Hi, it's Major. The slowdown is on a break right now, but we'll be back soon with a new host.

In the meantime, we're bringing you some of the best episodes from our archives.

Today, we revisit an episode from Tracy K. Smith's time at the helm. Enjoy.

I'm Tracy K. Smith, and this is The Slowdown. Humans evolved in part because of our ability to read other people's faces.

If I can recognize anger, I can recognize that a situation might become dangerous and leave to a place of safety. I can adapt my

behavior to better serve the circumstances. But sometimes our ability to judge surfaces and

signals takes us past the point of caution to one of assumption. I see someone, and based

upon what I see, I presume to understand things that are not visible, what a person thinks,

how they live, what they possess or lack. You live, so you must not have, your, so you must not like, you grew up, so you must

believe. Where would our civilization find itself if, instead of jumping to presume our own interpretive authority, we imagined that

other people were as complex and many-layered as we believe ourselves to be. What would become of us

if we learn to encounter one another humbly, admiringly, like the miracles of mind and spirit we have always been.

What hurt, what conflict, what foolishness could be headed off at the pass.

I believe our ability to master these skills will determine whether or not we make it peacefully through the 21st century.

Today's poem is Workshop by Jacob Shores Arello.

If you've ever been in a writing workshop, you'll know what it feels like to share a brand

new poem with an audience and to receive feedback

on the poem's strengths and its weaknesses from your readers.

Maybe you'll also recognize something familiar in the pain and frustration that the poem's

speaker finds himself feeling when a reader rushes in and starts projecting stereotypes upon the poem.

Once that happens, the poem and the gifts it might otherwise have been willing to impart just up and vanish.

Workshop by Jacob Shores Areo. The pale sound of Hilgeros trilling in the jungle.

...