Videos

As CEO of the AI start-up DoNotPay, Joshua Browder (https://x.com/jbrowder1?lang=en) 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 great grandfather, Earl Browder (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Browder) , was head of the US Communist…

Lauded by KEEN ON favorites like Dave Eggers & Dale Maharidge, J. Malcolm Garcia (https://jmalcolmgarcia.com/) might be the Studs Terkel of contemporary American literature. Having worked as a social worker with San Francisco’s homeless community for 14 years, he then became an acclaimed journalist and winner of the Studs Terkel…

I was at the Liberalism for the 21st Century (https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/liberalism-for-the-21st-century-a) conference last week in DC where I bumped into an old friend and KEEN ON regular Jonathan Rauch (https://www.jonathanrauch.com/about.html) . A Brookings Fellow and prolific author, Rauch is amongst America’s most thoughtful commentators on the contemporary crisis of liberalism and…

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 Dollar (https://www.harpercollins.com/products/fifteen-cents-on-the-dollar-louise-storyebony-reed?variant=41226132357154) , whites on average have 85% more wealth than blacks,…

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 (https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Elle-Reeve/189169861) , online Americans - particularly lonely, alienated young men on networks like…

Trust a French literary theorist to think creatively about whether AI can think creatively. Laurent Dubreuil (https://complit.cornell.edu/laurent-dubreuil) is a professor of French literature at Cornell and the author of the intriguing Harper’s piece, Metal Machine Music (https://harpers.org/archive/2024/07/metal-machine-music/) , which asks both if AI and we humans can think creatively. Using…

I’m just back from the Liberalism for the 21st Century (https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/liberalism-for-the-21st-century-a) conference in DC which featured a lively discussion about digital misinformation between KEEN ON regular Jonathan Rauch (https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-forced-erasure-of-gays-from-20th-century-american-life/id1448694012?i=1000646062399) and Renee DiResta (https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/contributor/renee-diresta/?lens=publicaffairs) , the author of Invisible Rulers (https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/renee-diresta/invisible-rulers/9781541703377/?lens=publicaffairs) . As the former manager of the Stanford Internet Observatory,…

Does America have problem with its boys and men? Yes (https://lithub.com/richard-reeves-identifies-todays-crisis-of-masculinity-and-explains-how-to-fix-it/) , 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 answer. The author of the Rebels With a Cause: Reimagining…

Few Americans know contemporary China better than Peter Hessler (https://www.peterhessler.net/) . 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 Peace Corps volunteer in 1996 and has been writing about…

What a treat. LA Times book critic Bethanne Patrick (https://www.bethannepatrick.com/) and I got the opportunity to talk today with the great Andrew O’Hagan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_O%27Hagan) , author of Caledonian Road (https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324074878) , his new blockbuster novel about the state of contemporary Britain. It’s a fabulous read and O’Hagan was no less…

Spy novelists often make excellent moralists and the American writer Daniel Silva (https://danielsilvabooks.com/about-daniel/) , author of the Gabriel Allon series of best-selling thrillers, is a particularly sharp critic of contemporary morals. His new Allon thriller, A Death in Cornwall (https://www.amazon.com/Unti-Silva-Novel-2024/dp/0063384205) , focuses on money laundering, murder and mayhem in the…

Earlier this week, I visited the offices of Floodgate Partners in Menlo Park to talk with its co-founding partner Mike Maples (https://www.floodgate.com/team/mike-maples-jr) . As an early investor in Twitter, Twitch.tv and many other successful start-ups, Maples is one of Silicon Valley’s most respected venture capitalists. He is, to borrow the…

In episode 2022 (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-2022-is-the-ai-tech-boom) , 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-pessimist, I argued that much of the current Wall St AI insanity is a…

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 book, We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250817228/wearenotabletoliveinthesky) , reveals the damage done by microfinance loans…