Hello everyone, I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.

Now, I know I do this for a living, but let me tell you, staying on top of the news all the time is often not the best thing for your mental health.

We all want to stay informed and educated, but often when things are feeling especially heavy,

as they are for many folks these days, it can be a good idea to lean into things that make

us feel a little bit more grounded, help us find some peace, give us space to restore ourselves

for whatever it is we need to be doing to step it up in this moment. So today we are going to

talk about reading and writing as self-care. Here to make us smart is Maggie Smith, poet and host of a

podcast that I love called The Slowdown, where Maggie

selects and reads a poem every day. Welcome to the show, Maggie.

Ah, thanks for having me.

So I kind of summarized it, but for folks who aren't familiar, can you describe what

the slowdown is? Yes, so the slowdown is a podcast.

Each episode is usually five or six minutes long,

so it's a little amuse-bush.

I like to think of it as a little delicious bite.

And each weekday, it's a little moment of reflection

and then a poem.

And so what I hear from our devoted listeners is it's part of their daily practice, really,

to have a moment, maybe first thing in the morning while they're making their coffee or on the

morning commute or walking their dog or whatever they're doing maybe before the day has a chance to get at them,

to just sort of slow down, as the title suggests, and breathe and reflect and kind of come back to center,

which I think we all need right now.

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