Keen On Democracy

Yesterday, The Talking Heads, today, Dylan. The Great Man's Jewish identity has long been overshadowed by his pantheistic status as American prophet. So when, for example, at the beginning of his biopic “A Complete Unknown”, Dylan arrives in Greenwich Village, he is presented as having no history, like a biblical prophet wandering out of the desert. But the London-based historian Harry Freedman argues against this tabula rasa version. In Bob Dylan: Jewish Roots, American Soil, Freedman suggests that Dylan's upbringing in a committed Jewish family in Hibbing, Minnesota—complete with B'nai B'rith leadership and summer camps—profoundly influenced his artistic vision and social consciousness. From his early protest songs to his recent embrace of Chabad fundraising, Freedman argues his Jewish heritage makes him equally Zimmerman and Dylan, a Known Unknown. five takeaways* Dylan's Jewish upbringing was deeply embedded - Far from superficial, his family life included his father as B'nai B'rith president, mother active in Hadassah, Jewish summer camps, and a 500-person Bar Mitzvah in a town with only 280 Jews.* Early career involved deliberate identity concealment - Dylan spent his first 3-4 years creating elaborate backstories about circus and carnival origins to hide his middle-class Jewish background, likely due to antisemitism and desire to fit folk music's authenticity narrative.* Jewish cultural values shaped his protest period - Freedman argues Dylan's focus on social justice and civil rights emerged from growing up in an environment emphasizing welfare and human rights, typical of Jewish immigrant communities.* His genius lay in lyrics, not initial musicianship - Dylan's early success stemmed from extraordinary wordplay and poetic ability rather than musical skill, making him fundamentally a poet who set words to music.* Late-career Jewish reconnection - After his Christian period in the 1980s, Dylan has become increasingly involved with Jewish causes, particularly Chabad fundraising, suggesting his roots remained significant throughout his life. 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 The Talking Heads, the quinessential art school band of the East Village scene of the 1970's, still matter? Very much so. At least according to the band's biographer, Jonathan Gould, who believes that The Talking Heads remain "the archetype of what we now think of as the alternative rock group" - a band prioritizing aesthetic evolution over commercial success. Born from New York's affordable cultural moment when rent cost $275 and abandoned industrial spaces fostered creativity, Talking Heads, Gould argues in Burning the House Down, emerged as agnostic questioners of rock conventions. They rejected "rock hair, rock lights, and singing like a black man," creating minimalist performances under stark white lighting. Their 1984 film "Stop Making Sense" appears utterly modern today, Gould says, suggesting their systematic deconstruction of musical expectations continues influencing artists four decades later. Five Key Takeaways 1. The Agnostic Approach Talking Heads were "agnostic about everything" - not just religion, but romantic love, rock conventions, and musical preconceptions. This systematic questioning of accepted norms became their defining creative principle.2. Class and Ambition Shaped Their Art Unlike working-class rock predecessors, they were privileged art school graduates who grew up expecting to "be something." This background fostered artistic ambition over simple commercial success, making them prototypes of the alternative rock ethos.3. New York's Economic Crisis Created Cultural Opportunity The city's 1970s near-bankruptcy made it affordable ($275/month rent) for young artists. The exodus of residents and businesses left vast industrial spaces available, enabling an unprecedented downtown cultural scene.4. Minimalism as Rebellion Their aesthetic rebellion involved subtraction, not addition - "no rock hair, no rock lights, no long guitar solos." Working with Brian Eno, they removed rather than added tracks, creating space through restraint.5. Timeless Modernity "Stop Making Sense" appears contemporary today because they focused on modernity rather than trends. Their systematic rejection of rock clichés created work that transcends its 1980s origins, explaining their continued influence on alternative music.Jonathan Gould is a writer and a former professional musician. Born and raised in New York City, he began playing drums in high school and became serious about it while attending Cornell University, which led him to move to Boston in 1975 to study with the eminent jazz drummer Alan Dawson. He went on to spend many years working in bands and recording studios in Boston, Woodstock, and New York City before turning his full attention to writing about music in the early 1990s under the mentorship of the retired New Yorker editor William Shawn. In addition to his playing and writing about music, Jonathan also raised a family, served in local politics, and took an active role in the life of the upstate New York community where he lived for twenty-five years. He currently divides his time between Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Livingston, NY.Keen On America 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

What does it really mean to be a “good woman”? For the controversial podcaster and writer Elise Loehnen, female goodness is a misery trap. And so reclaim their happiness, to make themselves whole, Loehnen says, women need to stop being good. The former goop executive and co-author of the upcoming Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness explains how the seven deadly sins reveal women's hidden conditioning, how the wellness industry became toxic, and why the Enneagram can help women embrace their full selves—including the darker, "unacceptable" parts they've been taught to suppress. five key takeaways 1. The "Good Woman" Performance is Exhausting Women are conditioned to suppress basic human instincts—never being tired, needing no praise, having compliant bodies, avoiding anger—which requires enormous energy and is driven by fear of social rejection.2. The Seven Deadly Sins Reveal Female Conditioning What society labels as "sins" (pride, envy, sloth, etc.) are actually normal human traits that women are taught to repress, creating a "punch card" for performing goodness to the world.3. Women Police Each Other Through Envy Instead of recognizing envy as a signal pointing toward what we want, women often use it destructively to tear down other women who have what they desire—like the backlash against Goop.4. The Drama Triangle Keeps Us Stuck Most people operate in victim-villain-hero dynamics, blaming others instead of taking responsibility. Breaking free requires recognizing these patterns and creating different conditions in your life.5. Wholeness Beats Goodness True liberation comes from integrating all parts of yourself—including the "darker" aspects you've been taught to hide—rather than performing an impossible standard of perfection.Elise Loehnen is a writer, editor, and podcast host who lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Rob, and their two sons, Max and Sam. She is the host of Pulling the Thread, a podcast focused on pulling apart the stories we tell about who we are—and then putting those threads back together. Current Work & Recent Publications: Elise is the author of the New York Times bestseller On Our Best Behavior. She has co-written thirteen books, five of which were New York Times bestsellers, including True and False Magic with psychiatrist Phil Stutz. Her upcoming co-authored Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness will be published in August. Podcast & Media: She hosts Pulling the Thread where she interviews cultural luminaries on the big questions of the day, including Dr. Gabor Maté, Dr. Temple Grandin, Dr. Harriet Lerner, Loretta Ross, Drs. John and Julie Gottman, Dr. Richard Schwartz, Joy Harjo, Dr. B.J. Miller, Nedra Tawwab, Dr. Suzanne Simard, Susan Cain, Heather McGhee, Dr. Riane Eisler, and Terry Real. Professional Background: Previously, she was the chief content officer of goop, where she co-hosted The goop Podcast and The goop Lab on Netflix, and led the brand's content strategy and programming, including the launch of a magazine with Condé Nast and a book imprint. Prior to goop, she was the editorial projects director of Conde Nast Traveler. Before Traveler, she was the editor at large and ultimately deputy editor of Lucky Magazine, where she also served as the on-air spokesperson, appearing regularly on shows like Today, E!, Good Morning America, and The Early Show. She has a B.A. from Yale where she majored in English and Fine Arts.Keen On America 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

“Let me tell you about the very rich”, Scott Fitzgerald once said. “They are different from you and me”. One way they are different, the New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos reports, is that they own yachts - very very big, expensive yachts. In The Haves and The Have-Yachts, Osnos' dispatches about today's ultrarich, he takes us on board these boats to reveal the obscenity of our new gilded age. From Mark Zuckerberg's obsession with Augustus Caesar to the thin-skinned grievances of figures like Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk, Osnos explores how the personal quirks and anxieties of just 19 American plutocrats - the 0.00001% - are now reshaping our entire society. He argues we're living in an era of "flamboyant oligarchy," where billionaires openly flaunt their wealth. Citing the extraordinary tableau of tech moguls lining up in homage to Trump at his inauguration, Osnos describes our age as "the complete and total fusion of politics and plutocracy in the United States." five key takeaways1. We're Living in an Era of "Flamboyant Oligarchy" Unlike past wealthy elites who stayed hidden ("a whale that never surfaces doesn't get harpooned"), today's billionaires openly compete for attention and flaunt their wealth, fundamentally changing the relationship between extreme wealth and public life.2. Just 19 People Could Control 18% of America's Wealth The 0.00001% - currently 19 Americans - control 1.8% of national wealth today. If current trends continue, this could reach 18% within 40 years, representing an unprecedented concentration of economic power in human history.3. Personal Quirks Have Massive Social Consequences Billionaires' individual obsessions and blind spots shape society at scale - from Facebook being blue because Zuckerberg is colorblind, to his Augustus Caesar fixation influencing how he thinks about power and empire-building.4. The Complete Fusion of Politics and Plutocracy Trump's inauguration, featuring tech moguls "lined up in homage," represents the total merger of political and economic power in America - what Osnos calls a "sultanistic oligarchy" where billionaires have elevated Trump to rule on their behalf.5. Billionaires Are Surprisingly Thin-Skinned and Aggrieved Despite their wealth, figures like Musk and Andreessen are easily offended and resentful about public criticism, leading them not to retreat but to actively seek control over politics and media to reshape the narrative in their favor. BiographyEvan Lionel Richard Osnos (born December 24, 1976) is an American journalist and author who has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2008, specializing in politics and foreign affairs coverage in the United States and China. Osnos continues to be one of America's most prominent foreign correspondents and political journalists, known for his deep reporting and narrative storytelling that bridges international and domestic affairs.Current PositionsOsnos is currently a staff writer at The New Yorker, a CNN contributor, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, based in Washington D.C.Early Life and EducationOsnos was born in London when his parents, Susan (née Sherer) Osnos and Peter L.W. Osnos, were visiting from Moscow, where his father was assigned as a correspondent for The Washington Post. He graduated with high honors from Harvard University with a Bachelor's Degree. Career HighlightsEarly Career: In 2002, he was assigned to the Middle East, where he covered the Iraq War and reported from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere. In 2005, he became the China correspondent. Chicago Tribune: Prior to The New Yorker, he worked as the Beijing bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune, where he contributed to a series that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. The New Yorker: Osnos joined The New Yorker in September 2008 and served as the magazine's China correspondent until 2013, maintaining a regular blog called "Letter from China" and writing articles about China's young neoconservatives, the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, and the Wenzhou train crash. Major Publications* "Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China" (2014): Won the 2014 National Book Award for nonfiction and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. * "Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now" (2020): Published in October 2020, based on lengthy interviews with Biden and revealing conversations with more than a hundred others, including President Barack Obama. * "Wildland: The Making of America's Fury" (2021): Published in September 2021, about profound cultural and political changes occurring between September 11, 2001, and January 6, 2021. The book was a New York Times bestseller. * "The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich" (2025): His latest book, published in June 2025, exploring American oligarchy and the culture of excess. Awards and RecognitionOsnos has received the Asia Society's Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Journalism on Asia, the Livingston Award for Young Journalists, and a Mirror Award for profile-writing. He received two awards from the Overseas Press Club and the Osborn Elliott Prize for excellence in journalism from the Asia Society. Personal LifeHe has been married to Sarabeth Berman since July 9, 2011. He lives with his wife and children near Washington, 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

It all began in 2019 at DeadSpin where Megan Greenwell was editor-in-chief. She had her dream job at the sports publication she'd always loved, leading a profitable digital media company with a devoted readership. Then the curse of private equity arrived. Within three months, everything collapsed. As Greenwell argues in her new book, Bad Company, she was pushed out, her entire staff followed, and the site was eventually sold to a Maltese gambling operation. What should have been a routine business acquisition became a personal awakening. Greenwell realized she'd witnessed something much larger than corporate mismanagement—she'd seen how private equity is producing avampire economy sucking the blood out of the American Dream. five takeaways1. Private Equity Violates Free Market Principles Greenwell argues that PE actually corrupts capitalism rather than representing it—citing Milton Friedman's own exceptions for public services like healthcare and education, which are now PE's biggest targets.2. The Debt Transfer Loophole Creates Perverse Incentives In leveraged buyouts, PE firms load companies with 70-80% debt but transfer responsibility to the acquired company, allowing firms to profit even when businesses fail—as happened with Toys"R"Us.3. Workers Rarely Know PE Owns Their Employer Until It's Too Late Most employees discover private equity ownership only when everything falls apart, because the company name on their paycheck remains the same while control shifts to financial engineers.4. The Vampire Effect Goes Beyond Individual Companies PE isn't just killing businesses—it's hollowing out entire communities, from rural hospitals in Wyoming to local newspapers, destroying the infrastructure that sustains small American towns.5. Solutions Exist at State and Local Levels While federal regulation remains unlikely, progress is happening through state laws (like Massachusetts healthcare regulations), pension fund pressure campaigns, and nonprofit alternatives that prioritize sustainability over shareholder value.Megan Greenwell is an American journalist, editor, and writer with extensive experience across print and digital media. She was the first female editor-in-chief of Deadspin and editor of Wired.com Background & Education: Greenwell grew up in Berkeley, California. Her mother is an Episcopal priest who currently serves as the Dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Cincinnati. She attended Berkeley High School, where she was a reporter for the school newspaper and graduated from Columbia University (Barnard College) in 2006, where she was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Spectator Career Highlights:* Started as a staff writer at The Washington Post, covering education, philanthropy, and the war in Iraq, including a three-month stint at the paper's Baghdad bureau * Was part of The Washington Post team that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting WikipediaMegangreenwell* Worked as managing editor of GOOD Magazine, inaugural features editor at New York magazine's The Cut, and senior editor of ESPN The Magazine * Served as executive features editor for Esquire.com before becoming the fifth and first female editor-in-chief of Deadspin in 2018 * Later worked as editor of Wired.com and interim editor-in-chief of WIRED Current Work: She's now a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn and deputy director of the Princeton Summer Journalism Program PrincetonMegangreenwell. Her book "Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream" was published by HarperCollins on June 10, 2025Personal: Greenwell is married to David Heller, an assistant professor of internal medicine and global health at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Keen On America 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

25 years after serving as the bridge between the Web 1.0 and 2.0 revolutions, Google stands at the vortex of another technological revolution. The company's new AI mode threatens to destroy the "simple bargain" that has sustained the web since 2005 — Google's deal with websites which sent them traffic in exchange for indexing their content. Unlike traditional search results with links, Google's revolutionary new AI Mode delivers knowledge directly from training data, eliminating the traffic pipeline that media companies depend on. As That Was The Week's Keith Teare and I discuss, this marks the end of the Web 2.0 era and the beginning of the AI age, fundamentally changing how information flows online. By eating the Web 1.0 internet, Google established itself as the dominant Web 2.0 power. The multi-trillion-dollar question now is whether today's AI revolution will eat Google. Five Takeaways* Google Was the Web 2.0 Bridge - Though its hard to determine if Google was really a Web 1.0 or 2.0 business, the company clearly served as the crucial bridge between these two eras, evolving from a pure search engine to a centralized monetization platform that dominated the web for two decades.* The "Simple Bargain" is Breaking - Google's 20-year social contract with websites (free content indexing in exchange for traffic referrals) is ending as AI mode delivers answers directly without sending users to source sites.* AI Mode Eliminates Links - Google's new AI search produces results from training data rather than indexed links, meaning no traffic flows to original content creators—fundamentally breaking the web's economic model.* Search Quality Declined After 2010 - Google morphed from scientific link-counting to revenue-focused curation as social media grew, with the top third of search results becoming advertising rather than organic results.* Google Faces a Binary Choice - The company must choose between traditional search mode (with links and traffic) or AI mode (pure knowledge delivery), as trying to mix both models with advertising would damage the AI users' expectations.Keen On America 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

Happy NO KINGS DAY! Today, as nationwide protests sweep America, historian and activist Mark Bray argues that Trump and his MAGA movement represent a type of American fascism rooted in the country's long history of racist backlash against the struggle for civil rights. As the author of the iconic Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, Bray connects today's resistance to Trump to historical anti-fascist movements, from the KKK's post-Civil War violence to European fascism of the 1930s. He discusses protest strategies, the role of violence in resistance movements, social media's impact on organizing, and why disrupting "business as usual" matters more than just electoral politics in fighting authoritarianism. Long Live the NO KING. Five Key Takeaways* Trump represents American fascism, not just populism or patrimonialism - Bray argues the MAGA movement is "pretty unequivocally fascist," drawing on ultranationalism, militarism, and the glorification of violence that characterizes historical fascism.* American fascism has deep historical roots - Rather than being imported from Europe, fascistic tendencies emerged from America's own racist institutions, with the post-Civil War KKK representing the first "proto-fascist formation" in functional terms.* Disruption matters more than electoral politics - Effective resistance requires making "business as usual" impossible, forcing issues into national conversation and raising the political costs of authoritarian policies beyond just voting.* Violence remains a tactical question, not a moral absolute - Bray argues that while reasonable people can disagree about when to use force, removing it entirely from the "toolbox" of resistance may prove too late when facing genuine fascism.* Social media is a double-edged organizing tool - While platforms can rapidly mobilize movements like Occupy Wall Street, they also create instability, allow right-wing manipulation, and risk replacing sustained community organizing with quick digital fixes.MARK BRAY is a historian of human rights, political violence, and politics in Modern Europe at Rutgers University. He earned his BA in Philosophy from Wesleyan University in 2005 and his PhD in History from Rutgers University in 2016. He is the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Melville House 2017), The Anarchist Inquisition: Assassins, Activists, and Martyrs in Spain and France (Cornell 2022), Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street (Zero 2013), and the co-editor of Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader (PM Press 2018). His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, Salon, Boston Review, and numerous edited volumes.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

So what, exactly, is libertarianism? Spike Cohen, the Libertarian Party's 2020 vice presidential nominee, boils it down to "the principle of human respect"—treating people as individuals, not as what he calls "tax cattle." Speaking from FreedomFest in Palm Springs, the founder of You Are The Power offers a scathing critique of both major parties while exposing what he calls a federal funding scheme that encourages states to separate children from their families. From defending controversial Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht to challenging Big Tech monopolies, Cohen argues that government overreach—not lack of regulation—creates the very problems politicians claim to solve. And then, of course, there's Donald Trump who spoke at last year's FreedomFest. According to Cohen, Trump has betrayed his libertarian supporters by increasing both government spending and debt by more than almost all of his predecessors. For all his libertarian promises, Cohen argues, Trump is now amongst the most dangerous exponents of big government overreach. Five Takeaways1. Libertarianism as "Human Respect" Cohen defines libertarianism not as chaos, but as "the principle of human respect"—allowing individuals to make their own choices as long as they don't violate others' lives, rights, or property. Government should treat citizens as people, not "tax cattle."2. Big Government Creates Big Business Contrary to progressive solutions, Cohen argues that regulatory capture by large corporations is the root cause of "Big Pharma," "Big Tech," and other monopolistic industries. More regulation protects incumbents; less regulation enables competition.3. Trump Betrayed Libertarian Voters Despite campaigning on reducing government, Trump grew spending and debt more than most predecessors. Cohen credits Trump for freeing Ross Ulbricht but argues his first term should have warned voters about his true governing philosophy.4. Federal Funding Drives Family Separation Cohen's "You Are the Power" organization exposes how Title IV-D incentivizes states to remove children from families—receiving more money for accusations, removals, and permanent separations, especially involving chronically ill children.5. Direct Action Over Electoral Politics After getting just 1% in 2020, Cohen shifted from campaigns to grassroots activism, claiming 100% success in specific cases by mobilizing public pressure on government officials through targeted advocacy.Spike Cohen is a successful business owner, Libertarian activist, and media figure. He is the Founder and President of You Are The Power, a nonprofit focused on using solutions-oriented activism to grow the Liberty movement. Spike started a web design company as a teenager in 1998. In 2017, he retired from web design to focus on effective political messaging, entertainment, and activism. This culminated with him becoming Libertarian candidate for Vice President in 2020, where he traveled across the nation by plane and bus, meeting countless Americans and sharing the message of Liberty with them. Spike is a tireless advocate for freedom with a commitment to help grow the movement at the grassroots level, training candidates and activists in positive and principled messaging to explain libertarian ideas to everyday Americans, and working with elected officials to implement common-sense reforms to improve people's lives. Since the 2020 election, Spike has become a regular guest on cable news networks, nationally syndicated radio, international media outlets, and podcasts across the globe.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

According to Deborah Baker, author of Charlottesville: An American Story, America has become the Charlottesville of the Unite the Right Rally of August 12, 2017. Baker, who grew up in Charlottesville in the shadow of Jefferson's Monticello, watched in shock as neo-Nazis marched through her hometown in August 2017 with torches and flags. What began as her attempt to understand how such hatred could manifest in a progressive college town became a deeper reckoning with America's buried histories and recurring tragedies. The fascist ideologies that once seemed confined to internet forums and fringe rallies have now, she argues, been institutionalized at the highest levels of government. The warning signs were there in 2017—but too many people, from university administrators to progressive leaders, chose to look away. If we close our eyes, she warns, it won't go away. five key takeaways1. America Has Institutionalized ExtremismWhat began as fringe internet movements and basement trolling has now moved into the mainstream of American politics and government institutions. The ideologies that shocked people in Charlottesville 2017 are now, according to Baker, embedded at the highest levels of power.2. Progressive Institutions Failed to Take the Threat SeriouslyUniversity administrators, mayors, and police chiefs in liberal Charlottesville told citizens to "stay home" and ignore the approaching Unite the Right rally. This pattern of progressive leadership closing their eyes to fascist organizing represents a dangerous institutional failure that continues today.3. White Supremacy Has Always Married Anti-Semitism with Anti-Black RacismThe Nazi flags at Charlottesville weren't separate from the Confederate monuments debate. White supremacist ideology consistently portrays Jews as the puppet masters behind Black civil rights movements, combining European fascism with Southern white supremacy into a unified hateful worldview.4. America's "Buried Histories" Keep RepeatingBaker discovered that Charlottesville had experienced a similar white supremacist rally in the 1950s that had been completely forgotten. This pattern of burying ugly chapters allows the same mistakes to be repeated, as communities fail to learn from their past encounters with organized hate.5. Economic and Political Destabilization Creates Fertile Ground for FascismThe conditions that radicalized figures like Richard Spencer include the "forever wars," the 2008 financial crisis, and the broader betrayal of working-class Americans. These "self-inflicted wounds" by American institutions create the chaos that fascist movements exploit to gain followers.Deborah Baker was born in Charlottesville and grew up in Virginia, Puerto Rico and New England. She attended the University of Virginia and Cambridge University. Her first book, written in college, was Making a Farm: The Life of Robert Bly, published by Beacon Press in 1982. After working as a book editor and publisher, in 1990 she moved to Calcutta where she wrote In Extremis; The Life of Laura Riding. Published by Grove Press and Hamish Hamilton in the UK, it was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography in 1994. Her third book, A Blue Hand: The Beats in India was published by Penguin Press USA and Penguin India in 2008. In 2008–2009 she was a Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis C. Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars at The New York Public Library. There she researched and wrote The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism, a narrative account of the life of an American convert to Islam. Published by Graywolf and Penguin India, The Convert was a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award in Non-Fiction. The Last Englishmen: Love, War and the End of Empire was published in October 2018. For this book she received a Whiting Creative Non-fiction grant and a Guggenheim fellowship. Charlottesville is her sixth work of narrative non-fiction. She is married to the writer Amitav Ghosh and lives in Brooklyn and Charlottesville.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

Postmodern Patrimonialism. That's the term Brookings Institution scholar Jonathan Rauch uses to describe Trump's second presidency, arguing it represents a 21st century model of running government as if it's his own personal property. Rauch describes Trump 2's "everything everywhere all at once" strategy as a venture capital-like approach: launching numerous initiatives simultaneously to overwhelm opposition, expecting some to succeed while recognizing that others will fail. Noting that this strategy has slowed since March due to court challenges and declining approval ratings, Rauch discusses the institutional breakdown of Congress, the emergence of Gavin Newsom as the apex of the resistance to Trump 2, and identifies Stephen Miller and Russell Vought as key strategic masterminds behind the administration's coordinated assault on universities, law firms, and democratic norms. Five Key Takeaways * Patrimonialism, Not Fascism: Rauch has shifted from describing Trump as fascist to "patrimonial"—running government as personal property and family business. This model is less organized than fascism but equally corrosive to democratic institutions.* "Everything Everywhere All at Once" Strategy: Trump's administration deliberately overwhelms opposition by launching simultaneous attacks on multiple fronts (universities, law firms, agencies, individuals), making coordinated resistance nearly impossible.* Congressional Institutional Collapse: America has effectively moved from a three-branch to two-branch government, with Congress absent as a check on executive power—a more fundamental threat than Trump himself.* Democratic Governors as Resistance Leaders: Figures like Gavin Newsom are emerging as the most effective opposition voices, using states' rights to challenge federal overreach in ways Congress cannot.* Miller and Vought as Strategic Masterminds: Stephen Miller (immigration/security) and Russell Vought (domestic policy/OMB) are identified as the key architects behind the administration's coordinated assault on democratic institutions.Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution and the author of eight books and many articles on public policy, culture, and government. He is a contributing writer of The Atlantic and recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. His many Brookings publications include the 2021 book “The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth”, as well as the 2015 ebook “Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy.” Other books include “The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better after 50” (2018) and “Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America” (2004). He has also authored research on political parties, marijuana legalization, LGBT rights and religious liberty, and more.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

FreedomFest, America's annual celebration of libertarian values, begins tomorrow in Palm Springs. According to FreedomFest's CEO Valerie Durham, there's something quintessentially American about her libertarian creed. Attracting speakers as diverse as Cornell West and RFK Jr, Durham argues that the libertarian doctrine articulated at FreedomFest offers America a politics beyond the conventional dogmas of right and left. But is Durham's vision practical? Can radical libertarian principles like privatizing all roads and eliminating taxation really work in the 21st century? Five key takeaways1. Libertarianism as Pure American Philosophy Durham argues that libertarianism represents the most consistent American political ideology, emphasizing individual sovereignty, minimal government, and maximum personal choice as core principles that transcend traditional left-right divisions.2. Radical Economic Vision She advocates for privatizing virtually everything—roads, parks, utilities—eliminating taxation entirely in favor of direct user fees, arguing this would be more efficient and fair than current government monopolies.3. Cross-Partisan Dialogue Strategy FreedomFest deliberately brings together diverse speakers from Cornell West to RFK Jr., creating nuanced conversations rather than traditional left-vs-right debates, aiming to find common ground on liberty-focused issues.4. Skepticism of Both Major Parties Durham views Trump and traditional Republicans as insufficiently libertarian due to military spending and government overreach, while appreciating entrepreneurial figures like Elon Musk who advance innovation through private enterprise.5. Third Party Necessity She believes America's two-party system is "unsustainable" and argues for breaking up the Republican-Democrat duopoly through viable third-party alternatives that can introduce fresh ideas about governance and individual freedom.Keen On America 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

Karen Hao has been warning us about Sam Altman's OpenAI for a while now. In her bestselling Empire of AI, she argues that the Silicon Valley startup is a classic colonial power, akin to Britain's East India Company. Like those colonial merchants and policy makers who wrapped profit-seeking in civilizing missions, OpenAI cloaks its relentless scaling ambitions behind the noble goal of "ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity." But as Hao reveals, this pursuit comes at enormous cost—environmental devastation, exploited labor, and the extraction of data from communities worldwide. The parallels are striking: a private corporation accumulating unprecedented resources and power, operating with minimal oversight while externalizing the harms of its empire-building to those least able to resist. Five Key Takeaways 1. OpenAI is a Modern Corporate Empire Hao argues OpenAI operates like the British East India Company—a private corporation wrapped in a "civilizing mission" that extracts resources globally while externalizing costs to vulnerable communities. The company's stated goal of "benefiting all humanity" serves as ideological cover for profit-driven expansion.2. AI Development Didn't Have to Be This Destructive Before OpenAI's "scaling at all costs" approach, researchers were developing smaller, more efficient AI models using curated datasets. OpenAI deliberately chose quantity over quality, leading to massive computational requirements and environmental damage that could have been avoided.3. The Climate and Social Costs Are Staggering McKinsey estimates global energy grids need to add 2-6 times California's annual consumption to support AI infrastructure expansion. This means retired coal plants staying online, new methane turbines in working-class communities, and data centers consuming public drinking water in drought-prone areas.4. The Business Model May Be Unsustainable Despite raising $40 billion (Silicon Valley's largest private investment), OpenAI hasn't demonstrated how to monetize at that scale. Subscriptions don't cover operational costs, leading to considerations of thousand-dollar monthly fees or surveillance-based advertising models.5. Resistance is Possible and Already Happening Communities worldwide are successfully pushing back—from Chilean residents stalling Google data centers for five years to artists suing over intellectual property theft. Hao argues collective action across AI's supply chain can force a shift toward more democratic, community-centered development.Karen Hao is an award-winning journalist covering the impacts of artificial intelligence on society. She writes for publications including The Atlantic and leads the Pulitzer Center's AI Spotlight Series, a program training thousands of journalists around the world on how to cover AI. She was formerly a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, covering American and Chinese tech companies, and a senior editor for AI at MIT Technology Review. Her work is regularly taught in universities and cited by governments. She has received numerous accolades for her coverage, including an American Humanist Media Award and American National Magazine Award for Journalists Under 30. She received her Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from MIT.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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 we get the nonfiction we deserve? LATimes book critic Bethanne Patrick wrestles with this question through five new books that both mirror and address our fractured psyche. From Melissa Fibos' choice of celibacy over toxic sexual romance to a lone wolf crossing impossible borders, all these works expose a world grappling with isolation, AI empires, and the collapse of meaningful discourse. Whether it's Thomas Chatterton Williams's critique of wokeness, Damon Young's biting anthology of new black comedy, or Karen Hao's disturbing portrait of OpenAI as our new imperial reality ( Tomorrow's show features a full interview with Hao), each book reflects our deeper crisis: the inability to connect authentically in our age of social isolation and anxiety. The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex - Melissa Fibos. Melissa Fibos, a writer with a history of intense romantic fixations, realizes she's addicted to the chase rather than genuine connection. She embarks on a year-long celibacy experiment, allowing masturbation and fantasies but avoiding all dating and partnered sex. It's a transformative journey of empowerment as Fibos discovers authentic pleasure in solitude, food, and simple experiences, ultimately meeting her future wife before completing the full year.Summer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and The Demise of Discourse - Thomas Chatterton Williams. This multiracial critic argues that America's obsession with racial categories perpetuates the very divisions we claim to fight, insisting that race is purely a social construct with no biological basis. Writing from his perspective as an American expat in France, Williams contends that woke discourse and "correct" language distract from addressing real structural problems. His book challenges readers to move beyond tired black-versus-white frameworks toward more nuanced conversations about power and identity.That's How They Get You: An Unruly Anthology of Black American Humor - Edited by Damon Young This collection features sharp satirical pieces from top Black American writers who skewer everything from Karen culture to Disney's racial blindness to tech company exploitation. Contributors include Mateo Askaripour (who wrote the acclaimed "Black Buck") offering biting commentary on workplace racism and cultural appropriation. The anthology demonstrates how humor serves as both weapon and shield, allowing writers to expose systemic absurdities while maintaining their sanity in an often hostile world.Lone Wolf: Walking the Line Between Civilization and Wildness - Adam Weymouth In 2011, a wolf named Slavc traveled over 1,000 miles from Slovenia to the Italian Alps, becoming the first wolf in that region for decades and eventually establishing a pack of over 100. Weymouth follows this remarkable journey to explore how artificial barriers—from the Iron Curtain to Trump's border wall—prevent both wildlife and human refugees from reaching safety. The book uses the wolf's migration as a lens to examine what happens when the wild refuses to respect human boundaries and how life persistently seeks ways to thrive despite our attempts to control it.Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI - Karen Hao. Based on 90 interviews with current and former OpenAI executives plus dozens more from competing tech companies. Hao argues that without proper regulation and transparency, AI could evolve into a modern version of the British East India Company—a technological monopoly that serves elite interests while reshaping global power structures. Tomorrow's show features a full interview with Hao. 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

Is the promise of AI abundance Silicon Valley's biggest lie? That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare argues that while AI will inevitably reduce human labor and increase productivity, the real question isn't economic—it's about distribution. Who, exactly, benefits from all this abundance? Currently, it's private companies like OpenAI and Google that own the technology; not you and I, the public. This creates what Keith describes as a fork in the road: either a techno-feudal nightmare where few own everything, or a techno-socialist cornucopia where everyone prospers. He points to points to experiments like Sam Altman's Worldcoin as potential solutions, but warns that without deliberate human action, abundance could easily become the ultimate scarcity trap.As you can tell from this conversation, I'm much more skeptical than Keith. While he sees inevitable productivity gains leading to a potential utopia, I see Silicon Valley's promises of abudance as largely self-serving fantasy. There is no fork in the road and, with or without human agency, everything certainly isn't possible. Today's technological reality is growing inequality, not infinite distribution. The fact that Keith's most hopeful model is Sam Altman's chilling crypto scheme for paying people to scan and share their irises is particularly unconvincing. History shows us that new technologies, while promising a cornucopian future, always create new forms of scarcity. The people promoting AI abundance—Zuckerberg, Musk, Altman et al—are painfully antisocial, yet preach about more social time for family and friends. Meanwhile, teachers and journalists and lawyers are already being forced into retirement. Without concrete mechanisms for the redistribution of AI derived wealth, abundance will likely benefit the few who own the technology, not the many who actually need it. five key takeaways 1. The Economics vs. Distribution Problem AI will inevitably make production cheaper and more efficient, but there's no built-in mechanism ensuring everyone benefits. The proceeds will flow to private companies unless something changes.2. The Fork in the Road We face two possible futures: a feudal system where a few own everything, or a utopia where abundance benefits everyone. The outcome depends entirely on human choices, not technological inevitability.3. The End of Required Labor While productivity gains are inevitable, the complete elimination of paid work isn't guaranteed. But as AI becomes cheaper than human labor, employers will have no economic incentive to hire people.4. Democrats Need the Abundance Narrative The Democratic Party can't win by just redistributing a shrinking pie. They need policies that grow the economy and make abundance politically viable—free healthcare and education require rapid wealth expansion.5. Experiments Are Already Happening Projects like Sam Altman's Worldcoin (giving everyone AI profits via crypto) and discussions of Universal Income show that practical wealth distribution mechanisms are being tested, not just theorized.Keen On America 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

No, I'm not amused. Today's Trump vs Musk social media wrestling fiasco is one more example of how digital media is actually bemusing ourselves to death. Walter Lippmann, the brilliant but emotionally detached journalist who coined the term "stereotype," foresaw this nightmare a century ago. Lippmann's intellectual biographer Tom Arnold-Forster explains how Lippmann's theories about "manufactured consent" and the manipulation of public opinion by media barons anticipated everything from the Trump-Musk social media feuds to dehumanizing AI-generated content. Lippmann identified democracy's central paradox: we need informed citizens to self-govern, yet the modern world is too complex for anyone to fully understand. His 1919 warning is even truer today: "The present crisis of Western democracy is a crisis in journalism." Five Key Takeaways * Democracy's Impossible Paradox: Lippmann identified that modern democracy demands citizens make informed decisions about a world too complex for anyone—even experts—to fully understand. We're stuck needing public opinion to govern while being unable to form truly informed opinions.* The Stereotype Machine: Lippmann literally invented the modern concept of "stereotype" as a way information gets simplified and transmitted between people. He'd likely see AI as the ultimate "stereotype machine"—endlessly reproducing the most probable combinations rather than generating new insights.* Manufactured Consent Crisis: His core warning was that when consent-manufacturing becomes "unregulated private enterprise" (think Hearst then, Musk now), democracy itself is threatened. The solution isn't eliminating commercial media but professionalizing journalism within it.* Expertise Must Serve Democracy: Despite being labeled an elitist, Lippmann actually argued that expertise should ultimately be subject to democratic control. He attacked anti-democratic "experts" like eugenicist Lewis Terman as frauds.* Journalism = Democracy: Lippmann's most prescient insight: "The present crisis of Western democracy is in an exact sense a crisis in journalism." Today's democratic struggles are inseparable from our information crisis—fake news, social media manipulation, and the collapse of trusted news sources.Tom Arnold-Forster is the Kinder Career Development Fellow in Atlantic History at the University of Oxford's Rothermere American Institute. His writing has appeared in the Historical Journal, Modern Intellectual History, American Journalism, the Journal of American Studies, and Dissent.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

Revered by some, vilified by others, Ibram X. Kendi is America's most controversial anti-racism scholar. In this wide-ranging and frank conversation, the bestselling author of How to Be an Anti-Racist discusses his foundational (and republished) 2012 book The Black Campus Movement, drawing parallels between 1960s student activism and today's Gaza protests. Kendi argues critics deliberately misrepresent his work to "make me into this boogeyman" and keep people from engaging with evidence-based scholarship on racism. Despite facing accusations of being a "fraud," Kendi remains committed to his mission, particularly in his upcoming role at Howard University, where he'll direct a new Institute for Advanced Study. Five Key Takeaways * History Repeating: Kendi argues that today's campus protests over Gaza mirror 1960s Black student activism, with opponents using similar talking points to undermine anti-racist efforts on college campuses.* The "Boogeyman" Strategy: Kendi believes his critics deliberately misrepresent his work to make him seem "scary" and keep people from engaging with his evidence-based scholarship on racism, rather than addressing his actual arguments.* Campus Activism Then vs. Now: Key differences between the 1960s and today include the federal government now working to "re-segregate" campuses rather than desegregate them, and the presence of campus police forces that can suppress demonstrations.* Indirect Racism: Kendi argues that modern racism operates indirectly—when people deny that racist policies exist while racial disparities persist, they're implicitly suggesting that Black people are inferior, just without saying it explicitly.* New Chapter at Howard: After facing controversy and criticism, Kendi is moving from Boston University to historically Black Howard University to direct a new Institute for Advanced Study focused on rigorously studying racism.DR. IBRAM X. KENDI is a National Book Award-winning author of seventeen books for adults and children, including eleven New York Times bestsellers. Dr. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, and the director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. In the summer of 2025, he will join Howard University as Professor of History and Director of its newly established Howard Institute for Advanced Study. Dr. Kendi is the author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, making him the youngest author to win that award. He also authored the international bestseller, How to Be an Antiracist, which was described in the New York Times as “the most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind.” Dr. Kendi's other bestsellers include How to Raise an Antiracist and Antiracist Baby, illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky. In 2020, Time magazine named Dr. Kendi one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world. He was awarded a 2021 MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as the Genius Grant. His newest book is Malcolm Lives! It is the first major biography of Malcolm for young readers in more than thirty years. It appeared in May 2025 on the centennial of Malcolm's birth and debuted on the New York Times bestseller list.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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

Do we get the serial killers & heroes we deserve? The always generous literary critic Bethanne Patrick uses five new non-fiction books to respond to this rather absurd question. From French women resisting Nazis at Ravensbrück concentration camp to the CIA's Cold War book smuggling operation, these new books examine human behavior under the most extreme circumstances. Caroline Fraser's Murderland investigates whether environmental toxins in the Pacific Northwest bred serial killers like Ted Bundy, and Maria Blake's They Poison the World explores forever chemicals' deadly impact on the environment. While Kevin Sack's Mother Emanuel offers Charleston's story of African-American forgiveness for the 300-year injustice of slavery and Jim Crow. Together, these books suggest our environment shapes us—sometimes tragically, sometimes triumphantly. a takeaway from each book * The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück - French women's resistance efforts were systematically ignored in post-war recognition, with only 6 women receiving medals compared to 1,100 men, highlighting how women's contributions to liberation movements have been marginalized. Vive La France!* Murderland - Environmental toxicity from lead and arsenic smelting in the Pacific Northwest may have contributed to the region's concentration of serial killers in the 1950s-70s, with cases declining as environmental protections increased.* They Poisoned the World - The highly toxic PFAS "forever chemicals" were originally developed by the U.S. government for uranium processing, later causing widespread contamination linked to cancers, stillbirths, and weakened immune systems.* The CIA Book Club - The CIA successfully smuggled literature behind the Iron Curtain, with people craving not just political texts but also Agatha Christie mysteries and Shakespeare—proving culture, not just politics, sustained resistance.* Mother Emanuel - For Charleston's African-American congregation of Mother Emanuel church, forgiveness after the 2015 massacre wasn't about excusing the killer but about self-preservation—choosing to move forward rather than be consumed by hatred.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. 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

Black swan events used to be considered as one-of-a-kind events signifying something rare and exceptional. Today, however, we may be drowning in black swans. That, at least, is the view of global venture investor Christopher Schroeder, in his reflections on recent travel in India, the Gulf, Estonia & the United Kingdom. From the sudden eruption of India-Pakistan tensions that nobody saw coming, to Ukraine's daring military successes against Russia, to this week's collapse of the Dutch government, Schroeder argues we're living in an era of perpetual unpredictability. Schroeder believes that this flood of uncertainty is not only fueling a global anti-incumbent movement and reshaping defense technology, but also forcing nations to rethink their fundamental assumptions about governance, geopolitics, and technological innovation. five key takeaways1. We're Living in an Era of Constant Black Swans Unpredictable, high-impact events have become the norm rather than the exception - from sudden India-Pakistan tensions to Ukraine's surprising military successes to government collapses across Europe.2. Global Anti-Incumbent Sentiment is Driving Political Upheaval People worldwide are rejecting traditional governance that they perceive as incompetent or rigged for insiders, creating fertile ground for populist alternatives and massive political disruption.3. Defense Technology is Stuck in 20th Century Processes While Ukraine adapts drone technology in weeks based on battlefield feedback, Western procurement systems take 3-5 years (versus China's 18 months), creating a dangerous capability gap in modern warfare.4. Countries are Diversifying Dependencies to Avoid Over-Reliance Nations from India to Europe are consciously seeking alternatives to avoid becoming overly dependent on any single power - whether China for manufacturing or Russia for energy.5. Business-as-Usual Governance Cannot Address 21st Century Challenges Traditional institutions and processes are fundamentally inadequate for the speed and complexity of current global challenges, requiring dramatic structural changes that most governments resist making.Christopher M. Schroeder is a Washington D.C. and New York City based entrepreneur and venture investor. He is currently Chair of the Board of Trustees of the German Marshall Fund. He co-founded HealthCentral.com, one of the nation's largest social and content platforms in health and wellness, backed by Sequoia Capital, Polaris Ventures, The Carlyle Group, Allen & Company and IAC Corporation. The company was sold to the health media publisher, Remedy Health, in January 2012 where Schroeder remained a board advisor. Previously he was CEO of washingtonpost.newsweek interactive and LegiSlate.com, the b2b interactive platform on US and state legislation and regulation that he sold in 2000. He currently is an active investor in and advisor to top US venture capital funds and over a dozen consumer-facing social/media startups. He has had a career in finance and served in President George HW Bush's White House and Department of State on the staffs of James A. Baker, III and Robert B. Zoellick.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

Popeye might have gotten strong from eating spinach, but for the family of C.F. Seabrook, New Jersey's narcissistic patriarch of industrialized farming, spinach has been a curse. In his new book The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty, New Yorker staff writer John Seabrook charts the dramatic rise and fall of his family's Seabrook Farms. Part family memoir, part critique of industrialized agricultural capitalism, Seabrook tells the story of his grandfather C.F. Seabrook, the "Henry Ford of agriculture”, who built a frozen vegetable empire on 20,000 acres in New Jersey. Rather than a celebration of American innovation, however, The Spinach King is a parable about the dark side of capitalist ambition, explaining how the pursuit of industrial-scale farming led to worker exploitation, family destruction, and ultimately, the dynasty's collapse. Seabrook's motivation for writing about the rise and fall of his grandfather's empire? “Revenge,” he confesses, against a monster who cheated his own father and then psychologically humiliated his son. Five Key Takeaways 1. Industrial Agriculture's Labor Problem Remains Unsolved C.F. Seabrook discovered that while you can mechanize many aspects of farming, crucial tasks like harvesting and cultivation still require human hands. This 100-year-old challenge persists today—American agriculture still depends heavily on immigrant labor because Americans won't do the difficult, seasonal work.2. Capitalism Without Checks Corrupts Families The Seabrook story illustrates how pure capitalist pursuit can destroy the very thing it's meant to benefit. C.F. Seabrook's obsession with profit and control led him to psychologically abuse his sons, cheat his own father, and ultimately tear apart his family dynasty through paranoia and manipulation.3. Generational Conflict Doomed the Business The company's downfall wasn't primarily due to labor issues or market forces, but from irreconcilable differences between C.F. and his Princeton-educated son. The elder Seabrook's anti-union, authoritarian approach clashed with his son's more progressive values, creating internal warfare that destroyed the business.4. Personal Motivation Drives Powerful Storytelling John Seabrook openly admits he wrote the book for revenge against his grandfather, who had psychologically tormented his father. This personal stake transforms what could have been dry business history into a compelling family reckoning with broader implications for American capitalism.5. Agricultural Scale Has Natural Limits Unlike grain farming, vegetable agriculture may have inherent scaling limitations. Seabrook's grandfather tried to apply Henry Ford's mass production principles to farming, but vegetables—especially those requiring hand-picking—resist the kind of industrial scaling that works for manufacturing or grain production.John Seabrook has been a staff writer at The New Yorker for more than three decades. He is the author of The Song Machine, Flash of Genius, Nobrow and other books. The film ​“Flash of Genius” was based on one of his stories. He and his family live in Brooklyn.Keen On America 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

That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare argues we're “accelerating” toward an age of “abundance” in which AI and automation will slash production costs to near-zero, freeing humans to pursue hobbies instead of jobs. I'm less optimistic. I don't disagree with Keith's premise that AI will profoundly change not just our economy but our society and politics. But abundance? Who will own these AI factories? How will profits and wealth be distributed? Keith envisions massive corporate tax rates (up to 98%) redistributing automated profits, while I question whether people actually want a post-work world of ubiquitous stamp collectors or novelists. Our debate captures the gulf between Silicon Valley's utopian promises and the harsh political realities of the 2020s. Will technological abundance liberate humanity or concentrate power among tech giants and impoverish the rest of us? Five Key Takeaways * The Economics Are Clear, Politics Are Messy - Keith argues we're economically heading toward abundance through AI/automation reducing costs to near-zero, but admits the political question of wealth distribution remains "contested" and could lead to either democracy or autocracy.* Work vs. Hobbies Debate - Keith believes most people work jobs they don't love just to afford the things they do love, so abundance would free them to pursue passions. I counter that most people don't have hobbies and actually like having jobs.* The 98% Solution - Keith's preferred path to shared abundance: massive corporate tax rates on automated production (up to 98%) to redistribute AI-generated wealth, creating something "better than the Swedish system."* Big Tech Will Lead, Like It or Not - We both agree government won't drive this transformation—it'll be Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and others. The question is whether they'll be regulated/taxed or become "modern-day empires."* Scarcity in the Age of Abundance - It's a paradox. While promising intellectual abundance, we're seeing increased physical scarcity (land, immigration restrictions, declining birth rates) driven by political insecurity about the future.Keen On America 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

Revenge has become Donald Trump's brand. That, at least, is the view of James Kimmel Jr, author of The Science of Revenge, who argues that revenge has become America's “deadliest addiction”. When we feel wronged, he says, our pain centers activate, triggering dopamine-releasing reward circuits that create pleasure from fantasizing about retaliation. This neurological pattern mirrors classic forms of substance addiction, and explains everything from street violence to Trump's "revenge brand" politics. Kimmel contends that roughly 20% of people become compulsively vengeful, driving most societal violence throughout history. The antidote? FORGIVENESS, which neuroscience shows actually eliminates pain rather than just masking it. Kimmel's provocative thesis suggests treating revenge like other addictions through public health approaches and potentially even pharmaceutical interventions. five key takeaways* Revenge is neurologically identical to drug addiction - Brain scans show that revenge-seeking activates the same dopamine reward circuits as substance abuse, making it literally addictive.* All violence stems from perceived victimization - From mass shootings to genocide, perpetrators first see themselves as victims seeking "righteous" retaliation for real or imagined grievances.* Forgiveness is a neurological "superpower" - Unlike revenge's temporary dopamine hit, forgiveness actually deactivates brain pain networks and permanently eliminates trauma rather than just covering it up.* Trump represents America's "revenge brand" - The current political climate reflects a nation caught in collective revenge addiction, with both sides seeking retaliatory pleasure for past grievances.* We need addiction-style treatment for violence - Just as we treat alcoholism with medical interventions, revenge addiction could be addressed through public health campaigns, education, and potentially pharmaceutical solutions.James Kimmel, Jr., J.D. is a lawyer, a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, and the founder and co-director of the Yale Collaborative for Motive Control Studies. A breakthrough scholar and expert on revenge and forgiveness, James first identified compulsive revenge seeking as an addiction. He developed the behavioral addiction model of revenge and the brain disease model of revenge addiction as public health approaches for preventing and treating violence. He made the study of revenge and forgiveness his life's work after nearly committing a mass shooting as a teenager. James created The Nonjustice System and the related Miracle Court App for healing from grievances and victimization, controlling revenge cravings and revenge addiction, and empowering forgiveness. He is a leader in expanding local, state, and national violence threat risk and reduction initiatives to include public behavioral health motive control strategies. He launched SavingCain.org, the first-of-it's-kind website aimed at preventing homicides and mass shootings by speaking directly to prospective killers (modeled on suicide prevention websites) and developed the "Warning Signs of a Revenge Attack" (modeled on heart attack prevention websites) to prevent violence before it happens. He also developed the School Nonjustice System bullying prevention and victim support program for use with schools and youth. He co-founded the largest peer support mental health agency in Pennsylvania, maintains an active legal practice, and is a speaker at workshops, seminars, trainings, conferences, and other public and private events. James is the author of three books on revenge and forgiveness: The Science of Revenge: Understanding the World's Deadliest Addiction--and How to Overcome It; The Trial of Fallen Angels, a novel; and Suing for Peace: A Guide for Resolving Life's Conflicts. James received his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and his B.S. summa cum laude from the Schreyer Honors College of the Pennsylvania State University.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

It's not just the MAGA or the Woke crowd. According to Greg Lukianoff, CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), free speech in America is under existential threat from all political sides. While he's long criticized campus cancel culture from the left, he now opposes Trump's coercive targeting of big law firms, media companies, and universities. The Stanford Law trained Lukianoff argues that Trump's actions—removing security clearances, barring lawyers from federal buildings, and threatening media mergers—violate constitutional principles. Five Key Takeaways * Bipartisan Authoritarianism: Lukianoff fights free speech threats from both sides—campus cancel culture from the left that he's criticized for years, and now Trump's government coercion of law firms, media, and universities from the right.* Trump's Legal Warfare: The administration is removing security clearances from lawyers who opposed Trump, barring them from federal buildings (including courthouses), and threatening media companies' business deals—unprecedented attacks on legal and press freedom.* Institutional Cowardice: Major law firms like Paul Weiss capitulated quickly, offering millions in pro bono services to Trump, while others like Covington & Burling stood firm. Media responses have been mixed, with some caving under pressure.* Free Speech is Fragile: Lukianoff argues free speech isn't humanity's default state—it requires constant defense and can easily revert to authoritarianism when not actively protected by institutions and individuals.* Technology Accelerates Crisis: Social media and AI are speeding up existing problems of polarization and institutional decay, making the current free speech crisis more acute and unpredictable than previous eras.Greg Lukianoff is an attorney, New York Times best-selling author, and the President and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). He is the author of Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate, Freedom From Speech, and FIRE's Guide to Free Speech on Campus. He co-authored The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure with Jonathan Haidt. Most recently Greg co-authored The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All—But There Is a Solution with Rikki Schlott. Greg is also an Executive Producer of Can We Take a Joke? (2015), a feature-length documentary that explores the collision between comedy, censorship, and outrage culture, both on and off campus, and of Mighty Ira: A Civil Liberties Story (2020), an award-winning feature-length film about the life and career of former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

As one of the most illustrious rock stars of the sustainability movement, Tim Jackson suggests that we must “f**k the patriarchy” to get beyond capitalism. In his new book, The Care Economy, Jackson argues that our growth-obsessed capitalist economic system is fundamentally dysfunctional, prioritizing wealth accumulation over health and wellbeing. He advocates replacing GDP-focused metrics with care-based economics that emphasizes balance and restoration rather than endless expansion. Jackson critiques how Big Food and Big Pharma profit from making people sick then selling expensive treatments, creating a "false economy." Drawing a dotted line from Bobby Kennedy to RFK Jr., he sees health as the unifying political issue that will enable us to bridge traditional divides. five key takeaways 1. Redefine Prosperity as Health, Not Wealth True prosperity should be measured by health (physical, psychological, and community wellbeing) rather than GDP growth. Jackson argues that endless accumulation undermines the balance necessary for genuine human flourishing.2. The Food-Pharma Industrial Complex is a "False Economy" Big Food creates addictive, unhealthy products that cause chronic disease, then Big Pharma profits from treating symptoms rather than causes. This cycle generates GDP growth while systematically undermining public health.3. Care Work is the Foundation of All Economic Activity The predominantly female-performed labor of caring for children, elderly, and sick people is invisible to traditional economics but essential for society's functioning. This unpaid work must be recognized and valued.4. Individual Solutions Can't Fix Systemic Problems While people can make personal health choices, expecting individuals to overcome an engineered food environment designed to exploit human psychology is unrealistic. Systemic change is required.5. Health Could Unite Across Political Divides Unlike abstract environmental concerns, health is universally relatable and could serve as a rallying point for economic reform that appeals to both working-class and affluent communities.Tim Jackson is an ecological economist and writer. Since 2016 he has been Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP). CUSP is a multidisciplinary research centre which aims to understand the economic, social and political dimensions of sustainable prosperity. Its guiding vision for prosperity is one in which people everywhere have the capability to flourish as human beings—within the ecological and resource constraints of a finite planet. Tim has been at the forefront of international debates on sustainability for three decades and has worked closely with the UK Government, the United Nations, the European Commission, numerous NGOs, private companies and foundations to bring economic and social science research into sustainability. During five years at the Stockholm Environment Institute in the early 1990s, he pioneered the concept of preventative environmental management—a core principle of the circular economy—outlined in his 1996 book Material Concerns: Pollution Profit and Quality of life. From 2004 to 2011 he was Economics Commissioner for the UK Sustainable Development Commission where his work culminated in the publication of his controversial and ground-breaking book Prosperity without Growth (2009/2017) which has subsequently been translated into twenty foreign languages. It was named as a Financial Times ‘book of the year' in 2010 and UnHerd's economics book of the decade in 2019. In 2016, Tim was awarded the Hillary Laureate for exceptional international leadership in sustainability. His book Post Growth—life after capitalism (Polity Press, 2021) won the 2022 Eric Zencey Prize for Economics. His latest book The Care Economy was published in April 2025. Tim holds degrees in mathematics (MA, Cambridge), philosophy (MA, Uni Western Ontario) and physics (PhD, St Andrews). He also holds honorary degrees at the University of Brighton in the UK and the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, the Academy of Social Sciences and the Belgian Royal Academy of Science. In addition to his academic work, he is an award-winning dramatist with numerous radio-writing credits for the BBC.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

We Must Save the Books. That's Michael Kimmage's SOS message from Trumpian Washington in this issue of Liberties Quarterly. Kimmage, former director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, describes the surreal experience of being hired in January 2025 only to see his institution shuttered by Trump's administration three months later. He reflects on the "American ruin" created as a consequence of abandonment of the Wilson Center's 30,000 book library. And Kimmage connects the rapid destruction of foreign policy institutions like USAID and the U.S. Institute of Peace to a broader assault on expertise and nonpartisan learning, warning that without such institutions, "an abyss opens" in American governance and international relations. Five Key Takeaways* Institutional Destruction was Swift and Unexplained - The Wilson Center, USAID (reduced from 10,000 to 15 employees), and U.S. Institute of Peace were shuttered within months with no clear rationale provided, creating a "nightmare-like" quality where decisions happened without accountability.* America's First Modern Ruin - Kimmage describes the abandoned Wilson Center library as unprecedented in American experience - a functioning institution in the heart of Washington D.C. suddenly left as a tomb-like ruin, unlike anything seen in a country never defeated on its own soil.* Books Were Saved, But Expertise Was Lost - While the 30,000-volume library was eventually rescued and distributed to universities, the real loss was the destruction of nonpartisan expertise and institutional knowledge that took decades to build.* Echoes of 1950s McCarthyism - The assault on expertise mirrors McCarthyism, with direct connections through Roy Cohn's mentorship of Trump, but differs in scale since it's driven by a president rather than a senator.* The Death of Learning in Government - The shutdowns represent a fundamental rejection of the idea that careful, nonpartisan study of international affairs is essential to effective policymaking, potentially creating an "abyss" in American foreign policy capacity.Michael Kimmage is Director of the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute. Prior to joining the Kennan Institute, Michael Kimmage was a professor of history at the Catholic University of America. From 2014 to 2017, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. He has been a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and at the German Marshall Fund; and was on the advisory board of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. He publishes widely on international affairs and on U.S. policy toward Russia. His latest book, Collisions: The War in Ukraine and the Origins of the New Global Instability, was published by Oxford University Press in March 2024. He is also the author of The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy, published by Basic Books in 2020, and The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers and the Lessons of Anti-Communism, published by Harvard University Press in 2009.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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 religious was the 80s creative scene? Very. At least according to Paul Elie, whose intriguing new cultural history, The Last Supper, charts the art, faith, sex and controversy of the 1980s. Elie argues that this was the age of what calls “crytpo-religious” art - a intensely creative decade in which religious imagery and motifs were often detached from conventional belief. Beginning in 1979 with with Dylan's “Christian” album Slow Train Coming and ending with Sinéad O'Connor's notorious SNL tearing up of a photo of the Pope, Elie presents the 80s as a "post-secular" era where religion remained culturally significant despite declining traditional belief. And he argues that artists as diverse as Leonard Cohen, Salman Rushdie, Andy Warhol, U2, Robert Mapplethorpe and Wim Wenders all translated their religious upbringings into books, movies, songs and artwork that shaped a momentously creative decade. Five Key Takeaways* "Crypto-religious" art uses religious imagery and themes from a perspective other than conventional belief, forcing audiences to question what the artist actually believes and examine their own faith.* The "post-secular" era began around 1979 when it became clear that progressive secularization wasn't happening—instead, religion remained a persistent cultural force requiring honest engagement rather than wishful dismissal.* America's religious transformation in the 1980s saw the country shift from predominantly Christian to multi-religious due to immigration, while also developing a strong secular contingent, creating unprecedented religious diversity.* Artists as "controverts" were divided against themselves, torn between progressive cultural experiences and traditional religious backgrounds, using art to work through these internal contradictions rather than simply choosing sides.* The Rushdie affair marked a turning point when violence entered religious-cultural debates, hardening previously permeable boundaries between belief and unbelief, leading to more polarized positions like the "New Atheism" movement.Paul Elie is the author of The Life You Save May Be Your Own (2003) and Reinventing Bach (2012), both National Book Critics Circle Award finalists. He is a senior fellow in Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and a regular contributor to The New Yorker. He lives in Brooklyn.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

Who is the most unsung hero of the American Civil War and Reconstruction? According to Zaakir Tameez, it's the abolitionist statesmen Charles Sumner. In his eponymous new biography of Sumner, Tameez portrays Sumner as a model of "moral ambition" who sacrificed a promising corporate law career to fight for racial justice. As slavery's fiercest opponent, Tameez describes Sumner as the “conscience” of mid 19th century America. And he argues that Sumner's famous Senate caning in 1856, his influence on Civil War-era legislation, his likely homosexuality, and his role mentoring young civil rights lawyers all should represent models of moral leadership for 21st century Americans. five key takeaways* Moral Ambition Over Self-Interest: Charles Sumner abandoned a lucrative corporate law career and prestigious academic prospects at Harvard to fight for racial justice, demonstrating how personal sacrifice can serve greater moral purposes.* Early Integration Pioneer: More than 100 years before Brown v. Board of Education, Sumner partnered with young Black attorney Robert Morris in 1849 to argue for school integration in Massachusetts, showing his ahead-of-his-time commitment to racial equality.* Economic Critique of Slavery: Unlike many abolitionists who focused on moral arguments, Sumner viewed slavery as an economic system where less than 0.5% of the population (major slaveholders) dominated American politics and resources at everyone else's expense.* The Power of Mentorship: Sumner was part of an extraordinary mentorship chain from Alexander Hamilton to Chancellor Kent to himself to Moorfield Storey (first NAACP president), illustrating how moral leadership passes between generations.* Contemporary Relevance: The interview connects Sumner's example to modern "moral ambition," suggesting that today's young professionals should consider using their talents for social justice rather than purely personal advancement. 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

It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic. According to the Pulitzer finalist Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, the majority of Americans no longer trust standard scientific proof. As he notes in his new book, The Ghost Labs, this faith in evidence based science has been replaced by the growth of bigfoot hunters, mediums, and alien enthusiasts. Hongoltz-Hetling traces this trend from his previous work on libertarian movements and alternative medicine, noting how the pandemic accelerated distrust in traditional institutions. He argues these paranormal beliefs, while seemingly harmless, fragment communities and undermine collective problem-solving. So how to fix this crisis in scientific trust? Hongoltz-Hetling's suggestion of licensing psychics and incorporating these beliefs into clinical settings to prevent further institutional erosion might sound a little absurd. But perhaps it's one concrete way of addressing social cohesion in our bizarre age of bigfoot hunters, mediums, and alien enthusiasts.* Crisis of institutional trust: Americans are increasingly rejecting science, government, universities, and even churches, turning instead to individualistic paranormal beliefs as alternatives to evidence-based institutions.* COVID as a catalyst: The pandemic accelerated existing distrust, with libertarian "medical freedom" messaging providing a bridge between fringe beliefs and mainstream Republican politics, leading to figures like RFK Jr. gaining power.* Fragmented vs. collective belief: Unlike organized religion which builds community through shared doctrine, paranormal beliefs are highly individualistic and based on personal experience, ultimately driving people apart rather than together.* Real-world consequences: This isn't just harmless entertainment—it leads to defunding of universities, people avoiding medical care, and the weakening of institutions that society depends on for collective problem-solving.* Controversial solution: Hongoltz-Hetling reluctantly suggests licensing psychics and incorporating paranormal beliefs into clinical settings as a pragmatic strategy to prevent complete institutional collapse, though he acknowledges this feels like "capitulation to dark forces."Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling is a freelance journalist specializing in narrative features and investigative reporting. He has been named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, won a George Polk Award, and been voted Journalist of the Year by the Maine Press association, among numerous other honors. His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, USA Today, Popular Science, Atavist Magazine, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Associated Press, and elsewhere.Keen On America 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

According to the legal scholar Marcus Alexander Gadson, violence is central to the constitutional history of the United States. As American, in fact, as apple pie. In his new book Sedition, Gadson argues that America's revolutionary foundations established a precedent for political violence. Examining six 19th-century constitutional crises including the Buckshot War, Brooks-Baxter War, and Bleeding Kansas, Gadson explores how disputed elections, fraud allegations, and violent responses shaped American democracy. Gadson expresses concern about current threats to constitutional order, particularly the January 6th Capitol attack and subsequent pardons, warning that inadequate consequences may encourage future attempts to overturn elections through violence. Five Key Takeaways* Revolutionary Origins Create Precedent: America's birth through violent revolution against Britain established a template that future groups would invoke to justify political violence and rebellion.* Constitutional Crises Are Underappreciated: Gadson argues that violent constitutional crises have been more fundamental to American development than commonly recognized, with disputed elections frequently leading to armed conflict.* 19th Century Pattern: Six major incidents show recurring themes of election disputes, fraud allegations, militia involvement, and federal intervention, demonstrating fragility of democratic institutions.* January 6th Parallels: The Capitol attack fits historical patterns of insurrection, but the subsequent pardons set a dangerous precedent by failing to impose consequences.* Current Constitutional Danger: Gadson warns we may be in a constitutional crisis, citing concerns about election integrity, court order compliance, and the normalization of political violence. 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

Who was America's great power prophet during the Cold War? Perhaps not Henry Kissinger. In Zbig, Financial Times' U.S. editor, Edward Luce, makes the case that the Polish-American strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski was at least equal to Kissinger in his prophetic grasp of America's role in the Cold War world. Luce explores Brzezinski's role as Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, his combination of hard and soft power strategies against the Soviet Union, and his uncannily prescient predictions about Soviet collapse and the emergence of an "alliance of the aggrieved" against the United States. five key takeaways * Brzezinski was remarkably prescient - He accurately predicted Soviet collapse decades in advance, identifying the USSR's "Achilles heel" as its suppressed internal nations and calling it a "gerontocracy" destined to fail through "reverse natural selection."* The dinner that saved Europe - Brzezinski's coordination with Pope John Paul II in 1980 helped prevent Soviet invasion of Poland by persuading Solidarity to moderate their rhetoric while warning Moscow that Poland would be "indigestible."* Post-Cold War prophet of doom - Unlike triumphalist Americans in the 1990s, Brzezinski warned that U.S. hubris would create an "alliance of the aggrieved" (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea) - a prediction that proved remarkably accurate.* Meritocracy believer with aristocratic standards - Despite his Polish noble background, Brzezinski championed American meritocracy but maintained old-world intellectual rigor, famously giving only one A per class regardless of size.* Study your adversaries - His key lesson for today: America must continue studying and understanding other nations' languages, cultures, and motivations rather than assuming everyone should simply follow the American model.Edward Luce is the US national editor and columnist at the Financial Times. Luce's biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski Zbig, The life of Zbig Brzezinski: America's great power prophet, came out this month. He is the author of three highly acclaimed books, The Retreat of Western Liberalism (2017), Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent (2012), and In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India (2007). He appears regularly on CNN, NPR, MSNBC's Morning Joe, and the BBC.Keen On America 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

Yesterday, the self-styled San Francisco “progressive” Joan Williams was on the show arguing that Democrats need to relearn the language of the American working class. But, as some of you have noted, Williams seems oblivious to the fact that politics is about more than simply aping other people's language. What you say matters, and the language of American working class, like all industrial working classes, is rooted in a critique of capitalism. She should probably read the New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy's excellent new book, Capitalism and its Critics, which traces capitalism's evolution and criticism from the East India Company through modern times. He defines capitalism as production for profit by privately-owned companies in markets, encompassing various forms from Chinese state capitalism to hyper-globalization. The book examines capitalism's most articulate critics including the Luddites, Marx, Engels, Thomas Carlisle, Adam Smith, Rosa Luxemburg, Keynes & Hayek, and contemporary figures like Sylvia Federici and Thomas Piketty. Cassidy explores how major economists were often critics of their era's dominant capitalist model, and untangles capitalism's complicated relationship with colonialism, slavery and AI which he regards as a potentially unprecedented economic disruption. This should be essential listening for all Democrats seeking to reinvent a post Biden-Harris party and message. 5 key takeaways* Capitalism has many forms - From Chinese state capitalism to Keynesian managed capitalism to hyper-globalization, all fitting the basic definition of production for profit by privately-owned companies in markets.* Great economists are typically critics - Smith criticized mercantile capitalism, Keynes critiqued laissez-faire capitalism, and Hayek/Friedman opposed managed capitalism. Each generation's leading economists challenge their era's dominant model.* Modern corporate structure has deep roots - The East India Company was essentially a modern multinational corporation with headquarters, board of directors, stockholders, and even a private army - showing capitalism's organizational continuity across centuries.* Capitalism is intertwined with colonialism and slavery - Industrial capitalism was built on pre-existing colonial and slave systems, particularly through the cotton industry and plantation economies.* AI represents a potentially unprecedented disruption - Unlike previous technological waves, AI may substitute rather than complement human labor on a massive scale, potentially creating political backlash exceeding even the "China shock" that contributed to Trump's rise.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. A couple of days ago, we did a show with Joan Williams. She has a new book out, "Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back." A book about language, about how to talk to the American working class. She also had a piece in Jacobin Magazine, an anti-capitalist magazine, about how the left needs to speak to what she calls average American values. We talked, of course, about Bernie Sanders and AOC and their language of fighting oligarchy, and the New York Times followed that up with "The Enduring Power of Anti-Capitalism in American Politics."But of course, that brings the question: what exactly is capitalism? I did a little bit of research. We can find definitions of capitalism from AI, from Wikipedia, even from online dictionaries, but I thought we might do a little better than relying on Wikipedia and come to a man who's given capitalism and its critics a great deal of thought. John Cassidy is well known as a staff writer at The New Yorker. He's the author of a wonderful book, the best book, actually, on the dot-com insanity. And his new book, "Capitalism and its Critics," is out this week. John, congratulations on the book.So I've got to be a bit of a schoolmaster with you, John, and get some definitions first. What exactly is capitalism before we get to criticism of it?John Cassidy: Yeah, I mean, it's a very good question, Andrew. Obviously, through the decades, even the centuries, there have been many different definitions of the term capitalism and there are different types of capitalism. To not be sort of too ideological about it, the working definition I use is basically production for profit—that could be production of goods or mostly in the new and, you know, in today's economy, production of services—for profit by companies which are privately owned in markets. That's a very sort of all-encompassing definition.Within that, you can have all sorts of different types of capitalism. You can have Chinese state capitalism, you can have the old mercantilism, which industrial capitalism came after, which Trump seems to be trying to resurrect. You can have Keynesian managed capitalism that we had for 30 or 40 years after the Second World War, which I grew up in in the UK. Or you can have sort of hyper-globalization, hyper-capitalism that we've tried for the last 30 years. There are all those different varieties of capitalism consistent with a basic definition, I think.Andrew Keen: That keeps you busy, John. I know you started this project, which is a big book and it's a wonderful book. I read it. I don't always read all the books I have on the show, but I read from cover to cover full of remarkable stories of the critics of capitalism. You note in the beginning that you began this in 2016 with the beginnings of Trump. What was it about the 2016 election that triggered a book about capitalism and its critics?John Cassidy: Well, I was reporting on it at the time for The New Yorker and it struck me—I covered, I basically covered the economy in various forms for various publications since the late 80s, early 90s. In fact, one of my first big stories was the stock market crash of '87. So yes, I am that old. But it seemed to me in 2016 when you had Bernie Sanders running from the left and Trump running from the right, but both in some way offering very sort of similar critiques of capitalism. People forget that Trump in 2016 actually was running from the left of the Republican Party. He was attacking big business. He was attacking Wall Street. He doesn't do that these days very much, but at the time he was very much posing as the sort of outsider here to protect the interests of the average working man.And it seemed to me that when you had this sort of pincer movement against the then ruling model, this wasn't just a one-off. It seemed to me it was a sort of an emerging crisis of legitimacy for the system. And I thought there could be a good book written about how we got to here. And originally I thought it would be a relatively short book just based on the last sort of 20 or 30 years since the collapse of the Cold War and the sort of triumphalism of the early 90s.But as I got into it more and more, I realized that so many of the issues which had been raised, things like globalization, rising inequality, monopoly power, exploitation, even pollution and climate change, these issues go back to the very start of the capitalist system or the industrial capitalist system back in sort of late 18th century, early 19th century Britain. So I thought, in the end, I thought, you know what, let's just do the whole thing soup to nuts through the eyes of the critics.There have obviously been many, many histories of capitalism written. I thought that an original way to do it, or hopefully original, would be to do a sort of a narrative through the lives and the critiques of the critics of various stages. So that's, I hope, what sets it apart from other books on the subject, and also provides a sort of narrative frame because, you know, I am a New Yorker writer, I realize if you want people to read things, you've got to make it readable. Easiest way to make things readable is to center them around people. People love reading about other people. So that's sort of the narrative frame. I start off with a whistleblower from the East India Company back in the—Andrew Keen: Yeah, I want to come to that. But before, John, my sense is that to simplify what you're saying, this is a labor of love. You're originally from Leeds, the heart of Yorkshire, the center of the very industrial revolution, the first industrial revolution where, in your historical analysis, capitalism was born. Is it a labor of love? What's your family relationship with capitalism? How long was the family in Leeds?John Cassidy: Right, I mean that's a very good question. It is a labor of love in a way, but it's not—our family doesn't go—I'm from an Irish family, family of Irish immigrants who moved to England in the 1940s and 1950s. So my father actually did start working in a big mill, the Kirkstall Forge in Leeds, which is a big steel mill, and he left after seeing one of his co-workers have his arms chopped off in one of the machinery, so he decided it wasn't for him and he spent his life working in the construction industry, which was dominated by immigrants as it is here now.So I don't have a—it's not like I go back to sort of the start of the industrial revolution, but I did grow up in the middle of Leeds, very working class, very industrial neighborhood. And what a sort of irony is, I'll point out, I used to, when I was a kid, I used to play golf on a municipal golf course called Gotts Park in Leeds, which—you know, most golf courses in America are sort of in the affluent suburbs, country clubs. This was right in the middle of Armley in Leeds, which is where the Victorian jail is and a very rough neighborhood. There's a small bit of land which they built a golf course on. It turns out it was named after one of the very first industrialists, Benjamin Gott, who was a wool and textile industrialist, and who played a part in the Luddite movement, which I mention.So it turns out, I was there when I was 11 or 12, just learning how to play golf on this scrappy golf course. And here I am, 50 years later, writing about Benjamin Gott at the start of the Industrial Revolution. So yeah, no, sure. I think it speaks to me in a way that perhaps it wouldn't to somebody else from a different background.Andrew Keen: We did a show with William Dalrymple, actually, a couple of years ago. He's been on actually since, the Anglo or Scottish Indian historian. His book on the East India Company, "The Anarchy," is a classic. You begin in some ways your history of capitalism with the East India Company. What was it about the East India Company, John, that makes it different from other for-profit organizations in economic, Western economic history?John Cassidy: I mean, I read that. It's a great book, by the way. That was actually quoted in my chapter on these. Yeah, I remember. I mean, the reason I focused on it was for two reasons. Number one, I was looking for a start, a narrative start to the book. And it seemed to me, you know, the obvious place to start is with the start of the industrial revolution. If you look at economics history textbooks, that's where they always start with Arkwright and all the inventors, you know, who were the sort of techno-entrepreneurs of their time, the sort of British Silicon Valley, if you could think of it as, in Lancashire and Derbyshire in the late 18th century.So I knew I had to sort of start there in some way, but I thought that's a bit pat. Is there another way into it? And it turns out that in 1772 in England, there was a huge bailout of the East India Company, very much like the sort of 2008, 2009 bailout of Wall Street. The company got into trouble. So I thought, you know, maybe there's something there. And I eventually found this guy, William Bolts, who worked for the East India Company, turned into a whistleblower after he was fired for finagling in India like lots of the people who worked for the company did.So that gave me two things. Number one, it gave me—you know, I'm a writer, so it gave me something to focus on a narrative. His personal history is very interesting. But number two, it gave me a sort of foundation because industrial capitalism didn't come from nowhere. You know, it was built on top of a pre-existing form of capitalism, which we now call mercantile capitalism, which was very protectionist, which speaks to us now. But also it had these big monopolistic multinational companies.The East India Company, in some ways, was a very modern corporation. It had a headquarters in Leadenhall Street in the city of London. It had a board of directors, it had stockholders, the company sent out very detailed instructions to the people in the field in India and Indonesia and Malaysia who were traders who bought things from the locals there, brought them back to England on their company ships. They had a company army even to enforce—to protect their operations there. It was an incredible multinational corporation.So that was also, I think, fascinating because it showed that even in the pre-existing system, you know, big corporations existed, there were monopolies, they had royal monopolies given—first the East India Company got one from Queen Elizabeth. But in some ways, they were very similar to modern monopolistic corporations. And they had some of the problems we've seen with modern monopolistic corporations, the way they acted. And Bolts was the sort of first corporate whistleblower, I thought. Yeah, that was a way of sort of getting into the story, I think. Hopefully, you know, it's just a good read, I think.William Bolts's story because he was—he came from nowhere, he was Dutch, he wasn't even English and he joined the company as a sort of impoverished young man, went to India like a lot of English minor aristocrats did to sort of make your fortune. The way the company worked, you had to sort of work on company time and make as much money as you could for the company, but then in your spare time you're allowed to trade for yourself. So a lot of the—without getting into too much detail, but you know, English aristocracy was based on—you know, the eldest child inherits everything, so if you were the younger brother of the Duke of Norfolk, you actually didn't inherit anything. So all of these minor aristocrats, so major aristocrats, but who weren't first born, joined the East India Company, went out to India and made a fortune, and then came back and built huge houses. Lots of the great manor houses in southern England were built by people from the East India Company and they were known as Nabobs, which is an Indian term. So they were the sort of, you know, billionaires of their time, and it was based on—as I say, it wasn't based on industrial capitalism, it was based on mercantile capitalism.Andrew Keen: Yeah, the beginning of the book, which focuses on Bolts and the East India Company, brings to mind for me two things. Firstly, the intimacy of modern capitalism, modern industrial capitalism with colonialism and of course slavery—lots of books have been written on that. Touch on this and also the relationship between the birth of capitalism and the birth of liberalism or democracy. John Stuart Mill, of course, the father in many ways of Western democracy. His day job, ironically enough, or perhaps not ironically, was at the East India Company. So how do those two things connect, or is it just coincidental?John Cassidy: Well, I don't think it is entirely coincidental, I mean, J.S. Mill—his father, James Mill, was also a well-known philosopher in the sort of, obviously, in the earlier generation, earlier than him. And he actually wrote the official history of the East India Company. And I think they gave his son, the sort of brilliant protégé, J.S. Mill, a job as largely as a sort of sinecure, I think. But he did go in and work there in the offices three or four days a week.But I think it does show how sort of integral—the sort of—as you say, the inheritor and the servant in Britain, particularly, of colonial capitalism was. So the East India Company was, you know, it was in decline by that stage in the middle of the 19th century, but it didn't actually give up its monopoly. It wasn't forced to give up its monopoly on the Indian trade until 1857, after, you know, some notorious massacres and there was a sort of public outcry.So yeah, no, that's—it's very interesting that the British—it's sort of unique to Britain in a way, but it's interesting that industrial capitalism arose alongside this pre-existing capitalist structure and somebody like Mill is a sort of paradoxical figure because actually he was quite critical of aspects of industrial capitalism and supported sort of taxes on the rich, even though he's known as the great, you know, one of the great apostles of the free market and free market liberalism. And his day job, as you say, he was working for the East India Company.Andrew Keen: What about the relationship between the birth of industrial capitalism, colonialism and slavery? Those are big questions and I know you deal with them in some—John Cassidy: I think you can't just write an economic history of capitalism now just starting with the cotton industry and say, you know, it was all about—it was all about just technical progress and gadgets, etc. It was built on a sort of pre-existing system which was colonial and, you know, the slave trade was a central element of that. Now, as you say, there have been lots and lots of books written about it, the whole 1619 project got an incredible amount of attention a few years ago. So I didn't really want to rehash all that, but I did want to acknowledge the sort of role of slavery, especially in the rise of the cotton industry because of course, a lot of the raw cotton was grown in the plantations in the American South.So the way I actually ended up doing that was by writing a chapter about Eric Williams, a Trinidadian writer who ended up as the Prime Minister of Trinidad when it became independent in the 1960s. But when he was younger, he wrote a book which is now regarded as a classic. He went to Oxford to do a PhD, won a scholarship. He was very smart. I won a sort of Oxford scholarship myself but 50 years before that, he came across the Atlantic and did an undergraduate degree in history and then did a PhD there and his PhD thesis was on slavery and capitalism.And at the time, in the 1930s, the link really wasn't acknowledged. You could read any sort of standard economic history written by British historians, and they completely ignored that. He made the argument that, you know, slavery was integral to the rise of capitalism and he basically started an argument which has been raging ever since the 1930s and, you know, if you want to study economic history now you have to sort of—you know, have to have to address that. And the way I thought, even though the—it's called the Williams thesis is very famous. I don't think many people knew much about where it came from. So I thought I'd do a chapter on—Andrew Keen: Yeah, that chapter is excellent. You mentioned earlier the Luddites, you're from Yorkshire where Luddism in some ways was born. One of the early chapters is on the Luddites. We did a show with Brian Merchant, his book, "Blood in the Machine," has done very well, I'm sure you're familiar with it. I always understood the Luddites as being against industrialization, against the machine, as opposed to being against capitalism. But did those two things get muddled together in the history of the Luddites?John Cassidy: I think they did. I mean, you know, Luddites, when we grew up, I mean you're English too, you know to be called a Luddite was a term of abuse, right? You know, you were sort of antediluvian, anti-technology, you're stupid. It was only, I think, with the sort of computer revolution, the tech revolution of the last 30, 40 years and the sort of disruptions it's caused, that people have started to look back at the Luddites and say, perhaps they had a point.For them, they were basically pre-industrial capitalism artisans. They worked for profit-making concerns, small workshops. Some of them worked for themselves, so they were sort of sole proprietor capitalists. Or they worked in small venues, but the rise of industrial capitalism, factory capitalism or whatever, basically took away their livelihoods progressively. So they associated capitalism with new technology. In their minds it was the same. But their argument wasn't really a technological one or even an economic one, it was more a moral one. They basically made the moral argument that capitalists shouldn't have the right to just take away their livelihoods with no sort of recompense for them.At the time they didn't have any parliamentary representation. You know, they weren't revolutionaries. The first thing they did was create petitions to try and get parliament to step in, sort of introduce some regulation here. They got turned down repeatedly by the sort of—even though it was a very aristocratic parliament, places like Manchester and Leeds didn't have any representation at all. So it was only after that that they sort of turned violent and started, you know, smashing machines and machines, I think, were sort of symbols of the system, which they saw as morally unjust.And I think that's sort of what—obviously, there's, you know, a lot of technological disruption now, so we can, especially as it starts to come for the educated cognitive class, we can sort of sympathize with them more. But I think the sort of moral critique that there's this, you know, underneath the sort of great creativity and economic growth that capitalism produces, there is also a lot of destruction and a lot of victims. And I think that message, you know, is becoming a lot more—that's why I think why they've been rediscovered in the last five or ten years and I'm one of the people I guess contributing to that rediscovery.Andrew Keen: There's obviously many critiques of capitalism politically. I want to come to Marx in a second, but your chapter, I thought, on Thomas Carlyle and this nostalgic conservatism was very important and there are other conservatives as well. John, do you think that—and you mentioned Trump earlier, who is essentially a nostalgist for a—I don't know, some sort of bizarre pre-capitalist age in America. Is there something particularly powerful about the anti-capitalism of romantics like Carlyle, 19th century Englishman, there were many others of course.John Cassidy: Well, I think so. I mean, I think what is—conservatism, when we were young anyway, was associated with Thatcherism and Reaganism, which, you know, lionized the free market and free market capitalism and was a reaction against the pre-existing form of capitalism, Keynesian capitalism of the sort of 40s to the 80s. But I think what got lost in that era was the fact that there have always been—you've got Hayek up there, obviously—Andrew Keen: And then Keynes and Hayek, the two—John Cassidy: Right, it goes to the end of that. They had a great debate in the 1930s about these issues. But Hayek really wasn't a conservative person, and neither was Milton Friedman. They were sort of free market revolutionaries, really, that you'd let the market rip and it does good things. And I think that that sort of a view, you know, it just became very powerful. But we sort of lost sight of the fact that there was also a much older tradition of sort of suspicion of radical changes of any type. And that was what conservatism was about to some extent. If you think about Baldwin in Britain, for example.And there was a sort of—during the Industrial Revolution, some of the strongest supporters of factory acts to reduce hours and hourly wages for women and kids were actually conservatives, Tories, as they were called at the time, like Ashley. That tradition, Carlyle was a sort of extreme representative of that. I mean, Carlyle was a sort of proto-fascist, let's not romanticize him, he lionized strongmen, Frederick the Great, and he didn't really believe in democracy. But he also had—he was appalled by the sort of, you know, the—like, what's the phrase I'm looking for? The sort of destructive aspects of industrial capitalism, both on the workers, you know, he said it was a dehumanizing system, sounded like Marx in some ways. That it dehumanized the workers, but also it destroyed the environment.He was an early environmentalist. He venerated the environment, was actually very strongly linked to the transcendentalists in America, people like Thoreau, who went to visit him when he visited Britain and he saw the sort of destructive impact that capitalism was having locally in places like Manchester, which were filthy with filthy rivers, etc. So he just saw the whole system as sort of morally bankrupt and he was a great writer, Carlyle, whatever you think of him. Great user of language, so he has these great ringing phrases like, you know, the cash nexus or calling it the Gospel of Mammonism, the shabbiest gospel ever preached under the sun was industrial capitalism.So, again, you know, that's a sort of paradoxical thing, because I think for so long conservatism was associated with, you know, with support for the free market and still is in most of the Republican Party, but then along comes Trump and sort of conquers the party with a, you know, more skeptical, as you say, romantic, not really based on any reality, but a sort of romantic view that America can stand by itself in the world. I mean, I see Trump actually as a sort of an effort to sort of throw back to mercantile capitalism in a way. You know, which was not just pre-industrial, but was also pre-democracy, run by monarchs, which I'm sure appeals to him, and it was based on, you know, large—there were large tariffs. You couldn't import things in the UK. If you want to import anything to the UK, you have to send it on a British ship because of the navigation laws. It was a very protectionist system and it's actually, you know, as I said, had a lot of parallels with what Trump's trying to do or tries to do until he backs off.Andrew Keen: You cheat a little bit in the book in the sense that you—everyone has their own chapter. We'll talk a little bit about Hayek and Smith and Lenin and Friedman. You do have one chapter on Marx, but you also have a chapter on Engels. So you kind of cheat. You combine the two. Is it possible, though, to do—and you've just written this book, so you know this as well as anyone. How do you write a book about capitalism and its critics and only really give one chapter to Marx, who is so dominant? I mean, you've got lots of Marxists in the book, including Lenin and Luxemburg. How fundamental is Marx to a criticism of capitalism? Is most criticism, especially from the left, from progressives, is it really just all a footnote to Marx?John Cassidy: I wouldn't go that far, but I think obviously on the left he is the central figure. But there's an element of sort of trying to rebuild Engels a bit in this. I mean, I think of Engels and Marx—I mean obviously Marx wrote the great classic "Capital," etc. But in the 1840s, when they both started writing about capitalism, Engels was sort of ahead of Marx in some ways. I mean, the sort of materialist concept, the idea that economics rules everything, Engels actually was the first one to come up with that in an essay in the 1840s which Marx then published in one of his—in the German newspaper he worked for at the time, radical newspaper, and he acknowledged openly that that was really what got him thinking seriously about economics, and even in the late—in 20, 25 years later when he wrote "Capital," all three volumes of it and the Grundrisse, just these enormous outpourings of analysis on capitalism.He acknowledged Engels's role in that and obviously Engels wrote the first draft of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 too, which Marx then topped and tailed and—he was a better writer obviously, Marx, and he gave it the dramatic language that we all know it for. So I think Engels and Marx together obviously are the central sort of figures in the sort of left-wing critique. But they didn't start out like that. I mean, they were very obscure, you've got to remember.You know, they were—when they were writing, Marx was writing "Capital" in London, it never even got published in English for another 20 years. It was just published in German. He was basically an expat. He had been thrown out of Germany, he had been thrown out of France, so England was last resort and the British didn't consider him a threat so they were happy to let him and the rest of the German sort of left in there. I think it became—it became the sort of epochal figure after his death really, I think, when he was picked up by the left-wing parties, which are especially the SPD in Germany, which was the first sort of socialist mass party and was officially Marxist until the First World War and there were great internal debates.And then of course, because Lenin and the Russians came out of that tradition too, Marxism then became the official doctrine of the Soviet Union when they adopted a version of it. And again there were massive internal arguments about what Marx really meant, and in fact, you know, one interpretation of the last 150 years of left-wing sort of intellectual development is as a sort of argument about what did Marx really mean and what are the important bits of it, what are the less essential bits of it. It's a bit like the "what did Keynes really mean" that you get in liberal circles.So yeah, Marx, obviously, this is basically an intellectual history of critiques of capitalism. In that frame, he is absolutely a central figure. Why didn't I give him more space than a chapter and a chapter and a half with Engels? There have been a million books written about Marx. I mean, it's not that—it's not that he's an unknown figure. You know, there's a best-selling book written in Britain about 20 years ago about him and then I was quoting, in my biographical research, I relied on some more recent, more scholarly biographies. So he's an endlessly fascinating figure but I didn't want him to dominate the book so I gave him basically the same space as everybody else.Andrew Keen: You've got, as I said, you've got a chapter on Adam Smith who's often considered the father of economics. You've got a chapter on Keynes. You've got a chapter on Friedman. And you've got a chapter on Hayek, all the great modern economists. Is it possible, John, to be a distinguished economist one way or the other and not be a critic of capitalism?John Cassidy: Well, I don't—I mean, I think history would suggest that the greatest economists have been critics of capitalism in their own time. People would say to me, what the hell have you got Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek in a book about critics of capitalism? They were great exponents, defenders of capitalism. They loved the system. That is perfectly true. But in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, middle of the 20th century, they were actually arch-critics of the ruling form of capitalism at the time, which was what I call managed capitalism. What some people call Keynesianism, what other people call European social democracy, whatever you call it, it was a model of a mixed economy in which the government played a large role both in propping up demand and in providing an extensive social safety net in the UK and providing public healthcare and public education. It was a sort of hybrid model.Most of the economy in terms of the businesses remained in private hands. So most production was capitalistic. It was a capitalist system. They didn't go to the Soviet model of nationalizing everything and Britain did nationalize some businesses, but most places didn't. The US of course didn't but it was a form of managed capitalism. And Hayek and Friedman were both great critics of that and wanted to sort of move back to 19th century laissez-faire model.Keynes was a—was actually a great, I view him anyway, as really a sort of late Victorian liberal and was trying to protect as much of the sort of J.S. Mill view of the world as he could, but he thought capitalism had one fatal flaw: that it tended to fall into recessions and then they can snowball and the whole system can collapse which is what had basically happened in the early 1930s until Keynesian policies were adopted. Keynes sort of differed from a lot of his followers—I have a chapter on Joan Robinson in there, who were pretty left-wing and wanted to sort of use Keynesianism as a way to shift the economy quite far to the left. Keynes didn't really believe in that. He has a famous quote that, you know, once you get to full employment, you can then rely on the free market to sort of take care of things. He was still a liberal at heart.Going back to Adam Smith, why is he in a book on criticism of capitalism? And again, it goes back to what I said at the beginning. He actually wrote "The Wealth of Nations"—he explains in the introduction—as a critique of mercantile capitalism. His argument was that he was a pro-free trader, pro-small business, free enterprise. His argument was if you get the government out of the way, we don't need these government-sponsored monopolies like the East India Company. If you just rely on the market, the sort of market forces and competition will produce a good outcome. So then he was seen as a great—you know, he is then seen as the apostle of free market capitalism. I mean when I started as a young reporter, when I used to report in Washington, all the conservatives used to wear Adam Smith badges. You don't see Donald Trump wearing an Adam Smith badge, but that was the case.He was also—the other aspect of Smith, which I highlight, which is not often remarked on—he's also a critic of big business. He has a famous section where he discusses the sort of tendency of any group of more than three businessmen when they get together to try and raise prices and conspire against consumers. And he was very suspicious of, as I say, large companies, monopolies. I think if Adam Smith existed today, I mean, I think he would be a big supporter of Lina Khan and the sort of antitrust movement, he would say capitalism is great as long as you have competition, but if you don't have competition it becomes, you know, exploitative.Andrew Keen: Yeah, if Smith came back to live today, you have a chapter on Thomas Piketty, maybe he may not be French, but he may be taking that position about how the rich benefit from the structure of investment. Piketty's core—I've never had Piketty on the show, but I've had some of his followers like Emmanuel Saez from Berkeley. Yeah. How powerful is Piketty's critique of capitalism within the context of the classical economic analysis from Hayek and Friedman? Yeah, it's a very good question.John Cassidy: It's a very good question. I mean, he's a very paradoxical figure, Piketty, in that he obviously shot to world fame and stardom with his book on capital in the 21st century, which in some ways he obviously used the capital as a way of linking himself to Marx, even though he said he never read Marx. But he was basically making the same argument that if you leave capitalism unrestrained and don't do anything about monopolies etc. or wealth, you're going to get massive inequality and he—I think his great contribution, Piketty and the school of people, one of them you mentioned, around him was we sort of had a vague idea that inequality was going up and that, you know, wages were stagnating, etc.What he and his colleagues did is they produced these sort of scientific empirical studies showing in very simple to understand terms how the sort of share of income and wealth of the top 10 percent, the top 5 percent, the top 1 percent and the top 0.1 percent basically skyrocketed from the 1970s to about 2010. And it was, you know, he was an MIT PhD. Saez, who you mentioned, is a Berkeley professor. They were schooled in neoclassical economics at Harvard and MIT and places like that. So the right couldn't dismiss them as sort of, you know, lefties or Trots or whatever who're just sort of making this stuff up. They had to acknowledge that this was actually an empirical reality.I think it did change the whole basis of the debate and it was sort of part of this reaction against capitalism in the 2010s. You know it was obviously linked to the sort of Sanders and the Occupy Wall Street movement at the time. It came out of the—you know, the financial crisis as well when Wall Street disgraced itself. I mean, I wrote a previous book on all that, but people have sort of, I think, forgotten the great reaction against that a decade ago, which I think even Trump sort of exploited, as I say, by using anti-banker rhetoric at the time.So, Piketty was a great figure, I think, from, you know, I was thinking, who are the most influential critics of capitalism in the 21st century? And I think you'd have to put him up there on the list. I'm not saying he's the only one or the most eminent one. But I think he is a central figure. Now, of course, you'd think, well, this is a really powerful critic of capitalism, and nobody's going to pick up, and Bernie's going to take off and everything. But here we are a decade later now. It seems to be what the backlash has produced is a swing to the right, not a swing to the left. So that's, again, a sort of paradox.Andrew Keen: One person I didn't expect to come up in the book, John, and I was fascinated with this chapter, is Silvia Federici. I've tried to get her on the show. We've had some books about her writing and her kind of—I don't know, you treat her critique as a feminist one. The role of women. Why did you choose to write a chapter about Federici and that feminist critique of capitalism?John Cassidy: Right, right. Well, I don't think it was just feminist. I'll explain what I think it was. Two reasons. Number one, I wanted to get more women into the book. I mean, it's in some sense, it is a history of economics and economic critiques. And they are overwhelmingly written by men and women were sort of written out of the narrative of capitalism for a very long time. So I tried to include as many sort of women as actual thinkers as I could and I have a couple of early socialist feminist thinkers, Anna Wheeler and Flora Tristan and then I cover some of the—I cover Rosa Luxemburg as the great sort of tribune of the left revolutionary socialist, communist whatever you want to call it. Anti-capitalist I think is probably also important to note about. Yeah, and then I also have Joan Robinson, but I wanted somebody to do something in the modern era, and I thought Federici, in the world of the Wages for Housework movement, is very interesting from two perspectives.Number one, Federici herself is a Marxist, and I think she probably would still consider herself a revolutionary. She's based in New York, as you know now. She lived in New York for 50 years, but she came from—she's originally Italian and came out of the Italian left in the 1960s, which was very radical. Do you know her? Did you talk to her? I didn't talk to her on this. No, she—I basically relied on, there has been a lot of, as you say, there's been a lot of stuff written about her over the years. She's written, you know, she's given various long interviews and she's written a book herself, a version, a history of housework, so I figured it was all there and it was just a matter of pulling it together.But I think the critique, why the critique is interesting, most of the book is a sort of critique of how capitalism works, you know, in the production or you know, in factories or in offices or you know, wherever capitalist operations are working, but her critique is sort of domestic reproduction, as she calls it, the role of unpaid labor in supporting capitalism. I mean it goes back a long way actually. There was this moment, I sort of trace it back to the 1940s and 1950s when there were feminists in America who were demonstrating outside factories and making the point that you know, the factory workers and the operations of the factory, it couldn't—there's one of the famous sort of tire factory in California demonstrations where the women made the argument, look this factory can't continue to operate unless we feed and clothe the workers and provide the next generation of workers. You know, that's domestic reproduction. So their argument was that housework should be paid and Federici took that idea and a couple of her colleagues, she founded the—it's a global movement, but she founded the most famous branch in New York City in the 1970s. In Park Slope near where I live actually.And they were—you call it feminists, they were feminists in a way, but they were rejected by the sort of mainstream feminist movement, the sort of Gloria Steinems of the world, who Federici was very critical of because she said they ignored, they really just wanted to get women ahead in the sort of capitalist economy and they ignored the sort of underlying from her perspective, the underlying sort of illegitimacy and exploitation of that system. So they were never accepted as part of the feminist movement. They're to the left of the Feminist Movement.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Keynes, of course, so central in all this, particularly his analysis of the role of automation in capitalism. We did a show recently with Robert Skidelsky and I'm sure you're familiar—John Cassidy: Yeah, yeah, great, great biography of Keynes.Andrew Keen: Yeah, the great biographer of Keynes, whose latest book is "Mindless: The Human Condition in the Age of AI." You yourself wrote a brilliant book on the last tech mania and dot-com capitalism. I used it in a lot of my writing and books. What's your analysis of AI in this latest mania and the role generally of manias in the history of capitalism and indeed in critiquing capitalism? Is AI just the next chapter of the dot-com boom?John Cassidy: I think it's a very deep question. I think I'd give two answers to it. In one sense it is just the latest mania the way—I mean, the way capitalism works is we have these, I go back to Kondratiev, one of my Russian economists who ended up being killed by Stalin. He was the sort of inventor of the long wave theory of capitalism. We have these short waves where you have sort of booms and busts driven by finance and debt etc. But we also have long waves driven by technology.And obviously, in the last 40, 50 years, the two big ones are the original deployment of the internet and microchip technology in the sort of 80s and 90s culminating in the dot-com boom of the late 90s, which as you say, I wrote about. Thanks very much for your kind comments on the book. If you just sort of compare it from a financial basis I think they are very similar just in terms of the sort of role of hype from Wall Street in hyping up these companies. The sort of FOMO aspect of it among investors that they you know, you can't miss out. So just buy the companies blindly. And the sort of lionization in the press and the media of, you know, of AI as the sort of great wave of the future.So if you take a sort of skeptical market based approach, I would say, yeah, this is just another sort of another mania which will eventually burst and it looked like it had burst for a few weeks when Trump put the tariffs up, now the market seemed to be recovering. But I think there is, there may be something new about it. I am not, I don't pretend to be a technical expert. I try to rely on the evidence of or the testimony of people who know the systems well and also economists who have studied it. It seems to me the closer you get to it the more alarming it is in terms of the potential shock value that there is there.I mean Trump and the sort of reaction to a larger extent can be traced back to the China shock where we had this global shock to American manufacturing and sort of hollowed out a lot of the industrial areas much of it, like industrial Britain was hollowed out in the 80s. If you, you know, even people like Altman and Elon Musk, they seem to think that this is going to be on a much larger scale than that and will basically, you know, get rid of the professions as they exist. Which would be a huge, huge shock. And I think a lot of the economists who studied this, who four or five years ago were relatively optimistic, people like Daron Acemoglu, David Autor—Andrew Keen: Simon Johnson, of course, who just won the Nobel Prize, and he's from England.John Cassidy: Simon, I did an event with Simon earlier this week. You know they've studied this a lot more closely than I have but I do interview them and I think five, six years ago they were sort of optimistic that you know this could just be a new steam engine or could be a microchip which would lead to sort of a lot more growth, rising productivity, rising productivity is usually associated with rising wages so sure there'd be short-term costs but ultimately it would be a good thing. Now, I think if you speak to them, they see since the, you know, obviously, the OpenAI—the original launch and now there's just this huge arms race with no government involvement at all I think they're coming to the conclusion that rather than being developed to sort of complement human labor, all these systems are just being rushed out to substitute for human labor. And it's just going, if current trends persist, it's going to be a China shock on an even bigger scale.You know what is going to, if that, if they're right, that is going to produce some huge political backlash at some point, that's inevitable. So I know—the thing when the dot-com bubble burst, it didn't really have that much long-term impact on the economy. People lost the sort of fake money they thought they'd made. And then the companies, obviously some of the companies like Amazon and you know Google were real genuine profit-making companies and if you bought them early you made a fortune. But AI does seem a sort of bigger, scarier phenomenon to me. I don't know. I mean, you're close to it. What do you think?Andrew Keen: Well, I'm waiting for a book, John, from you. I think you can combine dot-com and capitalism and its critics. We need you probably to cover it—you know more about it than me. Final question, I mean, it's a wonderful book and we haven't even scratched the surface everyone needs to get it. I enjoyed the chapter, for example, on Karl Polanyi and so much more. I mean, it's a big book. But my final question, John, is do you have any regrets about anyone you left out? The one person I would have liked to have been included was Rawls because of his sort of treatment of capitalism and luck as a kind of casino. I'm not sure whether you gave any thought to Rawls, but is there someone in retrospect you should have had a chapter on that you left out?John Cassidy: There are lots of people I left out. I mean, that's the problem. I mean there have been hundreds and hundreds of critics of capitalism. Rawls, of course, incredibly influential and his idea of the sort of, you know, the veil of ignorance that you should judge things not knowing where you are in the income distribution and then—Andrew Keen: And it's luck. I mean the idea of some people get lucky and some people don't.John Cassidy: It is the luck of the draw, obviously, what card you pull. I think that is a very powerful critique, but I just—because I am more of an expert on economics, I tended to leave out philosophers and sociologists. I mean, you know, you could say, where's Max Weber? Where are the anarchists? You know, where's Emma Goldman? Where's John Kenneth Galbraith, the sort of great mid-century critic of American industrial capitalism? There's so many people that you could include. I mean, I could have written 10 volumes. In fact, I refer in the book to, you know, there's always been a problem. G.D.H. Cole, a famous English historian, wrote a history of socialism back in the 1960s and 70s. You know, just getting to 1850 took him six volumes. So, you've got to pick and choose, and I don't claim this is the history of capitalism and its critics. That would be a ridiculous claim to make. I just claim it's a history written by me, and hopefully the people are interested in it, and they're sufficiently diverse that you can address all the big questions.Andrew Keen: Well it's certainly incredibly timely. Capitalism and its critics—more and more of them. Sometimes they don't even describe themselves as critics of capitalism when they're talking about oligarchs or billionaires, they're really criticizing capitalism. A must read from one of America's leading journalists. And would you call yourself a critic of capitalism, John?John Cassidy: Yeah, I guess I am, to some extent, sure. I mean, I'm not a—you know, I'm not on the far left, but I'd say I'm a center-left critic of capitalism. Yes, definitely, that would be fair.Andrew Keen: And does the left need to learn? Does everyone on the left need to read the book and learn the language of anti-capitalism in a more coherent and honest way?John Cassidy: I hope so. I mean, obviously, I'd be talking my own book there, as they say, but I hope that people on the left, but not just people on the left. I really did try to sort of be fair to the sort of right-wing critiques as well. I included the Carlyle chapter particularly, obviously, but in the later chapters, I also sort of refer to this emerging critique on the right, the sort of economic nationalist critique. So hopefully, I think people on the right could read it to understand the critiques from the left, and people on the left could read it to understand some of the critiques on the right as well.Andrew Keen: Well, it's a lovely book. It's enormously erudite and simultaneously readable. Anyone who likes John Cassidy's work from The New Yorker will love it. Congratulations, John, on the new book, and I'd love to get you back on the show as anti-capitalism in America picks up steam and perhaps manifests itself in the 2028 election. Thank you so much.John Cassidy: Thanks very much for inviting me on, it was fun.Keen On America 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

Why are the Democrats losing the American working class? According to Joan Williams, it's because they are failing to prioritize economic concerns of working-class Americans. In her new book Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back, Williams argues that Democrats lost the 2024 election because of their over-preoccupation with the interests of college educated Americans. Williams notes significant shifts among non-college voters of color toward Republicans and believes Democrats must develop what she calls "cultural competence" to connect with working-class voters. She emphasizes that economic struggle, and not just racism, drove Trump's victory. Williams advocates for a messaging that resonates with working-class values while maintaining progressive goals on issues like climate change. Democrats, she suggests, must return to their traditional language and prioritize economic stability for all Americans if they are to win back power in 2028. Five Key Takeaways * Democrats lost working-class voters across racial groups in 2024, with significant shifts among non-college voters of color (35-point shift among Latinos and 30-point shift among Black voters) and even larger shifts among younger voters of color.* Williams argues that economic factors, not just racism, drove Trump's victory. She believes Democrats failed to prioritize inflation and economic issues that matter most to working-class Americans, focusing instead on issues that primarily resonate with college-educated elites.* The "class-culture gap" between college-educated elites and working-class Americans requires Democrats to develop "cultural competence" - understanding and connecting with the values, communication styles, and priorities of non-college educated voters.* Williams believes Democrats must center economic messaging on the principle that "anybody who works hard in America deserves a stable middle-class standard of living" while connecting progressive policies to working-class values.* Unlike some critics, Williams doesn't believe Democrats must abandon identity politics or progressive causes, but rather must present these causes in ways that connect with working-class values while prioritizing economic issues.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Described as having "something approaching rock star status” in her field by The New York Times Magazine, Joan C. Williams is an award-winning scholar of social inequality. She is the author of White Working Class, and has published on class dynamics in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, The New Republic and more. She is Distinguished Professor of Law and Hastings Foundation Chair (emerita) at University of California College of the Law San Francisco. 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 Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden From Us, best selling writer Anna Malaika Tubbs reveals the secret history of American patriarchal values. Tubbs argues this patriarchy is the central narrative thread of American history. She emphasizes that patriarchy affects everyone differently according to their race, class, and gender - thereby creating a "gendered hierarchy" that excludes many from traditional gender roles. Tubbs maintains that this patriarchy persists. Indeed, she presents the Trump administration's Project 2025 as a reactionary attempt to return to this central narrative of American history. Five Key Takeaways * American patriarchy was intentionally built into the nation's founding documents, with women deliberately excluded from the Constitution. This systemic design continues to influence modern American society and politics.* Patriarchy affects different groups in varying ways—white women experience oppression differently than women of color, who historically weren't even afforded the "protections" of traditional gender roles. Understanding these distinctions is crucial for building effective coalitions.* Agency is central to resistance against patriarchal systems. Throughout history, marginalized groups have consistently demonstrated alternative ways of living despite systemic constraints.* Current political movements like Project 2025 represent a conscious return to traditional patriarchal values, particularly in their emphasis on women's reproductive roles.* According to Tubbs, addressing patriarchy requires multi-level approaches: personal reflection, reimagining relationships, mindful parenting, and policy change. Understanding how patriarchy operates helps explain voting patterns and can inform strategies for social change.Anna Malaika Tubbs is a New York Times bestselling author and multidisciplinary expert on current and historical understandings of race, gender, and equity. With a Ph.D. in Sociology and a Masters in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge in addition to a Bachelors in Medical Anthropology from Stanford University, Anna translates her academic knowledge into stories that are clear and engaging. Her articles have been published by TIME Magazine, New York Magazine, CNN, Motherly, the Huffington Post, For Harriet, The Guardian, Darling Magazine, and Blavity. Anna's storytelling also takes form in her talks, including her TED Talk that has been viewed 2 million times, as well as the scripted and unscripted screen projects she has in development. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their three kids.Keen On America 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

History, Marshall Poe wrote in December 2023, shows that Israel will never win a “war of occupation”. Eighteen months later, with Israel on the brink of a full scale occupation of Gaza, Poe's argument is even more relevant. the Gaza war, the historian warns, is turning into Israel's Vietnam - an unwinnable occupation that will only bring shame on the invaders. Trust Poe on the Vietnam analogy. His last book was about the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam, so he's all too familiar with the catastrophic consequences of imperial wars of counter-insurgency. Five Takeaways * Counterinsurgency operations typically evolve into prolonged occupations, as forces cannot easily identify and eliminate insurgents without alienating the local population.* Military occupations historically fail when the entire civilian population becomes hostile to occupying forces, leading to ethical compromises and potential atrocities.* The My Lai massacre in Vietnam exemplifies how poor intelligence and leadership can result in civilian casualties when soldiers cannot distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.* Population relocation, a strategy being discussed for Gaza, has historically been catastrophic whenever attempted in the 20th century.* The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has limited viable solutions, with Poe suggesting the two-state solution is no longer realistic and expressing skepticism that external powers like the US can resolve the situation.Marshall Tillbrook Poe is an American historian, writer, editor, and founder of the New Books Network, an online collection of podcast interviews with a wide range of nonfiction authors. He has taught Russian, European, Eurasian, and world history at various universities including Harvard, Columbia, University of Iowa, and, currently, the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Poe is the author or editor of a number of books for children and adults.Keen On America 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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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

So why did Harris lose in 2024? For one very big reason, according to the progressive essayist Bill Deresiewicz: “because she represented the exhausted Democratic establishment”. This rotting establishment, Deresiewicz believes, is symbolized by both the collective denial of Biden's mental decline and by Harris' pathetically rudderless Presidential campaign. But there's a much more troubling problem with the Democratic party, he argues. It has become “the party of institutionalized liberalism, which is itself exhausted”. So how to reinvent American liberalism in the 2020's? How to make the left once again, in Deresiewicz words, “the locus of openness, playfulness, productive contention, experiment, excess, risk, shock, camp, mirth, mischief, irony and curiosity"? That's the question for all progressives in our MAGA/Woke age. 5 Key Takeaways * Deresiewicz believes the Democratic establishment and aligned media engaged in a "tacit cover-up" of Biden's condition and other major issues like crime, border policies, and pandemic missteps rather than addressing them honestly.* The liberal movement that began in the 1960s has become "exhausted" and the Democratic Party is now an uneasy alliance of establishment elites and working-class voters whose interests don't align well.* Progressive institutions suffer from a repressive intolerance characterized by "an unearned sense of moral superiority" and a fear of vitality that leads to excessive rules, bureaucracy, and speech codes.* While young conservatives are creating new movements with energy and creativity, the progressive establishment stifles innovation by purging anyone who "violates the code" or criticizes their side.* Rebuilding the left requires creating conditions for new ideas by ending censoriousness, embracing true courage that risks something real, and potentially building new institutions rather than trying to reform existing ones. Full Transcript Andrew Keen: Hello, everyone. It's the old question on this show, Keen on America, how to make sense of this bewildering, frustrating, exciting country in the wake, particularly of the last election. A couple of years ago, we had the CNN journalist who I rather like and admire, Jake Tapper, on the show. Arguing in a piece of fiction that he thinks, to make sense of America, we need to return to the 1970s. He had a thriller out a couple of years ago called All the Demons Are Here. But I wonder if Tapper's changed his mind on this. His latest book, which is a sensation, which he co-wrote with Alex Thompson, is Original Sin, President Biden's Decline, its Cover-up and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. Tapper, I think, tells the truth about Biden, as the New York Times notes. It's a damning portrait of an enfeebled Biden protected by his inner circle. I would extend that, rather than his inner circle protected by an elite, perhaps a coastal elite of Democrats, unable or unwilling to come to terms with the fact that Biden was way, way past his shelf life. My guest today, William Deresiewicz—always get his last name wrong—it must be...William Deresiewicz: No, that was good. You got it.Andrew Keen: Probably because I'm anti-semitic. He has a new piece out called "Post-Election" which addresses much of the rottenness of the American progressive establishment in 2025. Bill, congratulations on the piece.William Deresiewicz: Thank you.Andrew Keen: Have you had a chance to look at this Tapper book or have you read about Original Sin?William Deresiewicz: Yeah, I read that piece. I read the piece that's on the screen and I've heard some people talking about it. And I mean, as you said, it's not just his inner circle. I don't want to blame Tapper. Tapper did the work. But one immediate reaction to the debate debacle was, where have the journalists been? For example, just to unfairly call one person out, but they're just so full of themselves, the New Yorker dripping with self-congratulations, especially in its centennial year, its boundless appetite for self-celebration—to quote something one of my students once said about Yale—they've got a guy named Evan Osnos, who's one of their regulars on their political...Andrew Keen: Yeah, and he's been on the show, Evan, and in fact, I rather like his, I was going to say his husband, his father, Peter Osnos, who's a very heavy-hitting ex-publisher. But anyway, go on. And Evan's quite a nice guy, personally.William Deresiewicz: I'm sure he's a nice guy, but the fact is he's not only a New Yorker journalist, but he wrote a book about Biden, which means that he's presumably theoretically well-sourced within Biden world. He didn't say anything. I mean, did he not know or did he know?Andrew Keen: Yeah, I agree. I mean you just don't want to ask, right? You don't know. But you're a journalist, so you're supposed to know. You're supposed to ask. So I'm sure you're right on Osnos. I mean, he was on the show, but all journalists are progressives, or at least all the journalists at the Times and the New Yorker and the Atlantic. And there seemed to be, as Jake Tapper is suggesting in this new book, and he was part of the cover-up, there seemed to be a cover-up on the part of the entire professional American journalist establishment, high-end establishment, to ignore the fact that the guy running for president or the president himself clearly had no idea of what was going on around him. It's just astonishing, isn't it? I mean, hindsight's always easy, of course, 2020 in retrospect, but it was obvious at the time. I made it clear whenever I spoke about Biden, that here was a guy clearly way out of his depth, that he shouldn't have been president, maybe shouldn't have been president in the first place, but whatever you think about his ideas, he clearly was way beyond his shelf date, a year or two into the presidency.William Deresiewicz: Yeah, but here's the thing, and it's one of the things I say in the post-election piece, but I'm certainly not the only person to say this. There was an at least tacit cover-up of Biden, of his condition, but the whole thing was a cover-up, meaning every major issue that the 2024 election was about—crime, at the border, woke excess, affordability. The whole strategy of not just the Democrats, but this media establishment that's aligned with them is to just pretend that it wasn't happening, to explain it away. And we can also throw in pandemic policy, right? Which people were still thinking about and all the missteps in pandemic policy. The strategy was effectively a cover-up. We're not gonna talk about it, or we're gonna gaslight you, or we're gonna make excuses. So is it a surprise that people don't trust these establishment institutions anymore? I mean, I don't trust them anymore and I want to trust them.Andrew Keen: Were there journalists? I mean, there were a handful of journalists telling the truth about Biden. Progressives, people on the left rather than conservatives.William Deresiewicz: Ezra Klein started to talk about it, I remember that. So yes, there were a handful, but it wasn't enough. And you know, I don't say this to take away from Ezra Klein what I just gave him with my right hand, take away with my left, but he was also the guy, as soon as the Kamala succession was effected, who was talking about how Kamala in recent months has been going from strength to strength and hasn't put a foot wrong and isn't she fantastic. So all credit to him for telling the truth about Biden, but it seems to me that he immediately pivoted to—I mean, I'm sure he thought he was telling the truth about Harris, but I didn't believe that for one second.Andrew Keen: Well, meanwhile, the lies about Harris or the mythology of Harris, the false—I mean, all mythology, I guess, is false—about Harris building again. Headline in Newsweek that Harris would beat Donald Trump if an election was held again. I mean I would probably beat—I would beat Trump if an election was held again, I can't even run for president. So anyone could beat Trump, given the situation. David Plouffe suggested that—I think he's quoted in the Tapper book—that Biden totally fucked us, but it suggests that somehow Harris was a coherent progressive candidate, which she wasn't.William Deresiewicz: She wasn't. First of all, I hadn't seen this poll that she would beat Trump. I mean, it's a meaningless poll, because...Andrew Keen: You could beat him, Bill, and no one can even pronounce your last name.William Deresiewicz: Nobody could say what would actually happen if there were a real election. It's easy enough to have a hypothetical poll. People often look much better in these kinds of hypothetical polls where there's no actual election than they do when it's time for an election. I mean, I think everyone except maybe David Plouffe understands that Harris should never have been a candidate—not just after Biden dropped out way too late, but ever, right? I mean the real problem with Biden running again is that he essentially saddled us with Harris. Instead of having a real primary campaign where we could have at least entertained the possibility of some competent people—you know, there are lots of governors. I mean, I'm a little, and maybe we'll get to this, I'm little skeptical that any normal democratic politician is going to end up looking good. But at least we do have a whole bunch of what seem to be competent governors, people with executive experience. And we never had a chance to entertain any of those people because this democratic establishment just keeps telling us who we're going to vote for. I mean, it's now three elections in a row—they forced Hillary on us, and then Biden. I'm not going to say they forced Biden on us although elements of it did. It probably was a good thing because he won and he may have been the only one who could have won. And then Harris—it's like reductio ad absurdum. These candidates they keep handing us keep getting worse and worse.Andrew Keen: But it's more than being worse. I mean, whatever one can say about Harris, she couldn't explain why she wanted to be president, which seems to me a disqualifier if you're running for president. The point, the broader point, which I think you bring out very well in the piece you write, and you and I are very much on the same page here, so I'm not going to criticize you in your post-election—William Deresiewicz: You can criticize me, Andrew, I love—Andrew Keen: I know I can criticize you, and I will, but not in this particular area—is that these people are the establishment. They're protecting a globalized world, they're the coast. I mean, in some ways, certainly the Bannonite analysis is right, and it's not surprising that they're borrowing from Lenin and the left is borrowing from Edmund Burke.William Deresiewicz: Yeah, I mean I think, and I think this is the real problem. I mean, part of what I say in the piece is that it just seems, maybe this is too organicist, but there just seems to be an exhaustion that the liberal impulse that started, you know, around the time I was born in 1964, and I cite the Dylan movie just because it's a picture of that time where you get a sense of the energy on the left, the dawning of all this exciting—Andrew Keen: You know that movie—and we've done a show on that movie—itself was critical I guess in a way of Dylan for not being political.William Deresiewicz: Well, but even leaving that aside, just the reminder you get of what that time felt like. That seems in the movie relatively accurate, that this new youth culture, the rights revolution, the counterculture, a new kind of impulse of liberalism and progressivism that was very powerful and strong and carried us through the 60s and 70s and then became the establishment and has just become completely exhausted now. So I just feel like it's just gotten to the end of its possibility. Gotten to the end of its life cycle, but also in a less sort of mystical way. And I think this is a structural problem that the Democrats have not been able to address for a long time, and I don't see how they're going to address it. The party is now the party, as you just said, of the establishment, uneasily wedded to a mainly non-white sort of working class, lower class, maybe somewhat middle class. So it's sort of this kind of hybrid beast, the two halves of which don't really fit together. The educated upper middle class, the professional managerial class that you and I are part of, and then sort of the average Black Latino female, white female voter who doesn't share the interests of that class. So what are you gonna do about that? How's that gonna work?Andrew Keen: And the thing that you've always given a lot of thought to, and it certainly comes out in this piece, is the intolerance of the Democratic Party. But it's an intolerance—it's not a sort of, and I don't like this word, it's not the fascist intolerance of the MAGA movement or of Trump. It's a repressive intolerance, it's this idea that we're always right and if you disagree with us, then there must be something wrong with you.William Deresiewicz: Yeah, right. It's this, at this point, completely unearned sense of moral superiority and intellectual superiority, which are not really very clearly distinguished in their mind, I think. And you know, they just reek of it and people hate it and it's understandable that they hate it. I mean, it's Hillary in a word. It's Hillary in a word and again, I'm wary of treading on this kind of ground, but I do think there's an element of—I mean, obviously Trump and his whole camp is very masculinist in a very repulsive way, but there is also a way to be maternalist in a repulsive way. It's this kind of maternal control. I think of it as the sushi mom voice where we're gonna explain to you in a calm way why you should listen to us and why we're going to control every move you make. And it's this fear—I mean what my piece is really about is this sort of quasi-Nietzschean argument for energy and vitality that's lacking on the left. And I think it's lacking because the left fears it. It fears sort of the chaos of the life force. So it just wants to shackle it in all of these rules and bureaucracy and speech codes and consent codes. It just feels lifeless. And I think everybody feels that.Andrew Keen: Yeah, and it's the inability to imagine you can be wrong. It's the moral greediness of some people, at least, who think of themselves on the left. Some people might be listening to this, thinking it's just these two old white guys who think themselves as progressives but are actually really conservative. And all this idea of nature is itself chilling, that it's a kind of anti-feminism.William Deresiewicz: Well, that's b******t. I mean, let me have a chance to respond. I mean I plead guilty to being an old white man—Andrew Keen: I mean you can't argue with that one.William Deresiewicz: I'm not arguing with it. But the whole point rests on this notion of positionality, like I'm an older white man, therefore I think this or I believe that, which I think is b******t to begin with because, you know, down the street there's another older white guy who believes the exact opposite of me, so what's the argument here? But leaving that aside, and whether I am or am not a progressive—okay, my ideal politician is Bernie Sanders, so I'll just leave it at that. The point is, I mean, one point is that feminism hasn't always been like this. Second wave feminism that started in the late sixties, when I was a little kid—there was a censorious aspect to it, but there was also this tremendous vitality. I mean I think of somebody like Andrea Dworkin—this is like, "f**k you" feminism. This is like, "I'm not only not gonna shave my legs, I'm gonna shave my armpits and I don't give a s**t what you think." And then the next generation when I was a young man was the Mary Gates, Camille Paglia, sex-positive power feminism which also had a different kind of vitality. So I don't think feminism has to be the feminism of the women's studies departments and of Hillary Clinton with "you can't say this" and "if you want to have sex with me you have to follow these 10 rules." I don't think anybody likes that.Andrew Keen: The deplorables!William Deresiewicz: Yes, yes, yes. Like I said, I don't just think that the enemies don't like it, and I don't really care what they think. I think the people on our side don't like it. Nobody is having fun on our side. It's boring. No one's having sex from what they tell me. The young—it just feels dead. And I think when there's no vitality, you also have no creative vitality. And I think the intellectual cul-de-sac that the left seems to be stuck in, where there are no new ideas, is related to that.Andrew Keen: Yeah, and I think the more I think about it, I think you're right, it's a generational war. All the action seems to be coming from old people, whether it's the Pelosis and the Bidens, or it's people like Richard Reeves making a fortune off books about worrying about young men or Jonathan Haidt writing about the anxious generation. Where are, to quote David Bowie, the young Americans? Why aren't they—I mean, Bill, you're in a way guilty of this. You made your name with your book, Excellent Sheep about the miseducation...William Deresiewicz: Yeah, so what am I guilty of exactly?Andrew Keen: I'm not saying you're all, but aren't you and Reeves and Haidt, you're all involved in this weird kind of generational war.William Deresiewicz: OK, let's pump the brakes here for a second. Where the young people are—I mean, obviously most people, even young people today, still vote for Democrats. But the young who seem to be exploring new things and having energy and excitement are on the right. And there was a piece—I'm gonna forget the name of the piece and the author—Daniel Oppenheimer had her on the podcast. I think it appeared in The Point. Young woman. Fairly recent college graduate, went to a convention of young republicans, I don't know what they call themselves, and also to democrats or liberals in quick succession and wrote a really good piece about it. I don't think she had ever written anything before or published anything before, but it got a lot of attention because she talked about the youthful vitality at this conservative gathering. And then she goes to the liberals and they're all gray-haired men like us. The one person who had anything interesting to say was Francis Fukuyama, who's in his 80s. She's making the point—this is the point—it's not a generational war, because there are young people on the right side of the spectrum who are doing interesting things. I mean, I don't like what they're doing, because I'm not a rightist, but they're interesting, they're different, they're new, there's excitement there, there's creativity there.Andrew Keen: But could one argue, Bill, that all these labels are meaningless and that whatever they're doing—I'm sure they're having more sex than young progressives, they're having more fun, they're able to make jokes, they are able, for better or worse, to change the system. Does it really matter whether they claim to be MAGA people or leftists? They're the ones who are driving change in the country.William Deresiewicz: Yes, they're the ones who are driving change in the country. The counter-cultural energy that was on the left in the sixties and seventies is now on the right. And it does matter because they are operating in the political sphere, have an effect in the political sphere, and they're unmistakably on the right. I mean, there are all these new weird species on the right—the trads and the neo-pagans and the alt-right and very sort of anti-capitalist conservatives or at least anti-corporate conservatives and all kinds of things that you would never have imagined five years ago. And again, it's not that I like these things. It's that they're new, there's ferment there. So stuff is coming out that is going to drive, is already driving the culture and therefore the politics forward. And as somebody who, yes, is progressive, it is endlessly frustrating to me that we have lost this kind of initiative, momentum, energy, creativity, to what used to be the stodgy old right. Now we're the stodgy old left.Andrew Keen: What do you want to go back to? I mean you brought up Dylan earlier. Do you just want to resurrect...William Deresiewicz: No, I don't.Andrew Keen: You know another one who comes to mind is another sort of bundle of contradictions, Bruce Springsteen. He recently talked about the corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous nature of Trump. I mean Springsteen's a billionaire. He even acknowledged that he mythologized his own working-class status. He's never spent more than an hour in a factory. He's never had a job. So aren't all the pigeons coming back to roost here? The fraud of men like Springsteen are merely being exposed and young people recognize it.William Deresiewicz: Well, I don't know about Springsteen in particular...Andrew Keen: Well, he's a big deal.William Deresiewicz: No, I know he's a big deal, and I love Springsteen. I listened to him on repeat when I was young, and I actually didn't know that he'd never worked in a factory, and I quite frankly don't care because he's an artist, and he made great art out of those experiences, whether they were his or not. But to address the real issue here, he is an old guy. It sounds like he's just—I mean, I'm sure he's sincere about it and I would agree with him about Trump. But to have people like Springsteen or Robert De Niro or George Clooney...Andrew Keen: Here it is.William Deresiewicz: Okay, yes, it's all to the point that these are old guys. So you asked me, do I want to go back? The whole point is I don't want to go back. I want to go forward. I'm not going to be the one to bring us forward because I'm older. And also, I don't think I was ever that kind of creative spirit, but I want to know why there isn't sort of youthful creativity given the fact that most young people do still vote for Democrats, but there's no youthful creativity on the left. Is it just that the—I want to be surprised is the point. I'm not calling for X, Y, or Z. I'm saying astonish me, right? Like Diaghilev said to Cocteau. Astonish me the way you did in the 60s and 70s. Show me something new. And I worry that it simply isn't possible on the left now, precisely because it's so locked down in this kind of establishment, censorious mode that there's no room for a new idea to come from anywhere.Andrew Keen: As it happens, you published this essay in Salmagundi—and that predates, if not even be pre-counterculture. How many years old is it? I think it started in '64. Yeah, so alongside your piece is an interesting piece from Adam Phillips about influence and anxiety. And he quotes Montaigne from "On Experience": "There is always room for a successor, even for ourselves, and a different way to proceed." Is the problem, Bill, that we haven't, we're not willing to leave the stage? I mean, Nancy Pelosi is a good example of this. Biden's a good example. In this Salmagundi piece, there's an essay from Martin Jay, who's 81 years old. I was a grad student in Berkeley in the 80s. Even at that point, he seemed old. Why are these people not able to leave the stage?William Deresiewicz: I am not going to necessarily sign on to that argument, and not just because I'm getting older. Biden...Andrew Keen: How old are you, by the way?William Deresiewicz: I'm 61. So you mentioned Pelosi. I would have been happy for Pelosi to remain in her position for as long as she wanted, because she was effective. It's not about how old you are. Although it can be, obviously as you get older you can become less effective like Joe Biden. I think there's room for the old and the young together if the old are saying valuable things and if the young are saying valuable things. It's not like there's a shortage of young voices on the left now. They're just not interesting voices. I mean, the one that comes immediately to mind that I'm more interested in is Ritchie Torres, who's this congressman who's a genuinely working-class Black congressman from the Bronx, unlike AOC, who grew up the daughter of an architect in Northern Westchester and went to a fancy private university, Boston University. So Ritchie Torres is not a doctrinaire leftist Democrat. And he seems to speak from a real self. Like he isn't just talking about boilerplate. I just feel like there isn't a lot of room for the Ritchie Torres. I think the system that produces democratic candidates militates against people like Ritchie Torres. And that's what I am talking about.Andrew Keen: In the essay, you write about Andy Mills, who was one of the pioneers of the New York Times podcast. He got thrown out of The New York Times for various offenses. It's one of the problems with the left—they've, rather like the Stalinists in the 1930s, purged all the energy out of themselves. Anyone of any originality has been thrown out for one reason or another.William Deresiewicz: Well, because it's always the same reason, because they violate the code. I mean, yes, this is one of the main problems. And to go back to where we started with the journalists, it seems like the rationale for the cover-up, all the cover-ups was, "we can't say anything bad about our side. We can't point out any of the flaws because that's going to help the bad guys." So if anybody breaks ranks, we're going to cancel them. We're going to purge them. I mean, any idiot understands that that's a very short-term strategy. You need the possibility of self-criticism and self-difference. I mean that's the thing—you asked me about old people leaving the stage, but the quotation from Montaigne said, "there's always room for a successor, even ourselves." So this is about the possibility of continuous self-reinvention. Whatever you want to say about Dylan, some people like him, some don't, he's done that. Bowie's done that. This was sort of our idea, like you're constantly reinventing yourself, but this is what we don't have.Andrew Keen: Yeah, actually, I read the quote the wrong way, that we need to reinvent ourselves. Bowie is a very good example if one acknowledges, and Dylan of course, one's own fundamental plasticity. And that's another problem with the progressive movement—they don't think of the human condition as a plastic one.William Deresiewicz: That's interesting. I mean, in one respect, I think they think of it as too plastic, right? This is sort of the blank slate fallacy that we can make—there's no such thing as human nature and we can reshape it as we wish. But at the same time, they've created a situation, and this really is what Excellent Sheep is about, where they're turning out the same human product over and over.Andrew Keen: But in that sense, then, the excellent sheep you write about at Yale, they've all ended up now as neo-liberal, neo-conservative, so they're just rebelling...William Deresiewicz: No, they haven't. No, they are the backbone of this soggy liberal progressive establishment. A lot of them are. I mean, why is, you know, even Wall Street and Silicon Valley sort of by preference liberal? It's because they're full of these kinds of elite college graduates who have been trained to be liberal.Andrew Keen: So what are we to make of the Musk-Thiel, particularly the Musk phenomenon? I mean, certainly Thiel, very much influenced by Rand, who herself, of course, was about as deeply Nietzschean as you can get. Why isn't Thiel and Musk just a model of the virility, the vitality of the early 21st century? You might not like what they say, but they're full of vitality.William Deresiewicz: It's interesting, there's a place in my piece where I say that the liberal can't accept the idea that a bad person can do great things. And one of my examples was Elon Musk. And the other one—Andrew Keen: Zuckerberg.William Deresiewicz: But Musk is not in the piece, because I wrote the piece before the inauguration and they asked me to change it because of what Musk was doing. And even I was beginning to get a little queasy just because the association with Musk is now different. It's now DOGE. But Musk, who I've always hated, I've never liked the guy, even when liberals loved him for making electric cars. He is an example, at least the pre-DOGE Musk, of a horrible human being with incredible vitality who's done great things, whether you like it or not. And I want—I mean, this is the energy that I want to harness for our team.Andrew Keen: I actually mostly agreed with your piece, but I didn't agree with that because I think most progressives believe that actually, the Zuckerbergs and the Musks, by doing, by being so successful, by becoming multi-billionaires, are morally a bit dodgy. I mean, I don't know where you get that.William Deresiewicz: That's exactly the point. But I think what they do is when they don't like somebody, they just negate the idea that they're great. "Well, he's just not really doing anything that great." You disagree.Andrew Keen: So what about ideas, Bill? Where is there room to rebuild the left? I take your points, and I don't think many people would actually disagree with you. Where does the left, if there's such a term anymore, need to go out on a limb, break some eggs, offend some people, but nonetheless rebuild itself? It's not going back to Bernie Sanders and some sort of nostalgic New Deal.William Deresiewicz: No, no, I agree. So this is, this may be unsatisfying, but this is what I'm saying. If there were specific new ideas that I thought the left should embrace, I would have said so. What I'm seeing is the left needs, to begin with, to create the conditions from which new ideas can come. So I mean, we've been talking about a lot of it. The censoriousness needs to go.I would also say—actually, I talk about this also—you know, maybe you would consider yourself part of, I don't know. There's this whole sort of heterodox realm of people who did dare to violate the progressive pieties and say, "maybe the pandemic response isn't going so well; maybe the Black Lives Matter protests did have a lot of violence"—maybe all the things, right? And they were all driven out from 2020 and so forth. A lot of them were people who started on the left and would even still describe themselves as liberal, would never vote for a Republican. So these people are out there. They're just, they don't have a voice within the Democratic camp because the orthodoxy continues to be enforced.So that's what I'm saying. You've got to start with the structural conditions. And one of them may be that we need to get—I don't even know that these institutions can reform themselves, whether it's the Times or the New Yorker or the Ivy League. And it may be that we need to build new institutions, which is also something that's happening. I mean, it's something that's happening in the realm of publishing and journalism on Substack. But again, they're still marginalized because that liberal establishment does not—it's not that old people don't wanna give up power, it's that the established people don't want to give up the power. I mean Harris is, you know, she's like my age. So the establishment as embodied by the Times, the New Yorker, the Ivy League, foundations, the think tanks, the Democratic Party establishment—they don't want to move aside. But it's so obviously clear at this point that they are not the solution. They're not the solutions.Andrew Keen: What about the so-called resistance? I mean, a lot of people were deeply disappointed by the response of law firms, maybe even universities, the democratic party as we noted is pretty much irrelevant. Is it possible for the left to rebuild itself by a kind of self-sacrifice, by lawyers who say "I don't care what you think of me, I'm simply against you" and to work together, or university presidents who will take massive pay cuts and take on MAGA/Trump world?William Deresiewicz: Yeah, I mean, I don't know if this is going to be the solution to the left rebuilding itself, but I think it has to happen, not just because it has to happen for policy reasons, but I mean you need to start by finding your courage again. I'm not going to say your testicles because that's gendered, but you need to start—I mean the law firms, maybe that's a little, people have said, well, it's different because they're in a competitive business with each other, but why did the university—I mean I'm a Columbia alumnus. I could not believe that Columbia immediately caved.It occurs to me as we're talking that these are people, university presidents who have learned cowardice. This is how they got to be where they got and how they keep their jobs. They've learned to yield in the face of the demands of students, the demands of alumni, the demands of donors, maybe the demands of faculty. They don't know how to be courageous anymore. And as much as I have lots of reasons, including personal ones, to hate Harvard University, good for them. Somebody finally stood up, and I was really glad to see that. So yeah, I think this would be one good way to start.Andrew Keen: Courage, in other words, is the beginning.William Deresiewicz: Courage is the beginning.Andrew Keen: But not a courage that takes itself too seriously.William Deresiewicz: I mean, you know, sure. I mean I don't really care how seriously—not the self-referential courage. Real courage, which means you're really risking losing something. That's what it means.Andrew Keen: And how can you and I then manifest this courage?William Deresiewicz: You know, you made me listen to Jocelyn Benson.Andrew Keen: Oh, yeah, I forgot and I actually I have to admit I saw that on the email and then I forgot who Jocelyn Benson is, which is probably reflects the fact that she didn't say very much.William Deresiewicz: For those of you who don't know what we're talking about, she's the Secretary of State of Michigan. She's running for governor.Andrew Keen: Oh yeah, and she was absolutely diabolical. She was on the show, I thought.William Deresiewicz: She wrote a book called Purposeful Warrior, and the whole interview was just this salad of cliches. Purpose, warrior, grit, authenticity. And part of, I mentioned her partly because she talked about courage in a way that was complete nonsense.Andrew Keen: Real courage, yeah, real courage. I remember her now. Yeah, yeah.William Deresiewicz: Yeah, she got made into a martyr because she got threatened after the 2020 election.Andrew Keen: Well, lots to think about, Bill. Very good conversation, as always. I think we need to get rid of old white men like you and I, but what do I know?William Deresiewicz: I mean, I am going to keep a death grip on my position, which is no good whatsoever.Andrew Keen: As I half-joked, Bill, maybe you should have called the piece "Post-Erection." If you can't get an erection, then you certainly shouldn't be in public office. That would have meant that Joe Biden would have had to have retired immediately.William Deresiewicz: I'm looking forward to seeing the test you devise to determine whether people meet your criterion.Andrew Keen: Yeah, maybe it will be a public one. Bread and circuses, bread and elections. We shall see, Bill, I'm not even going to do your last name because I got it right once. I'm never going to say it again. Bill, congratulations on the piece "Post-Election," not "Post-Erection," and we will talk again. This story is going to run and run. We will talk again in the not too distant future. Thank you so much.William Deresiewicz: That's good.Keen On America 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

“That he not busy being born is busy dying”, Dylan noted in “It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)”, his grim 1965 masterpiece about reinvention. Sixty years later, at a time when “everything is technology”, these words have particular resonance in Silicon Valley. As That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare and I discuss in our weekly roundup of tech news, every Big Tech firm - from OpenAI and Airbnb to YouTube and Netflix — is in the perpetual business of radical reinvention. It's what Keith identifies as “the truth” of our technological age. Surviving this mayhem, then, requires not just perpetual birth, but also a lot of conscious dying. 5 takeaways* Keith Teare argues that "truth" can only meaningfully apply to facts and past events, not to opinions or future possibilities. He suggests that what becomes "true" is created after the fact through human actions and choices.* Our discussion explores how technological change is accelerating, with Paki McCormick's article "Everything is Technology" framing technology broadly as "the process of human ingenuity transforming conditions and creating change" rather than just gadgets.* We discuss AI's impact on education, with Keith sharing an example of a professor who allegedly resigned in real-time after discovering students had created a website with AI-generated lecture summaries and essay responses, highlighting the disruption to traditional academic models.* Our conversation covers how established companies like Airbnb and Netflix are evolving their business models, with Netflix adding an ad-supported tier alongside its subscription service and Airbnb expanding from accommodations to curated experiences.* We discuss economic differences between regions, referencing Yascha Mounk's article on the "great divergence" between the US and Europe in terms of GDP per capita, noting that the US has roughly three times the GDP per capita of Europe (approximately $85,000 versus $30,000). 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

Is spying an un-American activity? Not according to Jeffrey Rogg, whose new book, The Spy and the State, tells the story of American intelligence from the Revolutionary War to the present day. Rogg explores America's ambivalent relationship with espionage, arguing that spying is often viewed as "un-American" and yet necessary. he discusses key figures in American intelligence history such as OSS founder “Wild” Bill Donovan as well as shameful episodes like the botched Bay of Pigs invasion. Rogg highlights how these agencies reflect American society's strengths and weaknesses, and warns against over-politicizing intelligence. Throughout history, he emphasizes, Americans have gotten the intelligence community they've "bargained for." Which is certainly one way of thinking about SignalGate and the current state of American intelligence. 5 take-aways * Americans have historically viewed spying as a "necessary evil" that contradicts core American values of transparency and forthrightness, creating an inherent tension in the intelligence community.* Intelligence agencies often reflect the broader society - during crises, they tend to surveil minority groups, showing how America's fears manifest in intelligence operations.* Major intelligence failures (like the Bay of Pigs) and domestic surveillance represent dark chapters that have eroded public trust in intelligence institutions.* Political polarization of intelligence agencies is dangerous - when appointed leaders and career officials are at odds, it creates a toxic environment for effective intelligence work.* The intelligence community struggles to keep pace with technological advances, creating challenges for modern operations (as seen in the Signal Crisis and COVID work-from-home limitations).* Jeffrey P. Rogg is Senior Research Fellow at the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida. He previously held academic positions at the Joint Special Operations University at US Special Operations Command, the Department of Intelligence and Security Studies at The Citadel, and the National Security Affairs Department at the US Naval War College. He has a BA from Swarthmore College, a JD from Villanova University, an MA in Security Studies from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and a PhD in history from The Ohio State University. He serves on the boards of the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence and the Society for Intelligence History. He lives in Tampa, Florida.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

Walmart just announced it would be raising prices because of tariffs. So is that a good argument against Trump's autarkic trade policies? Perhaps. But, as the Professor of Innovation at the University of Cambridge, Tim Minshall, points out, the global system of manufacturing is a complex thing. He argues that while countries shouldn't attempt complete manufacturing self-sufficiency, maintaining some domestic capability is crucial for innovation and resilience. Minshall, whose new book How Things Are Made, explores the hidden world of manufacturing, explains how the industrial manufacturing and knowledge economies are deeply interconnected, and how relocating production isn't simple due to complex supplier networks and specialized skills. He addresses challenges facing manufacturing powers like Germany and examines China's rising dominance. Minshall concludes that manufacturing must become both better (less environmentally harmful) and focused on creating better products, while consumers must recognize both their role and responsibility in this complex system. Five takeaways * Manufacturing is essential for national "sovereign capability" but countries don't need to make everything themselves - a balanced approach is better than complete self-sufficiency or total offshoring.* Knowledge economies and manufacturing are interdependent - research and development require tight coupling with production, and letting manufacturing disappear overseas can damage innovation capabilities.* Manufacturing supply chains are incredibly complex - components for products like iPhones travel "around six times around the world" and factories can't simply be relocated overnight as skills, suppliers and infrastructure take years to develop.* Modern manufacturing faces two major problems: fragility (as demonstrated during COVID) and environmental damage from production and logistics.* We need both "better manufacturing" (less harmful processes) and "manufacturing better things" (like clean energy systems), while recognizing our role as consumers in driving manufacturing choices.Tim Minshall is the inaugural Dr John C. Taylor Professor of Innovation at the University of Cambridge, the head of the Engineering Department's Institute for Manufacturing and a fellow of Churchill College. His research, teaching and outreach are focused on the links between manufacturing and innovation. He lives in Cambridge with his scientist wife, Nicola.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

Something doesn't smell right about generative AI. Earlier this week, we had a featuring a former Google researcher who described large language models (LLMs) as a “con”. Then, of course, there's OpenAI CEO Sam Altman who critics both inside and outside OpenAI, see as a little more than a persuasive conman. Scam or not, the biggest technical problem with LLMs, according to Peter Vos, who invented the term Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), is that it lacks memory and thus are inherently incapable of incremental learning. Voss, the current CEO of Aigo.ai, argues that LLMs therefore represent a technological “dead end” for AI. The industry, Voss argues, has gone “fundamentally wrong” with generative AI. It's a classic economic mania, he says. And, as with all bubbles in the past - like Dutch tulips, internet DotComs or Japanese real-estate - it will eventually burst with devastating consequences. Peter Voss is a pioneer in AI who coined the term 'AGI' (Artificial General Intelligence) in 2001. As an engineer, scientist, inventor, and serial entrepreneur, he developed a comprehensive ERP package, growing his company from zero to a 400-person IPO in seven years. For the past 20 years, he has studied intelligence and AI, leading to the creation of the Aigo engine, a proto-AGI natural language intelligence that is revolutionizing call centers and advancing towards human-level intelligence.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

It's probably not news that today's Supreme Court runs on crazy conservative grudges and even crazier patrimonial fringe theories. But according to Leah Litman, Crooked Media podcaster and author of Lawless, the Supreme Court in Trump's America is most defined by what she memorably identifies as “bad vibes” (ie: feelings and anxieties). Litman argues these vibes reflect Republican anxieties about America's increasing cultural diversity and long term shift to a more progressive consensus. Litman characterizes the Roberts' Supreme Court as implementing a "vindictive patriarchy" that seeks to return women to traditional roles. She criticizes Court decisions on voting rights, presidential immunity, and reproductive freedom as serving the minority interests of wealthy white men. The Court's bad vibes, Litman says, extend to America's current constitutional crisis, particularly regarding Trump's executive overreach and the legal profession's pathetic response to this authoritarian power grab. five key takeaways * Litman argues that today's Supreme Court decisions are based on "vibes" (feelings and anxieties) rather than objective legal principles, leading her to characterize it as "lawless."* She positions the Court as part of a longer Republican project to use judicial power to implement conservative social policies, particularly regarding women's roles and reproductive rights.* Litman describes the current situation as a "vindictive patriarchy," where conservative men feel entitled to women's time and companionship, evidenced by backlash against women's independence.* Litman, who teaches law at Michigan, expresses disappointment in how large law firms have capitulated to Trump's administration instead of engaging in collective resistance to protect the rule of law.* Litman believes America is experiencing a constitutional crisis, with Congress failing to check executive power and the courts inconsistently resisting presidential overreach, particularly regarding deportations and executive actions.Leah Litman is a professor of law at the University of Michigan and a former Supreme Court clerk. In addition to cohosting Strict Scrutiny, she writes frequently about the Court for media outlets including The Washington Post, Slate, and The Atlantic, among others, and has appeared as a commentator on NPR and MSNBC, in addition to other venues. She has received the Ruth Bader Ginsburg award for her “scholarly excellence” from the American Constitution Society and published in top law reviews. Follow her on X @LeahLitman and Instagram @ProfLeahLitman.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

Rather than apple pie, addiction might be defining quality of 21st century American life. That, at least, is the view of Mattea Kramer, author of Untended, a contemporary novel about addiction in small town America. She argues that individualistic American capitalism has caused an plague of addiction - in everything from drugs and alcohol to technology and egoism. Kramer sees community as the only real antidote to this epidemic. She connects addiction to broader social issues like economic exploitation and discusses how small-town America has been ravaged by this epidemic and by what she calls “late-stage capitalism”. So how to address this epidemic of addiction in contemporary America? Kramer has no simple fix, but emphasizes the importance of recognizing the humanity in those struggling with addiction and suggests that moral agency and human connection offer hope amid these challenges. Five Key Takeaways * American individualism and capitalism create fertile ground for addiction by fostering isolation and disconnection, leading people to seek substances or behaviors that fill this void.* Addiction extends beyond substances to include work, devices, shopping, and even the pursuit of feeling "special and successful," which Kramer identifies as her family's particular "quintessentially American" addiction.* The opioid crisis has created intergenerational trauma as children are left "untended" when parents struggle with addiction, perpetuating cycles of harm.* Stigma surrounding addiction makes recovery more difficult, especially for parents who face amplified shame that prevents them from seeking help.* Kramer believes reconnecting with our shared humanity and exercising moral agency through compassion offer the best path forward amid societal challenges, rather than focusing solely on individual willpower.Mattea Kramer is an American writer. She writes about drugs, power and powerlessness, and the voice in your head. She's been published in The Guardian, The Nation, Mother Jones, Guernica, and The Washington Post, and she has appeared on MSNBC and on radio stations across the country. Her first novel The Untended has just been published.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

Is AI a big scam? In their co-authored new book, The AI Con, Emily Bender and Alex Hanna take aim at what they call big tech “hype”. They argue that large language models from OpenAI or Anthropic are merely what Bender dubs "stochastic parrots" that produce text without the human understanding nor the revolutionary technology that these companies claim. Both Bender, a professor of linguistics, and Hanna, a former AI researcher at Google, challenge the notion that AI will replace human workers, suggesting instead that these algorithms produce "mid" or "janky" content lacking human insight. They accuse tech companies of hyping fear of missing out (FOMO) to drive adoption. Instead of centralized AI controlled by corporations, they advocate for community-controlled technology that empowers users rather than exploiting them. Five Takeaways (with a little help from Claude)* Large language models are "stochastic parrots" that produce text based on probability distributions from training data without actual understanding or communicative intent.* The AI "revolution" is primarily driven by marketing and hype rather than groundbreaking technological innovations, creating fear of missing out (FOMO) to drive adoption.* AI companies are positioning their products as "general purpose technologies" like electricity, but LLMs lack the reliability and functionality to justify this comparison.* Corporate AI is designed to replace human labor and centralize power, which the authors see as an inherently political project with concerning implications.* Bender and Hanna advocate for community-controlled technology development where people have agency over the tools they use, citing examples like Teheku Media's language technology for Maori communities.Dr. Emily M. Bender is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington where she is also the Faculty Director of the Computational Linguistics Master of Science program and affiliate faculty in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School. In 2023, she was included in the inaugural Time 100 list of the most influential people in AI. She is frequently consulted by policymakers, from municipal officials to the federal government to the United Nations, for insight into into how to understand so-called AI technologies.Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). A sociologist by training, her work centers on the data used in new computational technologies, and the ways in which these data exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality. She also works in the area of social movements, focusing on the dynamics of anti-racist campus protest in the US and Canada. She holds a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics and a BA in Sociology from Purdue University, and an MS and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Hanna is the co-author of The AI Con (Harper, 2025), a book about AI and the hype around it. With Emily M. Bender, she also runs the Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 series, playfully and wickedly tearing apart AI hype for a live audience online on Twitch and her podcast. She has published widely in top-tier venues across the social sciences, including the journals Mobilization, American Behavioral Scientist, and Big Data & Society, and top-tier computer science conferences such as CSCW, FAccT, and NeurIPS. Dr. Hanna serves as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies and sits on the advisory board for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group. She is also recipient of the Wisconsin Alumni Association's Forward Award, has been included on FastCompany's Queer 50 (2021, 2024) List and Business Insider's AI Power List, and has been featured in the Cal Academy of Sciences New Science exhibit, which highlights queer and trans scientists of color.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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 traditional notion of western civilization is premised on the legacy of ancient Greece and Rome. Other less Eurocentric historians, like the Silk Road author Peter Frankopan, point to the role of China in shaping classical Europe. But, in The Golden Road, the Scottish-Indian historian William Dalrymple, challenges this "Silk Road" narrative, arguing India was Rome's primary trading partner and spread its culture peacefully throughout Asia. Dalrymple, who has lived in India for the last 40 years, explains how ancient Indian mathematical innovations like the concept of zero and our number system radically transformed the world. In a far ranging conversation, the astonishingly erudite Dalrymple also discusses his meteoric career as a non-academic historian and podcaster, India's resurgence as a global power, and offers his take on the current tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Five Key Takeaways* Ancient India was a civilization equal to Greece, Egypt, and China, contributing pivotal mathematical innovations including zero, the numerical system we use today, and advanced astronomical calculations like determining the Earth's circumference and heliocentric universe model—all developed long before the West.* The popular "Silk Road" narrative is largely a modern myth created in the 1870s. In reality, Rome and India were major trading partners, not Rome and China, with extensive sea trade rather than overland routes.* India's historical global influence was achieved peacefully through "soft power" – spreading Buddhism, Hinduism, science, mathematics, and culture across Asia through merchants and monks rather than military conquest.* Despite being a British historian writing about a former British colony, Dalrymple has found remarkable success in India, becoming a bestselling author who has chosen to focus on writing accessible, well-researched histories rather than pursuing a traditional academic career.* The current India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir represents a dangerous flashpoint between nuclear powers that could escalate without diplomatic intervention, reflecting ongoing tensions that date back to 1947.William Dalrymple FRSL, FRGS, FRAS (born William Hamilton-Dalrymple on 20 March 1965) is a Scottish historian and writer, art historian and curator, as well as a prominent broadcaster and critic. His books have won numerous awards and prizes, including the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, the Hemingway, the Kapuściński and the Wolfson Prizes. He has been four times longlisted and once shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the annual Jaipur Literature Festival. 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

“Who's Cheating?” asks Keith Teare in his weekly summary of tech news. Keith is defending a Columbia University student who was punished for openly used AI in his classes. As Arthur C. Clark famously noted, advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and so its use is often viewed as cheating by the old regime. But, as Keith and I agree, the $80,000 annual fees that universities are now charging for an undergraduate education could also be seen as a particularly egregious form of cheating. Especially since that a similar education could mostly be achieved by a $20 monthly OpenAI account. Five Takeaways* AI usage in education is causing institutional resistance, with a Columbia student's expulsion highlighting the tension between traditional learning and new technology adoption.* Universities face an existential crisis as AI makes knowledge more accessible, potentially undermining their expensive business model of gatekeeping talent.* Google's search dominance is threatened as Apple explores AI alternatives and companies like Anthropic develop competitive search APIs.* OpenAI is navigating a complex transition, maintaining non-profit governance while uncapping profit potential, signaling Altman's focus on commercial applications.* The future of AI lies in the application layer, with OpenAI's hiring of Instacart's CEO for applications suggesting a strategy to own the entire AI stack from infrastructure to user interface.Keen On America 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 will like this argument. Jason Riley, the Wall Street Journal columnist and author of The Affirmative Action Myth, argues that affirmative action policies have been counterproductive for Black Americans. He contends that Black Americans were making faster economic and educational progress before affirmative action policies began in the late 1960s. Riley claims these policies primarily benefit upper-class Blacks while setting up many poorer students for failure by placing them in institutions where they struggle academically. He advocates for colorblind policies rather than racial preferences, arguing that historically Black colleges continue to effectively educate Black professionals, and that integration should not take precedence over educational outcomes. Five key takeaways* Riley argues that Black Americans were making faster economic and educational progress before affirmative action policies were implemented in the late 1960s, with gaps narrowing between Black and white Americans.* He claims affirmative action primarily benefits upper-class Black Americans rather than addressing poverty, with the wealthiest 20% seeing gains while the poorest 20% fell behind.* Riley contends that racial preferences in college admissions set up many Black students for failure by placing them in institutions where they're academically mismatched, leading to higher dropout rates.* He emphasizes that historically Black colleges continue to produce disproportionate numbers of Black professionals, suggesting racial integration of classrooms shouldn't take precedence over educational outcomes.* Riley advocates for colorblind policies rather than racial preferences, arguing that such an approach would better promote Black upward mobility and reduce racial divisiveness.Jason Riley is an opinion columnist at The Wall Street Journal, where his column, Upward Mobility, has run since 2016. He is also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and provides television commentary for various news outlets. Mr. Riley, a 2018 Bradley Prize recipient, is the author of four books: “Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders” (2008); “Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed” (2014); “False Black Power?” (2017); and “Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell” (2021). Mr. Riley joined the paper in 1994 as a copy reader on the national news desk in New York. He moved to the editorial page in 1995, was named a senior editorial page writer in 2000, and became a member of the Editorial Board in 2005. He joined the Manhattan Institute in 2015. Born in Buffalo, New York, Mr. Riley earned a bachelor's degree in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has also worked for USA Today and the Buffalo News.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

As a direct descendant of Benjamin Franklin, the Chapman University economist Mark Skousen might be a bit biased. That said, Skousen makes an entertaining case in his new book, The Greatest American, for Franklin as being the most innovative and versatile of the Founding Fathers. Skousen acknowledges Franklin's contradictions: his transition from slave owner to abolitionist, his notoriety as a ladies' man and, above all, his moral philosophy of deploying his private wealth for the public good. What we are left with is the most human and least overtly political of all the Founding Fathers. Five Key Takeaways * Versatile Genius: Franklin excelled in numerous fields, with Skousen identifying 22 different careers including printing, science, diplomacy, and civic leadership, making him uniquely accomplished among American historical figures.* Ethical Capitalism: Franklin represents an ideal capitalist model who made his fortune by age 42, then dedicated the rest of his life to public service, establishing libraries, hospitals, and other civic institutions.* Personal Evolution: Franklin demonstrated willingness to change his views, most notably transitioning from slave owner to becoming the first president of Pennsylvania's abolitionist society.* Political Pragmatism: Franklin defied easy political categorization, valuing practical solutions over ideology and warning against concentrated power with his famous quote: "a republic, if you can keep it."* Complex Character: Despite his accomplishments, Franklin had notable flaws, including nepotism and his reputation as a "ladies' man," creating a complicated legacy that transcends simple hero worship.Mark Skousen holds the Doti-Spogli Chair of Free Enterprise at Chapman University in California. As an eighth-generation direct descendant of Benjamin Franklin, he has had a lifelong interest in the “grandfather” of our nation. Dr. Skousen's career has often followed that of his illustrious ancestor, as a publisher, author, financial advisor, teacher, father, public servant, and world traveler. In 2006, he and his wife, Jo Ann, compiled and edited The Compleated Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin, covering the remainder of his career, 1757–1790 (published by Regnery History).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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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

Much has been made of the hallucinatory qualities of OpenAI's ChatGPT product. But as the Wall Street Journal's resident authority on OpenAI, Keach Hagey notes, perhaps the most hallucinatory feature the $300 billion start-up co-founded by the deadly duo of Sam Altman and Elon Musk is its attempt to be simultaneously a for-profit and non-profit company. As Hagey notes, the double life of this double company reached a surreal climax this week when Altman announced that OpenAI was abandoning its promised for-profit conversion. So what, I asked Hagey, are the implications of this corporate volte-face for investors who have poured billions of real dollars into the non-profit in order to make a profit? Will they be Waiting For Godot to get their returns?As Hagey - whose excellent biography of Altman, The Optimist, is out in a couple of weeks - explains, this might be the story of the hubristic 2020's. She speaks of Altman's astonishingly (even for Silicon Valley) hubris in believing that he can get away with the alchemic conceit of inventing a multi trillion dollar for-profit non-profit company. Yes, you can be half-pregnant, Sam is promising us. But, as she warns, at some point this will be exposed as fantasy. The consequences might not exactly be another Enron or FTX, but it will have ramifications way beyond beyond Silicon Valley. What will happen, for example, if future investors aren't convinced by Altman's fantasy and OpenAI runs out of cash? Hagey suggests that the OpenAI story may ultimately become a political drama in which a MAGA President will be forced to bail out America's leading AI company. It's TikTok in reverse (imagine if Chinese investors try to acquire OpenAI). Rather than the conveniently devilish Elon Musk, my sense is that Sam Altman is auditioning to become the real Jay Gatsby of our roaring twenties. Last month, Keach Hagey told me that Altman's superpower is as a salesman. He can sell anything to anyone, she says. But selling a non-profit to for-profit venture capitalists might even be a bridge too far for Silicon Valley's most hallucinatory optimist. Five Key Takeaways * OpenAI has abandoned plans to convert from a nonprofit to a for-profit structure, with pressure coming from multiple sources including attorneys general of California and Delaware, and possibly influenced by Elon Musk's opposition.* This decision will likely make it more difficult for OpenAI to raise money, as investors typically want control over their investments. Despite this, Sam Altman claims SoftBank will still provide the second $30 billion chunk of funding that was previously contingent on the for-profit conversion.* The nonprofit structure creates inherent tensions within OpenAI's business model. As Hagey notes, "those contradictions are still there" after nearly destroying the company once before during Altman's brief firing.* OpenAI's leadership is trying to position this as a positive change, with plans to capitalize the nonprofit and launch new programs and initiatives. However, Hagey notes this is similar to what Altman did at Y Combinator, which eventually led to tensions there.* The decision is beneficial for competitors like XAI, Anthropic, and others with normal for-profit structures. Hagey suggests the most optimistic outcome would be OpenAI finding a way to IPO before "completely imploding," though how a nonprofit-controlled entity would do this remains unclear.Keach Hagey is a reporter at The Wall Street Journal's Media and Marketing Bureau in New York, where she focuses on the intersection of media and technology. Her stories often explore the relationships between tech platforms like Facebook and Google and the media. She was part of the team that broke the Facebook Files, a series that won a George Polk Award for Business Reporting, a Gerald Loeb Award for Beat Reporting and a Deadline Award for public service. Her investigation into the inner workings of Google's advertising-technology business won recognition from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (Sabew). Previously, she covered the television industry for the Journal, reporting on large media companies such as 21st Century Fox, Time Warner and Viacom. She led a team that won a Sabew award for coverage of the power struggle inside Viacom. She is the author of “The King of Content: Sumner Redstone's Battle for Viacom, CBS and Everlasting Control of His Media Empire,” published by HarperCollins. Before joining the Journal, Keach covered media for Politico, the National in Abu Dhabi, CBS News and the Village Voice. She has a bachelor's and a master's in English literature from Stanford University. She lives in Irvington, N.Y., with her husband, three daughters and dog.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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. Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It is May the 6th, a Tuesday, 2025. And the tech media is dominated today by OpenAI's plan to convert its for-profit business to a non-profit side. That's how the Financial Times is reporting it. New York Times says that OpenAI, and I'm quoting them, backtracks on plans to drop nonprofit control and the Wall Street Journal, always very authoritative on the tech front, leads with Open AI abandons planned for profit conversion. The Wall Street Journal piece is written by Keach Hagey, who is perhaps America's leading authority on OpenAI. She was on the show a couple of months ago talking about Sam Altman's superpower which is as a salesman. Keach is also the author of an upcoming book. It's out in a couple weeks, "The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI and the Race to Invent the Future." And I'm thrilled that Keach has been remarkably busy today, as you can imagine, found a few minutes to come onto the show. So, Keach, what is Sam selling here? You say he's a salesman. He's always selling something or other. What's the sell here?Keach Hagey: Well, the sell here is that this is not a big deal, right? The sell is that, this thing they've been trying to do for about a year, which is to make their company less weird, it's not gonna work. And as he was talking to the press yesterday, he was trying to suggest that they're still gonna be able to fundraise, that these folks that they promised that if you give us money, we're gonna convert to a for-profit and it's gonna be much more normal investment for you, but they're gonna get that money, which is you know, a pretty tough thing. So that's really, that's what he's selling is that this is not disruptive to the future of OpenAI.Andrew Keen: For people who are just listening, I'm looking at Keach's face, and I'm sensing that she's doing everything she can not to burst out laughing. Is that fair, Keach?Keach Hagey: Well, it'll remain to be seen, but I do think it will make it a lot harder for them to raise money. I mean, even Sam himself said as much during the talk yesterday that, you know, investors would like to be able to have some say over what happens to their money. And if you're controlled by a nonprofit organization, that's really tough. And what they were trying to do was convert to a new world where investors would have a seat at the table, because as we all remember, when Sam got briefly fired almost two years ago. The investors just helplessly sat on the sidelines and didn't have any say in the matter. Microsoft had absolutely no role to play other than kind of cajoling and offering him a job on the sidelines. So if you're gonna try to raise money, you really need to be able to promise some kind of control and that's become a lot harder.Andrew Keen: And the ramifications more broadly on this announcement will extend to Microsoft and Microsoft stock. I think their stock is down today. We'll come to that in a few minutes. Keach, there was an interesting piece in the week, this week on AI hallucinations are getting worse. Of course, OpenAI is the dominant AI company with their ChatGPT. But is this also kind of hallucination? What exactly is going on here? I have to admit, and I always thought, you know, I certainly know more about tech than I do about other subjects, which isn't always saying very much. But I mean, either you're a nonprofit or you're a for-profit, is there some sort of hallucinogenic process going on where Sam is trying to sell us on the idea that OpenAI is simultaneously a for profit and a nonprofit company?Keach Hagey: Well, that's kind of what it is right now. That's what it had sort of been since 2019 or when it spun up this strange structure where it had a for-profit underneath a nonprofit. And what we saw in the firing is that that doesn't hold. There's gonna come a moment when those two worlds are going to collide and it nearly destroyed the company. To be challenging going forward is that that basic destabilization that like unstable structure remains even though now everything is so much bigger there's so much more money coursing through and it's so important for the economy. It's a dangerous position.Andrew Keen: It's not so dangerous, you seem still faintly amused. I have to admit, I'm more than faintly amused, it's not too bothersome for us because we don't have any money in OpenAI. But for SoftBank and the other participants in the recent $40 billion round of investment in OpenAI, this must be, to say the least, rather disconcerting.Keach Hagey: That was one of the biggest surprises from the press conference yesterday. Sam Altman was asked point blank, is SoftBank still going to give you this sort of second chunk, this $30 billion second chunk that was contingent upon being able to convert to a for-profit, and he said, quite simply, yes. Who knows what goes on in behind the scenes? I think we're gonna find out probably a lot more about that. There are many unanswered questions, but it's not great, right? It's definitely not great for investors.Andrew Keen: Well, you have to guess at the very minimum, SoftBank would be demanding better terms. They're not just going to do the same thing. I mean, it suddenly it suddenly gives them an additional ace in their hand in terms of negotiation. I mean this is not some sort of little startup. This is 30 or 40 billion dollars. I mean it's astonishing number. And presumably the non-public conversations are very interesting. I'm sure, Keach, you would like to know what's being said.Keach Hagey: Don't know yet, but I think your analysis is pretty smart on this matter.Andrew Keen: So if you had to guess, Sam is the consummate salesman. What did he tell SoftBank before April to close the round? And what is he telling them now? I mean, how has the message changed?Keach Hagey: One of the things that we see a little bit about this from the messaging that he gave to the world yesterday, which is this is going to be a simpler structure. It is going to be slightly more normal structure. They are changing the structure a little bit. So although the non-profit is going to remain in charge, the thing underneath it, the for-profit, is going change its structure a little bit and become kind of a little more normal. It's not going to have this capped profit thing where, you know, the investors are capped at 100 times what they put in. So parts of it are gonna become more normal. For employees, it's probably gonna be easier for them to get equity and things like that. So I'm sure that that's part of what he's selling, that this new structure is gonna be a little bit better, but it's not gonna be as good as what they were trying to do.Andrew Keen: Can Sam? I mean, clearly he has sold it. I mean as we joked earlier when we talked, Sam could sell ice to the Laplanders or sand to the Saudis. But these people know Sam. It's no secret that he's a remarkable salesman. That means that sometimes you have to think carefully about what he's saying. What's the impact on him? To what extent is this decision one more chip on the Altman brand?Keach Hagey: It's a setback for sure, and it's kind of a win for Elon Musk, his rival.Andrew Keen: Right.Keach Hagey: Elon has been suing him, Elon has been trying to block this very conversion. And in the end, it seems like it was actually the attorneys general of California and Delaware that really put the nail in the coffin here. So there's still a lot to find out about exactly how it all shook out. There were actually huge campaigns as well, like in the streets, billboards, posters. Polls saying, trying to put pressure on the attorney general to block this thing. So it was a broad coalition, I think, that opposed the conversion, and you can even see that a little bit in their speech. But you got to admit that Elon probably looked at this and was happy.Andrew Keen: And I'm sure Elon used his own X platform to promote his own agenda. Is this an example, Keach, in a weird kind of way of the plebiscitary politics now of Silicon Valley is that titans like Altman and Musk are fighting out complex corporate economic battles in the naked public of social media.Keach Hagey: Yes, in the naked public of social media, but what we're also seeing here is that it's sort of, it's become through the apparatus of government. So we're seeing, you know, Elon is in the Doge office and this conversion is really happening in the state AG's houses. So that's what's sort interesting to me is these like private fights have now expanded to fill both state and federal government.Andrew Keen: Last time we talked, I couldn't find the photo, but there was a wonderful photo of, I think it was Larry Ellison and Sam Altman in the Oval Office with Trump. And Ellison looked very excited. He looked extremely old as well. And Altman looked very awkward. And it's surprising to see Altman look awkward because generally he doesn't. Has Trump played a role in this or is he keeping out of it?Keach Hagey: As far as my current reporting right now, we have no reporting that Trump himself was directly involved. I can't go further than that right now.Andrew Keen: Meaning that you know something that you're not willing to ignore.Keach Hagey: Just I hope you keep your subscription to the Wall Street Journal on what role the White House played, I would say. But as far as that awkwardness, I don't know if you noticed that there was a box that day for Masa Yoshison to see.Andrew Keen: Oh yeah, and Son was in the office too, right, that was the third person.Keach Hagey: So it was a box in the podium, which I think contributed to the awkwardness of the day, because he's not a tall man.Andrew Keen: Right. To put it politely. The way that OpenAI spun it, in classic Sam Altman terms, is new funding to build towards AGI. So it's their Altman-esque use of the public to vindicate this new investment, is this just more quote unquote, and this is my word. You don't have to agree with it. Just sales pitch or might even be dishonesty here. I mean, the reality is, is new funding to build towards AGI, which is, artificial general intelligence. It's not new funding, to build toward AGI. It's new funding to build towards OpenAI, there's no public benefit of any of this, is there?Keach Hagey: Well, what they're saying is that the nonprofit will be capitalized and will sort of be hiring up and doing a bunch more things that it wasn't really doing. We'll have programs and initiatives and all of that. Which really, as someone who studied Sam's life, this sounds really a lot like what he did at Y Combinator. When he was head of Y Combinator, he also spun up a nonprofit arm, which is actually what OpenAI grew out of. So I think in Sam's mind, a nonprofit there's a place to go. Sort of hash out your ideas, it's a place to kind of have pet projects grow. That's where he did things like his UBI study. So I can sort of see that once the AGs are like, this is not gonna happen, he's like, great, we'll just make a big nonprofit and I'll get to do all these projects I've always wanted to do.Andrew Keen: Didn't he get thrown out of Y Combinator by Paul Graham for that?Keach Hagey: Yes, a little bit. You know, I would say there's a general mutiny for too much of that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's true. People didn't love it, and they thought that he took his eye off the ball. A little bit because one of those projects became OpenAI, and he became kind of obsessed with it and stopped paying attention. So look, maybe OpenAI will spawn the next thing, right? And he'll get distracted by that and move on.Andrew Keen: No coincidence, of course, that Sam went on to become a CEO of OpenAI. What does it mean for the broader AI ecosystem? I noted earlier you brought up Microsoft. I mean, I think you've already written on this and lots of other people have written about the fact that the relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft has cooled dramatically. As well as between Nadella and Altman. What does this mean for Microsoft? Is it a big deal?Keach Hagey: They have been hashing this out for months. So it is a big deal in that it will change the structure of their most important partner. But even before this, Microsoft and OpenAI were sort of locked in negotiations over how large and how Microsoft's stake in this new OpenAI will be valued. And that still has to be determined, regardless of whether it's a non-profit or a for-profit in charge. And their interests are diverging. So those negotiations are not as warm as they maybe would have been a few years ago.Andrew Keen: It's a form of polyamory, isn't it? Like we have in Silicon Valley, everyone has sex with everybody else, to put it politely.Keach Hagey: Well, OpenAI does have a new partner in Oracle. And I would expect them to have many more in terms of cloud computing partners going forward. It's just too much risk for any one company to build these huge and expensive data centers, not knowing that OpenAI is going to exist in a certain number of years. So they have to diversify.Andrew Keen: Keach, you know, this is amusing and entertaining and Altman is a remarkable individual, able to sell anything to anyone. But at what point are we really on the Titanic here? And there is such a thing as an iceberg, a real thing, whatever Donald Trump or other manufacturers of ontologies might suggest. At some point, this thing is going to end in a massive disaster.Keach Hagey: Are you talking about the Existence Force?Andrew Keen: I'm not talking about the Titanic, I'm talking about OpenAI. I mean, Parmi Olson, who's the other great authority on OpenAI, who won the FT Book of the Year last year, she's been on the show a couple of times, she wrote in Bloomberg that OpenAI can't have its money both ways, and that's what Sam is trying to do. My point is that we can all point out, excuse me, the contradictions and the hypocrisy and all the rest of it. But there are laws of gravity when it comes to economics. And at a certain point, this thing is going to crash, isn't it? I mean, what's the metaphor? Is it Enron? Is it Sam Bankman-Fried? What kind of examples in history do we need to look at to try and figure out what really is going on here?Keach Hagey: That's certainly one possibility, and there are a good number of people who believe that.Andrew Keen: Believe what, Enron or Sam Bankman-Fried?Keach Hagey: Oh, well, the internal tensions cannot hold, right? I don't know if fraud is even necessary so much as just, we've seen it, we've already seen it happen once, right, the company almost completely collapsed one time and those contradictions are still there.Andrew Keen: And when you say it happened, is that when Sam got pushed out or was that another or something else?Keach Hagey: No, no, that's it, because Sam almost got pushed out and then all of the funders would go away. So Sam needs to be there for them to continue raising money in the way that they have been raising money. And that's really going to be the question. How long can that go on? He's a young man, could go on a very long time. But yeah, I think that really will determine whether it's a disaster or not.Andrew Keen: But how long can it go on? I mean, how long could Sam have it both ways? Well, there's a dream. I mean maybe he can close this last round. I mean he's going to need to raise more than $40 billion. This is such a competitive space. Tens of billions of dollars are being invested almost on a monthly basis. So this is not the end of the road, this $40-billion investment.Keach Hagey: Oh, no. And you know, there's talk of IPO at some point, maybe not even that far away. I don't even let me wrap my mind around what it would be for like a nonprofit to have a controlling share at a public company.Andrew Keen: More hallucinations economically, Keach.Keach Hagey: But I mean, IPO is the exit for investors, right? That's the model, that is the Silicon Valley model. So it's going to have to come to that one way or another.Andrew Keen: But how does it work internally? I mean, for the guys, the sales guys, the people who are actually doing the business at OpenAI, they've been pretty successful this year. The numbers are astonishing. But how is this gonna impact if it's a nonprofit? How does this impact the process of selling, of building product, of all the other internal mechanics of this high-priced startup?Keach Hagey: I don't think it will affect it enormously in the short term. It's really just a question of can they continue to raise money for the enormous amount of compute that they need. So so far, he's been able to do that, right? And if that slows up in any way, they're going to be in trouble. Because as Sam has said many times, AI has to be cheap to be actually useful. So in order to, you know, for it to be widespread, for to flow like water, all of those things, it's got to be cheap and that's going to require massive investment in data centers.Andrew Keen: But how, I mean, ultimately people are putting money in so that they get the money back. This is not a nonprofit endeavor to put 40 billion from SoftBank. SoftBank is not in the nonprofit business. So they're gonna need their money back and the only way they generally, in my understanding, getting money back is by going public, especially with these numbers. How can a nonprofit go public?Keach Hagey: It's a great question. That's what I'm just phrasing. I mean, this is, you know, you talk to folks, this is what's like off in the misty distance for them. It's an, it's a fascinating question and one that we're gonna try to answer this week.Andrew Keen: But you look amused. I'm no financial genius. Everyone must be asking the same question.Keach Hagey: Well, the way that they've said it is that the for-profit will be, will have a, the non-profit will control the for profit and be the largest shareholder in it, but the rest of the shares could be held by public markets theoretically. That's a great question though.Andrew Keen: And lawyers all over the world must be wrapping their hands. I mean, in the very best case, it's gonna be lawsuits on this, people suing them up the wazoo.Keach Hagey: It's absolutely true. You should see my inbox right now. It's just like layers, layers, layer.Andrew Keen: Yeah, my wife. My wife is the head of litigation. I don't know if I should be saying this publicly anyway, I am. She's the head of Litigation at Google. And she lost some of her senior people and they all went over to AI. I'm big, I'm betting that they regret going over there can't be much fun being a lawyer at OpenAI.Keach Hagey: I don't know, I think it'd be great fun. I think you'd have like enormous challenges and have lots of billable hours.Andrew Keen: Unless, of course, they're personally being sued.Keach Hagey: Hopefully not. I mean, look, it is a strange and unprecedented situation.Andrew Keen: To what extent is this, if not Shakespearean, could have been written by some Greek dramatist? To what extend is this symbolic of all the hype and salesmanship and dishonesty of Silicon Valley? And in a sense, maybe this is a final scene or a penultimate scene in the Silicon Valley story of doing good for the world. And yet, of course, reaping obscene profit.Keach Hagey: I think it's a little bit about trying to have your cake and eat it too, right? Trying to have the aura of altruism, but also make something and make a lot of money. And what it seems like today is that if you started as a nonprofit, it's like a black hole. You can never get out. There's no way to get out, and that idea was just like maybe one step too clever when they set it up in the beginning, right. It seemed like too good to be true because it was. And it might end up really limiting the growth of the company.Andrew Keen: Is Sam completely in charge here? I mean, a number of the founders have left. Musk, of course, when you and I talked a couple of months ago, OpenAI came out of conversations between Musk and Sam. Is he doing this on his own? Does he have lieutenants, people who he can rely on?Keach Hagey: Yeah, I mean, he does. He has a number of folks that have been there, you know, a long time.Andrew Keen: Who are they? I mean, do we know their names?Keach Hagey: Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, like Brad Lightcap and Jason Kwon and, you know, just they're they're Greg Brockman, of course, still there. So there are a core group of executives that have that have been there pretty much from the beginning, close to it, that he does trust. But if you're asking, like, is Sam really in control of this whole thing? I believe the answer is yes. Right. He is on the board of this nonprofit, and that nonprofit will choose the board of the for-profit. So as long as that's the case, he's in charge.Andrew Keen: How divided is OpenAI? I mean, one of the things that came out of the big crisis, what was it, 18 months ago when they tried to push him out, was it was clearly a profoundly divided company between those who believed in the nonprofit mission versus the for-profit mission. Are those divisions still as acute within the company itself? It must be growing. I don't know how many thousands of people work.Keach Hagey: It has grown very fast. It is not as acute in my experience. There was a time when it was really sort of a warring of tribes. And after the blip, as they call it, a lot of those more safety focused people, people that subscribe to effective altruism, left or were kind of pushed out. So Sam took over and kind of cleaned house.Andrew Keen: But then aren't those people also very concerned that it appears as if Sam's having his cake and eating it, having it both ways, talking about the company being a non-profit but behaving as if it is a for-profit?Keach Hagey: Oh, yeah, they're very concerned. In fact, a number of them have signed on to this open letter to the attorneys general that dropped, I don't know, a week and a half ago, something like that. You can see a number of former OpenAI employees, whistleblowers and others, saying this very thing, you know, that the AG should block this because it was supposed to be a charitable mission from the beginning. And no amount of fancy footwork is gonna make it okay to toss that overboard.Andrew Keen: And I mean, in the best possible case, can Sam, the one thing I think you and I talked about last time is Sam clearly does, he's not driven by money. There's something else. There's some other demonic force here. Could he theoretically reinvent the company so that it becomes a kind of AI overlord, a nonprofit AI overlord for our 21st century AI age?Keach Hagey: Wow, well I think he sometimes thinks of it as like an AI layer and you know, is this my overlord? Might be, you know.Andrew Keen: As long as it's not made in China, I hope it's made in India or maybe in Detroit or something.Keach Hagey: It's a very old one, so it's OK. But it's really my attention overlord, right? Yeah, so I don't know about the AI overlord part. Although it's interesting, Sam from the very beginning has wanted there to be a democratic process to control what decision, what kind of AI gets built and what are the guardrails for AGI. As long as he's there.Andrew Keen: As long as he's the one determining it, right?Keach Hagey: We talked about it a lot in the very beginning of the company when things were smaller and not so crazy. And what really strikes me is he doesn't really talk about that much anymore. But what we did just see is some advocacy organizations that kind of function in that exact way. They have voters all over the world and they all voted on, hey, we want you guys to go and try to that ended up having this like democratic structure for deciding the future of AI and used it to kind of block what he was trying to do.Andrew Keen: What are the implications for OpenAI's competitors? There's obviously Anthropic. Microsoft, we talked about a little bit, although it's a partner and a competitor simultaneously. And then of course there's Google. I assume this is all good news for the competition. And of course XAI.Keach Hagey: It is good news, especially for a company like XAI. I was just speaking to an XAI investor today who was crowing. Yeah, because those companies don't have this weird structure. Only OpenAI has this strange nonprofit structure. So if you are an investor who wants to have some exposure to AI, it might just not be worth the headache to deal with the uncertainty around the nonprofit, even though OpenAI is like the clear leader. It might be a better bet to invest in Anthropic or XAI or something else that has just a normal for-profit structure.Andrew Keen: Yeah. And it's hard to actually quote unquote out-Trump, Elon Musk on economic subterfuge. But Altman seems to have done that. I mean, Musk, what he folded X into XAI. It was a little bit of controversy, but he seems to got away with it. So there is a deep hostility between these two men, which I'm assuming is being compounded by this process.Keach Hagey: Absolutely. Again, this is a win for Elon. All these legal cases and Elon trying to buy OpenAI. I remember that bid a few months ago where he actually put a number on it. All that was about trying to block the for-profit conversion because he's trying to stop OpenAI and its tracks. He also claims they've abandoned their mission, but it's always important to note that it's coming from a competitor.Andrew Keen: Could that be a way out of this seeming box? Keach, a company like XAI or Microsoft or Google, or that probably wouldn't happen on the antitrust front, would buy OpenAI as maybe a nonprofit and then transform it into a for-profit company?Keach Hagey: Maybe you and Sam should get together and hash that out. That's the kind ofAndrew Keen: Well Sam, I'm available to be hired if you're watching. I'll probably charge less than your current consigliere. What's his name? Who's the consiglieri who's working with him on this?Keach Hagey: You mean Chris Lehane?Andrew Keen: Yes, Chris Lehane, the ego.Keach Hagey: Um,Andrew Keen: How's Lehane holding up in this? Do you think he's getting any sleep?Keach Hagey: Well, he's like a policy guy. I'm sure this has been challenging for everybody. But look, you are pointing to something that I think is real, which is there will probably be consolidation at some point down the line in AI.Andrew Keen: I mean, I know you're not an expert on the maybe sort of corporate legal stuff, but is it in theory possible to buy a nonprofit? I don't even know how you buy a non-profit and then turn it into a for-profit. I mean is that one way out of this, this cul-de-sac?Keach Hagey: I really don't know the answer to that question, to be honest with you. I can't think of another example of it happening. So I'm gonna go with no, but I don't now.Andrew Keen: There are no equivalents, sorry to interrupt, go on.Keach Hagey: No, so I was actually asking a little bit, are there precedents for this? And someone mentioned Blue Cross Blue Shield had gone from being a nonprofit to a for-profit successfully in the past.Andrew Keen: And we seem a little amused by that. I mean, anyone who uses US health care as a model, I think, might regret it. Your book, The Optimist, is out in a couple of weeks. When did you stop writing it?Keach Hagey: The end of December, end of last year, was pencils fully down.Andrew Keen: And I'm sure you told the publisher that that was far too long a window. Seven months on Silicon Valley is like seven centuries.Keach Hagey: It was actually a very, very tight timeline. They turned it around like incredibly fast. Usually it'sAndrew Keen: Remarkable, yeah, exactly. Publishing is such, such, they're such quick actors, aren't they?Keach Hagey: In this case, they actually were, so I'm grateful for that.Andrew Keen: Well, they always say that six months or seven months is fast, but it is actually possible to publish a book in probably a week or two, if you really choose to. But in all seriousness, back to this question, I mean, and I want everyone to read the book. It's a wonderful book and an important book. The best book on OpenAI out. What would you have written differently? Is there an extra chapter on this? I know you warned about a lot of this stuff in the book. So it must make you feel in some ways quite vindicated.Keach Hagey: I mean, you're asking if I'd had a longer deadline, what would I have liked to include? Well, if you're ready.Andrew Keen: Well, if you're writing it now with this news under your belt.Keach Hagey: Absolutely. So, I mean, the thing, two things, I guess, definitely this news about the for-profit conversion failing just shows the limits of Sam's power. So that's pretty interesting, because as the book was closing, we're not really sure what those limits are. And the other one is Trump. So Trump had happened, but we do not yet understand what Trump 2.0 really meant at the time that the book was closing. And at that point, it looked like Sam was in the cold, you know, he wasn't clear how he was going to get inside Trump's inner circle. And then lo and behold, he was there on day one of the Trump administration sharing a podium with him announcing that Stargate AI infrastructure investment. So I'm sad that that didn't make it into the book because it really just shows the kind of remarkable character he is.Andrew Keen: He's their Zelig, but then we all know what happened to Woody Allen in the end. In all seriousness, and it's hard to keep a straight face here, Keach, and you're trying although you're not doing a very good job, what's going to happen? I know it's an easy question to ask and a hard one to answer, but ultimately this thing has to end in catastrophe, doesn't it? I use the analogy of the Titanic. There are real icebergs out there.Keach Hagey: Look, there could be a data breach. I do think that.Andrew Keen: Well, there could be data breaches if it was a non-profit or for-profit, I mean, in terms of this whole issue of trying to have it both ways.Keach Hagey: Look, they might run out of money, right? I mean, that's one very real possibility. They might run outta money and have to be bought by someone, as you said. That is a totally real possibility right now.Andrew Keen: What would happen if they couldn't raise any more money. I mean, what was the last round, the $40 billion round? What was the overall valuation? About $350 billion.Keach Hagey: Yeah, mm-hmm.Andrew Keen: So let's say that they begin to, because they've got, what are their hard costs monthly burn rate? I mean, it's billions of just.Keach Hagey: Well, the issue is that they're spending more than they are making.Andrew Keen: Right, but you're right. So they, let's say in 18 months, they run out of runway. What would people be buying?Keach Hagey: Right, maybe some IP, some servers. And one of the big questions that is yet unanswered in AI is will it ever economically make sense, right? Right now we are all buying the possibility of in the future that the costs will eventually come down and it will kind of be useful, but that's still a promise. And it's possible that that won't ever happen. I mean, all these companies are this way, right. They are spending far, far more than they're making.Andrew Keen: And that's the best case scenario.Keach Hagey: Worst case scenario is the killer robots murder us all.Andrew Keen: No, what I meant in the best case scenario is that people are actually still without all the blow up. I mean, people are actual paying for AI. I mean on the one hand, the OpenAI product is, would you say it's successful, more or less successful than it was when you finished the book in December of last year?Keach Hagey: Oh, yes, much more successful. Vastly more users, and the product is vastly better. I mean, even in my experience, I don't know if you play with it every day.Andrew Keen: I use Anthropic.Keach Hagey: I use both Claude and ChatGPT, and I mean, they're both great. And I find them vastly more useful today than I did even when I was closing the book. So it's great. I don't know if it's really a great business that they're only charging me $20, right? That's great for me, but I don't think it's long term tenable.Andrew Keen: Well, Keach Hagey, your new book, The Optimist, your new old book, The Optimist: Sam Altman, Open AI and the Race to Invent the Future is out in a couple of weeks. I hope you're writing a sequel. Maybe you should make it The Pessimist.Keach Hagey: I think you might be the pessimist, Andrew.Andrew Keen: Well, you're just, you are as pessimistic as me. You just have a nice smile. I mean, in all reality, what's the most optimistic thing that can come out of this?Keach Hagey: The most optimistic is that this becomes a product that is actually useful, but doesn't vastly exacerbate inequality.Andrew Keen: No, I take the point on that, but in terms of this current story of this non-profit versus profit, what's the best case scenario?Keach Hagey: I guess the best case scenario is they find their way to an IPO before completely imploding.Andrew Keen: With the assumption that a non-profit can do an IPO.Keach Hagey: That they find the right lawyers from wherever they are and make it happen.Andrew Keen: Well, AI continues its hallucinations, and they're not in the product themselves. I think they're in their companies. One of the best, if not the best authority, our guide to all these hallucinations in a corporate level is Keach Hagey, her new book, The Optimist: Sam Altman, Open AI and the Race to Invent the Future is out in a couple of weeks. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Sam Altman as the consummate salesman. And I think one thing we can say for sure, Keach, is this is not the end of the story. Is that fair?Keach Hagey: Very fair. Not the end of the story. 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

What is the ideological alternative to Trumpism? In The Purposeful Warrior, Michigan's Democratic candidate for Governor, Jocelyn Benson, offers “a road map for shattering the status quo and standing up for ourselves, our communities, and our country”. Benson's book, with its focus on common decency, could certainly be read as an ideological alternative to transactional Trumpism. But The Purposeful Warrior, with its self-help sounding title and laundry list of moral truisms, might alternatively be interpreted as a defense of the status quo by a Harvard Law School educated politician. Five Key Takeaways * Being a "purposeful warrior" means fighting with focus, standing up for what's right even when it's difficult, and building a "bravery muscle" through repeated acts of courage.* Benson's experience defending Michigan's 2020 election results against pressure from President Trump - which led to armed protesters at her home - became a defining example of her standing up for democratic principles.* True strength combines courage with grace and empathy - Benson emphasizes that warriors need both grit and forgiveness to be effective.* Building a personal "board of directors" or trusted circle of advisors is crucial for staying aligned with your purpose when faced with challenges.* Democrats need to focus less on rhetoric and more on delivering tangible results that improve people's daily lives to rebuild trust with voters, particularly around economic concerns.Jocelyn Benson is Michigan's 43rd Secretary of State. In this role she is focused on ensuring elections are secure and accessible, and dramatically improving customer experiences for all who interact with Secretary of State offices. Benson is the author of State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process, the first major book on the role of the secretary of state in enforcing election and campaign finance laws. She is also the Chair of Michigan's Task Force on Women in Sports, created by Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2019 to advance opportunities for women in Michigan as athletes and sports leaders. A graduate of Harvard Law School and expert on civil rights law, education law and election law, Benson served as dean of Wayne State University Law School in Detroit. When she was appointed dean at age 36, she became the youngest woman in U.S. history to lead a top-100, accredited law school. She continues to serve as vice chair of the advisory board for the Levin Center at Wayne Law, which she founded with former U.S. Senantor Carl Levin. Previously, Benson was an associate professor and associate director of Wayne Law's Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights. Prior to her election, she served as CEO of the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality (RISE), a national nonprofit organization using the unifying power of sports to improve race relations. Benson is co-founder and former president of Military Spouses of Michigan, a network dedicated to providing support and services to military spouses and their children. In 2015, she became one of the youngest women in history to be inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.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 the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. 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 America 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 respected economic analysts in the world than the Financial Times Chief Economic Commentator Martin Wolf. Yesterday, we ran a conversation with Wolf about the survival of American democracy. Today, we talk Trumpian economics, particularly tariff policy. Wolf characterizes Trump's trade policies as historically unprecedented in their scale, comprehensive nature, and unpredictability. But are they “dumb”, I asked? He acknowledges genuine issues driving tariff policy like global imbalances and deindustrialization but believes the current approach won't solve these problems. Wolf explains that the US-China trade war is causing significant economic disruption, with prohibitive tariffs likely stopping trade between the world's two dominant economies. He warns that investor confidence is damaged by unpredictability, which will take years to restore, and questions the wisdom of dismantling America's alliance system. Dumb, dumb and dumber. Five Key Takeaways* Trump's tariff policies are unprecedented in economic history for their scale, comprehensive nature affecting most of the world, and extraordinary unpredictability.* There are legitimate economic problems regarding global imbalances and deindustrialization, but Wolf believes the current approach won't solve these issues and may worsen them.* The economic consequences include potential slowdowns in US retail sales, reduced profits for retailers, job losses, and decreased manufacturing investment due to uncertainty.* Investor confidence is severely damaged by unpredictability, with concerns about US government stability reflected in Treasury markets, and this uncertainty could take "a decade or two" to fully dissipate.* Wolf compares the current US withdrawal from global leadership to America's post-WWI rejection of the League of Nations, calling it "strikingly willful" and potentially destabilizing for the global order. Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello everybody, we are at the London office of the Financial Times with the chief economics commentator of the newspaper, one of the world's leading economists, Martin Wolf. Martin's been on the show many times. Martin, before we went live you suggested to me that this was your moment, that suddenly economics has become interesting again. Is it because of this Tariff thing that a certain Donald Trump has introduced well, there's no doubtMartin Wolf: what you describe as this tariff thing has created a novelty, to put it mildly. He's done things that as far as I can see have never been done before in the history of economics. So and you don't normally live through an experience with a set of policies, trade policy, which has been pretty unexciting since the Second World War, and you're suddenly in a different world. And that was not quite what we expected. In addition to that, it's not even as though it's sort of predictably in a different world. It was sort of every day or so. It seems to be something different. So in that sense, yes, it is very, very exciting. Now, there are other things going on, obviously in the administration and other areas which might turn out to be even more important. The attack on science and the funding of science, for example, the attack on universities. These are all very, important, the dismantling of important parts of the government, the relationship with allies, but I think this tariff war is remarkable for its scale. We've never seen changes in tariffs on this level before. It's comprehensive nature that base effects most of the world and it's extraordinary unpredictability. So this This is a new world for economists and we will be studying this, I'm absolutely sure, for half a century.Andrew Keen: My sense, Martin, is that one of the reasons you're enjoying it is because you're a natural polemicist and you haven't pulled your punches in your columns. I think you recently wrote in one of your last FTPs that America is inevitably going to lose in this war against China. Is it as dumb? As it seems. I mean, you're the chief economist at the chief economics commentator at the FT, one of the world's, as I said, most respected economists. You're an expert on this area. Is it just dumb? Are there any coherent economic arguments in favor of tariffs, of what they're doing? Well, I think...Martin Wolf: There is a genuine problem, and part of that is to do with trade. And more broadly the balance of payments, which is affecting the U.S., is genuine. There's a real set of issues, and economists, including me actually, have been discussing these problems, which you might call actually two problems, the global imbalances problem and the deindustrialization problem. These are two real problems, economic and social. The problem is that it's very hard for me to see how these policies that are now being introduced will solve those problems worldwide, and they are global problems. And the way the war is being pursued, if you like, by the Trump administration is such as, I think, inevitably to lose the many of the allies they ought to have in this contest and therefore they are playing this match, if we like, without the help of lots of people who should be on their side. And I don't think the way they're going about it now will solve that problem. I think making it worse but yes there are a couple of genuine real problems which is perfectly reasonable for them want to for them to want to address address if they can do so in a coherent well-plannedAndrew Keen: relatively inclusive way is it a problem with China essentially in terms of China producing too much and not buying enough of American goods is that the heart of the problem I think the problem China'sMartin Wolf: not the only such country. They are right to observe that Germany has also behaved somewhat in the same way, but Germany's capacity for disruption, though very real in Europe and I wrote about that in my book on the crisis published about a decade ago, is not global. The rise of China was bound to be a massively disruptive event. How could it not be? Suddenly there's a new peer competitor out there in the world. I don't think we had the right or the capacity to prevent its rise I would have strongly opposed any such effort but some people I'm sure would disagree but China is a vast country with a tremendously capable population and an even more capable government than we thought 20 or 30 years ago and its rise was going to be very disruptive its disruption is for the world I mean it's also disrupted Europe a lot it's disrupted any country that is competing with Chinese manufacturers. Actually, that includes Japan. Japan has been displaced as a manufacturing exporter to significant degree by China. So it's not just about America. One of the mistakes is thinking it's just about America. The rise of China is a fundamental transformational moment. And there is a specific problem with China, which is it's been following the general line of East Asian manufacturing-led development but because it's much bigger and because there are features of its economy particularly excess savings which are even larger than in other countries the disruption is even bigger so there's a genuine disruptive force here which we should have started dealing with consistently.Andrew Keen: About two decades ago. My sense is that Trump is trying in his own peculiar way to walk back some of these policies. But has the damage already been done? Well, that's a very interesting question.Martin Wolf: There are two dimensions that some damage has been done because it's working through the system now. Right now, there's essentially prohibitive tariffs between the US and China. And that means that trade between these two countries is largely going to stop and inevitably that's going to do a lot of damage because they, on both sides, but notably with China's supplies of manufacturers to the U.S. There are an enormous number of businesses across the United States that depend on these products. So that's going to be a disruption and it's going show itself up in economic activity and retail sales in the U.S. That's going have a significant effect. But I think the more important point is the degree of unpredictability and the degree of zaniness of what's happened, introducing these so-called reciprocal tariffs, which were reciprocal on one day and essentially getting rid of them the next for 90 days without anyone knowing what will follow them, for example, or introducing these obviously not expected, massively prohibitive tariffs on China, 145% tariffs and 125% on the other side, people suddenly realize that sort of anything can happen, things that they couldn't possibly imagine. It was completely outside their worst nightmares that this is what would happen when Donald Trump became president. After the first term, they didn't experience that. So I think the realization... That the range of possible developments of events is so far outside what you thought was possible changes the way you view the future and inevitably I think it's going to make investors who are going to be affected by trade which is basically anyone in manufacturing quite a lot of other businesses very very nervous about making commitments which they can't walk back so I think that everybody's going to become very risk averse. That includes allies, potential allies, because they don't know what's going happen to them. Should they align themselves with the US? Well, maybe that won't work. Look at what has happened to Canada. So, I think the In this respect, they have broadened the range of possible futures in relationship to the US, still the most important country in the world, beyond anything they could imagine, and that cannot disappear quickly. It will take, I would have thought, a decade or two at best before people will say, Now we know exactly what's going on.Andrew Keen: Exactly how the U.S. Is going to behave again. In terms of the economic consequences, Martin, is the real damage, at least at this point, 100 days into the Trump administration, is there real damage to the U S economy and the U,S. Consumer? I think that...Martin Wolf: That's certainly going to be important. There's no doubt about it. There's a basic proposition in economics, which is still basically true. The biggest victim of protection, particularly at this sort of level. Is your own country. You are imposing massive adjustment shocks on your country by suddenly putting out of reach, a huge range of goods that they were used to buying. So that's a huge shock and they have to adjust their spending habits, the firms have to adjust how they structure themselves. That's ineluctable and as it all goes away, And if it all goes away, will they assume that it's all back to normal? I don't know. But of course, because the US is the US, it has imposed tariffs now, significant tariffs by historical standards. It used to be an average of 2% or so. Now it's 10%, leaving aside China and leaving aside of course the automobile sector which has got higher tariffs and all the other special cases that are being considered. So these all affect other countries. And, of course, the effect on China is certainly going to be very, very substantial because it's losing the ability, really, to export to its biggest single market, if you don't regard Europe as a single market. So there will be damage to China. And then there's a really big question. What does it mean for all the countries that might replace China? Vietnam for example, other East Asian countries, is there now going to be a huge opportunity or is the US going to jack up its, reintroduce its reciprocal tariffs, 50%, close to 50%, which case they're going to lose the market. So I think at the moment you'd have to say that everybody is going to feel... Actually or very close to actuallyAndrew Keen: damaged. And what's that gonna look like? Higher prices, fewer jobs? Well I would be, there will be countries that will, in the US in particular. What should we be so to speak looking forward to in the next couple of years? Well when I assume thatMartin Wolf: There will be a slowdown in retail sales of consumer goods which will be really quite significant. It will affect the profits of major U.S. Retailing and retail firms significantly and jobs in those activities. That's sort of the shock effect. There will be a risk factor in investment above all investment in manufacturing which will also be significant so I would expect manufacturing investment to decline too. Will that lead to an actual formal recession? I don't know. I don t have enough expertise on the day-by-day numbers. I think there s an additional factor which we mustn t underestimate, how that will play out, we don t know, which is the loss of confidence in the U.S. Government, and you can see that in the Treasury s market, which is most important market in the world, and the pricing there suggests some real nervousness about the future of stability of US economic policy. And here, I think the most important thing will be will there be a war on the Fed? Who's going to be the next Fed chair? What will Trump try to do to get the Fed to do what he wants? So there's going to be a shorter term medium short term impact on the economy. Through exports and, above all, also import availability. And there's going to be bigger concern which will affect investment. And, I think, people's confidence in US financial assets, which is ultimately about confidence in the US government and the consistency and probity of its policies. So short, medium, and long-term effects. How bad it will be, that depends very much on what is decided in the next few months. If in the end, the trade war disappears, Trump stops threatening the Fed, everybody thinks well they tried that it was a huge disaster and they've learnt and he's very flexible he could go away still but the next I think the next two three months are going to be very very important do they walk all this back pretty decisively or do they stick with it or even play double or quits we don't knowAndrew Keen: I don't know whether Mr. Trump knows. Finally, and that's one of Donald Runfield's unknown unknowns, especially when we get into the head of Donald Trump. Finally, Martin, you're very good at the big picture. What people are talking about this moment at the end of a US-centric economic world order, the demise of the dollar, perhaps the rise of cryptocurrency, obviously the 90s. Dimension. Was this? Two final questions. Firstly, is that true? Are we seeing a reoriented global financial system in America and the dollar no longer being central? And secondly, for all Trump's stupidity, was this in the long run inevitable? I mean, of course, Kane says in the long run, everything is inevitable, including our own deaths. Uh is this something that we should have expected it's just all come in a rush in a mad rush at the beginning of 2025 well these these are really difficult questions i think that's why i asked you you're the chief economics commentator in the ft if you can't answer them no one let's just say how i think about itMartin Wolf: There are two reasons why you could think the world wouldn't continue as it was. The first is the rise of China has genuinely changed the world. And the unipolar moment was clearly over and China is clearly a more credible peer competitor of the US across the board than the Soviet Union ever was. So in that sense, the world that the US comfortably dominated had gone, and it was bound to require a, and something I've written about many times, a forceful alliance strategy by the US using its web of alliances which are still so potent as the basis of its power and influence to maintain anything like that order. So that was the situation. What I don't think was inevitable is that the president who sort of declared the end of the US-led order would also be someone who basically stands not just for America first but America alone. I always attacked his allies so forcibly. So he has, as it were, taken apart the Alliance system and the values that were linked to that, on which I think U.S. Leadership was going to depend increasingly in future. So that's a, it doesn't seem to be a necessary shock and a rather strange one if you consciously detonate as such an important part of your power, but I suppose it is possible to argue that after 80 years since the war, second world war, the Americans have just sort of got tired of that world and tired of the responsibility of that well and they've sort of gotten tired with themselves, with the system that they've been living under. That's so obvious. Left and right agree they don't like modern America. Well once we look at that, then it may be that this was inevitable, but it was inevitable then for reasons that I don't fully understand. And that's probably a failure of my imagination. And the core remains that while America couldn't go on being precisely what it was in the 90s or early 2000s, where they made a bigger mess of it, but they didn't have to jump out of the world and the world they created with this stupendous speed. And it's very similar, and even more dramatic in its effects, when after the First World War the Americans repudiated the League of Nations, said Europe's got nothing to do with us, we're just going to leave it, gone. You sort it out and you know what happened as a result. Germans elected the Nazis and the Nazis started conquering the whole of Europe. So it's the American withdrawal. So suddenly, and so completely, well, complete, that's unfair, but so suddenly, with no obvious strategy to replace it, that seems to me striking, strikingly willful and a little bit mad and in any case, for me it's a surprise.Andrew Keen: And it changes the world. Well, on that chilling note, Martin Wolff, the chief economics commentator of BFT, given us much to think about. Martin, thank you so much. This story is only just beginning. We're gonna get you back on the show in the not too distant future to explain what comes after America. 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

I've been in London this week talking to America watchers about the current situation in the United States. First up is Edmund Fawcett, the longtime Economist correspondent in DC and historian of both liberalism and conservatism. Fawcett argues that Trump's MAGA movement represents a kind of third way between liberalism and conservatism - a version of American populism resurrected for our anti-globalist early 21st century. He talks about how economic inequality fuels Trumpism, with middle-class income shares dropping while the wealthy prosper. He critiques both what he calls right-wing intellectual "kitsch" and the left's lack of strategic vision beyond its dogma of identity politics. Lacking an effective counter-narrative to combat Trumpism, Fawcett argues, liberals require not only sharper messaging but also a reinvention of what it means to be modern in our globalized age of resurrected nationalism. 5 Key Takeaways* European reactions to Trump mix shock with recognition that his politics have deep American roots.* Economic inequality (declining middle-class wealth) provides the foundation for Trump's political appeal.* The American left lacks an effective counter-narrative and strategic vision to combat Trumpism.* Both right-wing intellectualism and left-wing identity politics suffer from forms of "kitsch" and American neurosis.* The perception of America losing its position as the embodiment of modernity creates underlying anxiety. Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello everybody, we are in London this week, looking westward, looking at the United States, spending some time with some distinguished Englishmen, or half-Englishmen, who have spent a lot of their lives in the United States, and Edmund Fawcett, former Economist correspondent in America, the author of a number of important books, particularly, Histories of Liberalism and Conservatism, is remembering America, Edmund. What's your first memory of America?Edmund Fawcett: My first memory of America is a traffic accident on Park Avenue, looking down as a four-year-old from our apartment. I was there from the age of two to four, then again as a school child in Washington for a few years when my father was working. He was an international lawyer. But then, after that, back in San Francisco, where I was a... I kind of hacked as an editor for Straight Arrow Press, which was the publishing arm of Rolling Stone. This was in the early 70s. These were the, it was the end of the glory days of Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, the anti-war movement in Vietnam. It was exciting. A lot was going on, a lot was changing. And then not long after that, I came back to the U.S. for The Economist as their correspondent in Washington. That was in 1976, and I stayed there until 1983. We've always visited. Our son and grandson are American. My wife is or was American. She gave up her citizenship last year, chiefly for practical reasons. She said I would always feel American. But our regular visits have ended, of course. Being with my background, my mother was American, my grandfather was American. It is deeply part of my outlook, it's part of my world and so I am always very interested. I read quite a bit of the American press, not just the elite liberal press, every day. I keep an eye on through Real Clear Politics, which has got a very good sort of gazetteer. It's part of my weather.Andrew Keen: Edmund, I know you can't speak on behalf of Europe, but I'm going to ask a dumb question. Maybe you'll give me a smarter answer than the question. What's the European, the British take on what's happening in America? What's happened in this first quarter of 2025?Edmund Fawcett: I think a large degree of shock and horror, that's just the first reaction. If you'll allow me a little space, I think then there's a second reaction. The first reaction is shock and terror, with good reason, and nobody likes being talked to in the way that Vance talked to them, ignorantly and provocatively about free speech, which he feels he hasn't really thought hard enough about, and besides, it was I mean... Purely commercial, in largely commercial interest. The Europeans are shocked by the American slide from five, six, seven decades of internationalism. Okay, American-led, but still internationalist, cooperative, they're deeply shocked by that. And anybody who cares, as many Europeans do, about the texture, the caliber of American democracy and liberalism, are truly shocked by Trump's attacks on the courts, his attacks on the universities, his attack on the press.Andrew Keen: You remember, of course, Edmund, that famous moment in Casablanca where the policeman said he was shocked, truly shocked when of course he wasn't. Is your shock for real? Your... A good enough scholar of the United States to understand that a lot of the stuff that Trump is bringing to the table isn't new. We've had an ongoing debate in the show about how authentically American Trump is, whether he is the F word fascist or whether he represents some other indigenous strain in US political culture. What's your take?Edmund Fawcett: No, and that's the response to the shock. It's when you look back and see this Trump is actually deeply American. There's very little new here. There's one thing that is new, which I'll come to in a moment, and that returns the shock, but the shock is, is to some extent absorbed when Europeans who know about this do reflect that Trump is deeply American. I mean, there is a, he likes to cite McKinley, good, okay, the Republicans were the tariff party. He likes to say a lot of stuff that, for example, the populist Tom Watson from the South, deeply racist, but very much speaking for the working man, so long as he was a white working man. Trump goes back to that as well. He goes back in the presidential roster. Look at Robert Taft, competitor for the presidency against Eisenhower. He lost, but he was a very big voice in the Republican Party in the 1940s and 50s. Robert Taft, Jr. didn't want to join NATO. He pushed through over Truman's veto, the Taft-Hartley bill that as good as locked the unions out, the trade unions out of much of the part of America that became the burgeoning economic America, the South and the West. Trump is, sorry, forgive me, Taft, was in many ways as a hard-right Republican. Nixon told Kissinger, professors are the enemy. Reagan gave the what was it called? I forget the name of the speech that he gave in endorsing Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican Convention. This in a way launched the new Republican assault on liberal republicanism. Rockefeller was the loser. Reagan, as it were, handed the palm to Rocket Goldwater. He lost to Johnson, but the sermon they were using, the anti-liberal went into vernacular and Trump is merely in a way echoing that. If you were to do a movie called Trump, he would star, of course, but somebody who was Nixon and Reagan's scriptwright, forgive me, somebody who is Nixon and Reagan's Pressman, Pat Buchanan, he would write the script of the Trump movie. Go back and read, look at some of Pat Buchanan's books, some of his articles. He was... He said virtually everything that Trump says. America used to be great, it is no longer great. America has enemies outside that don't like it, that we have nothing to do with, we don't need allies, what we want is friends, and we have very few friends in the world. We're largely on our, by our own. We're basically a huge success, but we're being betrayed. We're being ignored by our allies, we're being betrayed by friends inside, and they are the liberal elite. It's all there in Pat Buchanan. So Trump in that way is indeed very American. He's very part of the history. Now, two things. One is... That Trump, like many people on the hard right in Europe, is to some extent, a neurotic response to very real complaints. If you would offer a one chart explanation of Trumpism, I don't know whether I can hold it up for the camera. It's here. It is actually two charts, but it is the one at the top where you see two lines cross over. You see at the bottom a more or less straight line. What this does is compare the share of income in 1970 with the share of the income more or less now. And what has happened, as we are not at all surprised to learn, is that the poor, who are not quite a majority but close to the actual people in the United States, things haven't changed for them much at all. Their life is static. However, what has changed is the life for what, at least in British terms, is called the middle classes, the middle group. Their share of income and wealth has dropped hugely, whereas the share of the income and wealth of the top has hugely risen. And in economic terms, that is what Trumpism is feeding off. He's feeding off a bewildered sense of rage, disappointment, possibly envy of people who looked forward, whose parents looked forward to a great better life, who they themselves got a better life. They were looking forward to one for their children and grandchildren. And now they're very worried that they're not those children and grandchildren aren't going to get it. So socially speaking, there is genuine concern, indeed anger that Trump is speaking to. Alas, Trump's answers are, I would say, and I think many Europeans would agree, fantasies.Andrew Keen: Your background is also on the left, your first job was at the New Left Reviews, you're all too familiar with Marxist language, Marxist literature, ways of thinking about what we used to call late-stage capitalism, maybe we should rename it post-late-stage-capitalism. Is it any surprise, given your presentation of the current situation in America, which is essentially class envy or class warfare, but the right. The Bannonites and many of the others on the right fringes of the MAGA movement have picked up on Lenin and Gramsci and the old icons of class warfare.Edmund Fawcett: No, I don't think it is. I think that they are these are I mean, we live in a world in which the people in politics and in the press in business, they've been to universities, they've read an awful lot of books, they spend an awful lot of time studying dusty old books like the ones you mentioned, Gramsci and so. So they're, to some extent, forgive me, they are, they're intellectuals or at least they become, they be intellectualized. Lenin called one of his books, What is to be Done. Patrick Deneen, a Catholic right-wing Catholic philosopher. He's one of the leading right-wing Catholic intellectuals of the day, hard right. He named it What is To Be Done. But this is almost kitsch, as it were, for a conservative Catholic intellectual to name a book after Vladimir Lenin, the first Bolshevik leader of the Russian Revolution. Forgive me, I lost the turn.Andrew Keen: You talk about kitsch, Edmund, is this kitsch leftism or is it real leftism? I mean if Trump was Bernie Sanders and a lot of what Trump says is not that different from Sanders with the intellectuals or the few intellectuals left in. New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles, would they be embracing what's happening? Thanks, I've got the third again.Edmund Fawcett: No, you said Kitsch. The publicists and intellectuals who support Trump, there is a Kitsch element to it. They use a lot of long words, they appeal to a lot of authorities. Augustine of Hippo comes into it. This is really kind of intellectual grandstanding. No, what matters? And this comes to the second thing about shock at Trump. The second thing is that there is real social and economic dysfunction here that the United States isn't really coping with. I don't think the Trumpites, I don't think the rather kitschy intellectuals who are his mature leaders. I don't think they so much matter. What I think matters here is, put it this way, is the silence of the left. And this is one of the deep problems. I mean, always with my friends, progressive friends, liberal friends, it's terribly easy to throw rocks at Trump and scorn his cheerleaders but we always have to ask ourselves why are they there and we're here and the left at the moment doesn't really have an answer to that. The Democrats in the United States they're strangely silent. And it's not just, as many people say, because they haven't dared to speak up. It's not that, it's a question of courage. It's an intellectual question of lacking some strategic sense of where the country is and what kinds of policy would help get it to a better place. This is very bleak, and that's part of, underlies the sense of shock, which we come back to with Trump after we tell ourselves, oh, well, it isn't new, and so on. The sense of shock is, well what is the practical available alternative for the moment? Electorally, Trump is quite weak, he wasn't a landslide, he got fewer percentage than Jimmy Carter did. The balance in the in the congress is quite is quite slight but again you could take false comfort there. The problem with liberals and progressives is they don't really have a counter narrative and one of the reasons they don't have a counter-narrative is I don't sense they have any longer a kind of vision of their own. This is a very bleak state of affairs.Andrew Keen: It's a bleak state of affairs in a very kind of surreal way. They're lacking the language. They don't have the words. Do they need to reread the old New Left classics?Edmund Fawcett: I think you've said a good thing. I mean, words matter tremendously. And this is one of Trump's gifts, is that he's able to spin old tropes of the right, the old theme music of the hard right that goes back to late 19th century America, late 19th century Europe. He's brilliant at it. It's often garbled. It's also incoherent. But the intellectuals, particularly liberals and progressives can mishear this. They can miss the point. They say, ah, it doesn't, it's not grammatical. It's incoherent. It is word salad. That's not the point. A paragraph of Trump doesn't make sense. If you were an editor, you'd want to rewrite it, but editors aren't listening. It's people in the crowd who get his main point, and his main point is always expressed verbally. It's very clever. It's hard to reproduce because he's actually a very good actor. However, the left at the moment has nothing. It has neither a vocabulary nor a set of speech makers. And the reason it doesn't have that, it doesn't have the vocabularies, because it doesn't have the strategic vision.Andrew Keen: Yeah, and coming back to the K-word you brought up, kitsch. If anything, the kitsch is on the left with Kamala Harris and her presentation of herself in this kitschification of American immigration. So the left in America, if that's the right word to describe them, are as vulnerable to kitsch as the right.Edmund Fawcett: Yes, and whether it's kitsch or not, I think this is very difficult to talk to on the progressive left. Identity politics does have a lot to answer for. Okay, I'll go for it. I mean, it's an old saying in politics that things begin as a movement, become a campaign, become a lobby, and then end up as a racket. That's putting it much too strongly, but there is an element in identity politics of which that is true. And I think identity politics is a deep problem for liberals, it's a deep problem for progressives because in the end, what identity politics offers is a fragmentation, which is indeed happened on the left, which then the right can just pick off as it chooses. This is, I think, to get back some kind of strategic vision, the left needs to come out of identity politics, it needs to go back to the vision of commonality, the vision of non-discrimination, the mission of true civic equality, which underlay civil rights, great movement, and try to avoid. The way that identity politics is encouraged, a kind of segmentation. There's an interesting parallel between identity politics and Trumpism. I'm thinking of the national element in Trumpism, Make America Great Again. It's rather a shock to see the Secretary of State sitting beside Trump in the room in the White House with a make America it's not a make America great cap but it says Gulf of America this kind of This nationalism is itself neurotic in a way that identity politics has become neurotic.Andrew Keen: Yeah, it's a Linguistic.Edmund Fawcett: Neurosis. Both are neurotic responses to genuine problems.Andrew Keen: Edmund, long-time viewers and listeners to the show know that I often quote you in your wonderful two histories of conservatism and liberalism when you, I'm not sure which of the books, I think it may have been in conservatism. I can't remember myself. You noted that this struggle between the left and the right, between liberalism and conservatives have always be smarter they've always made the first move and it's always been up to the liberals and of course liberalism and the left aren't always the same thing but the left or progressives have always been catching up with conservatives so just to ask this question in terms of this metaphorical chess match has anything changed. It's always been the right that makes the first move, that sets the game up. It has recently.Edmund Fawcett: Let's not fuss too much with the metaphor. I think it was, as it were, the Liberals made the first move for decades, and then, more or less in our lifetimes, it has been the right that has made the weather, and the left has been catching up. Let's look at what happened in the 1970s. In effect. 30-40 years of welfare capitalism in which the state played ever more of a role in providing safety nets for people who were cut short by a capitalistic economy. Politics turned its didn't entirely reject that far from it but it is it was said enough already we've reached an end point we're now going to turn away from that and try to limit the welfare state and that has been happening since the 1970s and the left has never really come up with an alternative if you look at Mitterrand in France you look at Tony Blair new Labor in you look at Clinton in the United States, all of them in effect found an acceptably liberal progressive way of repackaging. What the right was doing and the left has got as yet no alternative. They can throw rocks at Trump, they can resist the hard right in Germany, they can go into coalition with the Christian Democrats in order to resist the hard right much as in France but they don't really have a governing strategy of their own. And until they do, it seems to me, and this is the bleak vision, the hard right will make the running. Either they will be in government as they are in the United States, or they'll be kept just out of government by unstable coalitions of liberal conservatives and the liberal left.Andrew Keen: So to quote Patrick Deneen, what is to be done is the alternative, a technocracy, the best-selling book now on the New York Times bestseller list is Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson's Abundance, which is a progressive. Technocratic manifesto for changing America. It's not very ideological. Is that really the only alternative for the left unless it falls into a Bernie Sanders-style anti-capitalism which often is rather vague and problematic?Edmund Fawcett: Well, technocracy is great, but technocrats never really get to do what they say ought to be done, particularly not in large, messy democracies like Europe and the United States. Look, it's a big question. If I had a Leninist answer to Patrick Deneen's question, what is to be done, I'd be very happy to give it. I feel as somebody on the liberal left that the first thing the liberal left needs to do is to is two things. One is to focus in exposing the intellectual kitschiness, the intellectual incoherence on the one hand of the hard right, and two, hitting back in a popular way, in a vulgar way, if you will, at the lies, misrepresentations, and false appeals that the hard-right coasts on. So that's really a kind of public relations. It's not deep strategy or technocracy. It is not a policy list. It's sharpening up the game. Of basically of democratic politics and they need to liberals on the left need to be much tougher much sharper much more vulgar much more ready to use the kinds of weapons the kinds of mockery and imaginative invention that the Trumpites use that's the first thing the second thing is to take a breath and go back and look at the great achievements of democratic liberalism of the 1950s, 60s, 70s if you will. I mean these were these produced in Europe and the United States societies that by any historical standard are not bad. They have terrible problems, terrible inequities, but by any historical standard and indeed by any comparative standard, they're not bad if you ask yourself why immigration has become such a problem in Western Europe and the United States, it's because these are hugely desirable places to live in, not just because they're rich and make a comfortable living, which is the sort of the rights attitude, because basically they're fairly safe places to live. They're fairly good places for your kids to grow up in. All of these are huge achievements, and it seems to me that the progressives, the liberals, should look back and see how much work was needed to create... The kinds of politics that underpinned that society, and see what was good, boast of what was and focus on how much work was needed.Andrew Keen: Maybe rather than talking about making America great again, it should be making America not bad. I think that's too English for the United States. I don't think that should be for a winner outside Massachusetts and Maine. That's back to front hypocritical Englishism. Let's end where we began on a personal note. Do you think one of the reasons why Trump makes so much news, there's so much bemusement about him around the world, is because most people associate America with modernity, they just take it for granted that America is the most advanced, the most modern, is the quintessential modern project. So when you have a character like Trump, who's anti-modernist, who is a reactionary, It's bewildering.Edmund Fawcett: I think it is bewildering, and I think there's a kind of bewilderment underneath, which we haven't really spoken to as it is an entirely other subject, but is lurking there. Yes, you put your absolutely right, you put your finger on it, a lot of us look to America as modernity, maybe not the society of the future, but certainly the the culture of the future, the innovations of the future. And I think one of the worrying things, which maybe feeds the neurosis of Make America Great Again, feeds the neurosis, of current American unilateralism, is a fear But modernity, talk like Hegel, has now shifted and is now to be seen in China, India and other countries of the world. And I think underlying everything, even below the stuff that we showed in the chart about changing shares of wealth. I think under that... That is much more worrisome in the United States than almost anything else. It's the sense that the United States isn't any longer the great modern world historical country. It's very troubling, but let's face it, you get have to get used to it.Andrew Keen: The other thing that's bewildering and chilling is this seeming coexistence of technological innovation, the Mark Andreessen's, the the Musk's, Elon Musk's of the world, the AI revolution, Silicon Valley, who seem mostly in alliance with Trump and Musk of course are headed out. The Doge campaign to destroy government or undermine government. Is it conceivable that modernity is by definition, you mentioned Hegel and of course lots of people imagine that history had ended in 1989 but the reverse was true. Is it possible that modernity is by-definition reactionary politically?Edmund Fawcett: A tough one. I mean on the technocracy, the technocrats of Silicon Valley, I think one of their problems is that they're brilliant, quite brilliant at making machines. I'm the machinery we're using right here. They're fantastic. They're not terribly good at. Messy human beings and messy politics. So I'm not terribly troubled by that, nor your other question about it is whether looming challenges of technology. I mean, maybe I could just end with the violinist, Fritz Kreisler, who said, I was against the telegraph, I was against the telephone, I was against television. I'm a progressive when it comes to technology. I'm always against the latest thing. I mean, I don't, there've always been new machines. I'm not terribly troubled by that. It seems to me, you know, I want you to worry about more immediate problems. If indeed AI is going to take over the world, my sense is, tell us when we get there.Andrew Keen: And finally, you were half-born in the United States or certainly from an American and British parent. You spent a lot of your life there and you still go, you follow it carefully. Is it like losing a lover or a loved one? Is it a kind of divorce in your mind with what's happening in America in terms of your own relations with America? You noted that your wife gave up her citizenship this year.Edmund Fawcett: Well, it is. And if I could talk about Natalia, my wife, she was much more American than me. Her mother was American from Philadelphia. She lived and worked in America more than I did. She did give up her American citizenship last year, partly for a feeling of, we use a long word, alienation, partly for practical reasons, not because we're anything like rich enough to pay American tax, but simply the business of keeping up with the changing tax code is very wary and troublesome. But she said, as she did it, she will always feel deeply American, and I think it's possible to say that. I mean, it's part of both of us, and I don't think...Andrew Keen: It's loseable. Well, I have to ask this question finally, finally. Maybe I always use that word and it's never final. What does it mean to feel American?Edmund Fawcett: Well, everybody's gonna have their own answer to that. I was just... What does it mean for you? I'm just reading. What it is to feel American. Can I dodge the question by saying, what is it to feel Californian? Or even what is to be Los Angelino? Where my sister-in-law and brother-in-law live. A great friend said, what it is feel Los Angeles you go over those mountains and you put down your rucksack. And I think what that means is for Europeans, America has always meant leaving the past behind.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 in 2014. The second in his planned political trilogy – Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition – was published in 2020, also by Princeton University Press. The Economist called it ‘an epic history of conservatism and the Financial Times praised Fawcett for creating a ‘rich and wide-ranging account' that demonstrates how conservatism has repeated managed to renew itself.Keen On America 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

What's it like to have to work physically hard to make a living in America today? In A Living, the writer and physician Michael Stein shares conversations with his working-class patients. He explores how work shapes identity, provides meaning beyond income, and impacts upon physical and mental health. Stein promotes the dignity of physical labor, noting that many workers find deep satisfaction in producing tangible results, while highlighting how America's healthcare system often fails to recognize the importance of work in patients' lives. Five Key Takeaways* Work is deeply meaningful beyond income - people work to make friends, exert power, learn new skills, and find purpose. For many working-class Americans, their labor provides a core sense of identity and belonging.* Physical labor often provides a satisfaction that "b******t jobs" (white-collar positions) lack, as workers can see the tangible results of their efforts at the end of the day, giving them a sense of accomplishment.* The American healthcare system spends too much on treatment and not enough on prevention, with doctors having limited time to understand the full context of patients' lives, including how their work affects their health.* The rise of AI may flip traditional hierarchies, potentially making physical labor more secure and valued than knowledge work, as robots won't easily replace plumbers, electricians, and other skilled manual laborers.* Unemployment is fundamentally unhealthy - when factories close or people lose physical work, it has measurable negative impacts on community health outcomes, highlighting work's importance to wellbeing beyond financial security. 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

Does the United States of America still have anything going for it? According to the Arizona based Larry Aldrich, co-author of the upcoming What's Right About America, there remains much to celebrate about his country's foundational strengths, its resilience in the face of sometimes daunting challenges, and its continued innovation. He argues that America's focus on individual empowerment and the rule of law has created a structure that's enabled the country to overcome its difficulties and divisions throughout its turbulent history. While acknowledging current political divisiveness over issues like immigration reform, Aldrich maintains that the American system of checks and balances continues to work and will enable the nation to navigate through its currently turbulent moment. Five Point Takeaway* Aldrich identifies five core American traits: courage, imagination, grit, generosity, and optimism, which he believes contribute to the nation's continued strength and resilience.* He argues that America's innovative spirit continues to thrive through private sector achievements like SpaceX, which builds upon foundations established by government initiatives like NASA.* Aldrich believes the American system of checks and balances, though currently stressed, is functioning as designed and will help correct excesses in governmental power.* On immigration, he advocates for more humane policies and increased legal immigration, arguing that immigrants fill essential roles in the economy that many Americans don't want.* Despite describing himself as a libertarian who has never voted for a Democrat at the federal level, Aldrich expresses views that sometimes align with centrist positions, including criticism of excessive regulation and opposition to political extremes.Keen On America 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