USModernist Radio
USModernist® Radio is underwritten 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.
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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 China Forbes, Madeleine Peyroux, Judy Carmichael, Toni Tennille, Stacey Kent, Jane Monheit, Jennifer Warnes, Ann Hampton Callaway, Lucy Wijnands, Monika Ryan, Diane Schuur, Noel Paul Stookey, Brenda Lee, Lenore Raphael and Howard Alden, Eliane Elias, Halie Loren, Marilyn Scott, Cheryl Bentyne, Janis Siegel, Storm Large, Kate Earl, Nneena Freelon, 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 HAIA, 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 29 local, state, and national awards, He appears in the 2020 architecture documentary Frey II and the 2024 architecture documentary New England Modernism, both by 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.
Upcoming Episodes
July 28 #415/Authors Sam Lubell + Rowland + Broughton + Musical Guest Taurey Butler
July 21 #414/Tod Williams + Paul Masi + Jon Gentry + Musical Guest Carrie Marshall
July 14 #413/Daughters of Design: Susan Saarinen + Celia Bertoia + Carla Hartman, plus Phillip Cox + Niall Cronin on Evans Woollen III
July 7 #412/Sian Winship + Bobak Ha'eri + Spencer Luckey + Music from Lenore Raphael
June 30 #411/Mies with Iveta Cerna + Dirk Lohan + Max Strang on Gene Leedy
From poolside at the swanky USModernist compound during Modernism Week, we’re all about two architects: Chicago’s Mies van der Rohe and Florida’s Gene Leedy, with guests Iveta Cerna, director of the Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic; and Mies’s grandson, architect Dirk Lohan. Later on, we’ll hear from Max Strang, archivist of Gene Leedy and his impressive Florida architecture.
June 23 #410/Capitol Brutalism with Angela Person and Aileen Fuchs + Bad Prefab + Special Musical Guest Madeleine Peyroux
This week is the close of a wildly popular exhibition at the
National Building Museum in Washington DC called Capitol Brutalism, the
history of DC’s best Modernist buildings. With us is Executive Director
Aileen Fuchs and head curator Angela Person. Heading to California, we’ll
hear what happened to a couple who went all-in on prefab, which is great,
but then their prefab company went belly up, which is not.
Later on, special musical guest Madeleine Peyroux dances us to the end of
love.
June 16 #409/Chris Rawlins on Horace Gifford + Donald Luxton on Arthur Erickson + David Fixler
From poolside in Palm Springs during Modernism Week 2025, today’s guests are authors Chris Rawlins on Fire Island’s Horace Gifford, Donald Luxton on Vancouver’s Arthur Erickson, and recorded at the PRP4 DOCOMOMO conference in Boston, David Fixler.
June 9 #408/Authors Nora Wendl + Todd Gannon + Mary Anne Hunting + Kevin Murphy + Musical Guest Gabrielle Stravelli
When you hear about architect Mies van der Rohe and his famous Farnsworth House in Plano Illinois, little is said of the client. Today you’ll learn the real story of Dr. Edith Farnsworth from author Nora Wendl, we talk with Todd Gannon about architect Frank Israel, plus authors Kevin Murphy and Mary Anne Hunting on women architects in the early days of Modernism. Later on, tacos with musical guest Gabrielle Stravelli.
June 2 #407/Men About Town in Palm Springs: Christopher Kennedy + Kip Serafin + Kurt Cyr
From poolside at the swanky USModernist compound in Palm Springs, today’s guests are the three distinguished men about town. Need a midcentury sofa in green tomorrow? How about a tour for 25? Or a private cocktail party at the Dinah Shore house? Who are you gonna call? As the expression goes, we got a guy, actually three guys, who make these wonderful kinds of things happen.