Soft + Savage Podcast

Louise Levin

The Soft and Savage podcast illuminates the great minds, great movements and great works across demographics that are actively shaping our futures. Hosted by Louise Levin, the Queen, a “woman of a certain age and raging dilettante,” this podcast is for those interested in the gray matter of global conversation, the space where challenges are defined and solutions devised. Soft and Savage seeks to both decode the modern moment and inspire listeners to action through dynamic conversations with leading visionaries, whose solution-oriented approach to the modern challenges we all face walks the razor’s edge–between Soft and Savage.

  1. 2d ago

    Meet the Saunapreneurs Behind NYC’s First Ever Sauna Village…

    What if the missing infrastructure in American cities isn't broadband or transit, but a fire to sit around? In this episode of Soft + Savage, Louise Levin sits down with Adam Bamba Tanaka, Chief Operating Officer of Therme Group US and a Harvard PhD in Urban Planning leading the American expansion of bathing culture. Adam coordinates Therme Group's U.S. market entry, including Culture of Bathe-ing, the sauna festival that turned Domino Park into a working laboratory for public thermal space. The conversation moves through sauna masters, founders, and bathers who built this world from nothing. This conversation explores the forces shaping American bathing culture right now: a society mediated by screens and starved for a genuine third place, the regulatory fights over what even counts as a legal structure on water, the ecological stewardship woven into ritual, and the friendships that form between strangers who show up to sweat together. Together they trace how a fire in a small room becomes civic infrastructure. Soft + Savage is not interested in wellness as a trend. This is a conversation about what happens to a city when its public spaces disappear. How permits decide what gets built, how fragmentation gets reversed one room at a time, and how Adam and the people building this movement are treating heat itself as a form of urban planning. CONNECT WITH THERME GROUP US Featuring Adam Bamba Tanaka, Chief Operating Officer LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-bamba-tanaka-phd-12496123/ Website: https://www.thermegroup.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thermegroup/ CONNECT WITH SUPERIOR SAUNA & STEAM Featuring Shaelyn Crutchley (CMO) & Justus Benson (President) Website: https://superiorsaunas.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/superiorsaunas/ CONNECT WITH ALTÆR SAUNA Featuring Kayla Sibilia, Founder Website: https://altaer.space/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/altaersauna/ CONNECT WITH KOS SAUNA Featuring Kate Butchart, Creator Website: https://www.kossauna.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kos.sauna/ CONNECT WITH CULTURE OF BATHING Substack: https://cultureofbathing.substack.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cultureofbatheing/ CONNECT WITH SOFT + SAVAGE YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SoftandSavagePodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/softandsavagepodcast/ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0x9Af3IHHQNcBItNJ5jui0 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/c75e1401-d916-4aa0-ad12-ce4078abfc10/soft-savage-podcast Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/soft-savage-podcast/id1883783191 Website: https://www.softandsavage.com HOSTED BY Louise Levin https://www.linkedin.com/in/louise-levin-68b9949/ Subscribe for more conversations with the artists, thinkers, builders, and cultural forces shaping what comes next. Question for the comments: When's the last time you had an unplanned conversation with a stranger, no phone in hand? #SoftAndSavage #LouiseLevin #AdamBambaTanaka #ThermeGroup #BathingCulture #ThirdPlace #SaunaCulture #UrbanPlanning #CultureOfBathing #CommunityInfrastructure #EcologicalRestoration)

  2. Jul 31

    The Grassroots Urbanist: How four architects posted a drawing online and 10 years later, built it.

    In this episode of Soft + Savage, Raphael Miles shares what it takes to build impossible infrastructure — and reimagine public space through water, precision, and persistence.

  3. Jul 29

    Modern life is filled with materials the human body was never designed to absorb.

    In this episode of Soft + Savage, Daniel Lanzilotta turns plastic waste into witness — revealing what our systems leave behind and what art can force us to see.

  4. Jul 24

    The Penn-Trained Health Strategist: The quiet transfer of medical innovation to the East.

    In this episode of Soft + Savage, Dr. Lauren Arnold explores the intersection of medicine, research, AI, and the human questions shaping the future of health.

  5. Jul 22

    Most personalities are survival strategies pretending to be identities. — Bizzy Gold

    In this episode of Soft + Savage, Bizzie Gold unpacks resilience, reinvention, and the method behind lasting personal change.

  6. Jul 17

    Can architecture restore human connection in emotionally abandoned cities? — Adam Bamba Tanaka

    In this episode of Soft + Savage, Adam Tanaka reframes wellness as civic infrastructure — and asks what our cities should be designed to restore.

  7. Jul 15

    Frontline Innovation: Entrepreneurship in Conflict & Humanitarian Response with Jesse Levin

    In this episode of Soft + Savage, Jesse Levin takes us inside crisis, readiness, and the human architecture behind real-world response.

  8. Jul 13

    What the Fed didn't know on the eve of the 2008 crash — with Chris Giancarlo

    What if the entire 2008 financial crisis ran on a number that was wrong by fifty times? In this episode of Soft + Savage, Louise Levin sits down with Chris Giancarlo, the 13th Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and co-founder of the Digital Dollar Project, known across the finance and policy world as "CryptoDad." Giancarlo helped build and take public one of the trading platforms that handled the majority of the world's credit default swaps in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, then spent two and a half years as a CFTC commissioner and two more as its chairman — unanimously confirmed by the Senate under both Obama and Trump. He now leads the Digital Dollar Project, the nonprofit shaping the architecture of how the United States approaches a digital dollar. This conversation explores the forces that shaped Giancarlo's relationship to money: a 2008 phone call from the New York Fed that revealed how little regulators actually understood about the risk in front of them, the quiet cost of currency debasement on families with no access to a stable currency, the question of whether digitizing money hands people more agency or takes it away, and the unglamorous regulatory mechanics that decide what gets to exist before the public ever sees it — and what it means to build the rules for money before money itself changes shape. Soft + Savage is not interested in cryptocurrency as a trend or a get-rich-quick story. This is a conversation about the architecture underneath money itself — how a financial crisis can be misjudged by hundreds of billions of dollars, how privacy and surveillance quietly trade places depending on which technology wins, and how Giancarlo has spent four decades trying to make sure the next version of money still serves the people using it, not just the institutions issuing it. CONNECT WITH CHRIS GIANCARLO X (Twitter): https://x.com/giancarlomkts Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisgiancar/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/j-christopher-giancarlo-77257111 Digital Dollar Project: https://digitaldollarproject.org/ CONNECT WITH SOFT + SAVAGE YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SoftandSavagePodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/softandsavagepodcast/ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0x9Af3IHHQNcBItNJ5jui0 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/c75e1401-d916-4aa0-ad12-ce4078abfc10/soft-savage-podcast Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/soft-savage-podcast/id1883783191 Website: https://www.softandsavage.com HOSTED BY Louise Levin https://www.linkedin.com/in/louise-levin-68b9949/  Subscribe for more conversations with the artists, thinkers, builders, and cultural forces shaping what comes next. Question for the comments: If you could program your own money to release on a condition — the way Giancarlo describes for inheritance — what condition would you build in? #SoftAndSavage #LouiseLevin #CryptoDad #ChrisGiancarlo #DigitalDollar #Stablecoins #CFTC #FutureOfMoney #FinancialArchitecture #PredictionMarkets

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

The Soft and Savage podcast illuminates the great minds, great movements and great works across demographics that are actively shaping our futures. Hosted by Louise Levin, the Queen, a “woman of a certain age and raging dilettante,” this podcast is for those interested in the gray matter of global conversation, the space where challenges are defined and solutions devised. Soft and Savage seeks to both decode the modern moment and inspire listeners to action through dynamic conversations with leading visionaries, whose solution-oriented approach to the modern challenges we all face walks the razor’s edge–between Soft and Savage.

Information

  • Creator
    Louise Levin
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    17
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Soft + Savage Podcast
  • Show Website
    Soft + Savage Podcast