Nostalgia Trap

Christian Appy's work on the history of the Vietnam War has had an enormous influence on the direction of my own research and writing on the war. In this conversation, Appy joins me to talk about the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary, The Vietnam War, which aired on PBS in October. We analyze the Burns aesthetic and discuss how the film avoids confronting the war's most troubling questions.

David Fouser is a professor of history who recently completed a Ph.D at the University of California, Irvine. In this conversation he tells me all about the field of environmental history, how grad school drew him (and, seemingly, everyone else) to the left, and the particular contours of academic life in Los Angeles.

David Fouser is a professor of history who recently completed a Ph.D at the University of California, Irvine. In this conversation he tells me all about the field of environmental history, how grad school drew him (and, seemingly, everyone else) to the left, and the particular contours of academic life in Los Angeles.

Fifty years after publishing his first short story, Stephen King remains a powerful force in American popular culture. Claudia Moreno Parsons joins me to talk about what King's work has meant to us personally and his place in the wider spectrum of American literature.

Fifty years after publishing his first short story, Stephen King remains a powerful force in American popular culture. Claudia Moreno Parsons joins me to talk about what King's work has meant to us personally and his place in the wider spectrum of American literature. 

In this episode, Justin Rogers-Cooper and I take on the immigration debate from our typically broader historical perspective. How did we get from "tear down this wall!" in 1989 to "build the wall!" in 2016, and what do our rapidly hardening state borders tell us about what's coming down the line?

In this episode, Justin Rogers-Cooper and I take on the immigration debate from our typically broader historical perspective. How did we get from "tear down this wall!" in 1989 to "build the wall!" in 2016, and what do our rapidly hardening state borders tell us about what's coming down the line?

Mikhail Gershovich was my boss at the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute in New York, where we were both surprised to discover that we had each been raised in Ventura County during the 1980s. Now that we're both living in California again (Mikhail is academic director at Emerson College in Los Angeles), I get to hear about his early childhood in the Soviet Union, how his family came to the U.S. in 1979, and what it was like becoming American in Southern California during the height of the 1980s Cold War.

On my way out of Baruch College after twelve years of teaching in the history department, I stopped by Professor Vincent DiGirolamo's office to talk with him about his youth in California and his path to academia in New York City.