Aspen Ideas To Go

We try our whole lives to avoid pain and suffering and when it does show up, we try to solve it. In her new book, No Cure for Being Human, religious scholar Kate Bowler says we try to out-eat, out-learn, and out-perform our humanness. Truth is, bad things do happen to good people and if we're going to tell the truth, we need one another. As someone who lives with cancer, Bowler knows first-hand about the everything-works-out fantasy common in American culture. She speaks with Adelle Banks, national reporter at Religion News Service, about her personal experiences with pain and grief and the role religion plays in dealing with suffering.

Though it can sometimes feel like conflict and discord is human nature, our brains are actually predisposed to forming groups and working together. In our individualistic society, we may think our minds stop at our skulls, but when people come together and connect effectively, they actually think in different ways, and they all become smarter and healthier together. Science writer Annie Murphy Paul, the author of “The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain,” joins NYU psychology professor Jay Van Bavel for a participatory conversation about uniting people to solve problems and work towards common goals. Again and again, research demonstrates the power of groups, and the panelists help us translate these findings into practical tips for encouraging people to collaborate functionally. New Yorker writer Charles Duhigg moderates the conversation and takes questions from the audience.

As the world’s nations face the realities of climate change negotiation in Egypt this week at CoP27, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, we take a closer look at what it means to care for wild places. For some indigenous groups, just the concept of “wild” land is foreign, but many of these groups do recognize when land is out of balance. The extreme floods and fires we’ve been seeing around the U.S. and the world are a telltale sign that something is off, and as humans, we need to pay a little more attention to what’s happening on our land. Chuck Sams is the first Native American director of the U.S. National Park Service, and he explains in this talk how his background impacts the way he approaches his job and thinks about managing protected places. Kristine Tompkins spent a lot of time outside and in U.S. national parks growing up, and now runs Tompkins Conservation. The philanthropic organization buys up land in Chile and Argentina to restore and return to the countries as part of their national

Americans across the country will go to the polls and cast their ballots next week, but they won’t all do it in exactly the same way. The U.S. has 8,800 voting jurisdictions, which allows for local adaptation, but presents a challenge when it comes to standardizing elections. That variability might be part of what’s fueling a wave of mistrust about voting integrity, and a heightened interest in how elections work. Despite experts assuring us that 2020 was the most secure election in the country’s history, fears about voting fraud or voter suppression make it into the news almost daily, and social media complicates the information ecosystem. Election administrators have a new role to play as communicators, laying bare the inner workings of their operations. A panel of election experts at the Aspen Ideas Festival break it all down and share their insider perspectives. Kim Wyman used to run elections in Washington state, and now works on election security at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA). St

Does it feel like the quality of our national discourse has gone down in the last several years? You’re not the only one who’s noticed. It’s not individuals who have gotten stupider, says NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, but it’s our collective intelligence that’s suffering. Institutions aren’t getting as much done, and leaders are making rash decisions under the pressure of mobs on social media. Everyone on earth now has a “little dart gun,” says Haidt, and the sting of those darts add up to a messy, disorganized form of power. In his conversation onstage with the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Haidt explains the nuanced cumulative impact that social media has had on our discourse, and offers some ideas for how to raise our societal IQ back to functional levels.

So much of adult life is about learning the rules and then using those rules to navigate the world. We become certain that we know what we know — that we’re right, and we’re safer and more secure that way. But certainty, argues neuroscientist Beau Lotto, might actually be one of society’s biggest sources of emotional and physical unwellness. Certainty causes us to have less humility, less creativity, and less tolerance for difference. But occasionally, something amazing knocks us out of those patterns — we’re awestruck. Is it possible to use awe as a tool to make us more open, tolerant people? In Lotto’s talk from Aspen Ideas: Health, he walks us through how that effect actually works in our brains, and shares what he’s learned from researching the topic at his Lab of Misfits, where he’s founder and CEO.

Hate has unfortunately been a part of the United States since the founding of the country, enshrined at various times in policies and regulations, and showing up in the practices and everyday behavior of individuals. We have made progress in addressing some of those harms and removing some of the structural barriers people face, but we still have a ways to go as a society. And in the last few years, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, hateful incidents have been on the rise, putting minority groups at great risk. In this panel at the 2022 Aspen Ideas Festival, civic leaders and researchers who are leading the fight against hate explain its inner workings and tell us what they’ve learned about stopping hate from spreading. Eric Liu, the co-founder and CEO of Citizen University and the director of the Aspen Institute’s Citizenship and American Identity Program, moderates the conversation between Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation Leag

People often talk about maintaining their physical health but brain health is an afterthought. It turns out brain fitness at any age heightens and protects brain function and can even prevent brain disease. Sanjay Gupta, author of Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age, Maria Shriver, founder of the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement, and Natalie Morales, West Coast anchor of NBC’s Today Show, all have personal stories about dementia. In this episode, they talk about why it's important to link lifestyle with brain health in order to live a longer, happier life.

Are we experiencing a “crisis of connection"?” Fifty-four percent of American adults report that not a single person knows them well. Our political and social divisions are at the forefront of public life right now, and distrust is widespread. New York Times columnist David Brooks is on a mission to spread the skills of deep listening and engaged conversation, which lead to real recognition and understanding between humans. If you want to get to know someone, you need to know how they see the world, he says. And in this talk, he tells us what he’s learned about how to do that, and gently nudges us all to take a step toward rebuilding trust.

Do we really understand what’s happening in the economic lives of regular Americans? How is inflation hitting people with middle and lower incomes, and what impact will higher interest rates have on them? What societally valuable assets are we ignoring because we don’t measure them? Some economists believe we’re not collecting the right data, and therefore, we’re not getting an accurate picture of what’s happening to individuals. Gene Ludwig founded the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity to create new economic indicators for unemployment, earnings, and cost of living. He discusses how and why changes could be made to economic metrics with Duke law professor and risk analyst Sarah Bloom Raskin, and Oren Cass, the director of the conservative think tank American Compass. New York Times writer David Leonhardt moderates the conversation, which took place at the end of June.

Have Democrats become too identified with technocratic ways of speaking — about the economy, the pandemic, climate change? Has this deepened the political divide between those with and those without college degrees? Can Democrats reconnect with working-class voters who were drawn to Donald Trump? A few people inside the Democratic Party, including Colorado senator Michael Bennet, are speaking up to do just that, and figure out how to reorient the party to a compassionate and winning strategy. Harvard political philosophy professor Michael Sandel lays out a similar argument in his recent book “The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?” Bennet and Sandel hash out recent history and imagine a new direction — philosophical, social, economic and strategic — for the Democratic Party and the American people.

Heat 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 healthy lives and stay engaged in activism. She’s joined on stage at this 2022 Aspen Ideas Festival event by clinical and environmental psychologist Thomas Doherty, who specializes in working with people on their concerns about environmental issues and climate change. He aims to help people improve their mental health and build capacity to take action on the issues they care about. NBC correspondent Gadi Schwartz moderates the conversation.

For many people, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown became an unexpected opportunity to take stock of our relationships. Some friendships deepened and transformed, some slipped away, and many social circles shrank. Which isn’t always a bad thing. Our friendships have an enormous impact on our lives, but this type of relationship hardly gets any attention from social scientists and the media, and we have a lot of misconceptions about friendship. The writers and researchers in this panel from the 2022 Aspen Ideas Festival, psychologist Marisa G. Franco, writer Eric Barker, and author and speaker Jen Hatmaker, are all working to change that. In a lively conversation, they pick apart the inner workings of these unique kinds of bonds and share some tips on making and keeping better friends. Writer Jennifer Senior, author of the viral story in The Atlantic, “It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart,” moderates the discussion.

We are in a golden age for organized crime and corruption, according to watchdog groups. Technological innovations like cryptocurrency have given criminals new tools for covering their tracks, and allowed them to spread out around the globe. Bad actors have spent decades building tangled webs of enablers and tactics, and they now have more resources and capital than ever to invest in new crime enterprises. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project has reporters and editors on every continent who put their lives at risk to follow trails of laundered money and trace clues back to the guilty parties. Their reporting uncovers the ways corruption is chipping away at democracy, human rights, and quality of life for regular citizens. The co-founders of the OCCRP, Drew Sullivan and Paul Radu, along with Freezing Order author Bill Browder,  joined NPR host and reporter Mary Louise Kelly on stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival, to explain their methods, share their read on the magnitude of the problem, and spec

Parents have always cared about what their kids are learning in school, but education debates have become particularly explosive in the U.S. in the last couple of years. All over the country, parent groups have introduced bills that try to control and restrict what children learn – especially around issues of race, history, and LGBTQ identity. What’s behind the recent push for parental power over education? And is it pitting parents against teachers? Parents who are also educators, researchers and writers join moderator and New York Times podcast host Jane Coaston to try and untangle this flood of activism and assess its impact. You’ll hear from writer and editor at The Dispatch, David French, Wheaton College theology professor Esau McCaulley, and Stanford internet researcher Renée DiResta.

In public forums and institutions all across America, people are arguing about what free speech means in the age of the internet. What are the rules, and are they the same in every context? What are the consequences of taking action against hate speech, and what are the consequences of not taking action? Is “cancel culture” real, and what is it? Are we in need of a fundamental reset of the bedrock principles and law regarding freedom of speech? In this rousing and passionate panel from the 2022 Aspen Ideas Festival, New Yorker staff writer and professor Jelani Cobb and professor and former ACLU president Nadine Strossen debate the harms and merits of allowing and restricting speech in various environments. David Brooks, New York Times columnist and chair of Weave: The Social Fabric Project at the Aspen Institute, moderates the conversation.

Inflation is dominating the financial news headlines, and millions of Americans are really hurting from high prices for gas and food. The unemployment rate is still low, but some companies are announcing layoffs and hiring freezes, and it’s hard to see the light at the end of the economic tunnel. There are more questions than answers: What caused the highest inflation rate in 40 years, and how do we get out of it? What can the Biden Administration and the Federal Reserve do to help? Are we facing a recession? And who is inflation affecting the most? Ellen McGirt, senior editor at Fortune magazine, moderated a panel of economic experts at the 2022 Aspen Ideas Festival as they explored all of these questions, picking apart what happened in hindsight, and looking ahead to predict where the economy might go from here. You’ll hear from Karin Kimbrough, the chief economist for LinkedIn Corporation, Gregory Daco, the chief economist at EY-Parthenon, and Steven Rattner, CEO of Willett Advisors.

As Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, reporters bring us more and more heart-wrenching stories and images of suffering caused by the conflict. The scale of the damage can feel overwhelming, but a firsthand account can sometimes help us process the impact and ground us in what’s happening in the region. Yuliya Tychkivska is a longtime activist and the executive director of Aspen Institute Kyiv. She recently fled the war in Ukraine with her three children, traveling through at least six countries before finding temporary stability. Her husband is still back home, fighting in the war as a soldier. Tychkivska spoke with Elliot Gerson, Executive Vice President of the Aspen Institute, at the 2022 Aspen Ideas Festival about her harrowing experience during the war, hardships experienced by friends and family, and her hopes for Ukraine’s future.

Alexander Hamilton called the U.S. Supreme Court the “weakest” branch of government, because it has no direct control over the military or budget. But the court’s recent cluster of decisions on hot-button issues has demonstrated that it can have an enormous impact on the American people and life in this country. Is the judiciary becoming more powerful, and therefore more dangerous? And what will be the consequences if the Court’s power is undermined by ongoing questions about its legitimacy? The 2022 Aspen Ideas Festival asked a panel of legal experts to address these questions and shed some light on the Court’s recent decisions. Law professor and writer Jeffrey Rosen, of the National Constitution Center, moderates the conversation between Melissa Murray of NYU School of Law, Sherif Girgis of Notre Dame Law School and Neal Katyal of Georgetown Law. This is the final episode of three about SCOTUS decisions and the future of the Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on June 24, 2022, has clear consequences: abortion is no longer a protected federal right in the U.S, and many clinics are shutting down. But the legal arguments the decision relies upon are much more complex, and those details often get lost in the headlines. The 2022 Aspen Ideas Festival brought together a conservative and a liberal constitutional scholar to break down the ruling, explain the nuances and speculate about how Dobbs might impact the legal future of other federal rights, such as contraception access and same-sex marriage. Law professor and writer Jeffrey Rosen, of the National Constitution Center and Yamiche Alcindor, the Washington correspondent for NBC News, moderate the conversation between Sherif Girgis of Notre Dame Law School and Melissa Murray of NYU School of Law. This is the second of three episodes about SCOTUS decisions and the future of the Court.