It’s been thirty years since My So-Called Life premiered—thirty years since Angela Chase fell for Jordan Catalano and quietly redefined what teenage angst looked like. This week, Under the Influence rewinds to 1994 for a nostalgic deep dive into the one-season show that changed how we saw adolescence, parents, and ourselves.

Emily Crandall, a political theorist with a PhD from CUNY who moonlights as an underemployed adjunct and podcast maker (“Yay, capitalism”), and Esme Shaller, a clinical psychologist and professor at UCSF whose middle school daughters are currently reading The Babysitters Club, join the conversation. Together, they explore how My So-Called Life captured the confusion and loneliness of being fifteen, why its portrayal of parents feels so different through adult eyes, and how it laid the groundwork for every coming-of-age show that followed.

It’s a love letter to the nineties—a time before phones, when friendship was analog, music was everything, and watching a boy lean against a locker could still break your heart.

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