Aspen Ideas to Go

By trying to provide the perfectly happy childhood, a generation of parents may be making it harder for their kids to actually grow up. Hear from psychologists Polly Young-Eisendrath and Madeline Levine, as well as psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb on how our preoccupation with choice, self-esteem, and happiness may be yielding a generation marked by entitlement, materialism, narcissism, and an inability to face the challenges of adult life. The conversation is led by award-winning journalist Katie Couric. Show Notes Watch What is the Goal of Parenting? from the Aspen Ideas Festival. Follow our show on Twitter @aspenideas and Facebook at facebook.com/aspenideas. Email your comments to aspenideastogo@gmail.com. aspenideas.org

The #MeToo Movement has exposed sexual harassment in the workplace, but what about the problem of gender inequality? Journalist Joanne Lipman says every woman knows how it feels to be marginalized, not taken seriously, overlooked, and underpaid at work. Lipman, editor-in-chief at USA Today, wrote the book “That’s What She Said: What Men Need to Know (and Women Need to Tell Them) About Working Together.” She calls it a realistic handbook that helps professionals solve gender gap problems. Finding solutions is good for the big picture. Companies with larger numbers of women at the helm perform better financially. Lipman talks with Ruth Marcus, deputy editorial page editor at the Washington Post, about her research and shares personal stories about her professional journey. Show Notes Watch News Editors on Truth in the Trump Era from the 2017 Aspen Ideas Festival. Listen to Make Way for These Changemakers from Aspen Insight, featuring students from John Bartram High School in Philadelphia. Follow our show on Twitter @aspenideas and Facebook at facebook.com/aspenideas. Email your comments to aspenideastogo@gmail.com. aspenideas.org

Former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter insists that serving in city council is the best job in politics. He served two terms as mayor and managed to lower the city’s homicide rate and increase the high school graduation rate. Still, he says, it wasn’t enough. Though it may not be as glamorous as working in national politics, Nutter says you can more easily see progress when serving at the local level. In this episode, he talks with Jonathan Capehart, editorial writer for the Washington Post, about Nutter’s recent book, Mayor: The Best Job in Politics. Their discussion also delves into the relationship between law enforcement and communities of color, President Trump, and a recent incident at a Philadelphia Starbucks where two African American men were arrested. Show Notes Listen to the Aspen Ideas to Go episode, Runaway Slave: A Story of Triumph, Survival, and Resistance. Follow our show on Twitter @aspenideas and Facebook at facebook.com/aspenideas. Email your comments to aspenideastogo@gmail.com. aspenideas.org

As our lives become increasingly tech driven, we’re more vulnerable to cyberattacks, and our workplaces and government are too. William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), says it takes a whole-of-nation counterintelligence and security effort to keep our data safe. His organization is helping lead the charge. In this episode, he talks with NPR counter-terrorism correspondent Dina Temple-Raston about why Americans easily fall prey to spear phishing attacks and how our personal information, through gadgets like baby monitors, can easily be collected. They also discuss potential Russian interference in the midterm elections, Edward Snowden, government background checks, and technology and the US supply chain. Show Notes: Listen to the Aspen Ideas to Go episode, The Complexities of Today's Security Challenges featuring James Comey. Check out Aspen Insight's latest episode, Make Way for These Changemakers. Follow our show on Twitter @aspenideas and Facebook at facebook.com/aspenideas. Email your comments to aspenideastogo@gmail.com. aspenideas.org

Big philanthropy can contribute to a democratic society by addressing problems that neither government nor the private sector will take on. Yet philanthropic institutions and foundations are institutional oddities within a democracy: exercises of power by the wealthy with little accountability, donor-directed preferences in perpetuity, and generous tax subsidies. What, if anything, confers democratic legitimacy on foundations? Might foundations be a threat to democratic governance? Or are there modes of operation that illustrate how foundations can support democracy? Stanford political scientist Rob Reich challenges us to consider the role of philanthropy in democratic society. Listen to the Aspen Ideas to Go episode, Living a Moral Life. Discover Aspen Ideas to Go's sister podcast, Aspen Insight. Follow our show on Twitter @aspenideas and Facebook at facebook.com/aspenideas. Email your comments to aspenideastogo@gmail.com. aspenideas.org

Author Luis Alberto Urrea's latest novel, The House of Broken Angels, is inspired by his own Mexican-American family. Set in a San Diego neighborhood, the book's characters celebrate a final birthday for a beloved brother dying of cancer, and a funeral for his elderly mother. The farewell doubleheader may sound depressing, but the book buzzes with joy. And so does this talk from Urrea, held on stage in Aspen, Colorado as part of an Aspen Words lecture series. Aspen Words is the literary program of the Aspen Institute. Listen to the Aspen Ideas to Go episode, US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith. Find the long list of finalists for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. The winner of the Prize is Mohsin Hamid for his book Exit West. Follow our show on Twitter @aspenideas and Facebook at facebook.com/aspenideas. Email your comments to aspenideastogo@gmail.com. aspenideas.org

In rallies from coast to coast, students across the United States are calling for tighter gun control. The deadly Parkland, Florida shooting resurfaced the conversation but the issue of gun violence is all too familiar for people in Chicago. For residents in certain neighborhoods, shootings are frustratingly frequent. In 2016, a particularly deadly year, there were nearly 800 murders, and about half of the gun crimes happened in just five neighborhoods, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab. So what’s being done to reverse the violence? In this episode, we hear from Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart, Corey Brooks, a pastor of a nondenominational church on Chicago’s South Side, and Liz Dozier, founder of Chicago Beyond and former principal of a South Side Chicago high school. Their conversation is moderated by Ron Brownstein, a senior editor at The Atlantic. Watch "The Tragic Toll of Mental Illness Behind Bars" from the Aspen Ideas Festival. The conversation features Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart. Listen to "Speaking Up," an episode from Aspen Insight that features Todd Breyfogle, director of seminars for the Aspen Institute. Follow our show on Twitter @aspenideas and Facebook at facebook.com/aspenideas. Email your comments to aspenideastogo@gmail.com. aspenideas.org

A young, courageous African American woman risked it all to gain freedom from America’s First Family in the late 18th century. Ona, or “Oney,” Judge escaped George Washington’s Philadelphia mansion after years of serving as a seamstress for the famous founding father. There’s little written about Judge. Historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar stumbled on Judge’s story by chance when she discovered a runaway slave advertisement. “I remember sitting back and saying, ‘Who is this Ona Judge and why don’t I know her?’” Dunbar went on to write Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge. In this episode she speaks with Michele Norris, founder of The Race Card Project and executive director of The Bridge at the Aspen Institute, about what Judge’s story can teach us about racial injustice and gender inequality. Listen to the episode Why We Need to Talk About Race from Aspen Ideas to Go. Follow our show on Twitter @aspenideas and Facebook at facebook.com/aspenideas. Email your comments to aspenideastogo@gmail.com. aspenideas.org

For centuries the human race has been grappling with how to live a moral life. In this conversation we hear from scholars who think deeply about moral philosophy and helping others. David Brooks suggests that, “We have words and emotional instincts about what feels right and wrong,” yet questions the criteria we use to “help us think, argue, and decide.” New Yorker author Larissa MacFarquhar profiles a number of do-gooders whose deep, even extreme moral commitment leads as frequently to criticism as to admiration. Columbia philosophy professor Michele Moody-Adams believes that we find our best selves through serious self-examination and constant scrutiny. And Stanford political philosopher Rob Reich engages us all in deep exploration of these questions. Listen to the episode Taxation and Investigation from Aspen Insight. Follow our show on Twitter @aspenideas and Facebook at facebook.com/aspenideas. Email your comments to aspenideastogo@gmail.com. aspenideas.org

Throughout history, young people have been at the center of activism: the Civil Rights movement, Black Lives Matter, the labor movement, and now gun violence. What barriers do young people have to overcome to get adults to listen? What tactics must they employ to get people in power to take them seriously? We hear from young student activists working on issues of racism, inequity, and transgender rights. One recent movement, the #MeToo effort, has mobilized people across the globe in a short period of time. In the second part of the show, Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women's Law Center, speaks with journalist Jay Newton-Small about how to keep the energy of #MeToo going. Listen to our episode Inequality and Opportunity. Follow our show on Twitter @aspenideas and Facebook at facebook.com/aspenideas. Email your comments to aspenideastogo@gmail.com. aspenideas.org