Peter Saville is a man of the moment—and has been, again and again, throughout the past five decades. Raised in Manchester, England, in the sixties—in tandem with the growing prominence of counterculture, the rise of anti-war sentiments, and the birth of pop—Saville developed early on a keen eye and ear for the zeitgeist, or what he terms “nowness.” In his adolescence, he took up a fervent interest in music and in record covers in particular, and went on to art school to study graphic design. In his final year, he was commissioned to design the very first posters for the punk music venue The Factory, which would soon morph into the legendary independent record label Factory Records. Across his prolific, nearly 50-year-long career in graphic design and art direction, Saville has created album covers for Joy Division and New Order (most iconically, the one for Joy Division’s debut studio album, Unknown Pleasures); branding for clients including Ferragamo, Burberry, and Aston Martin; and more recently, even Kvadrat fabric designs—each drawing inspiration from the spirit of their times—that can be called nothing short of era-defining. Woven across all of his work are provocative dialogues between past, present, and future.On this episode, Saville speaks with Andrew about coming of age in the punk and post-punk worlds, the increasing impossibility of tracking “nowness,” and creating literal signs of the times.Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Peter Saville[12:11] Kvadrat Technicolour[01:10:48] Power, Corruption & Lies album cover[42:21] Factory Records[50:15] FAC1 poster[50:15] Haçienda[53:13] FAC 2[29:23] Unknown Pleasures album cover[01:22:13] Closer album cover[01:24:43] “Blue Monday” cover[01:35:44] The Apartment[01:39:29] Show Studio

Roxane Gay describes her wild trajectory as a multihyphenate writer-editor-publisher-professor-social commentator as “fairly bewildering.” And she’s not wrong: Over the past decade—and with long odds stacked up against her as a queer Black woman of size—Gay has had a meteoric rise in the media and publishing stratosphere, achieving rare heights. She has written a best-selling memoir, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017); a book of essays, Bad Feminist (2014); and two collections of short stories, Ayiti (2001) and Difficult Women (2017). She publishes a weekly newsletter called The Audacity and hosts The Roxane Gay Agenda podcast. Gay is also a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times. This spring, she launched the Roxane Gay Books imprint with the publisher Grove Atlantic, and this fall, she begins her rarified position as the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Her next book, the astutely titled How to Be Heard, comes out in the spring. Across all of her work, Gay addresses topics related to feminism, women’s rights, rape culture, sexual violence, weight and body image, trauma, race, and friendship. Gay, it is safe to say, is one of the most essential writers of our time, someone hyperattuned to the moment we’re in and who fights like hell for the issues and causes she deeply believes in. Now in a well-earned position of power, she uses the influence she has to elevate the voices of other writers she feels are being or have been overlooked.On this episode of Time Sensitive, Gay talks with Spencer about her nomadic childhood across America as the daughter of Roman Catholic Haitian immigrant parents, her fluid and flexible approach to time, and her open-armed joy of cooking.Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Roxane Gay[04:16] Bad Feminist[04:16] Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body[13:01] Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies[13:12] Roxane Gay Books[13:16] The Audacity Newsletter[13:18] Roxane Gay Agenda Podcast[13:22] Roxane Gay MasterClass[45:31] Ayiti[45:31] An Untamed State[45:31] Difficult Women[48:20] T Magazine “Cooking Class” videos

For the past five decades, the British-born, New York–based artist Jamie Nares has been capturing the passage of time, the physics of motion, and the essence of self through a wide variety of mediums, including film, painting, music, photography, and performance. Many of Nares’s films, such as Pendulum (1976) and Street (2011), play with rhythm and speed as they distill the streets of New York City and the movements of its inhabitants. Nares’s vast body of work shares a common theme: the recording of a specific moment in time that gives the viewer an intimate look into a human experience. Her famous brushstroke paintings are both powerful and delicate, capturing the mere seconds of a single, continuous bodily motion using a repeated swooping gesture. One of her recent projects, “Monuments,” pays homage to the workmen who, centuries ago, chiseled marks in the huge granite blocks of downtown Manhattan. As life speeds up following the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, Nares’s work serves as a beautiful reminder to slow down, and to more deeply explore the many movements around us.On this episode of Time Sensitive, Nares talks with Andrew about her decades of work exploring time, rhythm, and movement; her journey transitioning to womanhood at age 65; and why her daughters and the next generation give her hope for the future.Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Full transcriptJamie NaresKasmin Gallery[03:32] Street[15:43] Pendulum[25:26] Red-Handed[27:29] A New Vein[31:10] James Chance and the Contortions[38:18] Ramp[38:36] No Wave Cinema[39:21] Monuments[50:02] “Nares: Moves”

Xiye Bastida was quite literally born into environmentalism. Throughout her upbringing in San Pedro Tultepec, Mexico, and later in New York City, Bastida’s Indigenous community leader father, of the Otomi-Toltec people, and Chilean ethno-ecologist mother taught her the importance of ancestral wisdom, respecting nature, and protecting the planet. A lead organizer of the Fridays for Future youth climate strike movement, Bastida is also the co-founder of the Re-Earth Initiative, whose aim is to make the climate movement more inclusive and accessible. She has quickly become one of the world’s most visible and vocal youth leader’s in the climate conversation: Last year, she spoke at the U.N. Leadership Summit on Climate, hosted by the Biden administration, and gave the closing speech at the World Leaders Summit at COP26. She was recently on the cover of Vogue México, and in May, she attended the Met Gala upon the invitation of fashion designer Gabriela Hearst. All this while attending the University of Pennsylvania, where she’s an undergraduate majoring in environmental studies with a concentration in policy.On this episode of Time Sensitive, Bastida speaks with Spencer about effective strategies for climate activism, the deep meaning and value of Indigenous wisdom and ancestral knowledge, and what’s next for the climate movement.Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Full transcriptXiye Bastida[10:48] “Okay, doomers”[16:38] Otomi-Toltec people[21:53] COP26 World Leader Summit speech[52:54] Re-Earth Initiative[53:13] U.N. Leaders on Summit Climate speech[53:28] Gabriela Hearst[59:41] Levi’s Partnership[59:47] Nike campaign

Fashion designer Rachel Comey has always done things in a tightly focused way—and on her own terms. For more than two decades, she has followed an independent, wholly original approach to clothing design and retail that has resulted in her eponymous brand’s staying power. From novelty underwear with pockets, to a hand-painted shirt that musician David Bowie once wore on the Late Show with David Letterman, to her trademark high-waisted, wide-legged Legion pants, Comey’s designs stand out for their artful craft, distinctive aesthetic, and no-fuss sensibility. Beautiful as they are, they’re also, in a sense, utilitarian: Comey spends her time imagining her wearers’ needs as they go about their days and designs around that. There is something about the entire Rachel Comey universe that comes across as effortlessly cool.On this episode, Comey talks with Andrew about her 20-plus years in the fashion industry experimenting while staying true to herself, childhood memories that have helped shape her enduring designs, and her attention toward creating joy through clothing.Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Full transcriptRachel Comey[34:29] Fashion Week[47:39] Pioneer Works[49:14] High Maintenance[52:08] Legion Pant

For Céline Semaan, the founder of Slow Factory, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing climate justice and social equity, no obstacle is too big—or too conceptual—to surmount. Underlying all of Slow Factory’s efforts is the notion of “fashion activism,” a term that’s been credited to Semaan herself. The organization’s past projects include “Landfills as Museums,” which served as a meditation on what “trash” really is, and among its upcoming efforts is “Garment-to-Garment,” an initiative that will teach designers to make clothes from existing apparel instead of from rolls of raw fabric. Semaan is also currently developing the new Slow Factory Institute in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which will serve the dual roles of a factory for waste-led production as well as a Bauhaus-style school for climate justice.On this episode, Semaan speaks with Spencer about fashion as a political act, the importance of finding ease with contradiction, and what a post-trash world could look like.Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Full transcriptcelinecelines.comslowfactory.earth[03:54] “Slow is Beautiful”[06:16] Open Education[10:58] “Cities at Night”[30:16] “Applied Utopia”[34:05] Slow Factory Institute[35:01] Colin Vernon[36:33] Slowhide[41:13] “Landfills as Museums”[51:25] “Garment-to-Garment”[01:08:41] A Woman Is a School[01:24:45] “The Revolution is a School”

For writer, comedian, and cultural critic Baratunde Thurston, host of the How to Citizen podcast, humility is a tool to connect with people—and to bring them together around some collective sense of truth. Through his work, Thurston serves as an ambassador to his audiences, always considering what they’re going through and the questions they might ask. A Harvard graduate, he has advised the Obama White House and worked as a producer on The Daily Show, and is author of the best-selling memoir How To Be Black. A dogged dedication to transparency shines through all that Thurston does. Across his projects, he takes on nuanced discussions about race, technology, and democracy—and in the hopes of galvanizing his readers, listeners, and viewers, uses compassion and humor to make these subjects more approachable. Whether writing about Will Smith’s Oscars slap or the metaverse for the media company Puck (of which he is a founding partner) or hosting the new PBS travel series America Outdoors With Baratunde Thurston, he navigates everything with great self-awareness, curiosity, and an open mind. On this episode, Thurston speaks with Andrew about storytelling as a collaborative process, the value of open-source technology, and the word “citizen” as a verb.Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Full transcriptbaratunde.com[04:16] Sidwell Friends School[13:49] We’re Having A Moment podcast[14:59] Live on Lockdown[21:56] “How To Do a Data Detox In a Zillion Easy Steps”[25:06] Thurston’s TED Talk, “How to Deconstruct Racism, One Headline at a Time”[39:01] How to Citizen podcast[01:22:27] How to Be Black[01:24:26] “The Human Shield Against Technology”[01:25:17] Thurston’s TEDx Talk, “Hacking Comedy”[01:32:53] America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston

Author and translator Jhumpa Lahiri grew up in what she has called “a linguistic exile.” Born in London to Bengali immigrants who moved to the United States when she was 3, Lahiri experienced a profound sense of alienation as a child and a longing for somewhere that felt like home. Then, during a 1994 trip to Florence, Italy, she fell in love with the Italian language, which she came to see as a gateway to exploring her life and identity further—or to, in other words, get beyond any imposed self. For the last decade, she has written almost exclusively in Italian, and has translated most of her Italian writing into English herself. A visceral energy rises up from her translated sentences, reflective of the strong emotional tenor she feels when engaging with the Italian language. Some warned Lahiri against her decision to embrace Italian, practically considering it career suicide. But she remained unmoved. Despite her many triumphs until that point—including winning the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for her debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), and having her popular novel The Namesake (2003) turned into a Hollywood film—the pivot brought about a new flood of creativity. Since 2015, Lahiri has produced more books than there have been years, including her most recent, Translating Myself and Others (Princeton University Press), which was published in May. Her first book of Italian short stories, Racconti Italiani, or Roman Stories, will debut in the fall.On this episode, Lahiri speaks with Spencer about translation as a political act, the vocabulary of architecture, and language as a portal to understanding one’s place in the world.Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Full transcript[12:35] The Lowland[16:33] Translating Myself and Others[22:32] The Clothing of Books[22:32] The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories[23:11] Whereabouts[25:00] Confidenza[25:12] Ovid’s Metamorphoses[33:41] In Other Words[36:14] Racconti Italiani[39:35] The Namesake[43:38] Interpreter of Maladies[47:53] Unaccustomed Earth[59:44] Jhumpa Lahiri on Charlie Rose[01:07:38] Philip Guston

Jancis Robinson wrote the book on wine. Literally. The author of the first four editions of the definitive Oxford Companion to Wine, she has also published some 20 books on the subject and more than 1,500 articles for the Financial Times, for which she has been the wine correspondent since 1989. A member of the royal family’s wine committee, she also helps select wines for Queen Elizabeth II. A trailblazer and a nimble scholar, Robinson—who, in addition to her work at the FT, pours her expertise into her jancisrobinson.com website—was the first wine writer ever to become an M.W., or Master of Wine, a rare distinction.With nearly five decades in the trade, Robinson has an acute awareness of the forces behind the field’s constant evolution, and gives her readers context so that they can understand what it all means. Her primary interests lie not just in the flavors of wine, but rather in the stories that wines tell about where they came from, how they’re made, and what they reveal about the world. A supporter of the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation, a nonprofit working to improve soil health, she also helps amplify the many ways in which the climate crisis is impacting the wine industry, such as harvest dates and “smoke taint.” By her account, the wine world is in more flux today than ever before. On this episode, Robinson speaks with Spencer about the power of old vines, the trials of translating taste and smell into language, and why some of today’s most thoughtful producers are packaging great wines in cardboard boxes and cans.Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Full transcriptjancisrobinson.com[15:10] Regenerative Viticulture Foundation[17:16] The World Atlas of Wine[22:43] Vintage Time Charts[26:47] “Ancient Vines and Stunning Wines, But Portugal’s Douro Valley Has a Problem”[28:37] Historic Vineyard Society[28:48] Sideways[31:14] Jancis Robinson’s Wine Course[43:09] Master of Wine exam[46:04] The Oxford Companion to Wine[49:45] The 24-Hour Wine Expert[57:53] Wine Grapes[59:53] Design Classics[01:00:51] The Royal Opera House

Israeli singer-songwriter David Broza believes that music can unite people across cultures and has spent the past 45 years showing audiences how it can be done. One of his latest projects exemplifies this philosophy: Beginning in October, once a month during the Friday Kabbalat Shabbat services at Manhattan’s Temple Emanu-El, Broza will present tracks from Tefila, a new album that recasts the service’s traditional prayers and hymns as a blend of folk, jazz, pop, and classical songs. Performed by Broza, who sings in Hebrew and plays guitar alongside a global band of strings, horns, and gospel singers, the effort is a culmination of a lifetime spent honing his craft, which is rooted in the idea of music as a potent tool for facilitating dialogue and social change. Themes of building bridges and breaking barriers run throughout Broza’s vast catalog. Among his 40-plus albums, many of which are multi-platinum, with English, Hebrew, and Spanish lyrics, several put American and Spanish poems to melody. His first song, “Yihye Tov,” or “Things Will Get Better,” from 1975, became and remains a soul-stirring peace anthem for Israel; his 2014 album, East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem, features both Israeli and Palestinian musicians. Whether playing for three people (as he once did, in the Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona, as it was being shelled by rockets) or thousands, Broza takes great care to convey a sense of empathy and hope into his dynamic compositions.On this episode, Broza talks with Andrew about music as a connective tissue, how dialogue can lead to respect, and why feeling trumps thinking almost every time.Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Full transcriptdavidbroza.net[07:45] Yehonatan Geffen[07:45] “Yihye Tov” [21:51] “The Sixteenth Sheep” [33:42] Tefila[37:42] “Not Exactly Christmas”  [43:17] Misa Criolla[50:51] Sharona Aron[54:21] Wellesley Aron[01:21:01] One Million Guitars