Exposing Hollywood's most notorious interwar celebrity spy
In episode 1957 of KEEN ON, Andrew talks to Ronald Drabkin, author of BEVERLY HILLS SPY, about the First World War hero who helped Japan attack Pearl Harbor
Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Ronald Drabkin is the author of Beverly Hills Spy and peer-reviewed articles on Japanese espionage. His obsession with espionage history started when he was as a child in Los Angeles, where he vaguely understood that his father had been working for the US military in counterintelligence. Later he discovered that his grandfather had also been in “the business,” and it drove a voyage of discovery into previously classified documents on three continents. His career prior to writing was at early stage startups in the US, where he was an early adopter of Google and Facebook advertising. He currently lives in Tokyo.
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
Hopwood DePree: What One American Learnt From Restoring His Family's English Castle
Aaron Friedberg: Why China, Not Russia, Is Our Greatest Threat And What We Should Do About It
Sasha Issenberg: What America's Long Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage Can Teach Us About the Possibility of Gun Control
Erin Swan: How a First Novel About America's Vanished Earth Took 6 Years to Write and 30 Years to Plan
Nirit Weiss-Blatt: Why the Techlash Has Gone Too Far
Helene Munson on Hitler's Boy Soldiers: Can Germans Ever Forget the Second World War?
Kerri Arsenault and Bathsheba Demuth: How to Tell Effective Stories About the Environment
Jon Taffer: Why the Real Power of Conflict Is About Respect Rather Than Violence
Hal Weitzman: Why Delaware Is At the Root of Everything That Is Wrong With America
George Stevens, Jr.: Remembering (And Mourning) The Golden Age of Hollywood and Washington D.C.
Dov Seidman: How to Make American Capitalism Moral (Or, At Least, Try To)
Marcus Buckingham: Why Work Sometimes Does, Indeed, Love Us Back
Arthur Grace: Photographing Communism(s) and What Life Really Looked Like in Cold War Eastern Europe