Vandal Live: Affordances of Enclosure & The Ends of Empires
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
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1:00:34
Solidarity & Speculation
The finale of our trilogy centered on Technofeudalism begins with the intersection of political economy with aesthetics and literary forms, followed by a synthesis of financial and fictive definitions of speculation [18:00], what can be done with the technofeudal thesis [27:30], the role of solidarity in the age of insecurity [33:00], the Panic of 1873 as a model [41:30], panics to come [53:00], and some final words from Yanis Varoufakis [72:00]
Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Yanis Varoufakis, Jordan S. Carroll, James Livingston, Astra Taylor, Leigh Claire La Berge
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio
For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Speculators, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com
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1:17:31
From Technostructure To Technofeudalism
An exploration of the political economy of technofeudalism begins by defining the technostructure and introducing its personification, followed by testimony from a skeptic [26:00], competing periodizations of the present [48:00], and media praxis under the rein of the cloudalists [73:00].
Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Yanis Varoufakis, James Livingston, Astra Taylor
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Technofeudalism, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com
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1:34:35
Newspapers Worse Than Dead (But Print Is A Rent Strike)
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
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1:28:42
The Facebook Files & The Gutenberg Parenthesis
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
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