Retroist Retro Podcast

31:05

Retroist Podcast Episode 372 (1982 World's Fair)

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2026/09/25

I never got to go to the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, but I really wanted to. My mother had been to the 1964 World’s Fair in New York and talked about how much she loved it, so when Knoxville came along we couldn’t get enough of it. We watched stories about it on television, and whenever something appeared in the newspaper, she would save it for me. We were never likely to make the trip to Tennessee, but the fair did help convince my family to visit EPCOT Center a few months after it opened

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34:52

Retroist Podcast Episode 371 (Columbia House)

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2026/09/11

Joining Columbia House was something I wanted to do long before I really understood how it worked. I remember filling out the forms for records and later CDs, then having my mom stop me before I could send them away. A couple of my friends actually belonged, and from where I was sitting they seemed to have figured out some secret way of getting huge piles of music for almost nothing. I mostly knew Columbia House through the catalogs and all the mail that came with them. At an age when I loved

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38:42

Retroist Podcast Episode 370 (Diet Coke)

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2026/08/21

Diet Coke was a regular presence in our house almost as soon as it became available. Before that my family usually bought two bottles of Coca Cola each month, and I could count on drinking my share before it disappeared. Then my mom tried Diet Coke and one of those bottles changed over to the new drink. My sisters sorta would drink it too, which sometimes meant more regular Coke for me, but once that was gone I would stare at the remaining Diet Coke and wish it were something else. I found out years

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43:56

Retroist Podcast Episode 369 (Atari VCS 1977)

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2026/08/07

I am trying something a little different with this episode. I am heading back to 1977 to take a look at the original titles for the Atari VCS. I have been a lifelong Atari fan and collector and while my top games are not from the first year of the console, I am very much intrigued by the idea of a time when the console only had 9 titles. It would take me a while, but eventually I would get to collect ‘em all.Support the Retroist on Patreon On the show, I start off by talking about this time in

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34:02

Retroist Podcast Episode 368 (The Bad News Bears)

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2026/07/24

The Bad News Bears made more sense to me after I played baseball when I was young. I was put on a T-ball team that seemed to be assembled from the kids nobody else wanted, and we were terrible. We never got great, but we improved and somehow eventually managed to win a few games, and got the award we were dreaming of. That was enough to make us feel like champions. When I later watched the Bears, probably on VHS or cable, I could relate to being part of a team that was bad but still worth playing

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25:56

Retroist Podcast Episode 367 (World Cup '94 Memories)

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2026/07/11

I want to start off by saying I don’t know much about soccer or as I think most of the rest of the world calls it football. But with the World Cup back in the United States I thought this would be a nice opportunity to talk about my time working security at the World Cup the first time it was played in America back in 1994. I was very young at the time, but it was great job to get. It might not have taught me much about how soccer is played, but I did finally get an idea of how rabid the fans

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52:07

Retroist Podcast Episode 366 (Action Park)

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2026/06/19

I start this podcast episode by talking about my own trips to Action Park. I was so excited to go as a kid when I visited and got to go because it was close to where my uncle lived in Northern New Jersey. My mother was not a big fan of amusement parks unless they were connected to Disney, and she had started reading enough about Action Park to be worried. My uncle did not have the same concerns, so he took me there and I had a great time. I rode what I could, brought home brochures, talked about it

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40:17

Retroist Podcast Episode 365 (Perfect Strangers)

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2026/05/29

I begin this podcast episode by talking about the strange timing of television in our lives. Sometimes a show arrives at just the right moment, and for a while it feels like part of your weekly routine. Then you get older, your habits change, and without really deciding to, you stop watching. Years later, you come back to it and realize there was a whole stretch of the story you never saw. Perfect Strangers was one of those shows for me.Then I talk about Perfect Strangers, including its creation,

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45:07

Retroist Podcast Episode 364 (Game Genie)

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2026/05/15

I first saw the Game Genie at a friend’s house just after Christmas in 1991. We were doing the usual thing, seeing what everyone got, trying out games, handing controllers back and forth. Then he brought out the Game Genie and plugged it into the Nintendo. The second I saw what it could do, I wanted one of my own. It was that simple. If you spent enough time with games, you knew their rules pretty well, and this thing seemed to step right past them.On this episode of the Retroist Podcast, I talk

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55:38

Retroist Podcast Episode 363 (DeLorean)

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2026/04/24

There were a few cars that could stop me in my tracks when I was a kid, and the DeLorean was near the top of the list. We had one in my town, parked outside a dentist’s office, and just knowing it was amazing. It was not something you expected to see in everyday life. It looked like it had landed from somewhere else, all sharp lines and brushed metal, like the future had somehow ended up next to where I got scolded for not brushing properly.On this episode of the Retroist Podcast, I talk about what

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41:26

Retroist Podcast Episode 363 (Back to the Future the...

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2026/04/10

Back to the Future didn’t feel like a property that I expected to be turned into a cartoon, at least not to me at the time. By the time the animated series arrived, my interest in Saturday morning television was already starting to slip. I had not entirely left it behind, but I was no longer meeting it with the same excitement I had a few years earlier. That made this show an interesting one for me, because it landed right in that moment when a longtime habit was beginning to feel more like

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40:45

Retroist Podcast Episode 361 (Back to the Future Part...

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2026/03/27

Back to the Future Part III had a different job to do. Part II had ended on a cliffhanger and sent everybody out of the theater with their heads spinning, but the third film had to bring everything back down to earth, or maybe more accurately, out to the Old West. It was ending a story people had gotten very attached to and it had to do that without losing the sense of fun and invention that made the series feel special in the first place. We didn’t go to the future with flying cars and flat

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44:34

Retroist Podcast Episode 360 (Back to the Future Part...

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2026/03/13

Back to the Future Part II had a lot to live up to. The first movie was already huge, and by the time the sequel showed up people were ready to see Marty and Doc again. This was not just another follow up. It felt like an event. Audiences had been waiting to find out what happened next, and the movie gave them a future full of flying cars, weird gadgets, and, most importantly to a lot of us, hoverboards.On this episode of the Retroist Podcast, I talk about Back to the Future Part II, starting with

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40:55

Retroist Podcast Episode 359 (Back to the Future)

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2026/02/20

I don’t know if you knew this, but Back to the Future is kind of a big deal. Its known as a big hit, but that wasn’t a forgone conclusion. Robert Zemeckis was not yet a household name, and while Michael J. Fox was a TV star, translating that to movie stardom was far from guaranteed. Many studios had already passed on the project, and time travel comedies weren’t exactly in demand. But sometimes a movie arrives at exactly the right moment, and this was one of those times. It became one of the

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48:23

Retroist Podcast Episode 358 (Grease)

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2026/01/30

Grease as a studio movie in the late 1970s was a big swing. Sure it had two big stars in it, but its success entering a crowded summer of movies was not a foregone conclusion. But it turns out it was just what people were craving at the time and the film, much like the stage musical it was based on, was a huge success.On this episode of the Retroist Podcast, I talk all about Grease. Starting with my first interactions with the film. Like many, I found the songs in the films hard to resist and

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38:38

Retroist Podcast Episode 357 (Sha Na Na)

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2026/01/16

In the late 1960s, the pop culture of the 1950s was still well-remembered, but the United States was going through some major changes. A counter-culture was going mainstream and with it came a rejection of things associated with older generations. Emblematic of this era was Woodstock. This music festival was filled with bands and artists that defined the era. But another act, took to the stage during the festival that didn’t quite fit in, Sha Na Na.Started as a college performance act, Sha Na Na

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38:02

Retroist Podcast Episode 356 (Christmas Commercials III)

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2025/12/23

Welcome to the Retroist Christmas Commercials III Podcast. Christmas is almost here. You know what that means? Time to buy stuff! That’s why this week’s show is all about the Christmas commercials that we love. I have done this format twice before and people liked it. So be warned, this show has a bit of a different format from the regular podcast. It is dedicated solely to holiday commercials. I hope you enjoy it.I tried to break it down in little themes and also tried to not repeat what I have

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41:05

Retroist Podcast Episode 355 (A Charlie Brown Christmas)

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2025/12/16

In 1965, Christmas television in the United States changed forever when, A Charlie Brown Christmas, premiered. Nothing about its creation and tone said it was going to be a success, but it touched people and was a huge hit. A hit that has continued to deliver Christmas Magic year after year for decades.I start the episode talking about something that became important in the eighties. That’s when it wasn’t enough to just watch the special. Now with VCRs, you could own the special. Sure, you could

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31:46

Retroist Podcast Episode 354 (The Herculoids)

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2025/11/28

In 1967 Hanna-Barbera had a new show on Saturday Mornings, The Herculoids. This was before my time, but the show’s concept and characters were so enduring that nearly a decade and a half later they would be revived for a new show and I would be introduced to the great characters. Between and since then the have shown up in reruns, comic books, and more modern shows where they often appear for laughs.The design of the characters was by the great Alex Toth, who I haven’t really talk enough about on

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36:14

Retroist Podcast Episode 353 (Saturday Supercade)

Retroist Retro Podcast ·

2025/11/14

In 1983, the first wave of arcade madness was still at a highpoint. We had a slew of classic games filled with classic characters that had become household names. Still, only one had made the leap off the gaming screen and onto the small screen, Pac-Man (and his family.) With everyone being so crazed for games, TV networks were wondering, how do I get my own Pac-Man type show? That is where we get the Saturday Supercade. Because why have a show with just one character when you can pick up a slew of

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