PODCAST · history
Nostalgia Trap
by David Parsons
Deep dive conversations on American history, politics, and pop culture, hosted by history professor and writer David Parsons.
Episodes
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A Right to Housing? w/ Samuel Stein
Do you still have hope? And does a left project even need "hope"? Samuel Stein joins us this week to discuss his latest book A Right to Housing?, a refreshingly honest look at the possibilities for change within the grim landscape of American housing policy. Subscribe to our Patreon to access a...
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You're Like Me w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
This week Justin joins me to speculate on the inevitable "October Surprise" of the coming U.S. midterm elections: Terror attack? Alien invasion? Sharknado? The landscape of possibilities seems endless. Our conversation veers into a wider discussion of MAGA's fracture and the psychosexual politics...
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Hopelessly Inhospitable w Justin Rogers-Cooper
Listen to the full episode here Is the widespread hatred of AI just another stupid viral moment that will be forgotten in a week? Or is there something deeper happening? Justin and I game out the historical/psychological parameters of an anti-tech cultural politics, and try to come to terms with...
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Meet Me in the Backrooms w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper
In taking his internet creepypasta Backrooms from YouTube to the cinema screen, director Kane Parsons has created a piece of popular art that resonates deeply with some of our favorite Nostalgia Trap themes: '90s analog culture, toxic masculinity, psychedelic dream spaces, and the overriding...
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Chasing It w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
In the shadow of the U.S. officially losing the war in Iran, the American political and economic world continues to chase after a high that's perhaps no longer attainable. This week we examine how Trump, MAGA, AI companies, and the American left are grappling with a bubbling existential crisis...
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Vote Blue No Matter Who w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
It's time for the old "there's a civil war brewing in the Democratic Party" conversation again, and Justin joins me to poke holes in the orthodoxies embraced by both "sides" of the alleged progressive/left vs centrist debate currently gripping the American public. It's 2016 all over again! Or is...
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No One Wants to Work Anymore w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
This week Justin joins me to explore the tall claims made in a recent New York Times piece, "Gen Z Fell Out of Love With Work. I Don't Blame Them." Are we really experiencing a generational revolt against centuries of American attitudes about education, work, wages, and life itself? Let's see…
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News Trap 7.10.26 - The End of Curiosity w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
This is a preview clip from a subscribers-only episode. Click here to listen to the whole thing! Does economic crisis predictably produce extreme political movements? History's lessons are a bit unclear on that point and, as we investigate in this episode, the summer of 2026 is testing our...
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New Trap 6.26.26 - Thread the Needle w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
This is a preview clip from a subscribers-only episode. Click here to hear the whole episode with a FREE 7-Day trial subscription. As a wave of Mamdani-supported COMMUNISTS win power in New York, Justin and I ask the question that's on everyone's minds: is this the future of the Democratic Party?...
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News Trap 6.12.26 - Only the Orcas Can Save Us Now w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
This is a free preview of a subscribers only episode. CLICK HERE to hear the full episode with FREE 7-day trial. With news that Elon Musk in the world's first trillionaire after the historic SpaceX IPO, Justin joins me to discuss the financial gamesmanship at work in the AI industry, the…
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News Trap 5.29.26 - This Time It's Different, Charlie Brown w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
This is a free preview of a subscribers-only episode. Click here to listen to the whole thing with a free 7 day trial. Since the Iran war began many weeks ago, it feels like we're living in some kind of surreal rhetorical purgatory. Surveying the wider news landscape, though, a wider pattern...
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News Trap 5.15.26 - K Hole w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
It's the best of times and the worst of times, as average Americans are paying more for pretty much everything while the stock market breaks records. What's up with that? Justin joins us this week to talk about the contradictions currently bracing up the global economy, as we map out how the...
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News Trap 5.1.26 - Hasan Piker and Tucker Carlson Walk Into a Bar... w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper
Recent debates about whether or not leftist streamers like Hasan Piker should be embraced by the Democratic Party lead Justin and me to explore how the "marketplace of ideas" intersects with the broad historical and economic forces that govern our collective destiny. Subscribe and hear the full...
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News Trap 4.10.26 - Summoning Aliens w Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
This week we check out the explosive Ronan Farrow piece on Sam Altman and consider the intersection of AI, climate crises, and sociopathic personalities that defines this historical moment. Who is really in the driver's seat of our collective future? Listen to the full episode here
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Enshittification Hits the Left (PREVIEW)
Did Bernie's loss break the left's brain? Listen to the full episode here
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News Trap 3.26.26 - Kill Box w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
By joining Israel in a reckless attack on Iran, Trump has put the entire global system in the kill box, which begs the question, what's more dangerous: Trump when he's winning or Trump when he's trapped like a dog? And what happens when the material realities unleashed by this attack come home to...
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News Trap 3.5.26 - The Iran Wormhole w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
This week Justin and I game out scenarios unfolding from the U.S./Israel attack on Iran. Is it all about Epstein? (LOL) Or might China and Russia have something to do with Trump's latest insane wager? Let's take a look at the imperial chessboard. Listen to the whole episode here.
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Ep 425 - Cultural Inappropriation w/ Alan Burgess and Monte Montgomery
My late night adventures into the local jazz underworld have introduced me to some fascinating new friends, and I wanted to bring two of them into the Nostalgia Trap universe. Monte Montgomery and Alan Burgess are old pals whose frequent conversations often veer into the uncomfortable territories...
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News Trap 2.6.26 - Brain Damage w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
This is a preview clip from a subscribers-only episode. Check out our Patreon and subscribe to listen! On this week's News Trap Justin and I talk about the delicious crash of the crypto hustle, the sinister promise of "agentic AI," the human wreckage of Silicon Valley's utopian projects, the sad...
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Ep 424 - How Does It Feel? w/ Charles L. Ponce de Leon
When I was growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, Rolling Stone magazine was an indispensable resource for discovering the hip edge of American pop culture. Of course, I didn't realize at the time that the magazine had its roots in the 1960s counterculture, crafted by entrepreneur Jann Wenner as a...
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News Trap 1.23.26 - Taking It to the Limit w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
This is a brief clip from a full episode on our subscribers feed. Subscribe to hear the whole thing! This week Justin joins me to consider what would happen if the post-1945 "rules based order" really does collapse -- something that seems more inevitable with each passing moment. With the Trump...
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Ep 423 - High School Students Unite! w/ Aaron G. Fountain, Jr.
This week we're talking with Aaron G. Fountain, Jr. about his new book High School Students Unite! Teen Activism, Education Reform, and FBI Surveillance in Postwar America (UNC Press, 2025). By shifting focus from college campuses to American high schools, Fountain's work uncovers a whole world…
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News Trap 1.16.26 - Flood the Zone w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
This is a preview of a subscribers-only episode. Click here to listen to the whole thing, and access our big library of bonus content. 2026 is leaping out of the gate with a flood of chaotic news stories, from Minneapolis to Greenland, from Venezuela to Iran. Justin joins me to look for the...
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Ep 422 - I Like Me w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper
What makes John Candy such a unique figure in American pop culture? And why are we still talking about him in 2025? In this episode, Justin and I discuss the new documentary John Candy: I Like Me (dir. Colin Hanks) and reflect on Candy's outsized space in the cultural imagination, while exploring...
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News Trap 2025 Year in Review - Muzzle Velocity w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
This is a preview clip from a subscribers-only episode. CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE AND LISTEN. It's time once again to sip some eggnog and survey the wreckage of the past 12 months, as Justin joins us for a conversation about the continuing (though anti-viral) insanity of the Russia-Ukraine War and...
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The Drug Trap, Part Two - A Bottle in Front of Me (PREVIEW)
This is a clip from a subscribers-only episode. CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE AND LISTEN. As we continue our exploration of various forms of intoxicants, I share some personal stories and insights about America's favorite mind-altering substance: alcohol. From teenage experiments with wine coolers to…
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News Trap 12.5.25 - Big Talkers w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
This is a preview clip of a subscribers-only episode. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE AND ACCESS OUR LIBRARY OF BONUS CONTENT. Is the Trump Reich in terminal decline? Have we entered a new stage in the madness of this administration? This week Justin joins me to catalog some of the...
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Livestream 12.1.25: No Way Out (PREVIEW)
This is a preview of a subscribers-only episode. CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE AND LISTEN. Lots of fun stuff today: slavery in the tuna industry, monetized Nazi content driving engagement across every major social media platform, the idea of "moving where it's cheaper" meets open ridicule, poetry as a...
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The Drug Trap, Part One - Pills! Pills! Pills! (PREVIEW)
Have you ever seen A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies? It's an epic documentary whose title says it all: a legendary director tells his life story while sharing ideas about the history of cinema. Kind of a two-for-one. I highly recommend it. Anyway, that's what I'm...
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News Trap 11.14.25 - The Epstein Problem w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper
The latest Jeffrey Epstein email dump brings up some intriguing ideas about the shadowy financier's actual role among all his elite friends, from Donald Trump to Noam Chomsky. Why did so many powerful people seek his advice and companionship, despite knowing the details of his dark crimes? As...
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News Trap 11.7.25 - Change You Can Believe In w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW
This is a preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit the Nostalgia Trap Patreon. This week Justin and I talk about the Mamdani victory in NYC; the shifting dynamics of the much hyped "civil war" within the Democratic Party; how to read the Trump administration's weak response on elections and...
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News Trap 10.24.25 - For Me to Poop On w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
The US government shits the bed, Trump dumps AI feces on protesters, the East Wing of the White House gets flushed down the toilet, Mamdani squeezes out a floater upon a dying Democratic Party, and something stinks about the US dropping bombs on "drug dealers" off the coast of Venezuela. Listen…
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Livestream: One Battle After Another
Spoiler alert! I recorded this livestream about an hour after finishing this movie, so this is me attempting to untangle my thoughts about it. A complicated, funny, scary, and beautiful contemplation about revolutionary praxis (worst word in the world), One Battle After Another is definitely…
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News Trap 10.10.25 - The Best of Times, the Worst of times w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
This week Justin joins me to consider the dialectical nature of our 2025 reality, as we examine the utopian and dystopian properties of Bad Bunny Super Bowl discourse, the rise of Zohran Mamdani, and the accelerated unleashing of AI slop upon a world of hungry little piggies. Are we in heaven, or...
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2 Legit 2 Quit (Livestream Preview)
The Supreme Court is scared of crossing Trump; Stephen Miller wants to declare the Democratic Party a terrorist organization; an ICE raid in Chicago lays the groundwork for a new era of authoritarianism; late night TV says goodbye; microplastics are giving everyone cancer; and we're all awaiting…
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Digital Wolf Pack (Livestream Preview)
This week on the Nostalgia Trap Livestream: Conspiracy theory mind-melt reaches the upper echelons of power, AI-generated savagery plunges further into the toilet, Chuck Schumer and Zohran Mamdani flirt with the limits of liberal possibility, a shocking violation of the 1st Amendment that's NOT...
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News Trap 9.26.25 - The Thing Around the Corner w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
On this week's News Trap update, Justin joins me to discuss the question on everyone's mind: when is the fever gonna break? As the cartoonish reality of Trump's second term takes on increasingly demented dimensions, we game out how larger forces, particularly the insane bubble that is the AI...
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The Pendulum Swings (Livestream Preview)
On this week's livestream I talk about the deceptive power of the Kirk memorial, the postmodernity of conspiracy culture, the ironic twist of right-wing cancel campaigns and, of course, Jimmy Kimmel. Plus I share some juicy bits from Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern...
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Ep 421 - First They Came for Jimmy Kimmel w/ Judd Legum
The fallout from Charlie Kirk's assassination continues to mutate into an escalation of the right's multi-front authoritarian campaign. On this episode, I talk with Judd Legum, journalist and creator of two of the most important independent progressive publications of the past two decades: the...
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HATE F#CK NATION (Livestream Preview)
America is taking a turn into a dark cul-de-sac, and many liberals are hoping that Stephen Colbert and John Oliver's sunnier version of the national id will somehow, magically, win the day. But will it? Has it ever? Listen to the full episode here!
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News Trap 9.12.25 - The Least Among Us w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
Here's our attempt to put Charlie Kirk's assassination in the context of the algorithmic dream world we inhabit, the queer libidinal dimensions of love and murder, and the larger politics of incompetent maniacs in the driver's seat of global power. This is a preview clip from a much longer and...
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Ep 420 - All That Jazz w/ Monte Montgomery
Like many hip youngsters of my generation, at some point in my twenties I got Jazz-pilled by Beat literature, with writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg name-dropping bop-era musicians like Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and many more, sending me to Limewire…
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News Trap 8.30.25 - Eye of the Storm w Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
It's hard to believe, but today it's been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, a mega-event that, in hindsight, seems like a critical moment for understanding our current reality. This week Justin and I talk about Katrina as a wormhole into a dark present, as we reflect on several...
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120 MONTHS: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic w/ David Humphries
NOTE: This is a cross-post of my new podcast, 120 MONTHS, all about '90s music. I think Nostalgia Trap listeners will dig it. Follow the links to keep up with all our episodes! --------- After listening and re-listening to the playlist for January 1990, I couldn't stop thinking about The Sundays....
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120 MONTHS - FEBRUARY 1990 - Primus, The Cramps, Everything But the Girl, Oingo Boingo, Guided By Voices, Midnight Oil
February 1990 was a wild month in music, with new album releases from Oingo Boingo, Everything But the Girl, The Cramps, Primus, The Highwaymen, Midnight Oil, and Guided By Voices. All paying subscribers (at any level) of Nostalgia Trap get a full 120 Months Substack subscription:...
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News Trap 8.15.25 - Capital's AI & Crypto Endgame w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
Global capital is currently putting more resources into building AI infrastructure than any other mass project in human history, with little evidence that AI can ever turn the kind of profits needed to make it all worth it. Why? Justin Rogers-Cooper brings the data and the perspective to the AI...
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120 MONTHS - A 90s Music Odyssey
I'm very excited to present the very first episode of my new podcast/YouTube channel/online content thing, 120 MONTHS. This is a project that I've been wanting to do for a very long time. Along with my good friend John Lombardo, I'm listening to all the major music releases of the 1990s, IN…
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Ep 419 - Party Like It's 1999 w/ Ross Benes
Was 1999 the inflection point in American culture and politics? Writer Ross Benes joins me this week to talk about his book 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times. Ross's work connects the trashy Americana of Jerry Springer, pro wrestling, Insane Clown…
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News Trap 7.25.25 - The Midterms are Gonna Fix This w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
The Jeffrey Epstein saga continues to have legs, and this week Justin and I talk about what makes the story so appealing and operative for so many Americans, as we interrogate the elements of storytelling, virality, sex, and power that control our attention and shape our reality. Along the way...
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Ep 418 - Why Philip Seymour Hoffman Matters w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
Philip Seymour Hoffman is a towering figure in American cinema whose death in 2014 left a big gaping hole in the culture. I really think there has never been anyone really like him, before or since, on the screen. In this conversation, Justin Rogers-Cooper joins me to reflect on Hoffman's body of...
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Nostalgia Trap have?
Nostalgia Trap currently has 564 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Nostalgia Trap about?
Deep dive conversations on American history, politics, and pop culture, hosted by history professor and writer David Parsons.
How often does Nostalgia Trap release new episodes?
Nostalgia Trap releases new episodes frequently with a large back catalog of 564 episodes. Check the episode list for recent publication dates.
Where can I listen to Nostalgia Trap?
You can listen to Nostalgia Trap on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Nostalgia Trap?
Nostalgia Trap is created and hosted by David Parsons.
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