Nostalgia Trap

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.