Keen On Andrew Keen

The KEEN ON America series is supposed to feature conversations with prominent Americans about the post, present and future of their almost 250 year-old Republic. And while Nick Bryant was born in the UK and now lives in Australia, I think he nonetheless qualifies as an honorary American. The BBC’s America correspondent during the Bush and Clinton presidencies, Bryant has been compared with the iconic 20th century British journalist Alistair Cooke for his ability to make sense of the United States. Bryant has a new book about America out this week, THE FOREVER WAR, in which writes about the Republic’s “unending conflict with itself”. And so does Bryant think that America can ever come together, or is its 21st century fate to be always on the verge of civil war?



During a career spanning almost thirty years, Nick Bryant came to be regarded as one of the BBC’s finest foreign correspondents. He has been posted in Washington, South Asia, Australia and New York, where he covered the Trump years. His writing has appeared in The Economist, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Monthly and The New Statesman. He broadcasts regularly on the BBC and ABC. Nick studied history at Cambridge and has a doctorate in American politics from Oxford. He now lives in Sydney with his wife and children. His book, When America Stopped Being Great: A History of the Present, currently resides on Joe Biden’s bookshelf in the Oval Office.



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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“The past is never dead”, William Faulkner quipped, “it’s not even past.” Angry white men, a disruptive internet, political gridlock in DC, right-wing terrorism, lying Presidents…. Yes, the 2020’s began in the 1990’s with Ruby Ridge, Newt Gingrich, the Oklahoma bombing, Bill and Monica, Russ Limbaugh, and the dotcom madness. Indeed, according to Terry H. Anderson’s intriguing new book WHY THE NINETIES STILL MATTER, we can trace most *contemporary American dysfunctionality back to that fateful final decade of the 20th century.



Terry H. Anderson is Professor of History and Cornerstone Faculty Fellow at Texas A&M University, a Vietnam veteran, and has taught in Malaysia and Japan. He has received Fulbright awards to China, Indonesia, and was the Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History at University College, Dublin. He is the author of numerous articles on the 1960s and the Vietnam War, co-author of A Flying Tiger's Diary, and author of The Sixties; United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, 1944-1947; The Movement and the Sixties; The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action; and Bush's Wars.


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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What goes up, comes down. As the Dow continues to hover at 40,000, something is inevitably going to burst the Wall Street’s current irrational exuberance. According to Andrew Lipstein, the biggest danger to today’s stock market boom is the $15 trillion in global passive investing funds managed by companies like Vanguard. In this month’s Harpers cover story, WHAT GOES UP, the Brooklyn based Lipstein talks to leading Cassandras warning us of the apocalyptic dangers of passive investing. Lipstein is the author of two wickedly entertaining novels and the writer brings a sparkling surrealism to the normally horribly boring business of identifying the next economic crash.



Andrew Lipstein is a writer based in Brooklyn. His debut novel Last Resort was published in 2022 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the US, and Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the UK. His second novel The Vegan was published in July 2023, also by FSG and W&N. His third novel Something Rotten will be published in January 2025.



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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James Kirchick’s New York Times op-ed, “A Chill Has Fallen Over Jews in Publishing”, has elicited much controversy. I have to admit that I’m not entirely convinced by Kirchick’s thesis, particularly on his position that a Jew these days has no choice but to be a Zionist, but it’s a provocative argument. While meritocracy has “been good for the Jews”, he explains, our new “woke” politics, especially surrounding Israel, has transformed Jews into “the new whites”. So Jewish writers are now being silenced by a censorious publishing industry if they express even the slightest ambivalence about Gaza. Is this the new McCarthyism or just another storm in the literati teacup?



James Kirchick is a journalist and the New York Times-bestselling author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington and The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age. A writer at large for Air Mail and a contributing writer for Tablet, he has reported from over 40 countries and his writing has appeared in many publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.



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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On yesterday’s show, Keith Teare mourned the scarcity of utopian thinking in Silicon Valley. But maybe Keith was looking on the wrong coast. Robert Wolcott, who teaches at the University of Chicago and is the chair of the World Innovation Network, recognizes the value of utopian idealism in his co-authored new book, Proximity: How Coming Breakthroughs in Just-in-Time Transform Business, Society and Life. As he told me, the just-in-time tech revolution of generative AI, 3D printing, lab-grown meats, renewable energy, and virtual reality is going to change everything. But what Wolcott can’t predict, he confesses, is whether all this radically disruptive new tech will lead us to utopia or to dystopia.



Robert C. Wolcott is Adjunct Professor of Innovation at the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, and Adjunct Professor of Executive Education at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. From 2010 – 2019, he served as Clinical Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Kellogg. Wolcott won Teacher of the Year from Kellogg’s EMBA program in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2017. He’s co-founder and chair of The World Innovation Network (TWIN), a global community of nearly 4,000 innovation and growth leaders from over 30 countries and across sectors (business, government, the arts, academia, defense). TWIN gathers 400 delegates for TWIN Global each year in Chicago to explore the future, in addition to smaller gatherings and online sessions. The objective is to build trusted relationships across sectors. Wolcott is an angel investor in over 20 companies including crowd funding leader Indiegogo, tech-enabled coaching and culture development platform Abroad.io, student loan innovator Lumni, digital education leader Kiddom, transaction security technology firm Magic Cube, digital mental health platform Silver Cloud Health and ClearCare Online (acquired by Battery Ventures), international art show, EXPO Chicago and MommyDaddyMe.com, a Hong Kong-based online capability development platform for children and their families across Asia. Wolcott holds a BA, European and Chinese History; and an MS and Ph.D., Industrial Engineering & Management Science, Northwestern University. Wolcott is a board member of Clareo, a foresight and growth strategy consultancy serving global corporations, and Abroad.io, a tech-enabled human transformation platform. Wolcott serves on advisory boards for H-Farm, the leading technology ecosystem in Italy, and the Open Innovation Lab of Norway. He serves on the board of Cure Blindness (Himalayan Cataract Project), a global non-profit that has restored sight to nearly one million people in Asia, Africa and Latin America. He is a regular contributor for Forbes on the impact of technology on business, society and humanity. His book, Grow From Within: Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation (McGraw-Hill, 2010) has been published in Chinese and Japanese. Wolcott’s work appears in MIT Sloan Management Review, strategy+business, The Harvard Business Review (online), The Wall Street Journal, Advertising Age, Business Week, The Financial Times (European Edition), The New York Times and numerous overseas 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.




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If you want to insult somebody in Silicon Valley, call them a “utopian”. It suggests a fantastical mind unable or unwilling to come to terms with reality. Utopians, it is assumed by self styled “realists”, are children. They’ve failed to grow up. But according to That Was The Week tech newsletter Keith Teare, the problem with today’s Silicon Valley is the scarcity rather than abundance of utopian thinking. Borrowing from an essay entitled Whither Utopia by the British technologist Rohit Krishnan, Teare argues that we need a new generation of Robert Owen style utopians for our age of AI, technological visionaries with the audacity to think big and dig deep to confront our most persistent problems.



Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at the University of Kent and is the author of “The Easy Net Book” and “Under Siege.” He writes regularly for TechCrunch and publishes the “That Was The Week” newsletter.



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