# Ep. 20 Make College Great Again? Nostalgia, AI, and Academic Anxiety

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/unfixed-how-ai-is-reshaping-the-university-7342550/ep-20-make-college-great-again-nostalgia-ai-and-academic-anxiety
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/unfixed-how-ai-is-reshaping-the-university-7342550/ep-20-make-college-great-again-nostalgia-ai-and-academic-anxiety.md
Podcast: [Unfixed: How AI Is Reshaping the University](https://stenobird.com/podcast/unfixed-how-ai-is-reshaping-the-university-7342550)
Published: 2026-01-12T08:05:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.meltsintoair.org/unfixedpodcast/ep-20-make-college-great-again-nostalgia-ai-and-academic-anxiety
Audio file: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f624c707d4c797a5b5177f9/t/6963e4ca687af23b5058841b/1768154413692/Nostaglia+-+RTG.mp3
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Duration seconds: 1653

## Resource

In this episode of Unfixed, Nik and Zach take on a difficult but necessary conversation about nostalgia in higher education. Using real media headlines, faculty experiences, and their own teaching histories, they explore how AI panic taps into a deeper longing for a pre-pandemic, pre-ChatGPT past that may never have been as stable as we remember. The discussion unpacks what nostalgia is, why it’s so powerful right now, and how scapegoating AI can obscure long-standing challenges around reading, writing, and motivation. Rather than a call to “go back,” this episode walks the line between insight and wake-up—arguing that AI often reveals what’s already broken and, in some cases, opens space to fix it.

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## Transcript

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