Time Sensitive
by The Slowdown
Candid, revealing long-form conversations with extraordinary people about their life and work through the lens of time. Host Spencer Bailey interviews each guest about how they think about time—and how pivotal moments have shaped who they are today.Explore more at timesensitive.fm
Episodes
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Mona Chalabi on Why We Should Talk More Often About Money
Candid, direct conversations about money—how much we have, where it comes from, and how it colors our day-to-day reality—are, at best, uncomfortable and, more often than not, avoided entirely. In her new book, Ten Lives: How What We Have Shapes Who We Are, the Pulitzer Prize–winning data…
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Taryn Simon on the Limits of What We Can Know
What do we really know about the world around us? And how much of what we deem to be true is shaped by what we can—and cannot—see? These questions have animated the provocative and probing work of the artist Taryn Simon for more than 20 years. For her latest exhibition, “Father Country I Do Love...
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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 teaching the controversial German philosopher’s 1927 magnum opus, Critchley takes it on in his latest...
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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, author, artist, and educator has spent nearly a century immersed in the world of food, beginning…
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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 radically expanded the possibilities of what forms haute couture can take, combining…
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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-garde Antwerp Six group of Belgian fashion designers. From 1986 to 2024, across 38 years and 129...
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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 bridges between creative sectors—whether art, design, and music, or fashion, film, and food—and…
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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 Marginalian, braids together literature, science, philosophy, poetry, and art in beautiful, alchemical...
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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 years. The 91-year-old Nebraska-born artist—widely known for her vibrant, sculptural textile and…
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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 layering of Appalachian folk, Delta blues, gospel, soul, early country, and even spiritual jazz, at...
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George Saunders on the Power of Fiction to Enliven the World
The novelist, essayist, and short-story writer George Saunders—widely celebrated for his novel Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), which won the Man Booker Prize, and book of short stories Tenth of December (2013)—has made it his mission to “de-dullify” the world through his clear-eyed, empathic,...
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Alma Allen on Connecting to the Primordial Through Art
There’s an animate quality to the biomorphic sculptures of the self-taught, Utah-born artist Alma Allen. His works, carved from wood, marble, and bronze—and informed by his deep appreciation for the natural world—appear as if they’re living, breathing things, at once prehistoric and futuristic.…
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Devon Turnbull on Elevating the Beauty of Sound
To be in a room with one of the artist and audiophile Devon Turnbull’s texture-rich Ojas hi-fi audio systems may be the closest one can get to being in the studio with the musicians themselves. It’s not a stretch to call what he creates “sound sculptures”: Over the past two decades, Turnbull has...
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Shohei Shigematsu on Why “Memorable Space” Matters
According to the Japanese-born, New York–based architect Shohei Shigematsu, there’s such a thing as a building being too refined. What matters most, in his view, is creating what he calls “memorable space”: the antithesis of anything lifeless or lacking a symbiotic relationship to the city or its...
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Lucinda Childs on the Dance of Everyday Life
Over six decades and counting, the postmodern choreographer and dancer Lucinda Childs has built an exceptional, category-defining body of work grounded in a style that draws as much from “pedestrian,” everyday movements as it does from her foundational ballet training. Emerging out of the 1960s...
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Introducing Time Sensitive
Time Sensitive is a podcast featuring candid, revealing long-form conversations with extraordinary people about their life and work through the lens of time. Host Spencer Bailey interviews each guest about how they think about time—and how pivotal moments have shaped who they are today. Listen at...
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Hans Ulrich Obrist on Art as a Portal to Liberate Time
The Swiss-born, London-based curator, art historian, and Serpentine Galleries artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist moves through his life and work with a deep internal sense of urgency. Among the most prolific and everywhere-all-at-once people in the world of art—whose peripatetic path has taken...
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Jennie C. Jones on Time Traveling Through Art, Sound, and Space
When the artist Jennie C. Jones listens closely to a piece of music, she’s particularly attuned to its pauses, in-between moments, and breaks. Widely celebrated for her abstract works in painting, sculpture, and sound art that, in many instances, incorporate architecture or space—through which…
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Noah Horowitz on Art Basel as a Cultural Force
As the CEO of Art Basel, Noah Horowitz has made it his mission to ensure that the international art platform is seen, valued, and experienced—far beyond its art-fair roots—as a cultural catalyst and “opportunity accelerator.” Over the past 55 years, beginning with its tight-knit origins in Basel,...
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Theaster Gates on Building and Bridging Culture, From Chicago to Japan
Over the past two decades, the artist Theaster Gates has poured himself into his multifaceted practice that spans pottery, painting, sculpture, urban development, performance, archival research, and arts administration. Along the way, he has risen to become one of the most widely celebrated…
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Jay Osgerby on Imbuing Objects With Meaning
The British designer Jay Osgerby believes in designing rigorously simple objects that are deeply felt and, hopefully, appreciated for generations to come. As the co-founder of the London-based industrial studio Barber Osgerby, Jay and his partner in the firm, Edward Barber, emphasize...
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Michael W. Twitty on Honoring His Ancestors Through Food
For the James Beard Award–winning writer and culinary historian Michael W. Twitty, kitchens provide a multitude of significant purposes that stretch far into the past and carry through to the present. Beyond being places where people cook, share, and eat food, they also serve as vital spaces in...
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Camille Henrot on Tapping Into a Boundless Imagination
For the Paris-born, New York–based artist Camille Henrot, time practically never stands still. Across her work in film, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation—and soon, live performance—Henrot has developed ways of stretching and distorting time, seamlessly shifting from moments of potent,...
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Alison Roman on Recipes as Time Capsules
The cook and food writer Alison Roman frequently emanates and celebrates a certain spilled-milk imperfectionism. Her on-camera candor and laid-back cooking style have both contributed to growing her devoted audience of home cooks as well as the food-curious, many of whom have followed her and her...
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Olivia Laing on the Pleasures and Possibilities of Gardens
For the British writer and cultural critic Olivia Laing, restoring and tending to their backyard garden has prompted complex questions of power, community, and mystery, concepts that they beautifully excavate in their latest book, the fascinating and mind-expanding The Garden Against Time: In...
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Oliver Burkeman on the Power of Embracing Imperfectionism
The British author and journalist Oliver Burkeman has spent decades pondering what it means to live a meaningful life, both in his former Guardian column “This Column WIll Change Your Life” and across several books—most recently, Meditations for Mortals, out in paperback this October. That’s why…
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Sara Imari Walker on Making Sense of Life, the Universe, and Ourselves
As the physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker—the author of the mind-expanding book Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life’s Emergence—sees it, every single thing on Earth can be traced to life’s beginnings. Walker studies the origins of life on this planet—one of science’s greatest...
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James Frey on Designing Your Life to Bring Joy
In 2003, when the author James Frey published his first book, A Million Little Pieces—a gut-punch account of his experience with addiction and rehab—nobody could have expected what would come next. Thanks to an Oprah Book Club endorsement, A Million Little Pieces was instantly catapulted to...
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Molly Jong-Fast on the Fleeting Nature of Fame
Through her sharp and biting political commentary—whether as host of the podcast Fast Politics, as a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, or as a political analyst on MSNBC—Molly Jong-Fast has, over the past decade, become something of a household name. But, as the daughter of the once-famous...
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Alicja Kwade on the Absurdity of Being Alive
Few artists aim to make sense of the subjectivity and complexity of time and space quite like the Polish-born, Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade. In each of her works, ranging from sculptures and large-scale public installations to films, photographs, and works on paper, Kwade displays an astute...
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Thomas Keller on Cooking as a Pathway to Happiness
With one small, clever—and now-trademark—idea in 1990, the chef Thomas Keller turned not only the notion of the ice-cream cone on its head, but the fine-dining world, too. Now, 35 years later, his hospitality group comprises 10 restaurants, including The French Laundry in Yountville, California,...
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Billy Martin on Finding Harmony in Rhythm and Life
The drummer and percussionist Billy Martin, whose name many Time Sensitive listeners may recognize—he created the Time Sensitive theme song—defies any boxed-in or limiting definitions of his work. Best known as a member of the band Medeski Martin & Wood (MMW), he’s spent the past three-plus…
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John Pawson on Minimalism as a Way of Life
For the British architect John Pawson, minimalism isn’t just a design philosophy, but a life philosophy—with his 1996 book, Minimum, serving as a defining jumping-off point. Over the course of more than four decades, Pawson has quietly amassed a global following by distilling spaces, objects, and...
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Lina Ghotmeh on Ruin and Regeneration in Architecture
Through her “archaeology of the future” design approach, the Lebanese-born, Paris-based architect Lina Ghotmeh has firmly established herself as a humanist who brings a profound awareness of past, present, and presence to all that she does. In the two decades since winning her breakthrough...
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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...
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Pico Iyer on the Pleasure and Profundity of Silence
Since publishing his debut essay collection—Video Night in Kathmandu, featuring far-flung reportage from 10 Asian countries—in 1988, the prolific travel writer Pico Iyer has gone on to write more than a dozen books exploring themes ranging from displacement and identity to globalization and...
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Faye Toogood on Creation as a Form of Connection
Faye Toogood is perhaps best known for her Roly-Poly chair, among the more famous pieces of furniture to come out of the 2010s and take over the zeitgeist, but the London-based designer’s artistry and craft runs much deeper and spans much wider. She began finding, collecting, cataloging…
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Malcolm Gladwell on Finding Freedom in Abandoning Expectations
Malcolm Gladwell may be one of the most widely read—and, with his Revisionist History podcast, listened to—journalists of our time. A New Yorker magazine staff writer and the author of seven New York Times bestsellers, including The Tipping Point (2000), Blink (2005), and Outliers (2008), he has...
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Richard Christiansen on Bridging Horticulture and Popular Culture
Richard Christiansen believes that the true definition of luxury is having one’s senses on full blast—seeing, tasting, smelling, hearing, and touching the world around by engaging in its beauty and bounty to the fullest. This idea is at the heart of his company, the garden-pleasure apothecary...
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Marcia Bjornerud on the Profound Wisdom of Rocks
To the majority of humankind, rocks may appear to be static, timeless objects, but not to the geologist Marcia Bjornerud. In her mind, rocks are rich pieces of text that have evolved (and continue to evolve) across millennia, and are therefore incredibly timeful. “They almost demand reading,”...
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Nachson Mimran on Leveraging Privilege for Good and in Service of Others
With great privilege, believes the humanitarian and entrepreneur Nachson Mimran, comes great responsibility. Brought up in a family that operates one of the largest agri-industrial businesses in West Africa, Mimran comes from considerable wealth, but unlike so many who have a background such as...
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Jonathan Lethem on Novel Writing as a Memory Art
Perhaps best known for his novels Motherless Brooklyn (1999), The Fortress of Solitude (2003), and Chronic City (2009)—or, more recently, Brooklyn Crime Novel (2023)—the author, essayist, and cultural critic Jonathan Lethem could be considered the ultimate modern-day Brooklyn bard, even if today…
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Lindsey Adelman on the Transformative Nature of Light
To the lighting designer Lindsey Adelman, light is at once ubiquitous and precious, quotidian yet miraculous; it can be easily overlooked or taken for granted, but it also has the potential to become transformative or even otherworldly. Through her craft-forward approach, Adelman creates pieces...
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Paul Goldberger on Architecture as an Act of Optimism
In the eyes of the architecture critic Paul Goldberger, a building is a living, breathing thing, a structure that can have a spirit and even, at its best, a soul. It’s this optimistic perspective that has given Goldberger’s writing a certain ineffable, captivating quality across his prolific...
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Francesco Clemente on Painting as Poetry and Performance
The artist Francesco Clemente may have been born and raised in Naples, but—having lived and worked around the world, including in Rome, India, New York City, and New Mexico—he considers himself a citizen of no place. Widely known for his work across mediums, from drawings and frescoes to mosaics,...
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Sarah Lewis on “Aesthetic Force” as a Path Toward Justice
In her new book, The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America (Harvard University Press), the historian and Harvard professor Sarah Lewis unpacks a major part of United States history that until now wasn’t just brushed over, but was intentionally buried: how the Caucasian War and the…
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Rita Sodi on Food as a Reflection of Home
For Rita Sodi, cooking isn’t so much an art or a science, but rather an intuitive way for her to channel her Tuscan roots and provide a profound sense of home. Following a 15-year career in the world of fashion as a self-described “denim guru” for Calvin Klein Jeans, Sodi transitioned into the...
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Edwina von Gal on Gardening as an Antidote
To the landscape designer Edwina von Gal, gardening is much more than just seeding, planting, weeding, and watering; it’s her life calling. Since starting her namesake firm in 1984 in East Hampton, on New York’s Long Island, she has worked with, for, and/or alongside the likes of Calvin Klein,...
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Hiroshi Sugimoto on Photography as a Form of Timekeeping
While he may technically practice as a photographer, artist, and architect, Hiroshi Sugimoto could also be considered, from a wider-lens perspective, a chronicler of time. With a body of work now spanning nearly five decades, Sugimoto began making pictures in earnest in 1976 with his ongoing...
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Ramdane Touhami on Why He Will Never Slow Down
Soon to celebrate his 50th birthday by journeying from Paris to Tokyo by car along the Southern Silk Road, the French Moroccan creative director, artist, and entrepreneur Ramdane Touhami says he’s “thirsty for life like it’s just the beginning,” and it shows. Among his 17 (yes, 17) companies are...
About this show
Candid, revealing long-form conversations with extraordinary people about their life and work through the lens of time. Host Spencer Bailey interviews each guest about how they think about time—and how pivotal moments have shaped who they are today.Explore more at timesensitive.fm
Hosted by
The Slowdown