Keen On America
Episodes
Geoff Dyer: What Hasn't He Written Yet?
12 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Geoff Dyer is the author of Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, among other novels, and several nonfiction books, including Out of Sheer Rage. He won a...
Maya Alexandri: What Is It Like to Be an EMT on the Front Lines?
11 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Maya Alexandri is a novelist, lawyer, certified EMT, medical school student, and 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army. Maya's collection of short stories, ...
Franklin Foer: Is the Trump Regime Crumbling?
10 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Franklin Foer is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He is the author of How Soccer Explains the World, which has been translated into twenty-s...
Héctor Tobar: What Will 2020 Mean For Us When We Look Back at the Protests?
09 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Héctor Tobar is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a novelist. He is the author of Translation Nation, The Tattooed Soldier, and Deep Down Dark,...
Laura Lexx: Is There Anything to Laugh About Right Now?
09 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Lexx is an award-winning comedian and writer. She recently came to the public’s attention with her fictional Twitter thread about being marrie...
Matthew B. Crawford: Driving Is Humanism
08 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Matthew B. Crawford is the author of Shop Class as Soulcraft and The World Beyond Your Head. He earned a PhD in Political Philosophy from the Universi...
Federico Finchelstein: What Kinds of Lies Are Trump Articulating?
06 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Federico Finchelstein is Professor of History at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York City. He is the author of seve...
John Freeman: The Language Wars of the Revolution
05 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
John Freeman is the editor of Freeman's, a literary annual of new writing. His books include How to Read a Novelist and The Tyranny of E-mail, as well...
Casey Schwartz: What Becomes of Attention in the Age of the Pandemic?
04 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Casey Schwartz is the author of Attention: A Love Story and In the Mind Fields: Exploring the New Science of Neuropsychoanalysis. She contributes regu...
Barton Gellman: The History of Edward Snowden and the Current Issues of Individual Privacy
03 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Barton Gellman is a Pulitzer Prize and Emmy Award-winning journalist. Since 2013 he has been a senior fellow at the Century Foundation. During 21 year...
Frank Smyth: On the Persistent Myths of the NRA and the Potential for Pandemic Violence
02 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Frank Smyth is an independent, award-winning investigative journalist specializing in armed conflicts, organized crime and human rights overseas, and ...
Barbara Freese: On Corporate Denial in the Age of the Pandemic
01 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Barbara Freese is the author of Coal: A Human History, a New York Times Notable Book. She is an environmental attorney and a former Minnesota assistan...
Zachary D. Carter on John Maynard Keynes and the Need for Deficit Spending
31 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Zachary D. Carter is a senior reporter at HuffPost, where he covers Congress, the White House, and economic policy. He is a frequent guest on cable ne...
Derek Thompson: How Do We Avoid the Next Great Depression?
29 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he writes about economics, technology, and the media. He is the author of Hit Makers and the h...
Caroline Heldman: Politics and Gender in the Age of the Pandemic
28 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Caroline Heldman is Associate Professor of Politics at Occidental College. She is the coeditor of Rethinking Madame President.
Simon Kuper: What Books Read Differently After the Pandemic?
27 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Simon Kuper joined the Financial Times in 1994. He wrote the daily currencies column, before leaving the FT in 1998. He returned in 2002 as a sports c...
Jamelle Bouie: Is the Ghost of Herbert Hoover Alive in the Person of Donald Trump?
26 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Based in Charlottesville, Virginia and Washington D.C., Jamelle Bouie is a columnist for the New York Times and political analyst for CBS News. He cov...
John J. Pitney, Jr.: How Hard Is It to Be a Conservative Right Now?
22 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Conservative Commentator John J. Pitney Jr. frequently writes for USA Today,The National Review,Claremont Review of Books, and other publications and ...
Danny Dorling: Why the Pandemic Is Good for the Planet
21 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Danny Dorling is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, Oxford. He appears regularly on TV and radio, and writes for the Guardian, New Statesma...
Victor Davis Hanson: Is Trump in Control of His Own Fate?
21 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow in military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a professor emeritus of classics at Ca...
Timothy L. O'Brien: What's it Like Being Sued by the President of the United States?
18 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Timothy L. O'Brien is an award-winning author and journalist with more than 20 years of experience at leading media enterprises, including Bloomberg L...
Anne Nelson: How Has Coronavirus Changed the Agenda of the Radical Right?
18 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Anne Nelson has received a Livingston Award for her journalism, a Guggenheim Fellowship for her historical research, and a Bellagio Fellowship for her...
Valerie Hansen: Is This the Beginning of the End of Globalization?
15 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Valerie Hansen is the Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale University, where she teaches Chinese and world history. An accomplished scholar a...
Peniel E. Joseph: Is Covid-19 Racist?
14 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Peniel Joseph holds a joint professorship appointment at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the History Department in the College of Liberal Arts at...
Don Tapscott: Why the Pandemic World Will Be Transformed by Blockchain Tech
13 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Don Tapscott is one of the world's leading authorities on the impact of technology on business and society. He has authored 16 books, including Wikino...
John Elkington: Is the Pandemic a Black Swan Event?
12 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
John Elkington is a writer, thought-leader, serial entrepreneur, and, at heart, an environmentalist. Described as the "Godfather of Sustainability," h...
Bill Davidow: Will the Pandemic Accelerate the Autonomous Revolution?
11 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
William H. Davidow is a general partner with Mohr Davidow Ventures in Menlo Park, California. Before forming this venture capital firm, he was senior ...
Katherine Stewart: The Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism During the Crisis
09 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine Stewart's work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, American Prospect, The Atlantic and other publications. She is the autho...
Uché Blackstock: What Life Is Like on the Front Lines of Battling the Virus
08 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Uché Blackstock is an Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at NYU School of Medicine, where she is also the Faculty Director f...
Alex Lazarow: Will Silicon Valley Still Be the Heart of Innovation After the Pandemic?
07 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Alex Lazarow is a venture capitalist specializing in global innovation and impact. He presently works with the global investment firm Cathay Innovatio...
George Packer: Can We Blame Everything on Donald Trump?
06 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
GEORGE PACKER is a staff writer for The Atlantic and the author of The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, which received several prizes and was named o...
James Crabtree: What Is the Impact of Coronavirus on Technocracies?
05 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
James Crabtree is an Associate Professor in Practice at the LKY school, as well as a senior fellow at the Centre on Asia and Globalisation (CAG). He i...
Vivek Wadhwa: Is It Spring for Tech in Silicon Valley?
04 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Vivek Wadhwa is a Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering and a director of research at Duke University's Pratt Sc...
Howard Friedman: How Much Are Our Lives Worth?
03 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Howard Steven Friedman, a leading statistician and health economist, is an expert in data science and applications of cost-benefit analysis. He teache...
Kate Aronoff on the Environmental Consequences of the Crisis
02 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at The New Republic. She is the co-author of A Planet To Win: Why We Need A Green New Deal (Verso) and the co-editor of...
Daniel Markovits: Can We Blame the Meritocracy in America for the Current Crisis?
01 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Markovits is Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School and founding director of the Center for the Study of Private Law.
Gideon Rachman: Easternization in the Pandemic
30 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Gideon Rachman is chief foreign affairs commentator for the Financial Times. He joined the FT in 2006, after 15 years at The Economist, where he serve...
Jennifer Senior: We Should Be in Praise of Pessimism
29 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jennifer Senior has been an Op-Ed columnist since September 2018. She had been a daily book critic for The Times; before that, she spent many years as...
Mark O'Connell: Has the Apocalypse Finally Arrived?
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Mark O'Connell is the author of To Be a Machine, which was awarded the 2019 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize and sho...
William Galston: Is Our Current Moment Another 1933?
27 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
William A. Galston writes the weekly Politics & Ideas column in the Wall Street Journal. He holds the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in the Brookings Instit...
Julia Hobsbawm on Social Health in Complex Times
24 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Julia Hobsbawm is an entrepreneur and writer who address the problems and solutions of humans in the machine age. She was described by James Harding, ...
DAILY: Soli Özel on the Fundamental Restructuring of the Architecture of International Politics
23 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Soli Özel is a senior lecturer at Kadir Has University in Istanbul and a columnist at Habertürk daily newspaper. Currently, he is a Tom and Andi Ber...
DAILY: Trevor Jackson: The United States Is a Central Bank With a Country
22 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Trevor Jackson works on early modern European economic history, with an emphasis on inequality and financial crisis. His dissertation, “Markets of E...
DAILY: How Is Technology Affecting Our Emotional Intelligence?
21 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Rana el Kaliouby is a pioneer in artificial emotional intelligence (Emotion AI), as well as the cofounder and CEO of Affectiva, the acclaimed AI start...
DAILY: Paul Morland: Demography is Destiny
20 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Morland is associate research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London and an authority on demography. A French speaker with dual British and Ger...
DAILY: Is Instagram A Good Window Onto the Pandemic World?
17 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Frier reports on social media companies for Bloomberg News out of San Francisco. Her award-winning features and breaking stories have earned her...
DAILY: Kishore Mahbubani on the Catastrophic Response in the United States to the Crisis
16 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Kishore Mahbubani is a Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS) and a member of the American Academ...
DAILY: Helen Thompson: When Does the Blank Check Run Out for the Economy?
15 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Helen Thompson is Professor of Political Economy. She has been at Cambridge since 1994 and is at present Deputy Head of the School of the Humanities a...
DAILY: Walter Scheidel: We Need to Worry About Inequality Now More Than Ever
14 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Walter Scheidel is the Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History, and a Kennedy-Grossman Fellow in Human Biology at Stan...
DAILY: Nick Carr: Will the Analog World Make a Comeback
13 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Nicholas Carr is the author of The Shallows, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, The Glass Cage, and Utopia is Creepy. He has written for the New York Times, t...
DAILY: William Powers: Will the Crisis Make Us More Reliant on Digital?
10 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Award-winning media critic William Powers has written for the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and McSweeney's, among other publicat...
DAILY: Amity Shlaes: Are We Returning to the Great Depression?
09 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Amity Shlaes is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man: Graphic, a...
DAILY: Ece Temelkuran on How to Institutionalize Solidarity During Crisis
08 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ece Temelkuran is a Turkish novelist and political commentator whose journalism has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, New Statesman, Frankfurt...
DAILY: Gabriel Zucman on the Rise of Inequality in the Age of Crisis
07 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Gabriel Zucman is professor of economics and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. His research analyzes the accumulation and distr...
DAILY: Christopher Schroeder: The Future Is Everywhere
06 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Christopher Schroeder is a leading tech media entrepreneur and venture investor. He ran the digital assets for the Washington Post Company and co-foun...
DAILY: Liesl Schillinger on What to Read in the Age of Corona
03 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Liesl Schillinger is a New York–based critic, translator, and moderator. She grew up in Midwestern college towns, studied comparative literature at ...
DAILY: John Ralston Saul on the Collapse of Globalization During Coronavirus
03 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
John Ralston Saul is an award-winning essayist and novelist. His works of ideas, history and philosophy are constantly being reissued and translated f...
DAILY: Sarah Kendzior on Media in the Age of Trump
01 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Kendzior is best known for her reporting on St. Louis and the 2016 election, her academic research on authoritarian states, and her New York Tim...
DAILY: Parag Khanna on What Won't Change About Globalization After Coronavirus
01 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Parag Khanna is a leading global strategy advisor, world traveler, and best-selling author. He is Founder & Managing Partner of FutureMap, a data ...
DAILY: Jessica Rosenworcel on the Need for Broadband in the United States
30 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jessica Rosenworcel is a member of the US Federal Communications Commission. Nominated by President Obama, she was confirmed by the US Senate and swor...
DAILY: John Borthwick on Whether the Current Crisis Represents the Death of Analog
27 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
John Borthwick has been a leader and early-stage investor in New York technology for over two decades. As founder and CEO of betaworks, John has led t...
DAILY: Douglas Rushkoff on the Contradictory Numbers of Contemporary Capitalism
27 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy...
DAILY: Anne Applebaum on How Coronavirus May Compound our Current Crisis of Democracy
26 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Pulitzer-prize winning historian. She is also a Senior Fellow of International Affairs and Ago...
DAILY: Edward Luce on the Nature of Expertise in the Current Crisis
24 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Edward Luce is the US national editor and columnist at the Financial Times. Before that he was the FT's Washington Bureau chief. Other roles have incl...
DAILY: Economist Martin Wolf on How Politics Are Going to Be Shaped by the Current Crisis
23 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Martin Wolf is Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times, London. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empir...
Is Capitalism a Network of Entrepreneurs? Charles Armstrong on Whether the Silicon Valley Model Has Failed Us
21 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Charles Armstrong is a social entrepreneur based in London. He founded The Trampery in 2009 to develop new kinds of workspace for startups and creativ...
Robert H. Frank on the Power and Potential of Social Context
20 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Robert H. Frank is the H. J. Louis Professor of Management and Professor of Economics at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management. H...
Branko Milanovic: Is Capitalism Our Only Option?
19 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 2020, particularly in the Democratic primary, we have this great debate about capitalism. Some people say capitalism work. Some people say it doesn...
Angus Deaton on How the Flaws in Capitalism are Fatal for America's Working Class
13 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Angus Deaton, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics, is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus at Pr...
Margaret Heffernan on How to Navigate our Uncharted Future
06 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Margaret Heffernan is an entrepreneur, chief executive, and author. She was born in Texas, raised in Holland, and educated at Cambridge University. Sh...
Michael S. Malone on How We Can Reclaim the Future We've Sold to Machines
28 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Michael S. Malone covered the technology beat for the San Jose Mercury News in the 1980s and remains one of world's best-known technology-business jou...
Steven Levy on the Inside Story of Facebook
21 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Steven Levy is Wired’s editor at large. The Washington Post has called him “America’s premier technology journalist.” His previous positions i...
Lucy Parker on How Big Business Can Fix the World
14 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Lucy Parker is a partner of the Brunswick Group, one of the world’s leading corporate communications firms, whose clients include Burberry, Facebook...
Albert Wenger on a World After Capital
07 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last two hundred years, nothing has divided us more than our free-market economic system. Is it the source of every social injustice, from ex...
How to Fix Capitalism, with Andrew McAfee
31 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last two hundred years, nothing has divided us more than our free-market economic system. Is it the source of every social injustice, from ex...
Jacobin Editor Bhaskar Sunkara on Capitalism vs. Socialism
06 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Bhaskar Sunkara is an American political writer. He is the founding editor and publisher of Jacobin and publisher of Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and...
Katherine Mangu-Ward on Why Modern Capitalism is a Blessing
29 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine Mangu-Ward is editor in chief of Reason, the magazine of “free minds and free markets.” Her writing has appeared in The Wall Street Jour...
Economist Richard Wolff on the Future of Capitalism
22 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently...
How Has the Publishing Industry Been Affected by Trump?
15 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jarett Kobek is a Turkish-American writer living in California. His novella ATTA, a psychedelic biography of the 9/11 bomber Mohamed Atta, was an unex...
David Edgerton on Why Brexit is a Necessary Crisis
08 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
David Edgerton is Hans Rausing Professor of the history of science and technology and professor of modern British history at King's College London. He...
Ian Bassin: The Middle Class is the 'Butt End of the Elephant
01 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ian Bassin served as Associate White House Counsel from 2009-2011. In addition to counseling the President and senior White House staff on administrat...
Yancey Strickler on the Unintended Consequences of the Sharing Economy
25 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Yancey Strickler is a writer and entrepreneur. He is the cofounder and former CEO of Kickstarter and author of This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto f...
What Did You Wish You Had More Time to Do? Tiffany Shlain on How Unplugging Can Save Society
18 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Tiffany Shlain sits down with Andrew Keen to discuss her new book, 24/6. In 24/6, Tiffany Shlain explores how turning off screens one day a...
Scott Galloway: Tech Companies Should Be Broken Up
11 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Keen On, Andrew talks to Scott Galloway, the bestselling author of The Four and Algebra of Happiness and New York University busine...
Can the Truth Win Out in the Marketplace of Ideas?
04 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Keen On, Andrew talks to Richard Stengel, author of Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What...
How Can We Trust? Maria Ressa on the Future of Gatekeeping
27 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Keen On, Andrew talks to journalist Maria Ressa, about the weaponization of social media, the loss of democracy as we know it, and ...
Is the Age of Automation the New Industrial Revolution?
20 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Keen On, Andrew talks to Carl Benedikt Frey, the co-director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment at the Uni...
Do Oligarchs Rule the World? Jeffrey A. Winters on Wealth in Democracy
13 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Keen On, Andrew talks to Jeffrey A. Winters, the political scientist and author of Oligarchy, about the convergence of oligarchy an...
Can Digital Innovations Improve Democracy?
06 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Keen On, Andrew talks to Toomas Hendrik Ilves, former President of Estonia, about how the invention of the World Wide Web forever c...
What John Stuart Mill Can Teach Us About Democracy
30 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Richard V. Reeves is a senior fellow in Economic Studies, co-director of the Center on Children and Families, and editor-in-chief of the Social Mobili...
Can Digital Activism Solve the Information Crisis?
23 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Keen On, Andrew talks to Eli Pariser, author of the iconic book The Filter Bubble and founder of Upworthy, about digital activism, ...
The Economics of Good and Evil
16 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Keen On, Andrew talks to Tomáš Sedláček, author of Economics of Good and Evil and one of Europe’s most distinguished economis...
Why Too Much Information Is an Enemy of Democracy
09 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Keen On, Andrew talks to Pomerantsev, the author of the new book This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality, abo...
What is Behind the Rise of Populism?
02 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew talks to Catherine Fieschi, the founder and executive director of Counterpoint, a London-based consultancy on social and cultural dynamics, and...
Is Humor The Best Antidote to Tyranny?
24 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew talks to the legendary Czech diplomat, writer and human rights activist Michael Zantovksy about how to fight authoritarianism.Show Notes - http...
Pivoting to the Killer-app.
04 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew talks with writer Larry Downes, the author of five books including this year’s bestselling Pivot To The Future. Best known, however, for his ...
Facebook's Moral Crisis
25 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The American technology journalist and impresario David Kirkpatrick is probably the world’s leading authority on the history of Facebook. The author...
Ninja Morality: The case for technological innovation
18 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew talks to Ninja Future author Gary Shapiro about our moral obligation to unleash technological innovation on society Show Notes - http://www.a...
Keen On The State of American Democracy
11 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew talks to noted Harvard Law School scholar Noah Feldman about the health of American democracy, populism, anti-trust law and what James Madison ...
How to Lose a Country With Turkish Author Ece Temelkuran
29 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today Andrew is talking to Turkish born author of How To Lose A Country, Ece Temelkuran. As global citizens we chat about her rejection of the parochi...