September 26, 2025 • 12 mins
Take a wild ride back to the 1980s with The Strange History Podcast! In this mega episode, we explore 24 everyday habits and customs from the 80s that seem completely bizarre today. From smoking everywhere and kids riding in cars without seatbelts, to leaving doors unlocked, mixing tapes from the radio, and visiting full-service gas stations, the 80s were a decade of neon fashion, VHS rentals, questionable safety rules, and unforgettable childhood memories. Packed with true stories, hilarious anecdotes, and nostalgic details, this episode will make you laugh, cringe, and wish you could relive the decade when streetlights were curfews, the garden hose was a water fountain, and candy cigarettes were socially acceptable. Perfect for fans of retro culture, weird history, and 80s nostalgia!
Like and Subscribe:
Apple
Spotify
IHeart
Audible
Like and Subscribe:
Apple
Spotify
IHeart
Audible
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Strange History Podcast, the show where we
take a fond and occasionally horrified look at the bizarre
things humans once thought were completely normal. I'm your host, Amy,
and today we're strapping on our neon fanny packs, grabbing
a tab cola, and heading back to the nineteen eighties,
a magical time when mullets roamed free, hair spray holes
(00:22):
in the ozone layer were a legitimate concern, and safety
regulations were more suggestions than rules. So let's fire up
the Dolorean and revisit twenty four things that were perfectly
normal in the eighties but would raise some serious eyebrows today.
Smoking everywhere. This seems to be a trend we have
(00:43):
seen through the decades. At one point we smarten up.
I believe it was two thousand and four when smoking
indoors finally became illegal. Back then, lighting up wasn't just common,
it was practically a social queue. Restaurants, offices, airplanes, you
name it. People smoked there. You could sit in the
non smoking section of a diner and still feel like
(01:06):
you were chainsmoking through osmosis. On a TWA flight in
nineteen eighty five, the flight attendant's turbulence. Announcement was please
remain seated, but if you must smoke, do so carefully.
Safety first. Kind of kids riding in cars without seat
belts seat belts optional car seats suggestion. The prized spot
(01:32):
was in the rear facing way back of the family
station wagon, where kids could make faces at the drivers
behind them while eating pop tarts. In nineteen eighty three,
a Florida family turned their minivans back area into a
mobile playroom with bean bags. It was fun right up
until the day a rear end collision turned the bean
(01:52):
bags into airborne missiles. When I was a kid, my
parents and aunt and uncle would pile five kids and
four adults into one one of those wood panel station
wagons every weekend during the summer and go for pizza.
If my cousin Sam and I were lucky enough to
score the way back, we would be reminded of the
kids who stuck their head out the window and the
father had closed the window and decapitates the kids. It worked.
(02:17):
We never ever stuck our heads out the window and
today remain one with our noggins. As an adult, I
now realized they were full of beans and scare tactics were,
and I am sure still remain a wonderful parenting tool.
Letting strangers babysit your kids. If your neighbor's teenage niece
was good with animals, that was apparently enough qualification to
(02:38):
watch your children. No interviews, no CPR training, not even
a background check. In nineteen eighty seven, a New Jersey
mom hired a babysitter she met at a grocery store checkout.
The sitter turned out to be a French exchange student
who thought she was just coming over for dinner. Hanging
(02:58):
out at the mall all day before social media, the
mall was the feed teens would spend hours roaming, trying
on clothes they had no intention of buying, and sharing
fries in the food court. In nineteen eighty nine, a
Minnesota mall band sitting on the central fountain after teens
started using it as a dare base dunk tank, calling
(03:20):
someone and just hoping they were home. There was no texting,
no DMS, no scene check mark. If you called and
got no answer, that was it, mystery forever. In nineteen
eighty eight, a Pennsylvania teen missed a live call in
contest to win concert tickets because his friend's mom had
forgot to hang up the phone after an all night
(03:41):
gossip session. Renting VHS tapes and hoping they were rewound
Friday night meant heading to the local video store and
hoping someone had returned back to the future, and if
they hadn't rewound it, you might get slapped with a
twenty five cent fine. Eighteen eighty seven, a Texas rental
(04:01):
shop created a rewind police membership for customers who could
be trusted to return tapes properly rewound. Everyone else was
fined into compliance. Drinking straight from the garden hose, no
one thought about hot plastic chemicals or hose safety. If
you were thirsty after a bike ride, you went straight
for the spigot. A Wisconsin dad in nineteen eighty four
(04:24):
claimed water from the hose tasted better than tap water,
mostly because it kept kids outside where they couldn't track
mud into the kitchen. Playing outside until the street lights
came on. There were no GPS trackers or find my
iPhone alerts, just the neighborhood's unspoken law. When the street
lights flickered on, you came home. In nineteen eighty two,
(04:49):
a group of Chicago kids built a clubhouse in a
vacant lot out of wood scraps and old carpet. It
lasted three years before the city demolished it for safety
reasons that should have been obvious from day one. Smoking
sections in restaurants picture this. One side of the room
was smoking, the other non smoking, with nothing but a
(05:11):
fake plant to separate them. In nineteen eighty six, a
Denny's proudly designated smoking booths right next to non smoking booths,
separated by a plant. The plant did little to contain
the cloud neon clothing that could be seen from space.
The eighties were aggressively bright neon windbreakers, leg warmers, and
(05:34):
glow shoelaces made everyone look like a living highlighter. A
California middle school banned neon shoelaces in nineteen eighty nine
because kids were trading them during fire drills. Instead of
evacuating returning glass soda bottles for cash before recycling bins,
you could turn in empty soda bottles for coins for kids.
(05:56):
It was both eco friendly and a way to fund
arcade habits. In nineteen eighty one, a group of Oregon
kids pulled bottles out of a river and made six dollars,
which they immediately blew on pac Man fixing cassette tapes
with a pencil. If your tape got chewed up, you
didn't cry. You grabbed a pencil, stuck it in the reel,
(06:17):
and wound it back by hand. In nineteen eighty five,
a Detroit DJ accidentally played a warped tape of Take
on Me live on air. Listeners thought it was an
artsy remix and flooded the station with requests for the
slow version. Leaving kids in the car while running errands.
In the eighties, if mom had to just run into
(06:39):
the store, the kids stayed in the parked car with
the windows cracked and maybe the radio on. No one panicked,
called nine one one or even thought it was strange.
In nineteen eighty six, a mom in Ohio left her
two kids in the car with a can of pringles
while she did the weekly grocery shop. She came back
to find they'd use the empty can to catch lightning
(07:02):
bugs through the cracked window. School computer labs with Apple
two's and Oregon Trail computer class meant lining up to
use a big, beige machine with a floppy disc the
size of a pop tart If you didn't die of
dysentery and Oregon trail, you were basically a tech genius.
In nineteen eighty eight, a Massachusetts school's entire computer lab
(07:25):
lost half a day because a student hid the floppy
disks in the ceiling tiles to keep them safe. Long
distance phone charges calling your cousin two states away could
cost as much as dinner. Parents would yell it's long distance,
Make it quick, and you'd have to cram your conversation
into sixty seconds. In nineteen eighty five, a teen in
(07:47):
Iowa called a California pen pal for forty five minutes
and racked up a sixty eight dollar phone bill. Her
parents made her work at the local ice cream shop
all summer to pay it off. Metal playground equipment that
doubled as an oven. Every playground had metal slides, jungle gyms,
and merrygo rounds that could sear your skin by July.
(08:09):
Kids didn't complain. They just learned to slide fast. In
nineteen eighty two, a Texas park had to repaint its
slide because it was literally melting flip flops. Watching cartoons
only on Saturday morning. You couldn't just stream he man
or Looney Tunes. You had to wake up at six
am on Saturdays, pour a bowl of sugary cereal and
(08:30):
watch until noon. Miss it too bad? No reruns until
maybe next year. In nineteen eighty four, a Minnesota kid
slept through Saturday cartoons for three weeks in a row
and started taping them on VHS, sparking a mini cartoon
rental business at his school. Ice cream trucks selling cigarette
shaped candy. Nothing said summer treat like pretending to smoke
(08:55):
while eating sugar. These chalky white candy sticks even had
red painted tips to mimic the ember. In nineteen eighty seven,
a New Jersey mayor tried to ban candy cigarettes. The
local kids staged a protest outside city hall, complete with
bubblegum cigars. Encyclopedias as the Internet. If you had a
(09:16):
question you didn't Google, you pulled down a dusty volume
of Encyclopedia Britannica and hoped your topic wasn't stuck between
two missing letters. A family in Kansas in nineteen eighty
one proudly displayed their full Encyclopedia set, except for Volume M,
which was lost in a move. They never replaced it.
(09:37):
So Moon landing remained a mystery to their kids for years,
leaving the front door unlocked. Neighborhoods in the eighties often
had an open door policy. Literally, friends and neighbors would
just walk in, yell hello, and head straight to the kitchen.
In nineteen eighty five, a Michigan man came home from
work to find his neighbor making a sandwich in his kitchen.
(10:00):
The neighbor's excuse, I was out of Mayo gas station
attendance cleaning your windshield. Many full service gas stations had
attendants who'd pump your gas, check your oil, and clean
your windshield for free. In nineteen eighty three, a teenager
working at an Oregon station accidentally filled a diesel truck
(10:20):
with regular gas and still got a five dollars tip
for cleaning the windows. Real nice Unsafe science experiments in
school science class in the eighties often meant unsupervised experiments
with bunsen burners, mercury, or dry ice. Safety goggles were optional.
(10:40):
In nineteen eighty four, a Florida teacher let students bring
dry ice home for fun. One kid used it to
make fog for his Gi Joe battles in the bathtub.
Drive in movie theaters as teen hangouts. Drive ins were
still going strong in the early eighties. Teens piled into
cars or the trunks if they wanted to avoid paying
(11:02):
and spent more time socializing than watching the movie. In
nineteen eighty two, an Ohio drive in had to post
signs reading please watch the movie after staff caught dozens
of people sitting backwards in their cars to chat with
friends instead mixing tapes from the radio. Making the perfect
mixtape meant hovering over the record button praying the DJ
(11:23):
wouldn't talk over the intro of your favorite song. In
nineteen eighty six, a Boston teen spent two hours recording
Livin' on a Prayer without the DJ talking, only for
his sister to tape care bears sing along over it
the next day. And that, dear listeners, is a quick
trip through the neon colored, smoke filled hose, water hydrated
(11:44):
wonderland that was the nineteen eighties. It was a time
when rules were looser, phones were dumber, and somehow we survived.
Thanks for listening to the Strange History Podcast. If you
enjoyed this trip down memory lane, don't forget to subscribe
and maybe call a friend on a landline just for
old time's sake. Until next time, I'm Amy reminding you
(12:06):
history is full of strange and sometimes dangerously nostalgic moments.
Welcome to the Strange History Podcast, the show where we
take a fond and occasionally horrified look at the bizarre
things humans once thought were completely normal. I'm your host, Amy,
and today we're strapping on our neon fanny packs, grabbing
a tab cola, and heading back to the nineteen eighties,
a magical time when mullets roamed free, hair spray holes
(00:22):
in the ozone layer were a legitimate concern, and safety
regulations were more suggestions than rules. So let's fire up
the Dolorean and revisit twenty four things that were perfectly
normal in the eighties but would raise some serious eyebrows today.
Smoking everywhere. This seems to be a trend we have
(00:43):
seen through the decades. At one point we smarten up.
I believe it was two thousand and four when smoking
indoors finally became illegal. Back then, lighting up wasn't just common,
it was practically a social queue. Restaurants, offices, airplanes, you
name it. People smoked there. You could sit in the
non smoking section of a diner and still feel like
(01:06):
you were chainsmoking through osmosis. On a TWA flight in
nineteen eighty five, the flight attendant's turbulence. Announcement was please
remain seated, but if you must smoke, do so carefully.
Safety first. Kind of kids riding in cars without seat
belts seat belts optional car seats suggestion. The prized spot
(01:32):
was in the rear facing way back of the family
station wagon, where kids could make faces at the drivers
behind them while eating pop tarts. In nineteen eighty three,
a Florida family turned their minivans back area into a
mobile playroom with bean bags. It was fun right up
until the day a rear end collision turned the bean
(01:52):
bags into airborne missiles. When I was a kid, my
parents and aunt and uncle would pile five kids and
four adults into one one of those wood panel station
wagons every weekend during the summer and go for pizza.
If my cousin Sam and I were lucky enough to
score the way back, we would be reminded of the
kids who stuck their head out the window and the
father had closed the window and decapitates the kids. It worked.
(02:17):
We never ever stuck our heads out the window and
today remain one with our noggins. As an adult, I
now realized they were full of beans and scare tactics were,
and I am sure still remain a wonderful parenting tool.
Letting strangers babysit your kids. If your neighbor's teenage niece
was good with animals, that was apparently enough qualification to
(02:38):
watch your children. No interviews, no CPR training, not even
a background check. In nineteen eighty seven, a New Jersey
mom hired a babysitter she met at a grocery store checkout.
The sitter turned out to be a French exchange student
who thought she was just coming over for dinner. Hanging
(02:58):
out at the mall all day before social media, the
mall was the feed teens would spend hours roaming, trying
on clothes they had no intention of buying, and sharing
fries in the food court. In nineteen eighty nine, a
Minnesota mall band sitting on the central fountain after teens
started using it as a dare base dunk tank, calling
(03:20):
someone and just hoping they were home. There was no texting,
no DMS, no scene check mark. If you called and
got no answer, that was it, mystery forever. In nineteen
eighty eight, a Pennsylvania teen missed a live call in
contest to win concert tickets because his friend's mom had
forgot to hang up the phone after an all night
(03:41):
gossip session. Renting VHS tapes and hoping they were rewound
Friday night meant heading to the local video store and
hoping someone had returned back to the future, and if
they hadn't rewound it, you might get slapped with a
twenty five cent fine. Eighteen eighty seven, a Texas rental
(04:01):
shop created a rewind police membership for customers who could
be trusted to return tapes properly rewound. Everyone else was
fined into compliance. Drinking straight from the garden hose, no
one thought about hot plastic chemicals or hose safety. If
you were thirsty after a bike ride, you went straight
for the spigot. A Wisconsin dad in nineteen eighty four
(04:24):
claimed water from the hose tasted better than tap water,
mostly because it kept kids outside where they couldn't track
mud into the kitchen. Playing outside until the street lights
came on. There were no GPS trackers or find my
iPhone alerts, just the neighborhood's unspoken law. When the street
lights flickered on, you came home. In nineteen eighty two,
(04:49):
a group of Chicago kids built a clubhouse in a
vacant lot out of wood scraps and old carpet. It
lasted three years before the city demolished it for safety
reasons that should have been obvious from day one. Smoking
sections in restaurants picture this. One side of the room
was smoking, the other non smoking, with nothing but a
(05:11):
fake plant to separate them. In nineteen eighty six, a
Denny's proudly designated smoking booths right next to non smoking booths,
separated by a plant. The plant did little to contain
the cloud neon clothing that could be seen from space.
The eighties were aggressively bright neon windbreakers, leg warmers, and
(05:34):
glow shoelaces made everyone look like a living highlighter. A
California middle school banned neon shoelaces in nineteen eighty nine
because kids were trading them during fire drills. Instead of
evacuating returning glass soda bottles for cash before recycling bins,
you could turn in empty soda bottles for coins for kids.
(05:56):
It was both eco friendly and a way to fund
arcade habits. In nineteen eighty one, a group of Oregon
kids pulled bottles out of a river and made six dollars,
which they immediately blew on pac Man fixing cassette tapes
with a pencil. If your tape got chewed up, you
didn't cry. You grabbed a pencil, stuck it in the reel,
(06:17):
and wound it back by hand. In nineteen eighty five,
a Detroit DJ accidentally played a warped tape of Take
on Me live on air. Listeners thought it was an
artsy remix and flooded the station with requests for the
slow version. Leaving kids in the car while running errands.
In the eighties, if mom had to just run into
(06:39):
the store, the kids stayed in the parked car with
the windows cracked and maybe the radio on. No one panicked,
called nine one one or even thought it was strange.
In nineteen eighty six, a mom in Ohio left her
two kids in the car with a can of pringles
while she did the weekly grocery shop. She came back
to find they'd use the empty can to catch lightning
(07:02):
bugs through the cracked window. School computer labs with Apple
two's and Oregon Trail computer class meant lining up to
use a big, beige machine with a floppy disc the
size of a pop tart If you didn't die of
dysentery and Oregon trail, you were basically a tech genius.
In nineteen eighty eight, a Massachusetts school's entire computer lab
(07:25):
lost half a day because a student hid the floppy
disks in the ceiling tiles to keep them safe. Long
distance phone charges calling your cousin two states away could
cost as much as dinner. Parents would yell it's long distance,
Make it quick, and you'd have to cram your conversation
into sixty seconds. In nineteen eighty five, a teen in
(07:47):
Iowa called a California pen pal for forty five minutes
and racked up a sixty eight dollar phone bill. Her
parents made her work at the local ice cream shop
all summer to pay it off. Metal playground equipment that
doubled as an oven. Every playground had metal slides, jungle gyms,
and merrygo rounds that could sear your skin by July.
(08:09):
Kids didn't complain. They just learned to slide fast. In
nineteen eighty two, a Texas park had to repaint its
slide because it was literally melting flip flops. Watching cartoons
only on Saturday morning. You couldn't just stream he man
or Looney Tunes. You had to wake up at six
am on Saturdays, pour a bowl of sugary cereal and
(08:30):
watch until noon. Miss it too bad? No reruns until
maybe next year. In nineteen eighty four, a Minnesota kid
slept through Saturday cartoons for three weeks in a row
and started taping them on VHS, sparking a mini cartoon
rental business at his school. Ice cream trucks selling cigarette
shaped candy. Nothing said summer treat like pretending to smoke
(08:55):
while eating sugar. These chalky white candy sticks even had
red painted tips to mimic the ember. In nineteen eighty seven,
a New Jersey mayor tried to ban candy cigarettes. The
local kids staged a protest outside city hall, complete with
bubblegum cigars. Encyclopedias as the Internet. If you had a
(09:16):
question you didn't Google, you pulled down a dusty volume
of Encyclopedia Britannica and hoped your topic wasn't stuck between
two missing letters. A family in Kansas in nineteen eighty
one proudly displayed their full Encyclopedia set, except for Volume M,
which was lost in a move. They never replaced it.
(09:37):
So Moon landing remained a mystery to their kids for years,
leaving the front door unlocked. Neighborhoods in the eighties often
had an open door policy. Literally, friends and neighbors would
just walk in, yell hello, and head straight to the kitchen.
In nineteen eighty five, a Michigan man came home from
work to find his neighbor making a sandwich in his kitchen.
(10:00):
The neighbor's excuse, I was out of Mayo gas station
attendance cleaning your windshield. Many full service gas stations had
attendants who'd pump your gas, check your oil, and clean
your windshield for free. In nineteen eighty three, a teenager
working at an Oregon station accidentally filled a diesel truck
(10:20):
with regular gas and still got a five dollars tip
for cleaning the windows. Real nice Unsafe science experiments in
school science class in the eighties often meant unsupervised experiments
with bunsen burners, mercury, or dry ice. Safety goggles were optional.
(10:40):
In nineteen eighty four, a Florida teacher let students bring
dry ice home for fun. One kid used it to
make fog for his Gi Joe battles in the bathtub.
Drive in movie theaters as teen hangouts. Drive ins were
still going strong in the early eighties. Teens piled into
cars or the trunks if they wanted to avoid paying
(11:02):
and spent more time socializing than watching the movie. In
nineteen eighty two, an Ohio drive in had to post
signs reading please watch the movie after staff caught dozens
of people sitting backwards in their cars to chat with
friends instead mixing tapes from the radio. Making the perfect
mixtape meant hovering over the record button praying the DJ
(11:23):
wouldn't talk over the intro of your favorite song. In
nineteen eighty six, a Boston teen spent two hours recording
Livin' on a Prayer without the DJ talking, only for
his sister to tape care bears sing along over it
the next day. And that, dear listeners, is a quick
trip through the neon colored, smoke filled hose, water hydrated
(11:44):
wonderland that was the nineteen eighties. It was a time
when rules were looser, phones were dumber, and somehow we survived.
Thanks for listening to the Strange History Podcast. If you
enjoyed this trip down memory lane, don't forget to subscribe
and maybe call a friend on a landline just for
old time's sake. Until next time, I'm Amy reminding you
(12:06):
history is full of strange and sometimes dangerously nostalgic moments.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.