Keen On America

Updated: 15 Apr 2025 • 2409 episodes
keenon.substack.com/podcast

Nobody asks sharper or more impertinent questions than Andrew Keen. In KEEN ON, Andrew cross-examines the world’s smartest people on politics, economics, history, the environment, and tech. If you want to make sense of our complex world, check out the daily questions and the answers on KEEN ON. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best-known technology and politics broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running show How To Fix Democracy and the author of four critically acclaimed books about the future, including the international bestselling CULT OF THE AMATEUR. Keen On is free to listen to and will remain so. If you want to stay up-to-date on new episodes and support the show please subscribe to Andrew Keen’s Substack. Paid subscribers will soon be able to access exclusive content from our new series Keen On America. keenon.substack.com

Categories:

Show episodes

Brookings Senior Fellow Andre M. Perry has a new book out today which measures what he calls the “racial gap” in America and asks what we can do to close it. Entitled The Black Power Scorecard, it draws on extensive research and analysis to quantify how much power Black Americans actually have. Using big data metrics,

46 min
00:00
46:59
No file found

Who are the most symbolic mid 20th century American Jews? In Eminent Jews, New Yorker staff writer David Denby tells the remarkable stories of Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, and Norman Mailer. He explains how each embodied a new Jewish confidence after WWII, contrasting with earlier generations' restrain

46 min
00:00
46:35
No file found

The Harper’s cover story this month is about the ever-softening soft skills of American workers. Written by Lily Scherlis, it suggests that today’s emphasis on "soft skills" reflects America’s broader anxieties about automation, workplace conditions, and ever deepening socioeconomic inequality. After attending a Dale C

39 min
00:00
39:19
No file found

Lenin quipped that "there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen." The post Liberation Day drama of early April 2025, That Was The Week’s Keith Teare suggests, will be remembered as one of those weeks. While the world isn’t exactly ending, Keith suggests, the “West” - or at least a

36 min
00:00
36:22
No file found

In late February in DC, I attended the US premiere of the Bertelsmann Foundation of North America produced documentary “Lithium Rising”, a movie about the extraction of essential rare minerals like lithium, nickel and cobalt. Afterwards, I moderated a panel featuring the movie’s director Samuel George, the Biden US Dep

42 min
00:00
42:18
No file found

It’s a small world. The great David Rieff came to my San Francisco studio today for in person interview about his new anti-woke polemic Desire and Fate. And half way through our conversation, he brought up Daniel Bessner’s This Is America piece which Bessner discussed on yesterday’s show. I’m not sure what that tells u

42 min
00:00
42:37
No file found