Nostalgia Trap

We kicked off this week's livestream with a visit from Justin Rogers-Cooper, who reminds us that liberals (and the left too!) often lack a critique of the Fed, and how that gap in understanding leads…

Claudia Moreno Parsons joins us for an exploration of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders (1983).Based on S.E. Hinton’s 1967 novel about working class teen “greasers” in 1960s Tulsa, Oklahoma, The O…

Michael Brenes is  Associate Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and Lecturer in History at the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. His new book, For Might and Right: Cold…

On this week's livestream, Justin Rogers-Cooper drops by to offer thoughts on some weird moves from U.S. Congress on China this week, which for some reason no one is talking about. Plus, David contin…

The 1990 Martin Scorsese-directed gangster saga Goodfellas remains one of the most rewatchable films of the 20th century, a kaleidoscopic ride through the ups and downs of mafia life that’s as exhaus…

Jon Wiener is an American historian and the author of a number of books on the 1960s and 1970s, including Conspiracy in the Streets: The Extraordinary Trial of the Chicago Seven. Jon returns to the T…

I wanted to take the Thanksgiving holiday, when very few were likely to be watching, to try something new on the livestream...I hope you enjoy it. Since we've begun talking so much about movies on th…

Justin Rogers-Cooper and Bill Black join us for our very first episode specifically dedicated to the JFK assassination, an event that connects a number of Nostalgia Trap obsessions, from deep state c…

Kiara Barrow and Rebecca Panovka are the creators and editors of The Drift, a new magazine on culture and politics that promises to “introduce new work and new ideas by young writers who haven’t yet …

Daniel Traber is a professor of English at Texas A & M University at Galveston, a punk at heart, and an active member of the cult of Repo Man (dir. Alex Cox, 1984).  In this conversation, we get into…

Derf Backderf is a writer and artist whose graphic novels explore everything from the lives of sanitation workers (Trashed) to Derf’s actual high school relationship with future serial killer Jeffrey…

What happens when organized groups of working class Jewish communists pool their resources to create cooperative housing in New York City? Avi Garelick and Andrew Schustek have some ideas for us. The…

Well, there was an election. And there was a result of that election. But what does it MEAN? Trap oracle Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us this week for a conversation about the multiple stories being bo…

The Amazon series The Boys, based on the comic book series of the same name, is a hyper-violent and deeply cynical take on superhero culture and, ultimately, neoliberal capitalism. Danny Bessner join…

Writer Rax King’s deservedly celebrated recent piece, “Love, Peace, and Taco Grease: How I Left My Abusive Husband and Found Guy Fieri,” is both an incredible feat of writing and a compelling take on…

On our first live podcast episode, Danny Bessner, Courtney Rawlings, and Bill Black join us for a detailed look at the 1985 pop culture nostalgia monster Back to the Future (dir. Robert Zemeckis). We…

Oliver Stone’s 1995 film Nixon, starring Anthony Hopkins as the haunted, duplicitous 37th U.S. president, marked both a turning point in the filmmaker’s career and a significant shift in public opini…

As we continue our series on 90s L.A. movies, we arrive at the 1995 high school classic Clueless (dir. Amy Heckerling), one of a number of Jane Austen adaptations that dominated 1990s pop culture. Da…

Jared Yates Sexton is a professor and political analyst whose latest book American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed its People takes on some of the big foundational myths of American…