Keen on America: Andrew Reflects on 2025 & 2026


Author: Andrew Keen January 1, 2026 Duration: 55:15
Podcast episode
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

More episodes

Duration: 36:29
Can Swiftynomics save America? That’s the intriguing thesis at the heart of Misty Heggeness’ new book about Swift’s impact on the American economy. Entitled Swiftynomics, it’s as much about Taylor Swift’s fans as it is a…

Duration: 47:03
The Music Man was a 1957 Broadway show written by Meredith Willson, a musician from the small Iowa town of Mason City. The popular play (and later movie) featured a con man called Harold Hill who ripped off the naive peo…

Duration: 54:43
Few biographers can claim to know what it feels like to be Thomas Jefferson more than the Charlottesville-based historian Andrew Burstein. The author of many books about Jefferson, Burstein’s latest, Being Thomas Jeffers…

Duration: 39:13
There was a time in the mid 20th century, the literary historian Gayle Feldman reminds us, when the book business was cool. Back then, New York publishing resembled Silicon Valley tech and the Mark Zuckerberg of his day…

Duration: 47:31
Trump’s Gazan dream is to overlay the complex human history with his own narcissistic real-estate fantasy. But for Maia Carter Hallward, co-author of a new contemporary history of Gaza, this once vibrant Mediterranean en…

Duration: 45:53
The great John Maynard Keynes explained it a century ago. In his 1930 essay, "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren," Keynes predicted that the future would be defined by economic abundance rather than scarcity. B…

Duration: 31:58
WTF will happen in 2026? Over the last week, we’ve been running a series of interviews about the promise and peril of the new year. And in this new weekly magazine-style KEEN ON AMERICA show, we feature highlights of con…

Duration: 45:18
If Darwin’s evolutionary theories couldn’t kill America’s faith in God, then what could? That’s the message in Daniel K. William’s new book, The Search for a Rational Faith. Americans, Williams argues, have always sought…

Logo
Select station
VOL