Citizenship and the Beginner’s Mind: How to Imagine Our Way Forward
Setup
In this creative session, global citizen-artist Yo-Yo Ma shares ideas with Eric Liu of Citizen University and the Aspen Institute for how to reimagine our lives and responsibilities in American democracy. Drawing on Ma’s new audio experience “Beginner’s Mind,” which traces his evolution as a musician and a human, this conversation will explore what it means to be a good ancestor, to create common ground, and to reckon with injustices past and present.
Explore More
Arts
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
