Special Guest Hosted Episodes
Hear four poems curated by a few very special friends of The Slowdown.
This summer, The Slowdown invited four very special friends of the show to curate poems for our audience. Listen to their selections at the links below. We hope you enjoy!
America by Claude McKay, read by Tonya Mosley
Tonya Mosley is a co-host of Fresh Air. She's also the host of the award-winning podcast Truth Be Told, and a correspondent and former host of Here & Now, the midday radio show co-produced by NPR and WBUR. Listen to the latest season of Truth Be Told: She Has a Name on the web or wherever you get your podcasts.
maggie and milly and molly and may by E.E. Cummings, read by Eric Whitacre
Grammy Award-winning composer, conductor and speaker Eric Whitacre is among today’s most popular composers. A graduate of The Juilliard School, his works are programmed worldwide, and his ground-breaking Virtual Choirs have united well over 100,000 singers from more than 145 countries. Upcoming premieres include a new major work for choir, instrumentalists and electronics, Eternity in an Hour, at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms.
In Jerusalem by Mahmoud Darwish, translated Fady Joudah, read by adrienne maree brown
Through her writing, which includes short- and long-form fiction, nonfiction, spells, tarot decks and poetry; her music, which includes songwriting, singing and immersive musical rituals; and her podcasts, including How to Survive the End of the World, Octavia’s Parables and The Emergent Strategy Podcast, adrienne maree brown has nurtured Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, Radical Imagination and Transformative Justice as ideas, frameworks, networks and practices for transformation. Her work is informed by 25 years of social and environmental justice facilitation primarily supporting Black liberation, her path of teaching somatics, her love of Octavia E Butler and visionary fiction, and her work as a doula.
Chanson d’automne by Paul Verlaine, read by Jacques Pépin
Jacques Pépin is a French chef, author, culinary educator, television personality, and artist who has appeared on American television, has written for The New York Times and Food & Wine and has authored more than 30 cookbooks. He has been honored with 24 James Beard Foundation Awards, five honorary doctoral degrees, the American Public Television’s lifetime achievement award, the Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2019 and the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest order of merit, in 2004. In 2016, with his daughter, Claudine Pépin and his son-in-law, Rollie Wesen, Pépin created the Jacques Pépin Foundation to support culinary education for adults with barriers to employment.
