Phone Messages

This episode contains all the messages and interviews with Sikay Tang.

In 1977, the Fonz jumped over a shark on the TV show Happy Days. Although the show went on to have six more successful seasons, it became a symbol of decline and something that everything from baseball teams to podcasts should avoid.

In the initial years of Television, Game shows were a popular part of networks' prime time schedule until a 1959 investigation revealed they were often scripted. During the 1970s and 80s, daytime TV broadcast shows like Password and 25,000 dollar Pyramid. In 1999, Who Wants to be a Millionaire brought the genre back to network Prime Time.

In the summer of 1990, a series of murders spread fear across Gainesville Florida. Nearly eighty years earlier, the collapse of a small bank led to tragedy on the lower east side of Manhattan.

In the mid 1990s, a Destroy All Music Festival held at the Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center in Wicker Park featured bands like Carnival de Carnitas, Scissor Girls, Blowhole and DragKing.

Batteries Not Included in Lincoln Park, had a brief life in the 1980s showcasing scrappy young bands ready to surprise. The 1980s club Gaspars in Lakeview, became Schubas and continues to host live music several days a week.

In the 1920s, JR Stewart was one of many companies that manufactured banjo ukuleles during the first uke boom. Ukes became popular again in recent decades thanks in part thanks to Israel Kamakawiwoʻole.

The life of a pastor's wife in mid twentieth century midwest involved missionary work and potlucks but also social clubs to discuss books and hear lectures about graphonalysis.

Billy Joel's Piano Man was inspired by playing at a bar in Los Angeles. Two classic piano bars from that era, Nye's Polonaise Room in Minneapolis and The Red Fox Room in San Diego continue to thrive after more than fifty years in business.

In the 1990s, Chicago indy label bands like Dragking would sell their discs on consignment at Ajax Records, Dr. Wax, Wax Trax, Tower, and Reckless Records. The last of these is the only one still in business.

The first comic books were just collections of the cartoons from the Sunday funny pages. The 1930s saw the origins of superheroes and then crime, horror and romance that contained explicit sex and violence until the Comics Code forced a move to mostly kiddie comics in the 1950s.

The Chicago International Film Festival claims to be the longest running film festival in North America. Three years before it began, The University of Chicago's Documentary Film Group put on its own festival.

Trixie Records was a Chicago based label that released eight records in the early nineties, including by DragKing and Sabalon Glitz.

The 1980s was the last decade when most college students still relied on typewriters, but recently there has been a revived interest in vintage machines.

In 1966 a summer tradition of outdoor concerts began at Wollman Rink in Central Park. Over the years it featured bands such as Bob Marley and the Wailers, the Ramones and Devo for very cheap.

The late eighties saw a burst of ads for 1-900 numbers that promised to relieve your feelings of loneliness. But the phone sex business can be traced at least back to the 1970s.

In 1971, Hyde Park had seven second hand bookstores, including Chicago's oldest bookstore. Today, Powell's on 57th is the only one still in business.

Zen Buddhism became popular in post WWII San Francisco, especially among beat poets like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Tram Combs. The influence of Zen extended into cookbooks, when Edward Espe Brown began baking at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center.

Speed Kills was a Chicago based zine that published seven issues from 1991 to 1995. Its contents inspired the name for the Chicago based band Dragking.

The Regenstein Library opened in 1970 and soon became the center of social life on the University of Chicago campus. One reason for its popularity were the comfortable study areas, including window alcoves with Pfister Lounge Chairs.

Four years after Disco Demolition Night, the Police performed at Comiskey Park. In the Quad Cities, 80s entertainment included the Bix Beiderbecke festival and cruising on Saturday Night.

The Chicago Defender played an important role in the Great Migration of African Americans fleeing the violence of the Jim Crow South. Beginning in the 1970s, digital technology like VDTs had a big impact on newspaper production, including at places like the Defender.

In 1979, Methuen Press published Subculture: the meaning of style by Dick Hebdige, the first academic book to address Punk culture. In 1984, the University of Chicago Press published Paths of Neighborhood Change whose lead author was Richard Taub, a section of which discusses Hyde Park's urban renewal.

The mix of orange juice and rice can be used in a wide range of savory and sweet recipes. Before college students had cell phones, dormitories hired receptionists to direct calls to a phone in each resident hall.

Pure Hype began on WHPK in 1986 as a way to promote upcoming indie rock shows with free tickets and interviews with musicians. By 1988, the show also began hosting live performances in the middle of the radio station's record library.

The Indian Termination Policy from the 1940s to 1960s encouraged Native Americans migration to cities like Chicago, where they often settled in the Uptown neighborhood. In the 1970s, a movement for self determination inspired public school programs meant to reintroduce native children to their heritage.

The Seminary Coop Bookstore began in 1961 when a small group of students grouped together to buy academic books at a discount. In 2013, it moved from the basement of the Chicago Theological Seminary to the McGiffert House, a former CTS dormitory.

In the 1980s, video stores sold eighteen inch statues with oversized heads of celebrities from music, TV and film. From the 1950s to the 1990s, Esco Products of Brooklyn fabricated hundreds of different figures, from Groucho Marx to Louis Armstrong.

The mixing of entertainment and news can be traced back to the penny press, but for the model of New Yorker style personal journalism, we might look to The Spectator column from the nineteenth century magazine The Outlook.

In 1996 a scene from the film That Old Feeling was shot in the lobby of Toronto's Royal York Hotel. The Empire Room at Chicago's Palmer House was a legendary supper club that feature vocal greats from Frank Sinatra to Peggy Lee.

The first pancake mix in a box was made by Pearl Milling Company, but soon other companies would follow such as Pillsbury and General Mills, which came out with the multipurpose Bisquick in 1931.

In 1988, Pussy Galore released a tape covering the entire Exile on Main Street. Not long after that, the Minneapolis trio Zuzu's Petals performed their own cover of a Stones song at the 400 Club.

The building for the old Minnesota Club is now occupied by a restaurant dedicated to Herb Brooks. The St. Paul Athletic Club building now hosts wedding receptions and special events, and guests can stay in its boutique hotel.

The Music Man got his start in Rock Island, Illinois. The horns he sold likely came from Elkhart Indiana, the drums from Gretsch, the pianos from Wurlitzer and the violins from a Sears catalog.

Rod McKuen was one of the best selling poets of the late twentieth century and recorded hundreds of albums both singing and reading poetry. His also introduced Belgian singer Jacques Brel to a wider audience by translating many of his lyrics into English.

Lynn Throckmorton was known for his research comparing the evolutionary speed of fruit flies, but from 1986 until his death in 2009, his academic career appears to be lost.

The word "Man", was used as a form of greeting back in the 16th century, but in the contemporary U.S. it most likely comes from African American jazz musicians. Willie Mays inspired a song by The Treniers and a generation to say "Hey" instead of "Hi".

The term Fanzine was coined in 1940 to distinguish fan created publications from professionally produced Hollywood fan mags. Later, the shortened term zine became associated with a punk rock DIY aesthetic and often featured interviews with iconoclastic musicians like Weasel Walter.

As part of an effort to integrate Milwaukee schools, in 1976 Rufus King High School became a magnet school focused on college prep and welcomed students from far away suburbs, including Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes.

The National Autonomous University of Mexico became a UNESCO world heritage site in 2007. A lesser known attraction, also located in Mexico City's Coyoacán borough, is the home of film director El Indio Fernández.

In the 1990s, the Daley administration ended a program that had successfully reduced gang violence in neighborhoods such as Pilsen and Little Village. Today, organizations like Enlace Chicago continue to struggle for the resources needed to address the problems produced by political neglect.

In the Spring of 1990 Andrew Apter and Moishe Postone were relatively new faculty at the University of Chicago. Both would go on to become highly regarded teachers and scholars.

Songs about intoxication have a long history, from NWA's Dope Man to Loretta Lynn's Honky Tonk Girl to Henry Purcell's The Macedon Youth.

The terrace at University of Wisconsin's Memorial Union is a spectacular place to study with a pitcher of beer or read a copy of The Onion.

In Providence, Rhode Island of the eighties one could buy a Coffee Cabinet before going to a hear music at Club Rocket, or take Amtrak south to see the same band at d.c. space in our nation's capital.

Little Italy's San Gennaro festival has been the backdrop of multiple movies, including Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, where an intern got to spin cotton candy.

A swindle involving American Express Travelers checks allows purchase of a portable stereo with double cassette tape player.

In 1975, President Ford signed a law allowing women to enter the service academies. Facing enormous hostility, almost half of the women who entered West Point in these early years, dropped out, but one woman who made it through was Sara Potecha.

Porky's drive in opened on St. Paul's university avenue in 1953 and closed in 2011. It's space age building and neon pig's head now reside at The Little Log House Pioneer Village in rural Hastings.

From 1983 to 1992, Medusa's nightclub just south of Wrigley Field welcomed kids of all kinds to celebrate their freakiness on the dance floor.