Episodes

We’ve been on a food & farming run this week. First, we talked with America’s “lunatic farmer,” Joel Salatin , about how regenerative agriculture can regenerate the United States. And we followed that up with the food blogge...

While Kamala Harris has announced that she wants to become the first Silicon Valley President, Donald Trump is speaking today at Bitcoin2024 in Nashville in a self-serving attempt to make Bitcoin Great Again. So where should ...

A couple of days ago, America’s most controversial regenerative farmer, Joel Salatin, came on the show to explain how industrialized farming is killing our soil, our bodies and our souls. Today, the Los Angeles based food wri...

Yesterday, we were in rural Virginia interviewing the pioneering regenerative farmer, Joel Salatin. Today, we are on an equally innovative farm in Houston, Texas, in conversation with Kimberley Meyer, author of Accidental Sis...

As one of America’s most outspoken pioneers of regenerative agriculture, Joel Salatin is popularly known as The Lunatic Farmer . Others have accused him of being a bio-terrorist, Typhoid Mary, a charlatan, and starvation advo...

A hundred episodes ago , we had the author of Second Class, Batya Ungar-Sargon , on the show to talk specifically about how America’s elites have betrayed the country’s working men and women. So when I bumped into her at the ...

In the wake of Biden’s resignation and the coronation of Kamala Harris, it’s likely that this year’s election will be particularly divisive and vitriolic. We will hear endless hysteria about the election being the most import...

As CEO of the AI start-up DoNotPay, Joshua Browder is one of Silicon Valley’s rising young entrepreneurs. Born in the UK and educated at Stanford, Browder is from a remarkable family of American innovators and activists. His ...

Lauded by KEEN ON favorites like Dave Eggers & Dale Maharidge, J. Malcolm Garcia might be the Studs Terkel of contemporary American literature. Having worked as a social worker with San Francisco’s homeless community for 14 y...

I was at the Liberalism for the 21st Century conference last week in DC where I bumped into an old friend and KEEN ON regular Jonathan Rauch . A Brookings Fellow and prolific author, Rauch is amongst America’s most thoughtful...

For all the “progress” in civil rights front over the last couple of generations, the wealth gap between white and black Americans hasn’t changed much. As Ebony Reed, co-author of best selling new book, Fifteen Cents on the D...

In the wake of the failed Trump assassination attempt by what seems to be a conventionally lonely and bullied young man, more and more Americans are asking what has gone wrong. According to CNN correspondent Elle Reeve , onli...

Trust a French literary theorist to think creatively about whether AI can think creatively. Laurent Dubreuil is a professor of French literature at Cornell and the author of the intriguing Harper’s piece, Metal Machine Music ...

I’m just back from the Liberalism for the 21st Century conference in DC which featured a lively discussion about digital misinformation between KEEN ON regular Jonathan Rauch and Renee DiResta , the author of Invisible Rulers...

Does America have problem with its boys and men? Yes , says author of Boys and Men , Richard Reeves, a previous guest on KEEN ON. Today’s guest, Niobe Way, a NYU professor of developmental psychology, give a more nuanced answ...

Few Americans know contemporary China better than Peter Hessler . The author of four prize winning books about life in China as well as the former China correspondent of the New Yorker , Hessler originally came to China as a ...

What a treat. LA Times book critic Bethanne Patrick and I got the opportunity to talk today with the great Andrew O’Hagan , author of Caledonian Road , his new blockbuster novel about the state of contemporary Britain. It’s a...

Spy novelists often make excellent moralists and the American writer Daniel Silva , author of the Gabriel Allon series of best-selling thrillers, is a particularly sharp critic of contemporary morals. His new Allon thriller, ...

Earlier this week, I visited the offices of Floodgate Partners in Menlo Park to talk with its co-founding partner Mike Maples . As an early investor in Twitter, Twitch.tv and many other successful start-ups, Maples is one of ...

In episode 2022 , That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare and I violently disagreed about the current AI boom. Keith, the eternal techno-optimist, thinks AI is about to radically change everything; as the perennial techno-pes...

The seductive promise of microfinance might have conveniently died in the Western media, but Muhammad Yunis’ alluring economic idea has actually wreaked unintentional havoc around the world. Mara Kardas-Nelson’s important new...

Last week, That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare and I discussed whether Silicon Valley has an AI Bubble Problem. And we return to the same subject today, comparing today’s AI driven Wall Street techno-mania with the automo...

Memoirs are usually morally uplifting reads with happy endings. But Phil Elwood’s new memoir, All the Worst Humans , is a confession of how Elwood, as a top DC based PR operative, created what he calls a “counter-narrative” f...

In 2011, Simon Reynolds is one of the world’s most prolific music journalists, came on KEEN ON to explain why the Internet has been bad for both musical artists and fans. Back then it took a brave man like Reynolds to argue a...