Keen On

Yesterday’s show was on the Great White Hoax of manufactured racism in America. Today’s is on Black Capitalists, the title of a provocative new book by Rachel Layrea. But is this a great black hoax? Or might her focus on race and class really be a blueprint for a more ethical 21st century capitalism? Laryea, who holds a PhD from Yale and works in wealth management at JPMorgan Chase, argues that Black capitalists can strategically use the tools of capitalism to create social good, not just profit. But in a week when Jeff Bezos's lavish Venice wedding sparked protests about wealth inequality, can any kind of capitalism - either black, brown or white - ever truly serve social justice? And with the dismantling of DEI initiatives across America, is Booker T. Washington's style self-reliance the only path forward for Black economic empowerment?1. Black capitalism means using wealth-building strategically for social good, not just profit . Laryea:"To be clear, a Black capitalist is someone who identifies as a Black

There’s something fishy about what Philip Kadish calls The Great White Hoax. It’s his new book about America's long con - how racist scientific hoaxes have shaped two centuries of racist politics. From the 1840 Census Scandal to Henry Ford to George Wallace, Kadish exposes the conmen who have tried to sell racism to America. But here's the chilling twist: many of these fraudsters knew exactly what they were doing. They weren't true believers - they were cynical opportunists who saw profit in peddling fake science to justify white supremacy, creating elaborate deceptions that sometimes fooled even legitimate scientists. 1. Many racist "scientific" theories were deliberate, cynical frauds, not misguided beliefs"The thing that really characterizes the particular thread that I am following in my book and things that I was finding is that they all involved varying degrees of a kind of cynical, very self-aware, purposeful deception."2. The 1840 Census created the template for American scientific racism through know

Next month, America will celebrate the centenary of the Scopes Trial, the so-called 1925 “Monkey Trial” on evolution that riveted a nation. Although perhaps celebrate is the wrong word to describe the Tennessee trial that not only riveted America but also divided it. According to the historian Brenda Wineapple, author of Keeping The Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial that Riveted a Nation, the Scopes trial is as relevant to America in 2025 as it was in 1925. According to Wineapple, the trial wasn't really about science versus religion at all. Neither side truly understood Darwin's theory of evolution, which had been settled science for decades. Instead, the Scopes trial served as a cultural battleground where deeper American anxieties played out—fears about immigration, racial integration, women's suffrage, and rapid social change in the post-World War I era. The real combatants weren’t evolution and creationism, or even the courtroom celebrities Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, but competing vis

Don’t blame women. Men are failing spectacularly and it’s totally their own fault. In What Is Wrong with Men, cultural critic Jessica Crispin borrows from Michael Douglas movies to dissect how masculinity devolved from Seventies style vulnerability into today's aggressive displays of insecurity. While billionaires like Musk compulsively impregnate women and Zuckerberg learns jujitsu to feel "manly," basement-dwelling incels worship sex traffickers like Andrew Tate. The old patriarchy died in the 1980s, Crispin argues, but men refuse to adapt, expecting the world to revolve around them instead of building female-style support systems. It’s the Michael Douglas Trap. From Gordon Gekko's greed to crypto-gambling bros, modern masculinity has degenerated into a grotesque performance of insecurity—and it's getting worse. 1. Modern masculinity is trapped between dead patriarchy and refusal to adapt Crispin argues that traditional patriarchal structures collapsed in the 1980s, but men still expect the world to revolve

So I get why Jeff Bezos isn’t popular in Venice this week. But why would Africans in general, and Kenyans in particular, not love Bill Gates after the philanthropist pledged to give away $200 billion of his fortune to Africa? According to Tablet staff writer, Armin Rosen, it’s because Gates’ top-down, metrics-driven approach often ignores what Africans actually want. Drawing from extensive on-the-ground reporting in Kenya, Rosen highlights how Gates' Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa pushed unwanted agricultural technologies onto Kenyan farmers, while his foundation received controversial diplomatic immunity from Kenya's unpopular President Ruto. Though acknowledging Gates' successes in vaccination programs, Rosen questions whether billionaire-led development truly helps or undermines local agency and democratic governance. Maybe Gates should, instead, pledge his billions to Venice to enable the sinking city to outlaw tasteless American celebrity marriages. 1. Gates' philanthropy often imposes unwante

Are Donald Trump and Steven Miller terrorists? Pakistani-American lawyer and author Rafia Zakaria argues that their willfully cruel immigration policies reflect what she describes as an "architecture of terror." In her June Liberties Quarterly piece "Silencings", Zakaria argues that these policies represent a deliberate strategy to terrorize communities and systematically dismantle the American democratic public sphere. Drawing on her experience both in practicing immigration law and as a naturalized American citizen, she connects domestic enforcement tactics to broader patterns of dehumanization affecting brown people globally—from detention centers in California to the US/Israeli bombing campaigns of Iran to what she dubs the “historical shame” of orchestrated mass starvation in Gaza. 5 key takeaways and quotes1. Immigration Enforcement as Deliberate Terrorism Zakaria argues that the Trump administration's immigration policies are intentionally designed to terrorize entire communities, not j

In today’s age of authoritarian plutocracy, the UCLA political theorist Natasha Piano argues that we need to rethink the supposed “elitist” school of Italian thinkers like Vilfredo Pareto and Gaetano Mosca. In her intriguing new book, Democratic Elitism, Piano suggests Pareto, Mosca and even the Marxist Antonio Gramsci were actually "democratic theorists of elitism" who warned that electoral institutions can often enhance elite domination. Piano contends that American political science created a "founding myth" by misrepresenting these Italian thinkers to legitimize electoral democracy during the Cold War. And in our current political climate she says, their warnings about plutocracy are particularly prescient. Five takeaways1. Flipped Interpretation of Italian Elite TheoristsPareto, Mosca, and Gramsci weren't "elite theorists of democracy" but rather "democratic theorists of elitism" - they studied elite power to expose its dangers, not endorse it.KEY QUOTE: "They investigated eli

Yes, there still are some well meaning folks in Silicon Valley. Take, for example, Jimmy Chen, founder and CEO of Propel, an app designed to simplify food assistance for 41 million of the poorest Americans. Growing up food insecure himself, the Stanford educated Chen left lucrative jobs at Facebook and LinkedIn to build technology that actually serves those who need it most, proving that some Valley entrepreneurs are driven by social rather than financial ambition. Propel replaces the outdated 1-800 number system that food stamp recipients previously had to use to check their benefits, while connecting users to additional online resources and discounts. Chen's story challenges the conventional narrative that all tech founders are solely profit-motivated, and demonstrates how growing up in poverty can fuel mission-driven entrepreneurship. Five Key Takeaways1. Silicon Valley's Echo Chamber Problem Tech companies typically build for people like themselves - affluent, educated use

Can we ever really know Primo Levi? We know his books, of course, especially If This Is A Man, the astonishing account of his survival from Auschwitz. But what, then, of his apparent suicide in 1987? How can a man who miraculously survived Auschwitz take his own life forty years later? That’s one of the questions that Joseph Olshan asks in Milo’s Reckoning, a new novel about Levi, suicide and our own unknowability. Olshan, himself deeply affected by Primo Levi's death when he first heard the news during a newspaper interview in Italy, explores the profound mystery of human nature and the limits of what we can truly understand about others, even those, like Levi, whose experiences have been supposedly laid bare in their autobiographical work. 5 takeaways1. Suicide is often impulsive, not premeditated Most suicides happen in the spur of the moment when people "snap" under pressure, rather than being carefully planned decisions. The majority don't even leave notes, contrary to popula

Yesterday, The Talking Heads, today, Dylan. The Great Man’s Jewish identity has long been overshadowed by his pantheistic status as American prophet. So when, for example, at the beginning of his biopic “A Complete Unknown”, Dylan arrives in Greenwich Village, he is presented as having no history, like a biblical prophet wandering out of the desert. But the London-based historian Harry Freedman argues against this tabula rasa version. In Bob Dylan: Jewish Roots, American Soil, Freedman suggests that Dylan's upbringing in a committed Jewish family in Hibbing, Minnesota—complete with B'nai B'rith leadership and summer camps—profoundly influenced his artistic vision and social consciousness. From his early protest songs to his recent embrace of Chabad fundraising, Freedman argues his Jewish heritage makes him equally Zimmerman and Dylan, a Known Unknown. five takeaways* Dylan's Jewish upbringing was deeply embedded - Far from superficial, his family life included his father as B'nai

Do The Talking Heads, the quinessential art school band of the East Village scene of the 1970’s, still matter? Very much so. At least according to the band’s biographer, Jonathan Gould, who believes that The Talking Heads remain "the archetype of what we now think of as the alternative rock group" - a band prioritizing aesthetic evolution over commercial success. Born from New York's affordable cultural moment when rent cost $275 and abandoned industrial spaces fostered creativity, Talking Heads, Gould argues in Burning the House Down, emerged as agnostic questioners of rock conventions. They rejected "rock hair, rock lights, and singing like a black man," creating minimalist performances under stark white lighting. Their 1984 film "Stop Making Sense" appears utterly modern today, Gould says, suggesting their systematic deconstruction of musical expectations continues influencing artists four decades later. Five Key Takeaways 1. The Agnostic Approach Talking Heads were "agnostic about ever

What does it really mean to be a “good woman”? For the controversial podcaster and writer Elise Loehnen, female goodness is a misery trap. And so reclaim their happiness, to make themselves whole, Loehnen says, women need to stop being good. The former goop executive and co-author of the upcoming Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness explains how the seven deadly sins reveal women's hidden conditioning, how the wellness industry became toxic, and why the Enneagram can help women embrace their full selves—including the darker, "unacceptable" parts they've been taught to suppress. five key takeaways 1. The "Good Woman" Performance is Exhausting Women are conditioned to suppress basic human instincts—never being tired, needing no praise, having compliant bodies, avoiding anger—which requires enormous energy and is driven by fear of social rejection.2. The Seven Deadly Sins Reveal Female Conditioning What society labels as "sins" (pride, envy, sloth, etc.) are actually normal human traits that

“Let me tell you about the very rich”, Scott Fitzgerald once said. “They are different from you and me”. One way they are different, the New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos reports, is that they own yachts - very very big, expensive yachts. In The Haves and The Have-Yachts, Osnos’ dispatches about today’s ultrarich, he takes us on board these boats to reveal the obscenity of our new gilded age. From Mark Zuckerberg's obsession with Augustus Caesar to the thin-skinned grievances of figures like Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk, Osnos explores how the personal quirks and anxieties of just 19 American plutocrats - the 0.00001% - are now reshaping our entire society. He argues we're living in an era of "flamboyant oligarchy," where billionaires openly flaunt their wealth. Citing the extraordinary tableau of tech moguls lining up in homage to Trump at his inauguration, Osnos describes our age as "the complete and total fusion of politics and plutocracy in the United States." five key takeaways1.

It all began in 2019 at DeadSpin where Megan Greenwell was editor-in-chief. She had her dream job at the sports publication she'd always loved, leading a profitable digital media company with a devoted readership. Then the curse of private equity arrived. Within three months, everything collapsed. As Greenwell argues in her new book, Bad Company, she was pushed out, her entire staff followed, and the site was eventually sold to a Maltese gambling operation. What should have been a routine business acquisition became a personal awakening. Greenwell realized she'd witnessed something much larger than corporate mismanagement—she'd seen how private equity is producing avampire economy sucking the blood out of the American Dream. five takeaways1. Private Equity Violates Free Market Principles Greenwell argues that PE actually corrupts capitalism rather than representing it—citing Milton Friedman's own exceptions for public services like healthcare and education, which are now PE's bi

25 years after serving as the bridge between the Web 1.0 and 2.0 revolutions, Google stands at the vortex of another technological revolution. The company's new AI mode threatens to destroy the "simple bargain" that has sustained the web since 2005 — Google’s deal with websites which sent them traffic in exchange for indexing their content. Unlike traditional search results with links, Google’s revolutionary new AI Mode delivers knowledge directly from training data, eliminating the traffic pipeline that media companies depend on. As That Was The Week’s Keith Teare and I discuss, this marks the end of the Web 2.0 era and the beginning of the AI age, fundamentally changing how information flows online. By eating the Web 1.0 internet, Google established itself as the dominant Web 2.0 power. The multi-trillion-dollar question now is whether today’s AI revolution will eat Google. Five Takeaways* Google Was the Web 2.0 Bridge - Though its hard to determine if Google was really a Web 1.0

Happy NO KINGS DAY! Today, as nationwide protests sweep America, historian and activist Mark Bray argues that Trump and his MAGA movement represent a type of American fascism rooted in the country's long history of racist backlash against the struggle for civil rights. As the author of the iconic Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, Bray connects today's resistance to Trump to historical anti-fascist movements, from the KKK's post-Civil War violence to European fascism of the 1930s. He discusses protest strategies, the role of violence in resistance movements, social media's impact on organizing, and why disrupting "business as usual" matters more than just electoral politics in fighting authoritarianism. Long Live the NO KING. Five Key Takeaways* Trump represents American fascism, not just populism or patrimonialism - Bray argues the MAGA movement is "pretty unequivocally fascist," drawing on ultranationalism, militarism, and the glorification of violence that characterizes historical

So what, exactly, is libertarianism? Spike Cohen, the Libertarian Party's 2020 vice presidential nominee, boils it down to "the principle of human respect"—treating people as individuals, not as what he calls "tax cattle." Speaking from FreedomFest in Palm Springs, the founder of You Are The Power offers a scathing critique of both major parties while exposing what he calls a federal funding scheme that encourages states to separate children from their families. From defending controversial Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht to challenging Big Tech monopolies, Cohen argues that government overreach—not lack of regulation—creates the very problems politicians claim to solve. And then, of course, there’s Donald Trump who spoke at last year’s FreedomFest. According to Cohen, Trump has betrayed his libertarian supporters by increasing both government spending and debt by more than almost all of his predecessors. For all his libertarian promises, Cohen argues, Trump is now amongst the most dangerous exponents of big

According to Deborah Baker, author of Charlottesville: An American Story, America has become the Charlottesville of the Unite the Right Rally of August 12, 2017. Baker, who grew up in Charlottesville in the shadow of Jefferson's Monticello, watched in shock as neo-Nazis marched through her hometown in August 2017 with torches and flags. What began as her attempt to understand how such hatred could manifest in a progressive college town became a deeper reckoning with America's buried histories and recurring tragedies. The fascist ideologies that once seemed confined to internet forums and fringe rallies have now, she argues, been institutionalized at the highest levels of government. The warning signs were there in 2017—but too many people, from university administrators to progressive leaders, chose to look away. If we close our eyes, she warns, it won’t go away. five key takeaways1. America Has Institutionalized ExtremismWhat began as fringe internet movements and basement trolling

Postmodern Patrimonialism. That’s the term Brookings Institution scholar Jonathan Rauch uses to describe Trump's second presidency, arguing it represents a 21st century model of running government as if it’s his own personal property. Rauch describes Trump 2's "everything everywhere all at once" strategy as a venture capital-like approach: launching numerous initiatives simultaneously to overwhelm opposition, expecting some to succeed while recognizing that others will fail. Noting that this strategy has slowed since March due to court challenges and declining approval ratings, Rauch discusses the institutional breakdown of Congress, the emergence of Gavin Newsom as the apex of the resistance to Trump 2, and identifies Stephen Miller and Russell Vought as key strategic masterminds behind the administration's coordinated assault on universities, law firms, and democratic norms. Five Key Takeaways * Patrimonialism, Not Fascism: Rauch has shifted from describing Trump as fascist to "

FreedomFest, America’s annual celebration of libertarian values, begins tomorrow in Palm Springs. According to FreedomFest’s CEO Valerie Durham, there’s something quintessentially American about her libertarian creed. Attracting speakers as diverse as Cornell West and RFK Jr, Durham argues that the libertarian doctrine articulated at FreedomFest offers America a politics beyond the conventional dogmas of right and left. But is Durham’s vision practical? Can radical libertarian principles like privatizing all roads and eliminating taxation really work in the 21st century? Five key takeaways1. Libertarianism as Pure American Philosophy Durham argues that libertarianism represents the most consistent American political ideology, emphasizing individual sovereignty, minimal government, and maximum personal choice as core principles that transcend traditional left-right divisions.2. Radical Economic Vision She advocates for privatizing virtually everything—roads, parks, utilities—elim