Leonard Koren on Life as an Aesthetic Experience
Time Sensitive2 Huhti 2025

Leonard Koren on Life as an Aesthetic Experience

For as long as he can remember, Leonard Koren has been searching for beauty and pleasure. Throughout his career, the author and artist—he prefers the term “creator”—has spent considerable time putting to paper expressions and conceptual views that architects, artists, designers, and others have long struggled to find the proper framing of or words for. In 1976, when he launched the counterculture publication WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing, he ushered in the idea of “gourmet bathing,” which has maintained a potent cultural niche in the nearly 50 years since. With Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, published in 1994, Koren introduced the Japanese expression for “beautiful, imperfect, and impermanent” to the West, where it quickly took on a life of its own. Perhaps one of Koren’s greatest talents is his rare ability to translate philosophical meditations on seemingly esoteric subjects into accessible, approachable texts about ways of being, seeing, thinking, making, and feeling.

On the episode, Koren details his best—and worst—baths, and explains why he views his life as one long aesthetic experience.

Special thanks to our Season 11 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:
Leonard Koren

[02:49] “Undesigning the Bath”

[06:04] Century Tower

[06:35] 7132 Hotel (Therme Vals)

[08:38] “WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing”

[09:19] Max Palevsky

[09:19] Craig Elwood

[12:06] “From ‘WET’ to ‘Wabi-Sabi’: Leonard Koren’s Adventurous Aesthetic Journey”

[12:06] Mick Jagger

[12:06] Richard Gere

[12:06] Debbie Harry

[15:43] Charlie Haas

[16:59] “The Slow Lane”

[16:59] Pilar Viladas

[20:30] “How to Take a Japanese Bath”

[20:30] “Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers”

[20:30] “Wabi-Sabi: Further Thoughts”

[26:57] Okarkura Kakuzō’s “The Book of Tea”

[28:47] Glenn Adamson

[28:47] Sen no Rikyū

[36:38] “Noise Reduction: A 10-Minute Meditation for Quieting the Mind”

[39:41] “The Haggler’s Handbook”

[41:55] “283 Useful Ideas from Japan”

[44:10] “The Flower Shop”

[44:10] Blumenkraft

[44:10] “On Creating Things Aesthetic”

[44:10] “Which “Aesthetics” Do You Mean?”

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(163)

Simon Critchley on Giving Up the Fantasy of Mastery

Simon Critchley on Giving Up the Fantasy of Mastery

Who better to bring remarkable clarity to the density of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time than the British philosopher and New School professor Simon Critchley? After decades spent studying and teach...

7 Loka 1h 37min

Jacques Pépin on “Taste Memory” and a Life in the Kitchen

Jacques Pépin on “Taste Memory” and a Life in the Kitchen

Jacques Pépin has long found beauty in simplicity—a glass of warm milk, a freshly sliced lemon, a garden-ripe tomato—and in transmitting knowledge from one hand to the next. Now 90, the French chef, a...

30 Syys 1h 14min

Iris van Herpen on Visualizing the Invisible Through Haute Couture

Iris van Herpen on Visualizing the Invisible Through Haute Couture

Iris van Herpen’s boundary-defying, otherworldly work exists somewhere between couture, sculpture, science, technology, architecture, and nature. For nearly two decades, the Dutch fashion designer has...

16 Syys 1h 19min

Dries Van Noten on the Meaning Found in Making

Dries Van Noten on the Meaning Found in Making

Dries Van Noten’s lifelong fascination with craft and making runs deep. He grew up in a multigenerational family of retailers and tailors in Antwerp, and in the 1980s, he was part of the famed avant-g...

24 Kesä 59min

Felix Burrichter on Print’s Enduring Power in the Algorithmic Age

Felix Burrichter on Print’s Enduring Power in the Algorithmic Age

Through PIN–UP, the German-born, New York–based editor, curator, and founder Felix Burrichter continues to expand the possibilities of what an architecture magazine can be. He constructs intuitive bri...

17 Kesä 1h 20min

Maria Popova on the Role of Chance in Shaping Our Lives

Maria Popova on the Role of Chance in Shaping Our Lives

Through her multifaceted work, the Bulgarian-born, Brooklyn-based writer, reader, and researcher Maria Popova, founder of the “free, ad-free, A.I.-free, fully human” website and newsletter The Margina...

10 Kesä 58min

Sheila Hicks on Life as a Series of Portals

Sheila Hicks on Life as a Series of Portals

For our latest “site-specific” episode of Time Sensitive, Spencer meets Sheila Hicks inside her courtyard in Paris’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood, where she has called home for more than 60 yea...

27 Touko 1h 4min

Valerie June on Joy as a Form of Resistance

Valerie June on Joy as a Form of Resistance

The singer-songwriter Valerie June has a gift for writing contemporary songs that feel timeless and as though they could also have existed at various points across the past century. Her expansive laye...

13 Touko 1h 13min

Suosittua kategoriassa Liike-elämä ja talous

sijotuskasti
vallattomat
mimmit-sijoittaa
rss-rahapodi
rss-oivalluksia-rahasta-elamasta
psykopodiaa-podcast
ostan-asuntoja-podcast
oppimisen-psykologia
rss-rahamania
rss-kaupan-tila
rss-hereilla
rss-startup-ministerio
rss-inderes
rss-paasipodi
rahapuhetta
rss-sami-miettinen-neuvottelija
asuntoasiaa-paivakirjat
sijoitusovi-podcast
rss-karon-grilli
rss-bisnesta-bebeja