I Miss the 90s. What I Really Miss is Real Life

Under the Influence with Jo Piazza

Jo Piazza, Influence Inc.

Technology, Kids & Family, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Parenting

4.3 • 834 Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We are living in peak nineties nostalgia. Everywhere you look there are slip dresses, scrunchies, bucket hats, even Tamagotchis making a comeback. But this revival is not just about clothes or hair accessories. It is about a collective longing for a pre-digital era, before we were glued to our phones and before algorithms decided what we should see, wear, and want. In this episode of Under the Influence, we dig into why millennials and Gen Z are craving the decade that gave us dial-up internet, landlines, and the last gasp of an unplugged childhood. From malls to music videos, beauty trends to sitcoms like Friends (and even the new series Osadid and Friends), the nineties are everywhere right now. Maybe that is not just nostalgia. Maybe it is the medicine we need for our current screen burnout. Read Glynnis's piece on why we are doomed to keep reliving the nineties here. (Gift Link) Join our newsletter community here. ORDER EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU here. Visit our lovely sponsors here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Anna, I've got a new secret weapon for print.
0:02.2	Print? Vista print, right? That's not a secret.
0:05.6	Print everything for your business with Vistaprint.
0:08.0	Business cards, stickers, t-shirt, signage, even photo books from your last holiday.
0:12.0	If you need it, we print it at vistoprint.co.uk.
0:19.5	Everywhere, look, people are longing for a fantasy of the past.
0:26.6	And I am not talking about the Tradwife fantasy of the 1950s or the 1890s.
0:33.3	I'm talking about the 1990s.
0:36.2	The very real, messy, cigarettes outside and inside of the bar, Oasis on repeat,
0:43.7	Carolyn Beset in a white tea and perfect hair, flip phones if you had a phone at all,
0:50.0	brand new episodes of Friends and ER every single week. The nostalgia for the 90s is very,
0:58.2	very real. Today I'm talking about it with my dear friend, Glynis McNichael, who has a lot of
1:04.4	theories on why 90s nostalgia isn't just very prescient right now for those of us who lived through the 90s, but for those of us
1:13.2	who were either born in the late 90s or the early 2000s who never lived it in reality at all.
1:21.2	What Glynis thinks, and I totally agree, is that we're all really just craving life offline.
1:28.0	We want community without a feed telling us what to think,
1:32.2	a little serendipity, a little adventure.
1:34.8	Glinnis calls the 90s a code word for the fact that we just want real life.
1:41.3	And I think she's right.
1:43.1	So time travel with us. Back to a time when jagged little pill
1:47.3	had just come out. Sex in the City was on screens for the very first time. You'd have to walk
1:52.1	past a newsstand to get the actual news, and no one was reachable all the time. Travel back with us
	...

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