Time Sensitive The Slowdown

The multi-hyphenate British designer, creative director, and artist Samuel Ross, founder of the fashion label A-Cold-Wall and the industrial design studio SR_A, talks about notions of ritual, essence, and alchemy; how his work straddles the line between the organic and the synthetic; and why he always thinks in threes.

Jelani Cobb, a New Yorker staff writer and the dean of Columbia Journalism School, 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.

Artist Marilyn Minter talks about the unrealistic societal and body-image standards young women continue to face, the importance of tolerating complexity and multiplicity in artwork, and the hope she has in the next generation to fight social injustice.

Ari Shapiro, co-host of NPR’s All Things Considered, 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.

Anders Byriel, the CEO of the Danish textile company Kvadrat, 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.

Photographer Tina Barney talks about 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.