Perhaps best known for his novels Motherless Brooklyn (1999), The Fortress of Solitude (2003), and Chronic City (2009)—or, more recently, Brooklyn Crime Novel (2023)—the author, essayist, and cultural critic Jonathan Lethem could be considered the ultimate modern-day Brooklyn bard, even if today he lives in California, where he’s a professor of English and creative writing at Pomona College. His most celebrated books take place in Brooklyn, or in the case of Chronic City, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and across his genre-spanning works of fiction, his narratives capture a profound sense of the rich chaos and wonder to be found in an urban existence. Lethem is also the author of several essay collections, including the newly published Cellophane Bricks: A Life in Visual Culture (ZE Books), which compiles much of his art writing from over the years written in response to—and often in exchange for—artworks by friends, including Gregory Crewdson, Nan Goldin, and Raymond Pettibon.

On the episode, Lethem discusses his passion for book dedications; the time he spent with James Brown and Bob Dylan, respectively, when profiling them for Rolling Stone in the mid-aughts; how his work is, in part, a way of dealing with and healing from his mother’s death in 1978, at age 36; and why he views his writing as “fundamentally commemorative.”

Special thanks to our Season 10 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

Jonathan Lethem

[5:35] Cellophane Bricks

[5:35] High School of Music and Art

[5:35] Motherless Brooklyn

[5:35] The Fortress of Solitude

[5:35] The Disappointment Artist

[7:15] Carmen Fariña

[9:08] The Great Gatsby

[9:08] Brooklyn Crime Novel

[10:59] Lynn Nottage

[13:08] Bennington College

[23:41] The Collapsing Frontier

[23:41] Italo Calvino

[27:37] Dada movement

[27:37] Dissident Gardens

[31:21] Nan Goldin

[34:33] “The Ecstasy of Influence”

[42:32] “Being James Brown: Inside the Private World of the Baddest Man Who Ever Lived”

[42:32] “The Genius and Modern Times of Bob Dylan”

[51:00] Chronic City

[1:06:26] Jorge Luis Borges

To the lighting designer Lindsey Adelman, light is at once ubiquitous and precious, quotidian yet miraculous; it can be easily overlooked or taken for granted, but it also has the potential to become transformative or even otherworldly. Through her craft-forward approach, Adelman creates pieces that defy strict labels and explore the tensions between organic and industrial forms and materials, combining hand-blown glass with industrial and machine-milled components. Since launching her eponymous company in 2006, she has built a formidable business, perhaps becoming best known for her Branching Bubble chandeliers, a series that consists of glass “bubbles” elegantly mounted on the ends of brass, bronze, or nickel “branches.” Adelman also runs an experimental space called LaLAB as a means of exploring and meditating on illumination through the creation of one-off and limited-edition pieces, as well as private commissions.

On the episode, she discusses her recent decision to shift her company away from a large-scale production operation and toward a smaller, more intimate “studio” model; the great surprise of having one of her designs installed in Vice President Kamala Harris’s Washington, D.C., home; and her love of hosting.

Special thanks to our Season 10 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

Lindsey Adelman

[6:05] Ingo Maurer

[6:05] Gaetano Pesce

[7:55] Burst Chandelier

[12:22] “A Realm of Light”

[14:55] Isamu Noguchi’s Akari light sculptures

[17:20] Yosemite National Park

[18:41] James Turrell

[18:41] House of Light

[20:47] Noguchi’s “Lunar Infant”

[24:40] Writings by Agnes Martin

[26:52] Hiroshi Sugimoto

[27:46] David Lynch

[29:08] “Paul McCarthy: WS”

[29:08] Matthew Barney

[30:54] Haruki Murakami

[33:14] “A Cacao Ceremony That Brought Close Friends Even Closer”

[48:13] Branching Bubble chandelier

[48:13] Buckminster Fuller

[52:01] Adelman’s open-source D.I.Y. light project

[52:30] David Weeks

[52:30] Lunette

[52:46] “The Lighting Designer From Everyone’s Dream Brooklyn Brownstone”

[52:46] Rich People Problems

[52:46] Gwyneth Paltrow

In the eyes of the architecture critic Paul Goldberger, a building is a living, breathing thing, a structure that can have a spirit and even, at its best, a soul. It’s this optimistic perspective that has given Goldberger’s writing a certain ineffable, captivating quality across his prolific career—first at The New York Times, where he served as the paper’s longtime architecture critic, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1984; then as the architecture critic at The New Yorker from 1997 to 2011; and now, as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Goldberger is the author of several books, including Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry (2015), Why Architecture Matters (2009), and Building Up and Tearing Down: Reflections on the Age of Architecture (2009). He is also the chair of the advisory board of the Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, where we recorded this episode, our third “site-specific” interview on Time Sensitive.

On the episode, Goldberger discusses the Glass House’s staying power as it turns 75, the evolution of architecture over the past century, what he’s learned from writing architects’ obituaries, and the Oreo cookie from a design perspective.

Special thanks to our Season 10 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

Paul Goldberger

[05:17] Glass House

[05:17] Philip Johnson

[07:06] Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

[07:06] Farnsworth House

[08:42] Brick House

[12:37] Gordon Bunshaft

[12:37] Lever House

[12:37] Frank Lloyd Wright

[12:37] Guggenheim Museum

[13:18] TWA Flight Center

[13:18] Kevin Roche

[13:18] Ford Foundation building

[13:18] CBS Building

[15:17] Noyes House

[16:17] U.N. Headquarters

[17:50] Centre Pompidou

[17:50] I.M. Pei

[17:50] Louvre Pyramid

[17:50] Frank Gehry

[17:50] Guggenheim Bilbao

[20:00] Walt Disney Concert Hall

[23:20] Stuyvesant Town

[24:24] “Oreo, at 75, the World’s Favorite Cookie; Machine Imagery, Homey Decoration”

[25:46] “Quick! Before It Crumbles!: An architecture critic looks at cookie architecture”

[25:46] Nora Ephron

[26:18] “Design Notebook; Commonplace Things Can Be Great Designs”

[27:16] Bauhaus

[29:10] Fallingwater

[29:10] Richard Neutra

[29:10] Lovell House

[29:10] Gehry House

[29:10] Louis Kahn

[32:38] “Philip Johnson, Architecture’s Restless Intellect, Dies at 98”

[32:38] “Louis I. Kahn Dies; Architect Was 73”

[35:30] Paul Rudolph

[36:50] Zaha Hadid

[37:22] “New Police Building”

[38:19] Henry Geldzahler

[41:31] Why Architecture Matters

[43:21] Chrysler Building

[47:28] Vincent Scully

[48:18] Lewis Mumford

[1:00:47] The City Observed: A Guide to the Architecture of Manhattan

[1:00:47] World Trade Center

[1:02:49] “Here Is New York” by E.B. White

[1:05:33] Design: The Leading Hotels of the World

[1:07:25] Ritz Paris

[1:07:25] The Dylan Amsterdam

[1:09:01] “Why Buildings Grow On Us”

The artist Francesco Clemente may have been born and raised in Naples, but—having lived and worked around the world, including in Rome, India, New York City, and New Mexico—he considers himself a citizen of no place. Widely known for his work across mediums, from drawings and frescoes to mosaics, oils, and sculptures, Clemente makes art that evokes his mystical perspective, with his paintings often featuring spiritual subjects or dreamlike symbols. Beyond exhibiting in galleries and museums, over the years Clemente has also made works for a variety of other venues, including a nightclub, a hotel, a Hollywood film, and the Metropolitan Opera. This fall, his work (and name) will be central to his latest unusual project: the soon-to-open Clemente Bar at chef Daniel Humm’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant Eleven Madison Park.

On the episode, Clemente discusses his collaboration with Humm, frescoes as the most luminous artistic medium, his deep affinity with India, and the certain timeworn quality to his art.

Special thanks to our Season 10 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

Francesco Clemente

[3:55] Clemente Bar

[3:55] Eleven Madison Park

[3:55] Daniel Humm

[3:55] Alba Clemente

[7:50] Murals for the Palladium nightclub

[7:50] Hudson Hotel

[7:50] Ian Schrager

[8:43] Arata Isozaki

[8:43] Philippe Starck

[8:43] Kenny Scharf

[8:43] Keith Haring

[8:43] Jean-Michel Basquiat

[8:43] Steve Rubell

[9:43] Works for Great Expectations (1998)

[9:43] “The Sopranos” series

[9:43] Portrait of Fran Lebowitz

[11:37] Portrait of Toni Morrison

[23:12] Jiddu Krishnamurti

[23:12] Theosophical Society

[24:49] Álvaro Siza

[24:49] Museo Madre

[32:48] Cy Twombly

[32:48] Joseph Beuys’s exhibition “We Are the Revolution” (1972)

[35:30] Rudolf Steiner

[36:56] Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

[37:57] Swami Vivekananda

[39:20] Salman Rushdie

[41:31] Nisargadatta Maharaj

[46:51] Andy Warhol

[46:51] Allen Ginsberg

[48:13] William Blake

[48:54] Raymond Foye

[48:54] Hanuman Books

[50:04] “The Four Corners” (1985)

[53:36] Saint Francis

In her new book, The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America (Harvard University Press), the historian and Harvard professor Sarah Lewis unpacks a major part of United States history that until now wasn’t just brushed over, but was intentionally buried: how the ​​Caucasian War and the end of the Civil War were conflated by P.T. Barnum, former President Woodrow Wilson, and others to shape how we see race in America. Long overdue, The Unseen Truth is a watershed book about photography and visuality that calls to mind works by history-shaping authors such as James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and bell hooks. Lewis is also the founder of the Vision & Justice initiative, which strives to educate the public about the importance of art and culture for equity and justice in the U.S., and is launching a new publishing venture with Aperture this fall.

On the episode, she discusses the tension between pedagogy and propaganda; the deep influence of Frederick Douglass’s 1861 “Pictures and Progress” lecture on her work; how a near-death car crash altered the course of her life and The Unseen Truth; and the special ability of certain photographs to stop time.

Special thanks to our Season 10 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

Sarah Lewis

[04:01] The Unseen Truth

[05:24] Woodrow Wilson

[05:24] Frederick Douglass

[05:24] P.T. Barnum

[06:51] Toni Morrison

[06:51] Angela Davis

[06:51] Mathew Brady

[51:14] Vision & Justice

[11:35] Caucasus

[14:02] Imam Shamil

[17:38] Caucasian War

[19:31] MFA Boston

[19:31] The Metropolitan Museum

[22:30] “Pictures and Progress”

[28:41] “A Circassian”

[28:41] “Slave Ship”

[28:41] “The Gulf Stream”

[35:13] Frances Benjamin Johnston

[39:20] Jarvis Givens

[39:20] Fugitive Pedagogy

[44:05] The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search of Mastery

[49:08] Montserrat

[49:08] Under the Volcano

[51:36] Aperture

[52:26] Maurice Berger

[52:26] Coreen Simpson

[52:26] Doug Harris

[52:26] Deborah Willis

[52:26] Leigh Raiford

[52:57] Hal Foster

[56:01] Hank Willis Thomas

[56:01] Theaster Gates

[56:01] Mark Bradford

[56:01] Amy Sherald

[57:58] Wynton Marsalis

[57:58] Charles Black, Jr.

[57:58] Louis Armstrong

[57:58] Brown v. Board of Education

For Rita Sodi, cooking isn’t so much an art or a science, but rather an intuitive way for her to channel her Tuscan roots and provide a profound sense of home. Following a 15-year career in the world of fashion as a self-described “denim guru” for Calvin Klein Jeans, Sodi transitioned into the realm of restaurants in 2008, when she moved to New York City from Bagno a Ripoli, Italy, and opened the West Village establishment I Sodi. Soon after, Sodi serendipitously met her life and work partner, Jody Williams—the chef-owner of the French bistro Buvette—and the two went on to found the restaurant group Officina 1397. Now, in addition to I Sodi and Buvette, they also operate Via Carota, The Commerce Inn, and Bar Pisellino. Across all of Sodi’s undertakings, her motive is clear: to create dishes she loves with great care and rigor, and, at least in the cases of I Sodi and Via Carota, to share an abiding passion for Tuscan cooking.

On the episode, Sodi discusses learning to cook from her mother, her atypical journey from fashion to food, and some of the stringent rules she follows in the kitchen and in life.

Special thanks to our Season 10 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

Rita Sodi

[25:50] Tuscany

[4:50] West Village

[5:58] I Sodi

[6:47] Calvin Klein Jeans

[8:31] Jody Williams

[8:31] Via Carota

[8:31] Officina 1397

[8:31] Bar Pisellino

[8:31] The Commerce Inn

[8:31] Buvette

[20:29] Pete Wells

[23:22] “An Ode to I Sodi”

[23:22] “The 100 Best Restaurants in New York City 2024”

[23:22] “When I Want to Be Alone, I Eat Dinner at the Bar at I Sodi”

[25:50] Bagno a Ripoli

[29:35] “The Laws of Tuscan Eating at I Sodi in the West Village”

[48:26] Emilia-Romagna

[53:53] Jeff Gordinier

To the landscape designer Edwina von Gal, gardening is much more than just seeding, planting, weeding, and watering; it’s her life calling. Since starting her namesake firm in 1984 in East Hampton, on New York’s Long Island, she has worked with, for, and/or alongside the likes of Calvin Klein, Larry Gagosian, Frank Gehry, Maya Lin, Annabelle Selldorf, Richard Serra, and Cindy Sherman, creating gardens that center on native species and engage in other nature-based land-care solutions. In 2008, von Gal founded the Azuero Earth Project in Panama to promote chemical-free reforestation with native trees on the Azuero Peninsula. Stemming out of this initiative, in 2013, she then founded the Perfect Earth Project to promote chemical-free, non-agricultural land management in the U.S. Her most recent effort, Two Thirds for the Birds, is a call-to-action to plant more native plants and eliminate pesticides, thus creating a greater food supply for birds.

On the episode, she discusses the meditative qualities of gardening; reframing landscaping as “land care”; and why she sees herself not as a steward of land, but rather as a collaborator with it.

Special thanks to our Season 9 presenting sponsor, L’École, School of Jewelry Arts.

Show notes:

Edwina von Gal

[15:32] William Cronon

[15:32] Changes in the Land

[15:32] Tiokasin Ghosthorse

[24:04] Carl Sagan

[24:04] The Demon-Haunted World

[26:07] Perfect Earth Project

[40:37] Two Thirds for the Birds

[42:41] John Fitzpatrick

[42:41] Cornell Lab of Ornithology

[42:41] Merlin Bird ID

[47:01] Garden Club of America

[50:21] Diana Vreeland

[51:09] Peter Sharp

[51:09] Channel Gardens at Rockefeller Center

[54:46] Frank Gehry

[54:46] Biomuseo

[54:46] Bruce Mau

[56:32] Azuero Earth Project

[1:00:37] Doug Tallamy

[1:02:01] Nature’s Best Hope

[1:05:12] The High Line

[1:05:12] Brooklyn Bridge Park

[1:05:12] The Battery Conservancy

[1:05:12] Brooklyn Museum

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

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

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

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