Aspen Ideas to Go

New technologies have always led to changes in society, though not always as quickly or drastically as people feared. Could artificial intelligence be different? Instead of letting a new AI reality unfold amid helpless hand-wringing, what if we tried to learn from the past? In this talk recorded at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival, a panel of thoughtful technology experts from various perspectives meet to discuss what might happen in a future AI-infused world. They explore the possibilities between immediate havoc and the eventual end of humanity, and suggest actions we can take to get the outcome we want. UK historian, writer and TV presenter David Olusoga joins UK government technology advisor Karen McLuskie and tech philanthropist Vilas Dhar of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. The executive director of Aspen Digital at the Aspen Institute, Vivian Schiller, moderates the conversation.

Research on aging and extending life and healthspan has ventured beyond humans to our best animal friends – dogs. In less than a year, dog owners may be able to buy a drug that would extend their dog’s life and hopefully keep it healthier for longer. Especially for owners of big dogs with short lifespans, this could be welcome news. And what the drug developers learn about dog aging might contribute to learnings on human aging. Scientists are also building some of the first long-term studies on dog health that will provide detailed information and important insights on our pets’ lives, and maybe our own. Neuroscientist Celine Halioua founded her company Loyal when she was just 24, and is close to getting FDA approval for the company’s first drug. Daniel Promislow, a biogerontologist at Tufts University, founded and leads the Dog Aging Project, collecting data on dogs across the country from all walks of life. The Aspen Institute’s executive vice president, Eliot Gerson, moderates this feel-good conversation recorded at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival in June.

After a lifetime of successful acting and passionate activism, Jane Fonda is far from done. At 86, she’s now pouring all of her efforts into pushing for action that will stop climate change, and she’s willing to put it all on the line for this fight. From protesting and getting arrested in DC to talks and appearances across the country, Fonda is lending her famous face and using her platform every chance she gets to ensure our planet has a future. Her latest book, from 2020, is called “What Can I Do? My Path From Climate Despair to Action.”Journalist Katie Couric interviews Fonda at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival about this stage of her life and activism. Their conversation was recorded in June.

Many more Americans are struggling to survive and make ends meet than is typically portrayed in the media and public policy debates. And when poverty is depicted, harmful and inaccurate stereotypes often contribute to divisiveness rather than sympathy. Outdated measurement systems and unrealistic living standards have artificially kept U.S. poverty rates low over the past few decades. But Reverend William Barber II and his colleagues at the social change organization Repairers of the Breach have worked to correct the data and popularize the true scale of the problem. About 135 million people, or roughly 40% of the country, are considered poor or low wage, which means making less than $15 an hour. And in his book released earlier this year, “White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy,” co-written with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, he tackles misconceptions about race and poverty that keep people divided and powerless. The myth that all poor people are Black hides reality and exploits racism to ensure that nothing changes. In this talk from the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival in June, Barber talks with longtime public servant and former mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu, about what poverty really looks like and why the issue has been so distorted.

Leaders are the face of their institution, answering for all its missteps and sometimes taking the fall for the actions of others. How can anyone manage that job in today’s divisive world, and why would anyone want to? Three successful leaders come together in this episode for a frank conversation full of wisdom on the recipe for great leadership and recruiting and shepherding the next generation. Darren Walker is the head of the Ford Foundation, and speaks to the challenges of running a philanthropic organization focused on global justice. Businesswoman Indra Nooyi was CEO of PepsiCo for many years, and now sits on the boards of Amazon and Philips. Representing the public sector, Mitch Landrieu is former mayor of New Orleans, and most recently served as Infrastructure Coordinator for President Biden. Veteran journalist Katie Couric interviews the leaders at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival in June.

Technological innovations are led by people, and in this episode, the leaders of two of the most influential companies in Silicon Valley provide some insight into the human drivers of their products. Sam Altman is co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, which created the artificial intelligence tools ChatGPT and DALL-E. Brian Chesky is co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, which has revolutionized the hospitality industry. Altman and Chesky are also close friends, exchanging advice and support when the road gets bumpy, as it has at times for both. NBC News anchor Lester Holt interviews the founders about the challenges, accomplishments and responsibilities that come with charting new technological territory. This conversation was recorded at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival in June. Altman said publicly in late September that OpenAI, which was founded as a nonprofit, is considering converting to a for-profit company. The day before that announcement, three top executives resigned from the company, but Altman said those departures were unrelated. Despite internal turmoil, OpenAI reportedly raised $6.6 billion in early October, which follows a funding round of $10 billion in January.

Relations between the United States and China have become increasingly tense over the past few years. Trade wars have escalated, and U.S. national security experts are bracing as China bulks up its military power, purportedly for a 2027 anniversary. If China invaded Taiwan, it would spark major conflict between the two nations. In this June panel from the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival, experts with varying perspectives debate how to interpret the countries’ recent actions and speculate on where this relationship might be headed. London School of Economics professor Keyu Jin joins Matt Pottinger from research firm Garnaut Global, Tsinghua University economics professor David Daokui Li and U.S. Naval War College professor Andrew Erickson for a lively and informative discussion. Historian and Hoover Institution fellow Niall Ferguson moderates.

America’s “second founding” came on the heels of the Civil War, when the architects of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments thought long and hard about how to enshrine civil rights that were truly for all into the U.S. Constitution. Despite an immediate backlash, including from the Supreme Court, and repercussions we’re still dealing with today, that second generation of framers added a profoundly important layer to our legal foundation. With demagoguery on the rise and increasing evidence that social norms are fraying, do we need to do more to protect ourselves and those around us? In this talk from the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival, civil rights attorney and scholar Sherrilyn Ifill of Howard University School of Law makes an inspiring case for a third American founding. Law professor and writer Jeffrey Rosen, now CEO of the National Constitution Center, joins Ifill in laying out the historical legal context for this bold idea.

If we do absolutely nothing to mitigate climate change, scientists estimate the toll could be $38 trillion a year in damages. Industrialized countries like the United States, China, Russia and European nations are the biggest contributors to the problem, but as things stand, they probably won’t pay most of the costs from catastrophes that happen in other parts of the world. Transitioning to clean energy and staving off the worst possible climate harms will cost less in the long run, but requires investment now. What can spur the private financial sector to get excited about clean energy investment? Former climate envoy and U.S. secretary of state John Kerry joins Anne Finucane of TPG Rise Climate Fund and Vijay Vaitheeswaran, the global energy and climate innovation editor of The Economist for a strategic conversation at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival on how to get funding for climate mitigation projects to move faster. MSNBC business correspondent Stephanie Ruhle moderates the conversation.

Hope seems like a simple concept, but the feeling can be difficult to hold onto. And when times are difficult and chaos swirls around us, it’s more important than ever. How do we find and practice hope when it’s elusive? Spiritual and religious leaders rely on centuries of experience and wisdom to continually guide people back to hope, and this episode’s discussion from the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival draws from these experts. Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber founded the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, and doesn’t shy away from unorthodox methods of ministry. Rabbi Sharon Brous is the founder and leader of IKAR, a nondenominational Jewish congregation in Los Angeles. Humanist chaplain Greg Epstein works with the populations at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Union Theological Seminary professor and the former director of the Religion and Society Program at the Aspen Institute, Simran Jeet Singh, introduces and moderates the conversation.

Almost anyone with a computer can figure out how to make a deepfake photo, video or audio. With a contentious and vitally important election around the corner in the United States, what can we do to prepare for convincing misinformation aimed at voters? Experts around the country and the world have been preparing for this issue, and many have already gone through their own recent elections. At the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival, public and private sector officials met for a discussion on how to inoculate voters against bogus content and combat bad actors intent on disrupting democratic processes. Audrey Tang is Taiwan’s first Digital Minister, and led a successful effort to safeguard the country’s January elections. Michigan’s Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, has been through the past two election cycles and received national recognition for her special attention to tech interference. And Ginny Badanes manages Microsoft’s Democracy Forward program, focused on addressing global challenges to democracy. The Vice President and Executive Director of Aspen Digital, Vivian Schiller, moderates the conversation.

It’s been decades since the United States has updated its immigration policies in any sort of comprehensive way, and the problems and suffering at the southern border have persisted. Meanwhile, worsening conflicts around the world push more and more people to leave their homes and try and make their way to America. Immigration is a top concern of U.S. voters, and almost everyone agrees that something needs to change. Why is immigration reform so difficult? Four experts with diverse perspectives meet for a frank and lively panel at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival, and point out the gaps and roadblocks in our current system. President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, David Miliband, brings the aid organization outlook. New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer has reported on immigration for years. U.S. Representative Dan Crenshaw from Texas sees the political fight from inside Congress. And Marcela Escobari serves the public as coordinator for the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, and is also a special assistant to President Biden. NBC News journalist Rebecca Blumenstein moderates the conversation.

Where will artificial intelligence be in five years, or 10 or 20? What happens if the technology is regulated? And if it isn’t? How will it shape the world and the way we live our lives? The CEO of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman, has been working in this young field for more than a decade. He knows the AI landscape inside and out, and is a level-headed advocate for the technology’s future. He talks with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, the co-anchor of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” about how to proceed carefully and bring out the best version of AI while fostering progress. He believes friction and regulation aren’t necessarily a bad thing for an industry that could literally change the way we think about ourselves as humans. Suleyman is the bestselling author of “The Coming Wave: Technology, Power and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma.” Their conversation took place at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival.

The challenges for university presidents keep coming, from Middle East protests to standardized testing and admissions debates, to complaints over classroom content and pedagogical methods. The American public has little faith in college administrators right now, according to polling, and it’s often unclear how institutions can move forward and assuage the critics. Not to mention how to best educate our future leaders and citizens. A panel of wide-ranging experts on college life tackles these issues head on at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival, sharing examples from their schools and answering audience questions. Two college presidents, Dr. Sian Beilock of Dartmouth and L. Song Richardson, formerly of Colorado College, bring the perspective of leadership to the conversation. Theo Baker, a Stanford University student and investigative journalist known for exposing falsifications in the former Stanford president’s research, speaks to the student experience at a well-resourced institution. And the CEO of U.S. News and World Report, Eric Gertler, explains how the higher education watchdog publication is observing the landscape. Financial Times editorial board member and columnist, and provost of Kings College, Cambridge University in the UK, Gillian Romaine Tett, moderates the discussion.

Whether they publicly tout it or not, U.S. technology companies play a powerful role in politics, cultural issues and the way we live. Founder and investor Peter Thiel is one of the more visible and outspoken Silicon Valley figures. A member of the so-called "PayPal Mafia," a highly successful group of PayPal founders and employees, Thiel waded into the limelight in the lead-up to the 2016 election when he became an avid supporter and funder of the Trump campaign. While Trump and Thiel’s relationship has reportedly suffered since then, he explains in this interview at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival why he’ll likely still vote for Trump in 2024, but not donate to any campaigns. Co-anchor of CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Andrew Ross Sorkin presses Thiel on what another Trump presidency could mean for the country and democracy. Since this conversation was recorded on June 27, Trump selected Thiel’s mentee J.D. Vance as his vice presidential pick, and Thiel reportedly may be warming up to stronger support of the campaign. Sorkin also picks Thiel’s brain on the future of AI, cryptocurrency and cultural clashes in Silicon Valley and the tech world.

Sizable electorates around the world are flocking to populist candidates who promise power, domination and a return to better times. The global experiment in liberalism seems to be suffering a setback. In his latest book, “Age of Revolutions,” journalist Fareed Zakaria teases apart the foreign policy decisions that got us to this point. Several U.S. missteps, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the 2008 financial crisis, eroded trust in the vision of the American project, he says. And growing individual liberty and choice sparked a backlash among those mourning a cohesion they believe their society used to enjoy. New York Times columnist David Brooks, interviews Zakaria and takes questions from the audience.

Conflict and suffering can bring out the worst in people, but it can also bring out the best. This is one of the lessons New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has learned from decades of reporting on the ground in war zones and amidst humanitarian nightmares. Somehow, despite witnessing atrocities like the Tiananmen Square protests, genocide in Darfur and war in Iraq, Kristof still believes in humanity and holds onto optimism about the future. In his latest book, a memoir called “Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life,” he explains how he’s been able to persist. Podcast and TV host Kelly Corrigan interviews Kristof at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival about his road from a small rural town in Oregon to a decades-long career at the Times. This conversation was held on June 29.

The federal right to abortions in the United States has been overturned, access to contraception and IVF services are threatened in many states, and the gender wage gap persists. It feels like an era of backsliding for women’s rights and freedoms. What can we do to reverse the trend and get back on the road to progress? Three experts and crusaders for women’s and family rights meet on stage at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival for a conversation and strategy session on standing up for women. U.S. Representative (D-CA) Katie Porter, NYU law professor and constitutional law scholar Melissa Murray, and litigator Roberta Kaplan discuss recent Supreme Court decisions, the presidential debate, and the policy priorities and messages they’d like to see from lawmakers and candidates. Journalist Katie Couric moderates the conversation and takes audience questions. The talk was held on June 28.

The grim stream of news from the Middle East has been making it more and more difficult to hold onto hope for peace. When and how will the conflict in Gaza end? And could war even spread to Israel’s northern border with Lebanon? Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who served from 2006 to 2009, takes the stage at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival to share his frank thoughts on the situation. Washington Post reporter David Ignatius interviews Olmert, pushing to the heart of the issue in this rare opportunity to hear straight from the leader. In the second portion of the talk, Ignatius continues the conversation with the current ambassador to the United States from Jordan, Dina Kawar, and former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides. The diplomats give insights into the region’s complexities and possible paths out of constant conflict. Both talks were held on June 26.

The Supreme Court has issued another series of controversial and consequential decisions this term, fueling discussion on the current state of the judicial branch. Recent polling data show that seven in 10 Americans do not trust that the court can be impartial, and the justice’s actions outside of their chambers continue to make headlines. In a timely panel at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival, three constitutional law experts meet for a lively and hard-hitting conversation on the court’s latest rulings. Neal Katyal of Georgetown Law, Melissa Murray of NYU School of Law and George Conway of the Society for the Rule of Law discuss how the Chevron doctrine ruling will change U.S. regulation and lawmaking. And they cover other major decisions such as the Idaho emergency abortion case and continued consequences of the 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. What constitutes ethical conduct for a Supreme Court justice? Has the court been politicized, and if so, what do we do about it? The conversation took place on the evening of Friday, June 28, just ahead of the court’s decision on former president Donald Trump’s immunity case. Liz Kreutz, NBC News national correspondent, moderates the conversation.

People and families suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia often feel desperate for a cure and will try anything. Unfortunately, no cure exists and not a single treatment has been shown to reverse the effects of these brain diseases once they’ve started. Millions of Americans are afflicted by Alzheimer’s and dementia, and dishearteningly, the numbers are growing. But studies show that prevention via simple lifestyle habits is extremely effective, and some simple changes in diet, exercise and sleep practices can reduce the chances of developing brain disease by up to 40 or 50 percent. Drs. Ayesha and Dean Sherzai are a husband-and-wife team of neurologists who co-direct the Alzheimer’s Prevention Program at Loma Linda University in Southern California. In this talk from the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival, the Sherzais share some of the most hopeful and accessible tips on adopting a healthy lifestyle that can optimize long-term brain health and keep cognitive decline at bay.

Death is understandably difficult – and for some people, nearly impossible – to conceive of and talk about. Especially our own. It may seem like there’s nothing we can do to prepare for our last moments on earth, but several innovative panelists at the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival would disagree. Alua Arthur is a “death doula,” who helps people find peace with themselves when nearing the end of their life. A former lawyer, she founded the organization Going With Grace to help redefine the end-of-life experience. Dan Diaz was thrust into advocacy when his wife, Brittany Maynard, was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2014 at age 29. Maynard wanted control over how she died, and the couple moved to Oregon for the last months of her life, where medical aid in dying was legal. Diaz has been pushing to expand legalization of medical aid in dying ever since, and has helped pass legislation in several states since Brittany’s death. Designer Katrina Spade invented a way to turn humans into compost after life, and founded the company Recompose. Human composting is now legal in five states, thanks to efforts led by Recompose. Stanford medical professor and health care culture advocate Dr. Lucy Kalanithi moderates the conversation. Kalanithi’s husband Paul Kalanithi died of cancer in 2015, after writing the memoir “When Breath Becomes Air.”

Climate change is demanding an extraordinarily rapid transformation of human society, and we don’t have a manual. The people who have done the least to cause the problem are the people who will be feeling it most, and that pattern of inequality exists both within and between nations. Mapping a course to an adapted planet is an incredibly complex task that requires the cooperation of millions. Atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe is one of those pitching in, and she has co-authored the past four U.S. National Climate Assessment reports. She’s also the chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy and a professor in the Texas Tech University Political Science department. Her multiple insider roles give her a unique perspective on what it will take to solve and adapt to the climate crisis, and her practice of finding hope keeps her engaged. NBC “Today” show weather and feature anchor Al Roker interviews Hayhoe at the 2024 Aspen Ideas: Climate event in Miami Beach, Florida.

For 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 and TV host Kelly Corrigan invited Volf to introduce the book and start an extended and lively conversation with a wide variety of writers and thinkers at the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival. After setting the stage with Volf, Corrigan poses probing questions to Mónica Guzmán, the author of “I Never Thought of It That Way” and a senior fellow at Braver Angels, James Ijames, a playwright who won a 2022 Pulitzer for his play “Fat Ham,” Alexandra Reeve Givens, a lawyer and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Rainn Wilson, the actor who played Dwight Schrute on the TV show “The Office” and recently wrote a book about spirituality called “Soul Boom.”

In 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 assigned to formulate a plan via several fact-finding trips to the continent. When the outline of the program came together, then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist rallied support in congress and led the passage of legislation for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. In today’s talk from Aspen Ideas: Health, Fauci and Frist meet on stage about two decades after the start of PEPFAR to tell the story of how it got started and reflect on where it’s gone since. CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen moderates the conversation.

The 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 Festival last June, Friedman shares his experiences of reporting in the Middle East and at home in the United States, and reflects on witnessing the best and worst of humanity.

It 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 panel of A.I. experts from the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival shares hopes and fears for this kind of technology, and discusses what can realistically be done by private, public and civil society sectors to keep it in check. Lila Ibrahim, COO of the Google A.I. company DeepMind, joins social science professor Alondra Nelson and IBM’s head of privacy and trust, Christina Montgomery, for a conversation about charting a path to ethical uses of A.I. CNBC tech journalist Deirdre Bosa moderates the conversation and takes audience questions.

History 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 professor Jon Meacham for a conversation about how to reckon with the United States’ difficult history. The two touch on the Civil Rights movement, the value of civics education and a collective mindset and what simply getting along with our neighbors can and cannot accomplish.

After 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 panel from the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival, the renowned sex columnist Dan Savage, longtime author of the Savage Love advice column, joins Washington Post columnist Christine Emba, author of “Rethinking Sex: A Provocation,” for a candid conversation about building healthy sex lives and finding physical connection. Kelly Corrigan, the host of the PBS show “Tell Me More with Kelly Corrigan,” moderates the conversation and carefully chooses questions from the audience.

Teenagers 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, Capable and Compassionate Adolescents,” after demand for her professional help skyrocketed during the pandemic. Developmental psychologist and researcher Laurence Steinberg released “You and Your Adult Child: How to Grow Together in Challenging Times,” to meet a need in society for more guidance on adult children moving back in with parents and going through tough periods. Damour and Steinberg interview each other about their books at the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival and take questions from the audience.

Scientists 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 to possible until now. In this talk from the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival in partnership with Vox’s “Unexplainable” podcast, two experts on animal communication and the digital world come together to explain what may come next. Tragically, a few months after this conversation was recorded in June, one of the panelists, Karen Bakker, passed away unexpectedly. Bakker was a professor at the University of British Columbia who looked at ways digital tools can address our most pressing problems. She also wrote the book “The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology is Bringing Us Closer to the World of Animals and Plants.” The UBC Geography department wrote of Bakker: “We will remember Karen as multi-faceted and superbly talented in all realms.” Aza Raskin, the co-founder of the Earth Species Project, a nonprofit trying to decode animal communication using A.I., joined Bakker for this discussion. The host of “Unexplainable,” Noam Hassenfeld, interviewed Bakker and Raskin.

Menopause 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, sexual functioning changes and other symptoms that so many women experience. Two obstetrician and gynecologists meet on stage at the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival to shed light on the latest menopause research, hormone replacement treatments and the misinformation clouding women’s paths to relief. Jen Gunter wrote “The Menopause Manifesto” and has been called “the internet’s OB/GYN.” Nanette Santoro has helped run several studies on menopause, including the Women’s Health Initiative and the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN). She’s also the chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. New York Times health reporter Margot Sanger-Katz moderates the conversation.

William 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 themes are also frequently borrowed for contemporary entertainment. The Scottish actor Brian Cox has performed classic Shakespeare roles, including King Lear, hundreds of times on stage. Most recently he played the iconic patriarch Logan Roy on HBO’s “Succession,” a modern King Lear story. Simon Godwin, the artistic director of the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, D.C., is tasked with keeping Shakespeare’s work fresh with every new season and reaching a broad cross-section of audience members. Both joined entertainment leader and former Disney CEO Michael Eisner for a conversation at the festival about Shakepeare’s timeless messages and storylines.

Living 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 writes for, and explains how to understand and manage our emotions. We cannot control our emotional responses to the world, he says, but we can learn to control how we react to them.

The 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 arrived at her subject matter, which she says is not just a profession, but a calling. In this interview from the archives, Tricia Johnson, the editorial director of the Aspen Ideas Festival, interviews Turkle on stage at the 2021 festival. The event was Turkle’s first in-person book talk since the Covid pandemic hit. They discuss the role and power of being an outsider, how to build your empathy muscles, and the vital function of long-term relationships.

The 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 group of strangers and the man paid to get him into the country. He revisited that experience to write a memoir called “Solito” that shows him and other migrants in full dimensions. Novelist Jamie Ford’s most recent book, “The Many Daughters of Afong Moy,” explores migration in a different time and place, along with the ways migrants’ decisions stretch across eras. Afong Moy was a Chinese woman brought to the U.S. as a performer in 1834. She became extremely well-known across the country, but remained a spectacle and was not offered citizenship or long-term opportunity. Ford researched his own family to help write the book, starting with his great-grandfather who came from China to work in a mine in Nevada. TODAY show co-host Jenna Bush Hager selected both books for her book club, “Read With Jenna,” and interviews the authors.

When 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 that. Bowler talks about how being sick changed her relationship to her life, her body and her spirituality with Krista Tippett, the host of the public radio show and podcast On Being. This special On Being episode was taped live with an audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

For 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. Quality non-alcoholic alternatives are more available than ever before, and sober bars and gathering spaces have popped up in a few cities. An expert panel from Aspen Ideas: Health breaks down sober curiosity for an audience at the festival. Chris Marshall is a mental health counselor and the founder of Sans Bar, a sober bar in Austin, Texas. Jen Batchelor started Kin Euphorics, a functional non-alcoholic beverage brand. And Katie Witkiewitz directs a substance abuse program at the University of New Mexico. Journalist and founding editor of Healthcare Brew, Amanda Eisenberg, moderates the conversation.

In 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 guidance? In this panel discussion, three authors with recent books on finding our way in the world come together for a discussion on making life choices in modern times. Writer and speaker Bruce Feiler interviewed hundreds of people across the country for “The Search: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World.” Wired Magazine co-founder and co-chair of the Long Now Foundation, Kevin Kelly, compiled his lessons and experiences into a book inspired by his children called “Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier.” And journalist Joanne Lipman moderates the conversation and shares what she learned writing “Next! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work.”

Most 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 communitarian mindset to an individual one, government policies deprioritized workers, and labor unions weakened, all contributing to where we are today. Businessman, economics advisor and co-founder and co-chair of The Carlyle Group investment firm, David Rubenstein, talks with Leonhardt about his book on stage at the festival. The two discuss the drivers of economic progress and consider what would bring the American Dream back.

Artificial 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 working in A.I. since the 1990s, and is vice chair of Biden’s National AI Advisory Committee. He talks with New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman about finding the right balance between allowing innovation to flourish and preventing runaway negative outcomes.

Shakespeare 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 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The two come together on stage at the festival to talk about what makes a good Shakespeare adaptation work, and why people have been inspired to run with his work and messages for centuries. Oskar Eustis, NYU Tisch School of the Arts professor and the artistic director of The Public Theater in New York, where “Fat Ham” premiered, moderates the conversation.

Climate 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 funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest investment in clean energy the country has ever made. As he puts it, we have to get good at building things again, with an eye toward a carbon-free future. Podesta talks with Noticias Telemundo reporter Vanessa Hauc about what it will take to meet our climate goals, and what success looks like.

A 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 to be deliberate about how we allow this technology to develop, says Nita Farahany, a bioethics researcher and professor at Duke University. In this talk, Farahany points to what we need to watch out for, and explains how to proceed carefully. With her 2023 book, “The Battle for Your Brain: Defending Your Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology,” as a guide, she explains why several major tech companies are betting big on brain data collection tools. And she urges us to build safeguards to ensure a cognitively healthy society.

Even 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 Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity. His organization aims to help middle and low-income families achieve prosperity, in part by developing new headline statistics for economic data that bring us closer to truly understanding Americans’ experiences. Ludwig joins Heather Boushey from Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors on stage at the Aspen Institute, for a conversation about how to truly invest in American industry from the ground up. What principles and policies will help achieve national security and a strong economy that supports workers? Gillian Tett, U.S. editor-at-large of Financial Times, moderates the conversation.

The 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 different religious traditions come together on stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival to grapple with these questions. They point out how ancient faiths permeate our modern lives even where we don’t notice, and speak about the spiritual gaps religion fills for people and society. Kate Bowler is a podcast host and history professor at Duke Divinity School. Haroon Moghul is an imam and director of The Concordia Forum, a network of Muslim leaders. And Shira Stutman is interim rabbi at the Aspen Jewish Congregation, and the founder of Sixth & I Synagogue in Washington, DC. The executive director of the Religion and Society Program at the Aspen Institute, Simran Jeet Singh, moderates the conversation.

About 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 and working far away from home, and in each, there’s been something missing. Every year, she said she would figure it out next year. But as she writes in her latest book, the memoir “It. Goes. So. Fast.: The Year of No Do-Overs,” next year came quickly. Her sons were about to leave for college, and she had to make the most of the time they had left. Kelly talks with podcast and TV host Kelly Corrigan, host of PBS’ “Tell Me More with Kelly Corrigan,” about the constant challenge of trying to be there for your family and your job at the same time.

Artificial 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, Benjamin Franklin and Jennifer Doudna. Isaacson returned to the world of technology for his most recent book on Elon Musk. Journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin interviews Isaacson on stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival about whether a society fully integrated with AI can foster the same qualities shared by many influential people. Will A.I. augment the best that humans have to offer, or will it compete with or even degrade human intelligence? And are there some traits that technology just will never be able to replicate, like empathy and compassion?

When 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. Now Khan Academy has been experimenting with the next level of scalable tutoring. In March, the organization launched Khanmigo, a generative artificial intelligence tool made specifically for learning. Educators have been embroiled in debate about the role A.I. could and should play in school, and how to ensure that it’s effective for students and trustworthy for teachers. Khanmigo is aimed at quelling some of those fears and finding the opportunity in technology that’s so interactive and easily accessible. In this talk at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Khan demonstrates Khanmigo and explains how it was designed. Mehran Sahami, the head of Stanford’s computer science department, interviews Khan about the tool and takes questions from the audience.

The 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 Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, is the person who takes charge and tries to start negotiations when the State Department determines that a detainment is a diplomatic issue. At the Aspen Ideas Festival, NBC correspondent Tom Llamas talks with Carstens about the process, as well as Jason Rezaian, who spent 544 days in an Iranian prison for being a Washington Post reporter. Hostage expert Dani Gilbert, a political science professor at Northwestern University, also joins the panel to share research in this field.

Almost 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 at the Aspen Ideas Festival who identify the key immigration pressure points and share thoughts on moving forward. Former Arizona Governor Doug Ducey joins Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the head of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, U.S. representative Tony Gonzales from Texas and Mary Kay Henry, the international president of the Service Employees International Union.

Actor 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 Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution,” explores what he learned on his journey and how he’s navigated the spiritual gaps that can be found in our modern society. NBC TV host Jenna Bush Hager interviews Wilson about getting in touch with his spiritual self, reconciling with the difficulties of his past and writing Soul Boom.

The 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 ending up as CEO, and plotting the company’s groundbreaking future.

Populations 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 Institution Fellow Shadi Hamid and president of the advocacy group Freedom House, Michael Abramowitz, meet on stage at the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival to share their diverse expertise about what got us to this point, and where democracy might go in the future. Journalist Ravi Agrawal from Foreign Policy moderates the conversation.

Merely 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 together at the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival to share their unique perspectives and expertise on fighting gun violence. Journalist and public radio host Jenn White moderates the discussion.

The 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. Georgetown Law professor Neal Katyal, Stanford Law professor Pamela Karlan and Clark Neily from the Cato Institute join law professor and journalist Jeffrey Rosen for an in-depth discussion at the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival about the justices’ arguments and what we expect to see from the court in the future.

Like 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 not replicate the overblown optimism of social media’s early days? Philanthropist and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and the head of MIT’s College of Computing, Daniel Huttenlocher, explain how generative A.I. is built and taught to create content, and where it could go wrong. The two co-authors of the book “The Age of A.I.: And Our Human Future” point out the human biases built in to AI systems, and the dystopian (and some utopian) use cases of these tools in politics, warfare and other societal realms. Biographer and former Aspen Institute President Walter Isaacson moderates the conversation.

Why 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 joyful moments. In this episode, she talks about the difference between happiness and joy and how we can stimulate our senses to produce joy. Fetell Lee is the author of Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness.

The 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 American Library Association. Not all of the 1,269 attempts last year were successful in actually removing books from shelves, but many were, and several were the result of efforts by coordinated groups with political ties. John Szabo, the head of the Los Angeles Public Library, has dealt with the challenges of library systems of all sizes all over the country, and now leads the nation’s largest. He joins Nadine Strossen, the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union and an expert in constitutional law, at the 2022 Ideas Festival for a conversation about why book banning is so alluring for some, and antithetical to the purpose and mission of a library. The Aspen Institute’s Elliot Gerson moderates the discussion.

The 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 yourself and delaying sexual experiences a little longer. Human sexuality professor Debby Herbenick conducts a national survey on Americans’ sexual behavior, and gets firsthand accounts of college students’ sex lives in her classes. Columnist and activist Dan Savage has been answering no-holds-barred questions from the public about sex for decades. And Atlantic editor Kate Julian wrote one of the magazine’s most-read pieces of 2018, “The Sex Recession.”

As 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 American history, and the horse’s Black and enslaved groom, Jarret. The two navigate the injustices of the years just before the Civil War, as they travel the country winning races. Brooks weaves Lexington and Jarret’s stories in with characters living through other eras of American history, including the present day, illustrating the evolution and persistence of racism. In the last conversation of the 2023 Winter Words season from Aspen Words, Washington Post book critic Ron Charles interviews Brooks about what inspired “Horse” and led her from journalism to historical fiction.

During 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 Tragedy.” At the time of this interview with NPR host Mary Louise Kelly at the 2022 Aspen Ideas Festival, at least a thousand children still hadn’t been reunited with their parents. Soboroff is still following the issue, and shares what has happened to the families affected and how the Biden administration is handling the aftermath.

Even 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 climate evangelism in just a few years, with the help of patient authorities on climate science. Oceanographer and sea level rise expert John Englander was one of the scientists who helped Stephens make that transformation, even inviting him on a trip to Greenland to see receded sea ice up close. Englander and Stephens reunite on stage at the 2023 Aspen Ideas: Climate event in Miami Beach to talk about persisting climate skepticism and effective tools of persuasion. The talk is moderated by Susan Goldberg, the president and CEO of public media company GBH.

A 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 not just avert disaster, but also improve public health and quality of life. She’s focused on making technology and clean energy available to all Americans, not just those who can easily afford upgrades. She took the stage at the 2023 Aspen Ideas: Climate event in Miami Beach to share her optimism and expand upon the policy ideas that are inspiring her and the Biden administration. Singer and Miami resident Gloria Estefan interviews Harris and talks about the changes she’s seen in her home city as the climate shifts, and the precious resources she hopes to protect.

Today’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 social media and digital tools to speak out and take action on issues they care about. And they’re getting results and forcing people to notice. Aidan Kohn-Murphy, the executive director of Gen Z for Change, and Sofia Ongele, the group’s digital strategy coordinator, join John Della Volpe, youth politics advisor and polling director at the Harvard Institute of Politics, for a frank and illuminating conversation about how to heal the generational divide. Washington Post technology columnist Taylor Lorenz moderates the conversation.

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.

A 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 studying traumatic stress in civilians. In 2014, he published the book “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Treatment of Trauma,” which struck a chord with millions of people, and has stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for most of the time since publication. Van der Kolk has been a leader in exploring innovative treatments for trauma, such as neurofeedback and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) as well as a proponent of applying simpler and more widespread techniques to trauma therapy, such as yoga and Qigong. The executive director of Aspen Public Radio, Breeze Richardson, interviews van der Kolk at an event from the Winter Words 2023 season, from Aspen Words.

What 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 scientist for Match.com, and a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute. In this 2017 interview from the Aspen Ideas Festival archives, Atlantic writer Olga Khazan talks to Fisher about why love takes so many different forms and trajectories, and looks so different for all of us. They cover attraction, romantic love, slow love, divorce, adultery and what keeps love alive.

We 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, Killers, Rebels and Crooks,” compiles some of his best New Yorker pieces on “successful” outliers, including Mexican drug lord El Chapo Guzmán, the Sackler family, and late chef Anthony Bourdain. In the first event of the Winter Words 2023 season from Aspen Words, Keefe talks to Mitzi Rapkin, host of the literary podcast “First Draft,” about what draws him to these subjects, how he pulls information from his sources, and how he crafts narratives that keep us glued to the page.

Kids 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 adults, and not everyone gets the help they need. Professionals and parents alike are putting their heads together to come up with out-of-the-box ways of filling the gaps. In this panel discussion at Aspen Ideas, three experts in child development and psychology talk about solutions, big and small, that can help kids through these difficult times. Author and former college dean Julie Lythcott-Haims moderates the conversation between Christine Yu Moutier, chief medical officer for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Lisa Damour, clinical psychologist and writer, and Rick Weissbourd, psychologist and senior lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and Graduate School of Education.

Despite 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 think about how the country’s gun-owning and gun-despising populations can actually work together to save lives. Physician and Brown University professor Megan Ranney joins former U.S. surgeon general and anesthesiologist Jerome Adams and physician and program director of the American Foundation for Firearm Injury Reduction in Medicine (AFFIRM) at the Aspen Institute, Christopher Barsotti for a spirited talk at Aspen Ideas: Health. Each has firsthand experience treating people impacted by gun violence, and they share the ways they’ve employed a public health approach—emphasizing care over punishment—to reduce harm. Could their underused methods work in more parts of the country, and make a dent in this seemingly intractable issue? Elizabeth Cohen, senior medical correspondent for CNN, moderates the conversation.

People 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 Tamar Gendler. Their conversation sheds light on the modern science behind ancient discoveries.

The 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 the basis for her latest book, “The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness.” She talks with Yale internal medicine professor and author of the New York Times Magazine “Diagnosis” column, Lisa Sanders, about the process of illuminating the often disconnected and isolated community of chronically ill people. As O’Rourke explains, simple recognition can go a long way for patients facing the unknown, but even that is frequently hard to come by. In this conversation from Aspen Ideas: Health, she uses research, scientific analysis and storytelling to chart a course for a medical system that digs deeper for answers and does better for these patients.

Most 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 evidence that more doesn’t work. Maybe the secret is…wanting less? Arthur Brooks teaches classes on happiness at Harvard Business School, and is the author of the New York Times bestseller “From Strength to Strength,” among many other popular books and essays. He draws from the latest research in psychology, neuroscience, behavioral economics, and other disciplines to explain why our biology pushes us to accumulate and pursue but doesn’t have our long-term best interests in mind. The good news is we can circumvent that hard-wiring by shifting our perspectives, pointing in a new direction, and chipping away at what we’ve built up on the outside to find our true selves within.

Psychedelics 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 is complex. The line between recreational and therapeutic use is muddy, and professionals trained to guide us through psychedelic experiences and legislative debates on legalization are few and far between. Professor Rachel Yehuda has contributed groundbreaking research to the field of PTSD and intergenerational trauma, and began incorporating psychedelic therapy into her studies a few years ago. She joined nurse practitioner and professor Andrew Penn, also a researcher and an advocate for the perspective of nurses in psychedelic therapy, and Jeeshan Chowdhury, a biopharmaceutical entrepreneur working on psychedelics and addiction care, for an informative and nuanced conversation about the cutting edge of psychedelic-assisted therapy. Doctor and podcast host Shoshana Ungerleider moderates the discussion.

Professor 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.

Cybersecurity 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 hacks and ransomware, and the consequences for patients can literally be life or death. But could these kinds of threats go even deeper? What happens when we implant internet-connected devices into our bodies, like pacemakers and defibrillators? Electrical engineer and professor Kevin Fu researches medical device cybersecurity, and uses threat modeling to game out and catch every possible weak spot before the unthinkable happens to a patient. Jessica Wilkerson works on the regulation and enforcement side, developing policy at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for safe and effective medical devices. Vivian Schiller, the executive director of Aspen Digital, moderates a conversation between the two about what it takes to ensure safety against increasingly sophisticated bad actors when the stakes couldn’t be higher, and the exact methods and scenarios are unknown.

The 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-19 response coordinator.

Looking 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 dark times. On the other hand, when you avoid suffering, you avoid meaning, and therefore, you avoid happiness, says professor and author Arthur Brooks. One of the great secrets of happiness, he says, is unhappiness. Emerging from the pandemic, spiritual and intellectual leaders may have a lot to offer us about rebuilding our lives into something better and more meaningful, and Brooks joins writer Pico Iyer for this on-stage conversation about navigating the complex waters of making healthy life choices. Drawing on the teachings of the Dalai Lama and many other religious practitioners, Brooks and Iyer wind through loss and emptiness, opportunity and purpose, and biology and psychology. Each thread brings them back to the ongoing challenge of taking control of one’s mental state and landing at a destination full of life and intention.

Robots as caregivers? Meet “Pepper,” a robot that can tell a joke, recognize emotions and help people remember special times in their lives. Professor Arshia Khan of the University of Minnesota Duluth spoke at Aspen Ideas: Health.

Right when women feel like they have it all figured out, many of them enter a stage of life in our society where they feel dismissed, ignored and cast out. The pressure is strong to try and hold onto youth as long as possible via whatever means necessary, and shame tends to accompany all of the available options. How can we learn to embrace the inevitability of aging a little more, and push society to come along with us? Former models Paulina Porizkova, Yasmin Warsame, and Christie Brinkley are publicly changing the conversation about what it means to be a woman in her 50s and 60s, and raising questions about beauty standards, norms, and media representation. Editor-in-chief of Allure magazine, Jessica Cruel, moderates the lively on-stage conversation and poses provocative questions about how we see ourselves and each other.

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 park systems. NBC Correspondent Gadi Schwartz moderates the conversation and shares some outdoor memories of his upbringing in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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). Stephen Richer is the Maricopa County, Arizona recorder, managing elections for the nation’s second largest voting jurisdiction. Election law expert and UCLA professor Rick Hasen provides an academic view of our current context. Former CISA director Chris Krebs moderates the conversation.

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 League, and Dana Coester, media professor at West Virginia University.

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? Gene Ludwig, founder of the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, discusses how and why we should pay attention to different economic indicators with Duke law professor and risk analyst Sarah Bloom Raskin, and Oren Cass, 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.

We are in a golden age for organized crime and corruption, according to watchdog groups. 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.

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.