Aspen Ideas to Go
505 episodes - English - Latest episode: 21 days ago - ★★★★ - 213 ratingsAspen Ideas to Go is a show about big ideas that will open your mind. Featuring compelling conversations with the world’s top thinkers and doers from a diverse range of disciplines, Aspen Ideas to Go gives you front-row access to the Aspen Ideas Festival and other events presented by the Aspen Institute.
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Episodes
What Makes a Life Worth Living?
April 04, 2024 16:07 - 1 hour - 75 MBFor years, Yale undergraduate students have lined up to take a wildly popular course called Life Worth Living. Bucking the highly competitive tone you might expect at an Ivy League school, the class teaches students to look beyond traditional markers of success for deeper meaning. Theology professor Miroslav Volf is one of the co-teachers, and also one of the co-authors of a book version of the course that came out last year called “Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most.” Podcast a...
Fighting HIV Around the World
March 21, 2024 13:41 - 51 minutes - 46.9 MBIn the late 1990s, HIV and AIDS was killing people in Sub-Saharan Africa at an astonishing rate. Generations of children were growing up without parents and the workforce of civil society was hollowing out. Drugs effectively treating the disease were just becoming available, and the George W. Bush administration wanted to explore a way to bring treatment to Africa. Anthony Fauci was head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the time, and under near-secrecy, he was ...
Our Changing World with Thomas Friedman
March 07, 2024 03:41 - 33 minutes - 30.4 MBThe world seems to be moving and evolving faster than ever before, and democratic ideals are under threat in many countries around the globe. New York Times columnist and journalist Thomas Friedman has spent his career learning how to see things from many sides and identify the seams in the fabric of society. He believes we’re at a moment in time when it’s critical that we focus our energy on coming together and rebuilding functional democracy. In the closing session of the 2023 Aspen Ideas ...
Forging a Path to Ethical A.I.
February 22, 2024 02:51 - 55 minutes - 50.9 MBIt doesn’t look like we’re going to be able to put the generative artificial intelligence genie back in the bottle. But we might still be able to prevent some potential damage. Tools like Bard and ChatGPT are already being used in the workplace, educational settings, health care, scientific research, and all over social media. What kind of guardrails do we need to prevent bad actors from causing the worst imaginable outcomes? And who can put those protections in place and enforce them? A pan...
Redemption Song?
February 14, 2024 15:48 - 55 minutes - 50.5 MBHistory has the power to teach us what to do in the present, but do we actually make good use of that tool? Many events in our recent past might suggest otherwise. American history is complex and full of pain, suffering and missteps. Harvard professor Imani Perry’s interdisciplinary work draws from African American studies, legal history and cultural studies to find insights into how we live today. In this talk from the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival, she joins author, historian and Vanderbilt pr...
Our Modern Sex Lives
February 08, 2024 05:05 - 1 hour - 58 MBAfter millennia of human existence, we’re still figuring out and talking constantly about one of our most fundamental behaviors – sex. Despite the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s and the growth of sex positivity in recent decades, a lot of people still report having a lot of bad sex. The reasons for that are varied and multiple, but culture has a role to play, and we can help each other get to the root of what might be making sex feel unsatisfying, or even scary or shameful. In this pan...
Parenting Teens and Young Adults in Challenging Times
February 01, 2024 06:11 - 55 minutes - 50.8 MBTeenagers and young adults today are dealing with challenges their parents never experienced and couldn’t have prepared for. Nobody has a map and the road to resolution can be bumpy for all involved. Two adolescent psychologists published books last year aimed at helping parents understand and empathize with what their kids are going through and guiding everyone toward helpful solutions. Clinical psychologist and author Lisa Damour wrote “The Emotional Lives of Teenagers: Raising Connected, ...
Decoding Animal Communication with A.I.
January 25, 2024 05:52 - 52 minutes - 48.3 MBScientists could actually be close to being able to decode animal communication and figure out what animals are saying to each other. And more astonishingly, we might even find ways to talk back. The study of sonic communication in animals is relatively new, and researchers have made a lot of headway over the past few decades with recordings and human analysis. But recent advancements in artificial intelligence are opening doors to parsing animal communication in ways that haven’t been close...
The Hot Truth About Menopause
January 18, 2024 00:16 - 51 minutes - 47.3 MBMenopause is a normal phase of life, but can nonetheless be a challenging and confusing time for women reaching middle age. As a culture, we talk about the details of menopausal transition very little, and women often have to walk a gauntlet of sellers offering dubious cures and treatments before getting to medically sound and reliable solutions. Even experts frequently struggle to find the right combination of treatments for a particular patient’s hot flashes, memory lapses, sleep issues, s...
From King Lear to Succession with Brian Cox
January 11, 2024 06:23 - 59 minutes - 54.6 MBWilliam Shakespeare started writing plays in an era when popular theater was exploding and cementing its place in culture. Audiences spanned economic classes, professions and educational backgrounds, and he was keenly aware of the need to write for all attendees. He frequently wrestled with topics that retain relevance for society across centuries, such as power struggles, relationships, politics, and love. Not only are Shakespeare’s plays still performed constantly, but his storylines and t...
Arthur Brooks on Managing Your Emotions
January 03, 2024 18:15 - 58 minutes - 53.9 MBLiving a happy life isn’t as simple as having a smile on your face all the time. We often think that our negative emotions should be minimized and repressed, but acknowledging and managing them is actually key to achieving a healthy baseline. Author and Harvard professor Arthur Brooks studies the latest happiness research across behavioral science, philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. He shares his findings with the business school students he teaches and with the general public he writ...
The Empathy Diaries with Sherry Turkle
December 27, 2023 23:03 - 42 minutes - 38.7 MBThe human capacity for empathy allows us to communicate, collaborate and understand each other. But we all know empathy isn’t always easy, and we can feel worn down by the effort. MIT professor and researcher Sherry Turkle studies empathy, and particularly how technology can undermine our natural human tendencies to connect. After several books and many decades of work compiling research on other people, Turkle looked inward to write, “The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir.” She explores how she arr...
A Deeper Look at the Immigrant Experience
December 20, 2023 15:08 - 57 minutes - 52.3 MBThe stories we hear about migrants trying to escape difficult circumstances tend to focus on hardship, conflict, statistics and policy. We rarely get a deep look at any of the people risking their lives to cross the U.S. border or take a boat to Europe, and we don’t get to know or understand them as fellow humans. Writer Javier Zamora came to the U.S. when he was nine years old, as an unaccompanied minor. Over the nine weeks it took to make the journey, he had to put his trust in a small gro...
On Being in a Body: Kate Bowler with Krista Tippett
December 13, 2023 20:31 - 1 hour - 55.5 MBWhen Duke divinity school professor Kate Bowler wrote her best-selling memoir, “Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved),” she was grappling with the consequences of a shocking cancer diagnosis. Many of the common messages about hardship, tragedy and success that she’d grown up hearing – and even studied as a religious scholar – no longer seemed to make sense. She was told she may likely die from her cancer, and at age 35 with a husband and young son, she wasn’t ready for ...
The Sober Curiosity Movement
December 06, 2023 13:00 - 53 minutes - 49.3 MBFor adults, the pressure to drink at social engagements, work events, restaurants or almost anywhere outside the home can feel constant. Recent research has found that “no amount or kind of alcohol is good for your health,” and a wide variety of health problems can be linked to drinking. The growing “sober curious” movement offers people a way to think about cutting down on alcohol consumption at their own pace and in their own way, without the stigma that sometimes comes with sobriety. Qual...
Work and Life Advice for the Nonlinear Path
November 29, 2023 12:00 - 52 minutes - 48.5 MBIn today’s world, we tend to switch jobs more frequently than previous generations, and are more likely to have multiple jobs. Side gigs where we express passions or find meaning are also common, and many juggle additional roles as caregivers and community members, as people always have. In short, many of us are focused on a lot more than just climbing a corporate ladder. Our careers and lives aren’t linear, although a lot of the traditional advice about them is. Where do we look for updated...
What Happened to the American Dream?
November 16, 2023 19:14 - 52 minutes - 47.7 MBMost Americans today would agree that the dream of supporting a family and living a good life on one full time salary is not available to vast numbers of people. Wages have not risen at the pace of profits over the last several decades, and work with benefits is far from guaranteed for many. In his 2023 book, “Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream,” New York Times writer David Leonhardt explains how we got here. He points out that corporate culture moved from a communi...
How Do We Put Guardrails on A.I.?
November 09, 2023 16:28 - 51 minutes - 47.3 MBArtificial intelligence is making world-changing advances every day. But these powerful tools can be used for malicious and nefarious purposes just as easily as they can be used for good. How can society put guardrails on this technology to ensure that we build the most safe and responsible version of the future, where A.I. is assistive rather than weaponized? Google’s senior vice president of research, technology and society, James Manyika, is trying to help solve this problem. He’s been wo...
Shakespeare in Contemporary America, with 'Fat Ham' Creator James Ijames
November 02, 2023 01:59 - 53 minutes - 49.4 MBShakespeare is ubiquitous in literature classes and theater, but the avenues of relating to his work are not always clear to young people and modern audiences. Some, such as Shakespeare scholar and professor Ayanna Thompson, argue that his plays make sense as living, breathing, adaptable instruments that can be shaped to fit the times. Playwright, director and professor James Ijames created a prime example of interpretation with his play “Fat Ham,” an adaptation of Hamlet that won the 2022 P...
Building a Zero Carbon American Future
October 26, 2023 16:04 - 59 minutes - 54.8 MBClimate change catastrophes are already happening with increasing regularity, and it’s clear we need to take action. The Biden administration has set a target of zero carbon emissions in the United States by 2050. Reaching that ambitious goal will require a major transition in many sectors, including energy, agriculture, transportation, manufacturing and construction. John Podesta leads the Office of Domestic Climate Policy in the White House, and is focused on implementing the projects fund...
Who Can Track and Hack Our Brains?
October 19, 2023 02:30 - 52 minutes - 47.7 MBA technological future where our brain waves could be monitored and our thoughts decoded and analyzed — sometimes against our will — is not as far away as we think. But our existing legal protections and conception of human rights around cognitive liberty are trailing innovations in neurotechnology. Brain hacking tools and devices could bring massive benefits, for people suffering from dementia or mental health disorders, for instance. If we want to avoid dystopian outcomes, though, we have ...
Investing in Shared American Prosperity
September 27, 2023 22:58 - 48 minutes - 44.7 MBEven when the economy is booming and unemployment is low, millions of Americans still face economic hardship. And in the last few years the United States has dealt with supply chain challenges, inflation and financial instability. The economic tools we have to identify, address and talk about those problems aren’t always up to the task, and sometimes the picture we get is hard to match with reality. Gene Ludwig is a longtime financial advisor to Wall Street, and founder of the Ludwig Institu...
Where Ancient Faiths Meet Modern Lives
September 20, 2023 10:00 - 53 minutes - 48.8 MBThe United States is a more secular society than many, and the percentage of people who don’t identify with organized religion is rising. Some of the impacts from that shift might be obvious, such as declining membership in congregations or decreased support for religious organizations and institutions. But some of the consequences are less obvious. How do we change as people when we don’t practice religious ritual? When we aren’t part of a community? Three scholars and leaders from differen...
Balancing Work and Life with Mary Louise Kelly
September 13, 2023 10:00 - 59 minutes - 54.5 MBAbout two decades ago, NPR host Mary Louise Kelly had her first child and went down the extremely common yet commonly daunting life path of balancing a demanding career with a family. As a national security correspondent on assignment war zones, she missed family events and emergency phone calls from her kids’ school. As the daily weekday co-host of “All Things Considered,” she missed almost all of her sons’ soccer games. She’s tried working full time, working part time, working from home an...
Thinking, Innovating and A.I. with Walter Isaacson
September 07, 2023 01:00 - 53 minutes - 49.4 MBArtificial intelligence is clearly going to change our lives in multiple ways. But it’s not yet obvious exactly how, and what the impacts will be. We can predict that certain jobs held by humans will probably be taken over by computers, but what about our thoughts? Will we still think and create in the same ways? Author and former Aspen Institute president Walter Isaacson has been writing biographies about big thinkers and innovators for decades, including Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Benjam...
Harnessing A.I. in Education with Sal Khan
August 30, 2023 18:20 - 56 minutes - 52.1 MBWhen Sal Khan created Khan Academy, he was trying to scale up the successful experiences he’d had tutoring his cousins one-on-one in math. He saw how effective it could be for students to go at their own pace, ask questions and be questioned about their reasoning, and he wanted to make those benefits available to as many kids as possible. The organization eventually grew to include free online content on just about every subject taught in schools, and even test prep for the LSATs and MCATs. ...
The Dilemmas of Hostage Diplomacy
August 23, 2023 18:18 - 58 minutes - 53.7 MBThe White House has declared hostage-taking to be a national emergency. In July 2022, Biden issued an executive order outlining steps to deter the practice and help bring Americans back sooner. Increasingly, autocratic nation states such as Russia and Iran are detaining U.S. citizens unlawfully or on minor and bogus charges with the aim of getting something they want. Hostage diplomacy is no longer a tactic of terrorists or rogue actors, but a tool government officials are turning to. Roger ...
Wicked Problem: The Road Ahead for Immigration Policy
August 17, 2023 03:49 - 40 minutes - 37.3 MBAlmost everyone agrees that immigration policy in the United States is lacking, but despite decades of debate, Congress has not been able to pass comprehensive reform on the issue. For some, the primary issues are border security and economic concerns, and for others, labor needs and a commitment to humanitarianism take precedence. Why is it so hard to find common ground, and what are some visions for a different immigration future? NBC correspondent Tom Llamas moderates a panel of experts a...
Rainn Wilson and Spiritual Revolution
August 10, 2023 03:19 - 1 hour - 63.7 MBActor Rainn Wilson had his dream job on the hit TV show “The Office,” but was still being kept up at night by anxiety, depression, and life’s big unanswerable questions. He went on a quest to discover the world’s spiritual teachings, reading all the holy books of the world’s major religions. For several years, he researched and pondered concepts like truth, love, free will, and suffering, and he eventually landed back at the Baha’i Faith of his family and childhood. His latest book, “Soul Bo...
Mary Barra: The Future of General Motors and EVs
August 02, 2023 22:47 - 52 minutes - 47.9 MBThe automotive industry is going through a time of profound transformation, facing internal and external pressure to electrify America’s fleet of personal vehicles. General Motors has made a bold pledge to phase out internal combustion and produce only electric vehicles by the year 2035. CEO Mary Barra is leading the ambitious effort to revamp the company, after about a decade in the top role. Journalist Rebecca Blumenstein of NBC News interviews Barra about starting at GM in college and end...
Democracy Dilemma
July 26, 2023 21:36 - 51 minutes - 47.3 MBPopulations around the world have been electing more and more autocratic leaders in the past couple decades, via supposedly free, fair, and democratic elections. The freedom of the press is being impinged upon in many places, and fear, outrage and misinformation are often taking the place of reasoned debate. Minority populations in some countries are increasingly oppressed and vulnerable. Is democracy working? Filipino journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, Brookings Institutio...
Solving the Problem of Guns in America
July 19, 2023 21:15 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBMerely defining gun violence is difficult, and coming to agreement on what to do about it often seems near-impossible in the United States. But people on all sides of the debate agree that they want to feel safe, even if they have different ideas of how to achieve security. What will it take to truly listen to each other and make progress on this issue? U.S. Representative Lucy McBath, advocate John Feinblatt, Cato Institute legal scholar Clark Neily and sociologist Jennifer Carlson come tog...
Reviewing the Supreme Court’s Latest
July 13, 2023 03:37 - 54 minutes - 49.7 MBThe U.S. Supreme Court continues to issue major decisions that have profound impacts on the lives of Americans and the political future of the country. During the term that just ended, the court ruled on affirmative action, voting rights, gay rights and student loan forgiveness, among other issues with broad reach. But the justices are not a monolith, of course, and there is much to be learned from closely reading the full opinions and dissents, and placing the decisions in legal context. Ge...
Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Everything
July 05, 2023 16:45 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBLike all technology, artificial intelligence can be used for good, and it can be used for evil. What little federal regulation the United States has governing technology and the internet was written before artificial intelligence existed in its current form, and as a society, we’re flying blind and in way over our heads as we enter this next phase of digital life. What could we possibly do to help point these constantly-evolving tools in the right direction, anticipate the biggest risks, and...
The Surprising Source of Joy (Encore)
May 25, 2023 04:59 - 50 minutes - 46.4 MBWhy is it that simple pleasures such as bubbles, rainbows, and hot air balloons bring joy to most people? Designer Ingrid Fetell Lee says, “there’s something really powerful in the idea that we all find joy in the same things,” especially items with little significance otherwise. Fetell Lee studied how our physical environment impacts our well-being, both physically and psychologically. She believes that our surroundings can be a powerful tool for cultivating happier, healthier lives … and j...
Why People Want to Ban Books
May 11, 2023 01:43 - 42 minutes - 39.2 MBThe desire to try and stop people from reading certain printed material has been around since material was first printed. In the modern era, book banning has waxed and waned in popularity, experiencing peaks during McCarthyism and again in the 1980s. We’re now in the midst of another wave, mostly targeting books by people of color and LGBTQ identities. In 2022, the number of U.S. attempts to ban books hit the highest point since tracking began more than 20 years ago, according to the America...
Sex Recession: Why Isn’t Everyone Doing It?
May 03, 2023 23:05 - 1 hour - 57.8 MBThe age of technology and the internet provides constant easy access to sexual content and information about sex, for all tastes and curiosities. But survey data show that young people are having less sex than people of previous generations did at their age, and the experts are trying to figure out why. In this 2019 talk from the Aspen Ideas: Health archives, three professionals with inside knowledge talk to Atlantic culture writer Amanda Mull about the positives and negatives of keeping to ...
Geraldine Brooks on Spirit, Obsession and Injustice
April 12, 2023 19:10 - 53 minutes - 48.9 MBAs a budding journalist in Sydney, Australia, Geraldine Brooks was assigned to the horse racing beat in the sports department, with no experience or knowledge of the subject. She went to every single horse race in the city and reported on the results in great detail. It wasn’t until her 50s that she actually became personally interested in horses, and returned to the subject in her latest historical fiction novel, “Horse.” The book’s main subject is Lexington, the greatest race horse in Amer...
Separated: Inside an American Tragedy with Jacob Soboroff
April 05, 2023 12:00 - 46 minutes - 42.9 MBDuring the period of several months in 2018 when the Trump administration was separating migrant families at the U.S. border with Mexico, NBC News and MSNBC reporter Jacob Soboroff was exposing the raw details of the situation. He toured a detention facility holding young boys in Texas, and interviewed parents hundreds of miles away in California. He gave the public stark and simple descriptions of what he was seeing, and turned his reporting into a book, “Separated: Inside an American Trage...
Bret Stephens and John Englander on Climate Skepticism
March 23, 2023 01:51 - 25 minutes - 23 MBEven people who agree that climate change is a problem don’t necessarily agree on what to do about it. And some people still need a little more convincing that the threat is as serious as climate scientists and activists have been telling us it is. It can be difficult for skeptics with serious, well-intentioned questions to find a forum for getting answers. New York Times columnist Bret Stephens knows what that intellectual journey is like firsthand, having gone from climate skepticism to cl...
Vice President Kamala Harris Believes We Can Tackle Climate Change
March 15, 2023 15:42 - 33 minutes - 30.5 MBA problem as big as climate change relies on millions of incremental solutions of all sizes, but also requires leaders who can keep their eye on the big picture. Not all the movement on climate needs to come from the government, but making progress will rely in large part on executive action. Vice President Kamala Harris has a clear vision for the role that the U.S. government can play in solving this daunting problem, and is even excited about implementing solutions that she believes will n...
Can Gen Z Trust Their Elders?
March 08, 2023 11:00 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBToday’s young people have not seen a lot of good examples of adults working together to solve problems. Generation Z is coming of age amidst daunting issues like climate change, gun violence, and a teen mental health crisis, and trusted adults seem few and far between to many of them. The rift goes both ways — Baby Boomers and Generation X also report distrust and dislike of young people. Members of the activist collective Gen Z for Change are taking matters into their own hands, using socia...
Managing Our Eco-Anxiety (Encore)
March 02, 2023 13:48 - 45 minutes - 42.1 MBHeat waves. Wildfires. Floods. This summer has served up some of the most extreme weather on record, and it’s clear many of us are overwhelmed by climate change news. We usually hear more about problems than solutions, and it’s often difficult to find helpful information about managing our fear and discomfort. Alaina Wood is a scientist and climate communicator, known for her TikTok videos about uplifting climate-related news. She believes that amplifying positive messages helps people lead ...
How Trauma Lives in the Body with Bessel van der Kolk
February 22, 2023 17:13 - 57 minutes - 52.5 MBA traumatic event can literally change the way our brain functions, and live on in our body in unexpected ways. The field of psychiatry has not always acknowledged or fully studied the physical impacts of trauma, and mental health practitioners are often not aware of appropriate treatments for traumatized patients. Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk has been researching trauma as a clinician for about four decades, and founded one of the first research centers in the United States dedicated to...
Hot Stuff: Love, Sex and the Brain
February 15, 2023 11:00 - 35 minutes - 32.9 MBWhat is it that pulls one person toward another, and connects them? What does love and attraction do to our brain, and vice versa? Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher has been studying questions of love and relationships for over 40 years. Through detailed data collection, research questionnaires and even brain scans, she has collected massive amounts of information on the topic, and identified four main styles of thinking that guide a person’s behavior and lovelife. Fisher is the chief s...
Patrick Radden Keefe on Rogues and Rebels
February 08, 2023 19:17 - 57 minutes - 52.9 MBWe could look at people who veer off society’s dominant tracks into moral gray zones as simply bad, or damaged, or living the consequences of bad choices. But from the inside, people always have reasons for doing what they do, and when all the cards are on the table, morality can become murkier. New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe is fascinated by what drives people who land outside the norm, and especially those who do bad things. His latest book, “Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Kille...
The Kids Are Not Alright – But We Can Help
February 01, 2023 21:54 - 49 minutes - 45 MBKids growing up in the U.S. today are facing some terrifyingly real, daunting problems. Almost every day, they hear about political polarization, racism, climate change, gun violence and a host of other complex societal issues. They’re learning how to comprehend those challenges and the emotions they evoke at the same time they’re trying to learn everything else, and that overwhelm has consequences. Our mental health system is not robust enough to handle the current demand, for kids or adult...
Curbing Gun Violence Through Public Health
January 26, 2023 05:08 - 1 hour - 63.1 MBDespite the deeply tragic, terrifying and high-profile nature of gun violence, the United States has not been able to make significant progress on the problem. The arguments on all sides are exhaustingly familiar, and so is the lack of governmental and societal action. In the meantime, more and more people are dying—researchers say more than 45,000 a year. A group of passionate health care providers and public health professionals are urging us to look at the issue in a different light, and ...
ENCORE: What the Ancients Got Right about Happiness
January 18, 2023 19:13 - 43 minutes - 40 MBPeople have been thinking about happiness for thousands of years. In fact, ancient thinkers came up with strategies for cultivating pleasures over a lifetime, or creating a lasting capacity to take joy in the world. This long-term flourishing is different from immediate pleasures — it’s a richer notion of happiness. Laurie Santos is a professor of psychology at Yale and an expert on human cognition and the cognitive biases that impede better choices. She’s joined by Yale philosophy professor...
The Invisible Kingdom of Chronic Illness
January 11, 2023 13:00 - 51 minutes - 46.8 MBThe pain and discomfort brought on by a newly-developed chronic illness can be exhausting. On top of symptoms, millions of people also have frustrating and belittling encounters with the medical system while on a quest to diagnose and treat their illnesses. Journalist Meghan O’Rourke was one of them, and it took her more than a decade to convince a doctor to run the tests that would finally explain what she was experiencing. That journey led to treatments and improved health, and also became...