Episodes

The good news is that the interminable 2024 election is almost done. The bad news is that the 2028 Presidential campaign - sure to be described as the most important e lection in American history - will begin later this week....

This was the week of Techcrunch Disrupt , one of San Francisco’s biggest technology events of the year. That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare attended Disrupt this year and, as he explained in our weekly round up of tech ne...

Yesterday, we featured a conversation with the British pro-market Conservative, Jon Moynihan, who is unambiguously in favor of economic growth. But Daniel Susskind , author of Growth: A History and a Reckoning , is less of an...

Not everyone believes in the promise of economic growth. We’ve done KEEN ON shows in the past with “degrowth” advocates like Tim Jackson and Jason Hickle who argue that we need to get beyond the false promise of ever expandin...

Maybe Halloween is a bit early this year. As Jason Pack , the host of the excellent Disorder podcast notes, a Trump victory on Tuesday would be a horror show. And while he’s much more optimistic than me about a Harris victory...

Can one age with grace and wisdom? Yes, according to Andrew J. Scott , author of the Longevity Imperative, one of the six books on the Financial Times ’ illustrious short list for best business books of the year . For Scott, ...

Last week, the Los Angeles Times book critic, Bethanne Patrick, came on the show to talk about the best new non-fiction books for the Fall. Today she is back to talk new novels by great fictional writers like Allan Hollinghur...

There are few more passionate bibliophiles than those who have dedicated their lives to the publishing business. Take, for example, Stephen Riggio , the former CEO of Barnes & Noble who, as he confessed to me, has been hooked...

There are few men politically or intellectually smarter than President Lyndon Johnson and his defense secretary Robert McNamara . So how did LBJ and McNamara screw up America’s involvement in Vietnam so tragically? According ...

As the longtime collaborator of the 2024 Nobel laureates John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, Terrence Sejnowski is one of America’s most distinguished AI scientists. In his new book, ChatGPT and the Future of AI: The Deep Lang...

Not only is the AI revolution really happening, but its Large Language Model technology is becoming an independent actor in the world. Rather than the dark conclusion of a techno-pessimist, this is actually the view of one of...

From the introduction of North Korean troops into the war in Ukraine to a budding friendship with Elon Musk, Putin continues to make strange headlines. The real question is whether Putin actually knows what he’s doing or if h...

The Politifact founder, Duke University professor and Pulitzer Prize winning writer Bill Adair certainly isn’t the first person to raise the alarm about the problem of lying in American politics. But what’s really interesting...

In February 2011, I had the maven of mavens, Seth Godin , on the show to discuss the end of the industrial age. “So why are you so popular?” I asked the best-selling author, entrepreneur and teacher. “I notice things,” he exp...

New books about the impact of AI on the human condition are two a penny. But it’s rare to have an AI book by such a prominent author as Robert Skidelsky , a member of the British House of Lords and the author of the iconic t...

There are some seriously heavyweight new non-fiction books this Fall including memoirs by Al Pacino and Ketanji Brown Jackson, as well as an intriguing new historical analysis of the recently departed Queen Elizabeth and that...

Last October, we featured a conversation with Kian Vesteinsson, co-author of Freedom House ’s 2023 FREEDOM ON THE NET report, about the repressive power of artificial intelligence. A year later, Freedom House’s 2 024 FREEDOM ...

The conventional way of thinking about digital technology revolutions is akin to thinking about how to build a house. First we build the foundation, then we add the frame and finally the cosmetic furnishing. In tech, this is ...

Early today, we posted a conversation with Celeste Marcus, LIBERTIES Quarterly managing editor, about her hard-hitting “Hate Lands” essay in the Fall 2024 issue. In the same issue , there’s an equally hard hitting piece by t...

In the Fall 2024 issue of Liberties Quarterly, managing editor Celeste Marcus writes about the great Polish movie director Agnieszka Holland . Marcus argues that the 75 year-old Holland - best known for her 1990 movie Europa ...

Do we shape the future or does it shape us? That’s the core question in Brian Solis ’ new book, Mindshift which provides lessons for corporate executives in transforming leadership and driving innovation. Like so many other f...

As a longtime Harvard Business School professor and the former chief marketing officer at Aetna, David C. Edelman is all too familiar with both the dangers and opportunities of personalized technology. In Personalization , hi...

Last week, we featured an interview with the leftist American theologian, Jim Wallis, who warned about the false white gospel of contemporary Christian nationalism. And we return to the existential dangers of American religio...

The 2024 winners of the Nobel prize for Economics were announced this morning. One of the winners was the MIT economist Simon Johnson , who, as the co-author (with his MIT colleague Daron Acemoglu) of Power and Progress , ap...