Nostalgia Trap

Tom DePaola is a Ph.D. candidate studying higher ed and academic labor at USC, and co-author (along with Adrianna J. Kezar and Daniel T. Scott) of the new book The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University. He joins us to discuss the increasing precarity felt by academics and other workers at colleges across the country, and to explore the longer history of neoliberalism’s devastating attack on both the ideological underpinnings and practical operation of American higher education.    

Lavelle Porter is a writer and professor of English at CUNY’s New York City College of Technology. He joins us to discuss his new book The Blackademic Life: Academic Fiction, Higher Education, and the Black Intellectual, which explores representations of black intellectual life from the Reconstruction Era to today. Along the way we touch on the lesser-known fictional works of W.E.B. DuBois, the rise of Black Studies on college campuses in the 1960s and 1970s, the complicated, tragic legacy of Bill Cosby, and the evolving conversation about higher education in 21st century hip hop. 

Sarah Milov is a professor of history at the University of Virginia and the author of The Cigarette: A Political History. In this conversation, she describes how the intersection of private capital and state power combined (with astounding success) to promote the consumption of cigarettes to the American public, and how activists engaged ideas around public space, health, and consent to fight back.

Sarah Taber is a crop scientist and ex-farmworker with a wide knowledge of agricultural history and practice, which you can hear in action on her excellently-named podcast Farm to Taber.  In this conversation, we talk about the role of the “farmer” in the American imagination and survey some of the most critical moments in the development of American food and farming policy.

Luke O’Neil is a writer whose work chronicles the dark edges of 21st century America, capturing the horrific tenor of our age in his incredible newsletter and in his latest book, Welcome to Hell World: Dispatches from the American Dystopia. From murderous cops and fascist dads to suicidal veterans and imprisoned children, O’Neil connects the dots of the American nightmare in a voice that’s compelling and authentic and genuinely enraging. In this conversation, we talk about his path through the ugly landscape of new digital media and explore how the political and personal crash together in his work.

A.M. Gittlitz is a writer on radical politics, counterculture, and the paranormal, and the producer of a wonderful podcast called The Antifada. In this conversation, he catches us up on the worldwide UFO phenomenon, detailing how the U.S. government is pouring resources into investigating alien spacecraft, with big corporations (and the guy from Blink-182!) getting in on the action. Gittlitz shares plenty of incredible stories, many featured in his upcoming book I WANT TO BELIEVE: The Posadist Movement and Leftwing Ufology (Pluto Press, 2020), as we discuss the wider context of the alien narrative in culture and politics. 

Mike Pearl is a writer and self-described “apocalypse expert” whose new book The Day It Finally Happens explores the increasingly bizarre scenarios that threaten to totally ruin our collective future. From internet blackouts and antibiotic-resistant superviruses to collapsing governments and mass extinction events, Mike tracks the actual probability of these nightmares coming true as a way of helping us navigate an anxious present. In this conversation, we game out some of the more insane ideas from his book while asking the question of our age: How bad is it gonna get? 

Sam Yang is the host of Southpaw, a podcast about the intersection of leftist politics and combat sports. Yang is on a mission to reclaim fighting culture, forging connections between physicality, spirituality, and a more humane engagement with the planet and each other. In this conversation he discusses his background in martial arts, explaining how ethical ideas embedded in his combat training inform his political perspectives, and speculates on strategies for winning the hearts and minds of millions of UFC fans.

Bill Black and KJ Shepherd return to the Trap for a special Halloween episode, in which we reflect upon the public fears and personal phobias that plagued our childhoods. Together we explore all sorts of spooky stuff, including the hellish visions invoked by Chick tracts, the 1980s crusade against obscenity in pop music, the weird national obsession with children dying in abandoned refrigerators, and the varieties of erotic experience available at your local Barnes and Noble.  

Kevin Kruse is a historian at Princeton University and the author of a number of important books about race, class, and politics in 20th century America. He is also one of the most visible historians online, with a massive Twitter following that often serves as a mini-course in American history. In this conversation, we talk about his unexpected rise to Twitter fame, his beef with right-wing propagandist Dinesh D’Souza, the many pleasures of archival research, and his connection to the wider community of historians and other scholars who are more actively engaging the public during a chaotic political moment.