Aspen Ideas To Go

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

Want to raise creative kids who learn how to think for themselves? Go easy on the rules. Quick Take is a weekly dose of ideas and insights delivered in short form.Today’s episode features Adam Grant, a professor of management and psychology at The Wharton School and author of The Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World. Listen to his entire talk from the Aspen Ideas Festival https://www.aspenideas.org/podcasts/originalshow-nonconformists-move-the-worldFollow us on instagram.com/aspenideas Follow us on facebook.com/aspenideasFollow us on twitter.com/aspenideas

Norms in newsrooms across the United States are being upended thanks to deep polarization, a racial reckoning, and the pandemic. Hallmark journalistic traits like neutrality and objectivity are being redefined. Eric Deggans, TV critic for NPR, says it's impossible to be objective, and journalists have long been advocates for the status quo. “We’ve seen newspapers apologize for how they covered the Civil Rights Movement because they marginalized civil rights advocates." Still, today's challenges are unique. Newsrooms are grappling with generational change, the Me Too movement, and journalists who became oppositional following President Trump's "enemy of the people" comments. Deggans speaks with Joanne Lipman, former editor in chief for USA Today, and Vivian Schiller, executive director of Aspen Digital.

Quick Take is a weekly dose of ideas and insights delivered in short form.Today’s episode features astronomer Jill Tarter. She co-founded SETI, or the “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute.” Watch her full conversation from the Aspen Ideas Festival https://www.aspenideas.org/sessions/searching-for-aliens-finding-ourselvesFollow us on instagram.com/aspenideas Follow us on facebook.com/aspenideasFollow us on twitter.com/aspenideas

When President Biden expanded the nation's Child Tax Credit in March, US Senator Michael Bennet applauded the move. Bennet, a democrat from Colorado, has been working to increase support for families since he introduced the American Family Act in Congress in 2017. Now he wants to make the Credit, which pays most American families $250 or $300/child each month, permanent. He says it will cut childhood poverty in half. Still, Republicans reject an effort to extend it saying it's a waste of taxpayer money and costs American jobs. Bennet speaks with Etsy CEO Josh Silverman about the role of the Federal Government and the private sector in assisting today's families. They're interviewed by Marketplace's Samantha Fields.

What if the key to a healthier brain is as simple as getting up out of your chair?Quick Take is a weekly dose of ideas and insights delivered in short form.Today’s episode features neurosurgeon Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Listen to the full episode https://www.aspenideas.org/podcasts/building-brain-health-at-any-ageFollow us on instagram.com/aspenideas Follow us on facebook.com/aspenideasFollow us on twitter.com/aspenideas

When you tick a box on an online privacy notice, just how much personal information are you giving away? Is the tradeoff worthwhile? When it comes to data, the relationship between companies and consumers is uneven — customers are getting a raw deal because there's no limit on what a company can collect. Whose job is it to regulate this space and better protect consumers' data? Tom Wilson, CEO of Allstate, thinks the federal government should step in with a digital Bill of Rights that would increase transparency. Jen King, Privacy and Data Policy Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, believes one (among many) solutions is data trusts. They speak with Kristine Gloria, director of artificial intelligence for Aspen Digital, about large-scale solutions and what consumers can do today to better protect themselves online.

Quick Take is a weekly dose of ideas and insights delivered in short form.Today’s episode features Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd. Watch her full conversation from the Aspen Ideas Festival https://www.aspenideas.org/sessions/the-billion-dollar-bumble-that-changed-the-dating-game-foreverFollow us on instagram.com/aspenideas Follow us on facebook.com/aspenideasFollow us on twitter.com/aspenideas

Technology has changed the way we think and interact with one another, and social media platforms are intentionally engineered to be addictive and manipulative. Those messages are in the documentary "The Social Dilemma," which was created by Jeff Orlowski's filmmaking company Exposure Labs. "Big social," says Orlowski, is transforming our information ecosystem. He tells Vivian Schiller, executive director of Aspen Digital, that an unregulated social media landscape cannot co-exist with a healthy, functioning democracy. Orlowski's team is also behind the climate change films "Chasing Ice" and "Chasing Coral."

How can technology be used to help people leave conspiracy movements? A technologist for Google weighs in.Quick Take is a weekly dose of ideas and insights delivered in short form.Today’s episode features Yasmin Green, the director of research and development for Jigsaw, a unit within Google that works to use technology to solve global security challenges. Listen to the full episode https://www.aspenideas.org/podcasts/how-can-we-fix-a-broken-and-dangerous-internetFollow us on instagram.com/aspenideas Follow us on facebook.com/aspenideasFollow us on twitter.com/aspenideas

John Hagel, author of The Journey Beyond Fear, says there's increasing fear and uncertainty in the world and it's not just from the pandemic. Competition for jobs, mounting performance pressure, and a rapidly accelerating pace of change are escalating fears, especially in the workplace. But fear exists in other places — far-flung locales few people visit. Alison Levine is a polar explorer who made history when she skied nearly 600 miles from west Antarctica to the South Pole. She and Hagel talk about how to move beyond fear whether you're running a business, building a career, raising a family, going to school, or braving extreme environments. They speak with Aspen Ideas to Go producer Marci Krivonen.

What classrooms need now: A focus on emotional health.Quick Take is a weekly dose of ideas and insights delivered in short form.Today’s episode features Tim Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics and founder of Unite, speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Watch the full conversation, produced in partnership with the Walton Family Foundation:  https://www.aspenideas.org/sessions/the-classroom-of-the-future-better-education-for-all

The history of exploration on Mars reads like a good book with twists and turns and unexpected findings. None of these findings, though, have turned up evidence of life. After decades of searching, scientists are hopeful a NASA rover called Perseverance, which touched down on Mars in February, will reveal ancient, long-dead, fossilized life. Sarah Stewart Johnson, planetary scientist and author of The Sirens of Mars, says Perseverance is scouring the surface of a crater and producing rock samples. She says finding signs of life on the Red Planet would be an inspiration to humankind and make us think differently about our place in the cosmos. She speaks with Marina Koren, staff writer for The Atlantic.

Twenty years ago, terror attacks on September 11th took place in the United States over the course of a morning but the effects have been felt ever since — politically and psychologically. Journalist Garrett Graff says America lost its innocence that day and the attacks led to a series of consequential blunders by political leaders. The anger, hatred, and fear that emerged from 9/11 and the resulting War on Terror are to blame for the distrust and divisiveness that exists in America today. Graff and filmmaker Brian Knappenberger have devoted their careers to documenting 9/11 and its aftermath. Graff is the author of The Only Plane in the Sky and Knappenberger directed the Netflix docu-series "Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror." They speak with Vivian Schiller, executive director of Aspen Digital at the Aspen Institute.Garrett Graff's article in The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/after-911-everything-wrong-war-terror/620008/Trailer of "Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terr

How is social justice best pursued in a time when America is facing a reckoning on race? In today's cancel culture, many believe making the world a better place means banishing some opinions from the public sphere. John McWhorter, associate professor of English at Columbia University, says this censorious mindset threatens the value of free speech. McWhorter, a linguist and author of over 20 books, speaks with Jane Coaston, host of The New York Times podcast "The Argument," about pop culture, the philosophy behind free speech, and how college campuses are often where today’s cancel culture frame of mind begins. They also discuss McWhorter's latest book, Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter—Then, Now, and Forever.From the break: Learn more about and register for Unfinished Live https://live.unfinished.com/#Home

Before Covid-19 began spreading across the globe last year, virologist Nathan Wolfe already knew what was becoming abundantly clear: The world was woefully unprepared to prevent the spread of novel viral threats. To prevent similar devastation, he challenges people to imagine a different future where viruses are regularly tracked in groups of individuals—providing a sort of weather map of viruses. "We should have always-on systems that are capable of monitoring for all of the viruses present, all of the microbes present within a society, and that’s within reach." He speaks with Sarah Zhang, staff writer for The Atlantic, about where viruses come from, how to eliminate future pandemics, and why he doesn't think Covid-19 was deliberately released into the world. Wolfe is the founder and chairman of Metabiota and was a professor of epidemiology at UCLA.From the break: Listen to the episode "How One Woman's Detective Work Uncovered a Racist Tax System" https://www.aspenideas.org/podcasts/how-one-womans-detective-

A person with grit, says psychologist Angela Duckworth, uses passion and long-term perseverance to reach goals. Reaching success, she says, is about stamina over months and years, not talent or a high IQ. In her research, Duckworth studied cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, teachers working in some of the toughest schools, and young finalists in a national spelling bee. She speaks with Aspen Institute President Dan Porterfield about her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, and how parents, mentors, and teachers can instill grit into those they counsel.

People are in constant conversation with their dogs, says dog scientist Alexandra Horowitz, and dogs pick up on things like our tone of voice. "We think meaning is all in the words but for them, the meaning is in the context, and they’re working very hard to understand it.” Horowitz studies dog cognition and the relationship between dogs and their human owners. She runs the Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College and has written widely about dogs. In a wide-ranging discussion with Aspen Ideas Festival Executive Director Kitty Boone, she talks about how dogs may have been domesticated, why some dogs are serious-minded and others easy-going, and the best thing we can do for our dogs (it's easier than you think).

Representative Liz Cheney is one of nine lawmakers investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The Republican is part of a House select committee that held its first hearing last month. It's critical the committee get to the bottom of what happened that day, says Cheney, but equally important is Americans' acknowledgement that change is needed beyond Washington. “We need to have a very serious, sustained national discussion about American history, about civics, about the Constitution, and about the rule of law." She speaks with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt about the investigation, her personal experience at the Capitol January 6th, and why it's important voters demand substance from their elected officials. Their conversation was held August 4.

Instead of coming together during the pandemic, many Americans have grown farther apart. People are increasingly living in different realities of news, politics, and information, which is putting public health, elections, and democracy at risk. False and misleading information online are partly to blame, says Vivian Schiller, director of Aspen Digital. "Much of this stems from malign actors, some who are driven by profit and others, like foreign intelligence services, strategically weaponize our existing divisions against us." She speaks with Chris Krebs, former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security, and Yasmin Green, director of research and development for Jigsaw, about the roots of our broken information ecosystem.