Nostalgia Trap

Latest Episodes:

Nostalgia Trap - Episode 219: Come and See w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper Sep 28, 2020

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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

Show notes

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.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected