Nostalgia Trap

Sam Stein is a housing policy analyst and advocate in New York City; his book Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State reveals the horrifying machinations of real estate developers and the neoliberal state, who build massive luxury towers for billionaires while the city’s middle and working class citizens deal with skyrocketing rents, housing shortages, and rampant homelessness. How does this happen? And how do we fight back?  Here's more on the artist who snuck into 111 W 57th St and took these amazing photos: newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/08/andi-schmieds-billionaire-espionage-art-project And don’t miss Sam’s incredible piece in The Baffler on Manhattan “skinny” luxury towers: https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/faulty-towers-stein  

What is “trauma porn” and what role does it play on the left? Yasmin Nair joins us to discuss her recent piece, “AOC and the Weaponization of Trauma,” which explores the uncomfortable dynamics of race, gender and class at play in the public thirst for graphic stories of trauma, abuse, and suffering, and the toxic place that “trauma” holds in American political culture.   

As he approaches a major personal milestone, our good friend and Nostalgia Trap producer Peter Sabatino joins me for an honest conversation about the role alcohol has played in our respective lives. From the roaring 20s of college-age binge drinking to the high-octane craft IPA world of the hipster dad, we explore how drugs and alcohol become entangled with one’s sense of self, an element of identity that can grow more and more exhausting as the years go by. Is it mid-life crisis time on Nostalgia Trap? I think you know the answer. For the full episode: patreon.com/posts/episode-301-w-58294942

Max Chafkin, author of The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power (see Episode 294), returns for a conversation all about SpaceX cowboy Elon Musk. Is this guy a tech genius saving the planet from climate change and launching us into a beautiful robotic future, or a capitalist huckster whose only talent is convincing authoritarian states and a loyal fanbase of angry bros to support his business ventures? As Max and I explore in this episode, why not both? To hear the full episode: patreon.com/posts/episode-299-man-57888655

Could a Red Hot Chili Peppers song from 1999 hold the key to understanding the political economy of 21st century tech culture and the globalization of Hollywood’s vampiric vision of human nature? As Justin Roger-Cooper explains on our 300th (!!!) episode, sure, why not?  

This week Freddie deBoer joins me to talk about his recent Substack piece “Smoking Weed Doesn’t Feel Good for Me Anymore, and It Hasn’t for a Long Time,” exploring how cannabis legalization, stronger weed, and just plain getting older have caused us both to interrogate our personal weed consumption and stoner identities. This conversation touches on the politics of criminalization, peer pressure, stoner culture, mental health, grief, weed and the left, and lots more, as we try to come to terms with marijuana’s complicated role in our lives and in the wider world. To hear the full episode: patreon.com/posts/episode-298-w-57598306

Part Two of our conversation with Yasmin Nair on death and grief in the COVID era. Check out Yasmin’s incredible archive of writing, including many of the pieces discussed in this episode, here: yasminnair.com.

Andrew Schustek joins us to discuss the extraordinary Japanese horror film Cure (1997), one of a number of unbelievably prescient works directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa that take on the nightmarish social and political reality of Japan’s “lost decades.” In this conversation, we explain why Cure stands alone, as both a unique piece of horror craftsmanship and an endlessly frightening exploration of the connections between political economy and the unbridled murder lust simmering just beneath the surface of “ordinary” men and women. 

The one and only Yasmin Nair joins us this week for a wide-ranging discussion on a topic near and dear to all of us: death. In Part One of our conversation, we talk about how the politics of COVID have created a cruel public theater that showcases American culture’s deeply weird, and deeply disturbing, attitudes about death, grief, and what we owe to each other. This two-parter is quite openly a Nostalgia Trap therapy session, as Yasmin and I each process the loss of close friends in the context of intense global heartbreak.   Listen to Part Two here:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/57076725  

Max Chafkin is an editor at Bloomberg Businessweek whose new book, The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power tells the unbelievable true story of Peter Thiel’s rise to power through strategic investment and control over massive tech firms. From his assassination of Gawker (remember the Hulk Hogan lawsuit? Thiel funded it.) to his manipulation of Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook algorithm, Thiel has emerged as an enigmatic, arguably sinister force in American politics and media. Who is this guy? And what is the endgame?