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Amina Srna: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Amina Srna filling in for Brian today. Now we'll open the phones on something that's been hard to miss on social media this month, 2016 Nostalgia. If you've been on Instagram or TikTok lately, you may have noticed a flood of throwbacks, people posting old photos and little time capsules from the year 2016. In a recent New York Times piece, Madison Malone Kircher described it this way, "Instagram became a time machine," she writes, "Instead of the usual fair mostly content from influencers and advertisements, I was greeted by hundreds of old photos from friends and celebrities revisiting life in the year 2016."

Your feed might have been full of people in heavily filtered old iPhone photos, wearing skinny jeans, mid-2010s pop songs, President Obama, and selfies from busy offices, the kinds of details that make you instantly think, "Oh, we're doing 2016 now," so we want to hear from you. Let's take a moment to reflect on 2016. Even if you aren't on Instagram or TikTok, are you nostalgic? If so, and why. Call us at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Where were you in 2016? What were you doing? If you look at photos of yourself from then, what surprises you? Whether it's what you wore, what you cared about, or what you thought was important. 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692.

One explanation for this trend comes from how people are thinking about that year in hindsight, right? A Wikipedia page tracking the phenomenon, it's called 2016 is the new 2026, notes that a lot of this nostalgia is tied to what 2016 and what came before. Before COVID, before online misinformation felt so pervasive, and before AI-generated images, videos, and text became part of everyday life, and that telling 2016 becomes a kind of before moment. Not perfect, but simpler. Does that resonate with you? Do you miss 2016 because of where you were in your own life, or because of what hadn't happened yet? If you can't imagine how on earth anybody could feel nostalgic for 2016, you can weigh in too. 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692.

While this trend isn't explicitly political, it's hard to forget what else 2016 meant, the year Trump's political rise became a reality, the year of Brexit, the year a lot of people now think of as a turning point. You might even think of it as the before times. If you want to go there, how do you think our politics have changed since 2016? Are you nostalgic for that era, or does remembering it make you grateful it's behind us? Maybe it makes you sad. Tell us what 2016 represents to you personally, culturally, politically, or otherwise. 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692, and we'll take your calls right after this.

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Amina Srna: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Amina Srna. Now we'll take your calls on 2016 nostalgia. Sally in the Upper West Side, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sally.

Sally: It's just so ironic. I'm not sure I would call it nostalgia, but I was going through some old files and trying to throw out stuff and came across all The New York Times clippings I'd kept on the blizzard of January 24th, 2016.

Amina Srna: That's right.

Sally: Blanketed the whole East Coast, and I think I'd totally forgotten about it until I saw those pictures, and the storm we had last week was nothing compared to that one.

Amina Srna: I remember that very well. Thank you for your call, Sally. Here's Maria in Orange-- or South Orange, New Jersey, excuse me, who wants to talk about her political memories of 2016. Hi, Maria. You're on WNYC.

Maria: Hi. Thanks for having me on. Yes, I just wanted to comment. Back in 2016, that was a happy and bittersweet year. We were all working really hard on the Bernie Sanders campaign, and $27, that's the donations. We worked just so hard, and it was just a hopeful, wonderful time for thousands and thousands of people who wanted to get Bernie elected back in 2016 and again in 2020. Sadly, it never came to be, but good to see Bernie being so out there and strong and resilient and continue leading us in the right direction.

Amina Srna: Maria, thank you so much for your call. Here is a text. "In 2016, I was so devastated by the election results that I decided to return to the nonprofit sector. I gave up my corporate position, which paid a great salary and had the most amazing benefits in the world, to work for less than half of what I was making and also having to pay for many medical costs out of pocket.

I'm very nostalgic for those days when I could actually afford that medical care. Having to pay my own marketplace insurance and watching it rise annually by almost $100 per month and the deductibles also rising, I wonder how most Americans can even do it. I'm just an individual. People with families have to pay exorbitant amounts to keep their families covered." Let's go to a cultural memory. Kate in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC.

Kate: Hey, how's it going? Felt like a strike of lightning was when Prince died. For me, that was a huge-- it just felt like a crazy jolt of lightning in that year. It shook me, and that was it for 2016.

Amina Srna: Wow. Thank you so much for giving us a call and reminding us of that event. Let's go to Jeff in Astoria. Jeff, you're on WNYC.

Jeff: Hi, good morning.

Amina Srna: Good morning.

Jeff: In 2016, after some tumultuous years, both in my professional and as well as personal life, I had an opportunity, professional opportunity to move to New York City, and in February of that year, I did. Here we are roughly 10 years later and not a moment of regret. It ended up being the right opportunity at the right time and just a fantastic move for me. While there are many other moments from that year, such as Trump and the other things that your other colors will say, on a personal level, that's really what I remember, is 2016 being a very good year for me.

Amina Srna: Thank you so much for sharing that memory. Here's another text along the same lines. "I'm so nostalgic for 2016. That's the year I started my business, which I'm now in the process of shutting down due to burnout and loss of business. I'm survivor mode now." Another text that gets more to the politics, "There's no way not to think of 2016 as the last year before the onset of Trump and MAGA.

Terrible memories of constantly checking Nate Silver's website to make sure Hillary Clinton was leading in the polls, and then the crushing reality the day after the election." I'll just note Nate Silver's website, FiveThirtyEight, was tracking those polls all year, and they ended up being kind of wrong. Do we have another caller on the board? Let's go to Cheryl in Tewksbury, New Jersey. Hi, Cheryl.

Cheryl: Hi there, and I got to say, I was checking Nate Silver too, and I was pretty demoralized when Trump won, and I said, "Well, how bad can it be?" I couldn't have said anything worse. In 2017, I lost my mom. COVID came. I think Trump handled it terribly. I lost, in 2020, my father and then my husband. 2016 was the last happy year before the whole world came crashing down. I picked myself up, but when 2024 came around, I said, "I know it's going to be bad." I'm still bracing myself. We got three more years to go. We'll survive-

Amina Srna: Cheryl, thank you-

Cheryl: -but definitely it makes you stronger.

Amina Srna: -thank you so much for your call and I'm sorry for your loss. Also this text, "2016 was the last time my mother and I saw eye to eye politically. We campaigned for Bernie. Then she went down a rabbit hole and became MAGA." Another listener writes-- actually, let's go to a call. Marilyn in Fort Washington. You're on WNYC. Hi, Marilyn.

Marilyn: Hello. I was just going to say I missed the early part of 2016 before everything changed and things happened like people-- I noticed that fights broke out twice. I was in a situation where fights broke out on the Long Island Railroad, and then the time that was most troubling to me was on Christmas Day, I was at the supermarket, and there was a man behind me, and a woman behind him was obviously from another Spanish-speaking country, and he starts yelling at her and saying, "What are you doing? You don't belong here," and she thought he meant she had too many groceries in her cart. She counted and she had more than 12. She took out a pepper, but that is not what he meant. Then he kept on saying, "You don't belong here. You people, you think you can just come to this country, you do whatever you want, you steal things," and went on and on.

Amina Srna: I hear you, Marilyn.

Marilyn: I turned to him, yes, and I [crosstalk]--

Amina Srna: Just running time out of time in this segment, but your takeaway on the 2016?

Marilyn: It was on Christmas day, and I said to him-

Amina Srna: Right after the election day, yes.

Marilyn: -"On Christmas day," yes, "you would attack someone, who you don't even know, who may have three jobs." Then the woman in front of me said to him, "I voted for Trump, too." Didn't even say Trump. She said, "I voted for him, too, but I would never talk to another person that way, especially on Christmas Day." I just wanted to say that.

Amina Srna: Marilyn, thank you for sharing that memory, and thank you all so much for your calls and your memories from 2016. We're hoping you'll be able to stay warm in this frigid weather and take care of each other and remember the good times, hopefully. This is the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Amina Srna. Stay tuned for All Of It.

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