In 1932, Richard Hollingshead Jr. nailed a bed sheet to trees in his Camden, New Jersey backyard, balanced a Kodak projector on the hood of his car, and propped cars on wooden blocks to work out sight lines. The result was the patented terraced ramp layout behind the first official drive-in theater, which opened in June 1933 with room for 400 cars. This episode traces the boom, bust and unexpected resurrection of an entire industry.

The conversation covers the sound problem that sank Hollingshead's own theater, RCA's 1941 in-car speakers and the windows ripped out by forgotten cables, and the switch to radio micro-broadcasting. It follows the post-war explosion to more than 4,000 theaters, the bottle warmers and passion pits, the helicopter rides and caged monkeys, and then the real estate inflation, daylight saving time and digital convers ...