Latest The slowdown Podcast Episodes
Michael Murphy on Architecture as a Vessel for Healing and Hope
Time Sensitive - March 30, 2022 04:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsMichael Murphy believes in architecture that promotes connectivity, collectivity, and health, in the broadest sense of the term. As the founding principal and executive director of MASS Design Group, a 14-year-old nonprofit architecture and design collective with main offices in Boston and Kigal...
David Wallace-Wells on His Growing Optimism for the Planet’s Future
Time Sensitive - March 23, 2022 04:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsDavid Wallace-Wells, author of the best-selling book The Uninhabitable Earth and New York magazine’s editor-at-large, wields vivid language that makes people pay attention. But his writing isn’t hyperbole. Wallace-Wells’s clear-eyed, cinematic storytelling provides coherence and context around s...
Wynton Marsalis on Jazz as a Tool for Understanding Life
Time Sensitive - December 15, 2021 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsTrumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis, the managing and artistic director of New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC), is a man bursting with endless energy. Throughout his four-decade career, he has never seemed to run out of steam. He signed his first recording contract at 22, and has gone on...
Siri Hustvedt on the Value in Embracing Ambiguity
Time Sensitive - December 01, 2021 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsWhen Siri Hustvedt was 12 years old, she began reading 19th-century novels by Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain that were given to her by her Norwegian mother, and soon developed a passion for literature. She found great satisfaction in how these stories expanded h...
Daniel Humm on the Plant-Based Future of Fine Dining
Time Sensitive - November 17, 2021 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsThroughout his life, Daniel Humm has constantly pushed himself to the edge. So when Covid-19 arrived, he understood the importance of a quick pivot. Forced to close Eleven Madison Park—his three-Michelin-star Manhattan restaurant, named No. 1 in the world in 2017—he had to lay off all of his sta...
Elizabeth Alexander on Moving Forward in the Face of Adversity
Time Sensitive - November 03, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsThe poet, educator, and scholar Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, views her work as an urgent political act. Following in the footsteps of her father, who was a civil rights advisor and special counsel to President Lyndon B. Johnson, Alexander has witnessed the s...
Debbie Millman on the Importance of Playing the Long Game
Time Sensitive - October 20, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsArtist and designer Debbie Millman has been fascinated by the power of branding for most of her life. And as the host of the Design Matters podcast (which was recently translated into a book, out next month) and chair of the School of Visual Arts’s Masters in Branding program, she constantly has...
Glenn Adamson on Craft as a Reflection of Ourselves
Time Sensitive - October 06, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsFor curator and scholar Glenn Adamson, craft isn’t a quirky hobby that sits on the outskirts of contemporary culture. Rather, it’s a vital, timeless tool for teaching us about one another, and about humanity as a whole. This belief fuels his writing, teaching, and curatorial projects, which seek...
Trevor Paglen on Art in the Age of Mass Surveillance and Artificial Intelligence
Time Sensitive - September 22, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsTrevor Paglen aspires to see the unseen. The artist explores the act of looking through various angles—such as how artificial-intelligence systems have been trained to “see” and categorize the world, or the disquieting sense of being “watched” by a security camera—and creates scenarios that freq...
Maira Kalman on Walking and Looking as a Way of Life
Time Sensitive - September 08, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsWhen describing experiences, New York–based artist and author Maira Kalman almost always goes for the extremes: an instance can be at once stupid and smart, miserable and hopeful, sad and delighted. A bittersweet point of view forms the throughline of her work—which spans more than 30 books for ...
Kevin Beasley on Confronting the Social and Cultural Underlayers of Objects
Time Sensitive - June 30, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsKevin Beasley thinks a lot about objects. In particular, specific objects that relate to notions of American-ness and Blackness—and ones that are often linked, subtly or not, with violence. Whether with a Cadillac Escalade, a pair of Air Jordans, or an N.F.L. helmet, Beasley finds deep connectio...
Rosanne Cash on Moving Forward by Confronting the Past
Time Sensitive - May 26, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsFor Grammy Award–winning singer and songwriter Rosanne Cash, processing the past is a constant, endless journey. She’d been thinking about race and reparations long before the Movement for Black Lives gained momentum last year, as both racism and African-American ancestry exist in her family his...
Billie Tsien on Imbuing Buildings With Feeling
Time Sensitive - April 28, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsGrowing up in the 1950s in the only Chinese family in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, Billie Tsien always felt like an outsider. She would seclude herself in the shower of her family’s home’s master bathroom, behind closed doors, escaping into books for hours before her parents, who had originally...
Eileen Fisher on the Allure of Timeless Clothing
Time Sensitive - March 24, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsFor 37 years, Eileen Fisher has faithfully followed a vision: to create simple, timeless clothes for women that make it easy to get dressed. Soft-spoken, polite, and a self-described introvert, the 70-year-old Fisher is the unlikely CEO of an approximately $500 million fashion company that bears...
Eddie Stern on Taking Time to Discover Your Inner Freedom of Spirit
Time Sensitive - February 24, 2021 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsLast year, after more than three decades of practicing and teaching Ashtanga yoga, Eddie Stern found himself wondering if he should continue in the discipline. He’d amassed a considerable following through the classes of his New York yoga studios (with celebrity students such as Madonna; Gwyneth...
Simon Critchley on Finding Clarity in Philosophy and Comedy
Time Sensitive - January 27, 2021 05:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsSimon Critchley has seen his share of accidents. In his younger years, he damaged his hands while working in manufacturing plants, and ruined his hearing by rehearsing with a punk band in spaces with subpar acoustics. At 18, he suffered significant memory loss, and most recollections from his ch...
Monique Péan on the Transformative Nature of Fossils, Rocks, and Meteorites
Time Sensitive - December 16, 2020 05:00 - 57 minutes ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsNew York–based jewelry and object designer Monique Péan sees fossils and extraterrestrial materials as portals to another time, space, and place. Pyritized dinosaur bones, woolly mammoth tooth roots, meteorites, and lunaites are among her work’s mediums. She sources these from remote locations—i...
Dan Colen on Shifting Perspectives Through Farming and Art
Time Sensitive - November 18, 2020 05:00 - 58 minutes ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsArtist Dan Colen built Sky High Farm in the same way all his ideas are realized: intuitively, and with the faith to see it through. A 40-acre self-sustaining ecosystem in New York’s Hudson Valley, the farm helps underserved communities by donating everything it produces to local food banks. Sinc...
Angel Chang on Building Resilience Through Centuries-Old Crafts
Time Sensitive - October 21, 2020 04:00 - 55 minutes ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsTo make her namesake womenswear line, New York–based designer Angel Chang had to forget everything she knew about fashion. Her label’s clothing is made using age-old techniques developed by China’s indigenous Miao and Dong ethnic minority tribes, whose procedures are at risk of disappearing beca...
Daniel Boulud on Maintaining Consistency Over the Long Haul
Time Sensitive - September 30, 2020 04:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsAsked how the coronavirus pandemic has affected his relationship with time, Daniel Boulud chokes up. The New York–based French chef—who owns 13 restaurants, including the Michelin-starred Daniel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and the fast-casual café Épicerie Boulud—laments the ways that Covid-1...
Tom Kundig on the Parallels Between Mountain Climbing and Architecture
Time Sensitive - June 25, 2020 12:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsTom Kundig brings a refreshingly laid-back, aw-shucks, go-with-the-flow attitude to an industry that seems, on the whole, largely to lack that kind of demeanor. Architects tend to be a rather uptight, perfectionist breed. Not Kundig, an experimental, hands-on Seattle-based practitioner, who, tho...
Special Episode: Spencer Bailey and Andrew Zuckerman on Putting Time Sensitive on Hiatus During the Covid-19 Quarantine
Time Sensitive - April 08, 2020 04:00 - 16 minutes ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsThe show’s co-host’s announce that the podcast is on hold until they can get back into The Slowdown’s Manhattan studio; talk about the company’s new podcast, At a Distance (atadistancepodcast.com); and discuss the importance of recontextualizing scale and speed.
Ibrahim Mahama on the Great Potential of Art to Change How We Look at the World
Time Sensitive - April 01, 2020 04:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsOver the past decade—and especially in the last year—the Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama has swiftly risen to become one of the most prominent African voices in art. At age 32, he has already exhibited at the Biennale of Sydney, on Cockatoo Island (his work “No Friend But the Mountains” is curren...
Julia Watson on the Power of Indigenous Technologies to Transform Our Planet
Time Sensitive - March 25, 2020 04:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsJulia Watson is really into TEK. Not necessarily the Silicon Valley variety of tech, but rather traditional ecological knowledge. An anthropologist, environmentalist, activist, and landscape designer, Watson has become a leading researcher of indigenous communities, closely studying the vast imp...
Dustin Yellin on His Quest to Reimagine Learning in the 21st Century
Time Sensitive - March 18, 2020 04:00 - 52 minutes ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsSince establishing the Pioneer Works nonprofit cultural center in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood in 2013, artist Dustin Yellin has slowly grown the place into a powerhouse hub at the nexus of art, technology, music, and science (with literature and food sprinkled in). Like the beautifully comp...
Nathan Myhrvold on the Art and Science of Food
Time Sensitive - March 11, 2020 04:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsNathan Myhrvold is no ordinary chef. With two master’s degrees (one in mathematical economics, the other in geophysics and space physics) and a Ph.D. in theoretical and mathematical physics, he is also a technologist who did postdoctoral research with Stephen Hawking. From 1986 to 1999, Myhrvold...
Gabriela Hearst on Why Making Things That Stand the Test of Time Matters
Time Sensitive - March 04, 2020 10:00 - 54 minutes ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsSince launching her eponymous label in 2015, the Uruguayan-born, New York–based designer Gabriela Hearst has become known for her sincere, forward-thinking approach to sustainability; her slow-growth business ethos; the long waiting lists for her limited-production handbags; her impeccable tailo...
Tony Fadell on Leaving Silicon Valley to Help Build a Healthier Society, Online and Off
Time Sensitive - December 18, 2019 10:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsIn both his work and his life, Tony Fadell constantly imagines Version 2.0 (if not 3.0, or 4.0 and beyond). On a mission to shape the future through forward-thinking design, engineering, invention, and investing, he is probably most widely recognized for both founding the smart-home products com...
Suketu Mehta on the Positively Profound Impact of Immigration on the Planet
Time Sensitive - December 11, 2019 10:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsSuketu Mehta tells a story about pinkie fingers, dancing and kissing. It is as confounding as it sounds. And utterly heartbreaking, too. In his assertive and essential new book, This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto—as well as on this episode of Time Sensitive—he describes the scene: F...
Trend Forecaster Li Edelkoort on Why Doing Less Is More
Time Sensitive - December 04, 2019 14:16 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 123 ratingsThe Dutch-born trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort, founder of the Paris-based consultancy Trend Union, has a knack for being ahead of the curve. In fact, she kind of is the curve, the rare mind who—with her sharp eye, wide-ranging tastes, and quick wit—is able to situate herself within ...
Related The slowdown Topics