Nostalgia Trap

Daniel Horowitz is a historian and the author of many books on American consumer culture, economics, and political ideology. In this conversation we discuss his latest book, American Dreams, Americ…

This week Justin and I talk about China's Zero Covid policies coming apart as Apple demands MORE IPHONES, which leads to a wider consideration of what it means when a state drives people from the far…

On this episode of TRAP TV, we examine a critical moment in the history of the Walt Disney Company, when the tremendous success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 gave way to a period of rapi…

This week Justin and I talk about the fight between labor, management, unions, and the state now being waged in the railroad industry, and trace the longer history of rail and transport as central sp…

This week Justin and I consider the possibility that news of Twitter's imminent demise may be premature, which leads to a discussion of tech bro culture's connection to the wider history of consumer …

Shane Burley returns to the Trap for a challenging conversation about Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Vietnam war mindfuck Full Metal Jacket, a film that asks deep, dark questions about violence, masculinity,…

On this installment of Housing Trap, Andrew Schustek talks with Benjamin Teresa, a professor in the Urban and Regional Studies and Planning program at the Wilder School of Government and Public Affai…

The livestream returns to a week full of exciting collapses: MAGA, Twitter, Meta, all run by men who talk a big game but suddenly can't seal the deal. Is this a temporary blip, "something that happen…

This week Ryan and I watch an incendiary viral TikTok and debate the idea of “third places” – those special spaces where a human being can be a human being, around other human beings. Does such a sp…

Andrew Schustek and Samuel Stein continue their conversation on the inner workings of American housing policy, this time focusing on subsidies, affordable housing, and signs of weakness/vulnerability…

Nostalgia Trap fellow traveler and guest host Andrew Schustek continues our series of conversations on the political economy of housing in the 21st century. This week, Andrew talks with geographer, u…

This week Justin and I watch the first few episodes of Adam Curtis' latest documentary provocation, Russia 1985–1999: TraumaZone, as we consider the different ways to imagine "collapse," both ideolog…

Do you need a college degree in order to understand T.S. Eliot poems? Does subjecting a work of art or literature to academic analysis ruin our enjoyment of said work? This week Ryan and I talk about…

Shane Burley is a writer and filmmaker whose work explores the contours of 21st century fascist movements. His latest book, Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse (…

This week Justin and I talk about the UFO documentary Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind: Contact Has Begun (2020), and get into the multiple UFO narratives currently circulating in online/media/stat…

This week Yasmin and I endure Andrew Dominik’s much over-hyped Netflix #content Blonde, a fictional passion play “about” Marilyn Monroe, based on the novel by Joyce Carol Oates. Our reactions are ana…

Is the era of tech utopianism over? Does anyone believe that Zuckerberg's Hail Mary plan to trap us all in some nightmarish alternate digital reality is actually going to work? This week Justin and I…

Historian and author Jason Vuic returns to the Trap to talk about his book The Yucks: Two Years in Tampa with the Losingest Team in NFL History, which tells the incredible story of the Tampa Bay Buc…