Keen On

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Synopsis

Join Andrew Keen as he travels around the globe investigating the contemporary crisis of democracy. Hear from the world’s most informed citizens about the rise of populism, authoritarian and illiberal democracy. In this first season, listen to Keen’s commentary on and solutions to this crisis of democracy. Stay tuned for season two.

Episodes

  • Episode 2008: Chris French on the Science of Weird S**t

    23/03/2024 Duration: 27min

    As we approach Easter and Passover, it’s worth noting that our mainstream monotheistic creeds are based on a belief in what Professor Chris French, the head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit in the Psychology Department at Goldsmiths college at London University, would call “weird s**t”. So as French, the author of new MIT press book THE SCIENCE OF WEIRD S**T, explained to me, maybe we shouldn’t be that surprised with all the weird s**t about pizza parlors and extraterrestrial invasions that seems to have invaded all but the most scientific minds. Nobody seems to believe anything anymore, French explains. But it’s an anti skeptical science of the networked 21st century rather than the skeptical science of the 18th century Enlightenment. Happy Easter and Passover, everyone!Professor Chris French is the Head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit in the Psychology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and of the Committee for Skeptical

  • Episode 2007: Bethanne Patrick's guide to a literary March madness

    22/03/2024 Duration: 29min

    We would all be way more ignorant without omnivorous book critic and regular KEEN ON guest Bethanne Patrick. This month she recommends six new books by Russell Banks, Adam Philips, Percival Everett, Andrew Dubus III, Marie Mutsuki Mockett & Adelle Waldman. So don’t complain you’ve got nothing to read. No excuses. Bethanne Patrick maintains a storied place in the publishing industry as a critic and as @TheBookMaven on Twitter, where she created the popular #FridayReads and regularly comments on books and literary ideas to over 200,000 followers. Her work appears frequently in the Los Angeles Times as well as in The Washington Post, NPR Books, and Literary Hub. She sits on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and has served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. She is the host of the Missing Pages podcast. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host

  • Episode 2006: Everything you wanted to know about sex but didn't have the imagination to ask

    21/03/2024 Duration: 51min

    Warning: this is an adults-only show. David Baker, the Australian based author of The Shortest History of Sex, takes us through two billion years of sexual evolution. And, from the first microbial exchanges of DNA to Darwin and Freud, Tinder and sexbots, it’s not a pretty story. The good news, however, is that neither Baker nor I took off our clothes or confessed to any unusual fetishes. But we did talk about the sexual significance of Baker’s mustache which, I suspect, represents a kind of climax to two billion years of procreation and recreation. David Baker is a history and science writer who holds the world’s first PhD in Big History (the field that explores patterns in deep time and across the natural and social sciences). He is an award-winning lecturer, has written educational videos seen by millions of people, and is the author of The Shortest History of Our Universe. He lives in Tropical North Queensland, Australia.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst th

  • Episode 2005: Why the Pete Rose story is as much about the rise and fall of America as it is about the fate of Charlie Hustle

    20/03/2024 Duration: 41min

    Even if it isn’t quite Spring, the professional baseball season begins today in, of all places, Korea. And to celebrate this premature rite, I spoke with Keith O’Brien, the author of CHARLIE HUSTLE, the new Pete Rose biography already acclaimed as a “masterpiece”. Rose himself, O’Brien reveals, was anything but a masterpiece - a gambling addict who reflected all the gendered, class and racial realities of late 20th century America. Far more than a baseball story, O’Brien explains, the Pete Rose story is as much about the rise and fall of 20th century America as it is about the fate of Cincinnati’s Charlie Hustle. KEITH O’BRIEN is the New York Times bestselling author of Paradise Falls, Fly Girls, and Outside Shot, a finalist for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting, and an award-winning journalist. O’Brien has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Politico, and his stories have also appeared on National Public Radio and This American Life. He lives in New Hampshire.Named as one of

  • EPISODE 2004: Jacob Heilbrunn on conservative America's 100 year romance with foreign dictators like Kaiser Wilhelm II, Mussolini, Pinochet, Orban and Putin

    19/03/2024 Duration: 41min

    In his new book AMERICA LAST: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators, Jacob Heilbrunn argues that American conservatives have always had the hots for foreign dictators like Kaiser Wilhelm II, Mussolini, Franco and Pinochet. And so, he argues, it’s no great surprise that contemporary rightists like Ron DeSantis, Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson have all fallen so heavily for contemporary European enemies of democracy. It’s a fatal attraction, Heilbrunn describes this illiberal infatuation with autocrats like Orban and Putin. And it reflects the weakness, rather than the strength, of many on the American right. Jacob Heilbrunn is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and editor of the National Interest, a foreign policy magazine that was founded by Irving Kristol in 1985. He began his career as an assistant editor at the magazine, where his first issue was one featuring Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History?” essay. He went on to become a senior editor at the New

  • Episode 2003: Martin Sixsmith on Vladimir Putin and the return of history to Russia and the West

    18/03/2024 Duration: 45min

    Did history ever go away? For the former BBC Russia correspondent, Martin Sixsmith, there was a few euphoric years, in the early 1990’s, when history promised to end. That time, of course, was the post-Soviet Russia of Boris Yeltsin and the promise that “they” could become like “us” and embrace both democracy and a Chicago school market capitalism. In his new book, PUTIN AND THE RETURN OF HISTORY, Sixsmith tells the story of the transition from this euphoria about the end of history into the Ukraine fueled pessimism of today. But Sixsmith doesn’t blame everything on Putin, who he describes as a Russian Zelig, a Machiavellian opportunist who simultaneously was made by and has made history. Yes, he argues, the Kremlin has rekindled the Cold War. But we in the West also have some responsibility for not understanding the historic Russian paranoia about being invaded by western powers. Martin Sixsmith is a bestselling author, television and radio presenter and journalist. He began working at the BBC in 1980 as a f

  • Episode 2002: Elaine Lin Hering gives voice to the "Unsilent Generation"

    17/03/2024 Duration: 28min

    Once-upon-a-time, there was the “Silent Generation” - the self-sacrificing generation of WW2 vets who won the war and built America into a Cold War superpower. But Elaine Lin Hering, the author of UNLEARNING SILENCE, isn’t sold on this stoically self-sacrificing generation. Rather than silence, she believes that speaking our minds, both at work and at home, will unleash our talent and enable us to live more fully. Speak up, she says, and unleash your inner Ariana Huffington or Elon Musk. What could possibly go wrong?Elaine Lin Hering is a facilitator, speaker, and writer. She works with organizations and individuals to build skills in communication, collaboration, and conflict management. Elaine has worked on six continents and with a wide range of corporate, government, and nonprofit clients. She has trained mental health professionals, political officials, religious communities, and leaders at companies including American Express, Capital One, Google, Nike, Novartis, Shell, Pixar, and the Red Cross. Elaine

  • Episode 2001: Adam Hochschild offers his very personal take on the past, present and future of the United States of America

    16/03/2024 Duration: 52min

    To celebrate over two thousand episodes of the show, we are launching KEEN ON AMERICA - a special series of personal conversations with prominent Americans about their now almost 250 year-old Republic. First up is Adam Hochschild, the co-founder of Mother Jones magazine, author of American Midnight and many other important books about the modern world. As Hochschild told me when I sat down with him in his Berkeley home, his life has been fused by activism: at first, the rebellious activism of a son and young citizen in the early Sixties; and now the more cerebral activism of father, grandfather and acclaimed writer. Such activism, I think, make Adam’s story very much of an American story and an ideal first chapter in the KEEN ON AMERICA series. Adam Hochschild is the author of eleven books. American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis is his most recent. His preceding book, the biography Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor St

  • Episode 2000: Keith Teare on why the Congressional attempt to ban TikTok is astonishingly dumb

    15/03/2024 Duration: 37min

    I usually hate agreeing with Keith Teare, my libertarian-conservative friend from Palo Alto/Yorkshire. But on TikTok, we are in violent agreement. As Keith explains, TikTok isn’t a Chinese company and even it was, there’s absolutely no reason to ban it or force a US sale. That such self-serving stupidity is being peddled by the Biden administration is particularly worrying. Where are the grown-ups (except Keith and I) when it comes to talking sense about TikTok? Keith Teare is a Founder and CEO at SignalRank Corporation. Previously he was Executive Chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd - A UK-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. He was also previously the founder at the Palo Alto incubator, Archimedes Labs. Archimedes was the original incubator for TechCrunch and since 2011 has invested, accelerated or incubated many Silicon Valley startups including Around (sold to Miro), Millicast (Sold to Dolby), InFarm, Miles, Quixey; M.dot (sold to GoDaddy); chat.center; Loop Surveys;

  • Episode 1999: Sasha Issenberg offers a playbook for winning elections in our disinformation age

    14/03/2024 Duration: 41min

    The most troubling casualty of today’s social media age is our shared sense of reality. Perceptions of reality still exist, but they often come packaged, mirroring a priori assumptions about the world. So how to win democratic elections in this age of multiple informations? How to promote/peddle truths that will get people to vote for your candidate? That’s the story Sasha Issenberg writes about in his new book, THE LIE DETECTIVES, a kind of Moneyball for our disinformation age. One of America’s smartest political journalists, Issenberg explains, with bracing clarity, how to win elections in a democracy awash with lies and liars. Sasha Issenberg is the author of three previous books, on topics ranging from the global sushi business to medical tourism and the science of political campaigns. He covered the 2008 election as a national political reporter in the Washington bureau of The Boston Globe, the 2012 election for Slate, the 2016 election for Bloomberg Politics and Businessweek, and 2020 for The Recount.

  • Episode 1998: Emily Raboteau on how to mother against "the apocalypse"

    13/03/2024 Duration: 33min

    Last week, the LA Times book critic Bethanne Patrick came on the show to discuss new books about life in our age of the polycrisis. One of these was Emily Raboteau’s much acclaimed Lessons For Survival: Mothering Against “The Apocalypse”. So how, exactly, I asked the Bronx based Raboteau, do you mother against “the apocalypse”? And what does Raboteau, a amateur photographer and birdwatcher, have in common with Christian Cooper, the Central Park birdwatcher, who appeared on the show last year?Emily Raboteau writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change, and parenthood. Her books are Lessons for Survival, Searching for Zion, winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the critically acclaimed novel, The Professor’s Daughter. Since the release of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, she has focused on writing about the climate crisis. A contributing editor at Orion Magazine and a regular contributor to the New

  • Episode 1997: Benjamin Shestakofsky reveals the inegalitarianism at the heart of the startup economy

    12/03/2024 Duration: 41min

    University of Pennsylvania sociologist Benjamin Shestakofksy spent a couple of years as the fly on the wall in an anonymous tech startup. His new book, BEHIND THE STARTUP, not only reveals what he learned about the insanely frenetic nature of work in a culture dominated by raising the next round of venture investment, but also about the broader impact of the startup economy on innovation and inequality. More nimble and open minded that many academics, Shestakovsky observed the outsized (but underpaid) role of part-time overseas workers in venture capital backed US startups.Benjamin Shestakofsky is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is affiliated with AI at Wharton and the Center on Digital Culture and Society.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentato

  • Episode 1996: Frank H. McCourt, Jr explains why rebuilding the Internet is THE most important issue of our time

    11/03/2024 Duration: 48min

    Think you know Frank H. McCourt, Jr, the illustrious real estate media magnate, former chairman/owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers & current owner of Marseilles FC? Think again. McCourt is also now in the business of saving us from digital monopolists of Silicon Valley who, in his opinion, are trying to steal our liberty, humanity and our dignity. McCourt’s latest philanthropic venture is Project Liberty, an attempt to responsibly build an internet of tomorrow. And his equally ambitious new book, OUR BIGGEST FIGHT, describes itself as a Thomas Paine style “call to arms” to seize back control of our lives from corporate algorithms.Frank H. McCourt, Jr. is the executive chairman of McCourt Global, a private family enterprise working across the real estate, sports, technology, media, and capital investment industries. He is the founder and executive chairman of Project Liberty, a broad-based effort to build a better web for a better world. The project includes the development of an open internet protocol (the

  • Episode 1995: Sam Daley-Harris explains how to reclaim American democracy

    10/03/2024 Duration: 35min

    If, as Sam Daley-Harris believes, “cynicism is obedience”, then active citizenship is a form of rebellion. That seems to be the argument in both the 2024 edition of Daley-Harris’ RECLAIMING OUR DEMOCRACY and in our discussion today about how to resurrect American democracy in 2024. But what about the role of leadership in transforming America? And why would anyone invest all their spare time in trying to revive a sclerotic system that has thrown up the Biden-Trump rematch in 2024?Sam Daley-Harris is the founder and president of RESULTS, an international citizens’s lobby dedicated to creating the political will to end hunger and poverty. Daley-Harris is the author of the book Reclaiming Democracy: Healing the Break Between People and Government, recently reissued to commemorate its 20th anniversary. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To

  • Episode 1994: Why 1924 was the year that Adolf Hitler became "Hitler" and what it teaches us about the crisis of American democracy in 2024

    09/03/2024 Duration: 40min

    I talk to Peter Ross Range, Hitler historian and author of 1924 & UNFATHOMABLE ASCENT, about Adolf Hitler as the "gold standard" of authoritarianism and how the Nazi leader compares with Donald Trump. In contrast with Range, I don’t see any similarities between Trump and Hitler. Yes, both men might use the word “vermin” to describe people they loathe, but they are entirely different men operating in entirely different political systems in entirely different times. In my view, comparing Hitler to Trump is an insult to the millions of victims of Nazi Germany and doesn’t really help us make sense of the uniquely American farce of Donald Trump. Peter Ross Range is a world-traveled journalist who has covered war, politics, and international affairs. A specialist in Germany, he has written extensively for Time, the New York Times, National Geographic, the London Sunday Times Magazine, Playboy, and U.S. News & World Report, where he was a White House correspondent. He has also been an Institute of Politics F

  • Episode 1993: Keith Teare on the Hobbesian war of all-against-all inside & outside Silicon Valley

    08/03/2024 Duration: 34min

    The US Congress just announced war on TikTok; while, in Europe, the EU declared war this week on Spotify and Apple. Elon Musk and Sam Altman have declared war over OpenAI. And everyone inside and outside Google are all war over Gemini. But That Was The Week’s Keith Teare, Silicon Valley’s most cheerful optimist, still believes in what he sees as the inevitably progressive arc of history away from the power of government. Meanwhile Bitcoin just hit $69,000. What could possibly go wrong?Keith Teare is a Founder and CEO at SignalRank Corporation. Previously he was Executive Chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd - A UK-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. He was also previously the founder at the Palo Alto incubator, Archimedes Labs. Archimedes was the original incubator for TechCrunch and since 2011 has invested, accelerated or incubated many Silicon Valley startups including Around (sold to Miro), Millicast (Sold to Dolby), InFarm, Miles, Quixey; M.dot (sold to GoDaddy); cha

  • Episode 1992: Andrew Cockburn explains how Dr. Strangelove has always been a feature - rather than a bug - of Silicon Valley

    07/03/2024 Duration: 38min

    The cover story of Harper’s this month is piece by Andrew Cockburn, their Washington DC editor, entitled “The Pentagon’s Silicon Valley Problem”. But as Cockburn explained to me today, the Pentagon’s problem is also ours. Silicon Valley, he argues, was in many ways founded and financed by the Cold War military-industrial complex and has become the economic, military and ideological motor of 21st century American militarism. And in our age of AI, Cockburn warns, the farce of American military incompetence and Silicon Valley technological hubris threaten to merge into the tragedy of unintended war. Andrew Cockburn is the Washington DC Editor of Harper's magazine and the author of many articles and books on national security, including the New York Times Editor's Choice Rumsfeld and The Threat, which destroyed the myth of Soviet military superiority underpinning the Cold War. He is a regular opinion contributor to the Los Angeles Times and has written for, among others, the New York Times, National Geographic an

  • Episode 1991: Bethanne Patrick on how to disrupt the disruption of our revolutionary age

    06/03/2024 Duration: 36min

    In episode 1991, Andrew talks to the LA Times book critic, Bethanne Patrick, about six intriguing new non-fiction books about our contemporary age of inequality, existential anxiety and political and environmental upheaval. Bethanne Patrick maintains a storied place in the publishing industry as a critic and as @TheBookMaven on Twitter, where she created the popular #FridayReads and regularly comments on books and literary ideas to over 200,000 followers. Her work appears frequently in the Los Angeles Times as well as in The Washington Post, NPR Books, and Literary Hub. She sits on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and has served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. She is the host of the Missing Pages podcast. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books ab

  • Episode 1990: James Kaplan on Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans and the making of the most miraculous jazz record of all time

    06/03/2024 Duration: 42min

    “Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself,” Miles Davis once remarked. Most artists, of course, never ascend to the heights of even closely sounding like themselves. But as James Kaplan, the author of 3 SHADES OF BLUE, argues, Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans did get to sound like themselves in their studio album, Kind of the Blue. That’s the metaphysical truth of the 1959 recording, Kaplan explains. And, in a way, the three men paid for this astonishing miracle with their lives, both as men and artists. But at least they got to the mountain top. Thus the immortality of both the 65 year-old album and Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans. James Kaplan’s essays, stories, reviews, and profiles have appeared in numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and New York. His novels include Pearl’s Progress and Two Guys from Verona, a New York Times Notable Book for 1998. His nonfiction works include The Airport, You Cannot Be Serious

  • Epiosode 1989: Travis Rieder explains why an ethically pure life is neither moral nor practical in our complex world

    04/03/2024 Duration: 39min

    One of the more annoying characteristics of our coastal elites is their incessant virtue signaling. Every life choice - from drinking from plastic water bottles to driving electric cars to deciding to have children - is presented in terms of what Travis Rieder, the Johns Hopkins bio-ethicist and author of CATASTROPHE ETHICS, calls the “purity ethic”. Everybody these days seems greedy for virtue. But this greed, Rieder argues, isn’t realistic in an age of increasingly moral complexity. So, in our KEEN ON conversation, Reider lays out a path for leading a (reasonably) decent life which navigates between ethical fundamentalism and nihilism. Travis Rieder, PhD, is an associate research professor at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, where he directs the Master of Bioethics degree program. He holds secondary appointments in the departments of Philosophy and Health Policy and Management. His first book, IN PAIN (HarperCollins), was named an NPR Best Book of 2019, and his TED Talk on the same topic has

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