Keen On America

At the debate tonight, there probably won’t be much talk about American education. Which is a shame - at least according to Josh Cowen, author of The Privateers, a new book about how radical conservative billionaires like Betsy De Vos have created a culture war to sell their idea of school vouchers. It’s all part of the right-wing Project 2025 vision, Cowen suggests, of collapsing the church-state boundaries and making American public schools mirror the country’s inequities and injustices. The alternative, Cowen suggests, is for Federal or State governments to fund these public schools more generously, thereby allowing all Americans to get a fair and decent education. Josh Cowen is a nationally recognized expert and writer on topics related to school choice, teachers and teaching, policy analysis, and education politics. He has studied school vouchers, school accountability, charter schools, and parental decision-making as part of major research teams in Louisiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. His writing on school vouchers, culture wars, and other current events has appeared in major media outlets ranging from Slate to Time Magazine. He speaks and testifies across the country on the dangers of school privatization and is regularly quoted in state and national feature reporting. In addition to his appointment as professor of education policy at Michigan State University, Dr. Cowen has also served as one of five national directors of the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice (REACH) based at Tulane University. In 2016, he founded the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC), a strategic research partnership between Michigan State University and the state of Michigan. He has held a variety of editorial positions for major academic journals, and was co-editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis—the premier education policy journal in the United States. His research has been funded through federal, state and local government contracts, as well as a diverse array of philanthropies such as Arnold Ventures, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. Josh Cowen holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Master of Public Policy from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in history from the University of Michigan. Before beginning his research and writing career, he worked in CNN’s Washington, D.C. Bureau and on staff for the political debate show Crossfire. 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

The Serbian-American economist Branko Milanovic is one of the world’s leading authorities on inequality. In this KEEN ON America conversation, we talked about Milanovic’s interpretation of the history of American economic inequality - from slavery to contemporary capitalism. Why has America become so much unequal over the last fifty years, I asked. And today, in what Milanovic sees as a post neo-liberal age, how does he imagine the future of economic inequality?Branko Milanovic obtained his Ph.D. in economics (1987) from the University of Belgrade with a dissertation on income inequality in Yugoslavia. He served as lead economist in the World Bank’s Research Department for almost 20 years, leaving to write his book on global income inequality, Worlds Apart (2005). He was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington (2003-2005) and has held teaching appointments at the University of Maryland (2007-2013) and at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University (1997- 2007). He was a visiting scholar at All Souls College in Oxford, and Universidad Carlos III in Madrid (2010-11). Professor Milanovic’s main area of work is income inequality, in individual countries and globally, including in preindustrial societies. He has published articles in Economic Journal, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Development Economics, and Journal of Political Philosophy, among others. His book The Haves and the Have-nots (2011) was selected by The Globalist as the 2011 Book of the Year. Global Inequality (2016) was awarded the Bruno Kreisky Prize for the best political book of 2016 and the Hans Matthöfer Prize in 2018, and was translated into 16 languages. It addresses economic and political effects of globalization and introduces the concept of successive “Kuznets waves” of inequality. In March 2018, Milanovic was awarded (jointly with Mariana Mazzucato) the 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Knowledge. His most recent books are Capitalism, Alone, published in 2019, and Visions of Inequality, published in 2023..Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting 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

The Brooklyn based Rafil Kroll-Zaidi is a Princeton educated reporter formerly on the editorial staff of Harper's Magazine. And he is another kind of reporter too - a citizen- sleuth who makes six figures annually by reporting polluting trucks in New York City. Writing about this experience for New York magazine, Kroll argues that, in theory, at least, it’s a “win-win” for both himself and the environment. In practice, however, as he confesses, things aren’t quite as black and white when it comes to making a decent living as a reporter of idling trucks on the streets of New York City. Rafil Kroll-Zaidi is a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine and has been writing the journal’s popular Findings column, among other features, since 2007. Graham Roumieu is the author and illustrator of the celebrated Bigfoot “autobiographies” In Me Own Words, Me Write Book, and I Not Dead. His drawings appear in such publications as the Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, and the Walrus.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

Last Saturday, on our regular That Was The Week tech roundup, Keith Teare and I discussed the French decision to imprison Telegram founder Pavel Durov. Today, we discuss the theoretical imprisonment of Elon Musk, an idea touted yesterday by Robert Reich in The Guardian. Elon Musk, according to Reich, is “out of control” and one way to “rein him in” is to “threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X”. Lock him up, in other words. For Keith Teare, this reflects the increasingly authoritarian nature of American progressives like Reich. Perhaps. But, as we discuss today, the social media mogul Musk is a different kind of beast from 20th century media owners. So reining him in probably requires different strategies from those that tried make moguls like Rupert Murdoch or William Randolph Hearst accountable for the lies and hate spewed by their newspapers and tv stations. 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.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

Last month we ran an interview with the Oregon based regenerative wine maker Mimi Casteel about fixing America one sip at a time. In addition, we recorded a KEEN ON America segment with Casteel about her life-long love affair with the American land. Filmed at her family’s beautiful Hope Well Winery, Casteel spoke with an infectious passion about the natural beauty of America. However you think about the current state of the United States, you’ll be inspired by Mimi Casteel’s faith in the regenerative quality of American nature and its land. Strongly recommended. Mimi Casteel is the daughter of Ted Casteel and Pat Dudley, co-founders of Bethel Heights Vineyard. Growing up working in the vineyard and winery, Mimi gained such an appreciation for the industry that she promptly left home after high school. Armed with a BA in History and Classics from Tulane University, Mimi spent the next year working in various National Forests across the west. Her adventures fueled her passion for studying botany, forestry, and ecology. Mimi earned her MS from Oregon State University in Forest Science, and spent the next several years working as a botanist and ecologist for the Forest Service, living in the backcountry. She could never get past the longing for the vineyard, and working with the vines. Mimi returned to Bethel Heights in 2005, along with her cousin and childhood best friend Ben to take the helm as second generation winegrowers and owners. In 2015 Mimi left Bethel Heights and began her Hope Well journey, building an island of biodiversity and resilience on her own 80-acre farm, growing grapes for others to support the farm, and making wines to give a voice to the process of regeneration. Firmly convinced that moving from conventional to regenerative agriculture on working lands is the most powerful tool humanity has to reverse climate change, the mission of Hope Well has been to help spread the word by example, one farm at a time. 2020 changed everything. In 2020 the climate delivered a clear personal message that there is no time left for a one-farm-at-a-time strategy to address the climate crisis. In 2021 Mimi made the hard decision to move Hope Well, the wine, the sheep, the chickens, the children, the philosophy, the entire ethos, to a much smaller, integrated farm that allows for the time and personal capacity to do the work that needs to be done now, building strategies and networks that can transform agriculture on a global scale while there is still time.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

Andrew Leigh is a minister in the Australian parliament with a doctorate in economics from Harvard. Unlike many academic economists, however, Leigh has the gift of simplifying economics for all of us. His new book, How Economics Explains the World, presents economics as the prism to understand the human story. From the dawn of agriculture to AI, Leigh tells the story of how ingenuity, greed, and desire for betterment have, to an astonishing degree, determined humanity’s past, present, and future. Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, Treasury and Employment, and Federal Member for Fenner in the Australian Parliament. Prior to being elected in 2010, Andrew was a professor of economics at the Australian National University. He holds a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard, having graduated from the University of Sydney with first class honours in Arts and Law. Andrew is a past recipient of the Economic Society of Australia's Young Economist Award and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences. His books include Disconnected (2010), Battlers and Billionaires: The Story of Inequality in Australia (2013), The Economics of Just About Everything (2014), The Luck of Politics (2015), Choosing Openness: Why Global Engagement is Best for Australia (2017), Randomistas: How Radical Researchers Changed Our World (2018), Innovation + Equality: How to Create a Future That Is More Star Trek Than Terminator (with Joshua Gans) (2019), Reconnected: A Community Builder's Handbook (with Nick Terrell) (2020), What's the Worst That Could Happen? Existential Risk and Extreme Politics (2021) and Fair Game: Lessons From Sport for a Fairer Society & a Stronger Economy (2022). Andrew is a keen triathlete and marathon runner, and hosts a podcast called The Good Life: Andrew Leigh in Conversation, about living a happier, healthier and more ethical life. Andrew is the father of three sons - Sebastian, Theodore and Zachary, and lives with his wife Gweneth in Canberra.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

Formerly Le Monde’s guy in Jerusalem, Piotr Smolar is now the senior correspondent for Le Monde in Washington, DC. He is also the grandson of Hersh Smolar, one of the 20th century’s more remarkable men. As Smolar notes in Bad Jew, the astonishing story of his grandfather’s life from Stalin’s Russia & the Minsk Ghetto to Netanyahu’s Israel, there was, in fact, nothing particularly bad about Hersh Smolar. What was bad was history - the genocidal forces in Nazi Germany & the Soviet Union which Smolar fought against - both as an anti-fascist soldier and as a Polish communist. And then there’s the Jewish Question, also know today as the Israel Question, with which both Smolars are all-too-familiar. Indeed, Smolar’s important new book should probably have been entitled: Bad Jew Grandfathers & Bad Jew Grandsons. Piotr Smolar is a French journalist of Polish origin. He is the senior correspondent for Le Monde in Washington, DC. After working in Moscow from 1997 to 2001, he published a book in French on Russia’s heartland, Gloubinka. He extensively covered Russia’s neighboring countries, before becoming Le Monde’s correspondent in Jerusalem (2014–2019). Bad Jew is his first book to appear in English.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

Exactly 85 years ago today, on 3 September 1939, the Second World War officially began with Britain’s declaration of war against Germany. Russians might argue, however, the real war began on 22 June 1941 with Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. While, for America, of course, the war began on December 7, 1941, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. World War Two was then, in a sense, three wars rolled into one featuring the alliance of Britain, the Soviet Union and America against the Axis. But this alliance, for the historian Giles Milton, was a short-term affair rather than a marriage which would inevitably disintegrate after the defeat of Nazi Germany. Indeed, in his interesting new book, The Stalin Affair, Milton describes it as an “impossible alliance” that might have “won” the war but would lose the peace and trigger the Cold War. GILES MILTON is the internationally best-selling author of twelve works of narrative history, including Nathaniel’s Nutmeg and Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and have been serialised on both the BBC and in British newspapers. He is also the writer and narrator of the acclaimed podcast series, Ministry of Secrets. Milton is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. The Times described Milton as being able ‘to take an event from history and make it come alive’, while The New York Times said that Milton’s ‘prodigious research yields an entertaining, richly informative look at the past. Giles Milton’s book Nathaniel’s Nutmeg is currently under option in America for a major TV series, and Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is also under option. All of Milton’s books are available in print format and as e-books, in UK and US editions.Giles Milton was born in 1966. He was educated at Latymer Upper School and the University of Bristol, where he read English. His nonfiction books include Nathaniel's Nutmeg, Big Chief Elizabeth, Samurai William, The Riddle and the Knight, White Gold, Paradise Lost, Wolfram, Russian Roulette, Fascinating Footnotes from History. He is also the author of three novels, The Perfect Corpse, According to Arnold and Edward Trencom's Nose.  In the preface to the American edition of Fascinating Footnotes he has written: 'Much of my working life is spent in the archives, delving through letters and personal papers. The huge collection housed in Britain’s National Archives is incompletely catalogued (the National Archives in Washington DC is somewhat better) and you can never be entirely sure what you will find in any given box of documents. Days can pass without unearthing anything of interest: I liken it to those metal-detecting treasure-hunters of North Carolina who scour the Outer Banks in the hope of turning up a Jacobean shilling or signet ring. Persistence often pays rich dividends and this book - an idiosyncratic collection of unknown historical chapters - is the result of my own metaphorical metal detecting. Amidst the flotsam and jetsam, I’ve found (I hope) some glittering gems.'  Milton's works of narrative history rely on personal testimonies, diaries, journals and letters to make sense of key moments in history, recounted through the eyes of those who were there. A Cornish slave boy held captive in Morocco; a Jacobean adventurer in Japan; a young German artist conscripted into Hitler's war machine - Giles Milton's books focus on the stories of ordinary people who found themselves attempting to survive in extreme situations.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

Controversial things are happening on the campus of the University of Austin (UATX), the brand new anti-woke university designed to “dare” its students to “think”. Last week, we interviewed UATX’s founding president, Pano Kanelos, who explained how he was trying to build what he called a 21st century “liberal university”. Today, in this KEEN ON America interview, we talk to Jacob Howland, UATX’s founding Provost, on what should be taught at this university. For some, of course, Howland’s focus on a 21st century anti-woke university education represents a new humanism; for others, it’s the last gasps of a reactionary 20th century intellectual elite. In either case, UATX is a provocative pedagogical experiment which we, at KEEN ON America, will be following as the new university opens its doors to students this month.JACOB HOWLAND is Provost, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Dean of Intellectual Foundations at the University of Austin. Previously he was McFarlin Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Tulsa, where he taught from 1988 to 2020. He has published five books and roughly sixty scholarly articles and review essays on the thought of Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Kierkegaard, the Talmud, the Holocaust, ideological tyranny, and other subjects  A past winner of the University of Tulsa Outstanding Teacher Award and the College of Arts and Sciences Excellence in Teaching Award, Howland has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Littauer Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, and the Koch Foundation, and has lectured in Israel, France, England, Romania, Brazil, Denmark, Norway, and at universities around the United States.  His most recent book is Glaucon’s Fate: History, Myth, and Character in Plato’s Republic, Paul Dry Books, 2018. In addition, his articles have appeared in The New Criterion, Commentary, Newsweek, the Claremont Review of Books, the Jewish Review of Books, City Journal, Mosaic, Tablet, the New York Post, Unherd, Quillette, Forbes, and The Nation, among other venues. He has appeared in numerous podcasts including The Symbolic World, The Art of Manliness, and the podcast of City Journal and First Things.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

Bryan VanDyke’s new dystopian AI novel, In Our Likeness, only came out today, but it has already over 1,400 reviews on Amazon and is currently their bestselling science fiction book. So what does our seemingly infinite appetite for dystopian AI literature tell us about ourself, I asked VanDyke? Is the popularity of this type of dystopian literature because AI is about to replace humans with smart machines thereby making our species redundant? Or might it be a more persistent feature of modernity : our fear over the last couple of hundred years that any revolutionary new technology - railways, electricity, the computer or the Internet - is sabotaging our most “human” qualities?Bryan VanDyke is a digital strategist and a regular contributor at The Millions. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Northwestern. In addition to his debut novel, IN OUR LIKENESS, he is the author of a book-length essay, ONLY THE TRYING, which is a meditation on the nature of illness and recovery. For the last twenty-five years, he has advised and partnered with technologists, startup founders and venture capitalists with a passion for disruption. His debut novel draws on this experience and dramatizes many of the as-yet-unanswered questions about artificial intelligence. What happens with powerful tools when tech leaders seem fonder of disruption than they are of people and truth? Can we hold the line between the artificial and the real — and should we? He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting 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