Nostalgia Trap

120 MONTHS - FEBRUARY 1990 - Primus, The Cramps, Everything But the Girl, Oingo Boingo, Guided By Voices, Midnight Oil Aug 20, 2025

February 1990 was a wild month in music, with new album releases from Oingo Boingo, Everything But the Girl, The Cramps, Primus, The Highwaymen, Midnight Oil, and Guided By Voices.

All paying subscribers (at any level) of Nostalgia Trap get a full 120 Months Substack subscription: https://www.patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Listen to the February 1990 playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7cJqeGIUsNXmVkWYWlGzee?si=V8rVdTEVRBucjSyfE76aQw

Follow our Spotify for all our ‘90s playlists: https://open.spotify.com/user/parsonsdlp?si=1cd4dca3de484ac5

Substack: https://substack.com/@120months

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/120_months/

News Trap 8.15.25 - Capital's AI & Crypto Endgame w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Aug 15, 2025

Global capital is currently putting more resources into building AI infrastructure than any other mass project in human history, with little evidence that AI can ever turn the kind of profits needed to make it all worth it. Why? Justin Rogers-Cooper brings the data and the perspective to the AI masterplan, offering some ideas about what’s REALLY going on with the tech gambit, how the risk is being cleverly hidden, and why this moment foretells an economic and social crisis whose scale is unimaginable.

Subscribe for a FREE 7 day trial and listen to the whole episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/news-trap-8-15-w-136575689

We also, of course, discuss 90s music. Speaking of which, here’s some links to check out my new podcast, 120 MONTHS. If you can spare a moment, I’d deeply appreciate some likes/follows/5 star reviews on Apple to help game the algorithm and launch this new project in style. Thanks!

Substack: https://substack.com/@120months

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/120-months-podcast/id1833028709

120 MONTHS - A 90s Music Odyssey Aug 14, 2025

I'm very excited to present the very first episode of my new podcast/YouTube channel/online content thing, 120 MONTHS. This is a project that I've been wanting to do for a very long time.

Along with my good friend John Lombardo, I'm listening to all the major music releases of the 1990s, IN ORDER, month by precious nostalgic month, from January 1990 to December 1999. I know, it's A LOT. But what else is there for us anymore, beyond the endless pleasures and pain of retreating into the past?

A bit about John: I first met him in 1995, when I was a nerdy high school kid and he was an extremely cool local celebrity. As the lead singer of an alternative rock band that toured with bands like Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Toad the Wet Sprocket, and many more, John was tapped into scenes that I could only imagine. He has a ton of crazy stories, and a lot to say about how music evolved during the era. I'm very much looking forward to sharing the conversations we're having on the show.

We're creating Spotify playlists so you can listen along to all the music we're tracking on the show, and we've got a Substack page where you can find all of our 90s music content along with extra goodies for paid subscribers. I would love if you'd follow us there.

If you like Nostalgia Trap, I think you'll dig 120 MONTHS. I'll be sending out some special discount stuff for our Substack to anyone who follows/subscribes to the Trap Patreon, so keep an eye on your inbox. And below there are some links to find the whole 120 MONTHS universe.

And don't worry: Nostalgia Trap isn't going anywhere. This is just a new space to talk in detail about a weird, wonderful moment in the history of American music. I hope you'll join us!

Substack: https://substack.com/@120months

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@120Months

Spotify (podcast): https://open.spotify.com/show/1V3dm0LthMG5xzZwTaSpjK?si=7539d40d3fc4403e

Spotify (playlists): https://open.spotify.com/user/parsonsdlp?si=b1d40c1c852449e8

Apple (podcast): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/120-months-podcast/id1833028709

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/120_months/

Ep 419 - Party Like It's 1999 w/ Ross Benes Jul 31, 2025

Was 1999 the inflection point in American culture and politics? Writer Ross Benes joins me this week to talk about his book 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times. Ross’s work connects the trashy Americana of Jerry Springer, pro wrestling, Insane Clown Posse, and a million other bits of carnival weirdness to the larger political economy of the late 90s, and in this conversation he offers his takes on why so-called “low culture” really matters.

Support the show and access our giant library of bonus content on our Patreon page

News Trap 7.25.25 - The Midterms are Gonna Fix This w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Jul 25, 2025

The Jeffrey Epstein saga continues to have legs, and this week Justin and I talk about what makes the story so appealing and operative for so many Americans, as we interrogate the elements of storytelling, virality, sex, and power that control our attention and shape our reality. Along the way we've got takes on South Park, the Coldplay viral video, the Moscow Idaho murder trial, Tony Soprano, Zohran Mamdani's chances in NYC, Elon Musk's genocidal soul, Epstein's sexy painting of Bill Clinton, and lots more.

Click here to listen to the whole episode

Ep 418 - Why Philip Seymour Hoffman Matters w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Jul 18, 2025

Philip Seymour Hoffman is a towering figure in American cinema whose death in 2014 left a big gaping hole in the culture. I really think there has never been anyone really like him, before or since, on the screen. In this conversation, Justin Rogers-Cooper joins me to reflect on Hoffman’s body of work, the particular power he brought to his performances in a wide range of movies, and the profound legacy he occupies in our “cringe” era.

Listen to the full episode

News Trap 7.14.25 - Run for Your Life w/ Van Jackson Jul 14, 2025

Van Jackson, foreign policy writer and host of the excellent podcast Un-Diplomatic, joins me to freak out about ICE arresting local college professors, MAGA's Jeffrey Epstein fissures, Andrew Cuomo aiming to spoil Mamdani's victory in NYC, Trump sending weapons to Ukraine, and the overall Third Reich vibes that America is currently giving. As the ever-rising waters of tyrrany begin to splash onto our windowsills, what are any of us supposed to be doing?

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Ep 417 - The Abercrombie Age w/ Ethan Lascity Jul 11, 2025

Remember the heady days of Abercrombie and Fitch’s utter domination of the young, white middle class fashion market? What was that about? This week I’m joined by Ethan Lascity, an assistant professor and director of the fashion media program at Southern Methodist University, to discuss his book The Abercrombie Age: Millennial Aspiration and the Promise of Consumer Culture. Ethan helps me understand the wider historical context and significance of a very specific moment in American pop culture, when a vision of affluence was packaged and sold to a generation that would never actually attain it.

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News Trap 7.4.25 - An Independence Day Manifesto...ON ACID! Jul 04, 2025

Anyone with a brain and heart probably feels deeply conflicted about the Fourth of July, a celebration of American freedom that frequently feels crass and hollow in the context of an ever-expanding American cruelty. So I thought I would reflect on the some ideas about drugs and counterculture today. I share some new details of the CIA's MKULTRA mind control experiments, and read Allen Ginsberg's eerily prophetic 1959 piece, "Poetry, Violence, and the Trembling Lambs or Independence Day Manifesto."

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News Trap 6.27.25 - Genocide's Ghost w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Jun 27, 2025

Zohran Mamdani's win in NYC accelerates a civil war for the soul of the Democratic Party; ICE storm troopers refuse to take off their masks; Trump's bombing of Iran within the larger strategic maneuverings of world powers; the historical ingredients necessary for getting away with genocide.

Listen to the full episode here!

Ep 416 - America Eats Itself w/ Xaq Frohlich Jun 20, 2025

Xaq Frohlich is Associate Professor of History of Technology at Auburn University. His work focuses on issues relating to food and risk at the intersections of science, law, and markets. In this conversation, he joins me to discuss his book From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age, a fascinating history of how Americans have navigated food and health issues through culture and politics. From Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle to RFK, Jr. and “MAHA Moms,” let’s take a journey through America’s always evolving and often conflicted attitudes toward eating, agriculture, government regulation, and human health.

Check out the Nostalgia Trap Patreon page to access our News Trap and SCREENSHOTZ, along with a whole library of bonus podcast episodes

News Trap 6.13.25 - Scoreboard w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Jun 13, 2025

Is the fight against Trump's rising authoritarianism in the streets? Or in the courts? Why not both? At the five month mark, Justin joins me to survey the damage, and to assess the left's strategies in resisting an assault on our collective rights and dignity. Along the way, we consider Stephen Miller's nihilistic and libidinal hatreds, the Roberts' court's "fuck you" attitude toward the Constitution, the insurrection in Los Angeles, the efficacy of insurgent tactics of resistance, the psychotic undercurrents writhing through the right's "pro-natal" movement, and much more.

Click here to listen to the whole episode

Ep 415 - Own the Libs w/ Nick Marx Jun 06, 2025

What happened to the idea that “conservatives can’t do comedy”? Much to the horror of liberals, the past decade has witnessed the rise of a right wing comedy industrial complex, primarily found on podcasts, whose personalities and attitudes are inextricably linked to the success of Donald Trump’s populist conservative project. This week I talk with Nick Marx, co-author of the book That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them, about how figures from Joe Rogan to Greg Gutfeld have weaponized the public’s fatigue with elite liberal culture, and how their popularity reveals something deep and dark at the heart of a crumbling American society.

Check out the Nostalgia Trap Patreon page to access our News Trap and SCREENSHOTZ, along with a whole library of bonus podcast episodes

Ep 414- Which Way, White Dude? w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) May 30, 2025

Dazed and Confused (dir. Richard Linklater. 1993) remains a timeless classic of American adolescence…or does it? This week Justin joins me for a deep dive into one of the most nostalgia-laden films ever created, as we investigate how a seemingly breezy 1990s high school stoner comedy actually holds deep philosophical and political weight when viewed from 2025. From Matthew McConaughey’s lascivious lothario to Ben Affleck’s pathetic, psychotic bully, and a million characters in between, the film displays archetypes of American youth that point to the often narrow paths of identity available to each of us. All right, all right, all right?

Listen to the whole episode here

Check out Chuck Klosterman’s piece on the film

Here’s another great analysis of Dazed and Confused’s take on nostalgia

Ep 413 - Comanches in Gaza (PREVIEW) May 21, 2025

What is “settler colonialism” and how is it different from other forms of imperialism? In this episode I share excerpts from S.C. Gwynne’s bracing, controversial book Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, and reflect on the historical lines between the American project of removal and Israel’s current genocidal campaign in Gaza. How is Zionism related to Manifest Destiny? And what can we learn from each of these tremendously disturbing eras?

Listen to the full episode

Check out Louis Theroux’s documentary on the radical Israeli settlement movement, The Settlers.

Join the Culture Warrior tier and access our new SCREENSHOTZ news chat.

Ep 412 - Nation of Swine w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper May 13, 2025

Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas remains a classic of American drug literature, a haunting reflection on the cultural and political hangover of the revolutionary 1960s. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced a more resonant portrait of the American id than the carnival of vile, deranged American archetypes Thompson describes in these pages. Justin Rogers-Cooper has been similarly influenced by Fear and Loathing over the years, and joins me this week to talk about Thompson’s legacy, his dark take on the “meaning” of the 1960s, and his view of America as a debased post-Nazi hellscape.

Check out our new SCREENSHOTZ news chat on the Trap Patreon page, where we share a curated stream of excerpts from global news sources — a relentless, delicious feast of doom, with commentary!

Ep 411 - House on Fire (PREVIEW) May 08, 2025

An explosive piece called "Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College" raises a few questions for me: What is the left's attitude toward tech? Is there anything positive about AI?Is digital technology compatible AT ALL with a progressive vision of the future? ARE WE DOOMED AS A SPECIES???

Listen to the whole episode here

News Trap 5.6.25 - Terminal Velocity May 06, 2025

FAA failures creating realistic fears of looming airline disasters, Trump's cryptocurrency scam, quantum computing and financial apocalypse, Kanye's celebrity vagina mega corporation, Israel's endgame for Gaza, the 4Channing of the world, the Baldoni/Lively mind control machine, and much more.

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Ep 410 - Vietnam Vietnam Vietnam, We've All Been There Apr 30, 2025

April 30, 2025 is the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, so I’m marking the occasion by reflecting on the war’s meaning all these decades later. I share my own experiences as a historian of the war, along with some clips from books and documentaries that I think capture the impossible decisions the war forced upon millions of people.

Check out the podcast series created by Willa Seidenberg and Bill Short, A Matter of Conscience: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War

Listen to NAM-TV, my documentary series on Vietnam

Buy my book, Dangerous Grounds: Antiwar Coffeehouse and Military Dissent in the Vietnam Era

Subscribe to the Nostalgia Trap Patreon for access to all our bonus episodes, videos, and more

Ep 409 - This is the End w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Apr 25, 2025

The recent death of Val Kilmer got Justin and I thinking about Jim Morrison and the curious legacy of The Doors in American pop culture. In this conversation, we continue our exploration of the amorphous brand of white masculinity embodied by Morrison and other doomed rock gods of the late 20th century, as we share memories of how The Doors blew our alienated teenage minds before the massive buzzkill of adulthood forced us to reckon with the cringier elements of Morrison’s persona and cultural imprint. From psychedelic drugs and beat literature to sex, cars, and jazz – The Doors broke us through a certain mode of American manhood. But what was waiting for us on the other side?

Listen to the whole episode

News Trap 4.23.25 - Trapdoor (PREVIEW) Apr 23, 2025

I'm reading S.C. Gwynne's incredible book Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, and it's making me think about Israel, Gaza, and the fatal arrogance of the leadership class throughout history. A scathing review of Bill Clinton's new book brings that arrogant tendency right up to 2025, as we witness the Democratic Party's inability to conjure a coherent battle plan to confront Trump and company's unbelievably evil intentions.

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News Trap 4.16.25 - See You in the Camps Apr 16, 2025

As the Trump administration tests the "Hamilton glitch" in the U.S. Constitution by sending Abrego Garcia and others to a foreign concentration camp without legal due process, I thought it might be time to contemplate what ordinary people can do to express their outrage/disapproval/humanity in the face of injustice.

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News Trap 4.11.25 - Hard Decoupling w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Apr 11, 2025

Trump's tariff carnival is doing real damage to the global economy, and Justin shares his thoughts on how a collapsing financial architecture will impact big capital, our daily lives, and the Trump project itself. Plus, we address the "Hamilton glitch" of judicial weakness, baked into the Constitution, that's creating a rapidly escalating showdown over who's really in charge.

Click here to listen to the whole episode

News Trap 4.3.25 - Tariffs? I Just Met Her! Apr 03, 2025

Trump is dismantling the global neoliberal economic order that has served as the left's boogeyman for years, which SHOULD be an opportunity for the left to offer something beyond shrugging ambivalance and lib-dunking. Why isn't that happening?

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News Trap 3.28.25 - FOMO w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Mar 28, 2025

Guitar Center dudes and their insanely rigid opinions lead to a conversation with Justin about the political psychology of FOMO, the rise of the pedophile hunter influencer class, the masculine desperation of emoji-driven war-planning group chat jerkoff sessions, the abject horror of students kidnapped off the streets for their views on Israel and Palestine, and Trump's assault on free trade scrambling the political alignments of the past several decades.

Listen the whole episode

Ep 408 - The Final Frontier of Sociopath Presidents? w/ Adam Kotsko Mar 26, 2025

Adam Kotsko is a writer and cultural critic whose work focuses on American pop culture, from “cringe” comedies to our national obsession with sociopathic protagonists. His latest book, Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era considers how the Star Trek series has evolved (or devolved) in the political economy of streaming TV and the Marvel-ization of feature filmmaking. In this conversation we talk about how his work on TV sociopaths holds up during the new Trump administration, and the challenges of participating in fan culture within a fracturing and cynical landscape of cultural production.

Check out our previous episode with Adam, “Cringe Nation”

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News Trap 3.21.25 - Irreconcilable Differences (PREVIEW) Mar 21, 2025

Fascism comes to my local city council meeting, a proud Israel supporter haunts my gym, Elon Musk's transgender daughter drives him off a cliff, Trump wants to send people to foreign torture camps for Tesla vandalism, and the incompatible worldviews boil hotter than ever.

Click here to listen to the whole episode.

News Trap 3.19.25 - Against the Wall Mar 19, 2025

Today I fall into paranoid android mode, thinking about what it means to "own the libs" from the left in the new Trump Reich. My message to an increasingly marginalized left flank: be careful what you wish for!

Check out John Ganz's terrific Substack, Unpopular Front

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News Trap 3.14.25 - Blowback w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Mar 14, 2025

Trump and Elon Musk are actively working to destroy the global economic order, but to what end? This week Justin and I consider the wacky cartoon reality that Americans inhabit, and speculate about the different forms "blowback" might take when the punishment gets real.

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Ep 407 - A Complete Unknown w Stephen Petrus Mar 07, 2025

Stephen Petrus is director of Public History Programs at LaGuardia and Wagner Archives and co-author of the book Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival (2015). He joins me to discuss the movie A Complete Unknown, which tracks a brief but critical moment in the life of Bob Dylan, when his rise to stardom intersected with the wider social and political project envisioned by American folk musicians, fans, and organizers.

Check out Dylan’s Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie.

For a deeper look at the folk scene from which Dylan emerged, don’t miss Martin Scorsese’s documentary No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005)

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News Trap 2.28.25 - Car's on Fire w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Feb 28, 2025

Our good friend Justin Rogers-Cooper joins me to survey the first month of Trump's presidency, as we play out some of the nastier currents now circling in American and global political culture, from Trump's exoneration of his foot soldiers to the left salivating over Luigi Mangione, and much more. Who's really in control? And what can we anticipate as we head into truly uncharted territory?

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Check out the interview with ACLU executive director Anthony Romero that Justin cites in the episode.

News Trap 2.26.25 - The Way of the Gun (PREVIEW) Feb 26, 2025

A recent law school event featuring former L.A. County District Attorney Jackie Lacey honestly blew my mind, and made me think a lot about the intersection of crime, law enforcement, reform movements, and political violence. I try to put those ideas together alongside the current culture of J6 pardons and Luigi mania, as we fall further into a chaotic and vengeful national mindset.

Subscribe to the Nostalgia Trap Patreon to hear the whole episode and access our big library of bonus content.

Check out the latest episode of Lawyers in the Attic, with education attorney Meghan Sherry.

News Trap 2.19.25 - Into the Thresher Feb 19, 2025

There are currently too many news stories to fit into the "ominous portents of a dark future" file, so I've chosen a few of the most flagrant examples of Trump/Musk savagery to share, along with some reflections on how to fight for our minds and for each other as the world heads down the toilet.

Check out our Patreon for more: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Ep 406 - Work or Die, Part One (PREVIEW) Feb 14, 2025

I got my first job when I was 15 years old, working at a Pumpkin Patch on a local farm, and it’s been all downhill from there. I’m partly joking, but the working world has never been a place of maximum success and happiness for me, and in this episode I try to come to terms with my own job history as a way of exploring the pressures that consume many of us: bosses, bills, weird co-workers, and the dark feeling that American life is often a big depressing rip-off. I’ve got stories to tell from a lifetime of shitty jobs, from manning the bakery case at Marie Callender’s as a teenager to dealing with obnoxious D-list celebrities as a production assistant in Hollywood. As a wise man once said, “work sucks, I know.” Here’s a few slices of how I found that out.

Subscribe to hear the whole episode and access our whole library of bonus content:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/122293336?pr=true&forSale=true

Ep 405 - All I Can Say w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Feb 09, 2025

The haunting documentary All I Can Say, which chronicles a few vibrant years in the life of Shannon Hoon, the lead singer of 90s grunge rock band Blind Melon, is a slice of deep 90s nostalgia shot on camcorder by Hoon himself before he died of a drug overdose in October 1995. In this conversation, Justin Rogers-Cooper joins me to reflect on Hoon’s complicated legacy, the strange power of his intimate pre-Internet video diary, and the larger galaxy of 90s grunge martyrs.

Check out Justin’s chapter all about Blind Melon “Shannon Forever: Blind Melon’s Bee Girl and Countercultural Afterlives”

And enjoy the entire series of essays here: Happy Nostalgia: Making Connections with the Music of the ‘90s

Our episode on 90s music with Happy Nostalgia series editor David Humphries: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-401-love-means-research-w-david-humphries/id862194930?i=1000682583975

Our episode on Elvis with Justin, a personal favorite: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-349-i-w-78198738?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Please support the show! Subscribe to our Patreon for access to all Nostalgia Trap bonus content: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Ep 404 - Adventures in Adjuncting (PREVIEW) Jan 31, 2025

I started teaching college history courses in 2005 when I was a graduate student at the City University of New York. Looking back at those early years, I can hardly believe how little I knew about how to teach college courses. As I mark my 20th year of teaching, I thought I would reflect on everything I’ve learned from two decades of serving as an adjunct professor at a wide range of institutions, from working class community colleges to elite private schools and everything in between. I’ve changed a lot in these years, and so has the wider political economy and culture of American higher education. In this episode you’ll hear my takes on the rise of tech in education, dealing with woke culture (the good and the bad), the slow humiliation of professorial hierarchies, belligerently anti-communist business students, and lots more. I also share some stories of true communion with students and colleagues, moments that make the whole journey, despite its many challenges, incredibly rewarding.

To hear the whole episode and access our whole library of bonus content, subscribe to Nostalgia Trap here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-404-in-121213711

Ep 403 - Only in Dreams Jan 29, 2025

David Lynch died earlier this month, and like many others I’ve been reflecting on his legacy, not only in the wider culture but in my own personal trajectory and identity. In this episode, I focus on the latter. Rather than trying to analyze the larger meaning of Lynch’s filmography, I wanted to sort out how his work intervened on my life, in particular considering how ideas of dark magic, synchronicity, and dreams in his films connect with my own weird experience of American reality. So I share some strange stories here, along with stray thoughts on how David Lynch, more than any other artist, somehow captured the uncanny feeling that some dark undercurrent pulsed beneath the surface of American life.

Some reading recs I mention in the episode:

Greil Marcus, The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice

David Foster Wallace, “David Lynch Keeps His Head”

Laura Dern, “You Wove L.A. Into Our Dreams”

Subscribe to our Patreon page for bonus content, including full episodes, videos, and our News Trap updates: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

News Trap 1.24.25 Broligarchy's Endgame w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Jan 24, 2025

The politics of rebuilding Los Angeles after the fires, tech maneuvering for Trump juice, social media outrage missing the mark, Elon's Nazi salute masking something darker, a new Gilded Age comes into view, what's at risk with global capital behaving like a caged animal.

This is a short clip from a full episode, which you can hear by subscribing to our Patreon. Subscibers get access to all of our bonus content, including full episodes, videos, book recs, and News Trap updates: https://www.patreon.com/posts/120711896?pr=true&forSale=true

News Trap 1.22.25 - What's Next? w/ Ross Barkan Jan 22, 2025

Ross Barkan is a political writer and novelist whose Substack is one of our favorite places for thoughtful takes on the current political and cultural landscape. He joins me this week to survey the landscape with Trump taking office again, as we consider the tech world’s shifting allegiances and cultural power, the exhaustion with #resistance outrage and performative politics, the online popularity of Luigi Mangione, the Elon Musk “Nazi” salute, and much more. Ross also tells us about his latest novel, Glass Century, and reflects on why he thinks novel-writing (and reading) are such an integral part of being human.

Subscribe to our Patreon and get access to all our bonus episodes and News Trap updates: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Ep 402 - The Bookshop w/ Evan Friss Jan 18, 2025

This week I’m joined by Evan Friss, author of the current New York Times bestseller The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore, which traces the development of bookshops as integral, often paradoxical, spaces within the landscape of American consumer culture. What is a bookshop? And what makes it different from literally any other place you can visit? In this conversation, Evan shares some highlights from the book, as we discuss places like New York City’s The Strand, the pioneering gay rights bookshop Oscar Wilde, the proliferation of sidewalk booksellers (and the moral outrage they provoked), the unlikely redemption of Barnes & Noble as the hero of independent bookshops, and of course the rise of the villainous Amazon. As Evan explains, the bookshop isn’t dead, and its evolving fate in the 21st century provides a dynamic glimpse at how literacy and political economy intersect in the past, present, and future.

Subscribe to our Patreon to support our show and access our whole library of bonus episodes: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

News Trap 1.10.25 - Let 'Em Burn w Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Jan 10, 2025

Fires in Los Angeles unleash a wave of online hate from the left and right. What chance do we have to mitigate the coming climate change disasters if the population's reactions are driven by algorithms that massage and indulge our worst impulses?

This is a short clip from a full-length episode for Nostalgia Trap subscribers, sign up for a FREE 7-day trial to listen to the whole thing, plus gain access to our library of bonus episodes, videos, and more: https://www.patreon.com/posts/119735891?pr=true&forSale=true

Ep 401 - Love Means Research w/ David Humphries Jan 03, 2025

This week I talk with David Humphries, a professor of English at Queensborough Community College in New York City, about his excellent project Happy Nostalgia: Making Connections with the Music of the ‘90s, which collects essays from CUNY scholars on the last “analog” moment of music fandom, the beautiful and tragic 1990s. We get a chance to trade nostalgic stories about our own music obsessions of the ‘90s, and try to frame how things changed for us (and everyone else) when streaming music blasted a whole lifestyle into oblivion. What died, and what remains alive? And are we just being cranky old men about Spotify’s algorithmic nightmare? This is an intense and fun conversation about the meaning of nostalgia and how music gives us a constant pulse through the decades of technological and cultural evolution.

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to hear all our bonus episodes and News Trap updates: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Ep 400 - The Disney Revolt w/ Jake S. Friedman Dec 20, 2024

A critical but often overlooked chapter in American labor history, the animator’s strike that shook the Walt Disney Corporation in 1941 was part of a wave of labor struggle in World War II era Hollywood. Jake S. Friedman’s book The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation’s Golden Age chronicles the strike in colorful detail, and includes plenty of eye-popping images of the strike’s particularly cartoonish aesthetic. Friedman joins me for a conversation about his book, the strike, and the wider history of the Disney project, which shifted dramatically in the wake of the rebellion by its key artists. From communist infiltrators to mafia-connected union leaders, this is a fascinating picture of the intersection of art, industrial capitalism, and pop culture.

For more on the book, including lots of great images from the strike: https://www.thedisneyrevolt.com/

Our previous episode on World War II era Disney history: https://www.patreon.com/posts/trap-tv-brick-to-75566223

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap for bonus episodes, News Trap updates, and much more:

patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Ep 399 - Severance/Doppelganger w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Dec 13, 2024

This week we watched the excellent Apple TV series Severance and put it in conversation with Naomi Klein’s latest book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World. Both texts explore how the concept of “doubles” plays out in capitalist culture, and we have fun talking about the ways they did (and didn’t) blow our minds. From Klein’s refreshing take on the left’s severe mistakes of the COVID era (and how Steve Bannon greedily lapped up the detritus) to Severance’s terrifying vision of a corporation that aims to replace your entire identity, we take the opportunity to look into the mirror at the selves we make, and that are made for us.

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News Trap 12.6.24 Survival of the Fittest w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Dec 07, 2024

A United Healthcare CEO is assassinated and the world laughs, fitness and nutrition culture goes fascist, Europe in collapse while China salivates, Trump's tariffs portend new global shockwaves.

To hear the whole episode, subscribe for a FREE 7 day trial: https://www.patreon.com/posts/117457956?pr=true&forSale=true

News Trap 11.29.24 - The Internet Eats America w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Nov 29, 2024

It's Black Friday, so between insane binges of online shopping, Justin and I sat down to record a conversation about the Netflix documentary The Antisocial Network: From Memes to Mayhem, as we consider the path from Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders to 1/6 and Donald Trump's triumph in the 2024 election. What role has internet culture played in shaping our current reality, and what can we expect in the future?

This is only a short bit from a much longer episode, so subsribe to enjoy the whole thing --- lots of juicy ideas here.

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News Trap 11.25.24 - Tending the Light Nov 25, 2024

Musk's endgame on environmental regulations, universities bracing for a war on DEI and critical race theory, Houthi pirates drawn to their deaths in Ukraine, national economies bracing for world war. Happy Thanksgiving!

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Nostalgia Trap - Ep 398: In Levittown's Shadow w/ Tim Keogh Nov 07, 2024

Tim Keogh is an Associate Professor of History at the Queensborough Community College in New York City. His book In Levittown’s Shadow: Poverty in America’s Wealthiest Postwar Suburb turns a common American story on its head, giving us a picture of life at the economic bottom of the postwar suburban housing boom. This conversation features challenges to political orthodoxies of the right and left, and gave me a lot to chew on as we reflect on Trump’s stunning gains among urban and suburban New Yorkers.

Check out our Patreon for bonus episodes and weekly News Trap updates: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Ep 397: Vincent Van Gogh to the Polls w/ Peter Sabatino Oct 18, 2024

This week I’m joined by my good friend Peter Sabatino for a conversation all about Vincent Van Gogh’s personal and artistic legacy. We both read the book Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, a gigantic magisterial biography that affected us both in surprising ways. While Van Gogh embodies the archetypal image of the “tortured artist,” there’s so much more to his story, and Peter and I wanted to share our personal reactions to the aesthetic gift that Van Gogh created for the world in his short, difficult, astounding life.

Check out our Patreon page for weekly News Trap updates and bonus episodes: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

News Trap 10.14.24 - Goodbye to Reality Oct 14, 2024

Armed militias roam the hurricane ravaged wastelands of North Carolina, no one wants children and it's not because of the economy, Apple's Vision Pro is a massive failure, we're stepping off the ship of rational discourse and entering the wonderland of feelings as facts.

Don't miss any of our News Trap updates, subscribe and ride the snake: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Ep 396: What Happened to the American Hitchhiker? w/ Jack Reid Sep 27, 2024

Jack Reid is an American historian and the author of Roadside Americans: The Rise and Fall of Hitchhiking in a Changing Nation (UNC Press, 2020). In this conversation, we talk about the specific culture, between the 1930s and 1970s, that produced hitchhiking as a common social experience, when ordinary Americans would travel with strangers they met on the road. What happened to hitchhiking? And what does its disappearance tell us about our lonely historical moment?

Check out our subscriber feed for News Trap episodes and lots more: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

News Trap - Justin on Why Eating Dogs Matters (PREVIEW) Sep 16, 2024

Listen to the full episode and check out all our News Trap/bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/111997005?pr=true&forSale=true

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 395: Atomic Twang w/ Joseph M. Thompson Aug 30, 2024

Joseph M. Thompson is assistant professor of history at Mississippi State University, and the author of Cold War Country: How Nashville's Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism (UNC Press, 2024). Thompson’s history tracks the deep connections between country music and the U.S. military, uncovering a concerted effort by government officials and cultural creators to cement country culture and national pride (and of course, anti-communism). Our conversation moves from Slim Pickens to Toby Keith, as we explore how the cultural politics of country continue to shape the 21st century.

Subscribe to the Nostalgia Trap Patreon to check out my News Trap updates and all of our bonus content: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Ep 394: Brother, Can You Spare a Gun? w/ Andrew C. McKevitt Aug 21, 2024

Andrew C. McKevitt is John D. Winters Endowed Professor of History at Louisiana Tech University. His latest book, Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America, explores how guns came to occupy a curious place between “constitutional right” and “consumer good,” as the Cold War provided a cultural, political, and material framework by which guns could become the hottest item of the late 20th century. In this conversation, McKevitt shares some of the highlights of his research and provides historical context for the often simplistic “gun control” debate.

Subscribe to the Nostalgia Trap Patreon to check out my News Trap updates and all of our bonus content: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 393: That's Me in the Corner w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Jun 29, 2024

R.E.M. is one of the most influential rock bands in American music history, with a legendary arc that took them from college radio punks in the early 80s to critical darlings and arena rockers with multiple smash albums throughout the 90s. But what happened after that? This week Justin shares a thesis about the final phase of R.E.M.’s career, during which the band signed an $80 million contract with Warner Brothers – and it all went downhill from there. As we take a close look at Michael Stipe’s creative output and public persona, we recoil at how even our favorite artists can succumb to the poisonous influence of money and fame.

Check out our Patreon for daily News Trap episodes, bonus interviews, documentary shorts, and much more: https://www.patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

News Trap 6.14.24 w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Jun 14, 2024

Anti-immigration politics are winning the moment, the market for testosterone replacement therapy is booming, child labor is on the horizon, and United Health EATS PEOPLE.

And so ends this week's FREE PREVIEW for News Trap. Subscribe to continue the News Trap journey and keep up with all new episodes next week and beyond:

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News Trap 6.12.24 Jun 12, 2024

A stunning new piece in The Atlanticoffers details on the fall of America as seen from Phoenix, Arizona. Folks, 2024 is gonna be a hell of year.

This is FREE PREVIEW WEEK for News Trap, subscribe to hear 'em all: https://www.patreon.com/collection/520366?view=expanded

News Trap 6.11.24 Jun 11, 2024

Today we take a detailed look at this incredible Wall Street Journal piece featuring text messages from Yahya Sinwar, Hamas leader and architect of 10/7. What's Sinwar's strategy? And how does it fit into an American antiwar movement's calculations?

This week's episodes of News Trap are free for everyone but next week we're back to subscribers-only...so subscribe! Here's the link: https://www.patreon.com/collection/520366?view=expanded

News Trap 6.10.24 Jun 10, 2024

Nobody likes new cars, everyone loves old cars, Americans are on a spending spree while complaining about the economy, the anti-AI rebellion is growing.

This is a free episode of News Trap, subscribe to our Patreon for access to daily episodes:

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Nostalgia Trap - Episode 392: League of Morons w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper May 31, 2024

This week Justin and I talk about the 2008 Coen brothers film Burn After Reading, another “acid take” on American politics and culture with uncanny implications for our 2024 carnival timeline.

Check out our daily News Trap updates to catch up on the "map of the future," in real time: https://www.patreon.com/collection/520366?view=expanded

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 391: All for a Few Perfect Waves w/ David Rensin May 24, 2024

David Rensin is the author of more than a dozen books, five of them New York Times bestsellers. I was lucky enough to meet David through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and he joins me here for a conversation about his long, strange trip as a journalist and author, from writing for Rolling Stone and Playboy in the 1960s and 70s to co-authoring massively popular books with Tim Allen and Jeff Foxworthy (!) in the 1990s. Rensin’s 2013 book All for a Few Perfect Waves: The Audacious Life and Legend of Rebel Surfer Miki Dora is one of the most compelling visions of mid-century California I’ve encountered, and we talk here about Rensin’s decades-long odyssey to capture Dora’s significance as a surfer and cultural figure.

Check out my daily NEWS TRAP updates: https://www.patreon.com/collection/520366?view=expanded

News Trap 5.17.24 w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper May 17, 2024

"Everyday carry" and "prepper" culture, unsold Teslas piling up at dealerships, AI as the future of global capitalism, AI does not in fact work, Biden is not properly buying our votes.

Follow all our News Trap episodes by subscribing to our Patreon feed, free with 7 day trial membership: https://www.patreon.com/collection/520366?view=expanded

News Trap 5.14.24 May 14, 2024

We've been posting daily news wrap-ups/freakouts every morning over at the Nostalgia Trap Patreon page for our subscribers. I'm posting today's episode on the main feed, hoping you'll subscribe.

My goals with News Trap are to share perspectives on the big trends shaping our present and future, to fill in the gaps on stories you may have missed, or offer challenges to orthodoxies on the left and right, and to avoid the nauseating cycle of social media bullshit.

If that sounds like your thing, please join us. A Nostalgia Trap subscription includes access to every News Trap episode, along with our entire library of bonus content, interviews, and videos. Thanks!

Check out News Trap here: https://www.patreon.com/collection/520366?view=expanded

News Trap 5.8.24 (PREVIEW) May 08, 2024

Trump can't control himself in court, food prices are gonna decide the election, Tik Tok is gearing up for a Supreme Court battle, the U.S. can't make enough weapons for both Israel AND Ukraine, and RFK, Jr. has a brain worm (no, literally).

Stay informed! Subscribe so you won't miss all our News Trap updates: https://www.patreon.com/posts/103876807?pr=true

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 390: Impossible Wish, Part 2 w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) May 03, 2024

As campus protests against Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza continue, Justin and I pick up on our discussion from last week about the wider historical issues at play. This week we talk more about anti-apartheid campaigns of the 1980s, and consider the idea of “divestment” at elite colleges. The neoliberal, corporate university is having quite a moment – confronting the contradictions of its hyper-capitalist structure and social justice culture – and we are here for it.

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access our library of bonus episodes and News Trap updates: https://www.patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

News Trap 5.2.24 May 02, 2024

On today's News Trap I share some snippets about Chinese state capitalism, RFK's hilariously shitty presidential campaign, Elon Musk pulling the plug on everyone's dumb car chargers, the normalization of guns in schools and, of course, more on the campus protests against Israel's still unfolding genocide in Gaza.

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx2c4y469qCQM0YZlhxhh0w

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 389: Impossible Wish w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Apr 28, 2024

This week Justin and I attempt to put the latest round of campus protests into historical context, both in the wider view (19th century abolitionism, Vietnam, South Africa) and in our specific moment (Occupy, Black Lives Matter, pandemic, Israel/Gaza). What are the students’ demands, and how do we reconcile them with a popular social movement that could actually win?

Subscribe to hear the full episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-389-wish-103116444

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 388: Doom Loop w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Apr 12, 2024

It’s been a minute since Justin and I have shared our takes on “the news,” so this week we have a typically dark, unhinged conversation about what’s coming for us in 2024, with an American population frothing at the mouth to BUILD THE WALL and weapons-crazy madmen lashing out around the globe. It’s an incredible time to be alive.

Full episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/102232361?pr=true

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 387: Touching the Octopus w Justin Rogers-Cooper Mar 22, 2024

Conspiracy theories are a hell of a drug. Justin and I know this from experience, so watching the new Netflix documentary American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders brought up some deeply identifiable thoughts and emotions for both of us. Do you REALLY want to know the exact details of the dark forces at work within our most sacred institutions? As we discuss here, there’s a heavy price to pay for that knowledge, one way or another.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 386.5 - The History of America in Six Cars, Part Four - The Fall of Detroit (1st Half) Feb 20, 2024

This is the first half of this week's episode, go to our Patreon page to listen to the whole thing!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-386-of-98833719

It’s Part Four of our six-part adventure through the history of American automaking and car culture, and we’ve finally reached the moment when everything starts to unravel: the 1970s. When Arab nations decide to flex their oil muscle against the United States in 1973, they deliver American consumers into an entirely new economic reality, and Detroit struggles to meet the era’s new demands for fuel efficiency, safety, and lower emissions. Meanwhile, Japan enters the market with a new approach to cars and the production process that further erodes Detroit’s power – until an unlikely hero, the minivan, takes over the 1980s suburbs and points to a rocky road ahead.

Nostalgia Trap - Ep 385: The History of America in Six Cars, Part Three - Sweetheart of the Supermarket Set (PREVIEW) Feb 12, 2024

In Part Three of our journey through the history of American car culture, we explore how the massive cultural and political shifts of the 1960s made an impact on American automaking. From the Chevrolet Corvair spinning out and making Ralph Nader a household name, to the Ford Mustang turning boring housewives and husbands into hip celebrities, this was a wild era. When Detroit takes a sinister turn with the 1965 Pontiac GTO, a muscle car war grips American street racing subcultures, before it all burns out when the gas gets too expensive and the smog chokes the skies.

Full episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-385-of-98244614

Nostalgia Trap - Ep 384: The History of America in Six Cars, Part Two - Size is Everything (PREVIEW) Feb 01, 2024

As we continue our story of America’s love affair with the automobile, it’s time to look at the tailfin behemoths of the 1950s, the cars that look like “guns you can fuck.” With the automakers morphing into weapons manufacturers to help Uncle Sam win World War II, the postwar consumer reaped the strange benefits of military technology and imperial ideology seeping into the design of his suburban luxury sedan. Meanwhile, a cute little car produced by the Nazis was slowly stealing the hearts of America’s budding counterculture.

Full episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/97593008?pr=true

Nostalgia Trap - Ep 383: Fast and Furious - Hamas Drift w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Jan 29, 2024

This week we watch Fast Five (2011), the fifth installment in the Fast and Furious franchise, and contemplate how these movies embed radical ideas about criminality, subversion, insurgency, and family in often goofy stories about driving really fast cars, furiously.

Full episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-383-fast-97420130

For more reflections on car culture, check out Part One of our new series, The History of America in Six Cars: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-382-of-t-97179277

Nostalgia Trap - Ep 382: The History of America in Six Cars, Part One - Henry Ford, Nazis, and the Model T Jan 25, 2024

The supreme object of the 20th century, the automobile’s development as both transportation technology and cultural totem is literally the story of American capitalism. In the first episode of a six-part series, we examine the life and legacy of Henry Ford, whose Model T took the nation by storm after its debut in 1908. As Ford rises to an unprecedented position of wealth and power, his virulent anti-semitism and destructive business impulses threaten his company’s dominance of an emerging mass market in the 1920s.

The Model T’s rise and fall as the nation’s most popular commercial product gives us a chance to examine the dark forces at the heart of the progressive era, connecting Ford’s business innovations (the assembly line, the $5 day, etc) to the racism and hypernationalism that plunged the world into depression and war.

The series will continue with Parts 2-5 on our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Sources/inspiration for this episode include:

Paul Ingrassia, Engines of Change: The American Dream in Fifteen Cars

100 Cars That Changed the World: The Designs, Engines, and Technologies That Drive Our Imaginations

William Knoedelseder, Fins: Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors, and the Glory Days of Detroit

Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America

Nostalgia Trap - Ep 381: The Social Housing Question w/ Andrew Schustek and Samuel Stein Jan 18, 2024

Our friend Andrew Schustek is back with an all-new Housing Trap conversation all about the unfolding crisis of housing in 21st century New York City and beyond. This time he talks with returning guest Samuel Stein, a geographer, urban planner and housing policy analyst whose book Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State is a must read for housing policy nerds (you know who you are). The boys talk about Sam’s new piece in the New York Review of Architecture and contemplate the future of affordable housing in America.

You can listen to the entire Housing Trap series on our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/collection/119363?view=expanded

Use the discount code AFFORDABLE at the NYRA site for 25% off a subscription, a publication well worth your support: https://nyra.nyc/subscribe

Nostalgia Trap - Ep 380: Field of Homosocial Dreams w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Jan 12, 2024

This week Justin and I discuss the 1989 tearjerker Field of Dreams, a film about ghosts playing baseball in some guy’s backyard that endures as a beloved classic of American cinema. What’s going on with that? As a lifelong devotee of the film, Justin articulates why Field of Dreams hits so hard, as we explore how the secular religious magic of baseball and movies intermingle with dreams of capitalist and socialist utopias.

Sign up for a free 7 day trial of our massive library of podcasts, videos, and more: https://patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Ep 379: Circling the Drain w/ Float Universe Jan 02, 2024

Float Universe is an Instagram meme/troll account that’s ostensibly focused on the intersection of floatation tanks and psychedelic culture. The account’s creator joins me this week to explain how the floating experience mirrors the druggy rush of online dopamine adventures, as we explore how trolling and conspiracy theories are bending our everyday realities.

Sign up for a free 7 day trial of our massive library of podcasts, videos, and more: https://patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Ep 378: Big Tent Fascism w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Dec 28, 2023

We simply did not cover enough topics in our first “2023 Year in Review” episode, so this week Justin is back to talk about some of the big trends looming on the horizon of 2024: another grim yet insanely consequential U.S. presidential election, rising anti-immigrant sentiment on both left and right, the ominous march of genocidal war in Gaza, and the accelerating violent race for resources to light up our dumb little devices.

This is the first 7 minutes of a 70 minute conversation -- listen to the whole episode and access tons of other cool stuff by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-378-big-95389642

Nostalgia Trap - Ep 377: Past Forward w/ Clay Routledge Dec 22, 2023

Clay Routledge is a teacher, writer, and researcher in the field of existential psychology. His latest book, Past Forward: How Nostalgia Can Help You Live a More Meaningful Life explores a topic near and dear to our hearts: nostalgia and its power to shape the future. In this conversation, we talk about our own obsessions with specific pop cultural objects from our respective youths (video games, music, movies), and reflect on how nostalgic memories shape our individual and collective identities.

Sign up for a free 7 day trial of our massive library of podcasts, videos, and more: https://patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Ep 376: The Year of the Robot w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Dec 18, 2023

It’s time to take a nostalgic look back at the past year, as we survey some of the big trends from 2023 that will inevitably fuck up our collective 2024. This year we end up talking a lot about tech’s grip on our political and cultural imagination: labor strikes in Hollywood and the auto industry, the impact of AI, and the giant lie of green capitalism glimpsed in the debacle of electric vehicles. Will 2024 be the year the tech spell breaks?

Listen to the whole episode with a 7 day free trial of our patrons-only collection: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-376-year-94887877

Nostalgia Trap - Ep 375: Stand By Me w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Dec 09, 2023

Following last week’s episode all about Elliott Smith, this week Justin and I continue our discussion of sad boys and bad dads with a conversation all about Stand By Me, the 1986 Stephen King/Rob Reiner nostalgia-fest about four boys journeying into the postwar American hinterlands to find a dead body (spoiler: the body is a metaphor). In this conversation, we explore how this movie’s sentimental, disturbing vision of mid-century American adolescence fits into a longer historical discourse of masculinity, trauma, and healing.

Sign up for a free 7 day trial of our massive library of podcasts, videos, and more: https://patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Ep 374: Between the Bars w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Dec 04, 2023

This week Justin and I talk about the genius singer-songwriter Elliott Smith, who produced a stunning body of music in the late 90s before dying, tragically and cryptically, in 2003 at the age of 34. Smith's life and art intersects with the world of punk and grunge that emerged from the Pacific Northwest in the 80s and 90s, from the "boy culture" of Gus Van Sant films to the anti-rape politics of riot grrrl era feminism. In this conversation, we try to situate Smith within that wider history and offer some thoughts on his brief but prolific career.

Listen to the full episode with a free 7 day trial of our beautiful library of bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/posts/94028421?pr=true

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 373: The Gift of Death or, Zardoz and Our Analog Future w/ Anthony Galluzzo Nov 22, 2023

Anthony Galluzzo’s new book Against the Vortex: Zardoz and Degrowth Utopias in the Seventies and Today offers a delightfully adventurous set of takes on some of this podcast’s running obsessions: the collapse of the 1960s left, revolutionary violence, cult cinema, weird sex rituals, 1970s communes and “intentional communities,” population bombs, nuclear futures and, perhaps most of all, the religious belief in infinite technological progress that animates both the right and left. Fully automated luxury communism, anyone? In this conversation, Galluzzo shares how Zardoz’s bizarre story of a bikini-clad Sean Connery’s prison break from a dystopian society recovers the lost “degrowth” movements of the 1970s and brings us a radically different vision of our collective future.

‘Tis the season for William S. Burroughs’ Thanksgiving Prayer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLSveRGmpIE

Sign up for a free 7 day trial of our massive library of podcasts, videos, and more: https://patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 372: Dirty Words w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Nov 05, 2023

Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us for a conversation all about the life, work, and legacy of George Carlin, a key American cultural figure whose standup comedy transmitted radical ideas in the form of hilarious, often profane, “jokes.” What are “jokes” anyway? In this episode we find the traps in Carlin’s perspectives and reflect on the larger concept of standup comedy, particularly in the context of a Trumpian political reality that seems closer to Carlin’s dark, apocalyptic comedic vision than ever before.

Check out the rest of our series deconstructing the radical old dudes of the 20th century:

A People’s History of Howard Zinn

Manufacturing Noam Chomsky

Subscribe for a free 7 day trial of our massive library of podcasts, videos, and more: https://patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Ep 371: Pity the Landlord w/ Andrew Schustek and Charlie Dulik Oct 24, 2023

This week we’ve got a brand new Housing Trap conversation with guest host Andrew Schustek talking with Charlie Dulik, whose latest piece in The Baffler explores the controversy and mythology surrounding the “mom and pop landlord” in 21st century American life. Is collecting rent from tenants just another hustle for working class people? Or is “landlord” a distinct category of capitalist exploitation?

Sign up for a 7 day free trial of our big beautiful library of bonus episodes, videos, documentaries, and more: https://patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 370: The Israel Wormhole w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Oct 20, 2023

This week Justin and I try to wrap our minds and hearts around what's happening in Gaza. We offer some historical context, share some incredible Chomsky quotes (of course), and attempt to map out the future possibilities for the region. As always, though, it's hard to separate political analysis from the "fog of war" and the deep emotional stakes of watching an ongoing genocide funded by the United States government. We do our best to offer some directions for hope in an unfolding nightmare.

Full episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-370-91362380

Mr. Trap Ep 6 - Now It's Time to Drown the Wizard (PREVIEW) Oct 01, 2023

We are “back in action” and “ready to roll” and also just “ready” to continue our discussion of Mr. Show with Bob and David, a comedy television thing from the Before Times. On this episode, Peter, Geoff and David cover the opening episodes of Season 3: “Heaven’s Chimney” and “Peanut Butter, Eggs, and Dice.” There’s a lot of fun and challenging stuff here, as the show gets more confident in attacking its cultural targets, from right wing Christian cultists to self-congratulating liberal douchebags. Of course, there’s also plenty to cringe about, from Bob’s truly unbelievable depiction of a mentally challenged person to David Cross’ tired redneck minstrel character “Ronnie Dobbs.” Let’s have us a champagne jam!

Full episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/mr-trap-ep-6-now-90044447

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 368: CHAIN REACTION Sep 26, 2023

This week Justin and I watched the forgotten 1996 science fiction thriller Chain Reaction, starring Keanu Reeves as a scientist (lol) who discovers a source of infinite free energy and becomes the target of multiple global conspiracies aimed at controlling the world’s energy future. Seen from 2023, Chain Reaction reveals high anxiety about fossil fuels, the CIA, and the “just right” porridge of liberal masculinity (hint: it’s Obama/Morgan Freeman). This is first-rate Hollywood crap that somehow functions as an uncanny prophecy of our bad future. Run, Keanu, run!

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Nostalgia Trap - Episode 367: I Fought the Law Sep 19, 2023

In the past few weeks I've received many messages asking about the future of the show, so I wanted to put out a quick update about what's happening in my life (nothing too dramatic!) and where I expect the show to go. Long story short? I'm going to law school, and Nostalgia Trap will continue as I make my way through it. If you want to hear the whole story of why the hell anyone would go to law school in 2023, I tell it here, including all the weird signs and synchronicities that have set me on a somewhat unexpected, but eerily inevitable, new path.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 366: News Trap 8.11.23 - OK DOOMER (PREVIEW) Aug 11, 2023

This week I crank up the doom machine and cover a few troubling trends for a dystopian future, drawing connections between this week's horrific destruction of Lahaina, Maui to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. What are young people supposed to think about all this? And more importantly, will today's kids ever become HOMEOWNERS?

Subscribe for all our NEWS TRAP episodes and tons of bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-366-news-87551091

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 365: Summer 2023 News Trap w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Aug 02, 2023

This week Justin and I survey the big stories of the hot summer of 2023, with our eye on an unfolding and genuinely shocking set of ecological developments, the continuing practical and spiritual crisis of mass migration, the ominous undertones of the Hollywood strike and, of course, the revelations from major governments that yes, aliens exist and they have cool psychedelic vehicles. Is that just another collective heat hallucination, or have we truly arrived at the next chapter of the end times saga?

Check out the whole episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-365-2023-86817216

Nostalgia Trap - Ep 364: A Veep Theory of American Politics (PREVIEW) Jul 22, 2023

Veep is an HBO comedy series, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, that presents a dark satire of insider DC political culture. This week Justin and I consider Veep’s acid take on the critical years between 2012-2019, when Obama-era technocratic optimism gave way to Trumpian funhouse fascism. What Veep shows us is the reptilian machinations of the “burned out losers and conniving robots” that succeed in American party politics, giving us an opportunity to ask: is that true? Is the world really run by people this cynical and depraved?

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 363: M3GAN Jul 07, 2023

The sci-fi horror film M3GAN was a “surprise” hit last year, generating tons of internet buzz, viral Tik Tok dance videos and, of course, endless think pieces. As Justin Rogers-Cooper and I talk about this week, M3GAN operates on multiple levels, and contains a discourse about AI, capitalist culture, and queer family formation that makes it much more than another “killer robot” movie. Like Silicon Valley itself, M3GAN sings to us: “Tell me your dreams, I will dream them too.” But are we really in charge of the dream?

Check out our Patreon for bonus episodes, videos, and lots more:

https://www.patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 362: Judas and the Black Messiah (PREVIEW) Jun 30, 2023

The FBI-orchestrated murder of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton in 1969 remains one of the most singularly evil crimes of the 20th century, and it’s a story about which most Americans know very little. The 2021 film Judas and the Black Messiah, directed by Shaka King, is a heavy, detailed consideration of the events that led to Hampton’s death, focusing mainly on the figure of William O’Neal, a small-time thief coerced by the FBI into becoming a confidential informant working within Hampton’s organization. As Justin and I discuss in this episode, the film puts us in the center of the complicated moral calculations that defined 1960s radicalism, and asks hard questions about the price of loyalty, freedom, and revolution.

Listen to whole episode with 7 day free trial of our Patreon membership;

https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-362-and-85368710

Mr. Trap Ep 5 - Hey, Kids Are Our Future (PREVIEW) Jun 28, 2023

Continuing our epic survey of Mr. Show with Bob and David, the most important television program of all time, we watch the final two episodes of Mr. Show’s second season: “Operation Hell on Earth” and “The Velveteen Touch of a Dandy Fop.” As David, Peter, and Geoff discuss here, the show feels like it takes a thematic/aesthetic turn in these particular sketches, with hints of where we’re headed in Season 3. There’s weird arty stuff here (the entire “Recruiters” sketch, a parody of the basketball documentary Hoop Dreams, is uncanny), plus some all-time favorite characters (Fartin’ Gary, Droopy), and more than a few surprising takes on 90s culture and politics.

Mr. Trap is included with a subscription to the Nostalgia Trap Patreon -- sign up for a FREE 7 day trial here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/mr-trap-ep-5-hey-85206762

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 361: Sittin' on Top of the World w/ Kristen Lovell Jun 22, 2023

Kristen Lovell is a filmmaker whose new documentary, The Stroll, tells the story of transgender women surviving as sex workers in New York City’s Meatpacking District during the 1980s and 1990s. This is harrowing stuff, and a perspective on urban history and gentrification like you’ve never seen before. In this conversation, Lovell tells me about her own experiences in the neighborhood, and reflects on how the Giuliani/Bloomberg era used real estate and finance to cover the city’s dark history with luxury facades.

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access our massive library of bonus episodes, video essays, and more: https://patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 6.16.23: The Audacity of Nope (PREVIEW) Jun 17, 2023

This week Justin and I finally get around to watching Jordan Peele's latest film, Nope, a UFO story layered with allegories about race, nature, and cinema itself. We both find something simultaneously compelling and frustrating about Peele's work, and in this conversation we try to get at the weird contours and contradictions of his auteurist project.

Listen to the whole episode with a free trial of our Patreon stream: https://www.patreon.com/posts/livestream-6-16-84684829

News Trap 5.31.23 - Kicking Out the Low End May 31, 2023

On this week's News Trap, I tell the sad story of our podcast's PERSECUTION by the algorithmic fiends at YouTube, who are maliciously and wrongfully accusing Nostalgia Trap of advocating violence and conspiracy theories on our channel.

Depsite this campaign, I persevere by sharing some startling examples of the real violence latent in the American system, with stories about housing, homelessness, and new trends in Vegas table gaming.

Check out this interview with housing activist Paul Boden: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/29/paul-boden-america-homelessness-crisis

Start a 7 DAY FREE TRIAL of the Nostalgia Trap Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 5.19.23: Cat-pitalism w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) May 20, 2023

This week Justin and I watch the Netflix documentary Inside the Mind of a Cat and contemplate the weird social, political, and spiritual economy of our relationship with cats. From global kitty litter supply chains to the uncanny dominance of cat videos in online spaces, we try to get a handle on how cats became such integral characters in our personal lives and in the wider world.

Listen to the full stream: https://www.patreon.com/posts/livestream-5-19-83262670

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 5.12.23: Death and Texas w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) May 12, 2023

This week Justin and I watch the Netflix documentary Waco: American Apocalypse, which tells the story of the disastrous 1993 battle between a Christian end times cult and the United States government. I bet you can guess who won! This conversation touches on some of the gender and family dynamics at play in religious cults, and the paradox of creating a coherent "free" society with an armed population subject to the whims of charismatic religious leaders. If we're continuing the Trap method of seeing history as a map of the future, the road from Waco leads directly to Oklahoma City, Trump, and QAnon.

Full episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/livestream-5-12-82918108

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 360: The City Authentic w/ David A. Banks May 04, 2023

David A. Banks is a Lecturer in the Geography and Planning department director of the Globalization Studies program at University at Albany, SUNY. His new book, The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America, tells us how American cities are branding themselves with crafty historical “authenticity” in order to draw the creative class to populate and revitalize their dying towns. In this conversation, Banks explains how this nostalgia-driven gentrification, amplified by social media, is a powerful engine in 21st century urban planning, as capital endlessly asks us to “eat the past.”

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access our massive library of bonus episodes, video essays, and more: https://patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

News Trap 5.3.23 - Unfollowed (PREVIEW) May 04, 2023

On this week's News Trap we learn about Spotify and the fresh nightmare of AI music, pay our respects to a sad teenage suicide from internet bullying, and consider the burning question of the week for online leftists: Is Chomsky canceled for hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein and Woody Allen?

Full episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/news-trap-5-3-23-82469893

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 4.28.23: Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Apr 29, 2023

This week Justin and I read a fascinating, troubling recent New York Times editorial, "Our Way of Life is Poisoning Us," and try to wrap our minds and emotions around the existential implications of "microplastics" and the larger phenomenon of a world saturated in oil-based consumer products. From Joe Rogan's freakout about chemicals shrinking our taints, to the pop eco-terrorism of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, we imagine how our corrupted political media content machine can possibly confront a wholly plasticized reality. Is it too late to stop any of this? Is the plastic in control of history?

Full episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/livestream-4-28-82204734

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 359: It's Always Sunny in California w/ Malcolm Harris Apr 25, 2023

Malcolm Harris is a writer, cultural critic, and prominent voice on the post-Occupy American left. He joins us this week to discuss his latest book, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, which tells the story of how California became the primary machine of American empire. From railroads and universities to social media platforms and artificial intelligence, Harris traces a history that re-orients our understanding of the West Coast’s central place in the past and future of global capitalism.

Check out Malcolm’s previous Nostalgia Trap appearance: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-120-bad-22385554

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access our massive library of bonus episodes, video essays, and more: https://patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 4.21.23: The Social Dilemma w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Apr 21, 2023

This week Justin and I watch the scary Netflix doc THE SOCIAL DILEMMA and freak out about the algorithms that control our thoughts, our feelings, and the VERY HISTORY OF HUMANITY. We're in the matrix, man! It's real!

Subscribe to access our giant library of bonus episodes, video essays, and lots more:

patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Mr. Trap Ep 3 - Shake the Crime Stick! Apr 19, 2023

Continuing our cruise through the full Mr. Show with Bob and David sketchography, David, Peter, and Geoff take a detailed look at the first two episodes of Season Two: "Now, Who Wants Ice Cream?" and "A Talking Junkie?" Both of these episodes have plenty to love, including sketches that anticipate/predict Hamilton! and the January 6th Capitol Riot, among other eerie premonitions. But there's also lots to cringe at here, as we lament the weird dynamics of race, gender, and "alt comedy" during an odd moment in late 90s pop culture.

Catch up with the rest of Mr Trap on our Patreon page: Episode One - Where Do I Go Now?: https://www.patreon.com/posts/mr-trap-ep-1-do-78316534 Episode Two - Deep Nonsense: https://www.patreon.com/posts/mr-trap-ep-2-79766387

NEWS TRAP EPISODE ONE: All the News That's Fit to Screenshot Apr 11, 2023

Here’s the debut episode of a new weekly podcast called News Trap, in which I share the news stories, headlines, weird emails and cryptic text messages that are melting my mind each week. This is a place for me to share the Nostalgia Trap “backchannel” conversations that animate much of the content we put out.

As I’ve mentioned on the show many times, my good friend and frequent co-host Justin Rogers-Cooper and I have been curating a private 24 hour news service, exclusively with each other via text message, for years now, and the screenshots, 3am rants, and relentless live analysis of unfolding apocalypse have been the backbone of our work together on Nostalgia Trap.

So I want to let you in on our little news world. Each week I’ll share the cream of the crop from these screenshots/news freakouts, plus book recommendations and other fun stuff. In this first episode, we get into lithium wars, global civil unrest, and the fraud of green capitalism, and get a surprise visit from our old pal Kurt Vonnegut.

This debut episode of News Trap is free for everyone; all future episodes are for subscribers only – so join the club!

Subscribe here: https://www.patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 358: Lady Sings the Blues w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Mar 24, 2023

This week Justin and I read Billie Holiday’s incredible 1956 memoir Lady Sings the Blues, the story of one woman’s journey through a 20th century America saturated in the legacy of slavery and social violence. We discuss the book as a visceral lesson in the lived experience of racial capitalism, tracking how a voice haunted by history carries her through fame, money, drugs, exploitation, incarceration, and death. Why does Holiday’s life and voice still speak to us? And what does she have to say?

Check out the whole episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-358-lady-80456339

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 357: Wolf in the Mirror w/ Carl Freedman Mar 21, 2023

Carl Freedman is a writer and professor of English literature at Louisiana State University who has written a number of important books on science fiction, American politics, and Marxist critical theory. In our last conversation, we talked about his book American Presidents and Oliver Stone: Kennedy, Nixon, and Bush between History and Cinema and got into the weird cultural legacy of the JFK assassination. This week Carl returns to Nostalgia Trap to continue our survey of titanic 1960s presidents with this conversation all about Richard Nixon and his freaky place in the American political imagination. Underneath our explorations is the persistent question: Did Nixon make us, or did we make Nixon?

Check out Carl’s piece in L.A. Review of Books on the lines from Nixon to Trump: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/from-nixon-to-trump-metastases-of-cultural-power/

And here’s Carl’s book, not to be missed: Age of Nixon: A Study in Cultural Power

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to get all the good stuff on our bonus stream: https://www.patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 3.17.23: Watch the World Die w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Mar 17, 2023

This week Justin and I take on the US/China Tik Tok fight and consider the wider implications of social media technology weaponized by states in a new cold war. Are we the lab rats for a psychological experiment conducted on a world-historical scale? Fuuuuuuuck, I certainly hope not! In either case, this is an intense conversation surveying the gangster-ass landscape of global capital at a particularly chilling moment, as we try to unlock the future by applying the reptilian logic of money and power to this week's wacky events. Russia, Ukraine, China, NATO, and of course, Las Vegas -- all on the table today. Let's do this.

Subscribe to listen to all our livestreams/bonus stuff, whenever you want: https://www.patreon.com/posts/livestream-3-17-80177026

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 356: Her Cold War w/ Tanya L. Roth Mar 15, 2023

Tanya L. Roth is a historian and teacher whose new book, Her Cold War: Women in the U.S. Military, 1945-1980, details the experiences of American women after the 1948 Women’s Armed Services Integration Act began a new era in the history of military service. In this conversation, Roth explains how, in the decades since World War II, the U.S. military became a central battleground in the fight for gender equality, as women challenged (and ultimately overturned) their classification as “noncombatants” and continue to reshape the structure and ideology of an institution that, for better or worse, serves as a critical engine of social engineering.

Subscribe to access our weekly livestream and giant library of bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap Livestream 3.10.23 - Home is Where the Cops Live w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Mar 10, 2023

Is there property without police? This week Justin and I talk about the "bottom up" appeal of Fox News and Tucker Carlson, as we consider how concepts of home, family, and property are tied up in an ideology of crime and punishment. Lots of directions and implications here, from Ron DeSantis' sadistic turn at Guantanamo to Lori Lightfoot's loss in Chicago. How deep does America's prison mindset go? I think we're gonna find out!

Listen to the whole episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/livestream-3-10-79849586

Mr. Trap Ep 2 - Deep Nonsense (PREVIEW) Mar 09, 2023

What is “alt comedy” anyway? On this episode of Mr. Trap, we take you back to the mid-1990s, when finding hip comedy with an intelligent perspective was as difficult as finding weed and pornography. Which is to say, pretty difficult! As we survey Mr. Show’s first season, we share some of our favorite bits and talk about what made Bob and David stand out in the larger world of 90s humor, from Saturday Night Live to In Living Color. Geoff and Peter tell us what makes Bob’s Droopy character so special, we all have a laugh about Tom Kenny’s surreal Abraham Lincoln impression, and David tells the story of his multiple, bizarre real-life encounters with the actual Bob Odenkirk and David Cross.

All episodes of Mr. Trap are included with a Nostalgia Trap subscription:

patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 355: The Most Magical Place on Earth w/ Avi Garelick Mar 07, 2023

Our friend Avi Garelick joins us to discuss his recent piece on the war between Ron DeSantis and the Disney Corporation in Florida, as we explore the longer history of Florida’s extraordinary relationship to the Disney brand. Along the way, we talk about Sean Baker’s haunting film The Florida Project, the weird politics and aesthetics of “New Urbanism,” and the current direction of housing politics in American cities.

Check out our subscribers-only podcast series on Disney’s wild history:

Ep 1 - Time is a Flat Circle: https://www.patreon.com/posts/trap-tv-brick-is-74949645

Ep 2 - Uncle Walt Goes to War: https://www.patreon.com/posts/trap-tv-brick-to-75566223

Ep 3 - Space Cowboys: https://www.patreon.com/posts/trap-tv-brick-76267538

Nostalgia Trap Livestream 3.3.23 - Shiver the Whole Night Through w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Mar 03, 2023

This week Justin and I watch the documentary Missing 411: The Hunted and contemplate cryptids, bigfoots, and mysterious disappearances in American forests. How are American history and politics tied up in these stories? What happened to all of these people? And most of all, what the fuck is making these sounds?

Join up and listen to the whole episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/livestream-3-3-w-79523275

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 354: Everything Was Better in the 90s w/ Freddie deBoer (PREVIEW) Mar 03, 2023

Freddie deBoer joins me to discuss his viral piece on 90s nostalgia, “It's So Sad When Old People Romanticize Their Heydays, Also the 90s Were Objectively the Best Time to Be Alive.” This is a raw and honest conversation about what we miss about the era, what we absolutely hate about the 21st century, and how our lament for the loss of a certain kind of analog social reality is yes, old man shit, but also a call to the younger generation and a cataloging of the ways digital life has crippled us all. There was another way of living, kids. Let us tell you about it…

Listen to whole episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-354-was-79472867

Nostalgia Trap Livestream 2.24.23 - Gang Wars w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Feb 24, 2023

This week Justin and I talk about the Great Chatbot Panic of 2023, leftists in love with Trump's "brilliant" visit to Ohio, and the alleged moral authority of U.S. actions re: Ukraine, one year into the war. Let's do this.

Subscribe to listen to the whole episode and access all our bonus stuff, livestreams, and videos: https://www.patreon.com/posts/livestream-2-24-79161824

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 353: The Trivial Sublime, Part Two w/ Sean Nelson (PREVIEW) Feb 21, 2023

In Part Two of my conversation with writer and musician Sean Nelson, we talk about the origins of his band Harvey Danger in the 1990s Seattle music scene, the bizarre rush of having a massive radio hit, and the bleak economic landscape of indie rock in the streaming era. Along the way, Sean offers some hard-earned wisdom and personal reflections on the pejorative concept of the “one hit wonder,” as we contemplate the past and future possibilities of subversive popular culture. Were the 90s really the last golden age, or is that just another nostalgia trap?

Listen to the whole episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-353-part-79010461

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 352: The Trivial Sublime, Part One w/ Sean Nelson Feb 21, 2023

Sean Nelson is a writer and musician, known widely as the lead singer of the band Harvey Danger, whose 1998 single “Flagpole Sitta” became a staple of “alternative rock” radio and MTV and an inescapable earworm in 90s pop culture. In Part One of this conversation, we talk about what “alternative” means, tracing a line from the 1960s psychedelic culture that produced insane shit like the Monkees movie Head (1968) to the Seattle scene that drew Sean and many others in the early 1990s.

Check out Part Two of our conversation: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-353-part-79010461

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 2.17.23: Broken Motor w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Feb 17, 2023

This week Justin and I talk about the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Are we entering an accelerated era of industrial mass poisonings, or is this just more of the same old industrial mass poisonings?

Listen to the whole episode: patreon.com/posts/livestream-2-17-78840239

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 351: The Sympathetic Consumer w/ Tad Skotnicki Feb 14, 2023

Tad Skotnicki is a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the author of The Sympathetic Consumer: Moral Critique in Capitalist Culture (Stanford University Press, 2021). He joins me for a conversation about the common features of consumer activism, from 19th century abolitionism to 21st century Fair Trade movements, which have all based their projects around the idea that consumers are responsible for sympathizing with the invisible laborers that produce their goods, from sugar to iPhones. Skotnicki shares some great historical examples to help illustrate how capitalism’s consistent production of “sympathetic consumers” is a feature, not a bug.

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access our massive library of bonus episodes, video essays, livestreams and more: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 350: Gateway to the Shadow World w/ Carl Freedman Feb 09, 2023

Carl Freedman is a writer and professor of English literature at Louisiana State University who has written a number of important books on science fiction, American politics, and Marxist critical theory. In this conversation, we talk about his book American Presidents and Oliver Stone: Kennedy, Nixon, and Bush between History and Cinema and go down the JFK assassination rabbit hole. How does Oliver Stone’s hyper-stylized vision capture the psychedelic violence of a beautiful young celebrity president’s savage murder in broad daylight? And how much can we trace a 21st century American political culture of conspiracy theories, true crime obsession, and spectacular public violence to the ritual bloodshed of November 22, 1963?

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access our massive library of bonus conversations, livestreams, and videos: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Mr. Trap Ep 1 - Where Do I Go Now? Feb 06, 2023

What happens when three old pals get together to talk about the 90s sketch comedy program Mr. Show with Bob and David? This podcast answers that very question! Welcome to the debut episode of Mr. Trap, a place where me (David Parsons) and my good friends Peter Sabatino and Geoff Johnson can trade ideas, memories, analysis, and even a few laffs about a show that touched our young hearts and forged our identities. In this opening conversation we get into Mr. Show’s origins in the L.A. alt comedy scene, the transition to HBO, and the first few insane sketches announcing a new *extra ironic* set of Gen X comedy voices.

First episode is free -- everything else is for Nostalgia Trap Patreon subscribers only!

New episodes of Mr. Trap are coming throughout Spring/Summer 2023. Subscribe to hear the whole series: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 349: I Need Your Love w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Feb 03, 2023

This week Justin and I go all in on Baz Luhrmann’s camp masterpiece Elvis (2022), as we consider the life, work, and legacy of an iconic 20th century artist/product/celebrity/Christ figure. How is Elvis’ insane life story emblematic of an archetypal cultural phenomenon, from Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin to Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston? How do we sort out the contradictions of race, gender, sexuality, and class in Elvis’ rise and fall? And perhaps most of all, what’s up with Tom Hanks in this movie?

Listen to the whole episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-349-i-w-78198738

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 348: Going Underground w/ Lara Langer Cohen Jan 31, 2023

What does it mean to “go underground”? Lara Langer Cohen is an associate professor of English at Swarthmore College. Her latest book, Going Underground: Race, Space, and the Subterranean in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Duke University Press, 2023), explores how subterranean spaces (both real and imagined) animated social, political, and cultural movements in 19th century America, from the abolitionists of the Underground Railroad to anarchist secret societies and practitioners of sex magic. In this conversation, we plunge into these underground worlds and excavate some of the lost people and ideas that populate the places that exist beneath our collective history.

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access more conversations, livestreams, and videos: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Gender Trap - Ep 11 : Forget It, Jake, You're Canceled (PREVIEW) Jan 26, 2023

This week Yasmin and I watch Chinatown (1974) and have a conversation about the film’s infamously elegant screenplay, shocking plot twist, insanely dark ending, and wonderfully sleazy cameo from the film’s director, Roman Polanski, whose own personal corruption intersects with the film’s brutal vision of a corrupted world. What does Chinatown have to say to us now?

Subscribe to hear the whole episode, plus access all our fabulous bonus stuff: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 347: Fit Nation w/ Natalia Mehlman Petrzela Jan 24, 2023

How do shifting ideas about physical fitness, health, and the body reflect larger ideological structures like nation, race, gender, and capitalism? Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is a historian of American culture and politics and associate professor of history at the New School. In this conversation, we discuss her latest book Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession, which tracks the evolution of fitness culture from the strongman exhibitions at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair to the Peloton/home gym movement of the COVID-19 era.

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access our library of bonus episodes, livestreams, and video essays: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Housing Trap - The Way of Water w/ Andrew Schustek and Zach Paganini Jan 17, 2023

On this episode of Housing Trap, Andrew is joined by Zach Paganini, a Ph.D. student in the Earth and Environmental Sciences program at the CUNY Graduate Center, for a conversation about the effects of water on the political economy of housing in America’s coastal cities. Threatened by floods, superstorms, and rising sea levels, cities from New York to Florida to Southern California, known for their lucrative real estate, are already undergoing immense shifts in anticipation of a wet future. Schustek and Paganini explore the contours of that future, explaining how housing policy is a central arena in the battle for economic and environmental fairness and sustainability.

For more Housing Trap, along with access to the entire Nostalgia Trap bonus library for just $5, subscribe to our Patreon: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 1.13.23: Rats in a Maze w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Jan 14, 2023

This week Justin and I watched the HBO Max documentary This Place Rules, which gives us a chance to talk about the weird undercurrents of rape, sexual domination, violence, and pedophilia coursing through 1/6, QAnon, Alex Jones, Proud Boys, Antifa, and even the filmmaker himself. Are we in a unique moment for subconscious urges bubbling to the surface of public politics, or has it always been this way?

Listen to the whole episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/livestream-1-13-77204705

TRAP TV - Noir is a Vibe (PREVIEW) Jan 04, 2023

What is film noir and why does it matter? In the first episode of a series called Shadow Nation, I reflect on the commercial failure of Guillermo Del Toro’s prestige noir remake Nightmare Alley (2021) and wonder what makes a movie “noir” in the first place. Is it just detectives and fedoras and femmes fatale? Or is there a way of understanding noir beyond style, genre, and visual aesthetic?

Check out the full episode, in video and podcast form for Nostalgia Trap subscribers:

patreon.com/posts/trap-tv-shadow-76793267

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 12.30.22: No Hugs and No Learning w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Dec 31, 2022

Our series on 1990s/2000s comedy continues this week with a conversation about Seinfeld. Justin and I watched two episodes (S5E5 "The Bris" and S7E4 "The Wink"), and reflect on the show's weird elevated "dream vision" of 90s bourgeois culture.

Listen to the whole episode: patreon.com/posts/livestream-12-30-76564956

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 12.23.22: The Doofus in Charge w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Dec 24, 2022

This week Justin and I watch Elf (2003) and talk about Will Ferrell's late 90s/early 2000s comic persona in the context of male bodies, George W. Bush, and a particular cultural turn toward "dumb assholes" in the digital era.

Listen to the whole episode: patreon.com/posts/livestream-12-23-76298993

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 346: Uncomfortable Television w/ Hunter Hargraves Dec 20, 2022

What makes disturbing, graphic shows like CSI and Intervention so morbidly appealing? How does our desire for uncomfortable entertainment reflect a larger normalization of fear, precarity, and violence in our everyday reality? Hunter Hargraves is Associate Professor of Cinema and Television Arts at California State University, Fullerton. His new book, Uncomfortable Television (Duke University Press, 2023), examines how 21st century television invites viewers to find pleasure in discomfort, training us to survive in a neoliberal world that’s just one cringe experience after another.

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap and get access to all our bonus stuff

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 12.16.22: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Dec 17, 2022

This week Justin and I jump off our previous discussion of Groundhog Day with a look at Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987), a deceptively complicated film about class, gender, and the queer social dynamics of American capitalism. We talk a lot about John Candy as a performer and celebrity here, finding lots of unexpected connections with the life and death of Kurt Cobain, another figure who introduced working class conceptions of embodiment (think butts, buttholes, blood, semen, foot odor, etc) at a critical moment in American pop cultural history.

Subscribe to listen to the whole episode and access our massive library of bonus content for just $5

Campus Trap Ep 9 - The BRUTAL TRUTH About Getting a Ph.D. (PREVIEW) Dec 15, 2022

Since clever people are now declaring the end of college education, Ryan and I thought it might be fun to survey the highs and lows of our own respective "college" experiences, from undergrad to Ph.D. What worked for us, and what ruined our lives forever? Like any good academics, we're making a list!

Listen to the whole episode

Go read Ryan's Substack

Check out David's grad school rant on YouTube

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 345: Home Free w/ Daniel Horowitz Dec 13, 2022

Daniel Horowitz is a historian and the author of many books on American consumer culture, economics, and political ideology. In this conversation we discuss his latest book, American Dreams, American Nightmares: Culture and Crisis in Residential Real Estate from the Great Recession to the COVID-19 Pandemic (UNC Press, 2022), which connects the dots of our 21st century housing crisis, from HGTV reality shows (with titles like Flip or Flop, Hot Mess House, etc.), to Airbnb real estate moguls and the new era of working from home. How did buying, selling, and living in houses become such a social, cultural, and economic war zone?

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Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 12.9.22: Everybody Wants to Rule the World w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Dec 09, 2022

This week Justin and I talk about China's Zero Covid policies coming apart as Apple demands MORE IPHONES, which leads to a wider consideration of what it means when a state drives people from the farms to the factories. Plus, we reflect on Ye's new Christofascism in the context of violence against LGBTQ+ communities, as we ponder how to confront an enemy that LOLs at the damage they create.

Listen to the whole episode: patreon.com/posts/livestream-12-9-75725406

TRAP TV - Imagineering World War (PREVIEW) Dec 06, 2022

On this episode of TRAP TV, we examine a critical moment in the history of the Walt Disney Company, when the tremendous success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 gave way to a period of rapid expansion and ambitious, ultimately unsuccessful projects that nearly bankrupted the business and ended the Disney era. Then, the war came. This is the story of how World War II not only rescued Disney from financial ruin, it sharpened the company’s aesthetic and ideological purpose. With an unprecedented animator’s strike nearly paralyzing production in 1941, the war and its fallout on the homefront began a new period for both Disney the man and Disney the cultural product, as hyper-nationalism, militarism, and explicit anti-communism entered Disney’s bloodstream and brought the company to unimagined new heights of profit and influence.

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Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 12.2.22: I've Been Working on the Railroad w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Dec 02, 2022

This week Justin and I talk about the fight between labor, management, unions, and the state now being waged in the railroad industry, and trace the longer history of rail and transport as central spaces for navigating the class violence bubbling under the surface of the American economy. Plus, Christmas nostalgia for all the boys and girls!

Full episode: patreon.com/posts/livestream-12-2-75429714

Gender Trap - Ep 10 : Demon Child (PREVIEW) Dec 01, 2022

This week Yasmin and I watch Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968) and Birth (Jonathan Glazer, 2004), two films about trapped women, pixie haircuts, beautiful New York apartments, stifling bourgeois social norms, and creepy children born of Satan. There’s plenty for us to chew on here—from architecture and occult power to deeply unsettling notions of childhood, death, and sexuality—as we consider how these films locate an atmosphere of dread and horror in the fantastic spaces of elite New York.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 344: Capital's Terrorists w/ Chad E. Pearson Nov 29, 2022

Chad E. Pearson is a labor historian and writer whose work focuses on ruling class organizations and violence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this episode we discuss his latest book, Capital’s Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century (UNC Press, 2022), which explores how elite capitalists evolved new strategies of violence and repression during the Second Industrial Revolution, employing extralegal terror—from book burning and blacklists to kidnappings, arson, and murder—as a means of securing their power over a rising population of wage workers.

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 11.18.22: Owned by the Storytellers w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Nov 18, 2022

This week Justin and I consider the possibility that news of Twitter's imminent demise may be premature, which leads to a discussion of tech bro culture's connection to the wider history of consumer capitalism and the series of swaggering men who promise utopian escapes from the very nightmare they've created, producing an endless cycle of technological baubles that attempt to remove us from linear time and distract us from the inevitable march toward death. Does it work? You tell me!

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Nostalgia Trap - Episode 343: A World of Shit w/ Shane Burley (PREVIEW) Nov 17, 2022

Shane Burley returns to the Trap for a challenging conversation about Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Vietnam war mindfuck Full Metal Jacket, a film that asks deep, dark questions about violence, masculinity, racial imperialism, and other persistent features of human history. From its prolonged opening training sequence of horrific, hilariously choreographed ritual abuse to the oddly staged final battle sequences and bleak, abrupt ending, we explore how Full Metal Jacket’s relentless tone of removed, sarcastic cynicism offers a fractal view of war that remains one of Kubrick’s most punishing visions.

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Housing Trap - Home Is Where the Bank Is w/ Andrew Schustek and Benjamin Teresa Nov 15, 2022

On this installment of Housing Trap, Andrew Schustek talks with Benjamin Teresa, a professor in the Urban and Regional Studies and Planning program at the Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at UVA. In this conversation, Teresa explains the role of finance and real estate in shaping the possibilities and limits of housing policy, and offers some ideas on how community engagement might open a trapdoor to a more livable future.

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Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 11.11.22: Can't Get it Up w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Nov 11, 2022

The livestream returns to a week full of exciting collapses: MAGA, Twitter, Meta, all run by men who talk a big game but suddenly can't seal the deal. Is this a temporary blip, "something that happens to all guys sometimes," or are the big swingers of the digital era reaching their limits?

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Campus Trap Ep 8 - The One About Third Places Nov 01, 2022

This week Ryan and I watch an incendiary viral TikTok and debate the idea of “third places” – those special spaces where a human being can be a human being, around other human beings. Does such a space exist anymore? Who knows! But it seems like the degradation of public space in the past few decades just MIGHT have something to do with the decline of liberal social values – or is it the other way around? Let’s ask Mike Davis…

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Housing Trap - How to Build a City, Part Two w/ Andrew Schustek and Samuel Stein (PREVIEW) Oct 27, 2022

Andrew Schustek and Samuel Stein continue their conversation on the inner workings of American housing policy, this time focusing on subsidies, affordable housing, and signs of weakness/vulnerability in the “real estate state.”

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Housing Trap - How to Build a City, Part One w/ Andrew Schustek and Samuel Stein Oct 25, 2022

Nostalgia Trap fellow traveler and guest host Andrew Schustek continues our series of conversations on the political economy of housing in the 21st century. This week, Andrew talks with geographer, urban planner and housing policy analyst Samuel Stein, whose book Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State is already a classic of modern urban studies and required reading for anyone interested in a progressive vision of city planning. In this episode, Andrew and Sam introduce us to the major structures of the “real estate state” and imagine pathways to a future of lower rents and better living.

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Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 10.21.22: You're Just an Object to Me w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Oct 21, 2022

This week Justin and I watch the first few episodes of Adam Curtis' latest documentary provocation, Russia 1985–1999: TraumaZone, as we consider the different ways to imagine "collapse," both ideologically and aesthetically.

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Campus Trap Ep 5 - Behind the Paywall (PREVIEW) Oct 20, 2022

Do you need a college degree in order to understand T.S. Eliot poems? Does subjecting a work of art or literature to academic analysis ruin our enjoyment of said work? This week Ryan and I talk about the “point” of a humanities education in a technocratic neoliberal world, and reflect on the increasingly dominant view of college as a transaction rather than an education. How do we put the heart back in higher ed?

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Nostalgia Trap - Episode 342: Why We Fight w/ Shane Burley Oct 18, 2022

Shane Burley is a writer and filmmaker whose work explores the contours of 21st century fascist movements. His latest book, Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse (AK Press, 2021), covers the rapid shift in organizing tactics on the right and left in the years since the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. In this conversation we reflect on the fascist, antisemitic vibes now permeating pop culture and political discourse, and Shane shares his experiences as a journalist covering radical politics at an increasingly fractured historical moment.

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Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 10.14.22: Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Oct 14, 2022

This week Justin and I talk about the UFO documentary Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind: Contact Has Begun (2020), and get into the multiple UFO narratives currently circulating in online/media/state intelligence discourse. As always, we apply the Trap method of entertaining many different layered truths (an ecology of realities is one way to put it), but also tell some stories about our own "contact" experiences that shaped our personal perceptions of what's out there.

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Gender Trap - Ep 9 : Marilyn Monroe, Trauma Puppet (PREVIEW) Oct 11, 2022

This week Yasmin and I endure Andrew Dominik’s much over-hyped Netflix #content Blonde, a fictional passion play “about” Marilyn Monroe, based on the novel by Joyce Carol Oates. Our reactions are analytical and emotional, and we work out the intense feelings about celebrity, power, and gender brought up by the film’s often absurd provocations. And by the way, what are the gender dynamics at work here? Is this Andrea Dworkin sex-negative feminism disguised as arthouse shock therapy, or a brilliant, radical take on fame and desire? One thing we can agree on: Marilyn deserves better.

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Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 10.7.22: Gimme My Meat Space w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Oct 08, 2022

Is the era of tech utopianism over? Does anyone believe that Zuckerberg's Hail Mary plan to trap us all in some nightmarish alternate digital reality is actually going to work? This week Justin and I consider the social and cultural elements of tech as a driver of the US economy, and wonder if virtual reality is really the future, or the dead end of Silicon Valley's grip on the popular imagination.

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Nostalgia Trap - Episode 340: The Tampa Bay Yucks w/ Jason Vuic Oct 04, 2022

Historian and author Jason Vuic returns to the Trap to talk about his book The Yucks: Two Years in Tampa with the Losingest Team in NFL History, which tells the incredible story of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ disastrous, legendary first season as a professional football organization. Marked by appalling working conditions, a colorfully brutal head coach, a penny-pinching owner, and a winking gay pirate mascot, the Bucs’ 26-game losing streak is a bizarre piece of sports history that, as Vuic explains, paints a striking picture of 1970s American entrepreneurial culture and the chaotic politics of building and promoting Florida.

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Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 9.30.22: Behind the Wall w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Sep 30, 2022

As we continue into the "wormhole" opened up by COVID and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Justin and I consider the positions of those "behind the wall" of empire. How will we experience the future shocks now coming more clearly into view?

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Campus Trap Ep 6 - Toward An Academic Grindset (PREVIEW) Sep 28, 2022

How much American bootstrap ideology are we obligated to deliver to students? This week Ryan Boyd and I take a look at some “practical advice” about “surviving college” from a couple of recent popular books on the subject, and we discover a disturbing strain of self-help/New Age/Protestant work ethic/grindset philosophy that, perhaps unsurprisingly, fails to acknowledge structural and material barriers (money, food, housing, etc) to student success. So what’s a teacher to do? Sell the hustle or sell the trapdoor?

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Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 9.23.22: The Death of the Four Cheaps w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Sep 23, 2022

This week on the livestream we continue our discussion with Justin Rogers-Cooper on the end of the neoliberal order in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the "wormhole" we're entering. Justin offers some context and insights from environmental historian Jason W. Moore's Capitalism in the Web of Life (Verso, 2015), and we listen to some groovy stuff from JPW's excellent new album Something Happening/Always Happening.

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Nostalgia Trap - Episode 339: Black Tar America w/ Hit Factory Sep 23, 2022

Aaron and Carlee from the 90s movie podcast Hit Factory join us for a conversation about Oliver Stone’s 1994 maximalist murder-fest Natural Born Killers. Is this a masterpiece of postmodern satire, or a mindlessly self-indulgent pastiche? As we discover together, this movie is trickier than its cartoonish surface, painting a disturbing vision of American violence and celebrity that, nearly thirty years later, still burns like acid.

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Gender Trap - Ep 8 : Comfortably Powerless (PREVIEW) Sep 20, 2022

The world is filled with Pete Campbells – people whose wealthy families and social connections allow them to coast through life, easily opening doors that are locked tight for the rest of us. Doesn’t that just burn you up? On this week’s Gender Trap, Yasmin Nair and I talk about Episode 4 of Mad Men (“New Amsterdam”), in which we are forced to come to terms with the archetypal privileged son, and see him as but one part of a marvelous, odious machine that traps us all. Can we learn to love Pete Campbell?

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Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 9.16.22: Goodbye, Neoliberal World w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Sep 17, 2022

We're back on the livestream circuit with Justin Rogers-Cooper, talking about the fragile set of historical circumstances upon which the neoliberal era was built, and how those circumstances are rapidly deteriorating/disappearing into an era of pandemic, imperial war, energy depletion, and planetary emergency. Buckle up, motherfuckers: the age of neoliberalism is dying, and something new is being born.

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Nostalgia Trap - Episode 338: Millennials Killed the Video Star w/ Amanda Klein Sep 14, 2022

Amanda Klein is a professor of Film Studies at East Carolina University and the author of a number of works on American media and society. Her latest book, Millennials Killed the Video Star: MTV’s Transition to Reality Programming, is a detailed history of MTV’s abrupt evolution from music-centered content to non-stop reality programs in the late 90s and early 2000s. In this conversation, Klein discusses how MTV executives chased the elusive millennial dollar in a rapidly changing media landscape, producing shows like The Hills, Jersey Shore, Buckwild, and many others, offering a young, largely white audience an opportunity to imagine themselves occupying a wide range of non-white identities. Which MTV did you watch?

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Record Trap Ep 4 - Bowie's Last Act (PREVIEW) Sep 07, 2022

This week Justin and I consider the life and career of David Bowie, casting him as a master practitioner of pop magick, who harnessed the occult energies of art and celebrity to implant himself permanently in our cultural DNA. Nothing in Bowie’s work expresses this more clearly than his final album, Blackstar, released on his 69th birthday and two days before his death from liver cancer in January 2016. In this conversation we talk about Bowie’s life, art, and final act, as we reflect on how his particularly curatorial, affectionate, subversive, playful approach to music and stardom resonates in pop culture literally everywhere you look.

There's lots more to this episode for subscribers, including links and playlists to accompany the Bowie-fest: patreon.com/posts/record-trap-ep-4-71628069

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 337: Keep On Rockin' In the Free World w/ Penny Von Eschen Sep 01, 2022

In her incredible new book Paradoxes of Nostalgia: Cold War Triumphalism and Global Disorder Since 1989, historian Penny Von Eschen identifies nostalgia as a corrosive, reactionary force in global politics and popular culture since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and explains how the lingering ghosts of the Cold War haunt our era. From George H.W. Bush hosting an official White House screening of The Hunt for Red October in 1990 to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Von Eschen traces how Cold War nostalgia distorts our vision of the past and forecloses on possibilities for a peaceful future.

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Campus Trap Ep 5 - Whither the Wonder Boys? (PREVIEW) Aug 24, 2022

This week Ryan and I watch Wonder Boys (2000), starring Michael Douglas as a professor struggling to write a follow-up to his successful first novel while juggling personal relationships with students and faculty and ingesting massive amounts of drugs and alcohol. The movie depicts a romantic vision of campus life that seems miles away from our respective experiences in 21st century academia, while still reflecting a lot of the things that drew us to academic life in the first place. Is longing for the world of Wonder Boys just another nostalgia trap?

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Gender Trap - Ep 7 : Inside Doesn't Matter (PREVIEW) Aug 18, 2022

Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991 novel American Psycho, about a 1980s Wall Street serial killer, is one of the sickest acts of American satire I’ve read, and Mary Harron’s 2000 movie adaptation starring Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman nails the book’s tone while excising some of its most graphic violence. This week Yasmin and I ask: What is American Psycho really about? Is Bateman an aberration, or a perfect representation of American masculinity? What does it take to “fit in” a psychotic society?

Click here to listen to the full episode.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 336: The Dream of the 90s w/ Daniel Chard Aug 16, 2022

Daniel Chard is a professor of history at Western Washington University and the author of Nixon’s War at Home: The FBI, Leftist Guerillas, and the Origins of Counterterrorism. In this conversation, we both reflect on the different cultural and political forces that drew us to the American left in the 1990s, and how our politics have evolved in the decades since the heady days of freeganism, drum circles, anti-globalization protests, anarchist collectives, black bloc tactics, Ani DiFranco, and other key features of the “dream of the 90s.”

Check out Daniel’s first appearance on the show for a detailed discussion of his research on leftist violence and the FBI.

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Nostalgia Trap - Episode 335: Scorched Earth w/ Jonathan Crary Aug 10, 2022

Jonathan Crary is a professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University whose work examines the role of the human eye, aesthetics, and visual culture in modern history. His latest book, Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World, is a razor sharp critique of “digital capitalism” and the outsized role of the internet in our daily lives and the larger economy. Our conversation reflects on the decades since the 1960s, when hopes for radical change became invested in structures of technology and finance that have not only failed to produce utopia, but have in effect produced the opposite: an alienated, misinformed, angry society teetering on the brink of political, social, and ecological apocalypse. What would it look like to move beyond the digital age?

Subscribe to the Nostalgia Trap Patreon to access our massive library of bonus content: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Record Trap Ep 3 - The Devil in the Music, Part Two (PREVIEW) Aug 04, 2022

Justin Farrar and I continue our conversation about rock music and the occult by watching the incredibly disturbing Paradise Lost documentary series, which details the case of three young men wrongfully accused of the grisly murders of three children in the town of West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993. With prosecutors (literally) presenting Metallica lyrics as evidence of murderous intent, the case was part of a dark undercurrent in the 1990s, as music and counterculture became targets of intense paranoia, hatred, and violence from all varieties of American reactionaries. We share our memories and insights from this scary, prophetic era in rock history, when America’s endless cycle of Satanic panics aimed its sights at the MTV generation.

To listen to all episodes of Record Trap, plus the rest of the Trap universe, subscribe! patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 334: Manufacturing Noam Chomsky, Part Three w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Aug 02, 2022

On the third and final installment of our series on the life, work, and legacy of Noam Chomsky, Justin and I talk about Chomsky the Doomer: between nuclear war and climate collapse, he doesn’t hold out much hope for the survival of the human race. What makes him such a Gloomy Gus? Reading critically through Chomsky’s lectures and writings on the end of the world, we look at the details of his apocalyptic thinking and examine why he thinks we’re currently living through the “terminal stage of human existence.” But are we really doomed? Or is there a trapdoor to a different future?

To listen to the whole trilogy, subscribe to Nostalgia Trap: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 333: Manufacturing Noam Chomsky, Part Two w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW 2) Jul 30, 2022

Here's another quick clip from Part Two of our trilogy with Justin Rogers-Cooper on the complicated life, work, and legacy of Noam Chomsky.

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Record Trap Ep 2 - The Devil in the Music, Part One Jul 28, 2022

Where does American popular music come from, and what does the devil have to do with it? On Part One of a two-part series on music and the occult, Justin Farrar and I discuss Peter Bebergal’s excellent history Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, as we explore the eerie mythology that haunts the origins of blues and rock. Some of the musicians and other figures mentioned in this episode include Robert Johnson, Clarence Ashley, Big Mama Thornton, Elvis Presley, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Black Sabbath, Tommy Johnson, Skip James, Kurt Cobain, R.E.M., Harry Smith, The Geto Boys, and lots more.

For more episodes of Record Trap and access to the entire Nostalgia Trap universe, subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 333: Manufacturing Noam Chomsky, Part Two w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Jul 26, 2022

Our series on the life, work, and legacy of Noam Chomsky continues with a critical look at Chomsky’s signature intellectual work, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media. This episode traces Chomsky’s development through the 1970s and 1980s, as he evolved into a fierce critic of state violence and corporate propaganda, while becoming a bit of a radical celebrity himself. Justin has plenty of ideas about how Chomsky’s media theories hold up in the era of social media, 8chan, and QAnon. Are our minds really under the control of a unified state power? How does a fractured media, controlled in part by the people themselves, manufacture consent?

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Gender Trap - Ep 6 : Girls, Working (PREVIEW) Jul 24, 2022

This week Yasmin and I watch two films, Working Girls (Lizzie Borden, 1986) and Working Girl (Mike Nichols, 1988), as we think about the intersection of sex, gender, labor, and capitalism. Is sex work any different from an office job? That depends: What brand of hyper-gendered humiliation are you willing to endure for money?

To listen to this episode, and access our entire library of bonus content, including Campus Trap w/ Ryan Boyd, Record Trap w/ Justin Farrar, and our latest trilogy on Noam Chomsky w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper, subscribe to Nostalgia Trap for just $5 a month: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Campus Trap Ep 4 - Slow City Vibes (PREVIEW) Jul 21, 2022

Ryan’s recent trip to Montreal gets us thinking about the connections between cities and college campuses, as we try to imagine more vibrant institutions than the crumbling ones we currently haunt. Of course, creating a better university would mean confronting the ways that capitalism structures higher education, and Ryan shares some ideas from his recent Substack piece about radical teaching practices that aim to decondition students from the hustle mindset and cultivate vibes of solidarity and compassion.

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Nostalgia Trap - Episode 332: Manufacturing Noam Chomsky, Part One w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Jul 19, 2022

In the first of a trilogy of episodes examining the life, work, and legacy of Noam Chomsky, Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us for a discussion of Chomsky’s younger years: the historical moment into which he was born, the people and ideas that surrounded him, and the formation of his political and intellectual values. In this episode we pay particular attention to the evolution of Chomsky’s attitudes about war, fascism, and the state, as we trace his development from academic all-star to public dissident, from prominent researcher and theorist in the field of linguistics to outspoken critic of American foreign policy and leading figure in the American left. Our series will continue on the Nostalgia Trap subscriber feed: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Gender Trap - Ep 5 : Roe is Me (PREVIEW) Jul 14, 2022

On our first episode after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, Yasmin Nair and I take a moment to consider the implications: What does this mean for a newly emboldened right? And how can the left find new strategies of resistance?

We also watch a particularly brutal episode of Mad Men (S1E3, “The Marriage of Figaro”), which brings our abortion discussion back to the early 1960s and connects concepts of “privacy” to houses, neighborhoods, and bedrooms.

To listen to the whole episode, and access our massive library of bonus content, become a Nostalgia Trap subscriber for just $5 a month: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 331: Winter in America w/ Dan McClure Jul 12, 2022

Historian and writer Dan McClure returns to the Trap for a talk about his incredible new book Winter in America: A Cultural History of Neoliberalism, from the Sixties to the Reagan Revolution, which explores how the cruel economic principles we call “neoliberalism” found currency in popular culture in the years since the Vietnam War, delivering us into a nightmare world that protects capital and liquidates democracy.

Check out Dan’s previous appearance on Nostalgia Trap.

Subscribe to the Nostalgia Trap Patreon to access our entire library of bonus content: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Record Trap Ep 1 - I Know What It's Like to Be Dead (PREVIEW) Jul 06, 2022

On the very first episode of Record Trap, Justin Farrar joins me to lay out our mission statement for the podcast: a regular series of conversations about music, counterculture, and radical politics. What better way to kick off this project than by talking about drugs and The Beatles? The world’s greatest rock band didn’t just put out classic albums; they also helped introduce a whole generation to the psychedelic experience through their playful artistic engagement with LSD, marijuana, and other tools of chemical adventure. We take a trip through the 1960s to explore how four lads from Liverpool journeyed to the outer reaches of their own minds and packaged the lessons for the masses.

Subscribe to the Nostalgia Trap Patreon to access all our podcasts, including Record Trap w/ Justin Farrar, Gender Trap w/ Yasmin Nair, and Campus Trap w/ Ryan Boyd: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Campus Trap Ep 3 - Did You Ever Know That You're My Hero? Jun 30, 2022

What makes a great teacher? In an effort to avoid becoming completely blackpilled doomers, this week Ryan and I have a conversation about our favorite teachers, from kindergarten to grad school. We try to remember the things that made us want to become teachers ourselves, and wonder if the ideas and practices of our ancient heroes can help guide us through the dark waters of today’s campus.

Check out Ryan’s website

Subscribe to Ryan’s Substack

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Nostalgia Trap - Episode 330: In Whose Ruins? w/ Alicia Puglionesi Jun 28, 2022

Stories about the past form the ideological foundation of the American project. This week’s guest, Alicia Puglionesi, is a historian and writer whose work often focuses on “hauntings” – both real and imagined – in our collective history. Her latest book, In Whose Ruins: Power, Possession, and the Landscapes of American Empire, explores the fake narratives and mythologies created to justify land theft, genocide, and the endless extraction of natural resources for profit. In this conversation, she explains how fundamental elements like oil, water, and atomic power were harnessed by capital through processes of historical erasure and, above all, storytelling.

Subscribe to the Nostalgia Trap Patreon page to access our whole universe of bonus content, including our newest podcasts Gender Trap w/ Yasmin Nair and Campus Trap w/ Ryan Boyd: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Campus Trap Ep 2 - Dark Academia (PREVIEW) Jun 21, 2022

Digital Humanities? More like Digital Hu-SHAM-ities, am I right? On this episode of Campus Trap, Ryan Boyd and I trade stories about our experiences with the digital pedagogy boom/bust cycle of the past decade or so, in which a whole generation was sold on the idea that computers would somehow make higher education better for everyone (spoiler alert: it didn’t happen). So if the COVID/Zoom era finally made us understand that tech can’t solve the university’s problems, what’s our path forward? Is there an opportunity to reclaim and repurpose the campus?

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Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 6.20.22: Scarecrow Ampitheater w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Jun 20, 2022

On this week's livestream, Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us to ponder the looming economic wreckage soon washing upon America's shores, and what that means for an already volatile political and social domestic situation. We also reflect on how "delivering the goods" is a critical piece of state power, and what that means for Democrats in a world of inflation, insane gas prices, and impending mass layoffs. Fun stuff! But don't worry, we also consider the personal/psychological elements at play here. Aside from these structural traps, are we also at the mercy of increasingly deranged individuals with unimaginable power?

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Gender Trap - Ep 4 : Some Mysterious Wish (PREVIEW) Jun 17, 2022

“What is a woman? What is a man?” Go fuck yourself! Those questions are traps! In this episode of Gender Trap, Yasmin and I talk about the right’s absurd yet powerful assault on all things gender-related, and how the left’s reactive, academic takes on gender hobble our ability to fight back. What would a popular left vision of gender actually look like? Because it ain’t RuPaul! We also, of course, bring an episode of Mad Men (S1, E2, “Ladies Room”) into the mix, as we examine how Betty and Don’s fucked up 1950s nightmare marriage showcases the trap of Cold War domestic gender roles in dynamic, psychologically gory detail.

Subscribe to listen to the whole episode and access our vast galaxy of bonus content, including Campus Trap w/ Ryan Boyd, Record Trap w/ Justin Farrar, and lots more: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 329: Cool Town w/ Grace Elizabeth Hale Jun 13, 2022

Grace Elizabeth Hale is a professor of history and American Studies at the University of Virginia whose work focuses on race, class, and culture in the 20th century, particularly in the American South. Her latest book, Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture tells the story of how a small college town in Georgia became a center of indie and punk culture in the 1970s and 1980s, producing major bands like the B-52s and R.E.M. while maintaining a queer D.I.Y cultural scene that’s become a significant legend in the annals of American rock. What makes Athens so special? And can that magic be recreated in other places?

Subscribe to access all our bonus content, including our all-new podcasts GENDER TRAP w/ Yasmin Nair and CAMPUS TRAP w/ Ryan Boyd: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Campus Trap - Ep 1: Higher Ed in the Age of Ambient Doom (PREVIEW) Jun 10, 2022

On the debut episode of Campus Trap, Ryan Boyd joins me to reflect on how much the stereotypical “college experience” has evolved since our undergraduate days, when a countercultural bacchanalia was still dominant in the popular imagination, if not in practical reality. From the world of keg-stands and bongloads to the sobering realities of 21st century academia, we trace our own paths through graduate school and into a precarious labor market that seems shakier by the minute. How did our collective vision of college transform in the neoliberal era? And now that we’re professors ourselves, how do we navigate an increasingly dysfunctional society alongside our students?

Listen to Campus Trap and all our bonus stuff by subscribing to the Nostalgia Trap Patreon: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 328: Selling the Dream w Jason Vuic Jun 07, 2022

Jason Vuic is a historian and writer whose books tell incredible stories about the unintended consequences of unbridled American ambition. This conversation focuses on his two latest books: The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History and The Swamp Peddlers: How Lot Sellers, Land Scammers, and Retirees Built Modern Florida and Transformed the American Dream, as we explore how the market for cars and houses creates a fertile landscape for cynical opportunism and environmental disaster.

Subscribe to access our galaxy of bonus content, including the all-new CAMPUS TRAP w/ Ryan Boyd: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Gender Trap - Ep 3 : Gossip Girl (PREVIEW) Jun 03, 2022

How does “gossip” intersect with gender and power? If a woman “knows a secret” about a powerful man, what can she do with it? This week Yasmin and I consider gossip as an alternative social media network, bubbling under the surface of our political culture. Of course, Mad Men is a central text here, so we take a detailed look at how the show’s pilot uses the concept of “gossip” to lay out the show’s themes of identity, patriarchy, and public performance of self.

For the full episode and access to our magnifient library of bonus content: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 327: Laugh Lines w/ Carrie Conners May 31, 2022

Carrie Conners is a poet, writer, and professor of English at LaGuardia Community College; her latest book Laugh Lines: Humor, Genre, and Political Critique in Late Twentieth Century American Poetry explores how American poets since the 1950s engage humor as a political and aesthetic tactic. In this conversation, we talk about the language games of standup comics from George Carlin to Dave Chappelle, and trace the wider shifts in poetry, comedy, and political culture since the invention of the atomic bomb. We also examine how Carrie navigates these ideas in her own poetry, with excerpts from her two excellent collections, Luscious Struggle (2020) and Species of Least Concern (2022).

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap for bonus content, including our newest podcasts GENDER TRAP w/ Yasmin Nair and CAMPUS TRAP w/ Ryan Boyd: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 326: The Cult of the Gun w/ Daniel Chard May 23, 2022

Daniel Chard is a professor of history at Western Washington University whose work focuses on social movements, power, and political violence. His latest book, Nixon’s War at Home: The FBI, Leftist Guerillas, and the Origins of Counterterrorism explores the intersection of leftist violence and state repression in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In this conversation, Chard explains how the U.S. government’s mission to stop groups like the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army fueled a dramatic expansion of state policing powers that gave birth to the age of total surveillance.

Subscribe to access our library of bonus content: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 325: All of God's Money w/ Jason P. Woodbury May 17, 2022

Writer, musician, and fellow Wilco-head Jason P. Woodbury returns to talk with me about the 20th anniversary of the band’s eerily prophetic album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Our conversation focuses on the process of making the album, as documented in the film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (dir. Sam Jones, 2002), which captures not only Wilco’s particular creative agony but the wider cultural moment, a time just before 9/11, just before the Internet swallowed everything, just before all the abstract existential anxieties layered into the lyrics and atmosphere of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot became permanent fixtures of our collective reality.

Check out Jason’s latest single, “Wealth of the Canyon”:

https://soundcloud.com/jasonpwoodbury/wealth-of-the-canyon?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

And hear him playing guitar w/ Kitimoto::

https://soundcloud.com/jasonpwoodbury/sets/kitimoto-vintage-smell/s-ttZ6VuJ3Qw8?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Subscribe to access our library of bonus content, including our all-new podcast with Yasmin Nair, Gender Trap: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 5.11.22: Field of Opportunity w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) May 11, 2022

This week Justin and I talk about the idea of "fragile capitalism" in the context of the big crypto collapse, Peloton's hilarious demise, baby formula shortages, and other troubling signs of a global economy on the brink. What happens when the forces in control can't keep the lights on?

To listen to the whole episode and access our excellent library of bonus content: patreon.com/posts/66310876

Gender Trap - Episode 2 : The Autopsy of Jane Roe (PREVIEW) May 10, 2022

The impending demise of Roe v. Wade occupies our attention this week, as Yasmin narrates some key moments in the wider history of abortion politics over the last 50 years. We survey the racial and class dimensions of abortion access, reel at the scourge of liberal feminism, and gossip about the evil pro-life “Catholic socialists” lurking amongst us on the left. Most of all, though, this conversation focuses on tactics, from the relentless power-grabs of the right to the public demonstrations, mutual aid and OCCUPY experiments of the left. How do we reboot the framework of resistance? Because we’re gonna need a reboot.

To listen to the full episode: patreon.com/posts/gender-trap-ep-2-66230122

Gender Trap - Episode 1: Into the Gender Trap May 10, 2022

Gender Trap is an all-new podcast series with me (David Parsons) and Yasmin Nair attempting to move the conversation forward on gender and sexuality in politics, economics, and popular culture. In our inaugural episode, we explore the different modes of performative masculinity available to American men, from Alan Alda to Jason Momoa, explain why Mad Men will be a central text for our discussions, and offer some ideas about new ideological frameworks for navigating the trap of gender.

All future episodes of Gender Trap will be available exclusively for Nostalgia Trap subscribers at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 5.4.22: Heartburn w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) May 05, 2022

What else could we talk about today? Justin and I go dead alien/queer Marx on the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade leak, and reflect on the idea of "sliding back" on race and gender vs liberal narratives about the inevitable march of progress. The fascists are here. They're making their moves; we know what they want. What are OUR moves?

Subscribe to listen to all our bonus content:

patreon.com/posts/livestream-5-4-w-66017971

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 324: Body Drop w/ Brian Oliu May 03, 2022

Brian Oliu is a writer and teacher whose latest book, Body Drop: Notes on Fandom and Pain in Professional Wrestling, takes an intensely personal, often brutal approach to analyzing wrestling’s weird place in American culture. In this conversation, we talk about the wages of violence, gender, and capitalism in the sport itself, and in the giant corporations that control it. What’s “fake”? What’s “real”? Wrestling knows that it ain’t so simple.

Subscribe and access our library of bonus episodes: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 4.27.22: My Country is the World w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Apr 27, 2022

So is Biden gonna cancel these student loans or what? On this week's livestream, Justin and I talk about liberals fleeing Elon Musk's Twitter (lol), get into our predictions about where the student loan question is headed (the Supreme Court, probably), think about the American right's "cult of the gun," and explore the idea of a borderless world via excerpts from Thomas Paine, Noam Chomsky, and Donatella Di Cesare (with special appearances from Billy Joel and Don Draper).

To listen to the whole livestream and access our entire galaxy of bonus content: patreon.com/posts/65689550

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 323: Bloody Red Sun of Fantastic L.A. w/ Justin Farrar (PREVIEW) Apr 26, 2022

Justin Farrar’s first appearance on the show was a dense journey through the history of rock music and American counterculture, and it got me thinking about (and listening to) The Doors for the first time in years. Like many of us, I grew up with Jim Morrison’s iconic presence looming out from lots of different corners: posters in head shops, t-shirts worn by stoned high schoolers, the Oliver Stone movie (and attendant urban legends about Val Kilmer’s eerily channeled performance), and above everything else, the weird, ubiquitous music of The Doors themselves, blasting out of oldies stations and tape decks in friends’ cars. In this conversation, Justin returns to share his ideas about The Doors as both a musical act and cultural phenomenon, as we consider how the group’s pulsing blues rock and dark poetry synced so magically with the apocalyptic historical moment from which it emerged.

To accompany this episode, Justin has created 2 different excellent Spotify playlists:

The Doors Legacy: Art Rock, Punk, Post-Punk, Goth, Alt-Rock, Experimental

Songs from artists influenced by Morrison/The Doors

The Doors: California Noir

Songs from The Doors that capture the dark underbelly of Los Angeles

Listen to the whole episode and access all our bonus content: patreon.com/posts/episode-323-red-65611155

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 4.20.22: The Long Queer Eruption w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Apr 20, 2022

This week Justin and I talk about the right's pedophile/masculinity obsession, from Tucker Carlson and testicle tanning to predictable election-year assaults on teachers and other liberal cucks. Is this just normal American insanity, or is something stranger going on?

To listen to the whole episode and access our entire library of bonus content: patreon.com/posts/livestream-4-20-65392882

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 322: Pulp Vietnam w/ Gregory Daddis Apr 19, 2022

Gregory Daddis is a professor of history at San Diego State University whose work focuses on the history of the Cold War and the American war in Vietnam. His latest book, Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines, explores how hyper-violent, hyper-sexualized images of war in macho “pulp” magazines of the 1950s shaped the attitudes of young American men in the Vietnam War. In this conversation, we take a look at the industry that produced these magazines, talk about Daddis’ own experiences with military service, and discuss how American culture is part of the deeply gendered and racialized landscape of war. Subscribe to access our library of bonus content: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 4.13.22: People Are Strange w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Apr 13, 2022

On this week's livestream, Justin brings us some key ideas from Chomsky, Fanon and, of course, C.L.R. James, as we ponder the questions: How do people become obedient to structures that oppress them? What conditions create solidarity? What conditions breed division? And what do The Doors have to do with any of this??!!

To listen to the whole episode and access our entire catalog of bonus episodes: patreon.com/posts/livestream-4-13-65106738

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 4.6.22: All for Us and None for You w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Apr 06, 2022

This week Justin and I ask the eternal question: Does the United States' ugly record of horrific interventions in the affairs of other states undermine its claims to moral leadership? LOL of course it does! But, as we look to our Guiding Lights (Chomsky and Zinn) there's always more to the story...

To hear the whole episode, join our bonus stream: patreon.com/posts/livestream-4-6-64815684

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 321: Ecology Contested w/ Peter Staudenmaier Mar 30, 2022

Peter Staudenmaier is a professor of history at Marquette University whose work focuses on Nazi Germany, Italian fascism, environmental history, and occultism. His latest book, Ecology Contested: Environmental Politics between Left and Right (AK Press, 2021), explores how environmental ideals circulate on both the radical right and left, and how questions of ecology fit into the landscape of conspiracy theories, hyper-nationalism, and fascism. Subscribe to our bonus feed: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 320: Drive West on Sunset w/ Ryan Boyd (TEASER) Mar 26, 2022

Ryan Boyd returns to the Trap to talk about the unique generational experience of an analog childhood and digital adulthood. From Steely Dan on vinyl to David Foster Wallace on paper, we explore the desire to consume art in non-digital ways, and what that says about our fractured electronic existence. Full episode is here: patreon.com/posts/episode-320-west-64258531

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 319: Cringe Nation w/ Adam Kotsko Mar 21, 2022

Adam Kotsko is a theologian and culture writer who has written a number of books and essays about American pop culture. In this conversation, we discuss his books Awkwardness (2010) and Why We Love Sociopaths (2012), as we explore how shows like The Office, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Sopranos reflect the disturbed social politics of 21st century neoliberalism. Check out our bonus content here: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 318: Direct Musical Transmission w/ Jason P. Woodbury Mar 16, 2022

Jason P. Woodbury is a musician and music writer based in the Sonoran desert. Check out his work on Aquarium Drunkard and his personal site, where you’ll find lots of great stuff on music nostalgia, the vinyl world, counterculture, and lots of other favorite Trap topics. In this conversation, we talk about what we gained and lost with streaming music, the 2000s garage rock revival, the evolution of Jeff Tweedy and Wilco, the importance of developing a creative “practice,” and the ever-present danger of becoming a grouchy old punk.

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 3.15.22: Wormhole w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Mar 15, 2022

The Trap Livestream returns, as Justin Rogers-Cooper joins me for a live conversation about the insane wormhole we seem to be entering: Russia's invasion of Ukraine, gangster capitalism, Nazis, nuclear brinksmanship--plus the Saudis like China more than us now?! Let's get a hold of some narrative threads as the global system unravels/reorders/implodes. Full episode here: patreon.com/posts/livestream-3-15-63839534

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 317: Hope-ocalypse Now w/ Aaron Thorpe (TEASER) Feb 23, 2022

What is “apocalypse” and is it always a bad thing? This week we talk with Aaron Thorpe of the Trillbilly Worker’s Party podcast about maintaining a positive vision of the future despite all signs to the contrary. In addition to reflecting on apocalyptic fiction like Children of Men and Station Eleven, we consider how the “end of the world” shapes our vision of what’s possible. Listen to the full episode here: patreon.com/posts/62904889

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 316: The Life of the Grind w/ Ryan Boyd Feb 14, 2022

Ryan Boyd teaches in the Writing Program at the University of Southern California. His website collects much of his excellent writing, including a number of pieces on pedagogy and the state of higher education that we discuss in this episode. From crippling student loans and shitty mask policies to racist administrations and right-wing censorship, Ryan helps us explore what’s wrong, what can be done about it, and why our beleaguered colleges and universities are such critical battlegrounds for the future. Subscribe to support the show and access our huge bonus library: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 315: No Nukes is Good Nukes w/ Henry Maar Feb 07, 2022

Historian Henry Maar’s new book Freeze! The Grassroots Movement to Halt the Arms Race and End the Cold War examines the ways in which ordinary people confronted the horrors of nuclear war, with a specific focus on the extraordinary Nuclear Freeze campaign of the 1980s. In this conversation, Maar explains the roots of anti-nuclear activism in the United States, and tells us how Ronald Reagan’s aggressive Cold War posturing (along with the nuclear apocalypse film The Day After) created an atmosphere of dread that sparked an unprecedented global movement. Subscribe to support the show and to access bonus episodes: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 314: Hope You Die w/ Yasmin Nair (TEASER) Feb 03, 2022

The always engaging Yasmin Nair returns to continue our survey of how COVID is fucking us up on multiple channels: politically, economically, and spiritually. From liberals cheering on the deaths of the unvaxxed to celebrities spinning off into NFT land—all while the Biden administration tells us to “Google it”—things are looking pretty grim. How do we find hope in this degraded social landscape? Listen to the whole episode: patreon.com/posts/episode-314-hope-62069216

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 313: Hey Hey, My My w/ Justin Farrar Jan 30, 2022

Neil Young occupies god-tier status on Nostalgia Trap, so it’s no mystery who we’re supporting in his fight with Spotify and Joe Rogan. But this seemed like a good opportunity to talk in more detail about the connections between art and politics, particularly in the context of “the sixties,” and our friend Justin Farrar has done a lot of thinking on the subject. Justin joins us this week to talk about Young’s musical and political legacy, as we consider the long arc of rock and roll, from Hank to Hendrix, Marilyn to Madonna, and try to articulate why Neil’s music means more to us now than ever.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 312: No Blood for Oil w/ Sean KB Jan 25, 2022

Remember when oil explained everything? Sean from the Antifada podcast joins us for a conversation about the film Syriana (2005) and the politics of oil in the 90s and 2000s. From peak oil theories and endless oil documentaries to the “No Blood for Oil” chants of the anti-Iraq War movement, we explore the history of fossil fuel’s slippery place within the larger left.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 311: Queer as Pop w/ KJ Shepherd (TEASER) Jan 19, 2022

Am I “queer” because I listen to Belle and Sebastian? Good question! Trap favorite KJ Shepherd joins me for a conversation about masculinity in American pop culture, and that weird line between “hipster” and “queer.” Are these identities actually subversive, or are we fooling ourselves? Listen to the whole episode on our Patreon page: patreon.com/posts/episode-311-as-w-61332587

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 310: Let's Go Exploring w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Jan 10, 2022

Bill Watterson’s extraordinary comic strip Calvin and Hobbes made a huge cultural impact in the 80s and 90s, and remains an all-time favorite for both me and Justin. In this conversation, we talk about what makes Calvin and Hobbes so unique, how it connects to other 20th century comic projects from Peanuts to South Park, and how Watterson’s one man crusade against corporate tyranny pre-figured the social politics of “selling out” in the influencer age. And we’re joined this week by a very special guest, Justin’s 8 year old son, Konrad, who passionately testifies to Calvin and Hobbes’ enduring appeal for the youthful imagination. Subscribe for bonus episodes and movie club: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 309: Fucking and the City w/ Yasmin Nair Dec 21, 2021

Is there a deeper, more powerful nostalgia trap than the Christmas season? In this conversation, Yasmin Nair helps me work out my mixed emotions about the holidays, as we watch the Billy Wilder movie The Apartment (1960) and consider how its dark vision of philandering married men and “other women” in mid-century New York City shows us the Christmas season as a theater of sexual pathos, performative sentiment, and relentless cynicism. Subscribe for all our bonus treats: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 308: A People's History of Howard Zinn, Part Three w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (TEASER) Dec 15, 2021

Our epic trilogy on the life, work, and legacy of Howard Zinn concludes with a conversation about Zinn’s place in the wider history of the American left. Was Zinn a communist, an anarchist, or what? Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us in reading through some of Zinn’s later work for clues, as we consider how his internationalism and pacifism figured into a global vision of socialist solidarity that holds heavy lessons for the current political moment. Full episode here: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 307: Slave 4 U w/ KJ Shepherd Dec 12, 2021

KJ Shepherd joins us to talk about the #FreeBritney moment and the wider phenomenon of diva worship. What makes a diva? And more importantly, how is celebrity fandom entangled with capitalism and queerness? Subscribe for access to bonus episodes and other fantastic treats: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 306: A People's History of Howard Zinn, Part Two w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (TEASER) Dec 07, 2021

Our series on the life, work, and legacy of Howard Zinn continues with a detailed conversation about the book that made Zinn famous, A People’s History of the United States. Published in 1980, A People’s History has sold more than 2 million copies, and its bold retelling of major American events and characters remains a lightning rod for both the left and right. Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us to talk about Zinn’s quote-heavy methodology and to examine a few highlights of his counter-narrative. And, of course, Tony Soprano makes an appearance. Here's the whole episode: patreon.com/posts/episode-306-of-w-59643736

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 305: A People's History of Howard Zinn, Part One w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Nov 30, 2021

In Part One of our series on the life, work, and legacy of Howard Zinn, Justin Rogers-Cooper and I read Zinn’s 1994 memoir You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train and extract some of the juiciest bits of an extraordinary life: Zinn’s Dickensian childhood and seething class rage, his teenage experience with communists and police in 1930s New York City, his participation in World War II bombing raids that killed thousands of civilians, his life as a teacher and public intellectual during the civil rights and Vietnam War era, and his writing of a popular counter-narrative survey of American history that remains his most famous and controversial work, A People’s History of the United States. The series continues on our subscriber feed: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 304: With Arms Wide Open w/ Rax King Nov 23, 2021

Rax King returns to the Trap to tell us all about her new book Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer, which surveys the wreckage of 21st century American pop culture and finds much to salvage, and even to (gasp) love. From Creed and Jersey Shore to Hot Topic and The Cheesecake Factory, this conversation explores how the line between good and bad taste is often blurrier than we imagine. For bonus episodes and to join our movie club: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 303: Too Damn High w/ Sam Stein Nov 16, 2021

Sam Stein is a housing policy analyst and advocate in New York City; his book Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State reveals the horrifying machinations of real estate developers and the neoliberal state, who build massive luxury towers for billionaires while the city’s middle and working class citizens deal with skyrocketing rents, housing shortages, and rampant homelessness. How does this happen? And how do we fight back?

Here's more on the artist who snuck into 111 W 57th St and took these amazing photos: newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/08/andi-schmieds-billionaire-espionage-art-project

And don’t miss Sam’s incredible piece in The Baffler on Manhattan “skinny” luxury towers: https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/faulty-towers-stein

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 302: Trauma Porn w/ Yasmin Nair Nov 08, 2021

What is “trauma porn” and what role does it play on the left? Yasmin Nair joins us to discuss her recent piece, “AOC and the Weaponization of Trauma,” which explores the uncomfortable dynamics of race, gender and class at play in the public thirst for graphic stories of trauma, abuse, and suffering, and the toxic place that “trauma” holds in American political culture.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 301: Drunk History w/ Peter Sabatino (TEASER) Nov 04, 2021

As he approaches a major personal milestone, our good friend and Nostalgia Trap producer Peter Sabatino joins me for an honest conversation about the role alcohol has played in our respective lives. From the roaring 20s of college-age binge drinking to the high-octane craft IPA world of the hipster dad, we explore how drugs and alcohol become entangled with one’s sense of self, an element of identity that can grow more and more exhausting as the years go by. Is it mid-life crisis time on Nostalgia Trap? I think you know the answer. For the full episode: patreon.com/posts/episode-301-w-58294942

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 299: The Man Who Sold the World w/ Max Chafkin (TEASER) Nov 01, 2021

Max Chafkin, author of The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power (see Episode 294), returns for a conversation all about SpaceX cowboy Elon Musk. Is this guy a tech genius saving the planet from climate change and launching us into a beautiful robotic future, or a capitalist huckster whose only talent is convincing authoritarian states and a loyal fanbase of angry bros to support his business ventures? As Max and I explore in this episode, why not both? To hear the full episode: patreon.com/posts/episode-299-man-57888655

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 300: Californication w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Nov 01, 2021

Could a Red Hot Chili Peppers song from 1999 hold the key to understanding the political economy of 21st century tech culture and the globalization of Hollywood’s vampiric vision of human nature? As Justin Roger-Cooper explains on our 300th (!!!) episode, sure, why not?

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 298: Reefer Sadness w/ Freddie deBoer (TEASER) Oct 19, 2021

This week Freddie deBoer joins me to talk about his recent Substack piece “Smoking Weed Doesn’t Feel Good for Me Anymore, and It Hasn’t for a Long Time,” exploring how cannabis legalization, stronger weed, and just plain getting older have caused us both to interrogate our personal weed consumption and stoner identities. This conversation touches on the politics of criminalization, peer pressure, stoner culture, mental health, grief, weed and the left, and lots more, as we try to come to terms with marijuana’s complicated role in our lives and in the wider world. To hear the full episode: patreon.com/posts/episode-298-w-57598306

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 296: Good Grief, Part Two w/ Yasmin Nair (TEASER) Oct 16, 2021

Part Two of our conversation with Yasmin Nair on death and grief in the COVID era. Check out Yasmin’s incredible archive of writing, including many of the pieces discussed in this episode, here: yasminnair.com.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 297: Cure-Pilled w/ Andrew Schustek Oct 13, 2021

Andrew Schustek joins us to discuss the extraordinary Japanese horror film Cure (1997), one of a number of unbelievably prescient works directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa that take on the nightmarish social and political reality of Japan’s “lost decades.” In this conversation, we explain why Cure stands alone, as both a unique piece of horror craftsmanship and an endlessly frightening exploration of the connections between political economy and the unbridled murder lust simmering just beneath the surface of “ordinary” men and women.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 295: Good Grief, Part One w/ Yasmin Nair Oct 05, 2021

The one and only Yasmin Nair joins us this week for a wide-ranging discussion on a topic near and dear to all of us: death. In Part One of our conversation, we talk about how the politics of COVID have created a cruel public theater that showcases American culture’s deeply weird, and deeply disturbing, attitudes about death, grief, and what we owe to each other. This two-parter is quite openly a Nostalgia Trap therapy session, as Yasmin and I each process the loss of close friends in the context of intense global heartbreak.

Listen to Part Two here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/57076725

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 294: The Contrarian w/ Max Chafkin Sep 26, 2021

Max Chafkin is an editor at Bloomberg Businessweek whose new book, The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power tells the unbelievable true story of Peter Thiel’s rise to power through strategic investment and control over massive tech firms. From his assassination of Gawker (remember the Hulk Hogan lawsuit? Thiel funded it.) to his manipulation of Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook algorithm, Thiel has emerged as an enigmatic, arguably sinister force in American politics and media. Who is this guy? And what is the endgame?

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 293: Cuomosexuality w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (TEASER) Sep 23, 2021

Justin joins us to talk about Ross Barkan’s incredible book The Prince: Andrew Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of New York, as we discuss some of the wilder implications of Cuomo’s sickening “daddy” image among liberals, who fell in love with a television image curated for their pleasure. In this conversation Justin finally defines his oft-uttered phrase “queer your Marx” and throws out some uncomfortable questions for the left to confront: Why do we need daddies? What kind of sick people are we anyway? Listen to the full episode here: patreon.com/posts/episode-293-w-56427764

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 292: The Prince w/ Ross Barkan Sep 20, 2021

Ross Barkan is a journalist who has been covering New York state politics, in particular the governorship of Andrew Cuomo, for the last eight years. He joins us to discuss his book The Prince: Andrew Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of New York, which provides stunning details of the (now ex-) governor’s handling of COVID, and how his deft manipulation of political power and media obscured his own role in creating staggering suffering and death among the New Yorkers he swore to represent. For more on the Cuomo saga, and the erotic contours of the “daddy” image he cultivated among liberals, check out this week’s bonus episode, “Cuomosexuality” with Justin Rogers-Cooper: patreon.com/posts/episode-293-w-56427764

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 291: 9 Theses on 9/11, Part Three w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (TEASER) Sep 11, 2021

For the conclusion of our 9/11 trilogy, Justin Rogers-Cooper and I watch Alfonso Cuarón's 2006 cinematic masterpiece Children of Men, a work that has moved and obsessed both of us for years. We reflect on how the film uncannily captures the alternative future 9/11 launched us into — a world in which the apocalyptic background is getting closer and closer, changing the terms of our lives in ways we might not have anticipated. Listen to the full episode here: patreon.com/posts/episode-291-9-on-56022985

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 290: 9 Theses on 9/11, Part Two w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (TEASER) Sep 08, 2021

For Part Two of our 9/11 trilogy, Justin Rogers-Cooper helps us untangle the world of 9/11 truthers and related conspiracy theories, as we explore how the attacks and their aftermath destabilized consensus reality and led us into a new landscape of weaponized digital information. This conversation covers a lot of territory, from Alex Jones to Burn After Reading, from the White House to Saudi Arabia, and from Seymour Hersh to Zero Dark Thirty. Cutting through the haze of fake news, internet grifts, and homemade YouTube documentaries, we try to answer some basic questions: Why did 9/11 happen? Who benefitted? And how did it transform world history? Listen to the full episode: patreon.com/posts/episode-290-9-on-55920380

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 289: 9 Theses on 9/11, Part One w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Aug 31, 2021

To mark the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us for a trilogy of episodes considering the event’s legacy and long-term impact. In Part One, we consider the immediate shock of the day and how it seemed to instantly give birth to a new historical era, examining how Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and Jon Stewart’s sappy Daily Show monologues reflect the sentimental nationalism that gripped American liberals in the attack’s wake.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 288: We? What the Fuck We? w/ Bertrand Cooper (TEASER) Aug 28, 2021

Bertrand Cooper joins us to discuss his latest incendiary piece in Current Affairs, “Who Actually Gets to Create Black Pop Culture?,” which argues that the elite class composition of many Black creators reveals deep contradictions in the politics of woke Hollywood. Listen to the whole episode: patreon.com/posts/episode-288-we-w-55434030

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 287: Along the Royal Road w/ Jenni Olson Aug 24, 2021

Jenni Olson is a historian, archivist, and experimental filmmaker whose two feature-length films The Joy of Life (2005) and The Royal Road (2015) combine dreamlike urban landscapes, the dark history of California, and deeply personal reflections on queer love and desire. In this conversation, we talk about the origins of her aesthetic and the particular challenges of both creating and exhibiting historical material in non-traditional form. To hear more about queer and radical cinema, see Episode 281 with Donald Borenstein: patreon.com/posts/ep-281-at-new-we-53149916.

Nostalgia Trap - NAM-TV - S1 E6: Seduce and Destroy Aug 17, 2021

On Episode 6 of NAM-TV, we cover events in 1964 and 1965, as American involvement in Vietnam finally made the move from distant meddling into a full-blown military invasion. We trace a direct line from Lyndon Johnson’s disturbing sociopathic fantasies and stunning political cynicism to the sickening acceleration of violence unleashed in late 1964, after a questionable series of events in the Gulf of Tonkin and a hasty congressional resolution give the president a blank check to wage war in Vietnam. Listen to the whole series at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 286: How Do You Do, Fellow Working Class? w/ Erik Baker Aug 10, 2021

Who are “the people”? Erik Baker joins us to discuss his latest piece in n+1, a review of Thomas Frank’s 2020 book The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism. Baker takes on Frank’s New Deal nostalgia and romantic vision of a monolithic, left-leaning American working class, a set of distorted perspectives that still hold weight for a significant portion of the (extremely online) left. In this conversation, we explore what’s the matter with Frank’s analysis, and how to move past the ahistorical assumptions that continue to animate progressive discourse. For more on left populism and angry white dudes, check out this week's bonus episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/ep-285-party-its-54555603

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 285: Party Like It's 1999 w/ Kyle Riismandel (TEASER) Aug 05, 2021

Full episode: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap. Kyle Riismandel returns to the Trap to discuss the abysmal HBO documentary Woodstock ‘99: Peace, Love, and Rage, a film that, despite its shortcomings, gives us plenty to chew on about a weird era in American cultural politics. From Alanis Morrissette to Kid Rock, from Girls Gone Wild to Monica Lewinsky, we talk about the jarring social landscape of third-wave feminism, frat rock backlash, cynical corporate cash-grabs, and lots more heavy, angsty riffs straight from the late ‘90s.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 284: That's America, Charlie Brown w/ Blake Scott Ball Jul 26, 2021

What do Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, and the rest of the gang have to tell us about the staggering loneliness at the heart of the American experience? Blake Scott Ball is a professor of history at Huntingdon College and the author of Charlie Brown’s America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts. In this conversation, we trace the history of Charles Schulz’s iconic comic strip alongside the history of the late 20th century, as we see how Schulz’s characters navigated the Cold War, civil rights movement, Vietnam War, and other epochal events of the era, creating an emotional throughline that continues to permeate the American cultural imagination.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 283: Poddin' 'bout My Generation w/ Kyle Riismandel (PREVIEW) Jul 19, 2021

Kyle Riismandel, author of Neighborhood of Fear: The Suburban Crisis in American Culture, 1975-2001, returns to talk about the idea of generations, both as useful historical dividers and as complicated, constructed cultural identities. Are you Gen X? Boomer? Millennial? Zoomer? Does any of this shit matter? In this conversation, we reflect on what makes this generational stuff so powerful (hint: it makes a lot of money), and think about both the utility and limits of this brand of temporal categorization. To listen to the full episode and access all our bonus content, subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - NAM-TV - S1 E5: Oval Room (PREVIEW) Jul 08, 2021

On Episode 5, we take a look at the period 1956-1963, when the United States attempted to create an anti-communist state called South Vietnam, with a well-connected Catholic-Confucian politician named Ngo Dinh Diem as its president. When JFK takes over in 1961, Diem's violent repression of the Vietnamese population accelerates, and a homegrown resistance called the National Liberation Front begins organizing a military and political movement to oust Diem and unify Vietnam. For full episode subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 282: You Don't Belong Here w/ Elizabeth Becker Jul 07, 2021

Elizabeth Becker is an award-winning author and journalist; her latest book, You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War (2021), profiles three journalists whose groundbreaking work rearranged the history of the Vietnam War. In this conversation, Becker explains how Kate Webb, Catherine Leroy, and Frances Fitzgerald each developed critical journalistic practices that brought new insights to the conflict, and offers some jaw-dropping stories (spoiler: she met Pol Pot!) from her own extraordinary career.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 281: At a New Life We Took Aim w/ Donald Borenstein (PREVIEW) Jul 02, 2021

Donald Borenstein is a freelance video director, editor, and one of my favorite online friends, whose posts on politics, culture, and media have been a highlight of my feed for years. This week we finally get to meet face to face (on Zoom) and talk about two of our respective favorite films, Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames (1983) and Slava Tsukerman’s Liquid Sky (1982), both of which are essential viewing for anyone interested in radical politics and radical filmmaking practices. As works of sci-fi queer punk feminism, Born in Flames and Liquid Sky occupy a totally unique territory in the history of American politics and culture. In this conversation, Donald and I reflect on what makes these films “important” but also what makes them feel so fun and alive, and how they reshape the aesthetic and narrative boundaries of “political cinema.” For full episode subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - NAM-TV - S1 E4: Secret Agent Men (PREVIEW) Jun 24, 2021

On this week’s episode we explore the world of CIA spookery unleashed in Vietnam as the French exited the region and the United States began escalating its involvement in Vietnamese affairs. From the gangster-style machinations of the Dulles brothers to the psychological warfare practiced by characters like Edward Lansdale and Dr. Tom Dooley, this is the story of America’s covert war to manipulate the situation in Vietnam in the years 1954-1956, as it tried desperately to build an anti-communist alternative to Ho Chi Minh and to undermine the existence of a united, independent Vietnam. For full episodes of NAM-TV go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 279: Just One More Pod w/ Bill Black (PREVIEW) Jun 22, 2021

The kids are crazy for Columbo! This week our friend Bill Black drops by to talk about the long-running detective show starring Peter Falk that’s seen an unlikely resurgence in the COVID era. From its weird class dynamics and parade of villainous guest stars to Falk’s truly iconic performance, we explore what makes Columbo’s stories, characters, and rhythms so different from the binge-watchable content of the digital era, and try to wrap our minds around its sudden popularity among a new generation. To listen to the whole episode, subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 280: Hearts of Darkness w/ Allan Cooper Jun 22, 2021

Allan Cooper is a professor of political science at North Carolina Central University. He joins us to discuss his latest book, Africa and the Global System of Capital Accumulation, which describes the strategic role Africa plays in the global capitalist economy, where exploitation of labor and resources sustains the world’s middle class and consolidates state authority. In this conversation, we explore the role consumer desire for products like chocolate, diamonds, and cell phones plays in that larger chain of racism and imperialism, and trace how neoliberalism creates a culture that skillfully obscures its ravaging of the planet.

Nostalgia Trap - NAM-TV - S1 E3: Never Heard the Word Impossible (PREVIEW) Jun 09, 2021

On this week's episode of NAM-TV, we continue our story with a look at the First Indochina War (1946-1954), in which France attempted to reconquer Vietnam by fighting the Viet Minh, Ho Chi Minh's increasingly powerful revolutionary movement. With the United States secretly funding the French side, and the rest of the world more or less staying out of it, the war culminates (spoiler alert!) in a stunning victory for the Viet Minh at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. How did the Viet Minh achieve this "impossible" feat? And what will be the terms of their victory? For full episode subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 278: Love's Next Meeting w/ Aaron Lecklider Jun 07, 2021

Aaron Lecklider is a professor of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the author of Love’s Next Meeting: The Forgotten History of Homosexuality and the Left in American Culture. In this conversation, we talk about the intersection of sexuality and radical politics in the pre-Stonewall era, from 1920-1960, as we explore queer liberation’s complicated place in the history of the American left.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 277: Working Girls w/ Claudia Moreno Parsons (PREVIEW) Jun 02, 2021

This week Claudia and I continue our movie series with two 1980s Hollywood comedies about the lives of working class women, Pretty in Pink (1986) and Working Girl (1988). Our conversation explores how each film reflects a pre-”Lean In” pop feminism, with central characters that seek class mobility and romantic independence in the context of a vapid, wealth-obsessed 1980s culture. Subscribe for full episode: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - NAM-TV - S1 E2: Lose Yourself (PREVIEW) May 29, 2021

Here's a quick look at Episode 2 of NAM-TV, our new video lecture series on the Vietnam War and American historical memory. Available now for subscribers at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap, with new episodes dropping regularly throughout the summer.

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 5.27.2021: War Pigs w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) May 28, 2021

A quick clip from this week's livestream with Justin Rogers-Cooper providing some historical context and analysis to ongoing horrors in Ethiopia, Myanmar, Colombia, and Belarus. Subscribe for the full episode: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 276: Neighborhood of Fear w/ Kyle Riismandel May 24, 2021

Kyle Riismandel teaches American history at the New Jersey Institute of Technology/Rutgers-Newark, and is the author of Neighborhood of Fear: The Suburban Crisis in American Culture, 1975-2001. He joins us to explain how fear became an organizing ideological principle of the American suburbs in the post-Vietnam era, as hysteria about crime, sexual deviance, drugs, and Satan himself drove suburbanites to an obsession with security, surveillance, and policing that continues to haunt the American landscape.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 275: The Murder is the Message w/ Danny Bessner (PREVIEW) May 21, 2021

This week we talk about the political and social economy of “first person shooter” video games with Danny Bessner, whose recent piece in The Drift investigates the deep cultural contradictions at play in the enormously popular Call of Duty franchise. With armies of alienated young men casting themselves as protagonists in deeply distorted narratives of 20th century history, we explore the lines between harmless entertainment, violent brainwashing, and military propaganda. For full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 274: The Defund Moment w/ Alex Vitale May 15, 2021

Alex Vitale is a professor of sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College. His 2017 book, The End of Policing, has received significant attention in the wake of the George Floyd protests and a wider public discourse about the history, ideology, and practice of American policing. In this conversation, Vitale explains how policing and incarceration became the state’s primary mode of dealing with socio-economic problems created by neoliberal capitalism, from mass homelessness to mental illness, and how the defund/abolish movements have evolved a range of ideas and strategies to imagine a post-police world.

Nostalgia Trap - NAM-TV - S1 E1 (PREVIEW) May 13, 2021

Here's a quick look at our new video lecture series NAM-TV, our new video lecture series on the Vietnam War and American historical memory. Episode One is available now for subscribers at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap, with new episodes dropping regularly throughout the summer.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 273: Tapped Out w/ Katrinell Davis May 11, 2021

Katrinell Davis is an associate professor of sociology at Florida State University and the author of two incredible books: Hard Work is Not Enough: Gender and Racial Inequality in an Urban Workspace (2016) and Tainted Tap: Flint’s Journey from Crisis to Recovery (2021). In this conversation, we explore how different populations, from Black women bus drivers in San Francisco to the working class residents of Flint, Michigan, face extraordinary socioeconomic constraints, and how these communities respond, resist, and live joyously in the face of capitalism’s relentless attacks.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 272: Hey, Remember the Civil War? w/ Matthew Stanley May 06, 2021

Abraham Lincoln: Working class hero? Holy Angel of Liberation? Capitalist collaborator? Matthew Stanley has some ideas for us. As an associate professor of history at Albany State University, his work focuses on how we remember the Civil War, and why that matters. In this conversation we discuss his latest book, Grand Army of Labor: Workers, Veterans, and the Meaning of the Civil War, which explores the diverse ways that historical memories and images of war function within radical political movements.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 271: Gleaming the Q w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) May 04, 2021

This week Justin and I watch the HBO documentary Q: Into the Storm, and share our ideas about the QAnon phenomenon, from the sewers of 8chan to the hordes of Q-Tubers amplifying its ideas, paying special attention to the malevolent father-son duo Jim and Ron Watkins, who hijacked the brain of an American president. What is this new technological/psychological terrain we inhabit? And where is the rabbit hole leading us? For full episode subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 270: Eat Like a Dude w/ Emily J.H. Contois Apr 26, 2021

What does it mean to “eat like a man”? This week’s guest, Emily J.H. Contois, is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Tulsa and the author of Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture. In this conversation, she explains how the concept of “dude food” became a powerful branding strategy in Great Recession America, as food production and consumption became central sites in the contest over masculinity and identity.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 269: Multiple Identity Disorder w/ Claudia Moreno Parsons (PREVIEW) Apr 23, 2021

This week Claudia joins us to survey two of Martin Scorsese’s earliest films, Mean Streets (1973) and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), both of which express the lived experiences of working class Americans in often surprising ways. We talk about how these films depict class mobility and ethnic tribalism, violence (both economic and domestic), the multidimensional traps of gender, and the sometimes impossible moral challenges faced by people struggling to survive in the dark terrain of 1970s America. Subscribe for the full episode: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 268: Revolutionaries for the Right w/ Kyle Burke Apr 19, 2021

Kyle Burke is an assistant professor of history and Co-Coordinator of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at Hartwick College. In this conversation, he discusses his book Revolutionaries for the Right: Anticommunist Internationalism and Paramilitary Warfare in the Cold War, which explores how an international network of right-wing individuals and organizations supported anticommunist guerrillas throughout the global south from the 1950s to the 1980s. Burke helps us trace the line between vigilante and state violence, and puts contemporary right-wing movements like Qanon and the January 6th Capitol siege in the wider context of American anticommunism.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 267: No Right Way w/ Karina Moreno Apr 12, 2021

Karina Moreno is an associate professor in the department of urban policy and planning at Hunter College. She joins us to discuss her latest piece in Jacobin, which surveys the Biden administration’s “new” immigration policies, finding continuity with decades of criminalization and militarization along the Southern border. With an immigration system designed entirely to serve the needs of capital, and an ugly political discourse to support it, how can we reimagine our collective ideas about nations, borders, and security?

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 266: Born Losers w/ Claudia Moreno Parsons (PREVIEW) Apr 10, 2021

This week, Claudia and I talk about 3 of our favorite films, the “acid noirs”: The Long Goodbye (1973), The Big Lebowski (1998), and Inherent Vice (2014). United in theme and tone, the films explore the history of post-1960s Los Angeles by both indulging and subverting the tropes of noir detective stories. Our conversation focuses on how the films’ central character(s), Philip Marlowe (Elliot Gould), the Dude (Jeff Bridges), and Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix), simultaneously embody and critique the archetypal American male seeker/detective/scholar, set adrift in a world that no longer makes rational or moral sense. For the full episode, and to access all our bonus material, subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 265: Blue Collar Queer w/ Anne Balay Apr 05, 2021

Anne Balay is the author of two extraordinary works of social history: Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Steelworkers and Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers. Her work investigates the intersection of queer and working class identities, and shows us how industrial, blue collar working environments are undergoing profound structural and social transformations in the 21st century. In this conversation, she shares stories and insights from the incredible people she’s encountered in her research, and reflects on the intersection of personal identity, working class culture, and neoliberal capitalism.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 143: Afterbirth of a Nation w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Apr 05, 2021

Justin Rogers-Cooper helps us takes a deep dive into the aesthetic and political legacy of Kurt Cobain, who died of suicide 25 years ago this month. Cobain is an iconic pop cultural figure for a number of reasons, but this conversation focuses on his personal politics, and how his band Nirvana expressed an organic, biologically-obsessed form of anti-capitalism. Emerging from the working class hell of the 1980s deindustrialized Pacific Northwest, Cobain’s art explored how an empty, impoverished society literally tears human bodies to pieces. From drugs to guns to misogyny, racism, violence, and capitalism itself, if you want to understand the inner contours of the American nightmare, Kurt Cobain’s life story and artistic output remain as critical as ever.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 264: Crypto and the Left w/ The Blockchain Socialist (PREVIEW) Apr 02, 2021

This week’s guest runs the website and podcast The Blockchain Socialist, which seeks to investigate the intersection of blockchain technology and left politics. In this conversation, we talk about the basics of blockchain, crypto, and NFTs, and try to imagine if/how these tools might be used to create a more democratic political and economic system. For full episode, go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 263: The Adjunct Hustle w/ Joe Clark Mar 29, 2021

Joe Clark (author of News Parade: The American Newsreel and the World as Spectacle) returns to the show to talk about the ugly elephant in the room for young academics: the total collapse of full-time teaching jobs at the university. In this conversation, we take on some undeniably depressing realities, but wait! It’s not all doom and gloom. Joe offers a number of different ideas and scenarios for those souls forging paths outside the tenure track, as we game out the landscape of future possibilities for the highly-educated and precariously employed.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 262: Laura's Ghost w/ Courtenay Stallings Mar 22, 2021

Courtenay Stallings is a writer, historian, and the author of Laura’s Ghost: Women Speak about Twin Peaks. The book explores how Laura Palmer, whose death lies at the center of David Lynch’s epic television series Twin Peaks, became an icon of strength and hope for women who have experienced similar abuse and trauma. In this conversation, Stallings discusses the origins of the project, why Laura’s story resonates specifically with women, the diversity of the Twin Peaks fan community, and the particular ways that Lynch’s work engages challenging ideas about gender, desire, and violence.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 261: MANSONLAND w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Mar 18, 2021

Tom O’Neill’s mind-blowing book CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties sent me down so many unbelievable rabbit holes, made me feel so paranoid and obsessed, that I absolutely had to hear what my friend Justin Rogers-Cooper thought about it. Having now finished the book, he joins us this week for an exploration of O’Neill’s twisted story, as we consider both the content of his investigations and his very Nostalgia Trap-like research methodologies. Was Manson a spook? Did Bush really do 9/11? As we discover again and again, the search for the Truth is a long walk down a hall of mirrors. For full episode subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 260: That's So Gen X w/ KJ Shepherd and Bill Black Mar 15, 2021

Reality Bites (dir. Ben Stiller, 1994) is a film that attempts to condense the entirety of the Gen X experience into a 100 minute romantic comedy in which Winona Ryder faces the unfortunate predicament of simultaneously dating Ben Stiller and Ethan Hawke. Our good friends KJ Shepherd and Bill Black join us to discuss what Reality Bites is really saying about its cultural moment, and how the film’s conventional romantic plot reflects real anxieties about art, selling out, and sexuality that transcend our often narrow generational distinctions. Troy or Michael? Your answer says a lot!

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 259: There's So Much Beauty in the World w/ Claudia Moreno Parsons (PREVIEW) Mar 11, 2021

This week Claudia and I watched American Beauty (dir. Sam Mendes, 1999), a film that had a major cultural impact upon its release but hits significantly different in 2021. From the awkward screen presence of Kevin Spacey to the endless permutations of middle class suburban ennui, we explore how American Beauty’s story and characters reflect the zeitgeist of a very specific political and economic moment, one that seems firmly lodged in the late 1990s. So why did we fall so hard for this movie? And does its critique of American society still make any sense? To listen to the whole episode, subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 258: Terror Comes Home w/ Richard Kent Evans Mar 08, 2021

Richard Kent Evans is the author of MOVE: An American Religion, a groundbreaking history of the MOVE organization, a black radical group whose founding members were killed alongside their children when the Philadelphia police, working alongside federal agents, attacked their headquarters in 1985. What was MOVE? What were its founding principles? And why were state authorities so intent on violently destroying it? As Evans explains in this conversation, the MOVE bombing, as the incident came to be known, was the culmination of a much longer story that touches on deep, lingering questions about religious freedom, race, and state terror.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 257: Stealing Home w/ Eric Nusbaum Mar 01, 2021

Eric Nusbaum is the author of Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between, which tells the story of a neighborhood’s struggle to maintain their community against the tidal wave of powerful forces aligned to seize it from them. In this conversation, Nusbaum explains how the construction of Dodger Stadium in the late 1950s somehow encompassed the entirety of Los Angeles’ political, economic, and cultural history, and offers an opportunity to reflect on the intersection of sports culture, housing rights, radical politics, and popular democracy.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 256: Apples and Cherries w/ Tyler Scruggs (PREVIEW) Feb 26, 2021

Tyler Scruggs returns for a talk about the movie adaptation of Nico Walker’s novel Cherry, which follows a young man’s nightmarish evolution from lovestruck college student to opiate-addicted Iraq War veteran and serial bank robber. With Spiderman’s Tom Holland in the central role, and Marvel dudes (the Russo brothers) directing, the film has a jarringly different tone and effect than the book, and Tyler helps us frame Cherry’s function as both pop political cinema and a glossy advertisement for Apple’s streaming service. Of course, all of this evolves into a conversation about making and consuming art in the ephemeral landscape of hyper-capitalist digital pop culture. For the whole episode go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 255: News Parade w/ Joe Clark Feb 22, 2021

Joe Clark is the author of News Parade: The American Newsreel and the World as Spectacle (University of Minnesota Press, 2020). In this conversation, he tells us how the newsreel developed in the 1930s and 1940s as both an aesthetic object and consumer product, as figures like Charles Lindbergh became focal points of an immense transformation in the relationship between current events, entertainment, and an audience increasingly positioned as passive consumers of history.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 254: A Radical Alice in Wonderland w/ Claudia Moreno Parsons (PREVIEW) Feb 19, 2021

This week Claudia joins us to consider the magical cinematic collaborations of John Carpenter and Kurt Russell. We discuss The Thing (1982), Big Trouble in Little China (1986), and Escape from L.A. (1996) alongside a host of other sci-fi/action films of the era. Beyond just gushing about our favorite scenes/lines/moments, we try to articulate what makes Carpenter’s films so insanely rewarding, and explore how his trajectory in Hollywood gives us an object lesson in the intersection of art, radical politics, and capitalism. For full episode go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 253: Common Phantoms w/ Alicia Puglionesi Feb 15, 2021

Alicia Puglionesi is a writer and historian whose book Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science tells the story of how researchers in the late 19th and early 20th century attempted to engage the outer limits of human consciousness, and how their efforts were written out of “legitimate” academic discourse. In this conversation, she explains how this lost history of psychic experimentation resonates in 21st century politics and culture.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 252: Doctor Feelgood w/ Sam Adler-Bell Feb 10, 2021

Sam Adler-Bell is a writer and host of the excellent podcast Know Your Enemy. In this conversation, we discuss his recent piece in The Drift, “Doctor Do-Little: The Case Against Anthony Fauci,” which takes aim at the political practice and philosophies of a figure who has become, for better or worse, the public face of America’s pandemic response. Along the way, we examine Fauci’s role in the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, his disastrous flip-flop on the efficacy of masks, and the wider implications of neoliberal “hero” discourse in the context of public health.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 251: Contagion of Atrocity w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Feb 09, 2021

Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us for a conversation about the Netflix true crime documentary series Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer. Our focus is on the elements of the Night Stalker story that the series largely avoids; specifically, the origins of Richard Ramirez’s serial killer psychology and its connections to the history of Los Angeles and the American security state. From settler colonialism and indigenous genocide to atomic fallout and the ghosts of Vietnam, we examine the American West as a landscape of imperial violence, capable of reproducing endless permutations of murderous pathologies. For full episode go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 250: The Three-Cornered War w/ Megan Kate Nelson Feb 04, 2021

It’s our 250th episode (!) and historian Megan Kate Nelson joins us for a very Nostalgia Trap conversation about the deep, unresolved contradictions coursing through American history. Her latest book, The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West, reframes our vision of the Civil War, showing how westward expansion, abolitionism, and the extermination of indigenous peoples were folded into a nation-making project that determined the fate of a continent. Along the way we talk about epic battles in hot deserts, the desperate economy of water and whiskey, and why the Ken Burns version of the Civil War so urgently needs to be put to rest.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 249: Lost in New York w/ Claudia Moreno Parsons (PREVIEW) Feb 02, 2021

After Hours (1985) and Life Lessons (1989), two of Martin Scorsese’s most underrated films, share an obsession with the downtown New York art scene of the 1980s and the fabric of life in a city that no longer exists. Claudia Moreno Parsons joins us for a genuine nostalgia trap, as we explore how these two incredible films depict the intoxicating nightmare of city life, the class and gender dynamics of art world hipsterism, and the violence lurking within the act of creativity. For full episode go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 248: The Human Disease w/ Erik Baker Jan 26, 2021

Erik Baker is a doctoral candidate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University, researching the history of scientific and cultural ideas about work and workers in the 20th century United States. He joins us to discuss his latest piece in The Drift, “The Cure and the Disease: Social Darwinism from AIDS to COVID-19,” which connects AIDS conspiracy theories, anti-vaccination movements,, and the disturbing discourse about life and death coursing through the politics of COVID.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 247: Vaya Con Dios w/ Claudia Moreno Parsons (PREVIEW) Jan 22, 2021

Point Break (1991, dir. Kathryn Bigelow) is a classic of 90s action cinema, combining an absolutely ludicrous plot (a gang of surfing bank robbers infiltrated by a rookie FBI agent) with masterfully staged action sequences and goofy performances from leads Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. Claudia joins us to explore how Point Break’s intense engagement with gender, homosociality, and violence gives us that toxic mix of pure pleasure and pure ideology that marks the most powerful Hollywood productions. Speaking of which, at some point in this conversation, we also take on another Keanu blockbuster, 1994’s Speed, a film that exists as a kind of spiritual cousin to Point Break, and helps further develop our ideas about bodies in motion, late capitalism, and 90s Los Angeles. For full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 246: Perfect Storm w/ Jason Wilson Jan 18, 2021

Jason Wilson is an independent journalist whose work focuses on the American far right, extremist groups, and the U.S. security state. He joins us in the wake of Trump’s Capitol riot to offer details on the specific groups involved, from Boogaloo boys to Qanon, and to explore how the right’s world is shifting in response to Trump’s loss, internal fissures, and a looming federal government crackdown.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 245: A Year in Hell w/ Luke O'Neil Jan 14, 2021

Luke O’Neil’s Hell World newsletter collects stories and transmissions from the darker corners of modern American life, which at this point seems like every fucking corner, to be honest. In this conversation, he talks about his latest book, Lockdown in Hell World, which takes us on a detailed journey into the madness of the COVID-19 year, including despairing over our “last normal day,” watching Bernie eat shit in the primaries, and powerlessly watching the nation devolve into biological barbarism. Along the way, we try to understand how the “good ones” (you know, us) might be able to take the world back from hell.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 244: Time of My Life w/ Claudia Moreno Parsons Jan 12, 2021

A deceptively straightforward romantic drama set in the early 1960s, Dirty Dancing (1987) is a unique entry in the pantheon of 1980s blockbusters. Claudia Moreno Parsons joins us to explain what makes this film such a potent nostalgia trap, from its epic rock and roll soundtrack to the infectious chemistry of its two main stars, Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. But as we explore in this conversation, Dirty Dancing invests its coming of age story with complex critiques of class, gender, and racialized bodies at a specific moment in American history.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 243: Trojan Horse w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Jan 10, 2021

Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us to navigate the politics of desire as we unpack the career of Brad Pitt, an enigmatic American mega-celebrity whose on-screen presence and media persona carry a particular resonance in the story of American capitalism. This conversation features take after take on Pitt movies, from 90s bad boy stuff like Fight Club and Seven to later works like Moneyball, Fury, War Machine, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. We examine Pitt’s place in the pantheon of Western heroes, exploring how his characters’ “savage” violence reflects ancient ideas about American masculinity, race, and power. To hear full episode go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 242: World on Fire w/ Jordan Thomas Jan 04, 2021

Jordan Thomas is a graduate researcher in anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, whose work focuses on the cultural and historical forces that shape fire. He also works as a firefighter, spending increasingly long fire seasons laboring in the mountains alongside thousands of others, collectively battling some of the largest wildfires in human history. His recent piece in The Drift details the astonishing effort to save California from the ruinous results of centuries of environmental mismanagement. In this conversation, Thomas tells us why these fires have grown so large (hint: it’s climate change), tells us about his research into the history of indigenous fire practices erased by imperialism, and provides perspective on the fierce ground battles waged by firefighters on the front lines of climate catastrophe.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 241: One Special Thing w/ Matt Christman (PREVIEW) Dec 23, 2020

Paul Thomas Anderson’s second feature, Boogie Nights, is a nostalgia trap in every imaginable way, combining an obsessively detailed vision of 1970s porn production with a hip, postmodern aesthetic that defined 90s indie cinema. Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House is a fellow Boogie Nights appreciator, and joins us for a conversation about the cultural context that produced auteurs like PTA and Tarantino, the endless (and endlessly awful) imitators that followed, and the ways in which Boogie Nights represents, in both form and content, ideas of authorship and art that are rapidly transforming. To hear the full episode go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 12.17.2020 w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Dec 18, 2020

This week on the livestream, Justin Rogers-Cooper dropped by to discuss Biden's shocking pick for Secretary of the Interior, and why green capitalism is the battlefield (literally) of the future. Plus, David continues sketching out his pop cultural biography, reflecting on how a year of movie obsession in 1998 forced some painful self-reflection, but also offered an unexpected path out of a vapid suburban spirituality. To listen go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 240: They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To w/ KJ Shepherd (PREVIEW) Dec 17, 2020

In a world of infinite #content, why do we find ourselves watching the same movies and TV shows again and again? KJ Shepherd joins us for a conversation about the particular qualities that draw us to compulsively re-watch certain pieces of media, especially from when we were young. Our conversation focuses on the 1997 film Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, a “dumb” comedy that functions as a powerful nostalgia trap for KJ and a reflection of a very specific type of 90s Hollywood production. We talk about Romy and Michele’s unique charm, its undeniable queerness, the post-Romy career paths of Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow, and the singular social, cultural, and economic circumstances from which the “dumb 90s comedy” emerged. To listen to full episode go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 239: Heaven is a Place Where Nothing Ever Happens w/ Tyler Scruggs Dec 15, 2020

David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977) remains an unrivaled enigma in the history of cinema, a cult film that launched the career of one of Hollywood’s most enduring outsiders. The process of making the film, detailed in Lynch’s 2018 memoir Room to Dream (co-written with Kristine McKenna), reflects the complicated intersection of individual vision and economic reality that would define Lynch’s path as a filmmaker. But do these cultural and economic conditions even exist anymore? Musician, writer, and fellow Lynch-head Tyler Scruggs joins us to talk about Eraserhead’s unique production and cultural legacy, in a conversation that explores authorship, adaptation, consciousness, and what it means to be an artist in the digital era.

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 12.10.2020 w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Dec 11, 2020

We kicked off this week's livestream with a visit from Justin Rogers-Cooper, who reminds us that liberals (and the left too!) often lack a critique of the Fed, and how that gap in understanding leads to weird pronouncements like "capitalism loves COVID" when the truth is far more sinister. And I continue down the 90s memory hole with a discussion of Neil LaBute's 1997 film In the Company of Men and the different ways it rearranged my views on masculinity, work, and the banal sadism of capitalist culture. To listen to the full episode, go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 238: Stay Gold w/ Claudia Moreno Parsons (PREVIEW) Dec 10, 2020

Claudia Moreno Parsons joins us for an exploration of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders (1983).Based on S.E. Hinton’s 1967 novel about working class teen “greasers” in 1960s Tulsa, Oklahoma, The Outsiders is a searing take on the rigidity of class in America that resists the easy answers of other “young adult” books and movies of the era. In this conversation, we talk about the elements that make this film unique, from its melodramatic tone and affecting performances to the wider cultural and political questions with which it grapples. Listen to the full episode at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 237: For Might and Right w/ Michael Brenes Dec 08, 2020

Michael Brenes is Associate Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and Lecturer in History at the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. His new book, For Might and Right: Cold War Defense Spending and the Remaking of American Democracy, asks important questions about the disturbing connections between militarism, austerity, and democracy that mark the post-Cold War era, and how those trends both continue and accelerate the ideological and practical structures of American anti-communism. In this conversation, Brenes shares some of the book’s more startling revelations and reflects on how his historical and political imagination has evolved in the Trump era.

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 12.3.2020 w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Dec 05, 2020

On this week's livestream, Justin Rogers-Cooper drops by to offer thoughts on some weird moves from U.S. Congress on China this week, which for some reason no one is talking about. Plus, David continues his journey through 90s pop culture and considers the confluence of South Park, first person shooters like Quake and Duke Nukem, and the development of an "extremely online" cultural and political sensibility. Go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap for full episode.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 236: Egg Noodles & Ketchup w/ Danny Bessner (PREVIEW) Dec 04, 2020

The 1990 Martin Scorsese-directed gangster saga Goodfellas remains one of the most rewatchable films of the 20th century, a kaleidoscopic ride through the ups and downs of mafia life that’s as exhausting as it is entertaining. For David and Danny, Goodfellas occupies a space of both personal and cultural connection–a nostalgia trap that functions on multiple levels. In this conversation, we explore the film’s unique power in the context of 20th century history, from the development of working class white ethnic gang culture to its long decline in the shadow of suburbanization and gentrification, from spaghetti and marinara to egg noodles and ketchup. What story is Goodfellas really telling us? Go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap to hear the full episode.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 235: The Sorkin Effect w/ Jon Wiener and Danny Bessner Nov 30, 2020

Jon Wiener is an American historian and the author of a number of books on the 1960s and 1970s, including Conspiracy in the Streets: The Extraordinary Trial of the Chicago Seven. Jon returns to the Trap to talk with David and Danny about the Netflix film Trial of the Chicago 7, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin. From questionable casting choices to an outrageously ahistorical happy ending, how does Sorkin’s notoriously rosy, liberal take on American history color his depiction of 1960s radicalism?

Nostalgia Trap - Livestream 11.26.2020 (PREVIEW) Nov 27, 2020

I wanted to take the Thanksgiving holiday, when very few were likely to be watching, to try something new on the livestream...I hope you enjoy it. Since we've begun talking so much about movies on the podcast lately, I thought I would start reflecting on my own connection to cinema and pop culture more widely, as a way of exploring larger questions of politics, art, spirituality, drugs, and so many other Nostalgia Trap obsessions. In this first installment I describe my attachment to an HBO "Guide to Movies" book in 1990, and how it acted as a kind of Biblical text, and an entryway to a world of movies about which I knew very little. To listen, subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 234: Reality is Irrelevant w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper and Bill Black (PREVIEW) Nov 25, 2020

Justin Rogers-Cooper and Bill Black join us for our very first episode specifically dedicated to the JFK assassination, an event that connects a number of Nostalgia Trap obsessions, from deep state conspiracies and political violence to pop culture and generational division. To hear the full episode subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 233: The Social Dilemma w/ Kiara Barrow & Rebecca Panovka Nov 24, 2020

Kiara Barrow and Rebecca Panovka are the creators and editors of The Drift, a new magazine on culture and politics that promises to “introduce new work and new ideas by young writers who haven’t yet been absorbed into the media hivemind and don’t feel hemmed in by the boundaries of the existing discourse.” Barrow and Panovka join David and Danny for a wide-ranging conversation on the state of young left media in the post-Bernie era.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 232: Liminality is Survival w/ Daniel Traber Nov 20, 2020

Daniel Traber is a professor of English at Texas A & M University at Galveston, a punk at heart, and an active member of the cult of Repo Man (dir. Alex Cox, 1984). In this conversation, we get into why Repo Man, a movie literally about Repo Men in 1980s Los Angeles (oh, and aliens) is such an important lens on punk, postmodernism, and the twisted knot of counterculture, capitalism, and reaction that defined the Reagan era. Along the way we trade key scenes, lines, and characters, as we take apart a film that still seems, more than three decades later, far ahead of its time.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 231: Four Dead in Ohio w/ Derf Backderf Nov 16, 2020

Derf Backderf is a writer and artist whose graphic novels explore everything from the lives of sanitation workers (Trashed) to Derf’s actual high school relationship with future serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (My Friend Dahmer). His latest book, Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio, tells the story of the Kent State shooting in personal, often wrenching detail. In this conversation, Derf explains the challenges of rendering the event visually, the research behind some of the book’s incredible revelations, the psychological and ethical struggle of writing about Jeffrey Dahmer, and the wider project of “history as graphic novel.”

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 230: Coop Dreams w/ Avi Garelick and Andrew Schustek Nov 12, 2020

What happens when organized groups of working class Jewish communists pool their resources to create cooperative housing in New York City? Avi Garelick and Andrew Schustek have some ideas for us. Their detailed history, “The Rise and Fall of the Coops,” in the latest issue of Jewish Currents, examines the incredible story of the United Workers Cooperatives (or “Coops”), which were part of a wave of radical housing experiments built in the Bronx in the 1920s and 1930s. As Garelick and Schustek share in this conversation, the history of the Coops has vital lessons about the possibilities and limits of mutual aid when capital still controls the flow of power and resources.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 229: Neoliberalism or Barbarism w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW) Nov 10, 2020

Well, there was an election. And there was a result of that election. But what does it MEAN? Trap oracle Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us this week for a conversation about the multiple stories being born before our eyes, as neoliberalism’s representative politics come roaring back to life with Biden’s electoral victory, the left wing of the Democratic Party plays defense against its centrist attackers and, all the while, Trump sits in the White House denying that he lost and promising to fight the alleged conspiracy against him. What are the possibilities currently on the table? How wild are the next ten weeks going to get? It’s time for some game theory. For full episode, go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 228: No Way Out w/ Danny Bessner (PREVIEW) Nov 05, 2020

The Amazon series The Boys, based on the comic book series of the same name, is a hyper-violent and deeply cynical take on superhero culture and, ultimately, neoliberal capitalism. Danny Bessner joins us for a discussion of the show’s truly unhinged characters and plotlines, as we examine both the striking elements of The Boys’ dark vision of 21st century America (spoiler: it’s Nazis all the way down) and the limits of slickly-produced critiques of capitalism’s evils made by the very capitalist institutions responsible for them. Subscribe to listen to the whole episode: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 227: The Political Economy of Flavortown w/ Rax King and Danny Bessner (PREVIEW) Oct 29, 2020

Writer Rax King’s deservedly celebrated recent piece, “Love, Peace, and Taco Grease: How I Left My Abusive Husband and Found Guy Fieri,” is both an incredible feat of writing and a compelling take on the unlikely charm and cultural power of the yellow-haired star of the Food Network’s flagship program, Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives (or, the “Triple D”). She joins David and Danny for a discussion of millennial food culture, the aesthetic evolution of food TV, the connections between cheeseburgers and climate change, the ethics of eating at restaurants during COVID, and of course, the complicated cultural legacy of Guy Fieri’s undeniably addictive tour of American foodlust. Visit patreon.com/nostalgiatrap for full episode.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 226: Welcome to the Human Race w/ Danny Bessner and Trevor Beaulieu (PREVIEW) Oct 27, 2020

Trevor Beaulieu of the Champagne Sharks podcast joins us on our journey through 90s Los Angeles, as we explore John Carpenter’s batshit 1996 action film Escape from L.A. Dismissed by critics and ignored by audiences, the film now seems like a strange kind of masterpiece, and a vibrant window on the confused cultural politics of 1990s Hollywood.

Subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap to listen to full episode.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 225: Trap to the Future w/ Danny Bessner, Courtney Rawlings, and Bill Black Oct 23, 2020

On our first live podcast episode, Danny Bessner, Courtney Rawlings, and Bill Black join us for a detailed look at the 1985 pop culture nostalgia monster Back to the Future (dir. Robert Zemeckis). We take on the film’s weird political economy, sexual psychology, and engagement with 20th century American history, discovering a disturbing, often racist, conservative vision at the heart of Zemeckis’ insanely popular filmography. And of course, we find out if Back to the Future really did predict 9/11.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 224: Losing My Edge w/ Mike Koncewicz Oct 19, 2020

Oliver Stone’s 1995 film Nixon, starring Anthony Hopkins as the haunted, duplicitous 37th U.S. president, marked both a turning point in the filmmaker’s career and a significant shift in public opinion about Richard Nixon. Historian and writer Michael Koncewicz, author of They Said No to Nixon: Republicans Who Stood Up to the President’s Abuses of Power , joins us for a detailed discussion of the film’s complex engagement with the actual history of the Nixon administration. As we consider Nixon alongside Stone’s numerous other historical films (many of which ruminate on the 1960s), we explore a filmography marked by a sometimes exhilarating, often frustrating mix of wild aesthetic experimentation, paranoid conspiracy mongering, and conventional liberal sentimentalism.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 223: Plaid to the Bone w/ Danny Bessner and Courtney Rawlings (PREVIEW) Oct 16, 2020

As we continue our series on 90s L.A. movies, we arrive at the 1995 high school classic Clueless (dir. Amy Heckerling), one of a number of Jane Austen adaptations that dominated 1990s pop culture. Danny Bessner and Courtney Rawlings join us for an exploration of this sunny, satirical vision of affluent teen culture, and we discover that Clueless is a more complicated take on feminism, consumerism, class, and politics than any of us had noticed on first watch. From the mansions of Beverly Hills to the lowland horror that is THE VALLEY, we explore how Clueless offers a vision of Los Angeles and youth culture that continues to resonate in the 21st century. For full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 222: Earn This w/ Jared Yates Sexton Oct 14, 2020

Jared Yates Sexton is a professor and political analyst whose latest book American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed its People takes on some of the big foundational myths of American history, viewing them through the lens of an increasingly dark, apocalyptic 21st century. In this conversation, we talk about the toxic stew of capitalism, racism, power, and domination that have shaped the nation from its beginning, and discuss how capital’s power to absorb its resistance makes neoliberal products out of social and political movements, from #MeToo to Black Lives Matter.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 221: You're Nobody Til Somebody Loves You w/ Danny Bessner (PREVIEW) Oct 10, 2020

Our journey through 90s Los Angeles with Danny Bessner continues with an exploration of the Jon Favreau/Vince Vaughn indie bromance Swingers (1996). We talk about the film’s depiction of pre-gentrification Hollywood, when non-rich people could still afford a social life (or at least a beer and a burger), and analyze the wider historical forces that produced the somewhat bizarre mid-decade pop culture swing revival of which Swingers was a major part. We discuss David’s personal experiences with swing culture in Southern California, the blank culture of straight suburban whiteness, and the uneasy gender politics at play in Swingers and Gen X culture more widely. And we learn of Danny’s heretofore unacknowledged appreciation of Guy Fieri.

For full episode, subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 220: Hush Hush w/ Danny Bessner and Will Menaker Sep 29, 2020

Why are noir detective stories such fitting containers for exploring the greed, corruption, and violence of Los Angeles? As we continue our series with Danny Bessner on 90s L.A. cinema, Will Menaker of Chapo Trap House joins us for a conversation about Curtis Hanson’s 1997 neo-noir Hollywood masterpiece L.A. Confidential. Since Will and Danny are confessed James Ellroy fanatics, they explain how the famously enigmatic author’s dark, often reactionary vision of Los Angeles translates to the screen. Along the way we reflect on how L.A. Confidential plays with both the image and reality of L.A. history, simultaneously critiquing and participating in the city’s toxic, intoxicating mythology of Hollywood glamour and lurid subterranean nightmares.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 219: Come and See w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Sep 28, 2020

Are we as trapped by the future as we are by the past? Continuing our exploration of fascism and resistance in the 20th and 21st centuries, Justin Rogers-Cooper returns to offer his insights on the history of Belarus from World War II to the present. We begin with the 1985 Soviet film Come and See, using director Elem Klimov’s searing take on Belarus’ experience of Nazi occupation to frame our discussion of political culture, violence, and historical memory. We reflect on how Belarus’ recent history, from the unfathomable tragedy of Chernobyl to 2020 uprisings against the authoritarian government of Alexander Lukashenko, shapes our understanding of power, democracy, and solidarity.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 217: Nostalgialand w/ Rick Perlstein Sep 22, 2020

Rick Perlstein is a historian and the author of a series of bestselling, massively entertaining books on the rise of American conservatism in the late 20th century. His 2008 book Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America sharpened his mega-thesis about the historical significance of “the Sixties” in the American political imagination, demonstrating how Nixon and other conservatives drove a wedge through public discourse by manipulating and nurturing the reactionary impulse that boiled underneath the surface of the era. In this conversation, Perlstein discusses his latest book Reaganland: America’s Right Turn 1976-1980, shares stories about the methods behind the construction of his labyrinthine historical narrative, and reflects on the ways that nostalgia functions to distort our vision of the past, present, and future.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 216: I'm the Bad Guy? w/ Danny Bessner Sep 17, 2020

The 1993 film Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas and directed by Joel Schumacher, divided audiences and critics with a story of a man’s descent into vigilante violence on a hot Los Angeles day. Viewed from 2020, the film shows us something deep and dark about American social reality in the years immediately following the end of the Cold War. Danny Bessner joins us for a detailed analysis of an important piece of 90s pop culture, connecting the history of Los Angeles as the rising center of American empire to the emotional disintegration of Douglas’ character.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 215: I Hope Someday You'll Join Us w/ Jon Wiener Sep 09, 2020

Jon Wiener is an American historian and co-author, along with Mike Davis, of the extraordinary book Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties. In this conversation, Wiener explains why it’s so vital, particularly in 2020, to recover L.A.’s radical history, and explains the process behind communicating a complicated movement narrative to a broad audience. We also hear bits from Wiener’s incredible career as a writer and journalist, including his involvement with the groundbreaking progressive radio station KPFK, and his unbelievable legal battle with the FBI to declassify their records of surveilling and harassing John Lennon.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 213: Every Story is a Travel Story w/ Daegan Miller Sep 03, 2020

Daegan Miller’s first appearance on Nostalgia Trap, in which he discussed both his painful exit from academia and his stunning book This Radical Land: A Natural History of American Dissent, remains one of our most popular episodes. From the outskirts of a tiny town in rural Massachusetts, Miller returns to update us on his life outside the tortured confines of the university. In this conversation, in addition to the prerequisite nostalgia trip through late 20th century Ani DiFranco-style MTV radicalism, we talk about the everyday reality of being a “writer in the woods,” the hyper-nationalist (read: eco-fascist) environmentalism of the Trump era, mixed emotions about the fading relevance of boomer culture, and the weird feeling of watching “the kids” make memes about Karl Marx.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 211: From Head Shops to Whole Foods w/ Josh Davis Aug 27, 2020

What happened to the world of independently-operated head shops, feminist and black-owned bookstores, and health food markets that blossomed in the 1960s and 1970s? Josh Davis, professor of history and author of From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs, joins us to explain how a movement to change the world was slowly subsumed into the neoliberal hellscape of consumer capitalism.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 209: World Police Comes Home w/ Stuart Schrader Aug 19, 2020

Stuart Schrader is a Lecturer and Assistant Research Scientist in Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, and the author of Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing. In this conversation, he shares details from the book about the Office of Public Safety, a 1960s American Cold War project that gave U.S. aid to counter-revolutionary police forces around the globe. As Schrader’s work documents, the expansion of domestic police powers in the post-World War II mirrored, and was in fact a critical element of, the larger project of global American empire.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 206: Dying to Serve You w/ Sean Lawrence Aug 12, 2020

Sean Lawrence works as a bartender and manager at a couple of the most popular eating and drinking establishments in downtown Ventura, California. In this conversation, he shares amazing stories from the world of restaurants and bars during the pandemic, from fights with MAGA trolls and the anti-mask crowd, to the agony of layoffs and closings, to the continued suffocating fear of catching COVID, we shine a light on a rough but undeniably clarifying moment for workers in the food service industry.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 205: Onward Christian Soldiers w/ Kristin Kobes Du Mez Aug 04, 2020

Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a professor of history at Calvin University whose work focuses on the intersection of religion, gender, and politics in American life. Her new book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation traces the development of a white, militant, patriarchal Christian culture in the decades since the 1960s, when the rise of feminism and the civil rights movement triggered an evangelical backlash that led directly to the Trump era. In this conversation, she explains how a “tough guy” ideal gained traction in Christian culture, as white evangelicals came to embrace a brutal ideology of authority, domination, and violence.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 204: Eating Ass and Martial Law w/ Eddie Pepitone Jul 28, 2020

Eddie Pepitone is an actor and comedian whose latest standup special For the Masses captures the visceral hell of life in late capitalism. In this conversation, he talks about his path in comedy, the development of a “working class” voice, why he avoids trite topics like dating and pizza, and how his left-wing politics and Eastern spirituality find their way into his material.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 202: No Place Like Home w/ Yasmin Nair Jul 08, 2020

How does the way we live reflect all the traps of American ideology? This week, one of our favorites, writer and activist Yasmin Nair, joins us for a wide-ranging conversation on the historical, social, and economic dimensions of U.S. housing policy. From current debates around gentrification and rent strikes to the romanticized image of suburban nuclear families in pop culture, we explore how ideas of home ownership are at the core of the national-imperial project.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 201: Educating the Ruling Class w/ Nathan Tankus Jul 02, 2020

Since his first appearance on the Nostalgia Trap in 2016, Nathan Tankus has gained a devoted following for his ideas on politics, economics, and global finance. His newsletter, Notes on the Crises, is closely watched by journalists, politicians, and economists, particularly after publishing a remarkable set of pieces on COVID-19 and the Federal Reserve in early 2020. In this conversation, he discusses the strangeness of his newfound celebrity, and offers his takes on this chaotic historical moment, from Bernie’s flame-out to the Black Lives Matter uprising . For a special subscription discount to Nathan’s Substack, go here: https://nathantankus.substack.com/subscribe?coupon=1a0be4be

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 200: Wild Card w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Jun 24, 2020

This week Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us to celebrate our 200th episode with a deep dive into the political, economic, and cultural significance of the “Joker” character. What are the origins of the Joker image and mythology? How has the character evolved over time? And what does this archetype’s ubiquitous presence tell us about our historical moment? This episode is dedicated in loving, living memory of Laszlo Scott Kehoe.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 199: We Cannot Live Without Our Lives w/ Asad Haider Jun 18, 2020

Asad Haider is a founding editor at Viewpoint Magazine and the author of Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump. In this conversation he explains how the history of anti-racist struggle in the United States provides a compelling set of ideas for a dynamic, anti-capitalist emancipatory practice. Along the way, we discuss the value of reading Marx in 2020, our distorted view of 1960s and 1970s radicalism, the significance of the Black Lives Matter moment, and much more.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 198: Most Wanted w/ Paul Renfro May 28, 2020

Paul Renfro is a professor of history at Florida State University and the author of Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State. In this conversation he explains how fears of child abduction fueled a hysterical campaign in the 1970s and 1980s that produced a wave of new laws, structures of punishment, and ideas about family, security, and sexuality that continue to haunt American life.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 197: Where the Wave Broke w/ Ken Layne May 27, 2020

Ken Layne is the creator of Desert Oracle, a magazine and radio show/podcast all about the strange inhabitants and culture of the Mojave Desert. Layne’s trajectory through the world of alternative media winds through the 1990s and 2000s, when he was present at the creation of the Gawker media empire and subsequently took the reins of their influential politics outlet Wonkette. In this conversation, we talk about the evolution of underground culture through layers of toxic capitalism, as we trace Layne’s path from the fast lane of LA/New York/DC digital media to the burgeoning psychedelic scene in the California desert.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 195: Or Does It Explode? w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper May 20, 2020

Our series on the rapidly evolving politics of COVID-19 continues this week, with Justin Rogers-Cooper warning that the logic of finance capital may force a premature “re-opening” on the American public in the summer of 2020. In this conversation we talk about recent armed anti-lockdown protests, the movie Parasite as a window into the cultural zeitgeist around class inequality, and the potential for social violence as America plunges into an unprecedented depression.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 193: Toward a Global Left w/ Arash Azizi May 06, 2020

Arash Azizi is a writer and scholar currently completing a Ph.D. in History and Middle Eastern Studies at NYU; his work focuses on the left in Iran and in the wider Islamic world. In this conversation, making frequent reference to cinema and pop culture, he discusses the global dimensions of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements, tracing a narrative from the Cold War to the 21st century.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 192: Cinema in Transition w/ Drew Morton Apr 28, 2020

Drew Morton is an Assistant Professor of Mass Communication at Texas A&M University-Texarkana. He is the co-editor and co-founder of [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies, the first peer-reviewed academic journal focused on the visual essay, drawn from a wide range of scholars (including Drew himself). In this conversation he describes his education in film, both as a casual viewer and fan and later as a graduate student in Cinema and Media Studies at UCLA, as we explore how the central questions, ideas, and methodologies of the discipline are evolving in a hyper-accelerated media landscape.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 191: Aping Revolution w/ Yasmin Nair Apr 23, 2020

Yasmin Nair returns to the Trap for a deep dive into the film Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), a conversation that helps us frame ideas about prison abolition, animal rights, environmentalism, pandemics, and the tactical elements of a grassroots revolution.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 189: Thank You for Your Service w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Apr 14, 2020

As we continue our series on the politics of COVID-19, Justin Rogers-Cooper takes aim at the absurd ideology of “sacrifice,” as we explore how American sentimental mythology allows us to justify capitalism’s indifference to deaths of its "essential" workers.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 188: Under the Heel w/ Mistress Snow, Ph.D. Apr 06, 2020

Mistress Snow, Ph.D. is an academic in the humanities who was abruptly rejected by her mentor after coming out to her as a working dominatrix, an experience she documents in a recent Chronicle piece. In this conversation, she explains how her story connects with larger issues of class in academia, from the collapse of the job market and the humiliations of the adjunct hustle to the student loan nightmare and endless financial precarity. In the context of an accelerating economic and biological meltdown, we try to salvage what we love about academic work and the university, while looking ahead to a rapidly shifting future.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 186: Bodies and Power w/ Yasmin Nair Apr 01, 2020

Yasmin Nair is a writer and activist who always says what’s on her mind, and the results are consistently some of the most refreshing and challenging takes on modern American politics and culture. In this conversation, we talk about her most recent work, her outlook on the 2020 Democratic primary, the carceral politics of #MeToo, and why the U.S. left is often so hopelessly lost on issues of sex, race, and class.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 185: Ask Any Buddy w/ Evan Purchell Mar 25, 2020

Evan Purchell is a film historian and archivist whose latest film project, Ask Any Buddy, presents excerpted bits from 126 different gay male “adult” films from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. The effect is an uncanny journey into a lost world of urban gay culture, depicting a kind of imagninative fantasy of gay life before the AIDS crisis. In this conversation, Evan tells us about the film’s origins as a popular Instagram account, and details some of the stars (both in front of and behind the camera) of this extraordinary moment in the history of cinema, culture, and sexuality.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 184: History Accelerates w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Mar 22, 2020

With a nation in quarantine, Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us for a deep dive into the political opportunities presented by the COVID-19 moment, as we track the rapid evolution of capitalism in crisis. Now that the energy of apocalypse has been released into the discourse, where does it go? What new futures can we imagine as the old world shapeshifts before our eyes?

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 183: It Tolls for Thee w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Mar 16, 2020

Justin Rogers-Cooper returns to continue our series on the extraordinary historical moment created by the COVID-19 crisis. In this conversation we take on the rapidly evolving politics of the virus, reflecting on the public outrage at massive corporate bailouts while working people are saddled with unimaginable economic ruin. Can the left seize that energy to win electoral and ideological victories? We also speculate on the direction of U.S. government policy, social stability, and American popular culture as the crisis develops.

Preview of Episode 182: Contagion Mar 12, 2020

Preview of bonus episode 182: Contagion with Justin Rogers-Cooper.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 181: Modeling the Future w/ Kevin Baker Mar 03, 2020

Kevin Baker is a historian studying the ways policymakers use predictive computer models to map the future. In this conversation, he tells us about navigating the shock of class consciousness in the academy, describes his work researching artificial intelligence at Berkeley, and offers the peculiar story of The Limits to Growth, a 1972 study based on SimCity-like computer programs that predicted the collapse of industrial civilization by the year 2050.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 180: Vibe Check w/ KJ Shepherd and Bill Black Feb 24, 2020

Trap favorites KJ Shepherd and Bill Black return for a much-needed election year vibe check, in which we discuss our individual and collective moods in the context of Bernie Sanders’ continued success in the Democratic primary. From online battles with Marc Maron and other toxic centrist dorks to the wider view of academic work in a collapsing humanities job market, KJ and Bill bring their characteristically refreshing perspectives to an increasingly chaotic historical moment.

Subscribe to KJ’s newsletter: https://keegan.substack.com/

Read and support Contingent Magazine: https://contingentmagazine.org/

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 179: Violence Girl w/ Alice Bag Feb 20, 2020

Alice Bag is a punk icon, the lead singer of legendary 1970s L.A. punk band The Bags, and now a writer, educator, and feminist archivist. In this conversation, she tells her story of overcoming a childhood in East L.A. wracked by poverty and domestic abuse, finding an outlet for her personal and political rage in the burgeoning Hollywood punk scene. In the years since that initial explosion, she’s become one of the movement’s chief historians, recovering the voices of women and people of color who are often left out of the mainstream punk narrative.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 177: This Land is Your Land w/ Rick Paulas Feb 06, 2020

Rick Paulas is a journalist covering issues of housing and homelessness; his recent piece on Moms 4 Housing details what happened when a group of Black mothers occupied a vacant house in Oakland, California. In this conversation, we talk about America’s housing crisis in the context of neoliberal capitalism, and explore the revolutionary political, social, and cultural implications of a more activist homeless population.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 176: The Gig Academy w/ Tom DePaola Jan 30, 2020

Tom DePaola is a Ph.D. candidate studying higher ed and academic labor at USC, and co-author (along with Adrianna J. Kezar and Daniel T. Scott) of the new book The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University. He joins us to discuss the increasing precarity felt by academics and other workers at colleges across the country, and to explore the longer history of neoliberalism’s devastating attack on both the ideological underpinnings and practical operation of American higher education.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 175: The Blackademic Life w/ Lavelle Porter Jan 24, 2020

Lavelle Porter is a writer and professor of English at CUNY’s New York City College of Technology. He joins us to discuss his new book The Blackademic Life: Academic Fiction, Higher Education, and the Black Intellectual, which explores representations of black intellectual life from the Reconstruction Era to today. Along the way we touch on the lesser-known fictional works of W.E.B. DuBois, the rise of Black Studies on college campuses in the 1960s and 1970s, the complicated, tragic legacy of Bill Cosby, and the evolving conversation about higher education in 21st century hip hop.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 174: Engineering Addiction w/ Sarah Milov Jan 09, 2020

Sarah Milov is a professor of history at the University of Virginia and the author of The Cigarette: A Political History. In this conversation, she describes how the intersection of private capital and state power combined (with astounding success) to promote the consumption of cigarettes to the American public, and how activists engaged ideas around public space, health, and consent to fight back.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 173: The Farmer is the Man w/ Sarah Taber Dec 19, 2019

Sarah Taber is a crop scientist and ex-farmworker with a wide knowledge of agricultural history and practice, which you can hear in action on her excellently-named podcast Farm to Taber. In this conversation, we talk about the role of the “farmer” in the American imagination and survey some of the most critical moments in the development of American food and farming policy.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 172: Empire of Cruelty w/ Luke O'Neil Dec 12, 2019

Luke O’Neil is a writer whose work chronicles the dark edges of 21st century America, capturing the horrific tenor of our age in his incredible newsletter and in his latest book, Welcome to Hell World: Dispatches from the American Dystopia. From murderous cops and fascist dads to suicidal veterans and imprisoned children, O’Neil connects the dots of the American nightmare in a voice that’s compelling and authentic and genuinely enraging. In this conversation, we talk about his path through the ugly landscape of new digital media and explore how the political and personal crash together in his work.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 170: The Extraterrestrial Left w/ A.M. Gittlitz Nov 21, 2019

A.M. Gittlitz is a writer on radical politics, counterculture, and the paranormal, and the producer of a wonderful podcast called The Antifada. In this conversation, he catches us up on the worldwide UFO phenomenon, detailing how the U.S. government is pouring resources into investigating alien spacecraft, with big corporations (and the guy from Blink-182!) getting in on the action. Gittlitz shares plenty of incredible stories, many featured in his upcoming book I WANT TO BELIEVE: The Posadist Movement and Leftwing Ufology (Pluto Press, 2020), as we discuss the wider context of the alien narrative in culture and politics.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 169: Gaming the Future w/ Mike Pearl Nov 14, 2019

Mike Pearl is a writer and self-described “apocalypse expert” whose new book The Day It Finally Happens explores the increasingly bizarre scenarios that threaten to totally ruin our collective future. From internet blackouts and antibiotic-resistant superviruses to collapsing governments and mass extinction events, Mike tracks the actual probability of these nightmares coming true as a way of helping us navigate an anxious present. In this conversation, we game out some of the more insane ideas from his book while asking the question of our age: How bad is it gonna get?

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 168: Fight Club, But Woke w/ Sam Yang Nov 05, 2019

Sam Yang is the host of Southpaw, a podcast about the intersection of leftist politics and combat sports. Yang is on a mission to reclaim fighting culture, forging connections between physicality, spirituality, and a more humane engagement with the planet and each other. In this conversation he discusses his background in martial arts, explaining how ethical ideas embedded in his combat training inform his political perspectives, and speculates on strategies for winning the hearts and minds of millions of UFC fans.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 167: Monster Mash w/ KJ Shepherd and Bill Black Oct 30, 2019

Bill Black and KJ Shepherd return to the Trap for a special Halloween episode, in which we reflect upon the public fears and personal phobias that plagued our childhoods. Together we explore all sorts of spooky stuff, including the hellish visions invoked by Chick tracts, the 1980s crusade against obscenity in pop music, the weird national obsession with children dying in abandoned refrigerators, and the varieties of erotic experience available at your local Barnes and Noble.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 166: Showing the Receipts w/ Kevin Kruse Oct 22, 2019

Kevin Kruse is a historian at Princeton University and the author of a number of important books about race, class, and politics in 20th century America. He is also one of the most visible historians online, with a massive Twitter following that often serves as a mini-course in American history. In this conversation, we talk about his unexpected rise to Twitter fame, his beef with right-wing propagandist Dinesh D’Souza, the many pleasures of archival research, and his connection to the wider community of historians and other scholars who are more actively engaging the public during a chaotic political moment.

Episode 165: Today is Tomorrow w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (BONUS) Oct 18, 2019

Justin Rogers-Cooper returns to explore the 1993 Bill Murray comedy Groundhog Day, a deceptively straightforward film that pulses with dark insights on political economy, American history, human psychology, and everyday life in late capitalism.

FULL EPISODE: https://www.patreon.com/posts/30812647

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 164: School's Out Forever w/ Brendan O'Malley Oct 10, 2019

Brendan O’Malley is a historian and teacher whose experience with his school’s abrupt closure was the subject of a fascinating, wrenching piece in Contingent Magazine this summer. He joins us to talk about his background in history, earning his Ph.D. at the CUNY Graduate Center, and his particular path through a rapidly collapsing academic job market. Brendan’s story is ultimately a hopeful one, reflecting how a generation of young historians is finding our footing as teachers and scholars in ways none of us expected.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 163: Waging Peace w/ Susan Schnall Oct 02, 2019

Susan Schnall served as a nurse in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. Her experiences treating wounded Marines at Oak Noll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California transformed her, and in 1969 she faced court martial for her antiwar activism. In this conversation, she tells her incredible story of leaving the U.S. military and joining the antiwar movement, working as a hospital administrator and community organizer in New York City for 31 years, and serving as a core member of the Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign.

You can read more about Susan's story, along with many other perspectives on the GI Movement (including a piece on GI coffeehouses by Nostalgia Trap host David Parsons), in a new book from NYU Press, Waging Peace in Vietnam: US Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 162: Doomsday Politics w/ Bill Black Sep 19, 2019

With Trap favorite Bill Black joining us, a conversation about David’s irrational fear of spiders leads into a wider consideration of existential politics in an apocalyptic age. Bill has lots to tell us about the El Paso shooting and the eco-fascist ideology from which it emerged, connecting it to the rise of doomsday scenarios, conspiracy theories, UFO flashmobs, and other pieces of outright weirdness circulating through the culture.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 161: Circling the Eschaton w/ Erik Davis Sep 10, 2019

Writer and cultural critic Erik Davis joins us to discuss his fascinating, often startling new book, High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies. By connecting the strange experiences of three psychedelic philosophers (Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson), Davis offers a narrative of the 1970s that goes beyond disco and Jimmy Carter, showing us a world of occult prophecies, paranoid conspiracies, and often drug-induced spiritual fuckery. In this conversation, Davis discusses the origins of High Weirdness, his longer journey as a thinker and writer, and how the transcendent freakiness of California in the 70s produced eerie premonitions of the chaotic dystopias of the 21st century.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 160: Growth Mindset w/ KJ Shepherd Sep 02, 2019

KJ Shepherd is a Ph.D. historian whose research focuses on the history of American standardized testing and the “test preparation” industry it spawned. Along with trading stories about the horrors of teaching the SAT, we have a blunt talk about what’s happening in the history discipline: the impossibility of finding full-time jobs, the humiliation of the application process, the “alt-ac” lie, and much more. But we also discuss the wider historical moment we’re in, and how rising generations of non-tenured Ph.D.’s are shaping the future of scholarly work and public engagement.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 159: Subtext Becomes Text w/ Eli Valley Aug 22, 2019

Eli Valley is a comic artist and writer with an intense, visceral aesthetic that perfectly captures the rotten politics of our age. His acclaimed anthology Diaspora Boy: Comics on Crisis in America and Israel features a broad sample of his work over the past ten years. In this conversation we talk about his influences, both politically and artistically, and explore the historic and current role of counterculture in building left solidarity against fascism.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 158: Mapping the Zone w/ Liz Ryerson Aug 13, 2019

Liz Ryerson is a musician, writer, and teacher whose work explores the ideological and aesthetic landscape of video games and cult media. Her podcast The Blood Zone features her critical ideas about niche/independent media, from indie game design to music and cinema. In this conversation, we discuss the wider politics of the gaming and media world, including #Gamergate and other reactionary burblings, and trade ideas about leftists treading the stagnant cultural waters of late capitalism.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 157: Above the Law w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Jul 31, 2019

Justin Rogers-Cooper returns to continue our discussion of this Summer of Strangeness, this time taking on the Jeffrey Epstein case: who’s connected, why it matters, and what it reveals about the dynamics of power, authority, and punishment within the wider nightmare of global capitalism.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 156: Cartoon Reality w/ Daniel Pinchbeck Jul 25, 2019

Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of a number of books that explore big subjects like human consciousness, psychedelic drugs, shamanic cultures, and the Mayan 2012 prophecy. Lately he’s been thinking and writing about UFOs, after a number of startling reports in mainstream media over the past year revealed the US government’s deep engagement with spacecraft of unknown origin. In this conversation, we talk about his latest book, The Occult Control System: UFOs, aliens, other dimensions, and future timelines, and explore the possible explanations behind the UFO phenomenon’s peculiar appearance at this specific moment in history.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 155: Ride the Snake w/ Geoff Johnson Jul 16, 2019

Geoff Johnson has been teaching American history since we were both graduate students at CUNY in the George W. Bush years. In this conversation, we talk about our respective political and cultural experiences coming of age in the 1990s, and reflect on the different paths that brought us both to the radical left. From beat poetry, Jim Morrison, and hip hop to anti-capitalism and anarchy, we try to connect our personal, very American lives with the larger historical forces surrounding us.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 154: Generation Gump w/ Bill Black Jul 09, 2019

Bill Black is a historian whose project Contingent Magazine (begun with previous Nostalgia Trap guest Erin Bartram) this month features a 25th anniversary retrospective roundtable on the film Forrest Gump. In this conversation, Black explains how the film’s particular take on boomer generation “greatest hits” hides the film’s deeper engagement with the politics of the 1960s and 1970s, and helps frame how some of Gump’s key characters and scenes often dangerously distort our view of American history.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 152: Concentration Camp USA w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Jun 25, 2019

Justin Rogers-Cooper returns to the show to begin a series of episodes this summer tracking the global flashpoints of our historical moment. In this conversation, we talk about the term “concentration camp” in the context of Trump’s immigration policies, and game out the different scenarios at play regarding Iran. What’s Trump’s endgame in the Middle East? And what does this have to do with oil?

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 151: It's the Endless War, Stupid w/ Danny Haiphong Jun 20, 2019

Danny Haiphong is a socialist writer whose work frequently appears on Black Agenda Report. His new book (with Roberto Sirvent), American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror, explores the central mythologies about American benevolence that have served as the ideological spine for capitalism’s cancerous expansion. In this conversation, we talk about the disappointing foreign policy positions of left political figures like Bernie and AOC, and discuss the radical left’s longer history of engagement with issues of war, militarism, and imperialism.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 150: The Tenured Radical w/ Daniel Bessner Jun 12, 2019

Daniel Bessner is a professor and writer and frequent Nostalgia Trap contributor. He joins us to talk about his controversial recent Chronicle piece taking on the American Historical Association, and to share his vision of how to rescue the humanities from the destructive forces of neoliberalism.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 149: Me vs We w/ Thom Hartmann Jun 06, 2019

Thom Hartmann is a radio personality, best-selling author, and political commentator whose work in progressive media has spanned decades. He joins us to discuss his latest book, The Hidden History of Guns and the 2nd Amendment, and to explain his own political and philosophical evolution. From working for the Goldwater campaign as a teenager to joining Students for a Democratic Society to help fight the Vietnam War, Hartmann’s 1960s roots instilled important values and ideas about democracy, equality, and human evolution that persist in his work today.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 148: Unlearning Capitalism w/ Astra Taylor May 30, 2019

Astra Taylor is a writer and filmmaker whose work explores the radical contours of contemporary politics and philosophy. Her latest film, What is Democracy?, is a deep dive into one of history’s most intense questions, framing interviews and discussions within the harrowing context of a collapsing planet. In this conversation, she explains the ideas underlying her inquisitive approach to writing and making films, how her unorthodox experiences with formal education shaped her political and analytical thinking, and why she thinks asking bigger questions is such a vital task for the left.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 147: Anti-Capitalist in Appalachia w/ Tanya Turner May 23, 2019

Tanya Turner is one of the hosts of the Trillbilly Worker’s Party podcast, a smart, funny take on left politics in Whitesburg, Kentucky. In this conversation, we talk about the wider political world of Appalachia, her work with the media and arts center Appalshop, and how sex education is a vital space for talking about capitalism’s insidious control over our bodies.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 146: The Other Side of Going Viral w/ Linda Tirado May 14, 2019

Linda Tirado is a writer who catapulted to online fame after a casual, righteously enraged message board comment went mega-viral. Within weeks she had a book deal, TV appearances, agents, and a lot more attention than she had ever asked for or wanted. Her book, Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America, captures a working class voice that’s rarely heard in mainstream American media, and her experience with internet celebrity reflects the often terrifying ways that class functions in media culture.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 145: Money vs Wealth w/ Yasmin Nair May 09, 2019

Yasmin Nair is a Chicago-based writer, activist, and founder of Against Equality, an anti-capitalist collective of radical queer and trans writers, thinkers, and artists. Her provocative, often polemical, and always entertaining writing takes on the political culture of neoliberalism, the pitfalls of left media, and the politics of gender and sexuality, among many other topics. In this conversation we talk about the material politics of Brooklyn™ socialism, the differences between social, cultural, and economic capital, and what the left can learn from radical queer culture.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 144: The View from Brazil w/ Wendi Muse May 02, 2019

Wendi Muse is a doctoral candidate researching antiracist and left organizing in Cold War era Brazil, and the creator of the Left POCket Project, which curates capsule histories of important, often overlooked figures from the radical left. Her work shows us places where capitalism and the state are particularly oppressive, and documents the extraordinary actions people have taken to maintain solidarity and continue building movements of resistance. In this conversation, we talk about the racial and class dimensions of the Brazilian left, the movement of people and ideas between Brazil and other Portuguese-speaking nations, and the wider political implications of the 2018 assassination of Brazilian feminist and human rights activist Marielle Franco.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 143: Afterbirth of a Nation w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (BONUS EP PREVIEW) Apr 25, 2019

On this week's bonus episode, Justin Rogers-Cooper helps us takes a deep dive into the aesthetic and political legacy of Kurt Cobain, who died of suicide 25 years ago this month. Cobain is an iconic pop cultural figure for a number of reasons, but this conversation focuses on his personal politics, and how his band Nirvana expressed an organic, biologically-obsessed form of anti-capitalism. Emerging from the working class hell of the 1980s deindustrialized Pacific Northwest, Cobain’s art explored how an empty, impoverished society literally tears human bodies to pieces. From drugs to guns to misogyny, racism, violence, and capitalism itself, if you want to understand the inner contours of the American nightmare, Kurt Cobain’s life story and artistic output remains as critical as ever.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 142: Bring the Paine w/ Seth Cotlar Apr 18, 2019

Seth Cotlar is a professor of history at Willamette University and the author of Tom Paine’s America: The Rise and Fall of Transatlantic Radicalism in the Early Republic. He joins us to talk about Paine’s particular vision of a more radical democracy and how those ideas find life in today’s left. Cotlar is also hard at work on a new volume about the concept of nostalgia, obviously a favorite topic on the pod, and helps us sort out the complicated political and social functions (and the significant “traps”) of imagining the past.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 141: Centrism is a Disease w/ Chad Vigorous Apr 11, 2019

Chad Vigorous is the host of a sharp and funny podcast called The Discourse, and one of left Twitter’s most acerbic political commentators. In this conversation, he shares his insights on the nightmarish landscape of American culture and politics in the 21st century, explaining how fascism and white nationalism are finding their footing within the socioeconomic despair and ideological void created by neoliberalism.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 140: Historians in the Gig Economy w/ Bill Black Apr 04, 2019

Bill Black is a historian and writer whose work has appeared in Vox, the Atlantic, Washington Post, and a number of other publications. He joins us to talk about his path in history, a few of his more provocative pieces of research, (including an incredible narrative about the origins of the racist “watermelon” trope), and his exciting new project Contingent Magazine, which seeks to publish and promote work from the growing pool of young historians who don’t have tenure-track positions at universities. Like The Nostalgia Trap, Contingent is attempting to address the adjunctification of college faculty by creating spaces for young scholars outside of the increasingly austere academy.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 139: A People's History w/ Kevin Gannon Mar 27, 2019

Kevin Gannon is a professor of history at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, where he also serves as the Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. You may also know him as one of the history experts featured in Ava DuVernay’s incredible Netflix documentary 13th, and a very active figure in the "#twitterstorians" universe. In addition to his research on the history of race and justice in the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, he’s done a lot of thinking about how to reshape the way we teach and share American history. In this conversation we discuss the future of the discipline, from inclusive classroom strategies to the phenomenal growth of #twitterstorians, tracking how technology is transforming our idea of who and what a historian can be.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 138: Dreaming Liberation w/ Robin Kelley Mar 21, 2019

Robin Kelley is a professor of history at UCLA and the author of a number of important books on a wide range of subjects, from communism in the American South (1990’s Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression), to the political visions of radical black intellectuals and artists (2002’s Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination), to the history of jazz (2009’s Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original). He joins us to discuss his intellectual path from doctrinaire Marxism to “Marxist surrealist feminist,” and why he thinks aesthetics and culture are such vital spaces for the left to reclaim its imaginative vision.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 137: Fifty Shades of Bernie w/ Daniel Bessner (BONUS EP PREVIEW) Mar 12, 2019

Here's a brief preview of this week's bonus episode, featuring a conversation with historian Daniel Bessner on the significance of Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential run.

To listen to the entire episode: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 136: Seizing the Means of (Porn) Production Mar 05, 2019

Heather Berg is a writer and researcher who maps the intersections of socialism, feminism, and radical culture. Her upcoming book Porn Work locates porn workers as “experts on labor in late capitalism,” and in this conversation we explore how sex work in general and porn work in particular offers a critical site of anti-capitalist resistance.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 135: Money Can't Buy You Love w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Feb 26, 2019

Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us for the third installment of our Amazon HQ trilogy, in which we explore Amazon’s shocking decision to abandon its planned headquarters in Long Island City, New York. From grassroots activism and sinister politicians to Amazon’s deep connections to ICE and the surveillance state, this discussion frames the larger implications of a stunning victory for people over corporate tyranny.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 134: Posting is Praxis w/ @CapitlsmDislikr Feb 18, 2019

The online culture of memes, shitposting, and irony found on Twitter and other places is deeply entwined with the rise of millennial socialism and the larger landscape of 21st century politics. On this episode we explore the twisted path of the extremely online, as guest @CapitlsmDislikr shows us a world of grad school dead ends, crushing student loan debt, thankless adjunct teaching, satanic institutional bureaucracies and, of course, relentless irony posting on Twitter. Looking back on a ghastly past and even ghastlier future, our conversation sees millennials inhabiting a kind of endless present, with capitalism trapping an entire generation in a state of suspended animation.

Nostalgia Trap Ep 133 - The One About the 90s w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper BONUS EPISODE TEASER Feb 11, 2019

Justin and David were mere children in the 1990s, the hellish decade that spawned much of the political and cultural landscape we currently inhabit. In this episode we talk about pop-culture: from Friends to Seinfeld, Good Will Hunting to The Big Lebowski, Kurt Cobain to Tupac, we attempt to draw a historical line from the 60s to the 90s to the Trump era. What do some of our favorite (and not so favorite) cultural figures and products look like in the rearview?

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE: https://www.patreon.com/posts/24632188

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 132: Frank Rizzo's America w/ Timothy J. Lombardo Feb 06, 2019

Timothy J. Lombardo is a historian who teaches at the University of South Alabama, and whose recent book Blue Collar Conservatism: Frank Rizzo's Philadelphia and Populist Politics covers critical territory for those seeking to understand the Trump era. Using Rizzo’s political career as a jumping off point for a wider discussion of race, class, and identity, Lombardo’s work complicates some deeply-held myths about the “white working class.” In this conversation, he talks about the politics and culture that surrounded him growing up in 1980s and 1990s Philadelphia, and how he developed an interest in describing the contours of conservative politics in the post-industrial Northeast.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 131: Capital's Final Frontier w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Jan 30, 2019

Justin Rogers-Cooper is here to explain how the robber barons of the 19th century stack up against the current crop of capitalist megalomaniacs in Silicon Valley and beyond. In the process, we talk about Marx’s labor theory of value, the shift from control of resources to control of debt, the colonization of the human soul as the final frontier of profitability, and the specific function of monopoly within the larger liberal project.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 130: Being Tony Soprano w/ Topical Fever Jan 15, 2019

Before the Nostalgia Trap, David hosted a show called Topical Fever, which took on specific subjects from the worlds of politics, history and media. Sounds familiar, right? To mark the 20th anniversary since the premiere of The Sopranos, we’re sharing this Topical Fever episode from the vaults, featuring a conversation with professor of English Jeremey Cagle on the show’s relationship to another epic piece of American art: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 129: Let the People Speak w/ Maximillian Alvarez Jan 02, 2019

Maximillian Alvarez returns to the Trap to talk about his terrific new podcast Working People, a show that features deep conversations about life, labor, politics, and everything in between, from the perspective of working class people. He joins us to describe his latest series about General Motors and the social costs of the long decline of industrial manufacturing. Along the way, we chat about the alienation of social media, the prison of the gig economy, the continuing prescience of David Foster Wallace, and lots more.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 128: Amazon vs The People w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Dec 18, 2018

Justin Rogers-Cooper stops by to talk about Amazon’s impending invasion of Long Island City, Queens, where he works as a professor of English at LaGuardia Community College. Our conversation explores the psychotic evil of Jeff Bezos, the corrupt city leaders who are laying out a $3 billion red carpet for him, the larger structures of capitalism and consumerism driving Amazon’s power, and what all of this means for the future of New York City and the planet.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 127: Tracking the Right w/ Jason Wilson Dec 12, 2018

Jason Wilson is a writer for The Guardian whose work often covers the far right of American political culture. From Milo to the Proud Boys, Alex Jones to Glenn Beck, Wilson details the internal drama, street fights, and larger context of right-wing movements in the 21st century. In this episode, we catch up with his latest reporting on “deplatforming” and explore the role social media plays in spreading extreme ideas.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 126: A Politics of Desire w/ Conner Habib Dec 04, 2018

Conner Habib is the host of Against Everyone w/ Conner Habib, a podcast about subjects that often fall outside the range of typical “left” discussions—things like radical philosophy, the occult, psychoanalysis, sexuality, porn, and much more. In this conversation, he explains how the concept of desire permeates our politics, present in everything from sex work and surveillance to academia and the military-industrial complex, and why healing the planet and healing ourselves are inextricably connected projects.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 125: A Dark Inheritance w/ Brooke Newman Nov 27, 2018

Brooke Newman is a professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of A Dark Inheritance: Blood, Race, and Sex in Colonial Jamaica, a book that traces the evolution of racial definitions and sexual practices in one of 18th century Britain’s most valuable colonies. In this conversation, Newman discusses how notions of race and nation interacted with sex, gender, and class in often surprising ways during a brutal imperial occupation, and explains how Jamaica’s particular history reveals the deep, pathological contradictions at the heart of the Atlantic slave system.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 124: They Don't Care About You w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper TEASER Nov 19, 2018

TEASER: On this week's bonus episode, Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us to talk about the structural connections between California wildfires and a recent spate of mass shootings, understanding them as part of how corporations from energy to guns socialize losses while privatizing profits. We also deconstruct the Tucker Carlson media outrage in the context of capitalism’s increasing encroachment into supposed “sacred spaces” like the American home. Subscribe to listen!

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 123: When the Bough Breaks w/ Daegan Miller Nov 13, 2018

Daegan Miller is a writer whose recent book, This Radical Land: A Natural History of American Dissent, presents an intellectual history of how different Americans have resisted capitalism’s ravaging of the natural environment. From black antislavery radicals in the Adirondack wilderness of upstate New York to utopian anarchists in California’s sequoias, Miller’s narrative reveals a throughline of alternate visions running underneath the nation’s history. In this conversation, Miller tells how his personal connection to the land influenced his work as an environmental historian, explains how the disappointments of the academic labor market are connected to the wider alienation of 21st century American life, and offers his own eco-socialist vision of a kinder, gentler future.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 122: Dunder Mifflin Nation w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Nov 06, 2018

Justin Rogers-Cooper returns to the Nostalgia Trap to break down the political and social significance of NBC’s The Office, positioning the show within the larger context of 21st century neoliberal capitalism. How does the evolving sitcom form reflect changing attitudes about labor, patriarchy, and other structures of oppression? And what does it mean for the future of work?

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 121: Socialism and the Climate Crisis w/ Kate Aronoff Oct 31, 2018

Kate Aronoff is a writer whose work appears in The Intercept, Dissent, In These Times, and a number of other fine left publications. In this conversation, we talk about the media’s framing of the recent IPCC report’s dire prognosis for the planet, the pitfalls of climate nihilism, and the politics of saving the world.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 120: Fighting the Bad Future w/ Malcolm Harris Oct 24, 2018

Malcolm Harris is a freelance writer and the author of Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials, a book that explores how the structure of American society is rigged against young people. Despite the stereotype of apathetic, entitled youth wasting away in their parents’ basements, Harris shows us a generation locked in by the horrific social, economic, and cultural realities of the 21st century—and offers a blueprint for how young folks can join the fight for a better world.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 119: Imperialism is Over If You Want It w/ Daniel Bessner Oct 16, 2018

Daniel Bessner is a historian with a particular focus on American foreign policy. His book Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual mixes biography with a striking analysis of Cold War policy-making. In this conversation, Bessner expands on the ideas he presented in a recent New York Times op-ed, in which he argues that the left needs a more focused and practical pathway to dismantling the American imperial project and drawing down the endless wars that have decimated globe for decades.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 118: Civil Unrest w/ Nathan J Robinson Oct 10, 2018

Nathan J. Robinson is the creator and editor-in-chief of Current Affairs, one of the left’s most consistently valuable and readable publications. In this conversation, Robinson talks about honing his skills at political argument in the high school debate club, explains how a British accent can be an asset in American media, and describes his vision for the future of Current Affairs and the larger left movement.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 117: The Decline and Fall of American Cinema w/ Eileen Jones Sep 26, 2018

Eileen Jones is a film critic and professor whose biting, polemical movie reviews are featured in Jacobin and a number of other publications. Her recent book Filmsuck, USA investigates the persistently horrific state of American cinema, while outlining Jones’ vision of a liberatory movie culture that honors the medium’s working class roots. In this conversation, she explains how her early experiences watching Hollywood genre films influenced her ideas about movies, why the Coen brothers are her preferred auteurs, and why she thinks the language of cinema can play such a vital role in challenging the organizing principles of capitalism.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 116: The Southernization of Everything w/ Keri Leigh Merritt Sep 17, 2018

Keri Leigh Merritt is a historian of American class, race, and inequality, with a particular focus on the South during and after the Civil War. Her book Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South deftly navigates discourses on race, power, and capitalism, telling us what happens to “excess labor” under a slave economy. In this conversation, she talks about the South’s influence on her direction as a scholar, and explains how vital elements of the Southern political economy (from “right to work” to convict leasing) have spread to the rest of the country.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 115: Raging Against the Machine w/ George Ciccariello-Maher Sep 11, 2018

George Ciccariello-Maher is a political scientist and activist whose work focuses on the historical and current landscape of insurgent politics and anti-capitalism. As an outspoken left academic, Ciccariello-Maher is a favorite target of white supremacists and other right-wing extremists, whose threats and harassment led to his resignation from Drexel University in 2017. In this conversation, he tells how his early life informed his political development, why Venezuela’s recent history is such a vital piece of understanding global politics, and how riots and other forms of militant resistance can be effective means for achieving social and economic justice.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 114: Postmodern Punk w/ Daniel Traber Sep 05, 2018

Daniel Traber is a professor of English at Texas A & M University at Galveston. His work focuses on the intersection of culture and politics, with a particular emphasis on musical subcultures like punk and ska, a favorite Nostalgia Trap subject. In this conversation, he talks about getting into punk as a white suburban teen in Galveston, Texas in the 1980s, and how expressions of subversive identity are entangled with the forces of capitalism and fascism from which they emerged. From “God Save the Queen” to “conservative is the new punk,” we explore the malleability of our cultural signifiers in the age of Trump.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 113: The Center Collapses w/ Shuja Haider Aug 28, 2018

Shuja Haider is a writer and editor for a number of left publications (check out his work in Popula and Viewpoint). In this conversation, we talk about historical cycles of generational politics, the weird road from 60s counterculture to "conservatism is the new punk rock," and the growth of left/right radicalism among young people in the Trump era.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 112: The War that Never Ends w/ Matthew Stanley Aug 22, 2018

Matthew Stanley is a historian and professor whose latest book, The Loyal West: Civil War and Reunion in Middle America explores how the politics of the Civil War moved through the regions of the Lower Middle West. His work shows us how ideologies evolve through space and time, and how the Civil War in particular has served as a container for American social and political attitudes well into the 21st century. With Confederate monuments being toppled by activists and organizers around the country, to the shock and outrage of white supremacists and “traditional” (wink) Americans everywhere, Stanley points out some vital historical context:

“People talk about preserving history. But the best argument against keeping these monuments in public places IS the historical argument. Most of these were not erected by Confederate veterans, they weren’t erected during the Civil War or even Reconstruction. They were erected during the Jim Crow era, and many of them explicitly re-encode the racial order through monumentation. So they’re designed to be a political statement. You can’t depoliticize a monument. A monument is inherently political.”

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 111: Socialism or Barbarism w/ Micah Uetricht Aug 15, 2018

Micah Uetricht is managing editor at Jacobin Magazine and the author of Strike for America: Chicago Teachers Against Austerity. Like many of us, he’s watching with a combination of delight and disbelief as left-of-liberal ideas enjoy a rare moment in the mainstream spotlight, from the 1950s-style red-baiting of Fox News to Stephen Colbert’s recent declaration that “God is a socialist.” Even the ladies of The View are getting in on it, sitting down with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for a friendly little chat about democratic socialism. To Uetricht, these moments are further evidence that the time is ripe for a return to the working class politics that defined the Democratic Party in past eras.

In this conversation, Uetricht tells how his early experiences as a union organizer influenced his ideas, what he sees as the future for labor in America, and why he thinks it’s so critical for the left to wrest power from the neoliberals who control the Democratic Party:

“It really is a kind of socialism or barbarism moment. We can either offer something to people, or someone like Trump can. This is why we do have this responsibility, because obviously what is on offer by the Democratic Party, by the tepid centrist liberalism, is just going to continue to play right into the hands of people like Trump. And so our responsibility is to create an alternative that can actually speak to these very understandable and real and rational feelings that a huge chunk, if not the majority, of the population are feeling right now.”

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 110: War is a Racket w/ Nate Bethea Aug 08, 2018

Nate Bethea is co-host of the podcast A Hell of a Way to Die, a funny, often bracing show about the intersection of leftist politics and American military culture. While serving as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army from 2007-2014, and deploying to Afghanistan in 2009-2010, Bethea reports that he “lived the Army values so hard that I became a socialist.” In this conversation, he discusses the hazards of being openly left while on active duty, the disturbing rise of MAGA-style fascism among veterans, and how his experience at war deepened his political commitments:

“Leftist veterans aren’t coming from the perspective that everyone should be in the military, but what we’re saying is that we’ve seen some of these policies put forth in the military, we’ve seen things like universal health care, things like the GI Bill covering your full tuition—we see these things, and we think, why can’t everybody have this?

And we also have seen the waste and the stupidity . . . the containers full of shit burned in Afghanistan, vehicles valued at $300,000 abandoned in Iraq . . . I mean, if you take ROTC paying for my undergrad, and the GI Bill paying for my M.F.A., and if I had done a Ph.D., all of that tuition put together, and all the cost of living allowance they’ve given me, would not equal the cost of one stupid Humvee that we gave to the Iraqis and then ISIS stole, and then we bombed it with a bomb that cost more than the Humvee.”

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 108: Seizing Socialism's Moment w/ Alex Press Jul 30, 2018

Alex Press is a writer and assistant editor at Jacobin Magazine whose work explores the contours and possibilities of American working class politics. In this conversation, she tells about being radicalized by the Occupy movement in 2011, her journey through anarchism and socialism in a basement full of radical literature, and her thoughts on the rising visibility of socialist politics in the U.S. mainstream. Surveying the current political landscape, Press sees many opportunities for the left to more effectively harness the anger and energy felt by millions of Americans. She argues that popular social movements, from Black Lives Matter to #MeToo, can and should be channeled into real working class power:

“We don’t have a very visible fighting feminist movement in the way that we’ve had in the past. You have this incredible energy around #MeToo, so many people wanted to change this thing, everyone agreed it was terrible that every woman they know seems to have experienced really awful things, whether in their work life or elsewhere, and yet there was nowhere really for people to go. And when you don’t have that infrastructure of an organized left that can really lead that energy, and develop it, and demand certain changes, it dissipates. It’s a real missed opportunity, and it’s why left organizations should be preparing themselves to actually figure out a way to fight back against incredibly anti-feminist policies in this country.”

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 107: Mapping the Face of War w/ Bhakti Shringarpure Jul 25, 2018

Bhakti Shringarpure is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Warscapes, an online magazine that features interviews, fiction, non-fiction, poetry and art from regions of conflict around the world. In this conversation, she talks about her youth in India, her work with poet Ammiel Alcalay in graduate school, and why Warscapes avoids the clickbait format of mainstream digital media. In discussing recent outrage about Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza, Shringarpure explains how the urgent tone of social media distorts our perceptions:

“I think it’s not a new moment. Those things, the brutality toward children, the right to maim, all these things that people are shocked by, have always been endemic to that conflict, and to many conflicts. But I think we have this very bifurcated moment. We have this over-vigilant reportage [with] Twitter and social media—we’re finding out a lot, so the outrage machine is very intense.

On the one hand, we have all this information, we can see how intensely horrible it is, and then we have a set of governments that seem completely disinterested in what’s causing us this daily outrage. We are constantly forced to think of the insensitivity of these governments, alongside the hypersensitive, over-the-top, social media internet machine giving us image after image after image, and I think there’s a shock there . . . but the actual violence is unchanged.”

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 106: Hyperspeed of the Immediate w/ Maximillian Alvarez Jul 17, 2018

Maximillian Alvarez is a writer and academic whose work often explores the intersections of changing technological environments and the production of radical political philosophy. In this conversation, he talks about being surrounded by conservatives in Southern California during the 1990s, how the discovery of Russian literature expanded his political and intellectual worldview, and why it’s vital for academics to bridge the gap between the university and the wider public. Reflecting on Trump’s rise and the increasingly overt fascism of his troglodytic supporters, Alvarez invites us to consider the dark implications of social media’s powerful grip on the American mind:

“We are seeing and experiencing first-hand how the changing media environment in the 21st century shapes politics . . . When we’re writing the history of the beginning of the Trump era, we’re going to have plenty of work to do to figure out how his brand of populist ethnonationalism came to resonate with people, how the backlash to Obama materialized, the shifts on the right, etc. But we’re also going to have to ask other questions that are incredibly difficult.

What, for instance, are the political ramifications of a country’s increasingly pervasive loss of long term memory? [We’re] plugged into this hyperspeed of the immediate that social media and the digital news flow attunes [us] to, and I think this is having a very significant impact. The politics of resentment has found a place to flourish in a social media economy where the dopamine hits come from the responses of other people, that you get to see on your phone.”

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 105: Between Oligarchy and Democracy w/ Heather Cox Richardson Jul 11, 2018

Heather Cox Richardson is a historian of American politics with a number of important books on the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the ideological evolution of the Republican Party. Richardson’s work tracks the space between rhetoric and reality, showing us how political parties pull the levers of race and class to manipulate public opinion and gain power.

Richardson’s recent focus is the way American conservatism has influenced the direction of the Republican Party over the course of the past several decades. In this conversation, she explains how “movement conservatives” since the Buckley era pushed the GOP to embrace increasingly extreme candidates and positions, setting the table for the Trump nightmare:

“Americans figured out fairly early on that [Republican economic policies] didn’t really help them. So Republican language has gotten more and more crazy. For me, the real sign was when Carly Fiorina, in the debates in 2016, said that Democrats were literally killing babies so they could sell their body parts . . .

They’ve had to ratchet this language up more and more. So when Trump came in and said and did the horrific things he did, he was really simply playing that movement conservative narrative out to its logical end. It’s exactly the path we started on in 1951 with God and Man at Yale.”

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 103: No Really, You Don't Need a Weatherman w/ Michael Kazin Jul 02, 2018

Michael Kazin is a historian of American labor and social movements, and co-editor of Dissent magazine. As a student at Harvard in the late 1960s, he was a leader within Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and played a part in its short-lived militant faction, the Weatherman. In this conversation, Kazin reflects on his path “from revolutionary to professor,” explaining how his early experiences in the New Left inform his analysis of the massive political shifts over the decades that followed. In explaining the recent popularity of left figures and organizations, from Bernie Sanders to the DSA, Kazin sees liberal failure as a significant part of the equation:

“When liberals are in power, it actually helps the left, because they make promises they don’t keep. The left grew in the 60s under liberal presidents, the left grew in the 30s under Franklin Roosevelt, the left grew under Woodrow Wilson before then, and the left grew under Abraham Lincoln, who was in effect a progressive though no one used that term at the time.

And so people, especially young people say ‘I thought Obama was gonna do all this great stuff— he talked about a movement, he was gonna stop climate change, he was gonna get everybody better wages, he was gonna help unions organize.’ And the financial crisis made it seem as though, maybe capitalism’s not so great after all. Maybe this globalized economy, what some people call neoliberalism, made promises it couldn’t keep.

So under Obama, we have Black Lives Matter, we have Occupy . . . and people are open to hearing the kinds of things that Sanders has been saying for 50 years.”

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 102: Immigration and the Carceral State w/ Carl Lindskoog Jun 25, 2018

Carl Lindskoog is a historian of immigration, race, and rebellion whose forthcoming book Detain and Punish: Haitian Refugees and the Rise of the World’s Largest Immigration Detention System locates the roots of America’s current immigration policies in the history of U.S - Haiti relations over the past several decades. His latest piece reminds us that horrific practices like child detention are sadly nothing new, explaining how the U.S. government’s response to an influx of Haitian refugees in the 1990s created the template for the harsh, punitive immigration system that exists today. In this conversation, Lindskoog tells the extraordinary story of Haitian children rising up against their American captors at a detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, and discusses how the history of resistance to the U.S. immigration system is part of the wider movement to confront the brutality of the American carceral state:

“It’s always the two sides, repression and resistance. Long before it’s Guantanamo detainees or immigrant detainees in the United States doing hunger strikes and resisting and organizing inside—which they’re doing right now and we’ve been hearing about for the past several years—in the 1970s Haitian women in a prison in West Virginia have a hunger strike . . . so this is a big part of the movement for refugee and immigrant rights that’s been going a for a long time.

And this is where I see the Haitian story as connected to the [work of] Heather Ann Thompson and other people who are documenting prisoner resistance and resistance inside, because just as incarcerated people have always fought for their freedom, so have incarcerated people who are immigrants . . . and that needs to be part of the story too.”

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 100: Writing Attica's History w/ Heather Ann Thompson Jun 18, 2018

Heather Ann Thompson is a historian and writer whose 2016 book Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017. In this conversation, she discusses how her upbringing in Detroit shaped her views on American politics and ignited her interest in tracking the history of mass incarceration. Thompson also talks about the 13-year process behind writing a book like Blood in the Water, a project that included intense research, wrenching oral histories, and a narrative that’s been intentionally distorted and covered up for decades. By putting Attica’s history in context, Thompson’s work considers the larger moral dimensions of America’s obsession with crime and punishment:

“We have to explain not just why we get drug laws . . . what we really need to explain is: When did we become a country where it’s okay to have 400 children in Michigan serving life sentences? When did we as a society become okay with people spending 10 years in solitary confinement?

And that was where I felt that the memory of Attica was so critically important. Somehow, we had been given this opportunity to do right by the folks that were serving time, and that is exactly what the men in Attica had hoped would happen. And yet, the exact opposite happens and we come out of Attica seeing prisoners like animals.

How does that happen?”

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 99: The Long Seventies w/ Bruce Schulman May 29, 2018

Bruce Schulman's 2001 book The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics is a fascinating take on a critical era, and helps put the Trump era into an understandable historical context. In this conversation, Schulman discusses how popular culture came to be such a central element of his methodology, helping him chart a course through the political and social history of late 20th century America.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 98: The Ruins of History w/ Megan Kate Nelson May 17, 2018

Megan Kate Nelson's interdisciplinary approach to environmental history puts towering events like the Civil War into wholly new contexts. Her book Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War investigates the human, biological, and infrastructural devastation of the era, and asks critical questions about American memory. In this conversation she explains the development of her methodology and the direction of the historical discipline.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 97: Wild Wild Country w/ Claudia Moreno Parsons BONUS EPISODE TEASER May 10, 2018

Here's a quick preview of next week's bonus episode, a conversation with Claudia Moreno Parsons about the Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country. If you want to support the show and get access to all of our bonus material, you can subscribe here.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 96: The Longue Durée of Modernity w/ Daniel McClure May 08, 2018

Daniel McClure is a historian and writer interested in long term historical processes (like capitalism, imperialism, and the nation-state), connecting those big ideas to American popular culture and media in the postwar era. He explains how a theoretical approach to the study of history, while often met with skepticism in the academy, provides such an effective lens for understanding the current moment.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 94: The Greenwich Village Folk Explosion w/ Stephen Petrus May 01, 2018

Stephen Petrus is a historian of 20th century America and author of Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival. In this conversation, he tells me about discovering the world of beat poetry, folk music, and a rising "counterculture" in his younger years, and how becoming an academic historian led him to explore the complex social, political, and economic trends that created such a potent cultural moment in 1950s and 1960s New York City.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 93: Jason Wilson Apr 23, 2018

Jason Wilson's coverage of last summer's "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which culminated in the murder of Heather Heyer, helped frame the rising presence of "alt-right" and white supremacist actors on the American political stage. In this conversation, Wilson tells me about his youth in Australia, years studying media theory in grad school, and how he became alternately fascinated and horrified with America's radical right-wing.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 92: Allen Ruff Apr 12, 2018

Allen Ruff is the host of A Public Affair on WORT-FM community radio in Madison, Wisconsin, a show that features interviews with a wide range of figures from the left side of the American political and cultural scene (including yours truly). In this conversation, he talks about his experiences in the antiwar movement of the 1960s and 1970s, his subsequent career as an academic historian, and his trajectory on the radical left.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 91: Thomas Frank Apr 02, 2018

Thomas Frank might be best known as the author of What's the Matter with Kansas?, a 2004 book that sought to explain why so many Americans in "flyover country" vote for the Republican Party. But his analysis goes much deeper than just Kansas. In this conversation, he discusses his development as a political analyst and historian, and offers his perspective on what's happened to the left and right in recent decades. His latest book, Listen Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? traces how Democrats became the party of Wall Street, and Republicans hone their image as the party of "ordinary working people."

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 90: AM/FM - The Political Economy of Mass Shootings Mar 21, 2018

In this episode, Justin Rogers-Cooper joins me to unpack the mass shooting phenomenon in the wider context of American history. Why do Americans kill each other? Who benefits from mass killings? And how is social violence connected to the structures of capitalism?

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 89: Erin Bartram Mar 12, 2018

Erin Bartram's blog piece, "The Sublimated Grief of the Left Behind," explores an uncomfortable topic among graduate students and recent Ph.D.'s: giving up on the academic job market. In this conversation, Bartram discusses the origin of the piece (and how it ended up in the Chronicle of Higher Education), the ideological and material gap between full-time professors and part-time adjuncts, and how her path as an academic was shaped by the wider politics of neoliberalism in the university.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 88: Jeremy Young Feb 27, 2018

Jeremy C. Young is a professor of history at Dixie State University, and the author of Age of Charisma: Leaders, Followers, and Emotions in American Society, 1870-1940. In this conversation, Jeremy tells me about his own political evolution, and how contemporary American political figures like John McCain and Howard Dean led him to investigate how the idea of "personal magnetism" came to have such a particular power over the American public.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 87: Eero Laine Feb 20, 2018

Eero Laine is a professor of Theatre at the University at Buffalo whose work often focuses on the world of professional wrestling. He joins me to talk about how he came to study wrestling as both a performance and social/psychological phenomenon, and explains why the particular political economy of the WWE provides such a critical lens for understanding American history and culture.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 86: AM/FM - Punk in the 90s Feb 06, 2018

David Fouser was definitely way more into punk, as both an ethos and music genre, than I recall ever being. But now that he's all grown up, like many of us, his politics and musical tastes have evolved. In this conversation, we trade memories of the 1990s Southern California punk and ska scene, and reflect on punk's wider political and social significance.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 85: Daniel Bessner Jan 30, 2018

Daniel Bessner is a professor and writer whose work explores 20th century American cultural and intellectual history. In this conversation, we talk about his book Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual, his current research into the archives of the RAND Corporation, and his ideas about how intellectuals and academics might fit into a wider left project.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 84: Yekaterina Oziashvili Jan 23, 2018

Yekaterina Oziashvili, a professor of political science at Sarah Lawrence College, joins me to talk about her upbringing in Georgia during the final years of the Soviet Union, and how the nation's collapse in the early 1990s led to profound transformation's in her family's life. Her story, including her move to New York City at the age of 14, provides a fascinating angle on the intersection of ethnic identity, nationalism, and revolutionary politics.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 83: AM/FM - The Deep State is Capitalism Jan 15, 2018

What is the "deep state"? Does it really exist, or is it a specter in the minds of far-right conspiracy theorists from Jack D. Ripper to Alex Jones? In this episode, Justin Rogers-Cooper joins me to sort it out, exploring the "deep state" idea in the context of the opioid crisis and other contemporary signs of malignant capitalism.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 82: Michael Brenes Jan 07, 2018

Michael Brenes is a historian and Senior Archivist for American Diplomacy at Yale. When I first met him years ago, we were both working on degrees in American history at the CUNY Graduate Center, and discovered similar interests: twentieth century U.S. politics, the Cold War, the military-industrial complex, Vietnam—and, perhaps most importantly, a desire to understand how these historical phenomenon connect with our current crisis. In this conversation, Michael tells me how he landed at CUNY, his work exploring the political economy of the American military, and what his upcoming biography of Hubert Humphrey will tell us about a critical moment in the history of left/liberal politics.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 81: Yasmin Nair Dec 11, 2017

Yasmin Nair is a writer and activist based in Chicago, known as much for her dynamic political and cultural writing as for her contentious social media adventures. In this conversation we spend a good amount of time talking about her amazing piece in Evergreen Review, a manifesto for an apocalyptic moment that combines analysis of neoliberalism with ideas about gentrification, queer culture, dystopian science fiction, and so much more.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 80: AM/FM - 1877-1977 Dec 04, 2017

Justin Rogers-Cooper and I have often talked about combining our scholarly interests into an academic mega-project, exploring the connections between 1877 and 1977, an era that witnessed spectacular clashes between labor and capital and the development of a "citizen-soldier" politics that threatened the state's hegemonic grip on the imperial narrative. In this episode, we brainstorm some ideas about the project and try to nail down why this 100-year period is so critical to understanding our present historical moment.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 79: Douglas Williams Nov 27, 2017

Douglas Williams is a fierce political writer and grassroots organizer whose work can be found at TheSouthLawn.org. In this conversation, he tells me about the influence of his father's union work on his political development, and how the letdown of the Obama years led him, like many others, to the radical left.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 78: RE: Louis CK with Peter Sabatino Nov 15, 2017

Peter Sabatino, the Nostalgia Trap's producer and sound wizard, joins me to unpack the recent revelations about Louis CK's abusive behavior. Our conversation attempts to put this stuff in context, discussing both Louis' disturbing comedic output and the wider problem of predatory men protected by their social, political, and cultural power.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 77: Nelson Lichtenstein Nov 09, 2017

Nelson Lichtenstein is a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he also serves as the director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy. He joins me to talk about his time at Berkeley during the radical uprisings of the 1960s, his development as a labor historian, and the state of American politics.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 76: Christian Appy Nov 02, 2017

Christian Appy's work on the history of the Vietnam War has had an enormous influence on the direction of my own research and writing on the war. In this conversation, Appy joins me to talk about the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary, The Vietnam War, which aired on PBS in October. We analyze the Burns aesthetic and discuss how the film avoids confronting the war's most troubling questions.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 75: David Fouser Oct 23, 2017

David Fouser is a professor of history who recently completed a Ph.D at the University of California, Irvine. In this conversation he tells me all about the field of environmental history, how grad school drew him (and, seemingly, everyone else) to the left, and the particular contours of academic life in Los Angeles.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 74: Book Club, RE: Stephen King Oct 17, 2017

Fifty years after publishing his first short story, Stephen King remains a powerful force in American popular culture. Claudia Moreno Parsons joins me to talk about what King's work has meant to us personally and his place in the wider spectrum of American literature.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 73: AM/FM - Dreamer? I Barely Know Her! Oct 02, 2017

In this episode, Justin Rogers-Cooper and I take on the immigration debate from our typically broader historical perspective. How did we get from "tear down this wall!" in 1989 to "build the wall!" in 2016, and what do our rapidly hardening state borders tell us about what's coming down the line?

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 72: Mikhail Gershovich Sep 25, 2017

Mikhail Gershovich was my boss at the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute in New York, where we were both surprised to discover that we had each been raised in Ventura County during the 1980s. Now that we're both living in California again (Mikhail is academic director at Emerson College in Los Angeles), I get to hear about his early childhood in the Soviet Union, how his family came to the U.S. in 1979, and what it was like becoming American in Southern California during the height of the 1980s Cold War.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 71: Vincent DiGirolamo Jul 16, 2017

On my way out of Baruch College after twelve years of teaching in the history department, I stopped by Professor Vincent DiGirolamo's office to talk with him about his youth in California and his path to academia in New York City.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 70: AM/FM - One Planet to Burn Jul 04, 2017

Climate change is a favorite topic for me and my friend Justin Rogers-Cooper, who joins me here to talk about the state of the planet and the doomed human species in the Trump era. Despite its apocalyptic implications, our conversation takes an improbably optimistic turn, as Justin explains how the recent Star Wars entry Rogue One might point the way to a horizontal, inclusive politics strong enough to confront an increasingly challenging future.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 69: AM/FM - You Only Love Me When I'm Dying Jun 25, 2017

My good friend Justin Rogers-Cooper came over to help me understand a bit more of what's going on in Syria, and our conversation ended up focusing more on war imagery and how it functions in the social media age. How do graphic pictures and videos of war's mangled bodies, liked and shared on Facebook and Twitter, reflect the growing intersection of capitalism, media, technology, and violence?

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 68: Michael Koncewicz Jun 21, 2017

Michael Koncewicz is a historian and writer whose book They Said ‘No’ to Nixon: Republicans Who Stood Up to the President’s Abuses of Power will be out next year from University of California Press. In this conversation he tells me about his college years, working for the Nixon library in Yorba Linda, California, and how internal resistance to Nixon's criminality might signal a strategy for dealing with Trump.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 67: Matt Karp May 28, 2017

Matt Karp is a professor of U.S. history at Princeton University, and the author of the recent book This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy. In this conversation, Matt tells me about the process of his politicization through various stages of academia, the roots of his interest in the Civil War era, and how the abolitionist project provides an important model for a popular revolutionary politics.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 66: David Parsons May 16, 2017

To celebrate the publication of my book, Dangerous Grounds: Antiwar Coffeehouses and Military Dissent in the Vietnam Era(University of North Carolina Press, 2017), my good friend Justin Rogers-Cooper sits down for a detailed discussion. GI coffeehouses were opened by antiwar activists outside more than 20 American military bases throughout the country in the 1960s and 1970s; Dangerous Grounds puts the coffeehouse phenomenon in historical context, exploring the often misunderstood connections between radical left politics and American soldiers.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 65: Carolyn Eisenberg May 12, 2017

Professor Carolyn Eisenberg was studying history at Columbia University during the late 1960s and 1970s, witnessing (and taking part in) some of the historic political activism that emerged from the campus during those critical years. In this conversation we talked about the intersection of academia, teaching, and radical politics, and how the dynamics of campus life have shifted since the Vietnam War era.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 64: Jesse Schwartz May 03, 2017

Like many of my favorite guests, I met Jesse Schwartz when we were both doing our doctoral work at the CUNY Graduate Center. He's now a professor of English at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, Queens, and joins me here to share his journey from hippie bum to distinguished intellectual. Along the way we talk about California and New York, the politics of academia, the allure of psychedelia, and the weird shades of American countercultural experience. It's a long strange trip...

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 63: Ellen Schrecker Apr 26, 2017

Ellen Schrecker is an American historian whose work focuses on Cold War-era anti-communism. Her book Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America is a canonical treatment of the subject. In this interview, she discusses her upbringing, education, and the particular politics of the Ivy League during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 62: Sarah Jones Apr 17, 2017

Sarah Jones is a writer and social media editor at the New Republic, where her work has focused on poverty, politics, feminism, health care, and a number of other issues. I wanted to talk to her about Appalachia, where she was born and raised, and how the particular culture and politics of this region shaped her identity as a writer and thinker.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 61: Katie Halper Apr 04, 2017

Katie Halper is the host of the Katie Halper Show on WBAI, where she regularly brings a fresh, funny, and stridently left perspective to the horrific landscape of modern American politics. We talked about her upbringing in New York City and her path through performance, media, and politics.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 60: AM/FM with Justin Rogers-Cooper Mar 28, 2017

Justin Rogers-Cooper and I have spent a lot of time talking about false flags, conspiracy theories, and the strange American predilection for constructing our own personal realities. In this conversation we consider the wider historical and cultural implications of our collective and individual paranoid fantasies. From JFK to pizzagate, what do our conspiracy theories reveal about the national psyche and how it interacts with the structures of power?

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 59: Jesse Myerson Mar 24, 2017

Jesse Myerson is a writer and activist whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Dissent, The Baffler, and many of other publications. We talk a lot about the contemporary left, Occupy Wall Street, the Bernie Sanders campaign, what to do with the awful Democratic Party, and much more.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 58: AM/FM with Freddie deBoer Mar 14, 2017

It's always fun to sit down with writer Freddie deBoer, whose sharp, often savage takes on American politics usually provoke strong reactions from both friends and foes. In this conversation we talk about the awfulness of the Democratic Party and the dead-end of Daily Show-style liberalism, and attempt to chart a course for the left through the forest of the alt-right, fake news, and the horrors of a Republican-controlled central government.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 57: Matt Lau Mar 08, 2017

Matt Lau was a ubiquitous presence at the CUNY Graduate Center during my years of study there, perhaps most memorably as the author of a series of ridiculous satirical pieces on the back page of the school newspaper. In this conversation we bond over being white hip hop fans in the suburbs of Southern California in the 90s, our shared ambivalence about a life in academia, and Matt's path from the hazy woods of UC Santa Cruz to the utilitarian halls of CUNY.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 56: AM/FM Mar 03, 2017

On the debut episode of Nostalgia Trap AM/FM, Justin Rogers-Cooper joins me to talk about the nuclear bomb, the dangers of atomic diplomacy, and how the mushroom cloud at the end of history seems somehow more in focus than ever.

Nostalgia Trap AM/FM: Ep56 Teaser Feb 22, 2017

Nostalgia Trap AM/FM: It's the end of the world and you know it.

Nostalgia Trap AM/FM: Teaser Feb 19, 2017

Nostalgia Trap AM/FM: Real conversations about history, politics, and culture, remixed for an apocalyptic era. Coming soon.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 55: Michael Busch Feb 12, 2017

Michael Busch is a senior editor at Warscapes, an online magazine that features writing, art, photography and other media from war-torn regions around the globe. Michael talks with me about his youth and world travels, his time studying international organized crime at the CUNY Graduate Center, and the values and ideas behind his work at Warscapes.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 54: L.A. Kauffman Feb 06, 2017

L.A. Kauffman is a longtime organizer and historian whose new book, Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism traces the history of the left in the post 1960s era. She spoke with me about some of the major successes and failures of direct action campaigns in recent decades. In the age of a reawakened U.S. left, what can we learn about the tactics and strategies developed in the past? Kauffman's work answers that question with a detailed historical narrative that can serve as a guide to what works, and what doesn't.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 53: Daniel Pinchbeck Dec 17, 2016

Daniel Pinchbeck's bestselling 2002 book Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism had a profound effect on me when I read it in my early twenties. Along with the work of Noam Chomsky and Terence McKenna, Pinchbeck's writing definitely shaped the way I interpreted the fallout after 9/11 and the cascade of horror that was the Bush years. Here Pinchbeck shares his thoughts about a wide range of topics, from crop circles and shamanism to climate emergency and apocalypse. His book How Soon is Now: From Personal Initiation to Global Transformation comes out in early 2017.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 52: Will Menaker Dec 05, 2016

Will Menaker is one of the hosts of Chapo Trap House, a fierce and funny podcast that took the media world by storm during Election 2016. Here Will makes a triumphant return to the Nostalgia Trap, discussing Chapo's insane rise during the Democratic primaries, the depressing state of liberal "comedy," and how the show might evolve during the impending Trump era.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 51: Felix Biederman Nov 11, 2016

Felix Biederman is one of the hosts of Chapo Trap House, a podcast that mixes relentless satire with incisive political analysis. In this conversation, recorded less than 24 hours after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, Felix dissects his feelings about this surreal moment, tells me about his youth in Hyde Park, Chicago, and shares his perspectives on war, the Democratic Party, the appeal of MMA, and much more.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 50: Matt Christman Oct 16, 2016

Matt Christman is one third of the wildly popular podcast Chapo Trap House, a show that takes left political satire to a brutal, hilarious, and altogether new place. He talked with me about his youth in Wisconsin, his adventures on Twitter, and the abysmal state of American political discourse.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 49: Myq Kaplan Jul 15, 2016

Myq Kaplan is a very funny stand-up comedian whose material often touches on cultural issues like veganism, polyamory, and psychedelic drugs. I talked to him about his work in linguistics at Boston University, his early years as a musician, and his evolution as a comic. The "Hitler/time travel" bit discussed on this episode is featured in Myq's stand-up special, Small, Dork, and Handsome, currently streaming on Netflix.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 48: Thaddeus Russell Jun 20, 2016

Thaddeus Russell is a professor of history and writer whose book A Renegade History of the United States presents a striking counter-narrative to popular interpretations of the American experience. In this conversation, he tells me about a childhood spent surrounded by the Berkeley political world of the 1960s and 70s, and traces his unique path through the often rigid culture of academia.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 47: Nathan Cedric Tankus Jun 07, 2016

Nathan Cedric Tankus is a young scholar studying American economics during the antebellum period. He talked with me about his research, his personal background, and the future of left/right politics.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 46: Dahlia Elsayed May 24, 2016

Dahlia Elsayed is a visual artist, writer, and professor at LaGuardia Community College. She told me all about her youth in New Jersey during the Reagan years, her take on the punks vs. hippies rivalry, and the philosophy behind her striking visual style.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 45: Johanna Fernandez Apr 18, 2016

Johanna Fernandez is a professor of history at CUNY's Baruch College. We had a great talk about her childhood in the Bronx, her path in higher education, her development as an activist, and her friendship with imprisoned radical Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 44: Freddie deBoer Mar 29, 2016

Freddie deBoer is an academic and writer with a talent for provocation. He joins me to discuss his family's roots on the left, his engagement with the politics of higher education, and the impetus behind his polemical blog, fredrikdeboer.com.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 43: Sarah Leonard Mar 16, 2016

Sarah Leonard, a senior editor and writer at The Nation, talks about her new book, The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century, and shares her thoughts on what this wacky primary season portends.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 42: Corey Robin Mar 01, 2016

Corey Robin, professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, shares his thoughts on the punishing 2016 presidential primary season. Trump, Sanders, Hillary: what does it all mean?

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 41: Eric Foner Mar 25, 2015

Professor Eric Foner is a leading contemporary historian, whose work focuses on American political history, shifting notions of freedom and liberty, and (perhaps most famously) on the period of post-Civil War Reconstruction. He spoke about growing up in a politically-active family (both his father and uncle were blacklisted American historians), and told me about his encounters and interactions with figures from Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois to Richard Hofstadter, Herbert Gutman, and Eugene Genovese. We also talked about the origins of his historical methodology, his thoughts on contemporary politics, and his latest book, Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 40: David Nasaw Mar 12, 2015

David Nasaw is a historian and writer whose recent work has produced a series of magisterial biographies of some of the most towering figures in American history (William Randolph Hearst, Andrew Carnegie, and Joseph Kennedy). He discusses his graduate years at Columbia University during the political chaos of the late 1960s, and how his "bottom up" approach to historical scholarship has evolved into a wider examination of the ideological structures that lurk in the heart of American capitalism.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 39: Justin Rogers-Cooper Feb 18, 2015

Justin Rogers-Cooper is a professor of English at LaGuardia Community College, as well as one of the best friends I made while studying at the CUNY Graduate Center through the Bush and Obama years. Justin always impresses me with his uncanny ability to synthesize complicated historical and political ideas into an understandable, compelling, often disturbing super-narrative. Our conversation in this episode covers lots of stuff: his childhood in Ohio, the serious social problems associated with grade-school bullying, the centrality of race in reading U.S. history, the "surveillance state" mentality of social media, leftist infighting in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the hope for action on climate change, the implications of the Ferguson uprising, and much more.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 38: Frederik Logevall Jan 28, 2015

Frederik Logevall is a professor of history and one of the foremost American scholars of the Vietnam War. His most recent book, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize. We sat down at the American Historical Association's 2015 Annual Meeting and talked about French imperialism, LBJ's stubborn personality, the "handcuff" of domestic politics, the uses of counterfactual history, and much more.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 37: Liza Featherstone Jan 21, 2015

Liza Featherstone is a journalist and professor whose book Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart covered one of the largest class-action lawsuits in American history. We had a great talk about growing up in an activist family, the weirdness of the "trigger warning" movement on college campuses, and how Wal-Mart became such a monstrously influential force in shaping U.S. capitalism (and what we can do about it).

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 36: Owen Powell Jan 14, 2015

Owen Powell is a retired military police sergeant, former Marine, and Iraq combat veteran whose experiences in war have been chronicled in the New York Times, on NPR, and perhaps most prominently in Doonesbury artist Garry Trudeau's remarkable collection The Sandbox: Dispatches from Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this conversation he tells me about growing up the child of a U.S. combat veteran, his attitude toward military service and war, and how being shot in Iraq made an impact on his spiritual development.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 35: Minerva Ahumada Jan 07, 2015

Minerva Ahumada is a professor of philosophy at LaGuardia Community College. In this episode, we talk about her youth in Mexico, her unexpected move to the United States, and how a Japanese version of "The Little Mermaid" (with a radically different story than the U.S. version) helped reify her interest in narrative ethics, philosophy, feminism, and radical politics.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 34: Doug Henwood Dec 17, 2014

Doug Henwood's recent Harper's cover story about Hillary Clinton (the title: "Stop Hillary!") has ruffled the feathers of the Democratic Party establishment, and I can only guess how much this pleases Doug. We had a great conversation about his brief early attraction to the ideas of William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman, how and why his politics moved to the left, and how today's economic and political realities call for a more radical confrontation with the status quo.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 33: Moustafa Bayoumi Dec 10, 2014

Moustafa Bayoumi is an associate professor of English at Brooklyn College and the author of How Does it Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America (2009). In this conversation, we talk about his graduate years working with Edward Said; his development as a scholar of postcolonial literature and theory; his extraordinary article "Disco Inferno," which chronicles the use of American popular music in the torture of (mostly Arab) detainees; and the particular cultural, political, and economic elements of the Arab-American and Muslim experience in post-9/11 America.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 32: Will Menaker Dec 03, 2014

Will Menaker is an editor at Liveright Publishing, who recently put out Jacob Bacharach's debut novel, The Bend of the World. I've known Will since graduate school, where we shared a common love for The Onion, The Sopranos, and the weird ideological currents flowing through American popular culture. In this episode, we talk about his socialist ancestors, who opened cooperative factories in the United States, and how utopian fantasy and apocalyptic nightmares intersect with real politics.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 31: CUNY Students and Climate Change Nov 26, 2014

Although the popular stereotype of "kids these days" has them staring apathetically at their phones, more concerned with selfies than politics, my experiences with young people at CUNY often give the lie to that idea. After a semester spent reading and writing about climate change, the students in Justin Rogers-Cooper's English 101 course at LaGuardia Community College were heavily engaged, and more than ready to share their thoughts. I sat down with the class and listened to harrowing stories about Hurricane Sandy, ideas for shifting the political conversation about climate change, and their fears and hopes for the future of life on planet Earth.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 30: Claudia Moreno Parsons Nov 19, 2014

Claudia Moreno Parsons is a professor of English at LaGuardia Community College, and also the wife of your humble host. Since I've spoken to so many guests about the different people that made an impact on their lives, I thought that, for the podcast's 30th episode, it would be appropriate to speak with someone who's had a profound impact on my life. Claudia talks with me about her childhood in South Brooklyn, how books came to be so important to her, and how working with Ammiel Alcalay at the CUNY Graduate Center helped give shape to her work while fueling her intellectual imagination.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 29: Josh Mason Nov 12, 2014

Currently a professor in the Economics department at John Jay College in New York City, Josh Mason is one of only a few economists that I know in real life, so it was great to have the opportunity to pick his brain about details we historians often tend to overlook. We talked about his background in left journalism, his work with major labor unions, the direction of U.S. labor politics, and the curious but perhaps understandable academic preoccupation with organic farming.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 28: Neil Meyer Nov 05, 2014

I've known English professor Neil Meyer for many years, since our time spent concurrently at the CUNY Graduate Center, which spanned more or less the entire Bush and early Obama eras. I never knew Neil was from Detroit before this conversation, and the discovery allowed us an entryway into a wide range of historical and political phenomenon. We talked about his work in early American literature, his thoughts on gay marriage, abortion, and other pieces of the so-called "culture war," and of course, our mutual concern about James Franco's graduate studies.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 27: Jayashree Kamble Oct 29, 2014

My conversation with Jayashree Kamble, a writer and English professor at LaGuardia Community College, was an opportunity to talk about popular culture, an intense and rich subject of study that, at least in my experience, is often met with some resistance in graduate history departments. Jayashree discusses her early education in India, how she decided to move to Minnesota for graduate school, and all about the main focus of her work studying popular romance fiction. What do those books and other pieces of media have to tell us about race, politics, identity, and ideology? Jayashree's answers to these questions gave me a mind-blowing glimpse into the profound ways that popular culture can function in our lives.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 26: Sarah Jaffe Oct 22, 2014

Sarah Jaffe is a freelance writer and journalist whose work appears in The Guardian, In These Times, Salon, and Dissent Magazine, where she co-hosts the Belabored Podcast. We had a fun conversation about 90s culture, the paradox of loving the NFL, Beyoncé's feminist status, Ferguson's continued uprising, the state of higher education and, of course, the biographical details of how "punk rock and shitty jobs" helped lead her to a life of left journalism.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 25: Steve Brier Oct 15, 2014

Steve Brier is a historian whose work at the American Social History Project helped draw me into the field of working class social history. Steve also has some amazing stories about his father's time fighting fascists on the streets of East London in the lead-up to World War II, his time spent at Berkeley in the middle of the Free Speech Movement in 1964, and his work and friendship with legendary social historian Herbert Gutman.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 24: Sarah Leonard Oct 08, 2014

Sarah Leonard is an exciting voice in left journalism, currently working as a writer and editor for The Nation, New Inquiry, and Dissent. She writes about stuff that matters: mass incarceration, feminism, the evolution of media and technology, and much more. We talked about her experiences working around figures from the Democratic Party, her take on Occupy's past and future, and the limits of identity-driven politics in the context of Hillary Clinton's inevitable 2016 run.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 23: Frances Fox Piven Sep 24, 2014

Frances Fox Piven is a towering figure of the American Left, a professor of political science whose combined academic work and political activism provide an extraordinary framework of ideas about poverty, race, war, and many other vital issues. We sat down for a conversation about her upbringing during the Great Depression, the development of her political values, her friendship with Howard Zinn, and her encounters with American reactionaries after becoming a featured target of right-wing hatred and paranoia on Glenn Beck's television program.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 22: James Oakes Sep 17, 2014

James Oakes was sitting at the head of a frighteningly tiny conference table when I entered the room for my first graduate course at the CUNY Graduate Center many years ago. A professor of American history, his intensely thoughtful approach to the discipline impressed and, of course, intimidated me. I've since come to know him as a serious and generous scholar, whose work on slavery and abolitionism serves, to me, as a great model for how politics and history can be effectively interwoven. In this conversation, we talk about his focus on slavery and the Civil War, his response to Lincoln's radical critics, and why he prefers to explore his politics, at least publicly, through the study of the 19th century.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 21: Anthony Galluzzo Sep 10, 2014

In recent months I have been depending on writer and professor Anthony Galluzzo's fantastic Facebook feed for his uniquely cynical take on the latest news, notes, and opinions--particularly when it comes to higher education, gentrification, militarized police, imperial foreign policy, and lots of other big issues facing the world today. I finally got to sit down with him, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, of all places, to hear about his weird experience with actor Jason Patric on the week of 9/11/01, his perception of the freakish nature of Los Angeles sunshine, and the sometimes enlightening, sometimes frustrating times he's spent teaching at colleges like West Point and CUNY.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 20: Joe and John Lombardo Sep 03, 2014

I've known Joe and John Lombardo since the mid-1990s, when I met them while working at a restaurant called Marie Callender's in Ventura, California. As an alienated, nerdy teenager, I looked up to the Lombardo brothers as models of a different kind of man than the jocks and surfers I was surrounded by in high school. In hindsight, they were my first encounter with hipsterism, and they taught me a lot about being cool. In this conversation, they tell me about their own upbringing, how they came to punk music as a saving grace, encounters with Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, and Richard Simmons, and why they think the alternative rock scene of the 1990s was the last great moment in American counterculture.

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 19: Nichole Shippen Aug 27, 2014

Nichole Shippen is a political theorist and professor at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, New York. We talked a bit about her youth in a small rancher town in Wyoming, and how she navigated the particular cultural landscape of such a space. Our discussion focuses mainly on race, identity, and class structure in America, as we try to situate events in Ferguson, Missouri within a wider political and historical continuum. Her book Decolonizing Time: Work, Leisure, and Freedom will be published this fall.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 18: David Zeiger Aug 15, 2014

David Zeiger's documentary film Sir! No Sir!had a profound impact on my graduate studies, educating me about the "GI movement" against the Vietnam War and kick-starting my project on the "GI coffeehouses" that functioned as the institutional support network for that important movement. We had a great conversation about his years growing up in Los Angeles, his need to "do something" about the war in Vietnam, his work with antiwar soldiers at a GI coffeehouse in Killeen, Texas (outside Fort Hood) in the early 1970s, and his development as a photographer and filmmaker.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 17: Clarence Taylor Aug 08, 2014

During my early years as a graduate student in history, I took a course at the CUNY Graduate Center called "From Civil Rights to Black Power," taught by Professor Clarence Taylor. The readings for the course, along with Professor Taylor's radical approach to American racial politics, completely rearranged my perceptions about race and American society, and helped set me on a path to becoming a radical historian myself. His most recent book, Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union (Columbia University Press, 2011), historicizes the complex interaction between the radical Left and the wider politics of education. In this conversation, he talks about his years in New York City's public high school system and his evolving views on liberalism, conservatism, and the direction of radical politics in the age of Obama.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 16: Todd Gitlin Aug 01, 2014

Reading Todd Gitlin's book The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage was a major moment in my development as a historian. Gitlin's colorful, rigorous description of that turbulent decade heavily influenced my decision to study postwar American politics when I began my graduate studies in 2004. I recently sat down in his office at Columbia University to talk about his experience as president of Students for a Democratic Society in the mid-1960s, his personal trajectory as an activist and academic, and his thoughts on Occupy Wall Street and the contemporary American political landscape.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 15: Joshua Freeman Jul 22, 2014

In 2004, when he was executive officer of the CUNY Graduate Center's department of history, Professor Joshua Freeman was my first contact and mentor in the early years of grad school. His expertise and generosity helped me and many others in our transition to a rigorous Ph.D. program. He is now a Distinguished Professor at the GC and teaches at CUNY's Queens College, sharing his deep knowledge of American politics, economics, and society with students throughout New York City. This conversation touches on his experiences growing up in Brooklyn, his early connection to the Civil Rights Movement, the motivation behind his recent book American Empire, and his development as one of the nation's prominent scholars of American labor.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 14: Ammiel Alcalay Jul 15, 2014

Ammiel Alcalay is a poet, writer, critic, translator, archivist, and much more. As a professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center, he is known as much for his scholarship as for his generosity: with his time, with his attention to student's work, and with his talents as editor and writer. Ammiel recently visited my apartment for a conversation about his youth in Boston growing up around poet and writer Charles Olson, his activism during the Vietnam years, and the path that led him to become a scholar of the Middle East.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 13: Students of CUNY, Part 1 Jul 08, 2014

My friend Justin Rogers-Cooper, a professor of English at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, New York, recently invited me to campus to record a "live" podcast with his students. The course was designed to help students consider, and prepare for possible participation in, the profession of teaching. Talking to bright young undergraduates about the "nuts and bolts" of pedagogy was a fascinating experience that offers a unique perspective on what 21st century college students value both in and out of the classroom. The range of backgrounds and experiences presented in this series of clips captures some of what I value most about CUNY itself: an engaged, diverse student body with deep insights into the world around them.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 12: Christopher Silsby Jun 30, 2014

I've gotten to know Christopher Silsby through our work together at the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute at Baruch College. Christopher's particular take on the role of technology in education is one that continues to provoke engaging conversations at the Institute and beyond. It was a pleasure to sit down with him to hear about his upbringing in Kansas, his thoughts on education, and his work in theatre and history as he completes his Ph.D. at the CUNY Graduate Center.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 11: Josh Brown Jun 24, 2014

As the main adviser on my dissertation, Josh Brown was and continues to be an important figure in the development of my own thoughts and ideas about American history. Active in the Vietnam antiwar movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Josh's vision of the historical discipline's social and political value is in part drawn from his experiences during that tumultuous era. We sat down to a great conversation that touches on his father's unique history in World War II, the violence he witnessed on the streets of Chicago in 1968, and how he eventually became drawn to the radical brand of social history practiced by legendary historian Herbert Gutman.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 10: Barbara Garson Jun 17, 2014

I first met Barbara Garson while researching the GI coffeehouse movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which aimed to open antiwar, counterculture coffeehouses in small towns outside military bases, as part of a larger movement to end the war in Vietnam. Barbara's time spent working at such a coffeehouse in Tacoma, Washington was one part of a long career of writing and activism. Her controversial play MacBird!, a satire of the Lyndon Johnson administration and the Kennedy family, was an off-Broadway hit in 1967. Over the following decades, she has published a series of books focusing on American labor (All the Livelong Day: The Meaning and Demeaning of Routine Work), the economic landscape (The Electronic Sweatshop: How Computers are Transforming the Office of the Future), and most recently, the social consequences of capitalism (Down the Up Escalator: How the 99 Percent Live). She joins me here to discuss her personal political development and the ideas driving her work.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 9: Lavelle Porter Jun 10, 2014

Lavelle Porter is a writer with a fascinating set of interests, ranging from poetry and science fiction to racial politics, sexual identity, and the structures of higher education itself. His recent blog post, "More Thoughts on Graduate School," resonated with anyone who's ever agonized over grad school-related decisions in their life, capturing some of the ambivalence that often accompanies the "life of the mind." Lavelle joins me to talk about being at Morehouse College in Atlanta around the time Outkast blew up, how he became interested in artists and writers like Sun Ra and Samuel Delany, and what the future holds for education in America.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 8: The Minimum Wage Jun 03, 2014

Why is the minimum wage so ridiculously low in 21st century America? My guests today (Eljeer Hawkins, Cora Bergantinos, and James Hoff) are part of the 15Now movement, which is seeking to drastically shift the conversation about the minimum wage in cities across the U.S. In Seattle, the movement recently achieved a major victory, in part due to the leadership of Kshama Sawant, a city council member and one of the first socialists elected to public office in a U.S. city in decades. Our conversation addresses the economic and political context of minimum wage activism and assesses the prospects for the 15Now movement as it sets its sights on cities like San Francisco and New York.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 7: Bridget McGovern May 27, 2014

Why are sitcoms like Small Wonder so haunting to some of us? My guest, Bridget McGovern, a writer and managing editor at sci-fi/fantasy site tor.com, sheds some light on this subject and many others as we delve into the pop cultural universe, sharing stories about coming of age during an era of often strange, sometimes inspiring, always memorable cultural production. From The Golden Girls and Designing Women to Jim Jarmusch and Game of Thrones, Bridget and I talk about pop culture's particular impact on identity, its power to build communities, and its uncanny ability to make us keep the lights on.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 6: Corey Robin May 20, 2014

What does is it mean to be "conservative" in America? My guest on this episode, professor and writer Corey Robin, has spent a great deal of his career thinking about conservatism and its particular influence in the U.S. His most recent book, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, investigates the consistent themes and ideologies underlying this movement, and offers some startling conclusions that, perhaps unsurprisingly, make a lot of conservatives really angry. In this conversation, we talk about his coming of age in the Reagan eighties, his college years spent confronting the realities of Ivy League endowments, and his current work in publications from Harper's to the New York Times. You can find more of Robin's political analysis on his blog, coreyrobin.com.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 5: James Hoff May 13, 2014

I first became aware of James Hoff as the editor of the student newspaper, the Advocate, at the CUNY Graduate Center while both of us were working on our degrees in the mid-oughts. James shepherded the paper through a turbulent moment at CUNY, maintaining a radical voice that tirelessly defended the mainly working class student body against an often appalling administration. In this conversation we talk about his upbringing in California, his time spent traveling around the United States, and his eventual landing in New York City, where he teaches English and continues to promote working class politics (like the 15 Now movement) in publications like the Huffington Post and Inside Higher Ed.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 4: Christine Marks May 06, 2014

As we continue our journey through the halls of LaGuardia Community College in Queens, New York, I stop to talk with Christine Marks, a professor of English whose work focuses on intimate structures like identity, gender, food, and the body. Our conversation includes Christine's less-than-ideal experience as a high school exchange student from Germany, her eventual return to the United States, and her work with American novelist and essayist Siri Hustvedt.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 3: Stafford Gregoire Apr 29, 2014

Stafford Gregoire wasn't always a professor of English at CUNY's LaGuardia Community College. His past as a bike messenger in New York City during the early 1980s, riding the streets and avenues with a cast of characters out of a Hubert Selby, Jr. novel, set him on an intellectual journey that continues now in the halls of higher education. Stafford's stories touch on racial identity, gentrification, class politics, and the role that art can play in moving us toward both political and personal transcendence.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 2: Laura Tanenbaum Apr 22, 2014

On Episode Two of The Nostalgia Trap, I finally get the opportunity to meet and chat with Laura Tanenbaum, a professor of English at LaGuardia Community College whose work I've enjoyed on Jacobin, her own blog The Golden Notebooks, and in some of the most rewarding Facebook political battles of the past year. Laura and I talk about her years growing up in Chicago among a science-oriented family, her complicated feelings about 90s culture and films like Fight Club, and her interdisciplinary approach to teaching and writing.

The Nostalgia Trap - Episode 1: Connor Kilpatrick Apr 14, 2014

On the first episode of The Nostalgia Trap, I sit down to a conversation with writer and editor Connor Kilpatrick of Jacobin magazine. Connor and I talk about his childhood in Texas, his surprisingly apolitical college years, and the "moment of clarity" after Obama's election that led him to the optimistic brand of left politics he embraces today.

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