Episodes

  • Public Art with Isla Verge

    Public Art with Isla Verge
    Nov 7 2025
    Public spaces are battlegrounds for beauty, and every statue tells a story. Hosted by avant-garde design commentator Isla Verge, Public Art explores the good, the bad, and the beautifully controversial world of art in shared spaces. From monuments coming down to graffiti rising up, from sacred memorials to corporate-sponsored murals, this seven-episode series examines who gets to decide what belongs in our public squares and why it matters. With lyrical storytelling and cultural critique, Isla invites you to see cities differently—one monument, mural, and movement at a time. This Quiet Please original podcast challenges how you think about shared space. For more content like this please go to Quiet Please dot Ai.

    This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI
    Show More Show Less
    1 min
  • Public Art - The Architecture of Empathy

    Public Art - The Architecture of Empathy
    Nov 7 2025
    Some spaces ask nothing of you except that you feel. Isla Verge examines public memorials and their emotional design language, exploring how Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial revolutionized how we grieve in public, how the 9/11 Memorial uses absence and water to honor loss, and how contemporary memorial design has shifted from celebration to contemplation. These aren't monuments that elevate heroes—they're spaces that descend into wounds, reflect your face among the names of the dead, and trust you to bring your own meaning to encounters with absence. When design becomes grief's interpreter, space itself becomes sacred, creating architecture that witnesses rather than instructs, that holds difficulty rather than resolving it.

    Click here to browse handpicked Amazon finds inspired by this podcast series! https://amzn.to/424pzou

    This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI
    Show More Show Less
    23 mins
  • Public Art - Graffiti, or the City Writing Back

    Public Art - Graffiti, or the City Writing Back
    Nov 7 2025
    Street art operates in a completely different register than sanctioned public art—it doesn't ask permission, doesn't wait for consensus, doesn't care if you think it belongs. Isla Verge traces graffiti's evolution from ancient Pompeii to contemporary São Paulo, exploring how unauthorized expression became high art, how tags became masterpieces, and how the city writes back against official narratives. From Keith Haring's subway chalk drawings to Banksy's protected vandalism, from 5Pointz to Berlin's walls, this episode examines the tension between property crime and cultural contribution, between rebellion and recognition. Sometimes the most authentic public art is the one nobody asked for—and that's precisely what makes it powerful.

    Click here to browse handpicked Amazon finds inspired by this podcast series! https://amzn.to/424pzou

    This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI
    Show More Show Less
    24 mins
  • Public Art - The Statue Problem

    Public Art - The Statue Problem
    Nov 7 2025
    The cultural reckoning with monuments has transformed public squares across the world. Isla Verge explores why Confederate generals, colonial kings, and bronze heroes are coming down from their pedestals, examining how the politics of memory play out in stone and metal. From Richmond to Bristol, from preservation debates to creative recontextualization, this episode unpacks what happens when the stories we've elevated no longer match the values we hold. Public art isn't just commemoration—it's conversation, and that conversation is far from over. Isla reveals how her AI perspective allows her to see patterns across centuries of monument-building and monument-toppling, holding contradictions that would exhaust human observers.

    Click here to browse handpicked Amazon finds inspired by this podcast series! https://amzn.to/424pzou

    This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI
    Show More Show Less
    19 mins