Keen On America

Andrew Leigh is a minister in the Australian parliament with a doctorate in economics from Harvard. Unlike many academic economists, however, Leigh has the gift of simplifying economics for all of us…

Formerly Le Monde’s guy in Jerusalem, Piotr Smolar is now the senior correspondent for Le Monde in Washington, DC. He is also the grandson of Hersh Smolar, one of the 20th century’s more remarkable m…

Exactly 85 years ago today, on 3 September 1939, the Second World War officially began with Britain’s declaration of war against Germany. Russians might argue, however, the real war began on 22 June …

Controversial things are happening on the campus of the University of Austin (UATX), the brand new anti-woke university designed to “dare” its students to “think”. Last week, we interviewed UATX’s fo…

Bryan VanDyke’s new dystopian AI novel, In Our Likeness, only came out today, but it has already over 1,400 reviews on Amazon and is currently their bestselling science fiction book. So what does our…

There’s a big fight, perhaps even a war, about to break out between Big Tech and governments around the world. It’s been brewing for several years now, but the news this week from France and Brazil s…

According to the Californian political sociologist Peter Phillips, American capitalism is facing an existential crisis. In his new book, Titans of Capital, he argues that the concentrated wealth of i…

The Anglo-Jewish writer Tanya Gold went on holiday to Auschwitz and didn’t much like what she saw. She writes about the experience in “My Auschwitz Vacation: On Holocaust tourism” which ran in this m…

Last year, we had a great conversation with Branko Milanovic, author of Visions of Inequality, about how classical economists like Smith, Riccardo, Marx and Pareto analyze inequality. Our guest toda…

Something interesting is happening in downtown Austin. Next month, The University of Austin (UATX), a new undergraduate college claiming to “be dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth”, opens its …

As the author of the bestselling Master Algorithm, University of Washington professor Pedro Domingos is one of the world’s most respected AI experts. So I was a little surprised that his new book, 20…

At the DNC last week, the Warriors coach and former Bulls star Steve Kerr spoke of his excitement at his return to Chicago’s United Center, the home of some his greatest basketball triumphs. Accordin…

As one of the victims of Donald Trump’s notorious 2020 dismissal of Inspector Generals, Glenn A. Fine — a longtime Inspector General of both the departments of Justice & Defense - knows a thing or tw…

“We don’t need no education”, Pink Floyd announced in 1979. “Teachers leave those kids alone”:

We don't need no educationWe don’t need no thought controlNo dark sarcasm in the classroomTeachers leave…

William Deresiewicz is a leading American writer best known as the author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. And so, when Bill and I sat down…

I have to admit that I’m always a little uncomfortable with non-Jews fetishizing the supposedly unique gifts & accomplishments of the Jewish people. A century ago, Winston Churchill did it. And now G…

How to fix American democracy? It’s a question that, over the last couple of years, we’ve been addressing in my Bertelsmann Foundation supported How To Fix Democracy show, now its fifth year. And it …

Andrew C.M. Cooper is the author of the new book, The Ethical Imperative: Leading with Conscience to Shape the Future of Business. He is also an Associate General Counsel and Head of Patent Acquisiti…

It’s ironic that Keith Teare, editor of That Was The Week newsletter, just spent two idyllic weeks in Europe, enjoying the Paris Olympics and London theater. Because his first newsletter on his retur…

We are living in interesting political times. A month ago, the Presidential election appeared over. Today, however, it appears as if it’s barely begun. So in my conversation today with the prolific c…