Landline with Mary Mahoney

If someone tells you they love Grover Cleveland, do not go with them to a second location. Welcome to the first Future History episode of Landline, where I ask some tough questions about how history will remember us. If future historians had only our music, movies, TV, and celebrity gossip to go on, could they understand life today? What stories would they tell about us? First up: the Season 4 pre...

What happens when American Girl writes its own fan fiction? On this episode, I’m joined by Margaret Hartmann of New York magazine to dig into Fiona Davis’s Samantha: The Next Chapter . The novel finds Samantha Parkington at 25 in 1920, grieving Grandmary and fighting for her inheritance, with a choice to make between two very different men. Along the way, we take stock of American Girl at 40: Brat...

If you grew up waiting by the mailbox for the winter issue, this one's for you. I'm joined by Aubre Andrus, former lifestyle editor at American Girl magazine and author of books for middle-grade readers, who is campaigning to bring the magazine back. We talk about what made it so special: the paper dolls that traced a girl's family through her mother's line, the raw honesty of Hear...

I have a confession. Murder, She Wrote is my favorite show of all time, and when I heard Jamie Lee Curtis is starring in a new version, I had questions. In this episode, I'm joined by Cristen Conger, host of Unladylike and Conspiracy, She Wrote, to make the case for Jessica Fletcher. We get into the show's quietly queer world and Angela Lansbury's astonishing life, from teen Oscar nomi...

This year marks the 25th anniversary of 9/11. For this episode, I wanted to look at one very specific way it reshaped American life: music. My friend Abby joined me to travel down a rabbit hole that started with an actual, still-referenced Clear Channel memo listing over 150 songs deemed "lyrically questionable" after the attacks (“Walk Like an Egyptian” made the cut, for reasons no one has ever a...

This week: Dolly Parton. On August 25th, Dolly Rebecca Parton passed away at 80, after a short battle with cancer. This is a personal one. I talk about what she meant to me: the country music rabbit hole that started at my public library, the sense of humor and radical acceptance that made her feel like home for a young queer kid, the story of the trans fan whose top surgery she quietly paid for,...

Happy 30th anniversary, Rent. I've been waiting 525,600 minutes for this one. This week on Landline, I hand my nostalgia tour over to Kait and Renata of the Worst Bestsellers podcast. They teach me about the history of Rent, including the behind-the-scenes drama. We get into everything: the wood-burning stove I'm genuinely concerned about, Jonathan Larson's death the night before Rent opened off-B...

This week I'm talking reality TV and architecture with Jack Balderrama Morley, author of Dream Facades: The Cruel Architecture of Reality TV . We take a tour through the homes reality TV has taught us to want — Selling Sunset's glossy nothing-houses, the SoHo loft that launched The Real World, the Kardashians' frontier fantasy in Hidden Hills, Real Housewives of Atlanta's Chateau Chérie, and the c...

Bedrooms have always been sacred ground for girls; the one square footage where you got to decide who you were before anyone else weighed in. This week I'm talking to Rachel Moss, author of In the Girls' Room: Essays on Bedroom Culture from the 90s to Now , about the long, weird, footnote-worthy history of what girls actually do behind a closed door: making zines, starting bands, papering walls wi...

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,...