Keen On Andrew Keen

Bethanne Patrick, the world’s best read woman and KEEN ON’s official literary maven, has six recommended new books to read this June. Three non-fiction works and three novels, they extend from books all about women, to the dangers of jelly fish to a gay Hungarian in the Lavender Scare Hollywood of the Fifties. So something for everyone and Bethanne even suggests whether each book should be read on the porch or the porch. No excuses. Y’all have something to read in June.



Bethanne Patrick maintains a storied place in the publishing industry as a critic and as @TheBookMaven on Twitter, where she created the popular #FridayReads and regularly comments on books and literary ideas to over 200,000 followers. Her work appears frequently in the Los Angeles Times as well as in The Washington Post, NPR Books, and Literary Hub. She sits on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and has served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. She is the host of the Missing Pages podcast.



Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL 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.

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Back in August 2021, we did a show featuring the British psychologist Lucy Jones, about how nature maintains our sanity. Jones’ thesis is born out in the astonishing story of Banning Lyon, who was institutionalized in a Texan psychiatric hospital as a teenager and freed by his discovery of the outdoors. Lyon’s new memoir The Chair and the Valley is excellent - as, I hope, is this interview. In contrast with many other contemporary writers on trauma and healing, Banning tells his story in the kind of unsentimental, down-to-earth manner that will be inspiring to both environmentalists and psychologists.



Banning Lyon is backpacking guide, instructor, and public speaker. He currently lives in Martinez, CA, with his wife and daughter.



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

It’s becoming more and more self-evident that the Nineties matter. John Ganz’s important new book, When the Clock Broke, focuses on how, in the early 1990’s, the seemingly crackpot ideas of what at the time appeared to be con men like David Duke and Pat Buchanan, infiltrated what remained Ronald Reagan’s optimistic, globalist Republican party. The seeds of Trumpian reactionary populism, Ganz believes, were sown by characters like Duke, Buchanan and the libertarian economist Murray Rothbard who confessed, in a 1991 speech, to wanting to break the clock of social democracy. That clock is now smashed as is much else that was taken for granted in the early 1990’s about American politics.


John Ganz writes the widely acclaimed Unpopular Front newsletter for Substack. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Artforum, the New Statesman, and other publications.


Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. 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

In episode 2065, we discussed the Malaysian contractor, Leonard Glenn Francis (aka: Fat Leonard) about the biggest recent scandal in the US navy. But, as Guy Lawson, author of Hot Dog Money explains in this episode, Louis Martin “Marty” Blazer gives Fat Leonard a good run for his money (so to speak) in Blazer’s participation and later expose of the profoundly corrupt nature of American college sports. The US college sports “economy”, Lawson explains, is a huge deception - from the lie of amateurism to the way in which television sports revenue has transformed many academic colleges into media companies. As Lawson notes, you couldn’t make up the story of Marty Blazer. And the biggest scandal of all is that the lie of amateur college sports continues to generate massive wealth to American universities and media companies.



Guy Lawson is an investigative reporter who has looked closely at crime over the course of his career — and notes that the predatory ecosystem around NCAA sports is essentially an organized crime ring. His bestselling book War Dogs was made into the 2016 feature film starring Jonah Hill and Miles Teller, and his writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, the New York Times Magazine and Harper’s. In light of Blazer’s untimely passing, Lawson is now the keeper of his story. 



Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. 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 America braces itself for the upcoming Presidential election, a growing army of coastal commentators are agonizing over the health of the country’s democracy. In contrast with many of these desk bound pundits, the Bloomberg editorial director Frank Barry bought an RV and drove from New York City to San Francisco on the backroads of old Lincoln Highway. His new book, Back Roads and Better Angels, is an account of this journey into the heart of American democracy and, as Barry told me when I visited him at the Bloomberg offices in New York City, this trip has made him cautiously optimistic about the health of American democracy.



Frank Barry is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and member of the editorial board covering national affairs. He is the author of Back Roads and Better Angels: A Journey Into the Heart of American Democracy.



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

In the wake of a “major Summit” on Ukraine which neither the Russians nor the Chinese attended, the war remains as murky and inconclusive as ever. And it’s this murkiness and inconclusiveness that the San Francisco based writer Sasha Vasiljuk explores in her new novel, Your Presence is Mandatory. But Vasiljuk’s semi-autobiographical, semi-fictional canvas focuses on more than just Putin’s invasions of Ukraine. It’s a sweeping panorama of the last seventy-five years of Ukrainian history - although there’s nothing particularly sweeping or panoramic about the awkward secrets that Vasiljuk digs up in this most most morally murky of geographies.




Sasha Vasilyuk is a journalist and author of the debut novel Your Presence is Mandatory (Bloomsbury) about a Ukrainian Jewish WWII soldier and his family who reckon with his lifelong secrecy. The novel will also come out in Italy, France, Germany, Finland and Brazil in Fall 2024. Sasha grew up between Ukraine and Russia before immigrating to the U.S. at the age of 13. She has a MA in Journalism from New York University and her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, CNN, TIME, Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Bazaar, BBC Radio, USA Today, KQED, San Francisco Chronicle, The Telegraph, and Narrative. She has won several writing awards, including the Solas Award for Best Travel Writing and the NATJA award. Besides writing, she has founded a leading wedding PR company and the first coworking space in San Francisco. She also spent a year traveling alone around the world. Sasha is a graduate of Lowell High School, UC Berkeley (BA in Comparative Literature and Italian Studies), and New York University (MA in Journalism). She lives in San Francisco with her husband and two children.



Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. 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