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To celebrate over two thousand episodes of the show, we are launching KEEN ON AMERICA - a special series of personal conversations with prominent Americans about their now almost 250 year-old Republic. First up is Adam Hochschild, the co-founder of Mother Jones magazine, author of American Midnight and many other important books about the modern world. As Hochschild told me when I sat down with him in his Berkeley home, his life has been fused by activism: at first, the rebellious activism of a son and young citizen in the early Sixties; and now the more cerebral activism of father, grandfather and acclaimed writer. Such activism, I think, make Adam's story very much of an American story and an ideal first chapter in the KEEN ON AMERICA series. Adam Hochschild is the author of eleven books. American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis is his most recent. His preceding book, the biography Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes, was published in 2020. Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, appeared in 2016. Of his earlier books, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN USA Literary Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa and To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 were both finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels and the recent Lessons from a Dark Time and Other Essays collect his shorter pieces, including magazine reporting from five continents. Earlier in his career, he was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, a commentator on National Public Radio's “All Things Considered,” and a co-founder, editor, and writer at Mother Jones magazine. He has received the Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award from the American Historical Association and in 2014 was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a three-time winner of the California Book Awards' Gold Medal for Nonfiction.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, 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
Yesterday was the anniversary of the death of the great British Abolitionist Thomas Clarkson who died on September 26, 1846. In recognition and remembrance of Clarkson's monumental and tireless work to end the slave trade and slavery in the British Empire, I am re-airing my fascinating conversation with the journalist Adam Hoschchild, author of one of my favorite history books: Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves. We also just listened to this episode in my class and I hope other teachers and students can benefit from it!
Today I speak with Adam Hochschild, journalist, lecturer at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and author of eleven books. American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis is his most recent. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa and To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 were both selected as finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. We discuss the British Anti-Slavery Movement and his 2006 book Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN USA Literary Award, the Gold Medal of the California Book Awards, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Adam recommends these two books: The Life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano Disposable People by Kevin Bales
Links from the show:* American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis* Follow Ryan on Twitter* Subscribe to the showAbout my guest:Adam Hochschild (pronunciation: ”Hoch” as in ”spoke”; ”schild” as in ”build”) is the author of eleven books; American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis is his most recent. His preceding book, the biography Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes, was published in 2020. Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, appeared in 2016. Of his earlier books, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN USA Literary Award, the Gold Medal of the California Book Awards, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa and To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 were both finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels and the recent Lessons from a Dark Time and Other Essays collect his shorter pieces, including magazine reporting from five continents.Earlier in his career, he was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, a commentator on National Public Radio's “All Things Considered,” and a co-founder, editor, and writer at Mother Jones magazine. Links to recent articles of his appear below. He has received the Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award from the American Historical Association and in 2014 was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Get full access to Dispatches from the War Room at dispatchesfromthewarroom.substack.com/subscribe
Resources on how to take actionhttps://blacklivesmatter.com/global-actions/https://blacklivesmatter.com/defundthepolice/https://www.standwithbre.com/?fbclid=IwAR1O5lupss1_YmmjZpPlUr_mH0i5NX95YFaETWIJS4xwUDlUQTF-Tgz9zk0List of books recommended in episode:The Autobiography of Malcolm XBury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves by Adam HochschildThe work fo Dr Cornel West, an American philosopher, political activist, social critic, author, and public intellectual.
In 2011, Tristan Harris’s company, Apture, was acquired by Google. Inside Google, he became unnerved by how the company worked. There was all this energy going into making the products better, more addicting, more delightful. But what if all that made the users’ lives worse, more busy, more distracted? Harris wrote up his worries in a slide deck manifesto. “A Call to Minimize Distraction & Respect Users’ Attention” went viral within the company and led to Harris being named Google’s “design ethicist.” But he soon realized that he couldn’t change enough from the inside. The business model wasn’t built to give users back their time. It was built to take ever more of it. Harris, who co-founded the Center for Humane Technology, has become the most influential critic of how Silicon Valley designs products to addict us. His terms, like the need to focus on “Time Well Spent,” have been adopted (or perhaps coopted) by, among others, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. I interviewed Harris recently for my podcast. We talked about how the 2016 election threw Silicon Valley into crisis, why negative emotions dominate online, where Silicon Valley’s model of human decisionmaking went wrong, whether he buys Zuckerberg's change of heart, what happened when meditation master Thich Nhat Hahn came to Google, what it means to control your own time, and what can be done about it. Further Reading: A Verge interview with Jaron Lanier where he talks about the idea that to maximize engagement, you need to maximize emotional engagement, and the emotions that are most engaging are the negative ones. Tristan mentions Kahneman’s System 1 & System 2 thinking. Here’s an explanation of that. The Onion article Ezra mentioned about the ways meditation is applied in Silicon Valley The New York Times piece with a headline Tristan says is somewhat different from the truth A description of the Facebook earnings call that Tristan mentioned The Stanford Persuasive Technology lab Tristan mentioned to explain the psychology behind the Snapchat Streak Ezra mentioned Ralph Nader’s Consumer Movement. Here’s a description of that. The New York Times article on greyscaling a phone that Tristan and Ezra discuss Recommended books Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves Reprint Edition by Adam Hochschild Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Seth and JJ talk about what surprised them as they began to learn about slavery and trafficking. Though more can and should be done to end slavery, which has been continually with us, chattel slavery was ended in England at a time when slavery was an accepted norm that it was foolhardy to fight. Things can change through the efforts of many everyday people, as it did when England ended slavery within its empire in 1833. Sources: http://www.denverpost.com/2013/07/01/jury-finds-kalu-guilty-of-human-trafficking/ http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/14/africa/libya-migrant-auctions/index.html Bales, Kevin. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Blackmon, Douglas A. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. New York: Anchor Books, 2008. Griffin, Emory A. The Mind Changers: The Art of Christian Persuasion. Carol Stream: Tyndale House, 1976. Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Skinner, E. Benjamin. A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face With Modern Slavery. New York: Free Press, 2008. Zimmerman, Yvonne C. Other Dreams of Freedom: Religion, Sex, and Human Trafficking. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Jonathon Van Maren interviews author, journalist, and lecturer Adam Hochschild about his book Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebel's in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves and his history of abolition.