Keen On America

“His ultimate failure is not simply losing. It’s his failure to stop Trumpism from being such a dominant force in America.” — Julian Zelizer

On this Easter Sunday, can we resurrect Joe Biden’s reputation? Perhaps not — according to Julian Zelizer, the Princeton historian and editor of The Presidency of Joseph R. Biden, a collection of essays about the historical significance of the Biden Presidency.
Zelizer argues that Biden’s legislative record was more robust than most Americans remember — climate investments, semiconductor plants, diversity integrated into government programmes. Rather than policy, the problem was the politics. Biden didn’t build a coalition that would last long enough for his ambitious programmes to mature. He is the last of an era: a New Deal Democrat who believed in big government, that the Republicans could be brought back to the centre, that politics could still work the way it used to. Joe Biden promised to save the soul of America from the Charlottesville moment. Instead, his administration was bookended by a President who saw “good people” on both sides of the Charlottesville neo-Nazi violence.
Zelizer makes an unusual comparison: Biden as Barry Goldwater. Goldwater lost catastrophically in 1964. Decades later, his anti-New Deal ideas colonised the modern Republican Party. Zelizer suggests that Biden’s domestic agenda — affordability, industrial policy, bringing jobs home — may follow the same trajectory. Victory on the heels of defeat. A resurrection of sorts. Maybe not such a tragedy after all.
 
Five Takeaways

•       Biden May Be the Last New Deal President: He is a product of mid-twentieth-century Democratic politics — big government, big federal programs, the belief that Washington can help middle-class Americans. His formative period was the era of LBJ and the Great Society. The next round of Democrats will not make his mistakes. The style of politics he represents may be over.
•       His Legislative Record Was More Robust Than Anyone Remembers: Climate investments, semiconductor plants, diversity integrated into government programs, jobs brought back to the United States. The problem wasn’t that the programmes were broken. The problem was political: he didn’t build a coalition that would last long enough for them to mature. Even the New Deal wasn’t up and running within a year.
•       He Promised to Save the Soul of America. He Couldn’t: Biden’s candidacy was a response to the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville. His promise was that Trumpism would not be at the centre of American power. His ultimate failure is not simply losing. It’s that his administration is followed by a much more radical Trump Two that undoes everything he put on the books and goes further.
•       Biden as Barry Goldwater: Goldwater lost by one of the worst margins on record in 1964. Decades later, his ideas were at the core of the modern Republican Party. Zelizer argues Biden’s domestic agenda — affordability, industrial policy, semiconductor investment — may follow the same trajectory. The ideas may outlast the man.
•       Bookended by Trump: There is no way to talk about Biden without talking about Trump. His candidacy was about what he was not going to allow to define America. The fact that he is followed by a more radical and destructive second Trump administration will always be at the centre of the conversation. Trump is the defining voice of this entire period.
 
About the Guest

Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich and the Rise of the New Republican Party and editor of the presidential assessment series including volumes on Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden.
References:

•       The Presidency of Joseph R. Biden: A First Historical Assessment edited by Julian Zelizer — the book under discussion.
•       Episode 2859: Stop, Don’t Do That — Peter Edelman on Bobby Kennedy. The progressive populism Biden couldn’t resurrect.
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 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
Website

Substack

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

 
Chapters:

(00:31) - Introduction: Easter Sunday and the resurrection of Joseph R. Biden

(02:21) - Zhou Enlai and Kissinger: is it too early to tell?

(04:34) - The historians were eager to participate

(06:16) - A traditional president analysed in a traditional format

(07:20) - Divided We Stand: Newt Gingrich and the pathetic quality of the Democrats

(09:48) - Gramsci’s interregnum: frozen between the past and the future

(11:35) - The soul of America: Biden’s promise and ultimate failure

(14:18) - An unlikely person: plagiarism, alliances with segregationists, and luck

(16:04) - Lincoln’s widow at the theatre: why did anyone fancy this guy?

(18:54) - No ideological coherence: the compromise candidate

(21:13) - The CHIPS Act looked great on paper

(23:38) - Who was running the show?

(25:30) - The debate: clearly at best out to lunch

(28:26) - Biden as Barry Goldwater: ideas that outlast the man

(30:38) - Kamala Harris and backward momentum for female candidates

(34:38) - Foreign policy: the irony of his supposed strength

(38:25) - The Hoover comparison: the end of a chapter in American history

“We shape our tools, and thereafter they shape us.” — Marshall McLuhan (attributed)

Who gets to tell the AI story? A movie, a media company or Marshall McLuhan?
1. The movie: the AI doc, How I Became an Apocaloptimist, which That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare dismissed because it failed to define AI.
2. A media company: OpenAI bought the streaming show TBPN for hundreds of millions of dollars in a move that is akin to Lenin starting Pravda.
3. Marshall McLuhan: Ezra Klein visited Silicon Valley and was reminded of McLuhan’s (supposed) remark that “first we shape our tools, and thereafter they shape us.”
Klein argues that AI agents are empowering tools that give humans a massive boost in productivity. But the effect, he writes, is to constantly reinforce a certain version of ourselves. These agentic tools are undermining our agency, he fears. So AI ultimately gets to tell the AI story.
Agency is becoming simultaneously the political problem and the cure — the thing-in-itself. Writing in the New York Times, Sophie Haigney argues that all the worst people want to be high-agency. Out here, in Silicon Valley, we think that all the worst people want to be low-agency. Perhaps the only thing we all agree on is that nobody wants to be a bot. First we shape our AIs and thereafter they shape us.
 
Five Takeaways

•       The AI Doc Is a Massive Failure: Well made, technically fine, but it never establishes what the problem with AI actually is or what kind of solution it offers. All three leaders — Altman, Amodei, Hassabis — come across as unconvinced there will be a good future. The only opinion you can leave with is a negative one.
•       OpenAI Bought a Media Company: TBPN acquired for what may be hundreds of millions. Om Malik compares it to Lenin starting Pravda. You don’t buy a media outlet unless you want to influence the message. Keith thinks it’s about winning the messaging war against Anthropic. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s COO shifts to special projects and Fidji Simo takes medical leave.
•       Ezra Klein Saw Something New in San Francisco: He noticed people using AI agents as personal assistants — empowering tools that give humans a massive boost in productivity. His observation: the effect is to constantly reinforce a certain version of yourself. We shape our tools, and thereafter they shape us.
•       Agency Is the Defining Political Conversation: The New York Times argues all the worst people want to be high-agency. Keith argues the opposite: agency is the precondition for making history. The Meta verdict treated a depressed girl as a passive victim of media with no decision-making role. That depicts humans as infants. It isn’t true.
•       AI Is a Calculating Machine. You Have to Ask It Something: Agency hasn’t been given up. The human shapes the AI completely. Each session starts from scratch. The fear is that the next generation won’t be as clever as AI. But unless we have a strong sense of the self, we will be lost. If we do, we can shape these tools as we want.
 
About the Guest

Keith Teare is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and publisher of That Was The Week, a weekly newsletter on the tech economy. He is co-founder of SignalRank and a regular Saturday guest on Keen On America.
References:

•       That Was The Week — Keith’s editorial: “Who Gets to Tell the AI Story?”
•       Episode 2852: Don’t Fight the Last War — last TWTW on the social media trial and the Anthropic trap.
•       Episode 2850: Bring the Friction Back — Balkam on social media addiction. The agency debate continues.
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 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
Website

Substack

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

 
Chapters:

(00:31) - Introduction: the AI doc, How I Became an Apocaloptimist

(01:28) - Keith’s verdict: a massive failure of a movie

(03:20) - Daniel Roher’s narrative: should I have a kid in an AI world?

(05:30) - Who gets to tell the AI story?

(07:55) - Brain surgeons vs. social policy: the trust problem

(09:37) - OpenAI buys TBPN: Lenin, Pravda, and the propaganda play

(11:57) - Executive churn at OpenAI: Lightcap, Simo, and the COO shuffle

(15:22) - Stability is the enemy: the biggest startup the world has ever seen

(17:28) - The markets: rear-view mirror meets speculation

(19:48) - SpaceX with xAI: rumoured at $2 trillion

(22:32) - Ezra Klein in San Francisco: I saw something new

(24:19) - McLuhan: we shape our tools, and thereafter they shape us

(26:42) - Why didn’t the AI doc actually use AI?

(31:19) - The agency debate: all the worst people want to be high-agency

(38:09) - AI is a calculating machine. You have to ask it something.

“Millions of people have gone out and said, ‘Stop, don’t do that.’ And that is a wonderful thing.” — Peter Edelman

We are in Washington DC this week, in search of America’s heart. And there may be no better guide than Peter Edelman — one of the few remaining members of the Bobby Kennedy braintrust. Edelman was a close Kennedy aide from just after JFK’s assassination through the 1968 presidential campaign. He watched Bobby find himself after his brother’s death — grow from a man defined by serving JFK into the last progressive populist able to unite Black and white working-class Americans.
Edelman’s personal and political stories are inseparable from Bobby. In Mississippi, on the 1967 senatorial trip where Kennedy saw firsthand what he called the “third world” poverty in the Delta, Edelman met Marian Wright — the civil rights lawyer who would become his wife. They married a month after Bobby’s assassination, only the third interracial couple ever to marry in Virginia.
“Let’s do something good,” Marian and Peter said to each other when they decided to get married.
Everything Edelman did afterward was connected with Kennedy’s vision of ending poverty in America. Especially when he worked in the first Clinton administration. But when Clinton converted federal poverty aid into block grants and the number of Americans receiving help dropped from seventeen to three million, Edelman very publicly resigned. Clinton needlessly and cruelly threw low-income people overboard, Edelman told me.
Has Edelman given up on Donald Trump’s America? No. Millions of citizens, especially in his native Minnesota, are speaking out. “Stop, don’t do that,” is his RFK-inspired mantra. Proof, Peter Edelman believes, that the American heart is still beating.
 
Five Takeaways

•       Bobby Kennedy Was the Most Important Person in His Life: Edelman was Kennedy’s principal aide from just after JFK’s assassination through the 1968 presidential campaign. He travelled with him every day across America. He watched Bobby find himself after his brother’s death — grow from a man defined by serving Jack into the last progressive populist who could unite Black and white working-class Americans.
•       He Met Marian Wright in Mississippi: Bobby Kennedy found a profoundly malnourished child in Cleveland, Mississippi. He also found Marian Wright — already one of the most remarkable civil rights lawyers in the country. Edelman and Wright married one month after Bobby’s assassination. They were the third interracial couple to marry in Virginia. “Let’s do something good,” they said to each other after the killing.
•       Trump’s Picture Hangs on the Building Bobby Once Ran: The Department of Justice building in Washington is now named after Robert F. Kennedy. On it hangs a large picture of Donald Trump — almost dictatorial in feel. Edelman says Bobby would call him out, just as the millions of Americans speaking out are doing now.
•       He Broke with Clinton Over Poverty: Edelman and his wife had known the Clintons for years — Bill and Hillary stayed at their house. But when Clinton converted federal poverty aid into block grants, the number of Americans receiving help dropped from seventeen million to three million. Edelman resigned. He threw low-income people overboard, Edelman says. He didn’t have to.
•       Stop, Don’t Do That: Millions of Americans are speaking out against the current administration. That, Edelman says, is a wonderful thing. It’s the clearest articulation right now of what it means to be an American. Stop, don’t do that. Bobby Kennedy would have said exactly the same thing.
 
About the Guest

Peter Edelman is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. He served as principal aide to Robert F. Kennedy and in the Clinton administration. He is the author of So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America. He is married to Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund.
References:

•       So Rich, So Poor by Peter Edelman — his book on poverty in America.
•       Episode 2849: How Stories Can Save Us — Colum McCann on empathy and storytelling. Kennedy’s method was the original version.
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 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
Website

Substack

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

 
Chapters:

(01:11) - Introduction: looking for America’s heart in Washington DC

(03:15) - Bobby Kennedy was the most important person in my life

(04:44) - Trump’s picture on the Department of Justice building Bobby once ran

(06:16) - Mississippi: meeting Marian Wright in the Delta

(09:37) - The third interracial couple to marry in Virginia

(11:23) - Married one month after the assassination: let’s do something good

(12:11) - Cleveland, Mississippi: Bobby finds a malnourished child

(13:38) - Are the Trump Republicans winding the clock back before civil rights?

(15:08) - Everything I did afterward was connected to his thinking

(17:08) - How Bobby became himself after Jack’s death

(19:20) - The last man to unite the Black and white working classes

(20:30) - The third son of one of the richest men in America

(22:45) - The Ambassador Hotel: I was at home, it was three in the morning

(24:44) - Would he have won? I think he would have made it

(26:54) - Breaking with Clinton: he threw low-income people overboard

(33:08) - Stop, don’t do that: where the hope is

“That’s my story, but not where it ends.” — Bob Dylan, “Key West (Philosopher Pirate)”

Fitzgerald said there were no second acts in the American story. But it is, of course, a narrative of second chances. And there’s no more of an American story than Bob Dylan, whose second act may be more memorable than his first.
Robert Polito — poet, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning biographer, and former director of creative writing at the New School — has written what may be the (anti) definitive book on Dylan’s second act. After the Flood: Inside Bob Dylan’s Memory Palace covers the years from “Time Out of Mind” in 1997 through “Rough and Rowdy Ways” in 2020. It’s structured as an abecedarium — twenty-six chapters, A to Z — because Polito explains, he wanted a form that acknowledged the limits of what anyone can know about Dylan. There is no rosebud sled buried in the Tulsa archive. So an alphabet book as good as we are gonna get.
Digging into Dylan’s Tulsa archive, Polito found much blood on the tracks — multiple drafts for every work, songs ripped up and redistributed line by line. The freewheeling spontaneity of Dylan’s first act, Polito suggests, was replaced by something more deliberate: an American folk process merging into literary modernism. A hostage to his own memory palace, Dylan weaves Civil War poetry, Ovid’s exile poems, Homer, and nineteenth-century speeches into songs that know more than any single listener can interpret.
Polito argues that “Rough and Rowdy Ways” is Bob Dylan’s real Nobel Prize speech — his self-reflection on his own art, delivered in his own forms and idioms. This pinnacle of Dylan’s second act is his story, but not where it ends.
 
Five Takeaways

•       Rough and Rowdy Ways Is Dylan’s Real Nobel Prize Speech: The 2020 album is Dylan’s self-reflection on his own art, delivered in his own forms and idioms. Every song addresses his craft, his legacy, his audience. I Contain Multitudes, Key West, Murder Most Foul, My Own Version of You — each one a chapter in the speech the Nobel committee was waiting for. That’s when Polito knew he could write the book.
•       Dylan Works Harder Than Anyone Would Expect: The Tulsa archive reveals multiple drafts of songs that change radically from version to version. For Time Out of Mind, Dylan completed three or four songs, then ripped them up and redistributed the lines across different tracks. The spontaneity of the first act gave way to something more deliberate — folk process merging into literary modernism. Eliot, Joyce, Gertrude Stein.
•       The Memory Palace Is Real: Dylan embeds Civil War poetry, Ovid’s exile poems, Homer, nineteenth-century speeches, and movies into his late songs. The classical mnemonic device — depositing memories in specific rooms — became Polito’s image for how much those songs know. There is no rosebud sled buried in the Tulsa archive. The memory palace is the art itself.
•       That’s My Story, But Not Where It Ends: The last line of Key West — probably Polito’s favourite song on Rough and Rowdy Ways. If the song had ended with “that’s my story,” there would have been a definitiveness about it. Instead, Dylan subverts the line in the very next breath. Tentativeness and self-skepticism, all the way through.
•       The Police Didn’t Believe He Was Bob Dylan: Wandering around New Jersey in the rain, looking for where Springsteen grew up. The police pick him up. What’s your name? Bob Dylan. What’s your real name? Robert Zimmerman. Where do you live? That’s a good question. The more precisely he told the truth, the more they assumed he was lying. Knowing innocence.
 
About the Guest

Robert Polito is a poet, critic, and biographer. His biography of Jim Thompson, Savage Art, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is a former director of creative writing at the New School. After the Flood: Inside Bob Dylan’s Memory Palace is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
References:

•       After the Flood: Inside Bob Dylan’s Memory Palace by Robert Polito (FSG) — the book under discussion.
•       Episode 2849: How Stories Can Save Us — Colum McCann on Narrative Four. McCann’s “that’s his story, but not where it ends” is also Dylan’s line.
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 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
Website

Substack

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

 
Chapters:

(00:00) -

(00:31) - Introduction: Fitzgerald, second acts, and A Complete Unknown

(02:57) - Team Dylan? No — tentativeness and self-skepticism

(04:00) - The abecedarium: twenty-six chapters, A to Z, no rosebud sled

(06:13) - Dylan the movie guy: always watching films on the tour bus

(07:13) - The memory palace: how much those late songs know

(09:26) - The interlude: the Grammy lifetime achievement speech and starting over

(12:11) - Time Out of Mind and the Tulsa archive: how hard Dylan works

(15:55) - Folk process meets literary modernism: Eliot, Joyce, Stein

(18:34) - Lanois, the spoken vs. written word, and why albums are just a stage

(21:41) - Rough and Rowdy Ways as Dylan’s real Nobel Prize speech

(24:19) - Key West: that’s my story, but not where it ends

(26:04) - The sacrificial quality: he was given something and shouldn’t squander it

(30:24) - Race, the civil war, and Love and Theft as minstrel acknowledgment

(34:32) - Murder Most Foul: take me back to Tulsa, to the scene of the crime

(40:56) - Picked up by police in New Jersey looking for Springsteen’s house

“When Haiti plays Brazil, Haitians will feel equal. Football gives even the weakest and the poorest a fighting chance. That is profound.” — Dimitry Elias Léger

Yesterday, Simon Kuper defined the World Cup as a religious feast for all of humanity. Today, Dimitry Elias Léger asks whether God is watching. His new novel, Death of the Soccer God, is a fictional reimagining of the most famous goal in American World Cup history — scored in 1950 by a non-American. Joe Gaëtjens was a half-German, half-Haitian teenager sent to New York to study, not to play football. He picked up the game in Central Park, somehow (as a non-American) made it onto the US team at the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, and scored the goal that famously beat England one–nil in Belo Horizonte. England was so heavily favoured that the football-mad BBC didn’t even send a reporter.
Léger — a Haitian-born writer and (for his sins) an Arsenal fan — spent three weeks in Brazil researching the novel, two of them in Belo Horizonte. The philosophical question at the core of the book asks if God loves Haiti. Does God, Léger wonders, have a particular affection for the poorest people on earth?
And now, for the first time in decades, Haiti have qualified for the World Cup. In the United States of all places. They’re in the toughest group — with Morocco and, yes, Brazil. For ninety minutes, Haiti will be the Seleção’s equal. The democratic spectacle of football, Léger says, gives even the weakest and the poorest a fighting chance. God might even be watching.
 
Five Takeaways

•       The Most Famous Goal in American World Cup History Was Scored by a Haitian: Belo Horizonte, 1950. The US beat England one–nil. The scorer was Joe Gaëtjens — a half-German, half-Haitian teenager sent to New York to study, not to play football. He picked up the game in Central Park. He couldn’t tell his parents he was playing for America in the World Cup. The BBC didn’t even send a reporter. England was so heavily favoured it wasn’t supposed to matter.
•       Football Is the Only Arena Where Foot-Eye Coordination Is the Dominant Skill: We use our hands for everything. Football inverts it. That’s why it seems miraculous when Pelé or Maradona or Messi does what they do. The feet are not supposed to be that graceful. It’s more art than science, more jazz than chess.
•       Pelé Looks Like a Typical Haitian Kid: The first televised World Cup final was 1958 in Stockholm. Pelé was sixteen and scored a hat-trick. He looked like a majority of the planet’s population. That helped football explode globally. He introduced the bicycle kick, the samba flair. Brazil won three World Cups in twelve years.
•       Papa Doc Disappeared Him: In real life, Gaëtjens returned to Haiti after his glory years, ran afoul of the dictator François Duvalier, and was disappeared — never seen again. In the novel, the hero confronts the dictator face to face. Dictators have always used football to drape themselves in glory. The beautiful game has a very dark side.
•       Haiti Play Brazil This Summer: Haiti have qualified for the World Cup for the first time in decades. They’re in the toughest group — with Brazil and Morocco. For ninety minutes, Haiti will be Brazil’s equal. Football gives even the weakest and the poorest a fighting chance. That is profound.
 
About the Guest

Dimitry Elias Léger is a Haitian-born novelist and Arsenal supporter. He is the author of God Loves Haiti and Death of the Soccer God.
References:

•       Death of the Soccer God by Dimitri Elias Léger — the novel under discussion.
•       Episode 2856: One Life in Nine World Cups — Simon Kuper on football fever. The companion conversation.
•       Episode 2849: How Stories Can Save Us — Colum McCann on storytelling and empathy. Léger is the novelist to McCann’s activist.
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 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
Website

Substack

YouTube

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

 
Chapters:

(00:31) - Introduction: World Cup fever, Kuper, Foer, and going fiction

(02:30) - Joe Gaëtjens: the Haitian teenager who beat England

(04:19) - Half German, half Haitian: the immigrant who wasn’t even American

(06:45) - Does God exist? The philosophical question behind both novels

(08:20) - Football as foot-eye coordination: why it seems miraculous

(10:15) - Maradona, Messi, Pelé, Ronaldo: who is the greatest?

(12:08) - Pelé in the first televised World Cup final: looking like a typical Haitian kid

(14:22) - Football and jazz: the improvisational connection

(16:30) - Belo Horizonte: two weeks walking the pitch

(18:45) - Papa Doc disappeared him: the dark side of football and dictators

(20:55) - Haiti qualified for the World Cup. They play Brazil.

(23:10) - Equal footing for ninety minutes: what football gives the poorest