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

Mar 16 #448/Corbett Jones and Glenn Kurtz + Musical Guest Jenna Esposito
Mar 9 #447/Crosby Doe and Ed Dimendberg + Chris Roman + Musical Guest Claudia Burson
Mar 2 #446/Carin Carlson and Tim Mitchell + Nevada's Paige Figanbaum + Author Anthony Alofsin + Musical Guests Naomi and her Handsome Devils

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

Kevin McCloud and Tim Ross are hosts of Tim and Kev's Big Design Adventure, a globe-trotting podcast centered on people, places, architecture, and design. Later, baritone saxophonist Leigh Pilzer, whose powerful sound has anchored ensembles from the DIVA Jazz Orchestra to the immortal Glenn Miller Orchestra.

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

The venerable magazine Architectural Record is one of the most influential design publications in the world, clocking in 135 years of extraordinary coverage.  You can see all their issues at usmodernist.org/library. Today we’ll explore one of their editors, Lawrence Kocher, with Luis Pancorbo and Ines Martin Robles.  We’ll talk with Steven Hurtt on The Urban Design Legacy of famed critic Colin Rowe, and we’ll hear about celebrated architect Ulrich Franzen from Josephine Franzen.  Wrapping up, musical guest Kim Kaskiw.

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

First up, for our concrete fans, art critic and author Blake Gopnik looks inside modernism through his book, Brutalist Interiors.  From there, we head to St. Louis, where Pam Sanfilippo of the Eero Saarinen-designed Gateway Arch National Park shares how Saarinen’s soaring 630-foot monument endures for millions of visitors.  And we wrap up with the Rolling Stones of swing, the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, carrying forward one of the greatest big bands – with leader Jeff Bush.

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

Starting with Los Angeles, we’ll talk with Rudolph Schindler homeowner and star of Two and a Half Men, Holland Taylor.  Then we move to Palm Springs, the center of the Universe for midcentury Modernism.  Everybody who’s a fan of modernism needs to plan a trip, and today we’ll talk with Palm Springs tour guides Shann Carr and JD Cargill, author Adele Cygelman and her new documentary Arthur Elrod: Modern Cool, Later music from jazz pianist Lenore Raphael. 

Jan 26 #441/USModernist Radio Retro:  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.