Episode 2069: KEEN ON America featuring Bobi Conn
Bobi Conn’s life is an American story. Growing up in a desolate Kentucky holler, her father a drug addicted outlaw who abused her mother, Conn has reinvented herself as a successful writer and mother. But for all Conn’s unflinching honesty about her brutal upbringing, she remains proudly America - both in her love of the Kentucky land and her unwillingness to demonize rural America. Her American spirit, inherited from generations of poor folk scratching out a living on the land, is a defiant optimism and offers hope that America can once again reinvent itself in the 21st century.
Bobi Conn was born in Morehead, Kentucky, and raised in a nearby holler, where she developed a deep connection with the land and her Appalachian roots. She obtained her bachelor’s degree at Berea College, the first school in the American South to integrate racially and to teach men and women in the same classrooms. After struggling as a single mother, she worked multiple part-time jobs at once to support her son and to attend graduate school, where she earned a master’s degree in English with an emphasis in creative writing. In addition to writing, Bobi loves playing pool, cooking, being in the woods, attempting to grow a garden, and spending time with her incredible children.
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.
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
Burning Down The House: Do The Talking Heads Still Matter?
Why Being a 'Good Woman' Is Making Women (and Men) Miserable
The Haves and The Have-Yachts: Evan Osnos Explores the Minds of the Ultrarich
The Vampire Economy: How Private Equity is Sucking the Blood out of the American Dream
The Company That Ate the Web: Google's Quarter Century Journey from Bridge Builder to Web Destroyer
Long Live the NO KING: An Anti-Fascist Handbook on How to Resist Trump
An Existential Threat to American Freedom: Spike Cohen on Donald Trump's Betrayal of Libertarianism
American Fascism: If You Close Your Eyes It Won't Go Away
Postmodern Patrimonialism: Trump's Everything-Everywhere-All-At-Once Strategy as a Venture Capital Model of Politics
Beyond Left and Right: The Libertarian Vision of Freedom in America
The Empire Strikes Back: Karen Hao on OpenAI as a Classic Colonial Power
We Get the Non-Fiction We Deserve: From AI Empires to Wokeness Critiques to a Year Without Sex
Everything Is Possible, Nothing Is Inevitable: Why AI Might Be the Ultimate Scarcity Trap