Keen on America: Andrew Reflects on 2025 & 2026
Happy New Year everyone! As the final show of 2025 and first for 2026, we turned the tables and had me interviewed by the formidable David Masciotra. As you will see, my reading of 2025 is more optimistic than many of my guests. And my sense about 2026 is that it will be a happier year for America than 2025 (which isn’t saying much). As I explain to David, I suspect the zeitgeist is shifting back to a cautious optimism about the American future. Despite all the doom-mongering, 2025 was actually an exciting year for movies, books, and music — the artistic world being at least as vibrant and diverse as it was twenty years ago. That said, I warn about the medieval wealth gap between rich and poor, Trump’s pride in willful cruelty to immigrants, and the increasingly chasmic divide between young and older Americans.
This is all speculative, of course. But what I can promise is that this show will remain a daily broadcast featuring America’s leading commentators. So stay tuned. I can guarantee that 2026 will be an exciting year for all KEEN ON AMERICA viewers, listeners and readers.
Keen On America 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
J. Bradford DeLong: How Joe Biden's "Supply Side Progressivism" Has Actually Made 2022 A Good Economic Year For Most Americans
Allison Gilbert on From Colleen Hoover to New York's New Wage Transparency Law: The Good News For Women About 2022
David Kirkpatrick: The Year That Elon Musk Became Vladimir Putin: How We Lost All Our Moral Illusions About Big Tech in 2022
Alejandro Crawford: How to Empower Truly Rebellious Entrepreneurs to Do Good in the World
Katherine Stewart: Why American Religious Nationalism is on the Rise in 2022—and How to Confront It in 2023
Mary Annaïse Heglar: The Case for Climate Reparations: Our Environmental Crisis Isn't a "Villainless Crime"
Orville Schell on China in 2022: A Crack in Xi Jinping's Leninist Authoritarianism?
Joshua Browder: Should We Celebrate Technology Which Enables the Disruption of Local Government?
Ewan Morrison on Against Nihilism: Why Belief in Anything is Better Than Nothing
Keith Teare on a Crypto Winter and the Dawn of the AI Age: How Silicon Valley Will Remember 2022
Weili Dai: How AI and the Metaverse Will Combine to Create a More "Efficient" Future
Maurice Saatchi: Finally Revealed… Why Some of Us Go to Heaven and Why Some of Us End Up in Hell
Stephen Bezruchka: Why America Needs a "Sputnik Moment" To Reform Its Radically Inegalitarian Healthcare System