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Young and Profiting with Hala Taha (Entrepreneurship, Sales, Marketing)


1 Mel Robbins: The Let Them Theory, Build a Business and Life on Your Terms | Human Behavior | E329 1:16:55
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On her son’s prom night, Mel Robbins fussed over details that didn’t matter. Her daughter grabbed her arm and said, “Let them. Let them run in the rain. Let them eat where they want. Let them.” Those two simple words hit Mel like a ton of bricks and completely changed how she thinks about control. In this episode, Mel shares some of the pivotal moments that shaped her career, her innovative strategies for overcoming adversity, and how the Let Them Theory can help you navigate business challenges, strengthen relationships, and unlock your true power. In this episode, Hala and Mel will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (02:57) The Power of Action (04:22) Mel's Unforgettable TED Talk Debut (07:00) The 5 Second Rule (07:52) Building Unshakable Confidence (12:04) Turning Adversity into Strength (22:00) The Power of Showing Up for Others (30:40) Why Details Matter in Business (42:32) Understanding the Let Them Theory (51:14) The Let Them Theory in Business Mel Robbins is a motivational speaker, the host of The Mel Robbins Podcast, and a bestselling author of several influential books, including her latest, The Let Them Theory. Known for her groundbreaking 5 Second Rule, she has helped millions of people take action and transform their lives. With 30 million views, her TEDx talk made her a recognized voice in behavior change. Mel is also the CEO of 143 Studios, a female-driven media company creating award-winning content for top brands like LinkedIn and Audible. She is a Forbes 50 Over 50 Honoree and one of USA Today’s Top 5 Mindset Coaches. Resources Mentioned: Mel’s Books: The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can't Stop Talking About : https://amzn.to/4h6quLh The 5 Second Rule: Transform your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage : https://amzn.to/3WdAgTX Sponsored By: OpenPhone - Get 20% off 6 months at https://www.openphone.com/PROFITING Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://www.youngandprofiting.co/shopify Airbnb - Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at https://www.airbnb.com/host Rocket Money - Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to https://www.rocketmoney.com/profiting Indeed - Get a $75 job credit at indeed.com/profiting Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services : yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new All Show Keywords: Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, mental health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth mindset. Career & Entrepreneurship Career, Success, Entrepreneurship, Productivity, Careers, Startup, Entrepreneurs, Business Ideas, Growth Hacks, Career Development, Money Management, Opportunities, Professionals, Workplace, Career podcast, Entrepreneurship podcast…
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Content provided by Andrew Keen. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Andrew Keen or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.
Nobody 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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Content provided by Andrew Keen. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Andrew Keen or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.
Nobody 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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1 Episode 2487: Keach Hagey on Sam Altman's Superpower 1:01:25
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Keach Hagey ’s new biography of OpenAI's Sam Altman is entitled The Optimist . But it could alternatively be called The Salesman . The Wall Street Journal reporter describes Altman as an exceptional salesman whose superpower is convincing (ie: selling) others of his vision. This was as true, she notes, in Altman’s founding of OpenAI with Elon Musk, their eventual split, and the company's successful pivot to language models. Hagey details the dramatic firing and rehiring of Altman in 2023, attributing it to tensions between AI safety advocates and commercial interests. She reveals Altman's personal ownership of OpenAI's startup fund despite public claims to the contrary, and discusses his ongoing challenge of fixing the company's seemingly irresolvable nonprofit/for-profit structure. 5 Key Takeaways * Sam Altman's greatest skill is his persuasive ability - he can "sell ice to people in northern climates" and convince investors and talent to join his vision, which was crucial for OpenAI's success. * OpenAI was founded to counter AI risks but ironically accelerated AI development - starting an "arms race" after ChatGPT's release despite their charter explicitly stating they wanted to avoid such a race. * The 2023 firing of Altman involved tensions between the "effective altruism" safety-focused faction and Altman's more commercially-oriented approach, with the board believing they saw "a pattern of deliberate deception." * Altman personally owned OpenAI's startup fund despite publicly claiming he had no equity in OpenAI , which was a significant factor in the board's distrust leading to his firing. * Despite regaining his position, Altman still faces challenges converting OpenAI's unusual structure into a more traditional for-profit entity to secure investment, with negotiations proving difficult after the leadership crisis. Keach Hagey is a reporter at The Wall Street Journal , where she focuses on the intersection of media and technology. She was part of the team that broke the Facebook Files , a series that won a George Polk Award for Business Reporting, a Gerald Loeb Award for Beat Reporting and a Deadline Award for public service. Her investigation into the inner workings of Google’s advertising-technology business won recognition from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (Sabew). Previously, she covered the television industry for the Journal , reporting on large media companies such as 21st Century Fox, Time Warner and Viacom. She led a team that won a Sabew award for coverage of the power struggle inside Viacom. She is the author of The King of Content: Sumner Redstone’s Battle for Viacom, CBS and Everlasting Control of His Media Empire , published by HarperCollins, and The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI and the Race to Invent the Future , published by W.W. Norton & Company. Before joining the Journal , Keach covered media for Politico , The National in Abu Dhabi, CBS News and the Village Voice . She has a bachelor’s and a master’s in English literature from Stanford University. She lives in Irvington, N.Y., with her husband, three daughters and dog. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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…

1 Episode 2486: Bethanne Patrick on how our Facebook generation has gotten the Gatsby we deserve 38:24
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According to the LA Times book critic Bethanne Patrick , every generation gets the Gatsby it deserves. And our generation, the social media generation, has gotten it with Careless People , by the Sarah Wynne Williams, Facebook's former global policy director, which draws obvious parallels between Facebook and The Great Gatsby . Williams explicitly compares Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to Fitzgerald’s lazily destructive Tom and Daisy Buchanan. She describes how the company prioritized business growth over ethical concerns, focusing on particularly disgraceful incidents in Myanmar and Brazil. And she reveals Sandberg's extravagant lifestyle ($13,000 on lingerie) and Zuckerberg's awkward interactions with world leaders. Patrick suggests the now best-selling book serves as a cautionary tale about powerful tech companies that "will do whatever it takes to get what they want." 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 in the Los Angeles Times as well as in The Washington Post, NPR Books, and Literary Hub. She sits on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and has served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. She is the host of the Missing Pages podcast. 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…

1 Episode 2485: Paul Rice on why Tariffs are dumb 40:26
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It might be Liberation Day today, but according to Paul Rice , founder of US Fair Trade and author of Every Purchase Matters , Trump’s tariffs are dumb. Rice firmly distances Fair Trade from Trump's controversial trade policies, calling them "backward" and "bad for American business." He explains how Fair Trade - which has expanded beyond coffee to include 40 products, from produce to furniture - certifies products through rigorous standards ensuring workers receive fair wages and environmental protections. Every purchase does indeed matter . And, in contrast with Trump’s short sighted tariffs, Rice’s Fair Trade movement is worth celebrating today. Five Key Takeaways * Fair Trade is fundamentally different from Trump's tariff policies - Rice strongly distinguishes between Trump's "big stick diplomacy" approach to trade and Fair Trade's focus on equitable market transactions that benefit workers and the environment. * Fair Trade certification involves rigorous standards - Products earn certification through a 200-point checklist covering social, labor, and environmental criteria, with independent annual audits ensuring compliance. * Sustainable products don't necessarily cost more - Rice challenges the "fallacy" that ethical products must be more expensive, citing companies like NatureSuite that have adopted Fair Trade standards without raising consumer prices. * The Fair Trade movement is expanding rapidly - What began with coffee has grown to encompass approximately 40 product categories including tea, produce, apparel, furniture, and even cosmetics, with fresh produce being the fastest-growing segment (32% growth last year). * Ethical consumption is a form of everyday activism - Rice promotes the idea that Every Purchase Matters , suggesting consumers can "vote for change" through their purchasing decisions rather than waiting for political elections. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Paul Rice is a pioneer in the global Fair Trade and sustainability movements. Raised with a deep sense of compassion for the poor, Paul has spent 40 years fighting poverty and environmental destruction. The quintessential social entrepreneur, this passion led him to develop innovative models that harness the power of consumers and business to improve people’s lives and protect the planet. Paul launched Fair Trade USA (formerly known as TransFair USA) in late 1998 in a one-room warehouse in downtown Oakland, California. Under his leadership, Fair Trade USA became the leading certifier of Fair Trade products in North America, enlisting the support of over 1,700 major brands and retailers who sell everything from coffee and chocolate to apparel and seafood. By 2024, the organization and its partners had generated over $1.2 billion in cumulative financial impact for over 1 million farmers, workers and their families in 70 countries worldwide. Before founding Fair Trade USA, Paul worked with family farmers for 11 years in the highlands of Nicaragua, where he founded and led the country’s first Fair Trade organic coffee export cooperative. This deep, firsthand experience with the transformative impact of Fair Trade in the lives of farmers and their communities ultimately inspired him to return to the United States with the dream of mainstreaming the movement in this country. Paul has been named Ethical Corporation’s 2019 Business Leader of the Year and has been recognized four times as Social Capitalist of the Year by Fast Company magazine, which dubbed him a “rebel in the boardroom.” He is also a recipient of the prestigious Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, the World Economic Forum’s Social Entrepreneur of the Year, and the Ashoka Fellowship. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum, Clinton Global Initiative, Skoll World Forum, Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit, TEDx, Consumer Goods Forum, and numerous universities and conferences around the world. Paul is regarded as one of today’s leading visionaries and practitioners for sustainable sourcing and conscious capitalism. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Thanks for reading Keen On America! This post is public so feel free to share it. 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…

1 Episode 2484: David Masciotra on how every day has become April Fools Day in Trumpian America 40:58
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Happy April Fools, everyone! Although, according to cultural critic David Masciotra every day in Trump 2.0 America is now April Fool's Day. KEEN ON AMERICA regular Masciotra argues that the new Trump's administration represents a "bipartisan phantasm" featuring absurdly unqualified and ignorant figures from both right (Hegseth & Vance) and left (RFK Jr. & Tulsi Gabbard). Masciotra explores how the destruction of media gatekeepers has allowed fantasy to dominate reality - creating what he dubs, crediting Kurt Anderson, Trump’s Fantasyland America . Thanks for reading Keen On America! This post is public so feel free to share it. Five KEEN ON AMERICA Takeaways from this Conversation with David Masciotra * America as "Fantasyland" - Masciotra view current American politics as increasingly absurd, with Trump's administration embodying a "fantasyland" where truth and reality are secondary to spectacle. He argues this stems from a longer American tradition of accommodating unfactual, anti scientific beliefs. * Bipartisan Delusion - While fantastical thinking may be more prevalent on the right, Masciotra identifies figures like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard as examples of how the left also contributes to this phenomenon, describing this collective idiocy as a "bipartisan phantasm." * Media Gatekeepers - The conversation highlights how the demolition of traditional media gatekeepers has allowed crazy fringe ideas to gain mainstream traction, with Masciotra confessing that his youthful opposition to “elite” gatekeepers was misguided. * Reality vs. Fantasy - I expresses more faith that reality (such as the economic consequences of tariffs) will eventually overcome fantasy. But Masciotra is more pessimistic, citing examples of people maintaining delusions that do them great personal harm. * Democratic Strategy - We discuss whether Democrats need to incorporate more "fantasy" and humor in their approach, with Masciotra suggesting Democrats need to balance factual standards with more imagination, spontaneity, and willingness to be confrontational. David Masciotra is the author of six books, including Exurbia Now: The Battleground of American Democracy and I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters . He has written for Salon , the Washington Monthly , and many other publications, on politics, music, and literature. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…

1 Episode 2483: Peter Wehner on the ethical darkness that has fallen upon America 53:13
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This is an important interview. I’ve always thought of the political essayist Peter Wehner as representing the conscience of conservative, religious America. Wehner, who writes both for the Atlantic and the New York Times , has been offering a moral critique of Trump’s MAGA movement since 2015. And now that many of his direst warnings are being realized, his voice is amongst the most important in America. In this conversation, Wehner, a religious conservative who worked in several Republican administrations, reiterates his moral critique of Trump, explaining how revenge has become an obsessive emotion that is corrupting both MAGA leaders and followers. He expresses concern about how Trump's behavior is "emotionally rewiring" otherwise decent people, and contrasts this with a figure like the Czech dissident Vaclav Havel who stood defiantly for truth in the face of petty, revengeful authoritarianism. Five Key Takeaways from the Wehner Interview * Revenge as Trump's driving force - Wehner identifies revenge as Trump's core motivation, describing it as an insatiable appetite that crowds out noble emotions and justifies destructive actions. * Moral corruption spreads - Wehner warns that Trump's behavior is "emotionally rewiring" his supporters, with many now taking pleasure in cruelty and transgression rather than just tolerating it. * Religious hypocrisy - Wehner expresses deep disappointment in white evangelical Christians' embrace of Trump, noting the contradiction between their professed faith values and their celebration of Trump's cruelty. * Truth-telling as resistance - Inspired by dissidents like Vaclav Havel, Wehner emphasizes that speaking truth is essential resistance to authoritarianism, even when institutions and leaders are capitulating. * Institutional courage matters - Wehner contrasts organizations and leaders who stand firm (like The Atlantic) with those making "deals with the devil" (like The Washington Post), highlighting the importance of courage during this "stress test" for democracy. Peter Wehner, a Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum, is a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times and a contributing writer for The Atlantic , two of the most prestigious media journals in the world. He writes on politics and political ideas, on faith and culture, on foreign policy, sports and friendships. Mr. Wehner served in three presidential administrations, including as deputy director of presidential speechwriting for President George W. Bush. Later, he served as the director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives. Mr. Wehner, a graduate of the University of Washington, is editor or author of six books, including The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump , which The New York Times called “a model of conscientious political engagements.” Married and the father of three, he lives in McLean, Virginia. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…

1 Episode 2482: Is AI really about to change the publishing industry? 44:45
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That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare believes that the publishing industry is about to be dramatically swept away by AI. I’m not sure. Here, for example, is Anthropic ‘s (Claude) 100 word summary of this week’s KEEN ON AMERICA conversation with Keith: “The conversation between Andrew Keen and Keith Teare discusses OpenAI's new image generation tool that can now integrate text with images—a capability Keith considers revolutionary for publishing and graphic design. Andrew remains skeptical about its creative value. They debate whether this technology threatens graphic designers' jobs, with Keith arguing it will transform publishing workflows. They also discuss Google's experiment showing European users don't miss news content, Nick Denton's views on China, Trump's tariff policies, and Elon Musk merging X with his AI company. Keith highlights how AI is becoming integrated into content creation and publishing.” This sounds to me as if it was written by a12 year-old. Certainly not the kind of automated intelligence to keep a publisher up at night. However, if I ask Claude for five takeaways about our conversation this week, I get a much smarter response: Five Key Takeaways from the Conversation with Keith: * OpenAI's new image generation tool can now integrate text with images—a capability Keith views as revolutionary for publishing and graphic design, while Andrew remains skeptical about its creative value. * There's debate about AI's impact on creative professions—Keith believes tools like OpenAI's new image generator will transform graphic design workflows, while Andrew argues that human creativity remains essential. * Google's experiment revealed that removing European news content had negligible impact on user engagement, challenging assumptions about news content's value. * Elon Musk is merging X (formerly Twitter) with his AI company XAI, which Keith views as a smart financial move that could create a viable competitor to OpenAI. * Trump's tariff policies, particularly on vehicles, reflect a commitment to using trade barriers to encourage domestic manufacturing, signaling a broader trend toward economic nationalism. Smarter for sure. Maybe Keith is right. Perhaps traditional publishing companies like Adobe really are about to swept away by the AI revolution. 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…

1 Episode 2481: Jonathan Rauch on The Resistance to Trump 2.0 35:17
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Has Signalgate triggered a credible resistance movement to Trump 2.0? Brookings scholar and Atlantic columnist Jonathan Rauch isn’t particularly optimistic. He discusses the emerging resistance from law firms, media, and some religious groups, while expressing concern about Trump potential defiance of Supreme Court orders. Rauch observes that the opposition to Trump’s authoritarianism remains fragmented, but believes that eventually counter-organization will develop, though he remains uncertain whether it will happen quickly enough to be effective. Five Key Takeaways from the Rauch Interview * Patrimonial Governance: Trump's administration operates on what Rauch describes as a patrimonial model where loyalty to Trump is paramount, with officials trying to "work toward the Führer" by anticipating his desires rather than awaiting orders. * Institutional Breakdown: Rauch believes the U.S. has moved from a three-branch to effectively a two-branch government, with Congress largely absent as a check on executive power. * Fragmented Resistance: Opposition to Trump remains disorganized, with Rauch noting that resistance is forming but suffering from a collective action problem where institutions (law firms, universities, think tanks) are being picked off individually. * Supreme Court Concerns: Rauch predicts Trump may openly defy a Supreme Court order in his second term, which would represent an unprecedented constitutional crisis. * Religious Politics: Despite writing a book on Christian politics, Rauch sees no cracks in evangelical support for Trump, though he does believe some religious groups might eventually respond to extreme measures like deportations or humanitarian crises. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow in the Brookings Institute’s Governance Studies program and the author of eight books and many articles on public policy, culture, and government. He is a contributing writer of The Atlantic and recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. His many Brookings publications include the 2021 book “The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth”, as well as the 2015 ebook “Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy.” Other books include “The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better after 50” (2018) and “Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America” (2004). He has also authored research on political parties, marijuana legalization, LGBT rights and religious liberty, and more. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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…

1 Episode 2480: Dr Andy Lazris on how Big Pharma controls the American healthcare system 42:38
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This isn’t exactly the radical message one would expect from a primary physician from Columbia, Maryland. But according to Dr Andy Lazris , co-author of A Return to Healing , Big Pharma wields an iron grip on the American healthcare system. And it’s only by aggressively challenging the control of the pharmaceutical industry, Lazris says, that we can begin to reform the system. Lazris discusses how pharmaceutical companies heavily influence healthcare through funding medical organizations, research, and federal agencies like the CDC and FDA. He advocates for a return to patient-centered medicine with longer appointment times and less emphasis on unnecessary tests and medications. He suggests three core reforms: removing pharmaceutical influence from federal agencies, changing Medicare reimbursement to favor primary care over procedures, and increasing Medicare funding for primary care residency programs. Interestingly, Lazris views RFK Jr.'s health agency cuts as chaotic, but potentially beneficial. Five Key Takeaways from Andy Lazris's Interview * Pharmaceutical Industry Influence : The pharmaceutical industry has excessive influence over healthcare, including federal agencies (CDC, FDA), medical associations, academic research, and treatment protocols, prioritizing profit over patient wellbeing. * Primary Care Crisis : Primary care physicians are a "dying breed" despite their importance, as they face burnout from administrative burdens, quality metrics, protocol constraints, and insufficient time with patients. * Protocol-Driven Medicine : Doctors are increasingly forced to follow standardized protocols and quality indicators rather than providing individualized care, with financial penalties for not adhering to these guidelines. * Patient-Centered Reform : Lazris advocates for a return to healing through longer patient visits (40 minutes), focusing on lifestyle factors like diet and exercise (duh), and reducing unnecessary testing and medication. * Actionable Reforms : Lazris proposes three immediate reforms: eliminating pharmaceutical influence in federal agencies, restructuring Medicare reimbursement to favor primary care over procedures, and increasing Medicare funding for primary care residency programs. Dr. Andy Lazris is a physician Board Certified in Internal Medicine. He has practiced both primary care Internal Medicine and Geriatrics for the past 30 years. In addition to Internal Medicine board certification, he has a Certified Medical Director (CMD) degree and is the director of several long term care facilities in Howard County and beyond. He also is a certified wound specialist physician with a CWSP degree. Dr. Lazris is a Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University. He received a full merit scholarship to Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and completed his Internal Medicine training at University of Virginia Hospital. In 2021 and 2022 Dr. Lazris received the prestigious Top-Doc recognition in Geriatrics for the Baltimore region. In 2022 he was named one of America’s most honored doctors. He has received numerous accolades and awards for his practice of medicine, his writing, and his work to reform health care. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…

1 Episode 2479: Brian Goldstone on the 4 million invisible homeless workers in America today 41:03
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Amidst all the chaos and hysteria of Trump 2.0, some things in America never change. As the Atlanta based journalist Brian Goldstone notes in There Is No Place For Us, America’s “invisible” working homeless population have been mostly ignored by both Democratic and Republican administrations. Goldstone reveals how approximately 4 million Americans who work full-time jobs cannot today afford housing, with many living in extended-stay hotels, cars, or doubled-up with others. He highlights that 93% of homeless families in Atlanta are Black, and argues that these working homeless are victims of both failed economic policies and a lack of tenant protections. Goldstone criticizes both political parties for failing to address this crisis and calls for treating housing as a fundamental right rather than a commodity. Five Key Takeaways from this Goldstone Interview * Working Homelessness Crisis : Approximately 4 million Americans experience homelessness despite holding jobs, forming an "invisible" crisis where families live in extended-stay hotels, cars, or doubled-up with others. * Racial Disparity : In Atlanta, 93% of homeless families are Black, revealing significant racial disparities in housing insecurity, despite the city's reputation as a "Black Mecca." * Exploitative Housing Systems : Extended-stay hotels function as expensive, unregulated homeless shelters where families pay significantly more ($17,000 for eight months in one case) than they would for apartments they can't access due to credit barriers. * Bipartisan Failure : Both Republican and Democratic administrations have failed to address the root causes of housing insecurity, with Goldstone describing it as a "bipartisan abandonment of working poor people." * Housing as Commodity : The fundamental problem is treating housing as an investment vehicle or commodity rather than a basic human necessity, allowing it to be "auctioned off to the highest bidder." Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Brian Goldstone is a journalist whose longform reporting and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine , The New Republic , The California Sunday Magazine , and Jacobin , among other publications. He has a PhD in anthropology from Duke University and was a Mellon Research Fellow at Columbia University. In 2021, he was a National Fellow at New America. He lives in Atlanta with his family. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 child 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…

1 Episode 2478: Parag Khanna on the Countries Best Positioned to Win the 21st Century 48:29
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Which countries are best positioned to thrive in the 21st century? No, it’s not Denmark. Nor China. According to Parag Khanna , the Singapore based geo-strategist, the three countries that top what he calls The Periodic Table of States are Germany, Japan and Switzerland. And the United States of America, Khanna says, going against conventional wisdom, isn’t far behind. Khanna’s analysis describes a "post-Westphalian world" where non-state actors like corporations and diasporas hold significant influence. Khanna challenges the more conventional rankings of countries by incorporating climate resilience, governance quality, and economic stability alongside traditional metrics into his Periodic Table. The 5 KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways from our conversation with Khanna * Traditional power metrics are insufficient for measuring state stability - Khanna's "Periodic Table of States" incorporates factors like climate resilience, governance quality, and institutional effectiveness alongside conventional metrics. * Small states often outperform large powers in stability - Switzerland, Germany, and Japan top the rankings while large nations like India, Brazil, and Russia fall into the second tier. * We live in a "post-Westphalian" world where non-state actors (corporations like Google, diaspora networks, and even organized crime) wield significant power beyond traditional nation-state frameworks. * Migration management varies significantly across governance systems - Khanna notes that non-democratic states like UAE and Singapore have effectively managed high immigration rates while democratic nations have struggled politically with migration issues. * A "neo-Hanseatic league" of small, innovative states (like Estonia, Singapore, and Israel) is emerging as a powerful network outside traditional alliance structures, forming their own connections through academic exchanges, free labor mobility, and economic partnerships. Parag Khanna is Founder & CEO of AlphaGeo, the leading AI-powered geospatial analytics platform. He is the internationally bestselling author of seven books including MOVE: Where People Are Going for a Better Future (2021), preceded by The Future is Asian: Commerce, Conflict & Culture in the 21st Century (2019), as well as a trilogy of books on the future of world order beginning with The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (2008), followed by How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance (2011), and concluding with Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization (2016). He is also the author of Technocracy in America: Rise of the Info-State (2017) and co-author of Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization (2012). Parag was named one of Esquire ’s “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century,” and featured in WIRED magazine’s “Smart List.” He holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, and Bachelors and Masters degrees from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Born in India and raised in the UAE, New York and Germany, he has traveled to more than 150 countries and is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…

1 Episode 2477: How Daniel Oppenheimer Learned That the Problem in his Marriage Was Himself 54:57
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The writer Daniel Oppenheimer and his wife, Jessica, have been going to marriage therapy for many years. But, as he confessed in a recent New York Times magazine piece, he had to go to a superstar councillor to finally recognize that the biggest problem with his marriage was himself. Oppenheimer explains how renowned therapist Terry Real helped them, particularly by teaching him about healthy expressions of power. As with yesterday’s show with William Deresiewicz, our conversation expands to broader societal themes about modern masculinity, with Oppenheimer suggesting many men are now struggling with emotional maturity in relationships. Five KEEN ON AMERICA Takeaways with Daniel Oppenheimer * Self-awareness in relationships is crucial - Oppenheimer's confessional essay acknowledges his own reactive behaviors (anger, walking out, saying "f**k you") as primary problems in his marriage. * Men often struggle with emotional maturity - The conversation highlights how many men, including Oppenheimer, have difficulty processing emotions in healthy ways within relationships. * Power dynamics matter in relationships - Therapist Terry Real introduced the concept of "power with" versus "power over," suggesting passive men aren't effective in relationships, but dominating men aren't either. * Cultural representations shape expectations - Oppenheimer discusses how media portrayals of relationships (romantic comedies vs. train wrecks) create unrealistic relationship models without showing the healthy middle ground. * Good relationships require hard work - Despite 18 years of ups and downs, Oppenheimer and his wife chose to stay together, work through their problems, and find a path forward, suggesting commitment and effort are central to lasting relationships. Daniel Oppenheimer is a writer whose features and reviews have been featured in the Washington Post, Texas Monthly, Boston Globe, Slate.com, The Point, Washington Monthly, Guernica, The New Republic, Tablet Magazine, and Salon.com. He received his BA in religious studies from Yale University and an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife Jessica and his kids Jolie, Asa, and Gideon. Exit Right , which was published in February 2016 by Simon & Schuster, was his first book. His other book, Far From Respectable: Dave Hickey and His Art, was published in June 2021 by The University of Texas Press. It was reviewed in a variety of places, but the best review (ie the one that said the nice things most persuasively) was this one by Blake Smith . 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…

1 Episode 2476: William Deresiewicz on American Boys & Men 46:46
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Few observers are more insightful than the critic William Deresiewicz at identifying the changing landscape of American culture. In my latest conversation with Deresiewicz, best known for his book Excellent Sheep , we explore how young American men are increasingly drawn to right-wing politics while feeling socially devalued and alienated by progressive rhetoric. Deresiewicz critiques universities for embracing a censorious left-wing ideology that has become intellectually stagnant. He contrasts this with the creative ferment happening on the right, while at the same time rejecting Trump's authoritarian tactics against universities. Deresiewicz argues that art has lost its cultural significance as consumption has become disposable, and notes that a new counter-elite is attempting to destroy the established liberal elite rather than join its exclusive club. Here are the 5 KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways in our conversation with Deresiewicz: * Young men, particularly those without elite educations, are increasingly drawn to right-wing politics partly due to economic changes, dating app dynamics, and what Deresiewicz perceives as dismissive rhetoric from the progressive left. * Universities have embraced a "far left progressive ideology" that has been repeatedly rejected by voters even in traditionally liberal areas, yet Deresiewicz condemns Trump's authoritarian tactics against these institutions. * The political left has become intellectually stagnant , with creative energy now more visible on the right, while progressive spaces have become censorious and intolerant of debate. * Art has lost its cultural significance as streaming platforms and internet culture have turned creative works into disposable "content," diminishing both audience engagement and artistic seriousness. * A new counter-elite (represented by figures like Trump and Musk) isn't seeking admission to established power structures but rather aims to destroy them entirely, representing a significant shift in elite dynamics. William Deresiewicz is an award-winning essayist and critic, a frequent speaker at colleges, high schools, and other venues, and the author of five books including the New York Times bestseller Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life . His most recent book is The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society . His current project is a historically informed memoir about being Jewish. Bill has published over 300 essays and reviews. He has won the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle’s Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, and a Sydney Award; he is also a three-time National Magazine Award nominee. His work, which has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The London Review of Books , and many other publications, has been translated into 19 languages and included in over 40 college readers and other anthologies. Bill taught English at Yale and Columbia before becoming a full-time writer. He has appeared on The Colbert Report , Here & Now , The New Yorker Radio Hour , and many other outlets and has held visiting positions at Bard, Scripps, and Claremont McKenna Colleges as well as at American Jewish University and the University of San Diego. His previous books are The Death of the Artist: How Creators are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech , A Jane Austen Education , and Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets . Bill is a member of the board (directorial, editorial, or advisory) of The Matthew Strother Center for the Examined Life , a retreat and study program in Catskill, NY; The Metropolitan Review , a new literary journal; Tivnu: Building Justice , which runs a Jewish service-learning gap year and other programs in Portland, OR; the Prohuman Foundation , which promotes the ideals of individual identity and shared humanity; Circle , a group coaching and purpose-finding program for college and graduate students; and Clio’s , a selectively curated, chronologically organized bookstore in Oakland. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…

1 Episode 2475: Gregory Walton on how to achieve BIG change with small acts 43:05
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How to achieve BIG change with small acts? According to the Stanford psychologist Gregory Walton , this requires what, in his new book, he dubs Ordinary Magic . Small psychological interventions , Walton argues, can create significant positive changes. He explains that people often face "agency-depriving questions" that undermine their confidence and sense of belonging. His research shows how addressing these concerns through simple but powerful psychological reframes and supportive interactions can help individuals overcome obstacles. Walton distinguishes his evidence-based approach from typical self-help books and "nudge" tactics, emphasizing that while these interventions may appear simple, they require careful design based on deep understanding of human psychology. Here are the five KEEN ON AMERICA takeaway s from our conversation with Walton: * "Ordinary magic" refers to everyday experiences that help people overcome limiting self-doubts, creating potential for extraordinary positive change. * People often face psychological barriers in the form of questions like "Can I do it?" "Do I belong?" and "Does this matter?" which can become self-fulfilling prophecies. * Unlike behavorial economics style "nudge" approaches that treat people like objects to be manipulated, Walton's interventions aim to help people understand and reframe how they make sense of challenging situations. * Simple psychological reframes (like telling a tired child "when you're tired and keep going, your muscles get stronger") can have profound effects on persistence and achievement. * Creating environments where people feel they belong and are valued can dramatically improve outcomes - as demonstrated by interventions that reduced juvenile recidivism from 69% to 29% by connecting students with supportive teachers. * Greg Walton, PhD , is the co-director of the Dweck-Walton Lab and a professor of psychology at Stanford University. Dr. Walton’s research is supported by many foundations, including Character Lab, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. He has been covered in major media outlets including The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal , NPR, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times . 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…

1 Episode 2474: What Thomas Mann can teach America about how to save its democracy 45:12
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On Thursday, we featured a conversation with Red Scare author Clay Risen about Joe McCarthy, Donald Trump and the Paranoid Style of American History. Today our subject is one of the best known victims of McCarthyism - the German writer Thomas Mann. In His Liberties essay “Mannhood: The Coming Revival of Democracy,” Morten Hoi Jensen writes about how Mann, as an exile from Nazi Germany, toured the United States in the spring of 1938 lecturing in support of New Deal democracy. Thomas Mann’s brave defense of American democracy might now appear as a model for dissenting intellectuals in Trump’s America. Especially since Mann himself became a victim of the anti communist witch hunt after the War. Here are the five KEEN ON takeways in our conversation with Morten Hoi Jensen about Thomas Mann: * Thomas Mann was initially a conservative artist who became an advocate for democracy as he witnessed the rise of fascism in Germany. His political views evolved significantly from his earlier "apolitical" stance to becoming an outspoken critic of Nazism. * Mann's 1938 book and lecture tour "The Coming Victory of Democracy" warned Americans that democracy was vulnerable even in the United States. He saw parallels between pre-Nazi Germany and aspects of American society, which later contributed to his decision to leave the US during the McCarthy era. * Mann became a victim of McCarthyism in the 1950s. He was labeled as a "premature anti-fascist" by American reactionaries despite his prominence as a Nobel Prize-winning author who had been welcomed to America and had even visited the White House during the Roosevelt administration. * Throughout his life and work, Mann engaged in intense self-criticism and introspection about Germany's descent into fascism. Unlike many other political commentators, he looked inward and questioned his own early nationalistic writings, wondering if he had inadvertently contributed to Nazi ideology. * Mann's approach to politics was always that of an artist rather than a political analyst. His views were complex and often contradictory, yet his willingness to engage with difficult political questions through both his fiction (particularly in "Doctor Faustus") and his public speaking made him an important moral voice during a tumultuous period in history. Morten Hoi Jensen is the author of A Difficult Death: The Life and Work of Jens Peter Jacobsen , which was published by Yale University Press in 2017 with a foreword by James Wood. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, Liberties: A Journal of Culture and Politics, The Literary Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books , The Point , The New Republic , The Wall Street Journal , and Commonweal, among other publications. He is represented by Max Moorhead at Massie & McQuilkin. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…

1 Episode 2473: Is Europe about to become the World's 3rd Tech Superpower? 37:47
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Is Europe about to become the World's Third Tech Superpower? In our regular That Was The Week round-up of tech news, Keith Teare says NO!, arguing that the EU’s increasingly aggressive regulation of Apple and Google will relegate Europe to increasing irrelevance. But I’m not so sure. Just as Europe is finally establishing its military independence from Washington, so I suspect the same will become eventually true of technology. Sure, Europe will never probably develop big tech companies with the global muscle of Tencent or Google. But, in the long run, as Europe establishes economic and military autonomy from the United States, I expect the appearance of native European tech companies that will, at least, be competitive with Chinese and American corporations. Here are our 5 KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways in this conversation with Keith Teare: * Europe's regulatory approach to tech is viewed skeptically : Keith sees the European Commission's attempts to regulate American tech companies (particularly Apple) as counterproductive, potentially driving innovation away rather than fostering it. We discuss whether Europe's regulatory stance will lead to either excessive red tape or the development of state-subsidized European tech alternatives. * AI continues to advance rapidly : Our conversation repeatedly references how "AI marches on" as an inevitability. We discuss Sam Altman's view that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) will become ubiquitous like electricity or transistors, diffusing into everything and becoming cheap and widely available. * A possible cultural shift in tech and politics : We discuss an article by Jaye Chen about why the political right is winning over STEM graduates. She suggests that progressive movements have positioned tech as problematic while conservative messaging portrays technology as an asset, making it more appealing to STEM grads like Chen. * Tech industry geography is changing : Keith emphasizes that the "center of world innovation has moved to China" and predicts this shift to Asia will be "the story for the next 30 years." We compare this to historical shifts in economic power and debate whether America and Europe are in relative decline. * New AI applications are emerging in various fields : Our conversation highlights several new AI applications, including a podcaster using AI to search his own episodes (Chris Williamson's Modern Wisdom), Mercor (an AI recruitment platform that has scaled rapidly), and Skyreel AI (a text-to-film AI agent that can create realistic videos from text descriptions). Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2472: Clay Risen on Joe McCarthy, Donald Trump and the Paranoid Style of American History 48:17
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American history, Clay Risen reminds us, has an uncanny knack of repeating itself. In Red Scare , his important new book about blacklists, McCarthyism and the making of modern America, Risen suggests that Trump and MAGA have happened before. First as the tragedy of Joe McCarthy then as farcical Donald Trump? Or might today’s latest chapter in the paranoid style of American history actually be its most consequential and thus tragic? Here are the 5 KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways in this conversation with Risen: * Historical Parallels to Today : Risen suggests that there are striking parallels between the McCarthy era and current American politics under Trump, with similar tactics being used to target perceived enemies and "others" within society. The infrastructure created during previous periods of paranoia (like the FBI and certain immigration laws) is being repurposed in the present day. * Bipartisan Nature of the Red Scare : While often associated with Republicans, the Red Scare had bipartisan elements. Risen explains that Democrats like Harry Truman implemented loyalty programs, and figures like JFK positioned themselves carefully regarding anti-communist sentiment. This challenges the notion that such movements are solely partisan. * Targeting Vulnerable Groups : Both historically and today, political movements often target the most vulnerable groups first. During the Red Scare, Risen explains that was suspected communists and homosexuals; today, transgender people face similar targeting as political pawns and scapegoats. * Impact Beyond the Obviously Political : Risen reminds us that the Red Scare affected ordinary Americans across many sectors - teachers, Hollywood professionals, government workers - whose lives were ruined based on rumors, associations, or past affiliations. This led to widespread conformity as people self-censored to avoid scrutiny. * The Role of Institutions as Backstops : Risen is cautiously optimistic about how America’s current paranoid periods might end. He suggests that the judicial system (particularly the Supreme Court) represents the most effective backstop against MAGA excesses, much as the Warren Court eventually helped end McCarthy-era abuses of civil liberties. Clay Risen , a reporter and editor at The New York Times , is the author of Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America . His other recent books include The Impossible Collection of Whiskey (October, 2020) and Single Malt: A Guide to the Whiskies of Scotland (October, 2018). He is also the author of the spirits bestseller American Whiskey, Bourbon & Rye: A Guide to the Nation’s Favorite Spirit , now in its sixth printing with more than 100,000 copies sold. It is widely considered the bible on American whiskey and placed Risen among the leading authorities on the history, business, and diversity of U.S. spirits. Risen has served as a judge on multiple spirit award committees, including the prestigious Ultimate Spirits Challenge. In addition to Red Scare , Risen is the author of The Crowded Hour: Teddy Roosevelt, the Rough Riders and the Dawn of the American Century , a New York Times Notable Book of 2019 and a finalist for the Gilder-Lehrman Prize in Military History; A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination ; and The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act. A graduate of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service and the University of Chicago, Risen grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and two children. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2471: Dan Brooks reveals the MAGA aesthetic 39:11
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What is the MAGA movement’s aesthetic? According to the New York Times ’ Dan Brooks , it’s an aesthetic captured by the generative AI video “ Trump Gaza ”. Childishly absurd, it’s an aesthetic, Brooks suggests, of “bearded belly dancers, an Elon Musk look-alike on the beach and a golden statue of President Trump”. It’s not reality, of course. There are neither bearded belly dancers nor golden statues of Trump in Gaza right now. It doesn’t even resemble actual MAGA America. But as Brooks notes, the MAGA aesthetic - driven by AI generated visuals - is social and cultural “posturing”. It’s the post-ironic irony of social media. Unseriously serious. Designed for Instagram and TikTok. Here are the five KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways in our conversation with Dan Brooks: * The MAGA style employs a unique form of irony - Brooks describes it as "unstable irony" rather than the "stable irony" of traditional satirists like Jonathan Swift or Stephen Colbert. This style mixes sincere statements with exaggerations and jokes in a way that makes it difficult to determine what's meant seriously. * Generative AI has been embraced by MAGA communities - The conversation highlights how conservative online communities have adopted AI technology for creating content (like the Gaza video discussed) at a higher rate than other groups, enabling them to produce visually impressive media quickly that aligns with their messaging style. * The relationship between politics and morality is shifting (duh) - Brooks contrasts his earlier writing about how social media "weaponized morality" with the MAGA approach, which he characterizes as "anti-moral" rather than amoral—a deliberate rejection of or reaction against perceived moralism in American politics. * Politics increasingly operates on "vibes" rather than facts - Brooks suggests that the "fact-based era in politics" may have been an illusion, with voters making decisions based on associations and cultural identity rather than policy specifics or factual information. * Contemporary American culture is saturated in irony - The conversation traces how irony has become embedded in American communication since the mid-90s, when even institutional messaging began adopting an ironic stance. Brooks notes that in current culture, "the worst thing you can be is cringe or overly sincere." Dan Brooks is a contributor to the New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Harper’s, Pitchfork, and other publications. He lives in Montana with his handsome dog. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2470: Andrew Keen on the current state of American journalism 56:04
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Andrew Checchia , a young journalist at NewsJunkie.net, requested an interview with me about the current state of American journalism. So here are my thoughts about the Fourth Estate’s role in democracy, our supposedly dwindling trust in media, the ongoing cult of amateurism in journalism and Trump’s successful merging of news and entertainment. Here are the five KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways from my interview with Checchia: * The Fourth Estate's Role in Democracy * I present journalism not as a formal branch of government but as a consequence of democracy * I believe journalism is necessary for a functioning democracy but I certainly don’t think people can or should be forced to consume news * I defend "elite" journalism, comparing it to other professional fields like medicine or law * Trust in Media * I argue that while trust in journalism has declined, people who pay for subscriptions to The New York Times or Wall Street Journal likely trust those sources * I suggest (duh) the real problem isn't with journalism itself but with broader social, educational and cultural problems * I argue that traditional newspapers provide understood biases, while social media offers no way to determine credibility or truth * Digital Media and Amateurism * I discuss how the internet has disrupted traditional media through Web 2.0 style platforms like Craigslist (which decimated local newspapers) * I’m skeptical about most nonprofit news experiments, believing they only preach to the converted * New platforms like Substack, I argue, tend to create a winner-take-all economy rather than supporting a new middle class of journalists * Politics and Entertainment * I note how politics and entertainment have now totally collapsed together in American culture * I discuss how Trump treated politics like reality television, serializing it for an audience already comfortable with this type of medium * I believe people have become addicted to narrative forms derived from reality television and serialized Netflix style shows * Future Outlook * While careful about making predictions, I suggest the current bizarre political situation cannot continue indefinitely * I express cautious optimism about younger generations, believing they've been unfairly written off and will eventually take power * I note a pathetic, “Schumeresque” gerontocratic quality in American politics that needs complete overhaul Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2469: Daryl Davis on His Life with the Klu Klux Klan 44:51
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The musician and actor Daryl Davis probably knows more about the Klu Klux Klan than any other living African-American. As the author of Klan-Destine Relationships and his latest The Klan Whisperer , Davis has written about not only his infiltration of the Klan but his befriending of regretful Klansmen like Scott Shepherd (My wife, Cassandra Knight, also wrote about her dinner with Shepherd ). Davis’ new book should probably be entitled My Life with the Klan . But as the ideas of the Klan have become more mainstream in the last few years, so the traditional KKK itself seems like a quaint relic of a more innocent past. In the old days, you had to hide under a white sheet to say dumb things about people of other colors or faiths. Now these same dumb assumptions are being openly peddled by powerful media figures and elected politicians. Here are the five KEEN ON AMERICA take-aways from our conversation with Davis: * The power of conversation as a tool against hatred : Davis emphasizes that conversation is "the greatest tool or weapon to dismantle conflict" despite being "the least expensive" and "the most underused." His approach involves engaging directly with KKK members to challenge their beliefs through dialogue rather than confrontation. * People can change their racist beliefs : Davis firmly believes that racist ideologies are learned behaviors that can be unlearned. He makes a distinction between inherent traits (like a leopard's spots) and acquired beliefs, arguing that "what can be learned can be unlearned." He provides concrete examples like Scott Shepard, a former Klansman who completely transformed his worldview. * Understanding racism through personal experience : Davis's background as a diplomat's son who traveled extensively gave him a unique perspective on racism. Having been exposed to diversity from an early age, he was shocked when he first experienced racism at age 10, which led to his lifelong quest to understand and combat prejudice. * Core human values transcend differences : Davis believes that regardless of background, all humans share five core values: wanting to be loved, respected, heard, treated fairly and truthfully, and wanting the same things for their families as others want for theirs. He uses this understanding as a foundation for connecting with people across ideological divides. * The importance of distinguishing between ignorance and stupidity : Davis makes a crucial distinction between people who are ignorant (lacking information) versus stupid (having information but ignoring it). He believes education and exposure can cure ignorance, which is why he focuses on providing information and personal connection to those with racist beliefs. Dr. Daryl Davis is an international recording artist who has performed and toured all 50 States and around the world. He has performed extensively with Chuck Berry, The Legendary Blues Band (formerly The Muddy Waters Blues Band), Elvis Presley’s Jordanaires, and many others. As an actor Daryl received rave reviews for his stage role in The Time Of Your Life , and has done film and television roles including HBO’s acclaimed series The Wire . As a race relations expert Dr. Daryl Davis has received numerous awards and high acclaim for his book Klan-Destine Relationships and his award-winning film documentary Accidental Courtesy . He is the first Black author to write a book on the Ku Klux Klan based upon in-person interviews and personal encounters. His ability to get racists to renounce their ideology has sent Daryl to travel all over the United States and the world to share his methodology. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2468: David Masciotra on Trump's ravenous bigotry toward the trans community 50:48
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Long-time views of the show know that I’ve always been skeptical of equating Trump/MAGA with European fascism. I’ve always thought it historically facile and misleading. But I’m beginning to change my mind. Take, for example, David Masciotra’s thoughts on Trump’s “ravenous bigotry” toward the trans community. As Masciotra warns, this is the kind of organized, willful persecution of powerless minorities that fascist parties openly pursued while in power. Meanwhile, as Masciotra notes, prominent Dems like Gavin Newsom are staging a “shameful retreat” on trans rights and inviting neo-fascists like Steve Bannon onto their podcast shows. And then there’s Schumer. Oy. Here are the five KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways with our conversation with Masciotra * Democrats' retreat on trans rights : Masciotra argues that Democrats, including figures like Gavin Newsom and Rahm Emanuel, are retreating from defending transgender rights after the election loss, which he views as both a moral failure and a strategic mistake. * Targeted anti-trans rhetoric : According to Masciotra, 41% of Trump's campaign ads specifically targeted transgender Americans, demonstrating how the issue has been deliberately weaponized for political purposes despite transgender people making up less than 1% of the population. * Trans rights as the "first course" : Masciotra warns that "bigotry is ravenous," suggesting that abandoning transgender rights opens the door to attacks on other minority groups, comparing it to a restaurant menu where "trans people are the first course." * Democratic leadership criticism : David Masciotra is highly critical of Democratic leadership, particularly Chuck Schumer, whom he describes as "pathetic" and "inert" in his response to Trump's policies, with Masciotra noting a generational divide in the party's approach to resistance. * Authoritarian tactics and erasure : Masciotra discusses concerning developments like the National Park Service removing transgender references from Stonewall Rebellion information, which he characterizes as a "totalitarian termination of knowledge" mirroring authoritarian tactics described in Orwell's 1984. David Masciotra is an author, lecturer, and journalist. He is the author of Exurbia Now: The Battleground of American Democracy (Melville House Publishing, 2024) I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters (I.B. Tauris, 2020), Mellencamp: American Troubadour (University Press of Kentucky), Barack Obama: Invisible Man (Eyewear Publishers, 2017), and Metallica by Metallica , a 33 1/3 book from Bloomsbury Publishers, which has been translated into Chinese and Greek. In 2010, Continuum Books published his first book, Working On a Dream: The Progressive Political Vision of Bruce Springsteen. Masciotra writes regularly for the New Republic, Washington Monthly, Progressive , the Los Angeles Review of Books , CrimeReads , No Depression , and the Daily Ripple . He has also written for Salon, the Daily Beast , CNN, Atlantic , Washington Post , AlterNet , Indianapolis Star , and CounterPunch. Several of his political essays have been translated into Spanish for publication at Korazon de Perro . 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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Will AI kill Apple? That’s the (absurd) question with which Keith Teare and I begin our THAT WAS THE WEEK tech summary. We conclude that their failure to develop an in-house LLM or introduce a timely intelligence application in mobile won’t , of course, destroy Apple. But as Keith and I discuss, the redundancy of its Siri architecture is now forcing Apple to get serious about AI. So should that mean totally scraping Siri? Or acquiring Anthropic or Perplexity? Or does Tim Cook need to be replaced by a more AI friendly CEO ? Sam Altman, perhaps? Here’s our KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways for this week’s conversation with Keith: * Apple's AI Struggles : Apple is facing criticism for its AI implementation, particularly for announcing features at their developer conference that weren't delivered. However, Keith argues this failure may not matter much since consumers can access better AI tools through third-party apps on their iPhones. * The Future of Voice Interfaces : Both hosts suggest that voice and listening capabilities represent a major untapped opportunity in tech. Keith recommends using OpenAI's conversational mode with AirPods for an impressive experience, indicating that voice interfaces could become a primary way we interact with AI. * Perplexity vs. Anthropic Acquisition : There's discussion about whether Apple should acquire an AI company, with Keith suggesting Perplexity (valued at approximately $9-15 billion) would be a better fit than Anthropic because it combines web search with AI capabilities. * Sam Altman and OpenAI Criticism : Keith criticizes Sam Altman for claiming DeepSeek is "state-controlled," suggesting this is a competitive tactic rather than reality. This is notable as Keith has typically been positive about OpenAI. * Future of Coding and App Development : The conversation touches on Cursor (an AI code editor valued at $10 billion despite being less than a year old) and how AI is transforming app development. Keith suggests that in the future, startups may not need to hire engineers if founders learn to use AI coding tools, potentially revolutionizing the startup ecosystem. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2466: Sarah Vowell tells the Untold Story of Public Service 42:26
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So who, exactly is government. It’s the question that Michael Lewis and an all-star team of writers address in a particularly timely new volume of essays. Who is Government? According to the Montana based Sarah Vowell , author of “ The Equalizer ”, an essay in the volume about the National Archives, government enables all American citizens to find stories about themselves. Vowell praises the modesty of most government employees. But she warns, the work of public servants like the National Archives' Pamela Wright is anything but modest and represents the core foundation of American democracy. Vowell’s message is the antidote to the chainsaw. Essential listening in our surreal times. Here are the five Keen On America takeaways in this conversation with Vowell: * The National Archives as a democratic resource : Pamela Wright's work at the National Archives focused on digitizing records (over 300 million so far) to make them accessible to all Americans, regardless of where they live. This democratization of access allows people to bypass intimidating physical buildings and access their history from anywhere. * Public servants are often modest and unsung : Sarah describes how government workers like Wright tend to be modest, team-oriented people who focus on doing their job rather than seeking recognition. This stands in contrast to more visible or self-promoting public figures. * Personal connections to national archives : The conversation reveals how Americans can find their own family stories within government records. Sarah discovered her own family history, including her grandfather's WPA work and connections to the Cherokee Nation's Trail of Tears through archival documents. * Government's impact on opportunity : Sarah emphasizes how government programs like the Higher Education Act of 1965 created opportunities that changed her family's trajectory from poverty to professional careers through access to public education and financial assistance programs. * The interconnectedness of government services and American life : The conversation concludes with Sarah's observation about how government services form an "ecosystem of opportunity" that impacts everything from education to outdoor recreation jobs in Montana, with each part connected to others in ways that aren't always visible but are essential to how society functions. Sarah Vowell is the New York Times bestselling author of seven nonfiction books on American history and culture. By examining the connections between the American past and present, she offers personal, often humorous accounts of American history as well as current events and politics. Her book, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States , explores both the ideas and the battles of the American Revolution, especially the patriot founders' alliance with France as personified by the teenage volunteer in George Washington's army, the Marquis de Lafayette. Vowell’s book, Unfamiliar Fishes is the intriguing history of our 50th state, Hawaii, annexed in 1898. Replete with a cast of beguiling and often tragic characters, including an overthrown Hawaiian queen, whalers, missionaries, sugar barons, Teddy Roosevelt and assorted con men, Unfamiliar Fishes is another history lesson in Americana as only Vowell can tell it – with brainy wit and droll humor. The Wordy Shipmates examines the New England Puritans and their journey to and impact on America. She studies John Winthrop’s 1630 sermon “A Model of Christian Charity” and the bloody story that resulted from American exceptionalism. And she also traces the relationship of Winthrop, Massachusetts’ first governor, and Roger Williams, the Calvinist minister who founded Rhode Island – an unlikely friendship that was emblematic of the polar extremes of the American foundation. Throughout she reveals how American history can show up in the most unexpected places in our modern culture, often in poignant ways. Her book Assassination Vacation is a haunting and surprisingly hilarious road trip to tourist sites devoted to the murders of presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. Vowell examines what these acts of political violence reveal about our national character and our contemporary society. She is also the author of two essay collections, The Partly Cloudy Patriot and Take the Cannoli . Her first book Radio On , is her year-long diary of listening to the radio in 1995. She was guest editor for The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017 . Most recently she contributed an essay for Who Is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service by Michael Lewis (Riverhead, March 18, 2025). Vowell’s thirty years as a journalist and columnist began in the freewheeling atmosphere of the weekly newspapers of the 1990s, including The Village Voice , the Twin Cities’ City Pages and San Francisco Weekly , where she was the pop music columnist. An original contributor to McSweeney’s , she has worked as a columnist for Salon and Time , a reviewer for Spin , a reporter for GQ , and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times , where she covered politics, history, education and life in Montana. She was a contributing editor for the public radio show This American Life from 1996-2008, where she produced numerous commentaries and documentaries and toured the country in many of the program’s live shows. Her notable side projects have included a decade as the founding president of 826NYC , a nonprofit tutoring and writing center for students aged 6-18 in Brooklyn; producing a filmed oral history series commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Montana Constitutional Convention of 1972; and occasional voice acting, including her role as teen superhero Violet Parr in Brad Bird’s Academy Award-winning The Incredibles , and its sequel, Incredibles 2 , from Pixar Animation Studios. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2464: Marc Dunkelman on Why Nothing Works 47:01
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As MAGA continues to vandalize the Federal bureaucracy, some progressives are beginning to publicly acknowledge their role in the historic undermining of the US government. In his provocative new book Why Nothing Works , the self-styled “progressive” Marc Dunkelman argues that it was the left - in their cultural aversion to power over the last half century - who have broken the U.S. government. If progressives want to get something…. anything , in fact, done in America - from building high speed railways to more affordable housing - Dunkelman argues that the Democrats need to once again embrace positive government. Don’t blame Trump for Musk’s chainsaw, Dunkelman tells the Democrats. Blame yourselves. Here are the 5 KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways in this conversation with Dunkelman: * The Progressive Dilemma : Progressivism has two competing impulses that need to be in balance - one that seeks to centralize power to accomplish major projects (the "Hamiltonian" approach), and another that is suspicious of centralized authority and seeks to distribute power (the "Jeffersonian" approach). Since the 1960s, the balance has shifted heavily toward suspicion of power. * Crisis of Effective Governance : The current system has so many checks and constraints that even widely supported public interest projects can't get off the ground. Dunkelman cites the Biden administration's EV charger initiative that produced only 58 chargers from $5 billion in funding due to regulatory barriers and implementation challenges. * Historical Shift in Progressive Attitude : The 1960s-70s marked a turning point when progressive attitudes shifted from trusting centralized authority to deep skepticism. Dunkelman points to figures like Robert Moses (exposed in "The Power Broker") and Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley as embodying a form of centralized power that became viewed as problematic. * Political Consequences : This dysfunction in government has contributed to populist backlash, with voters supporting figures like Trump who promise to take a "sledgehammer" to institutions they see as failing. The inability to deliver visible results has undermined progressive credibility. * Path Forward : Progressives need to develop a new narrative focused on making government work effectively rather than just opposing power. Dunkelman suggests "permitting reform" and similar practical measures need to be central to the progressive agenda, rather than continuing the stale debate about moving left or right. Marc J. Dunkelman is a fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and a former fellow at NYU’s Marron Institute of Urban Management. During more than a decade working in politics, he worked for Democratic members of both the Senate and the House of Representatives and as a senior fellow at the Clinton Foundation. The author of The Vanishing Neighbor, Dunkelman’s work has also appeared in the New York Times , Washington Post , Wall Street Journal, Atlantic , and Politico . He lives in Providence, Rhode Island. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2263: David Enrich on a secret campaign to murder the truth in America 43:03
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The New York Times ’ David Enrich is one of America’s most tenacious investigative journalists. So when he comes out with a book entitled Murder the Truth , we should take note. There’s a campaign, Enrich warns, sometimes secret, sometimes open, to undermine the First Amendment and press freedom, thereby protecting the rich and powerful. Led by Clarence Thomas, Enrich explains, it’s an attempt to call into question the 1964 Supreme Court’s 1964 New York Times vs Sullivan decision on libel. Undermine this critical judgement on press freedom, Enrich warns, and the truth could, indeed, by murdered in the United States. Here are the five key take-aways in our conversation with David Enrich: * New York Times v. Sullivan is a crucial legal precedent for press freedom - This 1964 Supreme Court case established the "actual malice" standard that gives journalists protection when reporting on public figures, allowing them to make good-faith mistakes without facing ruinous litigation. * There's a coordinated effort to weaken press protections - Enrich describes a network of conservative lawyers, activists, judges, and wealthy individuals working to undermine New York Times v. Sullivan, with Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch already expressing interest in reconsidering the precedent. * Legal harassment is already silencing journalism - Even with current protections in place, powerful individuals and organizations are weaponizing defamation lawsuits to intimidate journalists, particularly affecting smaller, independent outlets that lack the resources to fight prolonged legal battles. * Media ownership is responding to political pressure - The conversation touches on how even billionaire media owners like Jeff Bezos (Washington Post) appear to be making editorial decisions based on fears of government retaliation under the Trump administration. * The threat to press freedom is incremental, not sudden - Enrich argues we may be at a pivotal moment where the campaign against press freedoms is moving from rhetoric to tangible action, comparing it to the "frog in boiling water" - a gradual process that may only be recognized in retrospect. David Enrich is the Finance Editor at The New York Times. He previously was an editor and reporter at The Wall Street Journal in New York and London. He has won numerous journalism awards, including the 2016 Gerald Loeb Award for feature writing. David grew up in Lexington, Mass., and graduated from Claremont McKenna College in California. He lives in New York with his wife and two sons. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2262: Jessica Pishko explains how the Democrats Built Trump's Police State 38:58
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Not everyone, especially mainstream Democrats, are going to agree with Jessica Pishko on this one. In Liberties , she argues that it was the Democrats who “built Trump’s army”. It was Joe Biden, she claims, who built up the very law enforcement regime that Trump is now weaponizing. So, in Pishko’s mind, the Democrats have as much responsibility for the Mad Max police state which Trump is now unleashing now on America. Here are the 5 takeaways in our conversation with Pishko: * Democrats invested in police despite lack of support : According to Pishko, Democrats under Biden significantly invested in law enforcement (adding 100,000 police officers), but this did not translate into police support for Democrats. She argues police overwhelmingly supported Trump in both elections despite these investments. * Police unions backed Trump : Police unions, which traditionally didn't endorse presidential candidates, explicitly supported Trump in his campaigns. Pishko finds this paradoxical since Republicans typically don't support unions, while Democrats (like Biden) protected police pensions and increased funding. * "Defund the police" aftermath : Pishko suggests the 2020 protests led to a backlash where police became more aligned with Trump. She argues Biden's attempt to distance himself from "defund the police" by increasing funding didn't win police support but may have alienated progressive supporters. * Reduced oversight under Trump : Pishko claims Trump has removed checks on police power, citing examples of him pardoning convicted police officers and ending Department of Justice investigations into police brutality. She believes oversight will now need to come from local and state levels. * Structural challenges to police reform : Pishko argues that the structure of policing itself resists reform, pointing to examples like the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department where, despite multiple oversight mechanisms, problems persist. She notes that Black officers are leaving the profession, suggesting systemic issues that individual "good officers" cannot overcome. Jessica Pishko is a journalist and lawyer with a JD from Harvard Law School and an MFA from Columbia University. She has been reporting on the criminal legal system for a decade, with a focus on the political power of sheriffs since 2016. In addition to her newsletter Posse Comitatus , her writings have been featured in The New York Times , Politico , Rolling Stone , The Atlantic , The Appeal , Slate , and Democracy Docket . She has been awarded journalism fellowships from the Pulitzer Center and Type Investigations and was a 2022 New America Fellow. A longtime Texas resident, she currently lives with her family in North Carolina. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2261: Thor Hanson on why virtual reality can never replicate the natural world 31:42
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There’s a story today about how a VR headset can make us more empathetic toward nature. But according to the Pacific Northwest based author and biologist Thor Hanson , no digital technology can ever replicate nature. Instead, he argues in his new book Close to Home , we humans are wired, so to speak, to appreciate the natureal world whether its on the Galapagos or in our local park. In fact, he told me in a windswept conversation he recorded outside his home on San Juan island, the wonders of nature are just acute outside our door, even if we live in Los Angeles or New York City. Here are the five KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways in our conversation with Thor Hanson: 1. Nature is accessible everywhere, not just in remote locations. Hanson emphasizes that meaningful connections with nature can be found right outside your door, even in highly urbanized environments like Los Angeles. 2. Local nature connections provide emotional resilience against global environmental challenges. Hanson suggests that forming bonds with nearby natural spaces helps counterbalance feelings of helplessness about larger environmental crises. 3. Scientific evidence confirms nature's positive impact on physical and mental health. Multiple studies show measurable benefits from nature exposure, including lower anxiety, reduced blood pressure, and faster recovery from illness. 4. Children have a natural ability to observe and connect with nature that adults often lose. Kids see more details in nature because they haven't developed the sensory filters that adults use to block out environmental stimuli. 5. Small-scale local conservation efforts can collectively make significant environmental impacts. Hanson shares examples like Switzerland's community pond-building initiative that successfully reversed amphibian population declines across an entire region. Author and biologist Thor Hanson is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Switzer Environmental Fellow, and winner of the John Burroughs Medal. His books include Close to Home , Buzz , The Triumph of Seeds , Feathers , Bartholomew Quill , The Impenetrable Forest , Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid, Star and the Maestro, and more. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2260: Felipe Torres Medina laughs and cries about the American immigration system 45:04
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Here are the 4 KEEN ON AMERICA take-aways in our conversation about the dysfunctional American immigration system with Felipe Torres Medina 1) Background & Immigration Journey * Felipe Torres Medina is a comic writer for "The Stephen Colbert Show" and author of the new book America Let Me In about the US immigration system * Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Medina moved to the US at 21 on a student visa to pursue a master's in screenwriting at Boston University * Medina received an "alien of extraordinary ability" visa (talent visa for artists) after graduation, and eventually got a green card after marrying 2) On the US Immigration System * Medina describes the immigration process as expensive (costing "tens of thousands of dollars" in legal fees) and filled with bureaucratic challenges * He emphasizes that legal immigration requires "tremendous privilege and money" that most people don't have * The book takes an interactive "choose your own path" format to highlight the maze-like nature of the immigration system * He points out that there hasn't been comprehensive immigration reform since the Clinton administration (nearly 30 years ago) 3) Comedy as Commentary * Medina uses humor to process his experiences and create community around shared frustrations * He was inspired by writers like Julio Cortazar, George Saunders, Tina Fey, and Carrie Fisher * The book aims to educate Americans who "have so many opinions about immigration" but "don't know what it entails" * He mentions that making the book interactive and game-like adds "levity" to a tense topic 4) How to Fix the System * While critical of Trump's immigration policies, Medina says the book isn't specifically about Trump but about a "flawed and messy" system created by multiple administrations * He suggests moving US Citizenship and Immigration Services out of the Department of Homeland Security to change the narrative that immigration is a security threat * His proposed reforms include creating better pathways for educated immigrants and hiring more USCIS staff to reduce backlogs FULL TRANSCRIPT * Andrew Keen: Hello everybody. It is Sunday, March the 9th, 2025. Interesting piece in the times. A couple of days ago, The New York Times, that is about the so-called British flame thrower who is a comic best suited to taking on Trump. They're talking about a man called Kumar. Nish Kumar looks very funny, and apparently he's very angry too. I have to admit, I haven't seen him. It's an interesting subject. It suggests that at the moment, even in spite of Trump and outraging many Americans, the state of American humor could be amped up a bit. My guest today is a writer on The Stephen Colbert Show and a comic, or certainly a comic writer in his own right, Philippe Torres Medina. He has a new book out on Tuesday. It's called America Let Me In, and I'm thrilled that he's joining us from Harlem in Manhattan today. Congratulations, Phillip, on the new job. What do you the new book? I was going to say job. That's a Freudian error here. What do you make of the Times's observation that American humor isn't in its best state when it comes to Trump? Felipe Torres Medina: Oh, wow. That's that's an interesting question. First of all, I love Nish Kumar. I think he's a wonderful, wonderful comedian. He's very funny. He has a level of wit and his observations are just wonderful. I hadn't seen this article, but I really appreciate that the times recognized him because he's been working very hard for a lot of years. I think more than American humor not being fit for the moment. I think at least personally for me, a little bit of addressing Trump again began. And addressing Trump in general is, you know, jokes have to be new. And after basically ten years of Donald Trump every day, all the time, it's certainly hard to continue to find new angles. Now, the dysfunction of the administration and perhaps sometimes the cruelty and whatever they're doing does provide you with material. But I think it can cause you as a writer to be like, oh God, here we go again. More Trump stuff. You know, because that's what we're talking about. Andrew Keen: Do you see your book, Philippe, as a Trump book? America? Let me in. It's about immigration. I mean, obviously touches on in many ways on Trump and certainly his hostility to immigration and immigrants. But is it a Trump book, or is it a broader kind of critique or observation about contemporary America? Felipe Torres Medina: Yeah, I never set out to write a book about Trump or a Trump book. My goal is to write a book about the immigration system, because I went through it, and as a comedian, I encountered in it many contradictions and absurdities that just kind of became fodder to me for comedy. So I try to write this book about the system, but the system was caused by many administrations in many parties, you know, now, the current hostility or the current everythingness of immigration, you know, immigration being kind of in the forefront of the national discourse certainly has been aided by Republican policy in the past ten years and by Donald Trump's rhetoric. But that doesn't mean that this is a book about Trump or as a response to Trump. It's actually a book responding to a system that is flawed and messy, but it's the one we have. Andrew Keen: Yeah. You described the book as a love letter to immigrants, but it's not a love letter to the system. Tell me your story. As you say. You went through it so you have firsthand experience. Where were you born? Felipe Torres Medina: So I was born in Colombia. I was born in Bogota, Colombia, which is the capital of Colombia. I lived there most of my life. I moved to United States when I was 21 on a student visa, because I came here to do my masters. I did my master's in screenwriting at Boston University. And after that, you know, I started working here as a comedian, but also as a writer. And I was able to get an alien of extraordinary ability visa, which is a very pretentiously named visa, kind of makes you sound like you're in the X-Men, but it it's just what they call talent visas for artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, educators, whatever. And so I got one of those and then several renewals of those. And then, you know, thanks to my work as a writer, as a comedian, initially as a copywriter in advertising, I was able to I bought I met the love of my life, got married, and then I have a green card and that's why I'm here. Andrew Keen: Yeah. As and quoting here, it sounds rather funny. An alien of extraordinary ability. Do you think your experience is typical? I mean, the even the fact that you came for grad school to to Boston puts you in a, in a kind of intellectual or professional elite. So is your experience in any way typical, do you think? Felipe Torres Medina: I wouldn't say typical. I would say my experience is the experience of many people who come here. And I think it's the experience of the people who are, quote unquote, the immigrants we want. Right. And, you know, if we're going to dive into the rhetoric of the of immigration these days, I came the right way and did everything, quote unquote, the right way. You know, but what this book and also this journey that I took to immigrate here proves is that it's it's only possible with tremendous amount of privilege and tremendous, tremendous amount of money. You know, it's a very expensive process for the majority of people. Andrew Keen: How much did it cost you? Felipe Torres Medina: Oh, I think in total since I started. I mean, when you count the fact that for most, like master's programs, you don't get any sort of financial aid unless you get, like a scholarship from your own country or a sort of like Fulbright or something like that. There's already the cost of a full master's program. Andrew Keen: But then you weren't coming. I mean, you didn't pay for your master's program in order to get immigration papers, you know. Felipe Torres Medina: Of course, that, but I, I had to pay for my master's program to be able to study here. You know, I didn't have I didn't have my any sort of aid. But, you know, discounting that in terms of immigration paperwork, I've spent tens of thousands of dollars because you have to hire immigration lawyers to make sure that everything's fine. And those are quite expensive. Andrew Keen: Was it worth it? Felipe Torres Medina: Well, yeah. You know, I met the love of my life. I live a. Andrew Keen: Very. I mean, there are lots of loves of. You could have met someone else, and that's true. Or you might have even you might have even met her or him at an airport somewhere else while they were on vacation. Felipe Torres Medina: That's that's possible. But yeah, I mean, I live a I live a good life. I do what I wanted to do, you know, I, I took got my master's because I wanted to write comedy professionally and I get to do that. And I do think when I set out to do this, I was like, well, the place with the best film and television industry in the world is and was then and still is the United States. So I was like, well, I have to go there, you know, and I was able to become a part of this industry and to work in this art form. Andrew Keen: You didn't get any job. You You got the combat job? Yes. I believe you drew the the short straw, right? I bet nobody else was right. Just Stephen Colbert. Felipe Torres Medina: Yeah, I'm very lucky. And but again, it's a mix of luck and hard work and all those things. So yeah, I don't I don't regret moving. Andrew Keen: So some people might be watching this maybe some some MAGA people. I'm not sure if MAGA people really watch this, but if they were they might be thinking, well, Philippe Torres Medina, he's a good example. He's the type of person we want. He jumped through many hoops. He's really smart. He's really successful. He brings value to this country. Is now a full time writer on the Colbert's show he came from it came from Latin America. And he's exactly the kind of person we want. And we want a system that's hard, because only guys like him have the intellectual and financial resources to actually get through it. Well, how would you respond to them? Felipe Torres Medina: I would say that I appreciate the compliment, but I wouldn't necessarily say that that's the best way to move forward on immigration now. I will say this book is a humorous take on the whole immigration journey. And so what? Like I tell different stories of different people coming here made up or inspired by real life. And one of the paths that you can take in this book, because this is kind of an interactive choose your own path book, is mine. But I think what this book tries to prove is that even if you do everything right, even if you, you know, have the money, sometimes it's very, very hard. And that, I think, does put us at a disadvantage when it comes to having a workforce that could be productive for the country, especially as birthrates are declining. You know, we are headed toward a but, you know, people have described as a barrel economy. If we don't simply up the population and the people who are upping the population and actually having children are immigrants. Andrew Keen: One other piece of news today, there's obviously a huge amount of news on the immigration front is apparently there's a freeze on funding to help green card holders. You've been through the process. You write about it in the new book. But how much more difficult is it now? Felipe Torres Medina: You mean under the current administration? Yeah. I wouldn't know. I you know, I think that. Andrew Keen: This idea of even freezing green card. Yeah. That holidays, even if you have a green card, you get frozen. Felipe Torres Medina: Yeah, exactly. And I think that that, you know, I think that that's what Trump did in his first term, more or less with legal immigration, was to create roadblocks and freezes and these kinds of things to kind of just like stymie the process and make it slower, make it harder, even for people who, again, are doing everything right to be able to remain in the country. Andrew Keen: And I'm guessing also some of the DOJ's stuff about laying off immigration judges and court stuff, they're taking office to leave. Apparently 100 immigration court staff are retiring. This adds to it as well. Felipe Torres Medina: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, Citizenship and Immigration Services, USCIS is a very particular part of the government because it is one of the few parts of the federal government that funds itself. Again, going back to cost the fees that they make are so big, they make so much money that if there's a government shut down, actually, USCIS does not shut down. It's one of the few parts of the government that didn't need to shut down, because they make so much money out of the immigrants trying to come here. So it's a really, really strange part of the government. It kind of doesn't know where it belongs. So seeing like the the DOJ's cuts that arrive into the and that may be implemented into USCIS. Kind I'm not familiar with any Dodge cuts recently on USCIS, but I suspect that they would be strange because it's a it's a very strange division of the federal government. It's not like the Department of Education or the like the Forestry Service. It's it's it's own kind of like little fiefdom. Andrew Keen: Are you wrote an interesting thing or you were featured recently on Lit Hub, where this show actually used to get distributed about how to write a funny book about American immigration. Of course, it's it's a good question. I mean, it's such a frustrating bureaucratic mess at the best of times. I do write anything funny, Philippe, about it. Felipe Torres Medina: Well, I think the, the to me, the, the finding a format to be able to explore this, this chaotic system. It's so, so complicated. It's like a maze. So to me, having this kind of interactive format allowed me to have some freedom to be like, okay, well, you know, one of the things that they taught me in my comedy education, when I was training at a theater here in New York, the Upright Citizens Brigade is the premise of if this is true, then what else is true? You know, so if this absurd thing is reality, then what? How can you heighten that reality? And for me, you know, the immigration system is so absurd. It's it's so Byzantine and chaotic that I was like, okay, well, I can heighten this to an extra level. And so when I keyed in on, on this format of like allowing the person who's reading it to be the many characters to inhabit the, the immigrants and also to be playing with the book, you know, going out and going to one page, making their own choices. It allowed me to change the tone immediately of the conversation because you say immigration and everyone's like, oh, you know, it gets tense. But if you're saying like, no, no, this is a game, you know, we're playing this game. It's about immigration, but it's a game. All of a sudden there's a levity to it, and then you take the real absurdities and the real chaos of the system and just heighten it, which is basically what you do with comedy at all times. Andrew Keen: Who are the the fathers or perhaps the mothers of this kind of comedy? The person who comes to my mind is is Kafka, who found his own writing very funny. Not, and I'm not sure everyone necessarily agrees. He, of course, wrote extensively about central mid European bureaucracy and its darkness and absurdity. Who's inspired you both as a comic writer and particularly in terms of this book? Felipe Torres Medina: Well, actually, Kafka also has a great book called America. Andrew Keen: Yeah. Which is a wonderful first paragraph about seeing this. Seeing the Statue of Liberty. Felipe Torres Medina: Yes. Which is also kind of about this. But I would say my inspirations comedically are, you know, I don't think I would have written this book without, like, the work of Tina Fey. I think Bossy Pants was a book where I was like, oh, you can be funny in writing. And Carrie Fisher is a big Star Wars nerd, you know, to like great, funny writer writers who are just, like, writing funny things about their lives. But I think the playfulness of it all, actually, I was inspired by this Argentine writer, Julio Cortazar, who wrote a novel that in English just translated as hopscotch. And this novel is a huge, like, structural disrupter, you know, in the like, what we call the Latin American boom of writing in the 60s, 70s and 80s. And he wrote this novel that is like a game of hopscotch. You're jumping from chapter two chapter. He's directing you back and forth. So I read a lot of that. And I, you know, I read that in my youth, and then I read it. I reread it as I was older. And then there are writers like George Saunders, who can be very funny while talking about very sad or very poignant things. And so that was also a big inspiration to me. But, you know, I am a late night writer, so I was interested in actually making it like, ha ha, funny. Not just, you know, sensible chuckle funny, you know, kind of like a very, like, intellectual kind of funny. So I was also inspired by, you know, my job and like Colbert's original character in Colbert's book, America, I am American. So can you the writing of The Onion and, you know, the book, The Daily Show Book America, which is just kind of like an explanation of what the federal government is and what the country is written in the tone of the correspondents or the the writers for The Daily Show back in the original Jon Stewart iteration. So those books kind of like informed me and made me like, realize, oh, I can you can make like a humorous guy that's jokey and funny, but also is actually saying something isn't just like or teaching you something. Because the biggest reason I started writing this book is that Americans don't know their own immigration system, and they have so many opinions about immigration, particularly now, but no one knows what what it entails. You know? And I don't just mean like conservatives, you know, I don't just mean like, oh, MAGA people. Like, I was living in New York in the Obama years or like the late Obama years, and none of my liberal Brooklyn, you know, IPA and iced matcha drinking friends had any idea what I was going through, you know, when I was trying to get my visas. Andrew Keen: The liberals drink IPA. I didn't know that I drink IPA, I mean, I have to change my. Yeah. It's interesting you bring up in the first part of that response, the, the the Argentine novelist. There's something so surreal now about America. An interesting piece in the times about not being able to pin Trump down because he says one thing one day, the next thing the next day, and everyone accepts that these are contradictions. Now, the times describes these contradictions as this ultimate cover. I'm not quite sure why they're a cover. If you say one thing one day, in the next something the opposite the next day. But is there a Latin American quality to this? I mean, there's a whole tradition of Latin American writing observing the, the cruel absurdities of of dictators and wannabe dictators. Felipe Torres Medina: Yeah. I mean, it's it's part of our literary tradition. You know, the dictator novel you have. But again, just as the feast of the goat, and you have Garcia marquez, my my compatriot, you know, like that. Andrew Keen: Was one of my favorite magnificent writing. Felipe Torres Medina: It's it's possibly, I hesitate to say, my favorite writer because it creates ranking, but. Andrew Keen: Well amongst your. Felipe Torres Medina: Favorite, among my favorite writers, 100 Years of Solitude. Obviously that is possibly my favorite novel, but he has also, I believe it's the Autumn of the Patriarch, which is his novel about. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, there is a there is. I wouldn't say it's a South American or Latin American quality to it. I think it's just once you encounter it, it is so absurd that art does have to come out and talk about it, you know, and, you know, you see the in a book like the Autumn of the Patriarch. That is a character full of contradictions. That is a character who, in chapter one, hates a particular figure because they he they think that they're against him and then is becomes friends with them and then hires him to be his personal bodyguard. You know, that is what dictators are, and that is what authoritarians do. It is the cult of the person. It is the whims of the person, and the opinion of the person are the be all and the end all to the point where the nation is. It is at the whims of, of of a a person, of those of those persons contradictions. So I wouldn't say it's necessarily a Latin American nature to this, but I think Latin America, because we experience dictatorship in many times supported or boosted by the United States. Latin Americans were able to find a way to turn this into art. And quite good art is what I would say. Andrew Keen: Yeah, and of course, it's the artists who are best able to respond to this. As you know, it's not just a Latin American thing. The Central Europeans, the Czechs in particular. Yes. Felipe Torres Medina: Milan Kundera. Andrew Keen: Yeah. Written a series of wonderful books about this. But the only way to respond to someone like Trump, for example, who says one thing one day, the next thing the next day when he talks about tariffs, he says, well, I'm going to have 25%. And the next day, oh, I've decided I'm not going to have 25%. Then the following day he's going to change his mind again. The policy people, I'm not very helpful here. We need artists, satirists of one kind or another humorist like yourself to actually respond to this, don't we? Felipe Torres Medina: I think so. I think that that that is what. Helps you? I mean, it's the emperor has no clothes, right? That's how you talk. And it's about all kinds of government, obviously. Autocracy or dictatorship is one thing, but at all in all systems of government, these are powerful people who think they have they know better and who think that they are invincible. And you know what? What satire or humor and art does is just point out and say like, wait, that's weird. That thing they just did is weird. And being able to point that out is, is a talent. But also that's why people respond to it so well. People say like, yeah, that is weird. I also notice that. And so you create community, you create partnership in there. And so all of a sudden you're punching up, which is something you want to do in comedy. You want to make fun of the people who have more power, and you're all punching up and laughing at the same thing, and you're all kind of reminding each other. You're not crazy. This is weird. Andrew Keen: Yeah. I mean, the thing that worries me. I was on Kolber on the Colbert Show a few years ago in the original show. I mean, it's brilliant comic, very funny. But him and Jon Stewart and the others, they've been going so long, and they. I'm not saying they haven't changed their shtick. I mean, writers like you produce very high quality work for them, but it's one of the problems that these guys have been going for a while and America has changed, but perhaps they haven't. Felipe Torres Medina: I mean, it's an interesting thing to bring up, particularly with with Stephen, because his show was completely different. Ten years ago, it was a completely different show. He was doing a character. Yeah, right. And now he's doing a more traditional late night show. I think I think the format of late night is a very interesting beast that somehow has become A political genre. You know, it didn't used to be with Letterman. Didn't you see with Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno? You know, they would dabble in politics. They would talk about politics because it's what people are talking about. But now it's become kind of like this world. It all has to be satire. And there's some there's some great work. And I do think people keep innovating and making, like, new things, even though the shows are about ten years old. You know, you have Last Week Tonight, which my wife writes for, but it's a show that does more like deep dive investigations and stuff like that. So it's more like end of the week, 60 minutes, but with jokes kind of format. But I do think, yeah, maybe like the shows, can the shows in the genre in general, like there's genre I could do with some change and some mixing it up and. Andrew Keen: Well, maybe your friend Kumar could. Felipe Torres Medina: Yeah. Well, what? Let us get. Andrew Keen: A slot to his own late night show. And I wonder also, when it comes to I don't want to obsess over Trump or that course it's hard not to these days, but because he himself is a media star who most people know through his reality television appearance and he still behaves like a reality television star. Does that add another dimension of challenges to the satirical writers like yourself, and comics like or satirical comics like Colbert and Jon Stewart? Felipe Torres Medina: I think it's just a layer of how to interpret him as a person. At least for me, it's like, okay, well, you have to remember that he is a show man, and that's what he's doing. Andrew Keen: Yeah. So they're coming back to your your metaphor of the air and power and not having any clothes on. He kind of, in his own nodding wink way, acknowledges that he's not pretending to wear any clothes. Felipe Torres Medina: Yeah, and, well, sometimes he is and sometimes he isn't. And that is. That's the challenge. And that's why writing jokes about him every day is hard. But, you know, we we. Andrew Keen: And the more I know I watched Saturday Night Live last week that Zelensky thing and it was brilliant. Zelensky and Musk and Trump. But I'm very doubtful it actually impacts in any way on anything. Well, and I. Felipe Torres Medina: Think that that's also a misconception people have about comedy. You know, comedy is there to be funny. You know, comedy isn't there to change your mind if it does that, great. But the number one impetus for For Comedy should be to make you laugh. And so the idea that, like, a sketch show is going to change the nation. I don't know. Those are things that I think are applied on to comedy. They're kind of glob down to comedy. I don't necessarily think that that's what it the, the people making the comedy set out to do so. I think if if it made you laugh and if it works. The comedy has done its job. Comedy, unfortunately, can't change the world, you know. Otherwise, you know, I'm sure there would have been a very. There are many good Romanian comedians who could have done something about it has. Andrew Keen: You know, time to time. I mean, Hava became Czech president for a while. You, you, you know, that you sometimes see laugh, laughter and comedy as a kind of therapy when it comes to some of the stuff you do with Kovat. Are you in in America? Let me in. Are you presenting the experience, the heartbreaking experience? So certainly an enormously frustrating experience of the American immigration system as a kind of therapy, both for people who are experiencing it And outsiders, Americans in general. Felipe Torres Medina: And for myself, I think. Andrew Keen: And of course, yes. So self therapy, so to speak. Felipe Torres Medina: I think so, I mean, it is for me a way to like comedy is a way to process things for me. It comes naturally to me, and it is inopportune at times when dealing with things like grief and things like that. But I mean event, anyone who's gone through grief, I think, can tell you there's one moment when things are going really bad and one of the people grieving with you makes one joke and you all laugh and you're like, this. This somehow fixed for one second. It was great. And then we're back to sadness. So I think comedy, you know, as much as again, I go back to what I said a second ago, it's about making you laugh and that making you laugh can create that partnership, can create that empathy and that that that community therapy, I guess, of people saying like, oh wait, yeah, this is weird, this is strange. And I feel better that someone else recognized it, that someone else saw this. Andrew Keen: It certainly makes you saying, hey, you wrote an interesting piece for The New Yorker this week. In times like these, where you, you write perhaps satirically about what you call good Americans. Is the book written for good or bad Americans or all Americans or no Americans? Who do you want to read this book? Felipe Torres Medina: Oh my God. I want everyone to read it and everyone to buy a copy so that I've got a lot of money. All right. No, I think it's written for most Americans and and immigrants as well. People living here. But I do think, yeah, it's written for everyone. I don't think I wrote it with particular like, kind of group in mind. I think to me, Obviously with my background and my political affiliations, I think liberals will enjoy the book. But I also think, you know, people who are conservative, people who are MAGA, people who don't necessarily agree on my vision of immigration, can learn a lot from the book. And I purposely wrote it so that these people wouldn't necessarily be alienated or dismissed in any way. You know, it's a huge topic, and I think it was more of a like, I know you have an opinion. I'm just showing you some evidence. Make with it what you will, but I'm just showing you some evidence that it might not be as you believe it is, both for liberals and conservatives. You know, wherever you are on the spectrum, liberals think it's super easy. Conservatives that think it's super easy but in a bad way to move here. And I'm here kind of saying like, hey, it's actually this super complicated thing that maybe we should talk about and we should try to reform in some way. Andrew Keen: Yeah. And I think even when it comes to immigration, often people are talking about different things. Conservatives tend to be talking about quote unquote, illegal immigration and progressives talking about something else, too. You deal with people who try to get into America illegally, or is that for you, just a subject that you're not touching in this book? Felipe Torres Medina: I address it very lightly toward the final pages of the book. I first of all, I can, like, claim ownership on all immigrant narratives. And I wrote this about the legal immigration system because it's what I've navigated. Again, I am not an immigration lawyer. I am not an activist. I'm a comedy writer who happened to go through the immigration like system, so I but I did feel like, you know, okay, well, let's talk for a second. You've seen how hard it is because I've shown you all this evidence in the first couple stories in the book. And again, I say in the last pages because because of the interactive nature of the book, this could there is potentially a way for you for this to be the first, one of the first things you read in the book, but to where the last pages of the book, I say, okay, let's talk about you. We've seen how hard it is. Let's talk about the people who do so much to try and come here and who go even harder because they do it in the like, in the unauthorized way, you know, or the people who come here seeking asylum, which is a legal way to come to the United States, but is very difficult. So I do present that, but I do think it is not necessarily the subject of a comedy book, As I said earlier, when you're dealing with comedy, you want to be punching up. You want to be making fun of people in authority figures or in a sort of status position that is above the general population or the the voice of the comic. And with with undocumented immigrants and people trying to come here in irregular ways. It's it's very hard to find the humor there because these people are already suffering very much. And so to me, the line is threading the line of comedy there. It can very quickly turn into bullying or making fun of those people. And I don't want to do that because a lot of people are already doing that, and a lot of people who are already doing that work on this in this administration. So I don't I don't really want to mess with that. Andrew Keen: Philip, I'm not sure if you've got a a Spanish translation of the book. I'm sure there will be one eventually. Felipe Torres Medina: Hopefully. Andrew Keen: If people start reading this in Colombia, where you're from, Bolivia or Argentina, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, they think themselves, this is so hard to get in, even legally. Even if you have money to pay for lawyers, they might think, well, f**k it, I'll just try and get over the border illegally. And do you think in a way, I mean, it's obviously designed as a humor book, but in a way this would encourage any sane person to actually give up. I mean, go try and try and go somewhere else or just stay where you are. Felipe Torres Medina: I think, I think the book has a tone of I'm I'm a pretty optimistic person. So I think the book does have a tone of optimism and love for America. I do love the United States, where I, while presenting it as a difficult thing, I am also saying, like it? It's pretty good. You're going to have a good time if you make it here. So I don't think it will be a deterrent. Whether it's some sort of Trojan horse to create more people, to try and go through the border. I don't know, it'd be pretty funny if a funny book tended ended up doing that, but. Andrew Keen: It'd be great if we just got hold of the book and blamed you for for for all the illegal immigrants. But in all seriousness, it was been a lot of pieces recently about, according to the New York Times, people going silent for fear of retribution. As a comic writer and someone clearly on the left, the progressive in American politics. Do you think that there is a new culture of fear by some of your friends and colleagues in the comedy business? Are they fearing retribution? Trump, of all people, doesn't like to be laughed that some people say that he he only wanted to be president after Obama so brilliantly and comically destroyed him a few years ago. Felipe Torres Medina: I think in comedy, you know, I think people are tired of talking of Trump because, again, as I said, ten years of writing about him. I don't think anyone is necessarily afraid of talking about him or making fun of him. I think that is or his administration. I think that is proven like this past week with explosion of memes, making fun of J.D. Vance, his face, you know, to the point where J.D. Vance has tried to hop on the meme and be like, ha ha! Yes, I enjoy this very much too. Good job members. So like, obviously, first of all, he doesn't like it, but I think everyone is. And I think this is something that America does so well. Americans like to make fun of politicians, period. And even though I think in certain spaces of, you know, politics and activism, there might be fear of retribution that is much more marked. I think the let's make fun of of the Emperor for having no clothes that make fun of them is an instinct that that it's not going away and it won't go away any, anytime soon. Andrew Keen: Philip, finally, you've written a funny book about immigration. But of course, behind all the humor is a seriousness. Lots of jokes. It's a very entertaining, amusing, creative book. But it also, I think, suggests reform. You've given a great deal of thought. You've experienced it yourself. How can America improve its immigration story so that we don't have in the future more satirical books like America Like Me and what are the the reforms, realistically, that can be made that even conservatives might buy into? Felipe Torres Medina: Well, I think one of the biggest things is, if you look at it historically, there hasn't been comprehensive immigration reform since Clinton. Which is ridiculous. You know, we're nearing on 30 years there, and we're. We're basically 30 years since. And, you know, I'm 33, so it's a whole lifetime for a lot of people with no changes to a system, no comprehensive changes to a system. And that just means that, like it is going to become outdated. So obviously it's very hard right now with the tenor, but what we really need is for people to sit down and talk about it as a normal issue. And this is not an invasion. This is not a national emergency. It is simply an issue, an economic issue. And I think one of the biggest things, and one of my personal suggestions is that. The US Citizenship and Immigration Service has always been, as I said, this kind of strange ancillary part of the government. It started as part of the Department of Labor, eventually joining the Department of Justice. Then it goes back to labor. It kind of always bounces around. They don't know where it fits. And in after 911, it became part of the Department of Homeland Security. And I think that creates a an aura around immigration as something that is threatening to homeland security. You know, which is not true. Andrew Keen: Yeah. I see what you're saying. It's become the the sex when it comes to, in the context of Victorian something that we don't talk about, and we use metaphors and similes to, to, to describe. And I take your point on that. But what about some and I take your point on the fact that the system hasn't been reformed since Clinton. But let's end with a couple of final, just Doable reforms, Philippe, that can actually make the experience better. That will improve that. That might be cheaper that the the Doge people might buy into that both left and right will accept and say, oh, that's fair enough. This is one way we can make immigrating to America a better experience. Felipe Torres Medina: I think, rewarding if we're talking about this idea of like, we want the best immigrants, educated people. I think actually rewarding that because the current system does not do that for most people trying to get a work visa. They're subjected to a lottery where the chances are something like 1 in 16 of getting a work visa to be here, and that is really bad for companies in general. It's something that the big tech firms have been lobbying against for years, and because there's no consensus in Congress to actually do something. We have been able to address that. So I think actually rewarding the kind of like higher education, high achievement immigrants. In a way that isn't just like if you have $5 million, you can buy a gold car. Yeah, and. Andrew Keen: That's what Trump promised. Felipe Torres Medina: Right? Actually rewarding it in a way that's like, okay, well, if you have a college degree, maybe you don't just get a one year permit to work here, you know, maybe you can. There is a path for you to if you made your education here, if you start your professional life here, if you are contributing because all these immigrants are paying taxes or contributing, maybe there's a path that isn't as full of trapdoors and pitfalls. I would say that that that's one of the biggest things. And honestly, higher up, like I, I do think maybe this is my progressive side of me, but it's like get more people working in USCIS so that these waits aren't taking forever and getting more immigration judges, you know, hire people who are going to make this system efficient, because that is, I think, unfortunately, what Dodge thinks that the, you know, we're going to slim it down so it doesn't cost that much. Yeah. But if you slam it down, you don't have enough people. And there's a lot of people are still trying to come here and they're still trying to do things. And if you don't have enough people like working those cases, all you're creating is backlogs. Andrew Keen: Yeah. I'm guessing when those transforms the American immigration system through AI, you'll have another opportunity for you to write a book. Yeah. I mean, I let me in an important book, a very funny book, but also a very serious book by one of America's leading young comic writers full time, writing for Stephen Colbert, Philippe Torres Medina. Philippe, congratulations on the book. It's out next week. I think it will become a bestseller. Important book. Very funny too, and we can say the same about you. Thank you so much. Felipe Torres Medina: Thank you so much for having me. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2259: Why AI is about to transform everyone (yes, even you) into a coder 32:59
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We are back to AI (actually it never left us). In this THAT WAS THE WEEK tech show, Keith and Andrew talk about how AI is now enabling anyone - even non-coders - to code. "I was able to do something without having the skill to do it,” Keith confesses about his experience in building an iPhone app for teens. In the same way as Web 2.0 technologies turned all of us into broadcasters, AI makes all of us coders. So the real question is what becomes of professional coders when their skills are accessible to anyone. The Five KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways from today’s show: * AI is enabling coding autonomy : Keith built an app for teens without writing code himself, highlighting how AI is making software development accessible to non-coders. As Keith puts it: "I was able to do something without having the skill to do it." * The future of coding is paradoxical : Rather than the "end of coding," Keith believes we're seeing "the beginning of coding" with potentially "100 to 1 million times more code" being created because it's becoming easier to produce. Similar to how desktop publishing tools didn't end design, but democratized it. * The workplace is evolving toward automation : Keith discusses how the post-COVID move away from traditional offices is the first step toward automated workplaces. He borrows from Dwaresh Patel in exploring what fully automated firms might look like. * Technical skills remain valuable but in new ways : While AI can generate code, understanding technical concepts remains important. Keith's son without coding skills provided valuable product feedback as a "product manager," showing that different skills are becoming complementary to AI capabilities. * AI agents are transforming enterprise software : Aaron Levy's post-of-the-week suggests AI agents will replace traditional enterprise software modules, performing tasks without human intervention while achieving the same goals that previously required clunkier software and human oversight. 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…
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1 Episode 2258: Joyce Chaplin on how Benjamin Franklin warmed up America 46:35
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So what’s the most revolutionary invention in the history of the American Republic? The internet, maybe? Or the electric bulb or the motor car? Perhaps. But according to the Harvard historian Joyce Chaplin , it might be the Franklin Stove, Benjamin Franklin’s innovation which she claims in an eponymous new book , represents an unintentional American revolution. What’s really important about the Franklin Stove, she explains, is that it democratized heating, thereby enabling ordinary Americans to survive the “Little Ice Age” of the late 18th century. In an 21st century America where research into global warming is now under threat, Chaplin’s intriguing The Franklin Stove is a convincing argument for the popular benefits of environmental science. Here the 5 Keen On America takeaways in our conversation with Joyce Chaplin * Franklin as a climate scientist : Chaplin reveals how Benjamin Franklin's work with his stove led him to understand atmospheric convection, which he then applied to explain larger climate systems like storm movements and the Gulf Stream. He essentially became an early climate scientist through his practical inventions. * The Little Ice Age context : Franklin invented his stove during the Little Ice Age (1300-1850), particularly in response to the severe winter of 1740-41. Unlike today's climate crisis, there was virtually no "denialism" about climate change during this period - people openly discussed and sought solutions to the cooling climate. * Franklin's environmental legacy : While Franklin initially created his stove to conserve wood and trees in Pennsylvania, his later models burned coal. This shift toward fossil fuels contributed to what Chaplin calls "an unintended industrial revolution" that ultimately led to our current climate warming crisis. * Franklin's political evolution : Though a monarchist for most of his life, Franklin underwent a radical transformation later in life, becoming head of Pennsylvania's abolition society after having previously owned enslaved people. This challenges the notion that historical figures were simply "products of their time." * Franklin's complex character : Chaplin, who has written extensively on Benjamin Franklin, portrays him as a self-cultivating narcissist who carefully crafted his public image and desperately sought fame from a young age. However, she acknowledges his genuine accomplishments and contributions to science and society, creating a more nuanced view of the founding father. Joyce E. Chaplin is the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History at Harvard University, where she also holds affiliations with the Graduate School of Design and Center for the Environment. She is the author of The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius , among other books, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times , The Washington Post , The Wall Street Journal , and the London Review of Books . She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2257: Kevin Fagan on a San Francisco story of homelessness that will break your heart 56:06
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Award-winning reporter Kevin Fagan is one of San Francisco’s great treasures. In his much acclaimed new book, The Lost and Found , Fagan tells his his two-decade experience reporting about homelessness in San Francisco. He shares the stories of Tyson and Rita, two homeless individuals who he helped reconnect with their families. Tyson, despite having a supportive family, died of a fentanyl overdose, while Rita was rescued by her family and lived 20 more fulfilling years. Fagan, who experienced housing insecurity as a teenager, explains that homelessness stems from systemic poverty issues rather than personal failings. He notes that despite San Francisco's reputation as America’s “homeless central”, 70% of its homeless population lost their homes while already living there. Here are the 5 KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways from our conversation with Fagan: * Personal connection to homelessness shapes Fagan's perspective - his own experience with housing insecurity as a youth gives him unique insight and empathy toward homeless individuals. * Homelessness is not simply a choice - Fagan emphasizes that "no one wants to be homeless" and many fall into homelessness through a combination of trauma, mental illness, addiction, and economic factors. * Family intervention can be transformative - Rita's story demonstrates how family reconnection (which inspired San Francisco's "Homeward Bound" program) can successfully help people exit homelessness. * San Francisco's homeless reputation is somewhat misunderstood - despite being known as "Homeless Central," about 70% of San Francisco's homeless population became homeless while already living in the city. * Solutions require addressing systemic poverty - Fagan argues that homelessness is fundamentally a poverty problem in America, requiring broader economic solutions beyond what individual cities can accomplish alone. Kevin Fagan is a longtime, award-winning reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, specializing in homelessness, enterprise news-feature writing, breaking news and crime. He has ridden with the rails with modern-day hobos, witnessed seven prison executions, written extensively about serial killers including the Unabomber, Doodler and Zodiac, and covered disasters ranging from the Sept. 11 terror attacks at Ground Zero to California’s devastating wildfires. Homelessness remains a core focus of his, close to his heart as a journalist who cares passionately about the human condition. His book on the rescue of two homeless people, “The Lost and The Found,” is available everywhere books are sold. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2256: Meenakshi Ahamed on the meteoric rise of Indians in America 35:20
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What do Fareed Zakaria, Nikki Haley, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Vinod Khosla and Kamala Harris all have in common? They are all, of course, highly successful Americans of Indian descent. According Meenakshi Ahamed, author of Indian Genius, one reason for what she calls the “meteoric rise” of Indians in America are their humble beginnings here. Arriving with minimal resources (what she calls the "$8 club"), Ahamed attributes their success to "jugaad" (resourcefulness), competitive spirit, family values, and an emphasis on education. She notes Indians are America's fastest-growing immigrant group, with traditionally Democratic voting patterns, though a 10% shift toward Republicans occurred in recent elections. So what are the chances that Trump will read Indian Genius to understand the upside of immigration to America? Less than zero, of course. 5 Key Takeaways * Successful Immigration Counter-Narrative : Ahamed's book presents a counter-narrative to anti-immigrant rhetoric, showcasing how Indian Americans have made significant contributions to American society, particularly in medicine, technology, and business. * The "$8 Club" Phenomenon : Many successful Indian immigrants came to America with extremely limited resources (just $8 due to India's currency restrictions) yet achieved remarkable success through determination, education, and hard work. * "Jugaad" Mindset : Ahamed attributes much of Indian immigrants' success to "jugaad" - a resourcefulness and ability to create something from nothing, developed in India's competitive environment where people must constantly find ways to get ahead. * Generational and Class Dynamics : Earlier Indian immigrants (1965-2010) typically came from upper castes with access to education, though this is changing. Additionally, Ahamed notes differences between first-generation immigrants like Vinod Khosla and later arrivals like Nadella and Pichai. * Shifting Political Allegiances : While Indian Americans traditionally voted 75% Democratic, Ahamed notes a recent 10% shift toward Republicans, particularly among younger Indian American men born in the US, reflecting broader demographic voting patterns. Meenakshi Ahamed was born in 1954 in Calcutta, India. After finishing school in India, she obtained an MA from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in 1978. She has had a varied career as a journalist, and prior to that, as a development consultant. She has worked at the World Bank in Washington, DC, as well as for the Ashoka Society. In 1989, she moved to London and became the foreign correspondent for New Delhi Television (NDTV). After returning to the United States in 1996, she worked as a freelance journalist. Her op-eds and articles have been published in the Asian Age , Seminar , Foreign Policy , the Wall Street Journal , and the Washington Post . She has served on the board of Doctors Without Borders, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, and Drugs for Neglected Diseases. She divides her time between the United States and India. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2255: Nicholas Lalla on Reviving the American Dream in Tulsa, Oklahoma 35:03
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America, to borrow a word from last week’s guest Yoni Appelbaum , is “stuck”. And so the American Dream, for most stuck Americans, is dead. Our guest today, the social entrepreneur Nicholas Lalla , agrees with Appelbaum. The American Dream might still be alive in privileged coastal communities, Lalla argues in his new book Reinventing the Heartland , but it needs resurrection elsewhere. Defining the American Dream as doing better than one's parents and having financial security, Lalla highlights Tulsa, Oklahoma as a model for mid-sized cities seeking economic revival through tech-focused development. Rather than emulating Silicon Valley, he advocates for cities finding their own "tech niche" based on local strengths. Tulsa's success comes from strategic investments, Lalla explains, the "Tulsa Remote" program offering $10,000 incentives to relocate, and comprehensive community development initiatives. Here are the 5 Keen on America takeaways from our conversation with Lalla: * The American Dream is geographically divided - Lalla believes the American Dream is thriving mainly in coastal tech hubs but fading in heartland communities, creating economic anxiety and social division. * Cities need to find their "tech niche" - Rather than trying to replicate Silicon Valley, mid-sized cities should identify and invest in specific tech sectors that build on their existing strengths and legacy industries. * Tulsa's model is working - Through strategic investments and initiatives like Tulsa Remote ($10,000 relocation incentives), Tulsa has successfully attracted tech talent and is on track to create 20,000 tech jobs over the next decade. * Local investment trumps waiting for government aid - Tulsa's transformation began with local philanthropic funding (particularly from the George Kaiser Family Foundation) before attracting corporate and federal investment. * Mid-sized cities offer competitive advantages - Despite lacking some big-city amenities, places like Tulsa provide benefits including lower cost of living, homeownership opportunities, outdoor activities, and the chance to participate in meaningful community development. NICHOLAS LALLA is an urbanist and social entrepreneur, working at the intersection of economic development and emerging technology. He is the author of Reinventing the Heartland, forthcoming from HarperCollins in March 2025. Lalla founded Tulsa Innovation Labs, an organization deploying over $200 million to build northeast Oklahoma’s innovation economy. He previously led Cyber NYC for the New York City Economic Development Corporation, a cybersecurity initiative The New York Times called “among the nation’s most ambitious…” Earlier in his career, at the Urban Land Institute, he launched a national resilience program for cities combatting the effects of climate change. Lalla has written for Newsweek , Fast Company , Stanford Social Innovation Review , and Next City , among other outlets. He can be found online at nicholaslalla.com . 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2254: Why Trump wants to be the Godfather 46:18
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What one word describes how Donald Trump thinks about the world? According to both the Atlantic writer Jonathan Rauch and UC Irvine professor Jeffrey Kopstein , that word is “patrimonialism” - a rather stodgy sociological term meaning that Trump wants to be the Godfather. Everything under Trump is personal, Rauch and Kopstein explain. Thus, for example, his public bullying of Zelenskyy and his vindictive announcement today of “pausing” military aid to Ukraine. The personal is the political used to be a rallying cry of the counterculture. With Trump, according to Rauch and Kopstein, the political is, by definition, personal. The public realm no long exists. And so Trump’s patrimonial ideology means that holding political power requires him to be The Godfather. The only question is whether that means becoming Don Corleone or Marlon Brando. I suspect both. Here are the 5 Keen on America takeaways from our conversation with Rauch and Kopstein: * Patrimonialism as Trump's governing model : The experts argue that Trump is implementing a patrimonial system of government where the state is treated as his personal property and family business. Loyalty to Trump as an individual supersedes institutional structures and processes, similar to how a mafia boss operates. * The systematic dismantling of bureaucracy : According to Kopstein and Rauch, the current administration is in a "demolition phase" where Trump and allies like Elon Musk are working to dismantle the modern bureaucratic state. This isn't simply about reducing government size but about replacing merit-based systems with personal loyalty networks. * The corruption inherent in patrimonial systems : In patrimonial systems, the distinction between public and private resources becomes blurred. The experts suggest that what we would call corruption (using public office for private gain) becomes normalized as the ruler sees state resources as personal property. * Cultural reaction against modernity : Kopstein argues there's a cultural dimension to this shift, with Trump's patrimonialism appealing to those uncomfortable with rapid social changes in modern society, particularly around issues of gender, sexuality, and cultural diversity. * The strategy for opposition : Rauch suggests that opponents should focus on exposing corruption as the most effective strategy against patrimonial systems. In the longer term, they argue for demonstrating how effective government bureaucracies actually benefit citizens' daily lives and for developing better policy ideas. Jonathan Rauch is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution. His latest book, Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy , was published in January 2025. Jeffrey Kopstein is Dean’s Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. In his research, Professor Kopstein focuses on interethnic violence, voting patterns of minority groups, antisemitism, and anti-liberal tendencies in civil society. These interests are central topics in his latest books, Intimate Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms on the Eve of the Holocaust (Cornell University Press, 2018), Politics, Memory, Violence: The New Social Science of the Holocaust (Cornell University Press, 2023), and The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers our Future (Polity, 2024). 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2253: John Lechner on the deadly role of Russian Mercenaries in Ukraine 42:04
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The international war reporter John Lechner is a brave man. For his new book Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare , he spent time in both Russia and the Central African Republic researching the Russian mercenary Wagner Group founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin. In our conversation, he details Prigozhin's rise, his rebellion against Putin, and his eventual death. Lechner argues that mercenary groups like Wagner are generally no more or less bloodthirsty than the governments that employ them. We also talked about the broader global trend of outsourcing warfare, from Russian mercenaries to U.S. contractors like Blackwater, and how this approach reduces political costs for governments engaging in military interventions. Here are the 5 KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways from the Lechner interview: * Wagner Group represents a broader trend of privatized warfare, following in the footsteps of Western contractors like Blackwater but expanding into offensive operations. * Yevgeny Prigozhin's personal ambition and desire to overcome his status within Putin's inner circle drove Wagner's expansion globally. * Mercenary groups like Wagner typically mirror the human rights practices of the governments that hire them, often exacerbating existing abuses rather than introducing new ones. * Prigozhin's rebellion against Putin stemmed from his narcissism and fear of losing political leverage when the Ministry of Defense attempted to absorb Wagner's fighters. * The outsourcing of warfare (through mercenaries, proxies, or technology) allows governments to pursue interventionist policies with reduced political costs, as contractor deaths don't receive the same public scrutiny as military casualties. John Lechner graduated from the Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. At Georgetown, John focused on security issues in Central Africa and the Sahel; Turkey; Russia, and the former Soviet Union. He is an expert on Russia’s growing influence in Africa. He speaks fluent Russian; advanced French, Turkish, and Georgian; and conversational Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), Chechen, German, and Sango (the lingua franca of the Central African Republic). After working in finance for several years, John decided to leverage his language skills and significant experience living abroad—especially in Russia and Europe—for a career in international affairs. After arriving in Washington DC, he took an internship with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), analyzing and publishing articles on Turkish domestic politics, security, and foreign relations. While attending Georgetown he has continued to work as a freelance journalist, covering issues related to language, history, culture, and politics in eastern Ukraine, Moldova, Turkey, the Sahel, and the Central African Republic. He is an expert on the history, languages, and politics of Central Africa, Turkey, and the former Soviet Union. You can find his articles published in Foreign Policy , War on the Rocks , Kyiv Post , The Diplomat , Africa is a Country , African Arguments, The National Interest , and Defense One , among others. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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In today’s THAT WAS THE WEEK tech newsletter, Keith Teare asks what “civilization” is good for. Triggered by David Brooks’ “We Can Achieve Great Things” NYTimes piece , Keith’s editorial this week focuses on how we can “earn” the future through constant innovation. The problem - as everyone from Keith Teare to David Brooks to KeenOnAmerica guest Yoni Appelbaum all acknowledge - is that America has become stuck in camps, routines and ideologies. So how to unstick America? How to reestablish belief once again in the future? Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Here are the 5 Keen On America take-aways from my conversation this week with Keith Teare: * Civilization and Technology : Keith argues that civilization is deeply interconnected with technological progress, suggesting that innovation has historically enabled human advancement and that government's role should naturally diminish as abundance increases. * David Brooks' Essay on Progress : We discuss Brooks' New York Times piece "We Can Achieve Great Things," which examines how progressives have built systems that inadvertently render government ineffective, and the need for a compelling narrative about the desired future. * The "Stuck" Society : We explore Yoni Appelbaum's argument that America has become immobile, with people no longer moving for opportunity and becoming "stuck" in their locations, which contradicts the traditional American dream. * AI Democratizing Coding : We discuss how AI tools are allowing non-coders to build applications, with Keith sharing his personal experience creating an app without knowing the programming language Swift, suggesting this might enable individuals to build significant businesses. * AI Competition Landscape : Our conversation covers recent AI developments, including Perplexity's move to create an AI web browser, OpenAI's GPT-4.5 Orion launch (which Keith acknowledges has been rushed to market), and the intensifying competition between companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and others in the rapidly evolving AI space. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2251: Kristian Ronn on why, in the short term, we all might be dead 42:23
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In the long run, Keynes famously quipped, we are all dead. But Swedish entrepreneur Kristian Ronn reverses Keynes to argue that in the short term we, as a species, might also be death. In his new book Darwinian Trap , Ronn argues that we're hardwired to prioritize immediate benefits over long-term consequences, creating existential risks like nuclear war and uncontrolled AI development. Ronn suggests we need better system design with proper incentives to overcome these tendencies. He proposes controlling critical parts of technology supply chains (like AI chips) to ensure responsible use, similar to nuclear nonproliferation treaties. Despite acknowledging all the obvious challenges of these kind of UN style regulatory initiatives, Ronn remains hopeful that rational thinking and well-designed systems can help humanity transcend its evolutionary limitations. Here are the 5 KEEN ON take-aways from our conversation with Kristian Ronn: * The "Darwinian Trap" refers to how humans and systems are hardwired for short-term thinking due to evolutionary forces, creating both personal and existential risks. * "Offensive realism" in international politics drives nations to compete for resources and develop increasingly dangerous weapons, creating existential threats through arms races. * AI poses significant existential risks, particularly as a technology multiplier that could enable more destructive weapons and engineered pandemics. * System design with proper incentives is crucial for overcoming our evolutionary short-term thinking—we need to "change the rules of the game" rather than blame human nature. * Strategic control of technology supply chains (like AI chips) could potentially create frameworks for responsible AI development, similar to nuclear nonproliferation treaties. Kristian Rönn is the CEO and co-founder of Normative, a software tool for sustainability accounting. He has a background in mathematics, philosophy, computer science, and artificial intelligence. Before he started Normative, he worked at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute on issues related to global catastrophic risks. 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…
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1 Episode 2250 Rebecca Haw Allensworth on America's Cult of the Professional 40:45
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Should lawyers, home alarm fitters, hairdressers and plumbers all have to get a license to do their business? And what about dog walkers and surgeons? It’s an absurd question, of course, but as Rebecca Haw Allensworth reveals in her new book, The Licensing Racket , we live in absurdly credentialed times. As Allensworth notes, at a moment in history when AI is about to replace many professional workers with bots, there really are required licenses for “trades” like home alarm fitters. And what about podcasters? Should amateurs like myself have to get a professional license to broadcast conversations with experts like Rebecca Haw Allensworth? Here are the 5 KEEN-ON takeaways from our conversation with Allensworth : * Licensing as exclusion rather than protection : Allensworth argues that many professional licensing requirements serve more to restrict entry to professions and maintain high prices than to actually protect the public. * Self-regulation creates conflicts of interest : Licensing boards are typically composed of professionals from the industry they regulate, creating inherent conflicts where they prioritize their profession's interests over public protection. * Appropriate vs. excessive licensing : While Allensworth supports licensing for complex and dangerous professions (doctors, lawyers, pilots), she criticizes excessive requirements for jobs like hairstyling, which requires as many educational hours as law school. * Regulatory failure in healthcare : The licensing system contributes to America's healthcare problems by increasing costs and creating scarcity, while simultaneously failing to effectively discipline dangerous practitioners (as seen in the opioid crisis). * Alternative approaches to professionalism : Professionalism doesn't necessarily require "closure" (restricting who can enter). Certification systems that signal quality without prohibiting practice may be more effective than licensing for many occupations. Rebecca Haw Allensworth is a Associate Dean for Research and holds the David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair of Law at Vanderbilt Law School. She studies antitrust and professional licensing. Her work on antitrust focuses on how to adapt competition policy to address competition problems posed by tech platforms and her research on professional licensing explores how lawmakers should balance the need for expertise in regulating the professions with the problems that can arise from self-regulation. She is the author of The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work and Why It Goes Wrong? (Harvard University Press, February 2025), a deep dive into the pathologies of professional licensing in America. Her article about medical licensing boards and unethical prescribers, “Licensed to Pill,” appeared in The New York Review of Books in July 2020. Her work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and has received the thirteenth annual Jerry S. Cohen Memorial Fund Writing Award for groundbreaking antitrust scholarship. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2249: Caroline Fleck on the Skill Set that will Change your Life 38:49
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Who wants to change their life? Who want to transform their relationships and increase their influence? If that’s you, then Stanford based psychologist Caroline Fleck might be your therapist. In her new book, VALIDATION , Fleck lays out a skill set that, she promises, not only revolutionized psychology but can revolutionize all of us. Skeptical? Yes, I was before talking with Dr Fleck. But she actually offer some very practical advice on how we can all improve our relationships and build our self-confidence. Here are the 5 KEEN ON take-aways from our conversation with Caroline Fleck: * Validation vs. Praise : Validation is about showing acceptance and understanding ("you're there, you get it, you care"), not about praise or agreement. Many people confuse these concepts. * Universal Human Need : Everyone seeks acceptance regardless of demographics, gender, or background. The absence of feeling validated contributes to suffering. * Balancing Acceptance and Change : Effective communication, especially in therapy, requires both validation (acceptance) and problem-solving (change). Validation creates the conditions for people to be receptive to change. * Applications Beyond Therapy : Validation skills can transform relationships, reduce conflict, and bridge divides in families, couples, and broader society. These are learnable skills that don't require a psychology degree. * Concerns About AI in Therapy : While AI can effectively mimic validation techniques, Fleck worries about the one-directional nature of AI relationships and their inability to foster genuine connection and reciprocal skill development. Dr. Caroline Fleck is a licensed psychologist, corporate consultant, and an Adjunct Clinical Instructor at Stanford University. She is a respected voice in psychology and has been featured in national media outlets, including The New York Times, Good Morning America , and The Huffington Post . Her upcoming book with Penguin Random House is the first ever to make the validation skills therapists use to get through to anyone available to everyone. In her private practice, Caroline specializes in evidence-based treatments for adults, adolescents, and couples, including Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) , Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) , and Gottman Method Couples Therapy. Her corporate work focuses on creating high-performing individuals and teams using the proven methods of behavioral science. Caroline graduated from the University of Michigan (BA) and Duke University (MA, PhD). 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…
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1 Episode 2248: Yoni Applebaum on why America is STUCK in a Crisis of Immobility 46:00
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According to the Atlantic ’s Yoni Applebaum , America is STUCK - literally and otherwise. In his new book Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity . Appelbaum argues that America faces not just a housing crisis but a mobility crisis, with prohibitively expensive housing in prosperous areas preventing people from moving toward opportunity. Applebaum traces how zoning laws, initially driven by racism and classism, have created a system where Americans move less than ever before, despite more wanting to relocate. This decreased mobility has wide-ranging consequences for civic engagement, social cohesion, and economic dynamism. His solution: simplify building regulations, reform housing policy to facilitate mobility, and dramatically increase housing supply. Here are the 5 KEEN ON take-aways from our conversation with Appelbaum: * America faces a mobility crisis, not just a housing crisis : People can't afford to move to areas with economic opportunity, which has dramatically reduced the rate of Americans relocating (from 1 in 3 annually in the 19th century to 1 in 13 today). * Restrictive zoning laws have racist and classist origins : America's first zoning laws were designed to segregate Chinese residents in Modesto, and Berkeley's first single-family zoning aimed to keep out working-class people. * Decreased mobility has widespread negative effects : Beyond economics, reduced mobility damages civic engagement, social cohesion, and even contributes to political polarization and populism. * Tenements served a positive historical purpose : Despite reformers' criticism, tenements were vehicles for economic mobility that allowed cities to absorb immigrant waves - a capacity many cities have lost. * Applebaum offers three solutions : Simplify building regulations, redesign housing policy to facilitate movement rather than keeping people in place, and dramatically increase housing supply ("build baby build"). Yoni Appelbaum is a deputy executive editor at The Atlantic and the author of Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity . Appelbaum is a social and cultural historian of the United States. Before joining The Atlantic , he was a lecturer on history and literature at Harvard University. He previously taught at Babson College and at Brandeis University, where he received his Ph.D. in American history. 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…
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1 Episode 2247: Andrew Cockburn on Trump and Musk's Futile War Against the Deep State 41:26
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Not everyone sees Trump or Musk as an existential threat to the American federal bureaucracy. In the March cover story of Harper’s , their Washington DC editor Andrew Cockburn argues that this latest war against the American state is “futile”. He expresses skepticism that DOGE’s efforts to dismantle the Federal will succeed, suggesting courts will likely block them as they did during Trump's first term. He predicts Musk's influence will diminish and that Trump will eventually sideline him. Cockburn also underlines the "contractor state" where much government work is already privatized, making structural change difficult. He criticizes Democrats for lacking energy and ideas, and suggests they need to disconnect from corporate interests and address issues like housing affordability and insurance costs to reconnect with voters. Here are the 5 KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Andrew Cockburn: * Cockburn believes Trump's attempts to dismantle the federal bureaucracy will likely fail, as the courts and bureaucratic resistance will eventually prevail, just as they did during his first term. * He predicts Elon Musk's influence in the administration will be temporary, with Trump eventually sidelining him as other courtiers like Kash Patel assert their authority. * The "contractor state" (privatized government functions) makes structural reform difficult, as contracts can't be easily canceled without legal challenges. * Cockburn sees a fundamental crisis in the Democratic Party, describing a lack of energy and clear ideas at their recent convention, with leadership disconnected from working-class concerns. * He suggests Democrats need to divorce themselves from corporate interests and address real issues affecting Americans, like unaffordable housing, exploitative insurance practices, and the impact of tech companies on local communities. Andrew Cockburn is the Washington Editor of Harper's magazine and the author of many articles and books on national security, including the New York Times Editor's Choice Rumsfeld and The Threat , which destroyed the myth of Soviet military superiority underpinning the Cold War. He is a regular opinion contributor to the Los Angeles Times and has written for, among others, the New York Times , National Geographic and the London Review of Books . 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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…
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1 Episode 2246: Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a carnival of hypocrisy 39:34
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Given the shameful American sacrifice of Ukraine, there will be few timelier movies than Anna Kryvenko’s upcoming “ This House is Undamaged ”,. It will be an Orwellian documentary examining the Russian destruction of Mariupol, the Ukrainian city devastated by Putin’s invasion in 2022. Krivenko, a Fellow at the Artist in Residence program, Institute for Advanced Studies at CEU, explains how Russian authorities are rapidly rebuilding and selling properties there while erasing Ukrainian history and creating the big lie of Mariupol as a historically Russian city. Kryvenko, originally from Kyiv, also discusses the parallels between Putin's and Trump's lies about Ukraine, summarizing their fundamental misrepresentation of the truth as a "carnival of hypocrisy." Here are the five KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Kryvenko: * The Russians are engaged in a systematic erasure of Mariupol's Ukrainian identity, not just through physical reconstruction but through an aggressive propaganda campaign that claims the city was "always Russian." This reconstruction effort began shortly after the city's destruction in 2022. * Pre-war Mariupol was not characterized by deep Russian-Ukrainian divisions as Russian propaganda claims. According to Kryvenko, language differences weren't a source of conflict before political forces deliberately weaponized them. * The rebuilding of Mariupol has a dark commercial aspect - Russians are selling apartments in reconstructed buildings, sometimes in properties where the original Ukrainian owners were killed, and marketing them as vacation properties while ignoring the city's tragic recent history. * There's a humanitarian crisis unfolding as some Ukrainians are being forced to return to occupied Mariupol because they have nowhere else to live, with Kryvenko citing statistics that around 150,000 people returned to occupied territories by the end of 2024. * The filmmaker is using a unique methodology of gathering evidence through social media content, vlogs, and propaganda materials to document both the physical transformation of the city and the narrative being constructed around it, rather than traditional documentary filming techniques. Transcript of Anna Kryvenko Interview Andrew Keen : Hello, everybody. As the situation in Ukraine becomes more absurd, it seems as if the lies of Donald Trump and the lies of Vladimir Putin are becoming increasingly similar. Trump has been talking about Zelensky and Ukraine, what is described as a barrage of lies. As CNN reports, Trump falsely called Zelensky a dictator. It's becoming more and more absurd. It's almost as if the whole script was written by some Central European or East Central European absurdist. Meanwhile, the Russians continue to lie as well. There was an interesting piece recently in the Wall Street Journal about Russia wanting to erase Ukraine's future and its past. My guest today, Anna Kryvenko, is a filmmaker. She's the director of an important new movie in the process of being made called "This House Is Undamaged." She's a visual fellow at the Central European University, and she's joining us from Budapest today. Congratulations on "This House is Undamaged." Before we talk specifically about the film, do you agree with my observations that there seems to be an increasingly eerie synergy between the lies coming out of Washington, D.C. and Moscow, between Trump and Putin? Anna Kryvenko : I think the situation is becoming more crazy and absurd. That's a better word to use in this situation. For me, all of this looks like some carnival of hypocrisy. It's unbelievable that someone can use the word "dictator" in comparison with Vladimir Putin or speaking about this 4% of the people who support Zelensky when he says it's only four persons. It looks completely absurd. And this information comes from Moscow, not from actual Ukrainian statistics. Andrew Keen : The phrase you use "carnival of hypocrisy" I think is a good description. I might even use that in the title of this conversation. It's almost as if Trump in particular is parodying himself, but he seems so separated from reality that it seems as if he's actually being serious, at least from my position in California. How does it look from your perspective in Budapest? You're originally from Ukraine, so obviously you have a particular interest in this situation. Anna Kryvenko : I don't even know what to think because it's changing so fast into absurd situations. Every day when I open the news, I'm speaking with people and it looks like some kind of farce. You're expecting that the next day someone will tell you that this is a joke or something, but it's not. It's really hard to believe that this is reality now, but unfortunately it is. Andrew Keen : Kundera wrote his famous novel "The Joke" as a parody of the previous authoritarian regime in Central Europe. Your new movie, "This House is Undamaged" - I know you are an artist in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University - is very much in that vein. Tell us about the project. Anna Kryvenko : We're in work in progress. I was doing research in the archives and internet archives. This documentary film will explore the transformation of Mariupol, a Ukrainian city that was destroyed by the Russian invasion in 2022. I will use only archives and found footage materials from people who are in Mariupol now, or who were in Mariupol at the time of invasion, who were actually trying to film what's going on. Sometimes I'll also use propaganda images from Russia, from Russian authorities. In May 2022, Mariupol, after intense fighting, was almost completely destroyed. Andrew Keen : Tell us the story of Mariupol, this town on the old border of Russia and Ukraine. It's in the southeast of Ukraine. Anna Kryvenko : It's on the shore of the Azov Sea. It's part of Donetsk region. It was always an industrial city, most known for the Azovstal factory. In 2022, after incredible brutality of Russian war against Ukraine, this strategically important city was almost completely destroyed in May 2022 and was occupied by Russian government. About 90% of buildings were destroyed or demolished in some way. Andrew Keen : The Russians have essentially leveled the town, perhaps in the same way as the Israelis have essentially destroyed Gaza. Anna Kryvenko : Exactly. For a lot of people, we have this image of destroyed Mariupol until today. But after these terrible events, the Russians started this big campaign to rebuild the city. Of course, we know it was done just to erase all the scars of war, to erase it from the city's history. They started the reconstruction. Some people who stayed in Mariupol thought they would have new housing since they had no place to live. But business is business - Russian authorities started to sell these apartments to Russian citizens. Andrew Keen : I'm surprised Trump hasn't got involved. Given his real estate background and his cozy relationship with Putin, maybe Trump real estate will start selling real estate in Mariupol. Anna Kryvenko : I was thinking the same thing this last week. It was looking like such an absurd situation with Mariupol. But now we are in this business mode again with Ukraine and all the minerals. It's only the economical part of war they look at. Andrew Keen : He probably would come up with some argument why he really owns Mariupol. Anna Kryvenko : Yes. Andrew Keen : Coming back to the Wall Street Journal piece about Russia wanting to erase Ukraine's future and its past - you're originally from Kyiv. Is it the old East Central European business of destroying history and creating a new narrative that somehow conforms to how you want history to have been made? Anna Kryvenko : I was really shocked at how fast this idea of Russian Mariupol is repeating after two years in Russian media, official and semi-professional blogs, YouTube, and so forth. As a person working with this type of material, watching videos every day to find what I need, I'm listening to these people doing propaganda from Mariupol, saying "we are citizens of the city and it's always been Russian." They're repeating this all the time. Even when I'm hearing this - of course it was always a Ukrainian city, it's completely absurd, it's 100% disinformation. But when you're hearing this repeated in different contexts all the time, you start to think about it. Andrew Keen : It's the same tactics as Trump. If you keep saying something, however absurd it sounds or is, if you keep saying it enough times, some people at least start believing it. You're not a historian or political scientist, but Mariupol is in the part of Ukraine which had a significant population of Russian-speaking people. Some of the people that you're filming and featuring in your movie - are they Russians who have moved into Mariupol from some other part of Russia, or are they people originally from Mariupol who are somehow embracing their new Russian overlords? Anna Kryvenko : The people I'm watching on social media, most of them say they're from Mariupol. But you can find journalistic articles showing they're actually paid by the Russian government. It's paid propaganda and they're repeating the same narrative. It's important that they're always repeating "we were born in Mariupol" and "we want the city to be Russian." But of course, you can see it's from the same propaganda book as 2014 with Crimea. They're repeating the same narrative from Soviet times - they just changed "Soviet Union" to "Russia" and "the West" to "European Union." Andrew Keen : You grew up in Kyiv, so you're familiar with all these current and historical controversies. What's your take on Mariupol before 2020, before it was flattened by the Russians? Was it a town where Russian-speaking and Ukrainian people were neighbors and friends? Were there always deep divisions between the Russian and Ukrainian speaking populations there? Anna Kryvenko : It's hard to explain because you need to dig deeper to explain the Russian-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking parts of Ukraine. But it was never a problem before Yanukovych became prime minister and then president. It was his strategy to create this polarization of Ukraine - that the western part wants to be part of the European Union and the eastern part wants to be part of Russia because of language, and they cannot live together. But it's not true. For me as a person from Kyiv, from the center of the country, with friends from different parts of Ukraine, it was never a problem. I'm from a Russian-speaking family and have many friends from Ukrainian-speaking families. It was never a question. We were in a kind of symbiotic connection. All schools were in Ukrainian, universities in Ukrainian. We were bilingual. It was not a problem to communicate. Some of this division came from Yanukovych's connections to Putin and his propaganda. It was important for them to say "we are Russian-speaking people, and because we are Russian-speaking, we want to be part of Russia." But I have friends from Mariupol, and after 2014, when war in eastern Ukraine started and Mariupol was bombed a few times, it became a really good city to live in. There were many cultural activities. I know friends who were originally from Mariupol, studied in Kyiv in theater or visual art, and went back to Mariupol because it was a good place for their art practice. Ukraine is still a bit centralized, with most activity in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, and the big cities, but Mariupol wasn't a city with internal conflict. It's weird that so fast after 2022, people started saying it was always problematic in wanting to be part of Russia. It was never like that. Andrew Keen : It's as if I lived for a year in Bosnia before the civil war, and it was almost as if ethnicity was invented by the nationalist Serbian regime. It seems as if the Putin regime is doing or has done the same thing in the eastern part of Ukraine. Anna Kryvenko : Yes. Andrew Keen : You talk to lots of friends still and you're from Kyiv originally, and obviously your professional life remains focused on the situation. In late February 2025, what's your sense of how Ukrainians are feeling given what Trump is now saying? Anna Kryvenko : I think a lot of people in Ukraine or Ukrainians abroad are feeling lonely, that they don't have support. Again we are in this situation where you have big deals about Ukraine without Ukraine. You feel like nothing, just an empty space on a map with minerals or sea access. We're just sitting there waiting while they're agreeing on deals. That's the negative layer. But it's important for all Ukrainians to be together and speak about the situation. After Trump's words about the 4% support for Zelensky, there were statistics from last year showing 57-55% support for Zelensky. Today, after these few days, new statistics show 65% support. Andrew Keen : Zelensky started his political career as a satirical comedian, and it's as if he's participating in his own comedy - as if he's almost paid Trump to promote him. What about the broader take on the US? Obviously Trump isn't all America, but he was just elected a couple of months ago. Are your Ukrainian friends and associates, as well as many people at the Central European University in Budapest, taking this as a message from America itself, or are people able to separate Trump and America? Anna Kryvenko : This is a hard question because we always know that you have a president or representative figure, but that's not the whole state. I spoke with someone from our university who was in Pennsylvania before the election, and he said all the people were pro-Trump. The logic was really simple - "he's good" and "he will stop this war" - though people sometimes don't even know which war or which country. They're just repeating the same talking points. Andrew Keen : It's sort of Orwellian in the sense that it's just war and it doesn't really matter who's involved - he's just going to stop it. Anna Kryvenko : It reminded me of how everyone was repeating about Lukashenko from Belarus that "he's a good manager" and can manage things, and that's why he's still president - not that he's a dictator killing his opponents. They use this to explain why he's good and people choose him. Now with Trump, they say "he's a good businessman," but we can see how this business works. Today, someone from Trump's administration said Zelensky needs to stop being arrogant because Trump is in a bad mood. In what world are we living where this is used as an argument? Andrew Keen : Coming back to real estate, he probably sees Mariupol as a nice strip on the Black Sea, like Gaza, which he sees as a valuable strip on the Mediterranean for real estate development. I found an interesting piece online about the Russian invasion, "When Buildings Can Talk: The Real Face of Civilian Infrastructure Ruined by Russian Invaders." In a way, your project "This House is Undamaged" is your way of making buildings talk. Is that fair? Anna Kryvenko : I think it's the best description you can use. Andrew Keen : Perhaps you might explain how and why. Anna Kryvenko : This name "This House is Undamaged" might or might not be the final name. For me, it's important because after the first months when it started to be a Russian city, some people were trying to sell apartments just to have some money. The reconstruction started a bit later. They were using video websites like Craigslist. It immediately became Russian, part of Russian territory. People from different Russian regions who saw this opportunity were trying to buy something because prices were so cheap. People needed money to buy a ticket and go to other cities or to relatives. In every advertisement, there was this phrase "this house has no damages" or "this house is undamaged." You had to put it there even if it wasn't true - you could see pictures where one building had a hole, but they were still saying "this house is undamaged." Andrew Keen : It's just again coming back to the carnival of hypocrisy or the carnival of absurd hypocrisy - you see these completely destroyed homes, and then you have the signs from the Russians saying this house is undamaged. Anna Kryvenko : It was also interesting why some people from Russia want to buy apartments in Mariupol, in these reconstructed buildings with weird pro-Russian murals - it's like Stalinism. They don't even know where Mariupol is - they think it's somewhere near Crimea, but it's not the Black Sea, it's the Azov Sea, an industrial region. It's not the best place to live. But they think it will be some kind of resort. They're living somewhere in Russia and think they can buy a cheap apartment and use it as a resort for a few months. This is absurd because the city was completely destroyed. You still have mass graves. Sometimes they're selling apartments where they can't even find the owner because the whole family is dead. On Google Maps, someone made an alternative version where you can see all the buildings that were destroyed, because officially you can't find this information anywhere. People were putting crosses where they knew someone died in a building - entire families. And after this, people are buying their apartments. For me, this is unbearable. You can do research about what you're doing, but people are lazy and don't want to do this work. Andrew Keen : It comes back to the Journal piece about Russia literally erasing not just Ukraine's past but also its future, creating a culture of amnesia. It's chilling on so many levels. But it's the old game - it's happened before in that part of the world and no doubt will happen again. As a filmmaker, what particular kind of political or aesthetic responsibility do you have? People have been writing - I mentioned Kundera, Russian writers, Gogol - satires of this kind of absurd political power for centuries. But as a filmmaker, what kind of responsibility do you have? How does your form help you make this argument of essentially restoring the past, of telling the truth? Anna Kryvenko : A lot of filmmakers in Ukraine, with the start of invasion, just brought cameras and started making films. The first goal wasn't to make a film but to document the crimes. My case is different - not only because my family's in Ukraine and I have many friends there and lived there until my twenties. For the last ten years, since the Maidan events in 2013-2014, I started working with archive and found footage material. This is my methodology. For me, it's not important to go somewhere and document. It's more interesting to use media deconstruction from propaganda sources, maybe from Ukrainian sources also because it's a question of ideology. One of my favorite materials now is people doing vlogs - just with their camera or mobile phone going from Russia to Crimea or back. You only have two ways to go there because airports aren't working, so you go through the Kerch-Crimea bridge. Now because of Mariupol's strategic location, you can go through there, so you have two different roads. People from different Russian cities sometimes film their road and say "what is this, is it destroyed?" This is the average Russian person, and you can hear the propaganda they're repeating or what they're really thinking. For me, it's important to show these different points of view from people who were there or are there now. I don't have the opportunity as a Ukrainian citizen to go there. Through this method, in the near future when I finish this film, we can have testimonies from the inside. We don't need to wait for the war to end because we don't know how or when it ends. It's important to show it to people who maybe don't know anything about what's going on in Mariupol. Andrew Keen : Given the abundance of video on the internet, on platforms like YouTube, how do you distinguish between propaganda and truth yourself in terms of taking some of these segments to make your film? It could be conceivable that some of the more absurd videos are put out by Ukrainians to promote their own positions and undermine the Russians. Have you found that? Is there a propaganda war on YouTube and other platforms between Ukrainian and Russian nationalists? And as a filmmaker who's trying to archive the struggle in an honest way, how do you deal with that? Anna Kryvenko : Of course, there are many people, and Mariupol is the best example because the Russian government is paying people to repeat pro-Russian ideology. Sometimes you can see just an average person from Mariupol going with a camera and shooting something without speaking - this is just documentation. Sometimes you have Russian people there for some days just saying something. And of course, you get different segments of real propaganda from some ministry in Russia with drone material and big music. I'm always trying to question myself: What am I looking at? Who is speaking? On technical aspects, why is this like this? It helps me to be holistic. Of course, I'm from Ukraine, and sometimes this is the most uncomfortable - you can hear actual people from Mariupol saying something you don't want to hear because it's not your point of view on the war. But these are people really from the city giving some kind of realistic point of view on the situation. It's sad, but there were statistics at the end of 2024 that about 150,000 people were returning to occupied territories, not only to Mariupol but all occupied territories. Maybe 40% were coming back to register their property and then returning to Ukrainian territory, but many people are returning to Mariupol because they don't have anywhere to live in Ukraine. It's not hundreds but thousands of people. As Ukrainians, we're not comfortable with this because we're all in different situations. But if something's not comfortable for my point of view, it doesn't mean it's bad or good. Andrew Keen : It's an important project. I know your artist residency at the Central European University is finishing at the end of February. You're going to focus on finishing the movie. When do you think it will be ready and what are your ambitions for the finished movie? Will you put it online, in theaters? What's your ideal? Anna Kryvenko : If everything goes well, we can finish it in a year and a half because it will be a long process of editing and working with rights. We only started working on it six months ago, and it's starting to go faster. Documentary making is a long process because of funding and everything. Even though I don't need to go somewhere physically, it's still a long process with a lot of waiting. First, we're thinking about festivals, maybe a theater release, maybe we'll have some broadcasters because it's an important topic to show to a wider audience. After a year, we'll see. Andrew Keen : If "Buildings Can Talk" is the subtitle of this upcoming movie "This House is Undamaged," it's a really important project about Mariupol. Thank you for being on the show. I'm going to have to get you back when the movie is done because I can't wait to see it. Anna Kryvenko : Thank you so much. Thank you. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Anna Kryvenko (1986, Ukraine) is a video and fine art photography artist based in Prague and Kyiv. She is a Fellow at the Artist in Residence program, Institute for Advanced Studies at Central European University. She graduated from the Centre for Audio-Visual Studies at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU, Prague). Her films and performances were screened at Dok Leipzig, ZagrebDox, Visions du Reel Nyon, Fluidum Festival, Jihlava Documentary Film Festival, etc. With her found-footage film Silently Like a Comet, she won the prize for the Best Experimental Act at FAMUFEST, Prague (CZ), and a few others. Her film Listen to the Horizon won the prize for the Best Czech Experimental Documentary, Jihlava IDFF (CZ). Her first feature documentary film My Unknown Soldier won the Last Stop Trieste 2018 Postproduction Award, Special Mention at Zagreb Dox, the Special Prize of the Jury at IDFF CRONOGRAF, and the Andrej Stankovič Prize. Her newest short film Easier Than You Think won the Jury Award of the Other Vision Competition 2022 (PAF, Czech Republic). 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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…
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1 Episode 2245: Is it really "not hard" to be a billionaire these days? 42:56
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Lots of healthy disagreement in this week’s THAT WAS THE WEEK tech show with Keith Teare . We debate the impact of AI on coding jobs, with Keith suggesting that while traditional coding skills may become less important, system architecture and AI guidance skills will be crucial to maintaining the value of human labor. We also discuss the rise of early-stage unicorns , military-tech AI start-ups, and disagree strongly on the status of billionaires, with Keith arguing that it’s “not hard” to be a billionaire in Silicon Valley today. Here are the five KEEN ON takeaways from today’s conversation: * Divergent Market and Valley Sentiment : While the stock market is having its worst performance since Trump's inauguration, Silicon Valley remains optimistic, particularly about AI. Keith argues there's no short-term correlation between Silicon Valley sentiment and market performance. * Evolution of Tech Skills : The rise of AI is changing the nature of technical skills needed in startups. Keith suggests that traditional coding skills are becoming less crucial, while the ability to architect systems and guide AI is becoming more important. He notes that universities are already adapting their computer science programs to include AI. * Rise of Efficient Startups : AI is enabling lean startups to do more with fewer people. Keith uses his own company Signal Rank as an example, noting they've built a complex system with just five people, two of whom are coders, highlighting a shift in how startups can be built efficiently. * Military-Tech Convergence : There's a growing trend of Silicon Valley companies entering the defense sector, exemplified by Saronic raising $600 million for autonomous warships. This represents a broader shift in how military technology is being developed and funded through private companies. * Debate about Wealth Creation: The conversation concludes with a debate about wealth accumulation, sparked by Robert Reich's controversial X post about billionaires. Keith argues that technology's global reach and distribution capabilities have made it easier than ever to build valuable companies, with Andrew strongly disputing the idea that becoming a billionaire is "not that hard." That Was The Week - February 22, 2025 With Andrew Keen and Keith Teare Andrew Keen : Hello everybody. It is Saturday, February the 22nd, 2025. The last Saturday in February, the last Saturday we're going to do That Was The Week tech roundup. It's been an odd week. On the one hand, the stocks notched the worst week since Trump's inauguration six weeks ago. It's been a long six weeks. According to the Financial Times, the geopolitical rupture, which of course has been caused by Trump, has sparked a quiet market rebellion. Niall Ferguson had an interesting piece in today's Wall Street Journal about the demise of the United States because of its massive debt, and Elon Musk has been continuing to make a public fool of himself this week, waving a chainsaw and pretending to be an Argentine politician, which I'm not sure reflects that well on him. However, in spite of all that bad news, Keith Teare's That Was The Week newsletter is actually very optimistic. Unicorns are back, according to Keith, and we have an image, of course, created by AI of these imaginary beasts horses with horns. Keith is joining us, as always, from Palo Alto, the home of optimism. Keith, do you think it's coincidental that suddenly everyone is optimistic again in Silicon Valley whilst the market is sliding to those two things in an odd way, kind of go together? Keith Teare : There's no correlation between Silicon Valley and the markets at all in any day to day sense. There's long term correlation, but not short term. Silicon Valley is having a moment because of AI, and Grok Three was launched this week. Crunchbase launched its new AI driven data platform, and the CEO declared that historical data is dead, meaning only future predictive data is any good anymore. Andrew Keen : And historical data being dead. The future is predictive intelligence. What does that mean? Keith Teare : He means that it's now possible, because of AI, to see patterns and trends and predict them. Just knowing the past is not the point anymore. Obviously it's stretching a point. You still need the history from the past to see the trends. But he's saying the needle has turned from looking backwards to predicting the future because of data. That's true in biology as well. There's a massive arc this week announced a new model that understands DNA and can predict the likelihood of solving diseases. Andrew Keen : Your editorial this week, Keith, is quite personal. You know that as the person in charge of Signal Rank, your startup, AI has been remarkably helpful in it. You refer in the editorial to an interesting piece in the New York Times about how AI is changing Silicon Valley build startups like your own Signal. What does your experience at Signal Rank tell us about the future of startups? Keith Teare : Signal Rank is five people. Two of us have coding skills. We've raised $5 million ever to spend on building Signal. All the other money we raised is to invest in companies. That article is focusing on the fact that it's almost like the Lean Startup story from the early 2000s, except it's true this time, because the most expensive thing in a startup is people. And the one thing you need less of is people. That's a massive shift. Of course, if you're building large language models, the opposite is true, because the most expensive thing is GPUs, which you pay Nvidia for. And that's super expensive. But everything else that's sitting on top of that is getting faster, cheaper and better. Andrew Keen : You also refer to a New York Times piece about how AI is prompting an evolution, not an extinction for coders. Your son's a coder, in a sense, you're a coder. Ultimately, one and I was at this thing with Tim Draper a couple of weeks ago where he was talking about companies, billion dollar companies built and managed by single people won't ultimately make most coders extinct. Maybe not all. But when founders like yourselves simply become coders and you won't have the need for other help. Keith Teare : I make the point in an editorial that I didn't write a single line of code, but I've built a very complex system with lots of AI agents working together and delivering results for users. Learning to code is going to be a low requirement. A very high requirement is learning to architect and guide the AI because the AI can code, but it can't imagine systems to build or know when it got it right or when it got it wrong. The skill base is going to shift to what normally would be the domain of a product manager who has coding skills and can understand what's happening and can understand what it can ask for and what it can't ask for. But coding itself, learning Python, learning JavaScript or Java? Probably less essential. Andrew Keen : So what happens to kids like your son who just graduated and now works in Silicon Valley as a coder? Keith Teare : He'll still be needed for some time. In his company, they're not allowed to use AI yet. It's a little bit like dying skills always protect themselves until they can't. Engineers that are defensive or companies that are defensive about using AI are going to fall behind a little bit. But eventually everyone gets there because it's just a better way of doing things. Andrew Keen : You're an innovator and instinctive in terms of innovation. But are people going to start going to college and doing majors and working with AI rather than learning how to code? Will computer science be really about how to ask the right questions and ask it to do the correct things? Keith Teare : Yes, but to do that you need to understand systems architecture. My youngest son just got an offer from my old university in the UK, Kent, and it's for a course called Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, so they're already evolving the courses to teach the new skills. I think it's going to be imperative if you can talk to a machine and you can imagine what you want it to build. Imagine you could describe to a machine the website you'd really like for Keen on America, and it would build it, and then you'd look at what it built and say, no, I didn't mean that, I meant this. It gives you massive power to produce things. Andrew Keen : And I think it's also true with writers. I'm not a coder. But the thing with AI is it's not designed to replicate human writing. It's designed to answer questions and organize ideas in ways that are instant as opposed to taking hours or days for humans. So it's similar in that sense. Meanwhile, let's go back to your unicorns. It's all coming out of Crunchbase that your wife works for. She writes for it. And what is Crunchbase telling us this week about quote unquote minting early stage startups? Are unicorns back in fashion? We haven't talked about unicorns for about a year. We talk about them every week. Keith Teare : The rates of unicorn production declined massively from 2021 onwards and reached the bottom last year. Andrew Keen : While the market was strong and now it's falling and unicorns are back. Keith Teare : This article is specifically about early stage unicorns. These are unicorns that become unicorns at a series A or a series B round. They're raising very large sums of money. The top six series A raises this week all raised more than $50 million. Andrew Keen : And the average valuation I guess early round has jumped to 3.3 billion. But doesn't the unicorn term become slightly absurd if you're raising hundreds of millions of dollars? It's given that you're going to be a unicorn. But does that really mean anything? Keith Teare : If you try to put it into a rational framework, the amount of money put into a company and the valuation is determined by supply and demand and likely outcomes. Investors who are writing these checks are making a calculation of what this company will be worth in the next five to ten years. They're writing checks appropriate to a gain of at least ten times that money. They're projecting into the future a likely outcome from writing the checks and the competition to invest in these companies is so intense that the checks get bigger earlier. Obviously that creates risk. The risk is that you're making the call too early and you're going to be wrong in your predictions. The upside is that you know you're right and you'll be smiling all the way to the bank. That's just the nature of any technology transfer. Andrew Keen : Is this different from any other hysteria boom? Just the numbers are larger. Is this different from the dot-com boom where huge amounts of money were poured in? Most companies failed. Some succeeded, like Amazon or like web 2.0, or like social media or like crypto. Keith Teare : It's very similar. It's more like the gold rush because there really was gold. There really is gold. Even in the dot-com boom, the asset class of venture capital did very well. Individual investments failed, but the asset class as a whole did very well. When you allocate to a tech boom like AI really is and the AI boom is real, there's real value being produced and real change in human experience that's going to generate lots of money. Placing those bets at the asset class level makes sense. Individual investments is a totally different story. Andrew Keen : You also refer to Hunter Walk, who is a very smart guy. He said, you have to assume every company will have access to the same LLMs and voices. The challenge then is to build a company that thrives despite this reality. Given the commodification of AI and all these platforms from xAI to OpenAI to Anthropic AI to Google Gemini, that are basically now all the same. We're seeing this commodification of LLMs. Doesn't that point to a weakness in this AI hysteria? Keith Teare : You have to distinguish between LLMs, reasoning agents and agents that can do things. This week, Grok Three was launched. It's very good, by the way. But it's only a little bit better than all the others. So it didn't get the attention that say deepfaked. Andrew Keen : And next week someone will come out with something else that will be a little better. And as this race continues, the differences between the products will become less and less. Keith Teare : But for you and me, that's fantastic. You use Anthropic, I use Perplexity, I use Claude, we're basically getting free intelligence to do work. Andrew Keen : I wonder whether in that sense it's rather like the early days of the internet where we got a lot of stuff for free, and then everyone woke up and started charging. I mean, we are paying. I pay my $20 a month to Anthropic. You pay your monthly fees, but it's still pretty small amounts of money. Keith Teare : OpenAI now has 400 million daily active users and is making billions of dollars. Andrew Keen : I hope so because it's raised tens of billions of dollars. Keith Teare : But that is the game. Think of the Andrew Keen world. You wouldn't want to constrain yourself to investing almost nothing and making almost nothing. You want to invest as much as possible as long as you know you can make more than that back. Andrew Keen : On the unicorn front, you've been at this rodeo before many times. You're about as experienced as it gets. Are you taking these arguments about unicorns seriously, or should we be taking them like unicorns themselves with a pinch of salt? Keith Teare : When you build startups, the valuation of the startup is not even in your mind as a variable. You're just building whatever your vision is and it costs money to build it. So you're raising money. You sell shares in your company at the highest price you possibly can. It's good news if you're a unicorn from the point of view of the company you're building. Founders don't really think about valuations as much as they think about how much money they need and what they're going to do with it. Normal people read the headlines and think that Silicon Valley is awash with irrationality. It isn't really true. Andrew Keen : Well, you're providing us with those headlines. One of the other pieces you linked to this week is from the FT about Silicon Valley fighting EU tech rules with backing from Trump. Most of the news this week has been about Trump outside technology. It's Trump changing the rules in terms of big tech and particularly Europe and tariffs completely. Keith Teare : Coinbase announced yesterday that the SEC has withdrawn its lawsuit against Coinbase. That's the latest little indication of the trend. There are rumors that Ripple, which was also subject to an SEC case, will have that case withdrawn. The Trump administration does not want to stand in the way of big tech or little tech for that matter, and it sees Europe, rightly so, as a bit of a backwater. The zeitgeist is changing. Even in Europe, the innovators are fairly pro the Trump message even if they're not pro Trump. The need to innovate and relax constraints. Andrew Keen : The German economy now seems to be in crisis or German culture is in crisis. But they probably left it too late. The horse or the unicorns, so to speak, has left the barn here, hasn't it? Keith Teare : Apple yesterday announced that it's turning off encryption in Europe, in the UK now, not the whole of Europe, because the UK asked for a backdoor. So now UK users of the iPhone have no security on their phones because Apple, rather than comply with a backdoor, would turn the whole security layer off. That's going to be a bit of a trend. The governments trying to control tech, especially if they're snooping on their citizens. Tech is not going to bend over and agree with them anymore. And Trump is going in the opposite direction. He's not trying to get them to do back doors. Andrew Keen : The interview of the week, my interview was with Tim Wu, who was perhaps the most influential critic of monopoly Big Tech in the Biden administration. He has an interesting new piece out on decentralizing capitalism. With the help of Claude, we came away with five points from my conversation with Wu. It's all about decentralizing capitalism, getting away from monopoly capitalism, which I think he sees in companies like Google and Facebook and even OpenAI. I know you're not a big fan of regulation, but do you think Wu has a point? He's in favor of decentralizing capitalism. He's not against the market. He's in favor of innovation. Keith Teare : What does he mean? Because you could frame that as being nation states that are too centralized or you could frame it that big tech is too centralized. How does he frame it? Andrew Keen : He frames it as capitalism lends itself to a winner take all economy. He goes over the argument that America has always been a more innovative and wealthier society when you attack the monopolies, whether it's the oil monopolies, the railroads, pharma. And the same needs to be done now to unleash creativity, to unleash guys like yourself. One of your close friends, Lina Khan, was on MSNBC this week, talking about what she calls an anti-monopoly hunger in America. I'm not sure whether that's an exaggeration, but certainly there is an anti-monopoly feeling, both on both sides of the aisle. It's one of the few things that unite Democrats and Republicans, isn't it? Keith Teare : No, I disagree. The zeitgeist is exactly the opposite. The desire to control, especially big tech is nonexistent. The Democrats live in their own bubble world on MSNBC, and they really don't know how normal people think. Most people think Google's awesome. They think Amazon is awesome. They like using AI. More and more people are using it. Andrew Keen : You can like using AI and not be in favor of monopolies. That's two different subjects. Keith Teare : Normal people don't even use the word monopoly. It's not a word in the normal lexicon. It's a purely political word, used only in the circles of the Democratic Party that have this kind of Stalinist influence. The word state monopoly capitalism came out of Stalin. Andrew Keen : But I think you need to read Wu's piece on decentralizing capitalism, because he's as much a critic of Stalinism and centralization as you. He uses models from postwar East Asia, particularly Taiwan, and of course, the Danish model to talk about reforming the US. So what would you advise guys like Wu to be arguing? Should they just throw in their chips with Donald Trump and say you're right? Keith Teare : Where I would agree with them, and this is the common thread where we can agree, is capitalism has the tendency to create what I think of as greater socialization. You get bigger and bigger units, more interconnected. The interconnected piece is super important. It's not just that they're big, they're interconnected and that tends to be global. There's a globalizing tendency within capitalism. As you globalize and you socialize production, small individual industries tend to go by the wayside. Artisan industries. All of that is true. But you don't fix that by trying to break it up. The real social good is that the human race increasingly becomes interconnected and interdependent. That's a good thing. What's wrong is the private ownership of the wealth that it produces. Andrew Keen : Last week we talked about Alva van Gogh's critique of Vance's Paris speech, although he agreed with it in part. This week, you connect with Albert's humanist vision for AI. The speech at the Paris AI summit he would have given. What is Albert's vision? Keith Teare : It's a little bit 1960s cumbayah-ish. I am one of those, so I agree with him. But it's basically saying that AI is a tool for humanity, not a tool against humanity. And he makes the case for that. He doesn't say there are no safety risks, but he minimizes safety risks and places human good first, which I think does correlate to Tim Vance. It's an opportunity to be taken, not a safety risk. So I think he's kind of on the same page as Vance, to be honest. Andrew Keen : Whenever anyone uses the word humanist, it always makes me slightly skeptical. I'm not entirely sure what it means. I mean, who's anti-humanist except for a few Marxist philosophers in Paris? Meanwhile, lots of other tech news. Microsoft announced what it sees as a breakthrough in quantum. Is that right, Keith? Keith Teare : You and I probably are not clever enough to know, but I think we are safe. The answer is yes. That headline says they've created a new state of matter, and that pertains to something called a topological qubit, which is a qubit that can be programmable. And they're so tiny and there's so many of them that a quantum computer can do calculations at much greater scale, much faster than anything before. And they claim to have reduced this new state of matter down into a chip that can be plugged into a computer, an electrical computer, not a quantum computer, and can run. And the claim is that that will accelerate quantum computing by decades, to the point where there are promising programs that mean something within five years. And so that's a new timeline from Microsoft. Andrew Keen : I think quantum is like we're going to talk about it and talk about it and talk about it, and everyone will be skeptical. Some people will say it's for real, and then suddenly something will come along, the equivalent of OpenAI or ChatGPT and quantum, and it will be real. But that certainly isn't this week. Meanwhile, your startup of the week is exactly what you've been talking about. A unicorn Saronic, which raised this week $600 million to mass produce autonomous warships. It's another example of how Silicon Valley and the Pentagon and the defense industry seem to be becoming one. Tell us about Saronic. Keith Teare : Saronic is part of that trend for Silicon Valley and military spending to converge. The same investors in Saronic are also in Anduril and some of the other companies we talked about from time to time, space as well. So it's symptomatic of two things. The first is militarized investment coming out of Silicon Valley, and the second is the valuations. I should disclose, by the way, that Signal Rank owns shares in Saronic. So this was good news for us this week. Andrew Keen : Or at least your investors own shares. It's interesting that this week Palantir also has done very well for the first few weeks of 2025. But it also crashed. This is a very frothy market, tech military startups isn't it? Keith Teare : I wouldn't say crashed. It's up like 200%. If you're an investor in Palantir and you've been holding, you wouldn't be too upset by this pullback. The world we're living in, and I'm not a fan of this by any means, but military investment by private companies selling to governments is going to be a rising trend because governments can't really innovate the military. They're so stuck with old fashioned views of what conflict might look like. It's interesting that even Musk and DOGE this week and Trump announced they're going to try to reduce the U.S. military budget by 10% annually. Andrew Keen : And they've seen some cuts. And I think when historians look back, the rise of companies like Saronic, the DOGE initiative, and the behavior which I'm like most people, I think rather critical of, of pulling back from Ukraine, they're all going to be part of the same narrative. Something is profoundly changing here on the military industrial, but the military political from the US's involvement in the world and the technological piece of this. Finally, post of the week and it comes back to the conversation you and I were just having about Tim Wu. Robert Reich, a well-known MSNBC type who was in the Clinton administration, posted that there are basically five ways to accumulate $1 billion: profiting from a monopoly, insider trading, political payoffs, fraud and inheritance. And Brad Gerstner, amongst others, was horrified with this. He said it was such a terrible, bitter and sad take on America. I'm assuming you're in the Gerstner camp, Keith. Keith Teare : I am, but that isn't why I posted it. I posted it because I wanted to focus on the absolute chasm between the democratic intellectual elite and the rest of us. Robert Reich almost is saying that you have to be a criminal to get rich. And that isn't how most people think. Andrew Keen : The American dream, right? But I, being a great fan of Reich, think he is the dinosaur of dinosaurs, but he isn't saying that. He's talking about being a billionaire. That's not being rich. So you have to distinguish. Keith Teare : This might be shocking to the listeners and maybe even to you, but it isn't that hard to become a billionaire if you do the right things these days, because 4 billion people on Earth are consuming technology outputs at increasing rates and paying for that. Being a billionaire is like what used to be being a millionaire. And it's only going up. Andrew Keen : I've got my title of this week's show Keith. "Keith Teare says it's not that hard to be a billionaire." How close are you to being a billionaire? Keith Teare : I've been very close twice in my career. Andrew Keen : No you haven't. When? Keith Teare : Absolutely have. Both RealNames and Easynet were valued at well over $1 billion. Andrew Keen : Yeah, but you didn't own the whole thing. Keith Teare : I owned a lot. And by the way, it was early in the life of the companies, and that was in 1994 and 1999. In 2025, those would be small outcomes. Today's outcomes, getting a company to be worth $1 billion happens early. That early stage unicorns point happens early. Andrew Keen : But let's be clear as well. What Reich is talking about is not billionaires. And as I said, I'm not particularly sympathetic to what he's saying either. But he's talking about real billionaires, people with $1 billion in the bank or with investors. Keith Teare : Let's just ask this question. Look back at what Reich says, and let's answer a few questions. Where would the brothers who run Stripe fit on that list? They're worth much more than $1 billion. They're not anywhere on that list. Where is Musk on that list? Where is Bezos on that list? Where are the founders of Google on that list? Andrew Keen : No, I agree with you. I think that he's wrong to say there are basically five ways to accumulate $1 billion: profiting from monopoly, insider trading, political payoffs, fraud and inheritance. You're absolutely right. But my disagreement with you is it's still incredibly hard to be a billionaire. How many billionaires are there in the US? Keith Teare : Of course it's hard. Andrew Keen : But you just said it was not that hard to be a billionaire. Keith Teare : Let me tell you what I mean by that. It's the easiest it's ever been, and it's going to get easier. Andrew Keen : Or it's easiest it's ever been because of inflation. Keith Teare : No, because of the scale of distribution networks and the revenues that come back from them. It used to be super hard. When I did Easynet, we had to put floppy disks on the front of magazines to distribute our software. When I did my most recent startups, you put an app in two app stores, and it's in the whole world the next day. And so the flow of money that comes from the ease of distribution of software to people who can pay for it if they like it, has completely changed the dynamics. Andrew Keen : I take your point. But coming back to this issue, how do you consider wealth? Who is rich? How much do you have to earn? Keith Teare : I think rich is totally subjective from your point of view. I thought I was rich when I didn't have credit card debt back in the day. Andrew Keen : Meaningless term, then. It's just entirely subjective. Keith Teare : Yes, but you can build the pyramid of wealth in terms of a smaller number of people at the top with very large amounts of wealth and go down to the bottom where lots of people have nothing. And that pyramid will change its shape and the scale at different levels through history, usually in a positive direction. That's one of the results of the socialization of production and the coming together of the human race into a single GDP growth. There's never been a period in human history recently where that pie or pyramid hasn't improved in both scale and distribution. Andrew Keen : As a bit frothy Keith, your new middle name is Keith "It's not that hard to be a billionaire" Teare. But coming back to Reich, I do agree with you. I think his approach is absurdly negative and reactionary, and the idea that you can't become a billionaire unless you're basically cheating, unless you're an inside trader or fraudulent or inherit money from someone else. He couldn't be more wrong on that, given, as you say, the Stripe guys, the Google guys, the Amazon people, even Musk. I'm no great fan of his but he didn't cheat to become a billionaire. Keith Teare : And you've got to believe, and this is why I put it in, that what he's saying is received wisdom in the minds of people like Lina Khan and Elizabeth Warren. Andrew Keen : That you're going to pick on your friend Lina Khan and Tim Wu as well. Wu teaches at Columbia. I wonder what Wu would say about that. I wonder whether Wu would argue that in a decentralized capitalism, it would be possible to be a billionaire. I'd have to get him back on the show to talk about that. Would we want a society, Keith? A decentralized capitalism where nobody was a millionaire, where the wealthiest people were worth 50 or $100 million? Keith Teare : No, I think the nightmare scenario for the future is that as production socializes and globalizes, a very small number of people control the wealth. But I think that's the right place to discuss how does the wealth get distributed to everyone? So you uplift human life, not just a few individuals, but I don't think you achieve that by trying to break up monopolies. Andrew Keen : The point is, it's not even breaking up monopolies. Reich's point is that one way to get $1 billion is to profit from monopoly. But the Google people, it's back to Peter Thiel's argument. Any entrepreneur wants to be a monopoly, that's the nature of doing startups. You want to win and winning becomes a monopoly, right? For better or worse. Google didn't start as a monopoly. Maybe it is one now because it's successful. Keith Teare : That's correct. If everyone was a failure, there'd be no monopolies. It's only success that creates market power and monopolies. It's a little bit like the word fascist. It's become a swear word to describe anything big. And fascist has become a swear word to describe anyone you disagree with. The truth is, these words mean things. Monopolies do get built. Google isn't one, in my opinion. And when they do, there's usually benefits that people are enjoying, which is why they're successful. And the key is how do you transition the world from massively concentrated private wealth to widely distributed aggregate wealth? Andrew Keen : And that's not about breaking up companies. Keith Teare : No, it's about distributing wealth, not breaking up companies. Andrew Keen : Also with Reich, there are lots of politically responsible or politically liberal billionaires. Reed Hoffman comes to mind. We talked about him last week. Finally, and this comes back to your point, Gerstner had another interesting post this week. He said the DOGE dividend could be a massive, game-changing legacy for Trump. Just one day of DOGE savings, apparently - this is what they claim, who knows whether they're really saving it - $3.7 billion could fund a private investment account with $1,000 for each child born in America. With just a little added per year, this could grow to $200,000 by age 30. Do you think Trump needs to do something radical on this front because he's not getting a great deal of good press on DOGE? A lot of people are losing their jobs every day. There are heart-rending stories of laid-off people. And it's not the billionaires losing their jobs. They're being fired by the billionaires. It's people working at poorly paid jobs in the first place. So does he need to do something with all the money he's supposed to have saved? Maybe in terms of a sovereign wealth fund or something more innovative? Keith Teare : What Gerstner is talking about there is about the distribution of wealth. It's one example of it. I think it's unlikely that Trump has the DNA to really follow through on anything like that. I don't think Donald Trump has any kind of social awareness at all about uplifting everybody. I do think there are people that do think like that. Sam Altman is one of them, and Reed Hoffman may be another, where the question of if there is abundance, how does everyone benefit from it? That's a real question. Gerstner's idea is not terrible, but I think it's a macro idea. There's a much bigger conversation needed than how to deploy the DOGE savings. Andrew Keen : I agree with you. And I think that I also agree with you on the Reich front that his kind of thinking, which is purely negative, is pointless. And what's missing on the progressive side amongst Democrats are creative, innovative thinking about the redistribution of wealth, rather than just taxing the rich or making it illegal to be a billionaire. Keith Teare : Yes. Andrew Keen : Well, we're in agreement, Keith. Keith Teare : Shocking. Andrew Keen : Shocking agreement. Although we disagree, I think it is still hard to be a billionaire. One thing I can guarantee is I've never been close and I never will be a billionaire. You say you've been close. What are the chances in the next few years, Keith, that you're going to be a billionaire from Signal Rank? Keith Teare : Don't even think about it. I think about what Signal Rank can do for everyone else. And if it does well, I'll do well. Andrew Keen : Go on bro. If it does well, I hope you'll pay me for this show. Keith Teare, publisher of That Was The Week. The man who argues that it's not that hard to be a millionaire. It's still a little hard, Keith, but we will be back next week to talk more billionaires, unicorns, AI, and everything else in the world of tech. Have a great week and we'll be back at this time next week. Thanks, Keith. Keith Teare : Bye. 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…
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1 Episode 2244: Tim Wu on how to decentralize capitalism 51:05
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Why is reforming capitalism so essential? In the latest issue of Liberties Quarterly , Tim Wu argues that unregulated capitalism not only leads to economic monopolies, but also drives populist anger and authoritarian politics. In “ The Real Road to Serfdom ”, Wu advocates for "decentralized capitalism" with distributed economic power, citing examples from Scandinavia and East Asia. Drawing from his experience in the Biden administration's antitrust efforts, he emphasizes the importance of preventing industry concentration. Wu expresses concern about big tech's growing political influence and argues that challenging monopolies is critical for fostering innovation and maintaining economic progress in the United States. Here are the 5 K EEN ON AMERICA takeaways from our interview with Tim Wu: * Historical Parallels : Wu sees concerning parallels between our current era and the 1930s, characterized by concentrated economic power, fragile economic conditions, and the rise of populist leaders. He suggests we're in a period where leaders are moving beyond winning elections to attempting to alter constitutional frameworks. * The Monopoly-Autocracy Connection : Wu argues there's a dangerous cycle where monopolies create economic inequality, which generates populist anger, which then enables authoritarian leaders to rise to power. He cites Hugo Chavez as a pioneer of this modern autocratic model that leaders like Trump have followed. * Decentralized Capitalism : Wu advocates for an economic system with multiple centers of distributed economic power, rather than just a few giant companies accumulating wealth. He points to Denmark, Taiwan, and post-WWII East Asia as successful examples of more balanced economic structures. * Antitrust Legacy : Wu believes the Biden administration's antitrust enforcement efforts have created lasting changes in legal standards and public consciousness that won't be easily reversed. He emphasizes that challenging monopolies is crucial for maintaining innovation and preventing industry stagnation. * Big Tech and Power : Wu expresses concern about big tech companies' growing political influence, comparing it to historical examples like AT&T and IBM. He's particularly worried about AI potentially reinforcing existing power structures rather than democratizing opportunities. Complete Transcript: Tim Wu on The Real Road to Serfdom Andrew Keen : Hello, everybody. We live in very strange times. That's no exaggeration. Yesterday, we had Nick Bryant on the show, the author of The Forever War. He was the BBC's man in Washington, DC for a long time. In our conversation, Nick suggested that we're living in really historic times, equivalent to the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11, perhaps even the beginnings of the Second World War. My guest today, like Nick, is a deep thinker. Tim Wu will be very well known to you for many things, including his book, The Attention Merchants. He was involved in the Biden White House, teaches law at Columbia University, and much more. He has a new book coming out later in the year on November 4th, The Age of Extraction. He has a very interesting essay in this issue of Liberties, the quarterly magazine of ideas, called "The Real Road to Serfdom." Tim had a couple of interesting tweets in the last couple of days, one comparing the behavior of President Trump to Germany's 1933 enabling act. And when it comes to Ukraine, Tim wrote, "How does the GOP feel about their president's evident plan to forfeit the Cold War?" Tim Wu is joining us from his home in the village of Manhattan. Tim, welcome. Before we get to your excellent essay in Liberties, how would you historicize what we're living through at the moment? Tim Wu : I think the 1930s are not the wrong way to look at it. Prior to that period, you had this extraordinary concentration of economic power in a very fragile environment. A lot of countries had experienced an enormous crash and you had the rise of populist leaders, with Mussolini being the pioneer of the model. This has been going on for at least 5 or 6 years now. We're in that middle period where it's moving away from people just winning elections to trying to really alter the constitution of their country. So I think the mid-30s is probably about right. Andrew Keen : You were involved in the Biden administration. You were one of the major thinkers when it came to antitrust. Have you been surprised with what's happened since Biden left office? The speed, the radicalness of this Trump administration? Tim Wu : Yes, because I expected something more like the first Trump administration, which was more of a show with a lot of flash but poor execution. This time around, the execution is also poor but more effective. I didn't fully expect that Elon Musk would actually be a government official at this point and that he'd have this sort of vandalism project going on. The fact they won all of the houses of Congress was part of the problem and has made the effort go faster. Andrew Keen : You talk about Musk. We've done many shows on Musk's role in all this and the seeming arrival of Silicon Valley or a certain version of Silicon Valley in Washington, DC. You're familiar with both worlds, the world of big tech and Silicon Valley and Washington. Is that your historical reading that these two worlds are coming together in this second Trump administration? Tim Wu : It's very natural for economic power to start to seek political power. It follows from the basic view of monopoly as a creature that wants to defend itself, and the second observation that the most effective means of self-defense is control of government. If you follow that very simple logic, it stands to reason that the most powerful economic entities would try to gain control of government. I want to talk about the next five years. The tech industry is following the lead of Palantir and Peter Thiel, who were pioneers in thinking that instead of trying to avoid government, they should try to control it. I think that is the obvious move over the next four years. Andrew Keen : I've been reading your excellent essay in Liberties, "The Real Road to Serfdom." When did you write it? It seems particularly pertinent this week, although of course you didn't write it knowing exactly what was going to be happening with Musk and Washington DC and Trump and Ukraine. Tim Wu : I wrote it about two years ago when I got out of the White House. The themes are trying to get at eternal issues about the dangers of economic power and concentrated economic power and its unaccountability. If it made predictions that are starting to come true, I don't know if that's good or bad. Andrew Keen : "The Real Road to Serfdom" is, of course, a reference to the Hayek book "The Road to Serfdom." Did you consciously use that title with reference to Hayek, or was that a Liberties decision? Tim Wu : That was my decision. At that point, and I may still write this, I was thinking of writing a book just called "The Real Road to Serfdom." I am both fascinated and a fan of Hayek in certain ways. I think he nailed certain things exactly right but makes big errors at the same time. To his credit, Hayek was very critical of monopoly and very critical of the role of the state in reinforcing monopoly. But he had an almost naivete about what powerful, unaccountable private economic entities would do with their power. That's essentially my criticism. Andrew Keen : In 2018, you wrote a book, "The Curse of Bigness." And in a way, this is an essay against bigness, but it's written—please correct me if I'm wrong—I read it as a critique of the left, suggesting that there were times in the essay, if you're reading it blind, you could have been reading Hayek in its critique of Marx and centralization and Lenin and Stalin and the Ukrainian famines. Is the message in the book, Tim—is your audience a progressive audience? Are you saying that it's a mistake to rely on bigness, so to speak, the state as a redistributive platform? Tim Wu : Not entirely. I'm very critical of communist planned economies, and that's part of it. But it's mainly a critique of libertarian faith in private economic power or sort of the blindness to the dangers of it. My basic thesis in "The Real Road to Serfdom" is that free market economies will tend to monopolize. Once monopoly power is achieved, it tends to set off a strong desire to extract as much wealth from the rest of the economy as it can, creating something closer to a feudal-type economy with an underclass. That tends to create a huge amount of resentment and populist anger, and democracies have to respond to that anger. The libertarian answer of saying that's fine, this problem will go away, is a terrible answer. History suggests that what happens instead is if democracy doesn't do anything, the state takes over, usually on the back of a populist strongman. It could be a communist, could be fascist, could be just a random authoritarian like in South America. I guess I'd say it's a critique of both the right and the left—the right for being blind to the dangers of concentrated economic power, and the left, especially the communist left, for idolizing the takeover of vital functions by a giant state, which has a track record as bad, if not worse, than purely private power. Andrew Keen : You bring up Hugo Chavez in the essay, the now departed Venezuelan strongman. You're obviously no great fan of his, but you do seem to suggest that Chavez, like so many other authoritarians, built his popularity on the truth of people's suffering. Is that fair? Tim Wu : That is very fair. In the 90s, when Chavez first came to power through popular election, everyone was mystified and thought he was some throwback to the dictators of the 60s and 70s. But he turned out to be a pioneer of our future, of the new form of autocrat, who appealed to the unfairness of the economy post-globalization. Leaders like Hungary's Viktor Orbán, and certainly Donald Trump, are direct descendants of Hugo Chavez in their approach. They follow the same playbook, appealing to the same kind of pain and suffering, promising to act for the people as opposed to the elites, the foreigners, and the immigrants. Chavez is also a cautionary lesson. He started in a way which the population liked—he lowered gas prices, gave away money, nationalized industry. He was very popular. But then like most autocrats, he eventually turned the money to himself and destroyed his own country. Andrew Keen : Why are autocrats like Chavez and perhaps Trump so much better at capturing that anger than Democrats like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris? Tim Wu : People who are outside the system like Chavez are able to tap into resentment and anger in a way which is less diluted by their direct information environment and their colleagues. Anyone who hangs around Washington, DC for a long time becomes more muted and careful. They lose credibility. That said, the fact that populist strongmen take over countries in distress suggests we need to avoid that level of economic distress in the first place and protect the middle class. Happy, contented middle-class countries don't tend to see the rise of authoritarian dictators. There isn't some Danish version of Hugo Chavez in the running right now. Andrew Keen : You bring up Denmark. Denmark always comes up in these kinds of conversations. What's admirable about your essay is you mostly don't fall into the Denmark trap of simply saying, "Why don't we all become like Denmark?" But at the same time, you acknowledge that the Danish model is attractive, suggesting we've misunderstood it or treated it superficially. What can and can't we learn from the Danish model? Tim Wu : American liberals often misunderstand the lesson of Scandinavia and other countries that have strong, prosperous middle classes like Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. In Scandinavia's case, the go-to explanation is that it's just the liberals' favorite set of policies—high taxation, strong social support systems. But I think the structure of those economies is much more important. They have what Jacob Hacker calls very strong "pre-distribution." They've avoided just having a small set of monopolists who make all the money and then hopefully hand it out to other people. It goes back to their land reform in the early 19th century, where they set up a very different kind of economy with a broad distribution of productive assets. If I'm trying to promote a philosophy in this book, it's for people who are fed up with the excesses of laissez-faire capitalism and think it leads to autocracy, but who are also no fans of communism or socialism. Just saying "let people pile up money and we'll tax it later" is not going to work. What you need is an economy structured with multiple centers of distributed economic power. Andrew Keen : The term that seems to summarize that in the essay is "architecture of parity." It's a bit clunky, but is that the best way to sum up your thinking? Tim Wu : I'm working on the terminology. Architecture of equality, parity, decentralized capitalism, distribution—these are all terms trying to capture it. It's more of a 19th century form of Christian or Catholic economics. People are grasping for the right word for an economic system that doesn't rely on just a few giant companies taking money from everybody and hopefully redistributing it. That model is broken and has a dangerous tendency to lead to toxicity. We need a better capitalism. An alternative title for this piece could have been "Saving Capitalism from Itself." Andrew Keen : Your name is most associated with tech and your critique of big tech. Does this get beyond big tech? Are there other sectors of the economy you're interested in fixing and reforming? Tim Wu : Absolutely. Silicon Valley is the most obvious and easiest entry point to talk about concentrated economic power. You can see the dependence on a small number of platforms that have earnings and profits far beyond what anyone imagined possible. But we're talking about an economy-wide, almost global set of problems. Some industries are worse. The meat processing industry in the United States is horrendously concentrated—it takes all the money from farmers, charges us too much for meat, and keeps it for itself. There are many industries where people are looking for something to understand or believe in that's different than socialism but different than this libertarian capitalism that ends up bankrupting people. Tech is the easiest way to talk about it, but not the be-all and end-all of my interest. Andrew Keen : Are there other examples where we're beginning to see decentralized capitalism? The essay was very strong on the critique, but I found fewer examples of decentralized capitalism in practice outside maybe Denmark in the 2020s. Tim Wu : East Asia post-World War II is a strong example of success. While no economy is purely small businesses, although Taiwan comes close, if you look at the East Asian story after World War II, one of the big features was an effort to reform land, give land to peasants, and create a landowning class to replace the feudal system. They had huge entrepreneurism, especially in Korea and Taiwan, less in Japan. This built a strong and prosperous middle and upper middle class. Japan has gone through hard times—they let their companies get too big and they stagnated. But Korea and Taiwan have gone from being third world economies to Taiwan now being wealthier per capita than Japan. The United States is another strong example, vacillating between being very big and very small. Even at its biggest, it still has a strong entrepreneurial culture and sectors with many small entities. Germany is another good example. There's no perfect version, but what I'm saying is that the model of monopolized economies and just having a few winners and hoping that anybody else can get tax payments is really a losing proposition. Andrew Keen : You were on Chris Hayes recently talking about antitrust. You're one of America's leading thinkers on antitrust and were brought into the Biden administration on the antitrust front. Is antitrust then the heart of the matter? Is this really the key to decentralizing capitalism? Tim Wu : I think it's a big tool, one of the tools of managing the economy. It works by preventing industries from merging their way into monopoly and keeps a careful eye on structure. In the same way that no one would say interest rates are the be-all and end-all of monetary policy, when we're talking about structural policy, having antitrust law actively preventing overconcentration is important. In the White House itself, we spent a lot of time trying to get other agencies to prevent their sectors, whether healthcare or transportation, from becoming overly monopolized and extractive. You can have many parts of the government involved—the antitrust agencies are key, but they're not the only solution. Andrew Keen : You wrote an interesting piece for The Atlantic about Biden's antitrust initiatives. You said the outgoing president's legacy of revived antitrust enforcement won't be easy to undo. Trump is very good at breaking things. Why is it going to be hard to undo? Lina Khan's gone—the woman who seems to unite all of Silicon Valley in their dislike of her. What did Biden do to protect antitrust legislation? Tim Wu : The legal patterns have changed and the cases are ongoing. But I think more important is a change of consciousness and ideology and change in popular support. I don't think there is great support for letting big tech do whatever they want without oversight. There are people who believe in that and some of them have influence in this administration, but there's been a real change in consciousness. I note that the Federal Trade Commission has already announced that it's going to stick with the Biden administration's merger rules, and my strong sense is the Department of Justice will do the same. There are certain things that Trump did that we stuck with in the Biden administration because they were popular—the most obvious being the turn toward China. Going back to the Bush era approach of never bothering any monopolies, I just don't think there's an appetite for it. Andrew Keen : Why is Lina Khan so unpopular in Silicon Valley? Tim Wu : It's interesting. I'm not usually one to attribute things to sexism, but the Justice Department brought more cases against big tech than she did. Jonathan Kanter, who ran antitrust at Justice, won the case against Google. His firm was trying to break up Google. They may still do it, but somehow Lina Khan became the face of it. I think because she's young and a woman—I don't know why Jonathan Kanter didn't become the symbol in the same way. Andrew Keen : You bring up the AT&T and IBM cases in the US tech narrative in the essay, suggesting that we can learn a great deal from them. What can we learn from those cases? Tim Wu : The United States from the 70s through the 2010s was an extraordinarily innovative place and did amazing things in the tech industry. An important part of that was challenging the big IBM and AT&T monopolies. AT&T was broken into eight pieces. IBM was forced to begin selling its software separately and opened up the software markets to what became a new software industry. AT&T earlier had been forced to license the transistor, which opened up the semiconductor industry and to some degree the computing industry, and had to stay out of computing. The government intervened pretty forcefully—a form of industrial policy to weaken its tech monopolies. The lesson is that we need to do the same thing right now. Some people will ask about China, but I think the United States has always done best when it constantly challenges established power and creates room for entrepreneurs to take their shot. I want very much for the new AI companies to challenge the main tech platforms and see what comes of that, as opposed to becoming a stagnant industry. Everyone says nothing can become stagnant, but the aerospace industry was pretty quick-moving in the 60s, and now you have Boeing and Airbus sitting there. It's very easy for a tech industry to stagnate, and attacking monopolists is the best way to prevent that. Andrew Keen : You mentioned Google earlier. You had an interesting op-ed in The New York Times last year about what we should do about Google. My wife is head of litigation at Google, so I'm not entirely disinterested. I also have a career as a critic of Google. If Kent Walker was here, he would acknowledge some of the things he was saying. But he would say Google still innovates—Google hasn't become Boeing. It's innovating in AI, in self-driving cars, it's shifting search. Would he be entirely wrong? Tim Wu : No, he wouldn't be entirely wrong. In the same way that IBM kept going, AT&T kept going. What you want in tech industries is a fair fight. The problem with Google isn't that they're investing in AI or trying to build self-driving cars—that's great. The problem is that they were paying over $20 billion a year to Apple for a promise not to compete in search. Through control of the browsers and many other things, they were trying to make sure they could never be dislodged. My view of the economics is monopolists need to always be a little insecure. They need to be in a position where they can be challenged. That happens—there are companies who, like AT&T in the 70s or 60s, felt they were immune. It took the government to make space. I think it's very important for there to be opportunities to challenge the big guys and try to seize the pie. Andrew Keen : I'm curious where you are on Section 230. Google won their Supreme Court case when it came to Section 230. In this sense, I'm guessing you view Google as being on the side of the good guys. Tim Wu : Section 230 is interesting. In the early days of the Internet, it was an important infant industry protection. It was an insulation that was vital to get those little companies at the time to give them an opportunity to grow and build business models, because if you're being sued by billions of people, you can't really do too much. Section 230 was originally designed to protect people like AOL, who ran user forums and had millions of people discussing—kind of like Reddit. I think as Google and companies like Facebook became active in promoting materials and became more like media companies, the case for an absolutist Section 230 became a lot weaker. The law didn't really change but the companies did. Andrew Keen : You wrote the essay "The Real Road to Serfdom" a couple of years ago. You also talked earlier about AI. There's not a lot of AI in this, but 50% of all the investment in technology over the last year was in AI, and most of that has gone into these huge platforms—OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini. Is AI now the central theater, both in the Road to Serfdom and in liberating ourselves from big tech? Tim Wu : Two years ago when I was writing this, I was determined not to say anything that would look stupid about AI later. There's a lot more on what I think about AI in my new book coming in November. I see AI as a classic potential successor technology. It obviously is the most significant successor to the web and the mass Internet of 20 years ago in terms of having potential to displace things like search and change the way people do various forms of productivity. How technology plays out depends a lot on the economic structure. If you think about a technology like the cotton gin, it didn't automatically lead to broad flourishing, but reinforced plantation slavery. What I hope happens with AI is that it sets off more competition and destabilization for some of the tech platforms as opposed to reinforcing their advantage and locking them in forever. I don't know if we know what's going to happen right now. I think it's extremely important that OpenAI stays separate from the existing tech companies, because if this just becomes the same players absorbing technology, that sounds a lot like the darker chapters in US tech history. Andrew Keen : And what about the power of AI to liberate ourselves from our brain power as the next industrial revolution? When I was reading the essay, I thought it would be a very good model, both as a warning and in terms of offering potential for us to create this new architecture of parity. Because the technology in itself, in theory at least, is one of parity—one of democratizing brainpower. Tim Wu : Yes, I agree it has extraordinary potential. Things can go in two directions. The Industrial Revolution is one example where you had more of a top-down centralization of the means of production that was very bad for many people initially, though there were longer-term gains. I would hope AI would be something more like the PC revolution in the 80s and 90s, which did augment individual humanity as opposed to collective enterprise. It allowed people to do things like start their own travel agency or accounting firm with just a computer. I am interested and bullish on the potential of AI to empower smaller units, but I'm concerned it will be used to reinforce existing economic structures. The jury's out—the future will tell us. Just hoping it's going to make humanity better is not going to be the best answer. Andrew Keen : When you were writing this essay, Web3 was still in vogue then—the idea of blockchain and crypto decentralizing the economy. But I didn't see any references to Web3 and the role of technology in democratizing capitalism in terms of the architecture of corporations. Are you skeptical of the Web3 ideology? Tim Wu : The essay had its limits since I was also talking about 18th century Denmark. I have a lot more on blockchain and Web3 in the book. The challenge with crypto and Bitcoin is that it both over-promises and delivers something. I've been very interested in crypto and blockchain for a long time. The challenge it's had is constantly promising to decentralize great systems and failing, then people stealing billions of dollars and ending up in prison. It has a dubious track record, but it does have this core potential for a certain class of people to earn money. I'm always in favor of anything that is an alternative means of earning money. There are people who made money on it. I just think it's failed to execute on its promises. Blockchain in particular has failed to be a real challenge to web technologies. Andrew Keen : As you say, Hayek inspired the book and in some sense this is intellectual. The father of decentralization in ideological terms was E.F. Schumacher. I don't think you reference him, but do you think there has been much thinking since Schumacher on the value of smallness and decentralized architectures? What do people like yourself add to what Schumacher missed in his critique of bigness? Tim Wu : Schumacher is a good example. Rawls is actually under-recognized as being interested in these things. I see myself as writing in the tradition of those figures and trying to pursue a political economy that values a more balanced economy and small production. Hopefully what I add is a level of institutional experience and practicality that was missing. Rawls is slightly unfair because he's a philosopher, but his model doesn't include firms—it's just individuals. So it's all about balancing between poor people and rich people when obviously economic power is also held by corporations. I'm trying to create more flesh on the bones of the "small is beautiful" philosophy and political economy that is less starry-eyed and more realistic. I'm putting forward the point that you're not sacrificing growth and you're taking less political risk with a more balanced economy. There's an adulation of bigness in our time—exciting big companies are glamorous. But long-term prosperity does better when you have more centers, a more balanced system. I'm not an ultra-centralist suggesting we should live in mud huts, but I do think the worship of monopoly is very similar to the worship of autocracy and is dangerous. Andrew Keen : Much to discuss. Tim Wu, thank you so much. The author of "The Real Road to Serfdom," fascinating essay in this month's issue of Liberties. I know "The Age of Extraction" will be coming out on November 10th. Tim Wu : In England and US at the same time. Andrew Keen : We'll get you back on the show. Fascinating conversation, Tim. Thank you so much. Hailed as the “ architect ” of the Biden administration’s competition and antitrust policies, Tim Wu writes and teaches about private power and related topics. First known for coining the term “net neutrality” in 2002, in recent years Wu has been a leader in the revitalization of American antitrust and has taken a particular focus on the growing power of the big tech platforms. In 2021, he was appointed to serve in the White House as special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy. A professor at Columbia Law School since 2006, Wu has also held posts in public service. He was enforcement counsel in the New York Attorney General’s Office, worked on competition policy for the National Economic Council during the Barack Obama administration, and worked in antitrust enforcement at the Federal Trade Commission. In 2014, Wu was a Democratic primary candidate for lieutenant governor of New York. In his most recent book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age (2018), he argues that corporate and industrial concentration can lead to the rise of populism, nationalism, and extremist politicians. His previous books include The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads (2016), The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (2010), and Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World (2006), which he co-authored with Jack Goldsmith. Wu was a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and also has written for Slate , The New Yorker , and The Washington Post . He once explained the concept of net neutrality to late-night host Stephen Colbert while he rode a rollercoaster . He has been named one of America’s 100 most influential lawyers by the National Law Journal ; has made Politico ’s list of 50 most influential figures in American politics (more than once); and has been included in the Scientific American 50 of policy leadership. Wu is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as a law clerk for Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2243: Nick Bryant on why Trump 2.0 is as historic as the Fall of the Berlin Wall 42:54
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How historic are Trump 2.0’s first few weeks? For the veteran correspondent, Nick Bryant , the longtime BBC man in Washington DC, what the Trump regime has done in the first few weeks of his second administration is as historic as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It’s the end of the America we haver known for the last seventy years, he says. Bryant describes Trump's rapprochement with Russia as Neville Chamberlain style appeasement and notes the dramatic shifts in U.S. foreign policy, particularly regarding Ukraine and European allies. He sees Trump's actions as revealing rather than changing America's true nature. Bryant also discusses the failures of the Dems, the role of Elon Musk in the administration, and structural changes to federal institutions. Despite all the upheaval, Bryant suggests this isn't so much "goodbye to America" as a revelation of the cynically isolationist forces that were always present in American society. Here are the five KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Nick Bryant: * Historic Transformation : Bryant sees Trump's second term as a pivotal moment in world history, comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall, with rapid changes in global alliances and particularly in America's relationship with Russia, which he characterizes as "appeasement." * Democratic Party Crisis : He analyzes how the Democrats' failures stemmed from multiple factors - Biden's delayed exit, Kamala Harris's weak candidacy, and the lack of time to find a stronger replacement. While Trump's victory was significant, Bryant notes it wasn't a landslide. * Elon Musk's Unexpected Role : An unforeseen development Bryant didn't predict in his book was Musk's prominent position in Trump's second administration, describing it as almost a "co-presidency" following Trump's assassination attempt and Musk’s subsequent endorsement of Trump. * Federal Government Transformation : Bryant observes that Trump's dismantling of federal institutions goes beyond typical Republican small-government approaches, potentially removing not just bureaucratic waste but crucial expertise and institutional knowledge. * Trump as Revealer, Not Changer : Perhaps most significantly, Bryant argues that Trump hasn't changed America but rather revealed its true nature - arguing that authoritarianism, political violence, and distrust of big government have always been present in American history. FULL TRANSCRIPT Andrew Keen : Hello, everybody. About eight months ago, we had a great show with the BBC's former Washington correspondent, Nick Bryant. His latest book, "The Forever War: America's Unending Conflict with Itself," predicted much of what's happening in the United States now. When you look at the headlines this week about the U.S.-Russia relationship changing in a head-spinning way, apparently laying the groundwork for ending the Ukrainian war, all sorts of different relations and tariffs and many other things in this new regime. Nick is joining us from Sydney, Australia, where he now lives. Nick, do you miss America? Nick Bryant : I covered the first Trump administration and it felt like a 25/8 job, not just 24/7. Trump 2.0 feels even more relentless—round-the-clock news forever. We're checking our phones to see what has happened next. People who read my book wouldn't be surprised by how Donald Trump is conducting his second term. But some things weren't on my bingo card, like Trump suggesting a U.S. takeover of Gaza. The rapprochement with Putin, which we should look on as an act of appeasement after his aggression in Ukraine, was very easy to predict. Andrew Keen : That's quite a sharp comment, Nick—an act of appeasement equivalent to Neville Chamberlain's umbrella. Nick Bryant : It was ironic that J.D. Vance made his speech at the Munich Security Conference. Munich was where Neville Chamberlain secured the Munich Agreement, which was seen as a terrible act of appeasement towards Nazi Germany. This moment feels historic—I would liken it to the fall of the Berlin Wall. We're seeing a complete upending of the world order. Back at the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, we were talking about the end of history—Francis Fukuyama's famous thesis suggesting the triumph of liberal democracy. Now, we're talking about the end of America as we've known it since World War II. You get these Berlin Wall moments like Trump saying there should be a U.S. takeover of Gaza. J.D. Vance's speech in Munich ruptures the transatlantic alliance, which has been the basis of America's global preeminence and European security since World War II. Then you've seen what's happened in Saudi Arabia with the meeting between the Russians and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, completely resetting relations between Washington and Moscow. It's almost as if the invasions of Ukraine never happened. We're back to the situation during the Bush administration when George W. Bush famously met Vladimir Putin, looked into his soul, and gave him a clean bill of health. Things are moving at a hurtling pace, and it seems we're seeing the equivalent of a Berlin Wall tumbling every couple of days. Andrew Keen : That's quite dramatic for an experienced journalist like yourself to say. You don't exaggerate unnecessarily, Nick. It's astonishing. Nobody predicted this. Nick Bryant : When I first said this about three weeks ago, I had to think long and hard about whether the historical moments were equivalent. Two weeks on, I've got absolutely no doubt. We're seeing a massive change. European allies of America are now not only questioning whether the United States is a reliable ally—they're questioning whether the United States is an ally at all. Some are even raising the possibility that nations like Germany, the UK, and France will soon look upon America as an adversary. J.D. Vance's speech was very pointed, attacking European elitism and what he saw as denial of freedom of speech in Europe by governments, but not having a single word of criticism for Vladimir Putin. People are listening to the U.S. president, vice president, and others like Marco Rubio with their jaws on the ground. It's a very worrying moment for America's allies because they cannot look across the Atlantic anymore and see a president who will support them. Instead, they see an administration aligning itself with hard-right and far-right populist movements. Andrew Keen : The subtitle of your book was "America's Unending Conflict with Itself: The History Behind Trump in Advance." But America now—and I'm talking to you from San Francisco, where obviously there aren't a lot of Trump fans or J.D. Vance fans—seems in an odd, almost surreal way to be united. There were protests on Presidents Day earlier this week against Trump, calling him a tyrant. But is the thesis of your book about the forever war, America continually being divided between coastal elites and the hinterlands, Republicans and Democrats, still manifesting itself in late February 2025? Nick Bryant : Trump didn't win a landslide victory in the election. He won a significant victory, a decisive victory. It was hugely significant that he won the popular vote, which he didn't manage to do in 2016. But it wasn't a big win—he didn't win 50% of the popular vote. Sure, he won the seven battleground states, giving the sense of a massive victory, but it wasn't massive numerically. The divides in America are still there. The opposition has melted away at the moment with sporadic protests, but nothing really major. Don't be fooled into thinking America's forever wars have suddenly ended and Trump has won. The opposition will be back. The resistance will be back. I remember moments in the Obama administration when it looked like progressives had won every battle in America. I remember the day I went to South Carolina, to the funeral of the pastor killed in that terrible shooting in Charleston. Obama broke into "Amazing Grace"—it was almost for the first time in front of a black audience that he fully embraced the mantle of America's first African-American president. He flew back to Washington that night, and the White House was bathed in rainbow colors because the Supreme Court had made same-sex marriage legal across the country. It seemed in that moment that progressives were winning every fight. The Supreme Court also upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare. You assumed America's first black president would be followed by America's first female president. But what we were seeing in that summer of 2015 was actually the conservative backlash. Trump literally announced his presidential bid the day before that awful Charleston shooting. You can easily misread history at this moment. Sure, Trump looks dominant now, but don't be fooled. It wouldn't surprise me at all if in two years' time the Republicans end up losing the House of Representatives in the congressional midterm elections. Andrew Keen : When it comes to progressives, what do you make of the Democratic response, or perhaps the lack of response, to the failure of Kamala Harris? The huge amount of money, the uninspiring nature of her campaign, the fiasco over Biden—were these all accidental events or do they speak of a broader crisis on the left amongst progressives in America? Nick Bryant : They speak of both. There were really big mistakes made by the Democrats, not least Joe Biden's decision to contest the election as long as he did. It had become pretty clear by the beginning of 2024 that he wasn't in a fit state to serve four more years or take on the challenge of Donald Trump. Biden did too well at two critical junctures. During the midterm elections in 2022, many people predicted a red wave, a red tsunami. If that had happened, Biden would have faced pressure to step aside for an orderly primary process to pick a successor. But the red wave turned into a red ripple, and that persuaded Biden he was the right candidate. He focused on democracy, put democracy on the ballot, hammered the point about January 6th, and decided to run. Another critical juncture was the State of the Union address at the beginning of 2024. Biden did a good job, and I think that allayed a lot of concerns in the Democratic Party. Looking back on those two events, they really encouraged Biden to run again when he should never have done so. Remember, in 2020, he intimated that he would be a bridge to the next generation. He probably made a mistake then in picking Kamala Harris as his vice presidential candidate because he was basically appointing his heir. She wasn't the strongest Democrat to go up against Donald Trump—it was always going to be hard for a woman of color to win the Rust Belt. She wasn't a particularly good candidate in 2020 when she ran; she didn't even make it into 2020. She launched her campaign in Oakland, and while it looked good at the time, it became clear she was a poor candidate. Historical accidents, the wrong candidate, a suffering economy, and an America that has always been receptive to someone like Trump—all those factors played into his victory. Andrew Keen : If you were giving advice to the Democrats as they lick their wounds and begin to think about recovery and fighting the next battles, would you advise them to shift to the left or to the center? Nick Bryant : That's a fascinating question because you could argue it both ways. Do the Democrats need to find a populist of the left who can win back those blue-collar voters that have deserted the Democratic Party? This is a historical process that's been going on for many years. Working-class voters ditched the Democrats during the Reagan years and the Nixon years. Often race is part of that, often the bad economy is part of that—an economy that's not working for the working class who can't see a way to map out an American dream for themselves. You could argue for a left-wing populist, or you could argue that history shows the only way Democrats win the White House is by being centrist and moderate. That was true of LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton—all Southerners, and that wasn't a coincidence. Southern Democrats came from the center of the party. Obama was a pragmatic, centrist candidate. Kennedy was a very pragmatic centrist who tried to bring together the warring tribes of the Democratic Party. Historically, you could argue Democrats need to move to the center and stake out that ground as Trump moves further to the right and the extremes. But what makes it harder to say for sure is that we're in a political world where a lot of the old rules don't seem to apply. Andrew Keen : We don't quite know what the new rules are or if there are any rules. You describe this moment as equivalent in historic terms to the fall of the Berlin Wall or perhaps 9/11. If we reverse that lens and look inwards, is there an equivalent historical significance? You had an interesting tweet about Doge and the attempt in some people's eyes for a kind of capture of power by Elon Musk and the replacement of the traditional state with some sort of almost Leninist state. What do you make of what's happening within the United States in domestic politics, particularly Musk's role? Nick Bryant : We've seen American presidents test the Constitution before. Nobody in the modern era has done it so flagrantly as Donald Trump, but Nixon tried to maximize presidential powers to the extent that he broke the law. Nixon would have been found guilty in a Senate trial had that impeachment process continued. Of course, he was forced to resign because a delegation of his own party drove down Pennsylvania Avenue and told him he had to go. You don't get that with the Republican Party and Donald Trump—they've fallen behind him. FDR was commonly described as an American dictator. H.L. Mencken wrote that America had a Caesar, a pharaoh. Woodrow Wilson was maximalist in his presidential powers. Abraham Lincoln was the great Constitution breaker, from trashing the First Amendment to exceeding his powers with the Emancipation Proclamation. Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase was unconstitutional—he needed congressional approval, which he didn't have. There's a long history of presidents breaking rules and Americans being okay with that. Lincoln has never been displaced from his historical throne of grace. FDR is regarded as one of the great presidents. What sets this moment apart is that constraints on presidents traditionally came from the courts and their own political parties. We're not seeing that with Donald Trump. Andrew Keen : What about the cultural front? There's talk of Trump's revenge, taking over the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., revenge against traditional scientists, possibly closing some universities. Is this overdramatic, or is Trump really taking revenge for what happened between 2020 and 2024 when he was out of power? Nick Bryant : Trump is in a vengeful mood—we always thought Trump 2.0 would be a project of vengeance. Republican presidents have always thought parts of the administrative state work against them, and Trump is dismantling it at warp speed. Elon Musk is going into various government departments acting like he's heading a hostile takeover of the federal government. Reagan launched a rhetorical assault on federal government, which was really a creation of the New Deal years under FDR. That period saw massive expansion of federal government into people's lives with Social Security and the welfare net. We haven't seen this kind of assault on federal government since then. Trump is also trying to dismantle what he regards as America's cultural establishment, which he sees as too white, too elitist, too intellectual. He's trying to remold America, its government, and cultural institutions in his own image. Andrew Keen : You've mentioned Reagan. I came to the U.S. like you—you came as a grad student to study American history. I came in the '80s and remember the hysteria at UC Berkeley over Reagan—that he would blow up the world, that he was clueless, a Hollywood actor with no right to be in politics. Is it conceivable that Trump could be just another version of Reagan? In spite of all this hysteria, might this second Trump regime actually be successful? Nick Bryant : You can't rule out that possibility. The mistake made about Reagan was seeing him as a warmonger when he really wanted to be a peacemaker. That was the point of ending the Cold War—he wanted to win it, but through gambles on people like Gorbachev and diplomatic moves his advisors warned against. There are analogies to Trump. I don't think he's a warmonger or wants to send U.S. troops into countries. He's described some surprising imperial ambitions like taking over Greenland, though Harry Truman once wanted that too. Trump wants to make peace, but the problem is on what terms. Peace in Ukraine, in Trump's view, means a massive win for Vladimir Putin and the sidelining of the Ukrainian people and America's European allies. There wasn't a big cost to Reagan's peacemaking—the European alliance stayed intact, he tinkered with government but didn't go after Social Security. The cost of Trump is the problem. Andrew Keen : The moral cost or the economic cost? Nick Bryant : Both. One thing that happened with Reagan was the opening of big disparities in income and wealth in American society. That was a big factor in Donald Trump's success—the paradox of how this billionaire from New York became the hero of the Rust Belt. When the gulf between executive pay and shop floor pay became massive, it was during the Reagan years. You see the potential of something similar now. Trump is supercharging an economy that looks like it will favor the tech giants and the world's richest man, Elon Musk. You end up worsening the problem you were arguably setting out to solve. You don't get landslides anymore in American politics—the last president to win 40 states was George Herbert Walker Bush. Reagan in '84 won 49 out of 50 states, almost getting a clean sweep except for Mondale's home state of Minnesota. I don't think Trump will be the kind of unifying president that Reagan was. There was a spontaneity and optimism about Reagan that you don't see with Trump. Andrew Keen : Where are the divisions? Where is the great threat to Trump coming from? There was a story this week that Steve Bannon called Elon Musk a parasitic illegal immigrant. Is it conceivable that the biggest weakness within the Trump regime will come from conflict between people like Bannon and Musk, the nationalists and the internationalist wing of the MAGA movement? Nick Bryant : That's a fascinating question. There doesn't seem to be much external opposition at the moment. The Democrats are knocked out or taking the eight count in boxing terms, getting back on their feet and taking as long as they can to get their gloves up. There isn't a leader in the Democratic movement who has anywhere near Trump's magnetism or personal power to take him on. Maybe the opposition comes from internal divisions and collapse of the Trump project. The relationship with Elon Musk was something I didn't anticipate in my book. After that assassination attempt, Musk endorsed Trump in a big way, put his money behind him, started offering cash prizes in Pennsylvania. Having lived at Mar-a-Lago during the transition with a cottage on the grounds and now an office in the White House—I didn't anticipate his role. Many people thought Trump wouldn't put up with somebody who overshadows him or gets more attention, but that relationship hasn't failed yet. I wonder if that speaks to something different between Trump 2.0 and 1.0. Trump's surrounded by loyalists now, but at 78 years old, I think he wanted to win the presidency more than he wanted the presidency itself. I wonder if he's happy to give more responsibility to people like Musk who he thinks will carry out his agenda. Andrew Keen : You've been described as the new Alistair Cooke. Cooke was the father of Anglo-American journalism—his Letter from America was an iconic show, the longest-running show in radio history. Cooke was always very critical of what he called the big daddy state in Washington, D.C., wasn't a fan of large government. What's your take on Trump's attack on large government in D.C.? Is there anything in it? You spent a lot of time in DC. Are these agencies full of fat and do they need to be cut? Nick Bryant : Cutting fat out of Washington budgets is one of the easy things—they're bloated, they get all these earmarks, they're full of pork. There's always been a bloated federal bureaucracy, and there's a long historical tradition of suspicion of Washington going back to the founding. That's why the federal system emerged with so much power vested in the states. Reagan's revolution was based on dismantling the New Deal government. He didn't get that far in that project, but rhetorically he shifted America's views about government. He emphasized that government was the problem, not the solution, for four decades. When Bill Clinton became president, he had to make this big ideological concession to Reaganism and deliver Reaganite lines like "the era of big government is over." The concern right now is that they're not just getting rid of fat—they're getting rid of expertise and institutional knowledge. They're removing people who may be democratic in their thinking or not on board with the Trump revolution, but who have extensive experience in making government work. In moments of national crisis, conservative ideologues tend to become operational liberals. They rely on government in disasters, pandemics, and economic crises to bail out banks and industries. Conservatives have successfully planted in many Americans' heads that government is the enemy. Hillary Clinton saw a classic sign in 2006—a protester carrying a sign saying "get your government hands off my Medicare." Well, Medicare is a government program. People need government, expertise, and people in Washington who know what they're doing. You're not just getting rid of waste—you're getting rid of institutional knowledge. Andrew Keen : One of the more colorful characters in these Trump years is RFK Jr. There was an interesting piece in the National Review about RFK Jr. forcing the left to abandon the Kennedy legacy. Is there something symbolically historical in this shift from RFK Sr. being an icon on the left to RFK Jr. being an icon on the libertarian right? Does it speak of something structural that's changed in American political culture? Nick Bryant : Yes, it does, and it speaks to how America is perceived internationally. JFK was always seen as this liberal champion, but he was an arch pragmatist, never more so than on civil rights. My doctoral thesis and first book were about tearing down that myth about Kennedy. The Kennedys did inspire international respect. The Kennedy White House seemed to be a place of rationality, refinement, and glamor. JFK embodied what was great about America—its youth, dynamism, vision. When RFK was assassinated in California, weeks after MLK's assassination, many thought that sense of America was being killed off too. These were people who inspired others internationally to enter public service. They saw America as a beacon on a hill. RFK Jr. speaks of a different, toxic American exceptionalism. People look at figures like RFK Jr. and wonder how he could possibly end up heading the American Health Department. He embodies what many people internationally reject about America, whereas JFK and RFK embodied what people loved, admired, and wanted to emulate. Andrew Keen : You do a show now on Australian television. What's the view from Australia? Are people as horrified and disturbed in Australia as they are in Europe about what you've called a historic change as profound as the fall of the Berlin Wall—or maybe rather than the fall of the Berlin Wall, it's the establishment of a new kind of Berlin Wall? Nick Bryant : One of Australia's historic diplomatic fears is abandonment. They initially looked to Britain as a security guarantor in the early days of Australian Federation when Australia became a modern country in 1901. After World War II, they realized Britain couldn't protect them, so they looked to America instead. America has underwritten Australia's security since World War II. Now many Australians realize that won't be the case anymore. Australia entered into the AUKUS deal with Britain and America for nuclear submarine technology, which has become the basis of Australia's defense. There's fear that Trump could cancel it on a whim. They're currently battling over steel and aluminum tariffs. Anthony Albanese, the center-left prime minister, got a brief diplomatic reprieve after talking with Trump last week. A country like Australia, much like Britain, France, or Germany, cannot look on Trump's America as a reliable ally right now. That's concerning in a region where China increasingly throws its weight around. Andrew Keen : Although I'm guessing some people in Australia would be encouraged by Trump's hostility towards China. Nick Bryant : Yes, that's one area where they see Trump differently than in Europe because there are so many China hawks in the Trump administration. That gives them some comfort—they don't see the situation as directly analogous to Europe. But it's still worrying. They've had presidents who've been favorable towards Australia over the years. Trump likes Australia partly because America enjoys a trade surplus with Australia and he likes Greg Norman, the golfer. But that only gives you a certain measure of security. There is concern in this part of the world, and like in Europe, people are questioning whether they share values with a president who is aligning himself with far-right parties. Andrew Keen : Finally, Nick, your penultimate book was "When America Stopped Being Great: A History of the Present." You had an interesting tweet where you noted that the final chapter in your current book, "The Forever War," is called "Goodbye America." But the more we talk, whether or not America remains great is arguable. If anything, this conversation is about "hello" to a new America. It's not goodbye America—if anything, America's more powerful, more dominant, shaping the world more in the 2020s than it's ever done. Nick Bryant : It's goodbye to the America we've known for the last 70 years, but not goodbye to America itself. That's one of the arguments of the book—Trump is far more representative of the true America than many international observers realize. If you look at American history through a different lens, Trump makes perfect sense. There's always been an authoritarian streak, a willingness to fall for demagogues, political violence, deep mistrust of government, and rich people making fortunes—from the robber barons of the late 19th century to the tech barons of the 21st century. It's goodbye to a certain America, but the America that Trump presides over now is an America that's always been there. Trump hasn't changed America—he's revealed it. Andrew Keen : Well, one thing we can say for sure is it's not goodbye to Nick Bryant. We'll get you back on the show. You're one of America's most perceptive and incisive observers, even if you're in Australia now. Thank you so much. Nick Bryant : Andrew, it's always a pleasure to be with you. I still love the country deeply—my fascination has always been born of great affection. Nick Bryant is the author of The Forever War: American's Unending Conflict with Itself and When America Stopped Being Great , a book that Joe Biden keeps in the Oval Office. He was formerly one of the BBC’s most senior foreign correspondents, with postings in Washington DC, New York, South Asia and Australia. After covering the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, he left the BBC in 2021, and now lives in Sydney with his wife and children. Nick studied history at Cambridge and has a doctorate in American history from Oxford. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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1 Episode 2242: Ian Goldin on the past, present and future of migration 44:24
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Few books are timelier than Ian Goldin ’s new The Shortest History of Migration . Drawing from his personal history as a South African emigrant and his experience working with Nelson Mandela, the Oxford based Goldin explores the when, why and how humans move - from the prehistoric peopling of the planet to today and tomorrow’s migrants. He addresses current political tensions, including J.D. Vance's recent criticisms of European migration policies and Elon Musk's controversial stance on immigration. Goldin argues that migration has been fundamental to human progress and economic growth, while acknowledging that there are legitimate questions about unregulated immigration policy. Here are the five KEEN ON take-aways from our conversation with Goldin * Migration patterns have remained remarkably consistent (about 3% of global population) over the past century, though absolute numbers have increased with population growth. However, what has changed dramatically is the creation of formal borders, passport controls, and our perception of migration. * There's a growing disconnect between political rhetoric and economic reality. While many politicians take strong anti-immigration stances, economies actually need migrants for their dynamism, particularly in aging societies. This is evidenced by Silicon Valley's success, where over half of tech entrepreneurs are migrants. * The distinction between economic migrants and refugees is crucial but often conflated in public discourse. Goldin argues that different policies are needed for each group - economic migration can be managed through choice, while refugee protection is a humanitarian obligation. * Local pressures versus national benefits create tension in immigration debates. While immigration's economic benefits often accrue nationally and long-term, the immediate pressures on housing, public services, and infrastructure are felt locally, leading to public resistance. * Future migration patterns will be dramatically reshaped by demographic changes, climate change, and automation by 2050. Goldin predicts that current debates about keeping people out may reverse as developed countries compete to attract migrants to address labor shortages and maintain economic growth. Full transcript of the Goldin interview KEEN : Migration is back in the news. A couple of days ago, J.D. Vance was in Europe, in Munich, attacking Europe over its migration policy. Meanwhile, European politicians have slammed France's call to be inclusive of far-right parties which are hostile to immigration. Immigration is really one of the most controversial issues of our age, perhaps of any age, as is underlined by my guest Ian Goldin, one of the great thinkers on globalization. He has a new book out this week in the U.S., "The Shortest History of Migration." Ian is joining us from Oxford, where he lives and teaches. Ian, what do you make of this latest violent spat in Europe? Is it something new or just more of the same? GOLDIN : I think it is an escalation of previous trends. For the U.S. to come to Europe and talk about domestic policies represents a change not only in tone and intensity but also in diplomacy. Politicians don't tend to go to other countries—UK and European politicians don't go to the U.S. and tell the U.S. how to run itself. So it is different when the vice president of the U.S. comes to Europe and comments very directly about individuals, meets with far-right leaders, and basically tries to advise Europe on what to do. It's a big step up from what we've seen before, and it's very polarizing. KEEN : This term "far right"—and it's not a term that I know you invented, you just used it—is it appropriate to describe these anti-immigrant parties in Europe and indeed in the U.S.? The AfD in Germany, the Reform Party in the UK, the MAGA movement in America. Are they all premised on hostility to immigration? GOLDIN : Immigration unites parties across the political spectrum, and anti-immigration is certainly not the preserve of far-right parties. Even the Labor Party in the UK at the moment has come out as very hostile to immigration. But what's different about Vance's visit to the UK is that he met with the AfD leader in Germany, didn't meet with the leader of the government. He's the only major global leader who's met with the AfD. Similarly, we've seen members of Trump's cabinet, like Elon Musk, endorsing the Reform Party in the UK and pumping up what I think are legitimately described as far-right parties on the political spectrum in Europe. But as you say, it's not the exclusive domain of the far right to be anti-immigrant. This is sweeping the board across the spectrum in many European countries and in the U.S. The Democrats are also pretty anti-immigration. KEEN : You brought up Musk. You have something in common with him—you're both South African migrants who've made good in the West. There's something very odd about Musk. Maybe you can make more sense of it, particularly given what you have in common. On the one hand, he is the poster child for globalization and migration. He was brought up in South Africa, came to the U.S., made a fortune, and now is the richest man in the world. On the other hand, he seems to be the funder of all these reactionary, anti-immigrant parties. What's going on here? GOLDIN : There's a lot to be said. Musk was an immigrant himself, just like Trump's grandfather was to the U.S., just like many members of the Cabinet's forebears were. So there's a contradiction of people who really owe their histories and where they are to immigration being so anti-immigrant. Personally, I not only come from the same town and went to the same high school in Pretoria, South Africa, but I've met him. He came to Oxford—if you look on the Oxford Martin School website, you'll see a conversation we had when he brought the first Tesla up to Oxford. I think he's moved a long way in the last years. It's difficult to explain that, but clearly what he's saying today is not the same as he was saying 5 or 10 years ago. He and others like Peter Thiel are very strong supporters not only of MAGA but of similar parties in Europe. I think it represents a new force—the amount of money these people have is very significant, and they do make a real impact on politics. Indeed, it's likely that Musk directly through his giving had material impact on the U.S. presidential election. Rich people have always given to political parties and owned media, but this is a whole new level of engagement where extremely rich people can influence outcomes. KEEN : The subtitle of your book, "The Shortest History of Migration" is "When, Why, and How Humans Moved from the Prehistoric Peopling of the Planet to Today and Tomorrow's Migrants." It's an ambitious book, though short. Has something changed over the last 50 or 100 years? Humans have always been on the move, haven't they? GOLDIN : There have been dramatic changes. One change is the creation of borders as we know them today and passports, border controls. That's relatively recent—before the First World War, people could basically move around without the controls and identity documents we know today. Secondly, there are many more countries now, well over 100 countries. The number of borders has greatly increased. The cost of travel and the risk associated with travel—I don't mean dangerous crossings across the Rio Grande or the Sahara, but air travel, ship travel, and motor vehicles—has gone down dramatically. The world population has increased significantly. Although the share of people migrating hasn't budged over the last hundred years—it's about 3% of the world's population—the absolute numbers have increased because 3% of 8 billion people is clearly a much bigger number than 3% of what it was around 2 billion 100 years ago. The big change has really been in the way we think about migrants today compared to, for example, the age of mass migration when 20-25% of the U.S. was migrant in the period 1850-1892, before the First World War. KEEN : But wasn't that also fair to say in the U.S. that there have been cycles of anti-immigrant politics and culture where at points the border was open and then got slammed shut again? GOLDIN : Yes, very much so, particularly in the post-Second World War period. We have what we might see again now, which is this two-handed approach. On one hand, politicians trying to be very strong on migration and saying things which they feel appeal to voters, and at the same time in practice very different things happening. We've seen that in many countries where the rhetoric on migration is very strong, where there are attempts to show that one is doing a lot by policing, by deporting, by building walls, etc. But the numbers of migrants actually go up because of the need for migrants. The stronger the economy, the more migrants you need; the older the economy, as the workforce ages, the more migrants you need. GOLDIN : Migrants are a source of economic dynamism. They are much more likely to create startups. It's no accident that Musk is a migrant, but well over half of Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs are migrants. It's a characteristic of migrants that they are much more productive, typically. They're much more likely to invest and to start up businesses. So if you want to have a dynamic economy and if you want to look after the elderly and pick your agriculture, you need migrants. I'm sure that even those in the government of the U.S. that are violently anti-immigrant recognize these things. That's where the tension will be played out. KEEN : You argue today's rich countries owe much of their success to the contributions of migrant workers. Is there any argument against migration? You're clearly on one side of the debate. What's the best argument against allowing migration into your country? GOLDIN : I'm not utopian in the sense that I do believe we need border controls and need to regulate the number of migrants who can come in. Clearly, we need to keep some people out—criminals and sex traffickers, for instance. But where we get real problems is that migrants can put a lot of pressure in the short term on resources. You see this in housing markets. People are feeling a lack of affordability of homes in dynamic cities—San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, New York, London, and many others. And it is true that in part this is because of the number of immigrants in these cities. Now, the immigrants also contribute and make these places dynamic. So it's a virtuous circle, but one has to address the concerns of citizens who say they cannot afford a home or public transport is too crowded, or that the lines are too long at hospital emergency services. These are real concerns. The challenge we face is that investment in resources, in public services, in housing, in transport and so on hasn't kept pace with population growth in dynamic cities particularly, and people are feeling the pinch. There's not much truth to the claim that immigrants undermine wages. In fact, there's quite a lot of evidence that they create jobs and lift wages. But there's also a short-term and long-term issue. The costs are often local, so people feel in a particular locality that they're overwhelmed by the number of immigrants, while the benefits are national and long-term. The immigrants build the houses, work in the hospitals, demand goods and services. They're buying things, building things, creating things. But that doesn't all happen at the same place at the same time. The other important thing is to distinguish between migrants and refugees. A lot of the problems that societies have is because these things are conflated. When I think of migrants, I think of economic migrants, of students, of people coming that are going to benefit themselves and the countries, but have a choice. Refugees are different. Refugees have a legitimate fear for their lives if they do not get refugee status. Governments need very different policies for refugees than they do for migrants. KEEN : You've mentioned the US, the UK—your book breaks down immigration around the world. You argued that the US is home to the largest absolute numbers of migrants, 51 million. Is the US still symbolically the place where the pro-anti migration argument gets played out? Trump, of course, has been outspoken and arguably it was really the reason why he was elected president again. GOLDIN : Yes, I think it is the place where it's being played out. It has the most migrants. It's a society we've always thought of historically as being constructed by migrants. It's an immigrant country—of course, it displaced an indigenous people that were living there before. But it is a society now that's basically come from elsewhere. The future dynamism of the US, where the US is going to be in ten, 20, 30 years' time, is going to depend to a large extent on its policies on immigration. If it throttles the source of its lifeblood that created the country that we know as a dynamic world-leading economy, it's going to fall back. KEEN : Musk is, as always, a little bit more complicated than he seems on immigration. On the one hand, he's obviously opposed to mass immigration. On the other hand, as a tech billionaire, he's sympathetic to qualified people coming into the country. And there seems to be a division within the Republicans between Musk and people like Steve Bannon, who seem to be opposed to all forms of immigration. Is this an important debate that you think will be played out on the American right? GOLDIN : Yes, I think it's extremely important. Both Musk and Steve Bannon have said pretty harsh things about the other side of this debate. Musk gets that the US needs tech workers. The tech industry is dependent on Indian and many other programmers. He's aware that the leaders of many firms, including Microsoft and Google, are immigrants, as is he. He's been focusing on the need for high-skilled immigrants. Steve Bannon is taking the fundamentalist MAGA line, claiming immigrants will take jobs—of course, they don't take jobs, they create jobs. My own guess is that Musk is going to win this particular debate, both because he's right at the center of power and because the businesses around him also get it. For agriculture, it's absolutely essential to have immigrants across the economy. Business will be crying out. And interestingly enough, as I highlighted in my Project Syndicate piece, a lot of Republican governors have been asking for immigration. KEEN : You mentioned you and Musk were born in the same South African town. You worked for Mandela. How do you place the colonial experience in your history of migration—where the white Europeans who showed up and conquered Africa, were they migrants, or something different? GOLDIN : They were migrants—migrant armies, migrant businesspeople, migrants, settlers. Some of them, particularly in Australia, were convicts shipped out. They often were underdogs doing it out of desperation. My grandparents migrated to South Africa because they were in that state. My grandfather on my father's side was from Lithuania, in Russia, where those who remained were all killed. Those of my mother's side who stayed in Austria and Germany were all killed. These were migrant refugees. The impact of colonialism was devastating. This goes back to the first settlers in the Americas—600 Spaniards who landed probably led to the death of over 20 million Native Americans through guns, germs, and steel, but mainly through germs. And before the colonial period, there was slavery, which is a terrible stain on humanity. Over 20 million people were forced into this absolutely inhumane system across the Atlantic. Slavery wasn't new—it had existed from before the first millennia. But the industrialization of it, the scale and horror of it, and the number of people who died in transit, that was new. I emphasize in the book that not all migration is good, and that migration is often a very unhappy experience, a brutal experience. But we need to try and understand this historical context. Certainly with immigration today, we need to make it more humane, better, and recognize that often what migrants do, they're doing to support their families, to create better opportunities for themselves and future generations. And the recipient countries need it too. The question is, can we better manage it? KEEN : Should the two histories be seen side by side—the images of North Africans and sub-Saharan Africans coming to Europe, children dying on beaches—should we be thinking about this as a counter-migration, a consequence of the European colonization of Africa? GOLDIN : There are clearly some links, but Africa is where it is today as a result not only of its colonial history and slavery, which often was driven by African slave kings before Africa was colonized. There are much more recent explanations as well—massive mismanagement of resources in Africa, the despotic actions of governments. The refugees coming to Europe are often in fear for their lives, whether it's being called up into the Eritrean army or what's happening in Somalia and Sudan. These people are escaping to protect their lives and to sustain people left behind through remittances. KEEN : Your book is very personal. You dedicate it to your grandparents. You write with the sensibility of a relative of migrants and a man who's migrated himself. You seem to be a citizen of the world. This is a labor of love, isn't it? GOLDIN : It is. I wrote another book on migration in 2012, "Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future." When the publishers came to me with this series, I leaped at it. I learned an enormous amount doing it. It's difficult to compress the whole history of migration, which is everything about humanity really, into 250 pages. But the main aim was to raise a sensibility that we're all migrants and that we need to better understand the role of migrants in our own personal histories and our countries' histories. These migrants are not "other people"—they are where we come from. I believe fundamentally that migration is what makes humans an exceptional species. It's the reason we've thrived. If we hadn't migrated, we would have died out. KEEN : So you don't buy the argument that the world is divided into the "somewheres" and the "everywheres"—the thesis that some people are locked into a place for generations, and others like yourself move around all the time? GOLDIN : I've debated that with David Goodhart. I think what he's picked up on, which I empathize with, is that people have an identity based on place. It's important not to deny that identity. But what his argument completely fails to pick up on is that firstly, that can be threatened. My mother's parents thought they were absolute Viennese—my grandfather was on the Viennese Opera Committee. It didn't help him when they decided to kill all the Jews in Vienna. My grandparents on my father's side were upright members of the Lithuanian community running a small business—that didn't help them. There's no evidence that having immigrants in your society makes you weaker or threatens your community. Indeed, if you want your community to thrive, you're going to need immigrants—not only to do the work that your community doesn't want to do, whether it's picking fruit or cleaning hospital floors, but to keep the place dynamic. That's what these governors in the US who are calling for more immigrants have recognized about their dying towns in the Midwest. They need immigrants to keep their communities alive. Dynamic cities are great examples of places which thrive on being melting pots. The magnetism of them is quite phenomenal. Look at Dubai, which I was in last week—90% immigrant. KEEN : Let's cast our eyes forward. What might the future hold for migration? Are there conceptual differences as the 21st century evolves? By 2050, will the debate be the same? Could technology change it? Musk is trying to settle on Mars—might that be the difference in 25 years' time? GOLDIN : It would be easier to settle at the North or South Pole than on Mars. I think there will be major differences by 2050. One of the major drivers is going to be demographic change. We're seeing a very rapid reduction in birth rates in well over half the countries of the world. We're going to see big labor contractions in labor markets in North America, Europe, and across Asia. As societies age and people live longer lives, we're going to see great shortages of labor. I think the fragility of different places is also going to be played out. Extreme climate and weather will lead to very different migration patterns. Oceans are going to rise, there'll be flood plains, intense weather, extreme droughts, lack of water by 2050. A place like Miami is going to be very threatened. AI will likely take over repetitive jobs, manufacturing, call centers. But the jobs that people will want in our wealthier societies—hospitality, elderly care, massages—these are what economists call non-tradable services. We'll need more of these, and they cannot be done remotely. They are unlikely to be done by machines by 2050. We're not going to want machines giving us massages or meals. So I think we're likely to see Europe, North America, and many parts of Asia turn the current debates on their head—from keeping people out to how we get more people into our societies. Population will start declining very rapidly, and workforces will decline before populations decline. KEEN : Finally, Ian, you write about the history of passports. You say they began in the early 20th century. With our increasingly sophisticated technology of data, how will that play out in your future history of migration? GOLDIN : I think it's going to play out differently in different places. The big question is how much we trust those who have the information. How we feel about it in Europe will be different from how people feel about it in China. One of the amazing experiments of the late 20th century is that within 27 countries in Europe, there are no passport controls. It's proved to be a remarkable, successful experiment. I hope increased surveillance becomes part of a bigger bargain in which we accept more people into our societies, treat them more fairly, protect them, and give them rights. But we also say we don't want some people to come, and we are able to control this. It gives people confidence that they don't feel out of control. So I do see a silver lining if it's used in a humane and effective way. The risk is that it's not, and people are continually forced into dangerous passages across the Mediterranean or the Rio Grande. That's what we need to work against. KEEN : There you have it. Amidst all this controversy about migration, some wisdom from Ian Goldin. Thank you so much. GOLDIN : Thank you so much for having me and all the best to you and to all your listeners. Ian Goldin is the Oxford University Professor of Globalization and Development and founding director of the Oxford Martin School, the world’s leading center for interdisciplinary research into critical global challenges, where he has established forty-five research programs. Previously, he was vice president of the World Bank and its Head of Policy, responsible for its collaboration with the United Nations and key partners. He served as adviser to President Nelson Mandela, has been knighted by the French government, and is the author of three BBC series. Ian has been an advisor to numerous businesses, governments, and foundations and is a founding trustee of the International Center for Future Generations and Chair of the CORE Econ initiative to transform economics. He is the author of twenty-five books, including Age of the City , which was selected by the Financial Times as one of its best books of 2023. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 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…
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