999 episodes

The daily show about the big ideas, new technologies, books and people changing the world. Hosted by Andrew Keen.

keenon.substack.com

Keen On Andrew Keen

    • Business
    • 4.1 • 71 Ratings

The daily show about the big ideas, new technologies, books and people changing the world. Hosted by Andrew Keen.

keenon.substack.com

    Episode 2003: Martin Sixsmith on Vladimir Putin and the return of history to Russia and the West

    Episode 2003: Martin Sixsmith on Vladimir Putin and the return of history to Russia and the West

    Did history ever go away? For the former BBC Russia correspondent, Martin Sixsmith, there was a few euphoric years, in the early 1990’s, when history promised to end. That time, of course, was the post-Soviet Russia of Boris Yeltsin and the promise that “they” could become like “us” and embrace both democracy and a Chicago school market capitalism. In his new book, PUTIN AND THE RETURN OF HISTORY, Sixsmith tells the story of the transition from this euphoria about the end of history into the Ukraine fueled pessimism of today. But Sixsmith doesn’t blame everything on Putin, who he describes as a Russian Zelig, a Machiavellian opportunist who simultaneously was made by and has made history. Yes, he argues, the Kremlin has rekindled the Cold War. But we in the West also have some responsibility for not understanding the historic Russian paranoia about being invaded by western powers.


    Martin Sixsmith is a bestselling author, television and radio presenter and journalist. He began working at the BBC in 1980 as a foreign correspondent, reporting from Moscow during the end of the Cold War, the era of Perestroika, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1997, he went to work for the government of Tony Blair as Director of Communications and Press Secretary to Harriet Harman and then to Alistair Darling. He then served as Director of Communication at the Department for Transport, Local Government, and the Regions. Sixsmith is the author of two political novels, Spin and I Heard Lenin Laugh. He has also published an account of the Litvinenko murder, The Litvinenko File, and made a documentary film in 2008 exploring the legacy of the KGB in today's Russia and the FSB. His book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee was turned into a hugely successful film in 2013, starring Judi Dench.

    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

    • 45 min
    Episode 2002: Elaine Lin Hering gives voice to the "Unsilent Generation"

    Episode 2002: Elaine Lin Hering gives voice to the "Unsilent Generation"

    Once-upon-a-time, there was the “Silent Generation” - the self-sacrificing generation of WW2 vets who won the war and built America into a Cold War superpower. But Elaine Lin Hering, the author of UNLEARNING SILENCE, isn’t sold on this stoically self-sacrificing generation. Rather than silence, she believes that speaking our minds, both at work and at home, will unleash our talent and enable us to live more fully. Speak up, she says, and unleash your inner Ariana Huffington or Elon Musk. What could possibly go wrong?


    Elaine Lin Hering is a facilitator, speaker, and writer. She works with organizations and individuals to build skills in communication, collaboration, and conflict management. Elaine has worked on six continents and with a wide range of corporate, government, and nonprofit clients. She has trained mental health professionals, political officials, religious communities, and leaders at companies including American Express, Capital One, Google, Nike, Novartis, Shell, Pixar, and the Red Cross. Elaine is a former Managing Partner of Triad Consulting Group and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, specializing in dispute resolution, mediation, and negotiation.




    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

    • 28 min
    Episode 2001: Adam Hochschild offers his very personal take on the past, present and future of the United States of America

    Episode 2001: Adam Hochschild offers his very personal take on the past, present and future of the United States of America

    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

    • 54 min
    Episode 2000: Keith Teare on why the Congressional attempt to ban TikTok is astonishingly dumb

    Episode 2000: Keith Teare on why the Congressional attempt to ban TikTok is astonishingly dumb

    I usually hate agreeing with Keith Teare, my libertarian-conservative friend from Palo Alto/Yorkshire. But on TikTok, we are in violent agreement. As Keith explains, TikTok isn’t a Chinese company and even it was, there’s absolutely no reason to ban it or force a US sale. That such self-serving stupidity is being peddled by the Biden administration is particularly worrying. Where are the grown-ups (except Keith and I) when it comes to talking sense about TikTok?


    Keith Teare is a Founder and CEO at SignalRank Corporation. Previously he was Executive Chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd - A UK-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. He was also previously the founder at the Palo Alto incubator, Archimedes Labs. Archimedes was the original incubator for TechCrunch and since 2011 has invested, accelerated or incubated many Silicon Valley startups including Around (sold to Miro), Millicast (Sold to Dolby), InFarm, Miles, Quixey; M.dot (sold to GoDaddy); chat.center; Loop Surveys; DownTown and Sunshine. Teare has a track record as a serial entrepreneur with big ideas and has achieved significant returns for investors.


    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

    • 37 min
    Episode 1999: Sasha Issenberg offers a playbook for winning elections in our disinformation age

    Episode 1999: Sasha Issenberg offers a playbook for winning elections in our disinformation age

    The most troubling casualty of today’s social media age is our shared sense of reality. Perceptions of reality still exist, but they often come packaged, mirroring a priori assumptions about the world. So how to win democratic elections in this age of multiple informations? How to promote/peddle truths that will get people to vote for your candidate? That’s the story Sasha Issenberg writes about in his new book, THE LIE DETECTIVES, a kind of Moneyball for our disinformation age. One of America’s smartest political journalists, Issenberg explains, with bracing clarity, how to win elections in a democracy awash with lies and liars.


    Sasha Issenberg is the author of three previous books, on topics ranging from the global sushi business to medical tourism and the science of political campaigns. He covered the 2008 election as a national political reporter in the Washington bureau of The Boston Globe, the 2012 election for Slate, the 2016 election for Bloomberg Politics and Businessweek, and 2020 for The Recount. He is the Washington correspondent for Monocle, and has also written for New York magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and George, where he served as a contributing editor. He teaches in the political science department at UCLA. Read his magazine, newspaper, and other published work here.
    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

    • 41 min
    Episode 1998: Emily Raboteau on how to mother against "the apocalypse"

    Episode 1998: Emily Raboteau on how to mother against "the apocalypse"

    Last week, the LA Times book critic Bethanne Patrick came on the show to discuss new books about life in our age of the polycrisis. One of these was Emily Raboteau’s much acclaimed Lessons For Survival: Mothering Against “The Apocalypse”. So how, exactly, I asked the Bronx based Raboteau, do you mother against “the apocalypse”? And what does Raboteau, a amateur photographer and birdwatcher, have in common with Christian Cooper, the Central Park birdwatcher, who appeared on the show last year?

    Emily Raboteau writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change, and parenthood. Her books are Lessons for Survival, Searching for Zion, winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the critically acclaimed novel, The Professor’s Daughter. Since the release of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, she has focused on writing about the climate crisis. A contributing editor at Orion Magazine and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, Raboteau’s writing has recently appeared and been anthologized in the New Yorker, the New York Times, New York Magazine, The Nation, Best American Science Writing, Best American Travel Writing, and elsewhere. Her distinctions include an inaugural Climate Narratives Prize from Arizona State University, the Deadline Club Award in Feature Reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists’ New York chapter, and grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Yaddo. She serves as nonfiction faculty at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference and is a full professor at the City College of New York (CUNY) in Harlem, once known as “the poor man’s Harvard.” She lives in the Bronx.
    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

    • 33 min

Customer Reviews

4.1 out of 5
71 Ratings

71 Ratings

Gay&Sweaty ,

Wow!!

This podcast is a must-listen! Kevin is able to expertly interview his guests, resulting in truly informative and inspiring conversations! Don't miss out! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

PBM 1950 ,

Sharp interviewer, insightful topics, and timely

Andrew Keen is a gifted interviewer--questions that cut to the core of a debate, and forces his guests to say more about why this or that essential point matters to concerns today. He moves the conversation forward in a brisk way, and regularly makes connections to other ideas (new books, social trends, etc) that help animate the discussion.

Advocate and researcher ,

Excellent, engaging, insightful

Enlightening and wonderfully engaging! Very impressed with this podcast. Andrew is skillful and insightful in his questions and back-and-forth dialogue with guests that draws out even more interesting comments from guests.

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