Nostalgia Trap

This week Justin and I read Billie Holiday's incredible 1956 memoir Lady Sings the Blues, the story of one woman's journey through a 20th century America saturated in the legacy of slavery and social violence. We discuss the book as a visceral lesson in the lived experience of racial capitalism, tracking how a voice haunted by history carries her through fame, money, drugs, exploitation, incarceration, and death. Why does Holiday's life and voice still speak to us? And what does she have to say?

Check out the whole episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-358-lady-80456339

Carl Freedman is a writer and professor of English literature at Louisiana State University who has written a number of important books on science fiction, American politics, and Marxist critical theory. In our last conversation, we talked about his book American Presidents and Oliver Stone: Kennedy, Nixon, and Bush between History and Cinema and got into the weird cultural legacy of the JFK assassination. This week Carl returns to Nostalgia Trap to continue our survey of titanic 1960s presidents with this conversation all about Richard Nixon and his freaky place in the American political imagination. Underneath our explorations is the persistent question: Did Nixon make us, or did we make Nixon?

Check out Carl's piece in L.A. Review of Books on the lines from Nixon to Trump: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/from-nixon-to-trump-metastases-of-cultural-power/

And here's Carl's book, not to be missed: Age of Nixon: A Study in Cultural Power

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to get all the good stuff on our bonus stream: https://www.patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

This week Justin and I take on the US/China Tik Tok fight and consider the wider implications of social media technology weaponized by states in a new cold war. Are we the lab rats for a psychological experiment conducted on a world-historical scale? Fuuuuuuuck, I certainly hope not! In either case, this is an intense conversation surveying the gangster-ass landscape of global capital at a particularly chilling moment, as we try to unlock the future by applying the reptilian logic of money and power to this week's wacky events. Russia, Ukraine, China, NATO, and of course, Las Vegas -- all on the table today. Let's do this.

Subscribe to listen to all our livestreams/bonus stuff, whenever you want: https://www.patreon.com/posts/livestream-3-17-80177026

Tanya L. Roth is a historian and teacher whose new book, Her Cold War: Women in the U.S. Military, 1945-1980, details the experiences of American women after the 1948 Women's Armed Services Integration Act began a new era in the history of military service. In this conversation, Roth explains how, in the decades since World War II, the U.S. military became a central battleground in the fight for gender equality, as women challenged (and ultimately overturned) their classification as "noncombatants" and continue to reshape the structure and ideology of an institution that, for better or worse, serves as a critical engine of social engineering.

Subscribe to access our weekly livestream and giant library of bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Is there property without police? This week Justin and I talk about the "bottom up" appeal of Fox News and Tucker Carlson, as we consider how concepts of home, family, and property are tied up in an ideology of crime and punishment. Lots of directions and implications here, from Ron DeSantis' sadistic turn at Guantanamo to Lori Lightfoot's loss in Chicago. How deep does America's prison mindset go? I think we're gonna find out!

What is "alt comedy" anyway? On this episode of Mr. Trap, we take you back to the mid-1990s, when finding hip comedy with an intelligent perspective was as difficult as finding weed and pornography. Which is to say, pretty difficult! As we survey Mr. Show's first season, we share some of our favorite bits and talk about what made Bob and David stand out in the larger world of 90s humor, from Saturday Night Live to In Living Color. Geoff and Peter tell us what makes Bob's Droopy character so special, we all have a laugh about Tom Kenny's surreal Abraham Lincoln impression, and David tells the story of his multiple, bizarre real-life encounters with the actual Bob Odenkirk and David Cross.

All episodes of Mr. Trap are included with a Nostalgia Trap subscription:

patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Our friend Avi Garelick joins us to discuss his recent piece on the war between Ron DeSantis and the Disney Corporation in Florida, as we explore the longer history of Florida's extraordinary relationship to the Disney brand. Along the way, we talk about Sean Baker's haunting film The Florida Project, the weird politics and aesthetics of "New Urbanism," and the current direction of housing politics in American cities.

Check out our subscribers-only podcast series on Disney's wild history:

Ep 1 - Time is a Flat Circle: https://www.patreon.com/posts/trap-tv-brick-is-74949645

Ep 2 - Uncle Walt Goes to War: https://www.patreon.com/posts/trap-tv-brick-to-75566223

Ep 3 - Space Cowboys: https://www.patreon.com/posts/trap-tv-brick-76267538

This week Justin and I watch the documentary Missing 411: The Hunted and contemplate cryptids, bigfoots, and mysterious disappearances in American forests. How are American history and politics tied up in these stories? What happened to all of these people? And most of all, what the fuck is making these sounds?

Join up and listen to the whole episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/livestream-3-3-w-79523275

Freddie deBoer joins me to discuss his viral piece on 90s nostalgia, "It's So Sad When Old People Romanticize Their Heydays, Also the 90s Were Objectively the Best Time to Be Alive." This is a raw and honest conversation about what we miss about the era, what we absolutely hate about the 21st century, and how our lament for the loss of a certain kind of analog social reality is yes, old man shit, but also a call to the younger generation and a cataloging of the ways digital life has crippled us all. There was another way of living, kids. Let us tell you about it…

Listen to whole episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-354-was-79472867

This week Justin and I talk about the Great Chatbot Panic of 2023, leftists in love with Trump's "brilliant" visit to Ohio, and the alleged moral authority of U.S. actions re: Ukraine, one year into the war. Let's do this.

Subscribe to listen to the whole episode and access all our bonus stuff, livestreams, and videos: https://www.patreon.com/posts/livestream-2-24-79161824