1998 nostalgia hits differently once someone points out that it was actually the last safe year. Google arrived. Email became something everyone had. Cell phones showed up in pockets that had never held one before. And none of the bad stuff had taken hold yet. Every website looked different. Loading one felt like going somewhere.

What does it feel like to look back at a year that was genuinely exciting about the future without knowing what the future was actually going to do? The internet in 1998 was surfing. An adventure. A place where you booted up the phone line and went exploring. Pokemon arrived the same year and for the same reason: a universe so complex and so vast that it felt like the whole world had opened up and there was always more to find.

The Big Lebowski came out that summer. The Chicago Bulls played their last dance. skunkmaster_J_1981 sent his first email. Not everything from 1998 aged well. The feeling of it did.

Topics: 1998 nostalgia, Throwback Thursday, Pokemon history, Big Lebowski, early internet culture

GUEST: Ed Conroy | retroontario.ca | @‌retrontario

Originally aired on2026-04-16