Nostalgia Trap

Am I "queer" because I listen to Belle and Sebastian? Good question! Trap favorite KJ Shepherd joins me for a conversation about masculinity in American pop culture, and that weird line between "hipster" and "queer." Are these identities actually subversive, or are we fooling ourselves? Listen to the whole episode on our Patreon page: patreon.com/posts/episode-311-as-w-61332587

Bill Watterson's extraordinary comic strip Calvin and Hobbes made a huge cultural impact in the 80s and 90s, and remains an all-time favorite for both me and Justin. In this conversation, we talk about what makes Calvin and Hobbes so unique, how it connects to other 20th century comic projects from Peanuts to South Park , and how Watterson's one man crusade against corporate tyranny pre-figured th...

Is there a deeper, more powerful nostalgia trap than the Christmas season? In this conversation, Yasmin Nair helps me work out my mixed emotions about the holidays, as we watch the Billy Wilder movie The Apartment (1960) and consider how its dark vision of philandering married men and "other women" in mid-century New York City shows us the Christmas season as a theater of sexual pathos, performati...

Our epic trilogy on the life, work, and legacy of Howard Zinn concludes with a conversation about Zinn's place in the wider history of the American left. Was Zinn a communist, an anarchist, or what? Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us in reading through some of Zinn's later work for clues, as we consider how his internationalism and pacifism figured into a global vision of socialist solidarity that hold...

KJ Shepherd joins us to talk about the #FreeBritney moment and the wider phenomenon of diva worship. What makes a diva? And more importantly, how is celebrity fandom entangled with capitalism and queerness? Subscribe for access to bonus episodes and other fantastic treats: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap .

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 t...

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...

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...

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...

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 ident...

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...

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,...

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...

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 N...

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 Face...

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 unc...

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 ow...

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 w...

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 Arab...

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 na...

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 h...