Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal

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.

Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel has no style. No singular aesthetic, mood, or technique. Rather, his focus is on storytelling. From being the first to capture the Contras on film in Nicaragua to photographing the X-Men series and Superman Returns (2006), Sigel has worn many hats (and no, we’re not talking about his fedoras and baseball caps, although there are those, too). But his desire to pursue these projects of various genres and styles all stem from the same goal: to delve into what makes humans human. Born and raised during a time of tense racial relations in Detroit, Sigel learned to look at the world through a political lens early in his youth, which later led to his pursuing social-minded documentaries. When his family moved from Detroit to Buffalo, Sigel got involved in a developing media-study program there, his first foray into the field. Since then, he has worked on dozens of films. He is perhaps best-known for his work on Drive (2011) and Three Kings (1999), and, of course, for his first collaboration with director Bryan Singer, on The Usual Suspects (1995). Sigel most recently worked with Singer in 2018—their tenth film together—on a celebratory biopic of Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody, which was nominated for a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award for best cinematography. On this episode of Time Sensitive—recorded shortly after his arrival back in the U.S. from Vietnam, where he was the director of photography on Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods (to be released in 2020)—Sigel shares with Andrew Zuckerman his early years in SoHo’s vibrant art community, his earning a metaphorical film degree by working for the legendary Haskell Wexler, and how he convinced Warner Brothers to create a movie using cross-processed film.

Neri Oxman is simultaneously a hardcore ecologist, evocative futurist, meticulous artist, and abstract scientist. The 43-year-old Israeli-American designer, architect, inventor, and MIT Media Lab professor embodies the same dualities that her work hinges upon. Oxman’s multifarious projects transcend the digital age; Oxman’s multifarious projects transcend the digital age; instead, she’s pioneering the “Biological Age” through “material ecology,” which fuses biology and technology, nature and culture, and the grown and made. Among her works are energy-generating photosynthetic wearables, a geometric dome spun by a robotic arm and completed by a swarm of silkworms, and sinewy masks modeled, in part, after the wearer’s own anatomical and physiological makeup—projects as functional and ideologically ambitious as they are beautiful. Outstanding in their aesthetic rigor, Oxman’s brainchildren have caught the attention of leading museums, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. This fall, she will receive SFMOMA's 2019 Contemporary Vision Award, and her next exhibition, “Material Ecology” at MoMA (on view from Feb. 22 to May 25, 2020), organized by Paola Antonelli and Anna Burckhardt, will present eight works from throughout her 20-year career—most notably an updated version of “Totems,” an array of vehicles for synthetically engineered melanin that debuted earlier this year in the Antonelli-curated “Broken Nature” exhibition at the Triennale in Milan. Having pursued architecture after dropping out of medical school, Oxman went on to study at the Architectural Association in London and, later, at MIT, where after earning a Ph.D. she stayed on to become a professor and now leads the pathbreaking Mediated Matter group. On this episode of Time Sensitive, Oxman and Spencer Bailey delve into motherhood, “fossils of the future,” robotic queen bees, death masks, and more.

Valerie Steele’s deep contextual dives into the history of fashion set her apart from other academics and curators—two identities she embodies in equal parts. The chief curator and director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (since 1997 and 2003, respectively), she has produced upwards of 25 exhibitions while also, over the past 15 years, leading the institution. No corner of fashion is out of bounds for the charismatic and multifaceted Steele. Past exhibition subjects have ranged from corsets to gothic fashion to queerness to the color pink. Writing, too, has been a major part of her unabating scholarship, as is evident in her authoring or co-authoring of nearly 30 books over the past few decades—the first of which, on fashion and eroticism, was a product of her final Ph.D. dissertation at Yale in the early ’80s. For Steele, clothes aren’t just tangible garments—they’re the constant medium through which to better understand things like politics, psychology, sexuality, and time. (Perhaps not surprisingly, in 2012, Suzy Menkes of The New York Times dubbed her “the Freud of Fashion”—a moniker Steele relishes.) Her rigorous, vibrant exhibitions—and her career as a whole—are the ultimate clapback to academics who once snubbed her studies as frivolous. Her next Museum at FIT showcase, “Paris: The Capital of Fashion” (on view from Sept. 6, 2019, to Jan. 4, 2020), collects roughly 100 objects that exemplify the “cultural construction” of the French city, from the 18th century to the present, contextualizing the evolution of artisanal haute couture into big business. On this episode of Time Sensitive, Steele and Spencer Bailey discuss her ongoing obsession with the city of Paris, academia’s continued distaste for fashion as a subject of worthy inquiry, her circuitous path to FIT (she dropped out of school at 15 and lived in a “lesbian-feminist commune” before attending Dartmouth for undergrad and Yale for her Ph.D.), and why luxury menswear is on the rise.

Michael Kimmelman does nothing in half measures. For more than 30 years, he has brought his assertive, culturally astute, historically sensitive perspective to The New York Times, which he has been contributing to since 1987 and joined full-time in 1990. During his tenure, he has written more than 2,000 articles, ranging from art criticism (he was its chief art critic from 1990 to 2007); to reporting from Europe and the Middle East (from 2007 to mid-2011, he was based in Berlin, where he was the “Abroad” columnist); to civically minded coverage of the built world, which has been his focus as the paper’s architecture critic the past seven years. Throughout Kimmelman has displayed the rare ability to balance his writing in a way that shows him to be more far more level-headed than hot-headed. He is a classically trained pianist who plays with the well-rounded, even-keeled temperament and gentle skill of someone who clearly has done the work and put the hours in, and the same is true of his pieces in The New York Times. Consider his judicious take—note: not takedown—on a 1992 Julian Schnabel show at Pace gallery: “Mr. Schnabel's ambition and ego continue to outstrip his ability to paint. But there's something impressive about his sheer audacity, and just enough talent in him to make it impossible to dismiss his work out of hand. One wants to ignore it but can't.” Or, more recently, in 2014, his view on David Adjaye’s Sugar Hill social-housing complex in Harlem: “Sugar Hill is something of an extravagance and not easily replicable. But it posits a goal for what subsidized housing might look like, how it could lift a neighborhood and mold a generation.” Kimmelman more often than not sees the bigger picture and, at the same time, injects his own shrewd, deeply studied understanding of the subject at hand. On this episode of Time Sensitive, Spencer Bailey speaks with Kimmelman about his lesser-known talents as a pianist, his three-plus-decade path at The New York Times, and his goal as architecture critic to build a greater discourse around designing cities that are better, healthier, and simply fairer for all.

Andrea Illy breathes coffee. Not literally, of course, but coffee has indeed been a part of his being since birth. The third-generation head of Illycaffè, he is the company’s chairman and, with CEO Massimiliano Pogliani, leads the massive global enterprise. With good reason—namely, its high-quality, beautifully packaged products—Illycaffè remains one of the largest coffee operations on the planet, with distribution in 145 countries. Last year, it brought in 483 million euros in revenue. Andrea’s path to the trade, on some level, was predictable: The company was founded by his grandfather, Francesco, and later run by his father, Ernesto. He entered the business shortly after earning an advanced degree in chemistry from the University of Trieste. Starting at Illycaffè 1990 as a supervisor of quality control, he quickly rose to become CEO in 1994 and in 2005 was named chairman. (He also studied business at SDA Bocconi in Milan and attended other management and executive programs along the way, including one at Harvard Business School.) In his current role, the 55-year-old continues to commit himself to the brand. Over the past three decades, he has seen Illycaffè surge from a more regional business to an international phenomenon. Not your average executive, Andrea speaks with the wisdom of a philosopher about things like contemporary art, the redemptive power of beauty, and the chemical, biological, agronomical, and physical elements of coffee growing and preparation. More recently, Andrea has been emphasizing the potential—and for Illycaffè, the reality—of “soil-to-soil” coffee production. He calls the concept “virtuous agriculture,” a term he coined to describe a method that combines sustainable farming with a focus, in part, on regenerating the environment by enriching soil with organic carbon. On this episode of Time Sensitive, Andrea talks with Spencer Bailey about the neurophysiology of beauty, the art and science of coffee, and why Illycaffè had made contemporary art so central to its brand and identity.

New Jersey native Maggie Doyne was age 18 when she arrived in Nepal, 19 when she had co-founded the BlinkNow Foundation nonprofit to support children in the district of Surkhet, and by 25, she had become a mother to 40 children. Doyne’s unlikely story began in 2005, with the decision to take a gap year after high school and travel; she felt it was necessary to press pause on a more expected path and learn about herself and her purpose in the world. Upon her visit to Nepal, Doyne fell in love with the country and the people. But she also found it in the aftermath of a nearly 11-year civil war, with displaced families, schools shut down, and children breaking rocks to sell for money. Doyne gathered her babysitting savings—just five thousand dollars—to buy a piece of land in Surkhet, and started a children’s home there. She still lives in that home now as the mother to 54 children. Today, BlinkNow, which she co-founded with her Nepali friend Top Malla, supports the Kopila Valley School, as well as a children’s home, health clinic, “Big Sister’s” home, and women’s center. The Kopila Valley School’s new campus opened this past February. Not only does the pre-primary through 12th grade program have 20 classrooms to educate more than 400 students, it is one of the greenest schools in the world. For her work, Doyne has received the Unsung Hero of Compassion Award, presented to her by the Dalai Lama in 2014, and was recognized as CNN’s 2015 Hero of the Year. On this episode of Time Sensitive, the 32-year-old Doyne discusses her path from presumably college-bound student to full-time mother of nearly five dozen Nepali children; experiencing heartbreaking loss and meeting the love of her life; and the importance of taking action.