Videos

One of Bethanne Patrick’s recommended books (https://keenon.substack.com/p/new-books-from-salman-rushdie-erik) for April was Mohamed Amer Meziane’s The States of the Earth (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/741203/the-states-of-the-earth-by-mohamed-amer-meziane/) . It sounded intriguing, if not entirely coherent, and so I invited Meziane on the show. Even now, I’m not sure I exactly get Meziane’s point. He seems to be saying…

In today’s stultified American gerontocracy, not everyone is convinced that we should care about old people. After all, aging baby boomers still control most of the wealth and power in an increasingly divided & inegalitarian country. But, in contrast with many of today’s age warriors, Andrew J Scott cares about…

Samyr Laine might be a model for how to become a Haitian-American in the 21st century. Son of Haitian emigrants, Laine was a roommate of Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard, competed at the London 2012 Olympics as a Haitian triple jumper, and is now an entrepreneur and investor in sports and…

Given the industry of Holocaust remembering, do we really need another book about the Nazis and their industrial death camps? Yes, according to Tobias Buck, author of the much acclaimed (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/12/final-verdict-by-tobias-buck-review-a-21st-century-holocaust-trial-bruno-dey) A Final Verdict: the Holocaust on Trial in the 21st Century. As the half-German managing editor of the Financial…

The Harvard academic Elisa New is host of the much acclaimed PBS series POETRY IN AMERICA (https://www.poetryinamerica.org/) . Now in Season Four, the show has featured conversations about American poetry with Joe Biden, Herbie Hancock, Gloria Estefan, Shaquille O’Neal, Bill Clinton and Al Gore. While America isn’t normally considered a…

In November of this year, two particularly out of touch eighty-year old men will contest the US Presidential election. America, in other words, has an age problem. According to David Faris, author of THE KIDS ARE ALL LEFT (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622994/the-kids-are-all-left-by-david-faris/) , the country might be on the brink of a generational…

As founding director of Cornell University's Carl Sagan Institute and author of the new ALIEN EARTHS: Planet Hunting in the Cosmos (https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/460729/alien-earths-by-kaltenegger-lisa/9780241680988) , Lisa Kaltenegger (https://astro.cornell.edu/lisa-kaltenegger) is one of the world’s most respected cosmologists. She believes that, with our revolutionary new cosmological technologies, we are likely to “discover” non-human life…

In a “post-truth” world, who should we trust? According to Alex Edmans, one of the UK’s hottest business school professors, you should trust him enough to read his new book, May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics and Studies Exploit Our Biases - And What We Can Do About It (https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/455479/may-contain-lies-by-edmans-alex/9780241630167)…

Museums, the distinguished anthropologist Adam Kuper argues in his new book Museums of Other People (https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-museum-of-other-people-from-colonial-acquisitions-to-cosmopolitan-exhibitions-adam-kuper/20268320?ean=9780593700679) , are actually mirrors of ourselves. Rather than revealing curiosities about cultures of antiquity, they are actually living documents of power - particularly western, colonial power. Does this mean we affluent westerners should all…

There are few people more adept at navigating America’s labyrinthine medical system than Robert Pearl (https://robertpearlmd.com/) . Yale medical degree, Stanford University professor, best-selling author, former CEO of the Californian insurance network Kaiser Permanente, Pearl has explored this byzantine confusion of private enterprise monopoly and government supported bureaucracy from almost…

Dr Judy Ho has a new book entitled The New Rules of Attachment: How to Heal Your Relationships, Reparent Your Inner Child, and Secure Your Life Vision (https://drjudyho.com/books/the-new-rules-of-attachment/) . It’s one of those books which explain to us, in our therapeutic age of intense anxiety, how to stop f*****g ourselves…

The suburbs haven’t got a great press recently on KEEN ON. First there was Benjamin Herold (https://keenon.substack.com/p/suburbia-and-american-disillusionment-e71) , author of Disillusioned, who found the dead body of the American Dream in the American suburb. And then David Masciotra (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-2017-david-masciotra-finds) , author of Exurbia Now, discovered political lethargy and reaction in…

In his early opposition to the Iraq war and other overseas misadventures in Bosnia, Haiti and El Salvador, Mark Danner (https://markdanner.com/) is one of the most respected observers of American foreign policy. So it was a real honor to sit down with him and talk about his life both as…

Harper’s has a great cover story (https://harpers.org/archive/2024/05/the-life-and-death-of-hollywood-daniel-bessner/) this month entitled “The Life and Death of Hollywood” by the intellectual historian, podcast and general muckraker Daniel Bessner. Film & tv writers face an existential threat, Bessner told me, from a Hollywood now controlled by four financialized mega-companies operated by MBA touting…