Nostalgia Interviews With Chris Deacy

My guest this week is Dereck Daschke whom I had the great pleasure of interviewing in Salt Lake City when we were both reviewing films at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2023 for the Journal of Religion and Film. Dereck teaches Religious Studies at Truman State University in Missouri and, like me, works in the area of religion and film. We find out about Dereck’s dissertation in Graduate School on Freud and the apocalypse and Dereck reflects on whether film can be a stand in for religious experience. We also discuss apocalyptic revenge fantasies and the Mad Max films. Dereck talks about his Lutheran upbringing in the Chicago suburbs and we find out why he has always been drawn to academia. He has a seminal memory of seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey in the basement of his local public library. We find out why this film made such an impact. The psychology of transcendence has always interested Dereck, and we learn about Dereck’s interest in Bob Dylan and his memories of seeing Dylan and Tom Petty in concer