Nostalgia Trap

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.

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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 book, A Right to Housing?

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 to unpack its uncanny connection to our collective trips into extradimensional worlds.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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 found a new planet hiding behind the sun!

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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?

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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 in the past.

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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 the "AI bubble." Plus, our usual speculations on the possibilities for progressive politics and leftist revolution within this particular social and economic climate. BUY BUY BUY or SELL...

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.

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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?

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Did Bernie's loss break the left's brain?

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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?

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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.

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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 series with Monte and Alan, we tackle the idea of "cultural appropriation" within the context of "race music," from Elvis to Eminem.

Check out Monte's first appearance on Nostalgia Trap here.

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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 favorite BFF.

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 Charles L. Ponce de Leon joins me for a conversation about his new book Rolling Stone and the Rise of Hip Capitalism: How a Magazine Born in the 1960s Changed America (UNC Press 2026...

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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 thinking about Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's dire warning at this week's Davos conference, we talk about the wider chaos unleashed by ICE in Minnesota, Trump's attack on the Fed, and...

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 larger struggle for social, racial, and economic justice. In this conversation, he shares some of the most compelling revelations he's discovered in oral history interviews, underground newspaper archives, and FBI records, and reflects on the...

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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 psychological, economic and historical forces that are launching us into a seemingly bleak future.

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 episode all about Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (dir. John Hughes), a key work in the Candy oeuvre.

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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 the MAGA project in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination and the rising cost of living, and consider the disturbing implications of the "Fuck Around and Find Out" philosophy as applied to...

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As we continue our exploration of various forms of intoxicants, I share some personal stories and insights about America's favorite mind-altering substance: alcohol. From teenage experiments with wine coolers to the tipsy world of New York City dive bars, I've collected some hard-earned perspectives on the complicated role booze plays in our lives and the wider world. Cheers!

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Is the Trump Reich in terminal decline? Have we entered a new stage in the madness of this administration? This week Justin joins me to catalog some of the important points of failure and retreat in the White House and beyond, from Trump's faltering ballroom construction project and the quiet shuttering of DOGE, to tech psychos like Sam Altman and Elon Musk selling increasingly unrealistic visions of the future (OpenAI dominance and Nazified...

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Lots of fun stuff today: slavery in the tuna industry, monetized Nazi content driving engagement across every major social media platform, the idea of "moving where it's cheaper" meets open ridicule, poetry as a way of hacking AI systems into encouraging self harm, Iran faces truly apocalyptic drought conditions, and worldwide murder rates decline precipitously because there aren't enough kids around to do the killing anymore.

Have you ever seen A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies? It's an epic documentary whose title says it all: a legendary director tells his life story while sharing ideas about the history of cinema. Kind of a two-for-one. I highly recommend it.

Anyway, that's what I'm going to do with this series, except instead of movies I'll be talking about drugs. I don't think my drug experiences are particularly unique, but I do have a lot of drug experiences, and I think I've got some insights to offer that extend beyond memoir; that is...

The latest Jeffrey Epstein email dump brings up some intriguing ideas about the shadowy financier's actual role among all his elite friends, from Donald Trump to Noam Chomsky. Why did so many powerful people seek his advice and companionship, despite knowing the details of his dark crimes? As Justin Rogers-Cooper explains, the answer raises uncomfortable questions about American history, "cancel culture," and the depths of inhumanity we're willing to forgive in our heroes, leaders, and friends.

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This week Justin and I talk about the Mamdani victory in NYC; the shifting dynamics of the much hyped "civil war" within the Democratic Party; how to read the Trump administration's weak response on elections and the government shutdown; Marjorie Taylor-Greene's pivot away from QAnon world; the Heritage Foundation's fight over Nick Fuentes and Nazi influencers; bombshell news about Nayib Bukele and his El Salvador prison project.

The US government shits the bed, Trump dumps AI feces on protesters, the East Wing of the White House gets flushed down the toilet, Mamdani squeezes out a floater upon a dying Democratic Party, and something stinks about the US dropping bombs on "drug dealers" off the coast of Venezuela.

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Spoiler alert! I recorded this livestream about an hour after finishing this movie, so this is me attempting to untangle my thoughts about it. A complicated, funny, scary, and beautiful contemplation about revolutionary praxis (worst word in the world), One Battle After Another is definitely worth your time. I explain why here.

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This week Justin joins me to consider the dialectical nature of our 2025 reality, as we examine the utopian and dystopian properties of Bad Bunny Super Bowl discourse, the rise of Zohran Mamdani, and the accelerated unleashing of AI slop upon a world of hungry little piggies. Are we in heaven, or are we in hell? Why not both?

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The Supreme Court is scared of crossing Trump; Stephen Miller wants to declare the Democratic Party a terrorist organization; an ICE raid in Chicago lays the groundwork for a new era of authoritarianism; late night TV says goodbye; microplastics are giving everyone cancer; and we're all awaiting an economic crash at a scale the world has never seen. Cheers!

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This week on the Nostalgia Trap Livestream: Conspiracy theory mind-melt reaches the upper echelons of power, AI-generated savagery plunges further into the toilet, Chuck Schumer and Zohran Mamdani flirt with the limits of liberal possibility, a shocking violation of the 1st Amendment that's NOT Jimmy Kimmel (so no one cares), plus some delightful Cuban piano grooves!

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On this week's News Trap update, Justin joins me to discuss the question on everyone's mind: when is the fever gonna break? As the cartoonish reality of Trump's second term takes on increasingly demented dimensions, we game out how larger forces, particularly the insane bubble that is the AI economy, are stirring in the background, threatening an imminent meltdown that promises to flip the script of what both left and right are currently imagining.

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On this week's livestream I talk about the deceptive power of the Kirk memorial, the postmodernity of conspiracy culture, the ironic twist of right-wing cancel campaigns and, of course, Jimmy Kimmel. Plus I share some juicy bits from Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland.

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The fallout from Charlie Kirk's assassination continues to mutate into an escalation of the right's multi-front authoritarian campaign. On this episode, I talk with Judd Legum, journalist and creator of two of the most important  independent progressive publications of the past two decades: the political news site ThinkProgress (RIP!) and the current Substack newsletter Popular Information. We talk about people being fired for comments about Kirk's death (including Jimmy Kimmel), the Trump administration's strategy of suing their enemies, and the outlook for progressive and left journalism in this increasingly stifling political atmosphere.

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America is taking a turn into a dark cul-de-sac, and many liberals are hoping that Stephen Colbert and John Oliver's sunnier version of the national id will somehow, magically, win the day. But will it? Has it ever?

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Here's our attempt to put Charlie Kirk's assassination in the context of the algorithmic dream world we inhabit, the queer libidinal dimensions of love and murder, and the larger politics of incompetent maniacs in the driver's seat of global power.

This is a preview clip from a much longer and wider-ranging discussion, for Nostalgia Trap subscribers.

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