Anyone with a brain and heart probably feels deeply conflicted about the Fourth of July, a celebration of American freedom that frequently feels crass and hollow in the context of an ever-expanding American cruelty. So I thought I would reflect on the some ideas about drugs and counterculture today. I share some new details of the CIA's MKULTRA mind control experiments, and read Allen Ginsberg's eerily prophetic 1959 piece, "Poetry, Violence, and the Trembling Lambs or Independence Day Manifesto...
Jul 04, 2025•36 min
Zohran Mamdani's win in NYC accelerates a civil war for the soul of the Democratic Party; ICE storm troopers refuse to take off their masks; Trump's bombing of Iran within the larger strategic maneuverings of world powers; the historical ingredients necessary for getting away with genocide. Listen to the full episode here!
Jun 27, 2025•6 min
Xaq Frohlich is Associate Professor of History of Technology at Auburn University. His work focuses on issues relating to food and risk at the intersections of science, law, and markets. In this conversation, he joins me to discuss his book From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age , a fascinating history of how Americans have navigated food and health issues through culture and politics. From Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle to RFK, Jr. and “MAHA Moms,” let’s take a jour...
Jun 20, 2025•55 min
Is the fight against Trump's rising authoritarianism in the streets? Or in the courts? Why not both? At the five month mark, Justin joins me to survey the damage, and to assess the left's strategies in resisting an assault on our collective rights and dignity. Along the way, we consider Stephen Miller's nihilistic and libidinal hatreds, the Roberts' court's "fuck you" attitude toward the Constitution, the insurrection in Los Angeles, the efficacy of insurgent tactics of resistance, the psychotic...
Jun 13, 2025•7 min
What happened to the idea that “conservatives can’t do comedy”? Much to the horror of liberals, the past decade has witnessed the rise of a right wing comedy industrial complex, primarily found on podcasts, whose personalities and attitudes are inextricably linked to the success of Donald Trump’s populist conservative project. This week I talk with Nick Marx, co-author of the book That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them , about how figures from Joe Rogan to Greg Gutfeld have w...
Jun 06, 2025•1 hr 5 min
Dazed and Confused (dir. Richard Linklater. 1993) remains a timeless classic of American adolescence…or does it? This week Justin joins me for a deep dive into one of the most nostalgia-laden films ever created, as we investigate how a seemingly breezy 1990s high school stoner comedy actually holds deep philosophical and political weight when viewed from 2025. From Matthew McConaughey’s lascivious lothario to Ben Affleck’s pathetic, psychotic bully, and a million characters in between, the film ...
May 30, 2025•3 min
What is “settler colonialism” and how is it different from other forms of imperialism? In this episode I share excerpts from S.C. Gwynne’s bracing, controversial book Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History , and reflect on the historical lines between the American project of removal and Israel’s current genocidal campaign in Gaza. How is Zionism related to Manifest Destiny? And what can we learn from eac...
May 21, 2025•7 min
Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas remains a classic of American drug literature, a haunting reflection on the cultural and political hangover of the revolutionary 1960s. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced a more resonant portrait of the American id than the carnival of vile, deranged American archetypes Thompson describes in these pages. Justin Rogers-Cooper has been similarly influenced by Fear and Loathing over the years, and joins me this week to talk about Thomps...
May 13, 2025•1 hr 14 min
An explosive piece called "Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College" raises a few questions for me: What is the left's attitude toward tech? Is there anything positive about AI?Is digital technology compatible AT ALL with a progressive vision of the future? ARE WE DOOMED AS A SPECIES??? Listen to the whole episode here...
May 08, 2025•6 min
FAA failures creating realistic fears of looming airline disasters, Trump's cryptocurrency scam, quantum computing and financial apocalypse, Kanye's celebrity vagina mega corporation, Israel's endgame for Gaza, the 4Channing of the world, the Baldoni/Lively mind control machine, and much more. Subscribe to News Trap for weekly updates delivered straight to your brain jelly
May 06, 2025•48 min
April 30, 2025 is the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, so I’m marking the occasion by reflecting on the war’s meaning all these decades later. I share my own experiences as a historian of the war, along with some clips from books and documentaries that I think capture the impossible decisions the war forced upon millions of people. Check out the podcast series created by Willa Seidenberg and Bill Short, A Matter of Conscience: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War Listen to NAM-TV,...
Apr 30, 2025•40 min
The recent death of Val Kilmer got Justin and I thinking about Jim Morrison and the curious legacy of The Doors in American pop culture. In this conversation, we continue our exploration of the amorphous brand of white masculinity embodied by Morrison and other doomed rock gods of the late 20th century, as we share memories of how The Doors blew our alienated teenage minds before the massive buzzkill of adulthood forced us to reckon with the cringier elements of Morrison’s persona and cultural i...
Apr 25, 2025•4 min
I'm reading S.C. Gwynne's incredible book Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History , and it's making me think about Israel, Gaza, and the fatal arrogance of the leadership class throughout history. A scathing review of Bill Clinton's new book brings that arrogant tendency right up to 2025, as we witness the Democratic Party's inability to conjure a coherent battle plan to confront Trump and company's unbel...
Apr 23, 2025•5 min
As the Trump administration tests the "Hamilton glitch" in the U.S. Constitution by sending Abrego Garcia and others to a foreign concentration camp without legal due process, I thought it might be time to contemplate what ordinary people can do to express their outrage/disapproval/humanity in the face of injustice. Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap for all our News Trap updates and access to a huge library of bonus content.
Apr 16, 2025•34 min
Trump's tariff carnival is doing real damage to the global economy, and Justin shares his thoughts on how a collapsing financial architecture will impact big capital, our daily lives, and the Trump project itself. Plus, we address the "Hamilton glitch" of judicial weakness, baked into the Constitution, that's creating a rapidly escalating showdown over who's really in charge. Click here to listen to the whole episode...
Apr 11, 2025•5 min
Trump is dismantling the global neoliberal economic order that has served as the left's boogeyman for years, which SHOULD be an opportunity for the left to offer something beyond shrugging ambivalance and lib-dunking. Why isn't that happening? Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access all our News Trap episodes and bonus content.
Apr 03, 2025•10 min
Guitar Center dudes and their insanely rigid opinions lead to a conversation with Justin about the political psychology of FOMO, the rise of the pedophile hunter influencer class, the masculine desperation of emoji-driven war-planning group chat jerkoff sessions, the abject horror of students kidnapped off the streets for their views on Israel and Palestine, and Trump's assault on free trade scrambling the political alignments of the past several decades. Listen the whole episode...
Mar 28, 2025•7 min
Adam Kotsko is a writer and cultural critic whose work focuses on American pop culture, from “cringe” comedies to our national obsession with sociopathic protagonists . His latest book, Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era considers how the Star Trek series has evolved (or devolved) in the political economy of streaming TV and the Marvel-ization of feature filmmaking. In this conversation we talk about how his work on TV sociopaths holds up during the new Trump administration,...
Mar 26, 2025•1 hr 9 min
Fascism comes to my local city council meeting, a proud Israel supporter haunts my gym, Elon Musk's transgender daughter drives him off a cliff, Trump wants to send people to foreign torture camps for Tesla vandalism, and the incompatible worldviews boil hotter than ever. Click here to listen to the whole episode.
Mar 21, 2025•3 min
Today I fall into paranoid android mode, thinking about what it means to "own the libs" from the left in the new Trump Reich. My message to an increasingly marginalized left flank: be careful what you wish for! Check out John Ganz's terrific Substack, Unpopular Front Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap for access to all our bonus content
Mar 19, 2025•22 min
Trump and Elon Musk are actively working to destroy the global economic order, but to what end? This week Justin and I consider the wacky cartoon reality that Americans inhabit, and speculate about the different forms "blowback" might take when the punishment gets real. Subscribe to hear the whole episode
Mar 14, 2025•5 min
Stephen Petrus is director of Public History Programs at LaGuardia and Wagner Archives and co-author of the book Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival (2015). He joins me to discuss the movie A Complete Unknown , which tracks a brief but critical moment in the life of Bob Dylan, when his rise to stardom intersected with the wider social and political project envisioned by American folk musicians, fans, and organizers. Check out Dylan’s Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie. For a deep...
Mar 07, 2025•1 hr 10 min
Our good friend Justin Rogers-Cooper joins me to survey the first month of Trump's presidency, as we play out some of the nastier currents now circling in American and global political culture, from Trump's exoneration of his foot soldiers to the left salivating over Luigi Mangione, and much more. Who's really in control? And what can we anticipate as we head into truly uncharted territory? Subscribe to listen to the whole episode, join the discussion, and gain access to our big library of bonus...
Feb 28, 2025•5 min
A recent law school event featuring former L.A. County District Attorney Jackie Lacey honestly blew my mind, and made me think a lot about the intersection of crime, law enforcement, reform movements, and political violence. I try to put those ideas together alongside the current culture of J6 pardons and Luigi mania, as we fall further into a chaotic and vengeful national mindset. Subscribe to the Nostalgia Trap Patreon to hear the whole episode and access our big library of bonus content. Chec...
Feb 26, 2025•4 min
There are currently too many news stories to fit into the "ominous portents of a dark future" file, so I've chosen a few of the most flagrant examples of Trump/Musk savagery to share, along with some reflections on how to fight for our minds and for each other as the world heads down the toilet. Check out our Patreon for more: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap
Feb 19, 2025•34 min
I got my first job when I was 15 years old, working at a Pumpkin Patch on a local farm, and it’s been all downhill from there. I’m partly joking, but the working world has never been a place of maximum success and happiness for me, and in this episode I try to come to terms with my own job history as a way of exploring the pressures that consume many of us: bosses, bills, weird co-workers, and the dark feeling that American life is often a big depressing rip-off. I’ve got stories to tell from a ...
Feb 14, 2025•6 min
The haunting documentary All I Can Say , which chronicles a few vibrant years in the life of Shannon Hoon, the lead singer of 90s grunge rock band Blind Melon, is a slice of deep 90s nostalgia shot on camcorder by Hoon himself before he died of a drug overdose in October 1995. In this conversation, Justin Rogers-Cooper joins me to reflect on Hoon’s complicated legacy, the strange power of his intimate pre-Internet video diary, and the larger galaxy of 90s grunge martyrs. Check out Justin’s chapt...
Feb 09, 2025•1 hr 14 min
I started teaching college history courses in 2005 when I was a graduate student at the City University of New York. Looking back at those early years, I can hardly believe how little I knew about how to teach college courses. As I mark my 20th year of teaching, I thought I would reflect on everything I’ve learned from two decades of serving as an adjunct professor at a wide range of institutions, from working class community colleges to elite private schools and everything in between. I’ve chan...
Jan 31, 2025•6 min
David Lynch died earlier this month, and like many others I’ve been reflecting on his legacy, not only in the wider culture but in my own personal trajectory and identity. In this episode, I focus on the latter. Rather than trying to analyze the larger meaning of Lynch’s filmography, I wanted to sort out how his work intervened on my life, in particular considering how ideas of dark magic, synchronicity, and dreams in his films connect with my own weird experience of American reality. So I share...
Jan 29, 2025•1 hr 15 min
The politics of rebuilding Los Angeles after the fires, tech maneuvering for Trump juice, social media outrage missing the mark, Elon's Nazi salute masking something darker, a new Gilded Age comes into view, what's at risk with global capital behaving like a caged animal. This is a short clip from a full episode, which you can hear by subscribing to our Patreon. Subscibers get access to all of our bonus content, including full episodes, videos, book recs, and News Trap updates: https://www.patre...
Jan 24, 2025•3 min
