Time Sensitive

To Jelani Cobb, reading, writing, and education are inherently acts of empowerment, and sometimes even ones of defiance. A staff writer at The New Yorker since 2015 and recently appointed the dean of Columbia Journalism School, where he has been on the faculty since 2016, Cobb has written on subjects ranging from the power of Dave Chappelle’s comedy, to the vital lessons of Martin Luther King Jr., to Donald Trump as a rapper. Cobb is also the author of the books The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress (2010) and To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic (2007). Given the precarious moment we’re in when it comes to truth and the future of not just journalism, but democracy itself, he is unquestionably one of the most essential writers, historians, and thinkers of our time. On this week’s episode of Time Sensitive, Cobb talks about timing and flow in hip-hop, why being a “first Black” leader in any high-profile profession is like “doing a high-wire act without a net,” and his belief that the future of journalism will include greater transparency around how a story gets made.

Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes: 

[03:39] DJ Kool Herc

[03:49] “Hip-Hop at Fifty: An Elegy”

[03:56] To the Break of Dawn

[08:05] August Wilson

[09:13] Skip James

[27:10] Run-D.M.C.

[27:16] LL Cool J

[27:24] Q-Tip

[27:25] Phife Dawg

[27:27] Salt-N-Pepa

[27:41] Kool G Rap

[27:45] Pharoahe Monch

[37:17] Queens Public Library

[39:27] Adell Patton

[41:18] Elizabeth Clark-Lewis

[43:06] David Carr

[43:23] Ta-Nehisi Coates

[49:58] The Devil and Dave Chappelle: And Other Essays

[53:21] “Trayvon Martin and the Parameters of Hope”

[59:14] “Postscript: Rodney King, 1965-2012”

[59:46] “Alvin Bragg, Donald Trump, and the Pursuit of Low-Level Crimes”

[01:02:21] Between the World and Me

[01:03:51] Columbia Journalism School

Over the past 50 or so years, Marilyn Minter has been on a roving exploration of feminist, sex-positive thinking. In her art-making, she harnesses the power of sexual imagery—a realm long controlled by men—and presents it through the lens of female desire. Among her most acclaimed works are her “Bathers” series, which reimagines classic female bathers; her “Bush” series, originally a Playboy commission; and a group of new portraits, currently on view at the New York gallery LGDR (through June 3), featuring impactful cultural figures she admires, such as Roxane Gay, Gloria Steinem, Lizzo, and Monica Lewinsky. On the episode, Minter talks about the unrealistic societal and body-image standards young women continue to face, the importance of embracing complexity and multiplicity in artwork, and the hope she has in the next generation to fight social injustice.

Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes: 

[00:49] Marilyn Minter

[04:02] Bettie Page

[06:10] Susie Bright

[24:31]  “The Joys (and Challenges) of Sex After 70”

[27:31] HBO’s The Deuce

[33:37] Pamela Anderson for Parkett

[40:33] LGDR

[46:30] Minter’s “Coral Ridge Towers” Series

[52:19] Linda Yablonsky

[53:23] Diane Arbus

[55:24] James Harithas

[56:35] Sylvia Mangold

[56:59] Kenneth Snelson

[58:16] Christof Kohlhöfer

[01:04:15] Neville Wakefield

[01:07:32] Planned Parenthood

[01:07:45] ADLAR AR App

As the co-host of NPR’s flagship news program All Things Considered, Ari Shapiro is a go-to source for tens of millions of Americans for essential deep-dives into some of the most critical stories unfolding across the globe. At NPR for more than two decades now, Shapiro has made it his mission to serve as an informational and emotional conduit—or even a translator of sorts—between the subject and the listener. On this week’s episode of Time Sensitive, he talks about his new memoir, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories From a Life Spent Listening; why he considers hosting All Things Considered like inheriting an heirloom; embracing one’s identity as a journalistic asset; and the parallels between reading fiction, cooking, and reporting the news.

Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

[01:14] Ari Shapiro

[03:48] “The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening”

[04:09] Mary Louise Kelly

[04:10] NPR’s All Things Considered

[07:23] Susan Stamberg

[08:51] Noah Adams

[09:44] Audie Cornish

[17:27] “A Second, Chance Interview With Subject of Controversial First Lady Remarks”

[20:46] “Ari Shapiro On Covering the Pulse Shooting”

[22:07] Billy Manes

[24:50] “‘Dr. No’ Becomes Diplomat, Continues a Family Story”

[24:54] Norm Eisen

[27:29] “For Two Sarajevo Women, a Chance Friendship Forged in the Ashes of War”

[31:40] “One Man's Moment With Martin Luther King Jr.”

[38:48] Cascade AIDS Project

[43:21] Nina Totenberg

[52:59] Amitav Ghosh

[53:02] “Journey To The Sundarbans: The ‘Beautiful Forest’ of Mangroves”

[53:05] Ghosh’s “The Hungry Tide”

[54:30] “Meet Bonbibi: The Indian Forest Goddess Worshiped Across Religions”

[54:32] “Experts Fear Climate Change Will Lead to More Tiger Attacks in the Sundarbans”

[54:53] “Amitav Ghosh: ‘The World of Fact Is Outrunning the World of Fiction’”

[55:00] Ghosh’s “Gun Island”

[55:49] Pink Martini

[55:53] Alan Cumming

[57:50] Kim Hastreiter

[59:23] Och and Oy

[01:02:11] Ernesto Lecuona

Over his 25 years as CEO of the Danish textile company Kvadrat, Anders Byriel has turned what was once a small, fairly dusty family design business into a global giant. Perhaps just as notably, he’s taken a radical, and even artistic, approach to building and cultivating the brand’s culture, partnering with designers such as Raf Simons, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, and Peter Saville; arts institutions like the New Museum in New York, the Tate Modern in London, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark; and brands including Adidas Originals, Bang & Olufsen, and Jaguar Land Rover. On this week’s episode of Time Sensitive, Byriel talks about why the best design has an artistic edge, the importance of making space for emotion within a corporate environment, and his deep and lifelong passions of poetry and photography.

Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, 

L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

Anders Byriel [01:04]

Annie Ernaux [04:25]

“Vermeer” at the Rijksmuseum [06:04]

Kvadrat [06:56]

Raf Simons [12:05]

Peter Saville [13:24]

David Adjaye [14:05]

Thomas Demand [14:14]

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art [14:17]

Rosemarie Troeckel [14:20]

Olafur Eliasson [14:27]

Jean Nouvel [14:40]

Massimiliano Gioni [18:06]

Pipilotti Rist [18:39]

Wu Tsang [19:07]

“The Triple Folly” [19:33]

Danh Vo [24:20]

Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec [27:09]

Giulio Ridolfo [30:41]

“Materializing Color” [30:43]

Adidas Originals x Kvadrat Stan Smith [39:03]

Konstantin Grcic [43:06]

Verner Panton [49:29]

“Pop Art Design” exhibition at Vitra Design Museum [50:20]

Robert Adams [01:03:08]

Henrik Nordbrandt [01:03:52]

Nan Goldin [01:10:39]

Ocean Vuong [01:04:54]

Ocean Vuong’s “Time Is a Mother” book of poems [01:05:01]

“Your Brain on Art” book [01:05:09]

Hiroshi Sugimoto [01:11:37]

“Ai Weiwei In the Elevator When Taken Into Custody by the Police” (2009) [01:12:00]

Ansel Adams [01:12:44]

Robert Adams’s “Around the House” book [01:13:01]

Robert Adams’s "A Road Through Shore Pine" book [01:13:30]

Across her 40-year-long career, the photographer Tina Barney has become internationally renowned for capturing her particular milieus—family, friends, and neighbors in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, most notably, but also in New York and Sun Valley, Idaho. On this week’s episode of Time Sensitive, she talks about her new book, The Beginning (Radius Books), and corresponding Kasmin gallery show (on view through April 22), which bring together some of her earliest images, taken between 1976 and 1980; what she views as the underlying sources of nostalgia; the fascinating natures of ritual and tradition; and the small miracles that can exist within a single photograph.

Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

• [11:20] “China Visit” (2006)
• [16:28] “Marina’s Room” (1987)
• [18:40] Watch Hill, Rhode Island
• [19:16] “The Europeans” (1996–2004)
• [32:01] “Big Pictures by Contemporary Photographers” at MoMA (1983)
• [32:07] “Sunday New York Times” (1982)
• [32:50] “Tina Barney” at MoMA (1990)
• [33:31] John Szarkowski
• [38:43] Sun Valley Center for the Arts
• [47:07] Theater of Manners (1997)
• [47:10] Players (2011)
• [47:12] Tina Barney Rizzoli monograph (2017)
• [47:16] Tina Barney: The Beginning (2023)
• [47:17] Radius Books
• [48:55] Kasmin Gallery
• [51:26] “Waterslide in Fog” (1979)
• [54:39] “The Suits” (1977)
• [54:40] “The Twins” (1977)
• [57:53] ““Amy, Phil, and Brian” (1980)
• [01:00:04] Robert Liebrich

On this week’s episode of Time Sensitive—our first of Season 7—Chicago-based artist Nick Cave talks about his career-spanning retrospective, “Forothermore,” currently on view at the Guggenheim (through April 10), which takes over three floors and features installation, video works, and sculpture, including recent iterations of his famous Soundsuits; his improvisational approach to work and life; how his art seeks to find brightness in darkness; and what the world might be like if everyone sat in silence for an hour each day.

Special thanks to our Season 7 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes: 

• [00:30] Nick Cave
• [16:43] Facility
• [16:57] Bob Faust
• [16:59] Jack Cave
• [20:53] “TM13” (2015)
• [25:16] “Forothermore”
• [25:20] Naomi Beckwith
• [29:53] “Time and Again” (2000)
• [33:18] “Gestalt” (2012)
• [33:19]  “Blot” (2012)
• [36:21] “Sea Sick” (2012)
• [43:44] Anselm Kiefer
• [53:11] “Made by Whites for Whites”
• [55:38] Claudia Rankine
• [55:53] Reginald Dwayne Betts

For the American-born chef and restaurateur Ruth Rogers, owner of the Michelin-starred River Cafe on the north bank of the Thames in London’s Hammersmith neighborhood, food is a portal: to memories and cultures. To conversations. To meaningful connections. 

Since Rogers, who goes by Ruthie, co-founded the celebrated Italian restaurant with Rose Gray in 1987, it has become a well-trod stomping ground for a bevy of artists, filmmakers, writers, actors, architects, and other movers and shakers—many of whom have appeared on her podcast, Ruthie’s Table 4, including the director Steve McQueen, British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful, and the artist Tracey Emin. Similarly, many highly regarded chefs have come up through the River Cafe’s kitchen, including Jamie Oliver, April Bloomfield, and Jess Shadbolt and Clare de Boer of the New York restaurants King and Jupiter. Rogers’s latest project, The River Cafe Look Book (Phaidon), captures her true spirit; that of the restaurant as a whole; and that of her late husband, the Pritzker Prize–winning architect Richard Rogers, to whom the book is dedicated. A book as much about looking as eating, it encourages, in Rogers’s wonderfully joyful way, engaging the full body and mind as a cook. 

On this episode, Rogers talks with Spencer about her journey in food and cooking; her 35 years at the helm of the River Cafe; and the rigorous culture of kindness and openness, paired with toughness, that she has built at the restaurant, both in and out of the kitchen.

Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

• Ruthie Rogers
• [03:32] The River Cafe Look Book
• [03:51] River Cafe 30
• [13:21] The River Cafe Cook Book
• [29:17] The River Cafe
• [41:53] Ruthie’s Table 4

One small step for Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, one giant leap for mankind. So goes the story of several of the entrepreneur, philanthropist, and humanitarian’s pursuits over the past three decades. At present the founder and CEO of Sceye, a company building stratospheric platforms to help prevent human trafficking and monitor climate change, Vestergaard has a long history in developing catalytic products that have quite literally revolutionized the humanitarian and public health landscapes. Through his eponymous material science company Vestergaard, he developed PermaNet, a screen designed to kill mosquitoes by contact, which has more than halved the global prevalence of malaria, and ZeroFly, a storage bag that protects agricultural commodities against insect infestation, mold growth, oxidation, and rancidity. With LifeStraw, he created a product that filters contaminated water, which has eradicated Guinea worm disease from South Asia and all but eradicated it from Sub-Saharan Africa. Imbuing a values-driven approach into everything he does, Vestergaard is driven by the desire to close the gap between those who have and those who don’t.

On the episode, Vestergaard talks with Andrew about the values of equity he was raised with in Scandinavia, the importance of maintaining rigor and commitment over time, and why doing good and doing business aren’t mutually exclusive.

Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

• Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen
• [02:55] Sceye
• [39:03] PermaNet
• [45:27] LifeStraw

The artist Hank Willis Thomas is a voracious reader, not only of books, but of the world around us—and particularly, of images. Through his practice, Thomas interrogates and investigates, probes and prods, and ultimately helps make sense of various strands of visual culture—advertising, photographs, videos, clothing and ephemera, monuments—to tell necessary stories and shape new forms of meaning and memory. While Thomas’s roots are in the medium of photography, his work also extends far into other realms, including sculpture and memorialization. A prime example of this and a collaboration with MASS Design Group is “The Embrace,” a memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, that will be unveiled in the Boston Common in January 2023. Another is the Gun Violence Memorial Project, organized with the prevention organizations Purpose Over Pain and Everytown for Gun Safety, and also with MASS. 

Central to Thomas’s art are the subjects of truth and reality (best illustrated by his traveling “Truth Booth” installation, which toured all 50 states in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election), how they’re shaped, and by whom. Many of Thomas’s more conceptual projects also tend to be collective. Most notable among these is For Freedoms, an artist-run coalition he co-founded in 2016 as a super PAC that serves as a platform for artists of all kinds to meaningfully contribute to public discourse and help raise political awareness in the United States.

On this episode of Time Sensitive, Thomas speaks with Spencer about identity as a figment of our imaginations, race as the “most successful advertising campaign” ever, and quilt-stitching as a metaphor for all that he does.

Special thanks to our Season 6 sponsor, L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts.

• Hank Willis Thomas
• [06:36] “Remember Me” 
• [06:56] “Digging Deeper”
• [12:12] MASS Design Group
• [15:27] “The Embrace”
• [18:02] “Raise Up”
• [19:27] Gun Violence Memorial Project
• [23:21] “Unity”
• [27:59] TED Talk: “A Mother and Son United by Love and Art” 
• [38:31] “Along The Way”
• [39:08] “Branded”
• [39:08] “Unbranded”
• [39:08] “Rebranded”
• [39:23] “Absolut Power” 
• [43:55] “A Place to Call Home”
• [44:01] “Question Bridge: Black Males”
• [47:00] “Truth Booth”
• [49:01] For Freedoms
• [49:01] “For Freedoms News”
• [58:46] “Guernica”