Pop Culture Diaries: Mariah Byrne Sullivan

This week: we follow a social worker through a week that includes the The Sims, Survivor, and crying to Mamma Mia—aka a millennial dream.

Jun 04, 2025

This is a free post for subscribers of Landline, a pop culture and history newsletter for people who care about the Titanic, and the the Kate Winslet vehicle of the same name. Consider subscribing to the paid plan to get my weekly email of recommendations and links, a podcast episode, and more! You can also help me spread the word by sharing it with a friend who would love it.

This week, paid members received:

Welcome to Pop Culture Diaries. Forget tracking calories and dollars—here, we follow the consumption that actually matters: books, music, TV, movies, threads, podcasts, YouTube videos, memes, and more. Think of this as a guilt-free way to read someone else’s diary and discover new pop culture obsessions, one week at a time.

If you’d like to submit your own Pop Culture Diary, you can do so using this online form.

Name: Mariah Byrne Sullivan

Occupation: Social worker

Week Covered: May 26 - June 1

Monday:

My week started off non-traditionally, since Monday was Memorial Day. It was the last day my friend from college and her husband were visiting my spouse and I at our home in St. Louis, MO, so it was a bittersweet end to a long weekend. We started the day slowly and spent the morning chatting. As the morning wound down, we played the card game Saboteur while listening to Jack Johnson Radio - the weekend soundtrack in my household - in the background.

I put on the week’s episode of On Being with Krista Tippet on the way home from the airport and spent most of the afternoon alternating between chores accompanied by the week’s episode of This American Life, catching up on pop culture I missed because we had guests, and re-reading Cloud Atlas on the couch. My email clean featured some beloved weekend newsletters: Closing Argument from The Marshall Project (a criminal justice publication), musician Shel Rollinson’s Sunday Letter, and Yoga with Adriene’s weekly email.

I leaned into my free time by playing The Sims 4 for a little while listening to BRAT by Charli XCX to try to lean into the beginning of summer vibes. I picked up The Sims after at least a decade away in 2020. Having full control of these fake people allowed me to feel some sort of agency in my life during a very dark time, and it’s continued to be a great stress release. (The Sims 4 base game is now free in case anyone is trying to relive their elementary/middle school glory days!!)

Before getting ready for bed, my husband Connor and I finished the finale episode of Survivor 48 (big Kamilla fan out here). We’ve been watching recent Survivor seasons with a group of friends each Wednesday night, and Survivor has now become a big part of my pop culture consumption (emerging theme ahead). Then, we watched the finale of The Last of Us. A real completionist evening for us!

Tuesday:

I stopped at our local St. Louis Public Library branch on my way into work and picked up my holds: Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones and The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich. Easy Beauty was recommended by my brother’s girlfriend, whose taste I really respect, and I always to make sure to put new Louise Erdrich releases immediately on my TBR.

I lead resident services for affordable housing tenants as my job with a community development corporation. While doing some admin tasks for work, I listened to my weekly Spotify Release Radar playlist and the most recent episode Death, Sex & Money while doing admin tasks at work. I’m a huge fan of host Anna Sale’s conversational, empathetic, and vulnerable interview style.

Connor wanted to re-watch an original Survivor season (He grew up watching the show with his family; I started watching reruns during the pandemic.), so we started Season 3 - Survivor: Africa while eating leftovers on the couch. There’s a lot to unpack with naming the season for a whole continent, but overall it’s been fascinating to watch the show - both its producers and its cast - try to co-create the heart of the game in its early seasons.

As will become a theme, I read more of Cloud Atlas before going to bed.

Wednesday:

I work a later shift on Wednesdays, so I started my day reading more of Cloud Atlas in bed (my preferred way to spend my time). My workday began by running some work errands, and I listened to the week’s episode of Code Switch while driving around. Throughout the workday, I listened to No. 1 by Etran de L’air (recommended last week by Ann Friedman in her newsletter) and the Pop Culture Happy Hour episode on The Last of Us. I sometimes disagree with PCHH’s takes on the culture I consume, but I’m also grateful for the opportunity to consider it more critically. (I was definitely more of a fan of this season of TLOU than they were.)

I finished Cloud Atlas while doing a load of laundry then wasted a bunch of time on Instagram Reels because I refuse to download TikTok, which makes me an old lady and I don’t care!

Today was the reveal of the Survivor Season 50 cast! For anyone who cares, I’m thrilled that Kamilla is coming back but think it's weird that they are having Kyle - who literally just won - return too. I’ve seen enough of Coach for my lifetime, but I’m glad to have Genevieve from Season 47 back. She was under-edited in her last season and made out as a villain of sorts, so I hope she gets a better arc this time around.

I put on the finale recap episode of the On Fire with Jeff Probst podcast while preparing dinner. Connor and I were about to eat when we learned our friends had a baby earlier in the evening, so we left the house to bring dinner to the new parents. We finished our day with an episode of Survivor: Africa once we got home. Welcome to the world, Miriam Rosalind!!!

Thursday:

I spent a lot of my workday doing data cleaning for a grant report and put on the “Are We In a Media Literacy Crisis?” episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour, and More to the Story from the Center for Investigative Journalism while I worked. More to the Story interviewed a journalist from St. Louis who is also a transplant here, and I really appreciated her perspective on why she’s stayed in St. Louis. I lived on both coasts before I moved to the Midwest in my mid-20s and I’m likely going to be here the rest of my life, so I’m always grateful to hear my appreciation for this complicated region validated.

Once I finished the podcasts, I put on the playlist that my husband and I are making for our soon-to-be child. I’m newly in my second trimester of pregnancy, and it’s been really fun to pull together songs that reflect the love and hope we have for the new life we’re making.

Re: being pregnant, I wasn’t feeling amazing when I got home, so I immediately lay down and put on my comfort movie Mamma Mia! (How you really know I’m pregnant is that I cried during Dancing Queen - a scene about truly nothing at all.) We interrupted the movie once Connor finished making dinner to watch another episode of Survivor: Africa.

It was like 8:00 pm but I was pooped, so I put on last week’s episode of Skipped History about an overlooked leader in sexuality studies while getting ready for bed. I started Easy Beauty (part of my library haul) during my lunch break and read a few more chapters to ease into sleep.

Friday:

Fridays are a big day for my inbox! I read Race/Related from The New York Times, Code Switch from NPR, Downtown, Morning Brew (which I read every day, but every other Friday they have my favorite game, Decipher), Landline, Scrap Facts (written by a college friend), Anna Sale’s weekly newsletter, and The Ann Friedman Weekly. I switched between previewing the new Miley Cyrus album and instrumental albums (mainly Ballpoint and Khruangbin) while doing some grant writing for work.

Once I got home, I perused my husband’s library haul - Murder On the Orient Express by Agatha Christie and The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin, both of which I will likely borrow before he returns them - and then finished my viewing of Mamma Mia! Surprising no one, we watched two episodes of Survivor: Africa after we got back from going out to dinner.

Saturday:

A quiet day, alternating between doing chores and reading Easy Beauty. I finally ventured out of the house to walk around a nearby park with a friend and listened to Reveal from the Center for Investigative Journalism and A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein on the way there and home.

Sunday:

I gave my pregnant body the gift of sleeping in and then finished Easy Beauty before going over to my neighbor’s house to catch up for a bit. My husband and I enjoyed our afternoon playing bingo with friends on the patio of a local pizza place. We ended the day by hosting a friend for dinner, and the three of us watched The Wild Robot. As three adults in their early 30s, we were all really looking forward to watching this children’s film, and it was beautiful! 10/10 recommend as a gentle way to end/start the week.

Call Me! (or not!)

I’d love to hear from you! Drop your thoughts in the comments to share with the Landline community, or reply to this email to contact me. You can also find me on Instagram, or email me. I don’t have a dedicated phone line yet (just like in my youth), but maybe someday I’ll achieve Claudia status and get a Landline.

Thanks for reading!

This is a free post for subscribers of Landline. Consider subscribing to the paid plan to get my weekly email of recommendations and links, a podcast episode, and more! You can also help me spread the word by sharing it with a friend who would love it. Thank you for being a friend!

Share Landline

Note: All books referenced in Landline can be found in my bookshop.org storefront from which I earn a small percentage of all books purchased.