Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - December 21, 2023


The #TradWives Are Coming For Your Husbands (According to the NY POST)

Topics
Reddit threads
Ruby Franke Pleads Guilty to Sickening Child Abuse Are #TradWives Dangerous or Just Ridiculous With Kathryn Jezer Morton

Episode Stats


Length

23 minutes

Words per minute

172.82

Word count

4,042

Sentence count

204

Harmful content

Misogyny

24

sentences flagged

Toxicity

9

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

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 .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:00.000 okay so today we are doing a very special emergency episode of under the influence
00:00:13.040 and and i have i have a guest that i haven't really had on the podcast before but he's very
00:00:20.900 excited to be here do you want to introduce yourself hello
00:00:26.060 i think it's rather funny i was told i was gonna be on this episode about
00:00:32.240 five minutes ago so uh to that i said yes i'm excited my name is nick i'm jose
00:00:37.540 yes nick astor nick astor now this episode is about trad wives we've been trad wife heavy lately
00:00:44.420 but that's because there's just so much news coming out and what i'm hearing from a lot of
00:00:49.700 listeners is that they've been listening to the podcast with their husbands now listen now this
00:00:55.320 might be self-selecting because listeners of our show may be the type of women who are in a more
00:01:00.620 equal marriage who are married to men who are you know who like their wives but what i'm hearing is
00:01:08.900 that a lot of a lot of our listeners listen to the trad wife episodes with their husband and their
00:01:13.400 husbands think it's fake they think it's like gonzo bananas made up which my husband also seems seems
00:01:20.680 to believe you don't you don't think trad wives are real do you uh i think first of all as somebody
00:01:27.220 that spends zero time on tiktok or instagram um i find the whole phenomenon to be a bit contrived
00:01:34.560 and i'm surprised that there are those that are so concerned about it i don't think it's all made
00:01:40.480 up but i think it's definitely some of these people are putting it on a bit i'm having you
00:01:44.480 on today to talk about this one story that went viral last night it's in the new york post which
00:01:50.780 i love i love the new york post you don't love the new york post but i love salt grain of salt
00:01:54.560 yeah yeah yeah um i love it because i used to be a new york city reporter for the new york daily
00:02:01.100 news the post was our competition and i i think i think that they are top-notch wonderful newspapers
00:02:06.740 which sometimes do post some some clickbait uh so again we can take this with a grain of salt
00:02:12.120 but people are going insane over this.
00:02:14.380 The headline in this New York Post story is,
00:02:17.760 TikTok ruined my husband of 12 years.
00:02:21.480 Now he wants a trad wife and we're getting divorced. 0.99
00:02:27.200 Yes, I read it. 0.97
00:02:28.380 You read it?
00:02:28.980 I did.
00:02:29.400 Tell me your reaction to it and then I'm going to read some of this.
00:02:34.460 My assumption is that that couple had underlying issues that were unresolved
00:02:39.180 and somehow this provoked the whole thing.
00:02:41.460 Yeah, I don't think this I don't think this marriage was in a good place prior to this, probably. So this is what the story says. And mind you, there is no one, no human beings are quoted in this story. The whole thing is taken from a Reddit thread that has since been removed. I just want everyone to know that.
00:02:59.200 And by the way, that's a common lazy journalist.
00:03:02.800 This is the laziest, laziest kind of journalism.
00:03:05.540 So, all right, here's the story.
00:03:07.200 TikTok has long been accused of ruining attention spans,
00:03:10.840 but now the app is under fire for destroying marriages too.
00:03:15.480 A distraught wife has taken to Reddit to reveal that the social media app
00:03:20.080 has completely changed her husband's character,
00:03:23.000 causing the end of her 12-year union.
00:03:26.460 okay so the anonymous woman again this is reddit she's anonymous she's 37 years old she says that
00:03:32.960 her and her hubby i hate the i hate the word hubby i don't like it either we're seemingly happy
00:03:38.740 together before he became hooked on tiktok trad wife videos here's my question do we think that
00:03:45.820 tiktok trad wife videos are like the new porn addiction i doubt it i'm just saying just saying
00:03:53.360 Anyway, so allegedly her husband came across trad wife videos earlier this year,
00:03:58.260 but she wants everyone to know that they were not a, quote, traditional couple.
00:04:03.100 She says, we both do work, we both do chores and child care, and he never complained about it.
00:04:09.600 But around March this year, he started acting weird.
00:04:13.320 He complained about how I looked.
00:04:15.000 He complained about the food.
00:04:16.600 He complained about me working long hours.
00:04:18.920 I work the same hours he does.
00:04:21.520 Throughout our marriage, he never had any complaints about the food I cook.
00:04:24.860 I dress in comfortable attire when I'm in my house.
00:04:27.540 He never had a problem with that, ever.
00:04:31.180 So then she goes on to say that he became obsessed with a TikTok star,
00:04:35.940 who she doesn't name.
00:04:38.020 She doesn't name this person.
00:04:39.920 But she says, her content, her content looked made up and not realistic to me
00:04:44.620 because it was 100% made for the male audience.
00:04:48.820 I told him this was all an act, put up for the world to see.
00:04:52.220 This is not reality.
00:04:53.540 Nobody cleans their house wearing pretty dresses. 1.00
00:04:55.900 The dresses will get dirty.
00:04:57.840 However, her husband was undeterred.
00:05:02.200 The wife tried to tell him to stop, said that it was hurting her.
00:05:06.680 Her husband apparently became verbally abusive for the first time in their marriage
00:05:10.460 and then insisted that she become a submissive wife.
00:05:16.280 He then said, you're smirking over there.
00:05:18.100 He then said, he deserved better.
00:05:21.940 He deserved better.
00:05:24.180 What did you think about this, Nick Astor?
00:05:27.380 Oh, God.
00:05:29.480 They've got other issues.
00:05:31.440 Yes, I think they have other issues.
00:05:33.720 My, I have many initial reactions.
00:05:36.760 My first reaction is that this isn't real,
00:05:39.800 that this is some Reddit troll,
00:05:42.320 you know, just kind of messing around with Trad Wives. 0.62
00:05:45.720 This has since been removed from Reddit.
00:05:48.100 I will say, yeah, yeah.
00:05:51.200 So that tells you something.
00:05:52.680 You can contact the mods of the relevant Reddit board and ask them.
00:05:56.880 As a reporter, they might tell you.
00:05:58.580 What do you mean? How does that work?
00:05:59.800 By the way, let me just tell everyone that Nick Astor is a total Reddit nerd.
00:06:04.280 So you ask Reddit a lot of crazy things that you get answers for.
00:06:08.580 You figured out how to fix our house, fix the siding on our house by going on Reddit, didn't you?
00:06:13.920 Oh, yeah, it definitely has a useful side.
00:06:16.920 Yeah.
00:06:18.100 What other things have you learned from Reddit?
00:06:20.600 Mostly all improvement stuff.
00:06:22.640 For you.
00:06:23.420 For you.
00:06:24.020 Yeah.
00:06:24.440 Yeah.
00:06:24.840 Yeah.
00:06:25.140 But there's also some weird gonzo influence stuff on there.
00:06:30.140 There's whole Reddit threads, by the way, of just like snark against specific influencers.
00:06:35.660 I'm not surprised.
00:06:37.140 So you're not.
00:06:37.620 I have not a comment.
00:06:38.380 You're not on them.
00:06:39.120 You're not on them.
00:06:40.560 The comments are very supportive.
00:06:42.560 if i will say just just kind of they seem a little bit naive some of them uh but but but god bless i
00:06:51.880 mean most of them are saying hey you're gonna do you you go girlfriend you're gonna do better next
00:06:56.980 time take him to the cleaners i give it a year before he realizes that he had everything he ever
00:07:03.420 wanted all along and the comments in this thread are very like girl power you don't need him you
00:07:10.440 can do better but then people are uh people are are trying to guess who the tiktoker is
00:07:19.120 the number one tiktoker that they think it is is estee williams and i love this comment the comment
00:07:26.280 is is it estee williams because the way you described it it sounds like her she's a grifter 0.95
00:07:31.480 she always zooms the camera on her boobs her videos are for the male gaze all right estee 1.00
00:07:39.060 She drives me crazy. 1.00
00:07:40.260 Have you seen Esty?
00:07:41.420 I've shown you Esty before.
00:07:42.840 Hold on.
00:07:43.360 You might have.
00:07:44.260 I genuinely have.
00:07:45.420 I have shown you Esty.
00:07:47.300 You've seen Esty and, um, hold on.
00:07:50.080 Let me pull up a picture of Esty Williams here.
00:07:53.340 This is Esty Williams.
00:07:55.120 Oh, yeah, that one. 0.99
00:07:56.920 Looks totally phony, really boring, and really high maintenance. 1.00
00:08:01.720 She's got some nice boobs, though. 1.00
00:08:04.260 Yeah. 1.00
00:08:05.220 Yeah.
00:08:05.940 I will tell you, I will tell everyone that Nick Astor doesn't notice. 1.00
00:08:08.940 other women if we're walking down the street i'm like do you think she had a boob job he's like
00:08:13.940 what he bought that way much attention he's like what's had a boob job that's true but he's like 0.79
00:08:18.620 what's happening what are boobs what's going on here um all right so the number one is sd williams
00:08:26.680 because she is really big on tiktok other people are guessing ballerina farm who if her name is
00:08:32.940 that by the way ballerina farm i read your piece on on her thanks for reading but thanks for
00:08:38.240 subscribing to over the influence it's weird that you paid one i thought it would bump the
00:08:44.640 algorithm or something thanks thanks you know what else bumps the algorithm pre-ordering the
00:08:49.600 sicilian inheritance i'm gonna order another copy right now okay you order 10 right i hate asking
00:08:57.660 people to pre-order the sicilian inheritance but it's it's this weird title again the sicilian
00:09:02.860 inheritance but it's this weird thing if people pre-order it the publisher prints more books
00:09:07.220 And so then we get more books to more people.
00:09:09.980 And I want people to read the book.
00:09:12.520 And I'm trying to do what the influencers do, which is just like sell, sell, sell.
00:09:16.500 Casually.
00:09:17.160 Since it's a plug, I will say.
00:09:18.780 Oh my God, you're so loud.
00:09:20.280 Since it's a plug, I will tell you, it's the best book you've ever written.
00:09:24.080 You're sweet.
00:09:24.880 And you also don't read books.
00:09:27.340 So I mean, all of yours, you've read all of mine.
00:09:30.020 You're you're I'm I'm your favorite author.
00:09:33.640 You are.
00:09:34.760 You am.
00:09:35.760 I am indeed.
00:09:37.220 Now, here's, let's take a quick break.
00:09:39.720 Let's take a quick break.
00:09:40.680 And then we're going to get into what, I have this, I have an idea.
00:09:45.360 I have a big idea for this.
00:09:48.580 Okay, we'll be right back.
00:10:01.360 And we're back with my very, with my very special guest, my husband,
00:10:04.900 my husband, Nick Astor, my very sweet husband.
00:10:07.340 So good to be here.
00:10:08.220 Thanks for having me.
00:10:08.920 You're very cute.
00:10:10.220 Oh, sorry.
00:10:11.360 You do need a haircut, though.
00:10:13.920 I have an appointment this weekend.
00:10:15.320 Good, good.
00:10:17.020 Okay, so we're talking about this New York Post story where a woman claims that her husband
00:10:22.260 has left her because he has become obsessed, obsessed with a TikTok trad wife.
00:10:29.700 And this woman claims that her husband wants her to be, quote, tradier, that she
00:10:37.220 he wants her to start wearing dresses and more makeup and doing a lot of domestic chores around
00:10:43.860 the house and being, quote, submissive. We talk a lot about whether the tradwife phenomenon is 0.98
00:10:50.860 dangerous. In fact, the crazy thing is our next episode is with Catherine Jeezer Morton from The 1.00
00:10:57.340 Cut, where we literally ask, are tradwives dangerous or just stupid? And that's coming. 1.00
00:11:03.980 i finished editing it this morning and and clearly the new york post wants us to believe
00:11:09.940 this is why trad wives are dangerous i wish the headline i used to come up with i used to come up
00:11:15.000 with tabloid headlines for so long the headline i would like to see and maybe maybe this this is
00:11:20.600 the headline of this episode trad wives are coming for your husband good headline i like it right
00:11:26.380 right and maybe i could make ai do like a cartoon of trad wives like pulling pulling just a like
00:11:35.480 kevin kind of man in like a plaid shirt and like chinos and trad wives are sirens pulling him into 0.99
00:11:42.620 the ocean holding rolling pin holding rolling pins gotta have a rolling pin involved and and
00:11:48.540 they're and they're like kneading his his chubby middle-aged dude belly like sourdough i like it
00:11:55.600 right yeah yeah wow i think i think i gotta go find this will you work on it i'm out of here
00:12:01.520 will you look who you go will you go ai this for me i want the rolling pin the trad wives i get
00:12:07.200 we need to figure out okay all right we're gonna do this we're gonna do this i'll break the internet
00:12:11.600 if we do this trad wives trad waves trad wives are trad wives are coming for your husband now
00:12:19.460 as a dude as our resident dude on this podcast right now um i'm looking at your socks by the
00:12:25.580 way those socks have holes you need new socks they're kind of dirty they're pretty dirty um
00:12:29.760 as a resident dude do you see anything at all like sexy or attractive in this idea of
00:12:36.200 submissive lady and do you wish that i did did my hair i mean by the way we should tell people
00:12:42.800 i'm still in pajamas right now you look nice thanks here's the deal i think most of this stuff
00:12:49.980 is theatrics and it's silly um but to the extent that this conversation provokes and inspires
00:12:57.260 couples talk to each other about their differences and you know how they handle the different
00:13:04.240 responsibilities of a household and being married or together wherever it is um that's a good and
00:13:10.520 sometimes we find ourselves you know drawn to quote-unquote traditional roles and don't there
00:13:17.540 are probably things we do that are in some cases more traditional generally not probably but whatever
00:13:23.840 it doesn't really matter as long as you're on the same page with it you talked about it i like that
00:13:28.740 idea i like that the idea of using this gonzo new york post story which is based on a reddit thread
00:13:35.320 as a way for a couple to listen to this podcast together and say hey let's have a more equal
00:13:42.000 marriage we could talk about the things that we do like our roles you have gotten very good at
00:13:49.660 waking up before me because i'm such a crappy sleeper and getting the kids out of bed and you
00:13:54.680 also wake up with the baby at night which i very very trad wife that's so trad wife of you um
00:14:02.340 Should I wear a wig?
00:14:04.180 Sure.
00:14:04.860 Prance around. 1.00
00:14:05.800 Skirt. 0.99
00:14:06.340 In a skirt?
00:14:07.040 Children, children.
00:14:08.400 Hello.
00:14:09.240 Hello.
00:14:10.020 Please get out of you.
00:14:10.920 I don't know.
00:14:11.700 I don't know how the children.
00:14:12.940 I mean, our children are very open-minded, but you might freak them out.
00:14:16.340 If you go full.
00:14:17.400 Freak them out.
00:14:17.880 If you go full Doubtfire on them.
00:14:19.880 Without telling them.
00:14:20.940 You'd have to ease them into it.
00:14:22.780 I think the kids might be ready for Mrs. Doubtfire.
00:14:26.300 Although, you know, it's heavy on the divorce.
00:14:28.460 But Sally Field and Robin Williams.
00:14:29.860 it's a nice movie it's it's a good film it's a good film it's a good film um but you do all the
00:14:38.160 dishes and unload the dishwasher but mostly because you don't like the way that i do it
00:14:41.920 you're not good at pack dishwasher i'm not i'm not good at it i'm not good at it i make the bed
00:14:48.240 and i put all the laundry away but you do the laundry true it's approved it's a preferential
00:14:53.380 page actually i like that and we've recently what i'm i'm really happy about is that you've
00:14:59.700 recently started taking the kids to their doctor's appointments oh i'm always yeah but you've
00:15:05.220 recently been doing it more which is nice yeah yeah that's good that's good but we work at it
00:15:11.260 i think that you know dividing tasks is hard whether you're working in a company whether or
00:15:17.180 not you're managing people or you're managing a household it's just we're not taught to treat our
00:15:22.320 household like a business but you're managing a lot you're managing so many moving parts it's
00:15:27.040 like project management yeah yeah for reals now here's my thought on this reddit thread
00:15:34.680 i just finished i just finished watching the new version of fatal attraction
00:15:40.220 which that's i watch tv in the morning well you you also drop the do drop off you drop both
00:15:46.600 big kids off at school which i like because you take you take them both on the bike um so while
00:15:52.280 you do drop off in the morning i play with the baby but then i also watch tv which i never ever
00:15:57.660 watch tv so it brings me a lot of joy i've been watching the new fatal attraction so i've been
00:16:01.960 thinking a lot about tv series also because we're in the process right now of selling the sicilian
00:16:07.800 inheritance book as a tv series we've got it we have it to some we have it out to some really
00:16:12.220 cool actresses by the way love it yeah yeah um so i think that this reddit thread could be the start
00:16:19.920 of a really good TV series where, bear with me here, and I don't know, maybe my agents don't
00:16:25.460 listen to my podcasts, but I have agents who should be working on this. They're probably, I mean,
00:16:30.120 Jason, are you listening? Wasn't that? Amanda. I don't know if I ever saw it with Stepford Wives.
00:16:38.620 Similar, similar, but like, all right, bear with me here. So the plot of this is that you've got
00:16:44.120 like a husband and wife, and they're just toiling along, and like, and everybody loves Raymond,
00:16:49.000 king of queens kind of way and all of a sudden the husband becomes obsessed with a trad wife on
00:16:57.700 tiktok but it has to be an ai like the movie she but we don't know that she's ai in the beginning
00:17:03.220 is the thing like at first right she he just disappears and the wife it's like a procedural
00:17:08.520 like every ai that evolves constantly to get more and more and then it starts taunting the wife and
00:17:14.100 then banging a roly pin on the head honey you're just getting ahead of head of yourself like we
00:17:18.920 have to write the pilot hold on there's a trash check we have to write the pilot first so the
00:17:23.020 pilot is that the husband goes missing and the wife is the prime suspect and so they all start
00:17:30.240 going through those like the cops and everything start going through his phone and his computer
00:17:34.420 and they find out that he was obsessed with this trad wife tiktok star and they still pin this
00:17:42.200 perhaps murder on the wife because they're like whatever he was he wanted to leave you
00:17:47.120 for this woman but the wife is convinced that he has gone in search of the trad wife and so like 1.00
00:17:53.200 she falls deep down a trad wife rabbit hole to try to fit but the and that then the woman like 0.99
00:17:58.820 just it ultimately yes maybe she is ai i don't know it could go in so many different directions 0.94
00:18:03.880 but if we could option this reddit thread i'm gonna call laura laura here's what optioning
00:18:11.800 It's not that original.
00:18:13.600 I guess this could just be an option of this podcast episode, right?
00:18:17.180 This is the IP for it.
00:18:18.220 There you go.
00:18:19.060 Boom.
00:18:19.980 Boom.
00:18:20.300 Lawyers listening?
00:18:22.420 Honestly, I don't think that anyone associated with any of the things that I create
00:18:26.600 listened to anything that I make.
00:18:29.100 I think it's just, I don't.
00:18:31.880 I don't.
00:18:32.220 I think the other day, as I said to someone that I work with, I'm like, oh, did you?
00:18:36.000 And they're like, you have a podcast?
00:18:39.940 Yeah, great.
00:18:41.120 Yeah, whatever.
00:18:41.800 Whatever. Well, anyway, but Laura, Laura is my friend and she's an awesome producer. She's the 0.54
00:18:47.020 one who is responsible for working on getting Charlotte Walsh likes to win. She's the one that 0.99
00:18:53.440 works on getting that made. She, she originally, you know, helped us land Julia Roberts, but we 0.65
00:18:58.520 all know that was a fucking disaster because she's a quitter. Fucking quitter. Her producer is going 1.00
00:19:04.160 to call me again and be like, stop talking about Julia. Sometimes Julia's producer texts me and is
00:19:09.360 like, can you stop? Can you stop? And I'm like, how about all of you stop listening to my podcast
00:19:13.620 because the TV show doesn't exist because Julia quit. Whatever. Really expect it. Yeah, she's
00:19:20.940 definitely going to text me in the middle of the night. No, what's really upsetting me about Julia
00:19:23.980 Roberts right now is that there are rumors that there may be a sequel to My Best Friend's Wedding,
00:19:30.480 which is my all-time favorite romantic comedy. I have the idea for what the script should look
00:19:37.660 like in my head but because we have a ban on julia roberts movies in our house we'll never
00:19:42.000 be able to watch it i remember that julia roberts was in that oh my god she plays the food critic 0.61
00:19:48.620 who has a best friend who they promised that they would like get married if they were unmarried at
00:19:53.920 a ridiculously young age and then he gets engaged to cameron diaz who is like 19 years old and she's
00:20:01.180 20. Kimmy is 20 in it.
00:20:03.240 And Julia Roberts goes and tries 0.99
00:20:05.320 to thwart the wedding.
00:20:07.540 And it's in Chicago, and they go on
00:20:09.220 an architectural boat tour.
00:20:11.040 Maybe I didn't see this. I remember hearing about it.
00:20:13.480 It's my all-time favorite romantic comedy.
00:20:15.320 What's the book? We should watch it together.
00:20:16.800 We can watch it together. I don't know. I feel like it's time to watch.
00:20:19.360 It's the holiday season, so I was hoping we could
00:20:21.220 watch Trading Places tonight.
00:20:22.780 Oh, yeah.
00:20:25.280 Speaking of Reddit, there was a great thread.
00:20:27.300 It was
00:20:27.880 what is the best film
00:20:31.060 based in philadelphia and why is it trading places it is trading places there was there
00:20:37.960 was a great bar named after the characters in trading places that closed uh if we if we ever
00:20:43.560 open our independent bookstore in philadelphia we should name it after the characters in trading
00:20:49.920 places not a bad idea right that's a good our what our dream wine bar slash cheese shop
00:20:56.780 slash bookstore slash salon.
00:21:01.360 And every once in a while a guy dressed as a gorilla
00:21:03.440 comes bursting out of the back room and runs around.
00:21:06.420 Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:21:08.340 Great.
00:21:08.860 Exactly.
00:21:09.720 I feel like Eddie Murphy would come to the opening of that,
00:21:11.720 but probably not Julia Roberts because she, 0.98
00:21:14.180 I think maybe she hates me as much as I dislike her.
00:21:16.380 Well, she wasn't in the film either, but.
00:21:18.180 No, I know.
00:21:19.220 I know.
00:21:19.580 I just can't stop bringing it up.
00:21:21.620 All right, well, we should close out this emergency episode
00:21:23.700 because we should both go do some work.
00:21:26.020 thank you for coming on you were lovely well you're welcome hopefully that was useful we
00:21:29.440 strayed from the topic a little bit but we always stray from the topic to summarize yeah i do think
00:21:34.380 it's a little bit of a of an act but hey you know if it if it gets people thinking and talking and
00:21:41.400 exploring their roles if you will well no but i think i think conversations like this get people
00:21:47.960 talking but i think trad wife content on its own is actually particularly i do think it's kind of
00:21:53.560 dangerous if you're not talking yet yeah and so and so well and most people are talking most people
00:21:58.120 are just like blindly scrolling social media and it's ruining you know conversation it's ruining
00:22:04.720 discourse it's destroying books and the news industry i can go on and on about the things
00:22:10.060 that social media ruins well you know i'm not going to have a boogeyman i mean but yes it does
00:22:17.800 it is problematic anyways it's problematic it's problematic um okay okay that was a good
00:22:23.320 emergency episode you did love it i want to do this again i know you do i know you're really
00:22:27.500 excited yeah all right guys thanks for listening read this story in the new york post i want to
00:22:33.520 hear what you think you can dm me i'm on the instagram at joe piazza author um you can also
00:22:39.620 subscribe to the over the influence sub stack uh and comment on there go have a great day
00:22:46.160 you guys deserve it
00:22:53.320 Thank you.