The American Vandal

Our ideology critique of contemporary tech fascist SciFi begins with the first selections from Fredric Jameson's 1977 seminar at the Institute On Culture & Society, followed by a journalists narration of the tech fascist turn in Silicon Valley [10:00], ideological analysis of Alt-Right speculative fiction [37:00], and technofeudal yearning to convert probability to prophecy [70:00]. Cast (in order of appearance): Fredric Jameson, Matt Seybold, Jacob Silverman, Jordan S. Carroll Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Mutants, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

Our inaugural installment of "live" podcasting was recorded with a small audience in the library at Quarry Farm. It features Caroline Levine and Jed Esty discussing their recent books, "The Activist Humanist" and "The Future of Decline," as well as responding to the themes of "A Tale of Today" and "Criticism LTD," and discussing the roles of humanities educators in addressing climate crisis, declinism, superpower nostalgia, and shock doctrine. Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Caroline Levine, Jed Esty Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Affordances, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist and politician, joins Leigh Claire La Berge, an author and CUNY professor, to explore crucial themes of technofeudalism and speculation. They discuss how political economy intersects with aesthetics and the importance of solidarity in addressing societal insecurities. The conversation dives into the Panic of 1873 as a historical model, critiques Silicon Valley's speculative nature, and reflects on the role of vulnerability in collective action. Expect sharp insights on the complexities of capitalism!

Yanis Varoufakis, a heterodox economist and author, dives into the rise of technofeudalism, exploring its controlling nature in today's digital society. James Livingston, a Marxist economic historian, expresses skepticism about this concept, linking it back to capitalism and questioning its genuine implications. Astra Taylor draws parallels between current economic inequalities and the Gilded Age, emphasizing how historical patterns of insecurity continue to manifest. Together, they unravel the intricate web of power dynamics shaping our digital economy.

Episode opens with journalism's "race to the bottom," described by a journalist who lived it, followed by what "The Facebook Files" revealed about social media's relationship to news [8:00], the tactics of parallel journalism [27:00}, the difference between fake news and fake journalism [38:00], the fate worse than death for periodicals, but not books [48:00], what the acquisition of Twitter taught us about technofeudalism [65:00], and a call to return to institutional media [82:00]. Cast (in order of appearance): Samuel Freedman, Matt Seybold, Jeff Horwitz, Gil Duran, Andie Tucher, Jeff Jarvis, Yanis Varoufakis, Tressie McMillan Cottom Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Newspapers, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

A two-part meditation on the history of journalism and the fate of investigative journalism under tech fascism begins with the model of Ida Tarbell, the epochal Wall Street Journal reporting on Facebook in 2021 [6:00], the professionalization of journalism during the Gilded Age and interbellum periods [38:00], the relationship between Silicon Valley and news organizations in the 21st century [54:00], the legacy of newspapers [63:00], and a periodization of print media [71:00]. Cast (in order of appearance): Gil Duran, Matt Seybold, Jeff Horwitz, Andie Tucher, Jacob Silverman, Jeff Jarvis Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Gutenberg, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

Our 150th anniversary celebration of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner's "The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today" turns to political economies of mass media, then and now, beginning with a close reading of the novel's title. We are then introduced to the tech fascist fantasy of the Network State [21:00], theories of post-capitalism [47:00], ways of reading from the right [58:00], and a more optimistic technofuturism [77:00} Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Jeffrey Insko, Anna Kornbluh, Gil Duran, Eleanor Courtemanche, Jordan Carroll, Douglas Dowland, Jeff Jarvis Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/GildedNetwork, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

The second act of "A Tale of Today," focused on HBCUs and the political economy of education in Gilded Ages old and new, concludes with a journey of curiosity through the unschooling movement, a historicist close reading of Ruth Bolton's time at Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania [24:40], analysis of the transition from secondary schools to higher education [35:00], a summary of this part of the series [82:00], and hope from the forgotten migration [87:30]. Cast (in order of appearance): Astra Taylor, Matt Seybold, Laura Heffernan, Rachel Sagnar Buurma, Alexander Manshel, Annie Abrams, Crystal Sanders Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/JourneyOfCuriosity, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

Following Jelani Favors's description of how the second curriculum of HBCUs has been compromised since the 1980s, we look back at the origins of Howard University in the Freedman's Bureau [10:00], discuss the labor history of literature instruction [28:00], and mark the college football playoffs by discussing the dehumanization of athletic workers with the authors of "The End of College Football" [44:30]. Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Jelani Favors, Laura Heffernan, Rachel Sagnar Buurma, Nathan Kalman-Lamb, Derek Silva Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/StudentWorkers, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

Archives, physical and digital, are suffering from austerity, enshittification, and censorship. In this episode scholars discuss the ambivalent impacts of digitization, what information matters in the data economy [8:30], an analogy involving European colonialism [23:00], the competition to document between corporations and universities [46:00], the duty to tell the truth freely [73:30], preserving the counternarratives to empire [81:00], and managing an archive through Orbanization [95:30]. Cast (in order of appearance): Laura Heffernan, Rachel Sagnar Buurma, Matt Seybold, Kelly Grotke, Asheesh Kapur Siddique, Leigh Claire La Berge, Crystal Sanders, Jared Loggins, Andrew Douglas, Timothy Barber Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/ArchiveOfEmpire, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com