At a Distance

Food artist Laila Gohar speaks with us about togetherness in a time of crisis; food as a medium for comfort, healing, and pleasure; how a culture of convenience has dumbed down our senses; and why living a responsible life means not throwing out any food.

Dr. Alejandro Junger, the founder of the Clean Program, talks with us about impacting tomorrow’s pandemics by addressing chronic diseases today, taking an open-minded approach to medicine, and why not everybody necessarily needs to do a cleanse.

Anthropologist Gina Rae La Cerva, author of the new book “Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food,” discusses why wild food has come to be considered a luxury, and the pressing need to build better, more resilient ecological and agricultural systems.

Former FBI special agent Asha Rangappa, a senior lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, discusses the ways in which social media platforms are being weaponized and how the Trump administration has botched the handling of both Covid-19 and George Floyd’s killing.

United States Artists president and CEO Deana Haggag speaks with us about the “many viruses” of the current White House leadership, why art is essential for unpacking and exploring the complexity of our current moment, and her hopes for a reoriented political system.

Artist Shantell Martin talks with us about the racial and economic inequality of Covid-19, the virus of racism, the power of reflection, and the importance of fighting against institutional memory loss.

Tristan Harris, president and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology and co-host of the Your Undivided Attention podcast, discusses the speed blindness caused by our technology systems and how Silicon Valley could effectively engage in climate action.

Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley, the husband-and-wife author duo of the forthcoming book “The Coming Quarantine,” talk about quarantine’s historical origins, political abuses of power during shelter-in-place orders, and designing “pandemic-friendly” cities.

Economist, Nobel laureate, and Harvard University professor Eric Maskin discusses the supply-chain challenges in restarting the economy, the issues he foresees with the 2020 U.S. presidential election, and why he thinks America will remain a center for global innovation.

Dr. David Katz, the CEO of the start-up Diet ID and the former director of Yale University’s Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, speaks with us about the importance of acknowledging doubt and analyzing Covid-19 through science, sense, and consensus.

Anthropologist and paleobiologist Nina Jablonski talks about how “this little piece of RNA with a punk haircut” is causing us to reflect on our relationship with nature and technology, and why future discourse needs to be structured around a classic liberal-arts education.

Molly Jong-Fast, editor-at-large of The Daily Beast and co-host of the podcast The New Abnormal, discusses the White House’s response to Covid-19, what’s ailing both the left and right in American politics right now, and her hopes for the November 2020 election.

Sarah Williams Goldhagen, author of the book “Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives,” speaks with us about how the pandemic may lead to a greater localization of place and the profound psychological and emotional effects of the built world.

Christian Madsbjerg, a professor at The New School and co-founder of the consultancy Red Associates, talks about conducting better high-stakes decision making under stress and why we need to overhaul how knowledge is created and organized.

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Randy Komisar, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, discusses the pressing need for social-justice innovations, the unregulated imbalance between capital and labor, and the monopolization of data by the big tech companies.

Paola Antonelli, the senior curator in the department of architecture and design of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, speaks with us about design’s vital role in the midst of emergency, and how, by simply showing more respect, we will be remembered in a better way.

Financial Times editor-at-large Gillian Tett talks about the urgent need to question how we construct our societies, interact with technology, and the true meaning of globalization, and why the pandemic may lead to wiser, humber, more open ways of being.

Philosopher Markus Gabriel, director of the International Centre for Philosophy at the University of Bonn in Germany, discusses why he views humans as a dangerous plague and the turmoil around truth in the 21st century.

Economist Rob Johnson, the executive director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, speaks with us about the massive wealth disparity that’s fracturing America, blind spots in our political and economic systems, and finding a way out of this “extreme disrepair.”

Rhode Island School of Design president Rosanne Somerson talks about the challenges she’s facing as a leader in higher education amidst the novel coronavirus, why territorial thinking has to stop, and the need to look at the Covid-19 pandemic as a “call-to-action moment.”

Paul Holdengräber, the host of the podcast The Quarantine Tapes and the founding executive director of the Onassis Foundation L.A., discusses his hope for humanity to return to a kinder way of being and why the Covid-19 pandemic is a “very philosophical moment.”

Entrepreneur, designer, and actor Waris Ahluwalia, the founder of House of Waris Botanicals, speaks with us about how cultural and societal obsessions with productivity are destroying the planet and why our relationship to nature is broken.

Environmental journalist Tatiana Schlossberg, author of “Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have,” talks about what Covid-19 and the climate crisis have in common and the far-reaching impacts that our personal actions can have on the Earth.

Writer, editor, activist, and politician Nikil Saval, who’s currently running as a Democrat for Pennsylvania State Senate, discusses the urgent need to build a society that cares for itself and the deeply entrenched problems he sees with healthcare, housing, and prisons in the U.S.