Keen On America

Keen On America

Nobody asks sharper or more impertinent questions than Andrew Keen. In KEEN ON, Andrew cross-examines the world’s smartest people on politics, economics, history, the environment, and tech. If you want to make sense of our complex world, check out the daily questions and the answers on KEEN ON. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best-known technology and politics broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running show How To Fix Democracy and the author of four critically acclaimed books about the future, including the international bestselling CULT OF THE AMATEUR. Keen On is free to listen to and will remain so. If you want to stay up-to-date on new episodes and support the show please subscribe to Andrew Keen’s Substack. Paid subscribers will soon be able to access exclusive content from our new series Keen On America. keenon.substack.com

Episodes

October 15, 2025 41 mins

For financial journalist Elizabeth MacBride, the New American economy is like the old one - only worse. Describing it as the “Frankenstein version of neo-liberalism”, MacBride explains that business has overtaken government to create ever-more-powerful bankers like Larry Fink and Jamie Dimon. But all is not lost. In her upcoming new book, Capital Evolution, co-authored with the VC Seth Levine, MacBride argues that there’s a new con...

Mark as Played

Churchill described Communist Russia as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. For Pulitzer Prize winning Princeton historian, Paul Starr, America might be the new Soviet Union. It’s a such contradiction, in fact, that he entitles his new book American Contradiction, in an attempt to describe the dominant narrative of “revolution and revenge” from the 1950s to today’s America. But unlike Churchill, who unwrapped the Russi...

Mark as Played

At 85, the venerable Jeffrey Archer has lived through enough crises to stay calm and carry on whatever the stormy political weather. The best-selling author—who has sold 275 million books and, as a Conservative MP and party chairman, served Margaret Thatcher for 11 years—speaks with the authority of someone who witnessed the Iron Lady’s firm politics up close and personal. But Mrs Thatcher isn’t the only British grande dame who Ar...

Mark as Played

History rarely repeats itself, especially speculative bubbles. As it becomes increasingly obvious that today’s AI bubble will dramatically burst, the real question is not when but how.

What makes this boom profoundly different from the DotCom crash of the nineties is OpenAI’s attempt to create an AI private monopoly by positioning itself at the center of trillions of dollars worth of self-serving “deals”. Sam Altman wants to simulta...

Mark as Played

Tom Brokaw famously described America’s World War II servicemen as the “Greatest Generation”. But according to the historian David Nasaw, the Americans who fought in the Second World War are better understood as The Wounded Generation. His eponymous new book describes the pain and hardships that 16 million veterans endured upon their return home - a tragic story of PTSD, racism and family breakup. Brokaw celebrated the nobility wi...

Mark as Played

According to the platform economist Sangeet Paul Choudary, author of Reshuffle, today’s AI hype is a feature rather than a bug in Silicon Valley. It’s a deliberate mechanism to attract capital in an “attention-poor, capital-heavy economy” while distracting from the lack of short-term business results. So who will ultimately win and who will lose in today’s AI arms race? While Choudary predicts power will concentrate around infrastr...

Mark as Played

It’s springtime for charlatans. At least according to Quico Toro, coauthor (with my old friend Moises Naim) of Charlatans, a new screed about how grifters, swindlers and hucksters are bamboozling the media, the markets and the masses. If you listen to Toro, you wouldn’t want to get out of bed in the morning. Everywhere - on our screens, in our churches, even in the White House - there lurk charlatans intent on stealing our souls. A...

Mark as Played

Next Monday is Columbus Day. Or should it be Indigenous People’s Day? According to the historian Matthew Restall we should be celebrating both Columbus and Indigenous People on Monday. The author of the timely The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus, Restall places Genoa’s most famous sailor as a prisoner of history - endlessly protean to reflect each era’s changing values. The many lives of Columbus, then, is a mirror of how we hav...

Mark as Played

Last weekend, the English reggae band UB 40 played in the Orpheum in Los Angeles and included in the set their 1980 song “Tyler”.

Tyler is guilty white judges said soWhat right do we got to say it’s not soTyler is guilty white judges said soWhat right do we got to say it’s not soTyler is guilty white judges said soWhat right do we got to say it’s not soTyler is guilty white judges said soWhat right do we got to say it’s not so

In th...

Just be yourself many career coaches tell us. But for the psychologist and entrepreneur Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, the reverse is true. Don’t Be Yourself Chamorro-Premuzic advises in his new book, arguing that authenticity Is overrated and what to do instead. Drawing from extensive behavioral science research, Chamorro-Premuzic contends that success comes not from unleashing your unfiltered self but from understanding where “the rig...

Mark as Played

What unites America, it used to be said, is a common commitment to “freedom”. But in our disunited times, it's worth remembering that two incompatible versions of freedom have actually divided rather than brought the United States together. As the historian Nicholas Buccola notes in his intriguing new book One Man’s Freedom, these competing freedoms are represented in the thinking of the two icons of modern American conservatism a...

Mark as Played

We’ve done a couple (here and here) of shows recently about the war on cars. But we never discussed the connections, both literal and metaphorical, between the damage of “Big Car” and “Big University” . According to the tenured Emory law professor Deepa Das Acevedo, what she calls in her new book, The War on Tenure, is really an attempt to transform the modern university into an academic version of Uber. By getting rid of tenure, A...

Mark as Played

One of the most painful lessons of the Kirk assassination is that conservatives are running rings around progressives in political mobilization - especially of young Americans. So how to make the left relevant in America again? For the philosopher Michael Brownstein, co-author of Somebody Should Do Something, progressives need to learn to lose both cleverly and loudly. And they can learn from NRA on this. Despite holding positions ...

Mark as Played

“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown,” were, of course, the closing words from Polanski’s 1974 movie, Chinatown. But the point of Jeff Chang’s new biography of Bruce Lee, Water Mirror Echo, is that by 1973, when Lee died, Asian America was more than just Chinatown. Lee made Asian America, Chang argues, by giving Asian Americans dignity. Chang shows how Lee’s journey from segregated Seattle and San Francisco neighborhoods to global star...

Mark as Played

Back in 1990, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur called Jim Fruchterman chose purpose over profit. In his new book, Technology for Good, Fruchterman explains how nonprofit leaders like him are using software and data to solve our most pressing social problems. Thirty five years ago, when his investors vetoed a reading machine for the blind because the market was only $1 million annually, Fruchterman walked away from his $25 million-fund...

Mark as Played

It’s not exactly news that the Nazis didn’t like the Jews. But according to the Rutgers historian Jochen Hellbeck, author of World Enemy Number One, the Nazi obsession went so far as to believe that the Soviet Union was owned and operated by a global cabal of Jews. And so, Hellbeck argues, it was not the Western powers but Communist Russia that Nazi Germany viewed as an existential threat—in fact, “World Enemy No. 1.” Jewish revolu...

Mark as Played

The numbers are mind blowing. According to Roadkill authors Henrietta Moore and Arthur Kay, cars have killed more people than both world wars combined. That’s how toxic our relationship with cars has been over the last century, they argue. The UN figures they cite—60 to 80 million direct deaths since the automobile’s invention—don’t even include premature deaths from air pollution or the millions seriously injured. Yet we’ve become...

Mark as Played

It’s the $320,000 question both parents and students are asking themselves: Is that four-year liberal arts degree really worth it? According to Brandeis University President Arthur Levine, it’s a question they should, indeed, be asking. In his co-authored book The Great Upheaval, Levine argues that the United States is experiencing a profound transformation not seen since the Industrial Revolution—when America’s classical colleges ...

Mark as Played

Some liberals might shake their virtuous heads and tut-tut disapprovingly. But, as the Brookings scholar William Galston argues, Donald Trump’s Old Testament politics of retribution has exposed the limitations of liberal thought. In his new book, Anger, Fear, Domination, Galston argues that liberals must recognize the dark passions driving politics and incorporate them into their own language. The power of political speech, Galston...

Mark as Played

“It’s happening. The question is whether it’s a dream or a nightmare. This week, OpenAI introduced Pulse, an AI assistant that knows what we want to do and think before we do. That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare welcomes Pulse as a “habit” that will “shape your day.” Unlike the techno-teleological Keith, however, I’m less enamored by Pulse. Do we really want a proactive AI assistant that not only controls what Keith calls the “...

Mark as Played

Popular Podcasts

    If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

    CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

    It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.

    Dateline NBC

    Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

    The Breakfast Club

    The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!

    The Joe Rogan Experience

    The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.

Advertise With Us
Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.