Candid, revealing long-form conversations with leading minds about their life and work through the lens of time. Host Spencer Bailey interviews each guest about how they think about time broadly and how specific moments in time have shaped who they are today.
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To Annie-B Parson, choreography isn’t confined to the studio and the stage; rather, practically everything around us abounds with movement that’s worth paying attention to. In her new, aptly titled book, The Choreography of Everyday Life , an inventive, observant, and witty ode to her relationship with dance and movement over the course of her lifetime, she delves into exactly that belief. Across the past 30-plus years with Big Dance Theater, which she co-founded in 1991, her work has amounted t...
If there were a bard for our bewildering times, Saeed Jones would be a fitting choice. In his newly released collection of poems, Alive at the End of the World , Jones dances through grief, rage, and trauma—collective and personal—with acerbic clarity and sharp-edged wit. It is a book that gets to the heart of this confounding, erratic era, by turns reflecting on the tremendous amount of loss that has come with Covid-19; more broadly, the staggering, startling nature of living through a pandemic...
Peter Saville is a man of the moment—and has been, again and again, throughout the past five decades. Raised in Manchester, England, in the sixties—in tandem with the growing prominence of counterculture, the rise of anti-war sentiments, and the birth of pop—Saville developed early on a keen eye and ear for the zeitgeist, or what he terms “nowness.” In his adolescence, he took up a fervent interest in music and in record covers in particular, and went on to art school to study graphic design. In...
Roxane Gay describes her wild trajectory as a multihyphenate writer-editor-publisher-professor-social commentator as “fairly bewildering.” And she’s not wrong: Over the past decade—and with long odds stacked up against her as a queer Black woman of size—Gay has had a meteoric rise in the media and publishing stratosphere, achieving rare heights. She has written a best-selling memoir, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017); a book of essays, Bad Feminist (2014); and two collections of short stories...
For the past five decades, the British-born, New York–based artist Jamie Nares has been capturing the passage of time, the physics of motion, and the essence of self through a wide variety of mediums, including film, painting, music, photography, and performance. Many of Nares’s films, such as Pendulum (1976) and Street (2011), play with rhythm and speed as they distill the streets of New York City and the movements of its inhabitants. Nares’s vast body of work shares a common theme: the recordi...
Xiye Bastida was quite literally born into environmentalism. Throughout her upbringing in San Pedro Tultepec, Mexico, and later in New York City, Bastida’s Indigenous community leader father, of the Otomi-Toltec people, and Chilean ethno-ecologist mother taught her the importance of ancestral wisdom, respecting nature, and protecting the planet. A lead organizer of the Fridays for Future youth climate strike movement, Bastida is also the co-founder of the Re-Earth Initiative, whose aim is to mak...
Fashion designer Rachel Comey has always done things in a tightly focused way—and on her own terms. For more than two decades, she has followed an independent, wholly original approach to clothing design and retail that has resulted in her eponymous brand’s staying power. From novelty underwear with pockets, to a hand-painted shirt that musician David Bowie once wore on the Late Show with David Letterman , to her trademark high-waisted, wide-legged Legion pants, Comey’s designs stand out for the...
For Céline Semaan, the founder of Slow Factory, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing climate justice and social equity, no obstacle is too big—or too conceptual—to surmount. Underlying all of Slow Factory’s efforts is the notion of “fashion activism,” a term that’s been credited to Semaan herself. The organization’s past projects include “Landfills as Museums,” which served as a meditation on what “trash” really is, and among its upcoming efforts is “Garment-to-Garment,” an initiative that will te...
For writer, comedian, and cultural critic Baratunde Thurston, host of the How to Citizen podcast, humility is a tool to connect with people—and to bring them together around some collective sense of truth. Through his work, Thurston serves as an ambassador to his audiences, always considering what they’re going through and the questions they might ask. A Harvard graduate, he has advised the Obama White House and worked as a producer on The Daily Show , and is author of the best-selling memoir Ho...
Author and translator Jhumpa Lahiri grew up in what she has called “a linguistic exile.” Born in London to Bengali immigrants who moved to the United States when she was 3, Lahiri experienced a profound sense of alienation as a child and a longing for somewhere that felt like home. Then, during a 1994 trip to Florence, Italy, she fell in love with the Italian language, which she came to see as a gateway to exploring her life and identity further—or to, in other words, get beyond any imposed self...
Jancis Robinson wrote the book on wine. Literally. The author of the first four editions of the definitive Oxford Companion to Wine , she has also published some 20 books on the subject and more than 1,500 articles for the Financial Times , for which she has been the wine correspondent since 1989. A member of the royal family’s wine committee, she also helps select wines for Queen Elizabeth II. A trailblazer and a nimble scholar, Robinson—who, in addition to her work at the FT , pours her expert...
Israeli singer-songwriter David Broza believes that music can unite people across cultures and has spent the past 45 years showing audiences how it can be done. One of his latest projects exemplifies this philosophy: Beginning in October, once a month during the Friday Kabbalat Shabbat services at Manhattan’s Temple Emanu-El, Broza will present tracks from Tefila , a new album that recasts the service’s traditional prayers and hymns as a blend of folk, jazz, pop, and classical songs. Performed b...
If life is a garden, the writer, editor, and craftsperson Deborah Needleman certainly knows how to dig and cultivate it. Early in her career, she followed a nonlinear path in the media industry that was, for the better part of a decade, slow and steady—and then, upon launching the home design bible Domino in 2004, meteoric. Over the next dozen years, Needleman rose to become one of the magazine world’s most in-demand editors, serving as the editor-in-chief of both WSJ. Magazine and T: The New Yo...
Bethann Hardison has, with great finesse, risen to become among the most vital voices in fashion. A self-described “advocate” who currently serves as Gucci’s executive advisor for global equity and cultural engagement, the former model and agent is a powerhouse figure who has not only reshaped conversations around diversity and anti-racism industry-wide, but has actively pushed for and, in turn, made change in terms of representation, from advertising campaigns to editorial shoots to runway show...
There is perhaps no one on the planet with a bigger-picture view on the impact of design—in all of its manifestations—than Paola Antonelli. As the Museum of Modern Art’s senior curator of architecture and design as well as its director of R&D, Antonelli consistently expands notions and definitions of what might be considered “design,” and shows how, in no uncertain terms, design connects to practically everything we see, touch, hear, taste, smell, and do . With great passion and energy, she ...
Alfredo Jaar illuminates truths that often escape popular consciousness. Through his work, the artist and filmmaker raises awareness about sociopolitical issues that have been forgotten, suppressed, or ignored, including genocide and the displacement of refugees. Simultaneously, he informs and engages viewers, urging them to be present for those who need their attention most. With all that he makes, Jaar maintains a heightened sensitivity to the limits and ethics of representation. His aim? To p...
Dan Barber is on a mission to quite literally plant seeds for a better future. Around a decade ago, after learning that the nation’s largest food companies rarely breed food for flavor—and instead select for self-serving characteristics, such as the ability to produce high yields or endure long-distance travel—Barber, a chef and the co-owner of the restaurants Blue Hill in Manhattan and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown, New York, turned his attention to seeds. From there, he collaborated wi...
John Hoke, Nike’s chief design officer, intimately understands how to move design from an object to a feeling. At the company over the past three decades, he has refined his approach to center around creating designs that serve wearers in practical yet unexpected ways, and that often redefine what sportswear can look like and do. Hoke often tells his team that “the goal is goosebumps”—to develop ideas so great that they can be physically felt. Hoke’s role in Nike’s legacy of innovation runs deep...
Claudia Rankine cuts to the chase. She does not mince her words. The poet, essayist, playwright, and educator—whose recent body of work analyzes white supremacy in America—looks closely at its subtle and not-so-subtle manifestations, personal and systemic. Her forthright attention to the unspoken runs across three plays and six collections of poetry, in which Rankine works through subjects of tragedy and despair, maternity and motherhood, selfhood and individualism, and everyday instances of rac...
Kenny Schachter has an insatiable appetite for all things art. The polymathic art dealer, curator, teacher, writer, critic, collector, and self-taught artist brings a Tasmanian Devil–level energy to all that he does, but always with great, arms-open passion and, even within his whirlwind of ideas and projects, deep focus. For good reason, he has become a sort of enfant terrible in the art world, someone who’s not afraid to speak his mind, and who doesn’t care about ruffling feathers or messing w...
For Reginald Dwayne Betts—a poet, lawyer, and activist who supports and contributes to prison decarceration efforts—reading and writing have a mind-expanding power that never wanes. The author of three books of poetry and a memoir, his prose is intimate and raw. Even when he’s not writing about himself, Betts finds ways to build personal connections with his subjects for his award-winning work in The New York Times Magazine —subjects that have included the rapper Tariq Trotter of The Roots, the ...
Maggie Doyne, who co-founded the BlinkNow Foundation nonprofit at age 19, discusses how, over the past 13 years, she has developed a school, children’s home, health clinic, and women’s center in Surkhet, Nepal.
Michael 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 Kigali, Rwanda, he creates buildings with the aim of aiding individuals and communities, and addressing complex issues—particularly ones exacerbated by politics and time. In addition to hospitals and health ce...
Author David Wallace-Wells delves into the current state of global warming, emphasizing its rapid acceleration and the devastating impacts of extreme weather and air pollution. He reflects on the psychological challenges of societal normalization in the face of crisis, contrasting the urgent response to COVID-19 with the slower recognition of climate change. Despite the grim realities, Wallace-Wells reveals a growing, albeit tempered, optimism, believing in human agency and the potential for a transformative, though disruptive, shift towards a more sustainable future.
Trumpeter 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 to release more than 100 jazz and classical recordings, win nine Grammy Awards, author six books, and earn more than 40 honorary degrees. In 1987, Marsalis co-founded a jazz program at Lincoln Center, wh...
When 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 her mind with new ideas and realms beyond. At 13, precociously enough, she decided she wanted to become a writer. Her interest in developing what she calls a “flexibility of mind” led her to eventually rea...
Throughout 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 staff. Facing bankruptcy, Humm reflected on the many food-related issues that the pandemic was heightening, including meat-production carbon emissions, food insecurity, and broken supply chains. The extremit...
The 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 sometimes exasperatingly slow pace of progress, particularly when it comes to racial equality, and the resoluteness required for the vital work of pressing on. She approaches each day as an opportunity to ...
Artist 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 branding on her mind. For Millman, part of the allure of logos, identities, and marketing stems from the exercise of clearly and confidently expressing a purpose and meaning—a challenge that she has conc...
For 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 to unpack the many ways in which the age-old activity shapes our lives. Adamson’s work shows that craft is bigger than any single skillfully handmade object—each of which itself can serve as an important...
