Nostalgia Trap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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? Check out the Nostalgia Trap YouTube Channel: youtube.com/boozeshaman Subscribe to our Patreon: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

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

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. Subscribe to watch/listen to the whole episode: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

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

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.

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.

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! Listen to the whole episode

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. Subscribe to listen to the full episode

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. Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access our entire catalog

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? Join the Nostalgia Trap Patreon and listen to the whole episode

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… Subscribe to access the entire Campus Trap catalog

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." Subscribe to listen to the whole episode

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. Subscribe to listen to Part Two

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. Listen to the whole episode

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? Listen to the whole episode

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. Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access bonus episodes, livestreams, and more

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. Listen to whole episode

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. Listen to the whole episode

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. Listen to the whole episode

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. Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap and access bonus episodes, our weekly livestream, and more

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? Subscribe to listen to all our livestreams whenever you want

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? Subscribe to hear the whole episode

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. Subscribe to hear the whole episode and access all our bonus episodes, livestreams, videos, and more

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. Subscribe to the Nostalgia Trap Patreon for bonus episodes, livestreams, videos, and much more

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? Listen to the whole episode and access all our weekly bonus traps

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. Subscribe to listen to the whole episode and all our livestreams/bonus content

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

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

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. Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access our whole universe of bonus content: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

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? Subscribe to listen to the whole episode and gain access to our giant library of bonus content: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

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.

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. Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access our whole library of bonus episodes, essays, and video content.

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