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 adequately explained), and ended up covering: the benefit concerts that defined the first month of grief that turned to rage, the album covers and music videos quietly re-edited to erase the twin towers, country music's hard turn to support the Iraq War, what happened to the Chicks when they refused to fall in line, and the strange, sometimes unbelievable songs 9/11 directly inspired, including one performed by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and one written by an 11-year-old Taylor Swift. We also cover the Limp Bizkit VMA fruit basket coincidence you did not ask for but are about to learn anyway.

Become a Patreon member → https://www.patreon.com/cw/MaryMahoney 

00:09 — Intro: why a music and 9/11 episode, 25 years later

06:14 — Personal 9/11 memories (Abby and Mary)

11:01 — The Limp Bizkit "Rollin'" World Trade Center coincidence

17:56 — Congress sings on the Capitol steps; the benefit concerts introduced

22:13 — America: A Tribute to Heroes (Sept 21), Springsteen opens with "My City of Ruins"

32:16 — Concert for New York City (Oct 21); Paul McCartney and the shift toward revenge

39:41 — The Beastie Boys' "New Yorkers Against Violence" benefit and the policy timeline (Patriot Act, "war on terror")

44:24 — Censorship 101: Clear Channel's rise and the "no-play" memo quiz

56:04 — Music videos and album covers edited after 9/11

1:08:26 — Country music's turn right: Toby Keith, Darryl Worley, and the Chicks

1:20:50 — Music inspired by 9/11: The Rising, My Chemical Romance, Coldplay, Cher

1:26:17 — "Songs I Can't Believe Exist" (Ashcroft, Michael Jackson, Smash Mouth, Taylor Swift) and closing reflections

Full episode transcript here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tvj_pHsqX9PwN0GyngE7OXVCEQBUlGDVHAvuGw2w8pM/edit?usp=sharing 

Benefit concerts & background

• America: A Tribute to Heroes
• The Concert for New York City
• "New Yorkers Against Violence" (Beastie Boys benefit) — Rolling Stone coverage
• Clear Channel memorandum (the banned/discouraged songs list)
• List of songs about the September 11 attacks (Wikipedia)
• Super Bowl XXXVI halftime show (U2)

Books & documentaries

• Music in the Post-9/11 World, ed. Jonathan Ritter and J. Martin Daughtry
• Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror
• Fahrenheit 9/11

Follow Landline:

• Instagram: @landlinewithmary
• Tiktok:@landlinewithmary
• YouTube:@LandlinewithMary
• Website: https://landlinewithmary.com/ 

Connect with Me:

• Website: www.marymmahoney.com
• Instagram: @mimimahoney
• Email: [email protected] 
• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/MaryMahoney 

Love the show? Please leave a rating and review! It helps other listeners find Landline.

Sponsor Message: 

Landline is sponsored by Libro.Fm. Listen to your favorite books and support your local bookstores! (Link: https://tidd.ly/40tPrKb )

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, and the two songs (written, according to legend, in the same day) that prove she was one of the great American songwriters, full stop. I talk about seeing her live at Tanglewood in 2016, "Pure and Simple" and how it got me through coming out to my family, the place I set for her at my own wedding, and what I want my son to understand about her someday, from 9 to 5 to the songbook she bought back for Porter Wagoner decades after he made her career miserable.

Then we zoom out to the "future history" of it all: how Dolly Parton fits into histories of women in country music, the impossible standards she was held to as a woman and an artist, the myth of the apolitical celebrity, what her giving says about wealth and philanthropy in our current Gilded Age, and why she asked Tennessee lawmakers not to build her a statue. Whatever history decides, I know how I'll remember her: for her talent, and for her kindness.

Become a Patreon member → https://www.patreon.com/cw/MaryMahoney 

Full episode transcript here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E5BygIoCPYH_5CJTYRbyvNZ9yyBynI1Tcq-AKKi1PMM/edit?usp=sharing

Follow Landline:

• Instagram: @landlinewithmary
• Tiktok:@landlinewithmary
• YouTube:@LandlinewithMary
• Website: https://landlinewithmary.com/ 

Connect with Me:

• Website: www.marymmahoney.com
• Instagram: @mimimahoney
• Email: [email protected] 
• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/MaryMahoney 

Love the show? Please leave a rating and review! It helps other listeners find Landline.

Sponsor Message: 

Landline is sponsored by Libro.Fm. Listen to your favorite books and support your local bookstores! (Link: https://tidd.ly/40tPrKb ) 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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-Broadway, a plagiarism lawsuit that I still can’t believe, the infamous fan who faked a terminal illness to get rush tickets, and what it was like to tape bootlegs, wade through early Rent message boards, listservs, and write fan fiction. Kait and Renata first met online as Rent fans, and I’m so glad they could join me on this journey through the history of Rent, which asks: what was this, what did it mean then, and what does it mean to us now? Thirty years later, does Rent hold up? Kind of. Does it still make us feel things? Absolutely.

Note: Paid members will get a bonus segment with Kait and Renata’s hot takes on Rent. Hint, one involves Joey Fatone and stunt casting. 

Become a Patreon member → https://www.patreon.com/cw/MaryMahoney 

00:00 — Cold open: "You two said off mic that you really loved the film"

00:18 — Welcome to Landline, meet Kait and Renata of Worst Bestsellers 

04:23 — So what is Rent, actually? We talk about the hot plate.

06:52 — Jonathan Larson, his death, and the real AIDS crisis backdrop the show was written into 

13:45 — The legal drama begins: the Billy Aronson handshake deal 

22:21 — The tragedy: Larson dies the night before Rent's off-Broadway opening 

28:37 — Rush tickets, sleeping on the sidewalk, and the birth of Rent fandom (message boards, fan fiction, listservs, taping bootlegs)

32:37 — The infamous fan who faked a terminal illness to get close to the cast 

54:37 — The plagiarism lawsuit: Sarah Schulman vs. Rent 

1:03:01 — The Rent Live 2019 disaster (Renata won a contest and lived to tell it) 

1:09:19 — Where Rent sits with us now, on its 30th anniversary

Full episode transcript here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f2QodlDoxGF8t044yTwnOdh6sFby5l9UkXIVZteBKQ0/edit?usp=sharing 

Follow Landline:

• Instagram: @landlinewithmary
• Tiktok:@landlinewithmary
• YouTube:@LandlinewithMary
• Website: https://landlinewithmary.com/ 

Connect with Mary:

• Website: www.marymmahoney.com
• Instagram: @mimimahoney
• Email: [email protected] 
• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/MaryMahoney 

Connect with Renatta and Kait, and Worst Bestsellers Podcast:

• Website: https://www.frowl.org/worstbestsellers/ 
• Instagram: @worstbestsellers  
• Renata’s Instagram: @renatasnacks 
• Kait’s Instagram: @fourteenacross

Love the show? Please leave a rating and review! It helps other listeners find Landline.

Sponsor Message: 

Landline is sponsored by Libro.Fm. Listen to your favorite books and support your local bookstores! (Link: https://tidd.ly/40tPrKb ) 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 current Mormon-wife renaissance on Bravo and beyond — and what all of it says about the American dream of homeownership, especially now that it feels further out of reach than ever. Jack is a delight, and left me wondering, “what if the cruelest architecture on Reality TV are the Below Deck yachts?”  

Timestamps

00:08 — Intro: reality TV, architecture, and Jack Balderrama Morley's Dream Facades

02:45 — What inspired the book

04:49 — Heidi Montag, Laguna Beach, and reality TV's turn toward the aspirational

10:26 — Selling Sunset and the "beige-ification" of reality real estate

13:50 — The architecture of Selling Sunset: from mid-century modernism to "shellacked modernism"

19:20 — The Real World, the SoHo loft, and the birth of reality TV

34:00 — The Kardashians, Hidden Hills, and the American frontier myth

50:45 — Real Housewives of Atlanta and Chateau Chérie

1:01:52 — Trading Spaces, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and the makeover-show genre

1:13:46 — Mormons, reality TV, and Real Housewives of Salt Lake City

Resources & Links Mentioned

Topics Discussed:

• Selling Sunset
• The Hills
• Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County
• The Real World
• Keeping Up with the Kardashians
• The Real Housewives of Atlanta
• The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
• Sister Wives
• Trading Spaces
• Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

Further Reading/Viewing:

• For more information on the gap between black and white homeownership, check out this report from Stateline: https://stateline.org/2022/10/13/black-families-fall-further-behind-on-homeownership/ 

Want even more resources, deep dives, and behind-the-scenes context on this episode's topics? Patreon members get access to my exclusive newsletter with extended research, additional links, and insights that didn't make it into the show. You can get the weekly newsletter when you join for free. Paid members get a monthly bonus episode and a weekly newsletter of things I'm loving in pop culture.

Become a Patreon member → https://www.patreon.com/cw/MaryMahoney 

Full episode transcript here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EL3u6H2HaPkyPLTj13o12i32_q541v2jIG4WSlaTdbk/edit?usp=sharing 

Connect with Mary:

• Website: www.marymmahoney.com
• Instagram: @mimimahoney
• Email: [email protected]

Love the show? Please leave a rating and review! It helps other listeners find Landline.

Connect with Jack Balderrama Morley:

• Website: https://www.jackbalderramamorley.com/ 
• Instagram: @jackbaldmo
• Read Jack’s writing at Dwell: https://www.dwell.com/@jackbalderramamorley1760/articles 
• Read Jack’s book: https://bookshop.org/a/102042/9781662602924 

Sponsor Message: 

Landline is sponsored by Libro.Fm. Listen to your favorite books and support your local bookstores! (Link: https://tidd.ly/40tPrKb ) 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 with posters of their heroes, filling notebooks with genuinely bad poetry. We go from the Riot Grrrl scene in 90s Olympia and Kathleen Hanna's outsized (and under-credited) cultural footprint, to the moral panic of Reviving Ophelia and the Cassie Bernall myth, to Tavi Gevinson and Rookie Mag, all the way up to "bed rotting" as bedroom culture's more depressed, more online cousin. It's a conversation about privacy, creativity, and what happens to a private space once the internet — and your own phone — starts listening in. Grab your zine scissors, we're getting into it.

Become a Patreon member → https://www.patreon.com/cw/MaryMahoney 

00:08 — Intro: what "bedroom culture" is, and welcoming Rachel Moss

02:28 — Rachel's zine shelf and the joy of meeting a fellow zine person

03:04 — Making zines in secret in rural Ohio, and the Courtney Love conspiracy zine detour

05:26 — Defining bedroom culture: making, consuming, and archiving

09:21 — Where it starts: the 1950s "invention" of the American teenager

10:40 — Riot Grrrl 101: Olympia, Kathleen Hanna, and Bikini Kill

14:18 — Sadie Benning's bedroom video diaries and the tangled Riot Grrrl web (Le Tigre, etc.)

17:26 — The dark side: Prozac Nation, Reviving Ophelia, and the Cassie Bernall myth

22:51 — Shared family computers, Net Chick, and the first wave of girls building websites

28:35 — Rookie Mag, Tavi Gevinson, and Petra Collins' uncredited influence

36:00 — Bed rotting, depression, and Qualeasha Wood's 2025 gallery performance

44:44 — Building Internet Bedroom, staying independent, and resisting the algorithm

53:32 — Where to find Rachel's book, Substack, and Instagram

Full episode transcript here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19mENoNtmGvp4XVh_7MELEsh1laxpvIVMx-meN9-OaZk/edit?usp=sharing 

Connect with Mary:

• Website: www.marymmahoney.com
• Instagram: @mimimahoney
• Email: [email protected]

Connect with Rachel Moss:

• Order Rachel’s books here: https://www.internetbedroom777.com
• YouTube: Rachel Moss (@internetbedroom) 
• Instagram: @girlgutters
• Substack: https://internetbedroom.substack.com

Love the show? Please leave a rating and review! It helps other listeners find Landline.

Sponsor Message: 

Landline is sponsored by Libro.Fm. Listen to your favorite books and support your local bookstores! (Link: https://tidd.ly/40tPrKb )

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 and Black history organizers who used the bicentennial's grant money to build the public history field as we know it. It turns out nostalgia isn't good or bad, it just is, and the receipts are more interesting than the fireworks.

This month’s patreon episode is a 411 episode on the bicentennial. Join the $5/month tier to hear it now. 

Become a Patreon member → https://www.patreon.com/cw/MaryMahoney 

Suggest a future episode topic here: https://www.patreon.com/MaryMahoney/posts/running-list-of-159302658?collection=1744255 

Timestamps

• 00:08 – Welcome, and why the bicentennial matters for America 250
• 02:05 – MJ on stumbling into a dissertation topic nobody else wanted
• 06:32 – How Americans went from watching history to living inside it
• 14:23 – Reenactment, Reagan's Oval Office for kids, and "Hippies Living History"
• 20:37 – 1966: Johnson forms the first bicentennial commission
• 29:12 – Nixon takes over and wants fireworks, not history
• 32:56 – Philadelphia's World's Fair collapses under its own weight
• 34:33 – The People's Bicentennial Commission crashes the Boston Tea Party
• 38:26 – The Afro-American Bicentennial Corporation and the fight for historic sites
• 1:04:05 – MJ's hot take: the 250th is just the 1893 World's Fair with worse merch

Full episode transcript here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nuDQ8GbcGKv4DmoAJ3jkPUutO8dpuDzq2oFO3SCnWpY/edit?usp=sharing 

Connect with Mary:

• Website: www.marymmahoney.com
• Instagram: @mimimahoney
• Email: [email protected]

Connect with M.J. Rymsza-Pavlovska:

• Website: https://mjrymszapawlowska.com/ 
• Book: History Comes Alive: Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 family's nachos), and whether Jesus Christ is technically a nepo baby. Spoiler: it depends on your theology (but it’s also making me want to rewatch Jesus Christ Superstar).

Become a Patreon member → https://www.patreon.com/cw/MaryMahoney 

• (00:00) Cold open / Fran's cat Bandit joins the show
• (03:10) The meritocracy myth and why nepo babies make us angry
• (08:08) Ben Platt's PR redemption arc
• (12:29) How nepotism started in the Catholic Church (hi, Borgias)
• (15:10) Was Jesus a nepo baby?
• (20:00) Emeril Lagasse IV and the "no seriously he earned it" profile
• (28:21) Bronny James and the tragedy of an impossible legacy
• (32:06) Chet Hanks: performance art or just vibes?
• (35:24) Jack Schlossberg, least favorite nepo baby, explained
• (43:38) Fran's favorites: Laura Dern, Jason Schwartzmann, the Gummers
• (48:18) Kai Trump's "just a regular girly" era and Tiffany Trump's strange tragedy
• (53:23) The takeaway: don't apologize, don't be boring, and if you have money, do something good

Full episode transcript here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11ghO5c8muWn77GzbPfNGP84l06ixrr8RNt4URRQDdn8/edit?usp=sharing 

Connect with Mary:

• Website: www.marymmahoney.com
• Instagram: @mimimahoney
• Email: [email protected]

Connect with Fran:

• Read Fran’s Book! The Field Guide to Nepo Babies (https://bookshop.org/a/102042/9781523530465 ) 
• Subscribe to Fran Magazine: https://franmagazine.substack.com/ 
• Website: https://www.franhoepfner.fyi/ 
• Instagram: @franhoepfner  

Love the show? Please leave a rating and review! It helps other listeners find Landline.

Sponsor Message: 

Landline is sponsored by Libro.Fm. Listen to your favorite books and support your local bookstores! (Link: https://tidd.ly/40tPrKb ) 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 queerness you can absolutely read into it if you're paying attention, the absolutely wild copyright drama that shaped the whole Kevin Sullivan universe, and what Lucy Maud Montgomery's own life might tell us about why she wrote the story she did. Plus: trivia, a trip to PEI, a lunch with Lucy Maud Montgomery's actual granddaughter (and what it's like to attend a conference with her descendants), and a very firm stance on Part Three. Long episode. Worth every minute.

Become a Patreon member → https://www.patreon.com/cw/MaryMahoney

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 very real and very wild 19th-century practice of advertising for a wife (one man received 794 letters, 13 daguerreotypes, and one thimble — just leaving that there), why Sarah Wheaton is a genuinely subversive heroine who would absolutely not survive the Ballerina Farm comment section, and what tradwife culture fundamentally misunderstands about what life on the prairie actually looked like for women. Spoiler: it was not sourdough and calico aesthetics. It was getting on the roof. We also talk grief and longing, Frontier House (the PBS show that radicalized a generation of history nerds), the Hemingway comparisons this book actually deserves, and why a scene involving three colored pencils might be the most emotionally efficient ending in American literature. Stay tuned for a future 411 episode connecting all of this to the longer history of Wives Wanted culture — and yes, 90 Day Fiancé.

Become a Patreon member → https://www.patreon.com/cw/MaryMahoney 

00:00 – Introduction: Why Sarah, Plain and Tall made us cry 

05:30 – The real history of Wives Wanted ads (794 letters, 24 shirt buttons, one thimble) 

13:00 – What this book is actually about: grief, longing, and Caleb's unanswerable question 

22:00 – The yellow bonnet arrives: why Sarah puts everyone at ease immediately 

27:00 – Tradwives vs. homesteaders: what trad wife culture gets completely wrong about the past 

36:00 – Frontier House, Doctor Quinn, and our shared disease of prairie nostalgia 

44:00 – The colored pencils ending, and why Patricia McLachlan is a genius

Full episode transcript here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1543EYkJM9RvhFTP3nh0Dy_mxzQOPO5DhxlLoINm0fUk/edit?usp=sharing 

Connect with Mary:

• Website: www.marymmahoney.com
• Instagram: @mimimahoney
• Email: [email protected]

Connect with Sara:

• Website: https://sara-petersen.com/ 
• Twitter/X: @slouisepetersen
• Instagram: @slouisepetersen 
• Book: Momfluenced: Inside the Maddening, Picture-Perfect World of Mommy Influencer Culture
• Newsletter: In Pursuit of Clean Countertops
• Podcast: Clean Countertops

Love the show? Please leave a rating and review! It helps other listeners find Landline.

Sponsor Message: 

Landline is sponsored by Libro.Fm. Listen to your favorite books and support your local bookstores! (Link: https://tidd.ly/40tPrKb ) 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.