A critical but often overlooked chapter in American labor history, the animator’s strike that shook the Walt Disney Corporation in 1941 was part of a wave of labor struggle in World War II era Hollywood. Jake S. Friedman’s book The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation’s Golden Age chronicles the strike in colorful detail, and includes plenty of eye-popping images of the strike’s particularly cartoonish aesthetic. Friedman joins me for a conversation about his book, the strike, and the wider history of the Disney project, which shifted dramatically in the wake of the rebellion by its key artists. From communist infiltrators to mafia-connected union leaders, this is a fascinating picture of the intersection of art, industrial capitalism, and pop culture. 

For more on the book, including lots of great images from the strike: https://www.thedisneyrevolt.com/

Our previous episode on World War II era Disney history:   https://www.patreon.com/posts/trap-tv-brick-to-75566223

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This week we watched the excellent Apple TV series Severance and put it in conversation with Naomi Klein’s latest book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World. Both texts explore how the concept of “doubles” plays out in capitalist culture, and we have fun talking about the ways they did (and didn’t) blow our minds. From Klein’s refreshing take on the left’s severe mistakes of the COVID era (and how Steve Bannon greedily lapped up the detritus) to Severance’s terrifying vision of a corporation that aims to replace your entire identity, we take the opportunity to look into the mirror at the selves we make, and that are made for us.

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A United Healthcare CEO is assassinated and the world laughs, fitness and nutrition culture goes fascist, Europe in collapse while China salivates, Trump's tariffs portend new global shockwaves.

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It's Black Friday, so between insane binges of online shopping, Justin and I sat down to record a conversation about the Netflix documentary The Antisocial Network: From Memes to Mayhem, as we consider the path from Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders to 1/6 and Donald Trump's triumph in the 2024 election. What role has internet culture played in shaping our current reality, and what can we expect in the future? 

This is only a short bit from a much longer episode, so subsribe to enjoy the whole thing --- lots of juicy ideas here.

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Musk's endgame on environmental regulations, universities bracing for a war on DEI and critical race theory, Houthi pirates drawn to their deaths in Ukraine, national economies bracing for world war. Happy Thanksgiving!

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Tim Keogh is an Associate Professor of History at the Queensborough Community College in New York City. His book In Levittown’s Shadow: Poverty in America’s Wealthiest Postwar Suburb turns a common American story on its head, giving us a picture of life at the economic bottom of the postwar suburban housing boom. This conversation features challenges to political orthodoxies of the right and left, and gave me a lot to chew on as we reflect on Trump’s stunning gains among urban and suburban New Yorkers.

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This week I’m joined by my good friend Peter Sabatino for a conversation all about Vincent Van Gogh’s personal and artistic legacy. We both read the book Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, a gigantic magisterial biography that affected us both in surprising ways. While Van Gogh embodies the archetypal image of the “tortured artist,” there’s so much more to his story, and Peter and I wanted to share our personal reactions to the aesthetic gift that Van Gogh created for the world in his short, difficult, astounding life. 

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Armed militias roam the hurricane ravaged wastelands of North Carolina, no one wants children and it's not because of the economy, Apple's Vision Pro is a massive failure, we're stepping off the ship of rational discourse and entering the wonderland of feelings as facts.

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Jack Reid is an American historian and the author of Roadside Americans: The Rise and Fall of Hitchhiking in a Changing Nation (UNC Press, 2020). In this conversation, we talk about the specific culture, between the 1930s and 1970s, that produced hitchhiking as a common social experience, when ordinary Americans would travel with strangers they met on the road. What happened to hitchhiking? And what does its disappearance tell us about our lonely historical moment? 

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Joseph M. Thompson is assistant professor of history at Mississippi State University, and the author of Cold War Country: How Nashville's Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism (UNC Press, 2024). Thompson’s history tracks the deep connections between country music and the U.S. military, uncovering a concerted effort by government officials and cultural creators to cement country culture and national pride (and of course, anti-communism). Our conversation moves from Slim Pickens to Toby Keith, as we explore how the cultural politics of country continue to shape the 21st century.

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