Keen On America

On Thursday, we featured a conversation with Red Scare author Clay Risen about Joe McCarthy, Donald Trump and the Paranoid Style of American History. Today our subject is one of the best known victims of McCarthyism - the German writer Thomas Mann. In His Liberties essay “Mannhood: The Coming Revival of Democracy,” Morten Hoi Jensen writes about how Mann, as an exile from Nazi Germany, toured the...

Is Europe about to become the World's Third Tech Superpower? In our regular That Was The Week round-up of tech news, Keith Teare says NO!, arguing that the EU’s increasingly aggressive regulation of Apple and Google will relegate Europe to increasing irrelevance. But I’m not so sure. Just as Europe is finally establishing its military independence from Washington, so I suspect the same will become...

American history, Clay Risen reminds us, has an uncanny knack of repeating itself. In Red Scare , his important new book about blacklists, McCarthyism and the making of modern America, Risen suggests that Trump and MAGA have happened before. First as the tragedy of Joe McCarthy then as farcical Donald Trump? Or might today’s latest chapter in the paranoid style of American history actually be its...

What is the MAGA movement’s aesthetic? According to the New York Times ’ Dan Brooks , it’s an aesthetic captured by the generative AI video “ Trump Gaza ”. Childishly absurd, it’s an aesthetic, Brooks suggests, of “bearded belly dancers, an Elon Musk look-alike on the beach and a golden statue of President Trump”. It’s not reality, of course. There are neither bearded belly dancers nor golden stat...

Andrew Checchia , a young journalist at NewsJunkie.net, requested an interview with me about the current state of American journalism. So here are my thoughts about the Fourth Estate’s role in democracy, our supposedly dwindling trust in media, the ongoing cult of amateurism in journalism and Trump’s successful merging of news and entertainment. Here are the five KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways from my...

The musician and actor Daryl Davis probably knows more about the Klu Klux Klan than any other living African-American. As the author of Klan-Destine Relationships and his latest The Klan Whisperer , Davis has written about not only his infiltration of the Klan but his befriending of regretful Klansmen like Scott Shepherd (My wife, Cassandra Knight, also wrote about her dinner with Shepherd ). Davi...

Long-time views of the show know that I’ve always been skeptical of equating Trump/MAGA with European fascism. I’ve always thought it historically facile and misleading. But I’m beginning to change my mind. Take, for example, David Masciotra’s thoughts on Trump’s “ravenous bigotry” toward the trans community. As Masciotra warns, this is the kind of organized, willful persecution of powerless minor...

Will AI kill Apple? That’s the (absurd) question with which Keith Teare and I begin our THAT WAS THE WEEK tech summary. We conclude that their failure to develop an in-house LLM or introduce a timely intelligence application in mobile won’t , of course, destroy Apple. But as Keith and I discuss, the redundancy of its Siri architecture is now forcing Apple to get serious about AI. So should that me...

So who, exactly is government. It’s the question that Michael Lewis and an all-star team of writers address in a particularly timely new volume of essays. Who is Government? According to the Montana based Sarah Vowell , author of “ The Equalizer ”, an essay in the volume about the National Archives, government enables all American citizens to find stories about themselves. Vowell praises the modes...

As MAGA continues to vandalize the Federal bureaucracy, some progressives are beginning to publicly acknowledge their role in the historic undermining of the US government. In his provocative new book Why Nothing Works , the self-styled “progressive” Marc Dunkelman argues that it was the left - in their cultural aversion to power over the last half century - who have broken the U.S. government. If...

The New York Times ’ David Enrich is one of America’s most tenacious investigative journalists. So when he comes out with a book entitled Murder the Truth , we should take note. There’s a campaign, Enrich warns, sometimes secret, sometimes open, to undermine the First Amendment and press freedom, thereby protecting the rich and powerful. Led by Clarence Thomas, Enrich explains, it’s an attempt to...

Not everyone, especially mainstream Democrats, are going to agree with Jessica Pishko on this one. In Liberties , she argues that it was the Democrats who “built Trump’s army”. It was Joe Biden, she claims, who built up the very law enforcement regime that Trump is now weaponizing. So, in Pishko’s mind, the Democrats have as much responsibility for the Mad Max police state which Trump is now unlea...

There’s a story today about how a VR headset can make us more empathetic toward nature. But according to the Pacific Northwest based author and biologist Thor Hanson , no digital technology can ever replicate nature. Instead, he argues in his new book Close to Home , we humans are wired, so to speak, to appreciate the natureal world whether its on the Galapagos or in our local park. In fact, he to...

Here are the 4 KEEN ON AMERICA take-aways in our conversation about the dysfunctional American immigration system with Felipe Torres Medina 1) Background & Immigration Journey * Felipe Torres Medina is a comic writer for "The Stephen Colbert Show" and author of the new book America Let Me In about the US immigration system * Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Medina moved to the US at 21 on a student v...

We are back to AI (actually it never left us). In this THAT WAS THE WEEK tech show, Keith and Andrew talk about how AI is now enabling anyone - even non-coders - to code. "I was able to do something without having the skill to do it,” Keith confesses about his experience in building an iPhone app for teens. In the same way as Web 2.0 technologies turned all of us into broadcasters, AI makes all of...

So what’s the most revolutionary invention in the history of the American Republic? The internet, maybe? Or the electric bulb or the motor car? Perhaps. But according to the Harvard historian Joyce Chaplin , it might be the Franklin Stove, Benjamin Franklin’s innovation which she claims in an eponymous new book , represents an unintentional American revolution. What’s really important about the Fr...

Award-winning reporter Kevin Fagan is one of San Francisco’s great treasures. In his much acclaimed new book, The Lost and Found , Fagan tells his his two-decade experience reporting about homelessness in San Francisco. He shares the stories of Tyson and Rita, two homeless individuals who he helped reconnect with their families. Tyson, despite having a supportive family, died of a fentanyl overdos...

What do Fareed Zakaria, Nikki Haley, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Vinod Khosla and Kamala Harris all have in common? They are all, of course, highly successful Americans of Indian descent. According Meenakshi Ahamed, author of Indian Genius, one reason for what she calls the “meteoric rise” of Indians in America are their humble beginnings here. Arriving with minimal reso...

America, to borrow a word from last week’s guest Yoni Appelbaum , is “stuck”. And so the American Dream, for most stuck Americans, is dead. Our guest today, the social entrepreneur Nicholas Lalla , agrees with Appelbaum. The American Dream might still be alive in privileged coastal communities, Lalla argues in his new book Reinventing the Heartland , but it needs resurrection elsewhere. Defining t...

What one word describes how Donald Trump thinks about the world? According to both the Atlantic writer Jonathan Rauch and UC Irvine professor Jeffrey Kopstein , that word is “patrimonialism” - a rather stodgy sociological term meaning that Trump wants to be the Godfather. Everything under Trump is personal, Rauch and Kopstein explain. Thus, for example, his public bullying of Zelenskyy and his vin...

The international war reporter John Lechner is a brave man. For his new book Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare , he spent time in both Russia and the Central African Republic researching the Russian mercenary Wagner Group founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin. In our conversation, he details Prigozhin's rise, his rebellion against Putin, and his eventual death. L...

In today’s THAT WAS THE WEEK tech newsletter, Keith Teare asks what “civilization” is good for. Triggered by David Brooks’ “We Can Achieve Great Things” NYTimes piece , Keith’s editorial this week focuses on how we can “earn” the future through constant innovation. The problem - as everyone from Keith Teare to David Brooks to KeenOnAmerica guest Yoni Appelbaum all acknowledge - is that America has...

In the long run, Keynes famously quipped, we are all dead. But Swedish entrepreneur Kristian Ronn reverses Keynes to argue that in the short term we, as a species, might also be death. In his new book Darwinian Trap , Ronn argues that we're hardwired to prioritize immediate benefits over long-term consequences, creating existential risks like nuclear war and uncontrolled AI development. Ronn sugge...

Should lawyers, home alarm fitters, hairdressers and plumbers all have to get a license to do their business? And what about dog walkers and surgeons? It’s an absurd question, of course, but as Rebecca Haw Allensworth reveals in her new book, The Licensing Racket , we live in absurdly credentialed times. As Allensworth notes, at a moment in history when AI is about to replace many professional wor...

Who wants to change their life? Who want to transform their relationships and increase their influence? If that’s you, then Stanford based psychologist Caroline Fleck might be your therapist. In her new book, VALIDATION , Fleck lays out a skill set that, she promises, not only revolutionized psychology but can revolutionize all of us. Skeptical? Yes, I was before talking with Dr Fleck. But she act...