Videos

Last month, we were in western Virginia talking to the pioneering regenerative farmer Joel Salatin about how American can fix itself one bite at a time (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/episode-2139-joel-salatin-explains-how-to-fix-america/id1448694012?i=1000663257514) . Today we are on the other coast, in western Oregon, talking to another regenerative farmer, Mimi Casteel (https://www.hopewellwine.com/people/) . In contrast with…

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, which he wrote in 1948,George Orwell imagined the “Ministry of Truth” to be the central institution that Big Brother used to reinvent reality and make war on the recent past. Three quarters of a century later, Steve Benen, the Emmy award winning producer of the Rachel Maddow…

As author of the authoritative three volume Third Reich Trilogy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Reich_Trilogy) , Richard J. Evans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_J._Evans) is probably the most respected scholar of Hitler’s Third Reich in the world today. And his latest book, Hitler’s People, (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/653631/hitlers-people-by-richard-j-evans/) is an attempt to make all-too-human sense of Nazi lieutenants like Goebbels, Himmler,…

In her new book, Freeman’s Challenge (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo213968137.html) , the Harvard historian Robin Bernstein (https://scholar.harvard.edu/robinbernstein/home) reveals the early 19th century origins of America’s for profit prisons. Telling the tragic story of William Freeman, an Afro-Native teenager guilty of what she calls the “terrorist” act of killing a white family, Bernstein simultaneously…

In an America riven with both civic discord and ignorance, how can we nurture a next generation of responsibly informed citizens? That’s the all important question Lindsey Cormack addresses in her new book, How to Raise a Citizen (https://www.amazon.com/How-Raise-Citizen-Why-Its/dp/1394278705/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.PHvF1NVrhF2T-r3WWzS7YsMwLSENCbU5kNSuWqV3VzOZF6Gid48gQH_tLM4QCxyhi9DCqsVC_I_h9gChXGhIRzAjU9zh_Xa6d8fFcGq01hoPw2cf3guNQq5JCs9jJ5ot.OHU_ihUsDz1TTSroLBkINO46vbPLPVsoM6Z6F9vV514&dib_tag=se&gad_source=1&hvadid=695496058693&hvdev=c&hvexpln=67&hvlocphy=9031951&hvnetw=g&hvocijid=12779447133008902799--&hvqmt=e&hvrand=12779447133008902799&hvtargid=kwd-2296548852715&hydadcr=8922_13572525&keywords=how+to+raise+a+citizen&qid=1723421759&sr=8-1) . There are no magical tricks to learning how to be…

There are two core critiques of AI. The first is that it is an existential threat because it replaces humans with algorithms. The second is that AI is a mirror that only compounds preexisting injustices. James Muldoon (https://jamesmuldoon.org/) , an associate professor of management at Essex Business School and co-author…

How democratic is American “democracy”. Dramatically less so that it was. That’s at least the rather worrying conclusion of David Daley (https://twitter.com/davedaley3?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) , the author of ANTIDEMOCRATIC (https://www.harpercollins.com/products/antidemocratic-david-daley?variant=41142644310050) , a new book which exposes what he says is “the far right’s 50-year plot to control American elections”. This half century…

Shad White has an uncanny resemblance to J.D. Vance. Born in a tiny town in Mississippi, White went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, then Harvard Law School and is now the State Auditor of Mississippi. Like Vance, the lifelong Republican White is a converted Catholic whose faith informs his…

If it’s lunchtime, it must be KEEN ON time. At least that’s what it seems, given the long menu of food guests recently on the show. First there was the lunatic regenerative farmer, Joel Salatin, fixing America one bite at a time (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-2139-joel-salatin-explains) . Then Nicola Twilley (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-2041-nicola-twilley-on-how) , the…

Peter Wehner (https://www.ttf.org/about-us/senior-fellows/peterwehner/) is the conscience of American conservatism. Having worked in three Republican administrations, the ex Republican is now a regular contributor to the New York Times and the Atlantic, writing compelling moral critiques of Trump and the authoritarian populism now dominant in the GOP. Many of you will…

Were politics chess, liberals had white; they moved first. Conservatives had black; they countered liberalism’s opening moves. In time, the initiative changed hands. Conservatives, who began as anti-moderns, came to master modernity, for the right was in telling ways the stronger contestant. So write Edmund Fawcett in his exemplary intellectual…

So what’s exceptional about America? According to the writer, film producer and scholar Jonathan Taplin, American exceptionalism lies its uniquely global cultural influence. For Taplin - the tour manager for Bob Dylan & producer of Martin Scorcese’s masterpiece Mean Streets - this reflects what he calls America’s right-brain power which…

Much of the critical writing about authoritarianism warns that contemporary populism threatens democracy. But as Stephen Hanson and Jeffrey Kopstein argue in their interesting new book, The Assault on the State (https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Assault+on+the+State%3A+How+the+Global+Attack+on+Modern+Government+Endangers+Our+Future-p-9781509563166) , this global attack on legalistic government by wannabe dictators like Putin, Erdogan and Modi endangers not just…