At a Distance
A podcast about the bigger picture. Host Spencer Bailey calls on leading minds, from scientists and technologists to artists and climate activists, to zoom out and look at some of the planet’s most pressing issues from a whole-earth, long-view perspective.
Latest episodes
May 12, 2020 • 37min
Randy Komisar on Why Innovation Is Dying and Capital Thriving in Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley venture capitalist Randy Komisar, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, discusses the pressing need for social-justice innovations, the unregulated imbalance between capital and labor, and the monopolization of data by the big tech companies.
May 11, 2020 • 28min
Paola Antonelli on Planning a Better Legacy for Humanity
Paola Antonelli, the senior curator in the department of architecture and design of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, speaks with us about design’s vital role in the midst of emergency, and how, by simply showing more respect, we will be remembered in a better way.
May 8, 2020 • 22min
Gillian Tett on the Risk of Pandemics as an Incredible Blind Spot
Financial Times editor-at-large Gillian Tett talks about the urgent need to question how we construct our societies, interact with technology, and the true meaning of globalization, and why the pandemic may lead to wiser, humber, more open ways of being.
May 7, 2020 • 41min
Markus Gabriel on the Coronavirus as an Immune Reaction of the Planet
Philosopher Markus Gabriel, director of the International Centre for Philosophy at the University of Bonn in Germany, discusses why he views humans as a dangerous plague and the turmoil around truth in the 21st century.
May 5, 2020 • 36min
Rob Johnson on the Covid-19 Pandemic as a Necessary Awakening
Economist Rob Johnson, the executive director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, speaks with us about the massive wealth disparity that’s fracturing America, blind spots in our political and economic systems, and finding a way out of this “extreme disrepair.”
May 4, 2020 • 31min
Rosanne Somerson on Cultivating “Perceptive Voices” of the Future
Rhode Island School of Design president Rosanne Somerson talks about the challenges she’s facing as a leader in higher education amidst the novel coronavirus, why territorial thinking has to stop, and the need to look at the Covid-19 pandemic as a “call-to-action moment.”
Apr 30, 2020 • 28min
Paul Holdengräber on the Transformative Nature of Asking Good Questions
Paul Holdengräber, the host of the podcast The Quarantine Tapes and the founding executive director of the Onassis Foundation L.A., discusses his hope for humanity to return to a kinder way of being and why the Covid-19 pandemic is a “very philosophical moment.”
Apr 29, 2020 • 24min
Waris Ahluwalia on Why We Shouldn’t Want to Return to “Normal”
Entrepreneur, designer, and actor Waris Ahluwalia, the founder of House of Waris Botanicals, speaks with us about how cultural and societal obsessions with productivity are destroying the planet and why our relationship to nature is broken.
Apr 28, 2020 • 34min
Tatiana Schlossberg on the Urgent Need to Consume More Consciously
Environmental journalist Tatiana Schlossberg, author of “Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have,” talks about what Covid-19 and the climate crisis have in common and the far-reaching impacts that our personal actions can have on the Earth.
Apr 27, 2020 • 36min
Nikil Saval on Coming to Terms With Our Failures as a Society
Writer, editor, activist, and politician Nikil Saval, who’s currently running as a Democrat for Pennsylvania State Senate, discusses the urgent need to build a society that cares for itself and the deeply entrenched problems he sees with healthcare, housing, and prisons in the U.S.
