Radio Live - Podcasts - Keen On America - 2025: The AI Year Scripted by Gary Marcus in 2024

2025: The AI Year Scripted by Gary Marcus in 2024

Author: Andrew Keen December 23, 2025 Duration: 38:35

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.

Gary Marcus claims to just be an AI “realist”. Some would describe the controversial AI sceptic otherwise. But whatever his moniker, Marcus’ warnings about AI have been eerily accurate. In fact, 2025 could be described as the year scripted by Gary Marcus in 2024. He warned us about the limitations of LLMs, the bubbly economics of Sam Altman’s OpenAI, and the AGI hype. So what does Marcus predict about 2026? Is he really the Cassandra who glimpses the AI future before the rest of Silicon Valley?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

More episodes

Episode 2261: Thor Hanson on why virtual reality can never replicate the natural world

11.03.2025 Duration: 31:42

There’s a story today about how a VR headset can make us more empathetic toward nature. But according to the Pacific Northwest based author and biologist Thor Hanson, no digital technology can ever replicate nature. Inst…

Episode page

Episode 2260: Felipe Torres Medina laughs and cries about the American immigration system

09.03.2025 Duration: 45:04

Here are the 4 KEEN ON AMERICA take-aways in our conversation about the dysfunctional American immigration system with Felipe Torres Medina1) Background & Immigration Journey* Felipe Torres Medina is a comic writer for "…

Episode page

Episode 2259: Why AI is about to transform everyone (yes, even you) into a coder

09.03.2025 Duration: 32:59

We are back to AI (actually it never left us). In this THAT WAS THE WEEK tech show, Keith and Andrew talk about how AI is now enabling anyone - even non-coders - to code. "I was able to do something without having the sk…

Episode page

Episode 2258: Joyce Chaplin on how Benjamin Franklin warmed up America

08.03.2025 Duration: 46:35

So what’s the most revolutionary invention in the history of the American Republic? The internet, maybe? Or the electric bulb or the motor car? Perhaps. But according to the Harvard historian Joyce Chaplin, it might be t…

Episode page

Episode 2257: Kevin Fagan on a San Francisco story of homelessness that will break your heart

07.03.2025 Duration: 56:06

Award-winning reporter Kevin Fagan is one of San Francisco’s great treasures. In his much acclaimed new book, The Lost and Found, Fagan tells his his two-decade experience reporting about homelessness in San Francisco. H…

Episode page

Episode 2256: Meenakshi Ahamed on the meteoric rise of Indians in America

06.03.2025 Duration: 35:20

What do Fareed Zakaria, Nikki Haley, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Vinod Khosla and Kamala Harris all have in common? They are all, of course, highly successful Americans of Indian descent. Accor…

Episode page

Episode 2255: Nicholas Lalla on Reviving the American Dream in Tulsa, Oklahoma

05.03.2025 Duration: 35:04

America, to borrow a word from last week’s guest Yoni Appelbaum, is “stuck”. And so the American Dream, for most stuck Americans, is dead. Our guest today, the social entrepreneur Nicholas Lalla, agrees with Appelbaum. T…

Episode page

Episode 2254: Why Trump wants to be the Godfather

04.03.2025 Duration: 46:19

What one word describes how Donald Trump thinks about the world? According to both the Atlantic writer Jonathan Rauch and UC Irvine professor Jeffrey Kopstein, that word is “patrimonialism” - a rather stodgy sociological…

Episode page

Episode 2253: John Lechner on the deadly role of Russian Mercenaries in Ukraine

03.03.2025 Duration: 42:05

The international war reporter John Lechner is a brave man. For his new book Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare, he spent time in both Russia and the Central African Republic re…

Episode page

Episode 2252: How to Unstick the Future

01.03.2025 Duration: 49:25

In today’s THAT WAS THE WEEK tech newsletter, Keith Teare asks what “civilization” is good for. Triggered by David Brooks’ “We Can Achieve Great Things” NYTimes piece, Keith’s editorial this week focuses on how we can “e…

Episode page

Episode 2251: Kristian Ronn on why, in the short term, we all might be dead

28.02.2025 Duration: 42:24

In the long run, Keynes famously quipped, we are all dead. But Swedish entrepreneur Kristian Ronn reverses Keynes to argue that in the short term we, as a species, might also be death. In his new book Darwinian Trap, Ron…

Episode page

Episode 2250 Rebecca Haw Allensworth on America's Cult of the Professional

27.02.2025 Duration: 40:46

Should lawyers, home alarm fitters, hairdressers and plumbers all have to get a license to do their business? And what about dog walkers and surgeons? It’s an absurd question, of course, but as Rebecca Haw Allensworth re…

Episode page

Episode 2249: Caroline Fleck on the Skill Set that will Change your Life

26.02.2025 Duration: 38:49

Who wants to change their life? Who want to transform their relationships and increase their influence? If that’s you, then Stanford based psychologist Caroline Fleck might be your therapist. In her new book, VALIDATION,…

Episode page

Episode 2248: Yoni Applebaum on why America is STUCK in a Crisis of Immobility

25.02.2025 Duration: 46:00

According to the Atlantic’s Yoni Applebaum, America is STUCK - literally and otherwise. In his new book Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. Appelbaum argues that America…

Episode page

Episode 2247: Andrew Cockburn on Trump and Musk's Futile War Against the Deep State

24.02.2025 Duration: 41:26

Not everyone sees Trump or Musk as an existential threat to the American federal bureaucracy. In the March cover story of Harper’s, their Washington DC editor Andrew Cockburn argues that this latest war against the Ameri…

Episode page