Keen On

In her new book, Freeman’s Challenge, the Harvard historian Robin Bernstein reveals the early 19th century origins of America’s for profit prisons. Telling the tragic story of William Freeman, an Afro-Native teenager guilty of what she calls the “terrorist” act of killing a white family, Bernstein simultaneously explores the origins of America’s first for profit prison in Auburn, NY. As she explains, there was and there still is an intimate connection between American incarceration and American capitalism - a chilling nexus which, for Bernstein, represents the import of slave “economics” into the for profit prison system. Robin Bernstein is the Dillon Professor of American History and professor of African and African American studies and studies of women, gender, and sexuality at Harvard University. She is the author of Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadca

In an America riven with both civic discord and ignorance, how can we nurture a next generation of responsibly informed citizens? That’s the all important question Lindsey Cormack addresses in her new book, How to Raise a Citizen. There are no magical tricks to learning how to be a good citizen, Cormack says, no clever shortcuts or miraculous new technologies. Instead, it’s up to all of us to take responsibility for giving our kids the necessary knowledge to understand the workings of our democratic system. And that all begins at the local level, she insists, where the real business of American democracy gets done on a daily basis. Lindsey Cormack is an associate professor of Political Science and Director of the Diplomacy Lab at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. Her first book, Congress and U.S. Veterans: From the GI Bill to the VA Crisis investigates the differences between legislative efforts and lip service paid to veterans by members of the US Congress. Her second book, How to Raise

There are two core critiques of AI. The first is that it is an existential threat because it replaces humans with algorithms. The second is that AI is a mirror that only compounds preexisting injustices. James Muldoon, an associate professor of management at Essex Business School and co-author of Feeding the Machine, fits into the second category. Reminding us that “AI is people”, he travelled around the world in search of the hidden human labor that is the powering the AI revolution. What he found was a huge precariat (estimated by the World Bank to be over 100 million people) who are doing the dirty human work that powers “artificial” intelligence. The AI revolution, then, for Muldoon, is only compounding the exploitative nature of labor in today’s increasingly inegalitarian global economy. It is the core problem with, rather than the solution to 21st century networked capitalism. James Muldoon is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Management at the Essex Business School, a Research Associate at the Oxford

How democratic is American “democracy”. Dramatically less so that it was. That’s at least the rather worrying conclusion of David Daley, the author of ANTIDEMOCRATIC, a new book which exposes what he says is “the far right’s 50-year plot to control American elections”. This half century plot was successfully realized in 2013, Daley told me, with the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now, he argues, individual states have the right to tamper with their electoral laws and hijack voting rights in America for their own political ends. It’s not quite a return to Jim Crow, Daley says, but it does reveal the worryingly antidemocratic foundations of the American political system. David Daley is the author of the national best-seller "Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn't Count" (Norton/Liveright) and one of the nation's leading experts on partisan gerrymandering. He is a senior fellow at FairVote, a nonpartisan champion of election reforms. His journalism on redistricting and gerrymandering has app

Shad White has an uncanny resemblance to J.D. Vance. Born in a tiny town in Mississippi, White went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, then Harvard Law School and is now the State Auditor of Mississippi. Like Vance, the lifelong Republican White is a converted Catholic whose faith informs his conservative, family centric politics. And, like JD Vance, White is an author. His new book, Mississippi Swindle, which he jokes might be called “Red Neck Elegy”, is the story of Brett Favre and the Mississippi welfare scandal that shocked America. One thing is for sure. This isn’t the last you will hear of Shadrack Tucker White. As he told me, he’s thinking of running for Mississippi Governor and he’s exactly the kind of articulate, smart and youthful conservative who, I imagine, will one day caste his ambitious eyes on the US Presidency. Shad White is the State Auditor of Mississippi. During his tenure, the auditor’s office has uncovered more waste, fraud, and abuse than any other time in state history. Shad is also a pro

If it’s lunchtime, it must be KEEN ON time. At least that’s what it seems, given the long menu of food guests recently on the show. First there was the lunatic regenerative farmer, Joel Salatin, fixing America one bite at a time. Then Nicola Twilley, the food blogger and historian of refrigeration. And don’t forget Andrea Freeman, who reminded us that even free school lunches aren’t really free. But our latest food guest, Lola Milholland, a Portland based Ramen noodle entrepreneur and food writer, might be the most entertaining of all. Milholland is the author of GROUP LIVING and Other Recipes, a rich stew of a memoir about her collectivist foodie parents and her passion for noisily slurping Japanese noodles. And my conversation with Lola covered everything from the non-sexual polyamory of group living to the deliciousness of the classic 1985 Japanese movie Tampopo. Eat, Lola, Eat. Recommended. Lola Milholland is a food-business owner, social-practice artist, and writer. Her work has been published by The Gua

Peter Wehner is the conscience of American conservatism. Having worked in three Republican administrations, the ex Republican is now a regular contributor to the New York Times and the Atlantic, writing compelling moral critiques of Trump and the authoritarian populism now dominant in the GOP. Many of you will have already read his latest Times piece, What Has Happened to My Party Haunts Me - but what, I asked Wehner, once made the GOP "his” party and could he ever imagine rejoining it?Peter Wehner, an American essayist, is a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times and a contributing writer for The Atlantic, two of the most prestigious media journals in the world. He writes on politics and political ideas, on faith and culture, on foreign policy, sports and friendships. Mr. Wehner served in three presidential administrations, including as deputy director of presidential speechwriting for President George W. Bush. Later, he served as the director of the Office of Strategic Initiatives. Mr. Wehner,

Were politics chess, liberals had white; they moved first. Conservatives had black; they countered liberalism’s opening moves. In time, the initiative changed hands. Conservatives, who began as anti-moderns, came to master modernity, for the right was in telling ways the stronger contestant. So write Edmund Fawcett in his exemplary intellectual history, Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition. As the author of the equally excellent Liberalism: The Life of an Idea, Fawcett is as well positioned as anyone to determine who is winning today’s grand ideological chess game between Liberalism and Conservatism. So, I asked Fawcett - in our bewildering age of Trump, Harris, Orban, Meloni, Starmer, Le Pen and JD Vance - is it liberals or conservatives who are most successfully reinventing their ideologies to master the desires of 21st century electorates?Edmund Fawcett was the Economist‘s Washington, Paris and Berlin correspondent and is a regular reviewer. His Liberalism: The Life of an Idea was published by Princeton

So what’s exceptional about America? According to the writer, film producer and scholar Jonathan Taplin, American exceptionalism lies its uniquely global cultural influence. For Taplin - the tour manager for Bob Dylan & producer of Martin Scorcese’s masterpiece Mean Streets - this reflects what he calls America’s right-brain power which dominated the world in the second half of the 20th century. Today, however, he says, left-brained tech magnates like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are all powerful and, as a consequence, are triggering an existential crisis of creativity in America. In this age of the algorithm, Taplin worries, the US will be just another unimaginative player in the global race to control the digital economy. Jonathan 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 me

Much of the critical writing about authoritarianism warns that contemporary populism threatens democracy. But as Stephen Hanson and Jeffrey Kopstein argue in their interesting new book, The Assault on the State, this global attack on legalistic government by wannabe dictators like Putin, Erdogan and Modi endangers not just democracy but also much of what we take for granted about the convenience of modern life. It’s a return to what they call the “patrimonialism” of The Godfather - a chillingly dysfunctional future in which to get a road fixed or a school built, we have to kiss the ring of a Don Corleone or a Donald Trump. Weird, eh?Stephen E. Hanson is the Lettie Pate Evans Professor in the Department of Government at William & Mary.  At William & Mary, he served as the Vice Provost for Academic and International Affairs from 2011 to 2022. Hanson received his B.A. in Social Studies from Harvard University (1985) and his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley (1991). He

In the 1970’s, J. Doyne Farmer built the first wearable computer which he used to predict the game of roulette. While this didn’t make him particularly popular in casinos, it did mark the beginning of a glittering scientific career in complexity and systems theory, as well as in theoretical physics and biology. And, along the way, Farmer founded a quantitative automated trading firm that was sold to UBS in 2006 as well as working for a while as an Oppenheimer Fellow at Los Alamos Labs. So when a guy as smart as Farmer - who now teaches both at Oxford and at the Santa Fe Institute — turns his big brain to economics, we should take note. In his new book, Making Sense of Chaos, Farmer explains how we can get to a “better economics for a better world” through what he calls complex economics. As a fusion of big data analysis and behavioral economics, Farmer is navigating a third economic way between the scylla of traditional free market economics and the charybdis of de-growth economics. Seriously smart stuff fr

According to the historian Matthew Warshauer, there was no giant conspiracy on 9/11. The real story about September 11, 2001, he argues in his provocative new book Creating and Failing the 9/11 Generation, is its impact on Gen Z who he believes should be renamed the 9/11 Generation. 9/11 and its disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he argues, have created a lost generation of young Americans without faith in the country’s institutions or elected officials. They’ve been “cast out of the Disneyland” of a unipolar world, he warns, and their cynicism and distrust is only compounding the seemingly never-ending political, economic and cultural crises of the United States over the last quarter century. Rather than the internet and social media, he believes, 9/11 is the root cause of America’s current age of anxiety. Matt Warshauer is a professor of history at Central Connecticut State University, his under-graduate alma mater, where he learned that passionate, devoted professors can change lives. Originally bore

Earlier this year, the prolific American political journalist Sasha Issenberg came on the show to offer a playbook for winning elections in our disinformation age. And, on a recent trip to Los Angeles, I sat down with Issenberg in his Venice home to talk more broadly about the American political system for our KEEN ON AMERICA series. In particular, he addressed perhaps the most pressing issue of all about the future of American politics - how we might build more trust and transparency in both media and the system itself. Sasha Issenberg is the author of five books including THE VICTORY LAB, which upon its 2012 release Politico called “Moneyball for politics,” and the follow-up THE LIE DETECTIVES, published in March 2024 by Columbia Global Reports. His other books have covered topics ranging from the global sushi business to medical tourism and the same-sex marriage debate. He covered the 2008 election as a national political reporter in the Washington bureau of The Boston Globe, 2012 for Slate, 2016 for Bloom

Many are called, but few are chosen. In her late twenties, Deesha Dyer was still in community college. By the age of 31, however, she had become Michelle Obama’s social secretary in the White House. So how did this self-styled undiplomatic young woman become a member of the most exclusive club in the world? And what does her authentically irreverent attitude which she says, in her new memoir, creates the “best kind of trouble”, tell us about how to succeed in 21st century America?Deesha Dyer is an award-winning strategist, on-the-ground community organizer, and executive operations expert. She served as the White House social secretary during the Obama administration and is currently the founder and CEO of social impact agency, Hook & Fasten. She curated and instructed a study course called Imposter to Impact at the Harvard Kennedy School. Deesha’s entertaining and engaging style of storytelling allows her to inspire audiences around the world. She co-founded and operates organization, beGirl.world Globa

What’s it like to discover a Klansman in one’s own family? A few weeks ago, R. Derek Black, the son of a KKK Grand Wizard and an intimate family friend of David Duke, came on the show to confess the exceptional nature of his own family history. But for Edward Ball, the author of Life of a Klansman, the story of his great great grandfather, perhaps the most disturbing element of having a family history of white supremacy is its unexceptional quality. As Ball - best known as the author of the award winning Slaves in the Family - explains, around half of Americans could, if they wish, write a similar memoir. So Ball’s Klansman could easily be your Klansman too. “Whiteness and its tribal nature,” Ball warns, “are normal, everywhere, and seem as permanent as the sunrise.” Edward Ball is the author of several nonfiction books, including The Inventor and the Tycoon, about the birth of moving pictures in California, and Slaves in the Family, an account of his family’s history as slaveholders in South Carolina, which

We’ve been on a food & farming run this week. First, we talked with America’s “lunatic farmer,” Joel Salatin, about how regenerative agriculture can regenerate the United States. And we followed that up with the food blogger and writer Nicola Twilley who explained about how refrigeration has transformed not only our food, and our planet, but also ourselves. Our guest today, Andrea Freeman, makes food policy central to the politics of America from its foundations to today. Her provocative new book, Ruin Their Crops On the Ground is intended as a kind of Fast Food Nation for the Black Lives Matter era. From the genocidal Trail of Tears to the anything but “free” school lunches in America today, Freeman argues that food has been always used by American corporate and political interests as a weapon of conquest and control.Andrea Freeman, a pioneer in the field of food politics, is a professor at Southwestern Law School. A Fulbright scholar and author of Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice, Freeman h

While Kamala Harris has announced that she wants to become the first Silicon Valley President, Donald Trump is speaking today at Bitcoin2024 in Nashville in a self-serving attempt to make Bitcoin Great Again. So where should Silicon Valley be putting its (ample) money in 2024? According to That Was The Week’s Keith Teare, tech is divided between pro Harris classical liberals like Reid Hoffman and pro Trump free market libertarians like Mark Andreessen. But the election, Teare warns, will really be all about America coming to terms with its own limitations - a reactionary idea that will find few supporters in forward thinking Silicon Valley. So, whoever wins the 2024 election, he suggests, the losers are likely to be innovative start-up entrepreneurs like Teare himself.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 o

A couple of days ago, America’s most controversial regenerative farmer, Joel Salatin, came on the show to explain how industrialized farming is killing our soil, our bodies and our souls. Today, the Los Angeles based food writer and podcaster Nicola Twilley offers a more nuanced account of the impact of industrialization on our food, our planet and ourselves. In her excellent new book, Frostbite, Twilley explains how industrialized refrigeration technology has revolutionized every aspect of the food cycle - from farm to table. Acknowledging its self-evident benefits (year round bananas, tomatoes & ice cream), Twilley also warns of the dark side of the refrigeration revolution, particularly its environmental impact which, she argues, is the central cause of global warming. Modify our refrigerated food economy, Twilley says, and the planet will cool down. Chilling.Nicola Twilley* is author of Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves (Penguin Press, June 2024), and co-host of

Yesterday, we were in rural Virginia interviewing the pioneering regenerative farmer, Joel Salatin. Today, we are on an equally innovative farm in Houston, Texas, in conversation with Kimberley Meyer, author of Accidental Sisters. It’s called Shamba Ya Amani (Farm of Peace) and, as Meyer explains in her new book, it’s a place where five immigrant women are attempting to build their own American dream. As Meyer notes, American invention comes in all shapes and forms and what these five immigrant women are doing at the urban farm of Shamba Ya Amani is just as innovative as anything one might find in Silicon Valley.Kimberly Meyer is the author of Accidental Sisters: Refugee Women Struggling Together for a New American Dream (University of California Press, 2024) and The Book of Wanderings: A Mother-Daughter Pilgrimage (Little, Brown, 2015). Her work explores displacement, political and spiritual, and the ways that the relationships among women and between mothers and children can become a hopeful act of resistan

As one of America’s most outspoken pioneers of regenerative agriculture, Joel Salatin is popularly known as The Lunatic Farmer. Others have accused him of being a bio-terrorist, Typhoid Mary, a charlatan, and starvation advocate. Less of a lunatic and more of an agricultural visionary, however, Salatin has transformed his family’s Polyface Farms in idyllic western Virginia into one of America’s leading laboratories for non-industrial food production. So when I visited Joel at Polyface recently, we talked about the principles of regenerative agriculture and why the Lunatic Farmer believes that America can be healed, “one bite at a time”, if we can radically change what we eat.Joel Salatin, 64, calls himself a Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer. Others who like him call him the most famous farmer in the world, the high priest of the pasture, and the most eclectic thinker from Virginia since Thomas Jefferson.  Those who don’t like him call him a bio-terrorist, Typhoid Mary, charlata