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The finale of "A Tale of Today," the eleventh season of The American Vandal Podcast. Matt Seybold offers his journey of curiosity from the end of "Criticism LTD" to "The Technofeudal Text."
If you’re looking for Print is a rent strike. t-shirts, please visit All Grim Prints.
All music for this season of The American Vandal Podcast comes from the Tennessee-based roots ensemble DownRiver Collective. Most of the tracks come from their most recent EP, Off The Shelf. You can purchase it direct from the band here. It's also available on Spotify and Apple Music.
Excerpts from Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner's The Gilded Age come from the audiobook edition produced by SNR Audio and narrated by Nathan Osgood. Available at Audible, as well as other audiobook retailers. SNR has an extensive catalog of professionally-narrated adaptations of 19th-century Anglophone fiction, including The Complete Mark Twain Collection.
Nathan Osgood is an actor and voice artist who has being appearing in films, scripted television, video games, podcasts, and audiobooks since the mid-'90s. In 2018, he played Mark Twain in the Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly vehicle, Holmes and Watson.
Episode Bibliography:
Sam Altman & Cleo Abram, “Altman Show Me GPT-5…And What’s Next” Huge Coversations (August 7, 2025)
Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Duke UP, 2011)
Wendy Brown, Undoing The Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Zone Books, 2017)
Jordan S. Carroll, Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction & The Alt-Right (U. Minnesota, 2024)
Tressie McMillan Cottom, “The Tech Fantasy That Powers A.I. Is Running on Fumes” New York Times (March 29, 2025)
Tressie McMillan Cottom, “The Way Harris Lost Will Be Her Legacy” New York Times (November 6, 2024)
Jodi Dean, Capital's Grave: Neofeudalism & The New Class Struggle (Verso, 2025)
Jacques Derrida, “The Madness of Economic Reason” in Given Time (U Chicago P, 1992)
Gil Duran, "Where J.D. Vance Gets His Weird, Terrifying Techno-Authoritarians Idea" The New Republic (July 22, 2024)
Gil Duran, "The People of Solano County Versus The Next Tech-Billionaire Dystopia" The New Republic (January 4, 2024)
Gil Duran, "The Tech Plutocrats Dreaming of A Right-Wing San Francisco" The New Republic (February 12, 2024)
Cedric Durand, How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-Feudalism (Verso, 2020) [French Edition, 2020]
Jelani Favors, Shelter In A Time Of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership & Activism (UNC Press, 2020)
Jelani Favors, "The Second Curriculum" The Point (August 15, 2021)
Bryant Morey French, Mark Twain & The Gilded Age: The Book That Named An Era (Southern Methodist UP, 1965)
Timnit Gebru & Émile P. Torres, “The TESCREAL Bundle: Eugenics & The Promise of Utopia Through Artificial Intelligence” First Monday (April 2024)
Alex Goryachev, “AI is Changing Reading, Writing, & Learning” Fast Company (April 11, 2025)
David Harvey, Marx, Capital, & The Madness of Economic Reason (Oxford UP, 2017)
Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative As A Socially Symbolic Act (Cornell UP, 1981)
Fredric Jameson, “Models of Ideological Analysis” 1977 Institute On Culture & Society
Jeff Jarvis, The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print & Its Lessons For The Age of The Internet (Bloomsbury, 2023)
John Maynard Keynes, "The General Theory of Employment" Quarterly Journal of Economics (February, 1937)
Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism (Verso, 2024)
James Livingston, "What Was Capitalism?" Project Syndicate (February 16, 2024)
Deirdre McCloskey, “Measured, Unmeasured, Mismeasured, & Unjustified Pessimism: A Review Essay of Thomas Piketty’s Capital In The 21st Century” Erasmus Journal for Philosophy & Economics (Autumn 2014)
Deirdre McCloskey, The Vices of Economists, The Virtuies of the Bourgeosie (Amsterdam UP, 1996)
Elon Musk & Tucker Carlson, “Potential Dangers of Hyper-Intelligent AI” Fox News (April 17, 2023)
Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard UP, 2014)
Victor Riparbelli, “Will AI Make Us The Last Generation To Read & Write?” TED Talks (October 19, 2024)
Matt Seybold, “Against Technofeudal Education” The American Vandal (June 10, 2025)
Matt Seybold, “The Klepto-Keynesian Showdown” The American Vandal (November 15, 2024)
Matt Seybold, "Authoritarianism Is The Bailout" The American Vandal (February 21, 2025)
Matt Seybold, “Neoliberal Rationality in The Old Gilded Age: Introductory Address at 2018 Quarry Farm Symposium” MarkTwainStudies.com (October 5, 2018)
Matt Seybold et al, "Cruel Optimism & The Enclosure of the Commons" The American Vandal (September 12, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, “Solidarity & Speculation” The American Vandal (May 14, 2025)
Matt Seybold et al, "The First Curriculum is Work Without Wages" The American Vandal (December 31, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, "Half Castle 'Gainst The Scott Walkers" The American Vandal Podcast (December 17, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, "The Education Gospel, Enshittify.edu, & The Expansion of Lower Ed" The American Vandal Podcast (November 25, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, "Philanthrocapitalism U" The American Vandal Podcast (November 12, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, "The Black University Concept & The Second Curriculum" The American Vandal Podcast (October 31, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, “Always Historicize?” The American Vandal Podcast (October 1, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, “The Jameson Tapes, Side A” The American Vandal Podcast (August 4, 2025)
Matt Seybold et al, "Newspapers Worse Than Dead (Bur Print Is A Rent Strike)" The American Vandal (April 4, 2025)
Matt Seybold et al, "The Age of Insecurity" The American Vandal (Septermber 9, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, “Ed Tech, AI, & The Unbundling of Research & Teaching” The American Vandal Podcast (November 2, 2023)
Matt Seybold et al, "The Facebook Files & The Gutenberg Parenthesis" The American Vandal (March 31, 2025)
Jacob Silverman, "Silicon Valley's Selfish Embrace of Trump" The New Republic (September 13, 2024)
Astra Taylor, The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart (AK Press, 2023)
Astra Taylor, “The Age of Insecurity: 2023 CBC Massey Lectures” (CBC, 2023)
Astra Taylor & Naomi Klein, “The Rise of End Times Fascism” The Guardian (April 13, 2025)
Peter Thiel & Ross Douthat, “Peter Thiel & The Antichrist” New York Times (June 26, 2025)
Andie Tucher, Froth & Scum: Truth, Beauty, Goodness, & the Ax Murder in America’s First Mass Medium (UNC Press, 1994)
Mark Twain & Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) [2006 Modern Library Edition]
Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (Melville House, 2024)
Yanis Varoufakis, "Trump & The Triumph of The Technolords" Project Syndicate (April 30, 2025)
McKenzie Wark, Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse? (Verso, 2019)
Raymond Williams, Marxism & Literature (Oxford UP, 1977)
Nathan Wolff, Not Quite Hope & Other Political Emotions In The Gilded Age (Oxford UP, 2019)
Nathan Woolf, "First As Farce: Structures of Feeling in The Gilded Age" Quarry Farm Symposium Keynote (2024)
