Keen On America

Yesterday, we featured a conversation with the British pro-market Conservative, Jon Moynihan, who is unambiguously in favor of economic growth. But Daniel Susskind, author of Growth: A History and a Reckoning, is less of an ideological warrior on behalf of unrestrained economic growth. In Growth, which is deservedly included on the Financial Times’ short list of best business books for 2024, Susskind seeks to navigate between the exuberantly Hayekian Moynihan and “degrowthers” like previous KEEN ON guests Tim Jackson and Jason Hickel. The truth about growth, for Susskind, as I’m guessing for most of us, is tricky, especially in the context of its longer term environmental costs. Thus the importance of Susskind’s nuanced and sensitive treatment of both the benefits and drawbacks of economic growth.Dr Daniel Susskind explores the impact of technology, and particularly AI, on work and society. He is a Research Professor in Economics at King’s College London, a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University, and an Associate Member of the Economics Department at Oxford University. He is the co-author of the best-selling book, The Future of the Professions (2015) and the author of A World Without Work (2020), described by The New York Times as "required reading for any potential presidential candidate thinking about the economy of the future”. His TED Talk, on the future of work, has been viewed more than 1.6 million times. And his new book, Growth: A Reckoning, published in April 2024, is currently shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2024. Previously he worked in various roles in the British Government – in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, in the Policy Unit in 10 Downing Street, and in the Cabinet Office. He was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard 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

Not everyone believes in the promise of economic growth. We’ve done KEEN ON shows in the past with “degrowth” advocates like Tim Jackson and Jason Hickle who argue that we need to get beyond the false promise of ever expanding wealth. Our guest today, however, is anything but a sceptic of capitalist economics. Jon Moynihan is a Conservative member of the House of Lords, a vocal supporter of BREXIT, and an unashamed follower of the free market economic principles of Friedrich Hayek & Margaret Thatcher. In his new book, Return to Growth: How to Fix the Economy, the entertaining and combative Lord Moynihan argues that critics of economic growth tend to be what he calls “pampered Oxford Dons” who have no real understanding of the needs or ambitions of ordinary people. By the way, tomorrow’s guest on the show will be the Oxford trained economist Daniel Susskind who, as it happens, has a new book out entitled Growth: A History and a Reckoning. So more views about the value of the idea of economic growth over the next few days.Jon Moynihan is a businessman and venture capitalist who started his career advising companies and banks in the Netherlands, the US and the UK as a specialist in mergers and turnarounds. He then ran the global firm PA Consulting Group for twenty-one years. He subsequently transitioned into venture startups, creating over twenty companies to date, most of them in the science and technology fields. Jon has worked as a volunteer in the charity sector all his life, including in Bangladeshi refugee camps and other developing countries; in educational think tanks, both managing and fundraising for charities; and in the arts sector, where, among other activities, he was president of the Royal Albert Hall for a number of years. Jon sits in the House of Lords as Baron Moynihan of Chelsea.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

Maybe Halloween is a bit early this year. As Jason Pack, the host of the excellent Disorder podcast notes, a Trump victory on Tuesday would be a horror show. And while he’s much more optimistic than me about a Harris victory, Pack nonetheless views Trump as Exhibit A in his arguments about the global disorder now threatening peace and stability around the world. My own view is that America - always vulnerable to paranoia and conspiracy theories - has descended into total hysteria over the upcoming election. Whoever wins isn’t going to have the political or financial capital to change much; whoever wins, the country is going to remain as bitterly divided as ever. But then, as I’m often reminded, what the f$*k do I know?Jason Pack is the Founder of Libya-Analysis LLC, and the co-host of Disorder, a geopolitics podcast co-produced with Goalhanger Podcasts. He is a Senior Analyst for Emerging Challenges at the NATO Defence College Foundation in Rome. In partnership with NDCF, Jason leads a project entitled NATO and the Global Enduring Disorder, which produces a range of content (including the Disorder podcast and series of publications) attempting to sketch out a ‘unified field theory’ of our current era of geopolitics while proposing actionable solutions to our most pressing collective action challenges. His most recent book, Libya and the Global Enduring Disorder (Hurst, Oxford University Press) is a ‘cross-over’ academic book that explores what Libya’s dysfunctional economic structures and its ongoing civil war reveal about our era of 21st-century geopolitics. Jason’s concept – that we no longer inhabit the post-Cold War World, but have entered a new era – the ‘Enduring Disorder’ – was conceived to describe the collective action failures that have come to define international politics. At present, he is producing a series of articles, media, and podcasts applying this concept to climate change, tax havens, and the geopolitical crises in Ukraine, Syria, and Afghanistan. For a full CV, please click here.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

Can one age with grace and wisdom? Yes, according to Andrew J. Scott, author of the Longevity Imperative, one of the six books on the Financial Times’ illustrious short list for best business books of the year . For Scott, aging in the 21st century requires a sharp shift in both personal and public policy attitudes to “old age”. No, we can’t live forever, he reminds us, but we do need to make the necessary social, political and economic adjustments to enable us to enjoy the increasingly longer lives most of us now take for granted. Rather than medicalizing old age, he argues, we need to normalize it so that its a central feature of, rather than an epilogue to, the good life. Wise words from one of the world’s leading authorities on aging.Andrew J. Scott is the world’s leading expert on the economics of longevity and on ensuring that our lives aren’t just longer but also happier, healthier and more productive. An award winning researcher, speaker, author and teacher he is a co-founder of The Longevity Forum, co-author of the global bestseller, “The 100 Year Life,” and a professor of economics at London Business School, Scott’s research focuses on the implications of longevity and his advisory work on helping individuals, non-profits, corporations, and governments to seize the benefits of a longer-living society.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 week, the Los Angeles Times book critic, Bethanne Patrick, came on the show to talk about the best new non-fiction books for the Fall. Today she is back to talk new novels by great fictional writers like Allan Hollinghurst, Rachel Kushner and Paula Hawkins. For those of you for whom American reality is currently too depressing, Patrick’s list of great new literature will be of particular solace. Bethanne Patrick maintains a storied place in the publishing industry as a critic and as @TheBookMaven on Twitter, where she created the popular #FridayReads and regularly comments on books and literary ideas to over 200,000 followers. Her work appears frequently in the Los Angeles Times as well as in The Washington Post, NPR Books, and Literary Hub. She sits on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and has served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. She is the host of the Missing Pages podcast.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

There are few more passionate bibliophiles than those who have dedicated their lives to the publishing business. Take, for example, Stephen Riggio, the former CEO of Barnes & Noble who, as he confessed to me, has been hooked on books his whole life. Riggio’s latest book project is as the translator of Silician Avengers, the greatest Italian novel that you’ve probably never heard of. Written in the 19th century by Luigi Natoli, who is often compared with Alexander Dumas and Charles Dickens because he published his prodigious fiction in popular newspaper installments, Sicilian Avengers is the saga of a legendary secret sect purported to be forerunners of the Mafia. Considered now by many literary critics to be one of the most notable works of fiction in the Italian language, Riggio’s translated version of the first two books of Sicilian Avengers comes with an afterword from Umberto Eco. Stephen Riggio is the former chief executive officer of Barnes & Noble. For over forty years he was a key leader transforming the single flagship New York location into a national retailer that expanded into e-commerce, book publishing and video games. Riggio has served on the boards of the National Book Foundation, the National Down Syndrome Society, and is a founding member of the AHRC New York City Foundation Board. He and his wife live in New York City.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

There are few men politically or intellectually smarter than President Lyndon Johnson and his defense secretary Robert McNamara. So how did LBJ and McNamara screw up America’s involvement in Vietnam so tragically? According to Peter Osnos, the author of LBJ and McNamara: The Vietnam Partnership Destined to Fail, it might have been because the two men were, in their own quite different ways, too smart. For Osnos - a legendary figure in American publishing who, amongst many other things, edited Donald Trump’s Art of the Deal - the catastrophe of America’s war in Vietnam is a parable about imperial hubris and overreach. According to Osnos, who has access to much previously unpublished material from McNamara, The Best and the Brightest orchestrated the worst and dumbest episode in American foreign policy. Peter Osnos began his journalism career in 1965 as an assistant to I. F. .Stone on his weekly newsletter. Between 1966–1984 Osnos was a reporter and foreign correspondent for The Washington Post and served as the newspaper’s foreign and national editor. From 1984-1996 he was Vice President, Associate Publisher, and Senior Editor at Random House and Publisher of Random House’s Times Books division. In 1997, he founded PublicAffairs. He served as Publisher and CEO until 2005, and was a consulting editor until 2020 when he and his wife, Susan Sherer Osnos, launched Platform Books LLC. Among the authors he has published and/or edited are — former President Jimmy Carter, Rosalyn Carter, Gen. Wesley Clark, Clark Clifford, former President Bill Clinton, Paul Farmer, Earvin (Magic) Johnson, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Sam Donaldson, Kenneth Feinberg, Annette Gordon Reed, Meg Greenfield, Dorothy Height, Don Hewitt, Molly Ivins, Vernon Jordan, Ward Just, Stanley Karnow, Wendy Kopp, Charles Krauthammer, Brian Lamb, Jim Lehrer, Scott McClellan, Robert McNamara, Charles Morris, Peggy Noonan, William Novak, Roger Mudd. Former President Barack Obama, Speaker of the House Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill, Nancy Reagan, Andy Rooney, Morley Safer, Natan Sharansky, George Soros, Susan Swain, President Donald Trump, Paul Volcker, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and Nobel peace prize Winner Muhammad Yunus, as well as journalists from America’s leading publications and prominent scholars. Osnos has also been a commentator and host for National Public Radio and a contributor to publications including Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, and The New Republic. He wrote the Platform column for the Century Foundation, the Daily Beast and The Atlantic.com from 2006-2014. He has also served as Chair of the Trade Division of the Association of American Publishers and on the board of Human Rights Watch. From 2005-2009, he was executive director of The Caravan Project, funded by the MacArthur and Carnegie Foundations, which developed a plan for multi-platform publishing of books. He was the Vice-Chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review from  2007-2012. He is a member of The Council on Foreign Relations. He is a graduate of Brandeis and Columbia Universities. He lives in New York City, with his wife Susan, a consultant to human rights and philanthropic organizations. His children are Evan L.R. Osnos and Katherine Sanford. There are five grandchildren.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

As the longtime collaborator of the 2024 Nobel laureates John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, Terrence Sejnowski is one of America’s most distinguished AI scientists. In his new book, ChatGPT and the Future of AI: The Deep Language Revolution, Sejnowski addresses some of the central technical and philosophical issues of today’s large language model AI revolution. And in this wide-ranging conversation, we talked about everything from the origins of human language to the existential question of whether our brains and smart machines are converging. Unlike other AI researchers, Terry Sejnowski is able to make the deep language revolution accessible to a mainstream audience. Strongly recommended. Terrence J. Sejnowski is Francis Crick Chair at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Distinguished Professor at the University of California at San Diego. He has published over 500 scientific papers and 12 books, including The Computational Brain with Patricia Churchland. He was instrumental in shaping the BRAIN Initiative that was announced by the White House in 2013, and he received the prestigious Gruber Prize in Neuroscience in 2022.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

Not only is the AI revolution really happening, but its Large Language Model technology is becoming an independent actor in the world. Rather than the dark conclusion of a techno-pessimist, this is actually the view of one of the leading AI platforms. For this week’s episode of That Was The Week, we ran Keith Teare’s editorial summarizing this week’s tech news through Google’s Notebook LM. Rather than a tool, NotebookLM concluded, it’s becoming an independent actor in today’s world. And this provocative conclusion is substantiated in much of this week’s tech news, especially the rise of what’s being called “agentic AI” and the renaissance of robotics. Even today’s American politics, with its two Presidential candidates obsessed with telling voters what they do and don’t want to hear, seems to confirm the way in which the human world itself is a mirror of a Large Language Model. 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

From the introduction of North Korean troops into the war in Ukraine to a budding friendship with Elon Musk, Putin continues to make strange headlines. The real question is whether Putin actually knows what he’s doing or if he, as a wannabe 21st century Russian Tsar, is subject to the same seemingly inevitable historical forces as the Tsars of yesteryear. As both a seasoned Putin watcher and the author of many books about Russia, Mark Galeotti is as well positioned as anyone to determined if Putin is a prisoner or a master of history. Churchill famously described Russia as "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." In his new book, Forged in War: A Military History of Russia from its Beginnings to Today, however, Galeotti unwraps this mystery by seeing Russia as an eternal prisoner of its geo-strategic vulnerabilities and thus, like Putin, always insecure, land-hungry and bellicose. Professor Mark Galeotti is one of the foremost Russia-watchers today, who used to travel there regularly to teach, lecture, talk to his contacts, and generally watch the unfolding story of the Putin era, until the Kremlin banned him indefinitely in 2022. Based in the UK, he is an Honorary Professor at UCL and heads the consultancy Mayak Intelligence. He is also a Senior Associate Fellow with both RUSI and the Council on Geostrategy, as well as a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague. Before then, he was Professor of Global Affairs at NYU and head of History at Keele University, and was educated at Robinson College, Cambridge, and the LSE. A prolific author on Russia and security affairs, he frequently acts as consultant to various government, commercial and law-enforcement agencies.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