Once upon a time, cultural revivals used to follow rules. Every 20 years, like clockwork, we'd collectively dust off a forgotten decade, which explains why disco returned in the '90s, synthpop dominated the 2000s, and so on. But today, that predictable rhythm is completely shattered because Fall Out Boy sits next to Boygenius next to TikTok remixes in playlists that defy all logic.

This week, host Leslie Simon investigates the death of the 20-year nostalgia cycle and tries to answer why streaming algorithms have left us culturally unmoored. From the psychology behind traditional revivals to the Y2K comeback that felt manufactured from Day 1, find out how we went from organized cultural memory to complete temporal anarchy.

Part 1 explores how we lost our collective sense of cultural time—and why your confusion about what decade we're living in isn't an accident.

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