We have a lot to thank horses for in our everyday lives, from the Hollywood motion picture, to life-saving vaccines for diphtheria and tetanus, to a staple in our closets: pants. "Prior to riding horses, no one wore pants," says historian Timothy Winegard. He argues that horses are intertwined in our own history to the point that we overlook their importance. His research explains how they shaped societies, economies and cultures. Without us, horses would be nowhere, and vice versa. It was a partnership — our brains and their braun — that truly changed the world. *This episode originally aired on Sept. 10, 2024.

Thanks to copyright laws, artists, writers and scientists are able to create without fear of theft. On an individual basis protection of intellectual property is a good thing. But systematically these laws create barriers and unequal access to art and knowledge. If you've ever tried to open a scholarly article or research online you know how difficult it is to access. What happened to the internet's great promise to democratize knowledge? In this podcast, producer Naheed Mustafa explores the fate of “open access” — all in the ever-expanding universe of copyright laws, paywalls and old-fashioned bureaucratic sludge.

We gorge ourselves on the internet, smartphones, social media, information overload — all of it constantly sap us of our emotional and intellectual vitality. Authors Pico Iyer and Jonathan Haidt argue it's vital we disconnect from our addictive online world to pursue a fulfilling, and richer life. By curtailing the noise of technology, media and other worldly distractions there's space to reconnect with the things that matter. "Humans were never designed to live at a pace determined by machines. The only way we could begin to do that is by becoming machines ourselves," says Iyer.

Pico Iyer and Jonathan Haidt were two of the marquee speakers at the 2025 Aspen Ideas Festival. The theme this year was 'What Makes Life Good.'