Time Sensitive

• Faye Toogood on Creation as a Form of Connection

  Faye Toogood is perhaps best known for her Roly-Poly chair, among the more famous pieces of furniture to come out of the 2010s and take over the zeitgeist, but the London-based designer’s artistry and craft runs much deeper and spans much wider. She began finding, collecting, cataloging, producing, and editing her “assemblages” long before she ever had a name for them, and her design career has been marked by exactly that, beginning with the debut of Assemblage 1 (2010) and through to her latest, Assemblage 8: Palette (2024). On the whole, Toogood’s creations serve as material investigations and discipline-defying attempts to better understand herself. Without formal training in design, Toogood—who was the Designer of the Year at the Maison&Objet design fair in Paris this past January and the Stockholm Furniture Fair’s Guest of Honor in February—uses what she describes as the feeling of being “a fraud in the room” to her advantage. Through her work, she is an enigma; with projects across furniture, interiors, fashion, and homewares, she’s unwilling to be defined by a single output and has instead built a multilayered practice and belief system that allows her to be “all heart and hands.” On this week’s Time Sensitive—our debut of Season 11—Toogood talks about the acts of creation and connection, and how each underscores the enduring play that’s ever-present in her work.Special thanks to our Season 11 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Faye ToogoodToogood[3:49] Assemblage 1[7:43] Assemblage 7[13:28] Seamus Heaney[14:50] Isamu Noguchi[14:50] Kan Yasuda[17:23] Roly-Poly chair[18:06] Rachel Whiteread[20:07] Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden[22:45] Matisse Chapel[25:40] “Ways of Seeing”[29:57] “Womanifesto!”[36:55] Assemblage 8[52:17] “The World of Interiors”

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• Malcolm Gladwell on Finding Freedom in Abandoning Expectations

  Malcolm Gladwell may be one of the most widely read—and, with his Revisionist History podcast, listened to—journalists of our time. A New Yorker magazine staff writer and the author of seven New York Times bestsellers, including The Tipping Point (2000), Blink (2005), and Outliers (2008), he has myriad awards and honors to his name. But this impressive trajectory has never been some planned-out or preordained journey; in fact, as Gladwell says on this episode of Time Sensitive, he has never been one to try to overly plan for or divine the future—of his career, of his life, or of anything, really. “Expectations are a burden and wherever possible should be abandoned,” he says. Gladwell’s radical receptiveness is perhaps what has led him to become one of today’s most prolific and eclectic writers, reporting on topics ranging from office design and french fries, to dog fighting and Steve Jobs, to automobile engineers and marijuana. Across all of his writing, Gladwell exhibits a rare sleight-of-hand ability to take certain intellectual or academic subjects and leap-frog them into popular culture, and, in doing so, make seemingly esoteric phenomena entertaining and widely accessible.On the episode—recorded in the Pushkin Industries outpost in Hudson, New York—Gladwell talks about the disappearance of what he calls “the critical enterprise in America”; and how A.I. is complicating his famous “10,000-Hour Rule.”Special thanks to our Season 10 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Malcolm Gladwell[4:36] Revenge of the Tipping Point[5:06] The Tipping Point[13:43] Unsafe at Any Speed[22:52] Anand Giridharadas[24:00] Revisionist History[25:39] Blink[31:07] The Holocaust in American Life[43:16] “10,000-Hour Rule”[43:16] Outliers[56:06] The Bomber Mafia (Podcast Mini Series)[56:06] Pushkin Industries[59:56] John Grisham[1:06:56] The Bomber Mafia  (Book)

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  1:12:11
• Richard Christiansen on Bridging Horticulture and Popular Culture

  Richard Christiansen believes that the true definition of luxury is having one’s senses on full blast—seeing, tasting, smelling, hearing, and touching the world around by engaging in its beauty and bounty to the fullest. This idea is at the heart of his company, the garden-pleasure apothecary Flamingo Estate, which is both a place—a home and garden on a seven-acre property in the hills of Los Angeles—and a brand, which operates a global farming collective and sells wellness, beauty, and “home essentials” products. In just a few years, Flamingo Estate has collaborated with cultural figures such as Julianne Moore, Martha Stewart, and Ai Weiwei, and created some 200 or so products, from C.S.A.-style farm boxes and flower arrangements, to scented candles and a rosé wine, to body washes and chocolates. Capturing the spirit of all this is a new book, Flamingo Estate: The Guide to Becoming Alive, which tells the story of his company’s rapid rise and includes interviews with the likes of Jane Fonda, John Legend, and Alice Waters.On the episode, Christiansen talks about his lifelong connection with beekeeping and honey; why more brands should embrace “radical inconsistency” in their products; and how reading a book by Jane Goodall, and later befriending the anthropologist and conservationist, changed the course of his life.Special thanks to our Season 10 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Richard Christiansen[4:24] Flamingo Estate[8:05] Flamingo Estate: The Guide to Becoming Alive[46:21] Jane Goodall[12:48] Alice Waters[15:06] Harvey[35:35] Chandelier Creative[45:51] Benetton[45:51] Colors[50:35] Rumiko Murata[52:35] Owl Bureau[58:28] “The Summer Day”

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  1:01:46
• Marcia Bjornerud on the Profound Wisdom of Rocks

  To the majority of humankind, rocks may appear to be static, timeless objects, but not to the geologist Marcia Bjornerud. In her mind, rocks are rich pieces of text that have evolved (and continue to evolve) across millennia, and are therefore incredibly timeful. “They almost demand reading,” Bjornerud says on this episode of Time Sensitive. “You have the feeling that you’re communicating with some larger, wilder, more ancient wisdom.” A two-time Senior Fulbright Scholar, a professor of geology at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, and an expert on the geophysics of earthquakes and mountain building, Bjornerud serves as a sort of geological translator of these “texts,” reading their encrypted messages and stories—tracing their etymologies, essentially—and from there inferring why things are the way they are. Bjornerud’s translations shine across her four books, including the newly published Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks.On the episode, she discusses the power of looking at the world through a Deep Time lens, why we’re currently in what she considers a “golden age” of geoscience, and what a “time literate” society would mean for humanity and the planet.Special thanks to our Season 10 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Marcia Bjornerud[15:18] Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World[07:16] Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks[07:16] “Studying Stones Can Rock Your World”[07:16] Geopedia: A Brief Compendium of Geologic Curiosities[07:16] Carbon cycle[09:47] Rock deformation[13:54] The overview effect[17:42] “Geology Is Like Augmented Reality for the Planet”[21:28] Colonization of Mars[21:28] Anthropocene[29:06] Planned obsolescence[29:06] Green technology revolution[31:40] Seventh Generation Principle[34:01] Stonehenge[38:29] University of Minnesota[41:02] Svalbard, Norway[41:02] Norwegian Polar Institute[44:15] Yoshihide Ohta[50:06] “Lost Time in Amatrice”[54:19] Kola Superdeep Borehole

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  58:45
• Nachson Mimran on Leveraging Privilege for Good and in Service of Others

  With great privilege, believes the humanitarian and entrepreneur Nachson Mimran, comes great responsibility. Brought up in a family that operates one of the largest agri-industrial businesses in West Africa, Mimran comes from considerable wealth, but unlike so many who have a background such as his, he is open and forthright about his inheritance and the responsibility he sees of doing good with it. With his decarbonization, refugee empowerment, and “human optimization” organization to.org, he’s creating deep impact through various design and development projects in refugee settlements—including the Bidi Bidi Performing Arts Center, completed last year in Uganda—and empowering individuals and communities via what he describes as “venture philanthropy.” At The Alpina Gstaad hotel in the Swiss Alps, which he’s the co-founder of, he provides exceptional hospitality experiences that subvert certain traditional industry codes, fostering a relaxed but elevated environment.On the episode, recorded in front of a live audience at The Lobby “hospitality event” in Copenhagen earlier this fall, Mimran discusses his big-picture view of the word hospitality; how a family tragedy led him and his brother to found to.org; and his bold vision for building transformative spaces for refugees.Special thanks to our Season 10 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Nachson Mimran[00:44] The Lobby[03:46] to.org[09:37] The Alpina Gstaad[09:37] Jean Claude Mimran[11:00] Marcel Bach[13:47] Arieh Mimran[19:29] Pangaia[23:28] Regenerate[23:28] Kakuma Refugee Settlement[23:28] Sumayya Vally[26:04] Hassell[26:04] Xavier De Kestelier[27:06] Bidi Bidi Performing Arts Centre[27:06] Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement[27:49] Mike Zuckerman[27:49] Nakivale Refugee Settlement[32:11] The Throne[38:16] Kutupalong Refugee Settlement[48:09] André Balazs

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