Keen On
2,157 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 month ago - ★★★★ - 72 ratingsNobody asks sharper or more impertinent questions than Andrew Keen. In KEEN ON, Andrew cross-examines the world’s smartest people on politics, economics, history, the environment, and tech. If you want to make sense of our complex world, check out the daily questions and the answers on KEEN ON.
Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best-known technology and politics broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running show How To Fix Democracy and the author of four critically acclaimed books about the future, including the international bestselling CULT OF THE AMATEUR.
Keen On is free to listen to and will remain so. If you want to stay up-to-date on new episodes and support the show please subscribe to Andrew Keen’s Substack. Paid subscribers will soon be able to access exclusive content from our new series Keen On America.
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Episodes
Carol Anderson: How to Ensure a Free and Fair Presidential Election
July 28, 2020 11:50 - 1 hourCarol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Emory University. She is the author of White Rage, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, Bourgeois Radicals, and Eyes off the Prize. She was named a Guggenheim Fellow for Constitutional Studies. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Robert Rotberg: How Do We Fight Corruption?
July 27, 2020 10:56 - 21 minutesRobert I. Rotberg is President Emeritus of the World Peace Foundation, Founding Director of Harvard Kennedy School's Program on Intrastate Conflict, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of The Corruption Cure: How Citizens and Leaders Can Combat Graft, Things Come Together: Africans Achieving Greatness in the Twenty-First Century, Transformative Political Leadership, and numerous other books. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Brad Feld: How Venture Capitalists Can Reshape Communities For the Better
July 23, 2020 04:00 - 31 minutesBrad Feld has been an early-stage investor and entrepreneur for over twenty years. Prior to cofounding Foundry Group--a Boulder, Colorado-based early-stage venture capital fund that invests in information technology companies all over the United States--he cofounded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures, a company that helped launch and operate software companies. Feld is also a cofounder of TechStars and has been active with several nonprofit organizations. He...
Martin Gurri: The Crisis of Authority in the 21st Century
July 22, 2020 04:00 - 29 minutesMartin Gurri is a former CIA analyst specializing in the relationship of politics and global media. His book, The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium, first published in 2014 and updated in 2018, has been praised for foreshadowing the political shocks of Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump. Mr. Gurri has published numerous articles, studies, and opinion pieces on geopolitical- and media-related topics. His blog, The Fifth Wave, pursues the themes first elabo...
Anne Trubek: Why Should You Write a Book During a Pandemic?
July 21, 2020 04:00 - 27 minutesAnne Trubek is the founder and director of Belt Publishing. She is the editor of the forthcoming Voices From the Rust Belt (Picador 2018), the author of The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting and A Skeptic’s Guide to Writers’ Houses. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired, MIT Technology Review, Smithsonian, Slate, Salon, Belt and numerous other publications. A tenured professor at Oberlin College from 1997-2015, she currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. ...
Joel Kotkin: A Warning to the Global Middle Class
July 20, 2020 04:00 - 27 minutesJoel Kotkin is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange, California and Executive Director of the Houston-based Urban Reform Institute. He is Senior Fellow for Heartland Forward and Executive Editor of the widely read website NewGeography.com. He is a regular contributor to City Journal, Daily Beast, Quillette and Real Clear Politics. As director of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman, he was the lead author of a major study on housing, and recent...
Ron Brownstein: Is Trump's America Slipping Away?
July 20, 2020 01:05 - 28 minutesRonald Brownstein is political director of Atlantic Media, publishers of the Atlantic, National Journal, and the Hotline, among other publications. He was national political correspondent and columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He has been named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of both the 1996 and 2004 presidential elections. The author or editor of five previous books, he appears regularly as an analyst for CNN and other television programs, such as Meet the Press and Cha...
Nicholson Baker: What Secrets Do the Freedom of Information Act Hold?
July 16, 2020 04:00 - 30 minutesNicholson Baker is the author of ten novels and six works of nonfiction, including The Anthologist, The Mezzanine, and Human Smoke. He has won a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Hermann Hesse Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Maine with his wife, Margaret Brentano. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Eric Lonergan: Is 2020 the Year of Anger?
July 15, 2020 12:33 - 28 minutesEric Lonergan is a macro hedge fund manager, economist, and writer. His most recent book is Money (2nd ed) published by Routledge. He has written for Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times, and The Economist. He also advises governments and policymakers. He first advocated expanding the tools of central banks to including cash transfers to households in the Financial Times in 2002. In December 2008, he advocated the policy as the most efficient way out of recession post-financial crisis, contri...
Osita Nwanevu Calls Out Yesterday's Liberals
July 15, 2020 02:31 - 24 minutesOsita Nwanevu joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2018, covering politics and policy in Washington, D.C. He is a former staff writer at Slate and a former editor-in-chief of the South Side Weekly, a Chicago alternative weekly. His writing has also appeared in Harper’s, the Chicago Reader, and In These Times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Camila Russo on Ethereum and the Future of the Internet
July 13, 2020 20:43 - 25 minutesCamila Russo is one of the most prolific and dedicated cryptocurrency journalists, speaking frequently at industry events and appearing on major media outlets. She is the founder of crypto content platform The Defiant, and was a Bloomberg News reporter for eight years covering emerging markets, European stocks and digital assets from Buenos Aires, Madrid and New York City. She also worked at Chile’s largest national newspaper, El Mercurio and was awarded first place for online journalism by B...
Mario Alejandro Ariza: Is Miami's Future Apocalyptic?
July 12, 2020 04:00 - 24 minutesMario Alejandro Ariza grew up in Santo Domingo and Miami, where he lives currently. His work has appeared in outlets such as The Atlantic, The Believer, the Miami New Times, and The New Tropic. He is featured in Sinking Cities, a PBS documentary series on the threat of climate change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Cass Sunstein: How Can Social Change Happen?
July 11, 2020 04:00 - 26 minutesCass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School, where he is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy. He is by far the most cited law professor in the United States. From 2009 to 2012 he served in the Obama administration as Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He has testified before congressional committees, appeared on national television and radio shows, been involved in ...
Cass Sunstein: Why Right Now Is Not a Hinge in History
July 11, 2020 04:00 - 26 minutesCass R. Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School, where he is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy. He is by far the most cited law professor in the United States. From 2009 to 2012 he served in the Obama administration as Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He has testified before congressional committees, appeared on national television and radio shows, been involved in ...
Brian Dumaine: What Does Bezonomics Tell Us About the Future of Labor?
July 10, 2020 04:00 - 27 minutesBrian Dumaine is an award-winning journalist and a contributing editor at Fortune magazine. In addition to Bezonomics his works include The Plot to Save the Planet, and, with three coauthors, Go Long: Why Long-Term Thinking Is Your Best Short-Term Strategy. He and his wife live in New York. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Yascha Mounk: Why We Need to Defend a Free Society
July 09, 2020 04:00 - 25 minutesYascha Mounk is a writer, academic and public speaker known for his work on the rise of populism and the crisis of liberal democracy. Yascha has written three books: Stranger in My Own Country - A Jewish Family in Modern Germany, a memoir about Germany’s fraught attempts to deal with its past; The Age of Responsibility – Luck, Choice and the Welfare State, which argues that a growing obsession with the concept of individual responsibility has transformed western welfare states; and The People...
Eric Holthaus: What Will the World Look Like in 2030?
July 08, 2020 04:00 - 28 minutesEric Holthaus is the leading journalist on all things weather and climate change. He has written regularly for the Wall Street Journal, Slate, Grist, and The Correspondent, where he currently covers our interconnected relationship with the climate. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Kevin Roose: Is 2020 the End of the Wild, Wild Web?
July 07, 2020 04:00 - 26 minutesKevin Roose is an award-winning technology columnist for The New York Times. His column, "The Shift," examines the intersection of tech, business, and culture. He is the New York Times bestselling author of three books, Futureproof, Young Money, and The Unlikely Disciple. He is a regular guest on “The Daily,” and appears regularly on leading TV and radio shows. He writes and speaks regularly on many topics, including automation and A.I., social media, disinformation and cybersecurity, and dig...
Bret Stephens: The Threat to Liberty From the Left
July 06, 2020 04:00 - 27 minutesBret L. Stephens joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2017. His column appears Thursday and Saturday. Mr. Stephens came to The Times after a long career with The Wall Street Journal, where he was most recently deputy editorial page editor and, for 11 years, a foreign affairs columnist. Before that, he was editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post. At The Post he oversaw the paper's news, editorial and digital operations and its international editions, and also wrote a weekly c...
Mehrsa Baradaran: Who's Actually Independent in 2020?
July 04, 2020 15:38 - 25 minutesMehrsa Baradaran is J. Alton Hosch Associate Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law and author of How the Other Half Banks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Pavlina R. Tcherneva: The Case for the Job Guarantee
July 02, 2020 04:00 - 24 minutesPavlina R. Tcherneva is Associate Professor at Bard College and Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Kevin Delaney: How to Save Democracy From Capitalism
July 01, 2020 04:00 - 24 minutesKevin J. Delaney is a senior editor for The New York Times. Previously, he co-founded Quartz and served as co-CEO and editor in chief from 2012 to 2019. Prior to Quartz, Kevin was a reporter at the Wall Street Journal for a decade, with that time split between Paris and San Francisco. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
David Shimer on the Ideology of Putinism
June 30, 2020 16:34 - 25 minutesDavid Shimer is pursuing a doctorate in international relations at the University of Oxford as a Marshall Scholar. His reporting and analysis have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Foreign Affairs. He is an associate fellow of Davenport College at Yale University, where he received his undergraduate and master's degrees in history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Margaret O'Mara: Has Silicon Valley Ruined America?
June 29, 2020 04:00 - 29 minutesMargaret O’Mara is the Howard & Frances Keller Endowed Professor of History at the University of Washington and a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. She writes and teaches about the growth of the high-tech economy, the history of U.S. politics, and the connections between the two. O'Mara is the author of Cities of Knowledge (Princeton, 2005), Pivotal Tuesdays (Penn Press, 2015), and The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America (Penguin Press, 2019). She is a coauthor,...
Ben Ehrenreich: A Road Map for the End of Time
June 26, 2020 04:00 - 24 minutesBen Ehrenreich writes about climate change for The Nation. His work has appeared in Harper's Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, the London Review of Books, and Los Angeles magazine. In 2011, he was awarded a National Magazine Award. His last book, The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine, based on his reporting from the West Bank, was one of The Guardian's Best Books of 2016. He is also the author of two novels, Ether and The Suitors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit mega...
Elif Shafak: Why Is Nationalism Not a Force For Good?
June 25, 2020 23:46 - 26 minutesElif Shafak is the acclaimed author of fifteen books, ten of which are novels, including The Bastard of Istanbul and The Forty Rules of Love. Her work has been translated into more than forty languages and she regularly contributes to the New York Times, the Guardian, and Politico. Shafak has been longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and twice for the Women's Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. She has held various teaching positions in the U...
Steven Weber: How Do We Make Things Better?
June 24, 2020 04:00 - 26 minutesteven Weber works at the intersection of technology markets, intellectual property regimes, and international politics. His research, teaching, and advisory work focus on the political economy of knowledge intensive industries, with special attention to health care, information technology, software, and global political economy issues relating to competitiveness. He is also a frequent contributor to scholarly and public debates on international politics and US foreign policy. One of the world...
Ezekiel Emanuel: Which Country Has the World's Best Health Care?
June 24, 2020 01:18 - 25 minutesEzekiel J. Emanuel is Vice Provost for Global Initiatives and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. From January 2009 to January 2011, he served as special advisor for health policy to the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Since 1997 he was chair of the Department of Bioethics at The Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health and a breast oncologist. Dr. Emanuel received his M.D. from Harvard Medical...
Evy Poumpouras: How Do We Prepare For the Unexpected?
June 22, 2020 04:00 - 23 minutesEvy Poumpouras is a former Secret Service Special Agent and on-air national TV contributor who frequently appears on NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and HLN. She also costars on Bravo's Spy Games, an espionage-inspired reality competition. Evy holds a Master of Arts in Forensic Psychology from Argosy University and a second master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She is also the recipient of the United States Secret Service Medal of Valor for her heroism on 9/11 and has been ...
David Kirkpatrick: Is Facebook Increasingly the Platform for the Right-Wing?
June 20, 2020 04:00 - 26 minutesDavid Kirkpatrick is the author of the definitive book on Facebook, The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That is Connecting the World, published by Simon & Schuster. He was for many years senior editor for internet and technology at Fortune, which he joined in 1983. He covered the computer and technology industry as well as the impact of the Internet on business and society. Today he is founder and CEO of Techonomy Media, a conference and publishing company focused on the cent...
Matt Alt: How Japan Has Conquered the World
June 19, 2020 04:00 - 25 minutesMatt Alt is a Tokyo-based writer, translator, and reporter. He is a contributor to The New Yorker online, CNN, Wired, Slate, The Independent, Newsweek Japan, The Japan Times, and many other publications, and is the co-author of six illustrated books about Japan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Maëlle Gavet: Why Is Big Tech Both the Problem and the Solution?
June 18, 2020 04:00 - 24 minutesMaëlle Gavet is on the board of Edenred SA. In the past she occupied the position of Chief Executive Officer at Ozon Holdings Ltd. and Chief Executive Officer of Internet Solutions LLC (a subsidiary of Ozon Holdings Ltd.), Chief Operating Officer for Urban Compass, Inc., Executive Vice President-Global Operations at Booking Holdings, Inc., Partner at The Boston Consulting Group, Inc. and Chief Operating Officer at Compass Group USA, Inc. Ms. Gavet received an undergraduate degree from Sorbonn...
Ian Bogost: How Can the Tech Industry Change for the Better?
June 17, 2020 04:00 - 26 minutesIan Bogost is the Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in media studies and a professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, a founding partner at Persuasive Games, and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. Bogost lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Peter Wehner: “I Am Critical of Trump Because I Am a Conservative”
June 16, 2020 22:23 - 27 minutesPeter Wehner is a New York Times contributing Op-Ed writer covering American politics and conservative thought and a popular media commentator on politics. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and veteran of three White House administrations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jennifer Mercieca: Is Donald Trump a Demagogue?
June 15, 2020 04:00 - 25 minutesJENNIFER MERCIECA is associate professor in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University. She is the author of Founding Fictions and coeditor of The Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations: Establishing the Obama Presidency. She frequently appears as an expert commentator and consultant for national and international media outlets Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Scott Santens: Is This the Moment When Universal Basic Income Becomes a Reality?
June 14, 2020 04:00 - 22 minutesScott Santens is a founding member of the Economic Security Project, an adviser to the Universal Income Project, a founding committee member of Basic Income Action, committee member of the US Basic Income Guarantee Network, and founder of the BIG Patreon Creator. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Robin Hauser: How Do We Address Bias Now?
June 13, 2020 20:43 - 25 minutesRobin Hauser is the director and producer of cause-based documentary films at Finish Line Features, LLC and Unleashed Productions, Inc. As a businesswoman, longtime professional photographer, and social entrepreneur, Robin brings her leadership skills, creative eye and passion to her documentary film projects. Her artistic vision and experience in the business world afford her a unique perspective on what it takes to motivate an audience. Robin’s most recent award-winning film, CODE: Debuggi...
Geoff Dyer: What Hasn't He Written Yet?
June 12, 2020 20:06 - 30 minutesGeoff 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 National Book Critics Circle Award in 2012 for Otherwise Known as the Human Condition. He lives in Los Angeles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Maya Alexandri: What Is It Like to Be an EMT on the Front Lines?
June 11, 2020 04:00 - 32 minutesMaya Alexandri is a novelist, lawyer, certified EMT, medical school student, and 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army. Maya's collection of short stories, The Plague Cycle, was published by Spuyten Duyvil in May 2018. She is also the author of the novel, The Celebration Husband (TSL Publications 2015). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Franklin Foer: Is the Trump Regime Crumbling?
June 10, 2020 22:12 - 25 minutesFranklin Foer is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He is the author of How Soccer Explains the World, which has been translated into twenty-seven languages, and is a winner of a National Jewish Book Award. For seven years, he edited The New Republic magazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Héctor Tobar: What Will 2020 Mean For Us When We Look Back at the Protests?
June 09, 2020 04:00 - 25 minutesHéctor Tobar is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a novelist. He is the author of Translation Nation, The Tattooed Soldier, and Deep Down Dark, filmed as the major motion picture The 33. The son of Guatemalan immigrants, he is a native of the city of Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and three children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Laura Lexx: Is There Anything to Laugh About Right Now?
June 09, 2020 00:41 - 22 minutesLaura Lexx is an award-winning comedian and writer. She recently came to the public’s attention with her fictional Twitter thread about being married to Jurgen Klopp which went viral and was retweeted and liked by Seth Meyers, Gary Lineker, Marian Keyes, Billy Bragg and Kathy Burke. She was also featured in The Times, The Telegraph, the Guardian and the Evening Standard. Laura’s first book, Klopp Actually: (Imaginary) Life with Football’s Most Sensible Heartthrob, will be published on 3rd Sep...
Matthew B. Crawford: Driving Is Humanism
June 08, 2020 00:11 - 26 minutesMatthew 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 University of Chicago, specializing in ancient political thought; he majored in physics as an undergraduate at UC Santa Barbara. Crawford has been working on cars since the age of fifteen and currently drives a 1970 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. Why We Drive is his latest book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Federico Finchelstein: What Kinds of Lies Are Trump Articulating?
June 06, 2020 04:00 - 26 minutesFederico 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 several books, including From Fascism to Populism in History, Transatlantic Fascism, and The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War. His books have been translated into many languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, and Italian. He contributes to major American, European, and Latin American media, including the New York Times, the Washington ...
John Freeman: The Language Wars of the Revolution
June 05, 2020 04:00 - 23 minutesJohn 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 as Tales of Two Americas, an anthology of new writing about inequality in the U.S. today. Maps, his debut collection of poems, was published in 2017. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, andThe New York Times. The former editor of Granta and one-time president of the ...
Casey Schwartz: What Becomes of Attention in the Age of the Pandemic?
June 04, 2020 04:00 - 25 minutesCasey Schwartz is the author of Attention: A Love Story and In the Mind Fields: Exploring the New Science of Neuropsychoanalysis. She contributes regularly to The New York Times and lives in New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Barton Gellman: The History of Edward Snowden and the Current Issues of Individual Privacy
June 03, 2020 04:00 - 26 minutesBarton Gellman is a Pulitzer Prize and Emmy Award-winning journalist. Since 2013 he has been a senior fellow at the Century Foundation. During 21 years at the Washington Post he served tours as legal, military, diplomatic, and foreign correspondent. He has taught courses at Princeton on nonfiction writing, investigative reporting and national security secrecy. His bestselling Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a New York Times Best Book of 2008. Le...
Frank Smyth: On the Persistent Myths of the NRA and the Potential for Pandemic Violence
June 02, 2020 04:00 - 27 minutesFrank Smyth is an independent, award-winning investigative journalist specializing in armed conflicts, organized crime and human rights overseas, and on the gun movement and its influence at home. He is a former arms trafficking investigator for Human Rights Watch breaking the role of France in arming Rwanda before its genocide. Smyth is a global authority on journalist security and press freedom having testified to Congress and member states of several multilateral organizations. Learn more ...
Barbara Freese: On Corporate Denial in the Age of the Pandemic
June 01, 2020 04:00 - 24 minutesBarbara Freese is the author of Coal: A Human History, a New York Times Notable Book. She is an environmental attorney and a former Minnesota assistant attorney general. Her interest in corporate denial was sparked by cross-examining coal industry witnesses disputing the science of climate change. She lives in St. Paul. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Zachary D. Carter on John Maynard Keynes and the Need for Deficit Spending
May 31, 2020 04:00 - 26 minutesZachary 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 news and news radio, and his written work has also appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, and The American Prospect, among other outlets. His story, "Swiped: Banks, Merchants and Why Washington Doesn't Work for You" was included in the Columbia Journalism Review's compilation Best Business Writing. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Learn more abo...