Nostalgia Trap

What makes a great teacher? In an effort to avoid becoming completely blackpilled doomers, this week Ryan and I have a conversation about our favorite teachers, from kindergarten to grad school. We try to remember the things that made us want to become teachers ourselves, and wonder if the ideas and practices of our ancient heroes can help guide us through the dark waters of today’s campus. Check out Ryan’s website Subscribe to Ryan’s Substack  Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to access all Campus Trap episodes, along with our entire bonus library  

Stories about the past form the ideological foundation of the American project. This week’s guest, Alicia Puglionesi, is a historian and writer whose work often focuses on “hauntings” – both real and imagined – in our collective history. Her latest book, In Whose Ruins: Power, Possession, and the Landscapes of American Empire, explores the fake narratives and mythologies created to justify land theft, genocide, and the endless extraction of natural resources for profit. In this conversation, she explains how fundamental elements like oil, water, and atomic power were harnessed by capital through processes of historical erasure and, above all, storytelling. Subscribe to the Nostalgia Trap Patreon page to access our whole universe of bonus content, including our newest podcasts Gender Trap w/ Yasmin Nair and Campus Trap w/ Ryan Boyd: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Digital Humanities? More like Digital Hu-SHAM-ities, am I right? On this episode of Campus Trap, Ryan Boyd and I trade stories about our experiences with the digital pedagogy boom/bust cycle of the past decade or so, in which a whole generation was sold on the idea that computers would somehow make higher education better for everyone (spoiler alert: it didn’t happen). So if the COVID/Zoom era finally made us understand that tech can’t solve the university’s problems, what’s our path forward? Is there an opportunity to reclaim and repurpose the campus? Subscribe to listen to this episode and access all our bonus content: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

On this week's livestream, Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us to ponder the looming economic wreckage soon washing upon America's shores, and what that means for an already volatile political and social domestic situation. We also reflect on how "delivering the goods" is a critical piece of state power, and what that means for Democrats in a world of inflation, insane gas prices, and impending mass layoffs. Fun stuff! But don't worry, we also consider the personal/psychological elements at play here. Aside from these structural traps, are we also at the mercy of increasingly deranged individuals with unimaginable power? Subscribe to listen to the whole episode: patreon.com/posts/68029440

“What is a woman? What is a man?” Go fuck yourself! Those questions are traps! In this episode of Gender Trap, Yasmin and I talk about the right’s absurd yet powerful assault on all things gender-related, and how the left’s reactive, academic takes on gender hobble our ability to fight back. What would a popular left vision of gender actually look like? Because it ain’t RuPaul! We also, of course, bring an episode of Mad Men (S1, E2, “Ladies Room”) into the mix, as we examine how Betty and Don’s fucked up 1950s nightmare marriage showcases the trap of Cold War domestic gender roles in dynamic, psychologically gory detail. Subscribe to listen to the whole episode and access our vast galaxy of bonus content, including Campus Trap w/ Ryan Boyd, Record Trap w/ Justin Farrar, and lots more: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Grace Elizabeth Hale is a professor of history and American Studies at the University of Virginia whose work focuses on race, class, and culture in the 20th century, particularly in the American South. Her latest book, Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture tells the story of how a small college town in Georgia became a center of indie and punk culture in the 1970s and 1980s, producing major bands like the B-52s and R.E.M. while maintaining a queer D.I.Y cultural scene that’s become a significant legend in the annals of American rock. What makes Athens so special? And can that magic be recreated in other places? Subscribe to access all our bonus content, including our all-new podcasts GENDER TRAP w/ Yasmin Nair and CAMPUS TRAP w/ Ryan Boyd: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

On the debut episode of Campus Trap, Ryan Boyd joins me to reflect on how much the stereotypical “college experience” has evolved since our undergraduate days, when a countercultural bacchanalia was still dominant in the popular  imagination, if not in practical reality. From the world of keg-stands and bongloads to the sobering realities of 21st century academia, we trace our own paths through graduate school and into a precarious labor market that seems shakier by the minute. How did our collective vision of college transform in the neoliberal era? And now that we’re professors ourselves, how do we navigate an increasingly dysfunctional society alongside our students? Listen to Campus Trap and all our bonus stuff by subscribing to the Nostalgia Trap Patreon: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap 

Jason Vuic is a historian and writer whose books tell incredible stories about the unintended consequences of unbridled American ambition. This conversation focuses on his two latest books: The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History and The Swamp Peddlers: How Lot Sellers, Land Scammers, and Retirees Built Modern Florida and Transformed the American Dream, as we explore how the market for cars and houses creates a fertile landscape for cynical opportunism and environmental disaster. Subscribe to access our galaxy of bonus content, including the all-new CAMPUS TRAP w/ Ryan Boyd: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

How does “gossip” intersect with gender and power? If a woman “knows a secret” about a powerful man, what can she do with it? This week Yasmin and I consider gossip as an alternative social media network, bubbling under the surface of our political culture. Of course, Mad Men is a central text here, so we take a detailed look at how the show’s pilot uses the concept of “gossip” to lay out the show’s themes of identity, patriarchy, and public performance of self. For the full episode and access to our magnifient library of bonus content: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Carrie Conners is a poet, writer, and professor of English at LaGuardia Community College; her latest book Laugh Lines: Humor, Genre, and Political Critique in Late Twentieth Century American Poetry explores how American poets since the 1950s engage humor as a political and aesthetic tactic. In this conversation, we talk about the language games of standup comics from George Carlin to Dave Chappelle, and trace the wider shifts in poetry, comedy, and political culture since the invention of the atomic bomb. We also examine how Carrie navigates these ideas in her own poetry, with excerpts from her two excellent collections, Luscious Struggle (2020) and Species of Least Concern (2022). Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap for bonus content, including our newest podcasts GENDER TRAP w/ Yasmin Nair and CAMPUS TRAP w/ Ryan Boyd: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap