The MoMA Magazine Podcast

Broken Nature | Who Is a River?

What does it mean for bodies of water, animals, and all of nature to be granted legal rights? In this episode of the Broken Nature series, host Paola Antonelli explores how the law can help us conceive of nature differently, and maybe even curb our destructive instincts. Author Nathaniel Rich tells the story "Dark Waters" about how environmental regulations in the United States have fallen short, activist Vimlandu Jha describes how he fights the pollution of India's Yamuna river, and Belkis Izquierdo describes her role as a magistrate in Colombia's Special Jurisdiction for Peace, a judicial body created to investigate and judge the crimes committed during the country’s decades-long civil war.

For more on this episode, visit moma.org/magazine.

Broken Nature | Will We Need to Become Less Human to Survive the Climate Crisis?

Humans depend on certain conditions to survive on Earth: oxygen, water, food, and the atmosphere’s protection from the sun’s most dangerous rays. But what happens when these conditions begin to change? Host Paola Antonelli is joined by Sarah Henderson, Scientific Director of Environmental Health Services at the British Columbia Center for Disease Control, geneticist Christopher Mason, and Nathalie Cabrol, Director of the SETI Institute at the Carl Sagan Center for Research, to investigate the how the climate crisis affects the most intimate system in our lives: our own body.

For more information on this episode, visit moma.org/magazine.

Broken Nature | Should Secondhand Be Our First Choice?

This episode of The MoMA Magazine Podcast's Broken Nature series explores the global secondhand clothing landscape: who participates in it, who benefits from it, who suffers because of it, and whether it is in fact a sustainable alternative to the excessive consumption encouraged by the fashion industry. Host Paola Antonelli is joined by Andrew Brooks, the author of Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-Hand Clothes, Katekani Moreku, a South African fashion designer who uses discarded clothing to create new garments, and Julie Wainwright, founder and CEO of The RealReal, a business focused on luxury consignment. 

Broken Nature | Is Corn Feeding a Lie?

Showing up in food, cosmetics, fuel, medicine, and even the air we breathe, corn has become one of the most ubiquitous presences in our lives. In this episode of The Broken Nature Series, host Paola Antonelli talked to Bex, who runs the blog Corn Allergy Girl, cultural anthropologist Alyshia Galvez, and community organizers Yira Vallejo and Jonathan Barbieri about the proliferation of corn and its consequences for our health, environment, and communities.

For more about the guests in this episode, visit moma.org/magazine

Introducing The Broken Nature Podcast

What are some of the most urgent challenges facing our planet? And how can design help us meet them?

Join Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at MoMA, for Broken Nature, a four-episode podcast series in conjunction with MoMA’s current exhibition, that explores our fragile but fundamental ties to the rest of nature and the world around us. Antonelli and her guests—bloggers, anthropologists, judges, entrepreneurs, and more—will look at systems that sustain and permeate our lives, from food to fashion and the law, and ask how we might redesign them to make them fairer to all humans and other species.

Join us next Monday, April 26, for the launch of Episode 1: Is Corn Feeding a Lie?

The Voices of "Marking Time"

MoMA PS1’s new exhibition Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration features artists who were incarcerated or impacted by the US prison system, and who address these issues in their work. In this episode, Dr. Nicole Fleetwood speaks with artists James Hough, Rowan Renee, Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter aka Isis tha Saviour, and Halim Flowers about the relationship between art and freedom, the failures of the American justice system, and their visions for a future without prisons.

Black Trans Futures ft: West Dakota, Raquel Willis, Muhammed Fayaz, and Ceyenne Doroshow

On June 14, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests and the COVID 19 pandemic, more than 15,000 people gathered in front of the Brooklyn Museum in New York City to protest the violence, harassment, and discrimination faced by Black trans people in the United States. The Brooklyn Liberation march, the brainchild of drag queen West Dakota, turned out to be the largest event for Black trans rights in history. Last month, Alex Halberstadt spoke over Zoom to four people with key roles in the event: West Dakota, who tells us what nightlife and political organizing have in common; Mohammed Fayaz, whose images work as a call to community; Ceyenne Doroshow, who looks back with decades of perspective; and Raquel Willis, who gave one of the day’s most powerful speeches. He asked them to reflect on this historic event, how it fits into the larger struggle for equity and justice, and the future of Black trans people in this country.

Harry Belafonte on Charles White

Harry Belafonte once wrote that artist Charles White's work “is a testimony to the vitality of American culture.” In this conversation with WQXR host Terrance McKnight, who worked with curator Esther Adler to select music and other audio for Charles White: A Retrospective, Belafonte describes his relationship with White and their commitment to celebrating and advancing black culture.

Rosanne Cash, the River, and the Thread

Singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash recently created a playlist to accompany Taking a Thread for a Walk, an exhibition of textiles and fiber art from MoMA’s collection. We spoke with her about her thoughts in choosing these songs and about the connections between weaving, making art, and writing music.

Tess Taylor on Finding Poetry in Dorothea Lange

Across her long career, pioneering photographer Dorothea Lange grappled with the relationship between words and pictures, the subject of MoMA’s recent exhibition. The Creative Team’s Prudence Peiffer sat down with poet Tess Taylor to discuss Taylor’s engagement with Lange and words in her book, Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange.