Crafting Human celebrates the creative brilliance of humans and the value of the soulful human touch expressed in the process of making, building and creating. Each week we have conversations with global creatives, makers, artisans, craftsmen, designers and storytellers, and we discuss how their work creates meaningful connections, distinctly shapes cultures and transforms communities & ecosystems. Crafting Human is a quiet resistance to the values of the industrial mindset that erode and devalue humans in the creative process. Through each guest's stories and creative expressions, we restore attention to what cannot be automated: the human hand, the human process, and the human story, which reflect our identity and values, and shape our experiences. We are reclaiming agency, the value of our humanity and the priceless beauty of the "slow" work made with intention and soul.
Crafting Human™ Ep. 12 | Feel Your Way: Will Ayers on Haptics, Imperfection & What Design Forgets
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 technology that communicates directional wayfinding through touch alone. A tap on your right shou...
29 Apr 2026
Crafting Human™ Episode 11 | Working with Nature to Regenerate Failing Systems
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 development, principal of Regenesis Group, and one of the founding voices behind the LEED Green Building...
23 Apr 2026
Crafting Human™ Episode 10 | What Home Really Means with Sandra Fadayel
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 beyond aesthetics. Sandra designs homes for global citizens and executives living across borders and...
23 Apr 2026
Crafting Human™ Episode 9 | The Art of Caring: Why Investing in Artists Is a Social Strategy
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 house on a country road showed her what became possible when artists were given time, space, a...
27 Mar 2026
Crafting Human™ Ep. 8 | Water Has a Superpower and It's Working on You Right Now: Jim Garland on Water’s Impact
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 the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hearst Building, Longwood Gardens, and Water Tower Place ...
13 Mar 2026
Crafting Human™ Ep. 7 | Steven Cooper on The Kitchen As a Place Where Grief, Joy & Identity Live
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. Steven Cooper has spent the last forty years designing that room. As owner of Cooper Pacific Kitchens ...
13 Mar 2026
Crafting Human™ Ep. 6 | Garrett Robbins on Storytelling, Cultural Memory, and Andaz Prague
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 concept shaped by Czech myths and legends passed down through generations. Together, we explore how a ...
19 Feb 2026
Crafting Human™ Ep. 5 | David Leventhal on Designing Business as a Living System
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, David and his team stepped back to ask a deeper question: What future are we actually trying to cre...
11 Feb 2026
Crafting Human™ Ep. 4 | Susan Magsamen & Ivy Ross on How Art Changes the Brain
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 sound can rewire the brain, support well-being, and deepen our capacity for empathy and meaning. Toge...
10 Feb 2026
Crafting Human™ Ep. 3 | Thomas Lavin on Building a Business That Champions Makers
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 what it means to represent handmade work in an age shaped by mass production and why craft continues...
29 Jan 2026
Crafting Human™ Ep. 2 | Valerie Legras & Morgane Baroghel-Crucq on Craft as Remedy to Disconnection
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 moves beyond skill-building to consider how objects, spaces, and rituals hold memory and how meaning...
23 Jan 2026
Crafting Human™ Ep. 1 | Gabriel Islas on Letting Go To Find Creative Courage & Growth
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™ is a space for conversations that go beyond aesthetics to explore what it means to create ...
23 Jan 2026
Crafting Human™ Ep. 2 Teaser | Objects Used to Have Soul...What Happened?
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 on the ideas of: Craft being intelligence made visible.Slowness is not inefficiency, but care and...
7 Jan 2026
Introducing Crafting Human™ | Crafting Human In the Age of AI
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, community, and ourselves. Each week, conversations go beyond output and aesthetics to explore th...
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