Solidarity & Speculation (A Tale of Today, Episode #17)

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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):

Yanis Varoufakis is a heterodox economist, most recently at University of Athens, the former Minister of Finance in Greece, and the author, most recently, of Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (Melville House, 2024). Also discussed in this episode are Another Now (Bodley Head, 2020), The Global Minotaur (Bloomsbury, 2011), Talking To My Daughter About The Economy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018), and the forthcoming Raise Your Soul: A Family History of Resistance (Bodley Head, 2025)

Jordan S. Carroll is the author of Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction & The Alt-Right (U. Minnesota, 2024), as well as Reading The Obscene: Transgressive Editors & The Class Politics of U.S. Literature (Stanford UP, 2021), which won the MLA Prize for Independent Scholars.

James Livingston is Professor Emeritus of History at Rutgers University and the author of, among other things, "What Was Capitalism?" (2024) and the Politics, Letters, Persons newsletter.

Astra Taylor is a writer, filmmaker, and activist, co-founder of the Debt Collective, and author, most recently, of The Age of Insecurity (AK Press, 2023), a collection of her 2023 Massey Lectures.

Leigh Claire La Berge is Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and author of Marx For Cats (Duke UP, 2023) and Wages Against Artwork (Duke UP, 2019). Her forthcoming book is Fake Work: How I Began To Suspect Capitalism Is A Joke (Haymarket, 2025)

Matt Seybold is Associate Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, as well as resident scholar at the Center For Mark Twain Studies and executive producer of The American Vandal Podcast.

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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.

Tracks featured in this episode include "Kettleridge," "Days Don't Stop," "Walls," “Daylight Breaks,” "As It Was," and "Dead To Me."

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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.

Narration in this episode comes from chapters five, eight, forty-nine, and one.

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Episode Bibliography:

Marc Andreesen, "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto" (October 16, 2023)

Jordan S. Carroll, Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction & The Alt-Right (U. Minnesota, 2024)

Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures (1957)

Jodi Dean, Capital's Grave: Neofeudalism & The New Class Struggle (Verso, 2025)

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]

Bryant Morey French, Mark Twain & The Gilded Age: The Book That Named An Era (Southern Methodist UP, 1965)

Sigmund Freud, “Analysis Terminable & Interminable” (1937)

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty, PBS/BBC/CBC (1977)

John Kenneth Galbraith, Economics & the Public Purpose (Houghton Mifflin, 1973)

Fredic Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Duke UP, 1992)

Jeff Jarvis, The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print & Its Lessons For The Age of The Internet (Bloomsbury, 2023)

Walter Johnson, “On Agency” Journal of Social History (Autumn 2023)

John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest, & Money (1935)

John Maynard Keynes, "The General Theory of Employment" Quarterly Journal of Economics (February, 1937)

Lina Khan, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox" The Yale Law Journal (2017)

Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism (Verso, 2024)

Leigh Claire La Berge, Fake Work: How I Began To Suspect Capitalism Is A Joke (Haymarket, 2025)

Leigh Claire La Berge, Scandals & Abstraction: Financial Fiction of The Long 1980s (Oxford UP, 2014)

Leigh Claire La Berge, “Time Stands Still At The Super Bowl: Trump, Rules, & The Banality of American Liberalism” (LA Review of Books Blog, 2.9.2018)

Leigh Claire La Berge, Marx for Cats: A Radical Beastiary (Duke UP, 2023)

Leigh Claire La Berge, Wages Against Artwork: Decommodified Labor & the Claims of Socially Engaged Art (Duke UP, 2019)

Leigh Claire La Berge & Quinn Slobodian, “Reading For Neoliberalism, Reading Like Neoliberals” (American Literary History, Fall 2017)

James Livingston, "What Was Capitalism?" Project Syndicate (February 16, 2024)

James Livingston, No More Work: Why Full Employment Is A Bad Idea (UNC Press, 2016)

James Livingston, The World Turned Inside Out: American Thought and Culture at the End of the 20^th Century (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009)

James Livingston, Against Thrift: Why Consumer Culture is Good for the Economy, the Environment, and Your Soul (Basic Books, 2011)

James Livingston, "Bannon Talks Techno-Feudalism" Politics, Letters, Persons (January 25, 2025)

James Livingston, "Steve Bannon Reads Christopher Lasch" Politics, Letters, Persons (July 4, 2025)

M. John Lubetkin, Jay Cooke's Gamble: The Northern Pacific Railroad, The Sioux, & the Panic of 1873 (U Oklahoma P, 2014)

Andreas Mahm & Wim Carton, Overshoot: How The World Surrendered To Climate Breakdown (Verso, 2024)

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Mary Poovey, A History of Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in The Sciences of Wealth & Society (U. Chicago, 1998)

Jacques Ranciere, The Politics of Literature (2006) [2011 Polity English Translation]

Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry For The Future (Orbit Books, 2020)

Matt Seybold, "Authoritarianism Is The Bailout" The American Vandal (February 21, 2025)

Matt Seybold, “Jason Wingard’s EdTech Griftopia” Los Angeles Review of Books (February 23, 2023)

Matt Seybold et al, "From Technostructure To Technofeudalism" The American Vandal (May 5, 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 Facebook Files & The Gutenberg Parenthesis" The American Vandal (March 31, 2025)

Matt Seybold et al, "The Gilded Network" The American Vandal (March 20, 2025)

Matt Seybold et all, "Fake Work, Fucking Models, & the Archive of Empire" The American Vandal (December 23, 2024)

Matt Seybold et al, "Cruel Optimism & The Enclosure of the Commons" The American Vandal (September 12, 2024)

Matt Seybold et al, "The Age of Insecurity" The American Vandal (Septermber 9, 2024)

Jacob Silverman, "Silicon Valley's Selfish Embrace of Trump" The New Republic (September 13, 2024)

Jacob Silverman, "Rise of the Crypto Keepers" The Nation (May 7, 2025)

Jacob Silverman, "Elon Musk Eyes A Shadow Presidency" The Nation (October 30, 2024)

Quinn Slobodian, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals & The Dream of A World Without Democracy (Metropolitan, 2023)

Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)

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, The People's Platform: Taking Back Power & Culture In The Digital Age (Picador, 2014)

Astra Taylor et al, Occupy!: Scenes From Occupied America (Verso, 2011)

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Yanis Varoufakis, Another Now (Bodley Head, 2020)

Yanis Varoufakis, Raise Your Soul: A Family History of Resistance (Bodley Head, 2025)

Yanis Varoufakis, "Trump & The Triumph of The Technolords" Project Syndicate (April 30, 2025)

Yanis Varoufakis, The Global Minotaur: America, Europe, & The Future of The World Economy (Bloomsbury, 2011)

Yanis Varoufakis, Talking To My Daughter About The Economy: Or, How Capitalism Works - & How It Fails (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018)

Yanis Varoufakis, Adults In The Room (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2018)

Morrison Waite, Munn vs. Illinois Decision (October, 1876)

McKenzie Wark, Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse? (Verso, 2019)

Marc Watkins, "Recapping OpenAI's Education Forum" Rhetorica (October 14, 2024)

Elmus Wicker, Banking Panics of The Gilded Age (Cambridge UP, 2000)

Raymond Williams, Marxism & Literature (Oxford UP, 1977)

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953)

Nathan Woolf, “First As Farce: Structures of Feeling in The Gilded Age“ Quarry Farm Symposium Keynote (2024)