Time Sensitive

Theaster Gates, a renowned multidisciplinary artist and cultural organizer, shares his insights on art and community development. He discusses his transformative work in Chicago, creating third spaces for social engagement. Gates reflects on his artistry rooted in music and his experiences in Japan, particularly his connections to Tokoname potters. He emphasizes culture's role in stabilizing neighborhoods and the importance of his Land School project. With themes of urban theory and cultural heritage, Gates weaves together personal narratives and artistic visions.

The British designer Jay Osgerby believes in designing rigorously simple objects that are deeply felt and, hopefully, appreciated for generations to come. As the co-founder of the London-based industrial studio Barber Osgerby, Jay and his partner in the firm, Edward Barber, emphasize experimentation, innovation, and a material- and craft-forward design approach to their products, furniture, architecture, and interiors. Across their nearly 30-year history as a studio, Barber Osgerby has taken a “fewer, better things” approach and along the way built a rich and varied body of work that includes the 2012 London Olympics torch, a commemorative £2 coin (2012), a Victoria and Albert Museum installation with BMW (2014), Vitra’s Tip Ton chair (2011), and paper lanterns crafted by Ozeki & Co. in Gifu, Japan. Each project exudes clarity, calm, and consideration—and always a sense of character. On this episode of Time Sensitive, Osgerby shares his optimistic views on A.I. as a means toward more people engaging in craft and handwork; 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, and soul.Special thanks to our Season 12 presenting sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes: Jay Osgerby[05:08] Flos[8:37] 2012 London Olympics torch[8:37] £2 coin (2012)[8:37] Victoria and Albert Museum[8:37] London Design Biennale[14:18] Design Museum in Tallinn, Estonia[14:18] Isokon[15:58] Dieter Rams[15:58] Ettore Sottsass[15:58] Memphis Group[15:58] Rationalism[20:25] Pitt Rivers Museum[24:56] Vitra[28:49] Arts and Crafts Movement[29:09] Glenn Adamson[31:01] Bill McKibben[36:38] Blueprint[36:38] Paul Smith[38:01] Galerie Kreo[39:00] Tyler Brûlé[41:36] Venini[51:34] Vico Magistretti[51:34] Achille Castiglione[53:07] Ozeki & Co.

For the James Beard Award–winning writer and culinary historian Michael W. Twitty, kitchens provide a multitude of significant purposes that stretch far into the past and carry through to the present. Beyond being places where people cook, share, and eat food, they also serve as vital spaces in which to gather in community, to grieve and process trauma, to teach and learn, to dance, to heal, and to experience Black love and joy. Twitty’s multilayered cooking draws on his family roots, his personal history, and his deep culinary knowledge of the American South. His latest title, the cookbook Recipes From the American South (Phaidon), brings his skill as a home cook and historically informed recipe-maker to the fore, allowing ingredients and dishes to transform into cultural and temporal touchpoints. On this episode of Time Sensitive, Twitty 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 and emotional healing.Special thanks to our Season 12 presenting sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes:Michael W. Twitty[7:43] Saidiya Hartman[8:43] Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and Mules and Men (1935) by Zora Neale Hurston[9:42] Gonze Lee Twitty[16:50] Brer Rabbit [14:33] National Museum of African American History and Culture[19:42] “Amazing Grace”[29:22] Gullah Geechee[54:04] Recipes From the American South (2025)[54:56] Southern Discomfort Tour[1:03:44] Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew (2023)[1:03:44] Rice: A Savor the South Cookbook (2021)[1:03:44] The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African-American Culinary History in the Old South (2018)[1:07:52] Ryan Coogler[1:19:17] James Hemings[1:19:17] Edith Fossett and Fanny Hern[1:19:17] Ursula Granger[1:19:31] Gage & Tollner[1:19:31] John Birdsall[1:19:31] Tennessee Williams[1:19:31] Truman Capote

For the Paris-born, New York–based artist Camille Henrot, time practically never stands still. Across her work in film, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation—and soon, live performance—Henrot has developed ways of stretching and distorting time, seamlessly shifting from moments of potent, rapid-fire intensity to quiet reflection. While her work carries a theory-driven ferocity and intelligence, it’s also incredibly playful. Hers is serious art that manages—often with a knowing, subtle wink—to not take itself too seriously.On this episode of Time Sensitive, Henrot considers the subjectivity of speed and slowness; previews her upcoming first-ever performance-art piece, slated to premiere in 2026 and a collaboration with the nonprofit Performa; and reflects on why, for her, a work is technically never finished. She also shares her fraught fascination with animals, childhood, and the climate crisis—the intersection of which she examines in-depth in her soon-to-debut film “In the Veins.”Special thanks to our Season 12 presenting sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes:Camille Henrot[4:30] RoseLee Goldberg[4:30] Performa Biennial[6:37] Buster Keaton[6:37] Tex Avery[7:03] Estelle Hoy[7:19] Adam Charlap Hyman of Charlap Hyman & Herrero[16:10] “In the Veins” (2026)[17:45] "Grosse Fatigue"[17:45] Massimiliano Gioni[38:51] Roland Barthes[45:36] Pierre Huyghe[47:51] Ikebana Sogetsu[51:46] Okwui Enwezor[55:03] Hypernormalisation by Adam Curtis (2016)[59:51] Jacob Bromberg[59:51] Akwetey Orraca-Tetteh[1:08:50] Adrienne Rich[1:08:50] Ursula K. Le Guin[1:08:50] Annie Ernaux[1:08:50] Mother Reader by Moyra Davey (2001)[1:08:50] Jenny Schlenzka[1:10:14] Maggie Nelson[1:11:02] Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty by Jacqueline Rose (2019)[1:11:02] Representation of Motherhood by Donna Bassin (1994)[1:13:00] Louise Bourgeois

Alison Roman, a renowned cook and food writer known for her improvisational home-cooking style, shares her journey through food and personal growth. She discusses the importance of recipes as time capsules that reflect authenticity. Roman also dives into frugality shaped by her early life and how her ADHD affects her time management. She reveals the joy found in grocery shopping and its significance in her work. Lastly, Alison emphasizes the lasting impact of cookbooks in a digital age, merging tangible experiences with culinary storytelling.

For the British writer and cultural critic Olivia Laing, restoring and tending to their backyard garden has prompted complex questions of power, community, and mystery, concepts that they beautifully excavate in their latest book, the fascinating and mind-expanding The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise. Whether in their nonfiction works, including the critically acclaimed The Lonely City (2016), their art and culture writing and criticism (2020’s Funny Weather: ​​Art in an Emergency), or their novels (2018’s Crudo and the forthcoming The Silver Book, out this November), Laing turns an incisive eye to examining what it will take for people—our “temporal selves,” as they put it—to forgo loneliness and isolation, reconnect with nature and one another, and flourish on a planet in crisis.On this episode, recorded in their apartment at the Barbican in London, Laing explores gardening and writing’s symbiotic relationship; the act of rebelling against a reactive culture by embracing slowness; and the importance of imagining, in vivid detail, the kinds of utopias we could one day very well live in.Special thanks to our Season 12 presenting sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes:Olivia Laing[4:35] The Barbican[7:39] “The Garden Against Time” (2024)[7:53] Mark Rumary[9:08] Notcutts[14:08] “The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone” (2016)[16:07] Jhumpa Lahiri[18:41] Piet Oudolf[19:21] Middleton Place[19:21] The Sackler family[22:54] “Modern Nature” (1991)[24:07] “Paradise Lost” (1667)[25:40] “The Secret Garden” (1911)[25:40] “Tom’s Midnight Garden” (1958)[29:29] “The Garden” (1681)[30:29] “Everybody: A Book About Freedom” (2021) [35:07] “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma” (2014)[39:57] David Wojnarowicz’s "Magic Box"[39:57] Ana Mendieta[40:51] Agnes Martin[43:08] “Funny Weather: ​​Art in an Emergency” (2020) [45:29] “Crudo” (2018) [48:20] “A Dance to the Music of Time” (1951–1975) [50:29] “The Silver Book” (2025)[52:48] Federico Fellini[52:48] Pier Paolo Pasolini[55:17] “News from Nowhere” (1890) 

The British author and journalist Oliver Burkeman has spent decades pondering what it means to live a meaningful life, both in his former Guardian column “This Column WIll Change Your Life” and across several books—most recently, Meditations for Mortals, out in paperback this October. That’s why he brings a healthy dose of skepticism to so-called “time management” systems and productivity hacks as a means toward true fulfillment. Burkeman’s compelled by the notion that, rather than being separate from time, human beings are time. If people faced the reality of their limited time on the planet head on, he believes there’s a real chance to experience greater, more engaged feelings of aliveness.On the episode—our Season 12 kick-off—Burkeman discusses why he’s eschewing  perfectionism and finding unexpected liberation in the premise that, to some extent, the worst has already happened, and the best may still be ahead.Special thanks to our Season 11 presenting sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes:Oliver Burkeman[4:26] “Meditations for Mortals” (2024)[6:48] Donald Winnicott[7:46] Martin Heidegger[7:46] "Technics and Civilization" (2010)[7:46] “Being and Time” (1927)[7:46] “Time Warrior” (2011)[7:46] “Time Surfing” (2017)[7:46] “Anti-Time Management” (2022)[10:14] Medieval peasants[10:14] “The 4-Hour Workweek”[13:18] Alicja Kwade[19:23] “Ichi-go, ichi-e” (“one time, one meeting”)[22:00] Eckhart Tolle[22:36] Agnes Martin[23:28] “The Road Not Taken”[40:03] “This Column Will Change Your Life”[51:00] Nicholas Carr[51:00] Clay Shirky[53:40] Jennifer Roberts[59:04] Pomodoro Technique [59:13] Kanban[1:01:33] James Hollis[1:02:40] Alfred Adler[1:02:40] “The Courage to Be Disliked” (2024)[1:06:24] Stoicism

As the physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker—the author of the mind-expanding book Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life’s Emergence—sees it, every single thing on Earth can be traced to life’s beginnings. Walker studies the origins of life on this planet—one of science’s greatest unsolved puzzles—and, beyond that, whether alien life exists on other planets. As part of her research, she’s advancing a physics known as “assembly theory,” a new way of thinking and talking about life’s origins and, in turn, time. She displays that rare gift for demystifying deeply layered concepts—and for reminding us of how profound it is to be alive, in this moment, in the first place. On this special episode—produced in partnership with the Aspen Art Museum and recorded in Aspen, Colorado, during the inaugural AIR festival earlier this month—Walker makes a compelling case for why understanding life’s origins is crucial to understanding ourselves.Special thanks to our episode sponsor, the Aspen Art Museum. Show Notes:Sara Imari Walker[6:59] Assembly theory[10:00] Thomas Moynihan[11:13] “Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence” (2024)[13:36] Michael Lachmann[18:38] Lee Cronin[18:48] Bertrand Russell [21:04] “A.I. Is Life”[24:10] Paley’s watch argument[25:36] Steve Jobs[25:54] “Reflecting on the iPhone's cultural impacts as it turns 18”[29:14] “It’s Time to Retire the Word ‘Technology’”[32:46] Copernican Revolution[36:14] “Hundert Autoren gegen Einstein” or “One Hundred Authors Against Einstein” (1931)[40:54] Arizona State University: School of Earth and Space Exploration[45:03] AIR Aspen[46:20] Carlo Rovelli[47:44] Thaddeus Mosley[47:54] Constantin Brâncuși[47:55] Isamu Noguchi

In 2003, when the author James Frey published his first book, A Million Little Pieces—a gut-punch account of his experience with addiction and rehab—nobody could have expected what would come next. Thanks to an Oprah Book Club endorsement, A Million Little Pieces was instantly catapulted to bestseller status, but soon blew up in scandal after Frey admitted to having falsified certain portions of the book, which had been marketed as a memoir. The drama that ensued sparked a media controversy—one that now, around 20 years later, feels petty and misplaced, especially in the context of today’s cancel-culture climate. More than 10 million copies of A Million Little Pieces have sold since, and Frey is still at it, writing, publishing, and pushing the boundaries of his art. His latest novel, Next to Heaven, is a rollicking, raunchy, absurd-yet-not satire about money, murder, and the all-too-human desires for power, pleasure, and greed. On the episode—our Season 11 finale, in which Frey sat lotus for the entire duration—he reflects on the A Million Little Pieces saga; his long-term study of Taoism; writing as a gateway to vulnerability; and why love, for him, is the greatest drug there is.Special thanks to our Season 11 presenting sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes:James Frey[5:08] “Tao Te Ching”[5:08] Lao Tzu[5:08] Stephen Mitchell[5:08] Taoism[8:51] Cubism[13:11] “A Million Little Pieces” (2003)[14:16] “Next To Heaven” (2025)[14:16] New Canaan, Connecticut[17:14] Jackie Collins[17:14] “Hollywood Wives” (1983)[17:14] Danielle Steel[21:35] Honoré de Balzac[29:37] “Katerina” (2018) [29:37] “Full Fathom Five” (1947) by Jackson Pollock[37:14] “Larry King Live” (2006)[39:09] “Tropic of Cancer” (1971)[42:24] “Up to Me” (1985)[44:20] “Kissing a Fool” (1998)[52:22] “My Friend Leonard” (2005)[52:22] “Bright Shiny Morning” (2008)[52:22] “The Final Testament” (2011)[58:56] “Author Is Kicked Out of Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club”[58:56] “James Frey: ‘I Always Wanted to Be the Outlaw’”[01:03:18] Bret Easton Ellis[01:03:18] Jay McInerney[01:03:18] Norman Mailer[01:10:54] Rashid Johnson[01:10:54] HBO’s “Native Son” (2019)

Through her sharp and biting political commentary—whether as host of the podcast Fast Politics, as a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, or as a political analyst on MSNBC—Molly Jong-Fast has, over the past decade, become something of a household name. But, as the daughter of the once-famous author and second-wave feminist Erica Jong—whose 1973 novel Fear of Flying catapulted her into the literary limelight—she has actually been in the public eye for much longer, decades before this more recent notoriety of her own making. Jong-Fast’s latest book, the searing, heartbreaking (but also, at times, hilarious) memoir How to Lose Your Mother, is in some sense an effort to take her story back after being in the shadow of her narcissistic, too often out-of-reach mother for so long. It’s also a book about aging and frailty, and an extremely difficult, gut-wrenching year: In 2023, Erica was diagnosed with dementia, right around the same time that Molly’s husband learned he had a rare cancer.On the episode, Jong-Fast talks about her own actual fear of flying, in addition to her mother’s book of the same name; 27 years of sobriety and how her time in A.A. has transformed her life; and the importance of confronting the vicissitudes of aging and one’s passage through time.Special thanks to our Season 11 presenting sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.Show notes:Molly Jong-Fast[4:28] “Fear of Flying” (1973)[4:28] Erica Jong[4:49] “How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir”[7:53] “Spartacus” (1951)[7:53] “April Morning” (1961)[7:53] “The Immigrants” (1977)[9:15] Lee Krasner[10:04] Susan Faludi[10:04] “Backlash” (1991)[12:09] “Fear and Flying Erica & Erotica in Connecticut” (1980)[12:09] “Fanny” (1980)[14:57] Marty Seif[18:26] Special Guest: Erica Jong (2023)[19:39] Pan Am Flight 001[21:11] “The Year of Magical Thinking” (2005)[21:11] “Notes to John” (2025)[26:54] “The Sex Doctors in the Basement” (2005)[36:46] “Normal Girl” (2000)[38:52] Jacob Bernstein[38:52] Carl Bernstein[38:52] Stalin Peace Prize[46:05] Michael Tomasky[48:55] Hazelden[49:57] “How Molly Jong-Fast Tweeted Her Way to Liberal Media Stardom”