Time Sensitive

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.

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20 episodes
Avg 1 hr 6 min
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S13 · E156
June 24 · 59 min
Dries Van Noten on the Meaning Found in Making
On Ep. 156, our latest “site-specific” recording, we meet with Dries Van Noten inside his recently established Fondazione Dries Van Noten in Venice, Italy, to discuss his lifelong fascination with making; beauty as an essential force in one’s life; and his conviction that, in our frenzied, fragmented world, craft offers a gateway to greater meaning and human connection.
S13 · E155
June 17 · 1 hr 20 min
Felix Burrichter on Print’s Enduring Power in the Algorithmic Age
On Ep. 155 of our Time Sensitive podcast, the German-born, New York–based editor and curator Felix Burrichter, founder of PIN–UP, shares why he sees magazines as intimate dinner parties; how slowness and experimentation have become his publication’s defining strengths; and why, despite our precarious present, he continues to strive toward utopia.
S13 · E154
June 10 · 58 min
Maria Popova on the Role of Chance in Shaping Our Lives
On Ep. 154 of our Time Sensitive podcast, 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, discusses her latest book, “Traversal”; why today’s A.I. debates are fundamentally modern versions of age-old questions about the soul; and the mystery of being alive.
S13 · E153
May 27 · 1 hr 4 min
Sheila Hicks on Life as a Series of Portals
On Ep. 153, our latest “site-specific” recording, we visit Sheila Hicks inside her courtyard in Paris’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood to learn about the 91-year-old Nebraska-born artist’s lifelong relationship with textiles, weaving, and perception through materials and environments; her formative travels in South America, Morocco, India, and Japan; and how chance encounters can shape one’s life.
S13 · E152
May 13 · 1 hr 13 min
Valerie June on Joy as a Form of Resistance
On Ep. 152 of our Time Sensitive podcast, the singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and poet Valerie June discusses songs as vessels capable of transporting us to once-in-a-lifetime moments, music-making as a mystical act, and the value of prioritizing gradual progress over instant results.
S13 · E151
May 6 · 1 hr 11 min
George Saunders on the Power of Fiction to Enliven the World
On Ep. 151 of our Time Sensitive podcast, the novelist, essayist, and short-story writer George Saunders discusses his latest novel, “Vigil”; his fascination with the afterlife; how meditation has shifted his approach to writing and his outlook on life; and the short story as a moral and ethical tool.
S13 · E150
April 22 · 1 hr 6 min
Alma Allen on Connecting to the Primordial Through Art
For our 150th episode, our latest “site-specific” recording, we visit the self-taught American artist and sculptor Alma Allen inside his family’s Mexico City home to discuss his highest-visibility exhibition yet—his upcoming solo presentation at the U.S. Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale—and how he’s been navigating the public debate and noise around his selection for it. He also talks about his peripatetic path to art-world ascendancy and the hard-to-pin-down nature of his biomorphic, mat
S13 · E149
April 8 · 1 hr 4 min
Devon Turnbull on Elevating the Beauty of Sound
On Ep. 149 of our Time Sensitive podcast, the artist and audiophile Devon Turnbull discusses sculpting sound through his texture-rich Ojas hi-fi audio systems and immersive listening rooms, including one currently installed at New York’s Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (through July 19) as part of its “Art of Noise” exhibition; how his time in Japan has shaped his understanding of sonic purity; and the synergistic relationship between D.I.Y. culture and the systems he creates.
S13 · E148
March 25 · 1 hr 10 min
Shohei Shigematsu on Why “Memorable Space” Matters
On Ep. 148 of our Time Sensitive podcast, the New York–based architect and OMA partner Shohei Shigematsu talks about his new extension of the New Museum in New York and the importance of what he calls “memorable space,” how he has carved his own distinctive path at the firm over nearly three decades, and the ways in which his Japaneseness has come alive through several of his recent building designs.
S13 · E147
March 11 · 55 min
Lucinda Childs on the Dance of Everyday Life
On Ep. 147 of our Time Sensitive podcast—our Season 13 opener—the choreographer and dancer Lucinda Childs discusses her rigorous approach to movement; revisits her early works from the 1960s and ’70s, performed from March 14–15, 2026, at the Guggenheim as part of Van Cleef & Arpels’s Dance Reflections Festival; and reflects on decades of experimental collaborations with Philip Glass and the late Robert Wilson.
March 4 · 3 min
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 timesensitive.fm, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
S12 · E146
Dec 17, 2025 · 1 hr 20 min
Hans Ulrich Obrist on Art as a Portal to Liberate Time
On Ep. 146 of our Time Sensitive podcast, the Swiss-born, London-based curator and Serpentine Galleries artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist shares what he’s learned from his thousands of conversations with artists, architects, and others shaping culture and society globally; reflects on 25 years of the Serpentine Pavilion; and discusses his firm belief that we all need to embrace more promenadology—the science of a stroll—in our lives.
S12 · E145
Dec 10, 2025 · 1 hr 19 min
Jennie C. Jones on Time Traveling Through Art, Sound, and Space
On Ep. 145 of our Time Sensitive podcast, the artist Jennie C. Jones talks about her two current exhibitions at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis (on view through Feb. 1, 2026) and her 2025 “Ensemble” Metropolitan Museum of Art rooftop installation, what listening as a conceptual practice looks like in action, the art of putting together a playlist, and her deep love of all things analog.
S12 · E144
Dec 3, 2025 · 1 hr 7 min
Noah Horowitz on Art Basel as a Cultural Force
Noah Horowitz, the CEO of Art Basel, details his ambitious agenda for the international art platform, renowned for its best-in-class fairs in Switzerland, Miami, Hong Kong, and Paris, with a Qatar edition launching in February 2026; shares his long-view perspective on the economics of art; and reflects on the centuries-old history that, in a roundabout way, helped lead to—and continues to inform and shape—today’s art world.
S12 · E143
Nov 19, 2025 · 1 hr 17 min
Theaster Gates on Building and Bridging Culture, From Chicago to Japan
For our latest “site-specific” episode, we visit the artist Theaster Gates inside his personal library on the South Side of Chicago to talk about the exhibition “Unto Thee” at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art (on view through Feb. 22, 2026), his first-ever solo museum show in his home city; his forward-looking vision for the Rebuild Foundation’s recently opened arts incubator The Land School; his deep, ongoing connections to Japan and the coastal city of Tokoname; and the vast, al
S12 · E142
Nov 12, 2025 · 58 min
Jay Osgerby on Imbuing Objects With Meaning
On Ep. 142 of our Time Sensitive podcast, the British designer Jay Osgerby, of the London-based industrial design studio Barber Osgerby, considers what his years inside factories and surrounded by craftspeople have taught him about human ingenuity, and reflects on objects as vessels for memory, history, feeling, and soul.
S12 · E141
Nov 5, 2025 · 1 hr 29 min
Michael W. Twitty on Honoring His Ancestors Through Food
The writer and culinary historian Michael W. Twitty, author of the new cookbook “Recipes From the American South,” reflects on what researching and uncovering his ancestry has taught him about Southern cooking and himself, and shares why, for him, food functions as a tangible form of cultural reclamation, memorial-making, and emotional healing.
S12 · E140
Oct 29, 2025 · 1 hr 18 min
Camille Henrot on Tapping Into a Boundless Imagination
The Paris-born, New York–based artist Camille Henrot previews her upcoming first-ever performance-art piece, slated to premiere in 2026 and a collaboration with the nonprofit Performa; explores her fraught fascination with animals, childhood, and the climate crisis—the intersection of which she examines in-depth in her her soon-to-debut film “In the Veins”; and reflects on why, for her, a work is technically never finished.
S12 · E139
Oct 22, 2025 · 1 hr 15 min
Alison Roman on Recipes as Time Capsules
Cook and food writer Alison Roman, author of the best-selling books “Dining In” and “Nothing Fancy,” talks about her forthcoming title, “Something From Nothing,” out Nov. 11, and reflects on the diaristic quality of her dishes, how time and money have shaped her cooking style and approach to recipe-writing, and the beauty of prioritizing tangible things in our ephemeral digital age.
S12 · E138
Oct 8, 2025 · 1 hr
Olivia Laing on the Pleasures and Possibilities of Gardens
The British writer and cultural critic Olivia Laing, author of the “The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise” and the forthcoming novel “The Silver Book,” discusses the symbiotic relationship between gardening and writing; the act of rebelling against a reactive, adrenaline-fueled culture by prioritizing and embracing slowness, in-person conversation, and what they call the “temporal self”; and the importance of imagining, in vivid detail, the kinds of utopias we could one day ver

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