Free Nights And Weekends

Send us Fan Mail Remember when a little six-sided cube took over the world? In the early 1980s, the Rubik’s Cube went from a colorful puzzle to an international obsession, showing up in classrooms, toy stores, shopping malls, and Christmas wish lists everywhere. This week on Free Nights and Weekends, we’re twisting our way back to the decade when everybody seemed to own one, everybody claimed they...

Send us Fan Mail A Halloween trip back to the 1980s, when heavy metal, Dungeons & Dragons, and suburban America became entangled in a nationwide fear of satanic ritual abuse. Jason Dean sits in and helps explore how legitimate concerns about trauma and child safety became an elaborate conspiracy, why some people profited from the panic, and what happens when fear outruns evidence. *editor’s no...

Send us Fan Mail We got the comments! The Brady episode struck a nerve. But of course it did. It’s a Gen X podcast and that’s our wheelhouse. In this midweek, bonus episode, we welcome back Eddie to do a little mop up and address the objectivity great observations of our listeners.  We always appreciate the feedback and it’s gonna pay off this week. You’ve spoken and we listened. Mostly.  Show Spo...

Send us Fan Mail This week Free Nights and Weekends celebrates a TV show that just won’t go away. The Brady Bunch served as a chronicle of American family life in the 1970s and has been viewed by generations since. Eddie Wilson joins us to discuss the series, talk about our favorite and least favorite episodes and his brush with the real life Bradys. Well, the characters. This is confusing. But no...

Send us Fan Mail Step right up! We're revisiting this one as we take a deep-fried dive into the Oklahoma State Fair — where childhood smelled like funnel cakes, diesel fumes, and bad decisions. Scott is joined by Garth and Ken from Fried Okla to swap stories about sketchy carnies, dunk tank jerks, and the glory of winning a live iguana you absolutely didn’t need. It’s a nostalgic, laugh-out-l...

Send us Fan Mail When we were kids, there was a piece of undeveloped land tucked away in my neighborhood that might as well have been another county. There was a creek, a hill, woods, a field, a rope swing and a clubhouse. We rode our bikes through it, built forts, explored, swung across the creek and spent entire summers back there. My buddy Todd and I even figured out how to catch crawdads with...

Send us Fan Mail Parole denied! Oklahoma governor declines parole for the remaining member of three spree killers that shocked OKC in 1978. In 1978, something horrific happened inside an Oklahoma City Sirloin Stockade. Six employees went to work that night. They never came home. For those of us who grew up in Oklahoma in the late '70s and '80s, the story became part of our collective chi...

Send us Fan Mail Oh, and so is Dolly! RIP Columbia House is finally calling it quits, so we’re taking a look back at the legendary mail-order music club that promised a dozen albums for a penny and somehow became a part of growing up in America. Eddie and I both signed up. We both have stories. And apparently, we had very different interpretations of how this whole thing was supposed to work. We t...

Send us Fan Mail In 1978, something horrific happened inside an Oklahoma City Sirloin Stockade. Six employees went to work that night. They never came home. For those of us who grew up in Oklahoma in the late '70s and '80s, the story became part of our collective childhood memory. We knew the name Roger Dale Stafford. We knew what had happened at Sirloin Stockade. We saw the news footage...

Send us Fan Mail Every August, Gen X kids hit the reset button. The new school year meant fresh notebooks, sharpened pencils, new sneakers if you were lucky, and the annual gamble of whether your backpack would survive until Christmas. It was the smell of a brand-new Trapper Keeper, hunting for your locker, trying to figure out where your classes were, and hoping your teacher wasn't "the...

Send us Fan Mail Was there ever a year that captured everything we loved about the 1980s better than 1984? This week, Scott and Jason take a nostalgic trip back to a year packed with unforgettable music, blockbuster movies, Olympic drama, pop culture milestones, and the everyday moments that made growing up in the '80s unforgettable. From Van Halen's 1984 , Prince , and Cyndi Lauper , to...

Send us Fan Mail Throwback to our 10th episode.  First jobs are fun, right? Right? In this big 10th episode extravaganza, Scott tells the story of his first steps to the exciting world of business and high finances.  Also, he (literally) stumbles upon on a mystery of architecture and city planning in front of a seemingly innocuous Central Oklahoma single-family home. Or is it? From the episode! To...

Send us Fan Mail  Whether your church camp was all about service projects or strict rules, one thing is certain...you probably still remember it. This week, Scott is joined by Jason Dean to compare two very different church camp experiences from the 1980s. Scott spent summers volunteering at Camp Aldersgate in Little Rock, helping maintain a camp that served children with disabilities. Jason grew...

Send us Fan Mail Remember Bennigan's? A simple Facebook post about their legendary Monte Cristo sandwich unleashed a flood of memories, complaints, and unresolved emotional baggage from Gen Xers across America. This week, Scott and fellow Oklahoma fat guy Jason Dean take a trip through the restaurant graveyard, remembering the chains, buffets, and menu items that disappeared without warning....

Send us Fan Mail On the 40th Anniversary of this classic, we relive the perfectly executed fake sick day to a citywide parade takeover, Ferris didn’t just skip school… he rewrote the rules. But beneath the sunglasses and smooth-talking confidence is the real story: Cameron, a borrowed Ferrari, and a day that was never going to end quietly. We break down:  The most elaborate “I’m sick” performance...

Send us Fan Mail We revisit our most downloaded episode yet! What a school year! The Mets won the Series. The Space Shuttle blew up in front of me and my classmates. Local OKC weather guy Paul Bouchereau unloads some F bombs during a graphics guy foul up (then they run that tape). Oh, then there was the basketball coach at my middle school.  Stick around for that one!  Chad Goucher sits in and we...

Send us Fan Mail Before YouTube ads stalked us across the internet… there was a magical time when television itself became a fever dream around midnight.  This week on the Free Nights and Weekends Podcast, Scott and Marc dive headfirst into the loud, sweaty, aggressively enthusiastic world of 1980s and early 1990s infomercials. The era where every problem in America apparently could be solved with...

Send us Fan Mail This week on the Free Nights & Weekends Podcast, Scott welcomes the guys from Fried Okla for a full-speed ride straight into Oklahoma tornado culture. 🌪️ From growing up terrified of Gary England’s “HOOK ECHO” warnings to standing outside like complete idiots watching green skies roll in, the gang revisits the chaos, adrenaline, and accidental comedy of living in Tornado Alley...

Send us Fan Mail Well, Scott calls Charlotte Rae "Martha" knowing full well that Martha Raye was Mel's mom on Alice.  But on part II of the Free Nights and Weekends Podcast , Scott and co-host, Jason power through it and dive deeper into… the “very special episode.” You remember them. One week you’re watching jokes and laugh tracks… the next, someone’s getting hooked on pills, kidna...

Send us Fan Mail This week on the Free Nights and Weekends Podcast , Scott and co-host, Jason crack open one of the strangest traditions in television history… the “very special episode.” You remember them. One week you’re watching jokes and laugh tracks… the next, someone’s getting hooked on pills, kidnapped by a bike shop owner, or learning a hard lesson about peer pressure while the studio audi...

Send us Fan Mail From the perfectly executed fake sick day to a citywide parade takeover, Ferris didn’t just skip school… he rewrote the rules. But beneath the sunglasses and smooth-talking confidence is the real story: Cameron, a borrowed Ferrari, and a day that was never going to end quietly. We break down:  The most elaborate “I’m sick” performance ever committed to film   Why Cameron Frye is t...

Send us Fan Mail Before streaming, before DVR… there was the VCR. In this episode of Free Nights and Weekends , Scott and Jason dive into the golden age of VHS—when families dropped $800 on a machine nobody knew how to program, video store shelves were packed with questionable titles, and “Be Kind, Rewind” wasn’t optional. From mall purchases in OKC to the chaos of early video rental shops, this e...

Send us Fan Mail Remember the movie that freaked out a generation? We thought we did too. This week, Scott and Marc revisit The Amityville Horror. While it’s not a technically “great” movie, it’s not technically scary or entertaining either. What a mess.  Editor note : Too many zeros were remembered on the price of the house. It sold for $80k. Oops.  Special thanks to Dan Adams at EXP Realty This...

Send us Fan Mail What do you get when you mix Jodie Foster , a presidential assassination attempt, a TV show that won’t go away, and a weird attempt at pitching woo? This week on Free Nights and Weekends, we rewind to one of the strangest cultural collisions of the 1980s — the obsession that drove John Hinckley Jr. to attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan … all in a misguided attempt to impress a m...

Send us Fan Mail Vinyl records are back… and somehow worth a billion dollars again. In this episode of Free Nights and Weekends , we drop the needle on the surprising comeback of vinyl—now officially a billion-dollar industry for the first time since 1983—and ask a bigger question: what did we actually miss? Scott and Marc rewind to the ritual of listening to albums in the 70s and 80s—studying lin...