The System for Questioning the Stories You’ve Been Told with Jo Piazza

Julie Fried (00:00.13) Welcome back to the System for Everything podcast. Today’s system tip: before making any major life decision, ask yourself, do I want this? Or did I just watch three women with perfect kitchens tell me I want this? There are so many things we believe about adulthood that nobody ever actually sat us down and convinced us of. A good mother should want to be with her kids as much as possible. A successful woman should be ambitious, but not too ambitious. A beautiful home means you’ve got your life together. And the weird thing is, after hearing these stories enough times, they stop sounding like stories and they start sounding like facts. Today’s guest has built a career looking at the space between the story we’re being told and what’s actually happening. Joe Piazza is an award-winning journalist and the best-selling author of 14 books published in 10 languages in 12 countries, four of them optioned for film and television. Her latest, The Parisian Heist, is out now and involved consulting real museum security people who were probably right to be suspicious. She hosts the Under the Influence podcast, writes the newsletter over the influence, and lives in Philadelphia with her husband and three feral children. Today I want to steal a journalist’s brain for the rest of us. How do we notice when something we’ve accepted as truth might actually just be a story? How do we navigate where our own beliefs come from? And ultimately, how do we decide which stories still belong in our lives and which ones we’re ready to rewrite? Welcome, Joe. Thank you so much for being here. jo (01:34.772) Hi, thank you so much for having me. I love I second and love everything that you said. So yay. Julie Fried (01:41.134) Awesome. Okay, we’re gonna get started as we always do with the system reboot. A quick little reset to start our episode with some humor and humanity. What is something you learned embarrassingly late in life that apparently everyone else already knew? jo (01:55.916) wow. There’s a lot of things. Okay. I I mean I just I was really bad at adulting for a lot of my 20s. So there’s just like some real basic things. But then I think the biggest one is that like people are not paying as much attention to you as you think that they are. I I felt like I was constantly being judged in my 20s. And now I’m like literally everyone is thinking about themselves all of the time. Julie Fried (02:14.988) Yes. Julie Fried (02:22.041) Yes. Okay, because I love your work. I have to know what is your comfort book? Like the one you’ve read so many times you’ve just lost count. jo (02:30.117) No, it’s so embarrassing. I like almost don’t want to say this. I have reread Petals on the Wind by VC Andrews so many times. It is such delicious, delightful trash. Also, I first read it when I was like 12, which is so young to read that trashy ass book. but I but for some reason I love it. I love it so much. I’ve also reread a lot of the Christopher Pike books from when I was a kid and also Summer Sisters from Judy Bloom. Julie Fried (02:42.773) Whoa! Julie Fried (02:58.518) yes. All right. What’s one thing the internet has convinced everyone that they need that you absolutely refuse to buy? jo (03:07.495) Gosh, I buy a lot of things from the internet. So, like, this is not the easiest question. Like, I for someone who reports on influencers and the influencing industrial complex, I truly have like I I get very easily influenced for things. So I’m trying to think of one thing that I did not buy. I will tell you what I did buy. I did buy a sweatshirt the other day that has a built-in eye mask, and that was wonderful. I know. Julie Fried (03:34.573) Ooh, that sounds perfect for a plane. jo (03:38.482) I’m getting on a plane on Sunday. I take it on every plane that I go on. It’s my favorite travel sweatshirt. I’m gonna have to keep gnawing on that one because, like I said, I’m just very easily influenced. Although, you know, I I’ve never been influenced to actually bake sourdough because every time that I’ve tried to bake, I’m shit at it. Okay. And like I know people that bake bread. Also, you know what I can buy? Bread. So I have not been influenced to do that. Julie Fried (03:58.636) Yeah. No matter how much an an influencer pushes me, I’m never gonna be convinced that a nugget ice maker is worth it. It’s just not different. That’s just the same jo (04:10.001) I disagree. I disagree. I I love to I know I I love tiny ice. I don’t know why. I love tiny ice. Julie Fried (04:18.509) Okay, fair. Alright, everyone, you’ve met the personality. Now meet the powerhouse. Jo has spent years investigating the stories women are sold about how we’re supposed to live. Her work keeps returning to that fascinating gap between what something looks like from the outside and what is actually happening underneath it. Now most of us aren’t gonna travel to 20 countries to investigate our marriage or interview a bunch of influencers before deciding whether Instagram is messing with our brains. It is. jo (04:20.071) I do. Julie Fried (04:46.849) But maybe we can learn to borrow some of the tools she uses to question what we’re seeing, what we’re being told, and even what we’ve been telling ourselves. Here’s my conversation with Joe Piazza on the system for questioning the stories you’ve been told. Okay, you have built a career investigating things most of us probably wouldn’t ever think to investigate. When you got married, you traveled around the world asking people how they made marriage work. You’ve spent years inside influencer culture. And now the Parisian heist looks at storytelling and legacy and whose contributions get remembered. So what makes your reporter brain look at some thing that everyone else is accepting as normal and think, Wait, says who? jo (05:30.618) Yeah, you know, any anytime I’m questioning something, I’m like, I should report on this. And I think that it’s an instinct that I’ve had from being a journalist for so long. I have covered everything from municipal bonds to celebrities to politics and and travel, right? And so, you know, I’ve been taught to question everything. And that’s pretty much it’s how I approach my fiction, it’s how I approach my podcasting and all of my storytelling. And I came to influence Because after I had my second baby, I was constantly being served this mom influencing content of these beautiful women in these white linen dresses, and they just look so freaking perfect all the time. they also had like nine kids and ten chickens, and their house was really clean. You know what? I’m covered in pee and puke, pee and pee and poop and puke. And like, I’m like, who are these women? And also, why are they constantly trying to sell me something? And that’s why when I started questioning influencers and started pulling back the veil on the influencing industrial complex, which is a Julie Fried (06:05.91) Yeah. Julie Fried (06:16.353) Nightmare. jo (06:30.451) multi-billion dollar industry created mostly by women for women, which is why it’s mostly ignored by mainstream media, except now, where we’re finally starting to understand that we’ve been sold lies for so many years on social media. and we just we simply deserve better, so much better. Julie Fried (06:53.611) Yeah. Are you are there certain words that you see like should always that immediately just kinda make you suspicious? jo (07:02.855) I’m suspicious of everyone all the time. it’s not a great way to live. But you know, like best, yeah, I mean a typical advertising copy. The way that I look at it is most Instagrams are personal or business PR. So someone is either trying to sell you a story about themselves or they’re trying to sell you something. and so anytime something is the best or this will solve, this will fix all your problems, that’s when my Spidey sense spikes and is like, No, no, no, no, no, no. What what’s gonna how much are you making off of this? Julie Fried (07:26.411) Yeah. Julie Fried (07:39.767) When you traveled to twenty countries reporting for your book, How to Be Married, was there something you thought was just like a fact about marriage until you encountered another culture and realized, okay, that’s not marriage, that’s just how we do marriage jo (07:55.42) It’s just how how Americans marriage, honestly. So many things, so much of it. When I got married late, I was thirty-five. My husband was forty-two. I’d been a travel journalist at the time. So I had a privilege to travel all around the world and ask people how to be married. And that turned into my book, How to Be Married. which is wonderful. It makes for honestly like the best wedding gift ever. people still stop me on the street and ask me about it, which is bananas, because that book came out. Julie Fried (07:59.17) Yeah. jo (08:25.149) Ten, eleven years ago. But I really I wanna know how to do this. I want to know how other cultures did it. And one of the big things that just kept coming up that is such an American sensibility is that your spouse should be your everything, should be your soulmate, should be your best friend, should be the person you want to have spend all your time with, the the best sex of your life, your confidant. And in other cultures, it’s like, no, your spouse is your spouse. Like that’s a role. You are running running a family together, running a family, I look at running a family like running a business. Julie Fried (08:51.276) Yeah. Julie Fried (08:56.787) Absolutely. jo (08:57.743) And they they can be your friend. They don’t have to be your best friend. They don’t have to be your tennis partner. They don’t have to be your everything. And in fact, it’s wildly unhealthy to expect that they’re your everything. And I think that that mismatch in expectations is why Americans are often so disappointed in their own marriages. Julie Fried (09:07.777) Yeah. Julie Fried (09:14.901) Ooh, all that’s good. Of the hundreds of people you talk to about marriage, like is there one person or couple or piece of advice that you still find yourself thinking about today? jo (09:26.161) I think about these really fancy French women all of the time, because they tell you to and by the way, it is also a myth that everyone in France is cheating on each other. They’re not. but they tell you to they could. they tell you to flirt with your to flirt with your spouse and also to flirt with people who aren’t your spouse. That like that, like both of those things are great. Like to remember to like flirt and date with your spouse and be fun and have a good time with them. Julie Fried (09:29.581) Ha ha ha. Julie Fried (09:37.453) They’re just hot enough too. jo (09:55.944) And then also let other people flirt with you. Like it doesn’t have to cross a line, but it it makes everyone feel good to feel wanted and to be reminded that you are an attractive sexual person in the world. And it also feels good sometimes to make your spouse a little bit jealous. Julie Fried (09:56.225) Yeah. Julie Fried (10:13.741) I don’t disagree. I love that. jo (10:15.463) I don’t disagree about it at all. Also, they have the best lingerie. My husband could care less if I’m wearing lingerie. Like I could show up in like his boxers and a sweatshirt. He’s like, you look hot. That said, I feel sexier. Okay. Like I feel good in it. Julie Fried (10:27.337) Yeah. Yeah. Do what makes yourself feel good. It’ll make you come across as hotter for sure. yeah. jo (10:33.095) Way more confident. Way more confident. Exactly. Exactly. Julie Fried (10:38.159) when you kind of suspect something that you’ve always believed might not be true, what do you actually do next? How do you investigate that belief without just like gathering evidence for the answer you already want? jo (10:51.749) Yeah, well I mean I the thing is I n never go at anything with an answer in mind. Like I actually want to be proven wrong most of the time. And so I report the hell out of it. I try to approach things from many, many different angles. You know, when I wrote my book, Everyone Is Lying to You, the original Chad Wife thriller, I really yeah, I it’s an OG, okay? It’s just, you know, it that’s what it is. I Julie Fried (11:12.845) Yeah The OG everyone Julie Fried (11:20.319) I I recommend that one a lot. ‘Cause I’m also so obsessed with like the Tradwives thing. So I like, This combines so many things I’m fascinated by. jo (11:22.341) It’s a good one. It’s a great one. I know, I know. But I interviewed trad wives, right? I interviewed people. I like to interview people on all sides of an issue because if we don’t, then we’re staying in our bubble, right? And I think you learn something every time that you have someone disagree with you. And I think we need a lot more civility in our culture. We need to be listening to many more sides. we don’t have to agree with everyone, but we have to be able to live in a world with everyone. That’s the thing. Julie Fried (11:31.873) Mm-hmm. jo (11:56.876) and so I try to bring as many points of view as I can. I tried and I try to never come in with an agenda. I think that a lot of books about influencers and about trad wives in particular came in with an agenda, and I did not think that was fair. and I want to paint what the real world looks like, have some freaking fun with it, because that’s what we deserve at this point, but then also not create a caricature of anyone because no woman deserves that. Some men do, but women don’t. Julie Fried (12:18.018) Yeah. Julie Fried (12:25.045) you really you didn’t just like criticize influencers from the outside. I mean you inf you interviewed hundreds of them, you went to their conferences, you even like tried to become one. So what if getting like inside that culture like it force you to admit that you couldn’t see from the outside? jo (12:35.292) I did. jo (12:42.459) Well, the fact that this is something that so many women need and actually deserve, like so much of influencing is born out of the fact that corporate culture sucks balls for women. All right. And so it is very hard to be a caregiver of any sort and work in a corporate job. So many of the influencers are women who have dropped out of the corporate world after having children because it’s just not possible to do it anymore. Julie Fried (12:48.482) Yeah. Julie Fried (12:53.918) Yeah. Julie Fried (12:59.287) Mm-hmm. jo (13:11.283) and so I I’m critical of many influencers and at the same time I recognize them as brilliant entrepreneurs. I just want everyone to be a little more transparent about what they’re selling you. That’s what I want here. I and I and I want all of us collectively to have more media literacy to so that we just understand better. Julie Fried (13:27.595) Yes. jo (13:34.567) That all of this is an ad. I mean, it’s the same thing as reading Vogue back in the day, right? It’s just a different format, a different platform. but I respect the hell out of influencers. Also, they work their asses off. It is a really hard job. They’re essentially running their own media companies. I just think it can get very dangerous when people are not looking at this with their eyes wide open. Julie Fried (13:38.881) Yeah. Julie Fried (13:50.786) Yeah. Julie Fried (13:58.184) I love that you approach it that way because someone can genuinely love motherhood and monetize money motherhood. Someone can, you know, genuinely recommend a product and make money when you buy it and they don’t automatically cancel each other out. But you’ve spent years looking at the business underneath these narratives and I think that’s where another really jo (14:08.317) Hundred percent. jo (14:16.103) No. Julie Fried (14:22.303) useful question comes in which is like who benefits if I believe this? Like has following the money changed the way you understand what women are told they should want? jo (14:26.483) Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. jo (14:32.755) Hundred percent, hundred percent. Because I think that that is the right question. Who benefits from this? Who benefits from me watching this? Who benefits from me buying this? Many of the times it is these tech companies run by men who are fucking up our world. Okay. So I just asking that question, who is and also who is deciding that I should see this, right? Because the algorithm is a tricky thing. It’s not showing you what’s best for you, it’s showing you what’s going to keep you blue to your screens. and sometimes I sound like a conspiracy theorist when I talk about all this, but you know, we’re kind of living in an episode of black mirror right now when it comes to technology. So, and I think that just remembering that what you’re being served isn’t necessarily what you should be being served. I mess with my algorithm so much that I am only served very joyful things. Julie Fried (15:13.869) Hundred percent. jo (15:26.213) Right now I am served Dolly Parton, otters holding hands, people buying things from Goodwill and then crafting with them. recipes involving cheese and butter stores in Paris. It’s fucking great. Julie Fried (15:33.165) Julie Fried (15:38.477) I think my entire algorithm right now is like recipes your toddler will eat. It’s just different ways to make a waffle. jo (15:46.919) Yeah, it’s just different ways to make a French fry is what it is. Julie Fried (15:50.006) Yeah. Tyler Moore, aka Tidy Dad, is how you and I got connected. we actually were just he’s someone I took a shot on and pitched and then we’ve become friends and he was like, you should have Joe on your podcast and I was like, That’s so I was like, That’s so cute that you think I could achieve that, that you think I could get her and he was like, I’ll make an introduction and I was like, What? And then I like dropped my phone. He’s the best. jo (15:57.274) Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. jo (16:06.666) he’s wonderful. I love him. jo (16:12.434) Here we are. I know, Tyler’s the best. He’s the best. Julie Fried (16:18.827) But, you know, I’ve heard you enthusiastically like enthusiastically recommend him, despite like professionally investigating influencer culture. So what is it about him that makes you trust someone like Tyler? What is the difference between someone influencing you and someone manipulating you? ‘Cause there are lots of those people out there too. jo (16:38.875) Lots of lots of those people. And Tyler is really one of the good ones. And I’m friends with a lot of influencers. I’m I’m Julie Fried (16:43.124) One of the best. jo (16:44.563) I’m I’m I’m friends with Grace Atwood. She influences me to buy things I love every day and has for ten years. You know, I think it’s the influencers who are very transparent about this being a business, transparent about their lives. Tyler literally shows the messy parts of his life, right? And like and he’s very honest, and he’s very honest that he’s getting paid when you buy something from him. So is Grace. they’re also not using their platforms to spread toxic ideas like a lot of influencers are. Again, like not influencing is not Julie Fried (16:59.201) Yeah. Julie Fried (17:10.155) Yes. jo (17:13.457) Bad on its face, but some influencers are influencing you in a negative way. Some influencers are manipulating you. Julie Fried (17:22.347) I want to go ahead and just switch gears entirely. I want to talk about your latest novel, which is The Parisian Heist. I devoured it when it came out, as I do all of your books. but it gave me like another lens on this whole conversation because part of what fascinated you was that Jo Van Gogh like and the enormous role that she played in building Vincent’s legacy. So she kind of helped shape the story through which the world came to understand him and his work. And I just wanted to know if researching her and all of that changed the way you think about the power of a story, like not just to communicate value, but actually like create value. jo (18:01.992) Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean A hundred percent it did. So the Parisian heist is partially about the untold, unsung story of Joe Van Gogh. She is the woman who made Vincent Van Gogh famous. She inherited hundreds of his paintings which were worthless at the time and single-handedly turned him into the rock star of the art world that we know today. I in all of my books I like to try to have some thread of women’s stories that have not been championed enough. Whether that be certain kinds of influencers, or that if that’s a woman running for office in Pennsylvania, or the Sicilian women who held to got together entire cities when the men left for America. And that’s one of my goals. And telling Joe’s story felt so important because Vincent is so well known. I mean, he’s he’s such a god among men in the art world. And yet, The majority of people have never heard Jo’s name and I think she deserves credit. I think we also need to talk more about the invisible labor of so many women throughout history who have been written out of history. So I love the book The Parisian Heist. I I just Anyone who loves art history, feeling a little smarter after books, historical fiction, will love it. But then we also have a very sexy art heist in the modern timeline. an all-woman art heist, which I I researched with many actual heist experts, which means yes, I probably could pull off the greatest heist of all time right now. and it’s got a lot of rich people behaving very badly. It’s got Paris, which I love more than anything. I think the Parisian Heist might be my favorite book. Julie Fried (19:32.39) So cool. jo (19:42.811) Of all time, even though Sicilian inheritance and everyone is lying to you, come up as a really, really close, really close tied for second. Julie Fried (19:52.056) So you mentioned it the invisible labor, ’cause there’s another idea in the book that I love, which is like sometimes questioning the story isn’t discovering like what we were told was fake. It’s just discovering who was left out of that story. So as a journalist, how do you train yourself to notice like what’s missing? jo (20:04.98) Mm-hmm. jo (20:10.776) well I mean you don’t know. You don’t train yourself. You just you don’t know until you start reporting. You don’t know until you start working. And you know, I think that well, and you have to keep showing up. It’s not you can’t just sit, you know, and type away at a computer. You have to show up in the world. You have to investigate, you have to talk to actual human beings in person to try to figure out what is missing and how to put all of these pieces together. Julie Fried (20:16.565) Yeah. You just have to keep searching. Julie Fried (20:37.111) Where do you think women are still doing really consequential work today that we’re failing to properly recognize? Great. jo (20:44.134) Everywhere? I mean, everywhere. What where are they not doing consequen consequential work that we fail to recognize? I mean, I th I still think that one of the s the great battles is recognizing women who work inside the home, who work raising children. And we still refer to that as a stay at home mom. No one is staying, okay? Like we still discount that as labor. but I mean honestly in every field in the world. Yeah. All over. Julie Fried (20:58.923) Yeah. Julie Fried (21:11.561) Is there a s agreed. Is there a story about how your own life was supposed to look that you’ve had to rewrite? jo (21:21.092) Yeah. I I do think I will say though, like if I could tell my twenty one year old self how things turned out, she’d be pretty psyched. Like I really freaking love my life. I love being a mom. I love my job. I love my h I love my husband. I did think that I was going to work at one newspaper or magazine for the rest of my life. I mean I thought I thought that I would remain in media at one job or maybe like move up the ranks eventually to like a big magazine or a big newspaper job. And then that whole world imploded and now I run my own media company, right? Which I like just as much. It’s just different. Julie Fried (21:47.021) Yeah. Julie Fried (21:56.59) After everything that you have reported, investigated, questioned, what’s one story about a good life that you still wholeheartedly believe? jo (22:08.094) You know, I think that we have to recognize a good life. I mean, that’s why I like to sit back and be like, You got all of the things you wanted and then some, like be freaking happy, right? I do think that we are told, you know, a good life looks like this and this and this and you know, especially we’re sold that a lot on on social media. But I think you have to sit down and think about what makes me happy. Am I doing the things that make me happy? How could I be like, what could I do more of that I enjoy? remember we have a lot more agency over things than than we think. and I also think, you know, having a good life does no does not for women mean climbing any kind of corporate ladder. Every woman that I know that’s done that, and I did it for a long time, is freaking miserable. Okay. Again, because the corporate world is terrible to us. Julie Fried (22:49.229) Yeah. Julie Fried (22:52.597) It’s not made for us. jo (22:52.614) s some women are it’s not made for us. And some women are very happy doing that because they like the titles and every I love money. Okay. So, you know, liking money is great. But I the world is not made for us in that way. So yeah, I think Also not tying our self-worth to our jobs. I’m very guilty of it. I tie my self-worth to how good my books are doing at any given time. I wish I could stop doing that. it’s like this one thing I would love to get over. That said, everyone should go out and buy the Parisian heist immediately. You’ll freaking love it. But that is yeah, yeah, but that it but yeah. I think that was just like a long winding answer. Julie Fried (23:26.891) Yeah. Julie Fried (23:33.323) So after a conversation where we talked about questioning what people are selling w us, I am now going to make you sell us something. So you’ve got the new book out, tell us what we need to know about the Parisian Heist and anything else you want us reading, listening to, or following along right now. Where can people find you? Where can people engage with your work more? jo (23:37.544) Okay. jo (23:52.882) Yeah. I’m on the Instagram at Joe Piazza Author and I yeah, I want everyone to grab the Parisian heist. Everyone that I know that’s read it, has loved it. You walk away feeling so much smarter about the art world in a very cool way, but I also think that people are really enjoying this backbone of female friendship and women supporting other women. and also, you know, it’s probably gonna teach you how to pull off a really great heist. So you got that going for ya. Julie Fried (24:24.79) Love that. Okay. Thank you so much for being here, Joe. This was so awesome. It was so cool to get to talk to you. I I love your work and it’ll all of it will be linked in the show notes. I can’t wait. All right, I’m gonna stop. jo (24:31.924) This was so fun. Thank you so much. jo (24:37.052) I can’t wait. Thank you. Have a great day. Julie Fried (00:21.59) Alright, everyone, we have spent this episode talking about questioning the stories we’ve been told, but Joe’s latest book, The Parisian Heist, also raises another important question. Could I successfully pull off a heist? I’ve thought about it. And the answer is no. No, I couldn’t. Could I steal a hotel pen? Absolutely. An extra dessert from a re a wedding? Yes, I have the confidence in the industry experience. Could I knowingly walk out of Target without paying for something? No. Not only do I not want to, but I’d make it about twelve feet into the parking lot and panic turn myself in. So international art theft probably isn’t my calling. But you know what I am qualified to do? Boss other people around and tell them my honest opinions about how they performed. So I’ve appointed myself HR for a fictional heist crew. The job is done, the painting has been stolen. And unfortunately for them, it’s time for their post-Heist performance reviews. Up first, Olivia Pope, the mastermind. Performance rating exceeds expectations. Olivia arrived with the original Heist plan, three backup plans, and the private cell phone number of someone at Interpol who apparently owes her a favor. She successfully stole the painting, resolved in unrelated international incident, and somehow returned wearing a better coat than the one she left in. Excellent leadership concerning work-life balance. Next up is Blair Waldorf, our inside man. Performance rating exceeds expectations. Blair walked into the museum gala without an invitation, immediately identified the three most powerful people in the room, and somehow convinced the curator that he should be grateful, she showed up. Twenty minutes later, she had access to the private collection, the security schedule. And damaging personal information about the two board members. Extremely effective. Workplace culture has become noticeably more hostile since her arrival. Next up we have Alexis Rose, our distraction. Performance rating exceeds expectations. Somehow. Alexis was assigned to distract one security guard for four minutes. Unfortunately, she knew him. Julie Fried (02:44.878) Apparently they dated briefly after being kidnapped by Smalley Pirates, although the timeline was difficult to follow. She distracted him for forty-five minutes, got invited to his sister’s wedding, and left with his apartment keys. I have several follow-up questions. None are relevant to her job performance. Next, Phil Dunfey, the getaway driver. Performance rating exceeds expectations. Phil arrived three hours early. He had mapped four escape routes, packed emergency snacks, and purchased several gadgets online he repeatedly referred to as his heist tech. Nobody asked him to do any of this. He did briefly attempt a three-point turn while we were actively fleeing the scene, but ultimately got everyone out safely and described the night as the best night of my life. Surprisingly competent. We’ll need to stop telling people about this immediately. And finally we have Ross Geller, the wild card. Performance rating immediate termination. Ross had one job. Blend in. Instead, he overheard a museum guide incorrectly described the history of the painting and interrupted the tour to correct her. This became a twelve minute lecture. When security asked him to leave, he loudly announced, I have a PhD. Again, We were attempting to steal a painting at the time. Ross has been terminated. His lady friend Rachel has submitted an eighteen page letter front and back explaining why I was too hard on him. Ross claims he read it. I don’t believe him. And that concludes this quarter’s performance reviews. Joe, thank you for teaching us how to question the stories we’ve been told and through the Preation Heights helping me discover that while I have absolutely No future in international art theft, I apparently do have a promising career telling international art thieves what they did wrong. Honestly, much more my skill set. There is something absolutely freeing about realizing that not every rule you’ve been following is actually a rule. Sometimes it’s a value you genuinely believe in. Julie Fried (05:00.952) Sometimes someone is making money from convincing you it’s true, and sometimes the story we’ve all accepted isn’t necessarily wrong. It’s just missing the person who should have been part of it all along. I think that’s what I’ll take away from this conversation. Questioning the story doesn’t mean deciding it’s false. It means getting curious enough to ask where it came from, who benefits from it, who’s missing from it, and whether you still want to carry it forward. Joe, thank you so much for letting me borrow your reporter brain and for reminding us that the stories we tell don’t just describe our lives. They can shape what we value, what we remember, and what we believe is possible. And if this episode made you think of someone who could use permission to question a few of their own shoulds, please send it to them. Make sure you are subscribed to the system for everything. And if you’re enjoying the show, leaving a review is one of the easiest ways to help more people find us. See you next week.