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Moved by her own deep hunger to belong — to have an identity that matters and a tribe of her own — Alex Wagner, author and host of Showtime’s “The Circus,” set off on a quest to find the truth about her family history. It became the memoir Futureface, and it took her from Burma to Luxembourg, from ruined colonial capitals to high-tech genetic labs. But as she closed in on the mystery of her own ancestry, she began to grapple with a deeper question: Does it even matter?
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Arts
Museums are typically testaments to the past, but a growing number are using exhibitions to shape our response to the future—specifically to climate change. Museum leaders wil...
Storytelling, music, animation, and podcasts! Watch the magic of innovative content being born as creatives pitch their ideas to a panel of Planet Media judges, each hoping to...
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...
The world seems to be moving and evolving faster than ever before, and democratic ideals are under threat in many countries around the globe. New York Times columnist and jour...
How is constitutional law being harnessed to address climate change? Ahead of Aspen Ideas: Climate, we caught up with Andrea Rodgers, Senior Attorney at Our Children's Trust,...
History has the power to teach us what to do in the present, but do we actually make good use of that tool? Many events in our recent past might suggest otherwise. American hi...
Of course, Black history shouldn’t just be a month-long nod on our yearly calendar — it is inextricable from American history and fundamental to the very soul of our nation an...
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...
William Shakespeare started writing plays in an era when popular theater was exploding and cementing its place in culture. Audiences spanned economic classes, professions and...
The stories we hear about migrants trying to escape difficult circumstances tend to focus on hardship, conflict, statistics and policy. We rarely get a deep look at any of the...
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...
Most Americans today would agree that the dream of supporting a family and living a good life on one full time salary is not available to vast numbers of people. Wages have no...
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...
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 I...
Climate change catastrophes are already happening with increasing regularity, and it’s clear we need to take action. The Biden administration has set a target of zero carbon e...
Even when the economy is booming and unemployment is low, millions of Americans still face economic hardship. And in the last few years the United States has dealt with supply...
Almost everyone agrees that immigration policy in the United States is lacking, but despite decades of debate, Congress has not been able to pass comprehensive reform on the i...
Americans seem more culturally and ideologically divided than at any point in most of our lifetimes, with no prospect of bridging those divides any time soon. The only thing w...
It’s a fact: In communities where voting rates are higher, health outcomes are better. That’s why ER physician Alister Martin, the Founder of Vot-ER and CEO of A Healthier Dem...
Populations around the world have been electing more and more autocratic leaders in the past couple decades, via supposedly free, fair, and democratic elections. The freedom o...