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 assumptions and advocates for reflection, deep reading, single-tasking, solitude, and yes, slowness. Though he doesn’t abide by the “digital detox” method, Madsbjerg does operate without a smartphone. While Madsbjerg is not immune to the contemporary swell of panic and anxiety, his approach is calm, methodical, and sometimes humorous. The co-founder of ReD Associates—a strategy and consulting firm that takes an interdisciplinary approach to advising big companies through observation, social science, and problem solving—the multifaceted Madsbjerg is an astute observer of human behavior. The author of Sensemaking: What Makes Human Intelligence Essential in the Age of the Algorithm and co-author of The Moment of Clarity: Using the Human Sciences to Solve Your Hardest Business Problem, he is in the process of writing a book called How to Pay Attention and a comedic screenplay about immigration in the U.S., tentatively titled H1B. He also teaches social science, social theory, and discourse analysis at the Parsons School of Design at The New School.  On this episode of Time Sensitive, Madsbjerg speaks to Andrew Zuckerman about the importance of long-view historical research, the problematic nature of “design thinking,” the deep value of a liberal arts education, and the relevance today of Martin Heidegger’s philosophical perspectives on time and technology.

Christian Madsbjerg on Why “Design Thinking” Is Bogus

A podcast featuring candid, revealing long-form interviews with curious and courageous people about their life and work through the lens of time. Host Spencer Bailey speaks with leading minds on how they think about time broadly and how specific moments in time have shaped who they are today.

Explore more at timesensitive.fm

Society & Culture

Personal Journals

History

Philosophy

Places & Travel

Arts

Literature

Performing Arts

Design

Food

Fashion & Beauty

Visual Arts

Business

Investing

Careers

Management & Marketing

Business News

Shopping

While he may technically practice as a photographer, artist, and architect, Hiroshi Sugimoto could also be considered, from a wider-lens perspective, a chronicler of time. With a body of work now spanning nearly five decades, Sugimoto began making pictures in earnest in 1976 with his ongoing “Diorama” series. In 1980, he started what may be his most widely recognized series, “Seascapes,” composed of Rothko-esque abstractions of the ocean that he has taken at roughly 250 locations around the world. In more recent years, Sugimoto has also built a flourishing architectural practice, designing everything from a café in Tokyo to the currently-under-construction Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. As with his subtly profound work, Sugimoto bears tremendous wisdom and is regarded by many as one of the most deeply perceptive minds and practitioners at the intersection of time and art-making. On the episode, he discusses his pictures as fossilizations of time; seascapes as the least spoiled places on Earth; and why, for him, the “target of completion” for a building is 5,000 years from now. Special thanks to our Season 9 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts. Show notes: Hiroshi Sugimoto [5:10] Pre-Photography Time-Recording Devices [39:05] “Theaters” [15:06] “Seascapes” [32:31] “Diorama” [17:16] Caspar David Friedrich [25:14] Odawara [28:52] “Aujourd’hui le monde est mort [Lost Human Genetic Archive]” [44:19] “Abandoned Theaters” [44:19] “Opera Houses” [44:19] “Drive-In Theaters” [49:52] “Architecture” [51:12] Le Corbusier [51:12] Mies van der Rohe [55:30] New Material Research Laboratory [55:30] Tomoyuki Sakakida [59:23] Enoura Observatory [59:23] Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden [1:00:48] Katsura Imperial Villa [1:01:05] Bruno Taut [1:02:14] Donald Judd [1:02:14] “Hiroshi Sugimoto: Five Elements in Optical Glass” [1:06:47] Mingei [1:06:47] Isamu Noguchi [1:06:47] Dan Flavin [1:09:15] Sugimoto Bunraku Sonezaki Shinju: The Love Suicides at Sonezaki [1:09:15] At the Hawk's Well [1:09:15] W.B. Yeats

Hiroshi Sugimoto on Photography as a Form of Timekeeping

Soon to celebrate his 50th birthday by journeying from Paris to Tokyo by car along the Southern Silk Road, the French Moroccan creative director, artist, and entrepreneur Ramdane Touhami says he’s “thirsty for life like it’s just the beginning,” and it shows. Among his 17 (yes, 17) companies are the cult grooming brand Officine Universelle Buly 1803, which he and his wife co-founded in 2014 and sold to LVMH in 2021; the Paris-based creative agency Art Recherche Industrie, whose clients include Christofle, Moynat, and Gohar World; and Hotel Drei Berge, which he opened in the Swiss Alps last year. With each of his enterprises, Touhami has proven, time and again, how much craft matters—that there’s a real demand for it in a streamlined world that prioritizes efficiency, and that it’s not necessarily at odds with turning a profit. On the episode, Touhami talks about the parallels between Japan and Switzerland, business as a religion, and the healing power of mountains. Special thanks to our Season 9 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts. Show notes: Ramdane Touhami [5:29] Hotel Drei Berge Hotel [5:29] Élisée Reclus [8:36] Angelo Mangiarotti [8:36] Tobia Scarpa [8:36] Dieter Rams [5:29] “Ramdane Touhami’s Peak Performance” [17:12] Mos Def [20:28] Henry David Thoreau [28:16] Officine Universelle Buly 1803 [28:16] Cire Trudon [1:00:35] Aman [27:06] Ignacio Mattos [28:16] LVMH [34:54] An Atlas of Natural Beauty [34:33] Bernard Arnault [34:54] Izumi Aki [41:54] Société Helvétique d’Impression Typographique [43:54] Émile Shahidi [44:30] Radical Media [44:59] Tricontinental magazine [57:24] “A Parisian Designer Builds His Dream House in a Former Brothel” [1:00:35] Southern Silk Road

Ramdane Touhami on Why He Will Never Slow Down

At age 4, following the fall of Saigon, in 1975, Viet Thanh Nguyen and his family fled Vietnam and came to the U.S. as refugees. Throughout the turmoil and its aftermath, neither he nor his family could have imagined that he would go on to not only become an internationally renowned novelist—winning a Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his debut novel, The Sympathizer (2015)—but also to serve as an executive producer of an HBO miniseries adaptation of the book, and become a widely respected voice on matters including anti-Asian hate, refugees and immigrants, war and genocide, and memory and memorials. In addition to The Sympathizer, Nguyen has written, among other books, the new memoir A Man of Two Faces (2023); The Sympathizer’s sequel, The Committed (2021); and the nonfiction title Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (2016).  On the episode, Nguyen talks about turning The Sympathizer into an HBO miniseries, the polarities between what he calls “narrative plenitude” and “narrative scarcity,” and jokes as a form of truth-telling. Special thanks to our Season 9 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts. Show notes: Viet Thanh Nguyen [3:43] “An Open Letter on the Situation in Palestine” [3:43] Min Jin Lee [5:48] F. Scott Fitzgerald [7:11] The Sympathizer [7:11] The Sympathizer HBO series [7:11] Robert Downey Jr. [7:11] Sandra Oh [8:41] A Man of Two Faces [8:41] Casualties of War [8:41] Apocalypse Now [8:41] Platoon [8:41] The Deer Hunter [11:48] Arundhati Roy [14:18] 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction [21:33] Fall of Saigon [33:34] The Great Gatsby [37:26] Portnoy’s Complaint [40:28] Great America amusement park [47:24] Maxine Hong Kingston [51:06] Chicken of the Sea [51:06] Simone [56:19] Operation Petticoat [56:19] I Was a Male War Bride [56:19] Catch 22 [56:19] Richard Pryor

Viet Thanh Nguyen on the Need to Recognize Coexisting Truths

Born and raised in Pennsylvania, the 97-year-old Pittsburgh-based artist and sculptor Thaddeus Mosley has a deep and enduring obsession with wood. In his late 20s, he began to use the material for art, carving sculptures in his basement studio, and with his sculpture-making now spanning 70 years, his enduring dedication to his craft is practically unparalleled. Represented by Karma gallery since 2019, Mosley has only now, in the past decade or so, begun to receive the international recognition and attention he has long deserved. In his hands, wood sings; he shapes and carves trees into striking abstract forms that often appear as if they’re levitating while honoring and preserving their organic, natural character. As with the work of his two main influences, Constantin Brâncuși and Isamu Noguchi, Mosley, too, strives to make sculptures that, in his words, beyond today, “will be interesting in a hundred tomorrows.” On the episode, he talks about the language that poetry, music, and sculpture all share; his early years as a sports writer for a local newspaper; and his life-transforming relationship with the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. Special thanks to our Season 9 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts. Show notes: Thaddeus Mosley [4:13] Sam Gilliam [17:24] Carnegie Museum [21:08] Carnegie International [21:08] Leon Arkus [21:08] “Thaddeus Mosley: Forest” [21:08] “Inheritance” [24:20] Isamu Noguchi [27:53] Constantin Brâncuși [28:28] University of Pittsburgh [28:28] Martha Graham [46:15] Floyd Bennett Field [46:23] Ebony magazine [46:23] Sepia magazine [46:23] Jet magazine [46:23] Pittsburgh Courier [54:34] John Coltrane [51:37] Li Bo [51:37] Dylan Thomas [56:21] Bernard Leach [57:45] Langston Hughes [57:45] Countee Cullen [57:45] Harriet Tubman [57:45] Fannie Lou Hamer [57:45] “The Long-Legged Bait” [57:45] “Air Step - for Fayard and Harold Nicholas” [57:45] The Nicholas Brothers

Thaddeus Mosley on Making Art to Be Appreciated for Centuries

Most widely recognized for his paintings that rigorously combine spray paint, stenciled geometric forms, and brushstrokes, the Brooklyn-based artist Adam Pendleton is also known for his “Black Dada” framework, an ever-evolving philosophy that investigates various relationships between Blackness, abstraction, and the avant-garde. Many will recognize Pendleton’s work from “Who Is Queen?,” his 2021 solo exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, which he has said was his way of “trying to overwhelm the museum.” This is a natural position for him: His works in and of themselves are often overwhelming. At once political and spiritual, they provoke deep introspection and consideration, practically demanding viewers to look, and then look again. On this episode, he discusses the elusive, multifarious nature of “Black Dada”; “An Abstraction,” his upcoming exhibition at Pace Gallery in New York (on view from May 3–August 16); painting as a kind of technology; and why, for him, jazz is indefinable. Special thanks to our Season 9 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes: Adam Pendleton [05:00] Joan Retallack [05:00] Pasts, Futures, and Aftermaths [05:22] “Becoming Imperceptible” [07:41] Ishmael Houston-Jones [07:41] Joan Jonas [07:41] Lorraine O’Grady [07:41] Yvonne Rainer [07:41] Jack Halberstam [14:26] Fred Moten [05:22] “Who Is Queen?” [23:50] Hugo Ball’s Dada Manifesto [23:50] Amiri Baraka’s “Black Dada Nihilismus” [31:14] Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum [31:14] “System of Display” [31:14] “Reading Dante” [34:40] “Adam Pendleton” at Pace Gallery [34:40] “An Abstraction” at Pace Gallery [34:40] Arlene Shechet [34:40] “Adam Pendleton x Arlene Shechet” [40:30] “Blackness, White, and Light” at MUMOK [45:07] “Twenty-One Love Poems” by Audrienne Rich [50:40] “Occupy Time” by Jason Adams [56:04] “What It Is I Think I’m Doing Anyhow” by Toni Cade Bambara [57:13] “Some Thoughts on a Constellation of Things Seen and Felt” by Adrienne Edwards

Christian Madsbjerg on Why “Design Thinking” Is Bogus

Download our free app to listen on your phone