1533 Episodes

  1. 512: To Offer Sweet Fruit to the Ghost

    Published: 9/29/2021

  2. 511: Present Tense

    Published: 9/28/2021

  3. 510: Let Me

    Published: 9/27/2021

  4. 509: Wondrous

    Published: 9/24/2021

  5. 508: Rehearsal for the New World

    Published: 9/23/2021

  6. 507: Do You Ever Think About Leaving, My Mother Asks

    Published: 9/22/2021

  7. 506: At the Arcade I Paint Your Footprints

    Published: 9/21/2021

  8. The Slowdown returns with new host Ada Limón

    Published: 9/9/2021

  9. 505: You Are Who I Love

    Published: 10/30/2020

  10. 504: What the Kids in Subtle Asian Traits Know

    Published: 10/29/2020

  11. 503: Before the Riot

    Published: 10/28/2020

  12. 502: To D.B.

    Published: 10/27/2020

  13. 501: Facial Recognition

    Published: 10/26/2020

  14. 500: The Party

    Published: 10/23/2020

  15. 499: Leaving Tulsa

    Published: 10/22/2020

  16. 498: Owed to the 99 Cent Store

    Published: 10/21/2020

  17. 497: Gwendolyn Brooks: America in the Wintertime

    Published: 10/20/2020

  18. News from The Slowdown

    Published: 10/19/2020

  19. 496: a brief meditation on breath

    Published: 10/19/2020

  20. 495: Naming Ceremony

    Published: 10/16/2020

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Host Maggie Smith is your daily poetry companion. Poetry is one of the greatest tools we have to wield our own attention — to consider our own lives and the lives of others, to help us live creatively and compassionately, to use that attention to lean into wonder, and joy, and truth, and to find hope — to keep hoping. The Slowdown community knows that reflecting on a poem, every weekday, can connect us to our inner world and the world around us. Listen as you make your morning coffee, as you go on a walk in your neighborhood, as you pull away from the to-do list, as you resist the dismal, endless scroll to share five minutes of perspective through the lens of poetry, from poets old and new, well-loved and emerging onto the scene. Brought to you by American Public Media, in partnership with the Poetry Foundation.