Cultural Events Calendar

Sound is more than something you hear: it’s a physical force that can push, pull, and even levitate objects. In this talk, I’ll explain how scientists and engineers use sound waves to move things too small to see with the naked eye.

I’ll start with something almost magical: sound waves powerful enough to float a plastic ball in mid-air, suspending it against gravity using nothing but vibrations. From there, I’ll introduce you to the world of microfluidics, where sound is used to sort and steer living cells with remarkable precision through channels narrower than a human hair.

Finally, I’ll tell you how surface acoustic waves, vibrations that ripple across a solid surface, play an essential role in your cell phone. In my own lab we’ve discovered how to use them to slide ultra-thin sheets of material along a surface. Rotating or stretching such sheets could unlock new electrical, magnetic, and optical material properties.

Presented in collaboration with the Aspen Security ForumFeaturing a screening of Antidote, an award-winning film that follows investigative journalist Christo Grozev and political activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who risk their lives standing up to the Kremlin and Putin and the consequences they faced. After the film screening, a discussion featuring Christo Grozev and The Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov will explore the broader geopolitical battle between democracy and authoritarianism, the role of democratic resilience through investigative journalism, and the personal risks faced by those who expose these abuses of power.

The William A. Nitze Community Lecture

Forty Years Of Wildlife Filmmaking with Sir David Attenborough

Presented by Alastair Fothergill | Producer and Co-Founder of Silverback Films

About Alastair Fothergill:

Alastair is the co-founder of Silverback Films and has been at the forefront of natural history programming for over 30 years. After studying zoology at the University of Durham, he joined the BBC Natural History Unit in 1983, where he worked on diverse programs including ‘The Really Wild Show’ and ‘The Trials of Life’ with Sir David Attenborough. He produced ‘Life in the Freezer’ before serving as Head of the BBC Natural History Unit for six years.

Join the Pitkin County Library and the Aspen Chabad Jewish Community Center as Gretchen Skidmore, director of Education Initiatives at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, gives a behind-the-scenes look at the results of this research. She will also provide insights on how the Museum shares these new findings with teachers, students, and the public.

For more information, please contact Shannon Ressel at shannon.ressel@pitkincounty.com or 970-429-1943.

In this panel discussion, Republican governors come together to discuss the challenges and opportunities shaping American governance today. From economic development and fiscal policy to energy, education, and public safety, the conversation explores how state leaders are navigating a rapidly changing political and economic landscape. This timely discussion offers an opportunity to hear directly from governors about the priorities and ideas guiding leadership at the state level. Speakers to be announced.

Physicists like to believe that their work reveals something deeply true about the Universe. Alien scientists, they suspect, are discovering the same concepts, even if they may express them in alien languages. But how do we know? If aliens arrived on Earth, could we use physics and math to bridge the gap? Before they arrive, we can glimpse the possibilities by looking at the foundations of physics, to search for clues about whether they are universal, or reflect something of our humanity.

Journalist Susan Page, Washington Bureau chief of USA Today, who has covered eight White House administrations and twelve presidential elections, joins the Aspen Institute for a keynote lecture on the topic of her acclaimed book, The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History. Sharing the colorful stories that shaped the relationship between Queen Elizabeth II and thirteen U.S. presidents, from Harry S. Truman to Donald J. Trump, Page reveals how the Queen used diplomacy, influence, and personal relationships to help shape one of the world’s most important alliances, offering a fresh look at leadership, power, and the enduring ties between the United States and the United Kingdom.

Join us for a presentation and discussion with Derek Okubo, former president and current board member of the Amache Alliance, Colorado's society for the preservation and archaeological study of the Amache Internment Camp. Derek will be presenting on the history of Amache, discussing his family's journey from incarceration to current preservation efforts, and will be in discussion with the Pitkin County Librarians about Colorado's role in the Japanese American Internment.

Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and professor of political science at Stanford University, joins Elliot Gerson, senior fellow at the Aspen Institute, for a conversation about the evolving landscape of international relations. Drawing on his experience as both a diplomat and author of the recent book, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America and the New Global Disorder, McFaul examines the state of US relations with rivals China and Russia, the broader geopolitical challenges facing democracies, and the role of diplomacy in an increasingly complex world.

Your immune system faces a remarkable challenge: it must defend you against viruses and other pathogens it has never seen before. It solves this problem by learning. Instead of storing a fixed list of answers, it tries new approaches and remembers the ones that worked in the past. In this lecture, I will describe how the body generates an enormous repertoire of antibodies, each with a different molecular “shape,” and how infection or vaccination triggers a surprising process in which some immune cells deliberately mutate their genes to generate novel antibodies. These cells undergo cycles of mutation and competition within your lymph nodes (hence the swelling!), to generate improved variants. The result is better antibodies that bind more effectively to their targets. This is Darwinian evolution, but accelerated to the timescale of days and occurring inside your own body. I will discuss how biophysical models can help us understand this learning process, why it matters for vaccines, how failures of immune learning contribute to autoimmunity, and why immune learning might become less effective with age.