Explore
Search results
Javier Zamora’s migration journey took him from El Salvador to the United States by foot at age nine, while Jamie Ford’s great-grandfather emigrated from China to Nevada to mine. Both authors reflect on the ways in which migration has shaped them, unpacking what it means to be American and exploring the meaning of home.
How do we create a culture that brings out the best in our personal and professional lives? Rituals are powerful tools for building a culture that better aligns your values and priorities with your everyday practices. Our work shows how rituals help people bridge transitions, get to flow, deal with conflict, and increase bonding. In this session, we’ll share some of the...
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...
No one knows the restorative power of music better than the musicians who make it (although brain scientists keep learning more). In collaboration with Jazz Aspen Snowmass, well-known artists performing at the June festival talk about the history and origin of the music they perform, share personal stories about their own relationship to music, and riff on its link to heal...
Kate Bowler, a young scholar of Christianity, had just written a book called Blessed, about the Christian idea that good things happen to good people, when she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer at the age of 35. Suddenly confronted with this devastating news, and people’s well-meaning but often lacking responses to it, Bowler wrote a book, launched a podcast, and became a...
Join leaders from X (formerly Google X) for a hands-on workshop, and get in the mindset that helped create breakthrough technologies such as internet-beaming balloons and self-driving cars. This interactive, problem-solving session — driven by a set of guidelines known as the Sustainable Development Goals — is an opportunity to flex your creative muscles and imagine new wa...
Is the English language deteriorating before our ears?
Great memoirs implicitly tackle the subject of identity, weaving together a cohesive self from a jumble of experiences, influences and, yes, imperfect memories. But what propels authors to write a memoir, and what compels us to read them? Join three masters of award-winning and best-selling works who dared such examination and reflection as they discuss the risks and rewar...
Women's History Month is an opportunity to honor the indelible contributions women have made in societies around the world. But don't wait until remarkable women are in history books to celebrate them! Learn about contemporary women making their mark on the world.
The search for meaning is at the crux of the human condition and the basis of Life Worth Living, a new book emulating one of Yale’s most popular courses. In this lively “hot seat” discussion, professor Miroslav Volf discusses the book’s framework with host Kelly Corrigan. Afterwards, distinguished guests join in contemplating key questions such as: what’s worth doing, who...
October is National Book Month, and we’re celebrating by looking back at some of our favorite conversations about reading and writing from the Aspen Ideas Festival and Aspen Ideas: Health. Hear from National Book Award winner Imani Perry, poet and memoirist Javier Zamora, bestselling novelist Amor Towles, Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks, nonfiction master Tracy Kidd...
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...
"Redeployment" takes readers to the front lines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For years, Adam Gopnik’s writing has delighted with charming and nostalgic observations of our behavior within the world around us. In this lecture, he’ll use findings from a series of New Yorker essays to ask us, what is it exactly that we do when we learn to do something? When we learn to drive, draw, play the piano, or do magic, what is it that we get good at when we ge...
In her latest New York Times bestselling book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, psychotherapist and Atlantic “Dear Therapist” columnist Lori Gottlieb explores the human condition through the lives of four of her patients—and a fifth one, herself. Through this disarmingly funny, thought-provoking, and boldly revealing memoir, Gottlieb reveals our collective blind spots. Ta...
Playwright Anna Deavere Smith and opera director Yuval Sharon explore how this extraordinary moment in our history will both influence their work as artists and compel all of us to reinterpret art from the past. While social change has emboldened artistic expression throughout history, evident in ancient Greek plays and centuries-old Shakespearian dramas, artistic expressi...
Aspen Ideas: Health is where the arts meet health. Ahead of the 10th annual event this summer, we're looking back at some of the innovative artists, musicians, actors, filmmakers, playwrights, and dancers who have shared their creative expressions of the mind, body, and spirit on our stages. Explore how the arts help expand our understanding of health and well-being.
Time on your hands? Looking to escape into learning? Dive deeply into a broad array of topics from Aspen Ideas. Discover how soul music became a soundtrack to some of our nation’s most defining moments. What role does the human microbiome play in inflammatory diseases? And, what is the universe made of and why don’t we know what it’s made of? Expand your perspective by lea...
Meet Shimon, the marimba-playing robot that can improvise with fluency and skill exceeding that of most professional musicians. This atypical frontman’s band isn’t your average performance group either: Shimon’s band of humans hails not from a conservatory, but from the Center for Music Technology at Georgia Tech. And did we mention the drummer lays the rhythm with a bioni...
Research supports the idea that creatives of all types are over-represented in the population dealing with mood disorders and other psychiatric challenges. Certainly some of the world’s greatest musical masterpieces were composed by musicians who struggled with mental illness. Was it a source of inspiration for their creativity, or did they turn to art to help them heal? R...