Keen On America

“AI is a theft of knowledge. I can’t believe we as a society allowed this.” — Noam Cohen

Ten years ago, Noam Cohen came on the show to ask if it was “Too Late to Save the Internet from Itself?” Back then, this early Silicon Valley critic was a New York Times writer. He was, as it turns out, a “premature anti-technologist” — Cohen’s phrase, borrowed from the premature antifascists who were called communist for opposing Hitler before it was fashionable. We should have listened to him. Now a freelance writer, Cohen describes himself, without self-pity, as a casualty of the internet revolution. The big media world that employed him barely exists anymore. And tech’s Know-It-All elite that he warned us about are richer than ever.

His 2017 book The Know-It-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley as a Political Powerhouse and Social Wrecking Ball is now back with a new introduction, triggered by that infamous photograph of Bezos, Zuckerberg, Pichai, and Musk at Trump’s inauguration. Cohen’s argument hasn’t changed — history has caught up with it. These weren’t businessmen attending a president’s ceremony, Cohen says. Trump, he fears, is their vessel. Like the tech titans, Trump doesn’t believe in regulation, doesn’t believe in democracy, believes only he can solve it. That’s the same thing Musk says. And Zuckerberg. And Altman. Even Amodei. They are all Know-It-Alls.

Five Takeaways

•       We Were Premature Anti-Technologists: Cohen’s phrase, borrowed from the premature antifascists who were called communist for opposing Hitler before it was fashionable. In 2017, he and I could see the consolidation of power. We should have been listened to. We weren’t. Cohen is now a freelance writer whose wife has the steady income. He describes himself, without self-pity, as a casualty of a media world that no longer exists.

•       Trump Is Their Vessel: That photograph at the inauguration — Bezos, Zuckerberg, Pichai, Musk — wasn’t businessmen attending a ceremony. Trump doesn’t believe in regulation, doesn’t believe in democracy, believes only he can solve it. That’s the same thing Musk says. And Zuckerberg. And Altman. They’re all unique founders who believe only they can fix the world. They have more in common with each other than with any of us.

•       Stanford’s Eugenics History Explains Silicon Valley: Lewis Terman brought the IQ test to America and built a programme around identifying “gifted” children. His son Fred turned Stanford into the Harvard of the West by importing venture capital. The idea that intelligence can be measured, that the smartest should breed, that society should be run by its cognitive elite — that’s the soil Silicon Valley grew from. It’s also why Jeffrey Epstein was a natural fit.

•       AI Is a Theft of Civilisation: They hoovered up all of human knowledge without permission or payment. Copyright is meaningless. The result isn’t intelligence — it’s replication. John McCarthy dreamed of creating a being three times smarter than Einstein. What we got is a machine that regurgitates our own words and calls it thinking.

•       There Shouldn’t Be Billionaires: Cohen’s conclusion after ten years of watching the Know-It-Alls consolidate power. AI and social media are utilities and should be nationalised. Wealth inequality at this scale is inherently destabilising. California’s proposed billionaire wealth tax and Australia’s ban on social media for under-16s are signs that the tide may be turning. But only if the next election produces a party willing to claw it back.

About the Guest

Noam Cohen is a former New York Times technology columnist and the author of The Know-It-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley as a Political Powerhouse and Social Wrecking Ball (The New Press, 2017; revised edition with new introduction, 2026). He lives in Brooklyn with his family.

References:

•       The Know-It-Alls by Noam Cohen (The New Press, revised 2026) — the book under discussion.

•       Episode 2842: Symbolic Capitalism vs. Symbolic Democracy — this week’s TWTW on the $10 trillion AI startup and whether capitalism permits democracy.

•       Episode 2836: Is Elon Human? — Charles Steel on Musk’s curious mind, referenced in the conversation.

•       Episode 2835: Why Dario Amodei Might Be the 21st Century’s First Real Leader — the Amodei question Cohen answers with a flat no.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.

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“We read so as not to feel alone.” — C.S. Lewis (possibly)

Dan Turello is a cultural historian of medieval Italy, a much published photographer, and the author of the new Connection: How Technology Can Make Us Better Humans. I’m sceptical. Especially the promise (or illusion) of better humans. But Turello’s definition of technology goes back further than most — all the way to the original fig leaf. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, the first thing they did, he reminds us, was cover their bodies. Technology, then, in Turello’s framing, is everything that extends beyond the human body. Clothing is technology. Double-entry bookkeeping is technology. The iPhone is just the latest chapter of our technology story that began at the beginning.

His most surprising argument is that our current tech anxiety has medieval roots. St. Francis of Assisi was what he calls a trust-fund kid “avant la lettre” — his father being a wealthy 13th century silk merchant at a time when northern Italy was Silicon Valley. Francis sold some of his dad’s silk, gave the money away, stripped naked before a bishop, and founded a counterculture movement. The first tech backlash, Turello suggests, wasn’t against AI. It was against double-entry bookkeeping. Dante, writing a generation later, idealised an earlier, simpler Florence — what scholars call “paleolithic chic.” No makeup, no ornate clothing, no fleeing to immoral cities. Sound familiar?

On AI, Turello goes a bit Saint Francis on us. Large language models, he fears, generate material without lineage — you can’t trace where the ideas came from, can’t triangulate the sources, can’t validate against reality. Technology is about power, Turello argues — about who controls the storyline. Making us better humans, then, requires recovering a sense of agency. Thus he argues that we should stop outsourcing our thinking, our writing, our photography to machines. Dante wrote the entire Divine Comedy without Claude. These days, we can barely write an email without a little help from our friends at ChatGPT. Machiavelli donned the robes of the past to think and write. We might try putting ours on too. But then isn’t that a tech solution too?

Five Takeaways

•       St. Francis Was a Trust-Fund Kid Who Invented Counterculture: His father was a wealthy silk merchant in 13th-century Italy, at the dawn of Europe’s commercial revolution. Francis sold his father’s silk, gave the money away, stripped naked before a bishop, and founded an order that rejected the mechanisms of early capitalism. The first tech backlash wasn’t against AI. It was against double-entry bookkeeping.

•       Technology Is Everything Beyond the Naked Human Body: Turello’s definition goes back to Genesis. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, the first thing they did was cover their bodies. Fig leaves are technology. Clothing is technology. The iPhone is just the latest iteration of a metaphysical problem that’s been destabilising us since the Fall.

•       Dante Wrote the Divine Comedy Without Being Able to Edit: He penned an entire macrocosm of the medieval world from memory, without the ability to rewrite in any meaningful way. Turello thinks Dante would be concerned that we’re losing our memories, our ability to tell a coherent narrative for our lives, and that our existence has become too fragmented. We can barely write an email without ChatGPT.

•       LLMs Generate Material Without Lineage: Technology is about power — about who controls the storyline. Large language models produce text without traceable sources, without verifiable origins, without lineage. You can’t triangulate where the ideas came from. That’s not intelligence. That’s a crisis of provenance.

•       Agency Still Matters: Turello’s hope for humanity is that we recover a sense of agency — the belief that our choices, friendships, relationships, and communities are ours to shape. The alternative is technological determinism: the machine decides. Machiavelli donned the robes of the past to think and write. We might try putting ours on too.

About the Guest

Dan Turello is a writer, cultural historian, and photographer. A Technology and Humanity Fellow at Florida Atlantic University’s Center for Future of Mind, AI & Society, his work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Connection: How Technology Can Make Us Better Humans is published by Columbia University Press.

References:

•       Connection: How Technology Can Make Us Better Humans by Dan Turello (Columbia University Press, 2026) — the book under discussion.

•       Episode 2840: What Came First: Stories or Language? — Kevin Ashton on storytelling preceding language, a natural companion.

•       Episode 2839: Have Our iPhones Eaten Our Brains? — Nelson Dellis on memory, cognitive atrophy, and outsourcing our minds.

•       Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction — referenced in the conversation on technology and power.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.

Website

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YouTube

Apple Podcasts

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Chapters:

• (00:00) - Introduction: has technology made you a better human?

“Washington and Hamilton were governed by Willing.” — John Adams, 1813

Thomas Willing voted against the Declaration of Independence. He was the wealthiest man in Philadelphia, the largest merchant trader in North America, an Anglican slave trader printing money. So he saw little reason to declare independence from Britain. Especially since the renegades — the poor Scots-Irish Presbyterians flooding into the country, the MAGA people of their day — had no love of wealthy aristocrats like himself. And then Willing did something that took everyone, even perhaps himself, by surprise: he financed the very revolution he’d voted against.

In The Banker Who Made America, the financial historian Richard Vague tells a story that reframes the Founding. After Bunker Hill, Willing financed the smuggling of gunpowder via the Caribbean at a critical moment in the struggle against the British. He and his partner Robert Morris became the principal suppliers of finance and other essential materiel for the revolution. When the Continental Currency collapsed in inflationary chaos, it was Willing’s bank that financed the second half of the war. The purpose of America’s first bank, like the Bank of England before it, was to fund war. Without it, there would have been no successful revolution.

But the real revelation in the Willing story is political. Pennsylvania radicals created the most democratic constitution in American history — an annually elected lower house, neither an upper house nor a governor with veto power. Willing and his fellow financial elites like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton hated this form of people’s democracy. So when they showed up in 1787 to write the US Constitution, they’d learned their lesson: too much democracy is dangerous to the wealthy. The result — an unelected Senate, an unelected president, judges appointed for life — was, as Vague puts it, “a counterrevolution against democracy.” Even Thomas Paine ended up on Willing’s payroll. This Philadelphia story became the American story. Follow the money.

Five Takeaways

•       Thomas Willing Voted Against Independence — Then Financed It: The wealthiest man in Philadelphia, the largest merchant trader in North America, an Anglican coastal elite making money hand over fist. He voted against the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776. Then he smuggled gunpowder through the Caribbean, funded the Continental Army, and created America’s first bank to finance the back half of the war. John Adams wrote that Washington and Hamilton were “governed by Willing.” Nobody knows his name.

•       The Constitution Was a Counterrevolution Against Democracy: Pennsylvania radicals created the most democratic constitution in American history — annually elected lower house, no upper house, no governor with veto power. Willing and the financial elites clawed it back. The 1787 US Constitution gave America an unelected Senate, an unelected president, and judges appointed for life. Vague calls it a counterrevolution. The tension between money and democracy has never stopped shaping American politics.

•       Even Thomas Paine Ended Up on Willing’s Payroll: The great radical pamphleteer, author of Common Sense, defender of the rights of man — working for the financial elite he should have loathed. Man’s gotta eat. It tells you everything about the relationship between money and idealism in the American founding.

•       The Revolution Wasn’t About High Taxes: Americans’ tax burden was lighter than Britain’s. The real causes were financial: George Washington wanted to speculate on land west of the Appalachians. Willing wanted to start a bank. The British prevented both. The revolution was capitalism demanding permission to operate. Follow the money, Vague argues, and most history that’s written without its financial dimension is incomplete.

•       Some Things Never Change: The purpose of America’s first bank was to fund war. The Bank of England was created for the same reason in 1694. The Pentagon is seeking $200 billion for Iran as we speak. American debt has grown to $39 trillion. Willing was the only person ever to turn down the US government for a loan — and he did it twice. We could use a Willing now.

About the Guest

Richard Vague is a businessman, banker, and commentator on economics. He is the former Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. His books include The Banker Who Made America (Polity, 2026), The Case for a Debt Jubilee, and The Paradox of Debt.

References:

•       The Banker Who Made America by Richard Vague (Polity, 2026) — the book under discussion.

•       Adam Gopnik, “Who Bankrolled the American Revolution?” — The New Yorker review referenced in the conversation.

•       Episode 2842: Symbolic Capitalism vs. Symbolic Democracy — yesterday’s TWTW on whether capitalism permits democracy or the reverse. Willing is the proof.

•       Philadelphia Citizen excerpt — an excerpt from the book covering Willing’s vote against independence.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.

Website

Substack

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Chapters:

“I don’t know if any rational person ever became a billionaire running a disruptive company.” — Keith Teare

Is capitalism by permission of democracy, or is democracy by permission of capitalism? That’s the question Keith Teare and I have been circling for a while on our weekly tech roundup, and this week it triggered a full-blown discussion of our 21st century economic and political fate.

Earlier this week, Vinod Khosla — one of Silicon Valley’s most successful venture capitalists — posted on X that “capitalism is by permission of democracy.” Keith agrees. I’m not so sure. My sense is that as AI start-ups approach valuations that rival the GDP of nation states, the old equation inverts. Governments no longer permit capitalism. Capitalism permits government. The Sam Altmans and Elon Musks of the future, running 10 or $15 trillion dollar startups, won’t lobby politicians. They’ll replace them. Dario Amodei’s confrontation with the US government, then, is a sneak preview of the future. Indeed, as what Om Malik calls a “symbolic capitalist”, Amodei is a good example of the type of engaged capitalist who will usurp traditional politicians. That’s the good news. The bad news is that other examples of symbolic capitalists include Elon Musk and Peter Thiel.

Five Takeaways

•       Keith Says OpenAI Will Be Worth $10 Trillion in Five Years: I told him I’d take him to dinner if he’s right. He said I’d have to do more than that. His logic: NVIDIA promises $1 trillion in new revenue by the end of next year, Anthropic did $5 billion in new revenue in a single month, and the three expected IPOs — Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX — would together raise more money than the entire IPO market of the last decade. The Netscape moment, if it comes, won’t be a moment. It’ll be an earthquake.

•       Fundrise Is the Canary in the Coal Mine: A fund holding private shares in Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX, Databricks, and Anduril went public this week at $34 and closed above $100. Retail investors paying three times net asset value for companies that aren’t even public yet. Keith says that’s not irrational — it’s the market pricing the future. I’m less sure. History is littered with futures the market got catastrophically wrong.

•       Om Malik Reframes the Entire Debate: His essay on “neo-symbolic capitalism” argues that value in the 21st century derives from symbols, narratives, and reputation rather than products. In that framing, Amodei’s fight with the government isn’t a miscalculation — it’s brand-building. Musk is the master of it. Altman tries to wear every hat simultaneously. Peter Thiel is in Rome talking about the Antichrist. And the billionaires who signed the Giving Pledge now want out.

•       Keith and I Disagree on What $10 Trillion Means: Keith says the government retains power regardless of corporate size. Being big doesn’t give you political power unless governments are corrupt. I think that’s naïve. If AI companies approach valuations that rival the GDP of nation states, the old equation inverts. Government doesn’t permit capitalism. Capitalism permits government. The Amodeis and Musks of the future won’t lobby politicians. They’ll replace them.

•       Contrarianism Is at the Very Core of Innovation: The one thing Keith and I agree on this week. Every billionaire is irrational. Musk is on the spectrum. Thiel believes in the Antichrist. Amodei thinks he can fight the US government and win. Keith concedes: no rational person ever became a billionaire running a disruptive company. The question is whether that irrationality is a feature of capitalism or a threat to democracy. We disagree on the answer.

About the Guest

Keith Teare is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and publisher of That Was The Week, a weekly newsletter on the tech economy. He is co-founder of SignalRank and a regular Saturday guest on Keen On America.

References:

•       That Was The Week — Keith’s editorial on public markets and price outcomes.

•       Om Malik on neo-symbolic capitalism — the essay that reframes the Amodei debate.

•       Episode 2835: Why Dario Amodei Might Be the 21st Century’s First Real Leader — last week’s TWTW, where the Amodei debate began.

•       Episode 2836: Is Elon Human? — Charles Steel on the curious mind of Elon Musk, referenced in the conversation.

•       Fundrise (VCX) — the IPO that triggered this week’s discussion, trading at 300% above NAV.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.

Website

Substack

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Chapters:

• (00:00) - Introduction: AI and unreason define the world

“We do not exist without nature — unless Silicon Valley figures something out in their bunkers.” — Natalie Kyriacou

Forget the Middle East for a moment. Or rather, don’t — because today’s petroleum war is an environmental catastrophe, perhaps even an ecocide. Militaries are the largest source of emissions on the planet. Trump uses Iran’s oil fields as a bargaining chip while assassinating its leaders, as if the price of petroleum is more important than human life (which it clearly is to him). Natalie Kyriacou, an Australian environmentalist and author of Nature’s Last Dance, isn’t surprised. Trump, she says, is the symptom rather than the disease. His rotten system of prioritising oil over human lives has been ruining the planet now for over a century. He’s just less polite about it.

Nature’s Last Dance is made up of what Kyriacou calls “tales of wonder” in our age of extinction. It tells the story, for example, of a 2000 oil spill off South Africa that threatened 90,000 African penguins and triggered the largest volunteer workforce ever assembled. Zoos, NGOs, school kids on bikes, Australians knitting sweaters all conspired to save the oiled penguins. It worked. At least in terms of those 90,000 penguins.

But did it change anything structurally? Perhaps not. But she’s arguing that the impulse to show up matters, that community is the unit of change, and that falling in love with the wonder of nature is the precondition for fighting for it. She presents forgiving Australian surfers who’ve been attacked by sharks now fighting to protect them. And she imagines birdwatching as a form of quiet rebellion.

But what does the world look like if this does, indeed, turn out to be nature’s last dance? Kyriacou’s answer is a kind of natural horror movie. A Hitchcockian David Attenborough movie: more pigeons, more rats and more “bin chickens” — Australia’s ibis, a bird that thrives in urban garbage. Nature’s revenge. So if we all don’t take up birdwatching, Kyriacou warns, we will all end up in The Birds.

Five Takeaways

•       Trump Is a Symptom, Not the Disease: Countries have prioritised oil over lives for centuries. Trump is just more abrasive about it. The US negotiated Kyoto and didn’t join it, designed Paris around its own preferences, then pulled out twice. Kyriacou argues we’ve been relying on a broken system long before Trump accelerated its collapse.

•       90,000 Oiled Penguins and the Largest Volunteer Workforce Ever Assembled: In 2000, an oil spill off South Africa threatened the largest colony of African penguins. What followed was extraordinary: zoos and NGOs from a dozen countries mobilised overnight, tens of thousands of volunteers arrived, Australians knitted sweaters. It didn’t stop oil. But it showed that the impulse to show up still exists, and that community is the unit of change.

•       AI Puts Our Destructive Relationship with the World on Steroids: Kyriacou’s sharpest point: the problem with AI isn’t water usage or compute power. It’s that AI amplifies every facet of humanity’s existing relationship with the planet. If we’re already this destructive, this divided, this extractive — AI makes all of it a million times more extreme. The same system that destroys nature destroys communities. It’s a systems failure.

•       No Country on Earth Is on Track: Not one country in the world is currently meeting its climate or nature targets. Not one. The UN has been stretched too thin, too bureaucratic, too afraid of self-criticism. World leaders set targets, shake hands, and go home to fail. Kyriacou wants to revive the UN, not destroy it — but she’s blunt about its limits.

•       The World in Grayscale: What happens if nature’s last dance is truly the last? More pigeons. More rats. More of Australia’s “bin chicken” — the ibis that thrives in urban garbage. A sanitised, diminished version of nature, and our own diminishment with it. Zuckerberg might say we can watch birds in virtual reality. Kyriacou would prefer not to. So would I.

About the Guest

Natalie Kyriacou OAM is an award-winning Australian environmentalist, Forbes 30 Under 30, UNESCO Green Citizens Pathfinder, and founder of My Green World. Her book Nature’s Last Dance: Tales of Wonder in an Age of Extinction was a bestseller in Australia and is out now in the US and UK.

References:

•       Nature’s Last Dance by Natalie Kyriacou — the book under discussion, out now in the US and UK.

•       Episode 2836: Is Elon Human? — the Musk episode, in which we discussed Silicon Valley’s relationship with nature and humanity.

•       Episode 2835: Why Dario Amodei Might Be the 21st Century’s First Real Leader — this week’s TWTW, covering AI’s relationship to leadership and society.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.

Website

Substack

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Chapters:

• (00:00) - Introduction: it might be nature’s last dance

“Nobody’s reality is more or less real.” — Kevin Ashton

It’s the chicken and egg question. What came first: stories or language? For Kevin Ashton, the answer is stories. In his new book, The Story of Stories, Ashton argues that rather than inventing stories with language, we invented language to tell stories. Stories, for Ashton, predate language. They are what makes us human.

300,000 years ago, Ashton argues, humans sat around night fires needing to talk about things they couldn’t point to — the past, the future, the Gods. So they created language. Grunts got grammatical. And the grammar had a structure that hasn’t changed since: character, chronology, consequence. Every sentence in every one of the world’s 7,000 languages is built upon the need to tell stories. Every conversation you’ve ever had contains a narrative. Even this one.

I asked Ashton whether this makes reality itself just another narrative and him just another postmodernist. Our brains construct reality, he explained, in the same way a graphic user interface constructs a desktop. Our dog sees a different rainbow to the one we see. But, in contrast with our dog, we tell stories about that rainbow.

Ashton is a technologist who first coined the term “Internet of Things”. But on AI, he is surprisingly critical. A large language model is a more complicated toaster, he says. It can produce language that fits the format of a story — character, chronology, consequence — because it’s digested millions of words. But it can’t produce meaning. We humans, in contrast, are made meaningful by our stories. That’s why you are reading this now.

Five Takeaways

•       We Invented Language to Tell Stories, Not the Other Way Around: Ashton’s central claim is that storytelling preceded and caused the evolution of language. A million years ago, humans around night fires needed to talk about things they couldn’t point to — the past, the future, the gods. Grunts became grammar. The structure hasn’t changed since: character, chronology, consequence. Every sentence in every one of the world’s 7,000 languages is built on this need to narrate.

•       Nobody’s Reality Is Real: Our brains construct reality the way a graphic user interface constructs a desktop — useful, not true. Your dog sees a different rainbow than you do. Whose is real? Both. Neither. Ashton isn’t a postmodernist — he’s arguing that our story-shaped brains are the lens through which all experience is filtered, and there is no stepping outside it.

•       The Bible Hitched a Ride on Writing: The world’s great religions spread because they were among the first stories to exploit writing as a distribution technology. The Bible is just a word for book. Scripture is a word for writing. Where those texts travelled, those religions still dominate today. Homer is an oral tradition frozen by the alphabet. The oldest surviving story in the world is Noah’s flood, and it comes from Southern Iraq, not Greece.

•       A Large Language Model Is a More Complicated Toaster: Ashton is brutally dismissive of AI. A machine can produce something that fits the format of a story because it’s digested millions of them. But it can’t produce meaning. Machines are inherently meaningless. We anthropomorphise them because that’s what our story-shaped brains do — we named our cars, now we’re naming our chatbots.

•       We Humans Are Made Meaningful by Our Stories: Ashton’s own life is the proof: a Birmingham DJ who learned Norwegian in nightclubs, fell for Ibsen, marketed lipstick for Procter & Gamble, and accidentally invented the Internet of Things because mascara kept going out of stock. No algorithm would have written that life. No machine could have lived it. That’s why you’re reading this now.

About the Guest

Kevin Ashton is a technologist and author who coined the term “the Internet of Things” and co-founded the Auto-ID Center at MIT. His previous book, How to Fly a Horse, was named Porchlight’s Business Book of the Year. The Story of Stories: The Million-Year History of a Uniquely Human Art is published by Harper. He lives in Austin, Texas.

References:

•       The Story of Stories by Kevin Ashton (Harper, 2026) — the book under discussion.

•       How to Fly a Horse by Kevin Ashton — his previous book on the secret history of invention.

•       Episode 2836: Is Elon Human? — the Musk episode, in which we discussed AI, the scientific method as secular religion, and whether machines can think.

•       Episode 2839: Have Our iPhones Eaten Our Brains? — Nelson Dellis on memory, AI slop, and cognitive atrophy — a natural companion to today’s conversation.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.

Website

Substack

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Chapters:

• (00:00) - Introduction: technology tells good stories about itself

“I don’t like the idea of losing out to a machine because I feel like I’m losing a part of myself in the process.” — Nelson Dellis, six-time USA Memory Champion

Most of us can’t remember our spouse’s phone number. We barely know our own. We haven’t read a physical map in years. Some of us don’t even know what a map is. Such is the impoverishment of mental life in our digital age.

Nelson Dellis, unlike most of us, is a rich man — at least mentally. He can memorise a shuffled deck of 52 cards in under a minute. He stores every stranger’s phone number in his head for 24 hours before putting it in his phone — on principle. He’s a six-time USA Memory Champion, a computer science professor at Skidmore, and the author of a new book, Everyday Genius, which suggests we can all be a lot smarter than our smart phones.

Dellis got into memory after watching his grandmother get lost in the fog of Alzheimer’s. And as a computer science professor, he’s equally terrified by what he now sees in the classroom. His students can’t craft an email without ChatGPT. They can’t focus. They can’t solve a problem without asking a machine. He warns that we’re outsourcing our cognitive agency to devices and mislabelling it as human productivity.

For Dellis, it’s the same mental atrophy that destroyed his grandmother. AI-generated mnemonics, he warns, feel “dead inside.” Our brains, like our language, are degenerating into slop. Thus the value of his hacks to restore our focus and boost our memories.

Five Takeaways

•       I Can’t Remember My Wife’s Phone Number: Neither can you. Neither can anyone under 50. We’ve outsourced our memories to devices and the consequences are only beginning to show. Nelson Dellis memorises every new phone number for 24 hours before putting it in his phone. Not because he needs to — because his brain needs him to.

•       His Grandmother Disappeared into Alzheimer’s and It Changed His Life: Dellis watched the woman who raised him become a shell of herself — unable to recognise her own grandson. He went down a rabbit hole into memory science, discovered a former champion’s audiobook, tried the techniques, and was hooked. He won his first US Memory Championship within two years. He’s won six.

•       If Everyone’s a Genius, Nobody Is: I pushed back on the book’s premise. Dellis conceded the point but held his ground: the techniques are learnable, the results are real, and the distinction between “genius” and “trained” matters less than the distinction between a brain that’s exercised and one that’s atrophying. The London cab driver study is his best evidence — hippocampi that grow with use and shrink without it.

•       AI Slop Is by Definition Forgettable: Dellis teaches computer science, so he’s no Luddite. But AI-generated mnemonics, he says, feel “dead inside.” The vivid, absurd, grotesque images that make memory techniques work are products of individual human imagination. A machine can’t generate weirdness. Not yet. Maybe not ever. His students can’t write an email without ChatGPT. That should terrify us more than it does.

•       Eat Your Blueberries: Four pillars of brain health: mental exercise, physical fitness, diet, and — the one that surprises people — social interaction. Dellis trains a 90-year-old and a five-year-old using the same techniques. Both can do things their peers cannot. The brain doesn’t expire at 70. But it does atrophy if you let your iPhone do the thinking.

About the Guest

Nelson Dellis is a six-time USA Memory Champion (2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2021, 2024), certified mountaineer and Everest summiteer, and Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Skidmore College. His new book is Everyday Genius: Hacks to Boost Your Memory, Focus, Problem-Solving, and Much More. He has taught memory techniques to audiences ranging from five-year-olds to nonagenarians.

References:

•       Everyday Genius by Nelson Dellis — the book under discussion, currently the number one new release in memory improvement on Amazon.

•       Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer — the bestselling account of competitive memory that Dellis discusses and Foer, a friend of his, promoted at the same event where Dellis won his first title.

•       Episode 2835: Why Dario Amodei Might Be the 21st Century’s First Real Leader — this week’s TWTW, where Keith Teare covered AI disruption from the tech side.

•       USA Memory Championship — the annual competition Dellis has won six times.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.

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Chapters:

• (00:00) - Introduction: we've never had a memory champion

“If we don’t fight, then what are we doing?” — Jeff Boyd

How do you write fiction about contemporary America when reality itself is stranger than fiction? A country in which “alternative facts” is policy rather than satire. Where “truth” has been nationalized.

Jeff Boyd, an acclaimed young American novelist, sees fiction as refuge. For both writer and reader, it gets us inside the heads of people who both inflict and endure pain. And it enables the senseless to make sense. The news cycle can’t do that. A novel can.

Boyd’s second novel, Hard Times, out today, is his latest attempt to make sense of the senseless. No, the title isn’t Dickensian — it’s from Curtis Mayfield. The song on the 1975 “There’s No Place Like America Today” album, with its cover juxtaposing some happy Americans in a car with others waiting miserably in the unemployment line. America might be great — but for whom, exactly? That dichotomy shapes Hard Times, which is set in a school on the South Side of Chicago where an innocent student gets shot and nobody can agree on what happened or why.

Is the American Dream over? Boyd isn’t quite sure. “As much as it feels impossible,” he says, “some part of me always wants to believe.” His characters fight — backs against the wall, cards stacked against them, but they don’t give in. That’s what Curtis Mayfield was singing about in 1975 and it’s what Jeff Boyd is writing about in 2026. The times are hard. A time, once again, for novelists to seize back reality.

Five Takeaways

•       How Do You Make Stuff Up When Reality Is Already Unbelievable? Boyd admits he sometimes wonders what the point of being a novelist is when the headlines are stranger than fiction. His answer: fiction is a refuge. It lets you get inside the heads of people who inflict pain or endure it, and try to make sense of what in reality remains senseless. The novelist can provide an answer. The news cycle can’t.

•       Not Dickens — Curtis Mayfield: The title comes not from the 1854 novel but from the 1975 song on There’s No Place Like America Today. The album cover says it all: happy people in the car, desperate people in the unemployment line. America is great — but great for whom? That dichotomy drives the book.

•       A Policeman’s Son on George Floyd: One of the officers who stood by while George Floyd died was black — a man whose family had been proud of him for getting the job, who went in wanting to do good. Boyd can’t write off an entire category of people. His black cop character in Hard Times exists to show the complexity of wanting to do right and getting caught up in wrong.

•       Fate vs. Agency on the South Side: Boyd’s grad school friend — not religious but deterministic — argued you could draw a line from where someone starts to where they’ll end up. Boyd’s characters fight against that line. A kid from a broken home on food stamps doesn’t have to end where you think. The novel asks whether the line holds or breaks.

•       The Fight Goes On: Is the American Dream over? Boyd isn’t quite sure. His characters have their backs against the wall and the cards stacked against them, but they don’t give in. That’s what Curtis Mayfield was singing about in 1975. It’s what Boyd is writing about in 2026. The times are hard. The fight goes on.

About the Guest

Jeff Boyd is the author of The Weight (Simon & Schuster, 2023) and Hard Times (Flatiron Books, 2026). A former Chicago public school teacher and graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received the Deena Davidson Friedman Prize for Fiction, he lives in Brooklyn with his family.

References:

•       Hard Times: A Novel by Jeff Boyd (Flatiron Books, 2026) — the book under discussion, out today. Starred review from Publishers Weekly.

•       The Weight by Jeff Boyd (Simon & Schuster, 2023) — Boyd’s acclaimed debut novel, set in Portland.

•       Curtis Mayfield, “Hard Times” from There’s No Place Like America Today (1975) — the song that gives the novel its title.

•       Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854) — the Dickensian social realist tradition Boyd consciously works within.

•       Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1970) — referenced in the conversation.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.

Website

Substack

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Chapters:

• (00:00) - Introduction: Hard Times from Dickens to today

“Had another nation done this, we would regard this as an act of war.” — Arthur Levine, President of Brandeis University

Forget Iran for a moment. I asked Brandeis President Arthur Levine whether the Trump administration has gone to war with the American university. He paused diplomatically. “Going to war is a very restrictive term,” he answered. Then added: “Had another nation done this, we would regard this as an act of war.” From the president of Brandeis, that’s not a metaphorical dodge. He is, of course, referring to the singling out and bullying of Harvard, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania and other universities by executive order. Levine trusts nothing like this will happen again. But he also trusted it wouldn’t and shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Levine is back on the show with a new book, From Upheaval to Action: What Works in Changing Higher Ed, co-authored with Scott Van Pelt. Last time we talked, we argued about whether the $320,000 degree is worth it. This time our conversation wasn’t so much about whether the degree is worth the exorbitant price tag, but whether the institution that grants it will survive. Indeed Brandeis is about to announce guaranteed transparent pricing — a necessary revolution in an industry that has, for too long, thrived on financial opacity.

A more existential threat to universities like Brandeis is AI. In this week’s That Was The Week tech roundup, Keith Teare noted that even engineers at major tech companies are being told to stop coding and run AI instead. I tell the story of a UC Berkeley student who told his professor he didn’t need to read anymore because AI could do the reading for him. For Levine, this represents a failure of education, not a triumph of technology. Reading and writing are muscles, he says. You don’t build intellectual heft by outsourcing thinking to smart machines.

Levine draws the Luddite parallel. He argues the early 19th century craftsmen got better-paid work in factories. Every technological revolution produces fear, displacement, and eventually adaptation, he warns. So are university faculty the modern-day craftsmen? Their work will change, Levine explains. AI will take the routine parts with new more creative jobs emerging. But anyone who tells you they know what those jobs are is making it up, he says.

I pushed him on Epstein and the ethical rot of the American elite. He deflected — “we’re talking about a very small number of people” — but eventually conceded that ethics should be woven into every undergraduate subject, not taught as a single standalone course. I’m not sure that goes far enough. When university presidents are resigning because they took money from a child trafficker, it suggests that something is really rotten.

On DEI, Levine is surprisingly blunt: drop the term. It’s become a target for both left and right. Replace it with full access to higher education for those who can benefit from it. He sold this full access program to Democrats as equity and to Republicans as workforce development. Both bought it. The label was the problem, he explains, not the policy.

Henry Adams went to Harvard in 1850 and said he received an 18th century education for a world preparing for the 20th century. The worst mistake, Levine says, is not adapting to change. On that, Luddite university faculty, and perhaps even Donald Trump, might agree.

Five Takeaways

•       “Had Another Nation Done This, We Would Regard It as an Act of War”: Brandeis President Arthur Levine chose his words with the care you’d expect from a university president, but the meaning was unmistakable. The Trump administration has singled out Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania, threatened their funding, and imposed regulations by executive order. Had any foreign government done this to American universities, Levine says, we would call it what it is. He trusts it won’t happen again. He also trusted it wouldn’t happen in the first place.

•       Brandeis Is About to Announce Transparent Pricing: Brandeis will soon tell prospective students exactly what they’ll pay — not the sticker price minus a mysterious financial aid package, but the actual number, guaranteed. It’s a small revolution in an industry that has thrived for decades on opacity, and it may force other universities to follow or explain why they won’t.

•       AI Represents a Failure of Education, Not a Triumph of Technology: A Berkeley student told his professor he didn’t need to read anymore because AI could do the reading for him. Levine’s response is blunt: reading and writing are muscles, and you don’t build intellectual muscle by outsourcing thinking to smart machines. He speaks from experience — he used AI for his own research and half the data came back wrong, with sources that turned out to be hallucinations.

•       Drop the Term DEI and Replace It with Full Access: Levine is surprisingly direct on this: the term DEI has become a target for both left and right, and it no longer serves whatever purpose it once had. He recommends replacing it with a simpler goal — full access to higher education for those who can benefit from it. He tested this framing himself, selling the same programme to Democrats as equity and to Republicans as workforce development. Both bought it. The label was the problem, not the policy.

•       The Worst Mistake a University Can Make Is Not Changing: Henry Adams went to Harvard in 1850 and later said he had received an 18th century education for a world preparing for the 20th century. Levine’s fear is that American universities are making the same mistake again — delivering a 20th century education for a world that has already moved into the 21st. The worst thing any institution can do right now, he says, is keep doing what it’s always done and expect the same results. On that, the Luddites, and perhaps even Donald Trump, might agree.

About the Guest

Arthur Levine is the president of Brandeis University and president emeritus of Columbia University’s Teachers College and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. His new book is From Upheaval to Action: What Works in Changing Higher Ed (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), co-authored with Scott Van Pelt.

References:

•       From Upheaval to Action: What Works in Changing Higher Ed by Arthur Levine and Scott Van Pelt (2026) — the book under discussion.

•       Previous episode: Is That $320,000 College Degree Really Worth It? — Levine’s first appearance on the show, September 2025.

•       

“You would not want to be me.” — Elon Musk

Yesterday I argued that Dario Amodei is the most interesting man in America because he’s doing something nobody else has the balls to do: acting like a human being in public. Elon Musk is the opposite. He has the balls — nobody would deny that — but what’s missing is the human-being. Or perhaps Elon is all-too-human, which explains why so many of us — including myself — loathe him.

Charles Steel, a London investor, doesn’t loathe Elon. In fact, he’s self-published a book about him: The Curious Mind of Elon Musk: Nine Ways He Thinks Differently. Rather than an Elon hagiography, Steel insists, it’s an attempt to explain why Musk admirers don’t fully understand him, and the Hate-Elon crowd would probably loathe him for different reasons even if they had full navigation rights to his mind.

As I said, I’m in the second camp. My dislike of Musk is political — the cosying up to Trump, the DOGE fiasco, the embrace of far-right groups, the transformation of Twitter into a safe space for misanthropes. But Steel makes a case that, in our therapeutic culture, might be harder for some to dismiss: Musk’s “curious mind” is the product of childhood bullying, high-functioning autism, an abusive father, and an existential crisis resolved not by philosophy but by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Apparently Elon read Nietzsche and that, of course, only compounded his existential crisis. Probably because Nietzsche was warning us about a future dominated by philistines like Elon Musk.

In navigating the Musk mind, Steel discovers three traits: hyper-rationality, existential angst, and belligerence. Lots of Silicon Valley founders have the first. Some have the second. Almost none have the third. The combination produces a man who genuinely believes that the scientific method — the right of anyone to criticize anything — is a secular religion, and that “wokeness” is a competing religion that must be destroyed. Whether or not you buy this self-serving argument, Steel might be right to stress a Musk worldview — even if that worldview is often childishly indefensible.

I suggested to Steel that Musk is trapped in a Hobbesian state of nature — frozen alone, unable to read other people, incapable of separating himself from himself. A kind of naturally narcissistic state. This is what I most dislike about Elon. That he’s normalizing this state of nature. Nietzsche might (like his contemporary disciple Peter Thiel) have called him the Anti-Christ. He’s certainly the anti-Dario.

Five Takeaways

•       Musk Is the Anti-Dario: Amodei acts like a human being in public. Musk has the balls but what’s missing is the human-being. Or perhaps he’s all-too-human, which explains why so many of us loathe him. The contrast between them is the story of Silicon Valley in 2026.

•       Steel’s Case Is Harder to Dismiss Than You’d Think: Musk’s “curious mind” is the product of childhood bullying, high-functioning autism, an abusive father, and an existential crisis resolved not by philosophy but by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He read Nietzsche and it made things worse. Probably because Nietzsche was warning us about philistines like Musk.

•       Three Traits: Hyper-Rationality, Angst, and Belligerence: Lots of Silicon Valley founders have the first. Some have the second. Almost none have the third. The combination produces a man who believes the scientific method is a secular religion and wokeness is a competing one that must be destroyed. Whether or not you buy this self-serving argument, Steel might be right to stress a Musk worldview — even if it’s often childishly indefensible.

•       Trapped in a Hobbesian State of Nature: Musk is frozen alone, unable to read other people, incapable of separating himself from himself. A kind of naturally narcissistic state. What’s most dangerous about Elon is that he’s normalising this state of nature for the rest of us.

•       The Anti-Christ and the Anti-Dario: Nietzsche might, like his contemporary disciple Peter Thiel, have called Musk the Anti-Christ. He’s certainly the anti-Dario. The contrast between Amodei and Musk is the story of Silicon Valley — and perhaps America — in 2026.

About the Guest

Charles Steel is a London-based investor and writer. He has worked with Tony Blair and Save the Children. His book The Curious Mind of Elon Musk: Nine Ways He Thinks Differently is self-published and out now. His next project is on Albert Camus.

References:

•       The Curious Mind of Elon Musk: Nine Ways He Thinks Differently by Charles Steel — the book under discussion.

•       Episode 2835: Why Dario Amodei Might Be the 21st Century’s First Real Leader — yesterday’s TWTW, the direct counterpoint.

•       Zero to One by Peter Thiel — referenced by Steel on Asperger-like traits and Silicon Valley success.

•       The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams — the book Musk credits with resolving his existential crisis.

•       The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus — Steel’s next project, and the question he’d most like to discuss with Musk.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.

Website

Substack

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Chapters:

• (00:00) - Introduction: I'm not a great fan of Elon Musk