Last month we ran an interview with the Oregon based regenerative wine maker Mimi Casteel (https://www.hopewellwine.com/people/) about fixing America one sip at a time (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-mimi-casteel-explains-the) . In addition, we recorded a KEEN ON America segment with Casteel about her life-long love affair with the American land. Filmed at her family’s…
Andrew Leigh is a minister in the Australian parliament with a doctorate in economics from Harvard. Unlike many academic economists, however, Leigh has the gift of simplifying economics for all of us. His new book, How Economics Explains the World (https://www.amazon.com/How-Economics-Explains-World-Humanity-ebook/dp/B0CPWX1N9V?ref_=ast_author_mpb) , presents economics as the prism to understand the…
Formerly Le Monde’s guy in Jerusalem, Piotr Smolar is now the senior correspondent for Le Monde in Washington, DC. He is also the grandson of Hersh Smolar, one of the 20th century’s more remarkable men. As Smolar notes in Bad Jew (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/757121/bad-jew-by-piotr-smolar/) , the astonishing story of his grandfather’s life…
Exactly 85 years ago today, on 3 September 1939, the Second World War officially began with Britain’s declaration of war against Germany. Russians might argue, however, the real war began on 22 June 1941 with Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. While, for America, of course, the war began on…
Controversial things are happening on the campus of the University of Austin (https://www.uaustin.org/) (UATX), the brand new anti-woke university designed to “dare” its students to “think”. Last week, we interviewed UATX’s founding president, Pano Kanelos, (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-pano-kanelos-on-how-to-build) who explained how he was trying to build what he called a 21st century…
Bryan VanDyke’s (https://www.amazon.com/Our-Likeness-Novel-Bryan-VanDyke-ebook/dp/B0CT4GCSKX) new dystopian AI novel, In Our Likeness (https://www.amazon.com/Our-Likeness-Novel-Bryan-VanDyke-ebook/dp/B0CT4GCSKX) , only came out today, but it has already over 1,400 reviews on Amazon and is currently their bestselling science fiction book. So what does our seemingly infinite appetite for dystopian AI literature tell us about ourself, I asked…
There’s a big fight, perhaps even a war, about to break out between Big Tech and governments around the world. It’s been brewing for several years now, but the news this week from France and Brazil suggests that conventional nation-states are increasingly confident of shutting down popular social networks and…
According to the Californian political sociologist Peter Phillips (https://www.sevenstories.com/authors/309-peter-phillips?srsltid=AfmBOopPfhjQegc1Bxz1MR3_XZrr79SnadUmNxz4yaJGAa--fFVSFe--) , American capitalism is facing an existential crisis. In his new book, Titans of Capital (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/760690/titans-of-capital-by-peter-phillips/) , he argues that the concentrated wealth of investment companies like BlackRock and Fidelity not only threatens human rights and democracy, but also the future…
The Anglo-Jewish writer Tanya Gold (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Gold) went on holiday to Auschwitz and didn’t much like what she saw. She writes about the experience in “My Auschwitz Vacation: On Holocaust tourism” (https://harpers.org/archive/2024/09/my-auschwitz-vacation-tanya-gold-tourism/) which ran in this month’s Harper’s. But, as she told me, she would have preferred the piece to have…
Last year, we had a great conversation (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dismal-science-investigates-that-most-dismal/id1448694012?i=1000632752932) with Branko Milanovic, author of Visions of Inequalit (https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674264144) y, about how classical economists like Smith, Riccardo, Marx and Pareto analyze inequality. Our guest today, David Lay Williams (https://twitter.com/LayWilliams?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) , asks the same question - but from the perspective of political philosophers…
Something interesting is happening in downtown Austin. Next month, The University of Austin (https://www.uaustin.org/) (UATX), a new undergraduate college claiming to “be dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth”, opens its well financed doors. Launched as a supposedly “anti-woke” university, UATX has some heavy hitting advisors including Richard Dawkins, Niall…
As the author of the bestselling Master Algorithm (https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/pedro-domingos/the-master-algorithm/9780465061921/?lens=basic-books) , University of Washington professor Pedro Domingos (https://twitter.com/pmddomingos) is one of the world’s most respected (https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~pedrod/) AI experts. So I was a little surprised that his new book, 2040 (https://www.amazon.com/2040-Silicon-Valley-Pedro-Domingos-ebook/dp/B0D81FJBTR) , is a science-fictional satire of American politics & Silicon Valley.…
At the DNC last week, the Warriors coach and former Bulls star Steve Kerr spoke of his excitement at his return to Chicago’s United Center, the home of some his greatest basketball triumphs. According to the Columbia University historian Frank Andre Guridy, (https://x.com/fguridy?lang=en) there’s nothing coincidental about this convergence of…
As one of the victims of Donald Trump’s notorious (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_dismissal_of_inspectors_general) 2020 dismissal of Inspector Generals, Glenn A. Fine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Fine) — a longtime Inspector General of both the departments of Justice & Defense - knows a thing or two about both honest government. In his new book, Watchdogs, (https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/10047/) Fine presents…
