The Summer 2011 issue of Nostalgia Digest includes an interview with Janet Waldo, known to separate generations as the squealy Emmy Lou on The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet radio show, then as Judy Jetson, Penelope Pitstop and Josie (of The Pussycats) for Hanna-Barbera TV cartoons. The Waldo interview is a two-page teaser for a longer interview to be broadcast on Nostalgia Digest’s Chicago-based radio show Those Were the Days on Aug. 27, which will also air some of her radio shows. Waldo played the title role in Meet Corliss Archer, a series about a 15-year-old girl (“Heyyyyyy, Corrrrliissss!,” as her next-door neighbor boyfriend screams) which ran for 13 years—nearly as long as the unchanging age of its protagonist.

I’ve got to patient for two months now; Waldo doesn’t mention Josie & the Pussycats at all in the magazine excerpt.

Only a handful of Meet Corliss Archer episodes are extant today, despite the show’s long run. Another show highlighted in Nostalgia Digest, however, is ubiquitous on the Golden Age of Radio internet stations: Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. Well over 700 episodes exist from the show’s 1949-1962 existence. It was cancelled in 1954 but revived a year later, and lasted until the very end of the radio drama era. There were eight different Johnny Dollars in that time, including Dick Powell (who did the pilot), Edmond O’Brien (1950-52) and the longest-starring Bob Bailey (1955-1960).

Johnny Dollar comes up frequently on the Audio Noir, Antioch Radio Network and other nostalgia channels. I’d be pretty sick of it, except that because of the sheer mass of episodes available you don’t endure many repeats. Also, it’s one of the few adventure series on any medium to be set in Connecticut. (The few others include that TV show where Amy Brenneman was a judge.) Johnny Dollar is the Hartford-based insurance agent with “the action-packed expense account.” He’s actually hardly ever in Connecticut, always flying off to Texas or somewhere, where he seems to inspire more murders than he’s enlisted to solve.

I never learn much from Nostalgia Digest—the articles are too brief, more extensive info is easily available from books and internet, and it prefers the popular to the obscure—but I nonetheless find it irresistible. It’s very passionate about its vast topic: in the current issue, “Nostalgia” covers Astaire & Rodgers to Paul Whiteman to The Bickersons to I Love Lucy to drive-in movie theaters—some 60 years of pop-cult phenomena. I especially like how little effect new media has had on nostalgia publications like this and Classic Images magazine: still committed to print, and serving a diehard market of feverish collectors and casual nostalgia buffs. The very packaging enhances the nostalgia element.