Ep 420 - All That Jazz w/ Monte Montgomery
Nostalgia Trap
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 to download mp3s of 1950s and 1960s Jazz. In recent years, my casual appreciation has turned into a more intense investigation of music history and practice, particularly after discovering a Jazz club in my neighborhood that’s overflowing with colorful characters and musical adventure. My guest today...
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News Trap 8.30.25 - Eye of the Storm w Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
Nostalgia Trap
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 threads from the disaster in New Orleans, including climate capitalism, "organized abandonment," racialized brutality, human trafficking, privatized fascism, social media clout chasing, and more. Let's take a ride from Katrina to Gaza, and survey the architecture of history that bridges them.
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120 MONTHS: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic w/ David Humphries
Nostalgia Trap
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 , I couldn’t stop thinking about The Sundays. Their album Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic stood out, not just as the best album of that month, but for producing an uncanny sense of nostalgia for the lost world of the pre-Internet 1990s. This week’s guest, David Humphries, a professor of English at Queensborough Community College in New York City,...
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120 MONTHS - FEBRUARY 1990 - Primus, The Cramps, Everything But the Girl, Oingo Boingo, Guided By Voices, Midnight Oil
Nostalgia Trap
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: Listen to the February 1990 playlist: Follow our Spotify for all our ‘90s playlists: Substack: Instagram:
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News Trap 8.15.25 - Capital's AI & Crypto Endgame w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
Nostalgia Trap
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 masterplan, offering some ideas about what’s REALLY going on with the tech gambit, how the risk is being cleverly hidden, and why this moment foretells an economic and social crisis whose scale is unimaginable. Subscribe for a FREE 7 day trial and listen to the whole episode here: We also, of course,...
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120 MONTHS - A 90s Music Odyssey
Nostalgia Trap
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 ORDER, month by precious nostalgic month, from January 1990 to December 1999. I know, it's A LOT. But what else is there for us anymore, beyond the endless pleasures and pain of retreating into the past? A bit about John: I first met him in 1995, when I was a nerdy high school kid and he was an...
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Ep 419 - Party Like It's 1999 w/ Ross Benes
Nostalgia Trap
Was 1999 the inflection point in American culture and politics? Writer Ross Benes joins me this week to talk about his book . Ross’s work connects the trashy Americana of Jerry Springer, pro wrestling, Insane Clown Posse, and a million other bits of carnival weirdness to the larger political economy of the late 90s, and in this conversation he offers his takes on why so-called “low culture” really matters.
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News Trap 7.25.25 - The Midterms are Gonna Fix This w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
Nostalgia Trap
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 we've got takes on South Park, the Coldplay viral video, the Moscow Idaho murder trial, Tony Soprano, Zohran Mamdani's chances in NYC, Elon Musk's genocidal soul, Epstein's sexy painting of Bill Clinton, and lots more.
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Ep 418 - Why Philip Seymour Hoffman Matters w/ Justin Rogers-Cooper (PREVIEW)
Nostalgia Trap
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 work, the particular power he brought to his performances in a wide range of movies, and the profound legacy he occupies in our “cringe” era.
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News Trap 7.14.25 - Run for Your Life w/ Van Jackson
Nostalgia Trap
Van Jackson, foreign policy writer and host of the excellent podcast , 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 supposed to be doing?
info_outlineRemember 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 context and significance of a very specific moment in American pop culture, when a vision of affluence was packaged and sold to a generation that would never actually attain it.
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