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Nostalgia Trap

David Parsons

Deep dive conversations on American history, politics, and pop culture, hosted by history professor and writer David Parsons.

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  • 25 episodes
  • fortnightly
  • Avg 16 min
  • English

Episodes 25

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  • February 4 · 1 hr

    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 subversive Trojan horse within the staid landscape of Cold War America. On this episode, historian Charles L. Ponce de Leon joins me for a conversation about his new book Rolling Stone and the Rise of Hip Capitalism: How a Magazine Born in the 1960s Changed America (UNC Press 2026), as we explore the magazine's complex evolution and the ironies of "counterculture" becoming "mainstream." Check out my '90s music podcast/video series with John Lombardo, 120 MONTHS: https://substack.com/@120months Subscribe to Nostalgia Trap to listen to our News Trap freakouts and other bonus content: https://patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

  • January 23 · 3 min

    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 administration acting in severely irrational ways, how will the global system react? In addition to thinking about Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's dire warning at this week's Davos conference, we talk about the wider chaos unleashed by ICE in Minnesota, Trump's attack on the Fed, and the continued dive into the abyss of 19th century imperial logic.

  • January 21 · 1 hr

    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 of 1960s and 1970s activism by young people around the country, who fought for their own rights within a larger struggle for social, racial, and economic justice. In this conversation, he shares some of the most compelling revelations he's discovered in oral history interviews, underground newspaper archives, and FBI records, and reflects on the role that high schoolers play in today's chaotic political landscape. Become a Nostalgia Trap Patron to access all our bonus episodes, including weekly News Trap updates.

  • January 16 · 7 min

    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 patterns uniting this increasingly jarring geopolitical reality, and to consider the poisonous cocktail of psychological, economic and historical forces that are launching us into a seemingly bleak future.

  • January 2 · 1 hr 18 min

    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 some of the darker elements of our paternal attraction to specific celebrities. Check out our previous episode all about Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (dir. John Hughes), a key work in the Candy oeuvre. Subscribe to the Nostalgia Trap Patreon to access our vast library of episodes and bonus content: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

Showing 21–25 of 25 episodes