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Soft Ratios Research
Soft Ratios Research episodes
- You can’t tell on the shelf (on shibui)
Some things you keep returning to on a hunch there’s more there. The Japanese named that pull, shibui, and it starts with an astringent taste.
27 min - The shape that fits no hand (on ergonomic design)
If no one actually has the average body, who are we designing for when we design for ‘the average person’? On the shape that fits no hand.
30 min - Wanting was never the missing piece (on task initiation)
What if the thing between you and the open file was never your character, but a barrier you could work to lower? The science of starting.
27 min - Wood turned against itself (on plywood)
How does gluing weak veneers crosswise make something strong, and why do we quietly look down on a material honest about how it was built?
25 min - The poem and the payment (on Rural Studio)
When a charitable building is also beautiful, what are we really moved by: the help itself, or the flattering picture of ourselves helping?
26 min - The wrist, not the brain (on neural interfaces)
If the device reads a motor command on its way to your hand, not a thought, then whose intention is it really acting on: yours, or its guess?
26 min - When fiction leaves objects behind (on sci-fi objects)
When a novel seems to ‘predict’ a gadget, what did it actually give us: the object itself, or the word we didn’t yet know we needed?
22 min - Welcome to Soft Ratios Radio
Who makes a podcast about the thinking behind everyday objects, and why? A short introduction to Soft Ratios, in the maker’s own voice.
2 min - A philosophy you can drink (on the Book of Tea)
Can a philosophy be something you drink? Okakura Kakuzo’s 1906 Book of Tea, the empty cup, and what a tradition is really keeping alive.
23 min - The answer was always yours (on oracles)
What did people really get from an oracle that spoke in riddles, and what do we lose now that every answer arrives certain and fog-free?
19 min
About Soft Ratios Research
From the publisher's feed
Each episode, Hoyd Breton — a designer at Soft Ratios Studio — rounds up the research on something he wants to understand, and two synthetic voices read it back and work it through, the way one mind…
argues with itself, ending on a question. No host, nothing performed — just the thinking, a subject at a time. A public record of one person teaching himself to look more carefully.