Keen On America

Back in April 2011, Saad Mohseni was made one of Time’s 100 most influential people in the world. And who exactly is that, you might ask. I have to admit I hadn’t heard of him either. But as Rupert Murdoch wrote about Mohseni for that Time award, “he's the best-informed person in the world about Afghanistan”. Mohseni, in fact, is the Afghan version of Murdoch (without the wives & nasty right-wing politics). Even today, with the Taliban back in power, Mohseni remains amongst Afghanistan’s most influential media moguls. And he writes about all this in Radio Free Afghanistan, a memoir focusing on what he calls his “twenty-year struggle for an independent voice in Kabul”. Important stuff about a country that needs to be remembered in the West rather than conveniently forgotten.Described by the Asia Society as a ‘Game Changer’, Saad Mohseni has built a reputation as a dynamic and innovative entrepreneur. As Chairman and Chief Executive of MOBY GROUP, Saad has been widely applauded for his role in advancing press freedom, empowering civil society and defending women’s rights. Time Magazine recognized him in 2011 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, while in 2013, Foreign Policy magazine named him among 100 Global Thinkers. In 2016, he was featured in the Business Insider 100 “The Creators” list, and recognized by the BBC as one of 10 men globally championing gender equality. Saad currently serves on the boards of the International Crisis Group (ICG) and the Washington DC-based International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). One of four children of an Afghan diplomat, Saad spent his early years in the United Kingdom, Kabul, Islamabad and Tokyo, before emigrating to Melbourne, Australia.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 authoritative American journalists than the longtime NPR and PBS host Ray Suarez. So it was a real treat to sit down with Ray earlier this month in Washington DC to talk broadly about his and his family’s experience as American immigrants from Puerto Rico. Suarez is part of that golden generation of late twentieth century American journalists who exemplified both trust and authority in their coverage of the news. And listening to him today is a reminder of what America has lost because of its failure to replace guys like Suarez with a young generation of equally trusted and authoritative journalists. Ray Suarez is the host of the public radio program and podcast "On Shifting Ground," produced by Commonwealth Club-World Affairs and KQED-FM. His next book, on the modern era of American immigration, We Are Home: Becoming American in the 21st Century, is published by Little, Brown. He has been a visiting professor of Political Science at NYU Shanghai, and the John McCloy Visiting Professor of American Studies at Amherst College. He is a graduate of New York University and the University of Chicago. Earlier in his career, Suarez was the host of the daily news program "Inside Story" from Al Jazeera America, Chief National Correspondent for The PBS NewsHour, and the host of "Talk of the Nation" from NPR. His recent podcast productions include two seasons of "Going for Broke," produced with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and "The Things I Thought About When My Body Was Trying to Kill Me," from Evergreen Podcasts, about cancer and recovery. Suarez’ journalism has been recognized with two DuPont-Columbia Awards, the Ruben Salazar Award from UNIDOS-US, and UCLA’s Public Policy Leadership Award for his reporting on urban America, among others.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

Do you work too hard? Is it ruining your life? If so, then you may want to look at Brigid Schulte’s new book, Over Work, an exploration of why American work isn’t working and how our lives can be made more meaningful. Schulte traces the arc of our discontent from a time before the neo-liberal 1980s, when work was compatible with well-being and allowed a single earner to support a family, until today, with millions of our new precariat working multiple hourly jobs or in white-collar positions where no hours are ever off duty. And she imagines a future in which we will all be able to transform the daily grind of work into a more meaningful life.Brigid Schulte is the author of the bestselling Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time and an award-winning journalist formerly for the Washington Post, where she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize. She is also the director of the Better Life Lab, the work-family justice and gender equity program at New America. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia, 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

Few people are more familiar with America’s drug addiction crisis than Ryan Hampton. A former addict himself as well as the author of three books on the crisis, including the new Fentanyl Nation, the Las Vegas based Hampton is also running for the Nevada State Assembly in November. For Hampton, America’s failed war on drugs and its toxic politics are part of the same “uniquely American” problem of what he described to me as “reckless capitalism”. That’s why, he explains in Fentanyl Nation, 80% of the world’s illegal opioid drugs end up in the United States. And it’s why addressing America’s drug crisis, Hampton argues in Fentanyl Nation, simultaneously requires confronting what he considers to be the toxic politics of the country’s pharmaceutical and medical economy. A prominent advocate, speaker, author, and media commentator, Ryan Hampton travels coast-to-coast to add solutions to our national addiction and drug overdose crisis. In recovery from a decade-long opioid addiction, Hampton is regarded as a forefront expert and thought leader in America’s rising addiction recovery advocacy & drug policy reform movements. An alumnus of the Clinton White House, he’s worked with multiple non-profits and addiction recovery organizing campaigns. He’s now a prominent, leading face and voice of recovery advocacy and is working to change the longstanding negative narratives about those impacted by addiction, recovery, and overdose. Through his books and media, organizing campaigns, and social content that reaches millions, Ryan breaks down cultural barriers that have kept people suffering in silence and is helping to inspire a new generation of advocates recovering out loud, pushing for common-sense policy. He was part of the core team that released the first-ever U.S. Surgeon General’s report on alcohol, drugs, and health in 2016 and was singled out by Forbes the following year as a top social entrepreneur in the recovery movement. Ryan connects a vast network of people passionate about ending the overdose crisis in America. He has been featured by—and is a contributor to—media outlets such as the Today Show, the Associated Press, USA Today, MSNBC, ABC News, Fox and Friends, the New York Times, NPR, HLN, Vice, Slate, The Hill, the Wall Street Journal, and others.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 fears that AI revolution represents an existential event for humanity. Anindya Ghose, the Heinz Riehl Professor of Business at NYU’s illustrious Stern school, actually believes AI can positively impact our daily lives - from health and wellness, to work, education, even love and dating. In Thrive, a new book he co-authored with Ravi Bapna, Ghose explains how we can maximize our well-being in the AI age. It won’t be easy, he acknowledges. But, in sharp contrast with skeptics like Gary Marcus, Ghose believes that the AI revolution can nudge us into living richer, happier, healthier and more productive lives. Let’s hope he’s right.Anindya Ghose is the Heinz Riehl Chair Professor of Technology and Marketing at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business where he holds a joint appointment in the TOPS and Marketing departments. He is the author of TAP: Unlocking The Mobile Economy which is a double winner in the 2018 Axiom Business Book Awards and has been translated into five languages (Korean, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Japanese and Taiwanese). He is the Director of the Masters of Business Analytics and AI Program at NYU Stern. He is a Leonard Stern Faculty Scholar with an MBA scholarship (the Ghose Scholarship) named after him. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Wharton School of Business. In 2014, he was named by Poets & Quants as one of the Top 40 Professors Under 40 Worldwide and by Analytics Week as one the "Top 200 Thought Leaders in Big Data and Business Analytics".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

Working on Sheryl Sandberg’s team at Google, Megan Hellerer - who had just graduated top of her Stanford class - was on the fast track to become a young Silicon Valley superstar. A few years later, however, she had a breakdown and quit. Describing herself as an “underfulfilled overachiever”, she writes about this traumatic experience in her new book, Directional Living. Hellerer - who now runs her own career coach consultancy and includes Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a client - confesses that at Google she wasn’t living her life and thus was miserable. Her answer to what she calls the traditional “destinational thinking” of career development is in “directional living” - a concept that replaces the “achievement lie” with a more authentic and less quantifiable path to personal fulfillment. Megan Hellerer is a career coach and the founder of Coaching for Underfulfilled Overachievers. She has led hundreds of women, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to transform their lives by transforming their careers. After checking all the traditional boxes of success—graduating at the top of her class from Stanford University and spending eight years as a Google executive—and still deeply unhappy, she quit her great-on-paper job with no plan. Now her mission is to provide others with the support and guidance that she needed when she herself was struggling. Megan has been featured in New York, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and The Times. She lives with her husband and daughter in the Hudson Valley, New York.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

Earlier this week, I interviewed the Australian AI expert Toby Walsh about Google’s new NotebookLM, a seemingly magical AI product that creates believable conversation between bots. Today, on our weekly That Was The Week tech roundup, Keith Teare and I agreed that this is going to profoundly change the way we not only produce media, but also how we imagine “trust” and “truth” in our synthetic media age. Referencing an optimistic essay by @Every CEO Dan Shipper entitled “Generalists Own the Future”, we agreed that products like NotebookLM will create what Shipper calls a “wicked environment” for generalists to create their own unique content. GPT-4o and Claude Sonnet 3.5 and the other LLMs means that we all have “10,000 Ph.D.’s available at our fingertips.” While that’s exciting news for know-nothing generalists like Keith and I, it’s less good news for all those narrow Ph.Ds beavering away in research libraries In the age of AI, these types of narrow specialists are the new proletariat. Luddites will, of course, encourage them to unite, telling them that they nothing to lose but their (irrelevant) specialization. But, in they want to survive in our synthetic media age, they might be better off turning in their library cards and downloading NotebookLM.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 year, Michael Scott-Baumann, author of The Shortest History of Israel and Palestine and a peace activist at the Balfour Project, came on the show to talk about the problem to end all problems - the Israel-Palestine question. Today, Scott-Baumann explains, this problem has, if anything, metastasized into something even more shameful and insoluble. Gaza has been transformed from what he calls “the world’s largest outdoor prison” into a war zone and the two sides are no nearer what the Balfour Project calls “peace with justice, security and equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis.” Given this deeply depressing situation, it’s essential that analysts like Scott-Baumann keep giving us the bad news. There is nothing to be cheerful about here. The situation, Scott-Baumann reminds us, is unrelentingly bad. And it is likely to get considerably worse. Michael Scott-Baumann is a graduate of Cambridge University and has an MA from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He has 35 years’ experience as a history teacher and lecturer. He has traveled widely in the Middle East and worked as a volunteer under the auspices of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, with whom he conducted field work on the West Bank. He lives in Cheltenham, England.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 AI revolution, long in hype but short in practice, is finally beginning to happen. In today’s WSJ, the tech writer Joanna Stern introduces her own Joannabot to review the new iPhone 16. Soon, of course, we will increasingly struggle to distinguished between the real Joanna and her Joannabot. And the same will also be true for yours truly on KEEN ON who will, in the not too distant future, be easily replicated (ie: replaced) by an Andrewbot. That, at least, is the view of Toby Walsh, one of the world’s most respected AI experts and authors. As Walsh explained to me (the real AK), he’s been playing around with Google’s new NotebookLM, a break-through product which, he says, amazed him as much as his reaction to GPT3. Toby is right. NotebookLM is an astonishingly good product which, in the not too distant future, will make most podcasters like myself redundant. My only consolation is that my wife works for Google. And she, I’m proud to say, is impossible to replicate. Toby Walsh is Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and CSIRO’s Data61. He is the winner of the prestigious Celestino Eureka Prize for Promoting Understanding of Science and was named on the international “Who’s Who in AI” list of influencers. He appears regularly on TV and radio, has been profiled by the New York Times and has authored four books on AI for a general audience, the most recent ones entitled “Machines Behaving Badly” and “Faking It: Artificial Intelligence in a Human World” (Fall 2023). He is a Fellow of the Australia Academy of Science and was named by the newspaper The Australian as one of the “rock stars” of Australia’s digital revolution. He has won both the Humboldt Prize and the NSW Premier’s Prize for Excellence in Engineering and ICT. His Twitter account was voted in the top ten to follow to keep abreast of developments in AI.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

This is the final episode of a trilogy of critical conversations about the digital revolution. Earlier this week, Gary Marcus explained how to tame Silicon Valley’s AI barons. Then Mark Weinstein talked to us the reinvention of social media. And now we have the former member of the European Parliament & current Fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, Marietje Schaake, explaining how we can save democracy from Silicon Valley. In her provocative new book, Tech Coup, Schaake explains how, under the cover of “innovation,” Silicon Valley companies have successfully resisted regulation and have even begun to seize power from governments themselves. So what to do? For Marietje Schaake, in addition to government regulation, what we need is a radical reinvention of government so that our political institutions have the agility and intelligence to take on Silicon Valley.Marietje Schaake is a Fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and at the Institute for Human-Centered AI. She is a columnist for the Financial Times and serves on a number of not-for-profit Boards as well as the UN's High Level Advisory Body on AI. Between 2009-2019 she served as a Member of European Parliament where she worked on trade-, foreign- and tech policy. She is the author of The Tech Coup.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