Keen On Andrew Keen

We live in a erotically dissonant and carnally confused age. One the one hand, young people are having a lot less sex these days; on the other, they are listening intently to the music of erotically dissonant artists like Billy Eilish and Taylor Swift. I first came across the ideas of “erotic dissonance” and “carnal confusion” in “The New Sound of Sexual Frustration”, an intriguing Atlantic piece by their prolific culture critic Spencer Kornhaber “I've listened to Billie Eilish's "Blue" 400 times already”, the obsessive Kornhaber confesses. So what did the author of ON DIVAS learn about the carnal confusion of today’s youth? Is the music of Eilish and Swift just another explosion of youthful sexual frustration? Or is our age of anxiety creating something quite new - a culture of anxiety in which sex is always in our heads but not in our beds.



Spencer Kornhaber is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers music and popular culture. Prior to joining The Atlantic as an editor in 2011, he wrote for Spin, The A.V. Club, and OC Weekly. In 2019, he won the Excellence in Column Writing Award from NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists.




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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Is history, particularly the last thousand year history of North America, written by the victors? Perhaps. After all, as Kathleen DuVal, the author of NATIVE NATIONS reminds us, a thousand years ago, back in 1024, North America was inhabited by a rich mosaic of indigenous civilizations that in many ways mirrored European societies. Today, of course, things are quite different. But as DuVal, a much acclaimed historian at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, reminds us, in 1024, a sophisticated collection of North American indigenous communities inhabited advanced urban areas linked by diplomatic and trading networks. What’s particularly refreshing about DuVal’s narrative is that she sidesteps the colonial guilt schtick that all-too-often corrodes the telling of this story. The indigenous peoples of North America were probably not much better or worse than Europeans, she suggests. And that’s what makes them and their thousand year history so interesting.
Kathleen DuVal is a Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her field of expertise is early American history, particularly interactions among Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans on the borderlands of North America. Her books include Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution and the forthcoming Native Nations: A Millennium in North America.
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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There will be a British general election on July 4. “The most consequential of our generation” no doubt many politicians will remind the voters. But almost exactly 45 years ago, there really was a profoundly consequential British election. Back in May 1979, Mrs Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative party won power in an election that ultimately changed everything about Britain. In 1979, (Sir) Tim Lankester was the first economic private secretary to Margaret Thatcher and, in his new book, INSIDE THATCHER’S MONETARISM EXPERIMENT, he writes about the promise, failure and legacy of this radical economic gamble. Yet in spite of the economic failure of Thatcher’s monetarist experiment, Sir Tim appears not a little nostalgic for a politician with the vision and will of the Iron Lady. “Mrs Thatcher never lied”, he reminded me about a politician whose success at the polls was rooted in the trust she established with the electorate. And it’s this trust that seems most scarce now, not just in the UK, but also in the US and other late-stage western democracies.



Sir Tim Lankester has led a distinguished career in economics and public service and is an ardent supporter of charity and the arts. After studying at St John’s College, Cambridge, and Yale University, Tim went on to enjoy an career with World Bank and then in the English Civil Service, including; at the British Embassy in Washington D.C., as Private Secretary to James Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher, as Permanent Secretary at the Overseas Development Administration (now the DFID), and at the Department of Education. He retired from public service in 1994, for which he was knighted. He went on to serve as Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies (1996 – 2000), President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford (2001 - 2009), and Chair of the Council of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2008 – 2014). From 2007 to 2015, Tim was Chair of The Place and formerly a board member of the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama and Governor of the Royal College of Music. Currently, Tim sits on the boards for many charities, including; Wells Maltings Trust, Norfolk; International Foundation for Arts and Culture; MBI AL Jaber Foundation; and Karachi Education Initiative UK. Tim also sits on the Board for the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Art and Culture, University of East Anglia, and is and Honorary Fellow of both SOAS and St John’s College, Oxford.


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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May might be almost finished, but you’ve still got time this Memorial weekend to begin reading one of Bethanne Patrick’s recommended new books. And this month, Patrick’s list is really scintillating - extending from fresh fiction by Claire Messud, Kaliane Bradley and Colm Toibin to new non-fictional books by George Stephanopoulos, Nina St. Pierre and Alan M. Taylor. So no excuses. Watch/listen to Patrick - the best read person in the world - and then beg, buy or steal one of her recommended new books.



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.

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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Few people are better equipped to unravel the riddle of the Indian economy than the former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan. As the co-author (with Rohit Lamba) of the just published Breaking the Mold: India’s Untraveled Path to Prosperity, Rajan lays out a strategy for Indian economic development that might allow the country to both maintain its much storied democracy and provide jobs and prosperity for its almost 1.5 billion people. While Rajan didn’t use the term “third way” in our conversation, there is a sense that he’s trying to navigate India between the Scylla of conventional western free market neo-liberalism and the Charybdis of the protectionism pursued by populists like Trump, Erdogen and perhaps the current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Certainly no great fan of Modi’s bureaucratic centralization, Rajan’s path to prosperity lies in decentralizing economic power to its federal states. It’s in the enlightened economic policies of states like Kerala, Rajan argues, that India can break the mold and become not just a prosperous society but also a model for other developing 21st century economies.



Raghuram Rajan is the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago business school. He was the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India between September 2013 and September 2016. Between 2003 and 2006, Dr. Rajan was the Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund. Dr. Rajan’s research interests are in banking, corporate finance, and economic development. The books he has written include Breaking the Mold: Reimagining India's Economic Future with Rohit Lamba, The Third Pillar: How the State and Markets hold the Community Behind 2019 which was a finalist for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year prize and Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy, for which he was awarded the Financial Times prize for Business Book of the Year in 2010. Dr. Rajan is a member of the Group of Thirty. He was the President of the American Finance Association in 2011 and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In January 2003, the American Finance Association awarded Dr. Rajan the inaugural Fischer Black Prize for the best finance researcher under the age of 40. The other awards he has received include the Infosys prize for the Economic Sciences in 2012, the Deutsche Bank Prize for Financial Economics in 2013, Euromoney Central Banker Governor of the Year 2014, and Banker Magazine (FT Group) Central Bank Governor of the Year 2016. Dr. Rajan is the Chairman of the Per Jacobsson Foundation, the senior economic advisor to BDT Capital, and a managing director at Andersen Tax.



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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Along with Ukraine and Gaza, Taiwan represents the third leg of our increasingly wobbly international political system. This week, for example, the Chinese navy put on military drills off the Taiwanese coast designed, supposedly, to test its ability to “seize power”. So is the world on the brink of a third world war between China and the United States? Perhaps, according to the Tufts university scholar and author of The Struggle for Taiwan, Sulmaan Wasif Khan, who compares the current highly militarized situation in the East China Sea with the situation in Europe before World War One. In our KEEN ON conversation, Khan brings some historical perspective to the situation in Taiwan, even comparing the current geopolitical tensions of the island with the Cuban situation during the Sixties.




Sulmaan Wasif Khan holds the Denison Chair in International History and Chinese Foreign Relations at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. He is the author of HAUNTED BY CHAOS: CHINA'S GRAND STRATEGY FROM MAO ZEDONG TO XI JINPING (Harvard University Press) and MUSLIM, TRADER, NOMAD, SPY: CHINA'S COLD WAR AND THE PEOPLE OF THE TIBETAN BORDERLANDS (University of North Carolina Press). He has written for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and The Economist. He has been a participant in NIC seminars and has spoken on China at INDOPACOM. His new book THE STRUGGLE FOR TAIWAN: A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, CHINA, AND THE ISLAND CAUGHT BETWEEN is published by Basic Books (US) and Allen Lane (UK and Commonwealth).



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