Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

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

June 9, 2026·50 min
Episode Description from the Publisher

What if the women from Girls Gone Wild finally got the mic? This week we go all the way back to the horrifyingly normalized misogyny of the early 2000s with author and podcaster Courtney Kocak, who spent seven deeply unsettling weeks working on the actual Girls Gone Wild tour bus. Courtney takes us inside the world Joe Francis built: drunk college girls signing contracts they didn’t understand, creepy power dynamics disguised as “fun,” and the moment she realized the entire machine was designed to separate women from their agency while making terrible men rich. We get into feminism’s branding problem, the manosphere, abortion shame, sex positivity after trauma, why women are exhausted from watching men face zero consequences, and whether the left needs to stop eating its own alive every five seconds online. Get Courtney's book Girl Gone Wild here. Join our newsletter community here. ORDER The Parisian Heist here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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