Keen On America

Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind, discusses the intersection of synthetic biology and AI, the threats and opportunities of technology, self-regulation in the tech industry, measuring AI capabilities, and addressing inequality in a post-nation state world.

EPISODE 1685: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Jonathan Taplin, author of THE END OF REALITY, on how 4 tech billionaires  - Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen - are selling us a fantasy future of the metaverse, Mars, and cryptoJonathan Taplin began his entertainment career in 1969 as Tour Manager for Bob Dylan and The Band. In 1973 he produced Martin Scorsese's first feature film, Mean Streets, which was selected for the Cannes Film Festival. Between 1974 and 1996, Taplin produced 26 hours of television documentaries (including The Prize and Cadillac Desert for PBS) and 12 feature films including The Last Waltz, Until The End of the World, Under Fire and To Die For. His films were nominated for Oscar and Golden Globe awards and chosen for The Cannes Film Festival five times. In 1984 Taplin acted as the investment advisor to the Bass Brothers in their successful attempt to save Walt Disney Studios from a corporate raid. This experience brought him to Merrill Lynch, where he served as vice president of media mergers and acquisitions. In this role, he helped re-engineer the media landscape on transactions such as the leveraged buyout of Viacom. Taplin was a founder of Intertainer and has served as its Chairman and CEO since June 1996. Intertainer was the pioneer video-on-demand company for both cable and broadband Internet markets. Taplin holds two patents for video on demand technologies. Professor Taplin has provided consulting services on Broadband technology to the President of Portugal and the Parliament of the Spanish state of Catalonia and the Government of Singapore. Mr. Taplin graduated from Princeton University. He is a member of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and sits on the Author’s Guild Council and the Board of the American Music Association. Mr. Taplin was appointed to the California Broadband Task Force and the City of Los Angles Technology and Innovation Council. He was named one of the 50 most social media savvy professors in America by Online College and one of the 100 American Digerati by Deloitte’s Edge Institute.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

EPISODE 1684: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to  Michael G. Long, the editor of BAYARD RUSTIN: A LEGACY OF PROTEST AND PROTEST, the political and personal bravery of Bayard Ruskin on the 60th anniversary of the March on WashingtonMichael G. Long (longmg4242@gmail.com) has a Ph.D. from Emory University and is the author or editor of numerous books on nonviolent protest, civil rights, LGBTQIA rights, politics, and religion.Mike's first YA nonfiction biography—a coauthored book titled Troublemaker for Justice: The Story of Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind the March on Washington (City Lights Books)—earned starred reviews in Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and the School Library Journal. The Bank Street Center, Kirkus, and SLJ selected Troublemaker as a best book of the year. Mike has also written on civil rights and protest for the Los Angeles Times, The Undefeated (ESPN), the Progressive, the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Daily News, the Afro, USA Today, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Huffington Post, and more. His work has been featured in or on MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, USA Today, The Root, The Nation, The UnJonathan Taplin is a writer, film producer and scholar. He is the Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and was a Professor at the USC Annenberg School from 2003-2016 in the field of international communication management and digital media entertainment. defeated (ESPN), Mother Jones, Huffington Post, Salon, CNN, Book Forum, Ebony/Jet, and many other places. Mike has spoken at Fenway Park, Citi Field, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Library of Congress, the National Museum of American History, the National Archives, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the City Club of San Diego, the Schomberg Center of the New York Public Library, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the New-York Historical Society, among other places.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

EPISODE 1683: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Avi Loeb, author of INTERSTELLAR, about our search for extraterrestrial life and our future in the starsAbraham (Avi) Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University, longest-serving chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy, founding director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative, and current director of the Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) within the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. He also heads the Galileo Project, chairs the Advisory Committee for the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, and is former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. Author of eight books and over a thousand scientific papers, Loeb is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics. In 2012, Time selected Loeb as one of the twenty-five most influential people in space. He lives near Boston, Massachusetts.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

EPISODE 1682: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Simon Sharpe, author of FIVE TIMES FASTER, about how we need to rethink the science, economics and diplomacy of climate changeSimon Sharpe is Director of Economics for the Climate Champions Team and a Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute. He has published influential reports and created ground-breaking international projects in climate change risk assessment, economics, and diplomacy. He played a leading role in the UK’s Presidency of the COP26 climate change talks in 2020-21, as Deputy Director of the UK government’s COP26 Unit, where he created global campaigns that led to significant international agreements on ending coal power, moving to zero emission vehicles, and protecting forests. His other roles in government included leading international climate change strategy, establishing low-carbon growth as a priority in the UK’s industrial strategy, and serving as head of private office to a Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change. He also served on diplomatic postings in China and India. In 2013-15, he created an international climate change risk assessment project, working with experts from the UK, USA, China, India, and other countries. In addition to influencing the understanding and assessment of climate change risk in its partner countries, its findings were extensively cited by the Scientific Advisory Board of the UN Secretary General. It also inspired new thinking in the academic community, with a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change using it to argue that ‘climate science needs to take risk assessment much more seriously’. More recently, he has worked with partners in the UK, China, India and Brazil to create the world’s first government-backed project to apply complexity economics to climate change. His paper on economic tipping points, ‘Upward-scaling tipping cascades to meet climate goals: plausible grounds for hope’, was the most downloaded paper in Climate Policy journal in 2021.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

EPISDOE 1680: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Bethany Allen, author of BEIJING RULES, about how an illiberal China is weaponizing its economy to confront the worldBethany Allen is the China reporter at Axios, based in Taipei. She is the author of the weekly Axios China newsletter, and she covers China's role in the world. Her latest book is BEIJING RULES (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. 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

EPISODE 1681: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Uri Kaufman, author of EIGHTEEEN DAYS IN OCTOBER, about the 1973 Yom Kippur War and how it created the modern Middle EastAfter putting himself through CUNY’s Queens College at night, Uri Kaufman attended New York University School of Law and graduated with honors in 1989. Kaufman subsequently became a real estate developer, specializing in adaptively restoring historic buildings, winning awards at the national and state level. His Harmony Mills project appears on the homepage of the New York State Historic Preservation Office’s website, hailed by officials as perhaps the finest example of restoring New York’s rich architectural heritage. For over twenty years, Kaufman visited battlefields, interviewed veterans, and reviewed thousands of pages of declassified records. Kaufman is fluent in Hebrew and hired a team of researchers to translate Russian, Arabic and German records (to review Stasi files describing Syria). Eighteen Days in October is the first history of the Yom Kippur War to be released in almost twenty years, and the first to rely upon recently declassified information.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

EPISODE 1679: In this regular weekly show with THAT WAS THE WEEK newsletter author Keith Teare, Keith defends SPAC king Chamath Palihapitiya from accusations of scamming small investors of their moneyKeith Teare is a Founder and CEO at SignalRank Corporation. Previously he was Executive Chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd - A UK based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. He was also previously founder at the Palo Alto incubator, Archimedes Labs. Archimedes was the original incubator for TechCrunch and since 2011has invested, accelerated or incubated many Silicon valley startups including InFarm, Miles, Quixey; M.dot (sold to GoDaddy); chat.center; Loop Surveys; DownTown and Sunshine. Teare has a track record as a serial entrepreneur with big ideas and has achieved significant returns for investors.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

EPISODE 1678: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Bethanne Patrick , the LATimes book critic, about nine noteworthy novels she recommends for the dying days of summerBethanne 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. 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

Sleep sociologist Katherine Conveney discusses the social aspects of sleep and its connection to technology. They explore the mysteries of sleep and the impact of electric lighting and technological devices on sleep quality. The podcast also covers the inequalities in sleep environments and the advancements in improving sleep quality through technology.