Time Sensitive

Nathan Myhrvold is no ordinary chef. With two master’s degrees (one in mathematical economics, the other in geophysics and space physics) and a Ph. D. in theoretical and mathematical physics, he is also a technologist who did postdoctoral research with Stephen Hawking. From 1986 to 1999, Myhrvold was the chief strategist and chief technology officer at Microsoft, where he worked closely with Bill...

Since launching her eponymous label in 2015, the Uruguayan-born, New York–based designer Gabriela Hearst has become known for her sincere, forward-thinking approach to sustainability; her slow-growth business ethos; the long waiting lists for her limited-production handbags; her impeccable tailoring; and her high-quality collections that, season after season, have consistently been hailed as criti...

In both his work and his life, Tony Fadell constantly imagines Version 2.0 (if not 3.0, or 4.0 and beyond). On a mission to shape the future through forward-thinking design, engineering, invention, and investing, he is probably most widely recognized for both founding the smart-home products company Nest and for his instrumental involvement in developing the iPod. Through his newest venture, the a...

Suketu Mehta tells a story about pinkie fingers, dancing and kissing. It is as confounding as it sounds. And utterly heartbreaking, too. In his assertive and essential new book, This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto —as well as on this episode of Time Sensitive—he describes the scene: Friendship Park, a half-acre fence on the U.S.-Mexican border. A Mexican man living in the U.S., who has...

The Dutch-born trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort, founder of the Paris-based consultancy Trend Union, has a knack for being ahead of the curve. In fact, she kind of is the curve, the rare mind who—with her sharp eye, wide-ranging tastes, and quick wit—is able to situate herself within past, present, and future. She astutely understands historical markers of time and often predicts, with surprisin...

Craig Robins strongly believes that all good things take time. Since launching his vast real estate enterprise Dacra in 1987, at age 24, he has, with this ideology in mind, become one of Miami’s shrewdest mover-shakers. Intimately involved in the revitalization of South Beach in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Robins helped restore—and save from demolition—several now-prized Art Deco properties, inc...

Christian Madsbjerg makes sense. Literally and figuratively, in all the definitions of the phrase. With roots in philosophy and political science, Madsbjerg brings a refreshingly human approach to his work as an author, screenwriter, professor, entrepreneur, and business advisor. In the face of some of the greatest concerns of our time—the climate crisis, technological upheaval—he challenges assum...

Many people turn to spiritual professionals such as astrologists and tarot card readers to help answer life’s most essential and cosmic questions. Eric Standop—international speaker, advisor, author, and facial diagnostics expert—guides people to look inward through a different method: by examining their faces. Through analyzing facial characteristics and behaviors, Standop informs his clients of...

Growing up in Evanston, Illinois, the artist Rashid Johnson had a “mixed bag”—racially, at least—of close friends. There were, he says, “four black guys, two Asian guys, two Jewish guys, a white English guy.…” They still keep in touch today via a text chain. This perspective, combined with the one ingrained in him by his Ph. D. history professor mother, who introduced him from a young age to the w...

It’s safe to say that, if it weren’t for art historian RoseLee Goldberg, performance art would not be what it is today. Not even close. The founder of the nonprofit organization Performa, which for nearly 15 years has been putting on biennials of live performance around New York City, has for decades helped shape and steer the conversation about what “performance art” even is—and what, at its best...

Daniel Brush’s acute eye for detail, as well as the rigor and vigor he brings to his craft, comes through loud and clear in all of his creations. A poet of materiality, he is at once a metalworker, a jewelry-maker, a philosopher, an engineer, a blacksmith, a painter, and a sculptor. The late Dr. Oliver Sacks, a friend of Brush’s, once said that Brush’s work is “the result of years of incubation, y...

Inge Solheim is a free spirit, a new-age explorer, and a wilderness guide-guru whose sense of freedom hinges upon not caring, at all, about what other people think of him. Leading trips to the most remote places in the world with diverse groups—ranging from scientists, to private clients, to film crews, to people with disabilities—Solheim trains those who are with him to overcome extreme physical...

David Duchovny may be swooned over as the hunky special agent Fox William Mulder in The X-Files and Hank Moody in Californication , but it should be noted—and, in our opinion, more widely known—that he is also an accomplished novelist. Yes, novelist . In fact, he has published three novels with the highly esteemed publisher Farrar, Straus, and Giroux since 2015. A fourth novel, called Truly Like L...

Jesse Kamm and her beloved waist-hugging, wide-legged “Kamm pants” embody minimalism. A proponent of producing fewer, better things, Kamm has committed to supporting local craftspeople by making all of her garments in Los Angeles and prioritizing the use of environmentally conscientious materials. This all makes sense within the context of Kamm’s upbringing in a farming and manufacturing town in I...

Sophia Chang pulls no punches. As the self-described (and indeed) “first Asian woman in hip hop,” Chang carries herself—happily, proudly—with the bravado and swagger of the industry brethren she managed throughout much of the ’90s and 2000s, including Ol’ Dirty Bastard (O.D.B.), RZA, and GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan, Q-Tip and A Tribe Called Quest, and D’Angelo. What makes Chang’s career particularly r...

Kim Hastreiter identifies as a “punk at heart.” The co-founder of Paper magazine, which she started in 1984 with David Hershkovits, she served as the publication’s co-editor-in-chief until handing it off, in 2017. At 67, she remains the cool mom of downtown New York. A curator, editor, writer, and artist, as well as a perpetually delighted connector of people, she witnessed—and amplified—the fledg...

Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel has no style. No singular aesthetic, mood, or technique. Rather, his focus is on storytelling. From being the first to capture the Contras on film in Nicaragua to photographing the X-Men series and Superman Returns (2006), Sigel has worn many hats (and no, we’re not talking about his fedoras and baseball caps, although there are those, too). But his desire to pu...

Neri Oxman is simultaneously a hardcore ecologist, evocative futurist, meticulous artist, and abstract scientist. The 43-year-old Israeli-American designer, architect, inventor, and MIT Media Lab professor embodies the same dualities that her work hinges upon. Oxman’s multifarious projects transcend the digital age; Oxman’s multifarious projects transcend the digital age; instead, she’s pioneering...

Valerie Steele’s deep contextual dives into the history of fashion set her apart from other academics and curators—two identities she embodies in equal parts. The chief curator and director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (since 1997 and 2003, respectively), she has produced upwards of 25 exhibitions while also, over the past 15 years, leading the institution. No corner of fas...

Michael Kimmelman does nothing in half measures. For more than 30 years, he has brought his assertive, culturally astute, historically sensitive perspective to The New York Times, which he has been contributing to since 1987 and joined full-time in 1990. During his tenure, he has written more than 2,000 articles, ranging from art criticism (he was its chief art critic from 1990 to 2007); to report...

Andrea Illy breathes coffee. Not literally, of course, but coffee has indeed been a part of his being since birth. The third-generation head of Illycaffè, he is the company’s chairman and, with CEO Massimiliano Pogliani, leads the massive global enterprise. With good reason—namely, its high-quality, beautifully packaged products—Illycaffè remains one of the largest coffee operations on the planet,...

New Jersey native Maggie Doyne was age 18 when she arrived in Nepal, 19 when she had co-founded the BlinkNow Foundation nonprofit to support children in the district of Surkhet, and by 25, she had become a mother to 40 children. Doyne’s unlikely story began in 2005, with the decision to take a gap year after high school and travel; she felt it was necessary to press pause on a more expected path a...

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...

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 Lio...

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,...