Category: Nostalgia Tour

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

Timestamps

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

Transcript

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

Connect with Mary:

• Website: http://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 )

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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 do not hold back. We talk costumes, we talk Raven-Symoné’s criminally underused presence, we talk about Greg and his many, many crimes. We also get into what this movie actually got right about the future, why Protozoa is the only trustworthy man in the film, and what it means that we are — I cannot stress this enough — closer to 2049 than to 1999. Zetus lapetus, indeed.

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

Timestamps

00:00 — Intro & how Kat and Mary found each other (via Kat’s sister scout, publishing lore, and American Girl)

09:00 — Rewatching Zenon: the opening sequence as a masterclass in show don’t tell, Leo energy, and the costume theory

20:00 — Greg’s crimes, Aunt Judy’s chaos, and the case for Protozoa

36:00 — Technology, surveillance, and what 1999 got eerily right (and wrong) about the future 51:00 — Girl power, Raven-Symoné, and why this movie has aged surprisingly well

1:05:00 — Supernova Girl, the songwriters, and the music that still goes hard

1:20:00 — Final takes, AOL emails, Lance Bass almost going to space, and why Zenon deserved more

Transcript

Full episode transcript here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cSyNza0TE2Ti0bFpDw51l9bW6eRnRKf7GVAu14dy6bQ/edit?usp=sharing

Connect with Mary:

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

Connect with Kat:

• Kat’s Substack: https://katbrzozowski.substack.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katbrzozowski/

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 )

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

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 Go On to the actual Titanic victims mid-concert, what happened when Aretha Franklin heard the air conditioning turn on, and who in that lineup was truly a diva versus who just crimped their hair and hoped for the best. We also get into the neoliberal defunding of arts education, the gendered double standard baked into the word “diva” itself, and why we are not going to be saying Jennifer Lopez’s name on this episode. (We said it once. That’s the limit.) Pop culture, meet context.

Want to hear the full episode? Plus get access to 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

Connect with Mary:

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

Connect with Kwame:

• Website: https://music.sas.upenn.edu/people/kwame-ocran
• Links: https://linktr.ee/KwameOcran

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

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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 American Girl books have a place on his bookshelf.

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

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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 family just…leaves Minnesota voluntarily at the end. For my first episode of Landline, I call up Colette Denalie Dion Montoya, an indigenous researcher and librarian, to help me understand what American Girl changed in the new edition and whether swapping out words like “savage” actually addresses the deeply colonial narrative at the heart of this story. We talk about representation, nostalgia versus history, the insidious ways racism gets re-coded, and why Pleasant Rowland collaborating with Barbie feels like a betrayal.

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

Get the weekly newsletter and biweekly podcast episodes FREE!

For $5/month, get ad-free episodes, a monthly bonus episode, a weekly newsletter of pop culture recommendations, and more!

Timestamps

00:00 — Why American Girl Made Millennials Like This

Main character energy, history-as-personality, and the doll books that rewired our brains.

07:00 — “American Girl Is in Its Hot Mess Era”

Mattel, quiet revisions, and why the 40th anniversary feels… tense.

12:00 — The Plot of Kirsten Learns a Lesson (Red Flags Included)

Secret forest meetings, “Indian friends,” and who gets to claim land as “home.”

23:30 — What American Girl Changed (and What They Didn’t)

From “savages” to “treaties”: how blame quietly moves off settlers and onto “the government.”

38:00 — Nostalgia vs. History

Why revisions, Barbie collabs, and 90s dolls reveal what the brand values now.

Further Reading/Viewing:

• Cooperative Children’s Book Center, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Diversity Statistics and Graphics: https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/literature-resources/ccbc-diversity-statistics/
• LibGuides: Native American Literature: Children’s Books (from Ohio Northern University): https://library.onu.edu/c.php?g=1279965&p=9394796
• “Manifest Destiny” in The American Yawp (a collaborative textbook on American history)
• “Running Zach” episode of Saved by the Bell, which its star discussed (and apologized for) on a later rewatch podcast, Zack to the Future.
• Dolls of Our Lives: Why We Can’t Quit American Girl (full disclosure: I co-wrote this unhinged history of a brand that has meant a lot to me!)

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, access to my AIM Buddly List chat, and more!

Become a Patreon member →

Read the full episode transcript here: (link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GY9vpEsF4CPdkcppujqW5gXKLY_u4xl7mfguine7DxY/edit?usp=sharing )

Connect with Mary:

• Website: http://www.marymmahoney.com
• Instagram: @mimimahoney

Connect with Colette:

Instagram: @colettka_cutletka

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

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