Inside the Minds of History’s Most Curious
Setup
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 creative leaps? Why do some innovators succeed, when others fail? How, in fact, do their minds work? Now more than ever, we need to cultivate the kinds of innovation that will address society’s major problems head on. Isaacson will discuss how we might achieve that.
- 2022 Festival
- Education
- Technology
- Society
Explore More
Education
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 L...
Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist and Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy. Ahead of Aspen Ideas: Climate next week, we caught up with Dr. Hayhoe to discuss t...
Global conflicts and health crises have put into stark relief deeply-ingrained gender roles in society. Yet the past years have also seen record-high numbers of women running...
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...
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...
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...
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 fin...
The unflinching humanity and morality that Martin Luther King, Jr. embodied is part of what makes his legacy so lasting. In addition to his preeminent civil rights work, he sp...
Whether you love setting New Year’s resolutions or ignore them entirely, there’s still a certain mix of nostalgia and excitement over the ending of one year and the possibilit...
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...
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 eff...
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 conseq...
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 amo...
Whether expressed through systems that are easy to navigate, devices that are friendly to their users, and spaces that are pleasing to the eye, thoughtful design can break dow...
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 mean...
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 us...
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 S...
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 ex...
Finding ways to ground ourselves on a planet too often in turmoil can foster the resilience we need to function at our best. By maintaining close personal ties, learning new s...
Philosophers throughout history have debated what it means to live a good life, and it remains an ongoing and unresolved question. Deep personal relationships, fulfilling work...
