One of Bethanne Patrick’s recommended books for April was Mohamed Amer Meziane’s The States of the Earth. It sounded intriguing,... more

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

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

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

The Harvard academic Elisa New is host of the much acclaimed PBS series POETRY IN AMERICA. Now in Season Four,... more

In November of this year, two particularly out of touch eighty-year old men will contest the US Presidential election. America,... more

As founding director of Cornell University's Carl Sagan Institute and author of the new ALIEN EARTHS: Planet Hunting in the... more

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

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

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

Dr Judy Ho has a new book entitled The New Rules of Attachment: How to Heal Your Relationships, Reparent Your... more

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

In his early opposition to the Iraq war and other overseas misadventures in Bosnia, Haiti and El Salvador, Mark Danner... more

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

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

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

Part of the purpose of our new KEEN ON AMERICA series is to (re)discover what it means to be an... more

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

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

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

I do enjoy our regular new books show with Bethanne Patrick, the astonishingly widely read book critic of Los Angeles... more

So what does it mean to be an American? Previous guests on KEEN ON AMERICA like Arlie Russell Hochschild and... more

How to deal the American crisis of homelessness? Late last year, Kevin Adler, the San Francisco based homeless activist and... more

Few Americans of any color or creed have had a legal career as historically rich or significant as Thelton Henderson.... more

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

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

Today, on the eve of the total lunar eclipse of the sun, the media is full of practical guides about... more

In this KEEN ON show, the music historian Sheryl Kaskowitz, author of A CHANCE TO HARMONIZE, narrates how FDR and... more

Is there such a thing as an economic bubble? Not according to That Was The Week author Keith Teare who... more

Is Trump really like Hitler? Last month, we did a show with the Hitler scholar, Peter Range, who argued that... more

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

How to put America back together? Few people have thought more about this Humpty Dumpty style challenge than Arlie Russell... more

Like all immigrants who fled to the U.S. to escape civil war, Ismar Volic has a deep personal appreciation for... more

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

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

The Daily Mail called him the “Sith Lord” of the art world, the New York Times annointed him as... more

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

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

In his 1887 polemic, On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche suggested that the idea of good and evil, of morality... more

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

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

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

All the tech news this week seems to be about how Big Tech is, for better or worse, getting BIGGER.... more

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

We would all be way more ignorant without omnivorous book critic and regular KEEN ON guest Bethanne Patrick. This month... more

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

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

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

Did history ever go away? For the former BBC Russia correspondent, Martin Sixsmith, there was a few euphoric years, in... more

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

To celebrate over two thousand episodes of the show, we are launching KEEN ON AMERICA - a special series of... more

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

The most troubling casualty of today’s social media age is our shared sense of reality. Perceptions of reality still exist,... more

Last week, the LA Times book critic Bethanne Patrick came on the show to discuss new books about life in... more

University of Pennsylvania sociologist Benjamin Shestakofksy spent a couple of years as the fly on the wall in an anonymous... more

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

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

I talk to Peter Ross Range, Hitler historian and author of 1924 & UNFATHOMABLE ASCENT, about Adolf Hitler as the... more

The US Congress just announced war on TikTok; while, in Europe, the EU declared war this week on Spotify and... more

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

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

“Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself,” Miles Davis once remarked. Most artists, of course,... more

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

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

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

In our weekly KEEN ON wrap of tech news with Keith Teare, author of the THAT WAS THE WEEK newletter,... more

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

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

EPISODE 1973: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to the LA Times book critic, Bethanne Patrick, about six intriguing... more

In episode 1972, Andrew talks to Gregory Makoff, author of DEFAULT, about the cautionary tale of Argentina's $100 billion 2001... more