Carl Honore

PODCAST: Teaching, Fast and Slow

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Carl travels to Blackburn, England to visit St. Silas Primary School, a jewel in the Slow Education crown. He interviews Hillary Hinchliff, then the headteacher, and Chris Boyce, the architect who built the school.

(Recorded March 11, 2016 in Blackburn, UK)

Topics covered include:

1. What is Slow Education?

2. How can a Slow School thrive in a system that prizes speed?

3. What happens when designers and architects team up with teachers to build a school?

4. How can the fabric of a school help deliver the curriculum?

5. What is the right balance between structure and freedom, slowness and speed, in the classroom?

6. What do Slow Schools have in common with workplaces in Silicon Valley?

7. Why does Slow Education work especially well for children from under-privileged backgrounds?

8. The role of play in the classroom

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St Silas School, Blackburn. May 2012 — St Sil

PODCAST: To Buddhify, or not to Buddhify

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Carl speaks to Rohan Gunatillake, a modern maven of mindfulness. His company created buddhify, the bestselling meditation app, and Wired magazine put him on its Smart List of 50 People Who Will Change the World. Rohan talks about his new book, This Is Happening, a manifesto for mindfulness in a busy, digital world.

(Recorded in London on March 23, 2016)

Topics covered include:

1. How to build mindfulness into a busy schedule

2. Are people becoming too dependent on apps to meditate?

2. Can you be mindful without being spiritual?

3. Does mindfulness have to be a solo experience or can it also be a communal?

4. What would it mean to design wellbeing into technology?

5. Advert Jujitsu, the Mouse Sweep and other mindfulness techniques for modern life.

6. How to use a smartphone mindfully.

7. Can you experience pain without suffering?

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PODCAST: European Vacation 2.0

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Carl talks to Vincent Dupin, founder of Into The Tribe, an online travel agency that organises smartphone-free holidays in tranquil corners of Europe.

(Recorded July 20, 2016 via Skype)

Topics covered include:

1. How real-world activities help us switch off

2. Can anyone learn to go phone-free for a few days?

3. What role does nature play when we unplug?

4. Tips for taming technology back home after an unplugged vacation

5. Is the art of doing nothing dead and buried?

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Slow Furniture in a Fast World

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Carl speaks to Oona Bannon and Russell Pinch, the couple behind PINCH, a London design studio famous for making furniture and lighting that combine the finest craftsmanship with a quiet aesthetic and respect for the environment. In other words, they fit into what has come to be known as the Slow Furniture Movement.

(Recorded in London on October 21, 2015)

Topics covered include:

1. How to work with wood in ways that care for the environment

2. How traditional craftspeople fit into modern manufacturing

3. Scaling up a company without losing its soul

4. The role of the internet and 3D printing in Slow design

5. Whether Slow design will always be a luxury for the affluent

6. How furniture can be designed to slow us down

7. The difference between young and older designers

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You Have Mail, almost

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Carl speaks to Michel Tombroff, CEO of Jack, an app that lets you send messages that arrive instantly but can only be opened at a later time that you decide. You can send a Jack (text, audio, video, etc) that’ll open in one hour, one month, 5 years or even 20 years from now.

(Recorded in London on March 1, 2016)

Topics covered include:

1. How technology shapes the way we communicate

2. The pleasure of waiting in a world of instant gratification

3. Why the power of a message comes from content and timing

4. What message you might send yourself two years from now

5. Why even digital natives love the idea of slower messaging

6. Whether instant messaging is here to stay

7. How delayed messaging could be used for marketing

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PODCAST: Come Dine With Me, Slowly

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Carl speaks to Guy Michlin, the founder of EatWith, which brings people together to dine in the homes of professional chefs and amateur cooks around the world.

(Recorded in San Francisco on June 1, 2015)

Topics covered include:

1. Eating well and convivially in more than 150 cities

2. What it means to “disrupt” the restaurant industry

3. How food brings us together

4. Smartphone etiquette at the table

5. Making “social dining” available to all social groups

6. How food culture varies across nations

7. Curating the social mix round the dinner table

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PODCAST: Wild Thing, You Make My Heart Sing

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Carl speaks to David Bond, who made Project Wild Thing, the film that helped spark a worldwide movement to get children back outside and reconnecting with nature.

(Recorded in London on May 19, 2015)

Topics covered include:

1. Benefits of playing outdoors

2. How to persuade children to unplug and go outside

3. The right balance of technology in childhood

4. How Silicon Valley parents handle screen time with their own kids

5. Why so many successful entrepreneurs climbed trees as children

6. How Nature reduces racism and other forms of prejudice

7. Whether games like Minecraft can ever rival the natural world

8. Differences (and similarities) between urban and rural children

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PODCAST: Welcome to New Slow City

Carl speaks to William Powers about New Slow City, the book he wrote about living Slow in New York

(Recorded via Skype on October 6, 2015)

Topics covered include:

1. How to live Slow in any big city

2. Tapping into urban sanctuaries

3. How to cultivate anticipation over instant gratification

4. How solitude fits in with slowing down

5. The place of ambition in urban life

6. Confronting FOMO (fear of missing out)

7. The power of “third-storey awareness”

8. Balancing clock time with your own time

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PODCAST: Slow Education

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Carl speaks to Mike Grenier, an English teacher and housemaster at England’s fabled Eton College and co-founder of the Slow Education movement.

(Recorded in London on July 1, 2015)

Topics covered include:

1. What is Slow Education and why we need more of it in schools

2. How dialling down the pressure can work in all classrooms

3. What teachers can do to promote deep learning

4. The good, the bad and the ugly of standardised testing

5. The “5-Minute Warning” and how can teachers apply it in the classroom

6. What colleges and universities can do to combat the obsession with perfect CVs

7. How businesses are reshaping educational priorities

8. Trends in education around the world

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Visit the Slow Education website.

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PODCAST: The Slow Journalism movement

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Carl speaks to Rob Orchard, founder and editor of Delayed Gratification, the world’s first Slow Journalism magazine.

(Recorded in London. Running time: 58’43”)

Topics covered include:

1. What is Slow Journalism and why does it matter in a fast world?

2. Is personalised news a good thing?

3. Does long-form journalism have a future?

4. How much news is actually news?

5. What role did toasters play in the genesis of Slow Journalism?

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