{"id":174357,"date":"2021-07-02T07:15:50","date_gmt":"2021-07-02T11:15:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=174357"},"modified":"2021-07-02T10:20:13","modified_gmt":"2021-07-02T14:20:13","slug":"uconn-magazine-our-american-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2021\/07\/uconn-magazine-our-american-girls\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Magazine: Our American Girls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019re surprised to learn that a podcast about the American Girl children\u2019s series of historical fiction books, best known for its accompanying dolls, has amassed 30,000 downloads a month from listeners all over the world and spawned a book deal, you\u2019re not alone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought the group of friends I watch \u2018The Bachelor\u2019 with would listen to this show, and my wife, and that would be it,\u201d says Mary Mahoney \u201918 Ph.D., a historian who created and hosts the \u201cAmerican Girls\u201d podcast with her friend and fellow UConn history grad Allison Horrocks \u201916 Ph.D. \u201cI wanted a reason to hang out with my friend every other week. I had absolutely no idea we would have the kind of listenership we have.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The show\u2019s blend of astute historical analysis, warm banter between close friends, and copious pop culture references has earned it a global community of fans. In one 71-minute episode, the hosts discuss the American Girl book \u201cMeet Samantha,\u201d about an orphan living with her wealthy grandmother in 1904 New York. During that episode, pop culture artifacts, along with a few straight up literary and historical references, are mined at various depths.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/magazine.uconn.edu\/2021\/06\/22\/our-american-girls\/\">Read on for more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What do you do with a history doctorate and a pop culture obsession? If you\u2019re these two alums, you create a hit podcast centering on \u201990s nostalgia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":156840,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,2226,2235,102,2306],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1929],"class_list":["post-174357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-clas","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-magazine","category-uconn-voices"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-31 16:02:51","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174357"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174361,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174357\/revisions\/174361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/156840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174357"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=174357"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=174357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}