The longest-running ’80s podcast—featuring interviews with music legends, movie stars, and MTV icons. Deep dives, debates, and Gen X nostalgia every week. Hosted by Steve Spears and Brad Williams, the show blends sharp takes with insider stories from the people who lived it. From ’80s music and movies to MTV culture and pop culture history, each episode goes deeper than nostalgia to uncover what made the decade unforgettable.
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Forty years ago, Paul Simon released one of the most unlikely blockbuster albums of the 1980s. Graceland arrived on Aug. 25, 1986, blending Simon’s unmistakable songwriting with South African rhythms, zydeco, gospel harmonies and a completely new way of building songs. The result was an album that sounded unlike almost anything else on the radio — and somehow became one of the defining records of…
If you could go back and spend four years at any fictional high school from the ’80s, where would you enroll? Would you hang out with Spicoli at Ridgemont High? Serve Saturday detention with the Breakfast Club at Shermer High? Shoot hoops for Hickory? Learn the African Anteater Ritual at Crandall High? Or maybe you'd choose a school where there's absolutely no chance of being murdered by your…
When Stuck in the ’80s was just getting started, we somehow convinced Adam Curry to talk to us. This was our second-ever celebrity interview , and Curry came armed with exactly the kind of stories we hoped an MTV VJ would have. Madonna. Sebastian Bach. Moscow. Richard Marx. And that's just for starters. In this classic Stuck in the ’80s interview, former MTV VJ Adam Curry takes us behind the…
Some movies don't just survive the passage of time—they become part of who we are. Released 40 years ago, Stand By Me captured something rare: the bittersweet moment when childhood gives way to adulthood. Based on Stephen King's novella The Body , the film transformed a simple search for a missing boy into one of the most heartfelt stories ever told about friendship, growing up and realizing that…
James Bond didn't just survive the 1980s—he evolved. The decade began with the familiar charm of Roger Moore, who somehow managed to save the world while delivering one-liners smoother than a shaken martini. But by the end of the '80s, the tuxedo belonged to Timothy Dalton, whose darker, more serious interpretation helped pave the way for the modern Bond audiences know today. On this week's Stuck…
Some bands reunite because nostalgia sells. Others reunite because they still have something to say. Listening to Haircut 100's new album, Boxing the Compass , it's pretty clear which camp they fall into. This week, Steve welcomes the always charming Nick Heyward back to Stuck in the '80s to talk about the band's first album featuring the original lineup in an astonishing 44 years. Rather than…
Episode 791: Forty years ago, the summer of 1986 came with its own soundtrack. It was a season when some of the biggest artists in music were reinventing themselves, while other bands were just beginning to find the audiences that would follow them for decades. Turn on the radio, walk into a record store or press play on your cassette deck, and you might hear something polished and enormous one…
Episode 790: Not every story from the 1980s comes wrapped in neon, movie quotes, and mixtapes. Some begin in darkness. This week on Stuck in the '80s , I sit down with author Tracy Viola to discuss her remarkable memoir, Pretty Wrecked: Confessions of a Teenage Addict and Her Road to Recovery . While many of our episodes celebrate the music, movies and pop culture that made the decade…
Episode 789: Summer has a funny way of collapsing time. One minute you're hearing a familiar song on the radio or smelling charcoal from the neighbor's grill, and suddenly you're sixteen years old again. You're counting down the days until the next blockbuster hits the theater. You're hanging out with friends until the streetlights come on. You're convinced that summer might actually last forever.…
Episode 788: If you grew up in the 1980s, chances are your childhood memories can be measured in action figures, toy catalogs, and Saturday mornings spent convincing your parents that you absolutely needed "just one more." The toys weren't simply things we owned—they became the stars of our own adventures. They transformed living room floors into battlefields, bedrooms into space stations, and…
Episode 787: When people talk about the summer movies of 1986, the conversation usually starts with Top Gun and ends somewhere around Aliens , The Karate Kid Part II , and Ferris Bueller's Day Off . It was one of the strongest movie summers of the decade, packed with blockbusters that still dominate pop-culture conversations 40 years later. But every great movie season leaves a few worthy titles…
