It Happened One Year

Just in time for the Super Bowl, It Happened One Year is heading back to the gridiron to talk a little football! Sarah & Joe very quickly discuss the Super Bowls surrounding 1984 - both blowouts - before transitioning into rare collegiate sports talk in the form of Heisman Trophy winner and future Buffalo Bills great Doug Flutie! The Boston College legend's Hail Mary to defeat Miami is possibl...

An obvious pick by Sarah for topics - when Hulk Hogan fully emerged as a huge pop culture icon in the decade at Madison Square Garden in January of 1984! Just in time for this year's Royal Rumble, It Happened One Year finally enters the wrestling arena and talks a little leg-dropping and camel-clutching! Sarah & Joe break down the lives and careers of Hogan and the Iron Sheik, their glancing a...

It's Christmas Eve 1984, and the battle scars from the prior year's Cabbage Patch carnage still sting for employees and customers alike. The utter mayhem of '83 lives in legend at the Viewmont Mall in Scranton, PA, and everyone is anxious to avoid a repeat this holiday season. Surely, it can't get that bloodthirsty, that vicious, that diabolical again, can it? What fresh hell awaits the mall deniz...

Upon the discovery of their existence, It Happened One Year had no choice but to reconvene before the holiday and discuss the brain-melting lunacy of 1984's top TV holiday specials - Mr. T & Emmanuel Lewis in A Christmas Dream and Scrooge's Rock 'N' Roll Christmas starring Jack Elam. Sarah & Joe's wildly different opinions about this yuletide fare serve as a backdrop to an episode clearly...

Jacob Marley was dead to begin with (he always is!) and It Happened One Year is there to pick up the slack, in what was originally conceived as the show's holiday episode, before the hosts got carried away and kept recording Christmassy things (tune in next week!). Herein, Sarah & Joe get into all things Cratchit in order to discuss the acclaimed 1984 movie version of A Christmas Carol starrin...

It's Christmas Eve 1984 at the Viewmont Mall, and tensions are running high. Employees cower in fear of the shopping onslaught ahead. Customers prepare to do battle for the season's coveted gifts. And children hope to get on Santa's lap with last minute pleas to the big guy. But nothing goes as planned. It Happened One Year presents its third fully scripted, madcap episode, this time written by gr...

This Thanksgiving, it is best to remember what we truly have to be thankful for - '80s pop music and the advent of music videos. With the inaugural VMA Awards on MTV in September and the November release of her landmark second album Like a Virgin, Madonna fully took the world by storm in 1984 and staked her claim as THE star of the decade, and It Happened One Year is there! Sarah & Joe break d...

The somber topic of celebrity death leads down an avenue to discuss television comedy in this straight-from-the-headlines It Happened One Year. Andy Kaufman's 1984 death (or grand hoax) leads Sarah & Joe to discuss his career, from Saturday Night Live to Taxi to wrestling, before pivoting into the seemingly evergreen popularity of Friends and the shocking loss of Matthew Perry. How and why sit...

As has become a yearly tradition, It Happened One Year is taking a look at a single night of programming from the topic's television season, and so it begins with ABC's November 3rd shows! T.J. Hooker, The Love Boat, and the long forgotten Finder of Lost Loves comprised Saturday night entertainment on the Alphabet Network, and Sarah & Joe are there! Listen as they question strange props, guest...

Back-to-back It Happened One Year politics?? You bet! Washington D.C. is providing the crazy content and IHOY is channeling it hard through 1984! Sarah & Joe look back at Tip O'Neill's epic run as Speaker in the '70s and '80s, and contrast some of the expectations for the role with how it is managed today. This naturally leads into the current House having no Speaker, the tumultuous mess that...

How well all the covered topics relate to one another is debatable in this lustiest of episodes from It Happened One Year! Ostensibly here to discuss the shameful handling Miss America Vanessa Williams received in 1984 over the publishing of old nude photos, Sarah & Joe pivot into the many and varied scandals enveloping politicians and celebrities thanks to their uncontained urges - with cameo...

So when she's on land, she just HAS legs?? This is the main conundrum tackled in It Happened One Year's most riparian of episodes - a discussion of Ron Howard's Oscar nominated mermaid comedy Splash! Sarah & Joe take up the task of deducing mermaid lore on film (if there is any) and compare that to the freewheeling creativity on display. Along the way they dive into the bizarro made-for-TV seq...

Unexpected twists and turns abound in what nominally is an It Happened One Year dedicated to the long-running syndicated phenomenon that was Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous, premiering in 1984! Sarah & Joe discuss their foggy memories of the show and how that compares to a modern rewatch, then sidetrack wildly into why these sort of shows are popular, modern reality television that sprung...

Not ones to shy away from a good eulogy, It Happened One Year makes a rare foray into the animal kingdom, by way of commemorating the lives of some trailblazing creatures! From American "monkeynaut" Miss Baker to Kansas zoo orangutan legend Djakarta Jim to Liberty and the many critters frequently spotted on the White House lawn, Sarah and Joe dig deep to find the bones buried in these tales of fur...

Football is upon us once again, and It Happened One Year is getting flagged for excessive celebration, as per usual! Sarah & Joe make their yearly predictions for 2023 NFL outcomes, but only after taking a look at two big events from 1984's football season - Walter Payton becoming the all-time leading rusher, and the events surrounding the Baltimore Colts hightailing it out of Maryland in the...

We're doing it again! It Happened One Year is back, now covering the pivotal political and pop culture period of 1984! First up, Sarah & Joe take a look at arguably the biggest star of the decade, Michael Jackson, and the many perils and pitfalls he faced in '84. The laborious Jackson 5/The Jacksons tour surrounding their latest album Victory serves as the backbone, and along the way attention...

You guessed it - we're doing it again! Join Sarah & Joe for a third trip into the past, looking at the events big and small, famed and forgotten from a new subject year! There'll be sports and politics! Movies and sweet jams! Cool fashions and dumb haircuts! New episodes arrive starting in August!

After twenty-six months spent taking extended looks at 1994 and 1967, It Happened One Year has finally reached its milestone 100th Episode! Hosts Sarah & Joe navigate this sort-of retrospective look at the show, by way of roping in many friends of the podcast and Baseball Humbug/Visitors to Nova Scotia veterans to hang out, play trivia games, cover overlooked corners of the subject years, and make...

What better to close out Season Two than with an historic, super-sized episode commemorating the dear departed of 1967! Sarah & Joe take an uncharacteristically deep dive into the many notables in film, music, sports, politics, writing, art, and society who vacated the premises in the subject year, with a list of icons including Vivien Leigh, Che Guevara, Otis Redding, Spencer Tracy, Dorothy Parke...

Life may be a numbers game, but as that great American Ned Ryerson said, it's also "one big crap shoot, any-hoot." So how significant really is the fact that the 200 millionth American was born (probably) on November 20th, 1967? After an introduction by friend of the show and Visitors to Nova Scotia star Kristin Mann, Sarah & Joe dig deep into U.S. and World population, from the predictions made i...

Sometimes the powers that be need to know of the public's general displeasure, so we take up our signs and we march! It Happened One Year's near-miss scripted episode morphed into this Branson, Missouri recorded dissection of the great Vietnam War protest that gripped Washington D.C. and the Pentagon in October of 1967, replete with discussions of the Yippies, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating C...

It's an epic throwdown for the ages as It Happened One Year wanders into one of the great debates in music history! Sarah & Joe don't exactly see eye-to-eye on these bands' particular outputs in 1967, but with The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request on the turntables, a heady, trippy time was bound to be had by all! After an introd...

There were a ton of newcomers to the entertainment industry in 1967, and It Happened One Year is there! After an introduction by friend of the show and ReconCinemation co-host Jon Deiner, Sarah & Joe unroll the landmark TV debuts, first albums, and inaugural feature film directing efforts coming out of '67 - covering a vast spectrum of the media universe, including The Flying Nun, The Producers, S...

In what will absolutely be the final time It Happened One Year covers the UFO sighting over Nova Scotia on October 4th, 1967, Sarah & Joe discuss the actual, known facts of the event, plus their own opinions about what this might have been. The Visitors to Nova Scotia's non-fiction percentage is guessed at, along with some random discussion of the film Women Talking and the most recent NFL season,...

Surprise road episode! Recorded in lovely Santa Fe, New Mexico, Sarah & Joe decide to tackle the NCAA University Division Tournament of 1967, culminating in UCLA's defeat of Dayton for the title! After an intro by friend of the show Dane Bower, the hosts go into their picks for the current men's bracket - and how that instantly went sideways - and the women's bracket (all in on Caitlin Clark's Iow...