The Aspen Institute

Featuring Ross Douthat, conservative political analyst, author, and New York Times columnist in conversation with Michelle Goldberg, New York Times columnist and Douthat’s co-host of the Times Op-Ed podcast, The Argument. His newest book, The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success, explores what happens when a rich and powerful society ceases advancing—how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemates, cultural exhaustion, and demographic decline creates a strange kind of “sustainable decadence”. Douthat dissects how we got here, how long this age of frustration might last and how our decadence might ultimately end.

Virtual Event.

Purchase his book, The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success, here.

Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. His column appears every Tuesday and Sunday, and he co-hosts the Times Op-Ed podcast, “The Argument.” Previously, he was a senior editor at The Atlantic and a blogger on its website. He is the author of “The Decadent Society,” published in March 2020. His other books include “To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism,” published in 2018, “Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics” (2012), “Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class” (2005), and a co-author, with Reihan Salam, of “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream” (2008). He is the film critic for National Review.

Michelle Goldberg became an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times in 2017 and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. She is the author of three books: “Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism,” “The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World,” and “The Goddess Pose: The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West.” Her first book was a finalist for the Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism, and her second won the Ernesta Drinker Ballard Book Prize and the J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Award. Previously she was a columnist at Slate. A frequent commentator on radio and television, Ms. Goldberg’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Newsweek, The Nation, The New Republic, The Guardian and many other publications. She has reported from countries including India, Iraq, Egypt, Uganda, Nicaragua and Argentina.