If life is a garden, the writer, editor, and craftsperson Deborah Needleman certainly knows how to dig and cultivate it. Early in her career, she followed a nonlinear path in the media industry that was, for the better part of a decade, slow and steady—and then, upon launching the home design bible Domino in 2004, meteoric. Over the next dozen years, Needleman rose to become one of the magazine world’s most in-demand editors, serving as the editor-in-chief of both WSJ. Magazine and T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Across this work, her deep appreciation for beauty, craft, gardening and nature, and unfussy, richly layered interiors shined through. By the end of 2016, though, Needleman decided that she had had enough of the whirlwind hustle of the magazine business. She sought a way to work with her hands, not just her head. So she slowed down—way down—and turned to the meditative acts of gardening and craft. She headed to the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina, where she took an introductory broom-making course. Soon, she began producing a limited-edition “Garden Tea” of herbs such as chamomile, lemon balm, and mint. And she kept writing: Throughout 2017 and 2018, Needleman traveled the world, studying local crafts for the T column “Material Culture.” In time, she began to work more consistently with her hands, establishing a humble craft practice, primarily focused around basketry, that she continues to build upon today.On this episode, Needleman talks with Spencer about the pleasures of producing objects from modest materials, what her current craft endeavors have in common with magazine-making, and the deep inherent value of a patina.Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes: Full transcript[07:52] The December 4, 2016, issue of T: The New York Times Style Magazine[11:23] “For the Love of Italy” [16:21] Deborah Needleman’s home in upstate New York[18:44] “Long-Stemmed Neuroses” [20:33] “The Anti-Martha”[22:22] Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End [25:23] Piet Oudolf[37:15] “Lessons in the Humble Art of Broom-Making”[41:59] Deborah Needleman’s Side chair[47:19] John C. Campbell Folk School 

Bethann Hardison has, with great finesse, risen to become among the most vital voices in fashion. A self-described “advocate” who currently serves as Gucci’s executive advisor for global equity and cultural engagement, the former model and agent is a powerhouse figure who has not only reshaped conversations around diversity and anti-racism industry-wide, but has actively pushed for and, in turn, made change in terms of representation, from advertising campaigns to editorial shoots to runway shows.Hardison brings a nuanced, lived approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion, one that is wholly her own, and one that she has practiced from a young age. With subtle (and sometimes, not-so-subtle) force—and through projects such as the Black Girls Coalition, which she co-founded in 1988 with her friend the model Iman, and the Diversity Coalition, which she started in 2013 by calling out certain brands for not using any models of color in their runway shows—Hardison has stepped up again and again, speaking truth to power, against what was, and in some respects remains, a long, ongoing lack of representation. This work has earned her a matriarchal place in the upper echelons of the fashion world, with recognitions such as the 2014 CFDA Founder’s Award. Hardison is currently at work on a memoir about her life, and a documentary about her path to fashion and diversity work by the filmmaker and director Frédéric Tcheng is also underway.On this episode, she talks with Spencer about her “queen-ager” energy, her glass-half-full philosophies around death and dying, her efforts to call out fashion industry racism, and her rational, deep-seated concerns for the future.Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Full transcriptbethannhardison.com@bethannhardison [29:07] CFDA Founder’s Award[51:32] “The Battle of Versailles” runway show[51:43] The October 1974 cover of Essence[55:54] Issey Miyake and Twelve Black Girls[01:00:36] Black Girls Coalition[01:19:00] The “All-Black” issue of Italian Vogue

There is perhaps no one on the planet with a bigger-picture view on the impact of design—in all of its manifestations—than Paola Antonelli. As the Museum of Modern Art’s senior curator of architecture and design as well as its director of R&D, Antonelli consistently expands notions and definitions of what might be considered “design,” and shows how, in no uncertain terms, design connects to practically everything we see, touch, hear, taste, smell, and do. With great passion and energy, she is the ultimate clear-eyed booster of this wide-ranging realm she holds dear. Antonelli’s most recent output—the book Design Emergency: Building a Better Future (Phaidon)—is not only an outgrowth of her prolific 28-year career at MoMA (during which she has worked on related projects including the 2005 exhibition “Safe: Design Takes on Risk,” the 2015 book Design and Violence, and the 2019 Triennale di Milano exhibition “Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival”), but also a result of the pandemic. During lockdown in spring 2020, Antonelli, together with the British design critic and writer Alice Rawsthorn, conceived and launched @designemergency on Instagram, a still-ongoing feed that highlights voices central to key global issues, all of them related to improving the world through design. The effort is yet another example of Antonelli’s talent for synthesizing a vast array of provocative projects, designers, products, and ideas; bringing them to the forefront; and giving them much-needed attention. On this episode, Antonelli talks with Spencer about time as a frustration, the myth of speed, the importance of going with the flow, and the many design emergencies constantly taking place all around us.Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Full transcript[04:15] Museum of Modern Art[04:15] @curiousoctopus[05:38] Objects of Design: From the Museum of Modern Art[06:09] “Machine Art”[12:54] “Humble Masterpieces”[15:44] “Mutant Materials in Contemporary Design”[17:42] “Design and the Elastic Mind”[25:14] “Neri Oxman: Material Ecology”[29:34] Design Emergency[29:34] Alice Rawsthorn[33:43] @design.emergency[45:18] “Items: Is Fashion Modern?”[47:02] The 3,000-Year History of the Hoodie[51:03] “Safe: Design Takes On Risk”[01:04:45] Design and Violence

Alfredo Jaar illuminates truths that often escape popular consciousness. Through his work, the artist and filmmaker raises awareness about sociopolitical issues that have been forgotten, suppressed, or ignored, including genocide and the displacement of refugees. Simultaneously, he informs and engages viewers, urging them to be present for those who need their attention most. With all that he makes, Jaar maintains a heightened sensitivity to the limits and ethics of representation. His aim? To provide viewers with a different perspective on the world and reveal their connections to its many crises—and to be moved to act.Born in Santiago, Chile, in 1956, during a time of intense media censorship, Jaar early on developed an understanding of how to discuss injustices through a different kind of language. He immerses himself deeply in the subjects he documents, which have included Brazil’s Serra Pelada gold mine and the 1994 Rwandan genocide. While Jaar’s work focuses on specific events, there’s a haunting sense of timelessness to it. Take his landmark “A Logo for America” project, which points out that when we say “America” and mean “the U.S.,” we’re claiming a region that is only partially our own. Shown around the world, it has gained multiple new meanings since its 1987 debut. Currently on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of its 2022 Biennial (through Sept. 5) is a video by Jaar, amplified with special effects, of the 2020 police attacks on demonstrators in Washington, D.C.On this episode, Jaar speaks with Andrew about how tragedies reveal inequities, gathering multiple perspectives to understand global issues, and slowing people down so that they can see. Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Full transcriptalfredojaar.net[03:43] “Manu”[06:36] “Between the Heavens and Me”[23:56] “Lament of the Images”[54:54] Nicolás Jaar[01:01:09] “Rushes”[01:03:32] “Cries and Whispers”[01:11:22] “A Logo for America”[01:18:25] “The Rwanda Project”[01:20:40] “Six Seconds”

Dan Barber is on a mission to quite literally plant seeds for a better future. Around a decade ago, after learning that the nation’s largest food companies rarely breed food for flavor—and instead select for self-serving characteristics, such as the ability to produce high yields or endure long-distance travel—Barber, a chef and the co-owner of the restaurants Blue Hill in Manhattan and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown, New York, turned his attention to seeds. From there, he collaborated with a vegetable breeder to make the honeynut squash, a sweeter, healthier version of the butternut variety, and has since used his cooking to raise awareness about the vital roles seeds can play in our food system. A co-founder of the seed company Row 7, he is not only concerned with the beneficial impacts seeds can have on taste buds, but also on communities and the planet.Rethinking what people eat has played a constant role in Barber’s practice. His cooking style, honed at restaurants including Alice Waters’s Chez Panisse, favors minimal ingredients as a way of celebrating their distinctive tastes. His upstate restaurant sits on a property shared with the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture, a nonprofit operation that includes a regenerative farm and robust educational programming; there, his Blue Hill kitchen staff works with the Stone Barns teams to develop new ideas around food and farming. Barber regularly hosts educational programs, too, such as WastED, a 2015 pop-up that served delicious dishes made from ingredients most of us would consider trash.On this episode, Barber talks with Andrew about the distinctive role that restaurants can play in supporting social movements, food scraps as part of a chef’s DNA, and why producing more food won’t solve food insecurity.Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Full transcriptResourcED [05:07]Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture [09:09]Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns [15:11]The Third Plate [15:11]Row 7 [27:35]Michael Mazourek [27:35]Eliot Coleman [51:43]WastED [01:00:32]

John Hoke, Nike’s chief design officer, intimately understands how to move design from an object to a feeling. At the company over the past three decades, he has refined his approach to center around creating designs that serve wearers in practical yet unexpected ways, and that often redefine what sportswear can look like and do. Hoke often tells his team that “the goal is goosebumps”—to develop ideas so great that they can be physically felt. Hoke’s role in Nike’s legacy of innovation runs deep. He joined the Beaverton, Oregon–based company in 1992, at age 28, after studying architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and working as a model-maker for the late architect Michael Graves. Hoke, who is dyslexic, considers drawing his first language, his way of articulating the reactions he has to the things he sees. Connecting images with emotions is his portal to new ideas, which he has realized across many forward-thinking projects, ranging from singlets made from recycled polyester and water bottles, produced for the 2000 Summer Olympics; to Space Hippie, a footwear collection inspired by life on Mars; to the 2020 Nike Air Zoom Alphafly NEXT%, a shoe with a carbon-fiber plate that literally propels wearers forward. Even as Nike marks its 50th anniversary this year, Hoke has his sights set on the future, refusing to settle for what has worked in the past. Design, he believes, is a continual, iterative process of improvement. On this episode, Hoke talks with Andrew about how physical movement amplifies the senses, design as an act of optimism, and why perfection is a trap.Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Full transcript[04:16] Nike[07:11] Nike Air Zoom Alphafly NEXT%[12:43] Nike FlyEase[13:06] Nike Air VaporMax [16:12] Nike’s FY20 Impact Report [18:03] Space Hippie[19:36] Nike Considered Design[45:29] Michael Graves[01:02:19] Nike: Better Is Temporary[01:04:26] LeBron James Innovation Center[01:04:26] Serena Williams Building

Claudia Rankine cuts to the chase. She does not mince her words. The poet, essayist, playwright, and educator—whose recent body of work analyzes white supremacy in America—looks closely at its subtle and not-so-subtle manifestations, personal and systemic. Her forthright attention to the unspoken runs across three plays and six collections of poetry, in which Rankine works through subjects of tragedy and despair, maternity and motherhood, selfhood and individualism, and everyday instances of racial discrimination in ways that shrewdly illuminate the inner workings of American society. Never prescriptive, she leaves room for audiences to consider their own prejudices and privileges, and to understand more intimately where they come from and the systems in which they participate and belong. Often, Rankine seems more interested in questions than answers, and in unpacking the thought processes implied by a given response. These inquiries are at the center of her 2019 New York Times Magazine essay “I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked,” which details her experiences of talking with white men about race in airports and on airplanes. Some of these dialogues arise in Rankine’s play Help, too, which recently finished a monthlong run at The Shed in New York City. Her inquisitiveness also lies at the center of The Racial Imaginary Institute, an organization she co-founded in 2016 that prompts artists and institutions to consider their racialized positioning. For Rankine, too much is at stake to not have these kinds of conversations.On this episode, Rankine talks with Spencer about why Americans tend to avoid talking about whiteness and white supremacy, racism in professional tennis, and what liminal spaces can reveal about white privilege. Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Full transcriptclaudiarankine.com[05:48] “Claudia Rankine on How Beyoncé Became an Icon”[05:48] The White Card[18:30] The Racial Imaginary Institute[18:30] The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind[27:58] “I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked.”[34:01] Citizen: An American Lyric[36:41] “The Meaning of Serena Williams”[53:22] Help[58:11] “Weather”[01:10:09] Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric[01:10:09] Just Us: An American Conversation[01:13:51] Plot[01:13:51] The End of the Alphabet

Kenny Schachter has an insatiable appetite for all things art. The polymathic art dealer, curator, teacher, writer, critic, collector, and self-taught artist brings a Tasmanian Devil–level energy to all that he does, but always with great, arms-open passion and, even within his whirlwind of ideas and projects, deep focus. For good reason, he has become a sort of enfant terrible in the art world, someone who’s not afraid to speak his mind, and who doesn’t care about ruffling feathers or messing with the establishment. He pushes against the status quo, and happily so. Schachter is a believer in high culture as much as low, and brings little pretension to his craft, no matter the medium, even if considerable rigor underlies it. Often, he’s decidedly coy.Schachter’s love of art is bona fide and lifelong. Not only did art prove a helpful outlet for him during a difficult childhood, but it has also blossomed into a way of growing closer to his family (particularly with his children, with whom he has mounted a series of inventive exhibitions). Schachter especially appreciates art for its ability to help him depict the time he’s living in. For him, art also serves as a form of cultural and personal commentary and as a mode of humor, often the self-deprecating variety. Schachter has become something of an NFT oracle, too, and will present his latest efforts in this space at next month’s Independent Art Fair (May 5–8) in New York, with Greece’s Allouche Benias gallery.On this episode, Schachter talks with Andrew about art as a form of sense-making, the benefits of being an outsider, and why he employs humor in so much of his work.Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts. Show notes:Full transcript@kennyschachter[07:56] Schachter’s column for Artnet[09:46] Schachter’s shrugging emoji[28:42] “The Hoarder” series of Sotheby’s sales[29:46] “Kenny Schachter: Retrospective” (2018)[42:15] “Friends & Family” (2012)[57:46] “The Artist Is Online” (2021)[57:57] “Kenny Schachter: Metadada” (2022)[01:01:46] “Forbidden Amuse Yourself Piggy Bank” (2018)[01:23:06] “The Art World’s Mini-Madoff and Me”

For Reginald Dwayne Betts—a poet, lawyer, and activist who supports and contributes to prison decarceration efforts—reading and writing have a mind-expanding power that never wanes. The author of three books of poetry and a memoir, his prose is intimate and raw. Even when he’s not writing about himself, Betts finds ways to build personal connections with his subjects for his award-winning work in The New York Times Magazine—subjects that have included the rapper Tariq Trotter of The Roots, the late actor Michael K. Williams, and Vice President Kamala Harris. He also brings a literary bent to his activism: In 2020, he founded Freedom Reads, a nonprofit that aims to build libraries inside 1,000 prisons and juvenile detention centers across the country. The program recently installed its first sets of bookshelves at MCI-Norfolk, the Massachusetts prison where Malcolm X was incarcerated, and last month, in a public event at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., it presented the 500 titles that comprise each collection.Betts, a graduate of Yale Law School (where he’s currently in a Ph.D. program), became an advocate for respecting the rights and dignity of the people who are in or who have gone through the American carceral system after experiencing it firsthand himself. Instead of resigning himself to the violence and dehumanizing conditions of incarceration, he turned his focus to books—many by Black writers and poets—that showed him the depth and richness of self-reflection, and that got him thinking about the stories he himself had to tell. On this episode, Betts speaks with Spencer about the long-term impacts of his time behind bars, the current renaissance of prison writing, and the transformative act of giving people who are incarcerated access to literature and books.Special thanks to our Season 5 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts. Show notes:Full transcriptdwaynebetts.comA Question of Freedom [18:39]Betts’s 2021 commencement speech at Wesleyan University [25:46]Felon: An American Washi Tale [30:24]“Kamala Harris, Mass Incarceration and Me” [30:36]“A Son, A Mother, and Two Gun Crimes” episode of Death, Sex & Money podcast [38:06]“The Lives They Lived” [42:55]Shahid Reads His Own Palm [01:00:27]Bastards of the Reagan Era [01:00:27]Felon [01:00:27]“Could an Ex-Convict Become an Attorney? I Intended to Find Out” [01:03:01]Freedom Reads [01:10:23]“Memorial Hoops” [01:16:54]

Maggie Doyne, who co-founded the BlinkNow Foundation nonprofit at age 19, discusses how, over the past 13 years, she has developed a school, children’s home, health clinic, and women’s center in Surkhet, Nepal.