My So-Called Whatever: An 80's / 90's / NKOTB (New Kids on the Block) Podcast

Some shows perform nostalgia. This one just lives in it. Two lifelong friends host, and the format is a long conversation that keeps making room for other people. Listeners send stories, secrets, texts, emails, and voice messages, and those submissions shape whole episodes. The biweekly Block Party installments are the clearest example, built from New Kids on the Block fan stories contributed by friends of the show including Jennifer, Robbie, Kelley, and Julie. One recap follows a fan who arrived at the Gary Marshall Theater so early she went across the street to Bob's Big Boy for lunch, sat on a bench in the brisk air, and learned from a worker changing the marquee that doors would not open until four. She then met Jeanette, who had driven down from the San Francisco area, and two women who had flown in from Florida. They stood around talking about New Kids and about Joe. That is the show in miniature. A concert becomes a road trip, a parking lot becomes a reunion, and the retelling becomes the episode. The nostalgia segments work the same way. Middle school was hard, one host says plainly, and the two compare how they used to imagine what a future boyfriend might look like. A high school reunion story leads somewhere unexpected. A song brings back a memory neither had thought about in years. Ordinary life is left in rather than trimmed out, which is a large part of the charm. A tree hangs on for dear life above a pool during a windstorm. An insurance claim gets recounted and then talked down as not a big deal. There is an explanation of why a house near a small hospital shares a grid, and why the generators are so loud, and how power went out twice with no storm in sight. Someone shows off programmable holiday lights that cycle from Christmas to Valentine's Day to St. Patrick's Day to Easter. A New Year episode gets recorded on January 1st, and the New Year joke is new year, same me. Every episode opens with a promo from DJ AK, the Amanda Knight, announcing that the show and No More Games Radio have joined forces, and many carry a homemade theme song about sharing stories and a friendship circle that keeps growing. Recurring bits include listener secrets, requests for callers to test the voicemail line, and a why are we not dead update from Brooke. The sign-off never changes: a promise to be loving you forever. For anyone who came of age in the 80s and 90s, it plays less like a broadcast and more like being on the call.