Keen On America

“If the regime doesn’t lose, it wins.” — Soli ÖzelIt was just past midnight in Istanbul when I reached Soli Özel. The Pentagon had just announced it was deploying 3,000 soldiers — the 82nd Airborne — to the Gulf. Özel — professor of international relations at Kadir Has University, columnist, and one of the most trusted analysts of Middle Eastern politics — is blunt. This might, he warns, be America’s Suez moment.In 1956, Britain and France — two spent imperial powers that refused to accept they were spent — were humiliated in Egypt. Trump is a noisier, more corpulent Anthony Eden. The difference between then and now is that the US and Soviet Union were ready to replace the European colonial powers. Today, no great power can take America’s place in the region. But its prestige is diminished, its ammunition depleted, and when it called on NATO allies to help open the Strait of Hormuz, nobody volunteered. Russia and China, Özel suggests, are winning on every front without sending any of their crack regiments to the front. It may also be midnight for a declining United States in the Middle East. Five Takeaways•       The Negotiations Were Going America’s Way: According to the Omani foreign minister, Iran had accepted conditions firmer than the original JCPOA. The war was a choice, not a necessity. The question is who convinced the president: the Venezuela precedent, which suggested quick regime decapitation, or the Israelis, who wanted not just a deal but the regime’s destruction. Nobody told him that Venezuela and Iran have nothing in common.•       If the Iranian Regime Doesn’t Lose, It Wins: Iran has escalation control. Its defensive resilience has exceeded every analyst’s expectations. It struck the Ras Laffan gas refinery in Qatar — three to five years to repair. It hit radars, data centres, refineries. Nobody thought they could do this. If the regime survives, it emerges emboldened, more autocratic, and the entire Gulf security equation changes permanently.•       This May Be America’s Suez Moment: In 1956, Britain and France — two spent imperial powers — were humiliated in Egypt. The difference: the US and Soviet Union were ready to take their place. Today, no great power can replace America in the region. But its prestige is diminished, its ammunition depleted, and when it called on NATO allies to help open the Strait of Hormuz, nobody volunteered.•       The Moral Debate America Isn’t Having: The decapitation strategy — assassinating an entire generation of foreign leaders — crossed a red line that should never have been crossed. The American debate is about preparedness, Israeli influence, and whether Trump can find an exit. The moral question is taking the back seat. The rest of the world has noticed.•       Russia Wins. China Waits. Nothing Will Be the Same: Oil prices from the sixties to over a hundred. Russia has more room in Ukraine. China is happy the US can’t pivot to Asia and is depleting ammunition reserves meant for a Taiwan scenario. Relations between the Gulf countries, Israel, and the United States will be reconsidered, redefined, and never the same. About the GuestSoli Özel is a professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy, and a columnist for Habertürk. A member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, he has taught at Johns Hopkins SAIS, UC Santa Cruz, and Yale, and was a Fisher Family Fellow at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School. He writes regularly for Project Syndicate.References:•       Episode 2843: The Philadelphia Story — Richard Vague on how America’s first bank was created to fund war. The connection between banking, debt, and war hasn’t changed.•       Episode 2842: Symbolic Capitalism vs. Symbolic Democracy — this week’s TWTW on whether capitalism permits democracy. The Iran war is the test.About Keen On AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:

“The problems start when I conclude that only an uninformed, unintelligent, or evil person could hold the view that you hold.” — Julia MinsonIn a sneak preview of the 2028 Presidential election, Andy Beshear called JD Vance the most arrogant politician in America. Vance’s spokesperson fires back that Beshear is chasing headlines. Just another disagreeable day in American public life. So how can we make conversation more civil? How to disagree more agreeably?In her new book (out today) How to Disagree Better, the Harvard public policy professor Julia Minson argues that disagreement is not conflict. You and I can see the world differently and have a completely civil conversation about it. The problem is when we decide the other person is stupid, evil, or both.Minson’s test case is her own family. Her father-in-law is a retired Army veteran who served in Vietnam and Korea and has voted Republican his entire life. Minson is a first-generation Russian immigrant who came to Denver as a teenager. They disagree on immigration, on ICE, on most of what divides America. The problem, she confesses, is that they don’t actually know why the other believes what they believe because they’ve spent years avoiding the subject. So Minson and her father-in-law make the worst assumptions about each other.Her deeper argument is about the danger of silence. The loudest disagreements get the headlines, but the more dangerous problem is the people who don’t dare to speak up — the junior person in the corporate meeting sitting on their hands while a bad decision gets made, the teenager who walks out of the room, the patient who leaves the doctor’s office. Minson is honest about the limits of how to disagree better: Putin wouldn’t read this book. Some disagreements are not between equals. But most of ours are — and we’re terrible at them because we’d rather go to the dentist than spend twenty minutes talking to someone who disagrees with us. Let’s hope Minson has sent How to Disagree Better to both Andy Beshear and JD Vance. Five Takeaways•       Disagreement Is Not Conflict: You and I can see the world differently and have a completely civil conversation about it. The problems start when I conclude that only an uninformed, unintelligent, or evil person could hold the view you hold. That’s when disagreement becomes conflict — and it’s usually based on inaccurate information about the other person’s motives.•       We Fill In the Blanks with the Worst Possible Story: When people avoid a topic, they don’t actually know why the other person believes what they believe. So they make assumptions — and what they assume is negative. Grandpa doesn’t like immigrants because he’s a racist. That probably isn’t how grandpa would explain himself. Most conflict is bred in misunderstanding.•       Vulnerability Persuades. Bragging Doesn’t: If Minson says “we should let in more immigrants because my life as an immigrant is wonderful” — that sounds like bragging. If she says “I struggled to find acceptance and I want to make it easier for others” — that resonates. Sharing why a topic matters to you, especially the vulnerable part, changes the conversation.•       The Real Problem Is Silence, Not Shouting: The loudest disagreements get the headlines. But the more common and more dangerous problem is people who don’t speak up because they’re afraid the disagreement will turn into drama. In corporations, in families, in classrooms — the junior person sitting on their hands while a bad decision gets made. That silence has real costs.•       Putin Wouldn’t Read This Book: Minson is honest about the limits. Her book is for people who want better relationships with people they disagree with. It’s not for autocrats. Some disagreements are not between equals. Some people have made clear what their goals are, and thoughtful conversation is not one of them. The book works best where diplomacy already should. About the GuestJulia Minson is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and founder of Disagreeing Better, LLC. Her research focuses on the psychology of disagreement. How to Disagree Better is published by Portfolio/Penguin Random House.References:•       How to Disagree Better by Julia Minson (Portfolio, 2026) — out today.•       Disagreeing Better — Minson’s consulting practice and research hub.•       Episode 2845: Let’s Ban Billionaires — Noam Cohen on the Know-It-Alls, where the disagreement is rather less agreeable.About Keen On AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:

“AI is a theft of knowledge. I can’t believe we as a society allowed this.” — Noam CohenTen 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 GuestNoam 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 AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:

“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 GuestDan 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 AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: has technology made you a better human? (03:22) - The iPhone vs. the decisive moment: Bresson and photography (05:39) - The orange cushion: an ode to imperfection (06:27) - St. Francis of Assisi: the first tech critic (07:22) - 800 years of tech anxiety: from double-entry bookkeeping to AI (11:27) - Žižek, capitalism, and the love-hate relationship with technology (13:50) - Fig leaves to iPhones: technology as everything beyond the naked body (15:00) - Marinetti, Svevo, and the mammoth: technology as relationship (17:54) - Walter Benjamin, The Matrix, and who controls the storyline (20:51) - Bresson’s decisive moment vs. Nietzsche’s blow it up (22:25) - Agency under attack: reclaiming embodied experience (25:47) - Machiavelli donning the robes of the past (28:44) - Nost...

“Washington and Hamilton were governed by Willing.” — John Adams, 1813Thomas 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 GuestRichard 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 AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters: 

“I don’t know if any rational person ever became a billionaire running a disruptive company.” — Keith TeareIs 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 GuestKeith 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 AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: AI and unreason define the world (01:49) - Markets as prediction machines: NVIDIA’s $1 trillion promise (04:42) - The three IPOs that would dwarf a decade of IPOs (05:50) - Fundrise (VCX): retail investors paying 300% premium (09:23) - Keith’s prediction: OpenAI at $10 trillion in five years (11:44) - The Anthropic debate continues: tactics vs. morals (14:22) - Silicon Valley’s behind-the-scenes support for Amodei (16:42) - What happens when an AI company rivals a nation’s GDP? (23:05) - Om Malik on neo-symbolic capitalism (28:10) - Musk as the master of symbolic capitalism (30:08) - Bezos, Project Prometheus, and the Prometheuses of AI (32:07) - Peter Thiel, the Antichrist, and the Giving Pledge collapse (35:27) - Vinod Khosla: capitalism by permission of democracy? (38:23) - Or democracy by permission of capitalism?

“We do not exist without nature — unless Silicon Valley figures something out in their bunkers.” — Natalie KyriacouForget 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 GuestNatalie 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 AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: it might be nature’s last dance (01:18) - Ecocide: countries don’t count military emissions (03:05) - Trump as symptom: oil over lives for centuries (04:16) - Neither optimist nor pessimist — or both (06:54) - The oiled penguins of South Africa (09:11) - Did it change anything structurally? (11:26) - America’s broken climate leadership (13:37) - UNESCO and the limits of the United Nations (16:46) - Making nature impossible to ignore (18:46) - Solar, nuclear, and the biodiversity blind spot (20:58) - Wisdom from Australia: nationalism for wildlife (24:14) - Birdwatching as quiet rebellion (26:44) - AI puts our destructive relationship on steroids (29:48) - Systems failure: tech billionaires and ecocide (33:48) - What if there are no birds left? The world in grayscale

“Nobody’s reality is more or less real.” — Kevin AshtonIt’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 GuestKevin 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 AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: technology tells good stories about itself (01:46) - Language was invented to tell stories, not the other way around (04:47) - If stories are our water, how do you get outside them? (06:40) - Character, chronology, consequence: the Lego brick of narrative (07:07) - Hyper-realism and the graphic user interface of reality (09:05) - Nobody’s reality is real — your dog sees a different rainbow (12:35) - Darwin, Einstein, and science as storytelling (14:32) - True stories, true crime, and the O.J. Simpson test (17:15) - The Bible as storytelling technology (21:49) - Socrates vs. Plato: speech, writing, and the Reformation (23:49) - The Internet of Stories: from campfire to smartphone (25:05) - Were the Greeks really better storytellers? No. (28:49) - Favourite storytellers: Pynchon, McCarthy, Dead Space (30...

“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 ChampionMost 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 GuestNelson 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 AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: we've never had a memory champion (01:23) - Is everyone a genius? The soccer medal problem (03:25) - Controlling the thing inside our skull (05:07) - The brain as the most complicated object in the universe (06:40) - Grandmother’s Alzheimer’s: the origin story (08:26) - Can brain training delay Alzheimer’s? (11:53) - Mental longevity vs. the iPhone warranty (13:46) - Inside the USA Memory Championship (15:52) - Numbers, cards, names, poems: the events (18:13) - Joshua Foer and Moonwalking with Einstein (21:28) - Social genius: loneliness as cognitive decline (24:43) - Blueberries, omega-3s, and pre-competition doping (27:24) - Freaks or trained humans? (31:01) - Your iPhone is atrophying your brain (37:51) - AI slop: why machines can’t make memories (39:23) - Hack: how to remember any name you hear

“If we don’t fight, then what are we doing?” — Jeff BoydHow 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 GuestJeff 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 AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: Hard Times from Dickens to today (01:19) - Not Dickens — Curtis Mayfield (02:44) - The Obama era and the fall back into hard times (05:32) - How do you fictionalize a reality stranger than fiction? (08:44) - Autobiography: teaching in a Chicago school (10:18) - Fate, predestination, and fighting the line (12:49) - The novelist as God — do your characters surprise you? (15:02) - A student is shot: the journalist-novelist (15:33) - Social realism in the Dickensian tradition (18:45) - Chicago stereotypes and the beauty between blocks (22:19) - A policeman’s son on George Floyd and the black cop who stood by (25:27) - Teaching as the most underappreciated job in America (27:57) - Money, class, and Black Chicago beyond the stereotype (29:43) - Trump, alternative facts, and who controls the truth (32:19) - The American Dream: is it over?

“Had another nation done this, we would regard this as an act of war.” — Arthur Levine, President of Brandeis UniversityForget 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 GuestArthur 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 MuskYesterday 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 GuestCharles 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 AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: I'm not a great fan of Elon Musk (02:05) - Is Musk on the spectrum? (03:56) - The meaning of life and the philosophy of curiosity (05:58) - Childhood bullying, an abusive father, and Musk as casualty (06:53) - “You would not want to be me” (08:38) - Hobbes, the state of nature, and Musk as pre-social man (10:29) - Should we try to be less normal? (12:15) - Racism, empathy, and the missing human attributes (14:14) - Goebbels comparison: when does curiosity become offensive? (15:52) - Why is it always the right? Musk and wokeness (17:18) - The curious mind as mirror of ou...

“Whether you like Amodei or not, at least he’s a leader.” — Andrew KeenDario Amodei is the most interesting man in America right now. Not because he runs a $500 billion company or because he’s suing the Trump administration or because Anthropic’s Claude topped the iPhone charts. But because he’s doing something nobody else in Silicon Valley has the balls to do: he’s acting like a human being in public. He has principles, he states them, and he accepts the consequences. That’s leadership. It shouldn’t be remarkable. In 2026, it is.This week’s That Was The Week is about how America both loves and hates AI. An NBC poll found 60–70% of Americans are concerned about AI — making it even less popular than the Democratic Party (quite an achievement). A hundred planned data centers have been cancelled because of local protests. 10,000 authors published an anti AI manifesto at the London Book Fair this week. Each week, in contrast, a billion people used ChatGPT, but these users often seem oblivious to its weaknesses. So Keith’s AI-generated video for the show was, by universal agreement (including his own), not going to win an Oscar tomorrow. Except for Most Sloppy AI generated video.Every road this week led back to Amodei who is anything but sloppy. He’s become a Rorschach test for the entire industry. Tech progressives Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway are lauding him. The MAGA crowd — including David Sacks, Trump’s AI czar — on the All In podcast are doing the opposite. Keith thinks Dario is a naive CEO making bad business decisions — comparing him to his own doomed battle in the late Nineties against Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer. It’s a fair point. Should a tech CEO really be setting AI policy? Keith’s answer is no — that’s for people like David Sacks appointed by executive, legislative, and judicial branches. I’m not so sure. In an America defined by its dysfunctional political system, we need leaders like Amodei to take ethical stands. If not, then who?The IPO race this year between Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI makes this particularly interesting. I wonder whether Amodei might use the IPO itself to force a public debate that nobody in government is willing to have. Not just about guardrails or weapons — but about what kind of society AI is building and who gets to decide what does and doesn’t get used. Musk, by publicly embracing white racists and other groups of hate, is making his politics clear. Sam Altman, as always, is wearing every hat simultaneously. Amodei, in contrast, knows his hat. Rather than MAGA, it should say: The Most Interesting Man in America. He’s got my vote. Even if he’s not running for office. Five Takeaways•       AI Is Less Popular Than the Democrats: An NBC poll found 60–70% of Americans are concerned about AI. A hundred data centres have been cancelled due to local protests. 10,000 authors published an anti-AI manifesto at the London Book Fair. Close to a billion people use ChatGPT each week — but the haters are the non-users, and they outnumber the lovers by a wide margin.•       Amodei Is the 21st Century’s First Real Leader: He’s suing the Trump administration. He’s refusing to let Claude be used for autonomous weapons. He’s accepting the business consequences. Keith thinks he’s naive. I think he’s the only person in Silicon Valley acting like a human being in public. The debate between us is the show.•       Keith Compares Amodei to His Own Doomed Battle Against Ballmer: In the late Nineties, Keith fought Microsoft with RealNames and lost. He sees Amodei on the same trajectory — noble, principled, already finished. I compared Keith to Pete Hegseth declaring the Iranian regime defeated. The MAGA crowd on All In, including Trump’s AI czar David Sacks, agree with Keith. That alone should give him pause.•       The IPO Race Will Force the Debate: Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI are all expected to go public this year. Amodei could use the IPO to force a conversation about what kind of society AI is building — a conversation nobody in government is willing to have. Musk is making his politics clear by embracing white racists. Altman is wearing every hat. Amodei knows his.•       In the Absence of Leadership, Fear Thrives: Keith’s best point of the week. Nobody is setting AI policy. The politicians are clowns. The tech CEOs are children. In the vacuum, fear wins. Amodei is trying to fill it. Whether he succeeds or not, at least he’s trying. That’s more than anyone else can say. About the GuestKeith Teare is the publisher of That Was The Week and co-founder of SignalRank. He is a serial entrepreneur, former CEO of RealNames, and a regular sparring partner on Keen On America.References:•       That Was The Week: AI Loved and Hated — Keith Teare’s editorial.•       Rex Woodbury, “Why Does Everybody Hate AI?” — Digital Native.•       Josh Dzieza, The Verge — on lawyers, PhDs, and scientists in the AI gig economy.•       Noah Smith — “Something Feels Weird About This Economy.”•       Meta’s acquisition of Moltbook — the AI agent social network.About Keen On AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: AI loved and hated (01:17) - NBC poll: AI less popular than the Democrats (03:10) - Rex Woodbury and the haters: is it really AI people hate? (04:21) - AI slop and Keith’s terrible video (07:28) - The adoption curve: AI companies are isolated from mainstream opinion (07:51) - Dario Amodei as the answer to both lovers and haters (10:14) - Keith vs Ballmer redux: why Amodei has already lost (12:09) - OpenAI and Google employees rush to Anthropic’s defense (14:24) - Woodbury, The Verge, and AI taking jobs (16:51) - Keith’s Apple TV app: vibe coded in a weekend (19:29) - AI will destroy universities: cheating at apocalyptic levels (21:41) - Noah Smith: something feels weird about this economy (27:00) - The IPO race: Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX (30:42) - Could Amodei blow up the IPO proce...

“I can point to things. But is that a systemic explanation? I think there the answer is a little less clear. I mean, surely people need love and all of that, but then there’s this risk of just devolving into platitude.” — David SussilloDavid Sussillo is a big time neural reverse engineer. The Stanford brain scientist worked at Google Brain with Geoffrey Hinton, and now is at Meta Reality Labs. What distinguishes Sussillo, however, is not his Silicon Valley good luck, but the bad luck of his origins. In his memoir, Emergent: A Memoir of Boyhood, Computation, and the Mysteries of the Mind, Sussillo begins at the Albuquerque Christian Children’s Home — a modern-day orphanage — and the Milton Hershey School, the boarding school endowed by the chocolate magnate for kids with nowhere else to go. Both his parents were addicts. His mom died young. His dad spent his life as an untrained preacher ministering to homeless people on the streets of Albuquerque while managing a lifelong heroin habit.The book’s thesis borrows from the science he studies: “emergence” — simple things interacting to produce complex behaviour that none of them could produce alone. His life is both proof of and a challenge to this concept. He made it out. Most of the kids he grew up with didn’t. He can point to moments — a gifted-and-talented test in third grade, an aunt and uncle’s intervention at nine, a first love in college — but he can’t build an explanatory system from these haphazard events. The Sussillo quilt doesn’t have an innate pattern. It just has patches.What makes Sussillo unusual as a memoirist is his refusal to sentimentalise. Twenty years of psychotherapy, he confesses, has taught him something most authors never learn: that understanding your own story doesn’t mean you’ve explained it. His science can’t explain his childhood either. “The big dirty secret of neuroscience,” he says, “is that we don’t really understand much in the ways that people would love us to understand.” The man who reverse-engineers neural networks can’t reverse-engineer himself.I asked him whether having children would have been harder than writing the book. Yes, he said. With the book, you can take a break. With kids, you relive things through a very specific way of relating. He and his wife chose not to. His mentors all told him he’d have been great at it. He’s not so sure. That honesty — the willingness to say “I don’t know” and mean it — runs through everything Sussillo does. He says he’s happy, claiming to have found peace with his past. But he still carries the baggage. Who wouldn’t? He’s just learned to manage it. Emergent, not emerged. Five Takeaways•       From Orphanage to Google Brain: Both parents were heroin addicts. Sussillo grew up in a modern-day orphanage in Albuquerque and then the Milton Hershey School. He went on to work at Google Brain with Geoffrey Hinton, now works at Meta Reality Labs, teaches at Stanford. Most of the kids he grew up with didn’t make it.•       Emergence as Autobiography: The book’s thesis borrows from the science he studies: simple pieces combining into complicated outcomes. His life is the proof of concept and the counter-example simultaneously. The quilt doesn’t have a pattern. It just has patches.•       The Dirty Secret of Neuroscience: The man who reverse-engineers neural networks can’t reverse-engineer himself. “We don’t really understand much in the ways that people would love us to understand.” Twenty years of therapy taught him more than the science.•       Would Kids Have Been Harder Than the Book? Yes. With the book, you can take a break. With kids, you relive trauma through a very specific way of relating. He and his wife chose not to have children. His mentors told him he’d have been great at it. He’s not so sure.•       Emergent, Not Emerged: Sussillo has found peace with his past. He’s happy. He still carries the baggage from his childhood. He’s just learned how to manage it. The emergence is ongoing. About the GuestDavid Sussillo is a research scientist at Meta Reality Labs and a consulting professor at Stanford University. He previously worked at Google Brain. His memoir is Emergent: A Memoir of Boyhood, Computation, and the Mysteries of the Mind. He grew up in the Albuquerque Christian Children’s Home and the Milton Hershey School. He lives in New Mexico.References:•       Emergent: A Memoir of Boyhood, Computation, and the Mysteries of the Mind by David Sussillo — the book under discussion.•       The Albuquerque Christian Children’s Home — the group home where Sussillo spent five years of his childhood.•       The Milton Hershey School — founded in 1906 by the Hershey chocolate magnate for children with nowhere else to go. Sussillo spent four years there.•       Google Brain — the lab where Sussillo worked alongside Geoffrey Hinton on the neural network research that became the foundation of modern AI.•       John Conway’s Game of Life — the cellular automaton simulation Sussillo cites as an early example of emergence: complicated outcomes from simple rules.About Keen On AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction (01:30) - The Albuquerque Christian Children’s Home and Milton Hershey School (03:30) - Why write a memoir? Five years and twenty years of therapy (05:00) - Heroin-addicted parents: the origin story (08:00) - A father as untrained preacher on the streets of Albuquerque (10:00) - Which parent had more impact? (12:00) - The gifted-and-talented test that changed everything (15:00) - From Milton Hershey to Carnegie Mellon: the jump (18:00) - Life falls apart at 23: panic attacks and psychotherapy (21:00) - Neural networks, Google Brain, and the dirty secret of neuroscience (25:00) - Would having kids have been harder than writing the book? (28:00) - The Albanian friend and the beach: what America gets right (31:00) - Silicon...

“They all did it. They’re all guilty.” — Amy LittlefieldWho killed Roe? Amy Littlefield, the abortion access correspondent at The Nation and big time Agatha Christie fan, has written a true crime book about it. Literally. Killers of Roe treats the death of the constitutional right to abortion as a murder mystery in the Poirot or Miss Marple tradition, complete with suspects, motives, and a forensic reconstruction of the 50-year crime scene. The suspects have Christie-style names: the Racist (Jesse Helms), the Little Brother (James Buckley), the Devout Bureaucrat (Paul Herring), the Closeted Congressman (Bob Bauman), and of course Mr Hyde Amendment himself, Henry Hyde — six foot three, helmet of white hair, serial groper of women who ensured poor women lost access first.The Hyde Amendment is where the crime begins: 1976, a ban on federal funding of abortion. If you’re poor, the Supreme Court ruled, that’s your problem. The constitutional right exists, but don’t expect anyone to pay for it. Surprise surprise. Black women, low-income women, women on Medicaid understood immediately. Democrats and mainstream pro-choice groups took longer to notice. By which time the damage was done — and the playbook established: chip away at access rather than try to ban it outright.Littlefield is more Miss Marple than Poirot — unassuming, persistent, sitting with her suspects for hours until they tell her why they did it. The devout bureaucrat, Paul Herring, spent their interviews trying to convert her to Catholicism. Henry Hyde made a pass at the president of Planned Parenthood during a commercial break on the Phil Donahue show. Bob Bauman — closeted, adopted, alcoholic — confessed to her that his anti-abortion politics may have come from identifying with the unwanted fetus, because that could have been him. These are complicated people doing terrible things for reasons they believe are righteous.And the ending? Littlefield steals it from Murder on the Orient Express. They all did it. Every suspect is guilty — including the Democrats who failed to defend poor women, and the pro-choice movement that didn’t fight hard enough for the most vulnerable. Since the Dobbs decision in 2022: 59 excess pregnancy-associated deaths, 500 additional infant deaths, 22,000 additional births. The numbers aren’t a Miss Marple mystery. The crime is ongoing. And Trump, who declared himself “very pro-choice” before he appointed the justices who drove the final nail in, is the ultimate opportunist — a fat, orange haired version of Hyde. Murder on the Abortion Express. They all did it. All the men, at least. Five Takeaways•       The Hyde Amendment Is Where the Crime Begins: 1976. A ban on federal funding of abortion. Poor women lost access first. Black women, women on Medicaid understood immediately. Democrats and mainstream pro-choice groups took longer to notice. By which time the playbook was established.•       The Anti-Abortion Movement Stole the Language of Civil Rights: White conservatives who didn’t want to think about the harms of white supremacy found an escape valve: their own civil rights movement, with the fetus — almost always imagined as white — as the victim.•       The Suspects Are Complicated. The Crime Is Not: Henry Hyde groped women during commercial breaks. Bob Bauman — closeted, adopted, alcoholic — identified with the unwanted fetus. Paul Herring tried to convert Littlefield to Catholicism. Complicated people, terrible consequences.•       The Numbers Are Real: Since the Dobbs decision in 2022: 59 excess pregnancy-associated deaths. 500 additional infant deaths. 22,000 additional births. The crime is ongoing.•       They All Did It: Littlefield steals her ending from Murder on the Orient Express. Every suspect is guilty — including the Democrats who failed to defend poor women, and the pro-choice movement that didn’t fight hard enough for the most vulnerable. All the men, at least. About the GuestAmy Littlefield is the abortion access correspondent at The Nation. Her new book is Killers of Roe: My Investigation into the Mysterious Death of Abortion Rights. She is based in Boston.References:•       Killers of Roe by Amy Littlefield — the book under discussion.•       The Hyde Amendment (1976) — the ban on federal funding of abortion that first stripped access from poor women on Medicaid.•       The Helms Amendment — Jesse Helms’ restriction on abortion funding abroad through USAID, leading to thousands of preventable deaths worldwide.•       Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) — the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.•       Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie — the structural model for Littlefield’s conclusion: they all did it.About Keen On AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:

“It’s about blood. I cover a lot of bloodshed in the book, but I also talk about a different kind of blood: blood that ties, blood that binds families across time and distance.” — Jazmine UlloaKristi Noem is gone. Under her tenure, 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025 — double the previous year’s toll. But Jazmine Ulloa, the New York Times’ national immigration reporter, doesn’t think much will change. Noem wasn’t really the point, she insists. The MAGA spectacle rolls on. Stephen Miller’s violently anti-immigrant agenda remains. And hysterical conservatives like Peter Schweizer are still writing books about how the Mexican government is “weaponizing” immigration by sending their people over the border.Ulloa grew up three minutes from the Walmart where a self-proclaimed white supremacist drove nine hours from North Texas in August 2019, opened fire, and told an officer he was there to kill Mexicans. Her closest friend’s father escaped the parking lot as the shooting started. And it inspired her to write El Paso: Five Families and 100 Years of Blood, Migration, Race, and Memory — a chronicle of El Paso as the 21st century Ellis Island.Her argument, made through five families over a century, is that El Paso is not an exception to America. It is America. Latino identity has always been American identity. The Southwest sat on Mexican land before it was American. The border was never a clean line — it was always a contested negotiation, shifting beneath the feet of families who crossed it for work, for survival, for birthday parties in Juárez. The “detention and deportation machine,” she is careful to note, was built by both parties over many decades. Trump didn’t invent it. He simply applied his scattershot cruelty to it.What does feel new, Ulloa says, is how El Paso has become every American city — the same tactics long deployed at the border now rolling into Minneapolis and Chicago, snagging US citizens on the basis of how they look or how they speak. Some think this represents uncharted civil liberties territory. Border communities have been sounding this alarm for years, Ulloa notes. Nobody listened. Perhaps they will now.Jazmine Ulloa’s El Paso is also, quietly, a love letter — to the city, to its 80% Hispanic population, to the corrido tradition, to a place where magical realism is not a literary device but a way of life. Ulloa wanted the prose to sound like your tío telling stories over coffee. “Borders or bridges?” is the question El Paso has always been answering for generations. Now America is asking the same question. Five Takeaways•       The Machine Predates Trump: The deportation and detention apparatus dominating today’s headlines was constructed under both Democratic and Republican administrations across many decades — a bipartisan inheritance that Trump has amplified but did not originate.•       Noem’s Exit Changes Nothing: Relief crossed party lines when she was fired, but Ulloa is clear-eyed: Stephen Miller’s agenda remains intact, border crossings remain suppressed, and the same systemic challenges will persist under whoever takes over DHS.•       El Paso Is America’s Ellis Island — and Its Mirror: The city, 80% Hispanic and straddling two nations, has long been the place where immigration policy is made in the flesh. American identity has always been a negotiation — never a fixed truth, always contested terrain.•       Nativism Is Not an Aberration: From the Chinese Exclusion Acts to the KKK-backed Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, fear of the outsider has been a structural feature of US immigration policy — not a deviation from American values, but an uncomfortable expression of them.•       The Border Is Moving Inward: What was once contained to border communities — racial profiling, mass sweeps, civil liberties erosions — is now spreading into the American heartland. What Ulloa sees as genuinely new is the response: ordinary citizens coming out in their pajamas to document it. About the GuestJazmine Ulloa is the national immigration reporter for the New York Times. She is a former State House reporter for the Los Angeles Times and previously covered national politics for the Boston Globe. Her new book is El Paso: Five Families and 100 Years of Blood, Migration, Race, and Memory (Dutton/Penguin Random House, 2026). Born and raised in El Paso, she lives there now.References:•       El Paso: Five Families and 100 Years of Blood, Migration, Race, and Memory by Jazmine Ulloa (Dutton/Penguin Random House, 2026).•       Episode 2830: So Are All Immigrants Manchurian Candidates? Peter Schweizer on Weaponizing Immigration — Schweizer’s conspiracy-inflected reading directly challenged by Ulloa.•       The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 — the Coolidge-era immigration law, backed by the KKK, that used national-origin quotas to bar Southern and Eastern European and Asian immigration.•       The El Paso Walmart massacre, August 3, 2019 — 23 people killed by a white supremacist who posted a manifesto echoing the “Great Replacement” theory.•       One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez — the magical-realist tradition Ulloa draws on.About Keen On AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:

“This is not the beginning of a new right-wing revanche fascist era; this is the end of something. But the problem is we can’t get to the new world because the new world is too filled with problems.” — Jonathan TaplinTrump fantasizes about himself as a king. But he’s actually just an interregnum, at least according to Jon Taplin — author of Move Fast and Break Things, Hollywood insider, and old friend. In a “terrifying” new piece in Rolling Stone, Taplin draws an unusual historical parallel: Trump as Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell cut off the king’s head, slaughtered Catholics in Ireland (his Lebanon), tried to install his son as successor, and ended up with his head on a pike outside Parliament. MAGA is not the future, Taplin suggests. It’s the Gramsci-style death rattle of something that was already dying.The real question is what’s being born. Jon Taplin calls it the digital military-industrial complex — managed by Thiel, Musk, Andreessen, and a “real piece of work” drone entrepreneur unluckily named Palmer Luckey. In the Fifties, Eisenhower warned America about the dangers of a military industrial complex made up of 40 or 50 defense contractors. Now there are five, and — in Thielian Zero to One fashion — Silicon Valley wants to shrink them down to a techno-oligarchy.Today’s Iranian war, Taplin says, is the sneak preview of this. In Iran, AI is now, so to speak, calling the ethical shots. Palantir’s targeting system used old intelligence and identified a former military base. Thus the 175 dead children in a school next to a munitions factory. AI is only as good or evil as the information you feed it. Move fast and break things, Taplin appropriated Zuckerberg’s dictum to describe Silicon Valley’s impact on America. But Zuckerberg was only referring to domestic things — technology, society, democracy. Now it’s the world.But there may be hope. Anthropic is resisting the administration. The midterms are coming. Republican unity is cracking. But there’s also Taplin’s Taco Tuesday (TTT) — “Trump Always Chickens Out” — especially, for some reason, on a Tuesday. Taplin predicts Trump will declare victory in Iran and withdraw. The alternative — invoking the Insurrection Act to cancel the midterms — would have sounded insane a year ago. But, of course, nothing sounds insane in our interregnum times. Cromwell’s head ended up on a pike. Jon Taplin’s Hollywood cronies are, no doubt, licking their lips in anticipation of history repeating itself. First as tragedy, then as farce. Five Takeaways•       Trump Is Cromwell, Not the Future: Taplin argues this is not the beginning of a permanent MAGA era but the end of something—an interregnum in Gramsci’s sense. Cromwell ruled for eight years, tried to install his son, and ended up with his corpse dug up and his head on a pike. The old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum, many morbid symptoms appear.•       The Digital Military-Industrial Complex Is More Dangerous Than Eisenhower’s: Eisenhower warned about 40 or 50 defense contractors. Now there are five. Silicon Valley—Thiel, Musk, Andreessen, Luckey—wants to replace them. The US spends more on defense than the next ten countries combined. 59% of discretionary spending goes to the Pentagon. That money doesn’t build bridges or fund colleges.•       AI Targeted a School and Killed 175 Children: AI is selecting targets in Iran. The system—Palantir’s—used old intelligence and identified a former military base that had been a school for eight years. The children are dead. AI is only as good or evil as the information you feed it.•       Altman Threw Amodei Under the Bus: Sam Altman publicly supported Anthropic’s position on surveillance and autonomous weapons on a Tuesday. By Friday he’d signed a deal with the Department of War. Classic Sam. Meanwhile the administration is trying to kill Anthropic by barring any government contractor from using Claude—a potential death sentence for a company built on enterprise clients.•       Taco Tuesday: Trump Always Chickens Out: Taplin predicts Trump will declare victory and withdraw—“Taco Tuesday,” where TACO stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” The midterms are coming. Either the Democrats run the table, or Trump invokes the Insurrection Act to avoid electoral defeat. Nothing is insane with this president. About the GuestJonathan Taplin is Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and the author of Move Fast and Break Things, The Magic Years, and The End of Reality. He was tour manager for Bob Dylan and The Band and produced Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets and The Band’s The Last Waltz. He lives in Los Angeles.ReferencesReferences:•       Jonathan Taplin, “The Terrifying New Era of American Imperialism” — Rolling Stone•       Move Fast and Break Things by Jonathan Taplin•       The End of Reality by Jonathan Taplin•       Eisenhower’s farewell address (1961) and the original military-industrial complex warning•       Antonio Gramsci: “The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum many morbid symptoms appear”•       The Last Supper (1993)—the Clinton-era consolidation of defense contractors from 25 to 5About Keen On AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: Move fast and break the world ...

“Fidel Castro told his aides, ‘We’re going to fill his arms with shit.’ That is an example of weaponised migration. What we’re experiencing now is on a thermonuclear scale.” — Peter SchweizerIs best selling writer Peter Schweizer a conspiracy theorist? He doesn’t think so. His new book, The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon, argues that Mexico, China, and the Muslim Brotherhood are using mass migration as a strategic tool to undermine the United States. Not in a coordinated conspiracy—but as a confluence of interests, what he calls a “Venn diagram” of enemies who overlap on one point: transforming America through its borders.Rather than an axis of evil, then, we have a Venn diagram of foreign governments filling America with shitty immigrants. The world according to Peter Schweizer.Some of the claims are more credible than others. Mexico operates 53 consulates in the US—the UK has six. A dozen senior Mexican officials live full-time in the United States while serving in Mexico’s parliament, and one of them crossed the country in 2025 to, in his own words, “organise the militancy” against the Trump administration. Chinese birth tourism, encouraged by the CCP, has produced an estimated million children born on US soil who are growing up in China—future voters, donors, and government employees. Hong Kong banned the practice in 2013, calling it subversion. And look at Hong Kong’s predicament now.Other claims are harder to take seriously. The idea that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is a revanchist who wants to seize back California strikes me as Latin American magical realism—though Schweizer quotes Mexican officials saying exactly that. And the “Muslim Brotherhood” (whatever that is), which isn’t in power anywhere, is no more of a threat to the United States than the Ottoman Empire. I pushed him on whether all immigrants are Manchurian candidates. He says no—but Schweizer’s Invisible Coup could easily be confused with silly script for a paranoid Hollywood fantasy.There is, of course, a bit of an irony here. Schweizer’s own parents were immigrants—his father Swiss, his mother Swedish. He grew up outside Seattle. His mother warned him, as a young man, about the terrible dangers of Swedish socialism. He favours “some legal immigration”—and sounds almost surprised at his liberal self for saying so. The American dream, he insists, is not dead. It’s just being exploited by foreign powers who see America’s open borders as a strategic vulnerability. Castro’s Mariel boatlift is the model that Claudia Sheinbaum and the Moslem Brotherhood are trying to emulate. Pass the popcorn. Five Takeaways•       Immigration Has Been Weaponised: Schweizer argues that Mexico, China, and the Muslim Brotherhood are using mass migration as a strategic tool to undermine the United States. Not in a single conspiracy—but as a confluence of interests, a Venn diagram of enemies who overlap on one point: transforming America through its borders.•       Mexico Has 53 Consulates in the US. The UK Has Six: Schweizer’s most striking claim: a dozen senior Mexican officials now live full-time in the US, serving in Mexico’s parliament, organising what one of them calls “the militancy” against the Trump administration. Mexican consulates have met with Democratic activists to discuss how to flip states from red to blue.•       A Million US Citizens Are Being Raised in China: Chinese birth tourism, encouraged by the CCP, has produced an estimated million children born on US soil who are growing up in China. When they turn 18, they can vote, donate to candidates, and take government jobs. Hong Kong banned the practice in 2013, calling it subversion.•       The Son of Immigrants Who Fears Immigration: Schweizer’s own parents were immigrants—his father Swiss, his mother Swedish. He grew up outside Seattle. His mother warned him about Swedish socialism. He favours “some legal immigration” but wants the weaponised networks dismantled first. The irony is not lost.•       The American Dream Is Not Dead—It’s Being Exploited: Schweizer insists he’s not arguing against immigration itself. The dream survives, he says, but it’s being exploited by foreign powers who see America’s open borders as a strategic vulnerability. Castro’s Mariel boatlift was the template. What’s happening now, he says, is the same thing on a thermonuclear scale. About the GuestPeter Schweizer is president of the Government Accountability Institute and a former fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Coup, Red-Handed, Blood Money, and Clinton Cash. He received his M.Phil. from Oxford University. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida.ReferencesBooks and references:•       Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win by Peter Schweizer•       Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans by Peter Schweizer•       The Mariel boatlift of 1980—Fidel Castro’s template for weaponised immigration•       The Manchurian Candidate — referenced in the conversation•       China’s National Intelligence Law (2017)—requiring any Chinese national to perform intelligence duties when askedAbout Keen On AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: Is Peter Schweizer a conspiracy theorist? (02:37) - The cover: Sheinbaum, Xi, AOC, Obama, Biden (04:57) - Good immigrants and bad immigrants (05:51) - The Mariel boatlift as template: Castro’s “fill his arms with shit” (08:24...

“I have always said that they are the same person. And the drama of this story is that one ends up dead in the darkest prison in America, and the other in the White House.” — Michael WolffA few days ago we had Jason Pack on the show suggesting that the Anglo-American media elite had a degree of complicity in the Epstein scandal. Michael Wolff disagrees. The media weren’t complicit, he says. They were just dumb. They found the story unseemly, were uncomfortable with it, and avoided it out of disdain—not conspiracy. David Remnick of The New Yorker was “dismissive of the whole thing.” The word Wolff keeps coming back to is “ick.”Wolff knew Epstein. He recorded an estimated hundred hours of interviews with him. He has tried repeatedly to sell an Epstein book. Every publisher passed—the last time as recently as autumn 2025. One cited “the ick factor.” Others feared a Trump lawsuit. The man who made fortunes for publishers with Fire and Fury couldn’t get a deal on the story he knows best. If you want the closest thing to a firsthand account, Wolff says, read “The Last Days of Jeffrey Epstein” in his collection Too Famous. He’s probably right.What emerges from the conversation is a portrait of Epstein as a middleman in a city of middlemen—but one who was genuinely interested in the people he connected, which is rare in that world. His sexual depravity was at war with his ambition to be respectable. The blackmail theory? “Certainly not true,” Wolff says. People came because they liked being there. He was their friend. And then there’s Trump. Wolff’s most explosive claim is that they are the same person—the closest relationship both men had in life was with each other. The drama is that one ends up dead in the darkest prison in America and the other in the White House. It’s Gatsby without the romance. And that’s what makes them both so vile.As for the Trump show, Wolff has given up predicting its end. It doesn’t end until Trump dies. He is sui generis—nobody will replace him. He doesn’t understand legacy, doesn’t care about it, and when it’s no longer about him, could give a fuck. We’ll be trying to figure out how this happened for the next hundred years. Five Takeaways•       The Media Didn’t Conspire—They Were Just Dumb: Wolff dismisses the idea that the Anglo-American media elite knew more about Epstein than they were letting on. They didn’t know anything, he says. They found the story unseemly, were uncomfortable with it, and avoided it out of disdain—not conspiracy. David Remnick of The New Yorker was “dismissive of the whole thing.”•       No Publisher Would Touch the Epstein Book: Wolff has tried repeatedly to sell an Epstein book. Every publisher passed. One cited “the ick factor.” Others feared a Trump lawsuit. The last attempt was autumn 2025. The man who made fortunes publishing Fire and Fury couldn’t get a deal on the story he knows best. The publishing industry’s failure of nerve, Wolff says, is total.•       Trump and Epstein Are the Same Person: Wolff’s most explosive claim: Trump and Epstein are the same person. The closest relationship both men had in life was with each other. The drama of the story is that one ends up dead in the darkest prison in America and the other in the White House. Gatsby without the romance.•       Epstein Was a Middleman in a City of Middlemen: What made Epstein different wasn’t the blackmail—Wolff says that’s “certainly not true.” People came because they liked being there. Epstein was genuinely interested in the people he connected, which is rare among New York’s professional middlemen. His sexual depravity was at war with his ambition to be respectable.•       The Trump Show Doesn’t End Until He Dies: Wolff has been predicting the end of Trump for years. He now concedes it probably doesn’t end until Trump departs “this veil of tears.” Trump is sui generis—no one will replace him. He doesn’t care about legacy. He doesn’t even understand the concept. When it’s no longer about him, he could give a fuck. About the GuestMichael Wolff is a two-time National Magazine Award winner and the author of Fire and Fury, Siege, Landslide, All or Nothing, and Too Famous. He has been a columnist for Vanity Fair, New York, the Hollywood Reporter, and the Guardian. He lives in Manhattan.ReferencesBooks and references:•       Too Famous: The Rich, the Powerful, the Wishful, the Notorious, the Damned by Michael Wolff — contains “The Last Days of Jeffrey Epstein”•       Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff•       Previous Keen On episode: Jason Pack on the Epstein files and media complicity•       The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald — referenced throughout as the model for Epstein, “but without the romance”About Keen On AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:41) - Introduction: The media elite and Epstein (02:16) - The media didn’t conspire—they were just dumb (04:18) - Wolff knew Epstein: why the story fascinated him (05:15) - No publisher would touch the book—“the ick factor” (08:21) - The Trump problem: fear of being sued (08:34) - What’s the story? A middleman in a city of middlemen (10:01) - What Epstein was actually like (12:00) - “The Last Days of Jeffrey Epstein”: the best thing written about him (15:40) - Epstein as one of the elites—or the man who fed off them (16:29) - Trump and Epstein: the same person (17:49) - Gatsby without the romance (20:53) - The publishing industry’s f...

“The fatal error is ours. Legislators set out a regulatory regime that keeps regulation at bay. The only other industry with a similar protection is the gun industry.” — Olivier SylvainThere are certain words in book titles that provoke. “Reclaiming”, for example. My guest today is happy to defend the provocation. Fordham law professor and former FTC senior advisor Olivier Sylvain argues in his new book, Reclaiming the Internet, that the internet was never really ours to begin with—and that the story about user control, free speech, and digital democratisation was always more nostalgia than reality.But Sylvain’s argument in Reclaiming the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control—and How We Can Take It Back is not the usual big-tech-is-bad narrative (yawn). He doesn’t blame the companies. He blames us—or rather, Congress. The fatal error, he says, was Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, which created a blanket immunity from liability for companies trafficking in user-generated content. The only other industry with comparable legal protection, he says, is the gun industry. That immunity enabled the attention economy’s business model. Infinite scrolling = infinite advertising = infinite profit.What follows from that error is now everywhere: autoplay, algorithmic recommendation—design features engineered to hold your attention, not to facilitate free speech. Sylvain insists these companies aren’t really platforms. They are, instead, services delivering content pursuant to their bottom line. And now the same Nineties playbook—innovation, user control, free speech—is being replayed with AI. Companies are deploying chatbots before they’re ready, racing each other to market. A young man killed himself after a Gemini chatbot told him to and Google invoked the First Amendment in its defence.The fix, Sylvain argues, is not to abolish Section 230 but to attend to the business model itself: data minimisation, purpose limitations, and the kind of product-safety regulation that every other industry—from automobiles to toys to food—already accepts. I should disclose that my wife runs litigation at Google, so I’m all too familiar with the counter argument. But Sylvain makes a persuasive case even if his reclamation project is still a little too Rousseauean for my Hobbesian taste. Five Takeaways•       The Fatal Error Was Ours, Not Theirs: Sylvain doesn’t blame big tech. He blames us—or rather, Congress. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act created a blanket immunity from liability for user-generated content. The only other industry with comparable protection is the gun industry. That legal shield became the business model.•       These Are Not Platforms: The word “platform” implies a neutral conduit connecting users. Sylvain says that’s wrong. These are companies engineering your experience—infinite scroll, autoplay, algorithmic recommendation—to hold your attention and serve their bottom line. The free speech story is cover for a commercial design.•       The Same Mistake Is Happening with AI: The nineties playbook—innovation, user control, free speech—is being replayed with AI. Companies are deploying chatbots before they’re ready, racing each other to market. Internal documents show they knew the dangers. A young man committed suicide after Gemini told him to. Google invoked the First Amendment in its defence.•       Data Protection Is the Real Fix: Sylvain argues for data minimisation and purpose limitations—rules that would only allow companies to collect information consistent with the purposes a consumer signed up for. Not to monetise it for opaque reasons. That would dampen the incentive to engineer addiction without touching free speech.•       There’s a Bipartisan Consensus—but Only for Children: Something is shifting. Courts are rejecting Section 230 defences. Legislators on both sides agree something must be done. But the consensus only extends to protecting children. Sylvain thinks that’s a mistake: a 36-year-old man just killed himself after talking to a chatbot. Adults are vulnerable too. About the GuestOlivier Sylvain is a professor of law at Fordham University, a former senior advisor to the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and a Senior Policy Research Fellow at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute. His new book is Reclaiming the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control—and How We Can Take It Back (Columbia Global Reports).ReferencesReferences and previous Keen On episodes:•       Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (1996) and its evolution into blanket immunity for tech companies•       Gonzales v. Google (2023)—the Supreme Court case that declined to rule on Section 230 but allowed the merits to proceed•       The Character AI / Gemini chatbot suicide cases—ongoing litigation against Google•       Tim Wu on the extractive economics of platform capitalism — previous Keen On episode•       Julia Angwin, Zephyr Teachout, and Stewart Brand—referenced in the conversationAbout Keen On AmericaNobody 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.WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:(00:00) - Introduction: What does “reclaiming” the Internet mean? (03:06) - The layered stack: pipes, platforms, and consumer-facing apps (06:01) - Was user control ever real? The ideology of the nineties (09:32) - The fatal error: Section 230 and blanket immunity (14:51) - Facebook as punching bag—and why Sylvain doesn’t blame the companies (17:31) - Addiction, self-harm, and the design features that hold your attention (22:00) - The attention economy and the Gonzales v. Google case (26:35) - How we can take it back: data minimization and purpose limitations (29:02) - “These are not platforms” (31:21) - Europe, the First Amendment, and the right to be forgotten (33:06) - AI business ...