Last week, we featured an interview with the leftist American theologian, Jim Wallis, who warned about the false white gospel of contemporary Christian nationalism. And we return to the existential dangers of American religion today with Talia Lavin whose new book, Wild Faith, warns that the Christian right is actually…
The 2024 winners of the Nobel prize for Economics were announced (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/business/nobel-economics.html) this morning. One of the winners was the MIT economist Simon Johnson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Johnson_(economist)) , who, as the co-author (with his MIT colleague Daron Acemoglu) of Power and Progress (https://www.amazon.com/Power-Progress-Thousand-Year-Technology-Prosperity/dp/1541702530) , appeared on KEEN ON just over a year…
Earlier this week, the prominent African-American broadcaster and writer, Tavis Smiley, came on the show to voice (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-2215-tavis-smiley-on-why) his support for Reparations to correct the past racial injustices in American history. The Kentucky based historian, Joel Edward Goza (https://www.joeledwardgoza.com/) , author of Rebirth of a Nation (https://www.eerdmans.com/9780802884312/rebirth-of-a-nation/) , agrees with…
In her quest for the White House, it seems as if Kamala Harris is doing everything in her power to disassociate herself with liberal ideas. So what, exactly, has happened to liberal politics in the United States today? That’s exactly the question which the excellent young George Washington historian, Timothy…
It’s been a strange week in tech. The Nobel prizes in both Chemistry and Physics went to prominent former or current Googlers, and yet the tech news cycle has been dominated by the U.S. government’s intent to break up a seemingly prostrate Google. Keith Teare and Andrew, in their regular…
As a Harvard trained pediatrician as well as television writer and producer, Neal Baer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Baer) has particularly interesting take on the moral, policy and ethical challenges of CRISPR gene-editing technology. Baer - He is best known for his work on the television shows Designated Survivor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designated_Survivor_(TV_series)) , ER (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ER_(TV_series)) and…
Why are black men more likely to vote for Donald Trump than black women? According to Tavis Smiley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavis_Smiley) , the syndicated radio host and best selling author of many books about black America include his latest Covenant with Black America - Twenty Years Later, (https://www.amazon.com/Covenant-Black-America-Twenty-Years-ebook/dp/B0D2TMFG4D?ref_=ast_author_mpb) it’s because some black…
This is an important conversation. Few Americans are better skilled at listening than the UC Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlie_Russell_Hochschild) . The author of the best selling Strangers in Their Own Land (https://thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-land) , Hochschild’s much anticipated new book, Stolen Pride (https://thenewpress.com/books/stolen-pride) , takes place in Kentucky, where she…
In December 2008, Lily Bock, the daughter of the novelist Charles Bock (https://www.charlesbock.net/i-will-do-better) , was born. But Bock, the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Beautiful Children and Alice & Oliver, was a reluctant parent, tagging along for the ride of fatherhood, obsessed primarily with his dream of…
American Christianity appears in a state of disrepair, perhaps even imminent civil war. On the one hand, of course, we have the evangelical right who make up much of Trump’s ideological base; on the other hand, there are progressive American theologians like Jim Wallis (https://www.jimwallis.org/) who argue that this Christian…
Might future multi-trillion dollar AI platforms like OpenAI represent not just the end of the app age but also of economic competition itself? As That Was The Week’s (https://www.thatwastheweek.com/) Keith Teare and Andrew discuss in today’s weekly KEEN ON tech round-up, the news of OpenAI’s $6.5 billion new funding round…
Carissa Carter (https://dschool.stanford.edu/team-directory/carissa-l-carter) and Scott Doorley (https://dschool.stanford.edu/team-directory/scott-doorley) both teach at Stanford’s interdisciplinary d.school (https://dschool.stanford.edu/) . They are also the joint authors of Assembling Tomorrow (https://bookshop.org/p/books/assembling-tomorrow-a-guide-to-designing-a-thriving-future-from-the-stanford-d-school-scott-doorley/20464365?ean=9781984858184) , an intriguing new book in which, using their D School experience, Carter and Doorley provide a guide to designing a thriving future. They argue…
Yesterday, I interviewed (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-2208-andrew-hill-on-the-financial) The Financial Times’ Andrew Hill about the FT’s best six business books of the year. Today, I talk to Michael Morris (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2149872/michael-morris/) , the author of one of those books. In Tribal (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/557404/tribal-by-michael-morris/) , Morris explains how the cultural instincts that divide us can also help…
