Get in the Delorean because in this episode, we’re going Back To The ‘80s.

This is the first in a series on daily life as we remember it during a brighter, more hot neon time in America’s history.

In this episode, we recall the phenomenology and pace of life when your only options are rotary phones that belong to an entire household, music on vinyl, cassette, or terrestrial radio, and eventually CDs, and also the wonder of dual cassette boom boxes.

It’s totally tubular.

Here’s a bullet point list of things we mention…

• We Are The World: The Story Behind The Song

• When pop music was full of giant hooks

• Dialing a rotary phone

• The busy signal

• Phones attached to the wall

• Shag carpet

• Loooooong phone cords

• The phone scratch paper pad

• Answering machines

• The cassette mix tape & its intricacies

• Pencil-winding the tape

• Cassettes warped from heat

• Recording from off the radio

• Calling the radio station to make a request

• The boom box

• The dual cassette recorder

• Press 'Play' AND 'Record'

• Auto-detect silence on the tape

Something we didn’t mention in the episode but is worth saying here, is that if you’re attracted to the benefits of a more analog life, it’s possible to (sorta) recreate that for yourself. To a certain degree.

It’ll probably take deliberate, disciplined effort to yank yourself out of the strongest grips of things like social media and always-on, always reachable texts, notifications, beeps, and buzzes, but it is still possible to rewind the tape and go back in the technology timeline, to live a slower, more physical and embodied life during certain hours of your days and nights.