Keen On America

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...

Episode 1925: In this special DLD edition of KEEN ON, Andrew talks to John Thornhill, innovation editor at the Financial Times, who distinguishes the truth from the fiction of today's AI hysteria John Thornhill is the Innovation Editor at the Financial Times writing a weekly column on the impact of technology. He is also the founder and editorial director of Sifted , the FT-backed site for Europea...

EPISODE 1924: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Brian Klaas, author of FLUKE, about why we are all accidents of the most arbitrary chance and chaos Dr. Brian Klaas is an Associate Professor in Global Politics at University College London and a contributing writer for The Atlantic.  He is also the author of the book Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us and host of the Power Corrupt...

EPISODE 1923: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Casey Michel, author of the upcoming FOREIGN AGENTS, about the dirty overseas money sloshing around both sides of American politics Casey Michel is an author, journalist, and director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program with the Human Rights Foundation. He is the author of American Kleptocracy, named by The Economist as one of the "best books to...

This is a pretty funny interview. Especially at the end when, having asked Eve Herold whether or not we should have sex with our robots, there is a huge rumble of thunder in her home. Perhaps it was the Gods growling their disapproval of the question. Or maybe it was the cry from the heart of a jealous robot. Enjoy (but not too much). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with ot...

EPISODE 1922: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Eve Herold, author of ROBOTS AND THE POEPLE WHO LOVE THEM, about our narcissistic echo-chamber culture in which we are falling in love with our robots (ie: ourselves) EVE HEROLD is an award-winning science writer and consultant in the scientific and medical nonprofit space. A longtime communications and policy executive for scientific organizatio...

EPISODE 1921: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Dr Robert Pearl, author of UNCARING, about how the American healthcare system is rigged against ethical doctors and poor patients and what needs to change  in 2024 Dr. Robert Pearl is the former CEO of The Permanente Medical Group (1999-2017), the nation’s largest medical group, and former president of The Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group (2...

EPISODE 1920: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to PJ Caldas, author of THE GIRL FROM WUDANG, about why a future of digitally connected brains is about to transform all our realities.  PJ CALDAS The author of multiple best-selling novels in Brazil, PJ Caldas, a.k.a PJ Pereira was picked by the Dictionary of Brazilian Literature as one of the most important writers of the twenty-first century. The...