Nostalgia Trap

In Part Two of my conversation with writer and musician Sean Nelson, we talk about the origins of his band Harvey Danger in the 1990s Seattle music scene, the bizarre rush of having a massive radio hit, and the bleak economic landscape of indie rock in the streaming era. Along the way, Sean offers some hard-earned wisdom and personal reflections on the pejorative concept of the "one hit wonder," as we contemplate the past and future possibilities of subversive popular culture. Were the 90s really the last golden age, or is that just another nostalgia trap?

Listen to the whole episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-353-part-79010461

Sean Nelson is a writer and musician, known widely as the lead singer of the band Harvey Danger, whose 1998 single "Flagpole Sitta" became a staple of "alternative rock" radio and MTV and an inescapable earworm in 90s pop culture. In Part One of this conversation, we talk about what "alternative" means, tracing a line from the 1960s psychedelic culture that produced insane shit like the Monkees movie Head (1968) to the Seattle scene that drew Sean and many others in the early 1990s.

Check out Part Two of our conversation: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-353-part-79010461

This week Justin and I talk about the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Are we entering an accelerated era of industrial mass poisonings, or is this just more of the same old industrial mass poisonings?

Listen to the whole episode: patreon.com/posts/livestream-2-17-78840239

Tad Skotnicki is a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the author of The Sympathetic Consumer: Moral Critique in Capitalist Culture (Stanford University Press, 2021). He joins me for a conversation about the common features of consumer activism, from 19th century abolitionism to 21st century Fair Trade movements, which have all based their projects around the idea that consumers are responsible for sympathizing with the invisible laborers that produce their goods, from sugar to iPhones. Skotnicki shares some great historical examples to help illustrate how capitalism's consistent production of "sympathetic consumers" is a feature, not a bug.

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access our massive library of bonus episodes, video essays, livestreams and more: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

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 this conversation, we talk about his book American Presidents and Oliver Stone: Kennedy, Nixon, and Bush between History and Cinema and go down the JFK assassination rabbit hole. How does Oliver Stone's hyper-stylized vision capture the psychedelic violence of a beautiful young celebrity president's savage murder in broad daylight? And how much can we trace a 21st century American political culture of conspiracy theories, true crime obsession, and spectacular public violence to the ritual bloodshed of November 22, 1963?

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access our massive library of bonus conversations, livestreams, and videos: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

What happens when three old pals get together to talk about the 90s sketch comedy program Mr. Show with Bob and David? This podcast answers that very question! Welcome to the debut episode of Mr. Trap, a place where me (David Parsons) and my good friends Peter Sabatino and Geoff Johnson can trade ideas, memories, analysis, and even a few laffs about a show that touched our young hearts and forged our identities. In this opening conversation we get into Mr. Show's origins in the L.A. alt comedy scene, the transition to HBO, and the first few insane sketches announcing a new *extra ironic* set of Gen X comedy voices.

First episode is free -- everything else is for Nostalgia Trap Patreon subscribers only!

New episodes of Mr. Trap are coming throughout Spring/Summer 2023. Subscribe to hear the whole series: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

This week Justin and I go all in on Baz Luhrmann's camp masterpiece Elvis (2022), as we consider the life, work, and legacy of an iconic 20th century artist/product/celebrity/Christ figure. How is Elvis' insane life story emblematic of an archetypal cultural phenomenon, from Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin to Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston? How do we sort out the contradictions of race, gender, sexuality, and class in Elvis' rise and fall? And perhaps most of all, what's up with Tom Hanks in this movie?

Listen to the whole episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-349-i-w-78198738

What does it mean to "go underground"? Lara Langer Cohen is an associate professor of English at Swarthmore College. Her latest book, Going Underground: Race, Space, and the Subterranean in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Duke University Press, 2023), explores how subterranean spaces (both real and imagined) animated social, political, and cultural movements in 19th century America, from the abolitionists of the Underground Railroad to anarchist secret societies and practitioners of sex magic. In this conversation, we plunge into these underground worlds and excavate some of the lost people and ideas that populate the places that exist beneath our collective history.

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access more conversations, livestreams, and videos: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

This week Yasmin and I watch Chinatown (1974) and have a conversation about the film's infamously elegant screenplay, shocking plot twist, insanely dark ending, and wonderfully sleazy cameo from the film's director, Roman Polanski, whose own personal corruption intersects with the film's brutal vision of a corrupted world. What does Chinatown have to say to us now?

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How do shifting ideas about physical fitness, health, and the body reflect larger ideological structures like nation, race, gender, and capitalism? Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is a historian of American culture and politics and associate professor of history at the New School. In this conversation, we discuss her latest book Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America's Exercise Obsession, which tracks the evolution of fitness culture from the strongman exhibitions at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair to the Peloton/home gym movement of the COVID-19 era.

Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access our library of bonus episodes, livestreams, and video essays: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap