The Case for Cultural Appropriation: Martin Puchner on how culture is simultaneously owned by nobody and by all of us

EPISODE 1372: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to the Harvard professor and author of CULTURE Martin Puchner about how culture - from cave art to K-Pop - is the syncretic story of all of us. Nobody has the "right" to it, he says. And we all "own" it.

​Martin Puchner, the Byron and Anita Wien Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, is a prize-winning author, educator, public speaker, and institution builder in the arts and humanities. His writings range from philosophy and theater to world literature and culture and have been translated into many languages. Through his best-selling Norton Anthology of World Literature and his HarvardX MOOC Masterpieces of World Literature, he has brought four thousand years of literature to audiences across the globe. His new book, Culture: The Story of Us, tells a global history of culture that raises fundamental questions about how culture works, what good are the arts, and how different cultures should relate to one another. 

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

​

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe