The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily
American Public Media
Show overview
The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily has been publishing since 2024, and across the 2 years since has built a catalogue of 422 episodes. That works out to roughly 45 hours of audio in total. Releases follow a near-daily cadence.
Episodes typically run under ten minutes — most land between 6 min and 6 min — and the run-time is fairly consistent across the catalogue. It is catalogued as a EN-language Arts show.
The show is actively publishing — the most recent episode landed yesterday, with 95 episodes already out so far this year. The busiest year was 2025, with 262 episodes published. Published by American Public Media.
From the publisher
Host Maggie Smith is your daily poetry companion. Poetry is one of the greatest tools we have to wield our own attention — to consider our own lives and the lives of others, to help us live creatively and compassionately, to use that attention to lean into wonder, and joy, and truth, and to find hope — to keep hoping. The Slowdown community knows that reflecting on a poem, every weekday, can connect us to our inner world and the world around us. Listen as you make your morning coffee, as you go on a walk in your neighborhood, as you pull away from the to-do list, as you resist the dismal, endless scroll to share five minutes of perspective through the lens of poetry, from poets old and new, well-loved and emerging onto the scene. Brought to you by American Public Media, in partnership with the Poetry Foundation.