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The Afternoon of Conversation is the Aspen Ideas Festival's pinnacle programming moment. Over 2,000 people gather in the Benedict Music Tent, an open-air venue with acoustics that mimic an amphitheater, to hear from global leaders, community change-makers, journalists, politicians, and more. Doors open at 2 p.m.
What have we learned since the Manhattan Project, and how does the atomic bomb continue to challenge global warfare? Join Andrea Mitchell in conversation with documentary film director Chris Cassell and author Kai Bird in advance of the release of the NBC News Studios documentary, To End All War: Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb.
This conversation with two global design leaders will feature a discussion on how design creates better trajectories for brands and why design will be responsible for creating a benevolent future. We will explore the unforeseen paths taken from Harvard Graduate School of Design, Rem Koolhaus, PepsiCo, General Mills, and the lessons learned along the way to better connect w...
In this creative session, global citizen-artist Yo-Yo Ma shares ideas with Eric Liu of Citizen University and the Aspen Institute for how to reimagine our lives and responsibilities in American democracy. Drawing on Ma’s new audio experience “Beginner’s Mind,” which traces his evolution as a musician and a human, this conversation will explore what it means to be a good an...
Journalists Michele Norris, Jose Antonio Vargas, and Amar Bakshi have all worked to create global megaphones for sharing experiences and stories that too often go unnoticed. Norris’s Race Card Project, Vargas’s #EmergingUS, and Bakshi’s Portals provide egalitarian podiums where the most difficult conversations around race, immigration, religion, and identity can happen. No...
Africa is having a creative moment. Architects, fashion designers, illustrators, furniture designers, jewelers, and others are collecting a continent’s worth of influences and showcasing them on a global stage. Organizations are stepping forward to champion the notion that creativity and design have the power to fuel an economic revolution. One such organization, Design In...
Stuart Weitzman is one of America’s most famous shoe designers, known for outfitting countless celebrities (think Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Kate Moss) but — perhaps more importantly — women across the globe who aspire to quality, class, and style. Here, he shares the lessons of his entrepreneurial adventure — which concluded with the 2015 sale of the company for $574 mil...
Oscar-winning filmmaker John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, All Is by My Side) is known for his uncompromising and thought-provoking work examining some of society’s most pressing issues: immigration, sex trafficking, slavery, and race relations, among others. Ridley is joined by frequent collaborator, Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning actress Felicity Huffman, in conversation abo...
Like all institutions operating these days, museums have had to fundamentally shift to respond in real time to a global pandemic, a reckoning around racial justice, and a crisis around the very idea of truth. We often mistakenly think about museums as places for dusty relics. But on the contrary, they have an important job to do in helping us to contextualize what is happe...
More than one-third of the world’s girls and women have experienced some form of violence in their lives, leading the World Health Organization to highlight “a global health problem of epidemic proportions.” In this year of unprecedented attention to women’s safety, we are increasingly aware of their vulnerability to sexual violation, trafficking and other forms of abuse....
Historian Andrew Roberts examines Churchill's description of becoming prime minister in May 1940: "I felt as if I were walking with destiny and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.” The trial, of course, was an existential one for Britain, but Churchill’s career — and his confidence — helped lead the nation and the Allies throu...
Born out of gospel, R&B, and jazz in late 1950s America, soul has permeated music culture so thoroughly that its influence can be heard everywhere from modern country music to rock and hip-hop. So what is it about soul, and how did it become a soundtrack to some of our nation’s most defining moments? The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik and Grammy Award-winning artists share —...
Innovation is the driver of economic growth in the global economy, and cities and metropolitan areas are the wellspring of innovation. But the benefits of innovation and the resources that support innovation do not always reach all corners of the metropolis, and this exacerbates economic and social divisions that hinder our economy and weaken our communities. We can bridge...
How can we normalize inconceivable futures? At any given moment, there are multiple, parallel futures fighting for dominance – emerging from science fiction, political parties, corporate visions, counter cultures, and more. But in all cases, they need design to compete and thrive. Across the last decade COLLINS has worked with many of the world's leading organizations, inc...
Despite discussion of work-life balance, work is not something separate from our life, but integral to it. Good work is a critical component to a good life. As societies across the globe struggle with economic division and working people who feel left behind, can companies invent a world of work that is more sustainable? The Eileen Fisher company is a certified B corporati...
Visionary architects, artists, and builders are using cutting-edge design to transform homes, workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, and parks. Recognizing the health-promoting power of good design, their blueprints call for farmers’ markets and recreational fields on hospital grounds; planning processes that revitalize challenged communities by engaging local people as colla...
The Poetry Jam Session brings together some of the nation’s leading young poets for a spirited 80-minutes of cross-disciplinary performance, collaboration, and discussion. Lyrical and musical acrobatics will introduce ideas and issues central to this year’s arts track, bringing poetic life to the intersection of art and justice. This session is led by dancer turned directo...
We are often told great art speaks for itself. In practice, though, helping visual art find an audience usually requires a skillful narrative. How should we understand this use of storytelling, and who does it best? Does surging interest in contemporary art present special opportunities and responsibilities for developing appreciative audiences? What are key strategies and...
Common, an Oscar, Golden Globe, Emmy, and Grammy award-winner, will open the Afternoon of Conversation with Arthur Brooks, the president of the American Enterprise Institute. They will discuss Common’s recent book, Let Love Have the Last Word, which explores love as an action and a tool for self-betterment and healing humanity. Harvard Professor Cass Sunstein talks to Face...
Any city would be lucky to have an artist in its corner like 2016 Harman-Eisner Artist-in-Residence Theaster Gates, whose work embraces activism, cultural preservation, and community development. Since he began work on his now famed Dorchester Projects in 2009, Gates’s transformation of a once-neglected South Side neighborhood into a thriving cultural hub has yielded an en...