Keen On America
Andrew Keen hosts a daily interview podcast where he cross-examines the world's smartest people on politics, economics, history, the environment, and tech. Named one of the '100 most connected men' by GQ, Keen is also the author of four books including the international bestseller 'Cult of the Amateur'. The show aims to help listeners make sense of our complex world through sharp and impertinent questions.
Episodes
The Strange Death of the American Front Porch: Molly Brady on Land, Law, and the Lost Art of Neighborliness
What has made this moment feel different is not the anxiety about incivility, which has always been there, but rather the performance of it. It’s relentless.” — Molly Brady on incivility in the age of the smartphone Whatever happened to the American front porch? Builders killed it to save money, says the Harvard law professor Molly Brady — and with this death went one of the key stages on
How a Turkey Voted for Xmas: Ricardo Semler on Why One Boss Wants the End of All Bosses.
“It’s like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas.” — Ricardo Semler on why bosses won’t let their workers vote on them Ricardo Semler might be the most anti-boss boss in the history of corporate bosses. Thrown into his Austrian immigrant father’s São Paulo manufacturing firm at seventeen, the young Brazilian ripped up the rulebook — no dress codes, no time clocks, a ten-page cartoon manual
Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos: Is Ben Barnes the Last Moderate Texan Democrat?
“I could not get under oath and swear that I know exactly how Kennedy died in Dallas.” — Ben Barnes, who helped advance JFK’s fatal Texas tripIn Texas, there’s nothing in the middle of the road, Jim Hightower famously quipped, but yellow stripes and dead armadillos. But Ben Barnes has spent seven decades disproving him. Elected as a Democratic moderate to the Texas legislature at 21, Spea
The American Way of Violence: Mike McIntire on Guns, Greed, and a Daily Trickle of Bloodshed
“You didn’t have to look someone in the eye while you extinguished their life, and you could do it from a distance.” — Mike McIntire on what the gun changedIs there an American way of violence? Earlier this month, the film critic David Thomson blamed gory Hollywood movies, like Coppola’s Godfather, for glorifying it. Today’s guest has an even more brutal answer. According to Mike McIntire
The Seduction of the American Mind: Emily Eakin on Her Life in French Theory
“Theory said, it doesn’t matter what you’ve read. It’s how you read.” — Emily Eakin on the seduction of the FrenchmenWhen I was a graduate student at Berkeley in the Eighties, there was a bewildering rage for Frenchmen. Foucault in history, Derrida in literature, Althusser in political philosophy, Lacan in psychology. Not that anybody could quite explain what any of them meant — which onl
A $14 Billion Glitter Glue Gospel: Michael Blanding on the Wealthiest Christian Nationalist Family You've Never Heard Of
We’ve done plenty of abstract shows on American Christian nationalism. But this one is about a single family: the Greens of Oklahoma City, owners of the Hobby Lobby retail empire, and probably the wealthiest Christian nationalist family you’ve never heard of. According to investigative writer Michael Blanding, the Greens have amassed a $14 billion fortune from selling glitter glue and pop
Homer's Hollywood Odyssey: Joel Christensen on How Christopher Nolan Gave Us the Odysseus We Deserve
“I want someone who has regrets. I want someone who’s learned the hard way. I want someone who understands that life is made of those messy compromises.” — Joel Christensen on the Odysseus he hopes to see in Matt Damon Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is out — the controversial movie of the year, much of the controversy raging before anyone had seen a frame. So, before either of us had see
Who Owns Intelligence? The Smart Wealth of Nations
In 1776 — that same year America declared its independence — Adam Smith published the equally revolutionary The Wealth of Nations, his founding explanation of national economic value. Two hundred and fifty years later, Tim O’Reilly argues in the free-market Economist that Elon Musk and his fellow tech barons are building a monarchical form of capitalism that the proto-democratic Smith wou
Trump Points, Justice Shoots: Jonathan Rauch Looks Back (Without Anger) at the First Six Months of 2026
“We have a Justice Department which is now 100% the political pawn of the president,” warns Brookings senior fellow Jonathan Rauch. “He points, and they shoot.” Point and shoot. Like an old Kodak camera. Not exactly assuring words, you might think, from a man who begins our conversation looking back at the first six months of 2026 by announcing that he’s significantly less alarmed than he
We All Hallucinate Reality: Turi Munthe on Why We Think What We Think
“If you can only explain the arguments of the other side because they’re mad or dangerous or dumb, the problem is with you.” — Turi Munthe On yesterday’s show, the psychiatrist Sally Satel described how Americans imagine their own mental condition differently, depending on their politics and age. Which is a nice segue for today’s conversation with the Anglo-French journalist turned media
Who's Addicted to Addiction? Sally Satel on the Social Media Trials & America's Therapeutic Culture
“You can do as many brain scans as you want, but you’ll never be able to distinguish an impulse that wasn’t resisted from one that’s irresistible.” — Sally Satel on why social media addiction can’t be proven in court When Meta and YouTube lost the so-called landmark social media addiction trial back in March, there was jubilation inside and outside the courtroom. Finally, Big Tech seemed
The Art Restorer Who Came in From the Cold: Daniel Silva on Gabriel Allon, the Truest Fake Spy
The Israeli art restorer and spy Gabriel Allon is as real as George Smiley or Hercule Poirot. He even has his own Wikipedia page. The CNN special correspondent Jamie Gangel describes herself on X as a friend of Gabriel Allon before she gets around to mentioning her husband, the best-selling thriller writer Daniel Silva who, of course, is the creator of Allon. As with all successful litera
A Time for Monsters: David Masciotra Looks Back in Anger at the First Six Months of 2026 in America
The leftist cultural critic David Masciotra isn’t happy with the state of America in the first half of 2026. His dislike of the MAGA crowd goes without saying. But his anger at the state of progressive politics is more noteworthy. So far, he says, 2026 has been — to borrow from Antonio Gramsci — a time for monsters both on the left and right. With its “Epstein class” vocabulary, knee-jerk
Ten Days That Didn’t Shake the World: Is it 1905 in AI Time?
Will 2026 be one of those grand historical years that change the world — like 1917, 1789 or 1968? Not according to Keith Teare, publisher of That Was The Week newsletter and co-host of our weekly tech roundup. For Keith, the best historical analogy is 1905, the year of the first abortive Russian revolution. The year that didn’t change the world. Keith’s latest tech newsletter asks “What T
From Istanbul With Love: Kaya Genç on How Turkey is Watching Trump's America
“Someone said, oh, you look like Steve Bannon, and I love you for that… No, I just shaved my hair and lost some pounds.” — Kaya Genç on Trumpism’s global fanbase The NATO circus rumbled into the Turkish capital of Ankara this week resembling more of a gun show than an alliance summit. Ringmaster Donald J. Trump promised Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the F-35s and lifted the very sanctions that Tru
The End of the End of Geography: Mehran Gul on Why Innovation is Happening in America & China — but Nowhere Else
“A place that doesn’t have great philosophers will not have great technologists either.” — Mehran Gul on Europe’s inexplicable underperformance The digital revolution, we were promised, would mean the end of geography. From Beijing to Birmingham to Berlin to Barcelona, anyone could invent anything anywhere, and so the geography of innovation would no longer matter. But that’s not the way
The Glory of Small Things: Ian Bogost on How To Be Enchanted by Diet Coke Cans & Plane Tickets
“I crack the tab open, and I feel the cold metal… I hear the tink and give of the aluminum. And maybe when I’m done, I crush it into a small patty.” — Ian Bogost on the everyday enchantment of a Diet Coke can Don’t sweat the small stuff is one of the most persistent (and annoying) mantras of the self-help industry. But the counter-intuitive Atlantic columnist Ian Bogost advises the opposi
How the Democrats Screwed Bernie: Tad Devine on the 2016 Campaign, the Rigged Economy, and What’s at Stake in 2028
“America has a rigged economy held in place by a corrupt system of campaign finance.” — the message Tad Devine and Ben Tulchin developed for Bernie Sanders, which tested highest in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2015 How the Democrats Screwed Bernie. It could have been coined by Donald Trump. That was Tad Devine’s first objection when his editor floated it. But as Devine, Bernie Sanders’ chief
A Sudden Flicker of Light: Has David Thomson Fallen Out of Love With the Movies?
“For all the paperwork of democracy — government by and for the people — we have become a citizenry of spectators who simply want to be entertained. And we are accustomed to the realization that we can’t do anything about what’s on the screen.” — David Thomson Has the prolific film critic David Thomson fallen out of love with the movies? That’s the question I began my conversation with Th
Was the Colonization of North America a Genocidal Project? David Silverman on the Tragic Fate of Native Americans
“White Americans considered themselves chosen by God to possess the continent and lord it over others — and they saw Native people as indelibly savage and fated by God to extinction.” — David J. Silverman Was the colonization of North America a genocidal project? That is the delicate question David J. Silverman confronts in his powerful new book, The Chosen and the Damned: Native American
Universal Basic Capitalism: The Next American Revolution Or More Trickle Down Economics?
“The pinnacle of capitalism is still flawed. Any idea that it’s perfect — this idea of the perfect union — is deeply flawed as a concept and always has been.” — Keith Teare With July 4 finally done, we can look forward to the next American revolution. Just as AI is revolutionizing the economy, so too are radical ideas about harnessing this disruption for the benefit of all Americans. One
The United States of Oddity: Madeleine Schwartz on How the World Sees America at 250
“What is happening today in America is part of a global political turn — and what’s odd is how little the American people seem to realize it.” — Madeleine Schwartz So we’ve finally arrived. America is 250 today. But where, exactly, have we come? How should we think about the United States of America on July 4, 2026? Rather than peering inwards, Madeleine Schwartz — the Paris-based founder
America's Grand Faustian Bargain: Alexander Mikaberidze on How the Louisiana Purchase Made the United States
Tomorrow, America will celebrate its birth. But the decisive moment, even the real birth of modern America, argues Alexander Mikaberidze in his new book The Louisiana Purchase: The Grand Bargain and the Making of America, may not have been 1776 at all. It was 1803, the year of the Louisiana Purchase. The year Thomas Jefferson bought the future from Napoleon Bonaparte. This was the moment
Dear America — Happy Fucking Birthday: Christopher Hooks on an Exhausted United States at 250
“There’s a kind of exhaustion and resentment — maybe sometimes feeling a little foolish about still feeling attached to some idea of this country that seems like it’s maybe not holding that strong or that healthy anymore.” — Christopher Hooks Happy fucking birthday, America. No, not my tasteless language. These words adorn the cover of the July 2026 issue of the 175-year-old Harper’s, Ame
How We Disappear: Thomas Mullaney’s All-Too-Personal History of Information
“The second law of thermodynamics is not to be negotiated with.” — Thomas S. Mullaney The second law of thermodynamics is non-negotiable. The universe will end. Every human being dies. Everything decays and every record disintegrates. So why record history? Why bother remembering? These are the questions that the Stanford historian Thomas S. Mullaney addresses in his intriguing new book,
If I Perish, I Perish: Katie Gaddini on the Army of Esthers Powering the American Right
“If I perish, I perish.” — the chant Katie Gaddini heard from Esther’s Army at the National Mall, weeks before the 2024 election Back in 2021, at the height of the pandemic, Margaret Atwood came on the show to talk about The Handmaid’s Tale — her warning of how trad wives, to borrow a contemporary phrase, could be exploited by an evangelical patriarchy. Five years later, the Stanford fell
Russian-American Confessions: Jamison Firestone on Putin’s Russia and a Criminal American Dad
“My brothers always think: what would Jesus do? And they do that. I think: what would dad do? And I do the opposite.” — Jamison Firestone What do you do if your dad was a multimillionaire conman, crack addict, and owner of New York’s most expensive brothel? If you’re Jamison Firestone, you transform yourself into his antithesis. You go to law school. You go to post-Soviet Russia and estab
The Apotheosis of Donald Trump? Peter Wehner on Madness, Mayhem and How Trump Eludes Shakespearean Tragedy
“His descent is in a sense our descent.” — Peter Wehner on Trump at 80 Donald Trump turned 80 two weeks ago. But Peter Wehner’s timely Atlantic piece, “The Apotheosis of Donald Trump,” isn’t much of a birthday present. Wehner even suggests that for all Trump’s madness, mayhem and malevolence, the orange octogenarian eludes Shakespearean tragedy. So no historic hall of infamy for Donald. H
Payback’s a Bitch: AI Sovereign Wealth Funds, the Fake Andrew Keen, and America’s Inevitable Decline
“The frontier AI companies invited the government into the room. Now the government is beginning to behave as if it owns the door, the guest list, the schedule, and the product roadmap.” — Keith Teare Last week, I was away in Europe. So Keith Teare ran our That Was The Week show solo — with a chillingly authentic Andrew Keen bot. So realistic, in fact, that the fake version sounds (to me,
Down the Democratic Drain: Justin Gest on How Migration Is Unintentionally Strengthening Authoritarianism Around the World
“You cannot expect a society to open its doors if there is no way to close them. You cannot expect a society to open its gates if there is no gate to open.” — Justin Gest It’s a counterintuitive and deliberately provocative argument. Rather than bolstering open societies, migration actually benefits authoritarianism. And it’s the argument that Justin Gest makes in his new book, Democratic
Is London Really Falling? Patrick Radden Keefe's Search for Truth in the Most Invisible of Cities
“Narrative remains a pretty unbeatable delivery device for information.” — Patrick Radden Keefe Has London really fallen? That’s the question Patrick Radden Keefe — staff writer at The New Yorker and bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing — addressed in his new book, London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth. One thing for sure is th
The Best and Worst Thing About America: Konstanty Gebert on the Interlibrary Loan and Yalta
“The United States and America are not the same thing. The United States is a government, an administration. America is an idea — and that idea is still there, even when the government is not.” — Konstanty Gebert What is the best thing about America? At least when viewed from Warsaw. For Konstanty Gebert — Polish-Jewish journalist, Solidarity activist, co-founder of Gazeta Wyborcza, and o
We No Longer Dream of the United States: Bartosz Wieliński on America, Poland, and the Suicide of a Superpower
“People in my generation worshipped the United States during communism. Everybody wanted to flee to the US. It was the land of the dream. And now we confront a different type of country, different type of politics — and we don’t dream of the US anymore.” — Bartosz Wieliński I’m just back from Warsaw where I spent an afternoon at the offices of Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s liberal newspaper o
Let’s Agree to Disagree: Maciej Kisilowski on How to Save Democracy From Deplorables on All Sides
“If your opening position is: your views are beyond the pale, you are deplorable, there is no space for you in democracy — then how on earth do we expect anything other than revolutionary conservatism as a response?” — Maciej Kisilowski For Americans concerned about the fragility of their democracy, Poland offers some reassuring news. Having experienced its own illiberal blip, democracy i
Life After GDP: Tim Jackson Returns to 1968 to Excavate a Post-Capitalist Future
“The Gross National Product measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.” — Robert F. Kennedy, University of Kansas, March 18, 1968 It is June 5, 1968. An eleven-year-old English boy is watching the assassination of Bobby Kennedy on his black and white television. That little boy is Tim Jackson — now one of Britain’s most influential critics of capitalism. He had no idea t
Middlewomen: Laura McGrath on the 25 People Who Control American Fiction
“Just 25 literary agents represent more than half of all prizewinning novelists in the 21st century. The agent is the unacknowledged legislator of the literary field.” — Laura McGrath We think of publishers and editors as the ultimate tastemakers. As those godlike gatekeepers controlling what we read. But if you’re looking for literary gods, Laura McGrath argues, then you need to look at
What Makes Us Human? Kate O’Neill on the H Word, Verbal Slop, and the Meaning of Tech Humanism
“AI companies are taking advantage of our natural tendency to ascribe an inner life to our interlocutors. They profit when you think the chatbot cares.” — Kate O’Neill If we don’t like someone, we call them a fascist. And if we like them, we say they are a humanist. The F and H words. Both meaningless in our sloppy, bot-infested age. But maybe I’m just a cranky anti-humanist. Even anti-hu
Never Invite Sally Quinn: The Illustrious Washington Hostess on Ben Bradlee, Jill Biden and the Sexiness of Silence
“I considered it elder abuse. She put him through the paces, not only before the debate, but after. She should have gotten him out of there immediately.” — Sally Quinn on Jill Biden and the debate Today’s guest is amongst America’s most verbal octogenarians. No, not you-know-who. Sally Quinn is the illustrious Washington DC hostess, writer and commentator. The almost 85-year-old does impr
Gerontocracy in America: Samuel Moyn on How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth
“Age is the modality in which class is lived in America today.” — Samuel Moyn Yesterday we had 91-year-old Mordecai Kurz on the show. Tomorrow, it will be 84-year-old Sally Quinn. But today’s guest, the Yale legal historian Samuel Moyn, has a bit of a problem with old people. His new book, Gerontocracy in America, argues that the old folks are hoarding power and wealth in America. For Moy
The Trouble with Trillionaires: Mordecai Kurz on Capitalism, Democracy, and the Second Gilded Age
“Between 1980 and 2019, the billionaires gained $25 trillion. By today it’s probably $35 trillion. The question is who will pay for reform? You go where the money is.” — Mordecai Kurz Keynes observed that in the long run, we are all dead. The nonagenarian Stanford economist Mordecai Kurz agrees. Which is why he has no patience for the tech utopians’ promise of abundance for all of us in t
The Vanishing Black Family: Delano Squires on Marriage, Moynihan, and the Crisis in Black America
“Second wave feminism taught women that femininity was weak, masculinity was toxic, marriage was oppressive, the home was a prison, and children are a burden.” — Delano Squires Sixty years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan published The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, which was immediately attacked by the left as victim-blaming and by the right as an admission of state responsibili
A Century of Orations: Nathan Perl-Rosenthal Listens to 2,500 Voices of the American Revolution
“As early as 1805, you had orators getting up there — barely twenty years after American independence was recognised by Great Britain — saying: the Republic is over. We’ve had it. So there is a tradition of calling it the end times.” — Nathan Perl-Rosenthal It’s less than three weeks until America’s big birthday bash. But what exactly will be celebrated this 250th Independence Day? In The
Up to the Stars and Down into the Gutter: Elon Musk's Ascent/Descent to SpaceX and White Nationalist Violence
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,” Oscar Wilde wrote in his 1892 play Lady Windermere’s Fan. This week, Elon Musk managed — not for the first time — to be simultaneously in the stars and the gutter. SpaceX’s IPO valued his rocket company at $2 trillion — making Musk, officially, a trillionaire, the richest person in the world by a very large margin. The s
No Statecraft for Old Men: Jack Watling on the New Rules of Power in a Chaotic World
“Power trumps money fundamentally. And I think we’ve seen the extent to which these companies are very subservient to the US government. Because the US government can break them in an instant.” — Jack Watling on whether Anthropic and OpenAI can become geopolitical players In Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel No Country for Old Men, an ageing Texas sheriff finds himself outmatched by a killer o
The David Frum Show: Frum on Gatsby, Trump the Fascoid and What It Means to Be an American
“That’s not the America that I believed in and that I chose to merge my fate with.” — David Frum on Trump’s predatory foreign policy What does it mean to be an American? It’s a slippery question — especially for those of us born outside the United States. Take, for example, David Frum, the Toronto-born writer and Presidential speechwriter who coined the phrase “Axis of Evil” in 2002. Back
Save San Francisco’s Soul: Jonathan Weber on Technology and Politics in the City By the Bay
“The same creative and political forces that gave rise to [San Francisco’s] boom nearly engineered its collapse.” — Jonathan Weber In Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the quintessential San Francisco movie, the villain points to an old painting of the city and tells Jimmy Stewart that San Francisco has changed. The real city has been lost, he says. Somebody has stolen San Francisco’s soul. The vetera
Brooklyn Al Primo Posto: Vincent Coppola’s Magical Memoir of the Church, the Mafia and the Gowanus Canal
“I never knew, and I was a bright kid. I didn’t know who the mayor of New York was, but I could tell you the names of all the mafia guys on the corner.” — Vincent Coppola So we finally found a Coppola for the show. No, not Francis Ford. But somebody just as cool and even more authentic. The longtime Newsweek reporter Vincent Coppola grew up in Brooklyn three subway stops from Manhattan, b
Trump Finally Gets the Priceless Book He Deserves: Ben Fountain on How Rasputin Swims the Potomac
“The hyperreal is the real. The surreal is the real in The United States. We’ve reached that point. The absurd is the real. And so that’s what I was trying to capture in the book.” — Ben Fountain Our absurdist-in-chief wants a $250 banknote with his face on it. But the satirist Ben Fountain gives the President something even more valuable. In his new novel Rasputin Swims the Potomac, Foun
The Unexceptional Exceptionalism of the United States: Michael Mandelbaum on the American Way of Foreign Policy
“The United States has conducted an unusually ideological foreign policy, an unusually economic foreign policy, and an unusually democratic foreign policy. These three features have been present from the eighteenth century to the present.” — Michael Mandelbaum Is there an “American way” of foreign policy? Does that make the now almost 250 year-old republic unique? Michael Mandelbaum, auth
The Jeffrey Epstein of Antiquities: Matthew Campbell on the Man Who Got Away With Stealing the Gods,
“Objects in museums have to come from somewhere. The stories of how they came to be in those collections often involve laws being broken, unethical behaviour, and extreme violence.” — Matthew Campbell Imagine a gay Jeffrey Epstein who set up shop in Thailand. Only rather than peddling young girls, he traded in bodybuilders and priceless antiquities. That’s the story of the British émigré
D-Day for AI: How to Create an End Game That Will Benefit Everyone
“AI represents successful capitalism. What we have alongside that is unsuccessful government. Government has no plan — left or right.” — Keith Teare It’s the 82nd anniversary of D-Day. On June 6, 1944, there was an unambiguous end game — the defeat of Nazi Germany. But today, end games are more controversial, especially in terms of harnessing the AI revolution to benefit everyone. For Kei
Good Bobby, Bad Bobby: Evan Thomas on the Greatest Riddle in 20th Century American Politics
“He didn’t just say it, he meant it, he felt it — and the combination of the power guy, the ruthless power guy, and the profound idealist was fascinating, and also hard for him.” — Evan Thomas on Bobby Kennedy Who was the greatest riddle in 20th century American political life? Judging from the ever-expanding library of Bobby biographies, Robert Francis Kennedy ranks very high on that lis
Why Football Saves Our Souls: Brian Bunk on the Collective Beauty of the World’s Most Popular Game
“That kind of put soccer on my radar as a sport. I saw how deeply it meant to people, in a way I didn’t appreciate prior to that. And then I was in London when the World Cup began, and I saw the opening match — Argentina and Cameroon, with Cameroon winning in an upset. Just the whole spectacle of it gave me an appreciation for the game.” — Brian Bunk, on Ireland, Italia ’90, and the momen
Get the F*** Out of Your House: Yotam Marom on How to Raise the Volume on the Politics of Powerlessness
“Get the f*** out of your house and join an organisation. Groups are how we make movements. They’re how we make political and social change. They’re how we transform. Nobody does anything of value alone.” — Yotam Marom If you’re feeling politically powerless, you’re not alone. Yotam Marom — full-time organiser, facilitator and veteran of Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter — has spe
Around the World in One Long Depression: Liaquat Ahamed on 1873 & the Making of the Global Economy
“Be optimistic about the boom, but don’t buy the stock.” — Liaquat Ahamed on the AI bubble Yesterday, Alexander Starritt argued that the 2008 financial crash ruined the lives of his generation. But compared with the great crash of 1873, 2008 looks like a tremor. The Pulitzer Prize-winning economic historian Liaquat Ahamed has a new book out today, 1873, which presents this 19th century ec
Drayton and Mackenzie: Alexander Starritt on How the 2008 Crash Ruined Everything
“To explain the lives of people living in this moment, to look at the historical forces that are shaping all of us, you have to look at business and technology. In our period, what is it that’s shaping us? I would suggest it’s the long fallout from the 2008 financial crisis and the technology revolution that’s been happening in California.” — Alexander Starritt How to write a novel about
Ecocivilization and Our Discontents: Jeremy Lent on Why TINA Is Wrong
“When you’re in a world that is careening out of control, where we’ve broken through seven of the nine safe dimensions of safe operating space that scientists have discovered, it’s unrealistic in my view to focus on those little things and think that will lead to a real better outcome. What’s realistic is backcasting.” — Jeremy Lent There Is An Alternative. That is the central argument of
Anthropic Trounces OpenAI with Its Papal Pivot: Value Investing in Our AI Age
“I don’t look to companies to be moral guides. I want them to be good companies. When you invest in the stock market, you want them to be growing fast and making profit. That’s it. There’s nothing more to it.” — Keith Teare If it’s Saturday, it must be our weekly tech show. Before we went live, That Was the Week publisher Keith Teare told me it wasn’t a big news week. He was wrong, of cou
1776 as 1917: Sarah Pearsall's World History of the American Revolution
“The thirteen colonies that became the United States were not even half of the British colonies that existed in the eighteenth century. We need to think about why some colonies rebelled and others did not.” — Sarah Pearsall Earlier today, the historian Dominic Erdozain came on the show to argue that American patriotism has the same exceptionalist Puritan roots as British imperialism. But
To Love or Hate the United States? Dominic Erdozain on the Problem of American Patriotism
“We must perpetrate the paradox that our American cultural tradition lies in the future.” — Randolph Bourne, via Dominic Erdozain Should Americans be proud of their country? The Anglo-American historian Dominic Erdozain thinks not. His new book, To Love a Country, argues that there’s a problem with American patriotism. Americans shouldn’t love their country, Erdozain says. It’s not a good
Life of the Party: Joe Cunningham on How Democrats Lost America’s Trust and How They Can Win It Back
“I deliver it with the credibility of having won a district that Trump carried by 13 points. Not only how to speak to these voters, but how to win them back.” — Joe Cunningham Yesterday’s guest was Alexandra Natapoff, co-editor of America Unfinished — a collection of essays by illustrious Harvard Law School professors grading the march toward justice in the United States over the last 25
Is America Unfinished or Just Getting Started? Alexandra Natapoff on 250 Years of Justice and Injustice in the United States
“As long as democracy is a collective endeavour of all the people who belong to it, in some sense it can never be finished — because we are constantly bequeathing to the next generation the opportunity and the freedom to have these conversations over and over again.” — Alexandra Natapoff It’s less than six weeks until America’s 250th birthday. The official America 250 store is selling T-s
Beyond the Lean Startup: Eric Ries on Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Ones Stay Great,
“I took it for granted that we were trying to make the world a better place. But I think in retrospect that was naïve. What kind of change? For whom? We kind of forgot to specify what the purpose of all this disruption was.” — Eric Ries In 2011, Eric Ries published The Lean Startup, a book that reflected the optimistic zeitgeist about disruptive Silicon Valley companies. Fifteen years lat
God Forgives, Brothers Don’t: Jasper Craven on the Damage West Point Has Done to American Boys
“There is a pretty powerful strain in America today in which men feel some need to be violent and domineering to sort of prove their masculinity. And there’s sort of less intense but still prevalent strains that infect many other types of men.” — Jasper Craven Today is Memorial Day — America’s annual celebration of its warriors and military ethic. But for Jasper Craven, author of God Forg
What Albert Camus Teaches Us About America: David Masciotra on a Country of Strangers,
“We’ve learned how to tolerate acts of violence, acts of widespread death, disease — that other developed nations simply don’t tolerate. And that tolerance manifesting in myriad political failures — all of which go back to our refusal to maturely deal with mortality and issues of grief.” — David Masciotra Earlier this week, we talked to Ece Temelkuran about her book Nation of Strangers, a
Boy Meets Girl Meets AI Therapist: Fred Lunzer on Sike, Fictional Realism, and the Future of Love
“If you write something you think is really fanciful today, tomorrow’s news headlines might be telling the exact same story. That’s the challenge of writing realism today — when everything feels so sci-fi and so dystopic.” — Fred Lunzer Boy meets girl meets AI therapist. That is the premise of Sike, the debut novel by Fred Lunzer. Adrian is a rap ghostwriter who has never met any of the r
Unvaccinated Under God: Kira Ganga Kieffer on Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America
“Vaccine hesitancy in the U.S. should be understood as religious expression — not as the product of scientific misinformation. These debates have been proxies for existential concerns about justice and morality.” — Kira Ganga Kieffer Are anti-vaxxers simply bizarre anti-science crazies egged on by conspiracists like RFK Jr? For Kira Ganga Kieffer, author of Unvaccinated Under God, what sh
How to Win a Trade War: Soumaya Keynes on Trump, China, and Her Great-Great-Uncle Maynard
“The rules-based system just hasn’t worked. China’s system is so opaque that you can’t see the subsidies. And when you’ve got China not interested in new rules and the US not interested in a referee, you’ve got two of the world’s biggest actors who aren’t on board.” — Soumaya Keynes It would have been nice to get John Maynard Keynes on the show to get his critique of Trump’s trade war. Bu
Bad Entrepreneurs and Even Worse Artists: Does Capitalism Have a Future in the AI Age?
“The end of labor means the end of paid slavery. And the opening up of freedom — that is to say, choice of how to spend your time. The only question, a big question, is how do you eat?” — Keith Teare Does capitalism have a future in our AI age? For Musk, Silicon Valley’s baddest bad entrepreneur, the answer might surprise. Musk seems to think that in the long run, money and wealth will di
When California Was an Island: Peter Keating on the Cartography That Maps How We See the World
“Maps are communicating vast quantities of new knowledge that was only estimated. They convey this imaginative energy — an imaginative energy that maps today have lost, because today maps are so functional, so utilitarian.” — Peter Keating In the sixteenth century, Spanish cartographers represented California as an island. They weren’t being careless. Nor were they drawing New Yorker cove
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“Fascism is the term that is everywhere and nowhere in contemporary political discussions. We can talk about right-wing populism — but the type of politics they share with classic fascism is what I call red pill politics.” — David Ost Please don’t use the F-word. At least to describe the politics of Trump, Orbán, Meloni, Netanyahu, Modi, Farage et al. Rather than fascism, the best way to
Don't Retire, Rewire: Michael Clinton's Longevity Nation
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How to Watch the World Cup Like a Genius: Nick Greene on Why the Best Team Doesn’t Always Win
“Soccer matches are poorly designed experiments — you don’t necessarily find out which team was better. But any soccer fan will tell you that. Oftentimes, the better team does not win.” — Nick Greene, via a NASA scientist On June 11, the World Cup comes to North America. Fifty-six years ago, I watched the searing injustice of Johann Cruyff’s Holland getting robbed in the 1974 final by Ger
Can Keith Teare Convince Jonathan Rauch That AI Is Benign? That Was the Week, Special Edition
“The dangers are human, not AI. What’s dangerous is what a human does with AI, not what the AI does itself. In fact, even the idea that there is such a thing as the AI in itself is a mistake.” — Keith Teare I’m in Korea this week. So rather than doing a traditional one-on-one That Was the Week tech summary, Keith Teare and I are trying something different. We invited Jonathan Rauch — Broo
Athens vs Sparta: Adrian Goldsworthy on the Rivalry That Made the West
“History is really interesting because it’s about people. And people are interesting. So there are plenty of different ways of doing this, and I think there’s room for everybody.” — Adrian Goldsworthy The greatest rivalry in antiquity is also uncomfortably relevant to us today. In Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry That Shaped Ancient Greece, the classical scholar Adrian Goldsworthy covers th
Sometimes Fixed Sometimes Fickle: Audun Dahl on Why Our Moral Judgements Are Always in Flux
“We need to develop better theories of why the other side believes what they do. Having an accurate theory includes recognizing if somebody is a psychopath — but also recognizing that psychopaths are rarer than we think.” — Audun Dahl If you’re not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative at forty, you have no head. While this sounds like an annoying cliché (es
From SEAL Sniper to Puddle Jumper: Brandon Webb on How to Raise Confident and Joyful Kids
“Being a father is probably one of the toughest and most rewarding jobs I’ve ever had. A lot of the principles I used to teach snipers apply to kids: dealing with negativity, replacing negative self-talk, learning that well-meaning adults can say terrible things — and you don’t have to take that on as baggage.” — Brandon Webb Brandon Webb defines himself as an author, entrepreneur, Navy S
The Sweatshop of the Meritocracy: Dylan Gottlieb on How the Yuppies Conquered America
“As recently as the mid-seventies, under 5% of Ivy Leaguers are headed to Wall Street. It’s actually not that attractive. But as Wall Street’s deregulated, it changes the incentive structure — it makes it much more profitable and demands this huge labor force.” — Dylan Gottlieb They stalked the sidewalks of Manhattan in button-down shirts embroidered with the names of investment banks. Th
Where Are the Firefighters? Jonathan Vigliotti on How Los Angeles Was Left to Burn
“All the warnings were there. It was almost a carbon copy — the same warnings that were ignored before Paradise, ignored again before the Palisades. And nobody was held accountable.” — Jonathan Vigliotti On January 7, 2025, the Palisades Fire ignited in Los Angeles. Over the first few hours of the fire, the second-largest city in America had no firefighters on the front lines and no coord
What Would You Do With the Last 19 Minutes of Your Life? Vincent Yu on an Apocalypse that Fizzled
“They’re all me. Every single one. I see them almost as if they’re inoculated on various petri dishes, and the petri dishes are all put into this pressure-cooker situation — that of a missile alert.” — Vincent Yu So what would you do with the last 19 minutes of your life? That’s the question Vincent Yu plays with in Seek Immediate Shelter. Triggered (so to speak) by a 2018 Hawaii missile
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