We don’t often image Miami as a city of Cold War subterfuge akin to Berlin or Vienna. But according to Vince Houghton, co-author of COVERT CITY, Miami was as crucial to winning the Cold War as Washington DC or Moscow. The Cuban Missile Crisis was perhaps the most dramatic and dangerous period of the Cold War, he argues. What's less well known is that the city of Miami, mere miles away, was a pivotal, though less well known, part of Cold War history. On reflection, it make sense. With its population of Communist exiles from Cuba, its strategic value for military operations, and its lax business laws, the DC based Houghton explains, Miami has emerged as America’s most fertile city for espionage over the last half century.

Dr. Vince Houghton is the former Historian and Curator of the International Spy Museum. As the museum’s subject matter expert, he was a key member of the team that created and developed the content, exhibits, and design of the new museum. Vince has a PhD in Intelligence History, and is the author of two books – Nuking the Moon: and Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board and The Nuclear Spies: America's Atomic Intelligence Operation Against Hitler and Stalin. Dr. Houghton is currently the Director of the National Cryptologic Museum in Ft. Meade, MD.

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

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We’ve done several shows on the housing crisis in America, mostly from a progressive perspective in which the solution to the shortage of homes is presented in terms of government investment. The libertarian economist, Bryan Caplan, however, comes at the problem from a more conservative angle. The co-author of the new graphic novel, BUILD, BABY, BUILD, Caplan argues that the housing industry needs to be radically deregularized. This right-wing libertarian approach to the science and ethics of housing in America certainly makes sense in cities like San Francisco, with its massively inflated real-estate values, absence of affordable new homes, and huge homelessness problem.

Bryan Caplan is Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a New York Times Bestselling author. He has written The Myth of the Rational Voter, named "the best political book of the year" by the New York Times, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, The Case Against Education, Open Borders (co-authored with SMBC's Zach Weinersmith), Labor Econ Versus the World, How Evil Are Politicians?, Don't Be a Feminist, Voters As Mad Scientists, and You Will Not Stampede Me. His latest book, Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing, is published by the Cato Institute. He is the editor and chief writer for Bet On It, the blog hosted by the Salem Center for Policy at the University of Texas. He has published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, TIME, Newsweek, Atlantic, American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of Law and Economics, and Intelligence, blogged for EconLog from 2005-2022, and appeared on ABC, BBC, Fox News, MSNBC, and C-SPAN. An openly nerdy man who loves role-playing games and graphic novels, Caplan live in Oakton, Virginia, with his wife and four kids.

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

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One of Bethanne Patrick’s recommended books for April was Mohamed Amer Meziane’s The States of the Earth. It sounded intriguing, if not entirely coherent, and so I invited Meziane on the show. Even now, I’m not sure I exactly get Meziane’s point. He seems to be saying that secularization is not only behind western racial colonialism but also the destruction of the land. It’s a provocative thesis, nonetheless, and Meziane, who teaches at Brown University, makes it with a flourish of rich historical anecdotes.

Mohamed Amer Meziane is a philosopher, performer and professor at Brown University after teaching for 4 years at Columbia University. He is the author of The States of the Earth: An Ecological and Racial History of Secularization which won the Albertine Prize for non-fiction in 2023. His second book is titled: At the Edge of the Worlds: Towards a Metaphysical Anthropology.

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

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In today’s stultified American gerontocracy, not everyone is convinced that we should care about old people. After all, aging baby boomers still control most of the wealth and power in an increasingly divided & inegalitarian country. But, in contrast with many of today’s age warriors, Andrew J Scott cares about the old. In fact, the 58 year-old British business school academic has built a career on fetishizing long life. His latest book is entitled The Longevity Imperative in which he explains how to build a better society for healthier, longer lives. It all sounds very reasonable, although I suspect that age will come to replace social class as the driver of political conflict in the 21st century.

Andrew J. Scott is the world’s leading expert on the economics of longevity and on ensuring that our lives aren’t just longer but also happier, healthier and more productive. An award winning researcher, speaker, author and teacher he is a co-founder of The Longevity Forum, co-author of the global bestseller, “The 100 Year Life,” and a professor of economics at London Business School, Scott’s research focuses on the implications of longevity and his advisory work on helping individuals, non-profits, corporations, and governments to seize the benefits of a longer-living society.

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

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

Samyr Laine might be a model for how to become a Haitian-American in the 21st century. Son of Haitian emigrants, Laine was a roommate of Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard, competed at the London 2012 Olympics as a Haitian triple jumper, and is now an entrepreneur and investor in sports and entertainment. It’s quite a remarkable story and will speaks, to some, of the continued existence of the American Dream. Although Laine himself might question this optimistic interpretation of his narrative, suggesting to me that discrimination against immigrants, particularly those of black or brown skins, remains a troublingly central feature of 21st century American life.

Samyr Laine is an investor, Olympian, and operator with a background in sports & entertainment. He is currently GP of Freedom Trail Capital, SVP of The Creator Project at Raptive, former SVP of Operations & Strategy at Westbrook, and former Senior Director of Operations at Roc Nation. Prior to working on celebrity ventures for Will & Jada Pinkett Smith and Roc Nation, Samyr worked in the sports industry at Major League Soccer and Monumental Sports & Entertainment. He also competed in the London 2012 Summer Olympics in the triple jump representing Haiti after getting degrees from Georgetown Law & Harvard University.

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

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

Given the industry of Holocaust remembering, do we really need another book about the Nazis and their industrial death camps? Yes, according to Tobias Buck, author of the much acclaimed A Final Verdict: the Holocaust on Trial in the 21st Century. As the half-German managing editor of the Financial Times, Buck brings a subtlety to the discussion of the Holocaust which is sometimes missing from other commentators. The problem with many Holocaust books is that they routinize this singular historical event into a Hollywood scale horror show. Buck’s A Final Verdict doesn’t do this. Nor, I hope, did our discussion.

Tobias Buck is the Managing Editor of the Financial Times. Born in Germany, he studied law in Berlin before joining the FT as a graduate trainee in 2002. He went on to serve as the FT‘s correspondent in Brussels, Jerusalem, Madrid and Berlin. His first book, After the Fall: Crisis, Recovery and the Making of a New Spain, was published in 2019.

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

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The Harvard academic Elisa New is host of the much acclaimed PBS series POETRY IN AMERICA. Now in Season Four, the show has featured conversations about American poetry with Joe Biden, Herbie Hancock, Gloria Estefan, Shaquille O’Neal, Bill Clinton and Al Gore. While America isn’t normally considered a poetic nation, New’s show has brought poetry into the homes of millions of Americans. So when I caught up with New, I asked her whether there was such a thing as an American poem and what it is about America that inspires memorable poetry.

Elisa New is the Director and Host of Poetry in America, director of the Center for Public Humanities at Arizona State University, director of Verse Video Education, and Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature at Harvard University. New created Poetry in America, a PBS series, to bring poetry beyond classrooms into living rooms and onto screens of all kinds. The show can be seen on public television and streaming platforms, in schools and libraries, and on airlines. Guests include Joe Biden, Herbie Hancock, Gloria Estefan, Shaquille O’Neal, Elena Kagan, Nas, John McCain, Sonia Sanchez, Tony Kushner, Bill Clinton, Julia Alvarez, Bono, Cynthia Nixon, John Kerry, LisaGay Hamilton, Caroline Kennedy, Bill T. Jones, Katie Couric, and Al Gore and dozens of others. Alongside the PBS series, New produces educational materials on American poetry for all ages—from middle- and high-school students, to K-12 teachers, to lifelong learners—distributed by Harvard University, Amplify Education, and Arizona State University.  In her capacity as Director of the newly established Center for the Public Humanities at ASU, New will partner with ASU faculty and with partners from an array of other institutions to create relevant, engaging interdisciplinary content that extends beyond poetry: content that will broaden access to the highest quality learning experiences in the Humanities and adjacent fields. New is the author of The Regenerate Lyric: Theology and Innovation in American Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 1992); The Line’s Eye: Poetic Experience, American Sight (Harvard University Press, 1999); Jacob’s Cane: A Jewish Family’s Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the Ports of London and Baltimore: A Memoir in Five Generations (Basic Books, 2009); and New England Beyond Criticism: In Defense of America’s First Literature, A Wiley Blackwell Manifesto (Wiley Blackwell 2014).

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

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

In November of this year, two particularly out of touch eighty-year old men will contest the US Presidential election. America, in other words, has an age problem. According to David Faris, author of THE KIDS ARE ALL LEFT, the country might be on the brink of a generational war between young and old. But there’s nothing apocalyptic about this imminent conflict, Faris believes. The majority of American kids, he argues, are politically on the left and their progressive activism will unite rather than divide the country. So the American future, Faris predicts, will be a civil peace rather than war. I hope he’s right.

David Faris is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Roosevelt University in downtown Chicago, where he focuses on American political institutions, foreign policy, Middle East politics, and democracy. He is the author of "It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics" (Melville House Publishing, 2018) and "The Kids Are All Left: How Young Voters Will Unite America" (Melville House Publishing, 2020) as well as a contributing writer at Newsweek, Slate and The Week. His work has also appeared in The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, The New Republic, Washington Monthly, The Huffington Post, Heatmap News, Informed Comment, The Daily Beast, U.S. News and World Report, USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Sun-Times and more.

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

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As founding director of Cornell University's Carl Sagan Institute and author of the new ALIEN EARTHS: Planet Hunting in the Cosmos, Lisa Kaltenegger is one of the world’s most respected cosmologists. She believes that, with our revolutionary new cosmological technologies, we are likely to “discover” non-human life somewhere in the cosmos. What’s particularly astonishing about these kinds of conversations is how they no longer astonish us. Fifty years ago, the idea of discovering non-human life somewhere in the Universe was science fiction; today, it’s become the mainstream scientific assumption of leading cosmologists like Kaltenegger and the Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb. The issue is not if we’ll find these life-forms, Kaltenegger and Loeb are saying, but when. Astonishing.

Lisa Kaltenegger is the Director of the Carl Sagan Institute to Search for Life in the Cosmos at Cornell and Associate Professor in Astronomy. She is a pioneer and world-leading expert in modeling potential habitable worlds and their detectable spectral fingerprint. Kaltenegger serves on the National Science Foundation's Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC), and on NASA senior review of operating missions. She is a Science Team Member of NASA's TESS Mission as well as the NIRISS instrument on James Webb Space Telescope. Kaltenegger was named one of America’s Young Innovators by Smithsonian Magazine, an Innovator to Watch by TIME Magazine. She appears in the IMAX 3D movie "The Search for Life in Space" and speaks frequently, including at Aspen Ideas Festival, TED Youth, World Science Festival and the Kavli Foundation lecture at the Adler Planetarium which was live-streamed to six continents. Discover more about Kaltenegger's work on her wesite https://www.lisakaltenegger.com/

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

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

In a “post-truth” world, who should we trust? According to Alex Edmans, one of the UK’s hottest business school professors, you should trust him enough to read his new book, May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics and Studies Exploit Our Biases - And What We Can Do About It. You should also trust me enough to listen to and/or watch this conversation with Edmans, but not enough to believe everything that I say. For example, describing Alex as one of the UK’s “hottest” business school professors could be an exaggeration. It might even be a lie.

Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School.  Alex graduated from Oxford University and then worked for Morgan Stanley in investment banking (London) and fixed income sales and trading (New York).  After a PhD in Finance from MIT Sloan as a Fulbright Scholar, he joined Wharton in 2007 and was tenured in 2013 shortly before moving to LBS. Alex’s research interests are in corporate finance, responsible business and behavioural finance.  He is a Director of the American Finance Association, Vice President-Elect of the Western Finance Association, Fellow, Director, and Chair of the Ethics Committee of the Financial Management Association, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. From 2017-2022 he was Managing Editor of the Review of Finance, the leading academic finance journal in Europe.  Alex has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, testified in the UK Parliament, presented to the World Bank Board of Directors as part of the Distinguished Speaker Series, and given the TED talk What to Trust in a Post-Truth World and the TEDx talks The Pie-Growing Mindset and The Social Responsibility of Business with a combined 2.8 million views. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Harvard Business Review and World Economic Forum and been interviewed by Bloomberg, BBC, CNBC, CNN, ESPN, Fox, ITV, NPR, Reuters, Sky News, and Sky Sports.  Alex serves as a Non-Executive Director of The Investor Forum, on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Responsible Investing, on Royal London Asset Management’s Responsible Investment Advisory Committee, and on Novo Nordisk’s Sustainability Advisory Council. The UK government appointed him (jointly with PwC) to study the alleged misuse of share buybacks and the link between executive pay and investment. Alex previously served as Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Business at Gresham College, giving a four-year programme of lectures to the public. His series were on The Principles of Finance (2021/2), The Psychology of Finance (2020/1), Business Skills for the 21st Century (2019/20) and How Business Can Better Serve Society (2018/9). Alex’s book, Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit, was featured in the Financial Times Best Business Books of 2020 and won the Financial Times award for Excellence in Sustainable Finance Education; it has been or is being translated into Arabic, Chinese, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Turkish. He is a co-author of the 14th edition of Principles of Corporate Finance (with Brealey, Myers, and Allen). His latest book, May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do About It, will be published by Penguin Random House in 2024. Alex was named Professor of the Year by Poets & Quants in 2021. He has won 25 teaching awards at Wharton and LBS, won the Finance for the Future award for Driving Change in the finance community, and featured in Thinkers50 Radar.

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

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

Museums, the distinguished anthropologist Adam Kuper argues in his new book Museums of Other People, are actually mirrors of ourselves. Rather than revealing curiosities about cultures of antiquity, they are actually living documents of power - particularly western, colonial power. Does this mean we affluent westerners should all feel horribly guilty ever time we go to the British Museum or the Peabody? Perhaps. But Kuper brings these old museums back to life by reminding us of their contemporary political significance. So maybe guilt isn’t such a bad thing, if it makes us think a little more deeply about how and why we value other people’s culture.

Professor Adam Kuper (FBA) is an anthropologist and public intellectual. Most recently a Centennial Professor in this department and a Visiting Professor at Boston University, and a recipient of the Huxley Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, he has authored or edited 19 books and published over 100 journal articles focusing on anthropological theory, the history of anthropology in the US and Britain, and southern African societies and cultures. He has made numerous appearances on BBC TV and radio, and reviewed regularly for the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Wall Street Journal. His new book, The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions, Profile Books, was launched in America in April 2024.

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

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