A fun and freewheeling look at the many events big and small, famed and forgotten from a single calendar year
Episodes
Tuesday Sep 23, 2025
Tuesday Sep 23, 2025
We're doing it again! The fourth season of It Happened One Year kicks off the only way a season about the year 2000 could - a little Y2K madness! Listen as Sarah & Joe get deep into the panic and the preparation behind the computer bug that nearly tore the world apart, with all the media hysteria that led up to that fateful New Year's Eve, all the millennium celebrations, all the marketing tie-ins, and the various tidbits connected to the biggest year end party any of us will ever know!
Tuesday Sep 09, 2025
Tuesday Sep 09, 2025
We took a break, stretched our legs, and now it's time to do it again! The famed and forgotten await their turns on the big show! Starting later this month!
Thursday Apr 17, 2025
Thursday Apr 17, 2025
After twenty months, It Happened One Year is finally ringing down the curtain on 1984! Sarah & Joe are revisiting their season one roots by wrapping up the year with a rousing trivia contest, this time backed by the board game of 1984 product - Jeopardy! Listen as the hosts hack their way through decades-old questions and recount memories of this lengthy podcast season.
Tuesday Apr 01, 2025
Tuesday Apr 01, 2025
It's that time again, folks - It Happened One Year has (nearly) reached the end of another season, and so it's time to again honor those lost in the subject year. Listen as Sarah & Joe discuss a wide range of celebrities who said goodbye some forty-one years ago now, including Richard Burton, Peter Lawford, Ethel Merman, Indira Gandhi, Truman Capote, Francois Truffaut, Jackie Wilson, Count Basie, James Mason, and many more!
Friday Mar 21, 2025
Friday Mar 21, 2025
And now, the conclusion! The police are after the culprits, the press has caught the oddball details, and the conflict is coming to a head!
Written & Directed by Joe Cetta
Cast
Michelle Auffrey/additional - Sarah Rusakiiwicz
Freddie Auffrey - Dane Bower
Karl Daigle - Brent Hutchins
Karen Daigle - Lana Cooper
Patrolman Anne Dandy - Kristin Mann
Sgt. Furrier - Bear Savo
Judge Membrino/additional - Joe Cetta
Vito Vitale/Bailiff/Jack/additional - David Munchak
Rocky Cannavino - Bill Randall
Radio Margaret - Jo-Elle Munchak
Officer Rodriguez - Krispy
Attorney Henshaw - Matthew Hinton
Michelle P. - Jennifer Nack
Michelle R./Atomic Scientists/additional - Angie Buonincontro
Courtroom Assistant Marsha - Dina Udomsak
Stenographer Alice - Shannon Hosey
Reporter Hildy - Matt Moran
Reporter Gail - Graceann Dorse
Reporter Howard/additional - The Batman
David Wittman/additional - Adam Carpenter
Irving R. Levine/additional - Dave Gardon
Additional voices - Danielle Harris, Michael Buonincontro, Jerron
Dead Milkmen - Bill Honchell
Dead Kennedys - Kate Langan
Heaven 17 - Reid Mosley
Friday Mar 14, 2025
Friday Mar 14, 2025
Should the government allow as Christian a symbol as a nativity on town property? Some crusading figures in Fitchburg, Massachusetts sure didn't think so. And the events that followed grew into a local scandal and international punchline in 1984, with the nativity in Monument Park the new epicenter for this ideological battle! Vandalism, kidnapping, chicken throwing, and social commentary abound, and now, It Happened One Year brings you the whole approximate tale with its sixth fully-scripted production!
Written & Directed by Joe Cetta
Cast
Michelle Auffrey/additional - Sarah Rusakiiwicz
Freddie Auffrey - Dane Bower
Karl Daigle - Brent Hutchins
Karen Daigle - Lana Cooper
Patrolman Anne Dandy - Kristin Mann
Sgt. Furrier - Bear Savo
Judge Membrino/additional - Joe Cetta
Vito Vitale/Bailiff/Jack/additional - David Munchak
Rocky Cannavino - Bill Randall
Radio Margaret - Jo-Elle Munchak
Officer Rodriguez - Krispy
Attorney Henshaw - Matthew Hinton
Michelle P. - Jennifer Nack
Michelle R./Atomic Scientists/additional - Angie Buonincontro
Courtroom Assistant Marsha - Dina Udomsak
Stenographer Alice - Shannon Hosey
Reporter Hildy - Matt Moran
Reporter Gail - Graceann Dorse
Reporter Howard/additional - The Batman
David Wittman/additional - Adam Carpenter
Irving R. Levine/additional - Dave Gardon
Additional voices - Danielle Harris, Michael Buonincontro, Jerron
Dead Milkmen - Bill Honchell
Dead Kennedys - Kate Langan
Heaven 17 - Reid Mosley
And tune back in next week for the conclusion!
Friday Mar 07, 2025
Friday Mar 07, 2025
A relic from the days of yore! It Happened One Year finally rolls out its episode about the New York mafia of the 1980s, recorded so long ago we still thought there was a chance Donald Trump might go to prison! Ah, those innocent days! Sarah & Joe - at the tail end of Memorial Day weekend, 2024 - tackle a variety of mob related antics from 1984 and the surrounding days, including Rudy Giuliani's RICO takedown of organized crime (a story which was very fresh in the news again nine months ago), Big Paul Castellano's murder, the rise of John Gotti, Joe Columbo's Italian American Civil Rights League, Joe Profaci's descendants, the extensive crimes of Roy DeMeo, The Godfather's Albert Ruddy, The Sopranos in pop culture, Russell Bufalino, mob tours in Chicago, and much more!
Tuesday Feb 25, 2025
Tuesday Feb 25, 2025
"We have Jesus. We will hang him unless the police leave five cases of Budweiser here January 1st." This was the anonymous ransom demand left at the scene of the nativity heist that made international news out of Fitchburg, Massachusetts in December of 1984. But the identity of the culprits and their true motives were a mystery to law enforcement and the rosary-clutching public. Was the objection on religious grounds? Was it someone with a vendetta against the Fitchburg police? Or was it all a light-hearted prank that got out of hand? The fourth and final scripted episode from It Happened One Year for 1984, Three Minutes to Midnight imagines the daring crimes and colorful figures involved in this semi-forgotten incident, brought to life by dozens of members from the Mighty IHOY Players! Tune back in March 14th & 21st for the epic, two-part tale!
Tuesday Jan 21, 2025
Tuesday Jan 21, 2025
For the first and only time this season, It Happened One Year is doing a fabled Road Episode - this time the show's first from outside the country! Recorded Christmastime in the Notting Hill area of London, England, Sarah & Joe tackle the coincidentally Chicago-set Sidney Sheldon thriller 1984 adaptation The Naked Face, starring Roger Moore, Rod Steiger, Elliott Gould, Art Carney, Anne Archer, and Navy Pier, baby! Come for the breakdown of the melodramatics - touching quickly on Roger Moore's career and life, with appearances by Scaramanga himself Christopher Lee, Harry & Sally, the local Tesco - and wrap up with some truly mediocre impressions. Look, it was a recorded on a long vacation at the end of a long day, it was bound to be a little odd, even by IHOY standards.
Friday Dec 20, 2024
Friday Dec 20, 2024
Having largely dealt with 1984's Christmas season last year, It Happened One Year had to dig deep to unearth the Xmas episode topic this time around, and what better place to turn than to the cabbage patch itself! Sarah & Joe take a look at the big ABC special that aired December 7th, 1984 - The Cabbage Patch Kids' First Christmas, discuss the casting and bizarro plot, and attempt to track backward into Cabbage Patch lore to figure out what the hell is going on here. Along the way, the visit the oddball Cabbage Patch event center Babyland, chat about the connected books and records of the franchise, give some quick love to the Garbage Pail Kids, and quickly shout out last year's epic scripted episode Jingle Hell.