Landline with Mary Mahoney

I sat down with historian M.J. Rymsza-Pawlowska, author of History Comes Alive , to figure out why America decided to throw itself a birthday party in the middle of Watergate, and what that has to do with the strange, sputtering rollout of the 250th happening right now. We get into Nixon hijacking a nonpartisan commission, a very wagon train crossing the country to meet Gerald Ford, and the queer...

America is turning 250 this year, and to make sense of the chaos of America 250 (Vanilla Ice on the National Mall, a Confederate flag at the Great American State Fair) I had to go back to the last time we tried this. The Bicentennial, 1976. LBJ started with an earnest planning commission. Nixon gutted it and replaced them with his buddies. Sound familiar? The country was exhausted by Watergate, Vi...

This episode, I chat with Fran Hoepfner — critic, Vulture writer, and author of The Field Guide to Nepo Babies — to trace nepotism from the medieval Catholic Church all the way to Bronny James and Kai Trump. They get into who's doing it right (Ben Platt's Rachel Zegler solidarity era, Romy Mars booking a helicopter and owning it on TikTok), who's doing it wrong (Jack Schlossberg, reheating his fam...

Is your life a perfect graveyard of buried hopes? Have I got the episode for you! This month, I sit down with fellow historian and lifelong Anne devotee Samantha to talk about the thing that started it all: Kevin Sullivan's 1985 miniseries adaptation of Anne of Green Gables , starring Megan Follows. They get into what it meant to find Anne as a girl, why it still hits different as an adult, the qu...

We need to talk about Sarah, Plain and Tall. Yes, the children's book. Yes, it will make you cry. I'm joined by the brilliant Sara Petersen — writer of the In Pursuit of Clean Countertops newsletter and author of Momfluenced — to revisit Patricia MacLachlan's 1985 masterpiece, and I promise we are not being dramatic when we say it holds up. It more than holds up. It destroys you. We get into the v...

Why are we still so drawn to the Tudor era? Is it Henry VIII? His wives? The soap opera-level intrigue? I called up historian Nicola Clark, author of The Waiting Game , to talk about the women who were always in the background of this history, the ladies in waiting who served Henry VIII's six wives. These women were information brokers, diplomatic agents, reluctant witnesses, and fierce loyalists,...

Oh, we're really doing this. This month's bonus episode is the one I didn't know I needed until I needed it desperately: a full deep dive into Xenon: Girl of the 21st Century , the DCOM that has genuinely never left my brain, and honestly, why would I want it to? I'm joined by editor extraordinaire and fellow Leo, Kat Brzozowski (of Dolls of Our Lives: Why We Can't Quit American Girl fame), and we...

This week, I'm talking with author and producer Meredith Bagby about her book The New Guys , which follows the NASA astronaut class of 1978, the first to include women and people of color. We get into Sally Ride's complicated legacy (first American woman in space, closeted gay icon, accidental hero of the Challenger investigation), the very real dangers of flying on a shuttle whose O-rings had fai...

What does it mean to be a WNBA fan, and can we find the answer in fashion? I talked with digital media artist and archivist Hypatia Sorunke about A Women’s Basketball Fashion Archive, a project focused on documenting the expression of the global community of people who love women’s basketball. The premier project, “The Fitted W,” chronicled 1500+ archival film photos at 50+ games in 12 major citie...

Is turning 40 a big deal? Am I headed for a midlife crisis? This week I'm joined by the brilliant Corinne Fay of Big Undies to dig into the actual history behind the midlife crisis (spoiler: it was invented in 1965, mostly about men, and honestly feels like a Mad Men episode). We trace the significance of "40" from Biblical floods to actuarial science to Gail Sheehy's hugely influential 1976 book...

In 1998, VH1 gathered Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan, Shania Twain, Celine Dion, Aretha Franklin, and Carole King on one stage to raise money for music education — and accidentally created one of the most revealing documents of its era. I'm joined by music scholar Kwame Ocran to relive Divas Live in full: the Tommy Mottola sabotage plot hiding in plain sight, why Celine Dion dedicated My Heart Will...

You know the logo. You definitely had the jeans. But do you know the full story? I called up historian Aimee Loiselle to unpack what Baby Phat actually tells us about hip hop entrepreneurship, fast fashion, global labor, and why hustle culture never really lets you off the hamster wheel. We get into Kimora Lee and the history of Baby Phat, the real woman behind Norma Rae (who doesn't get enou...

It's my turn. I take my Gen Z friend Erin — a K-pop expert who has never heard of TRL — on a journey through the late 90s and early 2000s, when the media decided that women pop stars needed to be simultaneously sexy and virginal, and then punished them for both. We're talking Britney, Christina, Jessica Simpson, Justin Timberlake doing the absolute most on Barbara Walters, and how Ronald Reagan is...

My Gen Z friend Erin Shapland, librarian, K-pop enthusiast, and person who has never heard of TRL, joins me for a generational exchange on purity culture and pop. In part 1, Erin takes me through the world of K-pop: the management companies that sign kids at 12, the fan communities that send funeral wreaths when an idol is caught kissing his girlfriend, and the ways patriarchy manages to victimize...

Historian Monica Mercado joins me to explore nineteenth-century utopian communities — from the polyamorous, silverware-making Oneida community to the celibate, achingly chic Shakers — and what draws people to radical experiments in communal living then and now. We get into charismatic male leaders who will always, always disappoint you, why the Shakers are having a moment (three members and counti...

Sports journalist Frankie de la Cretaz joins me to talk about Heated Rivalry , the queer hockey romance that has straight women yelling "kiss!" at NHL games. We get into what that phenomenon reveals about MLM romance, consent in different queer communities, and the complicated politics of who gets to consume queer culture. We also dive into Frankie's experience defeating Boston's 2024 Olympic bid,...

I'm so excited to welcome my wife, librarian Anna Newman, for a conversation about navigating children's literature as new parents to our son Max. We discuss the joy and challenges of early parenthood, revisiting beloved childhood books that haven't aged well, and how we're thinking about introducing Max to classic stories—including whether problematic favorites like The Giving Tree and certain Am...

Figure skating journalist, coach, and writer Maura Sullivan Hill joins me to discuss what I'm predicting will be an extremely messy Winter Olympics. We talk about the lore surrounding today's figure skaters, the politics baked into every aspect of the sport, and why—spoiler alert—Michelle Kwan should have won the gold medal. Plus, Maura breaks my heart by confirming the pachinko is not technically...

American Girl is turning 40 this year (same, honestly), and with that milestone comes some reckoning with their original books. A few years ago, they quietly released revised editions of some classics, including "Kirsten Learns a Lesson"—the book where Swedish immigrant Kirsten befriends an Indigenous girl named Singing Bird, they somehow communicate without language, and then Singing Bird's famil...

Landline is the podcast where pop culture gets some context. Hosted by historian Mary Mahoney—your millennial friend with too many interests and not enough friends willing to talk on the phone—each episode calls up guests to connect today’s celebrity culture, internet trends, TV, music, and movies to the histories that explain why it all feels so familiar (even if it’s not). Blending non-boring hi...