Keen On America

How to Win a Trade War: Soumaya Keynes on Trump, China, and Her Great-Great-Uncle Maynard

“The rules-based system just hasn’t worked. China’s system is so opaque that you can’t see the subsidies. And when you’ve got China not interested in new rules and the US not interested in a referee, you’ve got two of the world’s biggest actors who aren’t on board.” — Soumaya Keynes It would have been nice to get John Maynard Keynes on the show to get his critique of Trump’s trade war. But in the long run, we’re all dead — even old Maynard. So instead, we found his great-great-niece, Soumaya Keynes — Financial Times columnist and co-author of How to Win a Trade War: An Optimistic Guide to an Anxious Global Economy. Having already appeared on Jon Stewart this week, Soumaya has a bit of Keynesian star quality about her. But she’s also a first-rate economist. Her thesis is that the old rules-based trading system that her great-great-uncle helped design after World War II is gone. And it ain’t coming back. China’s subsidies are so opaque that rules can’t be written to constrain them, let alone enforced. The US is no longer willing to submit to a referee. Without the two biggest players, no rules-based system is meaningful. So — now what? Keynes says we must think like a trade warrior. Donald Trump should leverage the tools available — but use them strategically. Trump’s error in his second term was not being tough on China while being too tough on everyone else, especially allies like Canada and Mexico. Soumaya Keynes’ most contemporary idea might be her most Keynesian one. John Maynard Keynes proposed penalties for countries running large trade surpluses as well as those running deficits — recognising that global imbalances are a two-sided problem. That idea didn’t make it into the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement. Eighty years later, in equally anxious economic times, his optimistic great-great-niece is reviving it. Five Takeaways • Can Trade Wars Be Won? Yes, Sometimes: The conventional wisdom: no one wins a trade war. Keynes and Bown agree — in theory. In practice, countries in a weaker position cave. History has examples: France in the late nineteenth century told its trading partners they were renegotiating treaties, and the smaller partners complied. Trump’s tariffs in his first term produced concessions. The problem is not that trade wars can’t be won. It’s that the smaller power’s only defence — coordinating with other smaller powers — is extremely hard to sustain. There’s always an incentive to cut a deal first. • China Is the Doper on the Sports Field: Keynes’s sharpest analogy: the global trading system is like a sports game that needs rules to ensure a level playing field. China’s subsidies — cheap credit, corporate handouts, opaque support for state-linked companies — are the equivalent of performance-enhancing drugs. The problem is that unlike doping in sport, China’s subsidies are invisible. You can write a rule saying China won’t give these handouts. But you can’t verify compliance. And without enforcement, rules are meaningless. The WTO has not solved this. Nothing has solved this. • Trump Was Right About China, Wrong About Everything Else: Keynes is careful here. She credits Robert Lighthizer in Trump’s first term with identifying China as the real problem and building a focused strategy. In the second term, Trump put tariffs on everyone simultaneously — which dissipated leverage, alienated the coalition of allies needed to pressure Beijing, and mixed up the problem of China’s subsidies with grievances against Canada, Mexico, and the EU. If you were genuinely tough on China, you wouldn’t have put tariffs on everyone. You would have been more targeted. • The Rules-Based System Is Gone and Isn’t Coming Back: Why can’t we return to the system Keynes’s great-great-uncle helped build? Two reasons. China’s subsidies are too opaque to write enforceable rules against. And the US has lost confidence in any international referee — a long and complex story, but the result is that America won’t submit to neutral adjudication. Without the two biggest players, no rules-based system is meaningful. Yearning for the old approach is not an option. A new strategy is needed — and that’s what the book is about. • AI and the Next Trade War: Services: AI is central to the US-China conflict already — chip restrictions, military advantage, economic supremacy. But Keynes’s less-noticed observation: AI could fundamentally reshape international services trade. The UK, for example, is a massive services exporter — finance, legal, consulting, accounting. If AI eliminates demand for those services, the UK faces a new current account crisis, new trade tensions, a new wave of economic conflict. Nobody knows how this plays out. Which is why, she suggests, the tools in the book will remain relevant for longer than the current tariff cycle. About the Guests Soumaya Keynes is an economics columnist at the Financial Times and host of The Economics Show with Soumaya Keynes. Before joining the FT she spent eight years at The Economist. She co-founded the Trade Talks podcast with Chad Bown during Trump’s first term. Chad P. Bown is the Reginald Jones Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former Chief Economist at the US State Department under President Biden. Together they are the authors of How to Win a Trade War: An Optimistic Guide to an Anxious Global Economy (Simon & Schuster, May 26, 2026). References: • How to Win a Trade War: An Optimistic Guide to an Anxious Global Economy by Soumaya Keynes and Chad P. Bown (Simon & Schuster, May 26, 2026). • Soumaya Keynes on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, May 19, 2026 — referenced in the interview. • Episode 2892: Jason Pack on the Iran war — the companion episode on America’s strategic distractions from the China problem. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouT...

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Bad Entrepreneurs and Even Worse Artists: Does Capitalism Have a Future in the AI Age?

2w ago00:43:20Tap to summarize

“The end of labor means the end of paid slavery. And the opening up of freedom — that is to say, choice of how to spend your time. The only question, a big question, is how do you eat?” — Keith Teare Does capitalism have a future in our AI age? For Musk, Silicon Valley’s baddest bad entrepreneur, the answer might surprise. Musk seems to think that in the long run, money and wealth will disappear in an age of abundant intelligence. Which, presumably, will include hundreds of billions of his own dollars. Although given Musk’s determination to sue and take money from OpenAI, some might be slightly sceptical of his real faith in a post-money cornucopia. It’s not just Musk and That Was the Week publisher Keith Teare who are reimagining capitalism in our AI age. The former World Bank chief economist, Branko Milanovic, drawing on Karl Marx and Adam Smith in equal measure, argues that if AI eliminates the labor component of production, things will become free — thereby creating the conditions for the destruction of capitalism. Keith agrees — and goes further than Milanovic. The end of paid labor, he insists, borrowing also from Marx, is not a catastrophe. It’s the end of what he calls “paid slavery” and the opening of genuine freedom. I’m not so sure. If nobody has to work, we’ll all become bad artists. The cult of the amateur. The future is of bad entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and even worse artists. Hyper-capitalism in our age of AI. Five Takeaways • The Musk-OpenAI Trial: A Big Yawn That Cost Millions: An Oakland jury rejected Elon Musk’s claim against OpenAI in under two hours — not because OpenAI didn’t do what Musk alleged, but because the statute of limitations had expired. Someone should have caught this before two weeks of trial. Musk has vowed to appeal, but it’s hard to see how you get around a statute of limitations. Keith’s verdict: sideshow, big yawn, ego contest. The lawyers won. The real question — who owns OpenAI after it converts to for-profit — was never going to be answered here. • Sam Altman’s Credibility Problem: The New York Times took five takeaways from the trial, one of which was that Sam Altman has a credibility problem. Keith’s response: not new information. What the trial did reveal is the depth of mutual animosity between Musk and Altman — two people who, despite everything, share more beliefs about where AI is going than almost anyone else in the world. Keith on who he’d back in a Stalin vs Hitler choice: Stalin, 100 times out of 100. Which is not to say he’s enthusiastic about either. • Krugman on Europe: Right Analysis, Wrong Conclusion: Paul Krugman, touring Europe, argues that GDP per capita understates European quality of life. A third of US income buys more than a third of US lifestyle in Europe — healthcare, education, travel, housing are all significantly cheaper. Keith agrees with the analysis. His counter: Europe’s structural hostility to innovation means it can maintain its lifestyle but not grow it. The social democratic model is sustainable until it isn’t. It needs to unlock innovation or it will slowly fall behind. Hard to do when you’re spending your time writing regulations. • Milanovic’s AI Thesis: When Things Are Free: Branko Milanovic — Marxist and neoclassical economist — argues that if AI eliminates the labor component of production, value in the classical Adam Smith/Ricardo/Marx sense disappears, and things approach free. Keith agrees and goes further: this isn’t just Marxist logic, it’s classical economics. The organic composition of capital. If variable capital — mostly labor — tends toward zero, costs tend toward zero, prices tend toward zero, and the distinction between capitalism and its opposite dissolves. Musk says the same thing. Agree or disagree, it’s the most interesting economic argument of our time. • The End of Paid Labor Is the End of Paid Slavery: Keith’s most provocative position. The end of paid labor is not something to fear. It is freedom — the opening up of genuine choice about how to spend your time. What remains are human-to-human activities: care work, travel companionship, live music, the masseur. These will be in demand. They just won’t constitute most of what 8 billion people do. The question of how the previously employed population participates in society — eats, lives, has purpose — is real and large. Keith’s position: it’s not an inconceivable problem. Andrew’s counter: if nobody has to work, we’ll all become bad artists. About the Guest Keith Teare is a British-American entrepreneur, investor, and publisher of the That Was the Week newsletter. He is a co-founder of TechCrunch and Andrew’s regular TWTW co-host. References: • That Was the Week by Keith Teare. • Branko Milanovic, “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism from a Marxist and Neoclassical Point of View,” Substack. • Paul Krugman, “Is Europe in Economic Decline?” The New York Times / Substack. • Episode 2910: Keith Teare and Jonathan Rauch on AI — the preceding special edition, directly referenced. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:

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When California Was an Island: Peter Keating on the Cartography That Maps How We See the World

2w ago00:50:42Tap to summarize

“Maps are communicating vast quantities of new knowledge that was only estimated. They convey this imaginative energy — an imaginative energy that maps today have lost, because today maps are so functional, so utilitarian.” — Peter Keating In the sixteenth century, Spanish cartographers represented California as an island. They weren’t being careless. Nor were they drawing New Yorker covers. These 16th century cartographers were, instead, mapping the limits of both what they knew and what they imagined. Cartography is as much an art as a science and maps always mirror how we see the world. Thus Peter Keating’s beautifully illustrated new book, Power Lines: Maps That Shaped the Way We See the World. Assembling nearly 100 of history’s most consequential political maps, Keating’s thesis is that maps are not neutral. They are arguments. Every map centers something — a religion, an empire, a people — and pushes something else to the margins. The story of cartography, then, is the story of power. Five Takeaways • California Was an Island: The Power of Imagined Geography: In the sixteenth century, Spanish cartographers drew California as a large island off the coast of America. They weren’t being careless — they were mapping the edge of what was known and imaginable. Before any map can draw a border, Keating argues, it has to decide what is real. The T-and-O medieval maps placed Jerusalem at the center of the world, with the biblically admitted lands of Europe, Africa, and Asia radiating outward. Only slowly, and with great difficulty, did the Western cartographic tradition absorb the fact that there was a whole continent between their imagination and the Pacific. • The Oldest Tension in Cartography: Sacred vs Scientific: Keating identifies two traditions in constant tension throughout Western history. The cosmographical tradition: center what you know and believe, place your gods and sacred lands at the middle of the world, and mix fantasy with inquiry. The scientific tradition: starting with Ptolemy in ancient Greece and independently in ancient China, create maps that generals and kings could actually use to expand territory, find resources, and identify enemies. With Rome’s Christianisation, the cosmographical tradition dominated for nearly a thousand years. The Ptolemaic scientific tradition only re-emerged with the Renaissance and exploration. • Poland: The Most Erased Country in Cartographic History: Keating’s answer to his own question — which country has been wiped off maps most often yet survived? Poland. It disappeared from maps at least three times, divided and partitioned by more geographically fortunate powers — Habsburgs, Russians, Nazis — whose cultural and military might seemed overwhelming. And yet Poland survived every erasure in the hearts of its people. A 1956 map of Poland as a carnation, published by the communist government as a May Day celebration, reads — Keating argues — as subversive under the surface: a nation asserting its existence against the regime that claimed to represent it. • Lincoln’s Favorite Map: The Slave Density Survey: The most powerful map in the book: the 1861 Coast Survey, a non-ideological government project that shaded American counties by the density of enslaved populations. Lincoln studied it obsessively. He reasoned that where enslaved people were densest, Union troops could arrive as liberators and find support. Where they were rare — in predominantly white areas of the South — he could pursue accommodation and peace. The map shaped the Emancipation Proclamation’s geography. And because enslaved populations had settled where the delta soils were richest, the map also explains the cultural and political geography of the American South today. • The Two-Color Election Map Is Making Democracy Worse: Every two years, Americans are shown the same red-and-blue electoral map. Keating’s verdict: it is a bad projection, a winner-take-all distortion, and a representation of the Electoral College’s biases rather than actual political sentiment. Research shows that two-color maps increase cynicism, cause people to underestimate the number of fellow-partisans in other states, and erode faith in politics. In a democracy, maps should reflect actual political support. The United States is overdue for population-based electoral maps. About the Guest Peter Keating is a narrative journalist whose work has appeared in GQ, Mother Jones, National Geographic, and Politico. He was a longtime columnist and founding member of the Investigative Unit at ESPN, where he was part of teams that won three National Magazine Awards. He is the author of Power Lines: Maps That Shaped the Way We See the World (Black Dog & Leventhal, May 12, 2026) and Dingers! A Short History of the Long Ball. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey. References: • Power Lines: Maps That Shaped the Way We See the World by Peter Keating (Black Dog & Leventhal, May 12, 2026). • Saul Steinberg’s “View of the World from 9th Avenue,” The New Yorker, 1976 — the famous New Yorker cover discussed in the interview. • Episode 2908: Audun Dahl on moral judgements — the parallel episode on how framing shapes perception. • Episode 2909: Adrian Goldsworthy on Athens and Sparta — referenced in the conversation. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters: (00:31) - California as an island: sixteenth-century Spanish maps (02:14) - What imagined maps teach us: the limits of knowledge (04:30) - The New Yorker cover of 1976: New York’s view of the world (05:22) - Two traditions in tension: cosmographical vs scientific (08:13) - Geo...

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Don’t Use the F-Word: David Ost on Why the Red Pill, Not Fascism, Demystifies the Far Right

2w ago00:46:49Tap to summarize

“Fascism is the term that is everywhere and nowhere in contemporary political discussions. We can talk about right-wing populism — but the type of politics they share with classic fascism is what I call red pill politics.” — David Ost Please don’t use the F-word. At least to describe the politics of Trump, Orbán, Meloni, Netanyahu, Modi, Farage et al. Rather than fascism, the best way to demystify far-right populism is via the movie The Matrix through its idea of “red pill” politics. David Ost’s new book, Red Pill Politics: Demystifying Today’s Far Right, argues that to grasp the threat we need to stop stepping out of the Third Reich and into The Matrix. The red pill, borrowed from the 1999 dystopian classic, has been appropriated by the far right as a metaphor for seeing through the liberal hegemony they claim distorts reality. Popping a red pill himself, Ost argues that while today’s far right shares the essential DNA of classical fascism, it nonetheless operates in a world in which outright dictatorship isn’t viable. Mussolini, Ost warns, didn’t become totalitarian until four years after taking power. Fascism, then, is a process. It takes time. Even dystopias require patience. The book is also a manifesto for left counter-politics. Yes, Law and Justice in Poland and Orbán in Hungary have both been voted out, Ost acknowledges. But in Poland, he warns, the Tusk government won power in 2023 and then governed timidly, afraid of alienating the center, failing its own base on abortion and LGBT rights, and then losing the presidential election. So the lesson from Eastern Europe is that economic left populism, not liberal caution, is the best antidote to red pill politics. Mamdani not Starmer. Otherwise the F-word will once again become a reality. Five Takeaways • The F-Word Has Become Meaningless: Every application of “fascism” to Trump, Orbán, or Meloni is immediately met with the counter: “Are we killing you? Are we throwing you in jail?” And seemingly the matter is put to rest. Ost’s argument: the f-word has become a conversation-stopper rather than a conversation-starter. It lets the far right off the hook by setting the bar at Nazi-level violence. The actual threat — the delegitimisation of institutions, the treatment of opponents as traitors, the erosion of democratic norms — is already underway, without the gas chambers that the f-word implies. • Opponents vs Traitors: The Defining Distinction: In a democracy, you have opponents. You disagree with them, you campaign against them, you try to vote them out. In far-right politics, you have traitors. People who disagree with you are not legitimate participants in a political contest — they are enemies of the nation, people who do not belong, people who are working against the interests of the real people. This distinction — not violence, not the gas chambers, but the redefinition of legitimate opposition as treachery — is Ost’s clearest marker of the transition from normal democratic politics to something else. • Mussolini’s Four Years: How Long Before Dictatorship? When Mussolini first came to power, there were still elections. He tried to rig the game — to gerrymander, to use contemporary parlance — and institutionalise his authority. He only turned to outright dictatorship after four years in power. That was a different time. But the pattern — of coming to power through elections and then slowly making it impossible to be removed through elections — is not unique to Italy. Ost argues we may currently be in the equivalent of Mussolini’s first four years in several countries simultaneously. • What Eastern Europe Teaches America: The Tusk Warning: Law and Justice in Poland governed for eight years and was voted out in 2023. The lesson should be hopeful. But the coalition that replaced it, led by Donald Tusk, governed timidly — afraid of doing anything that might alienate the center, failing to deliver on abortion rights and domestic partnerships, and then lost the presidential election. Ost’s verdict: a Biden mistake. When the center-left or left comes to power, it must be consequentially left populist — not just different from the right in tone and temperament, but materially different in what it does for regular people. Caution is its own kind of failure. • Mamdani as Real-World Exhibit A: Ost was writing the book when Zohran Mamdani won the New York City Democratic mayoral primary. Mamdani campaigned explicitly to speak to voters who had voted for Trump — asking why they were moving in that direction and arguing that a universalist left could speak to their material concerns without abandoning minorities. For Ost, this is the model: economic populism that is genuinely redistributionist, that speaks to small cities and rural areas, that is tough on the issues rather than cautious about public opinion. A left that actually stands for something. About the Guest David Ost is an emeritus professor of politics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He is the author of Red Pill Politics: Demystifying Today’s Far Right (The New Press, May 19, 2026), The Defeat of Solidarity: Anger and Politics in Postcommunist Europe, Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics, and other books. He has written for a wide range of scholarly and popular publications, has done research in Polish factories, and once drove a NYC taxi. He lives in Ithaca, New York. References: • Red Pill Politics: Demystifying Today’s Far Right by David Ost (The New Press, May 19, 2026). • Jonathan Rauch, “Yes, It’s Fascism,” The Atlantic — the piece Andrew references at the opening, and the episode we produced around it. • Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works — cited as the book Ost’s is in conversation with. • Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die — Levitsky blurbs the book. • Episode 2894: Marc Loustau on making Hungary boring again — the companion episode on Orbán’s defeat, referenced directly. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTube

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Don't Retire, Rewire: Michael Clinton's Longevity Nation

2w ago00:42:28Tap to summarize

“Retirement is a false construct created a hundred years ago by the government. It was basically created when Social Security was born. Prior to that, people worked until they died — because they didn’t live as long.” — Michael Clinton At the ripe young age of 70, Michael Clinton hiked nine days to Everest Base Camp and ran the Tenzing-Hillary Marathon down. Now 72, he is president of his own longevity consultancy, a columnist for Esquire and Men’s Health, a private pilot, part-owner of a vineyard in Argentina, and the author of Longevity Nation: The People, Ideas, and Trends Changing the Second Half of Our Lives (Atria/Beyond Words, May 5, 2026). Rather than about living forever, Longevity Nation dares us to redefine what the second half of our lives can look like. And Clinton wants us to reinvent society accordingly. A hundred years ago, he reminds us, only seven million Americans were over 65. Today there are 62 million, which will quickly grow to 80 million. The whole world is aging, and its institutions are not keeping up. Retirement, Michael Clinton explains, is a false construct invented a century ago by industrial age governments. Rewire, the septuagenarian marathoner says. Don’t retire. Five Takeaways • This Is What 72 Looks Like Today: Clinton’s opening provocation: at 70, he hiked to Everest Base Camp and ran the marathon down. He’s visited 125 countries, run marathons on all seven continents, holds two master’s degrees, and is a private pilot. His point is not to brag. It is that the cultural image of what 70 or 80 looks like has not caught up with the reality of what a subset of 70 and 80-year-olds — and, increasingly, a growing proportion of 70 and 80-year-olds — actually look like and are capable of. When he was 40, 72 seemed ancient. Now he is 72. It doesn’t. • GLP-1: Hotel California or Longevity’s First Democratised Drug? The sharpest exchange in the interview. Andrew’s framing: GLP-1 is Hotel California — you can check in but not check out. Stop taking it and the weight and inflammation return. Clinton’s response: yes, that seems to be the story right now, and nobody knows the long-term play. But GLP-1 is coming to Medicare this summer, price cut in half, and it may become the first truly democratised longevity drug — reducing obesity, inflammation, and cardiovascular risk across the income spectrum, not just for the wealthy. Exciting and uncertain in equal measure. • Retirement Is a False Construct: Social Security was created at a moment when most Americans died before collecting it. Life expectancy was 62. The retirement age was 65. The construct was built for a world that no longer exists. Clinton’s prescription: don’t retire. Rewire. You don’t have to do the same thing, but do something. Stay engaged. Stay purposeful. If you’re 65 and live another thirty years, the retirement construct — move to Florida, play golf, wait — is not merely insufficient. It is actively harmful to cognitive and physical health. • Longevity Nation vs Gerontocracy: Andrew raises the counter-argument: is longevity nation actually gerontocracy? Trump, Biden, Trump. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Nancy Pelosi. A class of elderly people who won’t step aside, hoarding power and preventing generational renewal. Clinton’s response: he is opposed to formal retirement ages for anyone. His answer to the political hoarding of power is not age limits but engagement — people need purpose, and purpose should be redirected, not cut off. Andrew’s unspoken counter: this is easy to say when you’re not the one being blocked by an eighty-year-old senator. • Who Do You Want Around Your Deathbed? Clinton’s most personal observation, via the book he co-authored: as you think about living longer, ask yourself — who are the five people you would want around your deathbed? And are you maintaining those relationships? The grandson of a funeral director, Clinton has a different relationship with death than most. His prescription: the longer you live, the more important it becomes to keep your closest relationships strong. Longevity without community is not longevity. It is just duration. About the Guest Michael Clinton is the former president and publishing director of Hearst Magazines, founder of Roar Forward, and the author of Longevity Nation: The People, Ideas, and Trends Changing the Second Half of Our Lives (Atria/Beyond Words, May 5, 2026) and Roar: Into the Second Half of Your Life (Before It’s Too Late). He is a columnist for Men’s Health and Esquire, a private pilot, a marathon runner on all seven continents, and a part-owner of a vineyard in Argentina. He lives in New York City and Water Mill, Long Island. References: • Longevity Nation: The People, Ideas, and Trends Changing the Second Half of Our Lives by Michael Clinton (Atria/Beyond Words, May 5, 2026). • Stanford Center on Longevity, New Map of Life — cited by Clinton as one of the major research frameworks behind the book. • Samuel Moyn, Gerontocratic Nation — the Yale professor’s forthcoming counter-argument, referenced by Andrew. • Cara Swisher, Cara Swisher Wants to Live Forever — the CNN series referenced at the opening as the sceptical counterpart to Clinton’s optimism. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters: (00:31) - Introduction: Cara Swisher wants to live forever (01:33) - How old are you, Michael? 72 and proud (01:57) - The Everest Base Camp hike at 70 (02:17) - Is the longevity boom a coastal elite phenomenon? (03:15) - A hundred years ago: seven million over-65s; today, 62 million (03:46) - The cultural shift:...

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How to Watch the World Cup Like a Genius: Nick Greene on Why the Best Team Doesn’t Always Win

2w ago01:00:26Tap to summarize

“Soccer matches are poorly designed experiments — you don’t necessarily find out which team was better. But any soccer fan will tell you that. Oftentimes, the better team does not win.” — Nick Greene, via a NASA scientist On June 11, the World Cup comes to North America. Fifty-six years ago, I watched the searing injustice of Johann Cruyff’s Holland getting robbed in the 1974 final by Germany. Today I talk with someone who explains how this kind of injustice is built into the game’s DNA. Nick Greene — long-suffering Newcastle United fan and author of How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius — has a new book, How to Watch Soccer Like a Genius, which tells us what architects, stuntwomen, paleoanthropologists and computer scientists tell us about the beautiful game. What they tell us is that the game isn’t fair. One NASA scientist tells Greene that soccer is a “poorly designed experiment” because the low-scoring nature of the game means results don’t reliably identify the better team. Thus the dark fate of the free-scoring, brilliantly inventive Hungarians in 1954 and the Dutch in 1974. So if you want to watch the World Cup like a genius, don’t expect the best team to win the tournament. Which may explain why Greene suspects that England — where the pain of World Cup injustice is a national fetish — will win in 2026. On penalties probably. Arsenal style. After 120 minutes of goalless football. Five Takeaways • Soccer Is a Poorly Designed Experiment: A NASA scientist published a peer-reviewed paper concluding that soccer is a “poorly designed experiment” — the low number of goals means results don’t reliably identify the better team. Greene’s observation: any soccer fan could have told him that, and saved the journal space. But this is also what makes the game what it is. Unlike basketball’s seven-game playoff series — which gives the best team enough chances to emerge on top — a single World Cup match, in a single-elimination tournament, means one error can have outsized consequences. The imperfect and the human are inseparable. • Justice Has Nothing to Do With It: The 1974 Dutch vs 2004 Greece: Andrew’s most painful memory: the 1974 World Cup final, where the magnificent Dutch side led by Cruyff was beaten by the Germans. The Dutch didn’t win, but they are remembered as one of the greatest teams in history. The 2004 Greek side, which won Euro 2004 by parking the bus and grinding nil-nil victories, actually won — and are remembered as a fluke. The lesson Greene draws: the shared understanding built into soccer watching is that winning is only one metric, and often not the most important one. It is an imperfect and profoundly human enterprise. • How to Appreciate Defense: The cliché American complaint about soccer is the low scoring. Greene’s response: this is partly a failure to appreciate defense, which in soccer can look like the absence of good offense. He discusses Italy’s history of outstanding defensive play — the Catenaccio system, Paolo Maldini, Beckenbauer — and the intelligence required to prevent goals. Andrew’s contribution: his wife, who watches American football, taught him that defense is where the sophistication lives. The same is true of soccer. The genius watcher watches the defenders. • VAR: Too Much, Going in the Right Direction: Greene’s measured verdict on VAR — video assistant refereeing. His worst case: when it ruins a goal celebration. The player scores, the crowd erupts, the flag goes up, three minutes of review, okay everyone start celebrating again. That destroys the cathartic moment that makes soccer’s rare goals so electrifying. His prediction: VAR will evolve toward the coach’s challenge model used in American football and basketball — a limited number of challenges per half, preserving the flow of the game while correcting the worst errors. It’s relatively young. It’ll be futted and fidgeted with. • Don’t Bet On It. Watch the Game: Greene’s best advice for American newcomers to soccer. Not about tactics, not about history. Betting on soccer is a mug’s game — partly because results don’t reliably reflect the better team (the NASA paper again), and partly because talking about your bets is the least interesting conversation you can have about sport. His prediction for the tournament: England. Reasoning: Harry Kane is playing. Andrew’s reaction: Kane is a Spurs man, so reluctant endorsement. But please, Nick. Don’t. About the Guest Nick Greene is a contributing writer at Slate and the author of How to Watch Soccer Like a Genius: What Architects, Stuntwomen, Paleoanthropologists, and Computer Scientists Reveal About the World’s Game (Abrams Press, May 12, 2026) and How to Watch Basketball Like a Genius (Abrams Press, 2021). His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Chicago Magazine, and elsewhere. He is a Newcastle United fan and lives in Berkeley, California. References: • How to Watch Soccer Like a Genius by Nick Greene (Abrams Press, May 12, 2026). • Simon Kuper, Going to the Match — referenced in the introduction as a recent KOA episode on nine consecutive World Cups. • Franklin Foer, How Soccer Explains the World — referenced as the prior KOA World Cup episode. • David Winner, Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer — blurbed the book; relevant to the 1974 Dutch discussion. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:

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Can Keith Teare Convince Jonathan Rauch That AI Is Benign? That Was the Week, Special Edition

2w ago00:55:41Tap to summarize

“The dangers are human, not AI. What’s dangerous is what a human does with AI, not what the AI does itself. In fact, even the idea that there is such a thing as the AI in itself is a mistake.” — Keith Teare I’m in Korea this week. So rather than doing a traditional one-on-one That Was the Week tech summary, Keith Teare and I are trying something different. We invited Jonathan Rauch — Brookings Institution senior fellow, serial author and one of the most rigorous minds in Washington — onto the show to discuss AI. Rauch had a simple mission. He wanted to find out why Keith Teare is just about the only person in the universe who believes that AI is benign. Jon had five buckets of doom to dump on Keith: labour market disruption, political upheaval, mental health and cognition, malicious actors, and the biggest daddy of all — AI developing consciousness, setting its own agenda, and killing everyone (even Keith). But Keith maintained his Yorkshire stoicism under intense scrutiny from the analogue Rauch machine. AI is a word-counting machine, he explained. Large language models train on words, not experience. They split words into a probabilistic graph of correlations. When you ask a question, a large statistical engine fires, word by word. In that sense, he says, AI is no cleverer than a calculator. The idea that it has awareness, consciousness, or a plan is mythological. What’s dangerous is what a human does with AI, not what AI does itself. The dangers, he says, are human. Jon wasn’t entirely reassured (his Brookings brand is scepticism, after all). What worries him most is that humans will handle these technologies irresponsibly. On that, he and Keith agree. The short-term labour disruption will be significant. White-collar service provision — legal, accounting, junior consulting — is already going. Jobs will go too. Work, Keith insists, will not. But nobody in politics is having the conversation about what comes next. Not JD. Not AOC. Only Keith and Jon. Five Takeaways • AI Is a Word-Counting Machine: Keith’s Core Argument: Large language models train on words and only words. They split those words into a probabilistic graph — how close is word A to word B? When you ask a question, a large statistical engine fires, producing output word by word. There is no awareness. There is no consciousness. There is no plan. The idea that such a system could develop its own agenda is mythological. It’s no cleverer than a calculator. It’s just a very big, very fast calculator. Rauch’s counter: the brain is also just dumb neurons. We get emergence from dumb neurons. Keith’s reply: what the AI can do is constrained by what humans allow it to do. The agency is human. • Doomerism as Business Model: Before engaging with any specific AI doom argument, Keith signals a prior: whenever there is ambiguity in a major technological change, a business model emerges to monetize doubt. It was true of nuclear power. It was true of climate change. It is true of AI. This doesn’t mean the fears are groundless — they wouldn’t sell if they weren’t reasonable. But it means they should be approached with prior scepticism. The doom argument works precisely because AI genuinely contains possible negative outcomes. The business model packages and amplifies those possibilities beyond their actual probability. • The Guardrails Are Human: Keith’s metaphor: AI sits in a prison where humans decide what the doors are. If you give it access to email, it can email. If you don’t, it can’t. It cannot take actions it has not been permitted to take. The word “guardrails” is commonly used, and it’s apt: the constraints on what AI can do are entirely under human control. The word output is the statistical engine — that’s not controllable. But its ability to act on words is highly constrained. The danger is not what AI does. It is what humans choose to allow AI to do. • Jobs vs Work: The Labour Disruption Argument: Rauch’s young friends in junior consulting are watching their jobs go in real time. Keith distinguishes between jobs — paid labour — and work, which is closer to effort and creative agency. Jobs can go. Work, he argues, will not — humans will always be reinterpreting the future they want and working to make it happen. But the short-term disruption will be significant: white-collar service provision (legal, accounting, consulting), teaching, driving. The wealth creation AI enables could supplement the end of paid labour. But no one in government is having that conversation. • Rauch’s Verdict: Clarified, Not Reassured: After fifty minutes with Keith Teare, Jonathan Rauch reaches a considered position: his worst fear — that AI becomes an autonomous engine of anti-human malfeasance — is unlikely to happen unless humans make it happen. His residual concern: that humans will not handle these technologies as maturely as one could wish. He’s not optimistic about political systems that are already too rigid, too partisan, and too dysfunctional to adjust as they did to the industrialization of the late nineteenth century. On that, he and Keith agree. Nobody knows. Not Keith. Not Andrew. And, despite his brilliance, not Jonathan Rauch. About the Guests Keith Teare is a British-American entrepreneur, investor, and publisher of the That Was the Week newsletter. He is a co-founder of TechCrunch. Jonathan Rauch is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, The Happiness Curve, Kindly Inquisitors, Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, and many other books. He is based in Washington, D.C. References: • That Was the Week by Keith Teare. • The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch. • Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies — the AI doom book referenced in the conversation. • Sam Harris and Tristan Harris podcast on AI risk — referenced by Rauch as the catalyst for his questions. • Episode 2902: Keith Teare on his jobless AI future vision — the preceding TWTW episode directly referenced. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.

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Athens vs Sparta: Adrian Goldsworthy on the Rivalry That Made the West

2w ago00:42:11Tap to summarize

“History is really interesting because it’s about people. And people are interesting. So there are plenty of different ways of doing this, and I think there’s room for everybody.” — Adrian Goldsworthy The greatest rivalry in antiquity is also uncomfortably relevant to us today. In Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry That Shaped Ancient Greece, the classical scholar Adrian Goldsworthy covers the long fifth century BC, from the Persian Wars that forced Athens and Sparta into alliance, through the Peloponnesian War that set them against each other. The parallels of the rivalry between Sparta and Athens are uncannily relevant today. Goldsworthy traces the NATO-like structure of the Athenian alliance, with its familiar complaint that the allies weren’t paying enough. He notes that Athens, which outgrew its ability to grow its own food, had to secure its grain supply from the Black Sea — in the same way as closing the Straits of Hormuz has disrupted modern supply chains. And he observes that the Spartans won the Peloponnesian War by getting Persian money — while the Athenians were doing exactly the same thing. Persia, he notes, is always lurking in the background. There would be no “west” without it. Five Takeaways • Athens and Sparta: Two Experiments, One Greek Longing: Both city states were driven by the same competitive Greek impulse — the desire to excel, to be the best. But they ran radically different experiments in how to achieve it. Athens: radical democracy, open society, maritime empire, philosophy, drama. Sparta: apartheid military state, in which a tiny Spartan elite was freed from all labour by a vast population of helots, so that they could devote their entire lives to being warriors and citizens. Two models for a polity that still structure political argument today. • Thucydides: Essential but Embittered: The History of the Peloponnesian War is the essential source — and the problematic one. Thucydides was an Athenian general who failed to save a city from a Spartan-led force and went into exile as a result. He is analytical and apparently balanced in ways that seem modern. But he cannot hide his biases: the demagogue Cleon gets speeches written for him that make him look like a self-interested buffoon. And his silences are as revealing as his words — large events, including an Athenian disaster in Egypt, are mentioned only vaguely. He tells us what he wants to tell. • The NATO Parallel: They Weren’t Paying Enough: The Delian League — the Athenian alliance that emerged after the Persian Wars — has a structural similarity to NATO that Goldsworthy notes carefully. Athens, like the United States, is the dominant naval power that has mobilised for a great threat and then chosen not to demobilise. The allies, like European NATO members in successive administrations’ complaints, weren’t willing to send ships or men. They’d just send a bit of cash. The Athenian fleet ends up overwhelmingly Athenian. As the threat recedes, the other states increasingly resent the protection they’re receiving from it. • Persia Is Always There: The Spartans won the Peloponnesian War by securing subsidies from the Persian Empire. The Athenians were doing the same thing. The irony: both sides of the Greek world’s greatest internal conflict ended up funded by the barbarian power they had united to defeat a generation earlier. Goldsworthy draws the modern parallel delicately: America is now fighting a war in Iran, once known as Persia. Europe chose not to join. The question of who Persia is in any given age is always live. Persia, he says, is always there. It always has been. • Athens as a Theme Park: The Roman Legacy: In the Roman period, Athens and Sparta became what Goldsworthy calls “university cities or, in Sparta’s case, a theme park.” Sparta, having lost any real military or political power, invented a public performance of its old customs — a tourist attraction for Roman visitors who wanted to see the old ways enacted. Athens was a university town for the Roman elite, whose children went there as we might go to Oxford. What we think we know about classical Greece is partly filtered through this late antique nostalgia — a celebration of how great we used to be. About the Guest Adrian Goldsworthy is a historian, novelist, and YouTuber with a DPhil from Oxford. He is the author of Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry That Shaped Ancient Greece (Basic Books, May 12, 2026), Caesar: Life of a Colossus, Augustus: First Emperor of Rome, How Rome Fell, Philip and Alexander, Rome and Persia, and many other books. He lives in Penarth, South Wales. References: • Athens and Sparta: The Rivalry That Shaped Ancient Greece by Adrian Goldsworthy (Basic Books, May 12, 2026). • Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War — the essential and problematic source, discussed at length. • Episode 2897: Patrick Wyman on Lost Worlds — directly referenced in the interview as a contrasting style of history. • Episode 2892: Jason Pack on the Iran war — the companion episode on the modern Persian conflict, referenced in the interview. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:

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Sometimes Fixed Sometimes Fickle: Audun Dahl on Why Our Moral Judgements Are Always in Flux

2w ago00:51:45Tap to summarize

“We need to develop better theories of why the other side believes what they do. Having an accurate theory includes recognizing if somebody is a psychopath — but also recognizing that psychopaths are rarer than we think.” — Audun Dahl If you’re not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative at forty, you have no head. While this sounds like an annoying cliché (especially to people under forty), it does recognize that our moral views change. But, as the Cornell psychologist Audun Dahl argues in his new book Between Fixed and Fickle: Why Our Moral Views Keep Changing, the most interesting question is why our moral principles always seem in flux. Why people who say cheating is wrong cheat. Why people who say violence is wrong turn a blind moral eye to their own insurrections. Dahl is a psychologist, not a moralist. He is not interested in what we should believe, but in what we think we believe. His central finding is that human morality is neither fixed nor fickle. People change their moral views when they believe they have good reasons to — reasons they can, indeed, articulate. The problem isn’t hypocrisy per se. It’s that we struggle to understand why the other side believes what it does. In morally polarised societies like contemporary America, we over-attribute psychopathy to political opponents. Most Republicans and most Democrats do have genuine moral commitments. But they are just different principles, applied to parallel moral hierarchies. Rather than morality perhaps, we need more empathy. Don’t judge. Understand. Five Takeaways • Two Kinds of Moral Change: Dahl identifies two forms of moral change that should trouble us. Situational moral change: people espouse one principle and act against it in a specific situation — the person who says cheating is wrong and cheats on an exam, the January 6th rioter who says violence is wrong. Historical moral change: the same principles coexisting with practices that contradict them — Thomas Jefferson proclaiming inalienable rights while enslaving hundreds. Both are not simply hypocrisy: they reflect the genuine messiness of moral life, where competing principles create constant conflict. • Morality Emerges in the First Three Years of Life: Dahl’s most striking empirical finding: by around age three, virtually all children develop an intrinsic concern with how we ought to treat other sentient beings. It is not taught as an external rule. It emerges. A three-year-old will say: it’s wrong to harm others, you shouldn’t steal. No other animal acquires this. It is a uniquely human characteristic. The question is not whether people have moral commitments — almost everyone does. The question is how those commitments interact with other concerns, pressures, and competing principles. • We Over-Attribute Psychopathy to the Other Side: One of the most robustly documented findings in political psychology: Republicans and Democrats don’t merely think the other side is wrong. They think the other side is evil — likely to condone things they would never condone. Research shows both sides significantly over-estimate the other’s extremism and moral depravity. Dahl’s prescription: develop better theories of why the other side believes what it does. An accurate theory includes recognising genuine psychopaths and bad actors when they exist. It also includes recognising that they are rarer than we think. • Jefferson, Epstein, and the Exceptions: Two historical anchors. Jefferson: the author of the Declaration of Independence’s inalienable rights, who enslaved hundreds. The question is not whether he was a hypocrite — he clearly was — but how someone could hold both positions simultaneously. The answer Dahl finds most compelling: conflicting moral principles applied with different weights in different contexts, not the absence of moral concern. Epstein: the opposite case, a man who concealed an absence of moral concern behind a veneer of respectability. The lesson: some people genuinely lack it, but they are exceptions. • Elbow Room: The Hilary Mantel Closer: Dahl’s two wishes for a more moral world. First: that we understand why the other side disagrees. Second: that we have more “elbow room” — the phrase from Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy — to make decisions based on what we actually think is right rather than what we need to do to survive. Machiavelli and Cromwell operated in a world where survival left almost no room for principled action. If that is becoming our world again, the prospects for moral progress are bleak. Dahl is cautiously hopeful. The creative, restless energy of each new generation — willing to say this is unjust, this is unfair — is what abolished slavery. It is what drives moral change still. About the Guest Audun Dahl is Associate Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. He is the author of Between Fixed and Fickle: Why Our Moral Views Keep Changing (Harvard University Press, April 2026). He grew up in Norway and is based in Ithaca, New York. References: • Between Fixed and Fickle: Why Our Moral Views Keep Changing by Audun Dahl (Harvard University Press, April 2026). • Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall trilogy — cited by Dahl as capturing the “elbow room” problem of moral action under survival pressure. • Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning — referenced in the same context as Mantel. • Episode 2906: Dylan Gottlieb on Yuppies — the companion episode on how professional class morality was shaped by competing incentives. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters: (00:31) - The Churchill/Adams quote: liberal at 20, conservative at 40 (02:08) - Dahl’s Norwegian grandpa and the disputed attribution (02:30) - Two kinds of troubling moral change: situational and historical (03:10) - Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and his enslaved peopl...

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From SEAL Sniper to Puddle Jumper: Brandon Webb on How to Raise Confident and Joyful Kids

3w ago00:54:00Tap to summarize

“Being a father is probably one of the toughest and most rewarding jobs I’ve ever had. A lot of the principles I used to teach snipers apply to kids: dealing with negativity, replacing negative self-talk, learning that well-meaning adults can say terrible things — and you don’t have to take that on as baggage.” — Brandon Webb Brandon Webb defines himself as an author, entrepreneur, Navy SEAL sniper, and father. But not in that order. The first three he leveraged into a series of bestselling books about the art of sniping. The fourth — the art of being a loving father — he dodged and ducked for years. But fatherhood might be Webb’s real calling. People regularly pulled him aside after meeting his grown children to ask him about his “secret” for being an effective dad. His kids were making eye contact, they were asking good questions rather than staring at their phones. Most astonishingly, they seemed happy. Webb’s new book, Puddle Jumpers: Simple and Proven Ways to Raise Confident and Joyful Kids, reveals his secret of parenting. It applies the positive performance psychology Webb learned as a Navy SEAL sniper instructor — how to redirect negative self-talk, how to deal with well-meaning adults who say damaging things, how to build mental toughness without destroying connection — to the work of raising children. It outlines his parenting philosophy of both high expectations and high support. Think of Puddle Jumpers as simultaneously the manual for tiger and the bunny parenting. Brandon Webb’s ultimate calling in life is as a parent. Father, author, entrepreneur and Navy SEAL sniper. In that order. Five Takeaways • The Sniper Instructor as Parenting Coach: Webb was running the Navy SEAL sniper program at 27 years old. The psychology they taught there — positive self-talk, replacing negative internal narratives, dealing with adversity without being broken by it — is what he applied to parenting. The connection is not as strange as it sounds: both sniping and parenting require performing under pressure, dealing with failure without catastrophising, and building confidence that is genuine rather than brittle. The difference is that the stakes in parenting last a lifetime. • High Expectations, High Support: Webb’s alternative to the false choice between permissive parenting and authoritarian discipline. Permissive parenting replaces preparation with protection. Authoritarian discipline breaks connection. Puddle Jumper Parenting holds both simultaneously: clear expectations and emotional safety. Kids need to know what’s required of them. They also need to know they won’t be abandoned when they fail. Webb’s word for children raised this way: puddle jumpers — kids who leap into life’s messy moments with full-hearted abandon, not because they’re fearless but because they trust themselves to recover. • The Credit Card Lesson: Don’t Bail Them Out: Webb’s son Jackson managed a self-storage facility through college and ended up with a $25,000 ownership payout as a sophomore at St Andrews. He spent it like a drunken sailor on shore leave, got a credit card, ran up $12,000 in debt at predatory interest rates, and called his father for help. Webb’s response: you remember that conversation we had? Figure it out. He let his son suffer. Jackson’s girlfriend hated Webb for two years. At the end, Jackson paid off the debt with a new business and told his father it was one of the best lessons he’d ever been taught. It would have been easy to bail him out. The suffering was the lesson. • Purpose and the War Veteran: Viktor Frankl’s Lesson: How does a combat veteran come home intact? Webb’s answer: purpose. His Afghanistan deployment had clear moral logic — the propaganda posters in the caves, the training camps, the towers. That clarity carried him through. Iraq was different. Soldiers who went to Iraq with no understanding of why they were there — and whose friends in 2010 were saying we have no idea what we’re doing here — came home broken. Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning: purpose is the thing that makes endurance possible. Without it, violence that cannot be assigned rational meaning produces serious mental illness. • Teach Kids About Money: The American Economy Preys on Them: Webb has strong opinions: America’s economy is largely fuelled by consumer debt. Credit card companies prey on college students because they know the parents will bail them out. Kids need to understand the system before the system takes advantage of them. His prescription: teach them age-appropriate financial literacy early. The Acorns Early app gamifies financial learning for children. The deal he struck with all his kids in college: I pay for school, you have a roof and food, but if you want to socialise, get a job. The lesson is not just about money. It’s about agency. About the Guest Brandon Webb is a combat-decorated Navy SEAL sniper, multiple New York Times bestselling author, Harvard Business School alumnus, and father of three. He is the author of Puddle Jumpers: Simple and Proven Ways to Raise Confident and Joyful Kids (Authors Equity/Simon & Schuster, May 12, 2026), The Red Circle, The Killing School, and The Making of a Navy SEAL. He divides his time between Portugal and New York City. References: • Puddle Jumpers: Simple and Proven Ways to Raise Confident and Joyful Kids by Brandon Webb (Authors Equity/Simon & Schuster, May 12, 2026). • Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning — Webb cites it as one of his favourite books, and the source of his thinking on purpose and combat trauma. • Episode 2888: Helen Benedict on The Soldier’s House — directly referenced in the interview; Webb’s purpose-in-war argument is the complement to Benedict’s moral injury argument. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple Podcasts

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All episodes

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Don’t Use the F-Word: David Ost on Why the Red Pill, Not Fascism, Demystifies the Far Right

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How to Watch the World Cup Like a Genius: Nick Greene on Why the Best Team Doesn’t Always Win

Can Keith Teare Convince Jonathan Rauch That AI Is Benign? That Was the Week, Special Edition

Athens vs Sparta: Adrian Goldsworthy on the Rivalry That Made the West

Sometimes Fixed Sometimes Fickle: Audun Dahl on Why Our Moral Judgements Are Always in Flux

From SEAL Sniper to Puddle Jumper: Brandon Webb on How to Raise Confident and Joyful Kids