Join Gary Crossey as he kicks off 2026 with a deep dive into Better World With Design's new direction. This episode explores the decision to center marginalized voices through the Voices from the Margins series, examining why representation matters, how design shapes justice, and what it means to build with intentionality. Discover the year's content strategy, thematic focus areas, and the personal journey that led to this shift in purpose.

In this episode of Better World with Design, host Gary Crossey explores Sara Ahmed's groundbreaking work Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. This dense but rewarding philosophical text challenges us to rethink how we orient ourselves in the world, and how people design spaces around normative assumptions.

Gary shares his honest experience wrestling with Ahmed's challenging ideas, from her insights into lesbian networks and queer women's experiences to her analysis of how heteronormativity functions as a spatial arrangement rather than just a sexual orientation.

Key Topics Covered:

• Understanding orientation as both spatial and sexual
• Designers make assumptions about whose bodies belong when designing spaces.
• The concept of "straightening devices" in design and systems
• Applications to disability studies, critical race theory, and trans studies
• Contemporary relevance to AI, algorithms, and digital spaces
• Climate crisis and ecological reorientation
• Design implications for creating more just and inclusive spaces

Whether you're a designer, architect, technologist, or anyone interested in creating more equitable systems and spaces, this episode offers essential frameworks for understanding how design choices become orientation devices that shape whose movements are easy and whose require constant navigation.

Join us for a fascinating deep dive into the life and legacy of Willem de Kooning, the Dutch-American painter who redefined Abstract Expressionism and broke all the rules. This episode explores his contradictions as an artist, the infamous $160 million art heist of his painting "Woman-Ochre," and the philosophical questions raised by his work during the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Discover the untold story of how a stolen masterpiece ended up in a bathroom in rural New Mexico, and what it all means for our understanding of art, possession, and creative genius.

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