Episodes

Finally a tech show not about AI. Martin Schmidt is the President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) as well a distinguished technologist in his own right. So rather than having just another conversation about AI, I ta...

Dr Josh McConkey ’s new book, Be the Weight Behind the Spear , is about how to fix America. McConkey, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in North Carolina, believes that the strength of America has always been i...

Is there anyone who still believes in America as a force for good in the world today? There’s that doddery old cold warrior Joe Biden, of course, and his younger globalizing sidekick, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. And t...

Instagram superstar and “Here’s Where It Gets Interesting” podcast host S haron McMahon has been dubbed America’s government teacher. In her first book, The Small and the Mighty , McMahon writes about twelve unsung Americans ...

Back in April 2011, Saad Mohseni was made one of Time’s 100 most influential people in the world. And who exactly is that, you might ask. I have to admit I hadn’t heard of him either. But as Rupert Murdoch wrote about Mohseni...

There are few more authoritative American journalists than the longtime NPR and PBS host Ray Suarez . So it was a real treat to sit down with Ray earlier this month in Washington DC to talk broadly about his and his family’s ...

Do you work too hard? Is it ruining your life? If so, then you may want to look at Brigid Schulte’s new book, Over Work , an exploration of why American work isn’t working and how our lives can be made more meaningful. Schult...

Few people are more familiar with America’s drug addiction crisis than Ryan Hampton . A former addict himself as well as the author of three books on the crisis, including the new Fentanyl Nation , the Las Vegas based Hampton...

Not everyone fears that AI revolution represents an existential event for humanity. Anindya Ghose , the Heinz Riehl Professor of Business at NYU’s illustrious Stern school, actually believes AI can positively impact our daily...

Working on Sheryl Sandberg’s team at Google, Megan Hellerer - who had just graduated top of her Stanford class - was on the fast track to become a young Silicon Valley superstar. A few years later, however, she had a breakdow...

Earlier this week, I interviewed the Australian AI expert Toby Walsh about Google’s new NotebookLM , a seemingly magical AI product that creates believable conversation between bots. Today, on our weekly That Was The Week tec...

Last year, Michael Scott-Baumann, author of The Shortest History of Israel and Palestine and a peace activist at the Balfour Project , came on the show to talk about the problem to end all problems - the Israel-Palestine ques...

The AI revolution, long in hype but short in practice, is finally beginning to happen. In today’s WSJ, the tech writer Joanna Stern introduces her own Joannabot to review the new iPhone 16. Soon, of course, we will increasing...

This is the final episode of a trilogy of critical conversations about the digital revolution. Earlier this week, Gary Marcus explained how to tame Silicon Valley’s AI barons. Then Mark Weinstein talked to us the reinvention ...

And still they come. Every week, it seems, there’s a new book celebrating resistance to Nazism. The latest is Two Wheels to Freedom , Arthur J. Magida’s true story of Cioma Schonhaus, a 20 year-old Jewish art student in Nazi ...

Early social media pioneer Mark Weinstein is deeply disturbed by the current state of social media. He’s not alone of course, but in his new book, Restoring Our Sanity Online , Weinstein lays out what he boasts is a “revoluti...

Yesterday, KEEN ON featured a conversation with the technologist Gary Marcus about how we can ensure that AI works for us. Today, on our regular That Was The Week tech weekly roundup, Andrew and Keith Teare discuss the role o...

Few artificial intelligence experts have been as outspoken or prescient as the author and entrepreneur Gary Marcus . In his new book, Taming Silicon Valley , Marcus takes on the new AI barons of Silicon Valley - billionaires ...

As Donald Trump’s 79 year-old Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross was the oldest first-time Cabinet appointee in American history. Ross’ mom, however - Agnes, a lifelong New Jersey schoolteacher and proud Democrat - probably ...

At the debate last night, Kamala Harris opened her remarks by talking about the need for America to fix its housing crisis. And crisis it is, at least according to Jerusalem Demsas , a staff writer at The Atlantic who has wri...

At the debate tonight, there probably won’t be much talk about American education. Which is a shame - at least according to Josh Cowen , author of The Privateers , a new book about how radical conservative billionaires like ...

The Serbian-American economist Branko Milanovic is one of the world’s leading authorities on inequality. In this KEEN ON America conversation, we talked about Milanovic’s interpretation of the history of American economic in...

The Brooklyn based Rafil Kroll-Zaidi is a Princeton educated reporter formerly on the editorial staff of Harper's Magazine. And he is another kind of reporter too - a citizen- sleuth who makes six figures annually by reportin...

Last Saturday , on our regular That Was The Week tech roundup, Keith Teare and I discussed the French decision to imprison Telegram founder Pavel Durov. Today, we discuss the theoretical imprisonment of Elon Musk, an idea tou...