Nostalgia Trap

Mistress Snow, Ph. D. is an academic in the humanities who was abruptly rejected by her mentor after coming out to her as a working dominatrix, an experience she documents in a recent Chronicle piece . In this conversation, she explains how her story connects with larger issues of class in academia, from the collapse of the job market and the humiliations of the adjunct hustle to the student loan...

Yasmin Nair is a writer and activist who always says what's on her mind, and the results are consistently some of the most refreshing and challenging takes on modern American politics and culture. In this conversation, we talk about her most recent work, her outlook on the 2020 Democratic primary, the carceral politics of #MeToo, and why the U.S. left is often so hopelessly lost on issues of sex,...

Evan Purchell is a film historian and archivist whose latest film project, Ask Any Buddy , presents excerpted bits from 126 different gay male "adult" films from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. The effect is an uncanny journey into a lost world of urban gay culture, depicting a kind of imagninative fantasy of gay life before the AIDS crisis. In this conversation, Evan tells us about the film's origins as...

With a nation in quarantine, Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us for a deep dive into the political opportunities presented by the COVID-19 moment, as we track the rapid evolution of capitalism in crisis. Now that the energy of apocalypse has been released into the discourse, where does it go? What new futures can we imagine as the old world shapeshifts before our eyes?

Justin Rogers-Cooper returns to continue our series on the extraordinary historical moment created by the COVID-19 crisis. In this conversation we take on the rapidly evolving politics of the virus, reflecting on the public outrage at massive corporate bailouts while working people are saddled with unimaginable economic ruin. Can the left seize that energy to win electoral and ideological victorie...

Preview of bonus episode 182: Contagion with Justin Rogers-Cooper.

Kevin Baker is a historian studying the ways policymakers use predictive computer models to map the future. In this conversation, he tells us about navigating the shock of class consciousness in the academy, describes his work researching artificial intelligence at Berkeley, and offers the peculiar story of The Limits to Growth , a 1972 study based on SimCity -like computer programs that predicted...

Trap favorites KJ Shepherd and Bill Black return for a much-needed election year vibe check, in which we discuss our individual and collective moods in the context of Bernie Sanders' continued success in the Democratic primary. From online battles with Marc Maron and other toxic centrist dorks to the wider view of academic work in a collapsing humanities job market, KJ and Bill bring their charact...

Alice Bag is a punk icon, the lead singer of legendary 1970s L.A. punk band The Bags, and now a writer, educator, and feminist archivist. In this conversation, she tells her story of overcoming a childhood in East L.A. wracked by poverty and domestic abuse, finding an outlet for her personal and political rage in the burgeoning Hollywood punk scene. In the years since that initial explosion, she's...

Rick Paulas is a journalist covering issues of housing and homelessness; his recent piece on Moms 4 Housing details what happened when a group of Black mothers occupied a vacant house in Oakland, California. In this conversation, we talk about America's housing crisis in the context of neoliberal capitalism, and explore the revolutionary political, social, and cultural implications of a more activ...

Tom DePaola is a Ph. D. candidate studying higher ed and academic labor at USC, and co-author (along with Adrianna J. Kezar and Daniel T. Scott) of the new book The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University . He joins us to discuss the increasing precarity felt by academics and other workers at colleges across the country, and to explore the longer history of neoliberalism's devastat...

Lavelle Porter is a writer and professor of English at CUNY's New York City College of Technology. He joins us to discuss his new book The Blackademic Life: Academic Fiction, Higher Education, and the Black Intellectual , which explores representations of black intellectual life from the Reconstruction Era to today. Along the way we touch on the lesser-known fictional works of W.E.B. DuBois, the r...

Sarah Milov is a professor of history at the University of Virginia and the author of The Cigarette: A Political History . In this conversation, she describes how the intersection of private capital and state power combined (with astounding success) to promote the consumption of cigarettes to the American public, and how activists engaged ideas around public space, health, and consent to fight bac...

Sarah Taber is a crop scientist and ex-farmworker with a wide knowledge of agricultural history and practice, which you can hear in action on her excellently-named podcast Farm to Taber .  In this conversation, we talk about the role of the "farmer" in the American imagination and survey some of the most critical moments in the development of American food and farming policy.

Luke O'Neil is a writer whose work chronicles the dark edges of 21st century America, capturing the horrific tenor of our age in his incredible newsletter and in his latest book, Welcome to Hell World: Dispatches from the American Dystopia . From murderous cops and fascist dads to suicidal veterans and imprisoned children, O'Neil connects the dots of the American nightmare in a voice that's compel...

A.M. Gittlitz is a writer on radical politics, counterculture, and the paranormal, and the producer of a wonderful podcast called The Antifada . In this conversation, he catches us up on the worldwide UFO phenomenon, detailing how the U.S. government is pouring resources into investigating alien spacecraft, with big corporations ( and the guy from Blink-182! ) getting in on the action. Gittlitz sh...

Mike Pearl is a writer and self-described "apocalypse expert" whose new book The Day It Finally Happens explores the increasingly bizarre scenarios that threaten to totally ruin our collective future. From internet blackouts and antibiotic-resistant superviruses to collapsing governments and mass extinction events, Mike tracks the actual probability of these nightmares coming true as a way of help...

Sam Yang is the host of Southpaw , a podcast about the intersection of leftist politics and combat sports. Yang is on a mission to reclaim fighting culture, forging connections between physicality, spirituality, and a more humane engagement with the planet and each other. In this conversation he discusses his background in martial arts, explaining how ethical ideas embedded in his combat training...

Bill Black and KJ Shepherd return to the Trap for a special Halloween episode, in which we reflect upon the public fears and personal phobias that plagued our childhoods. Together we explore all sorts of spooky stuff, including the hellish visions invoked by Chick tracts , the 1980s crusade against obscenity in pop music, the weird national obsession with children dying in abandoned refrigerators,...

Kevin Kruse is a historian at Princeton University and the author of a number of important books about race, class, and politics in 20th century America. He is also one of the most visible historians online, with a massive Twitter following that often serves as a mini-course in American history. In this conversation, we talk about his unexpected rise to Twitter fame, his beef with right-wing propa...

Justin Rogers-Cooper returns to explore the 1993 Bill Murray comedy Groundhog Day , a deceptively straightforward film that pulses with dark insights on political economy, American history, human psychology, and everyday life in late capitalism.  FULL EPISODE:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/30812647

Brendan O'Malley is a historian and teacher whose experience with his school's abrupt closure was the subject of a fascinating, wrenching piece in Contingent Magazine this summer. He joins us to talk about his background in history, earning his Ph. D. at the CUNY Graduate Center, and his particular path through a rapidly collapsing academic job market. Brendan's story is ultimately a hopeful one,...

Susan Schnall served as a nurse in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. Her experiences treating wounded Marines at Oak Noll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California transformed her, and in 1969 she faced court martial for her antiwar activism. In this conversation, she tells her incredible story of leaving the U.S. military and joining the antiwar movement, working as a hospital administrator and c...

With Trap favorite Bill Black joining us, a conversation about David's irrational fear of spiders leads into a wider consideration of existential politics in an apocalyptic age. Bill has lots to tell us about the El Paso shooting and the eco-fascist ideology from which it emerged, connecting it to the rise of doomsday scenarios, conspiracy theories, UFO flashmobs, and other pieces of outright weir...

Writer and cultural critic Erik Davis joins us to discuss his fascinating, often startling new book, High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies . By connecting the strange experiences of three psychedelic philosophers (Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson), Davis offers a narrative of the 1970s that goes beyond disco and Jimmy Carter, showing us...