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Everything Is Symbolic: The 1989 Diaries

Everything Is Symbolic: The 1989 Diaries

Written by: Allan Wiedenfeld
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About this listen

Everything Is Symbolic: The 1989 Diaries is a coming-of-age audio memoir adapted from the real journal of a closeted teen growing up in small-town Wisconsin during 1989. Each entry is read (mostly verbatim) with a mix of deadpan humor, emotional honesty, and unexpected beauty. Family chaos, social disasters, spiritual longing — all told by a teenager who thinks he might be in love, might be losing his mind, or might just be deeply misunderstood. Equal parts cringe and poetry. New episodes weekly. No visuals. Just a tape recorder and the truth.

© 2025 Everything Is Symbolic: The 1989 Diaries Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Ep 3: Everything Bad About High School, In One Room

    Ep 3: Everything Bad About High School, In One Room
    Aug 18 2025

    Existential dread, rejection, prom.

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    9 mins
  • Ep 2: The Cursed Trip

    Ep 2: The Cursed Trip
    Aug 8 2025

    California is supposed to be warm, glamorous, and full of possibility. Instead, there’s an aunt who talks in loops, a Hare Krishna buffet, a sitcom taping with no laughter, a big fight, and a bargain over a necklace. The trip keeps tilting toward the cursed—but the diary continues.


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    24 mins
  • Ep 1: Is God Private Property?

    Ep 1: Is God Private Property?
    Aug 8 2025

    Wisconsin, 1989. An 18-year-old takes inventory of small-town life: a stolen camera, a brother drunk in the kitchen, parents circling the same fight, and the quiet suspicion that God might be private property. The grotto waits, the bookstore can't read, the people avert their eyes, and the diary keeps its own sharp, patient record.
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    15 mins
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