Latest Aspen institute Podcast Episodes
Wicked Problem: The Road Ahead for Immigration Policy
Aspen Ideas to Go - August 17, 2023 03:49 - 40 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsAlmost 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 commitmen...
Rainn Wilson and Spiritual Revolution
Aspen Ideas to Go - August 10, 2023 03:19 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 217 ratingsActor 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...
Mary Barra: The Future of General Motors and EVs
Aspen Ideas to Go - August 02, 2023 22:47 - 52 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsThe 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 Mar...
Democracy Dilemma
Aspen Ideas to Go - July 26, 2023 21:36 - 51 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsPopulations 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 rea...
Solving the Problem of Guns in America
Aspen Ideas to Go - July 19, 2023 21:15 - 45 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsMerely 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 ...
Reviewing the Supreme Court’s Latest
Aspen Ideas to Go - July 13, 2023 03:37 - 54 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsThe 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 issu...
Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Everything
Aspen Ideas to Go - July 05, 2023 16:45 - 44 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsLike 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 ...
The Surprising Source of Joy (Encore)
Aspen Ideas to Go - May 25, 2023 04:59 - 50 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsWhy 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 stud...
Why People Want to Ban Books
Aspen Ideas to Go - May 11, 2023 01:43 - 42 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsThe 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, mostl...
Sex Recession: Why Isn’t Everyone Doing It?
Aspen Ideas to Go - May 03, 2023 23:05 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 217 ratingsThe 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 ...
Geraldine Brooks on Spirit, Obsession and Injustice
Aspen Ideas to Go - April 12, 2023 19:10 - 53 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsAs 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...
Separated: Inside an American Tragedy with Jacob Soboroff
Aspen Ideas to Go - April 05, 2023 12:00 - 46 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsDuring 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 inte...
Bret Stephens and John Englander on Climate Skepticism
Aspen Ideas to Go - March 23, 2023 01:51 - 25 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsEven 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, ...
Vice President Kamala Harris Believes We Can Tackle Climate Change
Aspen Ideas to Go - March 15, 2023 15:42 - 33 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsA 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. Vi...
Can Gen Z Trust Their Elders?
Aspen Ideas to Go - March 08, 2023 11:00 - 45 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsToday’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 g...
Managing Our Eco-Anxiety (Encore)
Aspen Ideas to Go - March 02, 2023 13:48 - 45 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsHeat 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 ...
How Trauma Lives in the Body with Bessel van der Kolk
Aspen Ideas to Go - February 22, 2023 17:13 - 57 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsA 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 t...
Hot Stuff: Love, Sex and the Brain
Aspen Ideas to Go - February 15, 2023 11:00 - 35 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsWhat 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 questionna...
Patrick Radden Keefe on Rogues and Rebels
Aspen Ideas to Go - February 08, 2023 19:17 - 57 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsWe 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....
The Kids Are Not Alright – But We Can Help
Aspen Ideas to Go - February 01, 2023 21:54 - 49 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsKids 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...
Curbing Gun Violence Through Public Health
Aspen Ideas to Go - January 26, 2023 05:08 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 217 ratingsDespite 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 ...
ENCORE: What the Ancients Got Right about Happiness
Aspen Ideas to Go - January 18, 2023 19:13 - 43 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsPeople 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...
The Invisible Kingdom of Chronic Illness
Aspen Ideas to Go - January 11, 2023 13:00 - 51 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsThe 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 ...
What if Wanting Less Gets You More?
Aspen Ideas to Go - January 04, 2023 21:08 - 51 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsMost of us know where to find quick hits of pleasure and enjoyment. But what about satisfaction that lasts for years, or decades, or a lifetime? It can be tempting to think the secret lies in pursuing more—more money, more accomplishments, more friends, more stuff—but we have overwhelming eviden...
The Promise and Pull of Psychedelic Therapy
Aspen Ideas to Go - December 22, 2022 04:25 - 1 hour ★★★★ - 217 ratingsPsychedelics are emerging from a period of prohibition and association with counterculture into the rigorous world of medical research and treatment. The potential outcomes for people suffering from difficult-to-treat mental ailments, such as PTSD and depression, are exciting, but the landscape ...
BONUS: How to Influence People
Aspen Ideas to Go - December 17, 2022 04:06 - 13 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsProfessor Zoe Chance, who teaches the most popular class at the Yale School of Management, illuminates the skills and strategies necessary to improve your natural ability to persuade. Tell us what you think about this episode by taking this quick survey. aspenideas.org
Pushing Back on the Pushback to Justice Reform
Shades of Freedom - December 15, 2022 00:38 - 33 minutesThe session, titled The Importance of Now: Maintaining Momentum in Criminal Justice Transformation, ranges from the personal to the national, covering how both these experts began in criminal justice change, and how to address the particular needs of women involved in the criminal legal system. ...
Hacked! Medical Devices at Risk
Aspen Ideas to Go - December 14, 2022 23:42 - 49 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsCybersecurity gaps in the technological systems that run our lives are becoming more and more apparent. Hardly a day goes by that we don’t hear about another major institution hit with an attack. Many hospitals and healthcare organizations have suffered interruptions of service because of cyber ...
BONUS: Rebuilding Trust in Science
Aspen Ideas to Go - December 10, 2022 02:43 - 11 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsThe pandemic amplified political polarization. As doctors learned more about COVID-19, protocols changed and people started to question the guidance. Science itself, came under scrutiny. CPR Audio Innovations producer Emily Williams shares a conversation with Dr. Ashish Jha, a White House COVID-...
Finding Happiness Despite Suffering
Aspen Ideas to Go - December 08, 2022 03:21 - 48 minutes ★★★★ - 217 ratingsLooking around and experiencing the suffering and injustice in the world can make it difficult to believe that happiness exists. But the Judeo-Christian tradition teaches that it’s sinful to succumb to despair, and we have a responsibility to ourselves and others to try and find our way through ...
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