Nostalgia Trap

Van Jackson, foreign policy writer and host of the excellent podcast Un-Diplomatic, joins me to freak out about ICE arresting local college professors, MAGA's Jeffrey Epstein fissures, Andrew Cuomo aiming to spoil Mamdani's victory in NYC, Trump sending weapons to Ukraine, and the overall Third Reich vibes that America is currently giving. As the ever-rising waters of tyrrany begin to splash onto our windowsills, what are any of us...

Remember the heady days of Abercrombie and Fitch’s utter domination of the young, white middle class fashion market? What was that about? This week I’m joined by Ethan Lascity, an assistant professor and director of the fashion media program at Southern Methodist University, to discuss his book The Abercrombie Age: Millennial Aspiration and the Promise of Consumer Culture. Ethan helps me understand the wider historical...

Anyone with a brain and heart probably feels deeply conflicted about the Fourth of July, a celebration of American freedom that frequently feels crass and hollow in the context of an ever-expanding American cruelty. So I thought I would reflect on the some ideas about drugs and counterculture today. I share some new details of the CIA's MKULTRA mind control experiments, and read Allen Ginsberg's eerily prophetic 1959 piece, "Poetr...

Xaq Frohlich is Associate Professor of History of Technology at Auburn University. His work focuses on issues relating to food and risk at the intersections of science, law, and markets. In this conversation, he joins me to discuss his book From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age, a fascinating history of how Americans have navigated food and health issues through culture and politics. Fr...

Is the fight against Trump's rising authoritarianism in the streets? Or in the courts? Why not both? At the five month mark, Justin joins me to survey the damage, and to assess the left's strategies in resisting an assault on our collective rights and dignity. Along the way, we consider Stephen Miller's nihilistic and libidinal hatreds, the Roberts' court's "fuck you" attitude toward the Constitution, the insurrection in Los Angele...

What happened to the idea that “conservatives can’t do comedy”? Much to the horror of liberals, the past decade has witnessed the rise of a right wing comedy industrial complex, primarily found on podcasts, whose personalities and attitudes are inextricably linked to the success of Donald Trump’s populist conservative project. This week I talk with Nick Marx, co-author of the book That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes ...

Dazed and Confused (dir. Richard Linklater. 1993) remains a timeless classic of American adolescence…or does it? This week Justin joins me for a deep dive into one of the most nostalgia-laden films ever created, as we investigate how a seemingly breezy 1990s high school stoner comedy actually holds deep philosophical and political weight when viewed from 2025. From Matthew McConaughey’s lascivious lothario to Ben Affle...

What is “settler colonialism” and how is it different from other forms of imperialism? In this episode I share excerpts from S.C. Gwynne’s bracing, controversial book Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, and reflect on the historical lines between the American project of removal and Israel’s current genocidal campaign in Gaz...

Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas remains a classic of American drug literature, a haunting reflection on the cultural and political hangover of the revolutionary 1960s. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced a more resonant portrait of the American id than the carnival of vile, deranged American archetypes Thompson describes in these pages. Justin Rogers-Cooper has been similarly influenced by...

April 30, 2025 is the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, so I’m marking the occasion by reflecting on the war’s meaning all these decades later. I share my own experiences as a historian of the war, along with some clips from books and documentaries that I think capture the impossible decisions the war forced upon millions of people.

Check out the podcast series created by Willa Seidenberg an...

The recent death of Val Kilmer got Justin and I thinking about Jim Morrison and the curious legacy of The Doors in American pop culture. In this conversation, we continue our exploration of the amorphous brand of white masculinity embodied by Morrison and other doomed rock gods of the late 20th century, as we share memories of how The Doors blew our alienated teenage minds before the massive buzzkill of adulthood force...

I'm reading S.C. Gwynne's incredible book Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, and it's making me think about Israel, Gaza, and the fatal arrogance of the leadership class throughout history. A scathing review of Bill Clinton's new book brings that arrogant tendency right up to 2025, as we witness the Democratic Party's inability to con...

Guitar Center dudes and their insanely rigid opinions lead to a conversation with Justin about the political psychology of FOMO, the rise of the pedophile hunter influencer class, the masculine desperation of emoji-driven war-planning group chat jerkoff sessions, the abject horror of students kidnapped off the streets for their views on Israel and Palestine, and Trump's assault on free trade scrambling the political alignments of t...