Keen On America

Episode 2082: James Kirchick explains why a chill has fallen over Jews in the American publishing industry

03 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

James Kirchick’s New York Times op-ed, “A Chill Has Fallen Over Jews in Publishing”, has elicited much controversy. I have to admit that I’m n...

Episode 2081: Robert Wolcott on how just-In-time technology is about to radical transform business, society and daily life

02 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On yesterday’s show, Keith Teare mourned the scarcity of utopian thinking in Silicon Valley. But maybe Keith was looking on the wrong coast. Robert ...

Episode 2080: Keith Teare's defense of technological utopianism

01 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If you want to insult somebody in Silicon Valley, call them a “utopian”. It suggests a fantastical mind unable or unwilling to come to terms with ...

Episode 2079: Jeremy S. Adams on Lessons in Liberty from ten extraordinary Americans

31 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Heroism might be out of fashion, but that hasn’t deterred Jeremy S. Adams from offering what he calls Lessons in Liberty from the lives of ten extra...

Episode 2078: Spencer Kornhaber on our carnally confused age in which sex is always in our heads but not in our beds

30 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We live in a erotically dissonant and carnally confused age. One the one hand, young people are having a lot less sex these days; on the other, they a...

Episode 2077: Kathleen DuVal on a Thousand Year History of Native Nations in North America

29 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Is history, particularly the last thousand year history of North America, written by the victors? Perhaps. After all, as Kathleen DuVal, the author of...

Episode 2076: Sir Tim Lankester on the promise, failure and legacy of Margaret Thatcher's monetarist revolution

28 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There will be a British general election on July 4. “The most consequential of our generation” no doubt many politicians will remind the voters. B...

Episode 2075: Bethanne Patrick's six must-read new books for May

27 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

May might be almost finished, but you’ve still got time this Memorial weekend to begin reading one of Bethanne Patrick’s recommended new books. An...

Episode 2074: Raghuram Rajan on why India must break the mold if it is become a prosperous 21st century economy

26 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Few people are better equipped to unravel the riddle of the Indian economy than the former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan. As ...

Episode 2073: Sulmaan Wasif Khan on the past, present and future conflict between America and China over Taiwan

25 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Along with Ukraine and Gaza, Taiwan represents the third leg of our increasingly wobbly international political system. This week, for example, the Ch...

Episode 2072: Keith Teare on Scarlett Johansson's voice and the creative promise/peril of AI

24 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Another week in tech, another splashy AI scandal. This one involves OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the voice of Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson. Dear Sam...

Episode 2071: Jehuda Reinharz on Chaim Weizmann, the first President of Israel who aspired to be a British aristocrat

23 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The debate about the supposed “colonial” foundations of Israel goes on and on. But I wonder whether Jehuda Reinharz’s definitive new biography o...

Episode 2070: John R. MacArthur warns that reading digital screens might be shrinking our brains

22 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The digital revolution has few more persistent critics than John (Rick) MacArthur, the legendarily outspoken publisher of Harper’s Magazine. His ske...

Episode 2069: KEEN ON America featuring Bobi Conn

21 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Bobi Conn’s life is an American story. Growing up in a desolate Kentucky holler, her father a drug addicted outlaw who abused her mother, Conn has ...

Episode 2068: Jacob Kushner on the National Socialist Underground's plot to kill German immigrants

20 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Is it time to start worrying about the Germans again? Perhaps, at least according to Jacob Kushner, the author of LOOK AWAY: A True Story of Murders, ...

Episode 2067: Jordan Elgrably on richly complex stories about the Middle East and North Africa mostly ignored by Western media

19 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Jordan Elgrably, the Morrocan-French editor of the Markaz Review, wants us to read complex stories about the Middle East and North Africa that our sim...

Episode 2066: Steven Johnson on the invention of dynamite, anarchist violence and the rise of the 20th century surveillance state

17 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I’ve always been a big admirer of Steven Johnson, whose prolific work focuses on the disruptive role of new technologies in shaping our past and fut...

Episode 2065: Craig Whitlock explains how an overweight Malaysian contractor known as Fat Leonard bribed, bilked and seduced the U.S. Navy

16 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It’s a mind blowing story. In Fat Leonard, the Washington Post’s prize winning investigative journalist Craig Whitlock tells of a Malaysian contra...

Episode 2064: Chris Gavaler explains how How Stars Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Marvel determine how we view reality

15 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ever wondered why the never-endingTrump show seems simultaneously like a reality show remake and sequel? According to Chris Gavaler, the self styled P...

Episode 2063: Rabbi Shai Held on why Judaism is really all about Love

14 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Given the situation in Gaza, some might interpret a new book entitled Judaism Is About Love to be either satirical or slightly chutzpahdik. But its au...

Episode 2062: KEEN ON AMERICA featuring Ali Velshi

13 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Last week’s KEEN ON America interview featured a conversation with R. Derek Black, the son of a KKK Grand Wizard, whose all-too-American life has be...

Episode 2061: Rafil Kroll-Zaidi on Branson, Missouri, the most American town you've never heard of

12 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What is the most American town in the USA? Las Vegas comes to mind, of course. And Memphis, with its uniquely American church of Graceland. Or one of ...

Episode 2060: Ferdia Lennon on the tragicomedy of the Peloponnesian War

11 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I’m just back from five glorious days in Syracuse, the ancient Mediterranean city in the south western corner of Sicily. And to extend my trip, at l...

Episode 2059: Keith Teare on why critics of the iPad Crush advertisement are "haters of the future"

10 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Apple’s Crush advertisement for their new range of iPads got so crushed by its critics that Apple apologized and announced the commercial wouldn’t...

Episode 2058: Timothy Morton searches for a Christian Ecology that will get us out of our Planetary Hell

09 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Timothy Morton, who teaches English at Rice, has become a bit of a rock star interpreter of our hellishly hot planetary times. And his eclectic work h...

Episode 2057: KEEN ON America featuring R. Derek Black

08 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How seriously should we take the white nationalist threat in the United States? Very seriously, at least according to R. Derek Black, a young man who ...

Episode 2056: Kyle Paoletta exposes the 2024 Republican Primaries as "Farce"

07 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Marx’s 19th century remark that history repeats itself twice, first as tragedy and then as farce, helps us makes sense of the seemingly surreal poli...

Episode 2055: Michael Ignatieff on a history of his privileges

06 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Pete Townsend said it best. “Hope I die before I get old” he wrote in The Who’s anthemic 1965 hit, “My Generation”. But what Townsend really...

Episode 2054: Keith Teare follows the money of the online creative economy

05 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The more that changes in the digital world, the more that stays the same. For all the disruption of AI, two trends appear totally unchanging. Firstly,...

Episode 2053: Vince Houghton on how the Cold War transformed Miami into America's most Covert City

04 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We don’t often image Miami as a city of Cold War subterfuge akin to Berlin or Vienna. But according to Vince Houghton, co-author of COVERT CITY, Mia...

Episode 2052: Bryan Caplan on the economic and philosophical case for the radical deregulation of the housing industry

03 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve done several shows on the housing crisis in America, mostly from a progressive perspective in which the solution to the shortage of homes is p...

Episode 2051: Mohamed Amer Meziane offers an ecological and racial history of seculization

02 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One of Bethanne Patrick’s recommended books for April was Mohamed Amer Meziane’s The States of the Earth. It sounded intriguing, if not entirely c...

Episode 250: Andrew J Scott on why we should care about old people

01 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In today’s stultified American gerontocracy, not everyone is convinced that we should care about old people. After all, aging baby boomers still con...

Episode 2049: KEEN ON AMERICA featuring Samyr Laine

01 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Samyr Laine might be a model for how to become a Haitian-American in the 21st century. Son of Haitian emigrants, Laine was a roommate of Mark Zuckerbe...

Episode 2048: Tobias Buck on the Holocaust on Trial in the 21st Century

30 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Given the industry of Holocaust remembering, do we really need another book about the Nazis and their industrial death camps? Yes, according to Tobias...

Episode 2047: Elisa New on Poetry in America

29 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Harvard academic Elisa New is host of the much acclaimed PBS series POETRY IN AMERICA. Now in Season Four, the show has featured conversations abo...

Episode 2046: David Faris on why American kids are all left these days

28 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In November of this year, two particularly out of touch eighty-year old men will contest the US Presidential election. America, in other words, has an...

Episode 2045: Lisa Kaltenegger on the inevitability of the existence of non-human life somewhere in the Universe

27 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As founding director of Cornell University's Carl Sagan Institute and author of the new ALIEN EARTHS: Planet Hunting in the Cosmos, Lisa Kaltenegger i...

Episode 2044: Warning! This KEEN ON conversation with Alex Edmans may contain lies

26 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In a “post-truth” world, who should we trust? According to Alex Edmans, one of the UK’s hottest business school professors, you should trust him...

Episode 2043: Adam Kuper explains why our museums reveal much more about ourselves than about other people's cultures

25 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Museums, the distinguished anthropologist Adam Kuper argues in his new book Museums of Other People, are actually mirrors of ourselves. Rather than re...

Episode 2042: Robert Pearl MD explains how AI can regenerate the American medical system

24 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There are few people more adept at navigating America’s labyrinthine medical system than Robert Pearl. Yale medical degree, Stanford University prof...

Episode 2041: Dr. Judy Ho on how we can stop f*****g ourselves up

23 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Judy Ho has a new book entitled The New Rules of Attachment: How to Heal Your Relationships, Reparent Your Inner Child, and Secure Your Life Vision...

Episode 2040: Matt Hern on the revolutionary potential of suburbia

22 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The suburbs haven’t got a great press recently on KEEN ON. First there was Benjamin Herold, author of Disillusioned, who found the dead body of the ...

Episode 2039: KEEN ON AMERICA featuring Mark Danner

21 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In his early opposition to the Iraq war and other overseas misadventures in Bosnia, Haiti and El Salvador, Mark Danner is one of the most respected ob...

Episode 2038: Daniel Bessner on how the existential crisis of Hollywood's film & tv writers is the canary in the coal mine for the rest of America's professional elites

20 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Harper’s has a great cover story this month entitled “The Life and Death of Hollywood” by the intellectual historian, podcast and general muckr...

Episode 2037: Elliot Ackerman on the danger of mercenaries and the value of national service

19 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Elliot Ackerman has an intriguing essay in this issue of Liberties Quarterly on the use and abuse of mercenaries throughout history. Linking the histo...

Episode 2036: Stephen Marche, author of "The Next Civil War", on Alex Garland's new movie "Civil War"

18 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I have to admit I absolutely HATED Alex Garland’s new movie Civil War. I found it annoyingly trite, self-evidently packaged for an ahistorical cinem...

Episode 2035: KEEN ON AMERICA featuring Christopher Schroeder

17 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Part of the purpose of our new KEEN ON AMERICA series is to (re)discover what it means to be an American. Many of the wisest observers of American lif...

Episode 2034: Dale Maharidge tells American liberals to look in the mirror to understand the Doom Loop now engulfing their country

16 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Like yesterday’s KEEN ON guest, Batya Ungar-Sargon, Dale Maharidge believes that liberals are “equally to blame” for what he calls, in his new c...

Episode 2033: Batya Ungar-Sargon on how American elites have betrayed the country's working men and women

15 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Behind all the partisan hysteria, a dramatic political realignment is taking place in America. As SECOND CLASS author Batya Ungar-Sargon told me, the ...

Episode 2032: Natalie Foster on how the arc of the 21st century American moral universe is bending toward justice

14 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Finally some good news for progressive Americans. According to Natalie Foster, whose new book The Guarantee is out on April 23, Americans are about to...

Episode 2031: New books from Salman Rushdie, Erik Larsen, Amor Towles, Mohamed Amer Meziane, Patric Gagne & Leif Enger

13 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I do enjoy our regular new books show with Bethanne Patrick, the astonishingly widely read book critic of Los Angeles Times. For April, she recommends...

Episode 2030: KEEN OF AMERICA featuring Sara Paretsky

12 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

So what does it mean to be an American? Previous guests on KEEN ON AMERICA like Arlie Russell Hochschild and Thelton Henderson told me that they learn...

Episode 2029: How to House America?

11 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How to deal the American crisis of homelessness? Late last year, Kevin Adler, the San Francisco based homeless activist and author of When We Walk By,...

Episode 2028: KEEN ON AMERICA featuring Thelton Henderson

10 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Few Americans of any color or creed have had a legal career as historically rich or significant as Thelton Henderson. One of the earliest African-Amer...

Episode 2027: Marc Hauser on giving children second chances to overcome trauma and lead happy lives

09 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone deserves a second chance. The former Harvard professor of psychology Marc D Hauser has had a controversial academic career, having been inves...

Episode 2026: Dr Damon Tweedy on today's struggle to center psychiatry and mental healthcare into the mainstream of the medical community

08 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

According to Dr Damon Tweedy there a connection between the historic struggle for civil rights and today’s struggle for more mainstream mental healt...

Episode 2025: On the eve of the eclipse, Christopher Cokinos illuminates the sun and moon's history and their future

07 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, on the eve of the total lunar eclipse of the sun, the media is full of practical guides about how to tilt our heads at this once-in-a-lifetime ...

Episode 2024: Sheryl Kaskowitz on how FDR and his New Deal team saved America from the Great Depression - one folk song at a time

06 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this KEEN ON show, the music historian Sheryl Kaskowitz, author of A CHANCE TO HARMONIZE, narrates how FDR and his team of New Dealers saved Americ...

Episode 2023: How the AI "bubble" isn't really a bubble and why Keith Teare might be emigrating to China

05 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Is there such a thing as an economic bubble? Not according to That Was The Week author Keith Teare who argues that all bubbles reflect innovation and ...

Episode 2022: Henk de Berg on the many similarities tying Donald Trump with Adolf Hitler

04 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Is Trump really like Hitler? Last month, we did a show with the Hitler scholar, Peter Range, who argued that the Adolf Hitler of 1924 had much in comm...

Episode 2021: Norman Ohler on Nazi Germany, the CIA, and the Dawn of the Psychedelic Age

03 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In TRIPPED, his intriguing new history of drugs and postwar America, the German writer Norman Ohler makes LSD both a symbol and a metaphor for the his...

Episode 2020: KEEN ON AMERICA featuring Arlie Russell Hochschild

02 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How to put America back together? Few people have thought more about this Humpty Dumpty style challenge than Arlie Russell Hochschild, author of the 2...

Episode 2019: Ismar Volic explains how mathematics can save American democracy from the Trump/Biden gerontocratic duopoly

01 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Like all immigrants who fled to the U.S. to escape civil war, Ismar Volic has a deep personal appreciation for American democracy. And Volic - a Bosni...

Episode 2018: Becca Rothfeld's celebration of mess, appetite and sexual desire

01 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Becca Rothfeld’s much heralded new collection, All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess, challenges the American Puritan values of self-...

Episode 2017: David Masciotra finds the pathologies of American Totalitarianism in Exurbia

31 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

According to David Masciotra, the real battleground for the future of American democracy lies in that no-man’s land between suburban and rural Ameri...

Episode 2016: Stefan Simchowitz on why he may be the most loathed man in the contemporary art world

31 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Daily Mail called him the “Sith Lord” of the art world, the New York Times annointed him as the art world’s Patron Satan”, while the Wall...

Episode 2015: Is Apple about to pull out of the European Union and did Sam Bankman-Fried really deserve his 25 year jail sentence?

29 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Is it really conceivable that Apple will withdraw its products and services from the entire European Union? What might sound absurd is actually concei...

Episode 2014: B. Janet Hibbs explains why not-so-young Americans are retreating home to their parents and the other certainties of their former childhood

29 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On the front page of her website, the family therapist and psychologist B. Janet Hibbs quotes Kierkegaard’s observation that “we live our lives fo...

Episode 2013: Candida Moss on how Christian slaves helped write the Bible and why this will outrage some American evangelicals

28 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In his 1887 polemic, On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche suggested that the idea of good and evil, of morality itself, might have been born by sla...

Episode 2012: David Donnelly on the catastrophic costs to humanity of Silicon Valley surveillance capitalism

27 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Surveillance capitalism is ubiquitous. If we’re not being watched by Google or Facebook, then we are watching movies warning about how these digital...

Episode 2011: KEEN ON AMERICA featuring Peter Wehner

25 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Few conservatives or Christians have stood up to Donald Trump with the coherence and bravery of The New York Times and Atlantic columnist Peter Wehner...

Episode 2010: How everyone, even business school professors, are joining the anti big tech church

25 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Do we really need more jeremiads exposing the Randian greed of Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg & Travis Kalanick? Rob Lalka’s THE VENTURE ALCHEMISTS is...

Episode 2009: Keith Teare on why Big Tech might be getting even BIGGER

24 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

All the tech news this week seems to be about how Big Tech is, for better or worse, getting BIGGER. There’s the Department of Justice anti-trust cas...

Episode 2008: Chris French on the Science of Weird S**t

23 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As we approach Easter and Passover, it’s worth noting that our mainstream monotheistic creeds are based on a belief in what Professor Chris French, ...

Episode 2007: Bethanne Patrick's guide to a literary March madness

22 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We would all be way more ignorant without omnivorous book critic and regular KEEN ON guest Bethanne Patrick. This month she recommends six new books b...

Episode 2006: Everything you wanted to know about sex but didn't have the imagination to ask

21 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Warning: this is an adults-only show. David Baker, the Australian based author of The Shortest History of Sex, takes us through two billion years of s...

Episode 2005: Why the Pete Rose story is as much about the rise and fall of America as it is about the fate of Charlie Hustle

20 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Even if it isn’t quite Spring, the professional baseball season begins today in, of all places, Korea. And to celebrate this premature rite, I spoke...

EPISODE 2004: Jacob Heilbrunn on conservative America's 100 year romance with foreign dictators like Kaiser Wilhelm II, Mussolini, Pinochet, Orban and Putin

19 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book AMERICA LAST: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators, Jacob Heilbrunn argues that American conservatives have alway...

Episode 2003: Martin Sixsmith on Vladimir Putin and the return of history to Russia and the West

18 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Did history ever go away? For the former BBC Russia correspondent, Martin Sixsmith, there was a few euphoric years, in the early 1990’s, when histor...

Episode 2002: Elaine Lin Hering gives voice to the "Unsilent Generation"

17 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Once-upon-a-time, there was the “Silent Generation” - the self-sacrificing generation of WW2 vets who won the war and built America into a Cold Wa...

Episode 2001: KEEN ON AMERICA featuring Adam Hochschild

16 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

To celebrate over two thousand episodes of the show, we are launching KEEN ON AMERICA - a special series of personal conversations with prominent Amer...

Episode 2000: Keith Teare on why the Congressional attempt to ban TikTok is astonishingly dumb

15 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I usually hate agreeing with Keith Teare, my libertarian-conservative friend from Palo Alto/Yorkshire. But on TikTok, we are in violent agreement. As ...

Episode 1999: Sasha Issenberg offers a playbook for winning elections in our disinformation age

14 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The most troubling casualty of today’s social media age is our shared sense of reality. Perceptions of reality still exist, but they often come pack...

Episode 1998: Emily Raboteau on how to mother against "the apocalypse"

13 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Last week, the LA Times book critic Bethanne Patrick came on the show to discuss new books about life in our age of the polycrisis. One of these was E...

Episode 1997: Benjamin Shestakofsky reveals the inegalitarianism at the heart of the startup economy

12 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

University of Pennsylvania sociologist Benjamin Shestakofksy spent a couple of years as the fly on the wall in an anonymous tech startup. His new book...

Episode 1996: Frank H. McCourt, Jr explains why rebuilding the Internet is THE most important issue of our time

11 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Think you know Frank H. McCourt, Jr, the illustrious real estate media magnate, former chairman/owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers & current owner of Ma...

Episode 1995: Sam Daley-Harris explains how to reclaim American democracy

10 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If, as Sam Daley-Harris believes, “cynicism is obedience”, then active citizenship is a form of rebellion. That seems to be the argument in both t...

Episode 1994: Why 1924 was the year that Adolf Hitler became "Hitler" and what it teaches us about the crisis of American democracy in 2024

09 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I talk to Peter Ross Range, Hitler historian and author of 1924 & UNFATHOMABLE ASCENT, about Adolf Hitler as the "gold standard" of authoritarianism a...

Episode 1993: Keith Teare on the Hobbesian war of all-against-all inside & outside Silicon Valley

08 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The US Congress just announced war on TikTok; while, in Europe, the EU declared war this week on Spotify and Apple. Elon Musk and Sam Altman have decl...

Episode 1992: Andrew Cockburn explains how Dr. Strangelove has always been a feature - rather than a bug - of Silicon Valley

07 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The cover story of Harper’s this month is piece by Andrew Cockburn, their Washington DC editor, entitled “The Pentagon’s Silicon Valley Problem”...

Episode 1991: Bethanne Patrick on how to disrupt the disruption of our revolutionary age

06 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In episode 1991, Andrew talks to the LA Times book critic, Bethanne Patrick, about six intriguing new non-fiction books about our contemporary age of ...

Episode 1990: James Kaplan on Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans and the making of the most miraculous jazz record of all time

06 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

“Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself,” Miles Davis once remarked. Most artists, of course, never ascend to the heights ...

Epiosode 1989: Travis Rieder explains why an ethically pure life is neither moral nor practical in our complex world

04 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One of the more annoying characteristics of our coastal elites is their incessant virtue signaling. Every life choice - from drinking from plastic wat...

Episode 1988: How the Patty Hearst saga captured the paranoia of early 70's America

03 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

You couldn’t make up the kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army in February 1974. The granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst...

EPISODE 1977: Max Stearns on why a "Parliamentary America" is the best fix for the country's broken democratic system

02 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In episode 1977, Andrew talks to Maxwell L. Stearns, author of PARLIAMENTARY AMERICA, about the need for a parliamentary system to repair the broken d...

Episode 1976: Keith Teare on the DEI Elephant in every Silicon Valley Boardroom

01 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In our weekly KEEN ON wrap of tech news with Keith Teare, author of the THAT WAS THE WEEK newletter, Keith explains why the Google Gemini fiasco is a ...

Episode 1975: Ira Shapiro explains how Mitch McConnell Betrayed America

29 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In episode 1975, Andrew talks to Ira Shapiro, author of THE BETRAYAL, about what he sees as Mitch McConnell's grave and unprecedented crime against Am...

EPISODE 1974: Getting beyond Oppenheimer

28 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In episode 1974, Andrew talks to Sarah Scoles, author of COUNTDOWN, about the chillingly blinding future of nuclear weapons.Sarah Scoles is a Colorado...

A Belated February Reading List

27 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

EPISODE 1973: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to the LA Times book critic, Bethanne Patrick, about six intriguing new fiction and non-fiction books...