There are two core critiques of AI. The first is that it is an existential threat because it replaces humans with algorithms. The second is that AI is a mirror that only compounds preexisting injustices. James Muldoon (https://jamesmuldoon.org/) , an associate professor of management at Essex Business School and co-author…
How democratic is American “democracy”. Dramatically less so that it was. That’s at least the rather worrying conclusion of David Daley (https://twitter.com/davedaley3?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) , the author of ANTIDEMOCRATIC (https://www.harpercollins.com/products/antidemocratic-david-daley?variant=41142644310050) , a new book which exposes what he says is “the far right’s 50-year plot to control American elections”. This half century…
Shad White has an uncanny resemblance to J.D. Vance. Born in a tiny town in Mississippi, White went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, then Harvard Law School and is now the State Auditor of Mississippi. Like Vance, the lifelong Republican White is a converted Catholic whose faith informs his…
If it’s lunchtime, it must be KEEN ON time. At least that’s what it seems, given the long menu of food guests recently on the show. First there was the lunatic regenerative farmer, Joel Salatin, fixing America one bite at a time (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-2139-joel-salatin-explains) . Then Nicola Twilley (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-2041-nicola-twilley-on-how) , the…
Peter Wehner (https://www.ttf.org/about-us/senior-fellows/peterwehner/) is the conscience of American conservatism. Having worked in three Republican administrations, the ex Republican is now a regular contributor to the New York Times and the Atlantic, writing compelling moral critiques of Trump and the authoritarian populism now dominant in the GOP. Many of you will…
Were politics chess, liberals had white; they moved first. Conservatives had black; they countered liberalism’s opening moves. In time, the initiative changed hands. Conservatives, who began as anti-moderns, came to master modernity, for the right was in telling ways the stronger contestant. So write Edmund Fawcett in his exemplary intellectual…
So what’s exceptional about America? According to the writer, film producer and scholar Jonathan Taplin, American exceptionalism lies its uniquely global cultural influence. For Taplin - the tour manager for Bob Dylan & producer of Martin Scorcese’s masterpiece Mean Streets - this reflects what he calls America’s right-brain power which…
Much of the critical writing about authoritarianism warns that contemporary populism threatens democracy. But as Stephen Hanson and Jeffrey Kopstein argue in their interesting new book, The Assault on the State (https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Assault+on+the+State%3A+How+the+Global+Attack+on+Modern+Government+Endangers+Our+Future-p-9781509563166) , this global attack on legalistic government by wannabe dictators like Putin, Erdogan and Modi endangers not just…
In the 1970’s, J. Doyne Farmer built the first wearable computer which he used to predict the game of roulette. While this didn’t make him particularly popular in casinos, it did mark the beginning of a glittering scientific career in complexity and systems theory, as well as in theoretical physics…
According to the historian Matthew Warshauer, (https://themindfulprofessor.org/) there was no giant conspiracy on 9/11. The real story about September 11, 2001, he argues in his provocative new book Creating and Failing the 9/11 Generation (https://www.routledge.com/Creating-and-Failing-the-911-Generation-The-Real-Story-of-September-11/Warshauer/p/book/9781032503875?srsltid=AfmBOooYfT0shvpw-VZE0CLil3eN0wKf0CdtL_TxQcwTde6AHeAsFS3m) , is its impact on Gen Z who he believes should be renamed the 9/11…
Earlier this year, the prolific American political journalist Sasha Issenberg (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-1999-sasha-issenberg-offers) came on the show to offer a playbook for winning elections in our disinformation age. And, on a recent trip to Los Angeles, I sat down with Issenberg in his Venice home to talk more broadly about the American…
Many are called, but few are chosen. In her late twenties, Deesha Dyer (https://www.deeshadyer.com/) was still in community college. By the age of 31, however, she had become Michelle Obama’s social secretary in the White House. So how did this self-styled undiplomatic (https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/deesha-dyer/undiplomatic/9781668640197/) young woman become a member of the…
What’s it like to discover a Klansman in one’s own family? A few weeks ago, R. Derek Black (https://podcasts.apple.com/fi/podcast/episode-2057-r-derek-black-on-his-life-as-the-son/id1448694012?i=1000654941044) , the son of a KKK Grand Wizard and an intimate family friend of David Duke, came on the show to confess the exceptional nature of his own family history. But…
We’ve been on a food & farming run this week. First, we talked with America’s “lunatic farmer,” Joel Salatin (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-2139-joel-salatin-explains) , about how regenerative agriculture can regenerate the United States. And we followed that up with the food blogger and writer Nicola Twilley (https://keenon.substack.com/p/episode-2041-nicola-twilley-on-how) who explained about how refrigeration has…
