We don’t often image Miami as a city of Cold War subterfuge akin to Berlin or Vienna. But according to Vince Houghton, co-author of COVERT CITY, Miami was as crucial to winning the Cold War as Washington DC or Moscow. The Cuban Missile Crisis was perhaps the most dramatic and dangerous period of the Cold War, he argues. What's less well known is that the city of Miami, mere miles away, was a pivotal, though less well known, part of Cold War history. On reflection, it make sense. With its population of Communist exiles from Cuba, its strategic value for military operations, and its lax business laws, the DC based Houghton explains, Miami has emerged as America’s most fertile city for espionage over the last half century.

Dr. Vince Houghton is the former Historian and Curator of the International Spy Museum. As the museum’s subject matter expert, he was a key member of the team that created and developed the content, exhibits, and design of the new museum. Vince has a PhD in Intelligence History, and is the author of two books – Nuking the Moon: and Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board and The Nuclear Spies: America's Atomic Intelligence Operation Against Hitler and Stalin. Dr. Houghton is currently the Director of the National Cryptologic Museum in Ft. Meade, MD.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

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We’ve done several shows on the housing crisis in America, mostly from a progressive perspective in which the solution to the shortage of homes is presented in terms of government investment. The libertarian economist, Bryan Caplan, however, comes at the problem from a more conservative angle. The co-author of the new graphic novel, BUILD, BABY, BUILD, Caplan argues that the housing industry needs to be radically deregularized. This right-wing libertarian approach to the science and ethics of housing in America certainly makes sense in cities like San Francisco, with its massively inflated real-estate values, absence of affordable new homes, and huge homelessness problem.

Bryan Caplan is Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a New York Times Bestselling author. He has written The Myth of the Rational Voter, named "the best political book of the year" by the New York Times, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, The Case Against Education, Open Borders (co-authored with SMBC's Zach Weinersmith), Labor Econ Versus the World, How Evil Are Politicians?, Don't Be a Feminist, Voters As Mad Scientists, and You Will Not Stampede Me. His latest book, Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing, is published by the Cato Institute. He is the editor and chief writer for Bet On It, the blog hosted by the Salem Center for Policy at the University of Texas. He has published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, TIME, Newsweek, Atlantic, American Economic Review, Economic Journal, Journal of Law and Economics, and Intelligence, blogged for EconLog from 2005-2022, and appeared on ABC, BBC, Fox News, MSNBC, and C-SPAN. An openly nerdy man who loves role-playing games and graphic novels, Caplan live in Oakton, Virginia, with his wife and four kids.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

One of Bethanne Patrick’s recommended books for April was Mohamed Amer Meziane’s The States of the Earth. It sounded intriguing, if not entirely coherent, and so I invited Meziane on the show. Even now, I’m not sure I exactly get Meziane’s point. He seems to be saying that secularization is not only behind western racial colonialism but also the destruction of the land. It’s a provocative thesis, nonetheless, and Meziane, who teaches at Brown University, makes it with a flourish of rich historical anecdotes.

Mohamed Amer Meziane is a philosopher, performer and professor at Brown University after teaching for 4 years at Columbia University. He is the author of The States of the Earth: An Ecological and Racial History of Secularization which won the Albertine Prize for non-fiction in 2023. His second book is titled: At the Edge of the Worlds: Towards a Metaphysical Anthropology.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.