As America braces itself for the upcoming Presidential election, a growing army of coastal commentators are agonizing over the health of the country’s democracy. In contrast with many of these desk bound pundits, the Bloomberg editorial director Frank Barry (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARv2G4EWOmk/frank-barry) bought an RV and drove from New York City to…
In the wake of a “major Summit (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cxrr1kyp04eo) ” on Ukraine which neither the Russians nor the Chinese attended, the war remains as murky and inconclusive as ever. And it’s this murkiness and inconclusiveness that the San Francisco based writer Sasha Vasiljuk (https://www.sashavasilyuk.com/about) explores in her new novel, Your Presence…
Big Tech is getting even bigger. This was the week that NVIDIA joined Microsoft and Apple as a three trillion dollar company. And it’s also the week that, according to That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare, in which OpenAI’s deals with Microsoft and Apple might have locked up the…
Big Tech is getting even bigger. This was the week that NVIDIA joined Microsoft and Apple as a three trillion dollar company. And it’s also the week that, according to That Was The Week (https://www.thatwastheweek.com/) publisher Keith Teare, in which OpenAI’s deals with Microsoft and Apple might have locked up…
The Euros start today and Copa America next week. So expect a slew of garbage about soccer/football as the “beautiful game” or, even more ludicrously, the “people’s game”. But as Joseph O’Neill shows in his timely new novel, Godwin (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/741344/godwin-by-joseph-oneill/) , today’s trillion dollar football industry is a mirror of…
How to write a history of labor in the United States for young people? According to the award-winning author J. Albert Mann (https://jalbertmann.com/about) , a history of labor written for children shouldn’t be childish. Indeed, her new book, Shift Happens: The History of Labor in the United States (https://jalbertmann.com/shift-happens) ,…
In episode 2082, (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-2082-james-kirchick-explains) James Kirchick suggested that being Jewish and being a Zionist should be of all of one thing. Shane Burley reverses this. The co-author of Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Antisemitism (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/741043/safety-through-solidarity-by-shane-burley/) , the Portland based, religiously orthodox Burley suggests that being Jewish might actually…
One fashionable English language word I’d like to blow up is “weaponization”. Another is “victimhood”. So I couldn’t resist talking the London School of Eonomics professor Lilie Chouliaraki about Wronged: (https://cup.columbia.edu/book/wronged/9780231550239) (https://cup.columbia.edu/book/wronged/9780231550239) The Weaponization of Victimhood (https://cup.columbia.edu/book/wronged/9780231550239) , her new book attempting to right how we abuse these two maligned…
Sixteen months feels like sixteen centuries in the history of digital technology. Last year, the NYU data scientist Meredith Broussard (https://meredithbroussard.com/) came on episode 1360 (https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/keen-on-777742/episodes/more-than-a-glitch-meredith-br-166624261) to explain how technology is reinforcing inequality and what we can do about it. Today, seventeen hundred episodes later, Broussard explained to me when…
The Nineties are back in fashion. Last week on KEEN ON, Terry Anderson explained why the Nineties still matter (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-2084-terry-h-anderson-on) . Next week, we are featuring a conversation with John Ganz, the author of When the Calock Broke (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374605445/whentheclockbroke) , his interpretation of how America “cracked up” in the early…
We are having a Stanford self-improvement sort of weekend. Yesterday, KEEN ON featured a conversation with two Stanford profs (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-2087-alex-dang-and-ilya-strebulaev) on how to acquire a venture capital mindset. Today, Jeremy Utley, the director of education at Stanford’s Institute of Design, teaches us how to facilitate our own epiphanies. In his…
Venture capitalists aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. For leftists, they are Trump supporting (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-2086-keith-teare-on-silicon) vultures, feasting on the rotting carcass of neo-liberalism. But for Alex Dang and Ilya Strebulaev, co-authors of THE VENTURE MINDSET (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/734114/the-venture-mindset-by-ilya-strebulaev-and-alex-dang/) , the top venture capitalists offer a lesson to all of us in how to…
That Was The Week (https://www.thatwastheweek.com/) author and Silicon Valley based entrepreneur Keith Teare isn’t a great fan of either Trump or Biden. But as he notes in this week’s newsletter (https://www.thatwastheweek.com/p/c18cb3bd-2a68-49ca-922f-2c4439f8c10a) , while Joe Biden is no dream candidate, Donald Trump is a “big no no” nightmare. But not everyone…
The KEEN ON America series is supposed to feature conversations with prominent Americans about the post, present and future of their almost 250 year-old Republic. And while Nick Bryant (https://twitter.com/NickBryantNY) was born in the UK and now lives in Australia, I think he nonetheless qualifies as an honorary American. The…
“The past is never dead”, William Faulkner quipped, “it’s not even past.” Angry white men, a disruptive internet, political gridlock in DC, right-wing terrorism, lying Presidents…. Yes, the 2020’s began in the 1990’s with Ruby Ridge, Newt Gingrich, the Oklahoma bombing, Bill and Monica, Russ Limbaugh, and the dotcom madness.…
What goes up, comes down. As the Dow continues to hover at 40,000, something is inevitably going to burst the Wall Street’s current irrational exuberance. According to Andrew Lipstein (https://alipstein.com/) , the biggest danger to today’s stock market boom is the $15 trillion in global passive investing funds managed by…
