Culture

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,”...

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 profess...

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 subje...

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...

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 fundame...

History is taught with textbooks and lectures, but it’s also passed down in more informal ways, within families from generation to generation. Different groups of people can become attached to varying stories of the same past, and some narratives are erased or distorted. Writer and scholar Clint Smith takes a close look at the mechanisms and consequences of those distortio...

The industrial revolution and consequent terrible labor conditions sparked a wave of revolutions in Europe, and then a string of laws and protections for workers. As author and innovation expert Alec Ross describes it, we “rewrote the social contract.” But, Ross says, we may be due for another rewrite, as we transition from an industrial economy to one based on information...

We may have moved from a time of reckoning on racial equity to a time of transformation, says business leader Dr. Rohini Anand, and that gives her hope. The author of “Leading Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: A Guide for Systemic Change in Multinational Organizations,” Anand advises leaders all over the world on how to get to work and make DEI improvements that stic...

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...

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 Vi...

Award-winning author and playwright Ayad Akhtar grapples with identity and belonging just like the protagonist in his book "Homeland Elegies." "In some ways being an outsider has given me a freedom to be able to withstand and bear some of the forced outsiderness. It gives me a perspective," he says. His fictional book, named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by the New...

Throughout American history, racism has been embedded in health and health care. To justify slavery, scientists promulgated falsehoods about African Americans and health. More recently, social policies rooted in racism have led to less access to care, higher disease rates, and lower life expectancies for communities of color. Science writer Harriet Washington says structur...

The type of conflict that's permeating America today is the intractable kind where normal rules of engagement don't apply. High conflict is the opposite of useful friction or healthy conflict. It's when discord distills into a good-versus-evil kind of feud — an us and a them. Sound familiar? In this time when everything is political, including aspects of the pandemic, ever...

America has been shaped by a hidden phenomenon that touches all of our lives. A rigid hierarchy of human rankings, or caste system, influences our culture, politics, and even our health. Race is the metric by which one’s position in the caste system is determined. In her book, "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents," Isabel Wilkerson describes how these inherited rankings...

The United States is facing one of the most difficult tests in its 244-year history. American democracy is struggling, economic and social justice are under interrogation, faith in institutions is declining, and a pandemic is touching us all. Is national unity a far-off dream?

America’s Founders didn’t envision activist groups mobilizing on social media and disinformation spreading across the internet. Thanks to the web, new threats to democracy — like the January 6th attack on the US Capitol — have emerged. Nate Persily, professor of law at Stanford, talks with Jeffrey Rosen, president of the National Constitution Center, about why passion may...

Why is it so hard to watch our children fail? Why might a highly structured life for a child be a bad thing? And how important is our behavior, as adults, in the development of a child? Psychologist Angela Duckworth explains how to raise a child with strong character.

With millions of Americans already infected with COVID-19, public health officials are working to ensure that a safe and effective vaccine is available for every American who wants one. They also want to be sure people aren’t afraid of getting those shots. Nancy Messonnier, M.D., is director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. She leads the Ce...

The American Dream says hard work will lead to a better life. But Harvard professor Micheal Sandel says climbing the ladder of success is getting harder in the United States, because the rungs on the ladder are growing further apart.

Current political fault lines are fracturing American society as people grow further apart from one another due to differing beliefs and opinions. We often see people we disagree with as caricatures, and think we can never reconcile our differences. Yet despite that sense of contradiction we are much closer to each other than we think.