USModernist Radio
 

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.

Past and upcoming 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, 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, 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 19 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.

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Upcoming Episodes

Dec 16 #382/Celebrity with Allison Martino + Bill Boggs; Columbus IN with Matt Shaw

Dec 9 #382/Bottoms Up in Lancaster OH: David and Jason Annecy + Shag + Barware Lady Amy Chastek

Dec 2 #381/Architecture Australia + UK + China: Glenn Murcutt + Rowan Moore + Nancy Steinhardt

Nov 25 #380/Coastal Modernism: Ed Niles + Ralph Choeff + Musical Guest Chris Bennett

Nov 18 #379/Moving Matsumoto: Melinda and Andy Knowles + Architect Birthdays with James Biber + Musical Guest Allegra Levy

In late 2023, new owners of a classic George Matsumoto Modernist house took out a demolition permit. Usually, that’s the end of the road, but Melinda and Andy Knowles stepped up and persuaded those owners to delay demolition - so they could move the house seven miles across town, where it’s been wonderfully restored on a new site, next to their existing midcentury Modernist house.  And in the best architecture book of the year, architect and author, James Biber. Later on, musical guest Allegra Levy.

Nov 11 378/Texas + California:  Katherine O'Rourke + Ben Koush + Michael Webb

We’ll talk today about Texas and California, two of our most populous states that could not be more different, with Kathryn O’Rourke and Ben Koush, authors of Home, Heat, Money, God: Texas and Modern Architecture; and Michael Webb, author of California Houses: Creativity in Context.

Nov 4 #377/Christopher Wilson + Ken MacIntyre + Musical Guest Emilie-Claire Barlow

Talking architecture with architects can be incomprehensible, especially for people who aren’t architects.  Today we talk with two noted populists who make architecture understandable and enjoyable - architect and professor Christopher Wilson, and journalist and architourist Ken MacIntyre of modtraveler.net.  Later on, musical guest Emilie-Claire Barlow.