You can listen to this episode on you favorite platform (including YouTube!) … or read it below.
According to the internet, I’m officially the last human being without a podcast. I held out as long as I could, honestly. I figured if I never started one, maybe society would somehow stay… balanced. Turns out, the universe doesn’t work that way.
So here I am, entering the podcast arena thirty years after everyone else, and honestly, it feels kind of great. Not because I needed another platform… because I don’t… but mostly because I grew up in a world where listening mattered.
We are the mixtape generation. The radio-DJ generation. The generation that sat in front of the TV with rabbit ears just right because “the movie is starting and don’t move or the picture will go fuzzy.” And look, we’re also the generation that bought all those early audio-books on cassette and CD. I still have so many honestly, I don’t know what to do with them. In fact, if you still have audiobooks on cassette, let me know in the comments which ones you have...
But my point it is… this podcast is my way of bringing all of that back.
Much less the fuzzy picture part. It’s the listening part I’m really interested in.
BY THE WAY, THE MAIN TOPIC TODAY IS ABOUT REMAKES AND REBOOTS, we’ll get to that in a moment as I expound the reason why….
WHY NOSTALGIA NATION - THE AUDIO EDITION EXISTS
If you’ve been reading my Substack, you know I love writing about the things that shaped us. I love sharing about the moments, the music, the movies, the weird cultural artifacts you forgot about until I mention them and suddenly your back that the mall in 1988 about to order at from the Orange Julius!
Some of those stories hit different when you hear them.
There’s a warmth to audio. A crackle. A closeness.
We grew up with sound doing half the work. The imagery lived in our heads.
That’s part of the charm.
Part of the magic.
Part of why I wanted to do this.
This show won’t be perfect. It won’t be over-produced. I’m not hiring a team of twelve editors and tech dudes to make my studio ready for a presidential visit. It’s just me, a microphone, and memories that refuse to be quietly archived.
GEN X STILL LISTENS
Podcast culture today is wild. You’ve got crime podcasts. Therapy podcasts. “Two dudes with microphones talking about nothing” podcasts. And now, you’ve got me working my hardest to keep our shared memories alive… podcast.
I know there’s a lot to listen to out there… but I’ll tell you what, it’s really tough to find a podcast that looks at what I’ve coined as The Hybrid Age. I’m talking about the Analog-to-Digital Renaissance… a one-of-a-kind human window when culture, technology, and community overlapped perfectly before social media rewired the world.
It was:
The golden age of shared pop culture
The dawn of personal technology
The height of communal experiences (music, movies, arcades, malls)
The final era of scarcity, which made everything feel bigger
The rise of imagination-driven creativity before algorithms took the wheel
A world where tech improved life without replacing humanity
I’m talking about 1975–2010. That’s basically the sweet spot where. It’s where analog soul + digital possibility =ed magic.
So I’m aiming to really dig into that… but I also want to bridge that into current culture and society. We have things now that we need to appreciate, but it helps to compare and see if were are doing better.
Not rushed.
Not manufactured for specifically for social.
Just honest, funny, nostalgic field notes from a generation that survived latchkey childhoods, dial-up internet, and the emotional trauma of not hitting record at the right time and catching the DJs voice on your mixtape.
Anyway, having said all of that. I appreciate you being here. I’ll post the Audio Edition when I have something to say and share. The best way to get the audio edition is to go to that80sdude.com (you’re here already ;) and make sure you are subscribed. All you need to do is enter your email in a box and hit subscribe folks. That’s it. And we’ll time travel together.
MAIN THEME: REMAKES, REBOOTS & WHY SOME WORK (4–6 minutes)
Now, since this is Episode 1, I want to frame the first real topic around something that hits perfectly for Gen X and OG Millennials especially, and that is the fact that our childhood franchises are back.
Some of them are thriving.
Some of them… should have stayed in the box next to your broken Star Wars figures.
I recently saw Predator: Badlands (and wrote about it here), and although I was invited to an immersive screening in Los Angeles, I couldn’t make it work with my schedule, but I was able to screen the film a few days later, and man… this is how you continue an 80s property.
Not by remaking.
Not by rebooting.
But by expanding the universe!
The Predator franchise has learned something essential:
Don’t replace the nostalgia - build on it.
Respect the lore, but don’t chain yourself to the past.
It’s why Prey landed so well.
It’s why Badlands feels like a continuation, not a regurgitation.
Same thing with the Alien franchise.
Those films survive because they keep finding new corners of the universe to explore, not because they try to redo what can’t be redone. In fact I just read that Alien: Earth has just been approved for a second season because of the incredible reception its received from critics and fans.
And now we’ve got Gremlins 3 on the radar.
The Goonies 2 whispers in development rooms.
A new Masters of the Universe project trying to find the right home.
These aren’t small deals. These films are cultural earthquakes for a generation that still knows where they were when they first saw Stripe’s skeleton jump out of the fountain in Gremlins or heard Sloth yell “Hey you guys!”
But here’s the thing:
Some remakes bomb because they forget who they’re talking to.
They remove the charm.
They remove the practical effects.
They remove the weirdness… and cheesiness.
Gen X properties weren’t polished.
They were messy, and a little insane… and that’s why we loved them.
When you sanitize nostalgia, you kill it.
When you respect it, you keep it alive.
That’s the sweet spot.
That’s where Predator and Alien are thriving, and where some other reboots were dead on arrival.
So the question is, what do you guys think? Is there a better way to have remakes today?
Am I on the right track when I say we should expand franchises rather than redo them? Although I’d love to see a few films remade just because the idea was high concept or fun but the execution at the time was not that great. Take Critters for example. That’s one of my favorite 80s flicks, and it’s still really good as it stands, but I sure wouldn’t mind keeping the same exact plot and story and just remaking it with modern movie magic. I suppose we now need to say that casting needs to be on point, because you know that’s been a major complaint by not only Gen X but by movie goers in general. Anyway, I’d love to know. Which films do you think would absolutely benefit from a remake?
Oh, and this just popped into my head… that’s going to happen a lot, friends… I’ve been waiting for a sequel to The Faculty… you guys remember that movie? It’s the 1998 film directed by Robert Rodriguez. That movie is so much fun… why haven’t they expanded that franchise?
Alright, so that’s a wrap on Episode 1 of Nostalgia Nation, the Audio Edition. Appreciate you being here and listening (or reading). And remember…
Nostalgia isn’t about living in the past.
It’s about understanding why the past matters in the first place.
DIRECT FROM MY COLLECTION VAULT
