Nostalgia Trap

KJ Shepherd is a Ph. D. historian whose research focuses on the history of American standardized testing and the "test preparation" industry it spawned. Along with trading stories about the horrors of teaching the SAT, we have a blunt talk about what's happening in the history discipline: the impossibility of finding full-time jobs, the humiliation of the application process, the "alt-ac" lie, and...

Eli Valley is a comic artist and writer with an intense, visceral aesthetic that perfectly captures the rotten politics of our age. His acclaimed anthology Diaspora Boy: Comics on Crisis in America and Israel features a broad sample of his work over the past ten years. In this conversation we talk about his influences, both politically and artistically, and explore the historic and current role of...

Liz Ryerson is a musician, writer, and teacher whose work explores the ideological and aesthetic landscape of video games and cult media. Her podcast The Blood Zone features her critical ideas about niche/independent media, from indie game design to music and cinema. In this conversation, we discuss the wider politics of the gaming and media world, including #Gamergate and other reactionary burbli...

Justin Rogers-Cooper returns to continue our discussion of this Summer of Strangeness, this time taking on the Jeffrey Epstein case:  who's connected, why it matters, and what it reveals about the dynamics of power, authority, and punishment within the wider nightmare of global capitalism. 

Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of a number of books that explore big subjects like human consciousness, psychedelic drugs, shamanic cultures, and the Mayan 2012 prophecy. Lately he's been thinking and writing about UFOs, after a number of startling reports in mainstream media over the past year revealed the US government's deep engagement with spacecraft of unknown origin. In this conversation, we...

Geoff Johnson has been teaching American history since we were both graduate students at CUNY in the George W. Bush years. In this conversation, we talk about our respective political and cultural experiences coming of age in the 1990s, and reflect on the different paths that brought us both to the radical left. From beat poetry, Jim Morrison, and hip hop to anti-capitalism and anarchy, we try to...

Bill Black is a historian whose project Contingent Magazine (begun with previous Nostalgia Trap guest Erin Bartram ) this month features a 25th anniversary retrospective roundtable on the film Forrest Gump . In this conversation, Black explains how the film's particular take on boomer generation "greatest hits" hides the film's deeper engagement with the politics of the 1960s and 1970s, and helps...

Justin Rogers-Cooper returns to the show to begin a series of episodes this summer tracking the global flashpoints of our historical moment. In this conversation, we talk about the term "concentration camp" in the context of Trump's immigration policies, and game out the different scenarios at play regarding Iran. What's Trump's endgame in the Middle East? And what does this have to do with oil?

Danny Haiphong is a socialist writer whose work frequently appears on Black Agenda Report . His new book (with Roberto Sirvent), American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror , explores the central mythologies about American benevolence that have served as the ideological spine for capitalism's cancerous expansion. I...

Daniel Bessner is a professor and writer and frequent Nostalgia Trap contributor. He joins us to talk about his controversial recent Chronicle piece taking on the American Historical Association, and to share his vision of how to rescue the humanities from the destructive forces of neoliberalism.

Thom Hartmann is a radio personality, best-selling author, and political commentator whose work in progressive media has spanned decades. He joins us to discuss his latest book, The Hidden History of Guns and the 2nd Amendment , and to explain his own political and philosophical evolution. From working for the Goldwater campaign as a teenager to joining Students for a Democratic Society to help fi...

Astra Taylor is a writer and filmmaker whose work explores the radical contours of contemporary politics and philosophy. Her latest film, What is Democracy? , is a deep dive into one of history's most intense questions, framing interviews and discussions within the harrowing context of a collapsing planet. In this conversation, she explains the ideas underlying her inquisitive approach to writing...

Tanya Turner is one of the hosts of the Trillbilly Worker's Party podcast, a smart, funny take on left politics in Whitesburg, Kentucky. In this conversation, we talk about the wider political world of Appalachia, her work with the media and arts center Appalshop , and how sex education is a vital space for talking about capitalism's insidious control over our bodies.

Linda Tirado is a writer who catapulted to online fame after a casual, righteously enraged message board comment went mega-viral. Within weeks she had a book deal, TV appearances, agents, and a lot more attention than she had ever asked for or wanted. Her book, Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America , captures a working class voice that's rarely heard in mainstream American media, and her expe...

Yasmin Nair is a Chicago-based writer, activist, and founder of Against Equality , an anti-capitalist collective of radical queer and trans writers, thinkers, and artists. Her provocative, often polemical, and always entertaining writing takes on the political culture of neoliberalism, the pitfalls of left media, and the politics of gender and sexuality, among many other topics. In this conversati...

Wendi Muse is a doctoral candidate researching antiracist and left organizing in Cold War era Brazil, and the creator of the Left POCket Project , which curates capsule histories of important, often overlooked figures from the radical left. Her work shows us places where capitalism and the state are particularly oppressive, and documents the extraordinary actions people have taken to maintain soli...

On this week's bonus episode, 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. Emergi...

Seth Cotlar is a professor of history at Willamette University and the author of Tom Paine's America: The Rise and Fall of Transatlantic Radicalism in the Early Republic . He joins us to talk about Paine's particular vision of a more radical democracy and how those ideas find life in today's left. Cotlar is also hard at work on a new volume about the concept of nostalgia, obviously a favorite topi...

Chad Vigorous is the host of a sharp and funny podcast called The Discourse , and one of left Twitter's most acerbic political commentators. In this conversation, he shares his insights on the nightmarish landscape of American culture and politics in the 21st century, explaining how fascism and white nationalism are finding their footing within the socioeconomic despair and ideological void create...

Bill Black is a historian and writer whose work has appeared in Vox , the Atlantic, Washington Post , and a number of other publications. He joins us to talk about his path in history, a few of his more provocative pieces of research, (including an incredible narrative about the origins of the racist "watermelon" trope), and his exciting new project Contingent Magazine , which seeks to publish and...

Kevin Gannon is a professor of history at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, where he also serves as the Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. You may also know him as one of the history experts featured in Ava DuVernay's  incredible  Netflix documentary 13th , and a very active figure in the "#twitterstorians" universe. In addition to his research on the history...

Robin Kelley is a professor of history at UCLA and the author of a number of important books on a wide range of subjects, from communism in the American South (1990's Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression ), to the political visions of radical black intellectuals and artists (2002's Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination ), to the history of jazz (2009's Thelonious...

Here's a brief preview of this week's bonus episode, featuring a conversation with historian Daniel Bessner on the significance of Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential run. To listen to the entire episode: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Heather Berg is a writer and researcher who maps the intersections of socialism, feminism, and radical culture. Her upcoming book Porn Work locates porn workers as "experts on labor in late capitalism," and in this conversation we explore how sex work in general and porn work in particular offers a critical site of anti-capitalist resistance.  

Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us for the third installment of our Amazon HQ trilogy, in which we explore Amazon's shocking decision to abandon its planned headquarters in Long Island City, New York. From grassroots activism and sinister politicians to Amazon's deep connections to ICE and the surveillance state, this discussion frames the larger implications of a stunning victory for people over corpo...