These days, you hear people talk a lot about the attention economy,

the idea being that our greatest investment, as consumers, as citizens,

is the time we spend looking, listening, thinking, and feeling about whatever pulls us in the hardest.

There is plenty that is tugging and tugging plenty hard.

You know what I'm talking about, the chaotic news cycle, our busy lives.

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.

I'm Maggie Smith, your new host of The Slowdown.

This show was launched nearly seven years ago to find a haven of calm in the middle of this constant storm,

based on the simple idea that reflecting on a poem every weekday can connect us to our inner world and the world around us.

And hundreds of episodes later, we stay committed to this idea.

I can't wait to join you 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,

The Slowdown will return with new episodes on August 18th.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

See you soon.

Hi everyone, it's Micah, lead producer of The Slowdown.

I want to take a minute to talk to you about public media. You may have heard about federal budget

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