Episode 1: The Age of Insecurity (September 9, 2024)
A new season of The American Vandal Podcast inspired by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s 150-year-old novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, launches with an introduction to Colonel Sellers; a discussion of Astra Taylor’s The Age of Insecurity (2023) [10:00]; questions about the discipline of history in the contemporary moment [28:00]; and Walter Johnson reflecting on resistance and his 20-year-old essay “On Agency” (2003) [41:00].
Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Astra Taylor, Asheesh Kapur Siddique, Walter Johnson
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio
Episode 2: Cruel Optimism & The Enclosure of the Commons (September 12, 2024)
A new episode of “A Tale of Today” begins with an explanation of the forest charter and the enclosure of the commons through a revisionist version of a familiar story. The enclosure of the commons is then traced into The Gilded Age [8:00], before two scholars of the novel discuss its affective registers, as well as Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s fraught attempts to periodize and historicize its contemporary political moment [21:00].
Cast (in order of appearance): Astra Taylor, Matt Seybold, Nathan Wolff
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio
Episode 3: Strategic Presentism & Revisionist History (September 22, 2024)
What’s the difference? The episode opens with defenses of presentism by two literary critics and a reception history of “The Gilded Age” [6:30] before turning to a critique of resistance history from within the discipline [12:30], a response from a prominent historian [44:30], a consideration of the standpoint of resistance history [67:30], and why aren’t there more literary critics on MSNBC? [75:30]
Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Jeffrey Insko, Anna Kornbluh, Asheesh Kapur Siddique, Walter Johnson, Astra Taylor
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Episode 4: Always Historicize? (October 1, 2024)
From Fredric Jameson on why “the most important goal is history itself” follows a series of conversations about dialectical criticism vs. new historicism [5:00], the wisdom of “always historicizing” [17:30], the anxiety of influence between new historicism and literary fiction [34:00] as well as between literary fiction and history [53:00], hinge points and shadow presentisms [59:00], and the layers of discourse about history in 2024 [88:30].
Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Eleanor Courtemanche, Jeffrey Insko, Anna Kornbluh, Robert Tally, Alexander Manshel, Walter Johnson
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio
Episode 5: The Historical Novel (October 15, 2024)
From Fredric Jameson on why “the most important goal is history itself” follows a series of conversations about dialectical criticism vs. new historicism [5:00], the wisdom of “always historicizing” [17:30], the anxiety of influence between new historicism and literary fiction [34:00] as well as between literary fiction and history [53:00], hinge points and shadow presentisms [59:00], and the layers of discourse about history in 2024 [88:30].
Cast (in order of appearance): Brandon Taylor, Matt Seybold, Eleanor Courtemanche, Nathan Wolff, Anna Kornbluh, Jeffrey Insko, Alexander Manshel
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio
Bonus Episode: “First As Farce: Structures of Feeling in The Gilded Age” by Nathan Wolff (2024 Quarry Farm Symposium Keynote)
As Nathan Wolff himself puts it, his recent keynote address at the 2024 Quarry Farm Fall Symposium is “very much in dialogue with The American Vandal.” In this talk, Wolff not only summarizes Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s The Gilded Age (1873), but further interpolates it with concepts like Lauren Berlant’s cruel optimism, György Lukács’s historical novel, and Raymond Williams’s structures of feeling, all of which have been cited frequently in our “A Tale of Today” series. While this episode from the usual format of The American Vandal Podcast, listeners to this season will undoubtedly see the synergy between this season and Wolff’s keynote.
Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Nathan Wolff
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio
Act II: HBCUs & The Philanthrocapitalist Swindle
Episode 6: The Black University Concept & The Second Curriculum (October 31, 2024)
A brief history of HBCUs through conversations with five scholars about the second curriculum which informs movement for Civil Rights in the midcentury US, segregation scholars and the long withholding of post-baccalaureate education from HBCUs [40:00], the aspirational Black University Concept in W.E.B. DuBois and Vincent Harding [75:00], and the challenges facing HBCU students today [84:00].
Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Jelani Favors, Crystal Sanders, Andrew Douglas, Jared Loggins, Dominique Baker
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio
Episode 7: Philanthrocapitalism U (November 12, 2024)
A Morehouse college commencement speaker makes an extraordinary financial commitment, but there’s a “profound story” to tell about the durable funding of HBCUs in the US since the Gilded Age [12:00]. How does philanthrocapitalism work? [42:00] What is the Double Tax? [48:00] How might EdTech extract “intellectual capital” from HBCUs? [54:00] Can the second curriculum be sustained inside a philanthrocapitalist university? [64:00] Are HBCUs the vanguard of a new era of disruption to education? [74:00]
Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Andrew Douglas, Jared Loggins, Kelly Grotke, Crystal Sanders, Jelani Favors, Dominique Baker
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio
Episode 8: The Education Gospel, Enshittify.edu, & The Expansion of Lower Ed (November 25, 2024)
An episode built around an interview with Tressie McMillan Cottom, author of Lower Ed (New Press, 2017) covers what lessons the rest of Higher Ed can learn from HBCUs [3:00], the vectors of financialization in the New Gilded Age [19:00], the migration of the for-profit model into not-for-profit institutions [60:00], and how Modern Monetary Theory might invigorate the Black University Concept [84:00].
Cast (in order of appearance): Jared Loggins, Matt Seybold, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Kelly Grotke, Andrew Douglas
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio
Episode 9: Half Castle ‘Gainst The Scott Walkers (December 18, 2024)
“A Tale Of Today” returns with an episode inspired by “The Teaching Archive.” Its authors discuss the pedagogical innovations of HBCUs and strategies for teaching literary history, followed by the legacy of New Historicism in the classroom [14:00], the model of the Monks of Lindisfarne [24:00], the historical rivalry between professors and journalists [36:30], the archives of HBCU student newspapers [43:00], and a reporter who spent decades on the education beat [64:00].
Cast (in order of appearance): Laura Heffernan, Rachel Sagnar Buurma, Matt Seybold, Jeffrey Insko, Anna Kornbluh, Eleanor Courtemanche, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Jelani Favors, Samuel Freedman
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio
Episode 10: Fake Work, Fucking Models, & The Archive of Empire (December 23, 2024)
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
Episode 11: The First Curriculum Is Work Without Wages (December 31, 2024)
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
Episode 12: A Journey of Curiosity (January 30, 2025)
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
Act III: What is Technofeudalism?
Episode 13: The Gilded Network (March 20, 2025)
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 S. Carroll, Douglas Dowland, Jeff Jarvis
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio
Episode 14: The Facebook Files & The Gutenberg Parenthesis (April 1, 2025)
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): Gild Duran, Matt Seybold, Jeff Horwitz, Andie Tucher, Jacob Silverman, Jeff Jarvis
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio
Episode 15: Newspapers Worse Than Dead (But Print Is A Rent Strike) (April 4, 2025)
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
Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio
Episode 16: From Technostructure To Technofeudalism (May 5, 2025)
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
Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio
Episode 17: Solidarity & Speculation (May 14, 2025)
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
Episode 18: Vandal Live: Affordances of Enclosure & The Ends of Empire (May 16, 2025)
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 (Princeton UP, 2023) and The Future of Decline (Stanford UP, 2022), 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.
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Act IV: The Jameson Tapes
Episode 19: The Mutational Romances of Silicon Valley Speculation (June 9, 2025)
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
Episode 20: Literary Sociology a.k.a. The Institutional Turn a.k.a. The Spreadsheet School of Literary Criticism (July 1, 2025)
A so-called Spreadsheet Man responds. Does the institutional turn have a distinctly feminine ethos? [27:30] How is it rooted in the Post45 Collective? [49:00] What are its debts to New Historicism and Marxist Literary Criticism? [69:00] And to Fredric Jameson? [84:30] And what has become of Economic Criticism? [94:00]
Cast (in order of appearance): Dan Sinykin, Matt Seybold, Brandon Taylor, Rachel Sagner Buurma, Laura Heffernan, J. D. Connor, Alexander Manshel, Fredric Jameson, Leigh Claire La Berge
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio
Episode 21: Spitesgiving in Flyover Country (July 18, 2025)
Analysis of the Gilded Age tropology of alienation precedes discussions of Hubert Humphrey & Tim Walz [9:00], the reception of “Hillbilly Elegy” and its aftermath [38:00], and “The Mismeasurement of Orcs” [78:00].
Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Andie Tucher, Samuel Freedman, Douglas Dowland, Dan Sinykin, J.D. Connor, Robert Tally
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Episode 22: The Jameson Tapes, Side A (August 4, 2025)
The first of two installments contextualizing Fredric Jameson’s lectures at the 1977 Institute On Culture & Society begins with a discussion of “Marxism & Historicism,” followed by conversations about historicizing the lectures [8:00], the process of recovering them [33:30], a key passage about commodity as its own ideology [55:00], and the long arc of Jameson’s thought and influence [71:30].
If you prefer to listen to Jameson’s lectures first, they are: “Models of Ideological Analysis” and “Ideology: Marx & Lukacs”
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Bonus Episode: “Models of Ideological Analysis” by Fredric Jameson (1977 Institute On Culture & Society)
Remastered audio of Fredric Jamesons opening lecture at the 1977 Institute On Culture & Society sponsored by the Marxist Literary Group and hosted by St. Cloud State University.
For further context, see “The Jameson Tapes, Side A.”
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Episode 23: The Jameson Tapes, Side B (August 7, 2025)
The second episode contextualizing Fredric Jameson’s lectures at the 1977 Institute On Culture & Society begins with a discussion of Jameson’s controversial efforts to resuscitate György Lukács. From this begins a conversation about moment of high theory into which the Institute was inaugurated and the connection of that moment to the more recent method wars [24:00], the specter of Foucault in Jameson’s work [54:00], and how Jameson’s models of ideological analysis intersect with his narrative theory and its centrality to Marxist practice [64:00].
Cast (in order of appearance): Caleb Smith, Anna Kornbluh, Matt Seybold, Fredric Jameson, Isabel Bartholomew, Robert Tally
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Bonus Episode: “Ideology: Marx & Lukacs” by Fredric Jameson (1977 Institute On Culture & Society)
Remastered audio of Fredric Jameson’s second lecture at the 1977 Institute On Culture & Society sponsored by the Marxist Literary Group and hosted by St. Cloud State University.
For further context, consider listening to “The Jameson Tapes” Side A and Side B, as well as the first lecture in the series, “Models of Ideological Analysis.”
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Episode 24: Cruel Futurism (August 18, 2025)
The finale of “A Tale of Today,” the eleventh season of “The American Vandal.” Matt Seybold offers his journey of curiosity from the end of “Criticism LTD” to “The Technofeudal Text.”
Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Nathan Wolff
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio
Epilogue: Inside Slow Civil War with Jeff Sharlet (September 18, 2025)
A chance to reflect, with journalism professor Jeff Sharlet, on his book, The Undertow: Scenes From A Slow Civil War (2023), the looming threat of acceleration, the methods and media of lingering, documentary modernism, and monsters within.
Matt Seybold 