Keen On America

EPISODE 1387: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to the HOW DATA HAPPENED co-author Chris Wiggins on a history of data from the Age of Reason to today's Age of Algorithms

Chris Wiggins is an associate professor of applied mathematics at Columbia University and the Chief Data Scientist at The New York Times. At Columbia he is a founding member of the executive committee of the Data Science Institute, and of the Department of Systems Biology, and is affiliated faculty in Statistics. He is a co-founder and co-organizer of hackNY (http://hackNY.org), a nonprofit which since 2010 has organized once a semester student hackathons and the hackNY Fellows Program, a structured summer internship at NYC startups. Prior to joining the faculty at Columbia he was a Courant Instructor at NYU (1998-2001) and earned his PhD at Princeton University (1993-1998) in theoretical physics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and is a recipient of Columbia’s Avanessians Diversity Award.

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.

EPISODE 1386: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to ALL ELSE FAILED author Dana Sachs about the the unlikely volunteers at the heart of the migrant aid crisis in Greece

Dana Sachs was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and spent her childhood there. Throughout those years, she thought Memphis was the most boring city in the world, but she changed her mind when she left for college and realized that not everyone got to grow up along the Mississippi River, tramping through Overton Park, eating peach cobbler at the Buntyn Café, and listening to B.B. King, Alex Chilton, and the Panther Burns. Obviously, it takes traveling far away to realize the things you most love about home. Since leaving Memphis, Dana has learned to love (and happily reside in) other complex and captivating cities, including San Francisco, Hanoi, Budapest, and Wilmington, North Carolina, where she lives with her husband, Todd Berliner, and their two sons. Dana began her writing career as a journalist and she has published articles, essays, and reviews in, among other publications, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, Travel and Leisure Family, and The Boston Globe. Her first book, The House on Dream Street: Memoir of an American Woman in Vietnam (2000) was chosen as an American Booksellers Association Book Sense Pick (the precursor of the Indiebound Next List). Her first novel, If You Lived Here (2007) was also a Book Sense Pick and was chosen for inclusion in Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers Program. Her nonfiction narrative The Life We Were Given: Operation Babylift, International Adoption, and the Children of War in Vietnam (2010) resulted from a Fulbright Foundation Fellowship in Vietnam. She is the co-author, with Nguyen Nguyet Cam and Bui Hoai Mai, of Two Cakes Fit for a King: Folktales from Vietnam (2003) and co-translator of numerous Vietnamese short stories into English. With her sister, filmmaker Lynne Sachs, she made the documentary about postwar Vietnam, “Which Way is East.” In recent years, Dana became a co-founder of Humanity Now: Direct Refugee Relief, a U.S.-based nonprofit that raises money in the United States to fund grassroots aid projects aimed at helping improve the lives of the tens of thousands of displaced people living in camps, abandoned buildings, and on the streets in Greece.

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.

EPISODE 1385: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to the co-authors of YOUR BRAIN ON ART, Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross about how the arts transform us and how this can improve our health, enable us to flourish, and build stronger communities

Susan Magsamen is the founder and director of the International Arts + Mind Lab, Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she is a faculty member. She is also the co-director of the NeuroArts Blueprint. Susan works with both the public and private sectors using arts and culture evidence-based approaches in areas including health, child development, education, workforce innovation, rehabilitation, and social equity.

Ivy Ross is the Vice President of Design for hardware product area at Google, where she leads a team that has won over 225 design awards. She is a National Endowment for Arts grant recipient and was ninth on Fast Company’s list of the one hundred Most Creative People in Business in 2019. Ross believes that the intersection of arts and sciences is where the most engaging and creative ideas are found.

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.

EPISODE 1384: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to BOTTOMS UP AND THE DEVIL LAUGHS author Kerry Howley about her journey through the Deep State and what this suggests about the existence of "truth" and "reality" in contemporary America

Kerry Howley is an essayist, screenwriter, and the author of Thrown, a New York Times Notable Book, New York Times Editor’s Choice, and pick for best-of-the-year lists in Time, Salon, Slate, and many other venues. Writing in Salon, Lydia Kiesling called Thrown “extraordinary,” “incredibly bracing,” and “reminiscent of some of the boldest voices of twentieth-century fiction.” Novelist Lev Grossman called it “probably the most bizarre and fascinating book I’ve read this year” in the pages of Time, adding: “The precision of Howley’s prose reminds me of Joan Didion or David Foster Wallace. She writes like somebody in ecstasy.” Thrown has been translated into four languages. Howley is the screenwriter behind WINNER, a comic coming of age story adapted from her profile of an endearing young whistleblower. The film stars Emilia Jones, Connie Britton, and Zach Galifianakus, and will be released in 2023. Howley’s second nonfiction novel, Bottom’s Up and the Devil Laughs, is forthcoming from Knopf. In 2020 Howley left a professorship at the University of Iowa’s celebrated Nonfiction MFA program to join the staff of New York Magazine. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Best American Sportswriting, The New York Times Magazine, and Harper’s. A Lannan Foundation Fellow and two-time National Magazine Award nominee, she lives in Los Angeles. Her latest book is BOTTOMS UP AND THE DEVIL LAUGHS: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE DEEP STATE (2023)

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.

EPISODE 1383: In this KEEN ON episode, Andrew talks to NEXT author Joanne Lipman about how to successfully reinvent how we live, work and lead.

Joanne Lipman has served as Editor-in-Chief of USA Today, USA Today Network, Conde Nast Portfolio, and The Wall Street Journal's Weekend Journal, leading those organizations to six Pulitzer Prizes. She is also author of the No. 1 bestseller "That's What She Said," about closing the gender gap. A frequent speaker and television commentator, she is an on-air contributor at CNBC and journalism lecturer at Yale University. She was also named the inaugural Distinguished Journalism Fellow at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study. Dubbed "star editor" by CNN and "innovator in chief" by The New York Times, Lipman began her career as a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, ultimately rising to Deputy Managing Editor, the first woman to attain that post. There, she created Weekend Journal and Personal Journal, and supervised coverage that earned three Pulitzer Prizes. She subsequently was founding Editor-in-Chief of Conde Nast Portfolio and Portfolio.com, which won National Magazine and Loeb Awards. In 2015, she became the first Chief Content Officer of Gannett. There she was Editor in Chief of its USA Today and USA Today Network, encompassing the flagship title plus 109 metro newspapers including the Detroit Free Press, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the Arizona Republic. In that role, she oversaw more than 3,000 journalists and led the organization to three Pulitzer Prizes. Lipman is a frequent television commentator, seen on ABC, CNN, NBC, CNBC, CBS, MSNBC and PBS, among others. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time, Fortune, Newsweek and Harvard Business Review. She is also co-author of the critically acclaimed musical memoir, "Strings Attached." 

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.

EPISODE 1382: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to ARID EMPIRE author Natalie Koch about the weirdly entangled fates of Arizona and Saudi Arabia

Natalie Koch is a Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University. She is a political geographer specializing in the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula region, where she has worked since 2012. Her latest book is ARID EMPIRE: The Entangled Fates of Arizona and Arabia.

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.

EPISODE 1381: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to productivity consultant and author of COMING UP FOR AIR author Nick Sonnenberg about a practical guide to increasing productivity at work

Nick Sonnenberg is the founder and CEO of Leverage, a business efficiency consultant, Inc. columnist and author of the upcoming book, Come Up For Air: How Teams Can Leverage Systems and Tools to Stop Drowning in Work. As a serial entrepreneur with a passion for productivity and a background in data science, Nick’s mission is to create companies that disrupt the way people work by leveraging the power of remote teams, digital tools, and powerful automations. His primary focus is to help teams operate more efficiently through his CPR® Business Efficiency Framework, a proven system for leaders, managers, and teams to maximize their performance and reduce overwhelm by using the right tools in the right way, at the right time. This framework consistently results in greater output, less stress, happier employees, and the potential to gain an extra full day per week in productivity per person. Nick has worked with individuals and companies of all sizes including Tony Robbins, Jay Abraham, Facebook, ConsenSys, and more.

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.

EPISODE 1380: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to true crime addict and author of HOW I'LL KILL YOU Ren DeStefano on female serial killers and why everyone, yes everyone, might have a murder in them.

Ren DeStefano lives in Connecticut, where she was born and raised. When she’s not writing thrillers, she’s listening to true crime podcasts and crocheting way too many blankets. Her latest novel is HOW I’LL KILL YOU (2023)

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.

EPISODE 1379: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to the editor of GREAT KINGDOMS OF AFRICA, John Parker about the great precolonial kingdoms of Africa that have been marginalized throughout history

John is Senior Lecturer in the History of Africa at SOAS. He is the author of ‘Making the Town: Ga State and Society in Early Colonial Accra’, ‘Tongnaab: The History of a West African God’ and ‘African History: A Very Short Introduction’. He is currently researching a book on the history of death and burial in Ghana and is editing ‘The Oxford Handbook of Modern African History’ with his colleague Richard Reid. His latest edited book is GREAT KINGDOMS OF AFRICA (2023)

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.

EPISODE 1378: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to the psychologist and author of PRESENCE, Ben Alderson-Day, about the universal feeling that someone or something is there when we are alone

Dr. Ben Alderson-Day is an Associate Professor in Psychology and a Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing at Durham University. A specialist in atypical cognition and mental health, his work spans cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy, and child development. His latest book is PRESENCE: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other (2023)

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.