Nostalgia Trap

Do you still have hope? And does a left project even need "hope"? Samuel Stein joins us this week to discuss his latest book A Right to Housing? , a refreshingly honest look at the possibilities for change within the grim landscape of American housing policy.  Subscribe to our Patreon to access a whole universe of conversations on politics, history, and culture...often completely hope-free!!

This week Justin joins me to speculate on the inevitable "October Surprise" of the coming U.S. midterm elections: Terror attack? Alien invasion? Sharknado? The landscape of possibilities seems endless. Our conversation veers into a wider discussion of MAGA's fracture and the psychosexual politics of homoeroticized schadenfreude, the pleasure of punishment, and social media lynch mobs. Click here t...

Listen to the full episode here Is the widespread hatred of AI just another stupid viral moment that will be forgotten in a week? Or is there something deeper happening? Justin and I game out the historical/psychological parameters of an anti-tech cultural politics, and try to come to terms with our own attitudes about the seemingly unstoppable rise of the machines. Check out Sam Stein's latest bo...

In taking his internet creepypasta Backrooms from YouTube to the cinema screen, director Kane Parsons has created a piece of popular art that resonates deeply with some of our favorite Nostalgia Trap themes: '90s analog culture, toxic masculinity, psychedelic dream spaces, and the overriding feeling that the historical vibe is growing dark . Justin joins me to explore this puzzle of a movie, and t...

In the shadow of the U.S. officially losing the war in Iran, the American political and economic world continues to chase after a high that's perhaps no longer attainable. This week we examine how Trump, MAGA, AI companies, and the American left are grappling with a bubbling existential crisis that's unprecedented in scale and intensity. Click here to listen to the whole episode!

It's time for the old "there's a civil war brewing in the Democratic Party" conversation again, and Justin joins me to poke holes in the orthodoxies embraced by both "sides" of the alleged progressive/left vs centrist debate currently gripping the American public. It's 2016 all over again! Or is it? Click here to hear the whole episode!

This week Justin joins me to explore the tall claims made in a recent New York Times piece, "Gen Z Fell Out of Love With Work. I Don't Blame Them." Are we really experiencing a generational revolt against centuries of American attitudes about education, work, wages, and life itself? Let's see what these Gen Z kids have to say. Listen to the whole episode here.

This is a preview clip from a subscribers-only episode. Click here to listen to the whole thing! Does economic crisis predictably produce extreme political movements? History's lessons are a bit unclear on that point and, as we investigate in this episode, the summer of 2026 is testing our understanding of the relationship between political economy and social reality. Strap in, folks: we just foun...

This is a preview clip from a subscribers-only episode. Click here to hear the whole episode with a FREE 7-Day trial subscription. As a wave of Mamdani-supported COMMUNISTS win power in New York, Justin and I ask the question that's on everyone's minds: is this the future of the Democratic Party? And more importantly, what will American politics look like in the wake of the Trump era?  

This is a free preview of a subscribers only episode.  CLICK HERE to hear the full episode with FREE 7-day trial. With news that Elon Musk in the world's first trillionaire after the historic SpaceX IPO, Justin joins me to discuss the financial gamesmanship at work in the AI industry, the planetary limits of this particular phase of capitalism, and the reasons why the #TeslaTakedown moment is long...

This is a free preview of a subscribers-only episode. Click here to listen to the whole thing with a free 7 day trial. Since the Iran war began many weeks ago, it feels like we're living in some kind of surreal rhetorical purgatory. Surveying the wider news landscape, though, a wider pattern emerges, and a "Charlie Brown" analogy reveals something a bit darker hidden in our collective basement.  

It's the best of times and the worst of times, as average Americans are paying more for pretty much everything while the stock market breaks records. What's up with that? Justin joins us this week to talk about the contradictions currently bracing up the global economy, as we map out how the Ukraine and Iran Wars are reshaping global power and the outlook for everything from gas and food prices to...

Recent debates about whether or not leftist streamers like Hasan Piker should be embraced by the Democratic Party lead Justin and me to explore how the "marketplace of ideas" intersects with the broad historical and economic forces that govern our collective destiny. Subscribe and hear the full episode here

This week we check out the explosive Ronan Farrow piece on Sam Altman and consider the intersection of AI, climate crises, and sociopathic personalities that defines this historical moment. Who is really in the driver's seat of our collective future? Listen to the full episode here

Did Bernie's loss break the left's brain? Listen to the full episode here

By joining Israel in a reckless attack on Iran, Trump has put the entire global system in the kill box, which begs the question, what's more dangerous: Trump when he's winning or Trump when he's trapped like a dog? And what happens when the material realities unleashed by this attack come home to roost? Click here to listen to the whole episode

This week Justin and I game out scenarios unfolding from the U.S./Israel attack on Iran. Is it all about Epstein? (LOL) Or might China and Russia have something to do with Trump's latest insane wager? Let's take a look at the imperial chessboard. Listen to the whole episode here .

My late night adventures into the local jazz underworld have introduced me to some fascinating new friends, and I wanted to bring two of them into the Nostalgia Trap universe. Monte Montgomery and Alan Burgess are old pals whose frequent conversations often veer into the uncomfortable territories of race, culture and politics that will be familiar to Trap listeners. In this first episode in a seri...

This is a preview clip from a subscribers-only episode. Check out our Patreon and subscribe to listen! On this week's News Trap Justin and I talk about the delicious crash of the crypto hustle, the sinister promise of "agentic AI," the human wreckage of Silicon Valley's utopian projects, the sad fall of Noam Chomsky, and the larger implications of Jeffrey Epstein's legendary run as the elite's fav...

When I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, Rolling Stone magazine was an indispensable resource for discovering the hip edge of American pop culture. Of course, I didn't realize at the time that the magazine had its roots in the 1960s counterculture, crafted by entrepreneur Jann Wenner as a subversive Trojan horse within the staid landscape of Cold War America. On this episode, historian Charle...

This is a brief clip from a full episode on our subscribers feed. Subscribe to hear the whole thing! This week Justin joins me to consider what would happen if the post-1945 "rules based order" really does collapse -- something that seems more inevitable with each passing moment. With the Trump administration acting in severely irrational ways, how will the global system react? In addition to thin...

This week we're talking with Aaron G. Fountain, Jr. about his new book High School Students Unite! Teen Activism, Education Reform, and FBI Surveillance in Postwar America (UNC Press, 2025). By shifting focus from college campuses to American high schools, Fountain's work uncovers a whole world of 1960s and 1970s activism by young people around the country, who fought for their own rights within a...

This is a preview of a subscribers-only episode. Click here to listen to the whole thing, and access our big library of bonus content . 2026 is leaping out of the gate with a flood of chaotic news stories, from Minneapolis to Greenland, from Venezuela to Iran. Justin joins me to look for the patterns uniting this increasingly jarring geopolitical reality, and to consider the poisonous cocktail of...

What makes John Candy such a unique figure in American pop culture? And why are we still talking about him in 2025? In this episode, Justin and I discuss the new documentary John Candy: I Like Me (dir. Colin Hanks) and reflect on Candy's outsized space in the cultural imagination, while exploring some of the darker elements of our paternal attraction to specific celebrities. Check out our previous...

This is a preview clip from a subscribers-only episode. CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE AND LISTEN. It's time once again to sip some eggnog and survey the wreckage of the past 12 months, as Justin joins us for a conversation about the continuing (though anti-viral) insanity of the Russia-Ukraine War and its significance within the larger framework of Europe's decline. We also talk about the strength of th...