Keen On America

Celeste Marcus , Liberties Quarterly managing editor, is in the news today. In the Winter 2024 volume of Liberties , she wrote “After Rape: A Guide for the Tormented” - a piece about her own experience of a 2021 rape. And today, she revealed the identity of her rapist on X. “I will not be raped with impunity”, she wrote today to explain why she’s gone public with his identity. As it happens, I sat...

EPISODE 1949: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Scott Gac, author of BORN IN BLOOD, about why violence is the defining feature of American history Scott Gac is Director of American Studies and Associate Professor of American Studies and History at Trinity College and the author of Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform. Named as one of t...

EPISODE 1948: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Nicholas B. Dirks, author of CITY OF INTELLECT, about why American universities need to reinvent themselves in our disruptive age of social media and AI NICHOLAS B. DIRKS is an internationally recognized historian and anthropologist, and an important leader in higher education. Well-known for his commitment to and advocacy for accessible, high-qu...

EPISODE 1947: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Ernest Scheyder, author of THE WAR BELOW, about the new economic war between China and the West to control critical minerals like lithium, copper and cobalt Ernest Scheyder is a senior correspondent for Reuters covering the clean energy transition and critical minerals, as well as the author of the forthcoming book "The War Below: Lithium, Copper...

EPISODE 1946: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Mike Chen, author of A QUANTUM LOVE STORY, about why scientific truth might be infinitely weirder than science fiction Mike Chen is a critically acclaimed science fiction author based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. His debut novel HERE AND NOW AND THEN was a finalist for the Goodreads Choice, CALIBA Golden Poppy, and Compton Crook awards. His...

EPISODE 1945:  In our weekly KEEN ON wrap of tech news with Keith Teare, author of  the THAT WAS THE WEEK newletter,  Keith defends Elon Musk's decision to go to Auschwitz and bemoans the breakdown of civility in our social media age 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 co...

EPISODE 1944: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Ehud Shapiro, a computer scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, about the egalitarian architecture necessary to build genuine digital democracy  Ehud Shapiro is a multi-disciplinary scientist, artist, entrepreneur and a Professor of Computer Science and Biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science. With international reputation, he made...

EPISODE 1943: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Kevin J. Mitchell, author of FREE AGENTS, about how evolution gave us free will Mitchell is a neurogeneticist interested in the relationships between genes, brains, and minds. He is a faculty member at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, in the departments of Genetics and Neuroscience. He writes the Wiring the Brain blog ( www.wiringthebrain.com ) a...

EPISODE 1942: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Keith Boykin, author of WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE ABOUT RACE, about  Claudine Gay, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott and why the real function of racism is distraction Keith Boykin is a TV and film producer, national political commentator, New York Times best-selling author, and a former White House aide to President Bill Clinton. His latest books are...

EPISODE 1941: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Benjamin Herold, author of DISILLUSIONED, about the unravelling of both America's suburbs and the American dream Benjamin Herold explores America's beautiful and busted public education system. His award-winning beat reporting, feature writing, and investigative exposés have appeared in Education Week, PBS NewsHour, NPR, the Hechinger Report, Huf...

EPISODE 1940: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Bernard Avishai, author of the Harper's story "Israel's War Within", about the age old battle in Israel between globalists and messianic Zionists Bernard Avishai: Bernard Avishai is the author of The Tragedy of Zionism and The Hebrew Republic, among other books. He teaches at Dartmouth College and splits his time between New Hampshire and Jerusal...

EPISODE 1939: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Simon Shuster, author of THE SHOWMAN, about Volodymyr Zelensky, a workaholic improv politician who needs to be loved by his Ukrainian people Simon Shuster has reported from Russia and Ukraine for 17 years, most of that time as a staff writer for Time Magazine. His coverage of the war began in 2014, when he was the first foreign journalist to arri...

EPISODE 1938: In this special KEEN ON show from DLD in Munich, Andrew talks Union Square Ventures partner, Albert Wenger, about work, leisure  and the environment in our smart machine age Albert Wenger is a managing partner at Union Square Ventures. Before joining USV, Albert was the president of del.icio.us through the company’s sale to Yahoo and an angel investor (Etsy, Tumblr). He previously fo...

EPISODE 1937: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Alex Byrne, author of TROUBLE WITH GENDER, about slippery sex facts and factual gender fictions ​Alex Byrne teaches in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . (In the philosophy half of the department.) His main interests are philosophy of mind (especially perception), metaphysics (especially co...

EPISODE 1936: In this special KEEN ON show from DLD in Munich, Andrew talks to Martin Puchner, author of CULTURE: THE STORY OF US, FROM CAVE ART TO K-POP, about on the future of artistic creativity in the age of the smart machine ​ Martin Puchner, the Byron and Anita Wien Professor at Harvard University, is a prize-winning author, educator, public speaker, and institution builder in the arts and h...

EPISODE 1935: In this special KEEN ON show from DLD in Munich, Andrew talks to Susan Danzinger about she is putting radical philosophical ideas into practice in upstate New York Susan Danziger is an investor and entrepreneur, founding a venture capital firm along with several social and environmental impact organizations including Wally Farms—a living research project dedicated to finding a food s...

EPISODE 1934: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to the founder & CEO of Fairly Trained, about the dire consequences of generative AI companies "scraping" data without acknowledging its creators  Ed Newton-Rex work sat the intersection of generative AI and music creation. He founded Jukedeck, an AI music generation company that provided music for video, TV, radio, podcasts and games. In 2019,...

EPISODE 1933: In this special KEEN ON show recorded at the DLD conference in Munich, Andrew talks to the Founder & CEO of Hidden Door, Hilary Mason, who peers behind the hidden door of AI, Gaming and Storytelling Hilary Mason is the Founder & CEO of Fast Forward Labs , a machine intelligence research company, and the Data Scientist in Residence at Accel Partners . She co-founded HackNY , a...

EPISODE 1932: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Yanis Varoufakis, author of TECHNO FEUDALISM, about the death of capitalism ad its replacement with a "cloudalist" totalitarianism Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece and the author of several international bestselling books. And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe, Austerity and the Threat to Global Stability reveals th...

EPISODE 1931: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Nick Romeo, author of THE ALTERNATIVE, about how to build a just economy Nick Romeo is a journalist, critic, and essayist. His new book, The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy (forthcoming January 2024 from PublicAffairs and Basic Books), uses extensive original reporting to provide a road map for a sustainable and survivable twenty-first-c...

EPISODE 1930: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Frank Vogl, author of THE ENABLERS, about the marketing scammers behind the increasingly mainstream success of cryptocurrency Frank Vogel  is the co-founder of two leading international non-governmental organizations fighting corruption -- Transparency International and the Partnership for Transparency Fund (Frank is the Chair of the PTF Board)....

EPISODE 1929: In this DLD special recorded in Munich, Andrew talks to Kenneth Cukier, co-author of BIG DATA, about AI, spirituality and the new humanism in our digital age Kenneth Cukier is the Deputy Executive Editor at The Economist in London and cohost of its weekly tech podcast Babbage. He is coauthor of the award-winning book “Big Data" with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, a NYT Bestseller translat...

EPISODE 1928 : In this special DLD edition, Andrew talks to Azeem Azhar, author of the popular Substack newsletter EXPONENTIAL VIEW, about AI's impact on politics, economics and society in 2024 Azeem Azhar is the creator of Exponential View ( www.exponentialview.co ), one of the world's leading platforms for understanding the impact of technology on society. His weekly newsletter is read by 200,00...

EPISODE 1927: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Abbot Kahler, author of WHERE YOU END, about writing unnerving literature for unnerving times Abbott Kahler (formerly Karen Abbott) is the author of four New York Times bestselling works of narrative nonfiction. A search for an ancestor who went missing in 1905 led her to write Sin in the Second City, which tells the true story of two sisters who...

EPISODE 1926: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to the LA Times book critic, Bethanne Patrick,  about her 10 must read books for 2024 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 i...