Radio Live - Podcasts - Keen On America - 01.20.23: That Was The Week in Tech

01.20.23: That Was The Week in Tech

Author: Andrew Keen January 21, 2023 Duration: 19:44

Podcast episode

Keen On America

Keen On America is a sharp, fast-moving podcast hosted by author and commentator Andrew Keen. Known for asking impertinent questions, Keen cross-examines some of the world’s most thoughtful voices on politics, economics, history, culture, the environment, and technology. Each episode digs beneath headlines and hype to uncover what is really shaping America today and how those forces connect to global change. Listeners can expect challenging conversations rather than easy talking points, as Keen presses guests to explain not just what is happening, but why it matters and what might come next. Whether you are trying to make sense of polarized politics, rapid technological disruption, or shifting social norms, this show offers a bracing, critical lens. Tune in and listen episodes of Keen On America to hear Andrew Keen interrogate the ideas and assumptions that define contemporary American life.

In his weekly round up of tech news with Keith Teare, the author of the That Was The Week newsletter, Andrew imagines the possible "dawning of a new era" in Silicon Valley. For the week of January 20, 2023, Keith and Andrew discuss the future of Google search, a possible Apple virtual reality headset in 2023 and, the way in which ChatGPT is about the transform the world.

More episodes

Hollywood's Last Dance: Time Warner and the Death of the American Dream Machine

15.12.2025 Duration: 44:41

So what does the latest Time Warner brouhaha tell us about the state of America? According to Daniel Bessner, host of the American Prestige podcast, it reflects the imminent death of Hollywood itself. Having written a re…

Episode page

Big Brother Down Under: Is it 1984 Already in Australia?

14.12.2025 Duration: 37:31

It’s been quite a week in tech. The Australian social media ban, the Netflix vs Paramount fight over Warner Bros & the Disney-OpenAI deal. That Was The Week’s Keith Teare and I try to explain all this in the broader cont…

Episode page

Mount Rushmore: America's Most Monumental Contradiction

13.12.2025 Duration: 43:53

Mount Rushmore, with its images of four Presidents carved into the Black Hills of South Dakota, is America’s most identifiable monument. It might also be its most monumental contradiction — which is saying a lot, given t…

Episode page

George Packer's Emergency: When Facts Fail, Turn to Fiction

12.12.2025 Duration: 50:45

George Packer is one of the most celebrated non-fiction writers on contemporary America. So why, in his new book The Emergency, has he turned to fiction? You’d think, after all, that MAGA America’s surrealism would be an…

Episode page

How 9/11 Broke the News, Both Then and Now: CNN's Finest Hour Was Also Its Last

11.12.2025 Duration: 47:27

The CNN anchor Carol Lin was on air on September 11, 2001 when the first plane hit the tower. So, in that now seemingly distant broadcast media age, she was the world’s first television journalist to break the news. But…

Episode page

An Anglo-American Way of Troublemaking: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford

10.12.2025 Duration: 46:33

Jessica was the good Mitford sister. The English aristocrat who fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War, then came to America and dedicated her life to social justice. According to her biographer Carla Kaplan, Mi…

Episode page

How Capitalism Can Save Capitalism: The Case for Stakeholder Capitalism

09.12.2025 Duration: 42:37

The American economy is a numbers game and those numbers are becoming more and more unfair. “30 years ago, if you were born in the bottom 25th percentile of wealth, you had about a 25% chance of dying in the top 25th per…

Episode page

2% of Americans are Homeless: America's Most Shameful Open Secret

08.12.2025 Duration: 50:16

Numbers often tell the story best. Yesterday, we discussed today’s 95/5 reality in which 5% of Americans control 95% of the wealth. Today, in our conversation with Patrick Markee, author of Placeless, the key number is 2…

Episode page

A Code RED For Humanity: Forget 80/20 - the 95/5 Rule of our AI Age

07.12.2025 Duration: 41:54

Forget Pareto’s 80/20 rule. What AI is doing is producing a new rule in which 5% of society captures 95% of the value of this revolution. That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare calls this the “Great Compression”, descri…

Episode page

Why "Progress" is Ruling Class Propaganda: The Dangerous Idea that Built Civilization and is Now Destroying it

06.12.2025 Duration: 50:38

Is the idea of “progress” the propaganda of the ruling class? Yes, according to Samuel Miller McDonald, author of Progress: How One Idea Built Civilization and Now Threatens to Destroy it. McDonald traces this “narrative…

Episode page

Two VCs, No Filter: The Naked Truth about Elon Musk and Sam Altman

05.12.2025 Duration: 40:52

They certainly are an odd couple. Silicon Valley veterans Dave McClure and Aman Verjee have been friends and business partners for 25 years — first at PayPal, then at 500 Startups, and now at Practical Venture Capital. Y…

Episode page

From Mongolia to Silicon Valley: A Venture Capitalist's American Dream

04.12.2025 Duration: 50:26

If you think the American Dream is dead, then you probably don’t know the story of Lu Zhang. Born in Mongolia and educated in China, Zhang came to Stanford as a graduate student, struck it rich as a young tech entreprene…

Episode page

The Broken China Dream: How Reform Revived Totalitarianism

03.12.2025 Duration: 45:37

We all know about the broken American Dream. But according to the American-based China scholar Minxin Pei, China’s dream is equally broken. In his new book, The Broken China Dream, Pie argues that the party-centric refor…

Episode page

A Tale of Two Kellys: Peter Wehner on the Intellectual and Moral Decline of the American Right

03.12.2025 Duration: 43:46

For Peter Wehner, American politics is a tale of two Kellys. On the one hand, there’s the moral resistance of Arizona Senator Mark Kelly to what appears to be the gratuitous violence of American forces overseas. On the o…

Episode page

Guantanamo: The Myth vs the Reality

02.12.2025 Duration: 45:50

Dick Cheney died four weeks ago, but his dark legacy lives on—quite literally—at Guantanamo Bay. The human rights lawyer Joshua Colangelo-Bryan was among the first attorneys to enter the notorious prison in 2004, and wha…

Episode page