Videos

April 19, 2024

Episode 2037: Elliot Ackerman on the danger of mercenaries and the value of national service

Elliot Ackerman has an intriguing essay (https://libertiesjournal.com/articles/mercenaries/) in this issue of Liberties Quarterly (https://libertiesjournal.com/) on the use and abuse of mercenaries throughout history. Linking the history of the British in India, the US in Afghanistan and Russia in contemporary Ukraine, he ask what it means when mercenaries replace regular soldiers…

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April 19, 2024

Elisa New

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April 19, 2024

Lisa Kaltenegger

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April 19, 2024

Alex Tsakiris

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April 18, 2024

Mohammed Amir Meziane

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April 18, 2024

Episode 2036: Stephen Marche, author of "The Next Civil War", on Alex Garland's new movie "Civil ...

I have to admit I absolutely HATED Alex Garland’s new movie Civil War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_War_(film)) . I found it annoyingly trite, self-evidently packaged for an ahistorical cinematic audience addicted to the amnesia of mindless violence. That’s fine, of course, for most Hollywood productions, but not for a supposedly serious movie about…

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April 17, 2024

David Faris

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April 17, 2024

Alex Edmans

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April 17, 2024

Episode 2035: KEEN ON AMERICA featuring Christopher Schroeder

Part of the purpose of our new KEEN ON AMERICA series is to (re)discover what it means to be an American. Many of the wisest observers of American life - from De Tocqueville in the 19th Century to Max Weber and Alistair Cooke in the 20th - saw the uniqueness…

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April 17, 2024

Stephen Marche

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April 16, 2024

Dale Maharidge

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April 16, 2024

Adam Kuper

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April 16, 2024

Episode 2034: Dale Maharidge tells American liberals to look in the mirror to understand the Doom...

Like yesterday’s KEEN ON guest, Batya Ungar-Sargon (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-2033-batya-ungar-sargon-on) , Dale Maharidge believes that liberals are “equally to blame” for what he calls, in his new collection of essays, America’s Doom Loop (https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/American-Doom-Loop/Dale-Maharidge/9798888451649) . Maharidge, whose Pulitzer prize winning writing about the gutting of the industrial midwest, inspired Springsteen’s iconic 1995…

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April 16, 2024

Robert Pearl

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April 15, 2024

Batya Ungar-Sargon

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April 15, 2024

Episode 2033: Batya Ungar-Sargon on how American elites have betrayed the country's working men a...

Behind all the partisan hysteria, a dramatic political realignment is taking place in America. As SECOND CLASS (https://www.encounterbooks.com/books/second-class/) author Batya Ungar-Sargon told me, the Democrats have become the party of a mostly coastal global knowledge elite and the Republicans the party of the old (most white) working class. This new…

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April 15, 2024

Judy Ho

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April 14, 2024

Episode 2032: Natalie Foster on how the arc of the 21st century American moral universe is bendin...

Finally some good news for progressive Americans. According to Natalie Foster, whose new book The Guarantee (https://nataliefoster.me/the-guarantee/) is out on April 23, Americans are about to get the economy they deserve. In The Guarantee, Foster gets inside the what she describes as “the fight” for our economic future and discovers…

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April 14, 2024

EPISODE 2004: Jacob Heilbrunn on conservative America's 100 year romance with foreign dictators l...

In his new book AMERICA LAST: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators (https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324094661) , Jacob Heilbrunn argues that American conservatives have always had the hots for foreign dictators like Kaiser Wilhelm II, Mussolini, Franco and Pinochet. And so, he argues, it’s no great surprise that contemporary rightists like Ron…

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April 14, 2024

Episode 2005: Why the Pete Rose story is as much about the rise and fall of America as it is abou...

Even if it isn’t quite Spring, the professional baseball season begins today in, of all places, Korea. And to celebrate this premature rite, I spoke with Keith O’Brien, the author of CHARLIE HUSTLE (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/714286/charlie-hustle-by-keith-obrien/) , the new Pete Rose biography already acclaimed as a “masterpiece (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/keith-obrien/charlie-hustle/) ”. Rose himself, O’Brien…

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April 14, 2024

Episode 2006: Everything you wanted to know about sex but didn't have the imagination to ask

Warning: this is an adults-only show. David Baker, the Australian based author of The Shortest History of Sex (https://www.amazon.com/Shortest-History-Sex-Procreation-Recreation/dp/1891011340#:~:text=Review,readers%20from%20start%20to%20finish.%22&text=%22With%20a%20keen%20eye%20for,this%20book%20is%20for%20you.%22) , takes us through two billion years of sexual evolution. And, from the first microbial exchanges of DNA to Darwin and Freud, Tinder and sexbots, it’s not a pretty story. The…

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April 14, 2024

Episode 2007: Bethanne Patrick's guide to a literary March madness

We would all be way more ignorant without omnivorous book critic and regular KEEN ON guest Bethanne Patrick. This month she recommends six new books by Russell Banks, Adam Philips, Percival Everett, Andrew Dubus III, Marie Mutsuki Mockett & Adelle Waldman. So don’t complain you’ve got nothing to read. No…

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April 14, 2024

Episode 2008: Chris French on the Science of Weird S**t

As we approach Easter and Passover, it’s worth noting that our mainstream monotheistic creeds are based on a belief in what Professor Chris French, the head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit in the Psychology Department at Goldsmiths college at London University, would call “weird s**t”. So as French, the…

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April 14, 2024

Episode 2009: Keith Teare on why Big Tech might be getting even BIGGER

All the tech news this week seems to be about how Big Tech is, for better or worse, getting BIGGER. There’s the Department of Justice anti-trust case against Apple, a hail-Mary attempt by Biden’s DOJ to transform to the high-end iPhone into a lower-end Android device. There’s Microsoft’s “acquisition” of…

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