USModernist® Radio is underwritten by The Brent R. Harris Charitable Trust, restorer of several Modernist houses including Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs, and by Diane Bald and The Budman Family, restoring significant architecture in Toronto, Los Angeles, Malibu and Palm Springs.  

Here are all our past shows

Listen to one of America's top-rated architecture podcasts as the USModernist® Radio crew talks and laughs with fascinating people who own, create, love, and hate Modernist architecture, the most controversial houses and buildings in the world.   DWELL rated USModernist Radio as the number 2 architecture podcast!

Past architecture guests include Jeanne Gang, Bjarke Ingels, Daniel Libeskind, Helena Arahuete, Barbara Bestor, Moshe Safdie, Tom Kundig, Harry Bates, Peter Bohlin, Alan Hess, Peter Gluck, Robert Rubin, Blair Kamin, Barry Bergdoll, Myron Goldfinger, Kenneth Frampton, Katie Swenson, Bob Ivy, Jen Masengarb, Angie Brooks + Larry Scarpa, Gisue Hariri, Sekou Cooke, Alexandra Lange, Paul Goldberger, Inga Saffron, Jim Olson, Sarah Susanka, Raymond and Dion Neutra, Eric and Susan Saarinen, and many more.

Past musical guests include Pink Martini, Ari Shapiro, China Forbes, Madeleine Peyroux, Judy Carmichael, Toni Tennille, Stacey Kent, Jane Monheit, Nneena Freelon, Diane Schuur, Noel Paul Stookey, Brenda Lee, Jennifer Warnes, Ann Hampton Callaway, Lucy Wijnands, Monika Ryan, Lenore Raphael and Howard Alden, Eliane Elias, Halie Loren, Marilyn Scott, Cheryl Bentyne, Janis Siegel, Storm Large, Kate Earl, Darius Brubeck, Maria Maldaur, Claire Martin, Robin McKelle, Bria Skonberg, Sophie Milman, Lucy Woodward, Heather Rigdon, Tierney Sutton, Diana Panton, Don Most, Judy Carmichael, Linda Eder, and Peter Lamb and the Wolves.

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Presented By

Host and Executive Producer George Smart, one dark and stormy night in 2007, started what has become USModernist®, the largest open digital nonprofit educational archive for Modernist residential design in the world. George and his intrepid team of wildly dedicated volunteers and woefully underpaid staff have won 20 local, state, and national awards, He appears in the architecture documentaries Frey II and New England Modernism by acclaimed filmmaker Jake Gorst.

Announcer, co-host, and engineer Tom Guild, legendary Raleigh FM DJ, grew up in a Durham Modernist house. He was on WRDU and WQDR back when humans actually played vinyl records over the airwaves using something called radio. Over the years, Tom recorded and mixed hours of top-notch audio including Porsche By Design for the NC Museum of Art. He met Mick Jagger. He has not met Frank Gehry. The security code for the show's recording studio, SoundTrax, is 8675309. The podcast began in 2015, based in Raleigh NC, and has done remotes from Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Sarasota, London, New York, and New Canaan CT.

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Upcoming Episodes

Feb 23 #445/Two Gentlemen of Architecture:  Australia's Tim Ross + UK's Kevin McCloud + Musical Guest Leigh Pilzer

Feb 16 #444/Luis Pancorbo and Inés Martin Robles on Lawrence Kocher + Author Steven Hurtt +  Jo Franzen on Ulrich Franzen + Musical Guest Kim Kashiw

Feb 9 #443/Blake Gopnik + Saarinen's Gateway Arch with Pam Sanfilippo + Musical Guests Jeff Bush and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra

Feb 2 #442/Holland Taylor on Schindler + Palm Springs Tours with Shann Carr and JD Cargill + Adele Cygelman on Arthur Elrod + Musical Guest Lenore Raphael

Jan 26 #441/USModernist Radio Rewind:  The Lake House

We've dug into the podcast vault for the charming story of The Lake House, a 2006 romantic drama that reunited Keanu Reaves and Sandra Bullock - but the Modernist house stole the show.  Featuring architect Nathan Crowley and production engineer Troy Hengge, with special musical guest Heather Rigdon.

Jan 19 #440/New Architecture Movies: Allie Rood + Beck Carpenter + Ryan Mah + Danny Berish + Musical Guest Brandi Disterheft

It’s movie time, and today we’ll talk with producers of architecture and design documentaries featured in Kyle Bergman’s Architecture and Design Film Festival which opened last fall and continues around the world.  Filmmaker Allie Rood’s Prickly Mountain captures Vermont’s countercultural design/build movement. Beck Carpenter’s Space Architect tells the story of NASA architect Constance Adams, whose pioneering designs for off planet habitats inspire solutions for our own climate challenges. Danny Berish and Ryan Mah’s Arthur Erickson: Beauty Between the Lines traces the life and work of one of Canada’s most celebrated architects, and wrapping up, the JUNO award-winning Brandi Disterheft. 

Jan 12 #439/Saving a TX Lundy with Carol and Dan Price + Sarasota's Erin DiFazio + Celanese House with Joel Disend and Inger Stringfellow + Special Musical Guest Pat Boone

Carol and Dan Price stepped in to save architect Victor Lundy’s Bellaire, Texas, home just weeks before demolition.  Erin DiFazio champions Sarasota’s architectural heritage, and owner Joel Disend shares his 1959 Edward Durell Stone house in New Canaan, Connecticut.  Then from teen idol to chart-topper to movie star to pro basketball team owner (and Debbie's dad), we’ve got the great Pat Boone, with a career spanning seven decades. 

Jan 5 #438/Children of Genius:  Rufus Nims with Sally and Cameron Nims + Gabriela Liebert + Musical Guest Susan Tobocman

No one remembers Rufus Nims, but anyone born in the 1970's or earlier remembers the orange Howard Johnsons he designed all across America.  We'll visit with his children, Cameron and Sally Nims, and talk with the owner of a recently renovated Nims house in Miami.  Later, it's musical guest Susan Tobocman, the daughter of architect Irving Tobocman of Michigan. 

Dec 29 #437/USModernist Radio Rewind: All About Harwell Hamilton Harris with Lisa Germany + Frank Harmon

We've dug into the podcast vault to bring back a show all about Harwell Hamilton Harris, with his biographer Lisa Germany, and his close friend and colleague, Frank Harmon.