Author: [email protected]

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

Timestamps

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

Transcript

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

Resources & links

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: http://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.

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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: http://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

Timestamps

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

Transcript

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

Connect with Mary:

• Website: http://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

Transcript

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

Connect with Mary:

• Website: http://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.

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, Vietnam, and inflation, so we reached for nostalgia instead. Little House on the Prairie, anyone? On this episode, I take you on what The Bachelor would call “a journey” through the highs, lows, and huhs? of the bicentennial. On tap: why America is so obsessed with celebrating itself and what that’s looked like in the past, the mission and merch of the bicentennial, the protests, and, inexplicably, the queen.

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

Timestamps

• (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

Transcript

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

Connect with Mary:

• Website: http://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.