All too often, gifts that bring initial delight end their lives in dusty corners, attic nooks, or worse still, the dump.used for years or even decades to come.

The Austrian-born, New York–based graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister has a rare knack for tackling broad, universal subjNow Is Better, just out from Phaidon, he’s taken on the subject of long-term thinking, arguing that never before in human history havbetter. First started in the 2020 lockdown, the project vividly brings statistics to life through a range of media, including

Just over a decade ago, in 2012, Jhumpa Lahiri moved with her husband and two children to Rome. In the 12 years prior, sInterpreter of Maladies; her best-selling 2003 novel, The Namesake, was turned into a Hollywood film directed by Mira Nair. Her arrival in Rome, it turned out, would alter her already exThe Lowland, which was a finalist for both the Man Booker Prize and a National Book Award, remains her last published work of ficti

Every year, the fall brings a global gauntlet of gallery openings, museum galas, and art fairs (Frieze London and Paris+ in October, Salon Art + Design in New York and Paris Photo in November, and the perennial year-end juggernaut Art Basel Miami Beach in December, to name a few). In an effort to cut through the noise—just as we did this past summer—we selected five must-see shows this season, from New York City, to Washington, D.C., to Denver. In New York, we recommEp. 97 of Time Sensitive—so of course we’re a bit biased).

David W. Orr could be considered at once an educator’s educator, a political scientist’s political scientist, and an ecoDemocracy in a Hotter Time: Climate Change and Democratic Transformation, from M.I.T. Press, which he edited), articles (more than 250 to date), and lectures (hundreds around the world) with a

If there’s anything that Christopher John Rogers cares even more deeply about than clothes, it has to be color. Since establishing his namesake fashion label in 2016, tGossip Girl, red carpets (Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, and Rihanna have all donned his dresses), and into the illustrious halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (two of his dresses were featured in the Co

As I was reading Katy Kelleher’s beautifully written new book, The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Essays on Desire and Consumption (Simon & Schuster), I found myself returning to a conversation I once had with the graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister, who in 2018 himself published an astute book on beauty. “If you’re in an environment that is lacking beauty,” Sagmeister told me, “you are becoming an asshole.” Cheeky as his

The yoga teacher Eddie Stern has spent decades thinking about and practicing breathing and breathwork—more specifically,pranayama—and across these countless hours he has learned and taught an array of techniques that can transform one’s life both meBroome Street Ganesha Temple in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, Stern is a legend in the realms of yoga and well-being, and over the years has counteOne Simple Thing: A New Look at the Science of Yoga and How It Can Transform Your Life and the co-creator of the Breathing App (with Moby and Deepak Chopra), Stern’s approach to yoga is intentionally uncomplicated. As is clear in this interview f

When the artist, performer, and poet vanessa german was selected to design a temporary memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., as part of the “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” exhibition (on view from Aug. 18 through Sept. 18), she quickly found herself turning to a catalytic moment in AmericaMarian Anderson’s 1939 Easter Sunday concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Attended by 75,000 people in the then segregated U.S. capitol, with millions more listening on

Through her health practice Doing Well, the integrative nutritionist Daphne Javitch has built a cult following around heRachel Comey, the food artist Laila Gohar), topic-driven sessions on different health subjects (aging, sex, backmapping), and recipes (halibut and caper sauce, tomato sauce, brothy avocado). A large part of her appeal is her fashion-adjace

“All too often, we humans push papers, ideas, or money around at a monotonous pace with no time for rest and even less tLook: How to Pay Attention in a Distracted World (Riverhead Books). The result of decades of research and time spent thinking and writing about the subject of observatiLook spans a vast range of theories—from philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s notion of embodied perception, to psychologist M

For Sara Auster, being receptive and listening to the world around you—both literally and metaphorically—are essential t

For Vivian Rosenthal, a trained architect and the co-founder of Frequency Breathwork, breath provides the structural starting point around which a good life gets built—it’s the foundation for all that groclasses that she guides from Souk Studio in Manhattan’s Flatiron neighborhood and at off-site events.

For the past 15 years, the architect, curator, and writer Pedro Gadanho has been raising alarm bells about the urgency tEco-Visionaries,” a 2018 exhibition he co-curated at the Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology in Lisbon, Gadanho is at the forefClimax Change: How Architecture Must Transform in the Age of Ecological Emergency (Actar Publishers, 2022), brings together his most recent research and thinking to profound and potent effect.

Ever since the Ghanaian British architect David Adjaye and I first met, in 2011, in large part because of our many interIn Memory Of: Designing Contemporary Memorials (Phaidon, 2020).

The Los Angeles–based energy healer, teacher, wellness entrepreneur, and self-described “multidimensional multi-hyphenather own platform, she offers an “Inner Child” healing workshop and a seven-day breathwork mini course, and also publishes a Friday email newsletter called 11:11.

As we head into the summer, we scouted the globe—from London to Dallas to Miami to New York—to select what we feel are tArt Basel Miami Beach in December): “Joan Didion: What She Means” at the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

As the founder of BAO (Black Apothecary Office), Jaé Joseph aims to create more than just another skin care company with yet more hydrating and exfoliating cleansers,consumed,” he says. “Forty to forty-two percent of the client base for my product line are not people of color.”

As far as architecture career paths go, Lina Ghotmeh’s is a bit of an anomaly. In 2005, at age 25, while working in Londreceived the Grand Prix Afex, a prestigious French architecture prize. Around that time—project complete—Dorell, Tane, and Ghotmeh shuttered DGT and

The astronomer Chris Impey’s latest book, Worlds Without End: Exoplanets, Habitability, and the Future of Humanity, explores the implications of the fact that there are, by his rough count, a mind-boggling four billion Earth-like planthe latest episode of our At a Distance podcast, adding that, “We’re not gonna go there; the energy cost is insane. We have to look after this planet.”

Leonard Koren may have written nearly 20 books over the past four decades, but he doesn’t consider himself a writer. “I creator,” he says. “I’m interested in exploring things that I’m curious about and trying to figure out what it is that makes thonsens, explored in books including New Fashion Japan (1984), 283 Useful Ideas from Japan (1988), and How to Take a Japanese Bath (1992). Perhaps his most widely known book is Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers (1994), which introduced—cemented, even—the term wabi-sabi in the West and has become a cult classic over the nearly 30 years since its publication.

If there’s one book I’m going to be shoving into peoples’ hands for years to come, it’s the recently released collectionNot Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility (Haymarket Books)—which is why it’s our pick for The Slowdown’s debut Book of the Month column.

The herbalist Rachelle Robinett refers to herbs as “icing on the cake.” It’s a mixed metaphor that, more deeply understoPharmakon Supernatural—through which she teaches classes (“Magnesium 101! With Wooden Spoon Herbs,” “Herbalism for Fertility,” “Holistic HerbaHRBLS, and sells items such as an “empathy-enhancing elixir” through an online shop—she is also the author of the newsletter The Art of Functional Nature, which goes out to more than 11,000 subscribers. In a space so often filled with hucksters and crackpots pushing gimmic

Since launching the organization Black Girls Breathing nearly five years ago, in October 2018, the Atlanta-based trauma- and grief-informed breathwork practitioner Jasmine Ma

Across his 40-year career, the British architect John Pawson has realized a vast portfolio of impeccably refined projectMaking Life Simpler (Phaidon), one by his longtime friend the design writer and critic Deyan Sudjic, a book not only about his work and visi

In the summer of 2021, just over a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, chef Daniel Humm took a giant, thought-provoking (anEleven Madison Park. Long known for its meat and fish staples—sliced sturgeon; a tabletop clambake; beef tartare with caviar and smoked bonincreasingly dire climate reality and also as a way of redefining fine dining for our precarious present. (That fall, Humm spoke about this radical transformation on our Time Sensitive podcast.) Within months, food and restaurant critics came with their meat knives out, most notablThe New York Times’s Pete Wells, who, in a particularly cranky review, wrote of a beet dish that it “tastes like Lemon Pledge and smells like a burning joint.” While there were certainly menu kinknamed the first vegan three-starred Michelin restaurant in the world—a catalytic moment for Humm, for fine dining, and for what he hopes will be our plant-based future. Over the past two y

Everywhere I went during this year’s Milan Design Week, there seemed to be a palpable feeling that the Salone del Mobile design and furniture fair, now in its 61st year, is sputtering, or, at the very least, puttering. While it unquestionabAlcova, which this year took place at a former slaughterhouse, and spaces in and around the city’s Brera neighborhood, long a GUBI presented its latest collections this year, or the Bonacossa Tennis Club, where the Milan-based designer Cristina Celestino created a pop-up restaurant with the food collective We Are Ona. Many architects, designers, and journalists I spoke wi

When Frances Moore Lappé published her book Diet for a Small Planet, in 1971, it was initially her humble way of understanding and coming to terms with modern-day food systems and industr

It’s a Friday in the late afternoon, and I’m standing with Ivy Ross, Google’s vice president of hardware design, and SusYour Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us (Random House), which takes a scientifically backed look into neuroaesthetics—or, in other words, how engaging with art

Radical by nature and a rule-breaker at heart, Paola Navone has been on an endless self-described “treasure hunt” for thArchitettura Radicale, and then went on to join the Italian radical design groups Alchimia and Memphis. From the early 1980s to 2000, she liv

Nearly 150 years ago, on April 14, 1876—the eleventh anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s death—Frederick Douglass spoke befDouglass said, “I warmly congratulate you upon the highly interesting object which has caused you to assemble in such numbers and spi

For Lesley Lokko, plurality comes naturally. Born in Scotland to a Ghanaian father and a Scottish mother, and moving freThe Laboratory of the Future,” she’s bringing exactly this outlook to the main exhibition. On view from May 20 through Nov. 26, the six-part presentAfrican Futures Institute in Accra, a new architecture school and research institute that, as with her Biennale show, positions Africa as a labor

For the past 20 years, Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, has been teaAwe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life (Penguin Press).

From its classic swoosh logo, to its signature Air Jordan silhouette, to its legendary “Just Do It” tagline, to its recent 50th anniversary video short by Spike Lee, Nike knows how to expertly engineer and craft its brand down to the tiniest detail, and how to subtly zoom out and in

Marina Koren, who covers science and space exploration as a staff writer for The Atlantic, realizes her job doesn’t sound real. “But I promise it is,” she says. “When I tell people I’m a ‘space reporter,’ they

When Janet Malcolm first wrote for The New Yorker in 1963, her debut wasn’t in the form of the piercing prose she became known for, but instead a slim poem titled “Thoughts on Living in a Shaker House.” On the surface, it may seem an odd starting point for Malcolm, who would become one of the foremost writers about—andNew Yorker staff writer until her death, on June 16, 2021, at age 86. But the poem’s lines are indeed pure Malcolm: plainspoken, cu

The first time I ever set foot in the Manhattan studio of the practically indefinable artist-metalsmith-painter-engineerwho died on Nov. 26, 2022, at age 75, he was looking directly at me through his jewelers loupe, which was firmly fastened around his head, just as I exited Himself. This close-up view was how he saw things. He looked at the world, and the cosmos at large, in microscopic detail. Dani

When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived, and with it, the lockdowns of March 2020, I sat at home in Brooklyn Heights, alone,

It’s a late afternoon in early November, nearing dusk, and I’m sitting with Michael Kimmelman, the New York Times architecture critic, inside the West Village outpost of Daily Provisions, a café from the New York City restaurateur Dawrote about another Meyer establishment, Union Square Cafe, unpacking the implications of the then-new location and layout of the l

That the first work of art I saw during this year’s Miami Art Week was a newscast seems somehow appropriate in our precaage of misinformation and sped-up media ecosystem?” the artists behind it, from the civic-engagement coalition For Freedoms, appeared to be asking. “And really, what’s t

Over the past decade, the Bronx culinary collective Ghetto Gastro has—through a combination of creative finesse, clever the guest on Ep. 2 of our Time Sensitive podcast), Pierre Serrao, and Lester Walker, practice what they call “durag diplomacy,” bringing the Bronx to the world and the “Bronx Brasserie” pop-up in Paris, to launching kitchen appliances with Target, to cooking with Wolfgang Puck at this year’s Oscars. An unabashed gastronome and the group’s self-described “dishwasher,” Gray has the agility and enTED Talk, which has been viewed nearly two million times. Serrao and Walker are seasoned chefs with backgrounds in top restauran

It’s a serene, bluebird-sky day, a slight chill in the air, and I’m walking with the Paris-based, Austrian-born designerSculpture Gallery, a transfixing space of light and shadow built in 1970 that’s home to works by artists including Michael Heizer, Robert

With practically everything they do—or at least with their many time-honored ceremonies and traditions, from yuritsuki gardening to the brewing of gyokuro—the Japanese bring great care. Gift-wrapping is no exception. Taking cues from the island nation’s rich, detail-driven heritage, and celebrating the latter art, theKoyori chose its name. Meaning “twisted paper cords,” Koyori references the primary material of mizuhiki, the decorative paper cords commonly used in Japan to tie paper-wrapped gifts. The metaphor is apt: Koyori’s exquisite Milan Design Week—is the British product and furniture designer Jasper Morrison, who serves as its “brand directing advisor.” Tapped by e

Detroit is a city of craft. Of carmakers and Carhartt. Of Motown Records and Eminem. Of iconic midcentury design (Isamu Noguchi’s Hart Plaza and Dodge Fountain, buildings by Mies van der Rohe and Minoru Heidelberg Project. So it’s fitting that, following previous iterations in Copenhagen, last fall, and in Turin, Italy, last month, the Freits latest “Hermès in the Making” exhibition (through June 15). A playful, Willy Wonka factory–like presentation of the company’s know-how, the display offers “an o not to smile while walking through it. Divided into four sections—”A Culture of Traditional Craftsmanship,” “High-Quality Msecret!” Beyond, stations feature artisans in saddle-stitching, porcelain painting, gemstone setting, glove-making, leather wor

For the past 16 years, Rebecca van Bergen has been laying the groundwork for a more equitable, inclusive, and transparenNest, van Bergen has woven together a potent platform for change. Its name is as clever as it is befitting. The notion of buEileen Fisher on things such as production compliance, responsible sourcing, and connecting designers and craftspeople. This is just

In 1938, two years after completing one of his first realized public artworks, “History Mexico,” a sculptural, colored chis namesake museum in Long Island City, Queens, which he founded in 1985).

From 1996 to 2018, Vuslat Doğan Sabancı worked her way up the ranks of her family’s business, Turkey’s Hürriyet newspaper publishing group, one of the largest media companies in the country. During that time, she helped lead the fi

A gold dial Titan quartz wristwatch with a worn-out brown leather strap. A 32-caliber Colt pistol. A dekchi, or brass cooking pot for cooking the traditional rice dish biryani. A signed letter from Mother Teresa. An Imperial Bank of India checkbook. These are but five items in the collection ofMuseum of Material Memory, an online repository of objects from across the Indian subcontinent, dating from or before the 1970s, including books,

Elyn Zimmerman will never forget the exact moment when, on February 26, 1993, a truck bomb exploded in the World Trade Center’s underg

Stephanie Goto thinks about champagne and ice cream in similar ways to how she does design: spatially, materially, and aomakase. Starting July 20 and running through August 10, the seven-course pairing menu—celebrating the release of Dom Pérignon’s by reservation only at Morgenstern’s Sundae Bar, part of its flagship location in New York’s Greenwich Village. (Those wanting to try a sintamago, soy sauce, and dashi, and then she designed an edible experience that playfully reimagines and transforms these ingredtoro burger with a side of soy sauce ice cream and ginger “fries,” paired with a glass of the Rosé Vintage 2006; and a sundadorayaki, paired with the Plénitude 2 Vintage 2003. Here, we speak with Goto about how the exquisitely executed project came to When and how did your relationship with Dom Pérignon begin?

Practically everything the artist, master potter, and writer Edmund de Waal touches turns to dust. Or at least toward the idea of dust. In each of his books—2010’s The Hare With Amber Eyes, 2015’s The White Road: Journey Into an Obsession, and the just-published Letters to Camondo (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), out this week—dust serves as a profound metaphor. Throughout his work, whether in pottery or prose, de Waal explores various notions a

The Covid-19 pandemic, by its very nature, has led to a universal turning toward—or even retreating to—home. The very noTadao Ando: Living With Light (Rizzoli), out this week, that presents 11 extraordinary residential projects designed by the Japanese architect, who has created more than 100 ho

Kate Young, the stylist for red carpet luminaries such as Sienna Miller, Margot Robbie, and Michelle Williams, grew up iVogue, and later, after several years in the Vogue fashion department, as fashion editor-at-large of Interview magazine. On her new YouTube show, Hello Fashion, created with The Slowdown, Young provides an inside peek, through her own distinct, high-low perspective, into the world. In the weekly series, which premiered on Tuesday, Young highlights the quality, craftsmanship, and enduring value of cthe debut episode, Young talks about how she and actor-singer Selena Gomez, a client of hers since 2014, created their latest project togRevelación. In addition to detailing the various looks—including a Valentino haute couture dress—Young FaceTimes with fashion iconHello Fashion as a whole. How did Hello Fashion come about? Why YouTube?