Aspen Ideas to Go

By The Aspen Institute

Society & Culture Philosophy Social Sciences

What's Aspen Ideas to Go about?

Aspen Ideas to Go is a show about big ideas that will open your mind. Featuring compelling conversations with the world’s top thinkers and doers from a diverse range of disciplines, Aspen Ideas to Go gives you front-row access to the Aspen Ideas Festival and other events presented by the Aspen Institute.

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Aspen Ideas to Go episodes:

04.04.2024
What Makes a Life Worth Living?
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...
03.21.2024
Fighting HIV Around the World
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...
03.07.2024
Our Changing World with Thomas Friedman
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...
02.22.2024
Forging a Path to Ethical A.I.
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...
02.14.2024
Redemption Song?
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,...
02.08.2024
Our Modern Sex Lives
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...
02.01.2024
Parenting Teens and Young Adults in Challenging Times
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...
01.25.2024
Decoding Animal Communication with A.I.
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...
01.18.2024
The Hot Truth About Menopause
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...
01.11.2024
From King Lear to Succession with Brian Cox
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....
01.03.2024
Arthur Brooks on Managing Your Emotions
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...
12.27.2023
The Empathy Diaries with Sherry Turkle
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...
12.20.2023
A Deeper Look at the Immigrant Experience
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...
12.13.2023
On Being in a Body: Kate Bowler with Krista Tippett
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...
12.06.2023
The Sober Curiosity Movement
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...
11.29.2023
Work and Life Advice for the Nonlinear Path
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...
11.16.2023
What Happened to the American Dream?
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...
11.09.2023
How Do We Put Guardrails on A.I.?
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...
11.02.2023
Shakespeare in Contemporary America, with 'Fat Ham' Creator James Ijames
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...
10.26.2023
Building a Zero Carbon American Future
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...
10.19.2023
Who Can Track and Hack Our Brains?
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...
09.27.2023
Investing in Shared American Prosperity
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...
09.20.2023
Where Ancient Faiths Meet Modern Lives
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...
09.13.2023
Balancing Work and Life with Mary Louise Kelly
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...
09.07.2023
Thinking, Innovating and A.I. with Walter Isaacson
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...
08.30.2023
Harnessing A.I. in Education with Sal Khan
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...
08.23.2023
The Dilemmas of Hostage Diplomacy
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...
08.17.2023
Wicked Problem: The Road Ahead for Immigration Policy
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,...
08.10.2023
Rainn Wilson and Spiritual Revolution
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...
08.02.2023
Mary Barra: The Future of General Motors and EVs
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...
07.26.2023
Democracy Dilemma
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...
07.19.2023
Solving the Problem of Guns in America
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...
07.13.2023
Reviewing the Supreme Court’s Latest
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...
07.05.2023
Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Everything
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,...
05.25.2023
The Surprising Source of Joy (Encore)
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,”...
05.11.2023
Why People Want to Ban Books
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...
05.03.2023
Sex Recession: Why Isn’t Everyone Doing It?
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...
04.12.2023
Geraldine Brooks on Spirit, Obsession and Injustice
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...
04.05.2023
Separated: Inside an American Tragedy with Jacob Soboroff
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...
03.23.2023
Bret Stephens and John Englander on Climate Skepticism
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...
03.15.2023
Vice President Kamala Harris Believes We Can Tackle Climate Change
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...
03.08.2023
Can Gen Z Trust Their Elders?
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...
03.02.2023
Managing Our Eco-Anxiety (Encore)
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...
02.22.2023
How Trauma Lives in the Body with Bessel van der Kolk
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...
02.15.2023
Hot Stuff: Love, Sex and the Brain
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....
02.08.2023
Patrick Radden Keefe on Rogues and Rebels
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,...
02.01.2023
The Kids Are Not Alright – But We Can Help
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...
01.26.2023
Curbing Gun Violence Through Public Health
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...
01.18.2023
ENCORE: What the Ancients Got Right about Happiness
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...
01.11.2023
The Invisible Kingdom of Chronic Illness
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...

What's Aspen Ideas to Go about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Aspen Ideas to Go episodes:

What Makes a Life Worth Living?

Fighting HIV Around the World

Our Changing World with Thomas Friedman

Forging a Path to Ethical A.I.

Redemption Song?

Our Modern Sex Lives

Parenting Teens and Young Adults in Challenging Times

Decoding Animal Communication with A.I.

The Hot Truth About Menopause

From King Lear to Succession with Brian Cox

Arthur Brooks on Managing Your Emotions

The Empathy Diaries with Sherry Turkle

A Deeper Look at the Immigrant Experience

On Being in a Body: Kate Bowler with Krista Tippett

The Sober Curiosity Movement

Work and Life Advice for the Nonlinear Path

What Happened to the American Dream?

How Do We Put Guardrails on A.I.?

Shakespeare in Contemporary America, with 'Fat Ham' Creator James Ijames

Building a Zero Carbon American Future

Who Can Track and Hack Our Brains?

Investing in Shared American Prosperity

Where Ancient Faiths Meet Modern Lives

Balancing Work and Life with Mary Louise Kelly

Thinking, Innovating and A.I. with Walter Isaacson

Harnessing A.I. in Education with Sal Khan

The Dilemmas of Hostage Diplomacy

Wicked Problem: The Road Ahead for Immigration Policy

Rainn Wilson and Spiritual Revolution

Mary Barra: The Future of General Motors and EVs

Democracy Dilemma

Solving the Problem of Guns in America

Reviewing the Supreme Court’s Latest

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Everything

The Surprising Source of Joy (Encore)

Why People Want to Ban Books

Sex Recession: Why Isn’t Everyone Doing It?

Geraldine Brooks on Spirit, Obsession and Injustice

Separated: Inside an American Tragedy with Jacob Soboroff

Bret Stephens and John Englander on Climate Skepticism

Vice President Kamala Harris Believes We Can Tackle Climate Change

Can Gen Z Trust Their Elders?

Managing Our Eco-Anxiety (Encore)

How Trauma Lives in the Body with Bessel van der Kolk

Hot Stuff: Love, Sex and the Brain

Patrick Radden Keefe on Rogues and Rebels

The Kids Are Not Alright – But We Can Help

Curbing Gun Violence Through Public Health

ENCORE: What the Ancients Got Right about Happiness

The Invisible Kingdom of Chronic Illness