I’m Mary Mahoney, a historian and podcaster who explores pop culture, memory, and the stories we tell about the things we love. My work connects the past to the present—using television, celebrity culture, media, and nostalgia to make sense of how history shows up in everyday life.

I write and produce Landline, a newsletter and podcast about pop culture—with context. The whole thing grew out of my background in history and a long-standing belief that pop culture matters, especially if you think about it with footnotes.

What I Do

Landline (Newsletter & Podcast)

Every week, I publish a newsletter and companion podcast that imagines our pop culture as future history. Is it possible to overthink the things we watch, read, listen to, etc.? Yes. This newsletter and podcast is the answer to that question.

Topics often include television and film, children’s media and nostalgia, cultural revision and historical memory, and how gender, class, and politics show up in entertainment (even when we don’t think they do).

Classes & Workshops

I teach live, small-group workshops that combine historical research, creative practice, and making things with your hands. These aren’t lecture courses or productivity bootcamps. They’re guided experiences designed to help people finish a project that actually means something to them.

Recent and upcoming classes explore genealogy as creative practice, paper dolls as biographical storytelling, archives, memory, and speculative history, and bibliotherapy and memoir—a course that invites participants to think about how reading has been used therapeutically in the past and to reflect on their own lives as readers through memoir writing.

My teaching style emphasizes fun, learning basic research, respect for emotional and archival limits, and reclaiming nostalgia and craft as serious work. If you’ve ever wanted someone to say, “Yes, that’s worth making—and here’s how,” this is probably your lane.

Consulting & Collaboration

I also work with cultural organizations, nonprofits, museums, and small creative businesses on projects that need research, strategy, and a strong editorial point of view. This work often includes digital storytelling, advising on programming and fellowship programs, content and audience strategy, and long-term editorial projects. (Some of this happens through CM Consulting & Creative Studio, my consulting practice.)

How I Got Here

I hold a Ph.D. in History (my doctoral research focused on the history of bibliotherapy, or the use of books as medicine) and spent years working in higher education and digital scholarship, where I focused on research, writing, and project-based digital production. Over time, I became more interested in reaching people outside the academy—people who are thoughtful, culturally engaged, and curious, but not especially interested in academic gatekeeping.

Landline is the result of that shift. It’s a space where historical thinking meets everyday media, and where curiosity matters more than credentials.

What to Expect

Historically grounded, publicly accessible writing. Cultural analysis without snobbery. A mix of research, personal voice, and gentle humor. Serious attention to things often dismissed as “frivolous.”

If you like essays that feel like a smart friend explaining why something matters—and then handing you a reading list just in case—you’ll feel at home here.

Start Here

• Subscribe to Landline on Patreon
• Listen to the Landline podcast
• Or get in touch about classes or collaboration