Videos

I did this interview with John Driscoll (https://thenewpress.com/authors/john-driscoll) , co-author of Pay the People! Why Fair Pay is Good for Business and Great for America (https://www.amazon.com/Pay-People-Business-Great-America-ebook/dp/B0CTNQLH8P) , earlier this week, assuming that Harris would lose the election. And let’s be clear: she did lose an election that should have been…

Lauren Oyler’s “Revenge Plot”, (https://harpers.org/archive/2024/11/revenge-plot-lauren-oyler-republican-national-convention-gop-trump/) a literary diary of her trip to this year’s Republican convention in Milwaukee, is the cover story of this month’s Harper’s (https://harpers.org/) . So when I talked today with the Berlin based writer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Oyler) , we discussed both the revengefulness of the Republican party and…

The good news is that the interminable 2024 election is almost done. The bad news is that the 2028 Presidential campaign - sure to be described as the most important election in American history - will begin later this week. The best-selling writer Paul Greenberg (https://www.paulgreenberg.org/) is already imagining this…

This was the week of Techcrunch Disrupt (https://techcrunch.com/events/tc-disrupt-2024/) , one of San Francisco’s biggest technology events of the year. That Was The Week (https://www.thatwastheweek.com/) publisher Keith Teare attended Disrupt this year and, as he explained in our weekly round up of tech news, the event - which was attended by…

Yesterday, we featured a conversation (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-2240-jon-moynihan-on-how) with the British pro-market Conservative, Jon Moynihan, who is unambiguously in favor of economic growth. But Daniel Susskind (https://www.danielsusskind.com/) , author of Growth: A History and a Reckoning (https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674294493) , is less of an ideological warrior on behalf of unrestrained economic growth. In Growth,…

Not everyone believes in the promise of economic growth. We’ve done KEEN ON shows in the past with “degrowth” advocates like Tim Jackson and Jason Hickle who argue that we need to get beyond the false promise of ever expanding wealth. Our guest today, however, is anything but a sceptic…

Maybe Halloween is a bit early this year. As Jason Pack (https://www.jasonpack.org/about) , the host of the excellent Disorder (https://www.goalhangerpodcasts.com/disorder) podcast notes, a Trump victory on Tuesday would be a horror show. And while he’s much more optimistic than me about a Harris victory, Pack nonetheless views Trump as Exhibit…

Can one age with grace and wisdom? Yes, according to Andrew J. Scott (https://profandrewjscott.com/the-longevity-imperative/) , author of the Longevity Imperative, (https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/andrew-j-scott/the-longevity-imperative/9781668638163/?lens=basic-books) one of the six books on the Financial Times’ illustrious short list (https://www.ft.com/content/27f60ee7-94cc-4098-9f5a-52fbf2f71b39) for best business books of the year . For Scott, aging in the 21st century requires…

Last week, the Los Angeles Times book critic, Bethanne Patrick, came on the show to talk about the best new non-fiction (https://keenon.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/150494012?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts%2Fpublished) books for the Fall. Today she is back to talk new novels by great fictional writers like Allan Hollinghurst, Rachel Kushner and Paula Hawkins. For those of you…

There are few more passionate bibliophiles than those who have dedicated their lives to the publishing business. Take, for example, Stephen Riggio (https://www.encyclopedia.com/economics/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/riggio-stephen-1954) , the former CEO of Barnes & Noble who, as he confessed to me, has been hooked on books his whole life. Riggio’s latest book project is…

There are few men politically or intellectually smarter than President Lyndon Johnson and his defense secretary Robert McNamara (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McNamara) . So how did LBJ and McNamara screw up America’s involvement in Vietnam so tragically? According to Peter Osnos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Osnos) , the author of LBJ and McNamara: The Vietnam Partnership Destined…

As the longtime collaborator of the 2024 Nobel laureates John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, Terrence Sejnowski (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Sejnowski) is one of America’s most distinguished AI scientists. In his new book, ChatGPT and the Future of AI: The Deep Language Revolution (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049252/chatgpt-and-the-future-of-ai/) , Sejnowski addresses some of the central technical and philosophical…