The Nostalgia Bone

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.7 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2021

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The global pandemic has spawned a different type of epidemic, one of an entirely different nature: a nostalgia outbreak. Longing for 'simpler times' and 'better days', many of us have been turning to 90s dance playlists, TV sitcoms, and sports highlights. We're looking for comfort and safety in the permanence of the past, or at least, what we think the past was. But, when it first appeared, nostalgia itself wasn't considered a feeling; it was a deadly disease. This episode traces the history of nostalgia from its origins as an illness to the dominating emotion of our time. And in doing so, we wrestle with its eternal paradox to both hold us back and keep us going.

Transcript

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0:00.0	When I was younger, probably about 10 or 11 years old, my grandmother actually gifted
0:16.1	me a cassette player for my birthday.
0:19.6	At that age I didn't own CDEs or MP3 player or something.
0:23.4	I definitely didn't own any cassette tapes.
0:28.1	My mom decided to drive me to this store called Media Play.
0:31.9	It doesn't exist anymore.
0:33.4	And I knew that I wanted Daff Punk's 2001 album called Discovery and so we bought it.
0:40.6	This was around September going into October and I just listened to it all the time,
0:47.7	religiously, constantly.
0:49.0	So it was this really crucial moment in my life where a few things converged like my introduction
0:56.1	into music that I really loved and enjoying a change of season and being a young person
1:04.2	and having that freedom.
1:06.2	And to this day I still listened to that record.
1:11.0	It's in my car.
1:12.0	My car, I have an older car and has a tape deck and so I can pop it in and kind of transports
1:18.5	me back to that time period.
1:34.0	It gives me this sort of like lump in my throat kind of feeling but it's not sadness.
1:39.5	You know, it's not something that I necessarily mourn.
1:42.9	Like I don't want to go back to being 10 years old.
1:45.5	You know, I like being an adult.
1:48.0	But it's almost just like a visceral feeling that lump in my throat and the misty-eyed
1:55.4	kind of feeling that I get and my face gets a little red.
	...

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