{"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":"Bonus Episode — PASSAGES: On Morrison featuring Tracy K. Smith and Namwali Serpell","slug":"bonus-episode-passages-on-morrison-featuring-tracy-k-smith-and-namwali-serpell","published_at":"2026-05-23T12:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130/bonus-episode-passages-on-morrison-featuring-tracy-k-smith-and-namwali-serpell","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130","url":"https://www.spreaker.com/episode/bonus-episode-passages-on-morrison-featuring-tracy-k-smith-and-namwali-serpell--72129644","audio_url":"https://api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72129644/theslowdown_20260523_20260523_128.mp3","summary":"Today we’re excited to share a bonus episode: the first episode of \"PASSAGES: On Morrison,\" produced by our friends at Random House Publishing Group. This new podcast takes reading on the road, as Namwali Serpell — novelist, critic, and Harvard professor — joins fellow writers and skilled readers in conversation to pore over excerpts of Toni Morrison’s prose. The show is the record of a traveling salon, a celebration of Morrison’s extraordinary work, and a love letter to reading closely in community. You’ll hear Serpell in conversation with poet and former host of The Slowdown, Tracy K. Smith. Together, they read the opening of THE BLUEST EYE, Toni Morrison’s debut novel, and discuss all that the passage emits and erases. The second episode, featuring acclaimed poet and critic Hanif Abdurraqib, is also available to listen now wherever you get your podcasts.","meta_description":"Today we’re excited to share a bonus episode: the first episode of \"PASSAGES: On Morrison,\" produced by our friends at Random House Publishing Group. This…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":1865,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130/episodes/bonus-episode-passages-on-morrison-featuring-tracy-k-smith-and-namwali-serpell/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/bonus-episode-passages-on-morrison-featuring-tracy-k-smith-and-namwali-serpell.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}