The American Vandal

Is Nathan Fielder's "The Rehearsal" a critique of Reality TV? Moreover, might it be read as an attack on HBO's new parent company, Warner Bros Discovery? A conversation about the show, the network, the conglomerate, and the streaming wars. For more about this episode, including a bibliography of works mentioned, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/TheRehearsal

Our sixth season - "HBO, From Pulp to Prestige" - kicks off with a discussion of conglomeration, collective intention, and corporate authorship through HBO's original programming and especially "Succession," the Emmy-winning tentpole drama produced by Jesse Armstrong and Adam McKay. For more about this episode, including a bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Succession

In the concluding episode of our series on Kerry Driscoll's field-shaping book, Mika Turim-Nygren seeks reception of the work in Native Studies and from Native communities. For more about this episode, including a bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/ReconsideringTwain

This seminal book in Twain Studies was a decades-long undertaking. Kerry Driscoll explains how she became "an accidental Twain scholar," and discusses with Mika Turim-Nygren the multifold archival discoveries - "good instincts and good luck" - which took Mark Twain Among The Indians from a short paper to a magnum opus. For more about this episode, including a bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/TalkingTwain

A new series hosted by Mika Turim-Nygren premieres with a discussion of Kerry Driscoll's 2019 book, "Mark Twain Among The Indians & Other Indigenous Peoples," featuring three established scholars in Twain Studies, all of whom regard in as one of the most important works in the field in the past quarter century. For more about this episode, including an extensive bibliography of works discussed, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/ReviewingTwain

Produced in observance of and solidarity with the Worldwide Teach-In On Climate & Justice taking place on many campuses today, including Elmira College, we host discussion of a CliFi novel by Kim Stanley Robinson which helps us get "Beyond Climate Despair." For more about this episode, include a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/MinistryForTheFuture

Is is possible to imagine a world without work? Or, at least, a world in which work is not romanticized, is not treated as defining element of social and individual achievement? James Livingston has predicted that we need to prepare for a postwork world, and David Graeber has challenged us to imagine alternatives to organization by bureaucracy, credit, and corporations. This episode features Livingston talking to Matt Seybold and Corey McCall about Graeber's posthumous book (The Dawn of Everything), the Great Resignation, QuitToks, Risk Shifts, and much more. For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/FuckWork

Wes Anderson's acclaimed new movie, The French Dispatch, draws inspiration from the Golden Age of The New Yorker magazine, a period from roughly the early 1940s to the mid 1970s. This episode features two scholars researching that period in the publication's history. They are uniquely situated to consider the selections from the magazine's back catalog which make Anderson's cut, as well as what he chooses to leave out. For more about this episode, including a bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/FrenchDispatch

How do we explain the Great Resignation? Or, for that matter, other mysteries of the contemporary economy, like the high price of culture work and the low wages of culture workers? Two scholars of Post45 literature and culture discuss the work of art and the art of work. For more about this episode, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/GreatResignation

A conversation about the personal essay boom, iterations of the memoir in other literary genres, the constructive use of social media, the style of "too late capitalism," and other means of self-indulgence with two decorated literary critics and theorists. For more about this episode, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/AutoEverything