Gary Shapiro is my Pivot Guy. As the longtime CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, the organization that puts on Las Vegas’ annual CES, Gary knows a thing or two about pivoting. And now he’s put his pivoting wisdom into a pivotal new book, Pivot or Die: How Leaders Thrive When Everything Changes, a guide about how to pivot successfully. As Gary explained to me, he breaks pivoting down into four kinds of pivots: the startup pivot, the forced pivot, the failure pivot and the success pivot. A pivotal conversation about a pivotally important subject.Gary Shapiro is CEO of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)® which represents over 1300 consumer technology companies and owns and produces CES® — the Global Stage for Innovation. As head of CTA for more than three decades, he has ushered the consumer technology industry through major periods of technological upheaval and transformation. Shapiro is also the New York Times bestselling author of Ninja Future: Secrets to Success in the New World of Innovation (HarperCollins, 2019), Ninja Innovation: The Ten Killer Strategies of the World’s Most Successful Businesses (HarperCollins, 2013), and The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream (Beaufort, 2011). Through these books and through television appearances, and as a columnist whose more than 1200 opinion pieces have appeared in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post, Shapiro has helped direct policymakers and business leaders on the importance of innovation in the U.S. economy.Named as one of the "100 most pivoted men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's most pivotal broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the pivotal 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 cats, both called Pivot. 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

It’s the race that will change the world. In Supremacy, one of the FT’s six short-listed best business book of the year, Bloomberg columnist Parmy Olson tells the story of what she sees as the key battle of our digital age between Sam Altman’s OpenAI and Demis Hassabis’ DeepMind. Altman and Hassabis, Olson argues, are fighting to dominate our new AI world and this war, she suggests, is as much one of personal style as of corporate power. It’s a refreshingly original take on an AI story which tends to be reported with either annoyingly utopian glee or equally childish dystopian fear. And Olson’s narrative on our brave new AI world is a particularly interesting take on the future of Alphabet, DeepMind’s parent corporation, which, she suggests, might, in the not too distant future, have Demis Hassabis as its CEO. “There's a very human story behind the development of AI.” -Parmy OlsonTRANSCRIPT:AK: Hello, everybody. A few weeks ago, about three weeks ago, the Nobel Prizes were awarded. And it was the year for AI and physics. John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, Geoffrey Hinton being known as the godfather of AI. Hinton had worked for Google for a while, and then in chemistry, the prize went to three scientists, including Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of Google DeepMind. Hassabis is a remarkable fellow on many different levels. One person who, I think, follows Hassabis with a great deal of care and interest is my guest today, Parmy Olson. She's a London-based Bloomberg opinion columnist and the author of a very intriguing new book, Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race That Will Change the World. Parmy is joining us from the Bloomberg office in London. Parmy, would it be fair to call this new book, which has actually been shortlisted for the F.T. Business Book of the Year Award, one of the six books on the shortlist, is it fair to call this book a kind of parallel narrative of Demis Hassabis at DeepMind and of course, Sam Altman at OpenAI? Is that the narrative of your book?PARMY OLSON: That's a big part of it. I wanted to tell the story of the AI boom and some of the possible risks that could come from AI, particularly around the control of AI, by talking about the humans behind it. So, I think there's a very human story behind the development of AI. And so, that's why I structured the first half of the book as a tale about the careers and lives and accomplishments, and failures as well, of Demis Hassabis and Sam Altman, including their rivalry.AK: Yeah, it's interesting and kind of ironic given that AI's about smart machines. Some people fear that it might turn us humans into footnotes, some people have suggested that AI is our last invention. And Hassabis has always been presented as the good face, the nice guy, obviously a genius, but at the same time quite reasonable. Whereas, of course, Altman is a much more controversial figure. It's not quite Elon Musk, but he's certainly closer to being like Musk than Hassabis. Is that a fair generalization, or do you reveal that Hassabis is actually a rather more complicated figure than his public persona suggests?PARMY OLSON: Yes, we could say that. I mean, first of all, I would say that publicly, in terms of how both men position themselves and come across, I think Hassabis comes across as a nice guy and someone who is very scientifically minded and very focused on pushing ahead scientific frontiers and discovery, whereas Sam is much more of a business person. You could see him more as a capitalist, someone who really wants to grow his power and influence. Demis is a little bit more driven by prestige. He has wanted, for years, to win a Nobel Prize. That was very much a—AK: Who doesn't, Parmy? We all want Nobel prizes, except most of us, we're not going to be considered, I think, by the committee.PARMY OLSON: Sure, but which CEOs actually sit down with their engineers and say "this is how we're going to measure success, is going to be winning 2 or 3 Nobel Prizes over the next ten years"? It was an actual concrete metric for success within his company. So, prestige was very important to him. I think in both cases, though, both men—and this was a thing I really wanted to get across with the book—is that both men had these very big humanitarian ideals around building powerful AI. Demis would talk about using it to—when they eventually build AGI, which is artificial general intelligence, or AI that surpasses our brains, and it can solve all sorts of problems that we can't solve, for example, curing cancer or solving climate change. He would often talk about that in interviews, and Sam wanted to do the same thing, but for a slightly different reason. He wanted to bring abundance to humanity and elevate the wealth of everyone and just improve everyone's well-being and lives. But what ended up happening over the years, of course, is on their journeys to trying to build AGI, the economics of that endeavor were such that they had to align themselves with larger tech companies. And those those objectives, as humanitarian goals, ultimately faded into the background. And they both, whether you see one is more Machiavellian than the other, I don't think really either of them had that kind of intent, but both ended up helping to enrich and extend the power and wealth of the world's largest tech companies, the world's largest de facto companies.AK: And those, of course, are Google and OpenAI.PARMY OLSON: And Microsoft.AK: It's interesting that you focus, initially, on the ethics in terms of comparing Hassabis and Altman. The reviews of the book, Parmy, of course, have been very good. As I suggested, you are on the shortlist for the F.T. Book of the Year. But a couple of reviewers, The LA Times, suggested that you didn't address—you yourself as the author—didn't address the ethical questions associated with a AI, and The Wall Street Journal reviewer concurred. Is that, I won't say a fair criticism, but do you think that that was part of your job, or given that you were focusing on two remarkable individuals, Hassabis and Altman, with very clear ethical goals, for better or worse (some people might suggest that some of those ethics aren't for real), that it wasn't your job as an author to get involved in making judgments on yourself? PARMY OLSON: Oh, but I completely disagree with that analysis, because—and I mean, I would say that as the author, of course, pushed back against those reviews—but in the middle of the book—AK: The reviews were good. It was just that one—PARMY OLSON: Oh, sure. Yeah. Okay. But the there's a whole section in the middle of the book which talks about the ethics of AI, and AI research, and why academic research into AI is not looking into the ethics of and measuring the success of AI in terms of well-being for humans, fairness, justice, those sorts of things being measured by capability and power and growth, because the academic field that researches artificial intelligence is completely funded by big tech. And that has been increasingly the case over the last ten years. And a few years ago, there were some researchers at Google who warned about the ethical problems that were inherent in the design of these large language models, like the ones that underpin ChatGPT, and Anthropic's Claude, and all these other ones that are coming to the fore now. And unfortunately, that whole effort became quite controversial. The researchers were fired. It was a quite a messy situation. They did get the word out, though—which I think I think was very important—that people started to pay more attention to the problems, for example, around bias in some of these language models, and the training data that's used to actually create these models. Also, the last 25% of the book is almost like a polemic by me against some of the ethical downfalls of the designs of these systems. So I do go into it quite a bit. I almost worried when I was writing the book that I was pushing a little bit too hard. So it's it's funny people are interpreting it in different ways. Some people have said, well, you you're quite kind to the founders. And I think that's because I, again, don't see them as having malintent. I think they were caught up in a system where the force of gravity around big tech companies is so strong that what they were trying to build just got sucked into that, and their ideals, and their efforts around governance—which we can talk about more—just really fell apart. And they ended up just kind of becoming de facto product arms of these companies. And the ethical considerations really, just like the humanitarian ideals, really just got pushed to the wayside.AK: Parmy, it's interesting you mention that Google researcher who got fired. Her name is Margaret Mitchell. She was actually on the show, and she talked a little bit about being a female in all this. I mean, obviously, Demis Hassabis is male, as is Sam Altman. They both are very well-educated men. They're not from the ruling class, of course. Hassabis is from a working-class family in England, but he graduated with a double first from Oxford.PARMY OLSON: Cambridge.AK: Altman dropped out, in classic fashion, from Stanford after a couple of years. Is the fact that they're men in a business where men tend to dominate—we all know the fate of Marissa Mayer, and perhaps even Sheryl Sandberg—does that tell us that, in some ways, whilst Hassabis and Altman are very different kinds of men, they might have more in common than divides them?PARMY OLSON: Because they're both men?AK: Yeah, well, they're both men. Classic men in tech, highly intelligent, for example, they're adjusted. Hassabis sat down with his DeepMind people and said, well, one of the things we need to do over the next ten years is win three Nobel Prizes. That's a very...not just a male thing to do, but a very...I mean, he's from the UK, but it's a very Silicon Valley kind of thing.PARMY OLSON: I think there's actually more that sets them apart. They're just so different in terms of their approach, even to building companies. You know, Demis, as we were talking about with the Nobel Prizes, was very focused on prestige. And that's kind of how he set up DeepMind as well. It was quite hierarchical. And people who worked at the company who were scientists or researchers who had PhDs were like the rockstars within the company. And they were the ones that got face time with Demis, whereas other people who didn't have that status did not have that kind of access. And you look at somewhere like OpenAI I under Sam Altman, it was a much more flat kind of organization. Doors were open. If you wanted to talk to Sam, you could. He would interview new recruits himself, often for hours at a time. He spent something like a third of his time on recruitment. That was a big part of just how he spent his day to craft together the most effective potential workforce. And OpenAI wasn't made up of research scientists with PhDs. It was engineers and hackers and former startup founders from the Y Combinator accelerator. So it was a very different kind of culture, quite, almost freewheeling. And and I think that reflected the personalities and the approach of both men.AK: Let's remind ourselves, Parmy, because not everyone knows this about the history of DeepMind. It was founded by Hassabis and...who was his co-founder? Suleyman...PARMY OLSON: Yeah, Mustafa Suleyman, and—AK: He's been on the show, he was on the shortlist last year for the F.T. Book of the Year. He had a book out on AI, which I'm sure you're very familiar with.PARMY OLSON: I've read it, yes. It's very good.AK: I think they may have met at Oxford. When did they found DeepMind? Tell us about the story. Everyone knows about OpenAI, particularly given what happened last summer. But I think less people are familiar with the story of DeepMind.PARMY OLSON: So it was the two of them and also Shane Legg, who was a research scientist who was one of the early proponents of artificial general intelligence. This was 2010. When we talk about AGI now, it's kind of become a mainstream discussion point. But in 2010, 14 years ago, it was a fringe theory. And if you were a scientist, you were liable to be laughed out of the room if you talked about it. And so, Shane and Demis knew each other from University College London, where they had both been doing PhDs. And Demis knew Mustafa as a childhood friend, like the two of—AK: Yeah, they're London boys, aren't they?PARMY OLSON: London Boys. And Mustafa, known as Moose, was actually friends with Demis's brother, and he and his brother and Demis, they actually played poker together, like serious professional poker. And at one point they went to Las Vegas and took part in a poker tournament. And they had this whole kind of like game plan, and had their tactics, and that was just something they had done in their 20s. And then, basically, when Demis was at UCL, Mustafa was interested in coming over and possibly studying there. And Demis said, well, why don't you come along, join us in some of these lunch lectures that we do. And then the three of them ended up just kind of coalescing together and having lunch together in this restaurant called Carluccio's, just around the corner from the university. Shane told me, they—AK: I just want to remind everyone, if anyone wants to write a novel about this, that if you go into UCL, the first person you see is a dead person, is Jeremy Bentham and the spirit of Bentham's Utilitarianism and his way of framing the world is perhaps the dominant one today. So, there's a lot of fictional qualities to this narrative, I mean, although you've done enough.PARMY OLSON: Well, someone really can go right in and write the novel if they want. I did not know that. That's a cool little aside there.AK: He's hard to miss, he's right in the middle when you walk into UCL.PARMY OLSON: Oh, boy. Okay. So it sets the tone.AK: He's not alive of course. Physically. His spirit is still there.PARMY OLSON: The three of them felt that they couldn't really talk about AGI on the premises of UCL, or this is what Shane Legg told me anyway. So they met in Carluccio's, where they just had a little bit more space and they were—AK: Is it, kind of, trashy Italian—PARMY OLSON: Ish. You have to go there. Don't knock it till you've tried it.AK: Well it's not exactly the Ritz, is it?PARMY OLSON: No, it's not. But they were...I don't know how much money they had at the time, but they were talking about potentially doing a company. And they you know, Demis and Shane talked about trying to, you know...the wildest, most galactically ambitious idea you can think of. Let's build AGI, the most powerful AI mankind has ever seen. How are they going to do it? They couldn't do it within a university setting, because they wouldn't get the funding they needed. They needed big computers to run the training systems. They needed to build these algorithms. Demis knew that from the beginning. He realized they had to start a company. And Mustafa, having had some experience working with starting companies in the past, he had already co-founded another company, the three of them worked together and started DeepMind, and they were very secretive to begin with. And they also really struggled to raise money in the UK. Andrew if you've spoken to tech people in the UK, you just don't have the same scale in funding and crazy visionary thinking that you get in Silicon Valley.AK: And these were just north London kids. Nobody had heard of Demis Hassabis.PARMY OLSON: With the crazy idea. Yeah, exactly. With a crazy idea.AK: Solomon has a checkered reputation now. When Google acquired DeepMind, he went over there, and then got fired for his behavior. Was Demis the genius and Mustafa the street hustler? What was their relationship like at DeepMind?PARMY OLSON: So, I think both of them were quite charismatic figures within the company. Shane was a little bit more in the background. Demis certainly was the brain. But Mustafa was like, I've heard him described as the Pied Piper. So he would interview people from academia, civil servants, to join DeepMind. And people have told me that within 20 minutes of speaking to Mustafa, they had to join DeepMind, because they absolutely believed that this was a company that was going to change the world, that was going to build Artificial General Intelligence. They were already getting way ahead within just a few years of starting. They were starting to attract some of the top scientists in deep learning.AK: I want to get to the Google acquisition in a second, but did they know Geoffrey Hinton? Geoffrey Hinton, of course, is British and ended up in Canada as a researcher. But did they have meetings with Hinton?PARMY OLSON: I don't know. Yes, I believe they did. Gosh, I'll have to go back and look over my notes, but I think when they actually did the Google acquisition, that Hinton was part of the entourage that came over to London to talk to them.AK: Wow. That's part of the movie. So. So what did they build? What year did they get acquired by Google?PARMY OLSON: 2015. And the reason for that was: they were struggling to keep their engineers from getting poached. So by that time, big tech companies like Facebook and Google and Microsoft were realizing, hey, deep learning is a thing. This suite was kind of a backwater in AI, and suddenly there were some milestones that were achieved and it was like, we need to hire the best—AK: And this was before Hinson's LLMs became huge, right? This was pre LLM?PARMY OLSON: Very much pre large language models.AK: So AI was still potential rather than, sort of, actuality.PARMY OLSON: Yes, but some tests had shown that deep learning was very good for vision recognition. So, recognizing that a cat was a cat. And so, when Facebook, Google, Microsoft wanted to hire the top deep learning scientists, turned out they were all working for DeepMind because Demis and Mustafa had done such a good job of hiring the world's best deep learning scientists. And they were offering two, three times the salary of what DeepMind could pay. And so Demis reached this realization like, we're going to have to take some money from a large tech player, or even be acquired, if we're going to reach AGI. And Facebook initially put 800 million dollars on the table, but DeepMind rejected it, because they wanted to have an ethics board where there would be some independent members of the board who would have legal control of AGI when they eventually built it. And Mark Zuckerberg, spoiler alert, said definitely not to that, walked away, and then Google came along, offered 650 million, and they agreed on that, because Google also agreed to have this ethics board, which, by the way, never actually happened.AK: It's a fascinating story, Parmy, on a lot of levels. Firstly, DeepMind's focus on scientific genius is very Google-like, isn't it? I assume that Demis in particular has quite a lot in common with Larry and Sergey as a personality type. Would that be fair?PARMY OLSON: Very much so. In fact, Demis and Larry had a very special bond, and that remained very important to DeepMind's position within Google for years. Larry allowed Demis and DeepMind to have quite a lot of independence, because Larry just trusted what Demis was doing. His father was a computer scientist involved in artificial intelligence, and Larry was deeply interested in artificial intelligence himself. He believed in mind uploading and very much believed in artificial general intelligence, this kind of potential utopia with with AI. So he was very much on board with what Demis was trying to do. The problem was, of course, as you know, Larry eventually stepped down as CEO of Google. And over time, that link that that Demis had to the top person at Google just became...he lost that.AK: So what's your reading of the Suleyman story, I mean, it was a little bit of a scandal at the time. Now he's at Microsoft. He's the AI supremo there. Why did he get thrown out of Google, in your view?PARMY OLSON: I've reported on that. I did a very long investigative story at The Wall Street Journal, and I think I broke the story on that. So essentially what happened was, there were allegations of bullying within DeepMind. DeepMind hired an independent investigator, a.k.a. a lawyer, to come in and see what was going on. And Mustafa was removed from his management position within DeepMind. He went on leave for a little while and then was welcomed to Google in Mountain View with open arms and took a vice presidential position within the company. But he didn't have—AK: Just to be clear, DeepMind had been acquired by Google.PARMY OLSON: Correct.AK: So, DeepMind was part of the Google, or Apple, or the Alphabet...network, a corporate network. Mustafa Suleyman was, what, the president at DeepMind. He got pushed out of DeepMind because of bullying, and he went to Google. Wasn't that a bit odd?PARMY OLSON: Odd in what way? I mean, it's odd in the sense that Google kind of—AK: Why would they hire a guy who's already accused of bullying?PARMY OLSON: Well yes, if that's what you mean, then 100%. And Google has this reputation and a history of giving a hero's welcome to executives who have not behaved very well. The top leader of Android was accused of harassment. There was a very big payout. You know, it's not the best look for Google. “I think the management team [at Google] have realized that this is the age they're living in, where companies like Perplexity AI are coming up with real, viable competition.” -Parmy OlsonAK: They appreciate the naughty boys more than other big tech companies. I always assume that are a lot of these kind of characters, particularly in Silicon Valley.PARMY OLSON: I mean, here's what I think. I think that's a moral failing of Google. And I think that it's, simply put, it's kind of the bro culture of Silicon Valley, that these people are able to get away with that kind of behavior.AK: Although the bros don't run...I mean, Google is less of a bro company, certainly, than Uber, and perhaps in some ways, Amazon or Facebook. Anyway—PARMY OLSON: Depends on how you define that.AK: What about the relationship between Demis and Mustafa? Did they fall out?PARMY OLSON: It's hard to tell now. I think they're still in touch. There was a really interesting article, I think in The New York Times by Cade Metz, where Demis made some comment—this is literally just in the last few months—and he said something like, "Mustafa is sort of where he is today in large part because of me." I'm completely paraphrasing that. But it was kind of a passive...Well, the reason I bring it up is because I've been to a few DeepMind events and AI events here in London, and that keeps coming up. People keep saying, did you read that comment that he made to The New York Times? So it does feel a little bit tense between the two. And no surprise. Demis is running AI for Google. And Mustafa is a big honcho for AI for Microsoft, and, of course, they're going head to head.AK: Right, and of course, Microsoft's use of OpenAI is incredibly complicated and controversial.PARMY OLSON: That's right.AK: So, before we get to the emergence of OpenAI, for these first few years, did Google essentially leave DeepMind alone and allow them to do all their research, hire these brilliant scientists and just pursue AGI, this big vision of machines that will have a kind of consciousness? Is that fair?PARMY OLSON: Yeah. 100% they left DeepMind to go alone. I don't know if their intention was for DeepMind to create technology that had consciousness, but certainly to create powerful AI.AK: Well, that AGI is, isn't it?PARMY OLSON: There's different definitions. Consciousness had always been part of the definition. Well, I'll just answer your question, then we can go to that. But for a long time, DeepMind operated very independently, and it actually spent years, at one point, trying to break away from Google, because remember, I said that Google agreed to DeepMind having the ethics board. Well, a couple of years after the acquisition, if you recall, Google turned into a conglomerate called Alphabet. And as part of that restructuring, various bets within the alphabet umbrella were able to spin out like Verily, the Life Sciences group, and Waymo, and organizations like that. And the DeepMind founders were told, you can also spin out, and you can become your own autonomous bet. And so the founders spent years talking to lawyers, drafting legal documents, to become a new type of company. They were going to be called a "general interest corporation." They actually took their entire staff on a plane up to Scotland for a retreat, where they announced this to the staff and said, we're going to be a separate organization. And the reason they were doing this was because they wanted to protect their future AGI from the control of a single corporation, a.k.a. Google. Their new organization was going to have a board. It was going to be staffed with very high ranking former political figures. They were reaching out to people like Al Gore and Barack Obama to be on this board. And they proposed all this to Google. And Google said, yes. Google even—and this is what I found through my reporting for the book—Google signed a term sheet where they agreed to fund this new organization, DeepMind, to the tune of 15 billion dollars over ten years as a kind of endowment. And so, the founders ran with this. They waited for it to happen. We're going to protect AGI. The staff loved it. And then during Covid, Google told Demis, the Google executives, actually, we're not going to let you spin out. We're going to draw you in even tighter.AK: Who at Google told him?PARMY OLSON: I actually don't know which particular exec—I assume it was Sundar, but Demis, at one point in April, I think of 2020 or 2021, had a meeting with the entire staff of DeepMind and just told them that the negotiations, which had been going on for years to spin out, were coming to an end and it was not going to happen. And I can tell you that the vast majority of people within DeepMind at the time were very, very disappointed.AK: I can imagine. And then, there's a remarkable symmetry to the narrative here. You can't make this stuff up, Parmy, which you haven't, of course. Meanwhile, OpenAI, similar sorts of issues were brewing. Is that fair? I mean, Altman's involvement with the company, Musk, of course, was one of the co-founders, as so many other people in Silicon Valley. It was founded as a nonprofit with similar idealistic concerns and goals. Is that fair?PARMY OLSON: Absolutely. It was just being approached from a different direction right? So, they started off as a nonprofit. Elon Musk co-founded it with Altman, in part because he was also concerned about Google having sole control of AGI. Musk was one of the early funders of DeepMind, and so he'd made a little bit of money when DeepMind sold to Google. But he knew what kind of research that DeepMind was doing. He felt they were very much on the cutting edge and they were getting close, and he felt we need to start an organization that isn't beholden to anyone financially, that isn't going to be opaque and closed, but it's going to be transparent. That's going to be cooperative and work with organizations, because when AGI comes, when we eventually build it, we can't have one single company controlling it, because then that would not benefit humanity. That would only benefit that one company.“I don't see them as having malintent. I think they were caught up in a system where the force of gravity around big tech companies is so strong that what they were trying to build just got sucked into that, and their ideals, and their efforts around governance…really fell apart.” -Parmy OlsonAK: And then tell me if I'm wrong. But there's so many ironies here. So, large language model technology was pioneered by Hinton, of course, who won who won the physics prize this year, and a team in Toronto. While they were at Google, Hinton somehow convinced Google to buy his researchers. But then Google didn't develop the large language model technology. And that got developed almost as a hunch by OpenAI. Is that a fair summary of this bizarre narrative?PARMY OLSON: Very much. And I would say actually Hinton didn't have as big a role in language models. He was more deep learning. It was another team of scientists within Google who worked on language models. In particular, they came up with this architecture called "the Transformer." So that's the T in chat GPT. And there was a group of them who wrote this paper, and it became—AK: That was in Toronto, wasn't it?PARMY OLSON: This was actually in Google's headquarters. They were all working in Google's headquarters in Mountain View. And they wrote this paper, and they released it. And OpenAI took that finding and built their own build on top of the Transformer and built their own versions of language models that eventually became ChatGPT. That's a that's a big oversimplification of a lot of work over several years. But that's essentially what happened. And part of the reason—AK: It's an astonishing irony, Parmy, that the idea of the Transformer was developed by Google scientists, Google researchers, but it was the people at OpenAI who were willing to invest in the idea. They had a hunch it could work, whereas Google essentially passed on it. It's almost like a VC who missed the investment in Google or Facebook or Amazon or something.PARMY OLSON: 100%. And I've spoken to people who were at OpenAI when they were building this, and they've told me when they were building the early versions of ChatGPT, they were so worried, like really, truly scared that Google was just about to release the exact same thing, because they were thinking, well, Google's—because the culture within the field of AI is just to release new innovations, like when you come up with a new architecture like the Transformer, you put it out into the world. And that's why other people, like the folks at OpenAI, could play with it. One person told me it was like, we're playing with Google's toys, and they're not doing anything. So they were shocked when they were releasing their own—AK: They were playing with Google's toys.PARMY OLSON: Yeah, they were shocked when they could put out their own versions and they were just waiting for Google to come out with the same thing. And it never did. And actually, there were language models being developed within Google, including by the guy who ended up starting character AI, which is a which was a very big AI chop up company. And they just wouldn't release it. And a big part of it is the innovator's dilemma, right? So Google knew, I think some part of them knew, if they put a big powerful chat bot out onto the internet, well, people might just use that instead of Google search. So why would they release something like that? And there was also a lot of concern about chat bots being online and saying toxic, crazy, unpredictable things, which could really hurt the company's reputation. So that was a big reason also why they didn't release it.AK: So meanwhile, while all this is going on, OpenAI does ChatGPT, which changes the world. What was the response within Google, and particularly for Demis? He must have been, in a way, furious that OpenAI had jumped on this technology, which, in some ways, the Google people had been pioneering. How did the DeepMind people allow Google to ignore the Transformer and the work that Hinton's people were doing? Or is that just a separate division, sort of parallel worlds?PARMY OLSON: Well, I think at DeepMind there wasn't as much interest in language models, and that was actually a little bit of a source of tension between Mustafa and Demis. Mustafa was very interested in the potential of large language models. This was even a couple of years before ChatGPT came out, but Demis was very interested in games and training AI through chess, or Starcraft, or Go, which is of course—AK: Which was their big breakthrough, on Go, wasn't it?PARMY OLSON: It was their very big breakthrough, very big PR moment for them as well. It was kind of like their version of IBM Watson beating Garry Kasparov and the chess champions. Now, they were beating someone who was able to, you know, master an even more complex game, which was Go. And that got them a lot of really positive press attention a few years ago. But it wasn't quite the same kind of public breakthrough. Again, this was something that appealed more to higher level scientists, whereas ChatGPT, remember we were talking about kind of the differences in approach, Sam Altman was more product-oriented. Demis is more about sort of prestige and science was with ChatGPT. This was something the entire public could play with. It was just a web page anybody could access. But that approach to AI was not something that Demis was as interested in. He wanted to try and build AGI by approaching in lots of different ways, whereas OpenAI and Sam, they saw the potential with language models as their one route. They wanted to just pick that one thing and just stick obsessively with it. And that's what they got.AK: Yeah, very focused, which is the startup way. Meanwhile, Hassabis has come around to recognizing this, he gave an interview last month to Axios suggesting that he now sees a watershed moment for AI. And Google has reorganized itself, its Gemini app team, Gemini being, in a sense, I guess their version of ChatGPT, now is managed by the DeepMind Group. So is Hassabis become, through perhaps some clever politics, has he become Mr. AI at Google?PARMY OLSON: He absolutely is. In fact, there's every possibility he could become the next CEO of Google. That is what I've heard from former executives of DeepMind and Google.AK: Wow. Who are his rivals at Google? Who are the other people who you think could take over from the current CEO?PARMY OLSON: I mean, maybe someone like Ruth Porat, who is sort of in the CFO role.AK: The former CFO, who now has a stupid role there.PARMY OLSON: I don't know who else could, really—AK: I mean, there's a German, I can't remember his last name, called Philip, who runs that business side, who I think is quite powerful.PARMY OLSON: Yeah, well, Jeff Dean was the person who could have ended up doing what Demis is doing now. But Demis sort of took that role instead. And we could talk about why that is. But I think ultimately, he is the most one of the most powerful people in Google right now. He's running their AI efforts in Silicon Valley and in London. So he absolutely is Mr. AI Guy. I think the big question is whether he would want to uproot his family and move to Silicon Valley if he ever wanted to take that even further. And, you know, take that top position, which might be something, you know, shareholders, activist investors might want to push for because—AK: What kind of lifestyle does have? Altman has a notoriously weird Silicon Valley, one, doesn't seem to move anywhere, doesn't seem to care about money. Does Hassabis enjoy the cash that he's got? I mean, he's a very rich man.PARMY OLSON: I think they all enjoy the cash. Have you seen the video of Sam Altman in his sports car, driving around San Francisco?AK: What kind of life? He's in London. Where does Hassabis live?PARMY OLSON: I don't know specifically where he lives. I presume it's somewhere near north London. But he does live in London with his family.AK: He's probably got the whole of the Caledonian Road, where I used to live. The real narrative of Andrew O'Hagan was on the show, His Caledonian Road. I've got a few more questions, this is such interesting stuff from Parmy. You mentioned the innovator's dilemma at Google, and that this new AI and these large language models, the Transformer would eat up their search dominance. Is there acknowledgment now, do you think, within Google that that innovator's dilemma is something they have to address and that they have to somehow embrace AI, and even AGI, even if it in some ways undermines the traditional notions of search?PARMY OLSON: Yeah, I think in a way they're kind of standing at an abyss and they have to just jump in. It's all very much an unpredictable. Google has always been a company that does not do a lot of radical change, which feels weird to say because you think, "Google. Tech company, cutting edge, AI. Surely, they..." But actually, just look at the Google home page. It has barely changed in a decade. There's really not a lot of big changes that Google ever makes to its core products, because it derives 80% of all its revenue from advertising. And so, messing around with that formula is a potential recipe for a disaster. But I think you're right. I think the management team have realized that this is the age they're living in, where companies like Perplexity AI are coming up with real, viable competition. This is a chat bot that a lot of people are using instead of Google search because it's just giving you a singular answer, and a very comprehensive answer. Whereas you look something up on Google, whether it's something related to a transaction or advice, and, I don't know how often you use Google, but you know, there's a ton of ads.AK: But of course, OpenAI also came out last week with its own version of search. And again, history is, in so many ways, repeating itself. Now, OpenAI is what Google once was to Microsoft. Meanwhile, Suleyman is at Microsoft. So many ironies. I know you got to run, finally Parmy—and we'll have to get you back on the show because it's so much more to talk about here—you probably heard there was an election in the US this week.PARMY OLSON: Hah. Oh, really?AK: A certain Donald Trump now is running the show. His supposed right hand man and left hand man is a certain Elon Musk who put his fortune on the line. He was one of the co-founders of OpenAI. Lots of questions now about what Trump will do with AI. One piece by Scott Rosenberg in Axios suggests that young AI just got a ticket to run wild. Given your narrative in supremacy, is this moment historically now the opportunity for both Hassabis and Sam Altman to really profoundly change the world? They won't have to deal with Lena Khan in DC or any other kind of regulation?PARMY OLSON: I actually have kind of a contrarian view to the one you just described from Axios, and a few other people have said, "Oh, Trump's in power, light touch regulation. Elon Musk isn't whispering in his ear. He's got an AI company. Obviously, things are going to be fast and loose for AI companies." I actually am not entirely sure that's how it's going to play out. And again, it's just because of all that I've read and research on Elon Musk. He is a guy who can put ideology before his own business interests, and he has done that before. And this guy truly is worried about AI as an existential risk. This has been years in the making for him. He broke up his friendship with Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, over an argument about the risks of AI destroying human civilization. He's publicly stated that. And it is absolutely a reason why he co-founded OpenAI because he was worried about Google controlling AGI. So I think this means that if Trump comes into power—Trump didn't even talk about AI on the campaign trail. He mentioned it a couple of times. But didn't really talk about it.AK: He's more into crypto, I think.PARMY OLSON: I think he just doesn't really care that much about AI. I don't think it really interests him, which leaves the door open for someone else to steer. And I think that person could well be Elon, because he cares about it so much. I don't think it would be JD Vance, because JD is more on the whole "big tech little tech" thing. I think Musk is really the AI guy in the administration, and I think he would push for safety measures. And the current executive order that Biden put in place on AI, Trump has said he'll get rid of it. Sure, he might do that, but he'll put something very similar in its place that will still push companies to check their AI models for safety. But they will also be told, you don't have to have filters in place on toxic content. So, because Trump and both Musk are so anti-censorship, anti-woke censorship. So I think we're going to have chat bots in the next couple of years that say a lot of wild things.AK: Yeah, well, you've said some very sensible things, Parmy. Your book, Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that will Change the World is on the shortlist of the F.T. Books of the year. That will be announced, I think, in London on December 9th. If you win, are you going to share the proceeds with Hassabis and Altman?PARMY OLSON: Or maybe I should put it into the race to build AGI because that's for the sake of humanity, right? That would be the charitable thing to do.AK: Right, well, Parmy, Olson, really honored to have you on the show. Fascinating subject. So much more to talk about. We'll get you back on the show in the not-too-distant future. Thank you so much.PARMY OLSON: Thank you.Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology regulation, artificial intelligence, and social media. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is the author of We Are Anonymous and a recipient of the Palo Alto Networks Cyber Security Cannon Award. Olson has been writing about artificial intelligence systems and the money behind them for seven years. Her reporting on Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp and the subsequent fallout resulted in two Forbes cover stories and two honourable mentions in the SABEW business journalism awards. At the Wall Street Journal she investigated companies that exaggerated their AI capabilities and was the first to report on a secret effort at Google’s top AI lab to spin out from the company in order to control the artificial super intelligence it created.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.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

Might November 5 mark a new dawn for both Silicon Valley and America? Palo Alto based serial entrepreneur Keith Teare is ambivalent. In his That Was The Week tech newsletter for this week, Keith confesses that while he voted for Harris, he recognizes that the Trump victory probably benefits him economically. It’s almost as if Keith is embarrassed to admit this - which may be true more broadly about the rest of us in Silicon Valley. As Keith and I discuss this week, November 5 brings much of what has been simmering over the last decade to a boil - particularly the role of AI in reshaping both the Valley and American society. It’s certainly going to an interesting four years. This episode also comes with some afterthoughts from Rob Hodgkinson, Keith’s co-founder at SignalRank, who wrote a provocatively celebratory piece this week about American exceptionalism. Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at the University of Kent and is the author of “The Easy Net Book” and “Under Siege.” He writes regularly for TechCrunch and publishes the “That Was The Week” newsletter.Rob Hodgkinson is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of SignalRank. He previously worked at Pixel United as an Advisor. Rob Hodgkinson attended the University of Cambridge.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The election is over and, is spite of Trump’s clear victory, America remains as divided as ever. So how to put the country together again? Juliana Tafur, the director of the Bridging Differences Program at UC Berkeley, has been giving this existential question much thought. What all Americans need, Tafur tells me, is the compassion, empathy and humility to understand the other side. But, as I asked her, isn’t that just shorthand for a progressive bridge building project in which the left defines the language of a reunited America?Juliana Tafur, the director of the Bridging Differences Program at UC Berkeley Her work focuses on strengthening social connections across lines of race, religion, culture, politics, and more, to foster a culture of understanding and belonging in the United States and beyond. Through partnerships, multimedia content, speaking engagements, and workshops, Juliana is committed to ensuring that bridge-building skills and resources reach people and inspire meaningful change. With experience as a social entrepreneur, workshop creator, Emmy-nominated senior producer, and award-winning documentary filmmaker, she has been working to foster human connection across complex societal divides for more than a decade. A TEDx speaker, she has led and facilitated speaking engagements and training sessions on bridging differences at more than 30 higher education institutions and organizations. Juliana is also a 2021–2022 Obama Foundation Scholar at Columbia University—a mid-career fellowship that recognized and deepened her work in the bridge-building field, expanding her research on intergroup relations, political polarization, and conflict transformation. She is an honors graduate of Northwestern University, where she earned dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Journalism and History.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.TRANSCRIPTKEEN: Hello, everybody. The easy bit's over! The election's finished, now the real challenge is bringing America back together. We always hear these terms from politicians and activists, but in practice, of course, it's a very challenging thing to do. My guest today on the show, Juliana Tafur, though, is somebody who's given a great deal of thought to bringing America back together, bridging differences. She is the inaugural director of the Bridging Differences Program at UC Berkeley. She's also very much involved in the Denver Foundation. She's based in Boulder, Colorado, and she's joining us today. Juliana, is that fair? Was the election the easy bit? Now, the challenge is putting Humpty Dumpty back together again?TAFUR: 100%. I love the Humpty Dumpty. Yes, we are broken. How do we come back together and mend those pieces while still acknowledging the brokenness, right? Yeah. With that analogy, there's a beautiful Japanese technique that aims to cover the fractures, but to cover the fractures with a strand of gold so that we're not pretending like the fractures aren't there, but we are making something better as a result of the recognition of those fractures.KEEN: Juliana, we've done a lot of shows about this sort of thing. In fact, I've worked with the Braver Angels group. I'm sure you're familiar with them. I have been to a couple of their conferences. There are more and more of these groups trying to bring Americans back together. Might one suggest that there is now a broader movement in America to bring Americans of different--particularly different political persuasions back together? You're doing it, braver angels are doing it. Many of the thousands of activists and hundreds of groups.TAFUR: Yeah. There is so many of us across the country that work tirelessly day in and day out, around elections and before and after elections to make sure we come together. And yes, Braver Angels is just one of them. I could certainly give you a list that you could attach to the show notes, because a lot of us are doing this work and it's good for people to know that we're out there and that this is possible. But sometimes it takes seeing it in action and understanding how to do it to really trust that you can do it, too.KEEN: Yeah, we've had lots of people on the show. I know you're familiar with the work of Eboo Patel. You've worked with him his book couple of years ago. We Need to Build: Field Notes for Diverse Democracy is another example of this kind of work. Tell me what you do at the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. What are you doing that's different or unusual or unique in terms of bringing Americans back together?TAFUR: Yeah, well, at the Greater Good Science Center, we study the psychology, sociology and neuroscience of well-being, or what we'd like to call the science of a meaningful life. And we break the science to the practice. So we take the science of how to have a meaningful life or how to bridge differences, and we translate it in a way that is accessible to people to apply in their own lives or to practitioners to help others apply the science. And in the bridging differences programs specifically, we do this through a series of videos, multimedia pieces that we publish in our magazine, Greater Good. We have a famous podcast called The Science of Happiness. We began in earnest in 2018, I would say, gathering what the science said about how to bring people together across differences. And when we talk about the science, we talk about skills, science-based skills, from compassionate listening to finding shared identities, etc., that have been tested in labs, and we translate them in a way that people understand how some of these skills applied, how they worked in labs, and how they can then work also in kind of real-life scenarios and situations. So we have a bridging differences playbook that has 14 science-based skills for bridging differences. We have an edX course that's free and available for everyone to take that also disseminates some of the science-based skills.KEEN: Tell me a little bit more about yourself. You've been involved in this space for a while. You're also a filmmaker, so you're very much committed on lots of fronts to this. How did you find yourself? Is this a reflection of your own upbringing, your own experience in the United States?TAFUR: Absolutely, yes. What you had up first was the page from the Obama Scholars Program. So a few years ago, 21, 22, I was an Obama scholar at Columbia University--KEEN: And you were the founder, at least at that point, of something called Story Powerhouse. I'm guessing you're still the founder, although you've moved on in a sense.TAFUR: Correct. Yeah. And Story Powerhouse was at the company Listen Courageously, which was a workshop series that I took around to universities and organizations and corporations talking about the power of empathic listening. And I got to that through film that I produced and directed that brought Americans together on opposite ends of the spectrum across the easy topics of abortion, guns and immigration. And the inspiration for this film came after the 2016 election. I felt a big need back then to try to bridge the divide that I was seeing and feeling, very explicitly, for the very first time in our country. And as a Colombian-American, I was beginning to talk to folks in my circles, and I was feeling this this real sense of othering that I had never, ever experienced and wondering and questioning what was my place and that of so many others like me in our country. And that led to to Listen, to this film that brought three sets of participants across these really tough topics together to explore if they could see each other as people and connect on a human level despite their differences. And I had no idea what the outcome would be. I had documented their conversations across a period of time. And I was truly moved by what I saw. I saw that those who were able to connect at a deep, human level were those who were able to listen. So then, that led me to study and explore and understand the power of listening and understood that it was a field. It's an arts, but it's also a science and connected with practitioners, but also researchers in the field of listening. And one thing led to the other, right? As a practitioner and filmmaker in the field of bridging differences, I found myself going back to intergroup relations and conflict transformation and other subjects too, to really understand why. Why was it that my film participants had come together, and how could I then equip others to continue doing the same? Less from a "we know this is possible" and more from a kind of research-grounded way.KEEN: Juliana, some people might be listening to this and...whilst on the one hand being, in a way, impressed they might be scratching their head, maybe listening to you, you use the E-word all the time empathetic, which is quite a kind of ideological character these days. You talk about othering, you're funded by, or you were funded by, the Obama Foundation. Now you head up a greater good institute at UC Berkeley, People's Republic of Berkeley, which is a place I know all too well, I used to live there for many years. Some people might be listening to this and thinking if you scratch the surface of what Juliana's saying, is she suggesting that this is the progressive version of the greater good? And as long as you're in our camp and you use her words like "empathy" and "othering" and love the Obamas and spend time at UC Berkeley, it's fine. But when you start perhaps putting red caps on and talking about America becoming great again or not being particularly sympathetic to immigrants, then you're outside your world. How would you respond to that? Is that a fair criticism or am I wrong, or would one be wrong?TAFUR: Well, obviously, people's criticisms are their criticisms, and that's absolutely okay. And there is no right or wrong. I just want to say--KEEN: Well, there is right and wrong, Juliana, isn't there? There's some things are certainly more right than wrong and some things are more wrong and right.TAFUR: Yes, but we don't judge that. I think, you know, people are right to believe what they believe, vote for who they vote, and be who they are. And we start bridging from the place of: I see you, and I hear you, and I might not understand you, but that's okay. I still don't dehumanize you. And that's the spirit of bridging differences. And yes, I don't hide where I stand. Politically, I am more progressive. And I have been an Obama scholar. And I work at Berkeley. So all of that is who I am. And from that place, I bridge. I bridge from the place of this is who I am, where I stand. I still love you and I still want to get to know you. And I still want to see you. And I just want to say, given that I'm Colombian American and I lived in Miami for the last ten years, I just recently moved to Boulder, Colorado, to lead a statewide initiative here in the state of Colorado called Belonging Colorado to make Colorado a place where everyone feels like they belong. Thank you for popping it up.KEEN: Called Belonging Colorado.TAFUR: Yeah, in Florida, I mean, I've had friends and neighbors who don't think like I do, who don't see the world like I do. And I've appreciated that. And I have not excluded them from our circles, from trying deeply to learn and understand what is it that they believe, what they believe. So I intentionally have made way to understand our country and and to try to tap into, honestly, what at the end of the day, are people's fears of what we need. And I approach them from that place. When you approach others from a place of "we are all walking with our fears in our foreheads," we begin to connect with your fear, my fear. But it's all fear and it's okay.KEEN: You used the term "humanizing differences," Juliana. Some people, again, might be listening and thinking to themselves, well, the guy who just won the election, more Americans voted for him than the other candidate. It's quite a decisive election. He doesn't seem to be in the business of "humanizing differences." In fact, many of the people he doesn't like, he seems, some people believe, I tend to be sympathetic there, he's dehumanizing them. So. So what do we do in an America, where the next president is, or appears to be, very often in the business of dehumanization?TAFUR: Hopefully we take back the narrative.KEEN: What does that mean, "take back the narrative"? He's been elected. It's his narrative.TAFUR: It is his narrative. But as people I don't believe that everyone who voted for him is voting for the dehumanization. I am holding firm to the belief that people are good, and that people have voted for other things and not for that. And I want people who voted for him to still see that we need to humanize each other despite our differences. And I believe that they do. I do not believe people are buying into that narrative and rhetoric. At least not everyone. Some may. But I think when we take back the narrative, we take back the narrative of: yes, right now there's a winning camp and a losing camp, and that's okay. And I would hope that those in the winning camp also want to see across differences and are reaching out to humanize those who are not in the winning camp. And, you know, that is now that is four years. But our country perseveres and continues and we are interdependent and need each other. Absolutely need each other. More than this rhetoric, more than the divisive politics. Politics is just one aspect of who we are.KEEN: There are others. I mean, you acknowledge that you're a progressive. There are other progressives who are preparing to resist the new--what they see as a regime, some people even think that the new president is a fascist. What would you say to resistors, people who don't believe that it's possible to, as you would put it, reshape the narrative or seize the narrative, that that the next president is in the business of dehumanizing many people, particularly people out of America and many people in America. And it's just pointless and that they're going to fight him, they're going to fight him in the courts, and maybe even on the streets.TAFUR: I don't think that's the way. I don't stand for that. And I'm also trying to bring those people along. I think the only way out of hate, sincerely, and I know it sounds cliche, but it's through love. I don't believe in resistance in that way. I am for peace and I will continue to promote peace. And I know that that is hard for people in the far left to also swallow. And I know it takes time and I know not everyone is there right now, especially right now. And not everyone will be there ever. And that's okay, too. We understand that bridging is not the right thing for every person in every situation. We know that a lot of people who feel that their identity is in danger or that they're being disrespected might not be called to bridge differences. And that is also okay. I don't think this is work that you do by demand. And and we know that it's not without risks. We know that it involves exposing vulnerability. And we also know that sometimes bridging work takes small shifts over time. What we like to call small to large, or big, bridges. Sometimes you don't start with the biggest bridge possible bridging across the biggest divide. So we know that it's work that requires the right mindsets and skills and attitudes, and that takes time.KEEN: You've used the word bridge a lot, bridging as a noun, as an adjective. I seem to remember Bill Clinton was very much in the, at least the etymological bridge building business. He would always talk about it. Are examples of American politicians in the past who have successfully built bridges? I mean, Clinton wanted to, of course, he had his own controversial personal narrative that didn't help. But when you look back into the American past, who are the bridging presidents? FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Lincoln?TAFUR: Yeah, those, and I would say, you know, yes, I may I'm totally biased because I am funded, have been funded, by the Obama Foundation. But sincerely, President Obama has taken bridging and pluralism, as he called it, as the work that he is doing, that he is centering on after his presidency, and he runs these democracy summits that happen once a year. And and it is a message that he deeply believes in and is trying to share with others.KEEN: Yeah, I mean, doesn't everyone bridge on their own terms? Obama campaigned aggressively for Harris. And in fact, a lot of people believe that Trump never would have got involved in politics had Obama not given him such a violent roasting at one of the White House correspondence evenings a few years ago. So isn't Obama an example of someone who bridges when they feel like it and when they don't, they accuse other people of not bridging?TAFUR: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I prefer not to get into politics. I do bridging differences work because I am equipping folks with the skills to be able to do this work. And I believe in humans. So so this is really not about politics for me. It never was. It never will be. I happen to be an Obama scholar, but I'd really rather not comment on what politicians are or not doing.KEEN: And I take your point, Juliana. But politics and the founders knew this, the politics in and out of America, is a dirty business. We pursue our own interests. Madison called them the pursuit of faction. That's why we have divisions, that's why we have branches of government which are designed to negate each other. Just as Madison so famously said, so profoundly said, "If men were angels (and he did say, man, he didn't say women as well, of course), if men were angels, there'd be no need for government." And I wonder whether...and again, I don't want a group for your movements or your thinking into one, but I wonder whether this kind of ambivalence, hostility, maybe even contempt for politics is problematic. When I think of someone like Michelle Obama, I have to admit I'm very, very disappointed that she didn't choose to enter into politics. She seems to be political when she feels like it. But not to participate in politics, she was probably the only person in America could have beaten Trump. Again, I don't want to turn this into a conversation about either Obama's. But my question to you is about acknowledging the dirtiness of politics, which reflects the dirtiness of the human condition, the fact that we all are, for better or worse, self-interested. Do you accept that Madisonian version of human nature?TAFUR: I honestly think there is a better future for us when we tap into what we can be and not what we are. And I know it's hard for many to do right now. And it's hard when what we see as reality is what politicians do. And I do see some examples of politics where people are coming together that I'd like to highlight, including Governor Spencer Cox. And he's led a national campaign called Disagree Better. And he's come on ads with Governor Jared Polis from--KEEN: Colorado, yeah?TAFUR: Colorado. And Governor Cox is out of Utah, Republican. Jared Polis is a Democrat from Colorado. And I think we need more of that. We need more examples of that, politicians coming together and showing how they are coming together so that we believe that it's also possible. So I'd like to  hang on to those examples in the political realm. But again, I'm in the business of what we individuals can do at the interpersonal level to begin to cultivate the right skills and mindsets, to be able to come together and at the inter group level with others.KEEN: There's been a lot of conversation, debate after this election, Juliana, like many elections, about why and how people should vote. Should they vote out of self-interest or for the the greater good? Lots of comments about many of the people vote voting for Trump seem to be voting against their own interests, particularly the new American working class. Whereas the coastal elites in voting for Harris seem also in an odd way to be voting against their own--certainly economic--interests by voting for her, in your view, to get to this bridge and this ability to be empathetic and converse with others, do we need to overcome our own self-interest, particularly our own economic self-interest?TAFUR: I don't think you need to overcome your own economic self-interests to bridge. Not at all. Because when we bridge differences, we are not asking honestly people to leave aside any of what they value. It centers on this recognition of, yes, common humanity, which I know is very abstract to a lot of people. But it is not about persuasion and it does not require you compromising your beliefs or values. It just requires the ability for you to recognize that anyone, anyone can teach you something, which is a term called intellectual humility. So, no, not to bridge. I mean, you may be putting your self-interest aside, or some of your self-interests, aside when you're voting for certain candidates. But to bridge, we are just coming together to see each other and to be with each other.KEEN: You talk about intellectual humility. That word again, humility is another fashionable word that goes with empathy. Is there, do you think, a religious context to this? Do you think some of these movements, maybe yours, maybe even yourself, it grew out of a religious tradition. A Christian tradition? Humility, empathy, love, understanding. These are words that are traditionally used in religion.TAFUR: Yes, they are. I will say that we have not necessarily emphasized or called attention to these character virtues and moral virtues in our work. We do talk about them a lot and we will probably emphasize them a bit more moving forward, given interest that we have in doing so, because we do think that when you talk about civil, moral character virtues like respect and curiosity and courage, you are meeting different types of people at different places. And at the end of the day, this is about becoming better people.KEEN: Say that again: this is about becoming better people. So, it's a moral movement. You're suggesting people need to pull their their moral socks up if we're going to put Humpty Dumpty, to extend this rather childish metaphor, if we're if we're to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, we need to pull our moral socks up. Is that fair?TAFUR: Yeah. I mean, we believe that cultivating these virtues is not just about overcoming current societal divides, but about nurturing a deep commitment to, for a lack of a better word, the greater good. This is what this is about.KEEN: I don't know how many jobs you have, Juliana. I'm lucky enough that I don't have multiple jobs, but some people, again, might be watching this and saying this is all very well. Maybe in some biblical fantasy land, we can all put ourselves out and be better people. But most people are really busy. Many, particularly, working class people who perhaps voted for Trumo, they're working 2 or 3 jobs. They're busy. They struggle to pay their rent, feed their families. Does this require to be part of your bridging movement? Does it require, shall we say, moral...concentration? Or could you do it...occasionally?TAFUR: Absolutely. You can do it occasionally. You can do it in the weekend. You can do it with neighbors. You could do it at a school board meeting. You could do it in neighborhood meetings. You could do it wherever you are. You could do it at work. You could do it with colleagues. You could do it with your kids. It does not require more than anything that you are already doing. It's just about how you approach those who are in your circles and in your life.KEEN: What's the most difficult thing? You do this a lot. You run bridging programs. You run a school, essentially, designed to help people bridge. What does the movement most struggle with? When you see people who are open to the idea and say, you're right, I need to be able to talk responsibly with humility and empathy to people who I don't agree with on the other political side, culturally, racially, and all the rest of it. What do people most struggle with, what don't they expect? What would you warn people about who are trying to get into a movement like this?TAFUR: We are very clear that if the other person is dehumanizing you, and if you feel at risk or threatened by this dehumanization, that you should probably be careful in engaging. So that's where we draw the line.KEEN: Yeah, but then you're shifting the responsibility to somebody else. I mean, obviously, if they're dehumanizing you, you wouldn't want to talk to them. But what's hard about changing oneself, that's possible, that doesn't involve the other?TAFUR: I think this just requires the commitment to want to do it and then the right skills. To engage with it in a way that you see works, that feels good, and that invites you to continue trying it out. And all it takes is the willingness to say, "I'm exhausted by this. This is affecting me personally." Because we do know that our divides are consuming us. They're affecting our health, our well-being. We also know our divides are affecting our families and our closest circles. We know that our divides affect our children in schools. So there are many, many reasons for wanting to bridge, for saying, "this is enough. I am exhausted." And if you are, you are not alone. Three. Out of four Americans are. 75% of Americans in the most conservative estimates say they are exhausted by the division.KEEN: Exhausted by just this endless controversy of people not being able to talk to one another?TAFUR: Yeah. Research tells us that three out of four Americans see political hostility and divisiveness as a serious problem and want to live in a less polarized country. So we are just trying to meet that exhausted majority where they are. Because we do know that people value diverse perspectives. Again, research points to this, and a desire to shift the political discourse. So we're telling them: we hear you. We see you. Yes, this division hurts us. Let's do something about it. Do you need some skills? We got you.KEEN: Juliana, I asked you about other examples from American history. What about models from the rest of the world in these kinds of conversations? You often hear about the the reconciliation, the truth and reconciliation movement and Mandela, South Africa. Are there models overseas, which Americans can learn from? Americans often aren't very good at learning from other countries, particularly in Africa. But is the South African model a good one, do you think?TAFUR: Yes. I mean, clearly, they were able to come together across incredible fracture and division, and they were able to persevere and collaborate across differences. There is also the model in Ireland that we can point to. There is division that is hurting countries across the world right now. And I know ,I come from a country that is deeply divided, Colombia. And Colombians have also succeeded in bridging the great divide. But there's been strides, through peace treaties and others, to come together despite differences. So we can certainly learn from other countries that have been deeply divided and in deep conflict and have come together. We are not in a place in the US where our conflict has turned violent, thankfully, at least not openly. We are seeing signs of violence, but we are not in the midst of a war (although it seems like a moral war in many regards.) And and I do want to point to the hope that countries who have been in deeper fractures about how this is possible and and hopefully also show us that we must do something before the fracture goes wider and deeper. And where reconciliation seems harder to do.KEEN: Juliana, you mentioned Ireland. One of the things that comes to mind in the Irish model is the role of citizen assemblies in bringing people together to talk about very difficult issues. You brought up abortion, guns and immigration, in the U.S., the three most divisive issues, probably abortion, was and maybe still remains the most divisive in Roman Catholic Ireland. But the Citizens' Assembly movement in Ireland addressed the issue of abortion, and that was the way for the Irish parliament to actually develop some some quite interesting new legislation on abortion. Are you sympathetic to rethinking institutions, political institutions, political organizations like the Citizens' Assembly? Is this something that you've thought about, researched, is it part of a greater good future?TAFUR: Yeah, I mean, I do think we need to re-imagine. I do think we need to take good examples, including citizens' assemblies and in understand what's going to work for all of us. We know what we're doing now is not working for all of us. What does it take? How can we bring folks together to the conversation in a way that is bringing us all together? So, I do think bringing a diverse group of citizens to engage in structured dialogue, learn from experts, and also deliberate over complex topics could be the way. Maybe that's what we need. Maybe we do need more public participation in the democratic process in a way that ultimately ends up shaping legislation. And it does align with our bridging differences program, right? And and what we promote in in bringing people in and fostering inclusivity. So how can we bring different backgrounds together in structured discussions so that we can move beyond these partisan divides? Because we do understand that some of these issues do provoke, I would say, a really strong emotional response and and also carry significant social implications for folks.KEEN: Juliana Tafur, you've you've done very well with, my rather obnoxious question. So let's end with an opportunity for you to talk about, quite literally, where we go from here. You have some articles on your website, on the Bridging Differences website about where do we go from here, after the election. Perhaps you might touch on 3 or 4 bullets--concrete things of where we go from here in in early November 2024 that can bridge America, that can bring us back together. What would you suggest that's doable, viable, can be achieved in the next few months?TAFUR: It's great that you point to that article. I was obviously part of a group of us at the Greater Good Science Center that was very keen on publishing this the day after the election to--KEEN: And now you're on--I couldn't resist this one, Juliana, now you're on KEEN ON. I'm sorry for that rather silly joke, but anyway. Go on.TAFUR: Yep, yep, yep. Well, let me just, like, run through a bit of what some of the experts and researchers who we invited to be a part of this article with what they said.KEEN: And that included Eboo Patel, who, as I said, has been on the show. So you put together a very interesting group of people to write this thing.TAFUR: Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, so Eboo is saying keep doing what matters to you and the world, and he's trying to get us away from this catastrophe mindset, and he wants to remind us that what you are doing is sacred and it makes a difference. And even if the world is going to end, he says, the wisdom of the sages says to keep doing your meaningful work, because that work is part of the saving grace of humanity. So that was beautiful. Scott Shigeoka, who's a bridging differences fellow at the Greater Good Science Center, is inviting us to practice curiosity as an act of love. And for Scott, he says that we must practice curiosity if we want to transform our fear and hate. And he's reminding us that curiosity is a trait that we are all born with, and it's the desire to understand others more deeply. Again, this does not mean agreeing with views that clash with your own, but challenging the assumptions that you have about people who hold those views. So a lot about interrupting prejudice. Jeremy Smith, who's our editor at The Greater Good, he's inviting us to work to promote your values in community. I'll go high level on some of these. Get to know other humans, right? Get out of our silos as much as we can and connecting across our differences. Dr. Linda Traub, who is a close collaborator of ours, is inviting us to be good neighbors, even, and especially, to those who are different. So those are just a few. Choose nuance, not outrage. So I do invite folks to go through this article and and hopefully a few of the golden nuggets of inspiration do stay with you, do motivate you, to do something. It's been hard for many of us to understand what is it that we can do right now if bridging even is the calling of the moment when so many are struggling to understand what this means about our country, what this means about the next four years. But I understand others are not and are celebrating. Regardless of where you are, I think in a few weeks when you feel up for it, I think the calling of our times is to come together and to understand, again, our interdependence. We must break this cycle of othering us versus them. That does that does not exist. Those are constructs that that we have created. But we are better and we are more. And we are one. And sorry if this sounds cliche to some, but that's what I got for you.KEEN: That's interesting. And finally, Juliana, you mentioned one of your colleagues talked about what they would do if the world was to end tomorrow, what they would do this evening. It certainly reflects on you. I know if I knew the world was going to end tomorrow, I would go to Kentucky Fried Chicken. But that probably speaks of my own unsuitability for your movement. What would you do if you knew the world was ending tomorrow?TAFUR: I would speak to you, Andrew.KEEN: Oh my god, we can go together to the Kentucky Fried Chicken. Well, Juliana, it's been a real honor to have you on the show. Very interesting conversation, we're going to get you back on because this--one thing we can say for sure is this issue is not going away in 2024, 2025, 2026. Keep up the good work, Juliana, and we'll talk again in the not too distant future. Thank you so much.TAFUR: Thank you, Andrew. Thank you.For those impressed with what Julianna Tafur is doing and would like to participate, here are a couple of ideas:* Ready to turn division into connection? The Greater Good Science Center’s 7-Day Campaign for Connection Challenge offers practical, research-based skills to ease stress and create understanding. Reserve your spot: http://tinyurl.com/7DayChallenge24* Feeling the weight of division this election season? You're not alone! Join the @Greater Good Science Center’s 7-Day Campaign for Connection Challenge, to help you navigate these polarized times with science-backed skills. Reserve your place: http://tinyurl.com/7DayChallenge24Keen 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

If there’s a disease that captures the toxic spirit of our times, it’s what the therapist, Vanessa Resier, in her new book, calls Narcissistic Abuse. Even the language of this disease - Gaslighting. Love bombing. Hoovering. Triangulating - has become part of the dictionary of life in the 2020’s. Narcissism and narcissists seem to be everywhere these days. In fact, as Resier told me (see full transcript below), all domestic abuse - from outright violence to subtle manipulation - is a form of narcissistic abuse. But if that’s true, I asked her, then what, exactly, isn’t narcissism?Vanessa M. Reiser is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW), licensed in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Florida. She is a psychotherapist and the founder of Tell a Therapist, LLC as well as the founder of the nonprofit, Tell a Therapist, INC. Vanessa holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from SUNY Empire State college and a Master of Social Work (MSM) from the University of Southern California. Vanessa specializes in narcissistic personality disorder, and her practice focuses on treating victims and survivors of cults, narcissists, domestic violence, and narcissistic abuse. Her insights are both personal and professional, giving her a unique lens into this insidious form of domestic abuse. Vanessa is a long-distance runner and two-time Ironman who is best known for running the state of New York (285 miles in 11 days) in a wedding dress to raise awareness for narcissistic abuse.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.TRANSCRIPTAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. Long-time viewers and listeners to the show know that I have a particular interest in words. Certain words acquire fashion, and I'm always curious why. One word that seems to be particularly popular these days, gets thrown around a lot, both clinically and out of the psychotherapist's office, is the word “narcissist.” There's a new book out this week. It's called Narcissistic Abuse. It's by my guest, Vanessa M. Reiser. She is a clinical social worker, a psychotherapist based in central New Jersey. And she's joining us. Vanessa, congratulations on the new book. This word narcissist. You're all too familiar with it, of course, everyone throws it around. Do you think it's particularly fashionable these days, or is that my imagination?Vanessa Reiser: I think it is definitely a word that is misunderstood. So, to your point, I think people use it in a way or in a regard that is not totally accurate. So, somebody who has narcissistic personality disorder. Has a list of characteristics that are very specific, very hazardous. It's not just somebody who is into taking selfies, or that we might think the word is in reference to. So, there are pretty serious characteristics that they possess. If somebody has a pathological disorder.Keen: Or let me rephrase the question: do you think there are more narcissists around now in the 2020s than there were historically, or are always the same amount? Of course, the word was invented by the Greeks. Its etymology comes out of Greek mythology: the God of Narcissus. So are we particularly prone, our culture or our individuality. To two to the problems of narcissism?Reiser: I think that it's always been around. I think there are more people, but I do think that we are now developing the vernacular for the characteristics. And I do think that because we have social media, people are more inclined to discuss it. So, in some ways it's a good thing, because we are now talking about it more, and some of the toxic behaviors. But I think is also an uptick because people are more individualistic, they are potentially more vain, more narcissistic. In their approach to their marketing themselves, everybody is out there flitting about, trying to make themselves an entity of sorts. And so, we're seeing a lot of people that are seemingly narcissistic, but that is not the same as somebody who has a pervasive pathological disorder, somebody who is lacking empathy, somebody who potentially has overlaps with sociopathy and looks to hurt people. We see this in certain pop culture scenarios, like we're seeing it with the P Diddy stuff here. There's a lot of talk now about cults, which my book is about also. So, these are people that are dangerous in some regard. These are people who are interested in meeting their own needs at the expense of others. And so it is somewhat misused, the word.Keen: Aren't we all want a bit like that? Aren't we all a bit self-interested? The subtitle of your book is A Therapist's Guide to Identifying, Escaping and Healing from Toxic and Manipulative People. Aren't all people, Vanessa, aren't they all manipulative? Aren't we all seeking what we want? This word toxic...it's another one of these words that's become fashionable, it seems to be used in all sorts of generic ways. Aren't we all, in our own way, toxic too?Reiser: I think there is a level of ego that we all possess, so we are feeding our egos, we are trying to manage that up against others in society, etc. Very Freudian. But this idea that somebody would be particularly manipulative, somebody who's lying, controlling, uses isolation. And again, the book is aimed to fuse the concepts of narcissistic abuse and cult abuse. So, cult leaders are all narcissists, sociopaths or psychopaths, and the way that they operate is in line with what we see in domestic violence scenarios in a one-on-one interpersonal relationship. And those are the tactics. They are very much about mind control. So this is positive reinforcers, negative reinforcers, silent treatment. So the level of manipulation is different than, let's say, if you're having a bad day and you need a Snickers bar and you might just act like a jerk. That is not a pervasive behavior. This is more maniacal, to sort of oversimplify it.Keen: I can't resist our promise not to bring up Trump too much in this conversation, Vanessa. But this is the week, of course, that he got elected, or reelected, to office. And often people use the word narcissist in association with him. You talked about its influence on popular culture. Does it also play a role in politics? You talked about cult leaders, aren't all political leaders in their own way, cult leaders?Reiser: No, because, again, you have to have a pathological disorder. It's not to say that there aren't an abundance of--there are. There are a ton of CEOs and c-suites of, you know, poets, priests and politicians are generally able to kiss babies and potentially stab you in the back. They can be really dangerous. I wouldn't say they all are. I would say it is more prevalent in certain career paths for sure. We see this in the military. We see this in police officers. We see this in surgery rooms. So, there are certain jobs--see, I think 1 in 4 CEOs is a psychopath directly, which is very interesting.Keen: But what do you make of that? Does that suggest that everyone is a psychopath, or does that suggest that certain kinds of jobs like CEO or perhaps presidents lend themselves to psychopaths and narcissists?Reiser: I think the way that they climb the ladder without empathy, sort of lying...Jeffrey Epstein was a good example of this because he was a liar. His entire resume was a fraud. So they know how to work the system, climb to the top, convince others to do their bidding, hide, find loopholes. They're pretty slippery and sneaky. And as I mentioned, the level of manipulation is just a master level. And so this is why cult leaders in political arenas and otherwise, in the one-on-one relationship, they are able to get people to fall in line, right? Manson never killed anyone. It was his minions that did so. So, they are able to use mind control in a way that most people don't think they could fall victim to. But I think that's the beauty of the conversations we're starting to have around this, because we're bumping into these people in our work environments. We're now having a discussion about what they look like, how they behave. It's very hard to process when you go through something like this. I think most of us think that people are sharing similar perspectives and logical ideas. And when you go through this portal, you understand that not everyone is thinking the way you are. And I think it's brilliant that we're starting to talk about it, actually. I think the word is overused, but I also believe that there are far more dangerous people out there than maybe we ever realized.Keen: Vanessa, you talked about Mayor Charles Manson, mass murderer Jeffrey Epstein, a serial sexual criminal. You also talk about CEOs. Surely there's a difference between the two, though. Are there, shall we say, criminal narcissists and then people who have done well, who have an element of narcissism in their personalities?Reiser: Absolutely. I think there are unfortunately often overlaps between narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder or sociopathy. So, the way I would characterize the difference would be what you are saying, which a is very, very big difference and yet somewhat nuanced, in my opinion, is the idea of no empathy. The narcissist might step over the dead body, the sociopath put the dead body there. So, it feels like it's a huge difference and a very small difference at the same time. Why? Because without empathy, I think our society really doesn't go on. I think empathy, is in the very first place, something that occurs when the primary caregiver realizes the baby's crying. Let's take care of the baby, the baby needs something. And this sort of innate experience is why we go on as a species. Without it, we are doomed. And so, this idea of no empathy already feels very wonky to me, and I think we need to open up a dialogue about that. But you're quite right. There is a difference between somebody who steps over the dead body and somebody who puts the dead body there.Keen: Yeah, there's a very big difference. You use the E-word, empathy. It's another of these, what I think of at least, as cult words. It gets thrown around as if it's a good thing. You talked about the the species nature of empathy, that we wouldn't survive without it. I'm not an expert on evolution or Darwin's theories, but I wonder what evolutionists would say about this, that our species is a competitive one and we all compete with one another. Is empathy, then, self-interest, and does that, in a sense, undermine the idea of empathy, given that it's supposed to be about being empathetic? But if it enables us to survive and prosper, then maybe it's not quite as empathetic as we would like to think.Reiser: I think probably there's a balance there, and the imbalance is what we're seeing. I think we need to cultivate more empathy. I think we need to be kinder to one another. I feel like it's gotten a little dark, and people are maybe acting out of fear a lot more than I've ever seen. And so, I think we have lost a good amount of that. I think we see it in times of tragedy, like in New York, on 9/11, you were able to see humankind in its best light. And we saw quite a bit of it with Covid when the first responders were being highly empathetic and volunteering their time and risking their lives to look out for others. So I think it's still there, but I think that we might be trending away from it. And that scares me. So, I think it is important. Empathy, to me, is ground zero for everything. I think it's important. I understand what you're saying, but I think there's a balance that we might be getting too polarized around.Keen: Are you suggesting that if you don't have empathy, you are by definition a narcissist?Reiser: No, I think that there are certain people that don't have as strong of empathy. Maybe they understand empathy. But I think if you couple that with this recipe of other characteristics like manipulation, like lying, controlling, isolating, abusing through addiction, smearing, withholding, there's, you know, something like 20 characteristics that most of them will possess a good amount. So, it's not an exact science. But no, I think no empathy, though, is one of the things that I think lends people to behave the way that they do if they're going to be abusive. So, it is a term that I think may highlight a good amount of what narcissists jumping off point is, which is they don't care, so they're going to do anything that they can to get what they want.Keen: You mentioned Manson, Jeffrey Epstein, of course, a historic sexual criminal, both male and very male in their own way. You've talked about empathy in some detail, Vanessa, both on the show and in the book. Is there a gendered quality to this too? Do Women make, and of course, there are female narcissists, but is a female narcissist different from a male narcissist, or are all narcissists, whether they're made of female, essentially the same?Reiser: There are some slight differences. By and large, the female narcissist will oftentimes exploit their children and use their children for supply. Not that the male narcissist won't do that, but a good oversimplification to identify the female narcissist is oftentimes the “pageant mom." Their children are an extension of them and they're sort of braggadocious about, you know, “my child is a doctor." The other thing that they they can do is--Keen: Sounds like a lot of mothers, Vanessa. They're proud of their kids if they're adults, I think, or a psychotherapist...Reiser: I think proud is very different from somebody who behind the scenes in the home, they're valuing that child based only on what they can get from the child. So they get supply from the neighbors who are excited to see the daughter, or the people at the cheerleading competition. It's very superficial and shallow. Behind the scenes, they can be particularly abusive and severely so. So, these children could develop eating disorders, could be self-injuring. And a lot of this is about the mask that they wear in public versus who they are behind the scenes.Keen: But on a lot of shows, Vanessa, on social media and anxiety, as you know, as a therapist and as a writer, this is a huge issue these days: is there a connection between our age of anxiety and the prevalence of narcissistic abuse? Are some of the most important reasons why there's so much anxiety, particularly amongst young people, a consequence of the rise of narcissistic abuse?Reiser: I'm not sure. It's an interesting question. I tend to lean more into the camp of nature, less nurture. So, my belief is based not on a ton of data, because there is not a lot of data on NPD because narcissists are not going into studies and saying, “Hey, I'm a narcissist, please study me," or “I'm willing to be studied." They are generally mandated. So, you know, there's not a lot of data to pull from. So, we're kind of theorizing, but I tend to lean more into the camp of something where intergenerational trauma may play a role, or genetic or biological predisposition. So, I'm not sure. There are certain people who have different opinions on this. Some people think this is something that happens in childhood, and it's a trauma. I tend to think it's something that potentially could be genetic.Keen: Vanessa, is there a danger here? You're a clinical social worker, a psychotherapist, you have your own private practice. So I'm not suggesting, of course, you're self-interested and you're trying to build a clientele here. But aren't you, not you, but isn't this whole movement, or discourse, medicalizing the complexity of the human condition? So all parents are, in their own way, manipulative. They will perhaps use their children sometimes to self-promote. Everybody wants to control one kind of relationship, or rather, everyone has their own interest. What's the danger, in your work and in the work of others, of medicalizing the business of being human? And I mean that not in an economic sense, but in all the messiness of what it means to be human and in our relations with others.Reiser: Yeah, I definitely do not see it that way. I think when my clients come to me, they are very confused about what has happened to them. And so the word being a clinical word, narcissistic personality disorder (or clinical words, narcissistic personality disorder) can feel very validating because it would be like going to the hospital and the doctor says, “you're sick." “Well, what do I have?" “You're just sick." And so my clients, very specifically, because I work only in the domestic violence realm, really are feeling validated around the language. So the language, you opened up this conversation today talking about words, these words like gaslighting, and the level of confusion that's gone on with--Keen: --and lovebombing and hoovering and triangulating, all these words that you bring up in your book.Reiser: They're very important for people to understand what they've endured. And so, I actually quite like the medical term, because it gives an answer to those that have gone through something that is particularly difficult to process and certainly very hard to describe.Keen: You talked about abuse and a lot of your clients, you talk about violence, or as most of the narcissistic abuse verbal?Reiser: All domestic violence is narcissistic abuse, all domestic violence is narcissistic abuse. Every single one of my clients who has been physically assaulted, or has an acute trauma through physical abuse, tells me that the psychological abuse is far worse. It's a brain injury of sorts when somebody lies to you repeatedly and skews your perception. I feel like the brain is kind of a fact-finding machine, and it looks for data, and it's constantly working to make those connections. And so, when that becomes fractured, people really decompensate. They do not do well. They fall apart. They fail. Most realms of their entire life can just fall apart. And so, it's a pretty serious thing, this psychological brain injury, if you will.Keen: Yeah, I take your point. I'm certainly not trying to minimalize domestic abuse. But just to repeat, you said all domestic abuse is narcissistic abuse. Is that what you're saying? So the husband who comes home after some drinks in the bar and beats his wife up. Is that narcissistic abuse or is that just that an angry drunk man?Reiser: I would have to sort of assess further, but it very well could be, and more than likely it would be. Now, does that mean he has narcissistic personality disorder? No, but that behavior itself is narcissistic.Keen: But aren't you, again, making it such a big word that any kind of bad behavior...it becomes narcissism. So it's really everything.Reiser: Certainly the high level bad behaviors that you're referencing, yes.Keen: So domestic abuse, anything behind domestic abuse: smacking someone around, beating up your child, beating up your wife, beating up your husband, it's always narcissism?Reiser: Yes.Keen: So, okay, so we have this thing called narcissistic abuse. You're a therapist. People don't come to you to, as you suggested, to have this thing argued over. They come for help, and they come to identify it and escape it. How do you deal with it? Let's begin with children and their narcissistic mother. What's your advice? How to get out of a narcissistic relationship?Reiser: That one is particularly challenging, because when you leave an intimate relationship, oftentimes you can just go back to the person you were prior, go find that person. When you are the child of a narcissist, it is challenging because, as I mentioned earlier, you become an extension of that parent. And so, your identity has not been developed, you have to figure out who you even are. What are your likes? What are your interests? What is autonomy like for you? And so, it's a big hill to climb. You're generally filtering thoughts through "what would my toxic parent want or what would they not want?" Which ultimately gives them control over every single thought you're having. And so that is a really, really hard thing to overcome. And then I suppose what we would do, probably, would be work on low contact or harm reduction to the extent that they feel comfortable, unless they're willing to remove them from their lives. Narcissists can be dangerous, in a way. So, these are people who might manipulate your love relationship, or the relationship you have with your own children, or your career. They can infiltrate everything around you. So depending upon the severity--it would be a case-by-case basis--but generally, with a parental unit, I would say probably trying to get to a point where you would see them maybe during holidays, or whatever you're comfortable doing, and then you don't really want to share too much with them, because they tend to exploit the information that you share with them.Keen: How reformable then, Vanessa, are narcissists? You're suggesting that they can't be reformed, that they have this condition and that you shouldn't trust them with information? They're always trying to take advantage of you.Reiser: Not a lot of data on the narcissist changing. It is a rigid pathological disorder. So, the neurotypical brain can move. Trauma victims can repair and develop new pathways in the brain. This is different. It's rigid. So, I don't see a ton of movement. I think that the best-case scenario is to get away from them.Keen: But have you had patients who've come into your office and said, “I'm a narcissist or I fear I'm a narcissist. Nobody wants to talk to me. My parents, my kids, my friends, my children, my relatives won't speak to me. I need to become less of a narcissist." Is that a condition that you sometimes come across?Reiser: Yes. And we would work towards developing empathy to the extent that they can. We would work towards developing emotional connections with other people. We would work towards understanding boundaries, working on accountability, communication style, attachment style. This is generally something that is best handled in an in-patient scenario. So it could look like a sex addiction treatment center, something like this, where they are really diving in. So the work that I'm doing is the best that I can with anybody who comes to me, as you mentioned. But it's something that would be best handled with extensive therapy.Keen: So you're a therapist and you're in the business of identifying and escaping and healing from toxic and manipulative people. But what about medicine? I talked about medicalizing the condition. I'm slightly curious about that, perhaps even slightly skeptical. But are there drugs for narcissists or for people who have been abused by narcissists?Reiser: In a word, no. There are tons of things therapeutically that have been coming out. We're seeing people who are trying certain psychedelics for post-traumatic stress disorder. So in the case of the victim, I know Bessel van der Kolk talks about MDMA and other options for treating trauma specifically that is very experimental and goes up against big pharma. So he has a lot of push back. But there's different treatments and things that people are trying, but there isn't really anything per se that treats trauma. In the pharma world, everything is to treat anxiety and depression, and sometimes that can work. So again, we're going to practice harm reduction. And the same could be said for the narcissist in terms of treatment. Pharmacologically, we would probably do something like the SSRIs, but there's no data that I can provide that says that that works. It's just something that I've heard people try to probably work on the anxiety of it. But there's no there's no drug that I know of that's going to remedy trauma or NPD.Keen: So you're ambivalent on psychedelics. We've done a number of shows. It's becoming increasingly fashionable or popular.Reiser: I'm not ambivalent.Keen: You're against or for? You don't think it works, basically?Reiser: No, I think I think it I think it could be tremendous. I don't know enough about it, but I'm kind of hopeful that it would work.Keen: But isn't that kind of, some people might say, Brave New World? It's an escape? We live in a psychedelic universe, we leave the world and we go to another?Reiser: I don't know. If we are microdosing, it's possible that we could quell the trauma responses to the extent that we may be able to then focus on developing different neural pathways and changing the way that the brain is thinking and some of the cognition that's negative that's floating around in there. So I'm hopeful that those things would help. I understand what you're saying, though.Keen: In an America which, Vanessa, is very divided, a lack of, perhaps, your word, empathy, politically, on either side, an election that reflects and perhaps compounds the divisions...do you think that America needs to become more, shall we say, therapeutic? Is is that the only way to bring Americans back together? I'm not suggesting that all politicians are narcissists, although, as I said, a lot of people have argued, including, I think his own niece, that Donald Trump is a classic example of a narcissist. But does America need counseling, shall we say? Is America itself collectively suffering from narcissistic abuse?Reiser: Well, that is a good question. Just gave me the chills. Yes, but also therapeutic practices that we can all do, I do this in my own life, is just...I really think it's important for people to express themselves. I notice in my clientele, when they are just sharing, they're connecting the dots really on their own, they aren't processing things, and I think it's important to express yourself. So even if you're journaling--so it doesn't have to be this, like, you're in therapy, so something is wrong with you, and let's fix you, and this is this is my advice, and all this. No. I do think that you need to have a safe place to express yourself. So, even just good friends, some way to kind of get it off your chest if it's through, you know, anything that you enjoy doing, like, running as I do, or the written word, or kickboxing, or some way to get things off your chest, I think, will help you to feel empowered, will help you to process some of the things that you're witnessing that could be upsetting.Keen: Yeah there's a long tradition of narcissism in literature, many writers have written books about narcissism, and some people believe many of the greatest writers are themselves narcissists. You talk about, Vanessa, finally, a safe place to do this. We touched on social media earlier. You're on Instagram, you're on TikTok, like most of us. Is social media in your view, a safe place, or is it the problem, or is it both?Reiser: Oh, great timing on that one. I would say it is something that could be both, for sure. It has tremendous benefits. There's communities that have developed through something as simple as a hashtag. So, there's so much good and then there's so much horror. I mean, that's just the way I see it.Keen: Well, finally, I have to ask you this, Vanessa. Since I get some free therapy from you, sometimes my kids accuse me of being a narcissist. I think it's sometimes when they don't like what I say. Have I displayed any manifestations of narcissism in this conversation? Do I need therapy myself?Reiser: No. You know, I don't know you well enough. You were certainly a gentleman. And it would be very, very hard for me to decipher something like that unless I got to know you behind the scenes. And I'm sure the same could be said about me.Keen: Well, next time my kids accuse me of being a narcissist, I will tell them, “Go and talk to Vanessa." Well, congratulations, Vanessa, on the new book, it's an important subject, and you treated in a very down to earth, coherent way. The new book is Narcissistic Abuse--sorry--Narcissistic Abuse: A Therapist Guide to Identifying, Escaping and Healing from Toxic and Manipulative People. It's on audiobook, it's read by Vanessa, and it's also out in traditional text. Congratulations, Vanessa. Subject isn't going away, we'll get you back in the not-too-distant future to talk more narcissism. Thank you so much.Reiser: Thank you so much. 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

War is never pretty, but its privatized high tech future dominated by companies like Palintir and SpaceX is particularly chilling. In Unit X, their FT shortlisted best business book of the year, Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff’s explain how the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are transforming the future of war with the creation of a new kind of military-digital complex. As Shah and Kirchhoff explain, Unit X is the elite unit within the Pentagon known as the Defense Innovation Unit which is now the military bridge between Silicon Valley and the Federal government. And with Elon Musk’s deregulatory zeal driving the upcoming Trump administration, expect to see closer and closer cooperation between the Pentagon and cutting edge AI and biotech tech companies. Raj M. Shah is a serial technology entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and former director of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit. He is currently the managing partner of Shield Capital, an investment firm focused on technologies at the nexus of commercial and national security applications. He started his career as an F-16 pilot in the Air National Guard and continues to serve part time. He obtained an AB degree from Princeton University and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania.Christopher Kirchhoff, an expert in emerging technology, helped create the Defense Innovation Unit, which he continues to advise. During the Obama administration, he was the director of strategic planning for the National Security Council and senior civilian adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Chris obtained an AB degree from Harvard College and a PhD in social and political sciences from Cambridge University.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.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

I did this interview with John Driscoll, co-author of Pay the People! Why Fair Pay is Good for Business and Great for America, earlier this week, assuming that Harris would lose the election. And let’s be clear: she did lose an election that should have been eminently winnable. Driscoll spelt it out clearly in a powerful The Hill article last week about how raising the minimum wage is the key to the White House for Harris. The problem with Harris, and most of the Democratic party, is their failure to offer a coherent and politically sellable economic alternative to Trumpism. John Driscoll and his group of successful business leaders at Patriotic Millionaires offer that alternative. It’s not socialism, but it is an undisguised and unapologetic attempt to recognize the economic predicament of the American working class and to resurrect the American Dream by leveling the playing field. That’s the way to defeat Trumpism. Not by smiling inanely and saying nothing.John Driscoll chairs the Waystar Corporation and is a senior advisor at Walgreens Boots Alliance. Previously, he was CEO at CareCentrix, president of Castlight, group president at Medco, and SVP at Oxford Health Plans. John also served as a captain in the U.S. Army Reserve and is a longtime board member of the Alliance for Hunger and The Patriotic Millionaires. The co-author, with Morris Pearl, of Pay the People! (The New Press), he lives in Stamford, Connecticut.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.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

Lauren Oyler’s “Revenge Plot”, a literary diary of her trip to this year’s Republican convention in Milwaukee, is the cover story of this month’s Harper’s. So when I talked today with the Berlin based writer, we discussed both the revengefulness of the Republican party and what she calls the “risk aversion” of the Democrats. While Oyler cares a lot about the outcome of today’s election, she is wary of what she calls the “constant catastrophizing” both on the left and right of American politics. While this probably won’t be the final election in the history of American democracy, she suggests, it might be the first 21st century Presidential contest not dramatically shaped by the internet. LAUREN OYLER’s essays on books and culture appear regularly in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, London Review of Books, Harper's Magazine, Bookforum, and other publications. Born and raised in West Virginia, she now divides her time between New York and Berlin.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TRANSCRIPTAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. The day has come, it's Tuesday, November the 5th. Election Day. We don't know who's won, but many people are going to the polls. One person who won't be going to the polls is my guest today, Lauren Oyler. She's a distinguished American writer, bestselling writer, essayist, critic. But she happens to be, as I joked before, we went live in exile in Berlin. She lives there in Germany, but she's also the author of an excellent piece, it's the cover story of Harper's this week: "Reunion or Revenge: The GOP Identity Crisis." According to Lauren, they're on the brink. I'm not sure of what. Lauren is joining us from Berlin in Germany. Lauren, what's the view from there? Americans looking as crazy as ever?Lauren Oyler: We're looking for a bar to go to. To be honest, we've been we've been we've been caucusing, trying to figure out where we can watch the the results. And we just found there's one place. But, you know, it doesn't the results aren't really start coming in until midnight here. So the debate is about whether we will stay up--or, people have some bad memories of doing that in 2016. I personally have a bad memory of doing that in 2016 as well. So the view is we're looking at our phones.Keen: So I assume the bad memory was not that you drank too much or ate too much.Oyler: No, I did. I certainly did. I'm just I was with my boyfriend at the time and we had gotten in a fight earlier that day about Hillary Clinton. And I, I just remember being like, I just don't care. I just don't care. And then we went to the bar with our friends and got quite drunk. And and then we were walking home and I didn't live here at the time, so I didn't have we didn't have cell phone service. So we walked home at like three in the morning. We were really drunk and we were like, Well, we won't know anything. And then we got home and we like, laid in bed in the dark and and looked at our phones and we were like, no, this is terrible. So and then just laid in bed again, really drunk looking at our phones.Keen: It's something that could have occurred in one of your books or maybe in a in a DeLillo book. So are the Germans shocked? I mean, they they they've made a culture out of being a shock to other people that they particularly shocked this time around?Oyler: No, I don't think so. I remember right before I went to report this story, I was in a restaurant down the street from my house and I listened to--I was overhearing a conversation with this German guy, was talking to these people and he was like, he was he was like, Yeah, have you heard they have the plague in Colorado now? He's like, Yeah, this is crazy. Imagine if we had the plague in Berlin. Like, it was really like, I don't really think they sort of like, Yeah, this is crazy, but it's, you know, it's not it's not the first time. And I think to and in Europe, it used to be that you were reviled as an American. Certainly when I first moved here in 2012, there was still that kind of anti-American sentiment. But now far right populism has spread across the West and everybody is sort of commiserating with with you and just kind of like, you know, it could happen. It could happen to us at any time. It basically is the idea.Keen: The plague has come home to Germany from Colorado. So let's get to the piece, Lauren, you went to Milwaukee to cover the GOP's identity crisis. And it's a long essay. Very...to use the word Oyler-ish in the sense that it's it's a very creative piece of work, creative nonfiction, although some people might say there's a fictional element there. What was your overall take on this odd convention and why was it that it's almost five months ago now?Oyler: Yeah. Well, I think the big the the big concern that I had going into it was that, you know, you're right, it would be coming out it came out in the middle of October, and I would be reporting on something that had happened in July, which, of course, in the past would have been perfectly normal for this kind of piece of this kind of like literary new journalism type thing. Many, many great pieces about political conventions that I'm sure your listeners, listeners will be familiar with, things like Norman Mailer, they come out late. But, you know, now--Keen: It's timeless as well in their own way. I mean--Oyler: It's supposed to be timeless, but now everybody's sort of attitude towards the news is like, I need to hear it right now. And then it the cycle, the cycle, the cycle and it goes away. So you sort of forget about it. So I kind of was grateful for the assignment because the assignment was basically like write something of lasting literary value about about the circus and spectacle, which was very interesting. And, you know, it was sort of you're following the news as it's happening and you're like, well, I can't really like you just have to be aware of the general narrative as time has gone on, you can't really be too obsessed with anyone's story because as I learned when former President Trump was almost assassinated while I was on the plane there, like something can just completely derail the whole plan. But I had never been to a political convention before. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed doing that kind of reporting. And I was surprised at how at the dissonance between what was being reported by these live up to the minute coverage, like blogs or social media or things like this. The difference between the analysis that those those journalists would generally produce and what I was interested in or even like what I thought the mood was, frankly, as, as the title of the piece and the sort of the tag line suggests, like it was a bit fraught, I think, for the Republicans. I think I think the liberal media generally tends to want to keep to the storyline that they are evil masterminds of the chaos that they saw. But I what I saw there at least, was kind of a fracturing basically.Keen: Right? I mean, I think that the more I watch or listen to liberal media or mainstream media, they behave as if they're the grownups and. And perhaps some of these photos actually underline the fact that it's the Republicans who were the children. For better or worse, they're out of control. They need to be sent to their room and perhaps spanked, although I'm guessing most liberal media people don't believe in spanking anymore. I'm curious, Lauren. I had lunch with Rick MacArthur, the publisher of Harper's few months ago in New York. And like all publishers of traditional magazines, he claims poverty, not enough money to go around. Couldn't you find someone a bit closer? I mean, I assume he paid for you to fly from Berlin to Milwaukee. That's quite a long way. Why didn't he find a local person, or do you think he chose you, or they chose you, the editor chose you because you bring a slightly foreign perspective?Oyler: Do you don't think I'm such a good writer that it's worth flying me over there?Keen: Did they pay for first class?Oyler: No, it was was economy, which was good, actually, because I got I had some interesting conversations with my senior and they did say, you know, we won't pay for paper business, but I did buy the expensive internet in the end. But and I think I was staying in a Hampton Inn. Do you know how do you know how the--Keen: My God. So they put you up in a Hampton Inn?Oyler: Do you know how it works? So when you go to a convention, there's like the convention as the press, the press corps or the convention, if you like, a place to stay. And so many of the delegates were staying like in Madison, Wisconsin, or in Illinois, and I was in the same hotel as the USA Today people. So that speaks to me being like the, you know, the national and the the government's like belief in the value of Harper's magazine in comparison to other other places. So it was maybe like 20 minute drive away anyway. Non sequitur. So why do you think they asked me to go? Maybe because I do have a little bit of foreign perspective, I think to it is not you know, it is nice to have a literary writer juice politics coverage. You know, there's a long history of this. Norman Mailer is a wonderful introduction to this book that I have about ranting about journalists and reporters and why it's important to bring a novelistic eye to things. Joan Didion, obviously famously, and all sorts of other examples. George Saunders did a did a Trump rally in 2016. I think Patricia Lockwood did one as well. So I think there's that kind of tradition that that Harper's is a part of and wants to sort of continue in the face of maybe people saying that literary writing has no place in society anymore. But also, I assume that my being from Appalachia has something to do with it because, yes, as you say, I live in Berlin, but I was born and grew up in West Virginia, and although we did not know J.D. Vance was going to be selected as the VP when they assigned me this piece, it wasn't always a strong possibility. And I think the region sort of exerts a pull on the national media at least every four years. So I would assume that that also has something to do with it.Keen: That's interesting that, you know, the the other side of the Appalachian coin from J.D. Vance. You mentioned earlier, Lauren, that the the media reported on this differently from bloggers and some of the online crowd. What are the differences? Can you generalize about how the USA Today crowd covered it verses bloggers who perhaps weren't there or watching online?Oyler: Yeah, well, I think there is a certain kind of convention story that is just like we're here, there's someone on TV, they're doing a stand up. They have someone shooting them and they're just like, I'm here live at the convention. Like, here's how crazy it is. But the thing that I talk about in the piece especially is this Ezra Klein sort of blog about the convention. And I believe the headline that he wrote was for his podcast about it was I watched the Republican National Convention. Here's whatever, and that kind of dramatic headline style that that has been honed on the Internet--Keen: And this was a New York Times piece--Oyler: Well, the New York Times Piece...I watched the Republican National Convention on television. Why does that...anyone can watch the Republican National Convention on television. And they want it to be like a dramatic sort of...a little bit dangerous feeling that it did have at points. But but the thing that was surprising to me was how unenthusiastic many of the people there were or who were just there because, you know, they go every been ten times or whatever.Keen: I mean, you have some great photos in the piece of people looking pretty miserable, which of course probably makes most of us feel better about it. And I mean this one in particular for people watching a couple of white middle class people with cheese hats, one with a "Make America Great Again" sign, the other, "bring back common sense." They look most uncommon and most miserable.Oyler: And it's not to say that there wasn't, there were many sort of disturbing moments of enthusiasm, I think. But they weren't always the people on stage that you would--the biggest applause that I remember was not for Trump or for J.D. Vance. Of course, those went on forever. But this sort of passion, like the sort of scary passion that the media wants to find it in the Republicans. I noticed it most with Peter Navarro, who had just gotten out of prison that day and offering to give a trial, which was so bizarre and people were just screaming their heads off for him.Keen: And he's a China hater.Oyler: Yes, I can never remember what the sort of White House department of something that they invented that he was the head of. It was some kind of trade council.Keen: Like Go to War with China Department.Oyler: Yes. Yes. And he had just been let out of prison and he was missing a tooth. Which was really bizarre. And then Tucker Carlson, everybody was going crazy for it because he's like a celebrity. But there was not this kind of excitement for, say, Kid Rock or something like this. Or even Hulk Hogan.Keen: Yeah. So here's the question for you. Lauren, I think you're as well-positioned in every sense to to answer this question, which is the question I struggle with and I've talked to I've talked about endlessly on this show and I haven't resolved I'm sure I've bored most of my viewers and listeners. You mentioned Hulk Hogan, of course, the ultimate wrestler. In fact, I had Peter Osnos on the show last week. It was the original editor of Art of the Deal, and he said when he was editing out of the deal, he went with Trump to a wrestling contest, and Trump was enormously popular there back then, 30 or 40 years ago. To what extent is this whole--and I use this word carefully--spectacle, just wrestling. To what extent is it just another version of reality television and everyone understands in an odd kind of way that they're participating in this weird narrative. You've done a lot of thinking and writing on this in terms of the Internet, although some of the people participating in this are pre-Internet people. I mean, Trump is Mr. Reality television. So this goes back before the Internet. But to what extent is this, I don't know, reality, hyper reality, beyond reality, and how does it connect with--there is a reality of America on November the 5th, 2024. I hope that's a--I'm not sure it's a particularly clear question, but gives you an opportunity to talk about how you perceive this whole spectacle or circus.Oyler: Well, I think it's I think that the Republican Party and I think the American society in general, certainly American media, has been in a kind of transitional phase since 2020. Don't quote me on that, but like generally, like since Trump's term was a very crystal clear political moment in the country, I think. And it did make a lot of people sort of immediately think back and say what, what did I miss about the last ten, 15 years that led to this? Like, why didn't I see this coming? Why didn't I expect Donald Trump to be elected president in 2016? And that led to all this kind of--the things that you're referencing, which are, you know, reality, the effects of reality television and the effects of social media, you know, the sort of the the sense that--the desire for kind of like a more immediate relationship to our media that develops--all these things kind of developed in tandem, which is to say that, you know, someone who's watching the Hills on MTV, which is sort of my demographic, is not going to be the same kind of person who's watching wrestling per say. But there are many things that those two kinds of programing have in common, right? And it is kind of the ironic presentation of reality and scare quotes, right? And I think that Donald Trump, obviously a reality television host himself and and and certainly involved in professional wrestling can like sort of tap into could tap into that. But I don't think we're in that period anymore. I don't you know nobody is we aren't I hope we don't have graduate students writing dissertations on the on the Kardashians anymore which is what, you know that was such a prominent force in the media and in the sort of 2010s during Obama's administration. And I don't know exactly like what is next, right? The conversations we're having now are all about AI. They're all about Elon Musk. But it's certainly not this like pro-wrestling spectacle thing anymore. And I think you can see that because it's not as if that was that was not new, part of part of the spectacle that was created by the by the Hulk Hogan stuff was like that it was so surprising. But you can't keep bringing Hulk Hogan out every for, you know, you can't have them every four years. I'm sorry.Keen: An immortal Hulk Hogan or for that matter, Trump.Oyler: Yeah, yeah. And I do think that--picking J.D. Vance as the vice presidential nominee does indicate that they are trying to sort of move forward and kind of set the path for Trumpism after Trump. As many...that's not my phrase. It's a phrase everybody everybody uses, because also Trumpism is the most successful kind of Republican movement in a long time. You might remember the Tea Party didn't arrive. But there's a lot of dissent about that, I think. I think a lot of older people in the party that I talked to when I was at the convention were dissatisfied with Trump. And they would say, you know, I actually never liked him. I didn't vote for him in the primary in 2016. I would prefer he not do this. I overheard a man giving an interview to some some wire service and he, he really sounded like he was having an identity crisis. Like he was like, I don't know. This is not the party I grew up with. This is not the party I joined. What am I going to do? So there are lots of these older guys who feel that way. And then on the other side, there are lots of these young guys who I talked to who are kind of young Republicans in their early 20s, and they also don't really care. It's not like they're excited about Donald Trump. They're like excited by the kind of meme-ified free market capitalism opportunities that the Republicans sort of scoop up, right? Like they like crypto. They like, you know, they're like they have some really confused ideas about tariffs, which if you if you press them on it a little bit, you would say maybe you actually should vote for a Democrat because Trump is just putting more tariffs on things, just all sorts of things.Keen: By the way, it's the first time in this conversation, Lauren, I've heard the the West Virginian twang when you when you said tariffs. Say it again.Oyler: Tariffs? I mean, I can do it all day if you want. I was anticipating you asking me to perform the accent. Maybe when we talk about a little bit more about J.D. Vance.Keen: Yeah.Oyler: But but, yeah--Keen: Tariffs, and what about China? Could you do China?Oyler: Well, you know, I lived in Beijing for about two months.Keen: I mean, JD, is he the fool here or is he the one who's being made to look like a fool, do you think?Oyler: I think he's allowing himself to be made to look like a fool. I don't think that...Keen: Does he know what he's doing here?Oyler: Yeah. I mean, does he know what he's doing entirely? No. Does he know what he's doing? More than, like, Donald Trump's kids? Yes.Keen: It isn't hard, especially the boys. The girls disappeared, right? I think our girls have disappeared.Oyler: And yeah, good for them. I think I saw on Twitter that it's Ivanka's 43rd birthday today.Keen: Maybe a happy birthday, Ivanka, if you're well, I'm sure you've got better things to do. Although, she does seem to be participating. I'm sure she's severely embarrassed now by the whole thing.Oyler: Yeah, I think that that's a big issue for, you know, they're just they're struggling to have like a base for Trump anymore. And there is like a base for Republican, like a Republican Party base. But it doesn't seem like there's that many.Keen: Yeah, and your essay is entitled "The GOP's Identity Crisis." Maybe it should be "The Trump Family's Identity Crisis."Oyler: Yeah. I mean, he's he's not going to be around for that much longer.Keen: Yeah. I mean, what you said was interesting about talking to a lot of older people who suggested they don't like Trump. I mean, if he loses today, who knows what's going to happen? But if he does indeed lose and relatively decisively in the sense that it's clear that he lost. Do you think the knives are going to be out in your experience in Milwaukee? Yeah, there are enough people in the Republican Party will say enough is enough. This guy's a loser and we need to move on.Oyler: I mean, I think you can't lose two times in a row. You know, I mean, I think that there is enough...It's it's hard to say, well, what are the billionaires going to do? Like, what's Elon Musk going to do? What? Like, where's the money going to go? I don't know. I think they are trying to set up...to me at the convention, it seemed to me that, like J.D. Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy are the are the people that are sort of creating the most enthusiasm. But at the same time, you do have this kind of thing which the Democrats start with in 2016 and in 2020, which is that the younger members of the party have sort of radically different kind of Internet inflected ideas about what they want from the party. And the older guard is sort of scandalized a little bit by that. And it's kind of like a power struggle that will be interesting to watch if if Trump loses. And even if he wins, frankly.Keen: The narrative, the traditional narrative in mainstream media over the last few days has been mostly about men. Men, male and female voters, black and white voters, which is always a feature. And young and old voters. What wisdom did you derive on those fronts from from Milwaukee? Were there any young people there or any black people there? Were there any women there?Oyler: Were there any young people, black people or women there? Yes, there were there. It does skew older. It's very white. And, you know, the women who are there generally wives, even if they're also delegates, like they're not the main event. They don't have a Sarah Palin at this point right? There was...many of the women who spoke on stage were given a pink backdrop. They're very welcoming to women and minorities and young people. The rhetoric is all very much, we're not racist. America is not racist country. This is not a racist party. Over and over again, Tim Scott gave a big speech about how the Republicans aren't racist. Amber Rose Kanye West's ex-girlfriend, gave a big speech about how Republicans aren't racist. There was all this kind of state saying how not racist they were. And, you know, on the ground, obviously most people are white, most people are old, and most people are men. So, it was not super convincing, but it is kind of interesting to watch them say that because, of course, even ten years ago, they would have never cared about any of that, any of those kinds of points.Keen: Early on in the piece, you mentioned DeLillo. To what extent did he, especially in White Noise, did he predict all this? I mean, not just him, but that school of American writing.Oyler: But do you think they're predicting it or they're just observing their own time, and actually, it hasn't changed?Keen: I guess, yeah. I remember a review, I think it was Andrew Hagan's review in the New York Review of Books after 9/11, in which they were reviewing one of one of DeLillo's books about terrorism. I know Hagan wrote about DeLillo in the sense that reality kind of overtaking, maybe, his prediction or his his kind of work. It must be, again, to use a word, surreal here to to see this world that DeLillo already imagined in practice.Oyler: Well, I think he's probably talking about Underworld. But I think it's maybe our idea of of history being kind of flawed rather than DeLillo's being overtaken. I do think DeLillo has some struggles writing about the Internet, but that's fine. But I think, too, because I was reading so much of these convention pieces from the 60s and 70s, the conversation is the same. And that's nonfiction, right? And so I actually think this kind of like apocalyptic rhetoric and and ever greater spectacle, it does sort of get ever greater, but it has always been getting ever greater. And so I don't know that DeLillo has been like overtaken, because also people can read. People read, you know, Libra now, which is all about in the wake of the failed assassination attempt on Trump. Everybody was talking about Libra, which is about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the kind of, let's say, deep state apparatus surrounding that event. And also, you know, White Noise is a satirical novel. But but I think there was sort of some airborne toxic events in the United States.Keen: Yeah. I mean, he actually did write that in the book. I think about that. In a small town.Oyler: Exactly. But I believe White Noise is based on also a real incident. And DeLillo tends to work with actual news stories. Underworld is also sort of heavily researched and based on on on real, real events. So I think actually, maybe we we have to sort of admit that like as as as writers, as pundits, as journalists, as as whatever, it's in our best interest to say now is totally different. Right now, more than ever, everything's totally different. We're in a new paradigm. We're in a new era. This is especially bad. You know, you keep hearing this is the most important election of our lives. And we've been hearing that for every single election. And it's always been that kind of story. I can't really remember what your question was, but my my feeling about DeLillo is, like, amazing author. One of the best we have.Keen: Yeah, I know. I agree. And this idea of it being the most important election and of course, until the next one. This idea of an identity crisis. Lauren, what is an identity crisis? You noted that America is in a transitional stage. I mean, countries are always in transitional stages. They're always changing. Gramsci I think wrote that these kind of periods are a time for monsters. So we imagine the worst. What, to you, is an identity crisis, and why is the GOP going through it and not the Democrats? Might one argue that it's actually much healthier to face up to this crisis than to basically ignore it as the as the Democrats seem to be doing?Oyler: Yeah. Well, I think the Democrats, for all their faults, sort of dealt with this in the last two elections. And actually, you could say too the election of Barack Obama in 2008 was also a kind of identity crisis moment for them because the party didn't really want him, right? And Hillary's people, I believe, in 2008 were really critical of anyone who would go work for Obama, and it was it was actually like quite a big conflict. So you could say that basically the Democrats have been going through it as well. And now they've kind of they lost so humiliatingly in 2016 that they kind of had to do something about it, and they basically strong armed the left wing of the party in 2020, which for people of my generation, it was quite upsetting or like, galvanizing in some way, but you just don't really see so much...for someone who was really paying attention in 2020, the dissent against Kamala Harris is so much less than the dissent against Joe Biden in 2020. Does that sound right to you?Keen: Yeah, but I'm not sure you...I mean, if America is indeed in what you call this transitional stage where things the nature of the country, perhaps what we might think of as its kind of operating system is changing so dramatically. The Republicans are trying to face up to it and perhaps making fools of themselves, but at least they're addressing it. Why? Why the Republicans? Why the Democrats? So maybe America really isn't...I mean, this idea of a transitional stage is always true. So it's no more transitional in 2024 than it was in 2020 or 1920.Oyler: Yeah. Well, I think the Democrats have proven themselves to be quite denialists, right? Like they're very centrist. So the radical wing of the Republican Party. You could argue that J.D. Vance is part of part of the radical wing of the Republican Party. So I just think that the the Democrats are risk averse. They're very risk averse. And the things that they want are a return to normalcy when Republicans want like a radical reshaping of the government and society. They want...I went to some Moms for Liberty event where, you know, they weren't talking about this on the convention floor, but the Republicans give hearing to people who want to abolish the Department of Education. I can't remember what Trump's specific view on that is, but that's an incredibly radical proposal.Keen: I mean, Michael Lewis wrote a whole book on that: The Fifth Risk.Oyler: Yeah. But, it's not inconceivable that they would do that.Keen: Well, they did it. I mean, they did it in in 2016. I don't know if you're with the Department of Education, but some of these departments, they essentially shut down or appointed people with so hostile to the bureaucratic state that they by definition were going to ruin it.Oyler: Yeah. And then there was the the acronym R.A.G.E, Retire All Government Employees, and this kind of stuff. So but my point is that they you know, they see themselves as a revolution--the Republicans see themselves as a revolutionary party, and the Democrats are emphatically not. They're defining themselves against Republicans. So they're like, of course we're not America is not in an identity crisis. We just need to, like, get back to normal. But to go back to the phrase identity crisis, I think, too, is a reference also to J.D. Vance, whose whole career is, I argue, based on a sort of perversion of liberal identity politics, or an appeal to a kind of liberal identity politics. And the Republican Party's use of him or his use of them, is also based on this kind of Appalachian identity he has has created for himself in the media.Keen: Lauren, whatever happens today, the country's still profoundly divided. One side's going to win, one side is going to lose, but not by much. Lots of people have written about America in a process of divorce. You've presented the Democrats as denialists and the Republicans as so aggressively trying to figure themselves out in a slightly absurd way. Is this like a kind of traditional divorce where one partner denies there's any problems and the other exaggerates them? I don't know what the outcome of that kind of divorce usually is.Oyler: I don't know. Are you divorced?Keen: Yeah, but I'm not a denialist.Oyler: So you're so you're like--Keen: I mean, I was divorced.Oyler: What?Keen: I mean, I was. So...I've married and divorced.Oyler: Okay. But you have been through that. You've experienced--Keen: Yeah, I've done a divorce. Have you?Oyler: No. Never been married.Keen: But you've written about maybe not marriage, but you've written about...split ups, shall we say? I mean, you book Fake Accounts, which was a big hit, is about individuals and how they relate to one another. Is this like, maybe not a divorce, but a breakup in a in a weird kind of way, which, you know, you can't really breakup because you can't split the country in two?Oyler: Well, I don't think so, because I think it's probably...the thing about a romantic relationship is generally you are choosing in some way at least, to be in it and you're sort of declaring your your desire to be in it at some point in time. So if you're breaking it up, you're kind of it's seen as a failure, right? Whereas if you're an American citizen and you were just born in the country, you can't really control where you were born and you can't really, you know, there are only so many things you can do about that, and about your stake in the American political system and whether it breaks out. But are you asking for going is if this sort of south is going to secede or something like that--Keen: No, I'm saying, does this all tie into perhaps our therapeutic culture? I mean, is it coincidental that the kind of language that's being used both by the participants and observers like yourself is the same kind of language used by therapists, people addressing marriage breakups, relationship breakups, denialism, risk aversity, revenge plots, all this sort of thing?Oyler: Well, I think all the political parties are just made up of individual people, and as an individual person, the metaphors that we have at hand are our personal interpersonal metaphors. But I believe I'm a little rusty on this, but I believe Civilization and Its Discontents by Freud makes a similar kind of argument, right? Which is that there's a interpersonal metaphor that can be expanded to encompass the society. And you can read society psychoanalytically. I'm not a Freudian or even pro psychoanalysis per say, but it's not like it's actually not a new tendency that we we want to speak in these terms, especially in politics, which is different from government, right? Like in politics, all of the rhetoric, all of the language that politicians use and that they construct in order to make their case is incredibly personal and incredibly designed to incite emotion. That may remind you of things that happen in in private life, say. But I mean, are we getting a divorce? Like, we can't get a divorce. The Democrats or Republicans can't get a divorce. Maybe they need to grow up rather rather than split up.Keen: Finally, Lauren, I think your latest collection of essays is, No Judgment, I'm being critical...one of your strengths as a writer, thinker, or broadcaster, is your distance. I saw you had two interviews recently, one with GQ that says you don't take your work too seriously and then one with Vanity Fair, which suggests you care a lot. I wonder, and that's probably true of most of us, that we both hopefully don't take ourselves too seriously, but we also, in our own way, care a lot. Is this something that we should care about? I mean, so much hysteria. You noted earlier, every election is the most important election in American history. 2028 will no doubt be the same. You write without judgment, I think, that the piece also is written, in a sense, without judgment. But are you concerned with America? I mean, is this something to really worry about, or is it just one more scene and in the surreal history of the United States of America?Oyler: Well, I think, of course, it's something to care about. The idea I don't really care about things is obviously not totally true. But I think you can't care about the horse race aspect of of politics and you can't...the constant catastrophizing in the media hasn't worked. It's not accurate and it doesn't work. But of course it would be...I would prefer Donald Trump not win. Like, that will have many effects on even the country where I live, which is Germany. But to that point, I don't live in the United States and I don't live in the United States kind of for political reasons. And, of course, it shouldn't be a horrible catastrophe there the way that it is. Should care about it? Yeah. I think that if people don't care about it, or especially if young people don't care about it, it is a sense of that nothing that you do really matters, and like throwing stuff at the wall to see if it sticks politically. And that moment where everyone thought that they could do sort of political activism on social media has thankfully gone away. But there's been nothing to replace it to produce the kind of political subject for young people. So, I don't you know, I don't know what to do.Keen: Yeah,  it's interesting. I mean, I want to end this now because you've been very generous with your time. But I think your point, which hasn't really been made before...2024 is the first post-Internet election. Before, everyone was always obsessed with the Internet, always talking about how important it is. And now, you just don't read much about it. It's either it's the electric system, so it's just sort of ingrained into the system, or we've gone beyond the Internet, God knows where. But the Internet doesn't really feature in the discussion anymore.Oyler: No, I think that that's true. And I think that that's good because people are sort of accepting that it's a part of life now. I think the reason we focused on it so much in the previous two decades was because it felt like things were really radically changing. And maybe this sense that I have that we're transitioning into a new era and we don't really know what is the important thing to focus on is because it was so clear, I think, for many people that things were changing in a particular way with social media and social media was having these kind of drastic facts. And some people were in denial about that, and they would say, social media does matter. It's not real. Now, you can't really say that. But I think I noticed just before we got on the call that there was a New Yorker news, a breaking news story that The New Yorker published that that Russia was sort of inserting like kind of really bizarre election interference propaganda that was so bad. And it's not even going to be a big news story, right? Whereas that was such a huge news story in 2016 and 2020. And now we just sort of accept, yes, the foreign governments are going to attempt to use the Internet to interfere in our elections and we will almost certainly do the same. So, to relate this back to your question, should we all care? I think it's good to be realistic about these things, but it's hard to know where to put the emphasis at this point.Keen: Well, Lauren, Lauren Oyler, the author of Revenge--Revenge Plot, Not Revenge Post.Oyler: I thought you were going to say "romantic movie," which is cool.Keen: You've given me the title of this piece. 2024 is the first post-Internet election. I think that's very profound of you. Thank you so much, Lauren. And I hope I hope you're happy, because I think you and I probably agree on the kind of outcome of the election. But it's not the end of the plot, the revenge plot, whatever other kind of plot you want. We have to get you back on the show, Lauren, once the fog has cleared and we have a better idea of America post-2024. Thank you so much. And keep well and safe in Berlin. Really, I really appreciate it.Oyler: Thanks. Have a good night. This is a public episode. 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The good news is that the interminable 2024 election is almost done. The bad news is that the 2028 Presidential campaign - sure to be described as the most important election in American history - will begin later this week. The best-selling writer Paul Greenberg is already imagining this election. “It is 2028 and a certain president wants a third term,” is the premise of Greenberg’s new satire, A Third Term: A Novella. And to counter this Republican President, (un)popularly known as “the Tyrant”, an operative snatches a certain George Washington from his deathbed in 1799 and makes him the 2028 Democratic candidate. The really interesting question in this imaginary Trump-Washington match-up are their running mates. If Washington selects FDR, then I’m guessing Trump will go with Robert E. Lee. It’s going to be quite a spectacle. I can’t wait. Paul Greenberg writes at the intersection of the environment and technology, seeking to help his readers escape screens and find emotional and ecological balance with their planet. He is the author of six books including the New York Times bestseller and Notable Book Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food. His other books are The Climate Diet, Goodbye Phone, Hello World, The Omega Principle, American Catch, and the novel, Leaving Katya. He currently hosts the podcast Fish Talk. Paul’s writing on oceans, climate change, health, technology, and the environment appears regularly in The New York Times and many other publications. He’s the recipient of a James Beard Award for Writing and Literature, a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and many other grants and awards. Currently the writer-in-residence at The Safina Center, Paul contributes to academic life as a visiting scholar at the University of Washington’s Ocean Nexus Center, and as an adjunct professor at New York University’s Animal Studies Program in Manhattan. In summers he runs a study-abroad program on the Mediterranean Diet in Greece for Boston’s Northeastern University. His books are used widely in university and high school curricula and have been excerpted on the College Board’s AP English Exam. Paul is a frequent guest on national television and radio including Fresh Air with Terry Gross. His PBS Frontline documentary The Fish on My Plate was among the most viewed Frontline films of the 2017 season and his TED Talk has reached over 1.5 million viewers to date. He lectures widely at institutions around the country ranging from Harvard to Google to the United States Senate. A graduate in Russian Studies from Brown University, Paul speaks Russian and French. He currently lives at Ground Zero in Manhattan where he maintains a family and a terrace garden and produces, to his knowledge, the only wine grown south of 14th Street.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.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

Keith Teare, founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation, shares insights from TechCrunch Disrupt, emphasizing the rapid evolution of technology and AI. He discusses how these advancements contrast sharply with the political landscape, particularly the upcoming Biden-Trump rematch. Teare explores whether Silicon Valley's innovations can truly disrupt politics or if they remain in parallel universes. He also highlights AI's transformative role in healthcare, especially in enhancing diagnostic methods, showcasing the vast potential of technology in various domains.