Nostalgia Trap

Daniel Chard is a professor of history at Western Washington University and the author of Nixon's War at Home: The FBI, Leftist Guerillas, and the Origins of Counterterrorism. In this conversation, we both reflect on the different cultural and political forces that drew us to the American left in the 1990s, and how our politics have evolved in the decades since the heady days of freeganism, drum circles, anti-globalization protests, anarchist collectives, black bloc tactics, Ani DiFranco, and other key features of the "dream of the 90s."

Check out Daniel's first appearance on the show for a detailed discussion of his research on leftist violence and the FBI.

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Jonathan Crary is a professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University whose work examines the role of the human eye, aesthetics, and visual culture in modern history. His latest book, Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World, is a razor sharp critique of "digital capitalism" and the outsized role of the internet in our daily lives and the larger economy. Our conversation reflects on the decades since the 1960s, when hopes for radical change became invested in structures of technology and finance that have not only failed to produce utopia, but have in effect produced the opposite: an alienated, misinformed, angry society teetering on the brink of political, social, and ecological apocalypse. What would it look like to move beyond the digital age?

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Justin Farrar and I continue our conversation about rock music and the occult by watching the incredibly disturbing Paradise Lost documentary series, which details the case of three young men wrongfully accused of the grisly murders of three children in the town of West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993. With prosecutors (literally) presenting Metallica lyrics as evidence of murderous intent, the case was part of a dark undercurrent in the 1990s, as music and counterculture became targets of intense paranoia, hatred, and violence from all varieties of American reactionaries. We share our memories and insights from this scary, prophetic era in rock history, when America's endless cycle of Satanic panics aimed its sights at the MTV generation.

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On the third and final installment of our series on the life, work, and legacy of Noam Chomsky, Justin and I talk about Chomsky the Doomer: between nuclear war and climate collapse, he doesn't hold out much hope for the survival of the human race. What makes him such a Gloomy Gus? Reading critically through Chomsky's lectures and writings on the end of the world, we look at the details of his apocalyptic thinking and examine why he thinks we're currently living through the "terminal stage of human existence." But are we really doomed? Or is there a trapdoor to a different future?

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Here's another quick clip from Part Two of our trilogy with Justin Rogers-Cooper on the complicated life, work, and legacy of Noam Chomsky.

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Where does American popular music come from, and what does the devil have to do with it? On Part One of a two-part series on music and the occult, Justin Farrar and I discuss Peter Bebergal's excellent history Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, as we explore the eerie mythology that haunts the origins of blues and rock. Some of the musicians and other figures mentioned in this episode include Robert Johnson, Clarence Ashley, Big Mama Thornton, Elvis Presley, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Black Sabbath, Tommy Johnson, Skip James, Kurt Cobain, R.E.M., Harry Smith, The Geto Boys, and lots more.

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Our series on the life, work, and legacy of Noam Chomsky continues with a critical look at Chomsky's signature intellectual work, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media. This episode traces Chomsky's development through the 1970s and 1980s, as he evolved into a fierce critic of state violence and corporate propaganda, while becoming a bit of a radical celebrity himself. Justin has plenty of ideas about how Chomsky's media theories hold up in the era of social media, 8chan, and QAnon. Are our minds really under the control of a unified state power? How does a fractured media, controlled in part by the people themselves, manufacture consent?

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This week Yasmin and I watch two films, Working Girls (Lizzie Borden, 1986) and Working Girl (Mike Nichols, 1988), as we think about the intersection of sex, gender, labor, and capitalism. Is sex work any different from an office job? That depends: What brand of hyper-gendered humiliation are you willing to endure for money?

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Ryan's recent trip to Montreal gets us thinking about the connections between cities and college campuses, as we try to imagine more vibrant institutions than the crumbling ones we currently haunt. Of course, creating a better university would mean confronting the ways that capitalism structures higher education, and Ryan shares some ideas from his recent Substack piece about radical teaching practices that aim to decondition students from the hustle mindset and cultivate vibes of solidarity and compassion.

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In the first of a trilogy of episodes examining the life, work, and legacy of Noam Chomsky, Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us for a discussion of Chomsky's younger years: the historical moment into which he was born, the people and ideas that surrounded him, and the formation of his political and intellectual values. In this episode we pay particular attention to the evolution of Chomsky's attitudes about war, fascism, and the state, as we trace his development from academic all-star to public dissident, from prominent researcher and theorist in the field of linguistics to outspoken critic of American foreign policy and leading figure in the American left. Our series will continue on the Nostalgia Trap subscriber feed: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.