Explore
Search results
Former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter says serving in city council is the best job in politics.
The average American will spend a third of his or her life working. What is the secret to achieving happiness because of our work and not in spite of it? How can we make a job into a vocation? David Brooks and Arthur Brooks have both studied and written about these questions, and they argue that in all kinds of work the answer is to find meaning. In this conversation, the...
Joshua Johnson, host of WAMU’s “1A,” interviews Simon Sinek in this Takeover episode.
Maria Hinojosa as takeover host with guests Jose Antonio Vargas, Melvin Mar, and Roberto Villaseñor.
In her new memoir, Mary Louise Kelly candidly explores the delicate balance between career and motherhood, sharing her insights as the host of NPR’s “All Things Considered” in the year leading up to her son’s departure for college. She and Kelly Corrigan, host of PBS’s “Tell Me More with Kelly Corrigan,” sit down for a lively and honest conversation about the challenges of...
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...
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....
In aggregate, men in America are suffering. As many as ten million are missing from the workforce; jobs their fathers and grandfathers held have been automated and outsourced. Millions fewer boys are enrolling in college. Tens of thousands perished last year, victims of the opioid epidemic. One in ten black men in his thirties is incarcerated. What is the story behind all...
In America, interpersonal trust is in decline. Less than one-third of Americans agree that most people can be trusted. Events that might have brought people together, like the shared sacrifices of the pandemic, led instead to infighting. Social trust enables us to live meaningful lives in community and peacefully solve shared problems, from racial injustice to creating job...
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 i...
There is an overwhelming tendency to see economic goals in terms of metrics like GDP, unemployment, or in terms of very specific policies or policy strategies — like populism versus centrism. Yet, this can reflect a confusion of means and metrics with ultimate end goals in terms of what matters most for raising human well-being. If increased job polarization, potential job...
The average American spends a third of his or her life working.
Over the past decade, Walter Isaacson has explored the minds of history’s most curious innovators. Leonardo da Vinci. Benjamin Franklin. Albert Einstein. Steve Jobs. Jennifer Doudna. And now: Elon Musk. All geniuses, to be sure. What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their...
Cities’ identities are made and remade over time by their cultures, but is a city’s cultural identity integral to its survival? When infrastructure is crumbling, public education funding has flagged, and the world of art and culture is accessible on any device with an Internet connection, is there still a specific, irreplaceable value inherent in the cultural identity of a...
Peter Georgescu arrived in this country as a penniless Romanian refugee and rose to prominence as the CEO of Young & Rubicam. It’s an American Dream success story that could not play out in today’s economic environment — one that is plagued with disappearing jobs, flat wages, and a shrinking middle class. In his new book, Capitalists, Arise!, Georgescu argues that the star...
It’s no secret that money in the hands of women is money well taken care of — with copious evidence to prove it. The question is how to get more money into those hands, especially now. An estimated 1.2 million women left the workforce between 2020 and 2022 — thanks largely to the pandemic’s demand for caretakers at home — effecting an enormous economic setback for women an...
Over the past century, women have made significant strides in achieving leadership positions, but they still have a long way to go to achieve parity in jobs, pay, and representation in business, science, government, or academia. In this session, we’ll examine the embedded gender biases that bar women from leadership positions, and ask what strategies women (and men) can em...
The Aspen Challenge presents teams of high school students from New Orleans and Miami who have developed innovative solutions to issues that have impacted their communities. See these young changemakers take to the stage to prove that entrepreneurial community solutions can be created at any age. Learn how Benjamin Franklin High School at the Katherine Johnson Campus is ta...
Generation after generation, we’re doing a pretty good job at regeneration. Yet sex continues to be a confusing subject — laden with ignorance, taboo, and shame — and the addition of technologies for connection, gratification, and reproduction are changing the landscape of intimacy. What do we really know about sex, and will we ever be good at talking about it?