Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet, and that's how it works now.

I'm Eli Bosnick and I'll be polling you down the river of knowledge this week, but I'll need some lovable rascals to trick into painting this podcast fence.

Noah, Tom, and he.

Okay, podcasting was already washed like that on that.

Oh, Cecil's going to be so pissed that we did fencing

while he wasn't here.

Before we begin tonight, I'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons. Patrons, without you, it would have mattered how much attention we paid to this book in high school. But thanks to you, we just get to make fun of its author. If you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around till the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us, Tom, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event what we'll be talking about today? We'll be talking about Mark Twain. And Noah, you ready to tell us about Mark Twain in person? No, but I'll tell you about him on our podcast. Okay. So why did you pick Mark Twain? Elon knows about a one-man show about Mark Twain.

So one-man show is a very famous one-man show. I did a monologue from a high school. Oh, famous. It's one of those like, oh, hello. And he's got a pipe. It is actually the consummate, oh, hello, one-man show. Because I read a biography of him that would have choked a fucking megalodon.

It totally ruined Mark Twain for me. because I read a biography of him that would have choked a fucking megaladon.

It totally ruined Mark Twain for me, and I need to claw something back from the 40 hours

of my life I spent on it, damn it.

See, before I read this book, I'm like, oh, Mark Twain, the vitriolic humorous known for

his tirades against religion, the atheist who went by a

transparently fake pseudonym and was famous for his oratory but still hated going on stage,

the cat adoring board game loving history buff who would kind of rather you look past his early

shit and focus on his more progressive shit that he did later in his career, that Mark Twain,

don't mind if I do, right?

But then the book was like, oh, Mark Twain, that acerbic, perpetually paranoid, gullible jackass that

fought for the Confederacy, the woo peddling racist, misogynist who had a disturbing fascination

with teenage girls, the tyrannical asshole who blamed everybody else for his failings got his career started

by endorsing colonialism and threw temper tantrums into his 60s.

Okay, I like the last part.

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