Episodes

In this episode of "Keen On", Andrew is joined by Darby Fox, the author of "Rethinking Your Teenager", to discuss the moral and biological state of teenagers. Darby Fox has been a therapist for over 20 years providing individual and group therapy in both non-profit and private settings. She currently divides her time between pro-bono work for Horizon's, a non-profit agency working with at-risk kids, and private practice. She received a BA from Middlebury College, graduating cum laude in Sociol...

In this episode of "Keen On", Andrew is joined by Daniella Ballou-Aares, the CEO of the Leadership Now Project, to discuss the current state of democracy in America post Donald Trump's presidency. Daniella Ballou-Aares is a Senior Advisor based in the Washington, DC office. She advises leaders who seek to build innovative organizations, thrive in uncertain times and launch new ventures to transform their sectors. Daniella joined Dalberg’s founding team in 2004 and has served in a variety of cap...

In this episode of "Keen On", Andrew is joined by Kenneth Cukier, the author of "Big Data", to discuss the role that big data can play to combat the coronavirus and how it could even be used prevent a future pandemic. Kenneth Cukier is a Senior Editor at The Economist, and host of its weekly podcast on technology. He is also an associate fellow at Said Business School at Oxford, researching artificial intelligence. Kenn is the coauthor of “Big Data: A Revolution That Transforms How We Live, Wo...

In this episode of "Keen On", Andrew reflects on some his recent guests' perspectives on both the notion of and the future of work. Named as one of the "100 Most Connected Men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known and controversial commentators on the digital revolution. He has written five books including the best-selling Cult of the Amateur, The Internet Is Not The Answer and How To Fix The Future. He directed and wrote the 2020 movie “How To Fix Democracy” and is the...

In this episode of Keen On, Andrew is joined by Sara Horowitz, the author of Mutualism, to discuss job security and insecurity in America, as well as to examine whether or not trade unions can still succeed in today's capitalist society. Sara Horowitz is the founder and a former Executive Director of Freelancers Union. She has been an innovative leading voice of the growing freelance economy, creating solutions for the new workforce for over two decades. Sara founded Freelancers Union in 1995 a...

On today's episode, Andrew Keen talks with Robert Wringham on his new book, I'm Out: How to Make an Exit, and the crisis of work today. Humorist Robert Wringham was born in Dudley, England in 1982 and now lives between Glasgow, Scotland and Montreal, Canada. He considers himself to be among the world's most indolent people but has somehow written three books, is the editor of New Escapologist magazine and sometimes writes for publications like The Idler, Playboy, and Splitsider.

In this episode of "Keen On", Andrew is joined by Laurence Rees, the author of "Hitler and Stalin", to discuss the regimes of history's most notorious dictators. Laurence Rees is a former Head of BBC TV History Programmes, as well as the founder, writer and producer of WW2History.com, which won 'Best in Class' awards in both the Education and Reference categories at the Interactive Media Awards. His latest book, 'Hitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War', was published by Viking...

In this episode of "Keen On", Andrew is joined by Joseph Henrich, the author of "The WEIRDest People in the World", to discuss how strange and exceptional Western society is when compared with most of the world. Joseph Henrich is Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. His theoretical work focuses on how natural selection has shaped human learning and how this in turn influences cultural evolution and culture-gene coevolution. This work has explored the evolution of confo...

On today's episode, Andrew Keen talks with Roy Richard Grinker on his new book, Nobody's Normal, which examines the attitudes toward mental illness throughout history. Roy Richard Grinker, Ph.D. is Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University and Editor-in-chief of Anthropological Quarterly. He is the author of Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness (NY: W.W. Norton, January 2021), among other books. Grinker was born and raised in Chicago where his fathe...

On today's episode, Andrew Keen talks with Sarah Jaffe about her new book, Work Won't Love You Back, and what love means in the twenty-first century. Sarah Jaffe is a Type Media Center fellow and an independent journalist covering labor, economic justice, social movements, politics, gender, and pop culture. Jaffe is the author of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Nation, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and many others. She ...

In this episode of "Keen On", Andrew is joined by Alan Lightman, the author of "Probable Impossibilities", to consider humankind's role within nature and the universe as a whole. Lightman was born in Memphis Tennessee in 1948, son of Richard Lightman, a movie theater owner, and Jeanne Garretson, a dancing teacher and volunteer Braille typist. From an early age, he was entranced by both science and the arts and, while in high school, began independent science projects and writing poetry. He won ...

In this episode of Keen On, Andrew Keen is joined by Robert Paarlberg, the author of Resetting the Table, to discuss food politics. Robert puts the current state of agriculture and health in America under the microscope in an attempt to predict the future of Americans' relationships with food. Robert Paarlberg does most of his research and consulting in the area of international food and agricultural policy, especially in Africa and the developing world. This topic connects Robert both to his o...

In this episode of Keen On, Andrew Keen talks with Raja Rajamannar about his new book, Quantum Marketing: Mastering the New Marketing Mindset for Tomorrow's Consumers. In the book, Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing Officer of Mastercard, shares breakthrough, frontier strategies to navigate the challenges marketers face to thrive in a modern business world that is changing with unprecedented speed and disruption. A member of the Mastercard's Management Committee, Raja draws upon his breadth of e...

In this episode of "Keen On", Andrew talks with Dr. Jillian Hernandez about her book, "Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment". Dr. Jillian Hernandez is a scholar, community arts educator, curator, and creative. Her work is inspired by Black and Latinx life and imagination, and is invested in challenging how working-class bodies, sexualities, and cultural practices are policed through gendered tropes of deviancy and respectability. She studies Blackness and La...

In this episode of "Keen On", Andrew talks with Alana Newhouse, the author of "Everything is Broken" and the founder and editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine. Alana Newhouse was born in 1976 and grew up in Lawrence, New York. She is a graduate of the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway, a 1997 graduate of Barnard College, and a 2002 graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Alana Newhouse is the editor in chief of Tablet, a daily online magazine of Jewish news, ...

In this episode of Keen On, Andrew talks with Gabrielle Glaser about her new book, "American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption." During the Baby Boom in 1960s America, women were encouraged to stay home and raise large families, but sex and childbirth were taboo subjects. Premarital sex was common, but birth control was hard to get and abortion was illegal. In 1961, sixteen-year-old Margaret Erle fell in love and became pregnant. Her enraged family sent her to a matern...

In this episode of Keen On, Andrew is joined by David Hardin, the author of Standpipe, to discuss the origin and fallout of the Flint, Michigan water crisis. David Hardin is a Michigan poet, writer, and artist. His work has appeared in 3 Quarks Daily, Prague Review, Drunken Boat, Hermes Poetry Journal, Dunes Review, Epigraph Magazine, Loose Change, Burningwood Literary Journal, ARDOR, Carolina Quarterly, Madison Review, the 2014 Bear River.

In this episode of Keen On, Andrew is joined by Alex S. Vitale, the author of The End of Policing, to discuss the history of policing and mass-incarceration in America, as well as to examine the roots and consequences of police brutality in the United States. Alex exposes the political agendas over time that have enabled racial profiling and fueled police violence towards people of color. ​Alex S. Vitale is Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Bro...

In this episode of Keen On, Andrew is joined by Stephen Marche, the author of America's Next Civil War, to discuss President Joe Biden's potential to bring peace to America, as well as to examine what major obstacles to diplomacy exist in the country today. In the wake of Joe Biden's inauguration is another civil war impending? Stephen Marche is a novelist, essayist and cultural commentator. He is the author of half a dozen books, including The Unmade Bed: The Messy Truth About Men and Women in...

In this episode of "Keen On", Andrew talks with anthropologist James Suzman about his new book, Work: A Deep History, From the Stone Age to the Age of Robots. With a head full of Laurens van der Post and half an anthropology degree from St Andrews University under his belt, James Suzman hitched a ride into Botswana’s eastern Kalahari in June 1991. He has been working with the Bushmen ever since. He remains involved in a number of Kalahari initiatives through the Cambridge based research and su...

In this episode of Keen On, Andrew is joined by Peter Gumbel, the author of Citizens of Everywhere, to discuss the fallout from Brexit, as well as to examine the history of culture in Britain and wider-spread Europe. Peter Gumbel is a British writer and editor based in Paris. He has spent most of his career as a journalist for US publications including the Wall Street Journal, Time, and Fortune. He is the author of four books on France, including a best-selling critique of the French education ...

In this episode of Keen On, Andrew is joined by Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution James Goldgeier and Professor Bruce W. Jentleson of Duke University, to discuss where America sits in the pecking order when it comes to global superpowers, as well as to consider the influence and appropriacy of its foreign policy. James Goldgeier is a Robert Bosch Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution and a Professor at the School of Internatio...

In this episode of Keen On, Andrew is joined by Simon Winchester, author of Land, to discuss the origin, history and modern-day notion of land ownership. Simon Winchester, OBE, a British writer, journalist and broadcaster, was born in north London on 28th September 1944, the only child of Bernard and Andrée Winchester (née deWael). Though not Catholic, he was educated first at a boarding convent in Bridport, Dorset and later at Hardye’s School, Dorchester, Dorset – where he achieved the dubiou...

In this episode of Keen On, Andrew is joined by Kenneth R. Rosen, the author of Troubled, to discuss the brutal emotional, physical, and sexual abuse carried out in America's behavioral treatment programs. Kenneth R. Rosen is a senior editor and correspondent at Newsweek based in Italy. He is a contributing writer at WIRED, and the journalist-in-residence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He is the author of two books of narrative nonfiction, an incoming Executive-in-Residence a...