

Keen On America
Andrew Keen
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
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
Episodes
Mentioned books

Sep 7, 2023 • 19min
There will be no stock market on a dead planet: Sandrine Dixson-Decleve on how to transform extractive capitalism into a regenerative model of equitable economic progress
EPISODE 1692: In this special KEEN ON show from the DLD AI Summit in Munich, Andrew talks to Sandrine Dixson-Decleve, co-president of the Club of Rome, about how to transform extractive capitalism into a regenerative model of equitable economic progressSandrine Dixson-Declève is Co-President of The Club of Rome and divides her time between leading The Club of Rome, advising, lecturing, and facilitating difficult conversations. She currently Chairs the European Commission, Expert Group on Economic and Societal Impact of Research & Innovation (ESIR) and sits on the European Commissions Mission on Climate Change & Adaptation. She also sits on several Non-Executives & Advisory Boards including EDP, BMW, UCB Climate KIC, Leonardo Centre, Imperial College London and is a Senior Associate and faculty member of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), an Ambassador for the Energy Transition Commission (ETC) and the Well Being Alliance (WeAll) and a Fellow of the World Academy of Science & Art. Sandrine is a TED global speaker and recently published “Quel Monde Pour Demain” lucpire editions and Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity. She was recognised most recently by Reuters as one of 25 global female trailblazers and by GreenBiz as one of the 30 most influential women across the globe driving change in the low carbon economy and promoting green business. 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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Sep 6, 2023 • 25min
Why truthful stories about nature should have neither beginnings nor endings: Martin Puchner on telling circular environmental stories
EPISODE 1691: In this special KEEN ON show from DLD Circular, Andrew talks to Martin Puchner, professor of literature at Harvard, about why truthful stories about nature should have neither beginnings nor endingsMartin Puchner is the Byron and Anita Wien Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, where he also serves as the founding director of the Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research. Puchner completed his BA at the Universität Konstanz; MA at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and at UC Irvine; and PhD at Harvard University. A recent fellow of both the Guggenheim Foundation and Cullman Center, he has published over a dozen books and anthologies, including Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes (Princeton, 2006), which won the MLA’s James Russell Lowell Award; The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy (Oxford, 2010), awarded the Joe A. Callaway Prize and the Walter Channing Cabot Prize; and The Written World: How Literature Shaped Civilization (Random House, 2017). Puchner is the co-editor of Against Theatre: Creative Destructions on the Modernist Stage (Palgrave, 2006) and The Norton Anthology of Drama (2009), and the general editor of the Norton Anthology of World Literature.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Sep 6, 2023 • 27min
Why there is hope in the soil: Jan-Gisbert Schultze on the transformational promise of regenerative agriculture
EPISODE 1690: In this special KEEN ON show from the DLD Circular conference in Munich, Andrew talks to Jan-Gisbert Schultze, the founder of the Regenerate Forum, about the transformational promise of regenerative agricultureJan-Gisbert Schultze's professional career has taken him in various roles as consultant, manager, entrepreneur and investor. He is co-founder and managing partner of Acton Capital, a venture fund in Munich, whose team has been investing in digital business models in Europe and North America for 24 years now. Michael Pollan's book "The Omnivore Dilemma" introduced him to regenerative agriculture in 2017. In late 2018, he founded the Soil Alliance to bring renowned regenerative pioneers to Germany. These activities gradually led Jan to the realization that the life-sustaining principles of nature applied in regenerative agriculture should be applied to the entire economy. To this end, he launched the Regenerate Forum in May 2020 to promote the transformation towards a regenerative economy.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Sep 6, 2023 • 20min
What, exactly, is circular economics? Martjin Lopes Cardozo on the current state of the circular economy
EPISODE 1689: In this special KEEN ON show from the DLD Circular conference in Munich, Andrew talks to Martjin Lopes Cardozo, CEO of the Amsterdam based Circle Economy, about the current state of circular economics.Martjin Lopes Cardoso is an experienced entrepreneur and CEO. He is currently CEO of the Amsterdam based Circle Economy. He has built scalable companies in both the US West Coast and in Europe in Digital and Clean Tech. Thought leader and frequent key note speaker. He is a trusted mentor and board member. He was educated at TU Delft and Harvard.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 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Sep 6, 2023 • 19min
The Age of the Sustainable City: Ian Goldin on how to make the 21st century city the heart of a new circular economy
EPISODE 1688: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Ian Goldin, author of AGE OF THE CITY, about how to make the 21st century city the heart of a new circular economyProfessor Ian Goldin is Professor of Globalisation and Development at the University of Oxford. He is a Professorial Fellow at the University’s Balliol College. From 2006 to 2016 he was the founding Director of the Oxford Martin School and currently leads the Oxford Martin Research Programmes on Technological and Economic Change, the Future of Work, and the Future of Development.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Aug 29, 2023 • 34min
Trust and the Tokenization of Value: Rachel O'Dwyer on the future of money in our age of the digital platform
EPISODE 1687: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Rachel O'Dwyer, author of TOKENS, about the future of money in our age of the digital platformRachel O'Dwyer is a lecturer at the School of Visual Culture at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin. She was a Fulbright Scholar at UC Irvine and the Microsoft Research labs, Cambridge; she is currently a fellow at Connect, the centre for Networks and Telecommunications at Trinity College, Dublin. She is the co-editor of Neural Magazine and has written for outlets such as Convergence, MIT Press and the London Review of Books. She has curated a number of exhibitions of digital practise that explore the intersection of art and the Blockchain.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Aug 29, 2023 • 38min
Containing and Controlling AI: Mustafa Suleyman on how to strengthen the nation-state in the coming wave of radical technological disruption
Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind, discusses the intersection of synthetic biology and AI, the threats and opportunities of technology, self-regulation in the tech industry, measuring AI capabilities, and addressing inequality in a post-nation state world.

Aug 28, 2023 • 35min
Silicon Valley's Destruction of Reality: Jonathan Taplin on how 4 tech billionaires are selling us a fantasy future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto
EPISODE 1685: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Jonathan Taplin, author of THE END OF REALITY, on how 4 tech billionaires - Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen - are selling us a fantasy future of the metaverse, Mars, and cryptoJonathan Taplin began his entertainment career in 1969 as Tour Manager for Bob Dylan and The Band. In 1973 he produced Martin Scorsese's first feature film, Mean Streets, which was selected for the Cannes Film Festival. Between 1974 and 1996, Taplin produced 26 hours of television documentaries (including The Prize and Cadillac Desert for PBS) and 12 feature films including The Last Waltz, Until The End of the World, Under Fire and To Die For. His films were nominated for Oscar and Golden Globe awards and chosen for The Cannes Film Festival five times. In 1984 Taplin acted as the investment advisor to the Bass Brothers in their successful attempt to save Walt Disney Studios from a corporate raid. This experience brought him to Merrill Lynch, where he served as vice president of media mergers and acquisitions. In this role, he helped re-engineer the media landscape on transactions such as the leveraged buyout of Viacom. Taplin was a founder of Intertainer and has served as its Chairman and CEO since June 1996. Intertainer was the pioneer video-on-demand company for both cable and broadband Internet markets. Taplin holds two patents for video on demand technologies. Professor Taplin has provided consulting services on Broadband technology to the President of Portugal and the Parliament of the Spanish state of Catalonia and the Government of Singapore. Mr. Taplin graduated from Princeton University. He is a member of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and sits on the Author’s Guild Council and the Board of the American Music Association. Mr. Taplin was appointed to the California Broadband Task Force and the City of Los Angles Technology and Innovation Council. He was named one of the 50 most social media savvy professors in America by Online College and one of the 100 American Digerati by Deloitte’s Edge Institute.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Aug 28, 2023 • 37min
I Must Resist: Michael G. Long celebrates the political and personal bravery of Bayard Ruskin on the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington
EPISODE 1684: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Michael G. Long, the editor of BAYARD RUSTIN: A LEGACY OF PROTEST AND PROTEST, the political and personal bravery of Bayard Ruskin on the 60th anniversary of the March on WashingtonMichael G. Long (longmg4242@gmail.com) has a Ph.D. from Emory University and is the author or editor of numerous books on nonviolent protest, civil rights, LGBTQIA rights, politics, and religion.Mike's first YA nonfiction biography—a coauthored book titled Troublemaker for Justice: The Story of Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind the March on Washington (City Lights Books)—earned starred reviews in Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and the School Library Journal. The Bank Street Center, Kirkus, and SLJ selected Troublemaker as a best book of the year. Mike has also written on civil rights and protest for the Los Angeles Times, The Undefeated (ESPN), the Progressive, the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Daily News, the Afro, USA Today, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Huffington Post, and more. His work has been featured in or on MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, USA Today, The Root, The Nation, The UnJonathan Taplin is a writer, film producer and scholar. He is the Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and was a Professor at the USC Annenberg School from 2003-2016 in the field of international communication management and digital media entertainment. defeated (ESPN), Mother Jones, Huffington Post, Salon, CNN, Book Forum, Ebony/Jet, and many other places. Mike has spoken at Fenway Park, Citi Field, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Library of Congress, the National Museum of American History, the National Archives, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the City Club of San Diego, the Schomberg Center of the New York Public Library, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the New-York Historical Society, among other places.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Aug 28, 2023 • 37min
Why extraterrestrial life doesn't give a damn about us: Avi Loeb on the search for interstellar species and our future in the stars
EPISODE 1683: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Avi Loeb, author of INTERSTELLAR, about our search for extraterrestrial life and our future in the starsAbraham (Avi) Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University, longest-serving chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy, founding director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative, and current director of the Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) within the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. He also heads the Galileo Project, chairs the Advisory Committee for the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, and is former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. Author of eight books and over a thousand scientific papers, Loeb is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics. In 2012, Time selected Loeb as one of the twenty-five most influential people in space. He lives near Boston, Massachusetts.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe


