Time Sensitive

Thirty years ago, on July 19, 1989, at 37,000 feet in the air, the titanium fan disk in the tail-mounted engine of United Airlines Flight 232—a DC-10 carrying 296 people from Denver to Chicago—exploded above the cornfields of Iowa. The spiraling debris punctured the aircraft and cut all of its hydraulics lines, making the jet nearly impossible to steer. The captain, Al Haynes, was left to somehow guide the vessel, its crew, and the passengers to the ground. Eventually, it was determined that the flight would make an emergency landing at Sioux Gateway Airport in Sioux City, Iowa. Spencer Bailey, now the co-host of Time Sensitive, was on that plane with his 36-year-old mom, Francie, and 6-year-old brother Brandon. They sat in the 33rd row. His fourth birthday was 30 days away. (His father, Brownell, and twin brother, Trent, were not on board.) After a harrowing 44 minutes that included four swooping 360-degree turns, followed by a call from the cockpit to “brace” amidst howling sirens from the aircraft’s Ground Proximity Warning System, Flight 232 made contact with Runway 22. The tip of the right wing hit the ground, instantly igniting and quickly tearing off. The aircraft’s tail section ripped off, too, ejecting the bank of seats where Spencer, Brandon, and Francie sat. The rest of the plane broke into several pieces. The main section of the fuselage slowed to a stop, upside-down, in a cornfield. One hundred eleven people, including Francie, died. One hundred eighty five, including Spencer and Brandon, survived. On this special episode of Time Sensitive, Andrew Zuckerman speaks with Spencer, who shares his story of the crash and its aftermath.

Few executives have the profoundly spiritual presence of Ivy Ross, who more than five years ago joined Google as a vice president, helping to lead the launch of the second edition of Glass at Google X and for the past three years overseeing design for its hardware division. When Ross enters a room, there’s a magical sort of glow around her. The energy she gives off—as was evident at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June, where she was joined by Spencer Bailey onstage in conversation—is contagious. It’s hard not to be charmed by her openness, her enthusiasm, her empathic nature. She is indeed a breath of fresh air within the often hubristic culture of Silicon Valley, and could be seen as a kind of guru—though she would never describe herself as such. Ross began her career—which has included stints at Calvin Klein, Mattel, Disney, and Gap—as a jewelry designer. And it shows. She’s extremely sensitive to form, color, material, and tactility. She deeply understands the importance of beauty. She believes that energy is embedded in everything, and that it can be felt, positively or negatively, in any object. She’s a shrewd, culturally attuned marketer, too. By the time she was in her mid-20s, she already had jewelry pieces in the permanent collections of museums around the world, including at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Design is in Ross’s blood: She remembers this “incredible curiosity” coming to her at a young age, partly through her father, who worked for the hyper-innovative Raymond Loewy, famous for dreaming up things like Lucky Strike packaging, the Studebaker, various locomotives, and NASA interiors. Ross is someone who throughout life has always trusted her gut, allowing her instincts to lead her through challenging situations, similar to how a drummer might take the reigns and bring a band forward through tricky improvisation. (Perhaps not surprisingly, Ross is also a drummer.) On this episode of Time Sensitive, Ross and Bailey discuss “design feeling,” as opposed to design thinking, and the role of rhythm in her life and work. She also shares how her spiritual education, from Jungian psychology and sound healing to stone medicine and qigong, has helped fuel her creative work and enliven her corporate career.

For the past two decades, Andri Snær Magnason has been on a quest for language that truly gets at the heart of the climate crisis—the images, mythology, and syntax to crystallize the often-abstracted but very real environmental disasters increasingly taking place around us. The 45-year-old Icelandic writer’s latest book, The Casket of Time, offers an allegorical tale of global calamity and apathy, captured through specific, deeply considered language he has been pursuing—and using—over the past 20-plus years. Magnason’s diverse body of work includes Dreamland, a nonfiction account of Iceland’s climate policies; a corresponding documentary co-directed by Magnason of the same name; and The Story of the Blue Planet, a whimsical tale of gluttony and sacrifice that won the Icelandic Literary Prize (a first for a children’s book) and was adapted into a play. A rigorous thinker and empathizer in all aspects of his work, Magnason examines beauty and ugliness as symbiotic instead of antagonistic. His poetry book Bonus is characteristic of this dynamic. Stemming from a critique of the Icelandic supermarket Bónus, the book envisions the world, not so unrealistically, as commercialized bulk. Ironically, or maybe not, the Bónus supermarket itself published Bonus, closing off the writer’s satire full circle. On this episode of Time Sensitive, Magnason discusses with Andrew Zuckerman the mutual dependency of spiritual and rational thinking, details two otherworldly, life-altering meetings with the Dalai Lama, and more.

When Elizabeth Diller graduated from Cooper Union with a degree in architecture in 1979, she had no intention of necessarily becoming an architect. In fact, the Polish-born, New York–raised Diller chose architectural studies simply to explore her interests in art and physical space. Two years later, in 1981, she co-founded a forward-thinking practice with Ricardo Scofidio, who had been her professor and who she later married. At first, their budding firm fell into an avant-garde category that existed outside corporate or institutional confines of art and architecture—and indeed it often critiqued those worlds. Diller and Scofidio were primarily making edgy, visually impactful installations and theatrical projects, as well as conceiving what might even be called “paper architecture”—dream concepts seemingly unlikely to be realized. Over the past three decades, though, with the introduction of numerous technologies, the latter has become reality and, at the same time, the former has continued apace. The firm, now called Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R)—Charles Renfro became a partner in 2004, Benjamin Gilmartin in 2015—has gone on to become one of the most groundbreaking, ahead-of-the-curve practices in the field. DS+R’s many cultural and civic projects around the world include the elevated High Line park in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood; the Broad museum in L.A.; The Shed at Hudson Yards, in collaboration with Rockwell Group; an expansion of the Museum of Modern Art, opening this fall; and the Centre for Music, a permanent home to be built for the London Symphony Orchestra. Diller and her firm’s approach, which begins with questions, accounts for much of this success: “What if we made this building out of water?” “How can we create a conversation between digital media and reality?” The results are often radical. Just take the firm’s breakthrough project, the Blur Building, an “architecture of atmosphere” created for the Swiss Expo in 2002 in Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland. The project was a rebellious, almost anti-architecture statement: the structure disappears. At its heart, the Blur captured the idea of architecture as experience, which is really what the bulk of the firm’s work achieves. DS+R’s buildings typically slow you down; they make you feel something. Today, Diller is among the most revered architects in the world. She has twice been named to the Time 100 list of the world’s most influential people, in 2009 and 2018, and she was the recipient of the first MacArthur Foundation fellowship in architecture in 1999. On this episode of Time Sensitive, Diller shares with Spencer Bailey her roundabout path to becoming an architect, the social and cultural impacts of the High Line and The Shed, and the emotional resonance of designing spaces in her home city.

Ten years ago, the Austrian-born, New York–based graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister—famous for his attention-grabbing exhibitions, posters, and books, as well as for his impeccable album covers for bands like The Rolling Stones, OK Go, and Aerosmith—walked onto the stage at the TED Global conference in Oxford, England. There to present his findings about the power of time off, he spoke specifically about the virtues and values, personal and professional, of taking a sabbatical every seven years, something he started to do in 2000 and has continued to practice since. Coming in the midst of the Great Recession, the talk resonated widely: its resulting video has been watched more than three million times. Clearly, Sagmeister was, and is, onto something. Even if it’s something most people can only dream about. Since then, Sagmeister has gone on yet another sabbatical—his third, in 2016—this time stopping in Mexico City, Tokyo, and the town of Schwarzenberg, Austria, over the course of a year. (For his first sabbatical, he was in New York City; for his second, Bali.) On this episode of Time Sensitive, the 56-year-old looks back, with a fuller-picture view, at his three periods of time off. Digging in to how the sabbaticals created opportunities for incubating ideas that became two massive multi-year undertakings—one a project on happiness, the other on beauty—Sagmeister shares with Spencer Bailey how certain things have changed for his practice since that TED Talk a decade ago. In 2012, he joined forces with Jessica Walsh; their firm, Sagmeister & Walsh, now operates in a different, slightly larger office than the one he was in, and having another partner at the firm has shifted how things run overall. Still, Sagmeister’s signature approach to design remains as exuberant as ever. For clients including the duffel-bag brand Baboon, the Jewish Museum, and the Miami advertising agency Gut, the firm continues to produce inventive and playful work.

Uzodinma Iweala’s journey to becoming the CEO of the Africa Center, a culture and policy institution located on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan at the northeast corner of Central Park, defies expectations. Prior to the role, which he began in early 2018, he had zero non-profit experience. And though the Washington, D.C., native had co-founded a small media start-up in Lagos, Nigeria, he had never lead an organization of this scale or ambition. What Iweala did understand, though, is the power of storytelling—specifically, storytelling of and about the African diaspora. Today, at 36, Iweala is confident that by harnessing storytelling he can, and will, reorient the organization, which was founded in 1984 as the Museum for African Art and saw its share of setbacks prior to his arrival. If Iweala’s diverse background and track record is any indication, the Africa Center is poised to grow into a high-impact hub for pushing conversations and greater understandings about the continent forward. Iweala’s journey has been circuitous to say the least: He wrote the novel Beasts of No Nation, which was adopted into a 2015 Netflix film directed by Cary Fukunaga and starring Idris Elba. He completed a multi-year study of HIV/AIDS in Africa, the result of which became his second book, Our Kind of People. He received an M.D. from Columbia University in 2011, co-founded and launched Ventures Africa magazine, and wrote another novel, Speak No Evil, released last year. In this episode of Time Sensitive, Iweala shares with Spencer Bailey his exceptional experiences as a writer, researcher, doctor, entrepreneur—and now, CEO.

The media tends to hyperbolize and boosterize technologists and the work that they do, creating all kinds of absurdly over-the-top titles for them. But when CBS’s 60 Minutes dubbed Kai-Fu Lee “the oracle of A.I.” earlier this year, it was actually a spot-on assessment. Lee has indeed been at the forefront of the field for more than three decades and is without question an artificial intelligence visionary. There are few people in the world who understand A.I. so astutely, especially within so many social and cultural contexts. His accolades speak volumes: In 2013, Lee was named to that year’s Time 100 list of the world’s most influential people, and this January, he was named co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s A.I. Council. His new book, A.I. Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, quickly rose to become a New York Times bestseller. Lee’s got one extraordinary résumé: After receiving a B.S.in computer science from Columbia University in 1983, he went on to get his Ph.D. in 1988 from Carnegie Mellon, where developed Sphinx, the first-ever speaker-independent continuous speech recognition system. In 1990, he joined Apple as a research scientist, heading up multiple R&D groups there for several years. From 1998 to 2005, he worked at Microsoft, where he established what would become Microsoft Research Asia, and later, upon returning to the U.S., he was named a vice president at the company. In 2005, he decamped to Google, resulting in a widely publicized five-month legal battle with Microsoft. Once settled, Lee helped bring Google to China, overseeing its growth and operations there for four years. Lee now runs Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in start-ups in China, many of them in the A.I. space. As of a year ago, according to Bloomberg, Sinovation had $2 billion under asset management with more than 300 companies in its portfolio. On this episode of Time Sensitive, Lee shares with Andrew Zuckerman his fascinating story of emigrating from China to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at age 11; why he remains rationally optimistic about A.I. (and its increasingly potent presence in our lives); and how a recent bout with cancer drastically altered his outlook on life and work.

Teresita Fernández defies expectations. For more than 20 years, the Miami-born, Brooklyn-based artist has pushed boundaries, literally and figuratively, through her large-scale sculptures, mixed-media works, and high-profile public installations, such as the seemingly illusory “Fata Morgana” in New York City’s Madison Square Park in 2015 and cocoon-like “Autumn (... Nothing Personal)” at Harvard University last year. Her highly evocative work, at its heart, explores the many complex layers embedded in things—an idea that’s inspired, in part, from the traditional East Asian garden concept of shakkei, or “borrowed landscape,” something she discusses in-depth with Spencer Bailey on this episode of Time Sensitive. Even if Fernández’s beautiful, affecting art can be enjoyed on the surface, to fully grasp her shrewd explorations of landscape and her exquisite experimentations with materials—from ceramics to charcoal to gold to graphite—viewers must look at them closely and read them deeply. If they do, they’re likely to come away with a greater, and certainly more real, understanding of the complicated colonial history of the Americas, as well as the sublime beauty inherent in so many of the natural wonders around us. In the lead up to her mid-career retrospective, “Teresita Fernández: Elemental”—perhaps her most ambitious exhibition yet, opening at the Pérez Art Museum Miami this fall (Oct. 18, 2019, to Feb. 9, 2020)—the 51-year-old artist recently came by The Slowdown’s New York City headquarters to share stories about her life and work, from being raised by hardworking Cuban exile parents in Miami to studying for her M.F.A. at Virginia Commonwealth University in a then largely Confederate-proud Richmond. As this interview makes clear, Fernández’s life is as wonderfully layered and complex as her art.

Bjarke Ingels communicates the value—and world-changing potential—of architecture with the giddy enthusiasm and excitement of a sci-fi obsessive anticipating the next big Hollywood blockbuster. This is an analogy that especially makes sense when one gets deep into conversation with Ingels, as Andrew Zuckerman recently did for this episode of Time Sensitive. At age 44, the Danish-born Ingels has become one of the most widely known and talked about practitioners in his field, reaching a level of fame and notoriety that most leading architects don’t see until they’re nearly twice his age. How did he do it? The answer lies largely in comics, or at least that’s where his success story starts. Dreaming of becoming an illustrator or cartoonist, Ingels found a path to architecture through art school. This background allowed him, over time, to shrewdly distill compelling narratives into everything his firm, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), does, whether a Copenhagen waste-to-energy plant that doubles as a ski mountain, a proposed floating city in the sea, or a Shenzhen skyscraper. On this episode, Ingels discusses his circuitous path to prominence; why he named his newborn Darwin; some of BIG’s latest undertakings, including The Dryline masterplan in New York; and why architects, developers, city planners, and others all need to take a longer view when it comes to creating our built environments.

Kate Young, the stylist for red carpet luminaries such as Selena Gomez, Margot Robbie, and Michelle Williams, has one of the shrewdest eyes in the business. Given her background—she comes from a family of competitive athletes and began her career at Vogue as an assistant to Anna Wintour, from whom she learned the ability to schedule periods of “utter focus”—this may not be so surprising. But she has carved her own distinctive path. Pairing fast and slow periods of time into her annual routines, Young believes in (and finds) balance. She achieves as much largely by moving between the bustle of New York City, where she lives and works during the week, and upstate New York, where she has a home and spends summers and weekends. Her style reflects this. In contrast to the attention-grabbing gowns and outfits she chooses for her clients’ public debuts, Young’s approach to what she wears is more “inward-facing” and functional—though she does confess an affinity for a particular Cartier bracelet and, at certain times, enjoys sporting a fancy pair of shoes. Beyond her standout styling work, she has designed a line of lingerie in Japan and, more recently, sunglasses for the brand Tura. On this episode of Time Sensitive, Young discusses her sports-filled youth in New Hope, Pennsylvania; studying English and art history at the University of Oxford; the realities of styling celebrities in the Instagram age; and the public misconception of luxury.