Episode 2097: Keen On America featuring Francis S. Barry
As America braces itself for the upcoming Presidential election, a growing army of coastal commentators are agonizing over the health of the country’s democracy. In contrast with many of these desk bound pundits, the Bloomberg editorial director Frank Barry bought an RV and drove from New York City to San Francisco on the backroads of old Lincoln Highway. His new book, Back Roads and Better Angels, is an account of this journey into the heart of American democracy and, as Barry told me when I visited him at the Bloomberg offices in New York City, this trip has made him cautiously optimistic about the health of American democracy.
Frank Barry is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and member of the editorial board covering national affairs. He is the author of Back Roads and Better Angels: A Journey Into the Heart of American Democracy.
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.
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
The Case for American Power: Why Hypocrisy is the Price of Idealism
Obama as Gorbachev and Trump as Yeltsin: How America is Like the Soviet Union Before Its Collapse
Dr Stranglove 2.0: Silicon Valley as the New Trillion Dollar Military-Industrial Complex
The Handmaid's Tale Is No Longer Fiction—Welcome to the Brave New MAGA World of Trad Wives and State Fecundity
From Pigeons to Polyamory: A New Yorker Cartoonist's Fix For American Loneliness
How Lawyers Created a Can't Do America: The Tragedy of Too Many Laws and Not Enough Innovation
Enstatification Over Enshittification: America as the New China
Six Books, One Story: The Closing of the American Century
Women Lie Too: A Smug San Francisco Intellectual Cross-Examines a Fearlessly Authentic Florida Psychologist
Beyond the New Deal: How the Left Must Reinvent Itself in a Populist Age
Why Tech Billionaires Are So Angry: Elon Musk and the Gilded Rage of Silicon Valley
The Bell Curve Author Takes God Seriously: But What if God Doesn't Take Him Seriously?
Dignity Has Never Been Photographed: More Balkan Ghosts for our Indignant Times