6.5 Minutes With... C21

A small podcast with big ideas. Hosted by the Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

6.5 Minutes With... | Amelia Bader 04/22/2026

6.5 Minutes With... | Amal Azzam 04/08/2026

6.5 Minutes With... | Mich Dillon 03/11/2026

6.5 Minutes With... | Nathaniel Stern 02/10/2026

6.5 Minutes With... | Symphony Swan 02/04/2026

6.5 Minutes With... | Kitonga Alexander 11/25/2025

6.5 Minutes With... | Adam Carr 10/29/2025

6.5 Minutes With... | Jean Creighton 05/08/2025

6.5 Minutes With... | Robert Smith 04/18/2025

6.5 Minutes With... | Robert Smith In this episode of C21’s “6.5 Minutes with…,” graduate fellow Jamee Pritchard interviews Robert Smith, Director of the Center for Urban Research, Teaching, and Outreach (CURTO) at Marquette University. He discusses his journey in community-based research and engagement by emphasizing the importance of "slow knowing" in his work, which, he explains, involves deliberate reflection and sustained inquiry. Smith highlights his projects, including a transatlantic study on legal activism against racial colonialism and a prison education program. He stresses the significance of local history and community engagement in shaping his research and teaching that are guided by initiatives like MKE Roots and the BLEST Hub, which focus on place-based learning and community-driven education. Media Recommendations (with links): Smith recommends a variety of media in understanding slow knowing, from the classroom to board games. He particularly mentions programs like CURTO’s McNeely Prison Education Consortium, MKE Roots, and the BLEST Hub. For prison education, the medium is the classroom; for MKE Roots, it is Milwaukee; and for BLEST Hub, Smith says that the “medium is whatever the young people tell us the medium ought to be.” : “We're always welcoming the folks who are system impacted to become a part of our on campus courses, and then those who are inside facilities. We teach courses inside correctional facilities within a blended model, with our Marquette students as well. We're also looking for folks who want to be instructors in those classes too. These are transformational learning experiences, not just the students who are being transformed, but the instructors are being transformed as well.” and : “There's a civics lesson right down the street and around the corner from you” Smith continues. “You know that our city, cities in general, but particularly this city, has some important local history, some important lessons about the urban experience, the Midwestern experience, the immigrant experience, the industrial experience, there's some really great histories that are right here locally that with MKE roots, we're engaging with teachers to help our young people understand the importance of place, and the importance of local history helping to serve as a foundation, for our young folks who are making those jumps from high school to the workforce or high school to college, our BLEST Hub, we're looking to find you where you are.” Board Games: Smith also suggests two board games: Chess and - a game about birds and all their splendor. He explains that they both have taught him patience and deliberation at very different moments of his life. /episode/index/show/30ae10a3-6801-46fc-b1a7-6496c05083dd/id/36220070

6.5 Minutes With... | Samira Payne 04/01/2025

6.5 Minutes With... | Samira Payne In this episode of C21’s 6.5 Minutes With…, graduate fellow Jamee Pritchard interviews Samira Payne, an educator and outdoor enthusiast, who discusses her journey into hiking and her role as a volunteer leader for Outdoor Afro, a nonprofit organization that reconnects Black people to nature. She emphasizes the importance of slow care and defines it as being present and actively listening to one's surroundings. Payne highlights the benefits of nature for self-care, health, and community building, encouraging newcomers to start with simple outdoor activities and gradually engage in group hikes. You can find more information about Outdoor Afro by visiting or following the organization on Facebook and Instagram. Join one of Samira Payne’s hikes by connecting with the local group via or . Additionally, if you are interested in Payne’s other form of self-care, yarncrafting, visit her Instagram page @livelybysamira. She describes crocheting as a meditative activity that calms her anxiety: “I'm able to focus better because it's this repetitive behavior that calms my mind and helps me slow down and be more present to where I am in that moment. So I'm a better listener when I'm crocheting, I am less anxious when I'm crocheting because I'm not running through my to do list. I feel like I'm getting something accomplished.” Samira’s Book recommendation: Wild Life: Finding My Purpose in an Untamed World by Dr Rae Wynn-Grant In her memoir, Rae Wynn-Grant explores the relationship between humans, animals, and the earth through her personal journey to becoming a wildlife ecologist. The memoir follows Wynn-Grant on her adventures and explorations in some of the world’s most remote locales. With a nearly twenty-year career in the wild, she’s created a niche as one of very few Black female scientists and her story recounts the challenges she had to overcome, expectations she had to leave behind, and the many lessons she learned along the way. Spanning the Great Plains of North America to the rainforests of Madagascar, Wild Life sheds light on our pivotal relationship and responsibility to the natural world and the relatives―both human and otherwise―that we share it with. /episode/index/show/30ae10a3-6801-46fc-b1a7-6496c05083dd/id/35959085

6.5 Minutes With... | Charmaine Lang 03/11/2025

6.5 Minutes With... | Charmaine Lang C21 Graduate Fellow, Jamee Pritchard, interviews Charmaine Lang, Ph.D, a certified healing centered coach and organizational development consultant, about her work on slow care. Lang helps clients find joy and balance in their personal lives and careers and specializes in creating sustainable, people-centered operations and cultures of care. Her work is deeply rooted in Black Feminist Praxis. Charmaine earned a Ph.D. in African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Lang defines slow care as intentional pausing and community support, a practice she observed in her dissertation on Black women activists in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, titled “Learning to Take the Excess Baggage Off”: An Ethnographic Study of Black Women Activists’ Self-Care Practices. She emphasizes the importance of self-care practices like meditation, therapy, and journaling, and acknowledges the difficulty that many Black women face in asking for help due to societal expectations. As a healing-centered coach, Lang supports her clients avoid burnout by encouraging them to meditate and reflect on their needs to foster their healing journey. For further information on the topic of slow care and healing, check out the following recommedations: 1. In Our Mother’s Gardens (2021), directed by Shantrelle P. Lewis, is a 2021 documentary that celebrates the resilience, strength, and healing practices of Black women across generations. The film highlights how Black women have passed down love, wisdom, and resilience through their matrilineal lines, emphasizing how they care for themselves and their communities despite enduring trauma and oppression. The documentary features stories from Black women across the African diaspora, particularly in the United States and the Caribbean, showcasing how these women have preserved their mental, spiritual, and emotional health through practices rooted in cultural traditions and communal care. This documentary is available on Netflix. 2. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell challenges the relentless drive for productivity in a capitalist society by advocating for intentional withdrawal of attention from exploitative systems. Blending philosophy, nature writing, and cultural critique, Odell emphasizes the importance of observation, presence, and deep engagement with the natural world. She argues that resisting the attention economy is an act of reclaiming personal autonomy and creativity. Through concepts like ecological attention and collective care, the book offers a powerful framework for slowing down, reconnecting with ourselves, and finding fulfillment beyond constant productivity and societal expectations. /episode/index/show/30ae10a3-6801-46fc-b1a7-6496c05083dd/id/35632555

6.5 Minutes With... | Desiree McCray 02/24/2025

6.5 Minutes With... | Mark Freeland 01/30/2025

6.5 Minutes With... | Yevgeniya Kaganovich 12/05/2024

6.5 Minutes With... | Yevgeniya Kaganovich In this episode, Jennifer Johung, director of the Center for 21st Century Studies, spends 6.5 minutes with Yevgeniya Kaganovich, a Belarus-born, Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based artist, whose hybrid practice encompasses jewelry and metalsmithing, sculpture, and installation. She is also a professor at the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Kaganovich discusses her on-going projects and installations at the Lyden Sculpture Garden and explains the implications of tree time, earth time, and human time within the context of C21’s theme of Slow Knowing. Her collaborative research and art project, Slow Growing in the Time of Trees, explores three archetypes – trees, paper, and chairs – through their own unique perspectives. She asks speculative questions in search of physical answers. Like, does paper remember being a tree? Check out the links below for more information about C21’s collaborative with Slow Growing in the Time of Trees, Kaganovich’s Tree Intuit Chair project, and further reading about the agency and perspective of non-human objects. Lyden Sculpture Garden Events: In Tree Intuits Chair, artist Yevgeniya Kaganovich grows saplings into sculptural chairs, imagining how a tree might perceive its own transformation into furniture. : Artist Yevgeniya Kaganovich and Lynden land manager, Robert Kaleta, lead a walk exploring the symbiotic relationship between trees and mushrooms. Recommendations for Further Reading: Author Jane Bennett argues that non-human objects, from trees to trash, possess a form of vitality or agency, challenging anthropocentric views of materiality. She calls for a political and ethical shift, urging us to recognize and engage with the vitality of matter to address ecological and social issues. Author Ian Bogost explores the idea of "object-oriented ontology," which asserts that objects, whether human or non-human, exist independently of human perception and have their own experiences. He advocates for a shift in philosophy to consider the subjective experience of all things, encouraging us to think about the world from the perspective of objects themselves. /episode/index/show/30ae10a3-6801-46fc-b1a7-6496c05083dd/id/34302875