Nostalgia Trap

Latest Episodes:

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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.

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