Episodes

This is an important conversation. Few Americans are better skilled at listening than the UC Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild . The author of the best selling Strangers in Their Own Land , Hochschild’s much antic...

In December 2008, Lily Bock, the daughter of the novelist Charles Bock , was born. But Bock, the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Beautiful Children and Alice & Oliver, was a reluctant parent, tagging along for...

American Christianity appears in a state of disrepair, perhaps even imminent civil war. On the one hand, of course, we have the evangelical right who make up much of Trump’s ideological base; on the other hand, there are prog...

Might future multi-trillion dollar AI platforms like OpenAI represent not just the end of the app age but also of economic competition itself? As That Was The Week’s Keith Teare and Andrew discuss in today’s weekly KEEN ON te...

Carissa Carter and Scott Doorley both teach at Stanford’s interdisciplinary d.school . They are also the joint authors of Assembling Tomorrow , an intriguing new book in which, using their D School experience, Carter and Door...

Yesterday, I interviewed The Financial Times ’ Andrew Hill about the FT’s best six business books of the year. Today, I talk to Michael Morris , the author of one of those books. In Tribal , Morris explains how the cultural i...

The Financial Times has just announced their short list of the best six business books of 2024. Authors include KEEN ON regulars like Andrew Scott as well as Michael Morris , who will appear on tomorrow’s show. As the competi...

While many fear that Trump offers an existential threat to American democracy, Barry C. Lynn believes that the real danger comes from big tech companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Lynn, the executive director of the O...

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...