Hey all. Joe here and welcome to Under the Influence. I'm up in the Catskills at the cabin. It's raining. You can probably hear it. The kids might come in any second, but they did just run out five minutes ago to chase a bear.

And my first reaction was, I feel really sorry for that bear.

I do. I do.

Today's episode is actually a rerun.

Five years ago, I recorded the very first episode of Under the Influence, and I recorded it in my closet, wedged between a toddler and a baby who refused to sleep.

I was exhausted and leaking milk, and for the past few months, I had been scrolling Instagram and wondering desperately why my life didn't look like

the linen-clad perfection of the moms in my feed. And that was what made me want to start

this crazy project. Because I felt a lot of guilt and shame that my life wasn't perfect, that

my baby didn't sleep, that I was covered in poop and pee, my house was a mess.

I couldn't put away my laundry.

I mean, even right now, my kids are screaming.

They're screaming.

And Nick is carrying one of them under his arm like a football to get the hell out of this house.

And so I spent six months reporting, and then I started recording in my closet.

And I wanted to rerun that first episode today because in five years, the world

of influencing has changed so freaking much. And I also know we have a lot of new listeners

here who may not have heard the first episode. But things were different five years ago.

When I first started reporting on this, mom influencing really was still treated like fluff.

It was not treated like a business. Even back then, it was a multi-billion dollar business

created by women for women that was never covered in the business section. Now, fast forward

to today, influencing has definitely infiltrated every aspect of our culture, but it's still not taken

seriously by the business pages of traditional media. It's not. It's not. Even though social media

...