Keen On America

As America braces itself for the upcoming Presidential election, a growing army of coastal commentators are agonizing over the health of the country’s democracy. In contrast with many of these desk bound pundits, the Bloomberg editorial director Frank Barry bought an RV and drove from New York City to San Francisco on the backroads of old Lincoln Highway. His new book, Back Roads and Better Angels, is an account of this journey into the heart of American democracy and, as Barry told me when I visited him at the Bloomberg offices in New York City, this trip has made him cautiously optimistic about the health of American democracy.Frank Barry is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and member of the editorial board covering national affairs. He is the author of Back Roads and Better Angels: A Journey Into the Heart of American Democracy.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

In the wake of a “major Summit” on Ukraine which neither the Russians nor the Chinese attended, the war remains as murky and inconclusive as ever. And it’s this murkiness and inconclusiveness that the San Francisco based writer Sasha Vasiljuk explores in her new novel, Your Presence is Mandatory. But Vasiljuk’s semi-autobiographical, semi-fictional canvas focuses on more than just Putin’s invasions of Ukraine. It’s a sweeping panorama of the last seventy-five years of Ukrainian history - although there’s nothing particularly sweeping or panoramic about the awkward secrets that Vasiljuk digs up in this most most morally murky of geographies.Sasha Vasilyuk is a journalist and author of the debut novel Your Presence is Mandatory (Bloomsbury) about a Ukrainian Jewish WWII soldier and his family who reckon with his lifelong secrecy. The novel will also come out in Italy, France, Germany, Finland and Brazil in Fall 2024. Sasha grew up between Ukraine and Russia before immigrating to the U.S. at the age of 13. She has a MA in Journalism from New York University and her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, CNN, TIME, Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Bazaar, BBC Radio, USA Today, KQED, San Francisco Chronicle, The Telegraph, and Narrative. She has won several writing awards, including the Solas Award for Best Travel Writing and the NATJA award. Besides writing, she has founded a leading wedding PR company and the first coworking space in San Francisco. She also spent a year traveling alone around the world. Sasha is a graduate of Lowell High School, UC Berkeley (BA in Comparative Literature and Italian Studies), and New York University (MA in Journalism). She lives in San Francisco with her husband 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

Big Tech is getting even bigger. This was the week that NVIDIA joined Microsoft and Apple as a three trillion dollar company. And it’s also the week that, according to That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare, in which OpenAI’s deals with Microsoft and Apple might have locked up the AI economy. CHECKMATE! Keith thus entitles this week’s newsletter, suggesting a Big Tech economy in which an isolated Google will be pitted against the OpenAI-Microsoft-Apple axis. I ‘m less convinced. Sure, these deals look good on paper, but my sense is that the real AI game has barely begun and there will be many many unexpected twists and turns before any multi trillion dollar tech company can declare checkmate in the great game of owning the emerging AI economy. 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

The Euros start today and Copa America next week. So expect a slew of garbage about soccer/football as the “beautiful game” or, even more ludicrously, the “people’s game”. But as Joseph O’Neill shows in his timely new novel, Godwin, today’s trillion dollar football industry is a mirror of our globalized, neo-colonial economy. Think of Godwin as a chirpy Heart of Darkness for our celebrity age of Messi, Ronaldo and Mbappe. And O’Neill, an Turkish-Irish Manchester United fan based in Brooklyn, has the necessary globetrotting credentials to chart the rottenness of our beautiful game. One-nil to neo-liberalism. Own goal. Joseph O’Neill is the author of the novels The Dog, Netherland (which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award), The Breezes, and This Is the Life. He has also written a family history, Blood-Dark Track. He lives in New York City and teaches at Bard College.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

How to write a history of labor in the United States for young people? According to the award-winning author J. Albert Mann, a history of labor written for children shouldn’t be childish. Indeed, her new book, Shift Happens: The History of Labor in the United States, is anything but childish in its very grown-up focus on exploitation and injustice. And given that our young adults are on the frontlines of an AI revolution that is already radically transforming the value of labor, shift is happening big time in our increasingly automated 21st century.J. Albert Mann is a disability activist, an award-winning poet, and the author of eight published novels for children. She has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and is the Partner Liaison for the WNDB Internship Grant Committee. Her first work of nonfiction for teens—SHIFT HAPPENS: THE HISTORY OF LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES—was published June 4, 2024 with HarperCollins Children’s.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

In episode 2082, James Kirchick suggested that being Jewish and being a Zionist should be of all of one thing. Shane Burley reverses this. The co-author of Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Antisemitism, the Portland based, religiously orthodox Burley suggests that being Jewish might actually mean questioning not just Netanyahu, but the very intellectual foundations of the Zionist project. This division between nationalist and internationalist Jews isn’t new, of course. But in a world where both antisemites and philosemites equate hatred of Israel with hatred of Jews, it’s an important reminder that anti Zionism has a long heritage in the radical Jewish community.Shane Burley is a writer and filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse (AK Press, 2021) and Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press, 2017), and the editor of the forthcoming anthology ¡No pasarán!: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis. His work is featured at places such as NBC News, The Daily Beast, The Independent, Jacobin, Al Jazeera, Haaretz, Tikkun, The Baffler,  Bandcamp Daily, Truthout, and the Oregon Historical Quarterly. He is also the editor of a special issue of the Journal of Social Justice on “Antisemitism in the 21st Century.” 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

Lilie Chouliaraki, Professor of Media and Communications at LSE and author of Wronged: The Weaponization of Victimhood, engages in a thought-provoking discussion. She explores how victimhood, often misconstrued as weakness, can be a tool for power, especially among political figures. Chouliaraki challenges listeners to critically evaluate claims of victimization through the lenses of race, class, and gender. The conversation also delves into the strategic manipulation of language in establishing narratives, urging a more nuanced understanding of victimhood in today's social movements.

Sixteen months feels like sixteen centuries in the history of digital technology. Last year, the NYU data scientist Meredith Broussard came on episode 1360 to explain how technology is reinforcing inequality and what we can do about it. Today, seventeen hundred episodes later, Broussard explained to me when she came back on KEEN ON, both nothing and everything has changed. AI is dramatically disrupting the world, she notes, and yet it also continues to spread stupidity and compound inequality. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.Data journalist Meredith Broussard is an associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University, research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology, and the author of several books, including “More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech” and “Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World.”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 Nineties are back in fashion. Last week on KEEN ON, Terry Anderson explained why the Nineties still matter. Next week, we are featuring a conversation with John Ganz, the author of When the Calock Broke, his interpretation of how America “cracked up” in the early Nineties. Today we feature a conversation with D.W. Gibson, author of the oral history of Seattle’s World Trade Organization protests, One Week to Change the World. As Gibson explains, the June 1999 WTO protests bridge the end of the 20th with the beginning of the 21st century. On the one hand, they are a fitting conclusion to what now appears to be the illusion of Nineties prosperity and stability, on the other, the Seattle protests are an early example of a populist response to economic globalization which climaxed in the Occupy movement a decade later. DW Gibson is most recently the author of One Week To Change the World: An Oral History of the 1999 WTO Protests. His previous books include the awarding-winning The Edge Becomes the Center: An Oral History of Gentrification in the Twenty-First Century, 14 Miles: Building the Border Wall, and Not Working: People Talk About Losing a Job and Finding Their Way in Today’s Changing Economy. He shared a National Magazine Award for his work on “This is the Story of One Block in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn” for New York magazine. His work has also appeared in Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Gibson’s radio work includes co-hosting the podcast There Goes the Neighborhood, guest hosting various news programs for WNYC, and reading original essays for Live From Here as well as NPR’s All Things Considered. His documentary film, Not Working, a companion to the book, is available through Films Media Group. His directorial debut, Pants Down, premiered at Anthology Film Archives in New York. Gibson serves as director of Art Omi: Writers in Ghent, New York, and he co-founded Sangam House, a writers’ residency in India, along with Arshia Sattar.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

Jeremy Utley, Director of Education at Stanford’s Institute of Design, discusses facilitating epiphanies and innovation in his new book. The podcast explores AI's impact on creativity, personal growth through design thinking, and leveraging technology for greater impact.