Hey, it's Ampeer's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. Between low-rise jeans making a comeback

and the local venue by me still doing quote-unquote indie sleaze nights, it's pretty clear that

we're going through a phase of millennial nostalgia. But what most people miss looking back on

that era is how much it was predicated on

us buying stuff, how our identities as consumers were the main thing that united us more than

anything. At least that's an argument Colette Shade makes in her book, Y2K, how the 2000s became

everything. In the book, she uses artifacts from the Y2K era, from the late 90s to the

mid-2000s to talk about politics and the economy and how we're still feeling the effects

of that era today. My conversation with Colette Shade after the break.

In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.

Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.

On our new show, Sources and Methods.

NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people

helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.

Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

In the late 90s, the future looked so bright, didn't it?

We had pop stars and music videos dancing with robots in space.

We had a president talking about all this extra money we had lying around. in space. All you people, can't you see, can't you see?

We had a president talking about all this extra money we had lying around. We expect the 1998 surplus to be about $70 billion.

And this new thing called the Internet promised a new age of interconnectivity that could unite us all.

Of course, we do not now live in a techno-utopia.

Instead, by 2008, unemployment was up, the housing market was collapsing, and we were mired in a global war on terror.

...