Episode 2078: Spencer Kornhaber on our carnally confused age in which sex is always in our heads but not in our beds

We live in a erotically dissonant and carnally confused age. One the one hand, young people are having a lot less sex these days; on the other, they are listening intently to the music of erotically dissonant artists like Billy Eilish and Taylor Swift. I first came across the ideas of “erotic dissonance” and “carnal confusion” in “The New Sound of Sexual Frustration”, an intriguing Atlantic piece by their prolific culture critic Spencer Kornhaber “I've listened to Billie Eilish's "Blue" 400 times already”, the obsessive Kornhaber confesses. So what did the author of ON DIVAS learn about the carnal confusion of today’s youth? Is the music of Eilish and Swift just another explosion of youthful sexual frustration? Or is our age of anxiety creating something quite new - a culture of anxiety in which sex is always in our heads but not in our beds.

Spencer Kornhaber is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers music and popular culture. Prior to joining The Atlantic as an editor in 2011, he wrote for Spin, The A.V. Club, and OC Weekly. In 2019, he won the Excellence in Column Writing Award from NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists.

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.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe