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
Jeff Kosseff: What Exactly Is Section 230 and Why Was It So Essential in the Creation of the Internet?
Rick Wartzman on Why Are Walmart Workers Still Broke? The Limits of a "Socially Conscious" American Capitalism That Still Won't Pay Its Employees a Living Wage
Matthew Campbell on Dead in the Water: The True Story of a Fake Hijacking and a Real Murder
Andrew Small on A Cold War Without Limits: The Chilling Story of China's Rupture With the West
Neal Gabler on You Don't Need to Be a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows: Ted Kennedy and the Rise of American Conservatism
Lucas Joppa: Why Both Government and Private Corporations Have Essential Roles in Confronting Global Warming
Jessica Todd Harper: Why Photography Can Be Fine Art and What Photographers Should Learn From Vermeer and Other 17th Century Dutch Artists
Isaac Stone Fish on America Second: Is It Really Possible That America's Elites Are Making China Stronger?
Daphne E. Jones on a Note to Donald Trump: This Is How to Become a Real Winner
Andrew Anagnost: How the Moral Sickness Afflicting Silicon Valley Might Be a Pandemic of Egoism
Peter Rawlinson: The Truth About Battery-Powered and Self-Driving Cars From the Engineer Who Invented the Tesla Model S and the Lucid Air
Edward J. Delaney on Cary Grant as The Acrobat: A Novel About the Hollywood Comic Star Whose Best Joke Was That He Didn't Really Exist
Andrew S. Weiss on Super Unhero: Vladimir Putin, the Accidental Czar, Imagined Graphically