Keen On

I usually hate agreeing with Keith Teare, my libertarian-conservative friend from Palo Alto/Yorkshire. But on TikTok, we are in violent agreement. As Keith explains, TikTok isn’t a Chinese company and even it was, there’s absolutely no reason to ban it or force a US sale. That such self-serving stupidity is being peddled by the Biden administration is particularly worrying. Where are the grown-ups (except Keith and I) when it comes to talking sense about TikTok? Keith 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 the founder at the Palo Alto incubator, Archimedes Labs. Archimedes was the original incubator for TechCrunch and since 2011 has invested, accelerated or incubated many Silicon Valley startups including Around (sold to Miro), Millicast (Sold to Dolby), InFarm, Miles, Quixey; M.dot (sold to GoDaddy); chat.center; Loop Surveys;

The most troubling casualty of today’s social media age is our shared sense of reality. Perceptions of reality still exist, but they often come packaged, mirroring a priori assumptions about the world. So how to win democratic elections in this age of multiple informations? How to promote/peddle truths that will get people to vote for your candidate? That’s the story Sasha Issenberg writes about in his new book, THE LIE DETECTIVES, a kind of Moneyball for our disinformation age. One of America’s smartest political journalists, Issenberg explains, with bracing clarity, how to win elections in a democracy awash with lies and liars. Sasha Issenberg is the author of three previous books, on topics ranging from the global sushi business to medical tourism and the science of political campaigns. He covered the 2008 election as a national political reporter in the Washington bureau of The Boston Globe, the 2012 election for Slate, the 2016 election for Bloomberg Politics and Businessweek, and 2020 for The Recount.

Last week, the LA Times book critic Bethanne Patrick came on the show to discuss new books about life in our age of the polycrisis. One of these was Emily Raboteau’s much acclaimed Lessons For Survival: Mothering Against “The Apocalypse”. So how, exactly, I asked the Bronx based Raboteau, do you mother against “the apocalypse”? And what does Raboteau, a amateur photographer and birdwatcher, have in common with Christian Cooper, the Central Park birdwatcher, who appeared on the show last year?Emily Raboteau writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change, and parenthood. Her books are Lessons for Survival, Searching for Zion, winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the critically acclaimed novel, The Professor’s Daughter. Since the release of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, she has focused on writing about the climate crisis. A contributing editor at Orion Magazine and a regular contributor to the New

University of Pennsylvania sociologist Benjamin Shestakofksy spent a couple of years as the fly on the wall in an anonymous tech startup. His new book, BEHIND THE STARTUP, not only reveals what he learned about the insanely frenetic nature of work in a culture dominated by raising the next round of venture investment, but also about the broader impact of the startup economy on innovation and inequality. More nimble and open minded that many academics, Shestakovsky observed the outsized (but underpaid) role of part-time overseas workers in venture capital backed US startups.Benjamin Shestakofsky is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is affiliated with AI at Wharton and the Center on Digital Culture and Society.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentato

Think you know Frank H. McCourt, Jr, the illustrious real estate media magnate, former chairman/owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers & current owner of Marseilles FC? Think again. McCourt is also now in the business of saving us from digital monopolists of Silicon Valley who, in his opinion, are trying to steal our liberty, humanity and our dignity. McCourt’s latest philanthropic venture is Project Liberty, an attempt to responsibly build an internet of tomorrow. And his equally ambitious new book, OUR BIGGEST FIGHT, describes itself as a Thomas Paine style “call to arms” to seize back control of our lives from corporate algorithms.Frank H. McCourt, Jr. is the executive chairman of McCourt Global, a private family enterprise working across the real estate, sports, technology, media, and capital investment industries. He is the founder and executive chairman of Project Liberty, a broad-based effort to build a better web for a better world. The project includes the development of an open internet protocol (the

If, as Sam Daley-Harris believes, “cynicism is obedience”, then active citizenship is a form of rebellion. That seems to be the argument in both the 2024 edition of Daley-Harris’ RECLAIMING OUR DEMOCRACY and in our discussion today about how to resurrect American democracy in 2024. But what about the role of leadership in transforming America? And why would anyone invest all their spare time in trying to revive a sclerotic system that has thrown up the Biden-Trump rematch in 2024?Sam Daley-Harris is the founder and president of RESULTS, an international citizens’s lobby dedicated to creating the political will to end hunger and poverty. Daley-Harris is the author of the book Reclaiming Democracy: Healing the Break Between People and Government, recently reissued to commemorate its 20th anniversary. 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

I talk to Peter Ross Range, Hitler historian and author of 1924 & UNFATHOMABLE ASCENT, about Adolf Hitler as the "gold standard" of authoritarianism and how the Nazi leader compares with Donald Trump. In contrast with Range, I don’t see any similarities between Trump and Hitler. Yes, both men might use the word “vermin” to describe people they loathe, but they are entirely different men operating in entirely different political systems in entirely different times. In my view, comparing Hitler to Trump is an insult to the millions of victims of Nazi Germany and doesn’t really help us make sense of the uniquely American farce of Donald Trump. Peter Ross Range is a world-traveled journalist who has covered war, politics, and international affairs. A specialist in Germany, he has written extensively for Time, the New York Times, National Geographic, the London Sunday Times Magazine, Playboy, and U.S. News & World Report, where he was a White House correspondent. He has also been an Institute of Politics F

The US Congress just announced war on TikTok; while, in Europe, the EU declared war this week on Spotify and Apple. Elon Musk and Sam Altman have declared war over OpenAI. And everyone inside and outside Google are all war over Gemini. But That Was The Week’s Keith Teare, Silicon Valley’s most cheerful optimist, still believes in what he sees as the inevitably progressive arc of history away from the power of government. Meanwhile Bitcoin just hit $69,000. What could possibly go wrong?Keith 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 the founder at the Palo Alto incubator, Archimedes Labs. Archimedes was the original incubator for TechCrunch and since 2011 has invested, accelerated or incubated many Silicon Valley startups including Around (sold to Miro), Millicast (Sold to Dolby), InFarm, Miles, Quixey; M.dot (sold to GoDaddy); cha

The cover story of Harper’s this month is piece by Andrew Cockburn, their Washington DC editor, entitled “The Pentagon’s Silicon Valley Problem”. But as Cockburn explained to me today, the Pentagon’s problem is also ours. Silicon Valley, he argues, was in many ways founded and financed by the Cold War military-industrial complex and has become the economic, military and ideological motor of 21st century American militarism. And in our age of AI, Cockburn warns, the farce of American military incompetence and Silicon Valley technological hubris threaten to merge into the tragedy of unintended war. Andrew Cockburn is the Washington DC Editor of Harper's magazine and the author of many articles and books on national security, including the New York Times Editor's Choice Rumsfeld and The Threat, which destroyed the myth of Soviet military superiority underpinning the Cold War. He is a regular opinion contributor to the Los Angeles Times and has written for, among others, the New York Times, National Geographic an

In episode 1991, Andrew talks to the LA Times book critic, Bethanne Patrick, about six intriguing new non-fiction books about our contemporary age of inequality, existential anxiety and political and environmental upheaval. 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 ab

“Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself,” Miles Davis once remarked. Most artists, of course, never ascend to the heights of even closely sounding like themselves. But as James Kaplan, the author of 3 SHADES OF BLUE, argues, Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans did get to sound like themselves in their studio album, Kind of the Blue. That’s the metaphysical truth of the 1959 recording, Kaplan explains. And, in a way, the three men paid for this astonishing miracle with their lives, both as men and artists. But at least they got to the mountain top. Thus the immortality of both the 65 year-old album and Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans. James Kaplan’s essays, stories, reviews, and profiles have appeared in numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and New York. His novels include Pearl’s Progress and Two Guys from Verona, a New York Times Notable Book for 1998. His nonfiction works include The Airport, You Cannot Be Serious

One of the more annoying characteristics of our coastal elites is their incessant virtue signaling. Every life choice - from drinking from plastic water bottles to driving electric cars to deciding to have children - is presented in terms of what Travis Rieder, the Johns Hopkins bio-ethicist and author of CATASTROPHE ETHICS, calls the “purity ethic”. Everybody these days seems greedy for virtue. But this greed, Rieder argues, isn’t realistic in an age of increasingly moral complexity. So, in our KEEN ON conversation, Reider lays out a path for leading a (reasonably) decent life which navigates between ethical fundamentalism and nihilism. Travis Rieder, PhD, is an associate research professor at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, where he directs the Master of Bioethics degree program. He holds secondary appointments in the departments of Philosophy and Health Policy and Management. His first book, IN PAIN (HarperCollins), was named an NPR Best Book of 2019, and his TED Talk on the same topic has

You couldn’t make up the kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army in February 1974. The granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, America’s most divisive media baron, was kidnapped in Berkeley (of all places) by domestic terrorists who demand that Hearst feed the poor in exchange for the 19 year-old woman. That, in itself, was quite a story in an America still embroiled in both Vietnam and all the other aftershocks of the Sixties. But then Patty Hearst went rogue and appeared to join the SLA, participating in the heist of a San Francisco bank and changing her name to Tania, in honor of Che Guevara’s girlfriend. Such was the paranoid America of early 1974. And, according, Roger Rapoport, author of the new novel SEARCHING FOR PATTY HEARST, such is the paranoid America of early 2024. History doesn’t quite repeat itself, Rapoport explained to me. But it certainly rhymes, particularly when one compares the violent left wing cults of the early 1970’s with the violent right wing cults of the earl

In episode 1977, Andrew talks to Maxwell L. Stearns, author of PARLIAMENTARY AMERICA, about the need for a parliamentary system to repair the broken democratic system in America.Maxwell L. Stearns (BALTIMORE, MD) is the Venable, Baetjer & Howard Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law. He has authored dozens of articles and several books on the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the economic analysis of law.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. T

In our weekly KEEN ON wrap of tech news with Keith Teare, author of the THAT WAS THE WEEK newletter, Keith explains why the Google Gemini fiasco is a feature rather than a bug of our preoccupation with identity politics.Keith 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 the founder at the Palo Alto incubator, Archimedes Labs. Archimedes was the original incubator for TechCrunch and since 2011 has invested, accelerated or incubated many Silicon Valley startups including Around (sold to Miro), Millicast (Sold to Dolby), 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

In episode 1975, Andrew talks to Ira Shapiro, author of THE BETRAYAL, about what he sees as Mitch McConnell's grave and unprecedented crime against American democracy.Ira Shapiro spent the first half of his 45 year Washington career as a Senate staffer and Clinton administration trade ambassador before writing a series of books about the Senate which William A. Galston, Brookings scholar, calls an "epic trilogy." Mr. Shapiro's current book, to be released on May 17, is The Betrayal: How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America. Robert B. Reich said: "Ira Shapiro holds Mitch McConnell and the Republican Senate accountable for their deliberate and catastrophic failure to stop Donald Trump even when American lives and American democracy were at stake. A gripping narrative and a must-read." Ira's first book, The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis (2012), was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Richard A. Baker, Senate Historian emeritus, described it as "a historically

In episode 1974, Andrew talks to Sarah Scoles, author of COUNTDOWN, about the chillingly blinding future of nuclear weapons.Sarah Scoles is a Colorado-based science journalist, a contributing editor at Popular Science and a senior contributor at Undark. She is author of Making Contact (2017) and They Are Already Here (2020), both published by Pegasus Books. Her book Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons (Public Affairs) has just been published.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.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, i

EPISODE 1973: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to the LA Times book critic, Bethanne Patrick, about six intriguing new fiction and non-fiction books to read in February.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

In episode 1972, Andrew talks to Gregory Makoff, author of DEFAULT, about the cautionary tale of Argentina's $100 billion 2001 debt default.Gregory Makoff has been writing about sovereign debt for the past decade and is the author of the forthcoming book Default: The Landmark Court Battle over Argentina’s $100 Billion Debt Restructuring, scheduled to be published by Georgetown University Press in February 2024. For twenty-one years through mid-2014, Gregory worked as an investment banker and debt transaction specialist, advising companies, financial institutions, and countries, including Jamaica, Colombia, the Philippines, and Turkey, regarding their debt management operations. From January 2015, he has published papers as a Senior (non-resident) Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), and, in 2015 and 2016, he worked at the U.S Treasury on the team that supported the enactment of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), the law that has been fa

In episode 1971, Andrew talks to Charan Ranganath, author of WHY WE REMEMBER, who unlocks memory's power to hold on to what matters about our lives.CHARAN RANGANATH is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California at Davis. For over 25 years, Dr. Ranganath has studied the mechanisms in the brain that allow us to remember past events, using brain imaging techniques, computational modeling and studies of patients with memory disorders. He has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. He lives in Davis, California. Outside of neuroscience, Dr. Ranganath is also a songwriter and guitarist with a number of recording credits, including a song on a feature film soundtrack.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 i