Keen On

Few artificial intelligence experts have been as outspoken or prescient as the author and entrepreneur Gary Marcus. In his new book, Taming Silicon Valley, Marcus takes on the new AI barons of Silicon Valley - billionaires like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman who are building an AI future that works for them rather than for the rest of us. In technology, Marcus argues, human agency is all important. So Marcus’ new polemic seizes back the mantle from these Silicon Valley barons on its insistence that AI must work for us.GARY MARCUS is a leading voice in artificial intelligence. He is a scientist, best-selling author, and serial entrepreneur (Founder of Robust.AI and Geometric.AI, acquired by Uber). He is well-known for his challenges to contemporary AI, anticipating many of the current limitations decades in advance, and for his research in human language development and cognitive neuroscience. An Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at NYU, he is the author of six books, including, The Algebraic Mind, Kl

As Donald Trump’s 79 year-old Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross was the oldest first-time Cabinet appointee in American history. Ross’ mom, however - Agnes, a lifelong New Jersey schoolteacher and proud Democrat - probably wouldn’t have been proud of her boy. As he acknowledges in his new memoir, Risks and Returns, Agnes always wanted her son to attend law school and was far from thrilled when Wilbur, then known on Wall Street as the “King of Bankruptcy,” became associated with Trump over one of his notorious bankruptcies. But as Wilbur confessed to me, he’s still thinking, at the grand old age of 86, of making Agnes proud by going back to law school. Although, of course, that plan might be waylaid if Trump is, indeed, elected in November and invites the Wall Street financier back into his administration. Before being named President Trump’s secretary of commerce in 2017, Wilbur Ross had already earned a reputation as the “King of Bankruptcy” over his 55-year career on Wall Street. Often working on high-pr

At the debate last night, Kamala Harris opened her remarks by talking about the need for America to fix its housing crisis. And crisis it is, at least according to Jerusalem Demsas, a staff writer at The Atlantic who has written extensively on the increasing scarcity and rising cost of American housing. In her new collection of essays, On the Housing Crisis, Demsas suggests that the best way to confront this crisis is to aggressively construct new housing. Build Baby Build, in other words. And, for Demsas at least, the sooner the better.Jerusalem Demsas is a staff writer at The Atlantic where she is an established voice on the housing crisis and local democracy. Her writing spans issues from infrastructure, labor economics, and federalism to race, gender, mobility and the politics of exclusion. She was recognized for her work in 2023 by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) with the ASME Next Award for journalists under 30. Demsas is also a Visiting Fellow with the Center for Economy and Society at

At the debate tonight, there probably won’t be much talk about American education. Which is a shame - at least according to Josh Cowen, author of The Privateers, a new book about how radical conservative billionaires like Betsy De Vos have created a culture war to sell their idea of school vouchers. It’s all part of the right-wing Project 2025 vision, Cowen suggests, of collapsing the church-state boundaries and making American public schools mirror the country’s inequities and injustices. The alternative, Cowen suggests, is for Federal or State governments to fund these public schools more generously, thereby allowing all Americans to get a fair and decent education. Josh Cowen is a nationally recognized expert and writer on topics related to school choice, teachers and teaching, policy analysis, and education politics. He has studied school vouchers, school accountability, charter schools, and parental decision-making as part of major research teams in Louisiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. His writing on sch

The Serbian-American economist Branko Milanovic is one of the world’s leading authorities on inequality. In this KEEN ON America conversation, we talked about Milanovic’s interpretation of the history of American economic inequality - from slavery to contemporary capitalism. Why has America become so much unequal over the last fifty years, I asked. And today, in what Milanovic sees as a post neo-liberal age, how does he imagine the future of economic inequality?Branko Milanovic obtained his Ph.D. in economics (1987) from the University of Belgrade with a dissertation on income inequality in Yugoslavia. He served as lead economist in the World Bank’s Research Department for almost 20 years, leaving to write his book on global income inequality, Worlds Apart (2005). He was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington (2003-2005) and has held teaching appointments at the University of Maryland (2007-2013) and at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at

The Brooklyn based Rafil Kroll-Zaidi is a Princeton educated reporter formerly on the editorial staff of Harper's Magazine. And he is another kind of reporter too - a citizen- sleuth who makes six figures annually by reporting polluting trucks in New York City. Writing about this experience for New York magazine, Kroll argues that, in theory, at least, it’s a “win-win” for both himself and the environment. In practice, however, as he confesses, things aren’t quite as black and white when it comes to making a decent living as a reporter of idling trucks on the streets of New York City. Rafil Kroll-Zaidi is a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine and has been writing the journal’s popular Findings column, among other features, since 2007. Graham Roumieu is the author and illustrator of the celebrated Bigfoot “autobiographies” In Me Own Words, Me Write Book, and I Not Dead. His drawings appear in such publications as the Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, and the Walrus.Named as one of the "100

Last Saturday, on our regular That Was The Week tech roundup, Keith Teare and I discussed the French decision to imprison Telegram founder Pavel Durov. Today, we discuss the theoretical imprisonment of Elon Musk, an idea touted yesterday by Robert Reich in The Guardian. Elon Musk, according to Reich, is “out of control” and one way to “rein him in” is to “threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X”. Lock him up, in other words. For Keith Teare, this reflects the increasingly authoritarian nature of American progressives like Reich. Perhaps. But, as we discuss today, the social media mogul Musk is a different kind of beast from 20th century media owners. So reining him in probably requires different strategies from those that tried make moguls like Rupert Murdoch or William Randolph Hearst accountable for the lies and hate spewed by their newspapers and tv stations. Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelera

Last month we ran an interview with the Oregon based regenerative wine maker Mimi Casteel about fixing America one sip at a time. In addition, we recorded a KEEN ON America segment with Casteel about her life-long love affair with the American land. Filmed at her family’s beautiful Hope Well Winery, Casteel spoke with an infectious passion about the natural beauty of America. However you think about the current state of the United States, you’ll be inspired by Mimi Casteel’s faith in the regenerative quality of American nature and its land. Strongly recommended. Mimi Casteel is the daughter of Ted Casteel and Pat Dudley, co-founders of Bethel Heights Vineyard. Growing up working in the vineyard and winery, Mimi gained such an appreciation for the industry that she promptly left home after high school. Armed with a BA in History and Classics from Tulane University, Mimi spent the next year working in various National Forests across the west. Her adventures fueled her passion for studying botany, forestry, and

Andrew Leigh is a minister in the Australian parliament with a doctorate in economics from Harvard. Unlike many academic economists, however, Leigh has the gift of simplifying economics for all of us. His new book, How Economics Explains the World, presents economics as the prism to understand the human story. From the dawn of agriculture to AI, Leigh tells the story of how ingenuity, greed, and desire for betterment have, to an astonishing degree, determined humanity’s past, present, and future. Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, Treasury and Employment, and Federal Member for Fenner in the Australian Parliament. Prior to being elected in 2010, Andrew was a professor of economics at the Australian National University. He holds a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard, having graduated from the University of Sydney with first class honours in Arts and Law. Andrew is a past recipient of the Economic Society of Australia's Young Economist Award and a Fellow of the Australian Academy o

Formerly Le Monde’s guy in Jerusalem, Piotr Smolar is now the senior correspondent for Le Monde in Washington, DC. He is also the grandson of Hersh Smolar, one of the 20th century’s more remarkable men. As Smolar notes in Bad Jew, the astonishing story of his grandfather’s life from Stalin’s Russia & the Minsk Ghetto to Netanyahu’s Israel, there was, in fact, nothing particularly bad about Hersh Smolar. What was bad was history - the genocidal forces in Nazi Germany & the Soviet Union which Smolar fought against - both as an anti-fascist soldier and as a Polish communist. And then there’s the Jewish Question, also know today as the Israel Question, with which both Smolars are all-too-familiar. Indeed, Smolar’s important new book should probably have been entitled: Bad Jew Grandfathers & Bad Jew Grandsons. Piotr Smolar is a French journalist of Polish origin. He is the senior correspondent for Le Monde in Washington, DC. After working in Moscow from 1997 to 2001, he published a book in French on Ru

Exactly 85 years ago today, on 3 September 1939, the Second World War officially began with Britain’s declaration of war against Germany. Russians might argue, however, the real war began on 22 June 1941 with Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. While, for America, of course, the war began on December 7, 1941, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. World War Two was then, in a sense, three wars rolled into one featuring the alliance of Britain, the Soviet Union and America against the Axis. But this alliance, for the historian Giles Milton, was a short-term affair rather than a marriage which would inevitably disintegrate after the defeat of Nazi Germany. Indeed, in his interesting new book, The Stalin Affair, Milton describes it as an “impossible alliance” that might have “won” the war but would lose the peace and trigger the Cold War. GILES MILTON is the internationally best-selling author of twelve works of narrative history, including Nathaniel’s Nutmeg and Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfa

Controversial things are happening on the campus of the University of Austin (UATX), the brand new anti-woke university designed to “dare” its students to “think”. Last week, we interviewed UATX’s founding president, Pano Kanelos, who explained how he was trying to build what he called a 21st century “liberal university”. Today, in this KEEN ON America interview, we talk to Jacob Howland, UATX’s founding Provost, on what should be taught at this university. For some, of course, Howland’s focus on a 21st century anti-woke university education represents a new humanism; for others, it’s the last gasps of a reactionary 20th century intellectual elite. In either case, UATX is a provocative pedagogical experiment which we, at KEEN ON America, will be following as the new university opens its doors to students this month.JACOB HOWLAND is Provost, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Dean of Intellectual Foundations at the University of Austin. Previously he was McFarlin Professor of Philosophy Emeritus a

Bryan VanDyke’s new dystopian AI novel, In Our Likeness, only came out today, but it has already over 1,400 reviews on Amazon and is currently their bestselling science fiction book. So what does our seemingly infinite appetite for dystopian AI literature tell us about ourself, I asked VanDyke? Is the popularity of this type of dystopian literature because AI is about to replace humans with smart machines thereby making our species redundant? Or might it be a more persistent feature of modernity : our fear over the last couple of hundred years that any revolutionary new technology - railways, electricity, the computer or the Internet - is sabotaging our most “human” qualities?Bryan VanDyke is a digital strategist and a regular contributor at The Millions. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Northwestern. In addition to his debut novel, IN OUR LIKENESS, he is the author of a book-length essay, ONLY THE TRYING, which is a meditation on the nature of illness and recovery. For the last twenty-

There’s a big fight, perhaps even a war, about to break out between Big Tech and governments around the world. It’s been brewing for several years now, but the news this week from France and Brazil suggests that conventional nation-states are increasingly confident of shutting down popular social networks and jailing their founders. For libertarians like That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare, this isn’t good news. In his editorial this week, Keith is particularly troubled by the French government’s decision to indict Telegram founder Pavel Durov.To make Durov liable for Telegram users is an injustice and an abuse of state power by officials who realise it is impossible to prevent privacy, so they resort to bullying and coercion.But I’m not so sure. If Telegram is, indeed, a dark web in your pocket, then the French government might have the right to not only arrest Durov, but even to make its use in France illegal. The legal implications of this case, as well as Brazil’s banning of X, are of course complex.

According to the Californian political sociologist Peter Phillips, American capitalism is facing an existential crisis. In his new book, Titans of Capital, he argues that the concentrated wealth of investment companies like BlackRock and Fidelity not only threatens human rights and democracy, but also the future of planet. Perhaps. But where Phillips really goes out on a limb is to argue that the Chinese state controlled model of capitalism which, he says, has brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, is more humane than the free market American model. Seriously?Peter Phillips is a Professor of Political Sociology at Sonoma State University since 1994, former Director of Project Censored 1996 to 2010 and President of Media Freedom Foundation 2003 to 2017. He has been editor or co-editor of fourteen editions of Censored, co-editor with Dennis Loo of Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney (2006), editor of two editions of Progressive Guide to Alternative Media and Activism (1999 &

The Anglo-Jewish writer Tanya Gold went on holiday to Auschwitz and didn’t much like what she saw. She writes about the experience in “My Auschwitz Vacation: On Holocaust tourism” which ran in this month’s Harper’s. But, as she told me, she would have preferred the piece to have been entitled: “Her Gay Romp Through Jewish Poland” - in honor, of course, of Mel Brooke’s satirical “Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp With Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden” from his 1967 movie The Producers. And there is certainly something Brookean about Gold’s predilection for outrage - a healthy thing, I suspect, especially given the soporific quality of much contemporary Holocaust writing. Tanya Gold is a freelance journalist, who has written for the Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, and the Sunday Times (London), amongst other publications. She was awarded Feature Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2010, also being nominated for Columnist of the Year, and was commended in the Feature W

Last year, we had a great conversation with Branko Milanovic, author of Visions of Inequality, about how classical economists like Smith, Riccardo, Marx and Pareto analyze inequality. Our guest today, David Lay Williams, asks the same question - but from the perspective of political philosophers like Rousseau, JS Rousseau and Hobbes. In his new book, The Greatest of All Plagues, Williams traces how economic inequality has shaped political theory over the last two thousand years. And in our age of increasingly sharp economic inequalities, Williams reminds us, what Plato called “the greatest of all plagues” is anything but an academic problem. David Lay Williams is Professor of Political Science at DePaul University. He earned his PhD in Government from the University of Texas at Austin and the author of Rousseau's Platonic Enlightenment (2007), Rousseau's 'Social Contract': An Introduction (2014), and The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx (2024). He h

Something interesting is happening in downtown Austin. Next month, The University of Austin (UATX), a new undergraduate college claiming to “be dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth”, opens its well financed doors. Launched as a supposedly “anti-woke” university, UATX has some heavy hitting advisors including Richard Dawkins, Niall Ferguson, Larry Summers, Andrew Young, Jonathan Haidt and Bari Weiss. It’s founding president is the Shakespeare scholar, Pano Kanelos, who is described as “an outspoken advocate for liberal education”. And so, when I sat down with Kanelos on the UATX campus, we talked about the idea of a “liberal education” and why there’s a need in contemporary America for one more liberal arts college. Pano Kanelos is the founding president of the University of Austin. From 2017 to 2021, Dr. Kanelos served as the 24th President of St. John’s College, Annapolis. After earning degrees from Northwestern University (B.A.), Boston University (M.A.), and the University of Chicago (Ph.D.), he taug

As the author of the bestselling Master Algorithm, University of Washington professor Pedro Domingos is one of the world’s most respected AI experts. So I was a little surprised that his new book, 2040, is a science-fictional satire of American politics & Silicon Valley. In 2040, Domingos is, however, also using fiction to write a critique of the current Silicon Valley mania for AI. The book is both a warning about the technological limits of AI as well as an investigation of the way that it could truly democratize American politics. And so, by 2040, Domingos promised me, we really might be close to the reality of what he calls “an agora in a Presibot”. Pedro Domingos is a leading AI researcher and the author of the worldwide bestseller "The Master Algorithm", an introduction to machine learning for a general audience. He is a professor of computer science at the University of Washington in Seattle. He won the SIGKDD Innovation Award and the IJCAI John McCarthy Award, two of the highest honors in data sci

At the DNC last week, the Warriors coach and former Bulls star Steve Kerr spoke of his excitement at his return to Chicago’s United Center, the home of some his greatest basketball triumphs. According to the Columbia University historian Frank Andre Guridy, there’s nothing coincidental about this convergence of American politics and sports. In his intriguing new book, THE STADIUM, Guridy reimagines America through the history of sports stadiums like Candlestick Park & Madison Square Gardens. It’s a story of politics, protest and play in which these sports stadiums act as mirrors and prisms to all the most troubling and hopeful aspects of American history.Frank A. Guridy is Professor of History and African American and African Diaspora Studies and the Executive Director of the Eric H. Holder Initiative for Civil and Political Rights at Columbia University. He is an award-winning historian whose recent research has focused on sport history, urban history, and the history of American social movements. His la