Keen On America

University of Pennsylvania sociologist Benjamin Shestakofksy spent a couple of years as the fly on the wall in an anonymous tech startup. His new book, BEHIND THE STARTUP, not only reveals what he learned about the insanely frenetic nature of work in a culture dominated by raising the next round of venture investment, but also about the broader impact of the startup economy on innovation and inequality. More nimble and open minded that many academics, Shestakovsky observed the outsized (but underpaid) role of part-time overseas workers in venture capital backed US startups.

Benjamin Shestakofsky is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is affiliated with AI at Wharton and the Center on Digital Culture and Society.

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Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Think you know Frank H. McCourt, Jr, the illustrious real estate media magnate, former chairman/owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers & current owner of Marseilles FC? Think again. McCourt is also now in the business of saving us from digital monopolists of Silicon Valley who, in his opinion, are trying to steal our liberty, humanity and our dignity. McCourt’s latest philanthropic venture is Project Liberty, an attempt to responsibly build an internet of tomorrow. And his equally ambitious new book, OUR BIGGEST FIGHT, describes itself as a Thomas Paine style “call to arms” to seize back control of our lives from corporate algorithms.

Frank H. McCourt, Jr. is the executive chairman of McCourt Global, a private family enterprise working across the real estate, sports, technology, media, and capital investment industries. He is the founder and executive chairman of Project Liberty, a broad-based effort to build a better web for a better world. The project includes the development of an open internet protocol (the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol), which shifts data rights from platforms to people, and an institute—launched with founding partners Georgetown University, Stanford University, and Sciences Po—to advance research and develop a governance framework for the internet’s next era.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

If, as Sam Daley-Harris believes, “cynicism is obedience”, then active citizenship is a form of rebellion. That seems to be the argument in both the 2024 edition of Daley-Harris’ RECLAIMING OUR DEMOCRACY and in our discussion today about how to resurrect American democracy in 2024. But what about the role of leadership in transforming America? And why would anyone invest all their spare time in trying to revive a sclerotic system that has thrown up the Biden-Trump rematch in 2024?

Sam Daley-Harris is the founder and president of RESULTS, an international citizens’s lobby dedicated to creating the political will to end hunger and poverty. Daley-Harris is the author of the book Reclaiming Democracy: Healing the Break Between People and Government, recently reissued to commemorate its 20th anniversary.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I talk to Peter Ross Range, Hitler historian and author of 1924 & UNFATHOMABLE ASCENT, about Adolf Hitler as the "gold standard" of authoritarianism and how the Nazi leader compares with Donald Trump. In contrast with Range, I don’t see any similarities between Trump and Hitler. Yes, both men might use the word “vermin” to describe people they loathe, but they are entirely different men operating in entirely different political systems in entirely different times. In my view, comparing Hitler to Trump is an insult to the millions of victims of Nazi Germany and doesn’t really help us make sense of the uniquely American farce of Donald Trump.

Peter Ross Range is a world-traveled journalist who has covered war, politics, and international affairs. A specialist in Germany, he has written extensively for Time, the New York Times, National Geographic, the London Sunday Times Magazine, Playboy, and U.S. News & World Report, where he was a White House correspondent. He has also been an Institute of Politics Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, a Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, and a Distinguished International Visiting Fellow at the University of North Carolina Journalism School. He lives in Washington, DC.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The US Congress just announced war on TikTok; while, in Europe, the EU declared war this week on Spotify and Apple. Elon Musk and Sam Altman have declared war over OpenAI. And everyone inside and outside Google are all war over Gemini. But That Was The Week’s Keith Teare, Silicon Valley’s most cheerful optimist, still believes in what he sees as the inevitably progressive arc of history away from the power of government. Meanwhile Bitcoin just hit $69,000. What could possibly go wrong?

Keith Teare is a Founder and CEO at SignalRank Corporation. Previously he was Executive Chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd - A UK-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. He was also previously the founder at the Palo Alto incubator, Archimedes Labs. Archimedes was the original incubator for TechCrunch and since 2011 has invested, accelerated or incubated many Silicon Valley startups including Around (sold to Miro), Millicast (Sold to Dolby), InFarm, Miles, Quixey; M.dot (sold to GoDaddy); chat.center; Loop Surveys; DownTown and Sunshine. Teare has a track record as a serial entrepreneur with big ideas and has achieved significant returns for investors.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The cover story of Harper’s this month is piece by Andrew Cockburn, their Washington DC editor, entitled “The Pentagon’s Silicon Valley Problem”. But as Cockburn explained to me today, the Pentagon’s problem is also ours. Silicon Valley, he argues, was in many ways founded and financed by the Cold War military-industrial complex and has become the economic, military and ideological motor of 21st century American militarism. And in our age of AI, Cockburn warns, the farce of American military incompetence and Silicon Valley technological hubris threaten to merge into the tragedy of unintended war.

Andrew Cockburn is the Washington DC Editor of Harper's magazine and the author of many articles and books on national security, including the New York Times Editor's Choice Rumsfeld and The Threat, which destroyed the myth of Soviet military superiority underpinning the Cold War. He is a regular opinion contributor to the Los Angeles Times and has written for, among others, the New York Times, National Geographic and the London Review of Books.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In episode 1991, Andrew talks to the LA Times book critic, Bethanne Patrick, about six intriguing new non-fiction books about our contemporary age of inequality, existential anxiety and political and environmental upheaval.

Bethanne Patrick maintains a storied place in the publishing industry as a critic and as @TheBookMaven on Twitter, where she created the popular #FridayReads and regularly comments on books and literary ideas to over 200,000 followers. Her work appears frequently in the Los Angeles Times as well as in The Washington Post, NPR Books, and Literary Hub. She sits on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and has served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. She is the host of the Missing Pages podcast.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

“Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself,” Miles Davis once remarked. Most artists, of course, never ascend to the heights of even closely sounding like themselves. But as James Kaplan, the author of 3 SHADES OF BLUE, argues, Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans did get to sound like themselves in their studio album, Kind of the Blue. That’s the metaphysical truth of the 1959 recording, Kaplan explains. And, in a way, the three men paid for this astonishing miracle with their lives, both as men and artists. But at least they got to the mountain top. Thus the immortality of both the 65 year-old album and Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans.

James Kaplan’s essays, stories, reviews, and profiles have appeared in numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and New York. His novels include Pearl’s Progress and Two Guys from Verona, a New York Times Notable Book for 1998. His nonfiction works include The Airport, You Cannot Be Serious (coauthored with John McEnroe), Dean & Me: A Love Story (with Jerry Lewis), Frank: The Voice, and Sinatra: The Chairman. He is a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow. He lives in Westchester, New York.

Named as one of the "100 most unconnected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's least known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

One of the more annoying characteristics of our coastal elites is their incessant virtue signaling. Every life choice - from drinking from plastic water bottles to driving electric cars to deciding to have children - is presented in terms of what Travis Rieder, the Johns Hopkins bio-ethicist and author of CATASTROPHE ETHICS, calls the “purity ethic”. Everybody these days seems greedy for virtue. But this greed, Rieder argues, isn’t realistic in an age of increasingly moral complexity. So, in our KEEN ON conversation, Reider lays out a path for leading a (reasonably) decent life which navigates between ethical fundamentalism and nihilism.

Travis Rieder, PhD, is an associate research professor at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, where he directs the Master of Bioethics degree program. He holds secondary appointments in the departments of Philosophy and Health Policy and Management. His first book, IN PAIN (HarperCollins), was named an NPR Best Book of 2019, and his TED Talk on the same topic has been viewed more than 2.5 million times. His second book, CATASTROPHE ETHICS (Dutton), will be published on March 5, 2024. Travis has been interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air and his opinion writing has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and Psychology Today. He lives in Columbia, MD with his partner, daughter, and their very small dog, Yumosh.

Named as one of the "100 least ethical men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's most immoral broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four unethical books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

You couldn’t make up the kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army in February 1974. The granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, America’s most divisive media baron, was kidnapped in Berkeley (of all places) by domestic terrorists who demand that Hearst feed the poor in exchange for the 19 year-old woman. That, in itself, was quite a story in an America still embroiled in both Vietnam and all the other aftershocks of the Sixties. But then Patty Hearst went rogue and appeared to join the SLA, participating in the heist of a San Francisco bank and changing her name to Tania, in honor of Che Guevara’s girlfriend. Such was the paranoid America of early 1974. And, according, Roger Rapoport, author of the new novel SEARCHING FOR PATTY HEARST, such is the paranoid America of early 2024. History doesn’t quite repeat itself, Rapoport explained to me. But it certainly rhymes, particularly when one compares the violent left wing cults of the early 1970’s with the violent right wing cults of the early 2020’s.

Award winning film producer, publisher, author and investigative journalist, Roger Rapoport has covered the Patty Hearst story for half a century. From his front page story in the Wall Street Journal about life on a Ford Assembly line in his junior college summer of 1967 to his fascinating coverage of the aviation industry in Angle of Attack, Roger Rapoport has received many honors for his groundbreaking reporting over the past five decades. But perhaps the highest accolade of all is a comment made years ago by one of his first editors. “Roger’s problem is that he doesn’t understand the meaning of the word no.” In 1974, Rapoport, a contributor to publications like the Atlantic, Esquire and Rolling Stone, went to work for New Times covering the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, a few blocks from his Berkeley home. His exclusive reporting focused on the life and times of Steve Weed , the fiance the Symbionese Liberation Army left behind as these revolutionaries stuffed the love of Weed’s life into a Chevy trunk and sped off into the night. Weed moved into Rapoport’s house where they wrote a big advance book together on the case. Shortly before completion the former Princeton marijuana dealer who began an affair with Patty when she was a 16 year old student at the high school where he taught, sued to block publication of the book. The following year one of Rapoport’s relatives, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark Brandler (best known for the Onion Murders trial), presided over a key trial that included Patty Hearst as a defendant with two of the SLA members. After covering the San Francisco Hearst bank robbery trial in 1975 he went on, thirteen years later, to score an exclusive Oakland Tribune with Bill Harris, the man who actually kidnapped Patty Hearst and wound up fleeing cross country with her and his wife Emily Harris. While others let the story rest he interviewed Dr. Thomas Noguchi the coroner to Marilyn Monroe, Janis Joplin and Robert F. Kennedy as well as six of Hearst’s fallen Symbionese Liberation Army comrades. Year after year Rapoport continued to pursue people who refused to go public and ultimately became convinced that nonfiction accounts of the kidnapping, including Patty Hearst’s own account of her life on the run with her kidnappers, fell short. While continuing to pursue the story behind the “official” version of the case he found time to write biographies of Governors Pat and Jerry Brown, and filmmaker Michael Moore. In the midst of all his research he founded a successful publishing company, became an award winning film producer and screenwriter (Coming Up For Air), and playwright (Old Heart). During this time he wrote for STAT News and Wired, and contributed to the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the Miami Herald. “I wrote this novel,” says Rapoport, ‘because I believed the American public deserved nothing but the truth. Very sorry about the delay. This book took a lot longer that I expected. Hope it was worth the wait.”

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.