Nostalgia Trap

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.