A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mark Twain

A bar fight and a stint on the lam transformed Samuel Clemens into Mark Twain — and changed the course of American literature. Settle in for Mark Twain's origin story.   * Hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, Jason EnglishWritten by Zaron BurnettProduced by Josh Fisher Editing and Sound Design: Jonathan Washington and Josh FisherMixing and Mastering: Baheed FrazierStory Editor: Marisa BrownResearch and Fact-Checking: Austin Thompson and Zaron BurnettVoice Actors: Frank Nemec, Zack Nemec, Elizabeth Dutton, and Jonathan WashingtonOriginal Music by Elise McCoyShow Logo by Lucy QuintanillaExecutive Producer: Jason English Special thanks to Bob Hirst from the Mark Twain Archive at UC Berkeley, and Joseph Amster from Emperor Norton's Fantastic San Francisco Time Machine. Want to email the show? We'd love to hear from you. You can reach us at veryspecialepisodes@gmail.com. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Zaron Burnett’s dad didn’t want slavery to be his son’s only image of Black people in American history. So every night, he filled Zaron’s dreams with these incredible stories of Black cowboys. Despite what Hollywood taught us, one-in-four cowboys were Black. Their stories tell a bigger, braver, more honest history of America.