Keen On America

Andrew Keen

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

  1. To Catch a Fascist: The Ethics of Unmasking the Radical Right

    17H AGO

    To Catch a Fascist: The Ethics of Unmasking the Radical Right

    An anti-fascist spy handed American officials evidence of murderous intent from a Nazi planning server — and they declined to act.About the Guest Christopher Mathias is a journalist covering the far right, formerly a senior reporter at HuffPost, with work appearing in The Guardian, The Nation, MSNBC, Zeteo, and WNYC. His reporting has helped unmask white supremacist cops, soldiers, teachers, and politicians, and he was a Deadline Awards finalist for feature writing. He is originally from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and lives in New York. His new book, To Catch a Fascist: The Fight to Expose the Radical Right (Atria Books), is out now. About the EpisodeDays after Jonathan Rauch’s influential Atlantic essay announced he’d moved from fascism skeptic to fascism believer, Christopher Mathias joins the show to discuss his new book — a deeply reported investigation into the decentralized network of anti-fascist activists who infiltrate, monitor, and expose neo-Nazis and white supremacists operating in positions of power across America. The conversation quickly moves beyond whether Trump is a fascist to the harder questions his book raises: Who gets to decide who is exposed? What rights to privacy do members of extremist groups retain? Is unmasking community self-defense or vigilantism? And does the same logic that justifies exposing a neo-Nazi EMT extend to the tens of thousands of ICE agents now conducting raids on American streets? Timeline 00:00 Introduction Jonathan Rauch’s Atlantic essay and the renewed fascism debate 01:10 Meet Christopher Mathias Introducing the book and the journalist behind it 01:45 The Greenville Moment When Mathias first used “fascist” in a headline after watching Trump whip a crowd into chanting “Send her back” 02:40 Defining the F-Word Fascism as a right-wing politics of domination; Langston Hughes recognizing it in the 1930s before the word arrived 04:15 The Hard Question If MAGA is a fascist movement, are the 70-plus million who voted for Trump fascists too? 05:55 The Worst of the Worst Why the book targets explicit neo-Nazis in positions of power, not ordinary Trump supporters 08:15 Who Decides? Privacy, accountability, and whether everyone at Charlottesville deserves exposure 10:45 Antifascist Amnesty Leave the movement and we leave you alone; return and we publish 12:30 The Equivalence Trap Why Mathias rejects the idea that this is just radicals exposing radicals 14:05 From Neo-Nazis to ICE How anti-fascist tactics are now used to identify masked federal agents 17:15 Where Does It End? Drawing lines between violent enforcement and bureaucratic participation 19:40 “Just Following Orders” Why some orders shouldn’t be followed, and the occupation of Minneapolis 21:30 The Battle Over Shame Competing databases, surveillance, and what America should be ashamed of 23:15 The Spy Who Warned Charlottesville An infiltrator uncovers plans for violence that officials ignore 26:00 Minneapolis as Model “We protect us” and a blueprint for grassroots resistance 28:45 The Underground War Intelligence, counterintelligence, and the personal cost of exposure 30:30 Closing Fascism as a snake eating its own tail and the urgent task of limiting the damage Links & References Mentioned in this episode: Jonathan Rauch, “Yes, It’s Fascism” — The Atlantic (January 2026) To Catch a Fascist: The Fight to Expose the Radical Right by Christopher Mathias (Atria Books, February 2026) Christopher Mathias reporting archive Follow Christopher Mathias: BlueSky | X About Keen On America Keen On America is a daily podcast hosted by Andrew Keen, the Anglo-American writer and Silicon Valley insider named by GQ magazine as one of the world’s “100 Most Connected Men.” Every day, Andrew brings his sharp Transatlantic wit to the forces reshaping the United States — interviewing leading thinkers and writers about American history, politics, technology, culture, and business. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show’s founding on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. Website | Substack | YouTube

    39 min
  2. How Meat Can Save the Planet: The Vegan Case

    2D AGO

    How Meat Can Save the Planet: The Vegan Case

    Can meat save the planet? That’s the paradoxical promise of the longtime vegan activist Bruce Friedrich, founder of the Good Food Institute. In his new book, Meat, Friedrich argues that plant-based and cultivated meat can satisfy the craving of the most hardline carnivore while simultaneously fixing the apocalyptic environmental consequences of industrial farming. So new tech, particularly the latest technology that magically mimics meat, will enable the regeneration of the (real) natural world. For this vegan advocate of meat, this next agricultural revolution will not only transform humanity’s favorite food but also our planet’s environmental 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

    49 min
  3. It's Always Exploding Somewhere: Why No Weapon Is Ever Perfect

    3D AGO

    It's Always Exploding Somewhere: Why No Weapon Is Ever Perfect

    There’s something absurdly Strangelovian about the American quest for a perfect weapon. As Jeffrey Stern warns in The Warhead, his new history of The Paveway, the first “smart” bomb, weapons are always, like their human engineers, imperfect. “It’s always exploding somewhere,” Stern dryly notes, and those explosions in the Texas Instruments developed Paveway were not only unexpected, but often tragically imperfect. So for example, the Second Gulf War was the most precise air war in history and yet within a year, more civilians died than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The conceit of “perfection”, Stern warns, might be as quintessentially American as the fatally flawed Walt Disney corporation or the Kennedy dynasty (both part of the Paveway story). Which is why this history of smart weapons makes such chilling reading in an AI age when Americans are once again being promised perfect military technology. 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

    41 min
  4. Where's the Countercultural Outrage to Trump?

    3D AGO

    Where's the Countercultural Outrage to Trump?

    Why did Nixon trigger a remarkable cultural American renaissance while Trump has generated an avalanche of social media bluster, but few great movies, songs or novels? For Silicon Valley critic Jon Taplin, the problem isn’t just technological. Yes, he argues in Rolling Stone, social media has sucked a lot of the cultural vitality out of America and created a self-interested new class of influencers. But Sixties veteran Taplin sees this cultural crisis in generational terms arguing that young American artists need a “cojones transplant”. Perhaps. Although one wonders if Taplin is part of an American gerontocracy which is hoarding not just power and wealth, but also virtue. 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

    33 min
  5. AI's Adolescent Crisis: And It's Still Just a Toddler

    4D AGO

    AI's Adolescent Crisis: And It's Still Just a Toddler

    Is AI going through an adolescent crisis, even it’s still just a toddler? There certainly seems to be a lot of adolescent angst amongst our new AI overlords like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. In his latest essay, appropriately entitled “The Adolescence of Technology”, Amodei lays out all the existential dangers of AI while simultaneously rejecting the doomsday pessimism of many tech sceptics. Amodei, That Was The Week’s Keith Teare quips, “reminds me of a teenager raised by religious parents to believe you should only have sex after marriage, but he wants to have sex now and feels guilty about it." Teare is right. Amodei - not unlike fellow adolescents Sam Altman and Elon Musk - certainly wants to have his cake and eat it too. So when will they all grow up? Some, like the perpetually infantile Musk, never will. But perhaps like Keith Teare’s conflicted teenager, maybe Dario Amodei will eventually grow out of his guilty adolescence and become a responsibly accountable adult. 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

    40 min
  6. Running Away From America: The Rhodes Scholar Who Ran a Male Brothel in Bali

    5D AGO

    Running Away From America: The Rhodes Scholar Who Ran a Male Brothel in Bali

    When asked what his parents did, Atlantic CEO and competitive marathoner Nicholas Thompson had a stock response. "My mother's an art historian at Babson," he would answer, "my father runs a male brothel in Bali." Thompson's new best-selling autobiography, The Running Ground, is an extended version of his extraordinary family history, focusing on the dramatic fall from grace of his Rhodes Scholar father, W. Scott Thompson. The confessional is partly a discourse on running — a discipline that the father passed down to the son. But it's also a meditation on parenting. So was his father a good dad? "If the standard is whether you go bankrupt, lean upon your children, ask them to perform bigamist weddings, threaten to kill yourself, blackmail them, then no," Nick Thompson reflects. "If the standard is does he love you every day, then yes." 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

    23 min
  7. Your 2026 Reading List: Seven Books You Won't Want to Miss

    6D AGO

    Your 2026 Reading List: Seven Books You Won't Want to Miss

    According to our favorite literary reviewer, Bethanne Patrick, these are the seven books that “will really matter” in 2026: * Land by Maggie O’Farrell — The Hamnet author returns with a luminous novel set in 1865 Ireland, two decades after the Great Famine. A father and son survey their region for the British—mapping the land in English when their hearts speak Gaelic. O’Farrell explores post-famine trauma, colonialism, and the mysterious pull of place, weaving in neolithic history and Irish wolfhounds that feel almost magical. As some characters emigrate to the New World, the novel asks what it means when land becomes identity, when a nation is defined not by commerce but by the places that feed our souls. * The Fire Agent by David Baerwald — A stunning debut from the Grammy-winning songwriter behind Sheryl Crow’s Tuesday Night Music Club. This 600-page thriller is based on Baerwald’s own family history: his grandfather Ernst was sent to Tokyo as the purported sales director for IG Farben, the company complicit in the Holocaust. The novel spans continents and decades, from a 1920s throuple to Wild Bill Donovan’s OSS becoming the CIA, complete with family photographs. Patrick calls it “a knockout”—not a potboiler, but a wild, scary ride where almost everything actually happened. * A Tender Age by Chang-rae Lee — The Pulitzer finalist delivers what his publisher calls “a spellbinding exploration of American masculinity and family dynamics.” Through an unforgettable Asian-American protagonist, Lee examines what it means to grow up with “double consciousness”—always aware of how the dominant culture perceives you, your family, your chances. Patrick places him alongside Jesmyn Ward as one of America’s finest novelists. * Witness and Respair by Jesmyn Ward — The two-time National Book Award winner collects her nonfiction, including the devastating Vanity Fair essay about her husband’s death from COVID at 33. “Respair” is Ward’s resurrection of an archaic word: the repair that comes after despair. These crystalline essays on the American South, racism, and grief reveal the deep thought behind her remarkable fiction. Patrick sees it as essential reading for 2026—a creative grappling with everything America must face. * Backtalker by Kimberlé Crenshaw — A memoir from the architect of “intersectionality” and “critical race theory,” now under attack in the current administration. Structured in three parts—raising a back talker, becoming a back talker, being a back talker—it begins with young Kimberlé desperate to play Thornrose in a classroom fairy tale, passed over week after week. When she’s finally chosen on the last day and the bell rings, her mother marches back to school and demands justice. That’s where Crenshaw learned to speak truth to power. * American Struggle edited by Jon Meacham — For the 250th anniversary, the historian assembles primary documents proving that struggle is constant and non-linear in American history. Abolitionists spoke out in the nineteenth century; civil rights activists had to speak out again in the twentieth. From Abigail Adams’s “remember the ladies” letter to Fannie Lou Hamer’s testimony at the 1964 Democratic Convention, Meacham—no fan of the current administration—shows that the fight never stays won. Patrick sees it as essential for librarians, teachers, and younger readers. * John of John by Douglas Stuart — Patrick’s sneaky seventh pick (I originally only allowed her six). The Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain returns to Scotland, this time the Isle of Harris, where men weave Harris Tweed on licensed looms. John McLeod is a fire-and-brimstone church elder; his son Cal returns from Glasgow art college with dyed hair and queer identity. What looks like prodigal son territory becomes something richer—father and son have more in common than either knows. Stuart captures a community tied to sheep farming and craft practices that feel centuries old, even as modernity crashes against the shore. Enjoy! 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

    41 min
  8. Human Fracking: The $17 Trillion War for Your Attention

    JAN 28

    Human Fracking: The $17 Trillion War for Your Attention

    Pay attention to this interview. Because, you see, attention is seriously expensive — the Silicon Valley industry being worth $17 trillion, at least according to the Princeton historian D. Graham Burnett, co-editor of a new manifesto entitled Attensity. For Burnett and his friends in the Attention Liberation Movement, the attention industry is "fracking" the human out of us. Liberating ourselves from its exploitative grasp, then, is an existential challenge. "If we take our attention away," he warns, "it collapses into sand." And so will we. So paying attention involves more than simply putting down our phones. It means joining the Attensity movement and challenging the central attention economy principles of 21st century capitalism. 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

    56 min
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4.1
out of 5
81 Ratings

About

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

Information

  • Creator
    Andrew Keen
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    1K
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Andrew Keen
  • Show Website
    Keen On America

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