Keen On America

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...

According to the Atlantic ’s Yoni Applebaum , America is STUCK - literally and otherwise. In his new book Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity . Appelbaum argues that America faces not just a housing crisis but a mobility crisis, with prohibitively expensive housing in prosperous areas preventing people from moving toward opportunity. Applebaum trac...

Not everyone sees Trump or Musk as an existential threat to the American federal bureaucracy. In the March cover story of Harper’s , their Washington DC editor Andrew Cockburn argues that this latest war against the American state is “futile”. He expresses skepticism that DOGE’s efforts to dismantle the Federal will succeed, suggesting courts will likely block them as they did during Trump's first...

Given the shameful American sacrifice of Ukraine, there will be few timelier movies than Anna Kryvenko’s upcoming “ This House is Undamaged ”,. It will be an Orwellian documentary examining the Russian destruction of Mariupol, the Ukrainian city devastated by Putin’s invasion in 2022. Krivenko, a Fellow at the Artist in Residence program, Institute for Advanced Studies at CEU, explains how Russian...

Lots of healthy disagreement in this week’s THAT WAS THE WEEK tech show with Keith Teare . We debate the impact of AI on coding jobs, with Keith suggesting that while traditional coding skills may become less important, system architecture and AI guidance skills will be crucial to maintaining the value of human labor. We also discuss the rise of early-stage unicorns , military-tech AI start-ups, a...

Why is reforming capitalism so essential? In the latest issue of Liberties Quarterly , Tim Wu argues that unregulated capitalism not only leads to economic monopolies, but also drives populist anger and authoritarian politics. In “ The Real Road to Serfdom ”, Wu advocates for "decentralized capitalism" with distributed economic power, citing examples from Scandinavia and East Asia. Drawing from hi...

How historic are Trump 2.0’s first few weeks? For the veteran correspondent, Nick Bryant , the longtime BBC man in Washington DC, what the Trump regime has done in the first few weeks of his second administration is as historic as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It’s the end of the America we haver known for the last seventy years, he says. Bryant describes Trump's rapprochement with Russia a...

Few books are timelier than Ian Goldin ’s new The Shortest History of Migration . Drawing from his personal history as a South African emigrant and his experience working with Nelson Mandela, the Oxford based Goldin explores the when, why and how humans move - from the prehistoric peopling of the planet to today and tomorrow’s migrants. He addresses current political tensions, including J.D. Vance...

No, social media might no longer be the greatest danger to our children’s well-being. According to the writer and digital activist Gaia Bernstein , the most existential new new threat are AI companions. Bernstein, who is organizing a symposium today on AI companions as the “new frontier of kid’s screen addiction”, warns that this new technology, while marketed as solutions to loneliness, may actua...

Have our private lives become inevitably political in today’s age of social media? Ray Brescia certainly thinks so. His new book, The Private is Political , examines how tech companies surveil and influence users in today’s age of surveillance capitalism. Brascia argues that private companies collect vast amounts of personal data with fewer restrictions than governments, potentially enabling haras...