Christian Madsbjerg makes sense. Literally and figuratively, in all the definitions of the phrase. With roots in philosophy and political science, Madsbjerg brings a refreshingly human approach to his work as an author, screenwriter, professor, entrepreneur, and business advisor. In the face of some of the greatest concerns of our time—the climate crisis, technological upheaval—he challenges assumptions and advocates for reflection, deep reading, single-tasking, solitude, and yes, slowness. Though he doesn’t abide by the “digital detox” method, Madsbjerg does operate without a smartphone.While Madsbjerg is not immune to the contemporary swell of panic and anxiety, his approach is calm, methodical, and sometimes humorous. The co-founder of ReD Associates—a strategy and consulting firm that takes an interdisciplinary approach to advising big companies through observation, social science, and problem solving—the multifaceted Madsbjerg is an astute observer of human behavior. The author of Sensemaking: What Makes Human Intelligence Essential in the Age of the Algorithm and co-author of The Moment of Clarity: Using the Human Sciences to Solve Your Hardest Business Problem, he is in the process of writing a book called How to Pay Attention and a comedic screenplay about immigration in the U.S., tentatively titled H1B. He also teaches social science, social theory, and discourse analysis at the Parsons School of Design at The New School. On this episode of Time Sensitive, Madsbjerg speaks to Andrew Zuckerman about the importance of long-view historical research, the problematic nature of “design thinking,” the deep value of a liberal arts education, and the relevance today of Martin Heidegger’s philosophical perspectives on time and technology.

Many people turn to spiritual professionals such as astrologists and tarot card readers to help answer life’s most essential and cosmic questions. Eric Standop—international speaker, advisor, author, and facial diagnostics expert—guides people to look inward through a different method: by examining their faces. Through analyzing facial characteristics and behaviors, Standop informs his clients of their talents, emotions, personality types, and overall health. No stranger to self-doubt and career burnout, Standop spent years seeking fulfillment through a rollercoaster career of long hours and travel in the entertainment industry. Early on, after starting out as a radio and television speaker, and then moving to a role in cinema management, Standop began to suffer from fatigue and skin irritations. He decided to take a six-month break before reentering the corporate arena, this time as a P.R. director in computer gaming. Later, he transitioned to high-pressure positions in events and marketing. The stress would again take its toll. One morning, he awoke to find that he had lost all feeling in his arms and legs. Determined to turn his health around, Standop decided to backpack through South Africa. There he encountered a face reader for the first time, and became fascinated with the practice. Standop would go on to learn from masters on three different continents. While we all communicate through facial behavior and recognition on some level, becoming an expert face reader takes significant time and dedication, as with developing any other skill. After several years of gathering information, both about himself and about his practice, Standop set out to teach others. Now, he coaches a wide variety of clients, from business executives to law enforcement officials to even—every once in a while, and only when pressed—babies. Standop’s first book, Read The Face: Face Reading for Success in Your Career, Relationships, and Health (St. Martin’s), came out this fall. On this episode of Time Sensitive, Standop and Andrew Zuckerman go deep into the origins of face reading, the function of smell in medical diagnostics, the ups and downs of his circuitous career, and how he ultimately found inner happiness.

Growing up in Evanston, Illinois, the artist Rashid Johnson had a “mixed bag”—racially, at least—of close friends. There were, he says, “four black guys, two Asian guys, two Jewish guys, a white English guy.…” They still keep in touch today via a text chain. This perspective, combined with the one ingrained in him by his Ph.D. history professor mother, who introduced him from a young age to the works of 20th-century African American writers such as Amiri Baraka, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington, and his tinkerer father, who owned a Wicker Park electronics shop, led to a deep, contextualized curiosity about the human condition: who we are, how we got here, and where we’re going. This multicultural (and intellectual) background continues to feed Johnson—as water and light would a plant—growing his insatiable appetite for better understanding the richness, complications, and contradictions of being human, each of us with our own roots, carrying our own energies—no one necessarily a part of any “monolithic experience.” It has also naturally led him to explore the social, cultural, and political realities of being a black man in today’s world. His multidisciplinary practice, which spans painting, drawing, sculpture, filmmaking, and installation art, is both biographical and collective. Underlying much of Johnson’s work is the idea of escapism—that each of us, on some level, yearns for another reality. Such a narrative is at the core of his directorial debut, HBO’s Native Son, released earlier this year and based on the 1940 Richard Wright novel of the same name (the screenplay was written by the playwright Suzan-Lori Parks). It is also at the heart of “The Hikers,” a ballet film shot on the side of a mountain in Aspen, currently on view at Museo Tamayo in Mexico City (through Nov. 10) and opening on Nov. 12 (through Jan. 25, 2020) at the Hauser & Wirth gallery in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, where it will be shown alongside several other works by Johnson, including ceramic mosaics, paintings, and a large-scale sculpture.On this episode of Time Sensitive, Johnson talks with Spencer Bailey about the steep challenge of turning Wright’s famed novel into a feature film; using materials such as shea butter, black soap, and plants in his artworks; why he remains somewhat ambivalent about the idea of “wokeness”; and his ongoing fascination with the complexity and diversity of not only blackness but also whiteness.

It’s safe to say that, if it weren’t for art historian RoseLee Goldberg, performance art would not be what it is today. Not even close. The founder of the nonprofit organization Performa, which for nearly 15 years has been putting on biennials of live performance around New York City, has for decades helped shape and steer the conversation about what “performance art” even is—and what, at its best and most inventive, it’s capable of achieving. A scholar, critic, and New York University professor, Goldberg has written important texts on the subject, including Performance Now: Live Art for the 21st Century (Thames & Hudson), and has established new modalities for organizing and presenting performances. Her astute understanding of the multidisciplinary medium is unparalleled.With Performa, Goldberg has radically shifted the landscape of the field through collaborations with hundreds of artists, including Adam Pendleton (in what was a breakout moment for the artist), Yoko Ono, Rashid Johnson, Joan Jonas, and Julie Mehretu. Following previous overarching themes like Futurism (2009), Surrealism (2013), and Dada (2017), this year’s biennial, which runs from November 1 through 24, will explore ideas about the Bauhaus on its centenary year. Among the performances will be works by Taiwanese artist Yu Cheng-Ta, who will unpack Western “influencers” and reality TV culture; Gaetano Pesce, who, at the Salon 94 Design gallery, will create a studio atmosphere, evoking the typical conditions of a day, via his assistants molding, pouring, and crafting; and Bunny Rogers, who will turn various spaces at a public high school—including hallways, a gym, and an auditorium—into a “living installation.”On this episode of Time Sensitive, Goldberg speaks with Spencer Bailey about her upbringing as a young dancer in Durban, South Africa, when that country was under apartheid rule; her adventurous journey into the beating heart of the art world, first in London and ultimately in New York; and her path to establishing Performa—and elevating performance art as we know it in the process.

Daniel Brush, a multi-disciplinary artist known for his exquisite creations, discusses his journey as a metalworker, jewelry-maker, and painter. Topics explored include his search for purity and truth in art, the power of drawing and engaging with reactions, fascination with perfection, inspiration from ancient art and a gifted mask, connection to the East, and embracing curiosity in craft.

Inge Solheim is a free spirit, a new-age explorer, and a wilderness guide-guru whose sense of freedom hinges upon not caring, at all, about what other people think of him. Leading trips to the most remote places in the world with diverse groups—ranging from scientists, to private clients, to film crews, to people with disabilities—Solheim trains those who are with him to overcome extreme physical and psychological barriers. Among his most memorable expeditions are a trip to the South Pole with Mark Pollock, who had lost his eyesight nine years prior, and a North Pole expedition with an organization called Walking With The Wounded, accompanied by Prince Harry and a team of English wounded soldiers. Born in Norway, he grew up in a rather dysfunctional family that left him mostly to his own devices. From a young age, he turned to nature, learning to appreciate solitude—and to be self-sufficient. At 14, Solheim started working at a pizza shop at which he would become a shareholder within a year. At 19, Solheim’s daughter, Marian, was born, and he transitioned into a nine-year “mundane” (his word) finance job, eventually becoming VP of a bank in Norway. While the career prestige was exhilarating in its own right, his passion led him to take on adventure traveling as a full-time profession. A rare combination of old soul, hopeless romantic, and youthful pioneer, Solheim chases beauty and adventure, living peripatetically: He resides part-time in Oslo and finds himself gravitating toward Malibu, California, two to three months a year. Reaching the middle of his life, Solheim remains optimistic about almost everything—even climate change—and is currently working on sustainable tourism and travel business. On this episode of Time Sensitive, Solheim and Andrew Zuckerman get philosophical about what it means to be an explorer at a time in which it’s practically never been easier to get anywhere in the world; confronting fear, anxiety, and pressure; trauma and its effect on our perceptions of time; and instant gratification and materialism.

David Duchovny may be swooned over as the hunky special agent Fox William Mulder in The X-Files and Hank Moody in Californication, but it should be noted—and, in our opinion, more widely known—that he is also an accomplished novelist. Yes, novelist. In fact, he has published three novels with the highly esteemed publisher Farrar, Straus, and Giroux since 2015. A fourth novel, called Truly Like Lightning and publicly revealed for the first time on this episode, is in the works.Primarily known for his acting—which also includes a well-known, ahead-of-its-time role, in the early ’90s, as the trans FBI agent Denise Bryson on Twin Peaks—Duchovny has carved out a name for himself as a screenwriter, director, producer, and musician, too. With an extensive literary pedigree—his father, Amram, was a “closet” writer until late in his life, when he published the novel Coney—Duchovny graduated with a B.A. in English from Princeton in 1982 and began (though never finished) a comparative literature Ph.D. at Yale.His mastery across both dramatic and comedic acting, as well as his prolificity in writing and music, is impressive in its breadth and wide-ranging in its subject matter. Less than a decade ago, Duchovny began singing and playing guitar, and in 2015, nearly 30 years into his film and television career, he released his first album, Hell or Highwater. That same year, he also published his first novel, Holy Cow. Since then, he has released a second album, Every Third Thought (2018), and published two more books, Bucky F*cking Dent (2016) and Miss Subways (2018). Now, at age 59, Duchovny’s creative energy continues apace across all these mediums—acting, writing, music—with his next novel soon to come out and plans to turn Bucky F*cking Dent into a film.On this episode of Time Sensitive, Duchovny speaks with Spencer Bailey about novel writing, the need to better understand proposed solutions for the climate crisis, his role as Denise in Twin Peaks, and the various twists and turns of his multifaceted life and career.

Jesse Kamm and her beloved waist-hugging, wide-legged “Kamm pants” embody minimalism. A proponent of producing fewer, better things, Kamm has committed to supporting local craftspeople by making all of her garments in Los Angeles and prioritizing the use of environmentally conscientious materials. This all makes sense within the context of Kamm’s upbringing in a farming and manufacturing town in Illinois, where she was raised by her mother and father—both curious and creative hippies—in a passive solar house they built themselves. The former model turned fashion designer, who spends time in both L.A., where she works, and Panama, where she surfs, lives truly luxuriously by being hyper-protective of her schedule.Kamm maintains that the currency she trades in is freedom, but her life hasn’t always been so balanced. After arriving in L.A. in her early 20s to pursue a modeling career, she quickly lost control and felt stripped bare by the pressures of the industry (and a consequential eating disorder). Living off of cottage cheese and cigarettes, and unhappy with who she had become, she stepped away from the runway and decided she instead wanted to make something. Kamm signed up for sewing classes, started producing her own clothes, and taught herself the ins and outs of running a business. Soon after, she was selling pants for $500 to women in line at a local coffee shop. Since unveiling her first collection, in 2005, she has created a bubble for herself by abstaining from fashion blogs and fancy industry events. Instead, Kamm focuses on her own projects; she spends time with her husband, Lucas Brower, and their 10-year-old son, Julien; and hangs out for three months a year by the Panama ocean, where she and Luke have built their own home.On this week’s episode of Time Sensitive, Kamm talks with Andrew Zuckerman about the essential quality of being a present parent, explains how she has hit upon a sustainable work-life stride, and discusses why she has no intentions of expanding her business beyond its current scale.

Sophia Chang pulls no punches. As the self-described (and indeed) “first Asian woman in hip hop,” Chang carries herself—happily, proudly—with the bravado and swagger of the industry brethren she managed throughout much of the ’90s and 2000s, including Ol’ Dirty Bastard (O.D.B.), RZA, and GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan, Q-Tip and A Tribe Called Quest, and D’Angelo. What makes Chang’s career particularly remarkable, beyond her having worked with so many bold-faced hip hop names, is both the organicness and audaciousness of her journey: A chance encounter in 1985 with Joey Ramone led to a budding friendship with the punk icon and, in a roundabout way, to working for Paul Simon in the late ’80s; through frequenting downtown clubs at the time, she befriended the Wu-Tang Clan, becoming a longtime confidante, insider, and ally of the hip hop collective. By the early ’90s, Chang had landed an A&R gig at Jive Records, where she signed the Fu-Schnickens and worked with names like KRS-One and Tribe.In 1996, having become deeply engaged in kung fu—a practice and passion she picked up through her friendship with the Wu-Tang Clan—Chang decided to take a major turn, leaving the music business altogether to manage Shi Yan Ming, a Shaolin monk who became her partner and the father of her two children, and his New York City temple. Though the relationship didn’t last—the couple split up in 2007—it proved a key part of Chang’s spiritual journey, life, and career. She would return to hip hop after that, working on various projects with and for the likes of RZA, GZA, and D’Angelo for a few years. Now, at 54, Chang is preparing her next big move, stepping out from behind the curtain to tell—no, to own—her story. This fall, with Audible, she’s releasing The Baddest Bitch in the Room, a coming-of-age audiobook memoir that chronicles her peripatetic path. Chang is soon to venture into television, too, having recently sold a screenplay to HBO.Born and raised in Vancouver, the first-generation Korean Canadian will not and cannot be pigeonholed, pinned down, put in a box, or stereotyped. On this episode of Time Sensitive, Chang talks to Spencer Bailey with refreshing candor about her exploits in the 1990s hip hop world, including her close friendship with O.D.B., whom she managed; the ever-shifting landscape of racism, sexism, and ageism in America; and why she feels that now, more than ever, is her time to shine.

Kim Hastreiter identifies as a “punk at heart.” The co-founder of Paper magazine, which she started in 1984 with David Hershkovits, she served as the publication’s co-editor-in-chief until handing it off, in 2017. At 67, she remains the cool mom of downtown New York. A curator, editor, writer, and artist, as well as a perpetually delighted connector of people, she witnessed—and amplified—the fledgling careers of Keith Haring, Vivienne Westwood, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and countless others.Hastreiter is, and has always been, New York hustle incarnate. From spending the Summer of Love building Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti in the desert, to cultivating Paper in 1979 in her loft kitchen, to printing the first issue in 1984 as a black-and-white zine, her gritty commitment to beauty and inspiration has never wavered. There’s never a dull moment with Hastreiter: Throughout Paper’s ascent to pop-culture bible, she curated several art and design shows, authored or co-authored four books, and hosted countless parties for her kaleidoscopic assortment of collaborators and friends. She is currently a mentor for Jim’s Web, a scholarship and mentorship program for emerging creatives, started in memory of her close friend the late design consultant and collector Jim Walrod.On this episode of Time Sensitive, Hastreiter sits down with Andrew Zuckerman to share her experiences of being a Mudd Club kid, selling clothes to Jackie Kennedy, curating in New York at the turn of the millenium, and “breaking the internet” with Kim Kardashian.