The Art of Curation: Recent Episodes
Curation is everywhere, sometimes hidden in plain sight. Get to know the wizards of tastemaking as we unpack the art and science of selection. Hosted by Mia Quagliarello for Flipboard.
“We aren't constantly swimming in trauma. We're a joyful people. I want to make sure that the way we present the work is reflective of an expansive and nuanced understanding that we can hold pain but we can also hold a lot of love, joy and happiness.” — Kalyn Fay Barnoski, Philbrook Museum of Art
When you’re a gatekeeper to a world that’s still unfolding for mainstream audiences, the pressure must be…intense. Kalyn Fay Barnoski, an interdisciplinary artist, musician, curator, and educator from Oklahoma, who is a Cherokee Nation enrollee and of Muscogee Creek descent, confirmed that the responsibility is a big one that they don’t take lightly.
What does that feel like? How does one begin to curate from such a vast and varied universe? What happens when the job also means retelling history? And what's the importance of the land a museum sits on when thinking about curation?
Listen in as Kalyn shares details about how they approach such a sacred role, what they’re excited about — and what work still needs to be done — when they ponder how Indigenous culture is presented in museums in 2023.
Other highlights, inspiration and key learnings from the conversation:
- How their life as an artist impacts their approach as a curator
- What people don’t get right about native art and culture
- Honoring all parts of yourself as a curator
- Indigenous creatives more people should know
- Making space for creativity
👋 Say "hi" to Kalyn.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Kalyn’s favorite culture picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the world’s first social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“I'm really interested in curators who have done the work of healing through their deep curiosity and then are thinking about what they can curate to help others on their journey. I can't think of anything that's more worthwhile and more meaningful than extending that vulnerability of your own healing journey and trying to support others on theirs.” — Scott Shigeoka, author of “Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World”
In talking to curators about what it takes to be successful, one word that keeps coming up again and again is “curiosity.” Being curious — and pursuing curiosity with an open heart — is a superpower when it comes to curation. Turns out it’s also a superpower in life.
Scott Shigeoka wrote the book on curiosity (coming out on Nov. 14) and says we’re all born with it. He adds that curiosity is like a muscle: with practice, any of us can get better at it, and when we do, the effects are profound. In this conversation, Scott shares his research, philosophy and practical exercises on how to become a more curious person and why it matters in the first place.
Other highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- The definition of curiosity
- His DIVE model for building your curiosity muscle
- How curiosity fares in an AI world
- What curators should know about curiosity and how they can leverage it
👋 Say "hi" to Scott.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Scott’s own picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the world’s first social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“I just love creating these really hyper specific titles where, after reading these few words, you really have an understanding of the context of the playlist itself…It's crazy how being that specific makes people so compelled to actually listen because it feels relatable.” — Kasey Gelsomino, Kasey’s Playlist
You don’t have to press play to know what you’re going to get on a playlist called “Oat Milk Lattes in the Mountains.” It’s pretty clear from just the name that this playlist is serving up indie folk, cozy comfort, and granola vibes. It also has a huge following on Spotify.
The mastermind behind this hyper-specific, contextual curation is Kasey Gelsomino. A record executive at Nettwerk in her 9-5, Kasey lives and breathes music in all hours of the day. You can see her personal tastes and curation style via her “Kasey’s Playlist” TikTok and Spotify channel, both of which have formidable followings.
How does a music curator think about making the perfect playlist? How does one grow on Spotify and TikTok? And what do curators need to know to be successful on these platforms?
Other highlights, inspiration and key learnings from the conversation:
- How songs get featured on Kasey’s Playlist
- The ingredients of a great playlist
- The art of hyper-specific playlist naming
- Deconstructing her TikTok and Spotify success
- Qualities of the best music curators
👋 Say "hi" to Kasey.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Kasey’s own picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the world’s first social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“[Mixtapes were] the ultimate love letter because it’s like saying: ‘This is me looking at you and trying to understand where your taste lies and also imparting some of my taste. This is where we intersect.’ Maybe I can introduce you to new things while recognizing that I'm here in a context that I think you will appreciate.” — Hrishikesh Hirway, musician and podcaster
Being a musician led Hrishikesh Hirway on a quest to understand how songs are born, bit by bit. If he detected a cool sound or curious lyric, he wanted to know why it was there and how it was made. These excavations now form an impressive — and impeccably curated — body of work in his Song Exploder podcast and Netflix show.
Hrishikesh is also the creator, (co-)host and producer of multiple podcasts, including “The West Wing Weekly” and “Home Cooking” with Samin Nosrat. His TED Talk on how to listen to people to connect more deeply with them and their stories is a must-watch, and The New York Times called him “a devoted connoisseur of the creative process.”
What does Hrishikesh think about curation, creativity and taste? What is the right balance between imposing your own likes and catering to an audience? Is human taste still a thing? And what did we lose out on when we stopped making mixtapes?!
Other highlights, inspiration and key learnings from the conversation:
- Which songs get the Song Exploder treatment (and why)
- How he excavates an artist’s creative process
- How any of us can cultivate our listening skills
- What he’s learned about curation from being a musician and podcasting
- His criteria for good curators
👋 Say "hi" to Hrishikesh.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Hrishikesh’s own favorite culture picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the world’s first social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“It's not like you press a button and you get to see art. You have to go there to know there…You have to be in front of it, obviously, and then you have to have a relationship with it. You have to see it again and again. And sometimes it takes years.” — Dereck Mangus, Baltimore Museum of Art
In 2022, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) turned over the curation of one of its exhibits to 17 security guards on staff. Called “Guarding the Art,” the show was a wide-ranging display of individuals’ tastes and the art that spoke to them. It was a radical idea that generated media attention and inspired other shows like it.
And why not? Museum guards spend hours and hours with the artifacts they watch over, so of course they’re going to have opinions about such things. It was thrilling to get to know two of those guards, Dereck Mangus and Jess Bither, and learn about their deep appreciation for art and how they approached curating the BMA show.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings from the conversation:
- The life of a museum security guard
- Which pieces they picked for “Guarding the Art” and why
- How to curate a group show with other 15 other people
- How participating in “Guarding the Art” changed them
- What they learned about the art of curation from this experience
👋 Say "hi" to Dereck and Jess.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Dereck’s and Jess’s own favorite culture picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the world’s first social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“The internet demands that everyone be a kind of curator: you're a curator of your own Instagram, of your opinions on Twitter, of what playlists you listen to on Spotify. There's a lot of curation going on but it's more in the sense of selecting between stuff. Curation, to me, is a much more deep-seated act that has more to do with the caretaking of culture, building context, and creating histories that might be overlooked.” — Kyle Chayka, Author, “Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture”
If you’ve heard of things like Instagram face or the Brooklyn coffee shop effect, you know the tremendous power algorithms have in shaping our lives. Journalist Kyle Chayka has been tracking this phenomenon for years and has concluded that algorithmically mediated digital platforms are not making our experiences better. In fact, he says, they are flattening our culture.
You don’t have to wait for his book, “Filterworld,” to come out in January 2024 to explore how this “algorithmification” of our social feeds is having profound effects on our media, communication, physical spaces, aesthetic preferences, consumer habits, and more.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings from the conversation:
- How algorithms can be simultaneously flattening and expanding culture
- How to detox from algorithms
- What makes a human curator worth following (and if journalists have a leg up)
- The influencer backlash and de-influencing trend
- How generative AI is impacting culture
👋 Say "hi" to Kyle.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Kyle’s own favorite culture picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the world’s first social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“Good writing is simple writing. I think that goes for the curation part, as well. I will try and strip myself from the equation as much as possible. You’re like a spider with your tentacles out everywhere, looking and pulling in things from different reader recommendations, dashboards and things you know about the company, and trying to spin it into something really interesting.” — Hannah Ray, Substack
The firehose of great things to read has only become more overwhelming since Substack came on the scene in 2017. The platform is home to so many excellent newsletters on topics like the history behind today’s politics, inspiring images and ideas, music and culture, and even beloved pets. As of May 2023, Axios reported over 17,000 writers earning money there, with the top 10 making more than $25 million annually.
With so many editorial options, it’s helpful to have a guide to help you find the worthy stuff. Inside of Substack, that’s Hannah Ray, Storytelling Lead. Hannah’s job is to find and elevate amazing writers, especially the ones who might not naturally toot their own horns. Hannah brings experience from The Guardian and Instagram to the role.
Other highlights, inspiration and key learnings from the conversation:
- How Hannah approaches curating newsletters for Substack
- Tools she uses to discover writers
- Her advice for how writers can grow and get featured
- Curation guardrails at Substack
- Why having an editorial background can serve in-house curators
👋 Say "hi" to Hannah.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Hannah’s own favorite culture picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the world’s first social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“Back in the day, curation was mostly a job in museums and art galleries. It took the Spotifys, Twitters and Netflixes of the world to really popularize curation as a valid business need. I’m proud to say that we were amongst the first ones to identify the business need for that discipline.” — Robyn Kerkhof, Blinkist
Curation has long moved out of the ivory tower of the art world. These days, anyone with taste and the will can be a curator. Sometimes curation is automated with a “human in the loop” providing oversight. Sometimes there’s no oversight at all.
However the sausage is made, the goal is usually to get the right content to the right person at the right time. When you make connections like this, the results are powerful.
Robyn Kerkhof, the Director of Content Discovery at Blinkist, knew that a curation function could impact her company’s bottom line, so she made the case for it internally. How did she do it? How did she measure success? And what did she learn along the way?
Other highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- The art of curation at Blinkist
- Mixing AI and human talents
- Balancing personal taste when curating for a brand
- The qualities of the most effective curators
- Robyn’s culture picks
👋 Say "hi" to Robyn.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Robyn’s own favorite culture picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the world’s first social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more
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“The problem is more to find what one wants to curate because, well, you have to find your way…[Mastodon] is a great place because you have incredible choice and a rich and creative crowd out there.” — Sabine Stoye, Mastodon art and photography curator
You may have heard about a Twitter alternative called Mastodon. The service is a decentralized social network made up of independent servers organized around specific themes, topics or interests. It’s one of the largest platforms in the Fediverse — a space that Flipboard cares deeply about and sees as pivotal to the future of social media.
What’s it like being a curator in this new world? Ask @ViewFinderCurator, aka Sabine Stoye. A linguist with a passion for the arts, Sabine shares why she’s made her curatorial home on Mastodon and what she looks for when boosting artists and photographers on the platform.
Other highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- The Fediverse, explained
- How she thinks about curating on Mastodon
- Juggling identities as a curator
- Why the Fediverse is a good place for curators
- Sabine’s culture picks
👋 Say "hi" to Sabine.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Sabine’s own favorite newsletters and his curated picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the world’s first social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“In the history of human culture, we've never had a time that’s been better for learning about photography. There are images everywhere, and hopefully somebody like me can help you see some of the good stuff.” — Andy Adams, FlakPhoto Projects
In an era flooded with so much photography, usually without context, it’s a relief to have Andy Adams as a guide. Based in Madison, WI, Andy is the founder, curator and director of FlakPhoto Projects, a hub focused on conversations about photography and visual culture. Andy’s built a formidable community of people who revel in his curation of images and ideas.
In this episode, you’ll learn about the art of curating imagery in 2023 and how the art of seeing can be a form of meditation.
Other highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- What he looks for as a photography curator
- Andy’s curatorial “tech stack”
- How he builds community as a curator
- The impact of AI on photography curation
- How each of us can become more observant
- Andy’s favorite photography books and podcasts
👋 Say "hi" to Andy.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Andy's own favorite newsletters and his curated picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the world's first social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more
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“If you're a curator in a museum, you're thinking about the thousands or millions of people that are coming through your space, not just your own personal taste. That's [also] important when doing a list. I have things that I love that I drink, but if I'm putting a list together, it's really important to think about all the people that are coming through the door.” — Nadine Brown, Sommelier and Wine Writer
The world of wine can be overwhelming. There is so much choice! Thank goodness for sommeliers, who matchmake our taste buds and meals to the perfect bottle. That pairing of food and wine, when done right, is a kind of alchemy itself.
Being a sommelier means delivering the right bottle to the right person at the right time. It requires immense knowledge, a knack for really listening to what people want, and then delivering something that creates an experience that is bigger than the sum of its parts.
That’s just some of what can be learned from Nadine Brown, a sommelier and wine writer and judge who was also the wine director for the Charlie Palmer Steak House in Washington, DC, where she managed a 4,000-bottle list and more than a few fancy customers.
Nadine says she thrives in the chaos of restaurants and takes great joy in providing top-notch recommendations and hospitality. It was a pleasure uncovering more about the business of curating wine for individuals and as part of an institution.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- What is unique about curating wine
- How to think about creating a wine list from scratch
- How to pick the right bottle for the right person
- How any of us can improve our wine knowledge
- What most people don’t understand about wines
- Which wine pairs best with tacos
👋 Say "hi" to Nadine.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Nadine’s own curated picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“‘Disability aesthetics’ is this term that is also really loose but points to where we can find disability as the space that informs an artistic practice. When I say ‘disability arts’ or ‘disabled artistry,’ it’s artists who have an experience of disability or illness and use that as a space that is generative and that is not hidden from the practice.” — Ezra Benus, artist, educator, and curator
The pandemic helped the average person understand what it’s like to fear for one’s health daily. But for people living with a disability or chronic illness, the feeling is nothing new.
Just think about the arts. Imagine being physically disabled and going to a crowded art show with nowhere to sit, or trying to create large-scale art when your movement is limited. These are things able-bodied people might take for granted but artist/curator Ezra Benus does not.
Ezra is half of Brothers Sick, a sibling collaborative with his brother, Noah, who is also a disabled artist. (They currently have their largest commission for an exhibition, Kingdom of the Ill, at Museion in Bolzano, Italy.) Ezra is also a resident at BRIC and works at United States Artists, where he helped to build and still manages the Disability Futures Fellowship, the first and largest unrestricted award to support disabled creatives in the country.
Ezra brings a unique perspective to the podcast as he considers disability and illness as part of a curatorial philosophy and practice.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- Focusing on disabled art, artists and narratives
- The definition of “disability aesthetics”
- How the art world be more accessible
- What other curators can take away from disabled ones
- Disabled artists more people should know
👋 Say "hi" to Ezra.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“When you focus on the research, educating, explaining and pulling things together, and then communicating that back in an easy way, this idea of bias often does not come up. I know that sounds counterintuitive. But it’s really about placing focus on how we explain [the news]. We don’t really worry about [what each side says]. We put our focus on contextual framing, trying to be quantitative, and communicating in a useful way.” — Drew Steigerwald, Co-founder 1440
In today’s media landscape, understanding what’s happening in the world is a tricky business. It’s a major understatement that you can’t always trust what you see online.
Drew Steigerwald is hyperaware of the hazards that can befall news consumers. He and his co-founder Tim Huelskamp started the 1440 newsletter to provide a straightforward, sober view of the day’s headlines, curated from 100+ sources into a five-minute read.
Named for the year the printing press was invented (and because there are 1440 minutes in a day), 1440 takes great pride in its “just the facts” approach. But we all know that this is easier said than done. Drew joins us to unpack what it means to him to stay unbiased in a world full of opinion, hype and misinformation.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- Producing 1440 from start to finish
- How to think about sources and which ones to trust
- How to manage an information firehose
- Is it really possible to be “unbiased”?
- Keeping positive in the face of depressing headlines
👋 Say "hi" to Drew.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Drew’s own favorite newsletters and curated picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“A lot of the curation and knowledge management is happening in single-player tools. It'd be a lot more powerful to combine the richness and the utility of all these tools with a more networked discovery and communal approach to building knowledge.” — Sari Azout
When we talk about curation, the first question that usually pops to mind is: What is the thing being curated? Could be information, music, art, sneakers, NFTs and on and on.
Startupy World founder Sari Azout has another viewpoint. She posits that in conditions of extreme information abundance, like we are experiencing today, what is being curated isn’t as important as how those things are discovered, contextualized and shared.
Sari is adamant that we need more choice around how we discover content. She advocates for going beyond the feed with systems that focus on utility over entertainment and could help to surface content that makes our souls sing. (Gems that might be overlooked or not gamed to death.)
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- A “controversial” take on curation
- Pros and cons of democratized tastemaking
- What even is good taste?
- Who thrives in the curator economy?
- Curators and monetization
👋 Say "hi" to Sari.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Sari’s own curated culture picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“Unlike the traditional definition of collecting, where you just accumulate, sneaker collecting is to accumulate and wear. The finality of collecting the art is to style it, to make it yours. For me, it's not just about the sneaker. It's about the whole fashion and the whole fit. It's about the whole piece that I'm putting out there while highlighting the shoe.” — Jixie Gonzalez, Curvy Kicks
Sneakers. They’re everywhere!
But for Jasmine “Jixie” Gonzalez, sneakers are more than just footwear. Not only is she the curator of a 30-year collection of over 1,000 kicks, she also describes sneakers as “medicinal.” As a plus-size woman who felt that “fashion never loved me back,” Jixie says sneakers became a language to exert her voice, express her style, and build an uplifting community of other women who love this kind of shoe.
Jixie’s passion for sneakers and their transformative power is infectious. Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- Difference between collecting and curating sneakers
- Finding and acquiring sneakers
- How to style sneakers
- How being plus-size influences her as a curator
- Women and sneaker culture
- Other sneaker collectors to know
👋 Say "hi" to Jixie.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Jixie’s own curated culture picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“There's no such thing as an unbiased algorithm, and some companies have probably admitted that sooner than others. But once you do admit it, the only rational step you can take is to try to learn as much as you can about the ways that algorithms can reflect our biases, both positive and negative, and what we can do to tune them so that they are running in line with the principles and standards that we are agreeing to at the outset.” — David Smydra, Twitter
Don’t let the Musk circus detract from the fact that there are good people doing good work at Twitter — people who are behind the scenes trying to build a quality experience and live up to a brand’s promise and values.
One of those people is David Smydra, the Head of Human in the Loop (HITL) Curation at the social network. If you’re not familiar with the term, HITL refers to the practice of uniting human judgment and machine intelligence to create effective algorithms. “It really enhances how our customers understand all those conversations that are only on Twitter,” he explains.
David is amazing at illuminating concepts that are often hidden and easy to take for granted. Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- How human curators can improve digital products
- What the machines can never take from us
- The role of taste and individualism in all of this
- Hiring for HITL curation
- The pendulum swings back to hands-on curation
👋 Say "hi" to David.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus David’s own curated culture picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“Curation is a specific mode of creativity that's more based in analogical thinking and juxtaposition and categorization. The best curators are critics too … It's not enough to be a great subject matter expert. You also have to have a deep understanding of the spheres of art, aesthetics, commerce and technology, and be someone who's constantly thinking about those things through multiple lenses.” — Meg Tarquinio, PhD
If you use Spotify, you know that the platform is a delightful mixture of human and algorithmic curation. There’s even a term for this: “algotorial.” Part editorial and part algorithmic, this approach combines the best of both worlds to create addictive listening experiences.
But try to look under the hood, and it’s often hard to tell what’s really going on. That’s why it was thrilling to find Spotify’s former Head of Curation Strategy, Meg Tarquinio, to talk about the craft of curation.
Meg speaks thoughtfully as a curation practitioner, strategist, and manager, as well as an academic who thinks deeply about these things.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- The responsibility of curation and the ‘anxiety of influence’
- Spotify playlists and the algotorial approach
- Human vs algorithmic curation, and the myth of taste
- Adapting to new curation models and landscapes
- Why working on a tarmac is a terrific job for a grad student
👋 Say "hi" to Meg.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Meg’s own curated culture picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“For several years now, I have just kind of felt like I'm not seeing what I really want to see in my feed, despite following friends and strangers whose taste and opinions I care about…The algorithm doesn't really get it. The big motivation for me is: humans just do stuff better. Some things just can't be automated.” — Ann Friedman
The algorithm doesn’t know that you can’t be put in a box. That your curiosity knows no bounds. That you don’t want to exist in a filter bubble.
That feeling drove journalist/author Ann Friedman to create her own newsletter, “The Ann Friedman Weekly.” This is a newsletter that I drop everything to read every Friday morning when it hits my inbox, and 55,000 fellow subscribers no doubt agree. In this interview, Ann unpacks how she makes it and reveals herself to be an incredibly kind and generous curator in the process.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings in this episode:
- Curating “The Ann Friedman Weekly” from A-Z
- Considering the role of technology
- How journalistic skills help curators
- Curation ethics
- Running a fellowship program
👋 Say "hi" to Ann.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Ann’s own favorite newsletters and her curated culture picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“The beauty of NFTs and Web 3 is that now it's global, where you have a whole gallery in your phone or laptop. You can be your own curator without having all the background and connections that are typically in the traditional art space…Anyone can curate if they have that passion and that love for creativity and art.” — Lex Marcano, NFT Girl
With all the Web3 hype and grim headlines about the “crypto winter” we’re still in, it’s impossible to escape conversations about NFTs. The market feels chaotic because it is.
Curation is one way to impose order in a volatile landscape, and anyone can play the game. In fact, there’s never been more of a need for guides to hold our hands.
Lex Marcano, aka NFT Girl, is one of those people. She’s an early mover into NFT curation and has emerged as one of the premier voices in the space.
An adept community builder, Lex is doing her bit to make Web3 a saner place and seems like she’s having a lot of fun while she’s at it — naysayers be damned!
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings in this episode:
- Curating gems in a crowded space
- Navigating the bear market
- Curating NFTs for physical locations
- Creating bridges to the LatinX community
- Community building in Web3
👋 Say "hi" to Lex.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Lex’s curated culture picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“When you host a lightweight cocktail party, you now have a way to go through life, collecting these new and interesting people and bringing them into your world…You use these parties as an audition to see who you would like to become better friends with.” — Nick Gray, creator of “The 2-Hour Cocktail Party”
Whether you’re new to a place or getting on in your years, it can feel increasingly hard to make friends. But Nick Gray has devised a blueprint to change that, outlined step-by-step in his book, “The 2-Hour Cocktail Party.”
Nick’s essentially created a system that’s like an audition for who gets to be your friend. It’s a way to turn even introverts into super connectors. And it's proof that when you stop being too cool to care, you’ll start connecting with people for real.
At the heart of Nick’s formula is the art of curating who gets to be invited to these highly structured IRL events. In this episode, Nick deconstructs his approach to curating people for parties with solid results. It’s a great one for anyone who wants to go from being a party pooper to a party planner.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- Nick’s 2-hour cocktail party formula (N.I.C.K.) in a nutshell
- Curating people for chemistry
- The importance of name tags and icebreakers
- Curating conversations, especially in “the awkward zone”
- Effectively maintaining the ties you’ve cultivated
👋 Say "hi" to Nick.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Nick’s curated culture picks and more about his newsletter and book.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
Technology is an amazing tool, but at the end of the day there is still no algorithm for cool. Cool is humans observing, selecting and sharing something because it moves them and they think it might move others, too.
Join us on a weekly journey to understand tastemaking as a craft that can be learned, honed and expressed through the art of curation.
“Whenever I wonder, ‘Wow, can I really pull this off?’ I know I'm in a good space, because I really want to push the limits of what I can do, what the exhibition can do and what the institution can do while trying to propel things in a positive direction. Risk, experimentality and curiosity are essential criteria for curators.” — Apsara DiQuinzio
The exhibit “New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century” is no longer showing at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, but if you were lucky enough to catch it, you knew you saw something special. The show, a major survey exploring feminist practices in contemporary art, walked visitors through eight meticulously planned sections, each one brimming with mini collections that were themselves so diverse, provocative, and aesthetically pleasing. It was the perfect show.
The creative force behind that exhibit was Apsara DiQuinzio, who’s now the senior curator of contemporary art at the Nevada Museum of Art. In this episode, we deconstruct how she created, curated and orchestrated “New Time,” as well as learn what it takes to have a degree in looking.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- The spark for “New Time”
- The thinking behind the exhibit’s organization and flow
- Finding the pieces for each section
- How to get the art you want (and what happens when you don’t)
- The qualities of a great curator
- How much of your own tastes is OK to let through
- Incorporating alternative viewpoints when putting together a show
- New York and feeding your soul as a curator
- The art of ‘prolific looking’
- Reno and its artistic vibe
- Favorite place to discover new art
- Apsara’s own curation “speed round”
👋 Say "hi" to Apsara.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“Part of my work is to look at how artists are using their craft to speak to the times that we're living in — everything from climate change to immigration to the everyday human experience. My role is to look at what our museum has historically focused on and, in some regards, attempt to fill in the gaps or expand the conversation.” — Ozi Uduma, University of Michigan
Ozi Uduma, Assistant Curator of Global Contemporary Art at the University of Michigan, is part of a four-person, all-female curatorial team responsible for putting on exhibitions for the university museum, including shows like Unsettling Histories: Legacies of Slavery and Colonialism andWish You Were Here: African Art and Restitution. Each curator has a regional specialty, such as Asian or African art, while Ozi owns the global lens.
This conversation discusses how the art of curation is connected to the act of cultural stewardship. Ozi thinks beyond the aesthetic value of pieces to how she can champion and protect artists who are changing how we think about social issues and even the history of art itself. Her hope is to give space for curiosity to thrive such that the museum is as essential a campus destination as, say, the library, and as thought-provoking as a piece of art.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- A day in the life of this curator
- What a successful exhibition at University of Michigan looks like
- The unique things a curator on a college campus must think about
- Identifying gaps in the way art history is told
- How curators can know what they don’t know
- How to put the ideals of representation into practice
- How Ozi widens her own lens
- Traits necessary to be a successful curator
- What her generation of museum curators is bringing to the discipline
- Ozi’s own curation “speed round”
👋 Say "hi" to Ozi.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Ozi’s curated culture picks from the African continent and diaspora.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“I am the kind of person that believes in frequency and energy. I really like to meditate. So when I think about how to inspire the people…I use music as the channel to share that energy.” — Ramon Olguin Sanchez
A vibe manager — also known as a vibe curator — has been called “the most millennial job ever.” To be one, you’ve got to be the kind of person who has their finger on the pulse of lifestyle and industry trends. You then curate those elements into a space or experience that’s inviting and creates a positive feeling for all.
Ramon Olguin Sanchez, the vibe manager at the Hard Rock Hotel Los Cabos, came to this podcast’s attention via a story in Business Insider. He’s in charge of curating music for 14 locations throughout the resort and maintaining the upkeep of iconic memorabilia. Speaking to him was like finding a curation unicorn in the wild. Language barriers meant the interview was shorter than usual, but we still loved learning what this unusual job entails.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- Definition of a vibe manager and why he’s right for the role
- Deciding on the kind of vibe you want
- How to curate music to create an atmosphere
- Role of music volume in vibe-making
- Scent, decor and other factors that contribute to a vibe
- What to do if the vibe feels off
- Favorite memorabilia at the resort
- Is this the best job ever?!
- What’s hard about being a vibe manager
- Places that inspire him for their vibes
- Ramon’s culture picks
👋 Say "hi" to Ramon.
🔎 Browse this Storyboard to get the episode, plus Ramon’s favorite podcast, author, musician and movie genre.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“Film curators definitely have the challenge of [their medium’s] temporal nature. With two dimensional objects, you can easily look at them at once and figure out [how to] arrange them. But when it comes to working with a time-based medium, you really have to watch it…and maybe multiple times to understand how the piece works.” — Leslie Raymond, Ann Arbor Film Festival
At 60 years old, the Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF) is the longest-running independent and experimental film festival in North America. Its director, Leslie Raymond, doesn’t just think about curating the best selection of experimental films each year. She also considers how the films fit into the festival’s rich legacy and Ann Arbor’s own cultural standing. (It’s been called the “Berkeley of the East.”)
It was exciting to learn about the ways film curation differs from other forms of curation and how the AAFF team turns 2,700 submissions into a tight, six-day lineup that surprises and delights audiences.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- What’s so cool about AAFF
- The Ann Arbor scene and techno music
- What does avant-garde film even mean these days
- How they decide what makes it into the festival
- How filmmakers can get a curator’s attention
- Conversation and dialogue as part of the curatorial process
- What’s unique about film curators
- How roles as an artist and educator intersect with being a curator
- Why it’s sometimes taboo for a curator to put their voice in the mix
- How the films fit together as a body of work
- What AAFF teaches new film reviewers
- Whether Leslie still watches movies for fun
- Leslie’s culture picks
👋 Say "hi" to Leslie.
🔎 Browse this Storyboard to get the episode, plus Leslie’s favorite book, movie, TV show, and podcast.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“To be a good curator, it's important to…be open to what you don't know and to be looking for people to tell you what the new important ideas are instead of going out and saying, I think I know what matters.” — Corey Hajim, TED Business Curator
She didn’t know it while it was unfolding, but when you look back at Corey Hajim’s career trajectory, it makes sense that she became the business curator at TED. Prior to joining the conference and content company, Corey got an MBA at Harvard, spent a decade in finance in New York City, and was a reporter at Fortune. So when she saw the job description for a curatorial role at TED, it didn’t just speak to her for the skills it required. There was one other sentence that hooked her: “We only hire nice people.”
Corey is most definitely a kind person, but what was fascinating to find out in this conversation is how niceness can make you a better curator. With that as a foundation, Corey dove into how she helps to program multiple events and online series each year, including working directly with dozens of speakers to make sure their TED talks shine. Learn from her deep curatorial experience while extracting some public speaking tips for yourself.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- How she became the business curator at TED
- Why the role spoke to her
- What attributes make a great curator
- What makes an “idea worth spreading” in a talk
- How she finds and coaches people for TED talks
- How she thinks about the talks as a holistic body of work
- Reacting to news and cultural moments
- Presentation tips for the rest of us
- Who she still wants to get for a TED talk
- Underviewed talks worth your time
- How she tracks her ideas when she’s always consuming
- Favorite TED talks and other culture picks
👋 Say "hi" to Corey.
🔎 Browse this Storyboard to get the episode, plus Corey’s favorite TED talks, books, podcasts, and more.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more
“Ever since I was at Amazon, I've been intrigued by the way in which discovery needs to be a bit more than search, and how curation is almost the flipside of knowing what you want…Helping you identify what you would get delight from is very often the result of curation.” — Spencer Hyman
As a “craft chocolate DJ” who runs a subscription service called Cocoa Runners, Spencer Hyman has plenty to say about the art of curating delicious, ethical chocolate bars. He’s deeply immersed in everything about the subject, from its history and the science of taste to how its cultivation impacts local farmers and the planet.
Add in his experience as a general manager at Amazon and chief operations officer of Last.fm, and you’ll quickly hear that Spencer’s perspective on curation actually goes way beyond cacao. He sees curation as a solution for many categories of goods — like music, film, wine, coffee, gardening — where consumers don’t typically know how to find the best stuff out there.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- Through-line of curation in his career
- Why choose chocolate
- The meaning of “craft chocolate”
- How to be an effective chocolate curator
- Involving his team’s expertise and taste buds
- The difference between flavor and taste
- How humans experience flavor and taste differently
- The allure of packaging for a curator — yay or nay?
- The “no repeat” rule for curation
- Programming engaging online virtual tastings
- Why the U.S. has a poor reputation for chocolate
- Dark vs. milk chocolate
- How he tracks his ideas and inspiration
- Spencer’s culture picks
- A detour into Spencer’s early career making Cabbage Patch Dolls
👋 Say "hi" to Spencer.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“I’ve learned how to choose the people who have the most interesting voices and stories and not just the ones that make $500,000 a year…I've really learned to mine for story and interesting tidbits and different kinds of people.” — Hannah Rimm
If you’ve ever read a Money Diary on Refinery29, you know they’re fascinating and a little bit addictive. Initially, it’s the scenario that draws you in; headlines like “I'm 25, I make $28,000 & I'm A Cowgirl For A Living” or “I'm 37, I Have A Joint Income Of $1.3 Million & I'm Shopping For A Second Home.” But quickly you’ll find yourself immersed in the juicy details of a stranger’s life — with the added benefit of picking up some personal finance insights along the way. It’s the same kind of pleasure as watching (smart) reality TV.
In this episode, we get to know Money Diaries editor Hannah Rimm. As the franchise’s only curator, Hannah sifts through more than 30 submissions per week in order to feed an ambitious publishing schedule of three weekly diaries. How she creates a column with such a rabid fan base — and a high-quality comment section, no less — is at the heart of this conversation.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- “Money Diaries” for the uninitiated
- The psychology of why “Money Diaries” is so interesting
- How she goes about deciding whom to feature
- The tie between emotions and spending
- How she ensures entries are truthful and sound
- What’s important in someone’s money story
- How she cultivates such a high-quality comment section
- The best way for a reader to make use of a Refinery29 money diary
- What changes she’s made to her own financial habits after editing this column
- On being a credit card points wizard
- How trends in the marketplace are influencing the stories being told
- How to manage “frivolous” spending (and the guilt that comes with it)
- What kinds of conversations she had about money growing up
- Her favorite money diaries
- What she learned about the art of curation from this job
- Hannah’s culture picks
👋 Say "hi" to Hannah.
🔎 Browse this Storyboard to get the episode, plus Hannah’s favorite shows, podcasts, games and more.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests.
Learn more
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“Sometimes in the Jewish imagination, but definitely in the broader public imagination, people reduce all of Jewish history to the Holocaust. And so I think one of the responsibilities that curators have is to show the rich panoply of Jewish experience beyond just 1939-1945…and to create access points to those histories.” — Jason Steinhauer
History Club founder Jason Steinhauer is a curator with such deep and varied experience that it’s hard to know where to start. Do we begin with the popular Clubhouse conversations he hosts on Thursday nights? His new book about how social media and the Web have changed the past? Or with any one of the curatorial/archivist roles he’s had at places like the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and the Museum of Chinese in America?
Instead, the conversation begins with a curatorial experience centered on a topic core to his identity, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage–A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. The grandchild of Holocaust survivors, Jason was part of the team behind an award-winning exhibition about American Jews in the Second World War. He brings a perspective to history — and how we experience stories from the past — that incorporates media, tech, culture and his own Jewish faith.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- Growing up a “museum nerd”
- Unique pressures of curating for a Holocaust museum
- How one begins to curate Jewish stories
- What curators of Jewish history need to consider that other curators do not
- What makes a good historian and how that is different from what makes a good curator of history
- Care for physical objects in a digital world
- Inside his book, “History, Disrupted”
- Consuming accurate, high-quality historical content on the Internet (and does Instagram count?)
- Founding History Club and curating conversations there
- What inspires his Clubhouse conversations
- The through-line of his career
- How history might judge the current day
- Speed round: Jason’s culture picks
👋 Say "hi" to Jason.
💡Follow History Club on Flipboard.
🔎 Browse this Storyboard to get the episode, plus Jason’s favorite books, movies, and other cultural picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more
“The moment we opened our doors, the project belonged to everybody else who's interacting with it. It’s [now] about serving those people and their engagement with things. A lot of curation is also about listening and continuing to change your perspective and accept things that you didn't know or understand before you started on the journey you're on.” — Matthew James-Wilson, Heavy Manners Library
Imagine wanting to create a library and then building it from scratch. What books would you include? Why would you choose them? What would you leave out? How would you serve your community and respond to how they are reacting to your creation?
These are the questions facing Matthew James-Wilson and Molly Soda of Heavy Manners Library, a new space in Los Angeles with a to-be-launched online component. The library seeks to archive and distribute self and independently published artists' books, zines, and more. It’s hoped that this will create a place where people without a formal art education can access that media outside of an institutional setting such as a university or a traditional library or gallery.
This episode shows what it’s like curating something from the ground up and how two creative people can collaborate to do what they do best while serving the project as a whole.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- Origins of the name “Heavy Manners Library”
- What makes the cut for the library
- How they ensure the selection lives up to their mission
- Filling in the gaps
- How the online membership will work
- Collaborating with your co-curator
- How to balance your tastes with what the community wants
- What they hope people feel when they come into the space
- Advice to artists on how to get noticed
- How the NFT trend impacts what they’re building
- How they find inspiration and track ideas
- Where to find up-and-coming artists
- Generational approaches to collecting
- Matthew and Molly's culture picks
👋 Say "hi" to Matthew and Molly.
🔎 Browse this Storyboard to get the episode itself, plus the media/expression that inspired the library’s name and a few of Matthew and Molly’s culture picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more
“The best preachers are able to say, here's this timeless principle — like humility or forgiveness or racial reconciliation — and then look around and say, ‘In what areas are our people uniquely challenged to live by this principle?’ That's where the curation comes in, where you're reading the news and trying to find the pressure points where people are struggling and really press in there.” — Dan Darling
You don’t have to be religious to enjoy this interview with pastor, author and columnist Dan Darling. As the director of the Richard Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dan lives at the intersection of the Bible, the culture and his ministry. It’s fascinating to learn about how he curates ideas and stories for his sermons, how he would curate the Bible for beginners, and his thoughts on what Jesus would curate.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- How Dan’s faith came to him
- How curation applies to Dan’s role as a pastor
- What it looks like to be a Christian in today’s world
- Anchoring sermons in the timelessness of the Bible
- How something written so long ago can still feel relevant
- Curating the Bible for beginners
- What would Jesus curate
- Applying the disciples’ qualities to ourselves
- Misperceptions secular people have about religious people (and vice-versa)
- How he tracks his ideas for sermons and writings
- His media diet
- What’s hard about his job
- How pastors are curators
- Dan’s favorite books, podcasts, shows and more
👋 Say "hi" to Dan.
🔎 Browse this Storyboard to get the episode itself, plus some of Dan’s writings and his own culture picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the popular social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“What the internet really needed was a great curator; someone who would read and select and present the finest pieces to you so that you could ignore the noise and get straight to the quality.” — Uri Bram, The Browser
Mission accomplished. If you subscribe to The Browser, you can rest easy knowing that a steady stream of fascinating pieces you didn’t know you wanted to read will flow effortlessly to you. A manageable five per day, in fact, plus extra bits in the postscript, like a video, podcast and quote.
That’s after the small team sifts through hundreds of stories every day. “The only real criteria we have at The Browser is: Will this piece be as interesting 10 years from now as it is today?” CEO Uri Bram reveals.
But it’s not just the stories that are interesting; so are the sources. The Browser curates from an extremely long tail of publishers and voices, almost all accessible for free, so there was much to unpack about the art of curation.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- What problem The Browser is trying to solve
- What makes a story right for The Browser
- What makes a curator right for The Browser
- A typical day for the team
- Collecting 10+ years of RSS feeds
- What grabs a curator’s attention in the firehose
- The thinking behind their haiku-like subject lines
- What's hard about running The Browser
- Discovering The Browser and publishing to Ghost
- Ghost vs Substack
- The Browser as a source: copying or compliment?
- Incorporating YouTube into their content strategy
- Which newsletters Uri loves himself
👋 Say "hi" to Uri!
🔎 Browse this Storyboard to get the episode itself, plus Uri's other favorite newsletters and culture picks.
➕This podcast was created by Flipboard, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“We really want to help people discover music that can help them feel a particular set of feelings in a way that we believe is incredibly potent. For me personally, that’s kind of my guiding light in how I decide on what music actually stands out and what music will be able to touch many people from within.” — Jonathan Tzou
Jonathan Tzou lives at the intersection of music, curation and entrepreneurship. As a fervent music fan and co-founder of electronic dance music site Dancing Astronaut, he is immersed in the world of EDM and speaks eloquently about how you might sift through a seemingly infinite number of tracks and mixes to recommend the very best for an audience.
He’s also the founder and CMO of Rupie.io, a platform that leverages the superpowers of thousands of curated creators to help build outstanding games and digital experiences.
Where these roles meet is the foundation of this conversation, as Jonathan speaks from the heart about feeling and how it is a guiding principle no matter what you’re curating.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- Connecting as music fans
- Electronic music: feeling, production styles, pioneers
- The power of dance and letting go
- Turning a passion for dance music into a community
- Where to start when curating the huge universe of EDM
- The process of “micro A&R”
- Identifying the threads of human emotion and the role of emotional resonance in curation
- The tipping point on timeliness as a curator
- Leveraging recommendation engines for music discovery
- Essential outlets for finding out about good new music
- Best curated music festivals and why you should try new things
- Applying curation principles to running a company
- Cultivating presence / music is meditation
👋 Say "hi" to JT!
🔎 Browse this Storyboard to get the episode itself, plus the sites Jonathan still uses for music discovery as well as his own culture picks.
➕This podcast was created by Flipboard, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“A top-down view is: someone's going to tell me what's cool, and that's not how it works anymore. It's trickle up, where the curator is the one who builds the audience and curates what's cool. If the audience comes, it comes from the community. And that's why it's really exciting: it doesn't rely on someone who has status or money to make these things reach scale.” — Gaby Goldberg
When people talk about Web3 and the metaverse, it feels like we’re moving into a new era, one governed by new rules of ownership and interconnectivity, where we can all take part in a new economy online. But where does curation fit into that future?
Investor Gaby Goldberg has one of the clearest-eyed views of how curation, culture, identity and ownership all fit together in this brave new world. She’s written several seminal posts at gaby.mirror.xyz — articles that themselves curate ideas into a fresh understanding of how tastemaking is now “trickle up” and who helped us get here (Kanye).
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- What is the difference between a creator and a curator
- The best curation needs a human touch
- The movement towards more niche communities
- How to find curators you respect and trust
- Organizing ideas for written pieces
- The psychology behind the need to curate
- What this new market of creators as curators will look like
- How curators can inspire trust
- Understanding the new universe of curation, Web3 and DAOs — where to start
- Why choose Mirror as a publishing platform
- Why curation will be more important in the metaverse
- The difference between Web3 and the metaverse
- Curating the people around you
👋 Say hi to Gaby!
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode itself, plus the sources Gaby mentions and her own culture picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“We're not trying to pick something that fits our subscribers’ tastes and interests. In a way, we're sort of doing the opposite: the point of Stack is that you come to us because you want to be exposed to things that you wouldn't have come upon yourself.” — Steve Watson, Stack
Steve Watson is the ultimate magazine curator. As the founder and curator of Stack, he is responsible for curating the world’s periodicals, carefully selecting the most original and interesting ones for his online shop and subscription service. It’s high-stakes curation: he must continually outdo himself so that subscribers are regularly surprised and delighted by his selections.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- Geeking out over print magazines
- Looking for something not seen before
- Remember “Raygun”?
- The art of magazine making in the digital age
- How he curates the Stack magazine service
- How much of an editor’s imprint is visible in magazines
- Which magazines belong in a hall of fame
- Which countries are the best at magazine making
- Could a machine do his job?
- What’s challenging about running Stack
- Magazines: keep, recycle or something else?
👋 Say hi to Steve!
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode itself, plus links to the magazines Steve talks about in the show as well as his own culture picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“I want to democratize the idea of collecting so that it's not only for people who have a lot of money who collect ancient artifacts or shoes or expensive watches. You can collect ideas, artists, and favorite things…” — Julia Lu, The Collector
If you spend any time on Flipboard, you’ll likely see The Collector’s Storyboards pass through your feeds. And if they don’t catch your eye visually, they’ll for sure pique your intellectual curiosity. With over 700 of these collections, curated around themes ranging from Banksy’s political art to Greek myths you probably don’t know, The Collector presents fascinating angles on ancient history, art, artists and philosophy.
TheCollector.com Editor-in-Chief Julia Lu takes us behind the scenes on the site’s editorial operations, where we learn how a collective of experts works together to curate information that has become a trusted resource for scholars, classrooms and enthusiasts.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- How Julia got involved with The Collector
- Her relationship to collecting
- How collecting differs from curating
- Gaining consensus when a collective is curating
- What makes for an ideal contributor to The Collector
- How you might take a collective of experts and form a big picture for a brand
- How The Collector thinks about sourcing
- Things to consider when curating an artist’s life
- What to consider when curating historical artefacts for a modern digital audience
- Curating against — or revising — the historical record
- What’s hard about running The Collector
- Pitfalls of Wikipedia as a source
- How Flipboard fits into The Collector’s content strategy
👋 Say hi to Julia!
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode itself, plus Julia’s own picks in the arts.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“It has to feel like it's a creation, not just a collection. That keeps you from getting burned out, because if you're passionate about what you're making, then you wake up the next morning and you just need to push that publish button.” — Dave Pell
If you’re a news(letter) connoisseur, then you likely already know — and love — NextDraft. Every weekday, at around 12pm PT, a new edition delights the ol’ inbox: 10 of the most fascinating stories of the day, lovingly ensconced in a writeup filled with biting observations and funny quips.
That voice belongs to Dave Pell — “the internet’s managing editor” and author of the book “Please Scream Inside Your Heart: Breaking News and Nervous Breakdowns in the Year That Wouldn’t End” (out in November 2021). Dave is a lean, one-man operation who’s been curating email newsletters well before they were a trend, and he had much to share about his daily curation process, why he sees himself as a columnist, self-care for news curators, and where he gets all those puns.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- Origins (and meaning of) NextDraft
- The power of email: it’s asynchronous and is one feed you have control over
- How the Trump years and news cycles impact(ed) his readership
- How Dave puts together NextDraft, including sourcing stories, building the email, and any help he gets
- How he comes up with such punny copy — and his favorite pun he’s ever written (oh, it’s good)
- The joys and hazards of being the internet’s managing editor
- Dealing with burnout as a news curator
- What’s challenging about working on The Next Draft
- A peek inside his first book, an overview of the surreal year that was 2020
- How writing a book is different from writing a newsletter
- What it’s like being in a two-curator household (his wife, Gina, is a founder of The What)
👋Say hi to Dave!
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode itself, plus all the non-news media that Dave loves. He says he’s a TV addict, so he’s got a lot of cool recommendations to share.
➕This podcast was created by Flipboard, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
“I always get really excited when someone who has access to any possible new piece of clothing buys something from the past that we've chosen. That's a really exciting step forward for vintage. It's the most ethical way of shopping, and chances are no one else is going to have the same thing that you have.” — Brandon Veloria Giordano of James Veloria
If you’ve ever trekked to the James Veloria vintage store in downtown Manhattan, you might think you took a wrong turn. Tucked away in a Chinatown mall, the shop is a glittery jewel box of clothes with as much personality as the proprietors themselves. By making it to James Veloria, you instantly become part of a community with other shoppers who also had enough savvy to make it there. Badge earned!
In this episode, the store's owners, Collin James Weber and Brandon Veloria Giordano, talk to us about the art of curating vintage clothes for their business and for fun.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- How they turned a passion into a business
- How they track trends and inspiration
- How they find vintage gems to sell
- How they ‘remix’ those items in the store
- Creating a community among customers
- What people misunderstand about vintage
- Thrift store curation tips
- Being in business with your partner
- How COVID-19 is changing fashion
- Best cities for vintage shopping
👋Say hi to Brandon and Collin!
🔎Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode itself, plus the books, movies, Instagram accounts and other cultural artifacts that Brandon and Collin love.
➕This podcast was created by Flipboard, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Head over to our website to learn more.
“The Latin term 'cura' means ‘concern’ or ‘study’ or figuring out different approaches to pulling together things. It also relates to healing, which I find kind of amusing, that the term ‘cure’ and ‘curator’ are tangentially associated. Like you're healing by pulling together information.” — DJ Spooky
Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky, is the ultimate creator: he’s a composer, a DJ, a multimedia artist, an editor, an author, and the curator of one of Flipboard’s most interesting magazines, “Semantic Infiltration.” He’s completely immersed in environmental and social issues and creates art to press those issues into the public consciousness. He’s also Yale’s Artist in Residence this year.
Paul seems to think deeply about everything — even his green tea selection! — and his intellectual and artistic curiosity have no bounds. His sources and references themselves create a canon for the avant-garde artist and those who want to be.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- Etymology of the word “curation”
- How he thinks about curation
- Living in a recommendation engine ecosystem
- The thinking behind “Semantic Infiltration” and his book, “Digital Fictions”
- Using trustworthy sources when writing a book
- Turning data into art
- How we can be more intentional about our choices
- How curating music is different from curating content
- His media diet and routine
- Where other social platforms fit into his consumption/curation
- Open source as 'the best way for humanity to move forward'
- How the evolution of his art has paralleled the evolution of technology
- Curating his own catalog
- On democracy and moving between worlds
👋 Say hi to DJ Spooky!
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard of the writers, thought leaders and artists he admires.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Head over to our website to learn more.
“I came to realize, over 20 years, that food was much more important than what you cooked for dinner or what cool ingredient you were into or what groovy restaurant you’re going to. And gradually what I wrote about...became the bigger picture in food. I don't want to leave cooking behind; cooking matters. But it's a small part of the food picture and talking about that is really important to us.” — Mark Bittman
Mark Bittman, Melissa McCart and the team at The Bittman Project are building a new kind of food media empire — one that can only be born in the post-2020 era. Naturally, recipes and cooking advice are at the heart of why people might subscribe to their newsletter or listen to Mark’s podcast. But their strategy is for you to come for the cooking and stay for the impact, whether that’s learning how to eat less meat, expanding the voices you might hear from in food, or bucking conventional wisdom in and out of the kitchen.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- How Mark developed his brand and expertise around food after he left the New York Times
- How Melissa helped to shape The Bittman Project as editor
- How current issues, like the coronavirus, climate change, and racial injustice, impact their content strategy
- The criteria for what’s curated into The Bittman Project Substack newsletter
- The values of The Bittman Project
- What Mark and Melissa read to keep up on food trends and the industry
- How the art of curation comes into play when planning and writing a cookbook like “How to Cook Everything”
- How they curate their team
- How they curate guests and content for the “Food With Mark Bittman” podcast
- How they use data to inform content decisions
- What’s challenging about running The Bittman Project
- How a home cook should curate their kitchen
- Ideas for curating your grocery shopping
- Olive oil, demystified
👋 Say hi to Mark and Melissa!
🔎 Browse the Storyboard of all their recommendations, including the cookbooks, food TV shows, and podcasts they love.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Head over to our website to learn more.
“What really makes an incredible curator in science is what makes an incredible curator of anything. A lot of that is thinking deeply about the experience.” — Jennifer Frazier
The Exploratorium is a beloved, hands-on museum in San Francisco, where science isn’t just something to learn about; it’s something to be uncovered and discovered as a kind of personal journey.
No one knows this better than Jennifer Frazier. As a senior scientist and curator at the Exploratorium, Jen is at the helm of creating immersive experiences that help people see science as a verb. “You’re not just curating important scientific ideas or discoveries,” she says. “You’re actually trying to curate so that people can experience the process of science.”
We talked to Jen about how to create science experiences for the public, what it means to practice inclusive exhibition design, how to reach communities who aren’t visiting, and more.
Highlights, inspiration and key learnings:
- What it means to be a scientist-curator. There aren’t a ton of them.
- History of the Exploratorium. Shout out to the Oppenheimer brothers.
- What success looks like for the scientist-curator. How to think about the experiences you want to create for your audience.
- How to reach groups you’re not reaching. Thinking about who is not being served and being more accessible to all people.
- Practicing inclusive exhibition design, starting with examining who is the curator and what is their background.
- The art of community curation and how you can curate with the people you’re serving.
- How much of your own tastes a curator should reveal when working for an institution.
- Using data to inform the work.
- The unique challenges of being a Life Sciences Curator — like keeping living things alive!
- Advice for people interested in following a similar career path.
- The importance of spending time in nature, the secret joy of national park visitor centers, and other things that inspire her.
- Who she’d like to invite to a science dance party.
👋 Say hi to Jen!
🔎 Browse the Storyboard of all her recommendations, including her favorite podcast, book, artist and DJ.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommended across thousands of interests. Head over to our website to learn more.