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Time Sensitive

Time Sensitive

The Slowdown 158 Episodes Oct 7, 2026

Time Sensitive features candid, in-depth conversations with influential thinkers, artists, and leaders about their relationship with time. Host Spencer Bailey explores how specific moments have shaped their lives and work, offering insights into creativity, productivity, and the human experience. The podcast delves into broad philosophical questions about time as well as personal anecdotes that reveal character and perspective.

Episodes

Simon Critchley on Giving Up the Fantasy of Mastery
Simon Critchley on Giving Up the Fantasy of Mastery Oct 7, 2026 01:37:40 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 book, Heidegger Thinking: ‘Being and Time’ Explained, getting at the deceptively simple ideas at its co
Jacques Pépin on “Taste Memory” and a Life in the Kitchen
Jacques Pépin on “Taste Memory” and a Life in the Kitchen Sep 30, 2026 01:14:53 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 as an apprentice in France at age 13 and rising through Parisian kitchens before moving to the United St
Iris van Herpen on Visualizing the Invisible Through Haute Couture
Iris van Herpen on Visualizing the Invisible Through Haute Couture Sep 16, 2026 01:19:13 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 time-honored craftsmanship techniques with cutting-edge technologies and material innovations, from 3-D—and, perha
Dries Van Noten on the Meaning Found in Making
Dries Van Noten on the Meaning Found in Making Jun 24, 2026 00:59:22 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 runway shows, Van Noten built one of fashion’s most admired independent houses. Since stepping away from
Felix Burrichter on Print’s Enduring Power in the Algorithmic Age
Felix Burrichter on Print’s Enduring Power in the Algorithmic Age Jun 17, 2026 01:20:51 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 shows how the built environment shapes and responds to larger societal and cultural forces. Amid endlessly
Maria Popova on the Role of Chance in Shaping Our Lives
Maria Popova on the Role of Chance in Shaping Our Lives Jun 10, 2026 00:58:08 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 ways. Traversing centuries, she approaches various ideas and thinkers, living and dead, as active refere
Sheila Hicks on Life as a Series of Portals
Sheila Hicks on Life as a Series of Portals May 27, 2026 01:04:19 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 fiber works—resists any firm classification of what she does, as her multifarious output reflects. Current
Valerie June on Joy as a Form of Resistance
Valerie June on Joy as a Form of Resistance May 13, 2026 01:13:28 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 once down to earth and dreamy, has drawn appreciation from the likes of Bob Dylan, Norah Jones, and Mavi
George Saunders on the Power of Fiction to Enliven the World
George Saunders on the Power of Fiction to Enliven the World May 6, 2026 01:11:37 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, often-puckish prose. There’s an unwavering spirit of generosity embedded in the way Saunders tells stories an
Alma Allen on Connecting to the Primordial Through Art
Alma Allen on Connecting to the Primordial Through Art Apr 22, 2026 01:06:26 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. Far from fixed objects, they eschew any overt symbolism or predetermined narratives. For this “site-spec
Devon Turnbull on Elevating the Beauty of Sound
Devon Turnbull on Elevating the Beauty of Sound Apr 8, 2026 01:04:54 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 built up his company Ojas through experimentation, engineering, and deep exploration, and in recent yea
Shohei Shigematsu on Why “Memorable Space” Matters
Shohei Shigematsu on Why “Memorable Space” Matters Mar 25, 2026 01:10:36 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 surroundings. As a long-time partner at the firm OMA, Shigematsu leads its New York studio with a sens

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