{"podcast":{"title":"The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily","slug":"the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130","podcast_index_feed_id":7043130,"rss_url":"https://www.spreaker.com/show/6220773/episodes/feed","website_url":"https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily--6220773","image_url":"https://d3wo5wojvuv7l.cloudfront.net/t_rss_itunes_square_1400/images.spreaker.com/original/da0c6a368b84c1071fbd347ea97864da.jpg","author":"Eliana Benavides","episode_count":933,"summary":"Poet Major Jackson is your guide on the pathways to feel and understand our common journey – through poetry. In sharing poems, we take a moment to pause and acknowledge the world’s magnitude, and how poets illuminate that mystery. Join The Slowdown for a poem and a moment of reflection in one short episode, every weekday. Produced by APM Studios in partnership with The Poetry Foundation and supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. Make us a part of your routine as you drink coffee in the morning, as you take a walk in nature, or as you wind down to go to sleep in the evening. With host Major Jackson, we collectively take a moment to calm, to inspire, to learn, and to engage with the best emerging poets and established writers of our time and generations past, from Emily Dickinson to Danez Smith, from Amanda Gorman to Mary Oliver. Listen to our back catalog for episodes by our previous hosts, Tracy K. Smith and Ada Limón, as well as guest hosts Jenny Xie, Brenda Shaughnessy, Tina Chang, Nate Marshall, Shira Erlichiman, and Jason Schneiderman. Our hosts and production team select poems that move them, and we hope they move y…","last_synced_at":"2026-07-20T16:20:32.051676+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130"},"episode":{"title":"1532: Blue by Laura Villareal","slug":"1532-blue-by-laura-villareal","published_at":"2026-06-08T08:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130/1532-blue-by-laura-villareal","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130","url":"https://www.spreaker.com/episode/1532-blue-by-laura-villareal--72413817","audio_url":"https://api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72413817/theslowdown_20260608_20260608_128.mp3","summary":"Today’s poem is Blue by Laura Villareal. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Diannely Antigua writes… “I believe color carries energy. It carries memory. I remember when I was young, coming home from the hospital after being sick. The teal paint on my bedroom walls suddenly felt overwhelming. It reminded me of sickness, of that version of myself I didn’t want to return to. A few days later, my dad and my uncle painted my walls a light beige. The color of cream. Or the pages of an old book. Or the color of my dog’s soft belly when she’d roll over, asking for a rub. I remember how calming it felt. How it erased what the room had previously carried and gave me the canvas to begin again.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation and get access to the sponsor-free version of The Slowdown today. Slowdownshow.org/donate","meta_description":"Today’s poem is Blue by Laura Villareal. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Diannely Antigua writes… “I believe color c…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":409,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130/episodes/1532-blue-by-laura-villareal/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130/1532-blue-by-laura-villareal.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}