Now We Know

Kevin and Chris are joined by Hollywood Crime Scene's Rachel Fisher for a deep dive into 1985's surprisingly macabre Return to Oz, starring the strikingly haunted-looking Fairuza Balk as Dorothy Gale. From electroshock therapy, to a clockwork soldier, to a jack-o-lantern with mommy issues, to a head-thieving witch, you're not in Judy Garland's Oz anymore. Ray Bolger ain't walking through that door...

Kevin and Chris are joined by returning guest Sean Hurlburt, mere days before the release of the brand new Sonic The Hedgehog movie, to revisit the 1993 Saturday morning animated series starring the lil' blue speedster himself. Fair warning: you probably can't run as fast as Sonic, even after he's absolutely gorged himself sick on chili dogs.

Do you ever feel like your clock is running out? You intrepid hosts have surely never felt this way. But this time, Kevin is revisiting a childhood favorite that is decidedly preoccupied with mortality ― Logan's Run, starring Michael York, the doctor from Darkman who explains the Rangeveritz Technique, and a guy who looks like a young Christopher Hitchens (albeit surprisingly, much less attractive...

Don't look now, but this stately little podcast has now spanned two decades! To celebrate, Kevin and Chris ring in the new year by looking back at the SNES version of Super Baseball 2020, a video game which serves up an uncompromising, tech-infused vision of America's national pastime. And yes, there are baseball-playing robots!

Our final episode of the year is filled with Smurfy holiday cheer, as Kevin foists the Smurfs Christmas Special on Chris.  The godless little Smurfs don't celebrate Christmas themselves, but they do battle Satan so they're maybe not quite as pagan as they seem.

With the holiday season well and truly upon us, Chris brings forth Jack Frost, the Christmas/horror movie with the murdering snowman! Oops, wait, what's that? Sorry, we're having some technical difficulties... it appears we somehow ended up with the Michael Keaton one?

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours! We've decided to celebrate by treating you to a high-quality, fresh out of the oven bonus episode. And as is traditional since last year, you're getting another Garfield holiday special, this one with many more mean-spirited Orson Welles jokes than you might expect. Enjoy the chow!

In the second installment of Now We Know's award-winning series, Kevin looks back at a collection of TV commercials from his heyday back in the 1980s and 1990s. Curated for your enjoyment, complete with earworm jingles, bizarre visuals, and every now and then, a truly vexing quandary.

It's more than a little shocking that it's taken this long. But finally, Chris has foisted 1989's Super Mario Bros. Super Show, which managed to air its entire run of episodes in just three months, onto Kevin. Of course, Kevin saw this show as a kid himself, like any true devotee of Nintendo's iconic plumber brothers. Will you get hooked on said brothers? Let's find out!

Well, would you look at that, the Now We Know boys just hit the half-century mark. And they're celebrating, in Halloween fashion, by watching one of Kevin's beloved childhood films, Ghostbusters 2. Come for the emotionally charged goo and Carpathian warlords, stay for the two bewilderingly pointless Slimer cameos.

One year after returning guest Jessica divulged her traumatic childhood horror movie experience to the Now We Know audience, Chris has invited her back to discuss a film he had a nearly identical experience with: Pet Sematary Two. With Jessica and Kevin's help, will Chris be able to endure this terrible fright from decades past?

Oh, Mel! This time, Chris and Kevin are joined by returning guest Miranda to discuss Mel's Hole, one of the most memorable tales of macabre mystery to ever cross the airwaves of the late conspiracy theory/paranormal radio host Art Bell. Come for the meandering, madness-inducing conversations about bottomless pits, the science of radar, and reanimated dogs, and stay for Mel's unthinkable, unspeakab...

This time Chris unleashes super-charged combat anime Dragon Ball Z onto Kevin, reliving the iconic first clash between series hero Goku (or Kakarot, as you may prefer) and series villain/anti-hero/eventual full-hero Vegeta. And to top it off, Chris made sure to track down the original Canadian dub that aired on Cartoon Network's Toonami block when he watched it in middle school. The dragon, in oth...

As a long, beautiful summer draws to a close, Kevin unleashes Eerie, Indiana on Chris, an ostensibly spooky kids show that aired on NBC in the early 1990s. Will child hero Marshall "Mars" Teller manage to survive the many twists, turns, and macabre happenings of the peculiar town of Eerie? Will he somehow manage to defeat a mid-level marketing scam, his romantic rival,  and  a conspiracy of cognit...

With a brand new movie release right around the corner, Kevin and Chris are joined by returning guest Natasha Vinik (@NatashaVinik) to discuss It, the 1990 TV miniseries adaptation of the Stephen King classic. Natasha had a particularly intense relationship with It in her youth, and she dishes all the deets for your listening pleasure.

Returning guest Evan Tognotti joins Chris and Kevin to relive One Small Hero, a rightfully forgotten 1999 children's film about perseverance, boring forests, and an extremely stress-free kidnapping. Once upon a time, a four-year-old Evan watched this movie about seven or eight times while trapped aboard a Carnival cruise ship, and now he's sharing the story of Sarah, Reese, Hutch, Baby, and Joey C...

Kevin and Chris are joined by Brian Houghton to discuss Trancers, a 1984 time travel/sci-fi flick starring Tim Thomerson as Trooper Jack Deth. A cop who embarks from the year 2247 to 1985 Los Angeles, all to foil a somewhat convoluted attempt at future government overthrow, Deth is aided in his mission by none other than a young, fresh-faced Helen Hunt. Prepare to go up the line!

This time around, Kevin and Chris are joined by India Hamilton to revisit Warriors of Virtue, a central plank of her childhood entertainment experience. Prepare to be sucked down the sewer to the land of Tao, to be thrust into a brutal war between anthropomorphic Roos, thickly-built bald generals with goatees, and Angus Macfadyen.

Following Kevin's completion of perhaps the most important video game of Chris' childhood, Earthbound for the Super Nintendo, the guys are joined by returning guest Seth Millstein and first-timer Sean Sterling to break down the all-time cult classic RPG. If you only know Ness from Super Smash Bros. it's time to get wise!

With moviegoers everywhere (or at least surely somewhere) buying their tickets for Godzilla: The King Of Monsters, Kevin looks back at Roland Emmerich's oft-derided take on the great lizard. Complete with old-young Matthew Broderick, Kent Brockman, Roger Ebert, baby Godzillas that are definitely not raptors, and Jean Reno griping about croissant and "french roast."

The NBA Finals are nearly upon us, and for a lifelong Warriors fan like Chris, it's just another chapter in a seemingly impossible dream. Which is why he decided to celebrate by dipping two decades into the past, to a game between Golden State and the hated L.A. Lakers all the way back on April 20, 1999. And your favorite Warriors are all here! Erick Dampier! Chris Mills! Terry "Top Cat" Cummings!...

This time, Kevin brings forth Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, a cherished late 80s single-season sci-fi series with a fake Darth Vader, a million-dollars-per-episode price tag, and a particularly brazen kid's toy tie-in gimmick. But you know what they say: Kid Kev gets what Kid Kev wants ("nobody puts Kid Kev in the corner" would've also been accepted).

Chris finally plays his ace in the hole, and Kevin simply wasn't prepared for it: Death and the Compass, a 1990s film adaptation of a Jorge Luis Borges story of the same name. Kid Chris was blown away by this low-budget, highly dissonant, Peter Boyle-as-mystic-detective indie film some 20 years ago, but what to make of it now?

This week, Kevin pulls from the vault a truly bizarre relic of the 1980s: Small Wonder, wherein a cookie-cutter American sitcom family welcomes a robot daughter to the mix. Come for Vicki's incorrigable japes, stay for grandpa's anti-robot bigotry!

Baseball season is finally upon us! And so, Chris decided to take Kevin ― and all San Francisco Giants fans ― back to a particularly harrowing time, a full eight years before the start of their golden, shimmering championship dynasty. Specifically, the 2002 World Series, perhaps the most ignominious moment in the franchise's history, and the formative experience of Chris' life as a sports fan.