May the 4th landed on a Friday this year and Ryan O’Donnell spent it exactly the way you would expect: three films deep by the time the show aired, running them as background noise the way most people run music.

Writing a Star Wars segment, Ryan O’Donnell put down the number 20 and paused. Twenty years of watching the films, reading the books, following the franchise. He was 23 when the new movies were coming out and got excited the same way he does now. His conclusion is that the franchise is genuinely generational, which he finds more cool than embarrassing.

The mantle story lands somewhere in the middle. Eleven Lego Star Wars sets, displayed on the fireplace the first time his partner came over. He describes leaving them up as, in hindsight, absolutely crazy. Six months later, he asked if she would actually watch the films with him. She said yes.

Topics: May the 4th Star Wars, Star Wars Day, generational fandom, Star Wars nerd, freak flag relationships

Originally aired on2026-05-04