Roller skates and Return of the Jedi. Leg warmers and Michael Jackson. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. AIDS and Chernobyl. “Live Aid” and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The 1980s were a decade full of neon colors and existential angst, fears of nuclear war and popular protests for peace. Mix tapes and video cassettes circulated as Glasnost and Perestroika fueled legions of Soviet hippies and metal heads. Hip Hop, roller skating, and aerobics conquered the globe while Bruce Springsteen traveled east for a rock concert in Radrennbahn Weissensee in in July 1988. Donald Trump was still building gaudy casinos while the Walkman made our music portable for the first time. My new book project will consist of a series of interrelated essays on the cultural zeitgeist of the 1980s from six countries on either side of the East-West Divide: The USA, the USSR, the FRG, the GDR, the Republic of Ireland, and the People’s Republic of Bulgaria. Although politics and economics divided the citizens of these countries, a new global popular culture brought them closer together. Rather than focusing on official rhetoric or political narratives of the 1980s, my ethnographic study will rely on primary source analysis, archival research, and oral histories to paint a vibrant picture of popular culture and everyday life among populations living through the final decade of the Cold War.