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Rewind to 22 Jan 2006 to 28 Jan 2006

🎤 High school musical rewires your personality
Disney drops a made-for-TV movie and accidentally creates a global tween religion. Zac Efron becomes your entire emotional support system, Sharpay steals every scene and ‘We’re All In This Together’ is suddenly being belted at school assemblies by kids who previously refused to raise their hand in class.

🕵️ Fake rock, real spies
Russia accuses British diplomats of spying with… a hollow rock full of electronics. Agents crouch to ‘tie their shoelaces’ while secretly uploading data. The UK denies everything. Everyone pretends this is normal diplomatic behaviour and not the plot of a rejected Bond film.

📧 Spam king gets wrecked
AOL sues notorious spammer Christopher Smith for clogging inboxes with miracle pills and ‘urgent business proposals’ and wins US$5.3 million. The CAN-SPAM Act finally swings into action and somewhere a Hotmail inbox breathes a small exhausted sigh of relief.

🦷 Grillz go mainstream
Nelly’s Grillz hits #1 in the US, officially turning dental jewellery into a cultural event. Suddenly everyone knows a guy who can get them ‘done cheap’ and your cousin is Googling ‘gold teeth near me’ on dial-up.

🧛 Leather, lore and Kate Beckinsale
Underworld: Evolution rules the US box office with slow-mo gun fights, ancient vampire drama and industrial blue-grey vibes while Memoirs of a Geisha enchants Australia with sweeping tragedy, Oscar buzz and very complicated cultural conversations.

🎬 Disney buys the future
Disney announces it’s buying Pixar for US$7.4 billion and accidentally sets up the next decade of Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, Inside Out and Frozen. Bob Iger chooses the smartest cheat code in media history.

📚 The book everyone pretends to like
The Hostage tops the charts and delivers 700 pages of government meetings, diplomatic intrigue and one-star reviews begging for mercy. Thrilling if you love bureaucracy.

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🧻 Wikitorial wipeout. The LA Times tried letting the public edit their editorials. What they got instead? Porn, profanity and chaos in 36 hours. A short-lived democracy, quickly replaced by Ctrl+Alt+Nope.

🦇 Batman begins again. Christopher Nolan ditches the bat-nipples and gives us trauma, ninjas and a Batmobile that could eat your SUV. Christian Bale growls, Katie Holmes dodges bats and superhero movies grow the hell up.

🧢 Ned Kelly gets heritage listed. Glenrowan, site of Ned Kelly’s final standoff, gets heritage status and an unofficial side hustle in car decals, mailbox toppers and calf tattoos that say “such is life.” Iconic outlaw, small-town merch king.

📻 Open up the boombox! We dissect the old addage, 'if it's not one thing, it's another!' as we air your boomer complaints.

🎮 Xbox 360 arrives. And so does Sid, the kid! Launch day chaos as the 360 sells out in hours. HD gaming, Xbox Live 2.0, achievements — and soon the dreaded Red Ring of Death. Microsoft’s win… with a billion-dollar asterisk.

🧪 Two Aussies, one Nobel and a beaker of bacteria. On a snowy Stockholm night, Dr Robin Warren and Professor Barry Marshall rewrite medical history — and humiliate decades of gastro dogma — by winning the Nobel Prize for proving stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria, not stress or spicy food. Marshall seals the legend by drinking Helicobacter pylori like it’s a schooner at the pub, getting sick, then curing himself with antibiotics. It’s the most chaotic, iconic, unbelievably Australian science story ever told.

🐸 A Frog is born (and it feels good, man). November 2005 saw the debut of Matt Furie’s comic Boy’s Club — and with it, the birth of Pepe the Frog. Back then, he was just a chill stoner amphibian with bad aim and good vibes. Twenty years later, he’s meme history — proof that even frogs can’t escape the internet’s chaos.

🐥 Chicken Little takes flight. Disney went fully digital for the first time without Pixar and served up Chicken Little, starring Zach Braff as the sky-is-falling featherball. It made $315 million, confused adults, delighted kids, and marked the moment Disney said “we can animate on our own!” (spoiler: not quite yet).

📚 Outlander gets extra saucy. A Breath of Snow and Ashes drops, and readers drown in time-travel, romance, and kilted chaos. Critics beg for fewer butts, more plot. Claire and Jamie? Still can’t keep their hands off each other.

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🐶 Who’s a cloned boy? Snuppy the Afghan hound becomes the world’s first cloned dog, born after 1,000 embryos, 123 surrogates and more ethical debates than a philosophy major on Red Bull.

🎤 Mariah's not-so-comeback. The Emancipation of Mimi drops and Mariah Carey reminds us she never left — she just needed a minute, some stiletto cardio and 14 guest producers. We Belong Together = world domination.

🚋 Tram Boy’s joyride. A 14-year-old Melbourne teen hijacked a Yarra Tram and drove it like a seasoned pro—manual track switches, passenger pickups, even PA announcements. His smooth run ended in a high-drama arrest and he became an instant folk hero.

🧢 Jay-Z drops luxury time bombs. Hov teamed up with Audemars Piguet to launch his own Royal Oak watch line with only 100 made. If you snagged one in 2005, it came with a preloaded iPod and a truckload of clout. Today? You’re sitting on six figures, easy.

Tatts all folks! Tattoos from the early 2000s are making a comeback and we're wondering if they ever went out of style! 📣 B-A-N-A-N-A-S.Gwen Stefani clapped back at Courtney Love with a cheerleader chant for the ages. Hollaback Girl hit the charts and took over high school halls everywhere. You couldn’t escape it — not in gym class, not at prom and definitely not on your Motorola RAZR ringtone.

⏳ Flashback within a flashback... within a 'best of' episode! T minus 20 gets meta as we throw back to a time when we were babies on the radio with none other than the man who inspired the character of Kramer from the hit show Seinfeld.

📺 Logies, lies and live TV glitches. The 2005 Logies were the chaos we deserved. Rove won everything (again), Chris Hemsworth got his moment and Channel Nine lost the broadcast right before announcing the Gold Logie winner. Also, shout-out to the whitegoods prize pack from voting - nothing says Aussie TV like a blender with your ballot.

🐕 And do kids even get chased by dogs anymore? We tackle the big questions when we open up the boom box.

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