
You can do WHAT with seaweed???
Season 1, Episode 20
October 17, 2023
Season 1, Episode 17
0:35:20
When Hurricane Katrina barreled toward her home stretch of the Gulf Coast, Sara Zewde had not yet decided what she wanted to do professionally. But the aftermath of the storm inspired her to work across ecology, infrastructure, and culture as a landscape architect. Today, she runs Studio Zewde, a landscape-architecture practice based in New York City, and is an assistant professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. As one of just a few Black female landscape architects, she is dedicated to building culturally-responsive spaces where people experience a sense of belonging. “People walk around Central Park, around landscapes, around sidewalks and street corners, and don’t realize they are living in somebody’s design,” she says. “Every single tree, every single path, all the topography – it’s a complete work of fiction.”
In this episode, Sara tells Dwayne about her interest in Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of landscape architecture in the U.S. and the designer of New York’s Central Park, who, she learned, traveled the American South as a journalist and documented the horrors of slavery there – an experience that came to fundamentally shape his approach to park design.
You can do WHAT with seaweed???
Season 1, Episode 20
Want to protect democracy? Hug an election official.
Season 1, Episode 19
The marvelous connections between poetry and medicine
Season 1, Episode 18
If farmworkers pick the food, shouldn’t they get a seat at the table?
Season 1, Episode 16
What the AIDS epidemic taught this nurse about keeping the world healthy
Season 1, Episode 15
Is it possible to build a great school in a prison?
Season 1, Episode 14
You—yes, you—can decide how the government spends money
Season 1, Episode 13
Following the data to a fairer criminal justice system
Season 1, Episode 12
How to teach history in a divided America? Let students think for themselves.
Season 1, Episode 11
Could virtual reality make us better coworkers?
Season 1, Episode 10
Native life is everywhere. Just look around.
Season 1, Episode 9
What’s possible when Black mothers have the financial freedom to dream?
Season 1, Episode 8
What if we let asylum seekers fix our immigration system?
Season 1, Episode 7
How does it feel to be known as a “felon” forever?
Season 1, Episode 6
Young people: here’s how to run for office—and win
Season 1, Episode 5
What you learn when you sail around the world without a compass
Season 1, Episode 4
This profoundly simple act can save the lives of millions of Black women
Season 1, Episode 3
Our buildings are making us sick. Can they heal us instead?
Season 1, Episode 2
How to tell ourselves the truth about the history of slavery
Season 1, Episode 1