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. HÁ 14 H

    Why Our Fear of Technology Is Nothing New—And Why That Should Give Us Hope: From Cuckoo Clocks to ChatGPT

    Why our panic about AI is nothing new—and why history suggests we have far more creative agency over our technological future than either Silicon Valley’s determinists or the neo-Luddites would have you believe. Who isn’t afraid of AI? But according to the San Francisco-based technology historian Vanessa Chang, that’s nothing new. So, she says, our ChatGPT age should give us hope rather than the reactionary hysteria marking much of today’s conversation about AI. In her new book, The Body Digital, Chang argues that our bodies have always been living interfaces between our minds and our world. Designing that interface has always been a choice, and so are the worlds that we are always building. From cuckoo clocks to player pianos to gramophones, every generation has panicked about machines colonizing human experience. And every generation has eventually found ways to shape those machines to human ends. So don’t be scared of ChatGPT, Chang says. Get creative. Get agency. * Tech anxiety is a historical constant, not a contemporary crisis. From Sousa’s panic about player pianos replacing human musicianship to today’s fears about ChatGPT, every generation has worried that machines will colonize human experience. The pattern itself should be instructive—and perhaps reassuring. * Our bodies have always been technological. Eyeglasses, writing, clocks—these aren’t separate from our embodied existence but extensions of it. The digital age hasn’t created the “body digital”; it’s simply the latest chapter in a much longer story of humans using tools to reshape how we sense, think, and interact with the world. * The real question isn’t whether technology will change us—it’s who gets to design that change. Chang insists we’ve always had agency in our relationship with machines. The danger isn’t AI itself but allowing corporate interests and proprietary systems to dictate the terms of our technological embodiment without democratic input or creative resistance. * AI isn’t “all-knowing”—it’s deeply circumscribed. Large language models are shaped by training data, developer biases, invisible labor in developing countries, and corporate imperatives. The mythology of omniscient AI obscures the very human choices and limitations embedded in these systems. * Writing and AI belong to the same evolutionary story. Both are technologies for extending human cognition beyond the body. Before writing, your thoughts died with you. After writing, they could travel across time and space. AI is simply the next iteration of humanity’s ancient project of externalizing and augmenting our minds—with all the promise and peril that entails. * 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

    39min

  2. HÁ 1 DIA

    Not Even God Can Judge Tupac Shakur: How a White Suburban Sportswriter Found the Humanity and Tragedy Behind Hip-Hop’s Most Misunderstood Star

    WHY LISTEN? Because Jeff Pearlman strips away the myth to reveal the real Tupac Shakur—a brilliant, wounded, and fiercely human artist whose story still speaks to America’s struggles with family, race, trauma, and truth. Happy Halloween, everyone. To celebrate, we’re turning our attention to one of white America’s most mythic—and most feared—figures: the hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur. In Only God Can Judge Me, his new Tupac biography, the Los Angeles-based sportswriter Jeff Pearlman reveals both the humanity and the heartbreak behind the myth. Yes, Pearlman concedes, Tupac Shakur was far from perfect. Yet in his music, his movies, and above all his short, turbulent life, Tupac embodied the quintessential American hero—a man who, despite all the injustice and chaos around him, stood up for what was right. Here was someone whom perhaps not even God could judge. 1. Tupac’s story is fundamentally about trauma, not violencePearlman’s biggest revelation wasn’t about gang culture or rap feuds—it was about the crushing weight of intergenerational trauma. Watching his hero mother, former Black Panther Afeni Shakur, descend into crack addiction left Tupac with wounds that shaped everything. “The trauma of having your hero become this thing that’s unrecognizable and zombie-like,” Pearlman explains, is what people miss when they romanticize Afeni as simply a “goddess” or reduce Tupac to a “son of a Black Panther.” 2. Tupac was a theater kid before he was a gangster rapperBefore Marin City’s crack epidemic and Death Row Records, Tupac Shakur was studying at the Baltimore School of the Arts—writing poetry, dancing, and dreaming of acting. He was “this free spirit who lived this beautiful, beautiful life,” Pearlman says. That artistic foundation—not the tough-guy persona—was his authentic self. Actor Jim Belushi told Pearlman that Tupac was on the verge of becoming an Academy Award–winning actor. The gangster image that Death Row demanded wasn’t who he wanted to be. 3. The book is sad—and that surprised everyone, including Pearlman“I didn’t expect this to be a sad book,” Pearlman admits. But every proofreader who read it said the same thing: “God, this book is so sad.” Tupac died young, nearly broke, used by powerful people, and alone in many ways—desperate to be understood and accepted. “Life kind of gobbled him up,” Pearlman says. The mythology of Tupac as an invincible icon obscures the heartbreaking reality of a 25-year-old carrying impossible weight. 4. Writing about Tupac as a white suburban sportswriter required radical humilityPearlman acknowledges the cultural distance he had to cross: “It’s a weird situation being a white guy who grew up in middle-class rural America writing about Tupac... I never experienced that level of trauma.” His approach wasn’t to claim expertise but to listen deeply and interview exhaustively. Along the way, he gained an unexpected education in Southern California gang culture—discovering that many former gang members and drug dealers “are wonderful guys” who “just had different journeys.” 5. Tupac would be “absolutely furious” about Trump’s America—and probably arrestedWhen asked what Tupac would think of today’s political climate, Pearlman doesn’t hesitate: “I think 25-year-old Tupac would be horrified, but not surprised.” More specifically, “I can’t imagine Tupac Shakur of any age just sitting back” while ICE agents grab people in unmarked vehicles. “I think he’d be 100% getting arrested at ICE roundups,” Pearlman says. As for Biden or Harris? Tupac would probably see them as “corporate shills who don’t stand up enough for the people.” 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

    37min

  3. HÁ 2 DIAS

    Fighting to Tell the Truth: Why every Film about War is an Anti-War Film

    After almost two decades in limbo, Michael Pack’s once-rejected Iraq War film finds its moment — a reminder that even the most supposedly “patriotic” war stories reveal the tragic cost of battle. Seventeen years after PBS rejected his Iraq War documentary The Last 600 Meters as “too pro-military,” conservative filmmaker Michael Pack is finally seeing it air — fittingly, on Veterans Day weekend. Pack reflects on why he believes documentaries are the “second draft of history,” why every war film is, at its core, an anti-war film, and how America’s shifting attitudes toward the military say as much about our politics as our wars. 1. History’s second draft.Pack sees documentaries as the “second draft of history,” a way to capture the ground truth before time erases memory — not to debate the causes or meanings of war, but to record what it actually felt like to fight. 2. Too pro-military for 2008, perfect for 2025.PBS first rejected The Last 600 Meters as “too pro-military.” Seventeen years later, the network is airing it before Veterans Day — proof, Pack says, that America’s cultural attitudes toward the military have shifted. 3. A non-woke filmmaker’s battle.Pack, long identified with the right, argues that the documentary world is dominated by the left. His new company, Palladium Pictures, trains “non-woke” filmmakers to tell stories that aren’t polemical but still reflect a wider range of perspectives. 4. Every war film is an anti-war film.For Pack, heroism and horror are inseparable. His Marines cross kill zones under fire, rescue the wounded, and witness the smell and trauma of war — “heroic and tragic,” he says, in the Kubrickian sense. 5. America’s unfinished war with itself.Pack’s Iraq film and his upcoming documentary on the Afghan withdrawal reflect what he calls “the failure of American elites.” From Vietnam to Afghanistan, he argues, the question remains: can America still fight and win wars? 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

    40min

  4. HÁ 3 DIAS

    Between the River and the Sea: American Jews and the Soiling of the Zionist Dream

    Perhaps the real question isn’t whether we can still talk about Israel, but whether we can afford not to. Silence, Daniel Sokatch warns, is complicity — and in both America and Israel, there’s already too much of it. Four years ago, Daniel Sokatch came on the show to discuss Can We Talk About Israel?, a guide for what he called “the curious, the confused, and the conflicted.” Now Sokatch is back with a new edition of his book. As head of the New Israel Fund, the liberal Zionist has spent his career defending the controversial idea that Israel can be both a Jewish and democratic state. Today, even as the Zionist dream continues to unravel, Sokatch insists that we need to continue talking about Israel. Without talk, Daniel Sokatch warns, there’s silence - and that silence might guarantee the end of the dream of both a Jewish and democratic state between what he calls “the river and the sea.” * Israel’s crisis is moral, not just political.For Sokatch, the war in Gaza has exposed the collapse of Israel’s founding promise — that it could be both Jewish and democratic. What’s at stake now, he argues, is not security but the moral soul of the state. * The American Jewish consensus is fracturing.Polls show that younger American Jews are turning away from Israel. Sokatch sees this as less about antisemitism and more about disillusionment — the feeling that Israel no longer reflects liberal Jewish values. * Zionism is no longer a single idea.“Ask me if I’m a Zionist,” Sokatch says, “and I have to ask what you mean.” The word has splintered — between nationalism, religion, and democracy — leaving even its defenders unsure of what dream they’re defending. * Talking is an act of resistance.Sokatch’s call to “keep talking about Israel” isn’t rhetorical. In an age when criticism of Israel is often branded antisemitic, he argues that open conversation is the only alternative to despair — or silence. * Hope lies in imagination, not ideology.Despite everything, Sokatch refuses fatalism. Like South Africa or Northern Ireland, he believes history can still surprise us — if civil society can keep the moral imagination alive long enough for change to take root. 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

    54min

  5. HÁ 4 DIAS

    The Vinci Code: How AI is Turning Everyone into James Bond

    As AI radically democratizes the world, we’re all about to become James Bond — or so says longtime spook watcher (and player) Anthony Vinci. In his new book, The Fourth Intelligence Revolution,, Vinci argues that we must all become spies in order to save America. That’s the future of espionage in an age when, at least according to Vinci, the Chinese might be hacking our data to subvert the United States. This “Vinci Code” borrows heavily from the Cold War playbook — paranoia layered upon paranoia layered upon more paranoia. I’m not buying it. But then again, I’m too busy with KEEN ON to be Bond. 1. A Fourth Intelligence Revolution Is UnderwayAnthony Vinci argues that global espionage is undergoing a fundamental transformation driven by artificial intelligence and the geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China. Intelligence, he says, is no longer confined to spies and soldiers — it now extends into economics, technology, and even ordinary life. 2. Economic Espionage Will Define the Next EraVinci believes America must adapt to a new kind of intelligence competition — one focused on markets, infrastructure, and intellectual property. To keep pace with China, the United States will need to develop capabilities in economic espionage, a domain it has long been reluctant to enter. 3. Artificial Intelligence Will Spy on Artificial IntelligenceThe next phase of espionage, Vinci predicts, will be conducted largely by machines. AI will collect, analyze, and even counter other AI systems, creating a world where “our machines will spy on their machines.” The traditional spy-versus-spy rivalry will become algorithm-versus-algorithm. 4. Every Citizen Is a TargetIn the digital era, espionage has expanded to include everyone. State and non-state actors alike can collect data, influence behavior, and manipulate information at scale. Vinci warns that individuals — not just governments — must now learn basic intelligence skills to safeguard their privacy and security. 5. China Is the Central ChallengeWhile Russia and other autocracies remain active, Vinci views China as the United States’ primary intelligence adversary. From TikTok to cyber-hacking, he argues, Beijing seeks to shape global perceptions and exploit American data — a strategy that makes Vinci’s The Fourth Intelligence Revolution as much about information as ideology. 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

    47min

  6. HÁ 5 DIAS

    Huawei vs Ericsson: How Huawei Turned Sweden's "Neutral" Tech Advantage Into a Cold War Liability

    Huawei matters, not just because it’s the world’s largest telecommunications company, but because it reveals so much about contemporary Chinese economics and politics. In House of Huawei, just shortlisted for the FT business book of the year, the Washington Post’s Eva Dou has written the untold story of this mysterious company that has shaken the world. As much about its reclusive founder, Ren Zhengfei, as it is about the telco manufacturer, Dou tells the story of one the great economic miracles of new Chinese economy. From its scrappy origins selling telephone switches to becoming a global tech giant capable of challenging American supremacy, Huawei embodies China’s transformation—and the increasingly fraught collision between Chinese ambition and Western power that now defines our geopolitical moment. And in overtaking Sweden’s Ericsson as the world’s dominant telecommunications equipment supplier, Huawei’s rise marks a fundamental shift in global technological leadership from West to East. What was once unthinkable—a Chinese company displacing the century-old Swedish pioneer that had long symbolized European technological excellence (and neutrality)—became inevitable, revealing how quickly the old order can crumble when confronted by innovative and dynamic state-backed industrial ambition. Yeah, Huawei matters. As Dou acknowledges, the Huawei story might even offer some signposts for Western companies - like Intel and even Nvidia and OpenAI - struggling to keep up with the pace of Chinese state capitalism. 1. Huawei’s Rise Embodies China’s State Capitalism Model Huawei’s transformation from scrappy startup to global telecommunications leader reveals how China combines entrepreneurial dynamism with strategic state support—a hybrid model that has proven remarkably effective at challenging Western technological dominance while defying simple categorization as either purely private enterprise or state-controlled entity. 2. Ren Zhengfei Remains One of Modern China’s Most Enigmatic Figures The reclusive founder’s personal story—from military engineer to billionaire industrialist—mirrors China’s own transformation, yet he has deliberately cultivated mystery around both himself and his company, making Huawei simultaneously China’s most successful global brand and its most opaque major corporation. 3. The Huawei Story Reveals Fundamental Tensions in US-China Relations America’s aggressive campaign against Huawei, from the arrest of Ren’s daughter Meng Wanzhou to equipment bans across the West, demonstrates how technological competition has become the central battleground of twenty-first century geopolitics, with telecommunications infrastructure emerging as contested territory in ways that transcend traditional trade disputes. 4. Huawei’s Displacement of Ericsson Marks a Historic Power Shift The fact that a Chinese company could overtake Sweden’s century-old telecommunications pioneer—long synonymous with European technological excellence and neutrality—represents more than market competition; it signals a fundamental reordering of global technological leadership from West to East that seemed unthinkable just decades ago. 5. Understanding Huawei is Essential to Understanding Contemporary China Huawei serves as a lens through which to examine China’s economic miracle, its relationship between private entrepreneurship and state power, its technological ambitions, and the growing friction between Chinese industrial policy and Western concerns about security, sovereignty, and fair competition—making the company’s story inseparable from broader questions about China’s role in the world. 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

    41min

  7. HÁ 6 DIAS

    How Smart is the MAGA Intelligentsia? The Professors, Philosophers, and Trolls who Transformed Rage into a Winning Political Ideology

    So how smart is the MAGA intelligentsia? According to Laura K. Field — a longtime observer of the American right and author of Furious Minds — the making of the new right has less to do with original intelligence than with timing and marketing. What the professors, philosophers, and trolls of this movement have done so effectively, Field argues, is transform rage into a winning political coalition. It’s not that figures like Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermuele, Peter Thiel or J.D. Vance are saying anything particularly original; it’s that the way they’re saying it feels new — sharper, more performative, more attuned to grievance. These men — and they are almost all men — have learned to ride a wave of popular anger against every form of traditional authority. Their rage, Field suggests, is what’s truly revolutionary. Their ideas - particularly those of online influencers like Stone Age Pervert and Curtis Yarvin - are not. 1. “We underestimate them at our peril.”The MAGA intelligentsia aren’t just provocateurs. Field insists that figures like Patrick Deneen and Adrian Vermeule are serious scholars whose anti-liberal philosophies are shaping the intellectual spine of Trump-era conservatism. 2. “Their anger is their originality.”Rage is the organizing principle. The MAGA thinkers’ ideas are recycled, Field says, but their fury and performance—how they say things—are what make the movement feel new. 3. “It’s a man’s movement.”Misogyny sits at the center of the new right. From Bronze Age Pervert to J.D. Vance, Field sees a backlash against feminism and modern gender equality that defines the movement’s identity. 4. “They’ve turned politics into theater.”Thinking as performance. The new right blurs intellect and spectacle, borrowing the techniques of influencers, culture warriors, and trolls to make outrage go viral. 5. “Liberals need conviction, not counter-rage.”Fury can’t fix democracy. Field argues that progressives must rediscover how to talk about freedom, meaning, and the common good—without imitating the anger they oppose. 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

    43min

  8. 25 DE OUT.

    This Is Not a Browser—Did René Magritte Really Predict the End of the Web Age?

    The Belgian surrealist René Magritte was a smart artist, but could the 20th century futurist really have predicted the end of the Worldwide Web age? Not exactly, of course. But according to That Was The Week publisher, Keith Teare, Magritte’s 1929 painting, “The Treachery of Images” (featuring the image of a pipe with the immortal words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”), is a helpful way of thinking about OpenAI’s introduction this week of their new Atlas “browser”. It’s not really a browser in the conventional way that we think about web browsers like Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer. And yet AI products like Atlas are about to once again revolutionize how we use the internet. They might even represent the end of the web age with its link architecture and advertising economics. So do we have words for what comes next? The not-a-browser age, perhaps. L’ère sans navigateur, to be exact. * The Browser Is Becoming an Agent, Not a Link Map - For thirty years, browsers like Netscape, Internet Explorer, and Chrome were rendering engines for HTML that displayed blue links to web pages. AI products like ChatGPT’s Atlas and Google’s AI mode in Chrome are transforming browsers into conversational agents that answer questions, summarize content, and even execute tasks like booking flights—pushing the traditional web “down a level” in the user interface hierarchy. * The Web’s Trillion-Dollar Advertising Model Must “Reprice Fast” - The web’s business model has been largely advertising-based, built on users clicking links that generate revenue. As AI interfaces replace link-based browsing, this nearly trillion-dollar annual revenue stream faces an existential threat. Publishers like Keith Teare and platforms like Google must figure out how to transition their economics to an AI-driven world where links aren’t surfaced by default. * Google Deserves Its Stock Price for “Being Brave in Undermining Its Own Business Model” - While AI threatens to upend Google’s AdWords cash cow, the company’s stock has surged roughly 50% over the past year. Keith argues Google has earned this bullishness by aggressively investing in AI infrastructure (like Anthropic’s $10 billion commitment to Google’s TPUs) and integrating AI features into Chrome—even though these moves could cannibalize its core search advertising business. * The “Victim Here Is the Publisher, Not the User” - Keith acknowledges that while the shift to AI agents feels like “an absolute change of paradigm,” it’s genuinely better for users who get more intuitive, conversational interfaces. Publishers and content creators are the ones facing disruption, as AI may eliminate their distribution channels without yet providing alternatives for reaching audiences or monetizing content. The challenge is that “most of the narrative that doesn’t like it is publisher-centric.” * Tim Wu and Antitrust Regulators Are “Fighting Yesterday’s War” - Columbia law professor Tim Wu’s new book The Age of Extraction focuses on the monopolistic dangers of Google, Amazon, and Facebook—but Keith argues this framing is already obsolete. The real competitive battlefield is AI, where Google is a “laggard” behind OpenAI and Anthropic. The underlying internet architecture (TCP/IP) remains neutral enough to allow challengers to emerge, making heavy-handed government intervention both unnecessary and potentially innovation-killing, as seen in the over-regulated EU. 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

    41min
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Sobre

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

Informações

  • Criado por
    Andrew Keen
  • Anos de atividade
    2019 - 2025
  • Episódios
    999
  • Classificação
    Livre
  • Copyright
    © andrew
  • Site do podcast
    Keen On America

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