Many of Us Are Consuming Nostalgia... Including Me

I’m writing this from an airplane.

I’m on my way to upstate New York for my first-ever silent meditation retreat. I’m a little scared, being that I am someone who literally talks for a living. But any fears of a silence-induced breakdown are overwhelmed by the extreme dread I feel knowing that I’m gonna have to spend several days away from what is currently my favorite TV show.

My current favorite TV show didn’t make any best-of lists this year. Its actors and writers did no press. It’s not up for any awards. This is because the show is almost 20 years old. I am rewatching AMC’s Breaking Bad, and it is low-key (high-key) taking over my life.

I watch an episode or two (or three) every night I don’t have plans. On nights when I wake up at 2 or 3 AM for no reason, I watch a little Breaking Bad. I’ve snuck portions of episodes on my iPhone in doctor’s waiting rooms, or most recently, the Verizon store, when I was waiting for some repairs. It’s like a gritty, crime-filled, methy lullaby for me. During our recent atmospheric river here in Los Angeles, I spent maybe two days holed up inside, making pasta and bingeing Breaking Bad.

You don’t need me to tell you this show is great. Let’s be honest: the last thing anyone needs is a middle-aged male podcaster telling them how good Breaking Bad is. But, I will say that this beautiful moment of television nostalgia I am in seems to be part of a larger trend, at least for me. To wit: for the last week or so, my most-played artist while zipping through LA traffic or walking Wesley Snipes the pitbull has been Santigold. And, like, Santigold’s FIRST album, titled Santogold, which came out — you guessed it — almost 20 years ago.

These last two weeks of TV and music nostalgia have been pure bliss. I have not found myself missing anything new. I have not found myself feeling FOMO about any discussions of current music or TV. I ended up at an album release party with a fellow entertainment journalist this week. She covers music, so I asked her what her favorite pop of the year was. She frowned and told me 2025 was pretty slim pickings. I agreed. I then proceeded to go back in time, forgetting the present, to think about all the Breaking Bad I’d watch when I got home, and how good listening to Santogold on the drive would be.

I’ve tried to compartmentalize the recent nostalgia streak in my consumption. Make it small and individual, and personalized. Maybe I love the old stuff because I’m middle-aged. It’s been documented in detail: at a certain age, we all stop seeking out new pop culture — music especially — and just keep returning to the sounds and images that sustained us in our youth.

Or maybe it’s because Breaking Bad is just perfect, and everyone who’s ever experienced that show needs to experience it again at some point. (Same for Santigold’s debut.) But I keep thinking that I’m not alone in this. Pop culture nostalgia has always been with us, but today, it seems nostalgia is ruling all of pop culture.

There’s a very interesting streaming stat that continually blows my mind. Some 70 percent of all streaming music on Spotify is “catalog,” meaning music 18 months old or older. We now have access to just about any song ever recorded, on demand, and we increasingly want the older stuff.

The same for social media. I open TikTok and I see JLo and Linda Perry, the lead singer of Four Non Blondes, lip-syncing a mashup of “What’s Up” and Nicki Minaj’s “Beez In The Trap.” One of these songs is 28 years old, the other 13. The two women lip-syncing to it haven’t had a hit in, well, a while. And yet, the hottest music trend on all of TikTok right now is that.

Go to Netflix and the other streamers, and nostalgia reigns supreme there as well. TV Guide estimates that the 20-year-old Fox show Prison Break was possibly “watched more than any other TV show anywhere in 2024.” The Office on Peacock remains more popular than its recent spinoff, The Paper.

Here is my theory: our era of high-speed Internet, endless social sharing, and the entirety of all the world’s knowledge available to us through the small supercomputers that live in our purses and back pockets hasn’t brought us into the future. It’s just helped us settle into, and get really cozy, rehashing and remixing the past.

I’ve started telling friends that all of this nostalgia we're swimming in has me feeling like pop culture itself has lost its sense of time. I am not saying that this is a bad thing, but, more than any moment in my adult life, that feeling has been a bit disorienting. My endless scrolls have no sense of forward momentum anymore. Neither does my streaming algorithm. Of course, this loss of time is happening in lockstep with the downfall of the monoculture, another phenomenon that increasingly makes pop culture feel adrift.

In the midst of this, how does one proceed? Do I scream and yell for yesteryear, when things felt a bit more linear and forward-looking? Do I rush towards some new semblance of cultural timekeeping and organization? Or better yet, can I let myself sit, or swim, in this water that seems to be constantly circling itself?

This is the logical point to share the answers I’ve found to all these questions. But I have no answers yet. Maybe you can help: Do you feel the same I do? How are you living in — or rejecting — pop culture nostalgia right now? I’d love your thoughts, as this is a topic I want to revisit in further detail, online and on-air.

In the meantime, something new? My chat with Danielle Pinnock, one of the stars of the CBS mega hit, Ghosts is in your feed now. It’s hard to overstate just how infectious her positive energy is. Come for the story of how she made it in Hollywood, stay for the all-around good vibes. And if you want something totally different, check out my other episode from last week. A chat with sports journalist Baker Machado all about how sports gambling is making all of sports look drastically different than it did even five years ago.

Alright, with that, I’m off! And if you’re watching Breaking Bad, let me know your favorite season of the show. (It’s season 4. Trust me ❤️)

Sam