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Ideas Festival 2025 – Session List

Saturday, October 18

The Four Pillars of Architectural Resilience for the Future of People, Place, and Planet

🕐 Time: 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM

📍 Room: Williams Auditorium

📝 Type: Session

Resilience includes far more than Physical traits. Operational, Communal, and Experiential elements are also at its core...

🎤 Speakers: Drew Pedrick

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Art Pharmacy

🕐 Time: 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM

📍 Room: Phi Gamma Hall

📝 Type: Session

In this fireside chat, Chris Appleton, Founder & CEO of Art Pharmacy, and Dr. Ali John Zarrabi, palliative care physician at Emory, explore the intersection of arts, health, and human connection...

🎤 Speakers: Ali John Zarrabi Chris Appleton

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Who Did That? Public Art and the Walls of the City

🕐 Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

📍 Room: Williams Auditorium

📝 Type: Session

Atlanta’s streets are alive with color, stories, and unexpected expressions of creativity. From sprawling murals to tags tucked into alleyways, public art and graffiti shape how residents and visitors experience the city...

🎤 Speakers: Randy Gue

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Work is Fun!

🕐 Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

📍 Room: Phi Gamma Hall

📝 Type: Session

Too many of us go about our work solely to make money to serve our “real” lives after the workday ends. But what if we could make our work fun instead, not by switching careers or seeking a raise, but by shifting our mindset and incorporating seven simple but game-changing principles into our workplaces? In Work Is Fun , Steven Carse, Cofounder of the King of Pops hand-crafted ice pop brand, shares his story of how optimizing daily tasks for enjoyment and job satisfaction, including measuring success outside of mere monetary terms, has transformed Carse’s life, community, and business....

🎤 Speakers: Steve Carse

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Anya Marina

🕐 Time: 11:30 AM – 01:00 PM

📍 Room: Oxford College Quad

📝 Type: Session

A murderous girl with a spine of steel. An asteroid hurtling toward a ruminating woman...

🎤 Speakers: Anya Marina

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The Power of Creative Storytelling with TimeSlips

🕐 Time: 12:00 PM – 01:00 PM

📍 Room: Student Center Greer Forum

📝 Type: Session

MacArthur Fellow Anne Basting has transformed the way we think about aging, memory, and care. As founder of the organization TimeSlips , she has pioneered creative storytelling techniques that invite older adults—including those experiencing dementia—into meaningful moments of connection and imagination...

🎤 Speakers: Anne Basting

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Start Making Sense (Words and Music in a Time of Chaos)

🕐 Time: 12:00 PM – 01:00 PM

📍 Room: Phi Gamma Hall

📝 Type: Session

We live in dangerous times. When the world is on fire, stories and songs help make sense of the chaos around us...

🎤 Speakers: Mickey Dubrow

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American Coup: Wilmington 1898

🕐 Time: 01:00 PM – 01:50 PM

📍 Room: Student Center Greer Forum

📝 Type: Session

American Coup: Wilmington 1898 tells the little-known story of a deadly race massacre and carefully orchestrated insurrection in North Carolina’s largest city in 1898 — the only coup d’état in the history of the US. Stoking fears of “Negro Rule,” self-described white supremacists used intimidation and violence to destroy Black political and economic power and overthrow Wilmington’s democratically-elected, multi-racial government...

🎤 Speakers: Brad Lichtenstein Crystal Sanders Carol Anderson

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The Science of Horror

🕐 Time: 01:00 PM – 02:00 PM

📍 Room: Williams Auditorium

📝 Type: Session

Just in time for Halloween, join Clint Fluker , Ken Carter , and Zanthia Whiley for a deep dive into the thrills and chills of the horror genre. Why do we line up for haunted houses, scary movies, and ghost stories when they make our hearts race? Horror also often mirrors our anxieties about disease, with stories of zombies and contagion reflecting real fears of outbreaks and epidemics...

🎤 Speakers: Clint Fluker Ken Carter Zanthia Wiley

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Local Journalism: Needed Now More Than Ever

🕐 Time: 01:00 PM – 02:00 PM

📍 Room: Phi Gamma Hall

📝 Type: Session

In an era of shrinking newsrooms and information overload, local journalism remains essential for building informed communities and holding institutions accountable. This conversation brings together UGA journalism professor Monimala Basu , Keith Pepper, publisher of Rough Draft Atlanta , and Janel Davis of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to explore the challenges and opportunities facing local news today...
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Kim Ware and the Good Graces

🕐 Time: 01:30 PM – 03:00 PM

📍 Room: Oxford College Quad

📝 Type: Session

Singer, songwriter, and drummer-turned-guitarist Kim Ware of the Good Graces is known for her unique brand of raw, folk-leaning “southern indie” music. Performing with a rotating cast of musicians, Ware has been crafting tracks with both guts and heart since picking up her first guitar in 2006...

🎤 Speakers: Kim Ware

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You Can Fall in Love in a Museum: Why Libraries and Museums Matter

🕐 Time: 02:00 PM – 03:00 PM

📍 Room: Student Center Greer Forum

📝 Type: Session

Museums and libraries are crucial to our national and individual welfare, yet arts funding and cultural expression face increasing threat. Join Kevin Young, poetry editor of The New Yorker and former director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, for a conversation with author Jessica Handler about the importance of museums and libraries as a tool for understanding ourselves and each other....

🎤 Speakers: Jessica Handler Kevin Young

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Battle for the Black Mind

🕐 Time: 02:00 PM – 03:00 PM

📍 Room: Williams Auditorium

📝 Type: Session

The Battle for the Black Mind is an explosive historical account of the struggle for educational justice in America. Drawing on over a decade of archival research, personal reflection, and keen sociological insight, this book traces a century of segregated schooling, examining how early efforts to control Black minds through education systems has laid the foundation for the systemic inequities we still live with today...

🎤 Speakers: Karida L. Brown

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Sweet Auburn: Where Everything Changed

🕐 Time: 02:00 PM – 03:00 PM

📍 Room: Phi Gamma Hall

📝 Type: Session

Once the wealthiest Black neighborhood in the world, the Sweet Auburn Historic District in Atlanta, Georgia, now occupies a distinct place, both historically and geographically. It is at once the globally significant birthplace of the civil rights movement; and it also lays in the wake of social, commercial, and urban challenges that have left some of its most important spaces and places in a state of peril―and even in danger of demolition―as Atlanta grows in, around, and over it. Now, for the first time, author, preservationist, and cultural developer Gene Kansas shines a spotlight on the district in Civil Sights...

🎤 Speakers: Gene Kansas

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Twelve Super Bowls in One Summer: The Impact of World Cup in Atlanta

🕐 Time: 03:00 PM – 04:00 PM

📍 Room: Student Center Greer Forum

📝 Type: Session

When it was announced that the World Cup tournament was coming to North America, organizers promised that each of the 104 matches would hold the economic impact of one and a half Super Bowls. Atlanta is on the schedule for eight matches over World Cup’s six-week span—will the city see the impact of twelve Super Bowls? How often does reality match up with the promises that sell these events? Is the city ready for the flood of millions of international travelers? What are the legislative, economic, and social costs of preparing for these events? Join WABE’s Rose Scott for a special live taping of Closer Look as she dives into the reality of hosting big ticket sports events, the unseen costs, the impact these events have on Atlanta’s most vulnerable citizens, and the challenges that World Cup brings to the Atlanta community. Joining her for this special panel discussion will be business, civic, and government leaders from metro Atlanta....

🎤 Speakers: Rose Scott

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Poetry, Performance, and Radical Imagination

🕐 Time: 03:00 PM – 04:00 PM

📍 Room: Williams Auditorium

📝 Type: Session

Poet, scholar, and performance artist Alix Olson is known for work that challenges conventions and sparks dialogue on issues of justice, gender, and power. With a voice that is both fierce and lyrical, Olson blends artistry with activism, inviting audiences to reimagine the world through bold language and performance...

🎤 Speakers: Alix Olson

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The Pool Is Closed

🕐 Time: 03:00 PM – 04:00 PM

📍 Room: Phi Gamma Hall

📝 Type: Session

In 2018, while teaching her kids to swim and working on urban river restoration projects, Hannah S. Palmer began a journal of social encounters with water...

🎤 Speakers: Hannah Palmer

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Covington Ballet

🕐 Time: 03:00 PM – 04:00 PM

📍 Room: Oxford College Quad

📝 Type: Session

Hailing from Covington, Georgia, the Covington Ballet brings artistry, discipline, and youthful energy to the stage. Their performance showcases the dedication of local dancers whose talent and training shine through classical technique and contemporary expression...
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Migrant Worker Health in the Florida Heat

🕐 Time: 04:00 PM – 04:50 PM

📍 Room: Williams Auditorium

📝 Type: Session

Dr. Chicas serves as an Assistant Professor at Emory University Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. She is a nurse scientist, and advocate for workers’ rights, who has dedicated her career to improving the living and working condition of farmworker communities...

🎤 Speakers: Roxana Chicas Gerardo Reyes Chaves Jeremy Young

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The Bear and the Phoenix

🕐 Time: 04:00 PM – 05:00 PM

📍 Room: Phi Gamma Hall

📝 Type: Session

John will compare the restaurant cultures of Atlanta and Chicago—two cities he's covered as a critic and lived in—as a way to explore how dining reflects deeper civic identities. Atlanta, like its symbol the phoenix, has reinvented itself again and again, moving from flashy post-Olympics spectacle to a food scene grounded in Southern ingredients, collaboration, and open-source creativity...

🎤 Speakers: John Kessler

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Words and Music

🕐 Time: 04:00 PM – 04:50 PM

📍 Room: Oxford College Quad

📝 Type: Session

KIM AND DANNY: A reading and word/music performance with poet Kim Addonizio and guitarist Danny Caron. Kim and Danny have been collaborating for three years on musical settings for several of her poems...

🎤 Speakers: Kim Addonizio Danny Caron Megan Sexton

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Rosanne Cash/Sing for Science

🕐 Time: 05:00 PM – 06:00 PM

📍 Room: Student Center Greer Forum

📝 Type: Session

Get ready for a special live taping of the Sing for Science podcast with host Matt Whyte , featuring Rosanne Cash , Grammy-winning singer-songwriter and acclaimed author, in conversation with Dr. Robyn Fivush , Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at Emory University...

🎤 Speakers: Matt Whyte Robyn Fivush Rosanne Cash

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