Stay ConnectedEach season of American Vandal is comprised of thematically-linked conversations about literature, history, higher education, media, technology, and political economy.
Sponsored by the premier source for programming and funding scholarship on Mark Twain’s life and legacy.
Copyright: © 2024 The American Vandal Matt Seybold, Center For Mark Twain Studies
From the 10th International Conference on the State of Mark Twain Studies, hosted by the Center For Mark Twain Studies, comes a conversation about how scholars nineteenth-century culture and media technology analyze the contemporary AI boom and broader changes to the media ecosystem of the 21st century.
Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Lauren Goodlad, Jeff Jarvis, Gregg Camfield, Jess Goldberg
Date Recorded: July 30, 2026
Music: Danny Weiss Quartet, Moby
Our second episode from the "Public Bugets, Public Good" workshop, hosted by Wayne State University and co-sponsored by Labor@Wayne, AAUP, HELU, and Public Good U features Christopher Newfields "AI & The Public Good," followed by a lengthy Q&A [21:00], then the Bluestone Labor Workshop helps us make the most of FOIA requests [45:00].
Cast (in order of appearance): Elizabeth Faue, Jamie McQuaid, Christopher Newfield, Bruce Simon, Brian Deyo, Matt Seybold, Sean O'Brien, Sofya Aptekar, Yasmeen Hishmeh, Justin Flores, Stephen Hastings-King
Date Recorded: April 30, 2026
Music: Danny Weiss Quartet, Moby
The first of two episodes recorded at the "Public Budgets, Public Good" workshop hosted by Labor@Wayne, and co-sponsored by AAUP, HELU, and Public Good U. This episode features presentations on the Lend & Rule approach to campus debt, the bourgeois coldness of budget models, the Locus of Authority playbook for university presidents, and a pro-friction approach to EdTech.
Cast (in order of appearance): Sofya Aptekar, Matt Seybold, Brian Deyo, Kelly Grotke, Stephen Hastings-King, Justin Flores, Sean O'Brien, Bruce Simon
Date Recorded: April 30, 2026
Music: Danny Weiss Quartet, Moby
On a hot Summer night in Brooklyn, Matt Seybold is joined by McKenzie Wark to launch the "Intellectuals" issue of e-flux Journal. They discuss the legacy of the public intellectual (and other mythic species), the belated reception of the vectoralist hypothesis, education and other other spaces, the practice and pleasures of being vulgar. Followed by an energetic Q&A.
Cast (in order of appearance): Brian Kuan Wood, Matt Seybold, McKenzie Wark
Date Recorded: June 11, 2026
Music: Danny Weiss Quartet
The final episode recorded at the Modes of Reading Today Symposium, hosted by the Townsend Center For The Humanities focuses on media, mediation, and machine-generated texts. It opens with Nicholas Baer and Pardis Debashi's "Unattainable Texts," followed by David Bates's "Reading and Writing" [20:00], Nina Beguš's "Novel Audiences in 'Finnegan's Wake'" [37:30], Hannes Bajohr's "Surface Reading LLMs" [57:00], Matt Seybold's "The Technofeudal Reader" [81:00], and a brief Q&A [100:00].
Cast (in order of appearance): Yael Segalovitz, Nicholas Baer, David Bates, Nina Beguš, Hannes Bajohr, Matt Seybold, Jacob Gaboury, Deniz Göktürk, Jonathan Kramnick
Dates Recorded: February 19-20, 2026
Music: Danny Weiss Quartet, Moby
The second episode derived from the Modes of Reading Today Symposium, hosted by the Townsend Center For The Humanities assesses what it means that "close reading is having a moment" through papers titled "What is Close Reading?" [8:00], "Finding The Right Place For Close Reading" [30:00], "The Affected Fallacy" [56:00], "On Generalizing" [77:30], and "Close Reading as Field-Making" [100:00]
Cast (in order of appearance): Yael Segalovitz, Matt Seybold, Jonathan Kramnick, Toril Moi, Joshua Gang, Dora Zhang, Farah Bakaari
Dates Recorded: February 19-20, 2026
Music: Danny Weiss Quartet, Moby
An episode recorded as part of the Modes of Reading Today Symposium, hosted by the Townsend Center For The Humanities begins with a discussion of John Donne's insomnia and Wilfred Bion's undigested nightmares, followed by a vigorous discussion of attention, sleep, and immersion as they relate to literature and criticism [39:00], after which the symposium's organizer (and host of the Psychoanaliterature podcast) flips the studio for some analysis of The American Vandal's creator [90:00].
Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, David Marno, Yael Segalovitz, Jonathan Kramnick, Toril Moi, Emma Lieber, Nicholas Baer, Dora Zhang, Anne-Lise François, Farah Bakaari, Sina Dell'Anno
Dates Recorded: February 19-20, 2026
Music: Danny Weiss Quartet, Moby, L. D. Miller
For more about this episode, please visit TheAmericanVandal.com
A discussion of the historical trajectory informing the current polycrisis reverberating from the Strait of Hormuz with two historians of Iranian Oil, authors of "Nationalising Oil & Knowledge in Iran" (Edinburgh UP, 2025) and "Machineries of Oil" (MIT Press, 2018). Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Katayoun Shafiee, and Mattin Biglari Music: Danny Weiss Quartet, Moby For more about this episode, please visit TheAmericanVandal.substack.com
Two events organized by the Center For Mark Twain Studies focus on the complex legacy of Mark Twain and the omissions and misrepresentations of his wife, Olivia Langdon Clemens, and extended family. Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Ann Ryan, Kerry Driscoll, Barbara Snedecor, Chuck Lindsay Dates Recorded: October 16, 2025 and November 30, 2023 Music: Danny Weiss Quartet, Moby For more about this episode, please visit TheAmericanVandal.substack.com
A live crossover podcasting event with the This Guy Sucked podcast, hosted at the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut. The question is not only whether and how much Mark Twain might have sucked, but also the potential for Twain's complex legacy to be altered by politics, propaganda, education, and scholarship. Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Claire Aubin, Erin Bartram Date Recorded: May 6, 2026 Music: Danny Weiss Quartet For more about this episode, please visit ThisGuySucked.com or TheAmericanVandal.substack.com
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