Crafting Human™ Podcast

The use of signs is disappearing. Cars are already driving themselves, and soon navigation may be something we stop looking at altogether. For nearly a decade, Will Ayers, founder of Found, has been rethinking wayfinding and environmental graphics, building identity systems for some of the most recognizable spaces in tech and beyond across the world. His newest venture explores a haptic software t...

Imagine a world where developers and communities are not at odds but sitting on the same side of the table, where a city addresses its housing shortage by restoring its wetlands instead of paving them, and where the place you live is one you truly know and feel a real sense of connection and belonging. In this episode of Crafting Human™, I sit down with Bill Reed, a pioneer of regenerative develop...

There are people in the world quietly doing something extraordinary: building systems of care around artists, the human beings who make culture possible. Kathy Treat is one of them. In 2008, Kathy founded the Speranza Foundation, which was born from her life experience where her musician friends were her lifeline during one of the hardest periods of her life. A  weekend recording session at a hous...

When the place that once represented home is no longer, what does it look like to build it again, and not just the walls and rooms, but the deeper foundations home provides: safety, identity, belonging? In this episode of Crafting Human, I sit down with my longtime friend and fellow Pratt alum Sandra Fadayel, founder of Inhabitat, a Dubai-based interior design studio whose mission reaches far beyo...

Water has a superpower. You’ve felt it, even if you’ve never named it. “It distracts us just enough that it opens us, and our minds move along different channels. Like a daydream. Like when you relax and suddenly think of what’s really important without trying to.” These are words from Jim Garland, and he would know. He has spent over three decades shaping water into experience, with work spanning...

There's a room in your home that holds everything. It’s the room where you learn that mistakes are okay and you’re encouraged to keep trying, the place that holds the grief that has nowhere else to go. It’s also the room where joyful celebrations spill into the hallway and where the traditions your grandmother never wrote down, because they lived in her hands, still echo through the walls. St...

On this episode of Crafting Human, I sit down with interior designer Garrett Robbins, co-founder of Brime Robbins, for a conversation about cultural heritage, storytelling, and the role design can play in reflecting a sense of identity and enabling a deeper connection to community and culture. Garrett shares the design inspiration behind the award-winning Andaz Prague project, a hotel design conce...

On this episode of Crafting Human™, I sit down with David Leventhal, founder of Playa Viva, a regenerative luxury destination resort, for a conversation about regeneration, adaptability, and what it means to design business as a living system. What began as a conventional real estate development shifted course after the 2008 financial collapse. Instead of simply trying to repair a broken model, Da...

On this episode of Crafting Human™, I sit down with Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, authors of Your Brain on Art, for a conversation about how the arts and aesthetics shape us, emotionally, physically, and neurologically. Drawing from neuroscience, lived experience, and the emerging field of neuroaesthetics, Susan and Ivy explore how engaging our senses through art, beauty, design, movement, and soun...

On this episode of Crafting Human™, I sit down with Thomas Lavin, Founder and CEO of Thomas Lavin Showroom, for a conversation about craft, stewardship, and the responsibility of building a business around makers. Over nearly three decades, Thomas has championed artisans and designers by prioritizing long-term relationships, education, and storytelling over speed or trend. Together, we explore wha...

On this episode of Crafting Human™, designer Valerie Legras and fibre artist Morgane Baroghel-Crucq reflect on craft as a form of embodied intelligence, one that lives in the hands, the body, and the process of making itself. Together, we explore how slowness, care, and making in alignment with nature and its natural rhythms shape not only objects, but the meaning they carry. This conversation mov...

On this episode of Crafting Human™, painter and educator Gabriel Islas reflects on plein air painting: working in the landscape where weather, time, discomfort, and imperfection shape both the process and the outcome.  Together, we explore his journey and growth as an artist, which has taught him to trust in the moments and process, even when the scale or stakes felt intimidating. Crafting Human™...

What happens when we stop teaching people how to make things? On Crafting Human, next Wednesday, 1/28, join me for a fascinating conversation with Valerie Legras, Founder & Creative Director of SWADOH design studio, and Morgane Baroghel-Crucq, a French fibre artist and artisan. We are having a conversation about craft, independence, and what’s lost when knowledge isn’t passed down. We reflect...

As technology accelerates speed, scale, and efficiency, many of us are left asking deeper questions: what does it mean to be human in a world increasingly shaped by machines? Hosted by designer and creative leader Sharon Yu, Crafting Human™ podcast celebrates the humans behind the work: the artists, makers, designers, craftsmen, and storytellers whose creativity shapes how we experience culture, c...