--- title: Five Best Ideas: How To Understand Pain Better description: Intelligence-gathering at the airport, communicating better about cancer, better living through poetry and more. canonical: https://time.com/4632751/how-to-understand-pain-better/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-01-12T17:00:44.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:59:11.253Z article:section: Ideas og:title: These Are Today's Best Ideas og:description: Gathering intel. at the airport, communicating better about cancer and more og:url: https://time.com/4632751/how-to-understand-pain-better/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: These Are Today's Best Ideas twitter:description: Gathering intel. at the airport, communicating better about cancer and more twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # How To Understand Pain Better by [The Aspen Institute](https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/) ## The Aspen Institute Jan 12, 2017 5:00 PM UTC by [The Aspen Institute](https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/) ## The Aspen Institute Jan 12, 2017 5:00 PM UTC **1\.** [**Can we understand pain better?**](https://mosaicscience.com/story/how-much-does-it-hurt-pain-agony-acute-chronic) By John Walsh in _Mosaic Science_ **2\.** [**The L.A. airport has an in-house intelligence unit. Will everything have its own CIA someday?**](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/threat-center/510644/) By Geoff Manaugh in _The Atlantic_ **3\.** [**How do we solve the crisis in cancer communication?**](https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/11/cancer-communication-crisis/) By Lynn O’Connor Vos in _Stat News_ **4\.** [**Want to become a better person in 2017? Read more poetry.**](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/advice-being-better-person-2017-nancy-mcgaw?trk=prof-post) By Nancy McGaw in LinkedIn **5\.** [**The U.S. media’s problems are much bigger than fake news and filter bubbles.**](https://hbr.org/2017/01/the-u-s-medias-problems-are-much-bigger-than-fake-news-and-filter-bubbles) By Bharat N. Anand in the _Harvard Business Review_  [_The Aspen Institute_](http://www.aspeninstitute.org/) _is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4632751/how-to-understand-pain-better/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4632751/how-to-understand-pain-better/"},"headline":"How To Understand Pain Better","datePublished":"2017-01-12T17:00:44.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:59:11.253Z","description":"These are today's best ideas","url":"https://time.com/4632751/how-to-understand-pain-better/","keywords":["Innovation","Cancer","Media","Air travel","Pain","Poetry"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"The Aspen Institute","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/innovation/","name":"Innovation"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4632751/how-to-understand-pain-better/","name":"How To Understand Pain Better"}}]}] ```