In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 175: 2024 Year In Review, 2025 Podcast Preview(12-25-2024)

• Season 1 • Episode 175

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Happy Holidays to all!
Episode 175 is a special bonus show to be found under your tree on Christmas morning.
It has been the best year yet for the podcast and this episode will review the year that was. This includes a countdown of my own picks for my Top 10 favorite segments of 2024.
We also will take a look ahead to 2025 with a bit of a preview of segments to come and a few possibilities on the horizon.
Most of all this episode serves as a thank you to all who have been tuning in and who helped to make 2024 the best year yet for this podcast.
Thank you all so very much. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
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Speaker 00:

Hello, world, and Merry Christmas. Welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 175. Yes, it's very Christmassy, very festive. It's a different sort of episode of the podcast. It's a bonus episode. I haven't done one of those in a while, meaning it's shorter than most of my episodes. Typical episodes are 50, 55 minutes. This one's going to clock in probably a little short of 25 minutes. It's a little something special under your Christmas tree. At first, I wasn't even going to do a show because I was thinking, what if I put a lot of effort into a show and release it? And then because it's the Christmas holiday, no one listens and it's kind of pointless. But it's been such a great year for the podcast, for my content creation, that I kind of compromised and said, okay, I'll do a shorter episode so there's something. And it's going to be kind of a year in review and a preview of 2025. Even though it's a bonus episode of the podcast, of course I wanted to start off thanking all of you for tuning in, whether it's on Christmas Day or the week after if you're on vacation. The biggest thanks go to my Patreon subscribers, Lori, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Leo, Marguerite, Neglectoid, Crystal. Thank you all so much for supporting me, supporting my content. For other listeners out there, I have a growing free tier on Patreon at In My Footsteps Podcast. If you want to go and check out some of what that's all about, but without having to pay a subscription. But that being said, it's only $5 a month. You get access to bonus podcast episodes, early access to the main show, to YouTube videos, sometimes early access to blogs that I'm sharing. So here we are, we are at the end of 2024, the year in review for the podcast. There's been a lot that's gone on with this show, with my content in general. When I started the year, we were on episode 126, which featured things like obscure advertising mascots and the television show Rescue 911. And here we are now, episode 175. I try to do them weekly. And typically that's the way it goes with the show. Maybe holidays I will skip. Like I said, I was going to skip this week, but I kind of was like, no, I want to give something to you who have been listening. I don't want to just not leave a present for you. It's interesting though, at the beginning of this year, I was still doing the Cape Cod centric, New England centric podcast thing. Because that was how this podcast started back in the fall of 2020. I was combining everything that I liked. And I like local history, local travel. And as much as I still love all that stuff, I started to realize that local travel and history has a local interest. And although I know a lot of you out there who listen are from New England, from the Northeast, any content creator wants to expand their audience. So I started to lean more into the nostalgia, the Gen X nostalgia, people of my age group, 70s, 80s, 90s. And that's where we are now. I even changed the name of the podcast. I changed the logo. One thing that I've noticed when it comes to putting together podcasts full of nostalgia and pop culture is you really never run out of ideas. Because as time goes on, More recent things become a part of distant history. Think about it. Things from 2004 are now 20 years old. I know, it's horrible to hear that. I do feel like the transition to an all-nostalgia podcast has been working because there have been repeatedly new highs being set for downloads for the podcast for best day, best week, best month. up to and including a couple of weeks ago, I had my best day ever. Part of that comes down to the content that I put out, I hope, but another big part of it comes down to you who listen and share and bring more people into my spiderweb of listeners. If any of you listening, if this is your first time listening to the podcast and you hear me mention Cape Cod, New England travel and history, go back into my archives and Up to, I think, in the early 130s, as far as episodes go, every episode there is a Cape Cod or New England travel and history segment. So if that interests you, I've got plenty in my back catalog. It was also this year that I dabbled in subscriber episodes on my Buzzsprout platform. That's where the podcast is hosted. It's like that's the command center, and then it gets sent to all the outposts like Spotify and Apple. Those ended up not taking off, so I kind of scrapped the ones on Buzzsprout, and I stuck with Patreon, really trying to build a collection that's worthwhile for people to check out, not just subscribers, but the free tier so that you have a reason to go there and know you can check something out and not immediately be asked for your credit card number. You longtime listeners of the podcast will know that the majority of this year I spent talking about trying to do a video podcast. I had had so much fun doing the bonus episodes on Patreon where I went back to my initial impressions blog from 2010 to 2012-ish. And just reviewing my life in general and trying to be the narrator on what exactly I was talking about. They're pretty foolish and fun. I enjoyed that concept so much that I brought back the Initial Impressions blog back in February. I called it Initial Impressions 2.0 to be very original. As of the recording of this podcast, I'm on the 48th blog entry for Initial Impressions 2.0. There's a link in the description of the podcast if you want to go and check that out. My blog this year in general, it was my most prolific year ever for writing on my blog, which surprised me, but yet it didn't because I found my old Las Vegas journal that I wrote 2000, 2001 when I lived out there. I also started going through my old poetry that I wrote beginning senior year of high school, which was 1996. And I wrote a long-form short story, I guess, about what I've learned in my 40s so far that coincided with my birthday at the beginning of November. All of that right there, coupled with initial impressions 2.0, the weekly podcast becoming a blog post, it made it where I've got a lot of entries on that blog. I will say that an idea that I've been noodling with a little to continue with the blog post talk is I've got probably the first 100 episodes of the podcast, so a little more than half, have been transcribed. So you could basically read the podcast. And I've been debating taking some of the segments like I do on YouTube, creating videos, but also creating blog posts where I could put photos with them. It's a lot of looking to saturate the content market so that if someone finds me through the blog or a YouTube video or this podcast or a video podcast or one of my books that they suddenly see, wow, he's got a lot of stuff. Let me check him out. And then it tips over to, man, he's got too much stuff. I'm sick of him. I hope that doesn't become the case. But getting back to the video podcast, I finally debuted the webcam weekly wrap-up in September. I bought a ring light. I bought a selfie stick that doubled as a tripod or a stand for the ring light. And I also bought a brand new HD webcam so that it looks good. I like these. Each episode is 20-25 minutes long. It's the video version of the Initial Impressions 2.0 blog. As of the time I'm recording this podcast, there are 11 episodes of the Webcam Weekly Wrap-Up on YouTube, along with clips from each show. And I've mentioned also that I'm collecting outtakes from the show, so that eventually, likely on Patreon, I'll put together an outtakes video. With the podcast itself switching over to a nostalgia-based show, I added in some new segments. Blinkin' You'll Miss It Retro was one that I was putting together for a while. I like to watch old commercials. There are loads of channels on YouTube that have just old commercial collections. And what I find is I'll be watching these commercials from the 60s through the early 2000s. And I'll see a product and be like, I don't remember that. So I'll pause the video and then I'll go on Google and I'll search for the product. I ended up making a long list of products of TV shows that then get collected into six packs. Blink and you'll miss it retro. Those are pretty good. I've got videos on YouTube of them. The other big thing that I added more of this year on the podcast was short film, educational short film, and employee training video reviews. Those are just so much fun to watch and share with you, share clips of them. There are no shortage of educational short films and employee training videos. I could do them weekly, but I like to kind of give variety. But don't worry, there'll be more of them coming up in 2025. A big thing I wanted to do on this bonus episode of the podcast for the year in review was going back to if this is the first episode any of you are listening to, I wanted to give you my top 10 favorite segments I did through the year for the podcast to give you homework, something to go listen to when this show is done. Because all of these podcasts are like my children that I can't choose my favorite, what I did here with these top 10 is they're in chronological order from when they appeared during the year. The first one is already a cheat because I said that I really enjoyed both of the classic mall store shows. Those are episode 129 and then only a couple of weeks ago, episode 173. I did long-form bonus episodes on 15 classic mall stores on each episode. So you're talking about all these famous stores that people of my generation would remember? You've got the famous ones like Sears, Woolworth, Filene's, Jordan Marsh. Some slightly lesser-known ones like Cherry and Webb, Miller's Outpost, Gadzooks, because I like saying that name. They are a fun trip down memory lane. They also have clips of commercials if I could find them for some of the stores. Some of them didn't have commercials. Number two on my favorite segments of 2024 was a educational short film slash PSA review from episode 137. The name of the film was Bomb Threat Plan Don't Panic. I remember seeing this movie on the Something Weird On Demand channel in probably 2006. Back then, probably on a day off from work, sitting with my sister Kate and my niece Emma. I had been looking for an excuse to talk about this short film, especially the music, the sound effects with it. The segment I did was good. I enjoyed it. You can watch the full video yourself, either archive.org or on YouTube. The third segment on my top 10 is from episode 139. This is one of the employee training videos, and it's the old country buffet video. More specifically, the carving guy. This was from, I believe, 1992 or 93. Those of you that frequented old country buffet when it was around, you'll immediately remember when you see the layout with the carving guy. I just laugh at the forced dialogue that he has to have with the customers. The neat thing about the video, the full video, or at least the most full version of it you can find online, is the carving guy has his own YouTube channel. I think I said during that segment that he has mentioned he was going to upload the full video, but he hasn't posted anything in three and a half years, so I'm not holding my breath for it. Number four on my top 10 favorite segments is from episode 144. This was 1970s diet and exercise fad fails. This one was actually made into a video on my YouTube channel, so you can go and watch it over there. My favorite of the fads was the slender bender, which looked like a lawn chair that you did ab crunches on. There are pictures in the video, but you can also just look it up on Google, Slender Bender 1970s, and see this foolish thing. Number five on my top ten favorite segments was from episode 147, and it was the segment on Mr. Delicious. This was the unique middle-aged businessman mascot for the Rax Roast Beef fast food chain in the early 1990s. He would speak about all the problems he was having in life, divorce, money, even alluding to erectile dysfunction in one of the commercials that was on TV. But it would always come back to how even as bad as his life was, he could go to Rack's Roast Beef and get great deals. If you look up Mr. Delicious, you will see a lot of articles and videos on whether Mr. Delicious destroyed the Rack's Roast Beef fast food chain. Number six on my top ten favorite segments of the year was from episode 148. This is when I told the story of my cat, my pet growing up, Solo the cat, and his adventures that seemed like they would be something I made up as a kid, but they were real. The big storyline, I guess, of this event was the fact that Solo the cat disappeared one day and was gone for several months, at least three months. I was 10 years old. I would shake the food outside the door because that was how we would call our cats in at night. And after many months, Solo actually returned. And the shocking part wasn't just that he returned, but that he had learned how to use the toilet. I mean, he didn't flush, but he learned how to go to the bathroom on the toilet. There's a teaser for you to listen to that full episode. The seventh of my top 10 favorite segments is from episode 154. It's an episode entitled The Lady of the Dunes at 50. This is all about the Lady of the Dunes Cape Cod murder mystery that was solved a couple of years ago where she was identified as Ruth Marie Terry. Long-time listeners know all about The Lady of the Dunes. There are eight episodes in total through the history of the podcast that have detailed segments either about The Lady of the Dunes, the case, or interviews with the Lady of the Dunes documentary producer, Frank Durant. That's how this all started. You listeners have gotten to basically live through that timeline that I went through of coming aboard the documentary to write the companion book all the way through it being solved. Number eight segment in my top 10 favorites of the year was from episode 156. That's the weirdest Atari games ever made. This included games like Mangia, where your Italian mother is feeding you pasta nonstop and you have to get rid of it off your plate before your stomach explodes. It was during the research for this segment that I also learned that there was a segment of games for Atari that were considered adult. I guess it just shows you that video games and gaming in general was way different 40 years ago than it is now. The ninth of the top 10 favorite segments of the year was from episode 169, and that was the history of Weekly World News, the tabloid slash spoof newspaper. In this segment, I go through a lot of the famous stories and covers from Weekly World News, Bat Boy, things about aliens, things about celebrities that have died but are still alive like Elvis and JFK. This segment definitely will have sequels to it in 2025. And finally, the 10th of the top 10 favorite segments of 2024 was from episode 171, so a month ago. That was the employee training video for Crystal Pepsi. I was dying laughing at the hype around this product about how it was going to change the world of soda and beverages in general, just knowing how it turned out. And also it had one of the most quintessentially 90s guys ever in it going in to pick up a case of Crystal Pepsi. Those are my top 10 favorite segments. It was hard to narrow it down because I don't go into any episode looking to make a segment or a show that's just a throwaway. But I wanted to give you who maybe haven't listened to every show or maybe you're listening for the first time kind of a little roadmap of ones to listen to to get you started. But then it comes to what's ahead for 2025. For me, myself, and more of an overarching context, there's a lot going on. So I am hopefully going to be launching the In My Footsteps podcast website. This is the other thing you've heard me talk about all year along with the video podcast. This website will have all of the old episodes in the archives. I'm going to try to have every link I've ever shared through all of these episodes. There will be links to my homepage, ChristopherSatterlund.com. I'm on the fence about having a merch shop. The new logo fits in well for t-shirts, for bags, for buttons, for bumper stickers. I've also got my first acting gig coming up in March. I can't give much away, but it's for Frank Durant's next film, so likely I'll be filming this at the beginning of the year, and then later, probably late in the summer, will be when this film is out. So that'll be a big through line for 2025 is how it is to be in a film. My other big thing for the first quarter of 2025 is learning about copywriting as a potential side hustle and not copywriting like in legal ownership of trademarks and such. This is more copywriting as in marketing, promoting products, because I've done it for years with all my own stuff. So it feels like a natural progression to try to do it for others. So I'm going to be doing some courses through Skillshare. There's no rush on making this a side hustle, but it could end up being something that becomes a bigger part of my life, especially as 2025 goes on. Currently, for the first time since 2010, I'm not actively working on or promoting a book. I've got nine books through my website, which is likely going to get a kind of a fresh coat of paint in 2025. But that requires actual skilled web designers. My friend Barry that designed and updates the website. Be in my Footsteps podcast site. It's good. But I'm not a web designer, so I know my limitations. But it's weird. I don't have any author events, speaking events on the horizon. I'm sure that's going to change, but I don't have one to promote. I don't have a new book to work on. These are usually the times that something pops up that I didn't see coming. So that's, you never know. One thing I do know, though, is 2025 will be going into the fifth year of the podcast cycle. And I've already got a lot of ideas for segments. Like I said, nostalgia, it's almost a never-ending well of ideas. For example, I mentioned the weirdest Atari games. It's a top five list from episode 156. I could literally make a segment about each of those top five and maybe the honorable mentions. So we go from one segment to potentially eight, nine, ten segments. That's the idea with nostalgia. You can expand on the universe. In another example, I had a listener reach out to me and ask me to do a segment on the children's music singer Rafi, which that will be part of next week's episode 176. But I didn't realize that Rafi's been around since before I was born. He's been around since the mid-1970s. So he literally fits in the wheelhouse of the nostalgia I'm looking for, but I wouldn't have thought to do a segment on him if this listener named Nick hadn't reached out and asked about it. Other topics, though, that I know are on the horizon for 2025 include, next week also, famous things that have anniversaries in 2025 to make you feel old. First and foremost, the movie Back to the Future is going to be 40 years old, so you kind of see where this segment is going. I'll also do 1995, the year in music, two parts. One will likely be next month, January, and then part two will be in July of next year. I'll be telling the story of my time in Florida. It was pretty brief. That was 20 years ago in the fall of 2005. Much like my time in Vegas, it's filled with interesting stories. I'll be doing a part two of famous musicians that were born in New England. Part one was from episode 93. And the reason I haven't done a part two yet was because my notes I had for that segment ended up being lost. I think I wrote over them and then saved it as a different episode, something stupid that I did. So I went back to look for that specific set of notes because I wrote it out to have two parts. I said, oh no, now I can't remember. But I'll do my research and find enough for a part two. And there'll be more follow-up segments. There'll be another segment about McDonaldland. Maybe their comic books. Loads more of educational short films, employee training video reviews. More blink-and-you'll-miss-it retro segments. Me vs. AI top five. Weird news stories, more about the Simpsons, the Three Stooges, Godzilla, funny fitness fads. The well of nostalgia doesn't run dry, or at least you've got to keep digging if it does. And nostalgia is powerful. It's like if you're having a bad day, a bad week, if you're not happy with where you are in life or just it's been a bad time, nostalgia stays the same. You find things that you used to watch or listen to when you were a kid and it brings you back. That's part of what I feel the purpose of this podcast is. Because as I get older and I'll be turning 48 next year, I feel the need to lean back on nostalgia a lot more. And I'm not saying it's all of you out there, but people that are my age, anywhere from your late 30s through your early 60s, I don't know if you look back and just like, where did the time go? So nostalgia is kind of a comforting thing. An interesting thing about the nostalgia, I may be dipping a little more into 1960s nostalgia. And that's because when I started looking at my year end numbers, specifically through Spotify, the majority of my listeners, the highest percentage, were people 55 and older. So if that's the case, and if a lot of you out there are people that grew up in the 60s. I'm going to do more to try to give you things that you will enjoy because it's also getting to the point where the early 2000s are now considered nostalgia. So there's a much larger segment of time that I can kind of mine from for ideas. So that's some of what's coming up for 2025 for me in particular and for the podcast. There are probably other ideas that I haven't thought of yet that'll pop in my head at some point during the next year, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. As we start to wind down the bonus Christmas Day episode, the last episode of the year, I just wanted to really thank you all for listening. This began as a passion project in the fall of 2020 as I struggled with giving up alcohol that had been a major problem in my life for several years leading up to the creation of the podcast. So in many ways, doing this podcast is part of what keeps me sober. And part of it is I keep adding to my plate with content to do almost to keep those demons at bay. I'm not saying if I stopped doing all of this stuff that I would immediately go to the liquor store. But there's that famous phrase, idle hands are the devil's workshop. So it's like, you never know. I stopped doing the podcast and I'm instantly like Barney Gumbel from The Simpsons laying in the gutter. My appreciation extends to the fact that I, yes, I've had nine books published and I've had hundreds of articles and blogs to pat myself on the back for things that aren't that interesting. I have a big social presence. You know, you Google me, you can find a lot of my stuff, but I'm not famous. So maybe some of you found me because you came to book events or you liked my books. But a lot of you found me because you found my podcast topics interesting and worth checking out. And some of you came, listened once and stayed. All of this stuff, it's been created through my mind. That's my biggest thing. That's my biggest goal in life is to be totally self-employed, self-sustaining, mainly through things that I create through my own mind. It's probably a control thing, but it's also the creativity. It's been something that has been my biggest burning passion since I was eight years old. So having you out there a loyal base of listeners that seems to be continually growing. It means a lot because it means what I'm doing is resonating with you and enough for you to share with others. I see my stats. I know where the majority of you are from. That sounds foreboding. I know where you're from. A lot from the Northeast, but then a lot scattered around the United States. I've got people in Canada, England, Germany, Singapore. My hope is that 2025 is even better than 2024, which has been the best year yet for all of my content. So my big goal, the biggest thing is to make next year the best year ever. So keep tuning in, keep listening, sharing with others. Check out the YouTube channel. I've got hundreds of videos there. The Webcam Weekly Wrap-Up Podcast. You can go to my blog, read all that content. I hope you've enjoyed my gift to you on Christmas Day. But I hope that your day, whether you're listening on the day or after, I hope it was or is as good as it can be, filled with family, friends, good food, I hope. That's always a big staple of the holidays. It was something I said a few weeks ago on the podcast that when you're little, the holidays feel magical and you don't have to do anything. It just is. The holidays can still be magical and amazing when you're older. You just have to put in more of the effort. That was a big thing when I said that. That was partially why I did this podcast episode, was to give you something more. But until next time, I'll be back on New Year's Day, so another holiday. Luckily, I will not be hungover, so that'll be good. If any of you are for that show, I'll try to talk quieter. But until next year, remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thank you all for an amazing 2024. I appreciate every one of you that listens. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, but you already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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