Aspen Ideas to Go

Following economic news too closely can give you feelings of whiplash and confusion, and may not speak to your personal experience. What economic information should you actually pay attention to, and how should you interpret what you hear? Former economics professor and head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Austan Goolsbee, and the CEO of polling and analytics company Gallup, Jon Clifton, break down the economic indicators we come across all the time. They tease apart what’s based on data and reality, what’s missing, and what’s hype and fluff. And how consumers react to economic news, they explain, adds yet another layer of feedback to the equation. Social media influencer and financial advisor Vivian Tu, the founder of advice brand Your Rich BFF, moderates the conversation.

Who would have thought play would be a transformative tool to de-stress and build resilience? Turns out the act, which is different for everyone, is biologically hardwired in our brains. “Everyone has a sense of joyfulness,” says Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play. He began studying play science after discovering the perpetrator of a 1960s mass shooting lacked play from the time he was born. Play deprivation can have grave consequences, he found, but joyful engagement fuels happiness and intelligence. He joins a panel of play experts including Cj Hendry, an artist whose large-scale installations often lead people to play, and Heidi Erwin, senior game designer at the New York Times. Sam Sanders, former NPR reporter and producer and host of the podcast, “The Sam Sanders Show,” moderates the conversation.

As artificial intelligence becomes more powerful and pervasive, how will it affect our work, our lives, and our ability to connect? Brené Brown, research professor and best-selling author says she hears a lot of experts trying to soothe people’s anxiety about the pace of technological change by offering platitudes like, What makes us human will ensure our relevance. This is dangerous because, as she explains, we’re not especially good at what makes us human. We’re not hardwired for the current level of uncertainty, and many of us feel as if the constant need to self-protect is driving the humanity right out of us.Brown joins Kate Crawford, AI scholar and University of Southern California professor, who points out that so much of what’s driving our feelings of emptiness and disconnection around AI is rooted in the fact that artificial intelligence is fundamentally a technology of extraction – it depends on the intensive exploitation of raw materials, human labor, and personal data. Together, Drs. Brown and Crawford encourage us to advocate for authentic connection over algorithmic convenience.

Many technology companies infamously measure their success based on how long someone spends in their app. That amount of screen time may or may not be good for a person’s wellbeing, but executives don’t see that as their problem. Not all CEOs have fallen into that trap, though. Bill Ready, the head of Pinterest, and Justin McLeod, who runs the dating app Hinge, have different priorities. When the writing on the wall was becoming more apparent and more disturbing, they led resets at their companies and looked for ways to put their users’ health first. Success for them means getting people out into the real world for healthy activities and in-person social engagement. And it turns out, that’s actually good for business, too. The editor-in-chief of Allure and Self magazines, Jessica Cruel, interviews the two CEOs about how they pulled off these positive pivots.

Colossal Biosciences has grand ambitions to bring back extinct species like the woolly mammoth and the dodo. But while it’s still working on those, Colossal surprised the world by announcing in April that it had created three white animals it says are dire wolves — a canine that lived in the Americas and is thought to have been slightly larger than a gray wolf. Colossal’s CEO Ben Lamm explains what it all means and how they brought the wolves into being. CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria interviews Lamm about the buzz Colossal created with its wolves and what’s coming next.   

Raising our kids with access to touchscreens and technology at almost all hours of the day is an untested experiment with unknown results. But by many measures, it isn’t going well. For several years, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has been collecting and analyzing the data on young people, social media and smartphones. He’s found some deeply troubling trends, which he explains in his latest book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” In a talk at the 2025 Aspen Ideas Festival, Haidt highlights his key findings and underscores the seriousness of this problem, but also presents practical and feasible ideas for solutions. Olivia Walton, the founder and CEO of Ingeborg Investments, joins Haidt after his solo talk for a question and answer session.

A push to expand publicly-funded school choice programs across the country is gaining steam. In only three decades, the practice has grown dramatically and President Trump is supportive of the idea. But what effect do school choice policies have on the K-12 education system as a whole? And where do charter schools fit in this debate? In this discussion from the 2025 Aspen Ideas Festival, three education experts from various perspectives report on what the data is telling us and highlight the nuances we should be considering. Alberto Carvalho is the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest district in the country. Education journalist Cara Fitzpatrick reports for Chalkbeat and is the author of “The Death of Public School: How Conservatives Won the War Over Education in America.” And Tommy Schultz is the CEO of the American Federation for Children, which advocates for school choice. CBS co-anchor John Dickerson moderates the conversation, which was recorded in June.

Major forces shaping the U.S. economy are already causing ripple effects across the globe. To say it’s a time of economic uncertainty and transformation may be an understatement. America could see the biggest tariff shock in nearly a century and immigration policy is affecting the labor market. In addition, the Tax Act, or One Big Beautiful Bill, could add trillions to the deficit. Prominent business leaders unpack the situation in a well-rounded discussion on the state of the economy. Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor in chief of The Economist, moderates the conversation that includes Blackrock CEO Laurence Fink, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, New York Stock Exchange Group President Lynn Martin, and Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf.

Regardless of one’s politics, most would agree that America is going through a difficult time. Our rifts seem overwhelmingly deep, and it’s not clear how to repair them. New York Times columnist and writer David Brooks has had his idea of what America is supposed to be and stand for upended in recent years. But he also isn’t giving up. In his 20th talk at the Aspen Ideas Festival, he charts a path of recovery. He looks to history for examples of eras when society’s ruptures reached untenable levels, and to psychology, philosophy, theology and other disciplines for clues about how we might move toward a healthy future. His talk was recorded in June at the 2025 festival. 

The United States is in a pivotal foreign policy moment. What can a zoomed-out view of the current world order tell us about where things are going? Several foreign policy experts come together on stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival for a discussion on the state of the world order. David Petraeus is a former CIA director and Army general, Susan Rice served as an advisor to both Biden and Obama and UN ambassador, and John Bolton was Trump’s national security advisor for part of the president’s first term. CNN journalist and author Fareed Zakaria keeps the conversation on track as moderator.