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The Nostalgia Bone (2021)

The Nostalgia Bone (2021)

Released Thursday, 1st December 2022
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The Nostalgia Bone (2021)

The Nostalgia Bone (2021)

The Nostalgia Bone (2021)

The Nostalgia Bone (2021)

Thursday, 1st December 2022
Good episode? Give it some love!
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Episode Transcript

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0:00

This

0:00

message comes from NPR sponsor

0:02

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fresh for everyone.

0:24

When

0:24

I was younger, probably

0:26

about ten or eleven years old, my

0:28

grandmother actually gifted

0:30

me a cassette player for my birthday.

0:34

At that age, I didn't own CDs or

0:36

MP three player or something. I definitely

0:39

didn't own any cassette tapes.

0:42

My mom decided to drive me to this

0:44

store that's called media play. It doesn't

0:46

exist anymore. And I knew that I

0:49

wanted DAF Punks two thousand

0:51

one album called Discovery, and

0:53

so we bought it. This

0:55

was around September, going into

0:57

October, and I

1:00

just listened to it all the time religiously

1:02

constantly. So it was

1:05

this really crucial moment in

1:07

my life where a few things converged like

1:09

my my introduction into music

1:11

that I really loved

1:14

and enjoying a change of

1:16

season and being a young

1:18

person and having that freedom. And

1:21

to this day, I still

1:23

listen to that record.

1:25

It's in my car. My car I have an older

1:27

car. It has a tape deck.

1:29

And so I can pop it in

1:31

and kind of transports me back

1:34

to that time period.

1:48

it gives me this sort of, like, lump

1:50

in my throat kind of feeling, but

1:52

it's not sadness. You know, it's not

1:54

something that I necessarily mourn

1:57

Like, I don't wanna go back to being ten

1:59

years old.

1:59

You know, I like being an adult. But

2:02

it's almost just like a visceral feeling

2:06

that lump in my throat and

2:09

misty eyed kind of feeling that I

2:11

get my face gets a little red.

2:14

my brain kind of shuts down and my body's

2:16

response to sort of take over. It's

2:20

more than just a tradition it

2:22

it literally is like an embodied experience.

2:33

Every year, the tape sounds a little bit

2:36

more worn down. It's a little bit more

2:38

warped. One of these days, I'm I'm

2:41

kind of afraid that I'm gonna pop it in and it's

2:43

just it's gonna be so degraded that I won't

2:45

be able to make any sense

2:47

out of it anymore. at that point, I

2:49

might myself might be so old that I

2:51

may not, you know, recognize it anymore as

2:53

this nostalgic talisman Who

2:55

knows?

3:12

I'm

3:12

Rhonda DiFerta. And I'm

3:14

Ramtina Arablei, and you're listening

3:16

to through line from NPR. Today

3:19

on the show, the History of nostalgia.

3:21

and its eternal paradox to

3:23

both hold us back and keep us

3:25

going. Producer Lane Kaplan

3:27

Levinson takes it from here.

3:38

I'm

3:39

sitting in the corner of my parents living

3:42

room, in the house I grew up in.

3:44

Cat Stevens t for the album

3:46

cover is pressed between my knees and

3:48

my fingers trace the track titles for

3:50

the time.

3:51

I know the order by heart. Where do the

3:54

children play?

3:54

hard

3:57

headed woman,

3:59

wild

3:59

world, sad Lisa,

4:02

really deep cut. and

4:05

my favorite miles from nowhere.

4:07

Miles from nowhere.

4:11

Guess I'll take my time. Oh,

4:15

yeah. And when

4:17

I'm leaned up against the pulsing speakers,

4:20

it's

4:20

just me,

4:21

Kat Stevens, and the Tillerman.

4:23

whoever that is. It's just

4:25

us.

4:39

That's where I'm transported

4:40

when I hear this album. It's

4:42

like a trapdoor or a chute

4:44

that plucks me from the present moment

4:46

and punks me back to that general time.

4:49

My childhood And when I choose

4:51

to hear this music, it's to evoke the

4:53

same emotion that daft punk brings up

4:55

in Grafton Tanner, an

4:57

emotion that washes over you when the weather

4:59

changes

4:59

or the sky turns a certain

5:01

color or that song comes on radio

5:04

and suddenly you're in two places at

5:06

once thinking fondly of the

5:08

past and mourning it all at the same

5:10

time, nostalgia.

5:11

Well,

5:13

I've

5:13

been researching nostalgia

5:16

for several years now.

5:19

Grafton Tanner is a communications studies

5:21

professor at the University of Georgia,

5:23

and he's written two books about nostalgia.

5:26

The most recent one has a great title. It's

5:28

called, the hours have lost their

5:30

clock, the politics of nostalgia.

5:33

I think that nostalgia is sort of

5:35

the defining emotion of our time

5:37

in that the last twenty years

5:39

has seen one kind of nostalgia wave

5:42

after the other. nostalgia

5:44

is hard to pin down. It's

5:46

not necessarily happy or sad.

5:48

doesn't make you feel good or bad.

5:51

The emotion can wash over you, thanks

5:53

to a cool fall breeze, or

5:55

a smell lofting over from a neighbor's

5:57

kitchen. or an old photo you've

5:59

never even seen before.

5:59

I

6:00

would say that nostalgia is

6:04

a longing for a

6:06

home in the past. It

6:08

might be imagined. It might be cobbled

6:10

together. It might be even distorted. It

6:13

doesn't mean that it's true or

6:15

false It just means that it

6:17

it might be kind of imperfect

6:19

because memory sometimes is imperfect.

6:22

But for all its ambiguity, nostalgia

6:25

does reliably offer

6:27

one thing and

6:28

escape. Away from the uncertainty

6:30

of the future, and

6:32

towards the permanence of the past.

6:35

And I

6:35

wanted to know if that's a good thing because

6:37

nostalgia has for a long

6:39

time, gotten a bad rap

6:41

as being this obstacle in the way of

6:43

progress. We can't move forward if

6:45

we're always looking back this is

6:48

certainly a discourse that's been around for a

6:50

long time. So I wanted to know if it was

6:52

good for us individually and also

6:54

as a society. And

6:56

finding that out, I think, meant

6:58

figuring out what nostalgia is

7:00

and how it's used by different people.

7:04

Our

7:04

new normal is full of constant

7:07

instability. The future

7:08

feels like a

7:09

swerving car on a narrow road with

7:11

no guardrail, flirting with the edge of

7:13

cliff. So it makes sense that

7:15

this idea of permanence rooted

7:17

in our memories of the past brings

7:19

some comfort even

7:20

if those memories are painful. Even

7:23

if the past wasn't so great, it

7:25

still was. And that

7:27

sense of knowing of having something to

7:29

hold on to, is what many of

7:31

us

7:31

are looking for as we barrel towards this uncertainty,

7:34

this cliff.

7:35

Histologia takes us to that warm,

7:38

reliable place of before.

7:39

But

7:42

this emotion has lived many lives.

7:44

And before it was thought of as a marketing

7:46

scheme, political strategy, a

7:48

beat up cassette tape, or simply

7:51

summer turning to fall, nostalgia

7:53

wasn't an emotion at all. It

7:55

was a deadly disease.

7:59

I'm Lane Captain

7:59

Levinson.

8:00

And today, we traced the history of

8:03

nostalgia

8:03

from its origins as an illness

8:05

to a defining emotion of our time.

8:15

Hi. My name is Mia Chang. I'm calling

8:18

from London and you're listening to

8:20

through line from NPR. I

8:22

feel nostalgic when it's

8:24

fall during this time of the year because

8:26

the colder weather reminds

8:29

me of the time when I used to

8:31

see all my friends back in

8:33

school. Around this

8:35

time, it's also Korean Thanksgiving, Ochucho,

8:37

and that makes me miss

8:39

my family and the dinners that

8:41

we used to

8:42

have. Hi. I'm

8:46

Daniel Al Arcon, host of NPR's Spanish

8:48

language podcast, La Ambulante. This

8:50

season, Superman flies Chile for

8:52

some real life heroics. A very

8:54

strange dog becomes front page news in

8:56

Peru. Mexican activists infiltrate an

8:58

Austrian museum to tell the story of a

9:00

controversial artifact. and much, much

9:02

more. New episodes every Tuesday

9:04

starting September twentieth available wherever

9:06

you get your podcasts. This

9:08

episode is brought to you by

9:10

Carvana. Carvana is in the business of driving

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market.

9:28

Part

9:32

one.

9:34

Mother's milk.

9:39

Nevertheless, I long, I

9:41

pine all my days to

9:43

travel home and see the dawn of my

9:45

return. And if a God will

9:47

wreck me yet again on the wind dark

9:49

sea, I can bear that

9:51

too. with a spirit tempered to endure.

9:54

Much have I suffered, labored long and

9:56

hard by now in the waves

9:58

and wars. Add this to the

10:00

total, bring the

10:02

trial on. Homer,

10:06

the odyssey.

10:15

In

10:18

the sixteen eighties, a group of

10:20

Swiss soldiers stationed abroad started

10:22

coming down with a mysterious disease.

10:25

they fainted. They hallucinated. They

10:27

claimed they saw ghosts and heard voices.

10:31

Autumn seemed to be a particular

10:33

trigger. As the leaves changed colors

10:35

and fell to the ground, the soldiers

10:37

found that they couldn't fight, they couldn't

10:39

eat, they could barely rise out of bed in

10:41

the morning. they were sick

10:43

and it was spreading, which peaked

10:45

the interest of a young ambitious

10:47

medical student. Name Johannes

10:49

Hoffer, who was nineteen at

10:51

the time. when he started hearing

10:53

stories about this strange

10:55

disease that was infecting

10:57

Swiss mercenaries The

11:01

disease caused this intense

11:03

form of home sickness. If

11:05

you caught it, you longed for home

11:07

cooked meals. soldiers

11:09

longed for their mothers, their

11:11

normal lives back home before

11:13

they started fighting. And

11:15

so intrigued by this at just

11:17

nineteen years old, he decided

11:19

to write his medical dissertation on

11:21

the disease, and he eventually decided

11:23

to call it nostalgia from the

11:26

Greek words, Novostos and

11:28

Algeo, which are homecoming

11:30

and ache, roughly

11:32

translated. The ache

11:34

for home. Whatever that concept

11:35

of home might mean. Johannes

11:38

Hoffert's dissertation gave a name to

11:40

this unnamed disease. and went on

11:42

to describe its symptoms, which in

11:44

addition to seeing ghosts included

11:47

sadness, disturbed sleep, weakness,

11:49

hunger, thirst, heart palpitations,

11:51

frequent size and

11:53

quote stupidity of the mind

11:55

attending to nothing hardly

11:57

other than the idea of the fatherland.

12:00

even wrote that

12:02

the sick people who have

12:04

nostalgia when they are sent

12:06

forced to foreign lands

12:08

with alien customs do not

12:10

know how to accustomed themselves to

12:13

the manners of living, not

12:15

to forget their moses milk.

12:17

And without treatment, so

12:19

the stories go. Many of

12:21

these mercenaries died from

12:24

nostalgia.

12:26

there were conflicting opinions about what actually

12:29

caused nostalgia. Hopper

12:31

thought it was nerve vibrations that literally

12:33

channeled the homeland or

12:36

more specifically. The quite

12:38

continuous vibration of

12:40

animal spirits through those

12:42

fibers of the middle brain in

12:44

which impressed traces of ideas of

12:46

the fatherland

12:47

still claim.

12:49

Other doctors argued it was caused by changes

12:51

in atmospheric pressure. while others

12:53

claimed it was caused by cowbells.

12:56

Yes, cowbells, which were

12:58

apparently clanging incessantly throughout the

13:00

Swiss country side and were thought to

13:02

cause ear drug damage.

13:03

Caledels were the noise pollution of the

13:06

day, but they were also desperately

13:08

missed when not in earshot.

13:09

the sound of home. So

13:12

whether it was pressure

13:12

changes, cowbells, or various

13:15

other theories of the root cause of

13:17

the disease, Hoffers said there was

13:19

basically only one cure that would

13:21

actually work. Unless the

13:23

sufferer was sent back home, then

13:25

the condition could be fatal and the

13:27

person who had nostalgia could die.

13:30

It's

13:31

impossible to know whether these Swiss

13:33

soldiers were actually dying from nostalgia.

13:36

but some of their death certificates said as

13:38

much. And military physicians and

13:40

generals were

13:40

extremely concerned with these

13:42

kinds of outbreaks. especially because

13:45

Hoffers proposed cure was a

13:47

no go. They didn't

13:48

really wanna send soldiers

13:50

back home or mercenaries back

13:53

home because then they wouldn't have

13:55

men of fighting age. And so

13:57

they tried to prevent the

13:59

soldier from spreading to begin with. And what they

14:01

would do is they would ban certain

14:03

songs from being whistled. You couldn't

14:05

seem certain popular songs from

14:07

back home because they thought that

14:10

a familiar melody might trigger

14:12

this outbreak of yearning, and

14:14

then it might rip through the ranks. Like

14:17

the rrones they vanish melodies, cow

14:19

herding you sick. That Swiss

14:20

herders played as they drove their cattle

14:22

down from the mountains on long horns

14:24

that went from their lips all the way

14:26

to the ground.

14:41

This music was such a

14:44

nostalgia trigger that playing, singing,

14:46

or merely whistling the tune

14:48

could get you killed. There

14:50

was

14:52

so much anxiety about community

14:54

bread that military doctors tried almost

14:57

anything before resorting to sending

14:59

soldiers home. They would try

15:01

bleeding the soldiers, you know,

15:03

all of the older medical

15:05

procedures that we don't do anymore,

15:07

they would apply leaches.

15:09

But then there were some other sort of strange

15:12

kind of extreme things that they

15:14

would try. They would try to

15:16

scare the nostalgia out of out of the

15:19

soldiers terrorizing them

15:21

or threatening to burn them with

15:23

hot irons or threatening to bury them

15:25

alive. There's even rumors

15:27

that some soldiers were buried

15:29

alive. Sometimes

15:32

military doctors were quarantined the

15:34

nostalgic sufferers, they would lock them in

15:36

these high towers because they

15:38

thought maybe they needed fresh air.

15:40

But of course, the isolation only made the

15:42

nostalgia worse. It

15:44

goes without saying that nostalgia existed

15:47

way before the word itself did.

15:49

People thought wars, people

15:51

left home, people got homesick, and you

15:53

earned for an idea of home that no

15:55

longer exists or never existed

15:57

at all. For instance, Homer's

15:59

Odyssey one of oldest epics written

16:01

around the eight century BCE is

16:03

thought of by some as the nostalgia

16:05

poem, even though the word nostalgia

16:07

never appears in the text. nevertheless,

16:10

I long. I pine

16:12

all my days to travel

16:14

home and see the dawn of my return The

16:17

story is

16:17

all about the protagonist Odysseus

16:19

and his decade long struggle to

16:21

return home after the Trojan War.

16:23

As Hoffer would say, he missed his

16:25

mother's milk. So

16:27

nostalgia existed way before Hopper said

16:29

so, and it existed all over the

16:31

world, not just in Europe. And it's

16:33

certainly the case that

16:35

nostalgia or sentiments

16:38

like nostalgia Words that are

16:40

similar to nostalgia show up

16:42

in various cultures

16:44

over the past few

16:46

centuries. One of my favorite

16:48

words is Sodaji, a

16:50

Portuguese word that doesn't have a direct English

16:52

translation, but refers to

16:54

a deep melancholic longing for

16:56

something or someone lost

16:58

or out of reach. Portuguese

17:00

writer Manuel de Mello calls

17:02

it A pleasure you suffer, an

17:04

ailment you enjoy.

17:06

oh those

17:09

, there's no man's

17:11

yammer three

17:14

room And

17:22

nostalgia is

17:25

clearly not just a western phenomenon.

17:28

There's versions of the idea in Japan.

17:34

India.

17:40

Ethiopia.

17:45

all

17:47

over

17:49

the world.

17:55

I wanted to

17:56

focus mainly on a western conception

17:58

of nostalgia primarily because even though

18:00

it's not necessarily a western

18:03

sentiment, The word itself has

18:06

been westernized and

18:08

born out of a western

18:10

context that continues to develop

18:12

in Western media. And

18:15

it was in the west where

18:17

this sentiment was first medicalized,

18:20

taking us back to those Swiss soldiers.

18:22

But soon

18:22

enough, it wasn't just a Swiss

18:24

thing. Western physicians were diagnosing

18:27

nostalgia in British soldiers fighting to

18:29

colonize

18:29

India, and in French

18:31

soldiers fighting the Napoleonic Wars. Mostalgia

18:33

was spreading alongside imperialism.

18:35

At a time when European

18:37

powers were sending men across the

18:40

world to expand their

18:40

empires. They were trying to

18:43

mobilize units with

18:45

so many citizen soldiers,

18:47

millions of citizen soldiers

18:50

drafted into service and

18:52

and told essentially to fight

18:54

for their country if they really loved

18:57

their country. When you feel like you've

18:59

lost control, then certainly you're going to

19:01

yearn for that

19:03

control back.

19:19

Nastasia

19:19

also showed up years later

19:21

in American soldiers during the

19:24

civil war. If you weren't

19:24

sent home, letters were the second best

19:27

cure.

19:27

The Philadelphia

19:28

Enquirer urged the public to send

19:31

soldiers mail saying it would literally

19:33

fend off the disease. But

19:36

while the soldiers were being diagnosed left

19:38

and right,

19:39

others were thought incapable of feeling nostalgia.

19:41

Those whose

19:42

worlds were perhaps most violently upended,

19:45

who were

19:45

forced from their homes separated

19:48

from their families, shipped across

19:50

the ocean and enslaved.

19:53

Before the civil war, white

19:55

slave owners believed that

19:58

enslaved people were incapable of

20:00

forging any attachment to home

20:02

and so therefore wouldn't feel

20:04

homesickness. There's a scholar of nostalgia.

20:06

Her name is Badia Hod Lagarde,

20:08

and she's she's written that we don't really have

20:10

a lot of research on the nostalgia of

20:13

of slaves the medical establishment in

20:15

the antebellum period literally didn't

20:18

believe that the slaves could

20:20

feel nostalgic. It

20:22

wasn't

20:22

just the medical establishment.

20:25

Most white people who bought and sold black

20:27

people did not think they were capable

20:29

of had getting the same feelings as them or even getting

20:31

the same diseases. It

20:32

was impossible for them to concede any

20:34

sort of shared experience with the people

20:37

they enslave Thomas Jefferson

20:39

said it himself. Their

20:41

griefs are transient. Those

20:43

numberless afflictions, which render it doubt hopeful

20:45

whether heaven has given life to us in mercy

20:47

or in wrath, are less felt

20:50

and sooner forgotten with them.

20:52

In

20:52

general, their existence appears

20:55

to participate more of sensation

20:57

than reflection. Well,

20:59

when they were enslaved,

21:02

they were not seen as as human. They

21:04

were seen as property. And so, of course,

21:07

human emotions wouldn't apply property

21:10

unless the property got sick

21:12

and couldn't work and then maybe the

21:14

medical establishment would come in and diagnose them

21:16

with a strictly slave type

21:19

disease like the madness to flee the

21:21

plantation or something. Denying

21:23

nostalgia in black people directly

21:25

contributed to scientific racism.

21:27

Instead

21:27

of diagnosing enslaved people with the same

21:30

disease as soldiers fighting in the civil

21:32

war, pseudoscientific terms

21:33

like draped Romania appeared

21:35

in medical journals. to

21:37

describe a mental illness that gave enslaved people the

21:40

uncontrollable impulse to run

21:41

away. It comes from the

21:44

Greek Dreyfusus. which

21:45

means an escape at madness,

21:48

the suggested cure,

21:49

regular whipping. Drake

21:52

Romania was strictly

21:52

created to pathologize people

21:55

who sought freedom. This wasn't the

21:57

first time that nostalgia

21:59

had been denied from a group

22:01

of people. In eighteen thirty,

22:04

when president

22:04

Andrew Jackson signed the Indian removal

22:07

act. He said he understood that Native

22:09

Americans would be sad to have their lands

22:11

taken from them but

22:13

didn't see how it would feel any different than when

22:15

European settlers chose to move out

22:17

west.

22:17

He couldn't understand why

22:19

they'd be so upset over forced migration.

22:22

Our children by thousands yearly

22:25

leave the land of their birth to

22:27

seek new homes in distant regions.

22:29

Does humanity weep at

22:31

these painful separations from everything, animate

22:34

and inanimate with which the young heart

22:36

has become inclined.

22:45

Nastasia

22:47

was wildly misunderstood. It

22:49

was withheld from many who experienced it and

22:52

falsely diagnosed as a deadly disease in

22:54

others, like

22:54

soldiers on the battlefield.

22:56

and this narrow view continued along

22:59

with the only known cure

23:01

to return

23:01

people home.

23:04

Problem

23:04

was, didn't

23:05

work. When, of course, the citizen soldiers went

23:07

back to being just citizens, they

23:09

brought the nostalgia with them so to speak.

23:11

And they yearn for home, when they came

23:14

back home, home had

23:16

changed. And war had changed them. And

23:18

so nostalgia used to

23:20

be an ally to them

23:22

at war and its ghost kind of

23:24

followed them back home and

23:26

sort of haunted them. And so

23:28

you if you wanted to trace nostalgia

23:30

as this spreading agent, it it kinda

23:32

spreads from the military out into

23:35

society and perplexed the medical

23:37

community yet again. If

23:39

nostalgia was thought of as homesickness, but

23:41

returning home didn't hear the disease,

23:43

then they were back to square one. Not to

23:45

mention the fact that doctors never found a sick

23:47

bone in any soldier's body.

23:49

So

23:49

what was nostalgia?

23:51

It

23:51

wasn't just about war and it wasn't

23:54

just about home. It's almost as if

23:56

it had more to do with time than

23:58

with place. It was

23:59

about change. There

24:02

were currents that

24:04

started to shift nostalgia from a

24:06

disease to an motion.

24:09

When we

24:11

come back, nostalgia ditches

24:14

Ward. for

24:18

romance. This

24:39

is Dan

24:39

from Berlin, Germany. You're listening to

24:42

TruLine from NPR. Lately,

24:44

I've been re watching Broad

24:46

City. I found I needed to return

24:48

to a time that feels like now, except without

24:50

a pandemic or glaring incipient

24:53

fascism. Plus, I love to laugh and I already

24:55

rewatched all of hacks.

24:57

This message

25:00

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25:00

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domain.

25:34

Part two, the

25:37

way

25:38

we wear. What,

25:49

though the radiance, which was once

25:51

so bright, be

25:54

now forever taken from

25:56

my sight. Though

25:58

nothing can bring back the

25:59

hour of splendor in

26:03

the grass, of glory

26:05

in the flower. We will

26:07

grieve not, rather

26:10

find, strength,

26:11

and what

26:12

remains behind

26:14

behind what it

26:16

was worth.

26:23

After

26:23

about a hundred years searching for

26:25

a literal nostalgia bone

26:27

in the body, Doctors started

26:29

to slowly give up on the idea that

26:32

nostalgia was a physical illness. Over

26:34

the course of the nineteenth century, there was a

26:36

growing consensus that Johannes

26:39

copper, the nineteen year old med student who

26:41

coined the word, was wrong.

26:42

nostalgia wasn't a disease and it

26:45

wasn't

26:45

straight up homesickness. it wasn't an incurable

26:47

illness but an incurable modern

26:50

condition. In reaction

26:51

to modernity itself,

26:53

There was some

26:53

thought that maybe progress

26:56

and industrialization might eradicate

26:59

nostalgia, but this really wasn't

27:01

the case. The

27:03

world was modernizing, and more people were

27:05

moving from place to place, whether by

27:07

choice or force. And in all

27:09

that change, there was a loss of

27:12

control. a loss of what you once

27:14

knew. It could be because you found yourself

27:16

in another country surrounded by

27:18

new food, culture, and language, or

27:21

because for the first time you're

27:23

leaving your land and showing up to a

27:25

workplace with

27:26

a boss. telling you what to

27:29

do.

27:31

I

27:32

remember you say something in your book about

27:34

how there are people moving from place to

27:36

place having this experience. And then there are people not

27:39

leaving the countryside that they've lived in

27:41

their whole lives, but seeing that

27:44

change. they're staying in place and all of a

27:46

sudden they don't recognize their

27:48

homeland and that can induce the

27:50

same feeling.

27:51

Absolutely. Some of those people aren't necessarily

27:53

moving around. They're staying

27:55

put, but their lives

27:57

are changing because of

28:00

the introduction

28:02

of industrial processes and

28:04

how they work and make money

28:06

suddenly becomes very standardized

28:08

and then itself becomes standardized at

28:10

a certain point. The

28:12

five day work week was a direct product

28:15

of industrialization. And

28:18

sort of conditioning tactics would eventually prepare

28:20

these citizens to work in the factories

28:22

later on when they certainly felt like

28:24

they had no control over their lives because they

28:26

were working all the time.

28:29

This

28:29

was a time when time itself

28:32

started to be viewed differently.

28:33

with the hours of day designed around mass

28:36

industrialization and and advancing

28:38

global economy. Things

28:41

felt different and there was a shared yearning for how

28:43

things were, whether people left home

28:45

or not. nostalgia was showing up

28:47

in

28:47

factory workers students,

28:50

migrants, people adapting to a

28:52

modernizing world. And

28:54

this

28:54

rise of industry naturally

28:56

came with a counterculture

28:57

movement. romance.

29:09

There was

29:11

a major shift in the

29:13

nineteenth century with the

29:16

rise of romanticism and the

29:18

romantics of the nineteenth century celebrating

29:20

sentiments and emotion.

29:23

Romanitism was a cultural

29:25

movement that reshaped art music,

29:27

literature, and philosophy over the

29:29

course of the nineteenth century. It

29:31

was in many ways a direct reaction

29:33

against the previous age

29:35

of enlightenment. which centered on

29:37

rationalism and reason as well as

29:39

industry with its tight schedules,

29:41

repetitive motions, and

29:43

mechanization.

29:44

romanticism was about the exact opposite.

29:46

The imagination, subjectivity,

29:50

and emotions. and nostalgia got

29:52

absorbed into the movement and turned into

29:54

a literary sensibility to help

29:56

express the angst of

29:58

the period. A famous

29:59

example would be the poetry of

30:02

Wordsworth. William Wordsworth,

30:04

an English poet known for helping to

30:06

launch the English romantic movement.

30:10

Thus, nature's sake, the work

30:12

was dubbed, weren't worth wrote

30:14

the Lucy Palms, how

30:17

soon MALUCE'S RESS WAS RUNNING.

30:19

FROM THIS PERSPECTIVE OF THIS

30:21

NARRATOR WHO LONGS FOR

30:23

THIS UNKNOWN WOMAN named Lucy who

30:25

we can never get to. She

30:28

died and left to

30:30

me. This heath, this

30:32

calm. unacquired scene.

30:34

It's absolutely a series

30:37

of nostalgic poems because

30:39

it's written in this very

30:41

highly emotional kind of language.

30:43

The memory

30:44

of what has been

30:46

and never more

30:47

will

30:48

be.

30:54

romantic nostalgia

30:54

was also crucial to the

30:56

building of nations, the yearning

30:59

for some long lost

31:02

homeland that would turn a

31:04

nation's past or its

31:06

history into what we would

31:08

call like a heritage or

31:10

something. As an example

31:12

of that, I I'm often reminded of

31:14

the notre dame cathedral.

31:16

Its constant preservation and

31:19

restoration is one symptom of

31:21

France's nostalgia for its own

31:24

heritage and a very romantic

31:26

stodger. At that, Victor Hugo's

31:28

novel, for example, hunchback of

31:30

Notre Dame, which came out of the eighteen

31:33

thirties, is a essentially like notre

31:35

dame propaganda written in this

31:37

romantic way.

31:40

At time,

31:41

Notre Dame was in huge disrepair

31:43

and an eye sorter residence.

31:45

And Victor Hugo was not only

31:47

a French writer, but an architectural preservationist.

31:50

who in the eighteen hundred started to

31:52

see Gothic era buildings being demolished

31:55

across Paris.

31:56

Hugo was determined to save

31:58

Notre Dame and in eighteen thirty

31:59

one published a novel set in the

32:02

fourteen hundreds, the Gothic

32:04

era, about Quasimodo, the

32:06

bell ringer, and foremost lover of the

32:09

cathedral. And the cathedral

32:10

was not only society

32:13

for him, universe and

32:15

all nature beside. A

32:18

dream of no other

32:20

hedgehoes than the painted

32:22

windows always in flower.

32:24

No other shade than that. That

32:26

nostalgia for the cathedral in particular

32:28

sparked interest in the eighteen thirties

32:31

for restoring of

32:34

no other mountain than the

32:36

coastal towers of the church. of

32:38

no other ocean and barriers

32:41

growing at their bases.

32:43

It worked. In eighteen forty four,

32:45

the restoration project again. The

32:47

irony there is that the constant

32:50

restoration of that particular

32:52

cathedral built upon this

32:54

ness stolemic romantic impulse actually

32:56

increases the risk of the cathedral

32:58

falling victim to things like fire,

33:00

which is what we think happened

33:04

in twenty nineteen when Notre

33:06

Dame burned that that was actually a

33:08

result of it being

33:11

restored too much or there was an attempt to

33:13

renovate it too much. And it's kind

33:15

of this lesson we can learn about

33:17

trying to restore the

33:19

past completely and fully, and then it

33:21

might actually end up in destruction. of the

33:23

thing that we long for.

33:29

The romantic

33:30

era was just one stream of

33:33

nostalgia that fed into a global

33:35

artistic expression of longing

33:37

yielding and reckoning with past and present

33:39

as time barreled on. As the

33:41

world

33:41

continued to rapidly change and old ways

33:43

of life slipped through people's fingers,

33:46

they grasped onto what was left.

33:48

Memories

33:49

memories of where they'd been, what

33:52

they'd had, and who they used

33:54

be. Mastasia became

33:54

a name for the pleasure and pain

33:56

in the space between the certainty of

33:58

the past and

33:59

the uncertainty of what

34:02

was

34:02

to come. When we're

34:04

born, emotional reactions

34:07

are pretty much the same in everyone. But

34:10

as we grow older, each of us develops his own individual

34:12

set of response pattern.

34:14

The mid twentieth century was

34:17

a turning point in the psychological study of

34:20

emotions. And so we have

34:22

examples of each of the three

34:24

basic emotions.

34:26

fear, rage,

34:29

and

34:29

love. And nostalgia,

34:31

which was being

34:33

seriously studied as an emotion, perhaps thanks to the romantic

34:36

era art world taking it under its

34:38

wing. So in some

34:39

ways, these psychological

34:42

developments were sort of life imitating art, but

34:44

some doctors were still on the

34:46

fence. Even as the stall just starts

34:49

to be considered more of a mood or an

34:52

emotion through the twentieth

34:54

century. You still have some who think

34:56

that it is pathological and

34:58

needs to be cured out of people.

35:00

There are a number of texts

35:02

written in the first half of

35:04

the twentieth century by positive psychologists

35:08

and criminal psychologists, in fact,

35:10

trying to find links between

35:12

what they would see as like

35:15

aberrant behaviors and perhaps this thing

35:17

called nostalgia. They were

35:20

wondering perhaps if nostalgia

35:22

could cause people to commit

35:24

crimes. There were stories

35:26

of young women committing

35:28

arson because they were nostalgic. They

35:30

moved away to work and they longed for

35:32

home and they ended up, like, burning

35:34

down the place where they worked. And

35:36

this just

35:38

sent psychologists down several rabbit holes trying to figure

35:40

out if nostalgia actually,

35:42

the seat of the disease might not be

35:44

in the body, it might be in

35:46

brain, and this was something that was talked about

35:49

even through the days of psychoanalysis in the nineteen fifties,

35:51

all the way up until

35:53

the Vietnam War. when

35:55

in reality people were just feeling what

35:58

we would define today as just a

35:59

regular human

36:02

emotion. Except

36:03

for a few rogue psychologists, by the mid

36:05

nineteen fifties and sixties, nostalgia was no

36:07

longer considered a malady,

36:09

but a mood. This

36:11

shift chipped away at the stigma previously

36:14

associated with being nostalgic, and

36:16

it became more and more

36:18

culturally accepted. if not embraced. And once that was the

36:20

case, nostalgia became more than

36:22

a mood. It

36:24

became marketable. Right.

36:26

As soon as nostalgia is

36:29

considered to be not

36:31

that bad and not pathological,

36:35

then people might ask, well,

36:37

then what can we use it for then?

36:39

If we don't want to cure it

36:41

out of people. And if it's something people are just going to

36:43

feel, then how might we

36:45

direct those feelings?

36:47

When we come

36:51

back, nostalgia

36:52

gets down to business.

37:11

Hi.

37:12

My name is Jared Howie. I'm calling from Pueblo

37:15

Colorado and you're listening to

37:17

Thru Line from NPR.

37:20

I've been feeling really nostalgic listening

37:22

to that kind of 90s pop rock scene that

37:24

was around for a while, like

37:27

semi channelized, two princes, that

37:30

kind of thing. And it really helps with how much

37:33

I miss home. And

37:35

I've always loved how music

37:38

can do that so easily. Just kind of bring you

37:40

back to what you love and what you

37:42

value

37:44

most. r

37:50

three, then

37:50

a saw j

37:52

tail.

38:02

It's nineteen

38:06

seventy four.

38:06

The US has withdrawn from Vietnam

38:09

after a decade of war. A

38:11

counterculture movement has swept through the country and sparked a

38:14

political backlash, and

38:16

happy days has debuted on TV.

38:19

a show about growing up in the American Midwest

38:21

during the nineteen fifties, the

38:22

era of drive ins, hair

38:25

gel, leather jackets,

38:27

basically

38:27

the fawns. The fans be with you?

38:30

No. I'll be with you. Let us a. A.

38:32

It might seem like a weird show

38:34

to arrive at such a charge time.

38:38

but Grafton Tanner says that was probably why

38:40

it was so popular. By the mid to late

38:42

nineteen seventies, plenty of people were

38:44

nostalgic for the nineteen fifties

38:47

the home they've always dreamed of, the

38:49

happiest investment they have ever

38:51

made. At last, the bryans have all the

38:53

space they need. big Florida ceiling closets for each

38:55

member of the family. Clearly, the nineteen

38:58

fifties were the happy

39:00

days to some

39:02

people. This is how American families

39:04

are living in their

39:08

new homes.

39:09

Sure. If you were

39:10

white and middle class like

39:12

most of the characters in that show, the

39:14

nineteen fifties might have seemed pretty good.

39:17

You could easily buy a home in the

39:19

suburbs. Your job was stable. You and your

39:21

kids could play catch in your backyard with

39:23

a cocker spaniel named spot. all

39:26

comfortably predictable. But

39:27

that remembrance of the fifties isn't

39:29

what the decade was actually

39:31

like.

39:31

The Korean War, a nuclear

39:34

arms race. Jim Crow. All that got

39:35

glossed over

39:36

with a whole lot of pomade.

39:38

Yuri sick man punch.

39:42

Hey.

39:44

Hey. I wanna hear about what Danny did at

39:45

the beach. And Greece comes out a few

39:48

years later.

39:50

Some love

39:52

have

39:53

me a blessed. And

39:57

it's

39:58

around

39:59

this time. when

40:02

these movies are pretty popular that you

40:05

have some marketing and

40:08

admin type

40:10

folks starting to talk about whether or not the nostalgia

40:12

market is really a thing, and whether

40:14

or not certain products could

40:16

go through the normal life

40:20

cycle And after they decline in popularity, might

40:22

they get popular again?

40:24

In other words,

40:26

was there

40:26

a way to make your nostalgia

40:30

profitable for them. Granted, different people

40:32

are nostalgic for different things. Some of

40:34

that has to do with where you grow up and when.

40:36

And some people aren't nostalgic at

40:40

all. but

40:40

maybe there are things that fall in the center of the nostalgia

40:42

venn

40:42

diagram that appeal to

40:44

the masses. Thank you, Holly.

40:47

day cooking. It has always been a family tradition at

40:49

our house. It's

40:50

easy with pillsbury sugar cookies.

40:52

I did one thing on and

40:55

one grandma came to bring,

40:58

one from uncle Charlie,

41:00

and one from

41:02

Burger King.

41:05

In nineteen

41:07

seventy five, there was a

41:09

professor of marketing named Donald W Hindon,

41:11

and he wrote this op

41:13

ed. and marketing news. And he

41:16

argued that the product life cycle in which

41:18

a product is introduced in the

41:20

marketplace, it grows,

41:22

it matures, and it

41:24

saturates the marketplace and then eventually

41:26

declines, he said that

41:28

that concept, that model

41:30

should be

41:32

updated account for this new trend where product

41:34

sales actually increase after

41:37

they decline. And he

41:39

called this the nostalgia tale He

41:42

writes that

41:46

nostalgia isn't a passing fad

41:48

and that marketing needs to take

41:50

it seriously. And

41:52

maybe, instead of always trying

41:54

to find something new to sell, we

41:56

can sell something that people haven't seen

41:58

in a while and they're gonna like it because they're gonna feel nostalgia for

42:01

it once we reintroduce it into

42:04

the marketplace.

42:05

And that, of

42:07

course, has not

42:10

slowed. I mean -- No. --

42:12

I think Wow. No way.

42:13

You might not remember

42:16

us, but we met in the

42:18

nineties. They

42:20

Siri set timber for fourteen minutes. We are

42:22

members of generation y. Okay.

42:24

Fourteen minutes of counting. As in yin

42:26

yang. Wait. Wait. For cookies.

42:28

Yo. Yo. Anyone,

42:30

you know, listening to this

42:32

now can just think about what

42:34

we're experiencing today when it

42:37

comes to,

42:39

you know,

42:42

reboots of

42:44

movies and reruns of

42:46

shows. Next up, the Fresh Prince of the lair, the

42:49

oh, you hear that song? Now, this is a

42:51

story y'all about

42:52

how my life got

42:55

flip third upside down and I don't know.

42:57

So you might remake something that's already been

42:58

made? became the Prince of a town

43:00

called Bel Air. Or you might just watch the same

43:02

thing over and over it over again.

43:05

I know I'd

43:08

go from rags to Ritzel

43:12

to being

43:12

a gangster was better than being president

43:14

of the United States. I'm wondering

43:15

if you could give us a

43:17

few specific ways that we're seeing the

43:19

consumer nostalgia play out today

43:22

and why? It's because people just

43:24

run out of good ideas and so

43:26

we're just recycling things.

43:29

Well, it does seem

43:32

like that people are running out of ideas. You that

43:34

is a completely normal

43:36

sentiment to have when one

43:38

Marvel film after the other.

43:40

You were made

43:42

to be ruled.

43:45

one reboot

43:46

after the other.

43:48

It will be

43:51

every man for himself.

44:01

There

44:01

was a scholar of nostalgia named Fred Davis. He wrote

44:03

a book in the nineteen seventies called yearning

44:06

for yesterday. And

44:08

he said, and then in the late

44:10

nineteen seventies that there was this

44:12

nostalgia wave.

44:14

I would argue that we are also experiencing

44:16

a nostalgia wave. I'll I'll be frank with you. I

44:18

I kinda thought it would have

44:21

crested and and fallen apart

44:23

by now because you could

44:26

trace this wave back

44:28

some twenty years. That's one of the

44:30

reasons why I believe that

44:32

nostalgia is to the defining

44:34

emotion of our time in that

44:36

the last twenty years has seen

44:38

one kind of nostalgia wave

44:40

after

44:42

the other. and they

44:44

all kind of tend to follow

44:47

major

44:47

crises.

44:49

Why eleven thirty seven at what? Nine

44:52

eleven, and then you're you're nostalgia

44:54

for the American homeland that used to be

44:57

The craziest day have ever seen in these markets, veteran traders

44:59

saying they never For the Great Recession, the

45:02

two thousand eight collapse, global

45:04

collapse of the of the economy

45:06

and the astrology for,

45:08

you know, some kind of safety

45:10

and stability. When did the world

45:12

change? Check your camera. And

45:14

then, of course, COVID nineteen. Snapshots

45:17

in time that now feel a lifetime away,

45:19

a concert, a walk with a

45:21

friend, a family get together,

45:23

a new haircut, And

45:26

so make sense why

45:27

people would want to seek these things out

45:29

because they're comfortable in in

45:32

times of chaos and

45:34

and crisis. Why

45:36

does

45:37

that lend itself to

45:40

nostalgia? Well,

45:40

if you take the

45:41

COVID pandemic, this major

45:44

global crisis

45:46

in which things not only

45:48

lives didn't only change drastically.

45:51

They changed really quickly.

45:54

One minute, you're living your life and the next minute,

45:56

you are locked down.

46:00

When

46:00

one's life world changes

46:03

that drastically, that's where nostalgia shows

46:05

up. And so if a crisis is big

46:07

enough to change your

46:10

daily life, the way that you live and interact with

46:12

other people. How you make your

46:14

money, how you survive, how you

46:18

socialize, If something comes along, it affects

46:20

you and changes all of those

46:22

things, then you're going

46:24

to naturally

46:26

yearn for

46:28

the

46:28

stability that you had before. Because even if it didn't seem

46:30

stable at the time, well, gosh,

46:32

things are so much more unstable. Now

46:34

I'd give anything to go back then.

46:38

So in the midst of that shock, when you when you control

46:40

and lose the daily routine of

46:42

your life, which is your reality,

46:46

then we'll turn to nostalgia, to weather

46:48

the crisis. Welcome to

46:49

the space, jam, space.

46:52

It's one of the

46:53

reasons why you have Something

46:55

like a

46:57

space jam reboot. Welcome,

47:06

Kate James.

47:12

or one

47:13

Star Wars film after the other. There

47:22

is some evidence to indicate that

47:25

when people feel nostalgic, they're more

47:27

likely to

47:28

part with their money. They're more likely to

47:30

spend money. especially

47:32

if they think if they spend

47:34

that money, then they'll be able to,

47:36

like, have that thing that they're

47:38

nostalgic for. So I don't think there's

47:40

any accident at all that

47:42

these large media companies like

47:44

Disney, Warner

47:46

Bros. are making films loaded with nostalgia references

47:48

because they know that that

47:50

they're going to attract people's attention.

47:54

And Grafton says this nostalgia abating has

47:56

inevitably seeped into other parts

47:58

of

47:58

our lives,

47:59

including

48:00

our politics. probably

48:02

the the best most recent example of

48:04

nostalgia and politics would be Donald

48:07

Trump who promised to make

48:09

America great again a

48:12

phrase that still has currency with many of his

48:14

supporters. It's a phrase he

48:16

borrowed from Ronald Reagan's

48:19

nineteen eighty campaign. For those

48:21

who abandoned hope, we'll

48:24

restore hope and we'll welcome them into a

48:26

great national crusade to

48:28

make America great again. That nostalgic

48:30

pledge really resonated with

48:32

lots of Americans. And then

48:34

Joe Biden had his own kind

48:36

of a

48:38

nostalgic phrase. He talked about building back better and there

48:40

was sort of this nostalgic

48:42

return to the Obama era

48:44

back when people thought things were

48:48

or better before Trump got in office, and it ultimately served

48:50

him well. And you could see this

48:52

in in American presidential

48:54

elections for years and years.

48:57

So it's

48:58

really everywhere now

49:00

and it's interesting because it's

49:02

capitalizing on this thing that has

49:04

evolved from being seen as a bad thing to a

49:06

mostly good thing, and then it

49:09

kind of saturated the

49:12

market. So I'm wondering what type of impact you think that

49:14

has on how the everyday

49:16

person relates to and

49:20

views nostalgia because they're starting to see it as something

49:22

that's commodified. Well, there seems to

49:24

be kind of

49:25

a distressed of nostalgia. and

49:28

some of that is I think leftover from its days

49:30

of it being perhaps pathological. I

49:32

think that there are traces of its

49:36

medical origins to this day. A

49:38

leftover belief that

49:40

one's nostalgia could drive

49:44

them to to utter destruction. You know? And if enough

49:46

people in a population or nostalgic,

49:48

that might lead to the end

49:50

of that country or that

49:52

group of people or whatever. And

49:54

so I think a lot of our distress of

49:56

nostalgia comes from the way that it's been used

49:58

in politics and by

50:00

the private sector because it it does seem kind of

50:02

gimmicky. I mean, the space jam

50:04

reboot doesn't seem like a

50:06

movie at seems

50:08

like it's designed to

50:10

just make the company money

50:12

and and like

50:14

that's it.

50:14

which can create

50:17

a kind of

50:18

stagnant even stale environment. That's

50:23

one aspect of nostalgia. It can hold

50:25

you back, get you kind

50:27

of stuck. And as

50:29

undesirable

50:30

as that might sound to

50:32

you, It sounds pretty good to politicians and corporations who

50:34

are doing everything they can to

50:36

tap into that nostalgia, and

50:38

almost like a drug keep

50:41

you with them. they wanna keep people in somewhat

50:43

of a low level nostalgic

50:46

state or in a state of agitation

50:48

or anger so

50:50

they're constantly scrolling on Twitter. So they're constantly purchasing

50:54

more nostalgic goods and streaming more

50:56

nostalgic content.

50:58

So there has been a change from

51:00

disciplining it out of people to almost encouraging it

51:02

in a specific way. And

51:06

it therefore defines nostalgia's value in a specific

51:08

way, IE as something

51:10

that sort of re inscribes

51:14

people as consuming,

51:17

scrolling, technocratic

51:20

subjects. consuming,

51:22

scrolling, technocratic subjects who depend more and more on the

51:24

past, real or imagined, to

51:26

exist in the present and

51:28

envision the

51:30

future. we have to have some sort of connection to the past

51:32

in order to move into

51:34

the future and in order to

51:37

to build a more equitable future. Some of this

51:40

requires a a historical

51:42

knowledge, like knowing how things

51:44

really were. But we

51:46

always aren't totally sure how things

51:48

really were. And also sometimes we have

51:50

to cut through some of

51:52

the propaganda offered to

51:54

us about the past. in order

51:56

to know how things really

51:58

were. Sometimes, nostalgia is a thing

51:59

that sort of cloaks

52:02

or fogs historical reality.

52:05

In a way,

52:08

nostalgia's

52:08

always been more about dealing with the present

52:10

than about capturing any real sense of

52:12

the past. And while it can

52:14

be used to manipulate and deceive, it

52:16

can also help us cope with all

52:18

these other emotions we have,

52:20

like loneliness, sadness,

52:23

anger,

52:23

grief, especially at a time

52:25

when so many people are

52:27

not just grieving the loss of loved ones during the

52:29

pandemic, but also in sort of a

52:32

long term grieving process as it

52:34

comes to, you know, when it comes to like

52:36

the environment, or

52:38

something. We have to face down this horrible thing

52:40

called global warming and it kind

52:42

of feels like that we're always

52:46

already grieving the end of the

52:48

world.

52:49

More people are

52:52

going to feel

52:54

this kind of intense

52:56

nostalgia moving forward, whether they

52:58

lose people because of fires or

53:02

landslides or hurricanes or

53:04

COVID or what have you. It's

53:06

a crazy world and things seem to only be

53:08

getting stranger and weirder

53:10

and worse. We're gonna have to get

53:12

used to feeling this way and we're gonna have

53:14

to know what to do with all of

53:16

that nostalgia.

53:20

So will nostalgia

53:22

help

53:22

build our future or

53:24

destroy it? It's probably

53:26

not one of the other.

53:29

because like our memories, nostalgia is

53:31

a jumbled kaleidoscope of things

53:32

that fade and morph.

53:35

Things that however

53:36

imperfect are familiar.

53:38

And

53:38

after all these examples

53:40

of nostalgia and how it's been

53:42

misunderstood and misused, it's also

53:45

a lot bigger that debate. same way that nostalgia doesn't make you

53:47

feel good or bad, nostalgia

53:49

probably isn't good

53:52

or bad. It's just something

53:54

that's deep inside of us that we can't

53:56

really control, but that if we

53:58

want, we can conjure. For

53:59

me, it's Youssef Cat Steve ins?

54:02

Yes. But it's also an old

54:04

pillowcase. I stole from

54:05

my grandpa's house years before he

54:07

died. My grandpa and that

54:09

house had such a particular

54:12

smell. And somehow, after all

54:14

these years, maybe because I

54:16

don't wash it,

54:17

the pillowcase is still swimming in

54:19

it. It's

54:19

like a magic trick, that trick time,

54:21

trick loss, trick grief, my grandpa

54:24

perfume. And for Grafton

54:26

Tanner, it's

54:27

deaf, punk,

54:29

on cassette And we have

54:31

to kind of sometimes

54:31

take elements from

54:34

the present as it slips into the past

54:36

with us into the future, like

54:40

my cassette tape or

54:42

a pillowcase or or

54:44

anything. You know, those are crucial

54:48

Talismans, these objects, and these things

54:50

that hold these memories, they're

54:52

important for

54:53

us to be functional

54:56

human beings. you

54:58

know, my cassette tape, that doesn't

55:00

destroy the world. It surely doesn't destroy

55:02

my world. to

55:04

this day, I firmly believe that best way to experience

55:06

that album is on cassette tape

55:09

or maybe like blaring from some

55:11

giant speakers in a club or

55:14

something.

55:33

That's it

55:36

for

55:38

this

55:39

week's show. I'm Ramtad Ferta.

55:42

And

55:42

I'm Ramtina. Ablouie, and you've been listening

55:44

to Through Life from NPR. This

55:46

episode was

55:47

produced by me who feels

55:49

nostalgic when I even

55:51

that often. It was one

55:52

of my dad's favorite foods. And me

55:54

who feels nostalgic whenever I hear

55:56

ninety's hip hop and Lauren

55:58

Swoo and I

55:59

am nostalgic about the

56:02

summers I spent in my parents'

56:04

homeland. Lane Kaplan Levinson,

56:06

and I have shared enough for one

56:08

day. Julie Kane, And I'm

56:11

nostalgic right now for

56:13

this giant Redwood tree that

56:15

just got cut

56:17

down. next house. Victor Yves,

56:20

and I'm nostalgic for

56:22

baseball games at Dodgers Stadium. with

56:25

my father. Yolanda Sanguini,

56:26

and I feel nostalgic whenever I

56:28

eat chicken wings from

56:29

a Chinese restaurant. It

56:31

reminds me of Friday nights

56:33

at my mom's tiny apartment in Harlem where she

56:35

would order Chinese food and host these boisterous get

56:38

togethers where everybody top

56:40

politics, those chicken

56:42

wings continue be a delight

56:44

to the senses. And

56:46

lately, I've been listening

56:48

to

56:49

Shakira's first albums along. like

56:51

more than usual. So

56:52

I've been feeling deeply nostalgic

56:55

about red hair and buttuquia

56:57

pre crossover era. I should

56:59

hear Miraanda

57:00

Matíos, and I'm nostalgic about

57:02

spending summers by the lake when

57:04

I was a child. Tamar

57:06

Churney. Vitamins or anything

57:07

that smells like darkroom chemicals can make

57:09

me really

57:10

nostalgic for the days before

57:12

photographer

57:13

feet, music, and pretty

57:15

much everything else, became digital ones and

57:17

zeros. Anja Steinberg. And I'm nostalgic for

57:19

the holiday Harry Potter

57:22

movie marathons on TV. Backchecking for this episode was done

57:23

by Kevin Vogel. Thank you to

57:26

Farai

57:27

Masika, Dimitri Apesos, Abbie

57:30

Wolfman Aaron, Michael Bars, Rene Tahan,

57:32

and our own Victory Vies for

57:35

their voice over

57:35

work. Also thanks

57:38

to Marie Abbe and

57:40

Anja Grumman. Our music

57:41

was composed by Ramaquin and his band,

57:43

Trump Electric, which includes Naveed

57:46

Marvey show Fujiwara. Anya Mizani.

57:48

This episode was mixed

57:50

by Alex Drew Penske. Finally,

57:54

you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please

57:56

write us at throughlineNPR dot

57:58

org or hit us up on

57:59

Twitter at

58:02

throughlineNPR. Thanks

58:03

for listening.

58:13

This message

58:13

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58:16

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