00:29:27.980 and have really moved the Overton window towards restricting women's rights. So we need that on 0.98

00:29:34.920 the left okay and we also need to stop see now i'm ranting i can't stop ranting we also need to

00:29:40.560 that's a rant i know right uh we need to stop eating each other alive like we have to be

00:29:45.360 we have to be less afraid to speak up and that we're going to be canceled at every juncture

00:29:50.340 because we didn't do like absolutely the most perfect right thing because i'm going to go on

00:29:54.900 a rant and i might say something that one person doesn't like and then all of a sudden i'm canceled

00:29:59.460 by the entire left and that sucks i that's my i have such a major bone to pick with the left on

00:30:07.120 this i got a lot of them yeah like let's get some nuance in our conversations and i i mean i am like

00:30:14.460 allergic to online discourse because there's just a lack of nuance in any anybody's takes

00:30:21.600 I watch it like it's a horror show, but I don't participate, really.

00:30:28.260 Yeah, no, exactly.

00:30:29.640 Exactly.

00:30:30.000 Like, it is just, oh, all right.

00:30:31.900 I think we've got a good start.

00:30:33.060 We're laying a really good groundwork here for change.

00:30:37.240 Like I said, it's an ongoing conversation.

00:30:40.840 Let's take one more break. 0.77

00:30:42.100 And when we come back, I want to talk about sex. 0.97

00:30:44.660 Yay. 0.98

00:30:45.260 Yay.

00:30:51.600 Okay, we're back. Now we're talking about sex. You are very, very sex positive. You have a podcast about sex. Do you think that Girls Gone Wild and your reaction to it shaped that? 0.97

00:31:04.860 Oh, yeah, for sure. I feel like I developed in reaction to what I saw on the Girls Gone Wild bus, but it's like a sex positive. I wanted to reclaim. Like, I'm a little bit of an exhibitionist. You know, like, I didn't want men to take away things that I loved just because they mangled them. You know what I mean?

00:31:33.240 I was like, I still get to own this love that I have for my body. I still get to own this love that I have for sex. And, you know, taboo kind of subject matter. Like, I still get to have that, even though, you know, it was ruined in this one circumstance.

00:31:54.060 Right. And that's actually been incredibly healing for me is to have these conversations and get to like do all these reframes on, you know, talk to all these sex workers for which it has been, you know, nothing's pure, but a mostly empowering experience for them.

00:32:12.760 Right. Yeah, exactly. I've actually I've written several sex worker characters in various novels of mine. Parisian Heist actually has two incredibly empowered sex worker characters, which I'm really excited about, honestly, because I also have spent a lot of time reporting in the industry.

00:32:35.040 And like we were saying earlier, I think it's so important to share the stories of different kinds of women, right?

00:32:42.680 And the kinds of women that have been castigated for so goddamn long. 0.99

00:32:46.480 I hate the I hate I think I think there is changing a little bit that might be like one maybe bright spot of feminism is that there is a little bit more cultural acceptance of sex work. 0.99

00:33:05.860 And I think we're starting to see them as, you know, three-dimensional humans a little bit more than the portrayals before that was like, how could, what are these strange creatures? And it's like, they live among us.

00:33:22.160 It's the oldest profession, my friends. It is the world's oldest profession. Yes.

00:33:27.260 And they're, I mean, again, nothing's 100 percent, but like I know so many brilliant sex workers, like sweet sex worker, you know, like they. 1.00

00:33:40.800 Because a sex worker is just like any other woman. 1.00

00:33:43.140 You could be a douche, too, but you're also like just a wide array of the entire spectrum of humanity. 1.00

00:33:51.480 Yeah.

00:33:51.780 uh what are the what are the biggest topics that get you the most like reactions when when you

00:34:00.420 start talking about sex on your podcasts well do you know about my happy ending massage I want to

00:34:06.660 hear all about it tell our audience I went to Tokyo uh for the podcast and I had my co-host at the

00:34:15.520 time we were interviewing a lot of people about you know we had done various trips we went to

00:34:21.760 to helsinki we went to mexico city we were in tokyo and we were you know do doing our anthony

00:34:28.020 bourdain you know exploring culture through love and sexuality and we were having amazing

00:34:34.320 conversations and then like towards the end of our trip this uh japanese girl 30 something

00:34:40.380 reporter was like dared us basically to do this thing called um i think it's home delivery health

00:34:48.180 or is what they call it's basically like uber for happy ending massages uber eats for happy

00:34:55.720 ending massages and we were like okay and so we asked our partners and got permission and 0.77

00:35:04.060 these guys came to our hotel and basically brought a little like gift bag of sex toys and 0.92

00:35:14.340 I got the experience of paying for sex and it was not it was so empowering in a strange way because I feel like it's so rare for a woman to be for the sex act to be all about them. 0.82

00:35:33.740 Like, usually we're givers of pleasure. And for me to be the sole person who was receiving, who's receiving pleasure mattered in this situation was insane. 0.76

00:35:49.160 And, you know, I was in this foreign land and my best friend was downstairs and I was doing this kind of illicit thing and my partner had given me permission to do it.

00:36:02.620 It just kind of like scrambled my brain in terms of, you know, all these things that I thought about sex.

00:36:10.900 I was like rewriting my scripts in real time and I was euphoric afterwards.

00:36:17.020 we both were we were like skipping through Tokyo and it just made me you know like I'm in a

00:36:25.980 monogamous relationship and I've been in this monogamous relationship for a long time and so

00:36:32.440 it was kind of fun to do something that wasn't you know there was no penetration or anything

00:36:38.020 like that but I got to like do something erotic that wasn't related to my now husband and

00:36:46.920 there was something really exciting about that that recharged me and i went home and i wanted 0.98

00:36:52.440 to fuck my husband my then fiance or whatever we were then and i was just so incredibly horny for 0.98

00:37:00.440 the next couple weeks that i went to the gynecologist and i was like concerned a little 0.99

00:37:06.120 bit i was like is this okay um he's like whoa what is going um but yeah i mean that was that's

00:37:16.220 one of my most popular episodes. And I love to talk about it because I just think

00:37:19.860 we don't normally we think about, you know, paying for sex and happy ending massages as

00:37:26.300 like desperate guys going to, you know, massage parlors. And it was like, so not my experience.

00:37:35.800 I love that. And I see why it's probably the most popular episode, because again,

00:37:44.480 it does completely flip all ideas about paying for paying for sex on its head. But I also think

00:37:52.700 it's the same reason we saw all fours become such a hit. My my friend Glynis McNichol's memoir, 0.98

00:38:00.440 Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself, because we just don't talk about women's pleasure enough. Still,

00:38:06.920 still. I'm actually I'm reading Maria Semple's Go Gentle right now. And it's about a woman in her

00:38:12.260 50s being reawakened to sex and that shouldn't feel radical and in some ways it does which is

00:38:20.720 still crazy to me and that is why again thank you for your service we just need more stories about 0.81

00:38:26.480 it uh-huh yeah and i yeah it just oh it was i mean it made me approach sex in my regular life

00:38:38.160 differently, which I kind of like wanted to like take tours of women to go have this experience

00:38:45.960 because I was like, we all should kind of be reoriented in this way. I actually think that

00:38:51.720 would sell out. Maybe. Maybe it's an offshoot of the Girls Gone Feral. Yes, that's part of it.

00:38:57.720 So is this legal in Tokyo? It's a gray area. I mean, so much sex work is a gray area.

00:39:03.900 Yeah. Yeah. They have a different outlook on it, though. Like we're a very shame based society and they're more guilt based, I think, is how it was explained to me.

00:39:13.260 I've heard that. Yeah. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And so really, they just sneak around because they don't really care. It's just about being socially called out.

00:39:22.320 Right. It's about being caught, not about actually like you don't feel the shame, but you feel guilt if someone finds out.

00:39:27.600 Yeah. Yeah. OK. Yeah. But this is one of their you know, this is maybe their you know, obviously it's not penetration, but they have host clubs. And so they have all this stuff that is legal. It's like here, the sugar babying. It's like. Uh huh. Yeah. Legal. Legal ish. Yeah. Fascinating. Fascinating. Yeah. Again, I mean, if we if we don't talk about all these things, we will continue to live in a shame based culture.

00:39:56.120 And unfortunately, all of that shame is always heaped on women. And I think that, you know, men are often in a more guilt based culture here in America where it's like, oh, we all only feel bad about this if someone finds out.

00:40:08.380 And even then, not really. Whereas women have this shame ingrained in them by our culture, by our society, by our media, by things like Girls Gone Wild, who really, I mean, that show categorized the girls who were on this as sluts instead of the men watching it as perverts. 0.92

00:40:28.140 Exactly. Exactly. And they're victims. 0.97

00:40:34.360 I mean, they're victims. They're young girls. They're they're at their most vulnerable. And Joe Francis, this entire franchise, our entire culture was taking advantage of them. Yes. Oh, we have so much to talk about on the girls gone feral media tour around. I'm like, how fast can I get this together? And, you know, it should be all ages because like I wanted all ages. Yes. Joan Price. Do you know Joan Price? I don't know. Tell me.

00:41:04.060 She wrote this book about sex and aging and she's 80.

00:41:09.100 I interviewed her recently.

00:41:10.640 She's in her 80s and she's this evangelist for like women getting, getting their, you

00:41:16.920 know, getting theirs, getting theirs into their 80s.

00:41:21.000 And she's just so vibrant.

00:41:23.120 And I'm like, you're one of my feminist icons.

00:41:26.900 So you can have it across the spectrum. 1.00

00:41:29.520 No, it's across the spectrum.

00:41:30.500 Totally.

00:41:30.720 I had my annual, like, wellness exam with my GP yesterday, and she asked me if I wanted the HPV vaccine.

00:41:38.640 And I've never had HPV, thankfully.

00:41:41.100 And she was like, yeah, she's like, insurance will pay for it until you're 46.

00:41:44.680 I'm going to be 46 in a few months.

00:41:46.640 And I was like, yeah, I guess so.

00:41:48.220 Why not?

00:41:49.060 Like, you know, my sweet husband, Nick Astor, may not be around forever.

00:41:53.320 And, yeah, I guess load me up.

00:41:56.040 And she's like, yeah, seriously. 0.99

00:41:58.180 My friend Nan got divorced, and now she's in her 60s, and she's having all this sex with young men. 0.99

00:42:04.680 Good for Nan. 0.98

00:42:05.800 I'm like, thanks so much for telling me this, Eileen.

00:42:07.640 I love this.

00:42:08.400 I love this for Nan.

00:42:09.360 Tell me everything.

00:42:10.440 She's like, yeah, but the insurance companies don't pay for it after 45, so Nan had to pay $1,000 out of pocket.

00:42:15.780 And I'm like, oh, my God.

00:42:16.620 $1,000?

00:42:17.660 $1,000 out of pocket.

00:42:18.840 So I'm like, yeah, load me up now.

00:42:21.000 Come on.

00:42:21.560 I'm like, does it last forever?

00:42:22.400 She's like, yeah.

00:42:23.000 I'm like, excellent. 1.00

00:42:23.760 This is my, like, geriatric insurance policy for my vagina. 1.00

00:42:27.560 I love that. Also, Joe, when you're ready to promote your book, please come on my podcast 0.98

00:42:32.160 and maybe can I ask you a preview question? Yeah, please do. Please do.

00:42:37.020 OK, so I'm trying. I'm 42 and I am too old to be asking this question, but I have to figure out

00:42:42.840 tomorrow, yesterday, if I want to have a kid. Oh, yeah. I think you should. You know, it's

00:42:51.340 really interesting you're asking me. I've been asked by a lot of my girlfriends who are on the

00:42:56.040 fence uh one in particular who i talked to about it for about three years and she had her first

00:43:00.320 baby at 40 and now tells me she's like oh my god i can't i want 19 i can't believe that like i was

00:43:06.420 ever on the fence about this but she was because she has a great career that she was actually like

00:43:11.140 a child she's a wonderful man she's a great life she's like because it's gonna fuck it up but i'm

00:43:14.440 like no it's not honestly as a woman who like i i have my dream job i do all the things i want 0.81

00:43:19.880 having kids is great i fucking love it not everyone loves it but like i fucking love it 0.86

00:43:24.260 And I like being a mom way more than I thought I was going to. 0.91

00:43:27.520 And so from my perspective, I'm like, yeah, give it a go.

00:43:29.920 Do it.

00:43:30.240 But then also, you know, if for some reason it doesn't work out, you've already got this really full, awesome life, right?

00:43:36.040 Yeah.

00:43:36.660 Yeah.

00:43:37.120 No, I mean, that's my thing is like the potential sacrifice is.

00:43:44.800 You figure it out.

00:43:45.700 It's not that it's honestly not that bad.

00:43:48.140 It's really not.

00:43:48.620 It's like nothing.

00:43:49.420 I don't feel like I've sacrificed anything.

00:43:52.500 and I think the amount that you quote unquote sacrifice is up to you. You choose, right? Like

00:43:58.380 we still travel with all of our kids. Like, yeah, I'm a little more tired, but like, I think I'd be

00:44:03.380 tired. I look at my friends who don't have kids that are my age. They're tired too. We're just

00:44:06.600 tired, right? So like, I think you choose, you choose how to fit your kids into your life.

00:44:11.960 And you don't, you don't have to be the a hundred percent all in crazed tiger mom. You mom how you're 0.64

00:44:20.640 gonna mom which is how you do the rest of your life I love that I see people like you and I'm

00:44:25.960 like she's got both she's done at all yeah I honestly like I mean it's you don't have it all

00:44:31.040 all the time right like things fall through the cracks but like I have if 20 something me could

00:44:35.700 see me now they'd be like this is everything I ever wanted I'm like yeah girl it is that's amazing

00:44:39.380 I also think because of the experiences that I've been through I would be such a good girl mom I

00:44:45.540 would be like and a good boy mom because we need good boy mom we do we do for sure for sure

00:44:50.520 maybe even more than we need girl moms these days yeah yeah honestly um i say do it just do it 1.00

00:44:57.480 let me go fuck my husband go fuck your husband right now i love it so much all right remind 1.00

00:45:04.260 everyone to order your book and tell them yet again where they can find it they can find it 1.00

00:45:07.700 in the bad place they can find it in the good place they can find it in all of the places right

00:45:10.760 yes gone wild girl gone wild yeah amazon bookshop.org barnes and noble request it from your

00:45:18.560 favorite spot and order a copy for your friend and talk about it for a book club oh very juicy

00:45:24.800 conversation very juicy conversation give it to a young woman in your life just hand it to a young

00:45:29.740 woman stranger uh you're the best book hustler i swear that about you hustler i mean i just it's

00:45:36.360 all i do it's all i do all day every day at this point also order the parisian guys while you're

00:45:42.600 on the bookshop or you're on the bad place ordering girl gone wild order order parisian

00:45:46.920 heist for you and for three friends, okay? Just get it done today. Do it.

00:46:16.920 Thank you.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - June 09, 2026

Girls Gone Wild Go Feral—Behind the Scenes of the Show That Shaped a Generation

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