S2 Ep.4: TO MARK. TO GROUND. THE SHADOWS OF PLACE: BOEDI WIDJAJA | Artist
Nina Freedman Nina Freedman

S2 Ep.4: TO MARK. TO GROUND. THE SHADOWS OF PLACE: BOEDI WIDJAJA | Artist

BOEDI WIDJAJA is a prolific international artist whose work is deeply tied to his personal experience of being a migrant child in Southeast Asia. Impacted by the region’s complicated entangled histories, his poetic art explores themes of diaspora, memory, cultural hybridity, identity and space.

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S2 Ep.3: MEN’S SHEDS | Phil Johnson, Managing Director for the US Men’s Sheds
Nina Freedman Nina Freedman

S2 Ep.3: MEN’S SHEDS | Phil Johnson, Managing Director for the US Men’s Sheds

Men’s Sheds, an international phenomenon, with thousands of clubs worldwide, are mainly ‘clubs for older guys’. They provide a place for older men to meet, build friendships and projects, pursue their interests, learn new things, and discuss health issues. In these places, there is a comfort level to talk while working “Shoulder to Shoulder”. We listen to Phil Johnson the Managing Director and catalyst behind the Men’s Sheds movement in the United States, talk about the transformative effect Men’s Sheds have had on retired and elder men’s lives.

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S2 Ep.2: IF YOU VISIT MY HOME YOU WILL KNOW ME | The Home Visit | Sarah Leibowits | Educator
Nina Freedman Nina Freedman

S2 Ep.2: IF YOU VISIT MY HOME YOU WILL KNOW ME | The Home Visit | Sarah Leibowits | Educator

Imagine a radical school curriculum where 4 and 5 year old children, are required to visit the homes of every student in the class. I speak with Sarah Leibowits, a lower school educator at the Manhattan Country School in New York, who has taken her class on  these very home visits for 20 years. Established as a 'private school with a public mission’,  lessons at the school from kindergarten through 8th grade are built on the celebration of unique difference.

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Episode 15: INSIDE THE WHEREING PODCAST | Nina Freedman|Host
Nina Freedman Nina Freedman

Episode 15: INSIDE THE WHEREING PODCAST | Nina Freedman|Host

This is the FInal Episode of Season 1! To all listeners, THANK YOU! From starting this naive experiment, during the pandemic, from my home, it amazes me that I have listeners all over the United States and the world. Wow! I am taking a break over the summer, and will return in September. This episode gives you some short Season 1 highlight clips, and ‘behind the scenes’ info about the Whereing Podcast. It is part of a recent talk about the podcast I was invited to give to the Pratt Institute School of Design, Department of Interior Design INT Talks.

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Episode 14: A LIVEABLE PLACE FOR ALL | Karen Kubey |Urbanist and Houser
Nina Freedman Nina Freedman

Episode 14: A LIVEABLE PLACE FOR ALL | Karen Kubey |Urbanist and Houser

I speak with Karen Kubey, who is an urbanist and ‘houser’ with an enduring passion and commitment to affordable housing as the generative factor in social equity and justice. We speak about the ways to engage residents in the decisions for the design of their homes, and the need to push for generous, transformative policies, because housing is a human right.

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Episode 13: MOTHER TONGUE | ፈለማ የማነበርሃን| Felema Yemaneberhan |Architectural Designer
Nina Freedman Nina Freedman

Episode 13: MOTHER TONGUE | ፈለማ የማነበርሃን| Felema Yemaneberhan |Architectural Designer

Felema Yemaneberhan grew up in Los Angeles, but throughout her childhood she was brought back to another home, in Eritrea, north of Ethiopia, a country traumatized by Italian colonization and Civil War. Before the age of 5, she only spoke Tigrinya, the language of her ancestral home, a place where her parents still anticipate returning. When we say mother tongue, what does it mean? ‘Mother Tongue’ merges the past and present, a sometimes invisible gift of identity, particularly when displaced in another land.

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Episode 12: ELASTIC | ABSORBABLE | SPACE:  Loukia Tsafoulia, Architect
Nina Freedman Nina Freedman

Episode 12: ELASTIC | ABSORBABLE | SPACE: Loukia Tsafoulia, Architect

The conversation with Loukia Tsafoulia covers her various multi-disciplinary projects. We first speak about the book she has edited and curated, titled 'Transient Spaces', and her devotion to exploring belonging for migrant and refugee populations. Her other works examine the connections between design, technology and science, specifically the human body, and its sensory interactions with objects and place. A project we speak about is an installation now being exhibited at the the Venice Biennale, called 'Synesthesia'.

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Episode 11: HOME ‘ON STAGE’ Lori Kirstein:  Actress | Singer | Author | Entrepreneur
Nina Freedman Nina Freedman

Episode 11: HOME ‘ON STAGE’ Lori Kirstein: Actress | Singer | Author | Entrepreneur

Lori Kirstein is a multi-talented force - an actress, singer, author, and entrepreneur. She brings these skills to her training programs, which focus on leadership from a place of presence and truth. We discuss the period in her life, when, in the midst of becoming a rising entrepreneur, she became homeless, and how it has informed her work and life, what it means to find and build a home.

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Episode 09: SPATIAL FICTIONS | FROZEN DAYDREAMS  Clement Luk Laurencio
Nina Freedman Nina Freedman

Episode 09: SPATIAL FICTIONS | FROZEN DAYDREAMS Clement Luk Laurencio

Clement Luk Laurencio is a storyteller and master of pencil drawings. His surreal, poetic drawings capture the dreams, inventions, memories and flashbacks of places he has lived, visited and cherished. He calls them ‘spatial fictions’. He says they are an invitation for pause, and wandering, in its timeless labyrinth. He probes the question ‘How is the dwelling a place of reverie and protection for the dreamer?’

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Episode 08: ONE YEAR IN: COLLEGE IN QUARANTINE  Emma Bowers | Alex Durham | Irene Pan
Nina Freedman Nina Freedman

Episode 08: ONE YEAR IN: COLLEGE IN QUARANTINE Emma Bowers | Alex Durham | Irene Pan

It is one year into the pandemic. Colleges closed their doors in March of 2020. Students weighed their decisions about how and where they could continue to learn. Where are our students now? What are the impacts, and unexpected lessons they have learned?

We speak with 3 students who all have different stories. Emma Bowers has had a nomadic experience. Alex Durham went home to live with family. Irene Pan is a Chinese international student, who decided to remain in the USA and study online.

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Episode 06: HOUSE CALL! BELONGING TO EARTH, PLACE AND SELF
Nina Freedman Nina Freedman

Episode 06: HOUSE CALL! BELONGING TO EARTH, PLACE AND SELF

She thought she was nomad. New to to this town, she experienced serendipitous events, meetings with eccentric creatives, and a deep curiosity about the land. We hear how her home was realized, in a beloved, magical summer camp, once called the ‘Fried Egg'. It is a story of belonging to earth, place and self - through anchoring, listening, learning, and rebuilding with friends.

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Episode 05:  PLACES OF RISK | PLACES OF SERVICE
Nina Freedman Nina Freedman

Episode 05: PLACES OF RISK | PLACES OF SERVICE

What does it mean to live on the edge? Jerry Roback is most comfortable describing himself as a wild man, a humanitarian adventurer, a self appointed and fearless grass roots citizen of compassionate service. He seeks the oasis - the calm, the magic, the rescue in places of suffering, a sanctuary for discussions across divides…. or simply… in the need that reveals itself in spontaneous encounters. That is his home. This unbridled spirit has provided a life resume of the ordinary extraordinary in places near and far.

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Episode 04: HOME AND HOMELESSNESS |BUILDING SMARTER
Nina Freedman Nina Freedman

Episode 04: HOME AND HOMELESSNESS |BUILDING SMARTER

What might resolve the challenges of sheltering the homeless? Kishani De Silva envisions a pilot scheme to test a smarter, faster, cheaper methodology. Bridging government, design, technology, and community resistance, she speaks, with hope, to the urgent need for alignment, partnership and the intangible meaning of community and belonging.

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Episode 03: A SENSE OF DIRECTION
Nina Freedman Nina Freedman

Episode 03: A SENSE OF DIRECTION

In the week of his 90th Birthday, I spoke to Yi Fu Tuan, a Chinese scholar and philosopher. He invented the phrase ‘humanist geography’ as a way to explore "how geography reveals the quality of awareness’. He writes about the contradictions of space and place as the necessary tension of the human experience for both freedom and security..... for movement and pause. With simple personal stories and observations, we are led us into his world.

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Episode 02: THIS UN-BELONGING BELONGS TO ME
Nina Freedman Nina Freedman

Episode 02: THIS UN-BELONGING BELONGS TO ME

We speak with Maria Amidu, an artist, whose work explores the relationships between people and place and what is hidden, obscured or unspoken, a clarion voice of the common experience. She unmasks the ignored mutable stories of migration, unbelonging, and remembering - what it means to be anchored while simultaneously erased.

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