Samuel Clemens is an older teenager now! But the concept of teenager-hood doesn't exist yet, nor is college a reasonable expectation for someone with his interests and social class. So instead it's time for a ROAD TRIP (!!!!!!!!!) to New York and Philadelphia and Cincinnati, where young Sam first encounters the wonders of industrialization in the Yankee states and writes some pretty heinous stuff in letters home to his family. After that we talk about his sex life (or lack thereof) for a few ...
20 Oct 2026
Episode 5: A Reading Twainbow
Print media. What was it? How was it made? What could it be used for, besides wrapping presents? Were the people who engaged with it in any manner big old nerds who were regularly given wet willies by the jocks of the day? We answer these and more questions as we follow a young Samuel Langhorne Clemens through his time as a printer's apprentice. It was grueling work – mind-numbingly and finger-losingly repetitive – but some of those who mastered it, like Sam, would have an outsized role in sh...
6 Oct 2026
Episode 4: Back to School Starring Rodney Twaingerfield
This week, we're going to school! But not real school, because this podcast is not an accredited educational institution (yet). Young Samuel Clemens wouldn't care though, because he thought school was for losers. Instead, we travel the mean streets of Hannibal, Missouruh and find out what the future Mark Twain learned from his parents and neighbors about class, race, morality, rebellion, and independence. I really wanted to call this episode Twained By The Bell but "saved" and "Twain" don't s...
22 Sept 2026
Episode 3: What Ever Happened To Baby Twain?
Good news! After getting rid of Mark Twain in Episode 1, we've brought him back to life via the power of podcast magic. But bad news too: he's just a little baby, incapable of doing much besides sucking his thumb and crying. So instead, we zoom out and look at the political and economic world of the early-to-mid 1800s. Then we focus on two particular incidents that affected lil' Twain: his family's flight from Florida, Missouri in the aftermath of the Panic of 1837, and his parents' systemic ...
1 Sept 2026
Episode 2: When It Twains, It Pours
We spend this episode following Mark Twain’s dad around. Unfortunately, Marshall Clemens kinda sucks, both in the sense that he’s a lousy hang and pretty bad at everything. But his failures provide a useful counterpoint to his son’s successes, and reveal a lot about early 19th century American life. At the very least, he marries the far more interesting Jane Lampton and they make Mark Twain together, which is probably more than you can say for yourself. If you're able, please support the pod ...
18 Aug 2026
Episode 1: The Twain Has Left The Station
Mark Twain dies almost right away, which is kind of unfortunate because we need him for the rest of the podcast. Luckily, we're able to time travel like the guy from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, but overshoot a little and end up in the American Revolution, where we catch up with Mark Twain's grandpa and dad. Sources: Autobiography of Mark Twain Parts 1-2, published 1924 (compiled by Alfred Bigelow Paine) Mark Twain in Eruption, published 1940 (compiled by Bernard DeVoto) Mar...
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