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Explore every episode of the podcast Soft Ratios Research
Dive into the complete episode list for Soft Ratios Research. Each episode is cataloged with detailed descriptions, making it easy to find and explore specific topics. Keep track of all episodes from your favorite podcast and never miss a moment of insightful content.
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mould seams reveal who decides (on Ursula Franklin) | 24 sept. 2026 | 00:26:13 | |
A plan can coordinate many hands, but when reality breaks its rules, who gets to revise it, and who must carry the cost? | |||
| Memory walks backward (on Elise Boulding) | 21 sept. 2026 | 00:23:57 | |
What changes when peace is remembered as ordinary life, then traced backward until the institutions and first steps needed to sustain it appear? | |||
| Almost everything with almost nothing (on gnuhr) | 21 sept. 2026 | 00:18:15 | |
When a brand also runs a consultancy, is the shirt in your hand a product, or the proof it sells to the next client? On clothing as evidence. | |||
| Continuity learns to turn (on the 911) | 17 sept. 2026 | 00:28:39 | |
How does a sports car that breaks nearly every design rule end up looking exactly right for sixty years? On the honest shape of the 911. | |||
| Accountability signs its name (on Korea's business-info footer) | 15 sept. 2026 | 00:19:52 | |
In Korea the name in a website's footer can be sent to prison, so when is a name on a thing real answerability, and when is it just ink? | |||
| Keeping tests the clever idea (on Oki Sato and nendo) | 10 sept. 2026 | 00:29:07 | |
A jolt of delight that photographs perfectly gets you to pick a thing up — but is that design, or does the design wait in whether you keep it? | |||
| One point for courage (on grading risk) | 08 sept. 2026 | 00:21:54 | |
Can a grade reward creative risk without turning courage into a performance, or does real experimentation depend on being free to try again? | |||
| Distance, however close (on Walter Benjamin's aura) | 03 sept. 2026 | 00:22:24 | |
What if the aura of a painting was never a thing it owns, but a way of looking long enough that the thing looks back at you? | |||
| Silence can clarify or corrode (on the inner life) | 01 sept. 2026 | 00:21:54 | |
If more introspection can just as easily corrode as clarify, is the inner life a room to fill at all? On attention as a shape, not a volume. | |||
| Access was the product (on the Whole Earth Catalog) | 27 août 2026 | 00:19:57 | |
What were a million and a half people really buying from a catalog that sold them almost nothing but a way to point past itself? | |||
| Intimacy draws its own architecture (on The Poetics of Space) | 25 août 2026 | 00:26:14 | |
Why do architects treasure a book with no plans, no rules, nothing to build from? On the house you carry inside, not the one you drew. | |||
| Nothing left to take away (on John Pawson) | 21 août 2026 | 00:26:49 | |
Why does an empty white room look like the easiest thing in the world, when it may be the most expensive and hard-won thing in the house? | |||
| The newspaper that stood up (on Josef Albers) | 18 août 2026 | 00:29:45 | |
How can one crease make a newspaper stand, and when does using less reveal what paper can do instead of hiding the real cost? | |||
| The overlap belongs to both (on Language of Vision) | 13 août 2026 | 00:20:58 | |
If the same trick that hides a warship also makes a picture refuse to resolve, which half of the man who taught both is really him? | |||
| What the eye paints over (on Teju Cole's Blind Spot) | 11 août 2026 | 00:20:36 | |
Every eye is built with a blind spot the brain quietly paints over, so what if your clearest view of anything hides a hole you'll never find? | |||
| A theory of place turned against people (on broken windows) | 06 août 2026 | 00:26:53 | |
A theory said fix the broken window to stop crime, so why did we spend forty years frisking the person standing near it instead? | |||
| The wound was always the first page (on Liu Cixin) | 04 août 2026 | 00:22:36 | |
Liu Cixin built the coldest sky in fiction as a warning to be kinder on the ground. Why did the world keep the hunter and lose the warning? | |||
| Why some images stay with us (on Roland Barthes and AI) | 30 juil. 2026 | 00:20:37 | |
Roland Barthes asked why some images become personal while others remain surface. AI makes that old question newly urgent for all of us. | |||
| The whole life of a thing (on Piet Oudolf) | 28 juil. 2026 | 00:28:32 | |
Piet Oudolf treats change, wear, and decline as design materials, revealing what becomes possible when we stop optimizing for the perfect moment. | |||
| Product design is not art (on the Ulm School) | 27 juil. 2026 | 00:30:56 | |
If you can't prove why one chair feels right and a correct one feels dead, can method ever get under the feeling? On the Ulm School. | |||
| I brought myself with me (on travel) | 26 juil. 2026 | 00:22:19 | |
Travel begins with a common appetite for expansion: more world, more attention, more range. What lets a journey actually enlarge us? | |||
| The work behind the calm (on the back of house) | 25 juil. 2026 | 00:26:50 | |
A king's table sank through the floor so he'd never watch a servant work — when we hide the effort behind ease, who are we really protecting? | |||
| The wick is only string (on making do) | 23 juil. 2026 | 00:29:10 | |
We call it a knack — the born gift for fixing anything from a junk drawer. What if it's really just refusing to let the wick stay a wick? | |||
| Craft you never notice (on the car interior) | 22 juil. 2026 | 00:32:02 | |
When a door shuts with that deep thunk, can your hand tell real craft from theater? On the honesty you can't feel from the seat. | |||
| Through smoke (on perfume) | 21 juil. 2026 | 00:26:00 | |
Why does a smell drop you into a kitchen you left forty years ago faster than any photo — and why can't you trust what it shows you? | |||
| The prepared mind saw nothing (on scenario planning) | 20 juil. 2026 | 00:27:10 | |
The prepared mind that supposedly saw the 1973 oil shock coming got the timing wrong — so what did all that imagining actually prepare? | |||
| Every inside corner is round (on corner radius) | 17 juil. 2026 | 00:27:19 | |
A spinning cutter physically can't leave a sharp inside corner — so how much of the soft edge everywhere is necessity, and how much is fashion? | |||
| It felt like knowing (on learning) | 16 juil. 2026 | 00:24:19 | |
When the words go down smooth on a second read, is that the feeling of having learned them, or the exact reason you never really did? | |||
| The hammer that expands (on sheet metal) | 14 juil. 2026 | 00:32:31 | |
When no one can name the maker of an everyday metal object, is that the machine erasing the hand, or the hand doing its job so well it vanished? | |||
| Beautiful things are difficult (on beauty) | 13 juil. 2026 | 00:27:12 | |
Is beauty a ratio you could calculate, or the thing itself showing you there was never a reason to find? On an old and difficult question. | |||
| Fine is not a feeling (on feeling more) | 08 juil. 2026 | 00:25:55 | |
What if your steadiness isn't temperament but a habit you once learned, a way of staying safe that quietly costs you the feeling itself? | |||
| You can't tell on the shelf (on shibui) | 07 juil. 2026 | 00:26:28 | |
Some things you keep returning to on a hunch there's more there. The Japanese named that pull, shibui, and it starts with an astringent taste. | |||
| The shape that fits no hand (on ergonomic design) | 06 juil. 2026 | 00:29:21 | |
If no one actually has the average body, who are we designing for when we design for 'the average person'? On the shape that fits no hand. | |||
| Wanting was never the missing piece (on task initiation) | 05 juil. 2026 | 00:26:50 | |
What if the thing between you and the open file was never your character, but a barrier you could work to lower? The science of starting. | |||
| Wood turned against itself (on plywood) | 05 juil. 2026 | 00:24:46 | |
How does gluing weak veneers crosswise make something strong, and why do we quietly look down on a material honest about how it was built? | |||
| The poem and the payment (on Rural Studio) | 05 juil. 2026 | 00:26:00 | |
When a charitable building is also beautiful, what are we really moved by: the help itself, or the flattering picture of ourselves helping? | |||
| The wrist, not the brain (on neural interfaces) | 05 juil. 2026 | 00:25:38 | |
If the device reads a motor command on its way to your hand, not a thought, then whose intention is it really acting on: yours, or its guess? | |||
| When fiction leaves objects behind (on sci-fi objects) | 04 juil. 2026 | 00:21:12 | |
When a novel seems to 'predict' a gadget, what did it actually give us: the object itself, or the word we didn't yet know we needed? | |||
| Welcome to Soft Ratios Radio | 02 juil. 2026 | 00:01:46 | |
Who makes a podcast about the thinking behind everyday objects, and why? A short introduction to Soft Ratios, in the maker's own voice. | |||
| A philosophy you can drink (on the Book of Tea) | 02 juil. 2026 | 00:22:53 | |
Can a philosophy be something you drink? Okakura Kakuzo's 1906 Book of Tea, the empty cup, and what a tradition is really keeping alive. | |||
| The answer was always yours (on oracles) | 02 juil. 2026 | 00:18:58 | |
What did people really get from an oracle that spoke in riddles, and what do we lose now that every answer arrives certain and fog-free? | |||
| Unlearning what you know (on ex-formation) | 02 juil. 2026 | 00:23:22 | |
A designer behind Muji had a backwards rule: to truly see an everyday object, first make it strange again. A quiet idea called ex-formation. | |||
| Inventing what others would sell (on Xerox PARC) | 02 juil. 2026 | 00:18:57 | |
Who really invented the desktop you use every day, and why does the story always credit the company that sold it over the one that made it? | |||
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