Time Sensitive

On Ep. 154 of our Time Sensitive podcast, the Bulgarian-born, Brooklyn-based writer, reader, and researcher Maria Popova, founder of the “free, ad-free, A.I.-free, fully human” website and newsletter The Marginalian, discusses her latest book, “Traversal”; why today’s A.I. debates are fundamentally modern versions of age-old questions about the soul; and the mystery of being alive.

On Ep. 152 of our Time Sensitive podcast, the singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and poet Valerie June discusses songs as vessels capable of transporting us to once-in-a-lifetime moments, music-making as a mystical act, and the value of prioritizing gradual progress over instant results.

The Paris-born, New York–based artist Camille Henrot previews her upcoming first-ever performance-art piece, slated to premiere in 2026 and a collaboration with the nonprofit Performa; explores her fraught fascination with animals, childhood, and the climate crisis—the intersection of which she examines in-depth in her her soon-to-debut film “In the Veins”; and reflects on why, for her, a work is technically never finished.

The British writer and cultural critic Olivia Laing, author of the “The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise” and the forthcoming novel “The Silver Book,” discusses the symbiotic relationship between gardening and writing; the act of rebelling against a reactive, adrenaline-fueled culture by prioritizing and embracing slowness, in-person conversation, and what they call the “temporal self”; and the importance of imagining, in vivid detail, the kinds of utopias we could one day very well live in.

On Ep. 136 of Time Sensitive—produced in partnership with with the Aspen Art Museum and recorded in Aspen, Colorado, during the inaugural AIR festival—the physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker, author of the mind-expanding book “Life as No One Knows It,” discusses time’s essential role in the “assembly theory” physics framework she’s spearheading alongside chemist Lee Cronin, how her childhood growing up in an antiques-filled Connecticut home shaped her fascination with the material world, and why understanding life’s origins on Earth—and exploring alien life beyond our planet—is crucial to understanding ourselves.

The writer, journalist, and political commentator Molly Jong-Fast joins us to discuss her new memoir, “How to Lose Your Mother.” Reflecting on a devastating year—one in which her once-famous mother, the author and second-wave feminist Erica Jong, was diagnosed with dementia and her husband with a rare form of cancer—Jong-Fast talks about her mother’s best-selling 1973 novel “Fear of Flying” and her own actual fear of flying, 27 years of sobriety and how her time in A.A. has transformed her life, and the importance of confronting the vicissitudes of aging and one’s passage through time.

The chef and restaurateur Thomas Keller, whose restaurants include the three-Michelin-starred The French Laundry in Yountville, California, and Per Se in New York City, joins us to discuss his recent “Chef’s Table” episode on Netflix and his cameo on the FX show “The Bear,” memory-making as a key part of his hospitality operation, and why persistence is the greatest form of pleasure.

For our latest “site-specific” episode, we visit the British architect and designer John Pawson at his country home in the Cotswolds to discuss the problems he sees with trying to turn minimalism into a movement; his deep-seated belief in restraint, both in life and in architecture; and his humble, highly refined approach to creating sacred spaces, whether a monastery in the Czech Republic, a church in Germany, or a basilica in Hungary.