Category: 5. Entertainment

RM returns to the spotlight as Samsung Art TV ambassador, championing the global art scene

 

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. announced RM of 21^st century pop icons BTS as the official ambassador for Samsung Art TVs.[1]The appointment is one of RM’s official activities following his highly anticipated return from mandatory military service in Korea.

 

As a globally recognized art connoisseur, RM has made headlines for his deep appreciation of the arts, including visits to leading museums and his private collection of contemporary art work. Now, in his role as Samsung Art TV ambassador, RM will bring his distinctive voice and passion for visual art to Samsung TV users around the world.

 

“RM’s passion for art and culture deeply resonates with our vision to make art more accessible through technology,” said Hun Lee, Executive Vice President of the Visual Display (VD) Business at Samsung Electronics. “We’re thrilled to welcome him as the ambassador for Samsung Art TVs, and we believe his voice will inspire a new generation to explore the world of art in meaningful, personal ways.”

 

 

Samsung Art TVs, known for their fusion of advanced display technology and artistic expression, serve as immersive platforms where art comes to life. Through Samsung Art Store[2] — a subscription-based service featuring over 3,500 high-resolution artworks in 4K — users can now enjoy curated content with insights from RM himself. His personal reflections and commentary on select works will be accessible directly on Samsung Art Store, providing fans and art enthusiasts with a unique window into his aesthetic sensibilities.

 

“As someone who finds deep inspiration and comfort in art, I’m honored to partner with Samsung to share my journey and love for visual creativity,” said RM. “Through this collaboration, I hope more people can connect with art in their everyday lives — just like I do.”

 

As part of his new role, RM made an appearance at Art Basel, one of the world’s premier international art fairs held in Basel, Switzerland. He hosted a special session where he shared his thoughts on contemporary art, collecting and the cultural significance of visual storytelling. Highlights from this event, including exclusive insights and behind-the-scenes moments, can be found on the Samsung Global Newsroom.

 

RM’s partnership with Samsung Art TVs sets the stage for a new dialogue between art, technology and global pop culture. Through this collaboration, Samsung continues to elevate its commitment to making world-class art more accessible and personal — now with RM as the bridge between fans and the art world.

 

For more information, visit www.samsung.com.

 

 

About RM of BTS

RM (Kim, Namjun) is a South Korean rapper, songwriter, music producer, and the leader of 21st century pop icons BTS. His discography includes solo mixtapes RM (March 2015) and mono. (October 2018), as well as solo albums Indigo (December 2022) and Right Place, Wrong Person (May 2024), which showcase his remarkable versatility across genres. As a creative powerhouse and avid art enthusiast, RM is renowned for crafting profound lyrics often inspired by various art forms. His flexible and philosophical approach to music and ability to push creative boundaries with cutting-edge collaborations has led him to work with a diverse range of artists, including Erykah Badu, Anderson .Paak, Lil Nas X, HONNE, Mahalia, and more. On May 24, 2024, RM released his critically-acclaimed second solo album Right Place, Wrong Person.

 

 

[1] Samsung Art TVs include MICRO LED, The Frame, The Frame Pro, Neo QLED 8K, Neo QLED, and QLED models starting from Q7F and above.

[2] Samsung Art Store is an art subscription service available on Samsung Art TVs, including The Frame, NEO QLEDs and QLEDs. Currently available in 117 countries around the world, Samsung Art Store offers over 70 partners and 3,500 artworks in 4K quality. Through Samsung Art Store, subscribers can enjoy artwork from world-class galleries and masters at home and use it to create new interior designs every day.

Baby steps, in fact. Marvel has rediscovered the lighthearted dimension of superheroism, the buoyant fun and the primary colour comedy – as opposed to the wiseacre supercool of, say, Guardians of the Galaxy. Here it has amusingly brought back the Fantastic Four in their early years (but not to the very beginning) in a retro-futurist version of early 1960s New York where no one smokes. Hilariously, the Four are of course living together as a family in a bizarre hi-tech apartment, like something in TV’s Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie, often wearing their comfy blue pyjama-style outfits.

Scientist Dr Reed “Mr Fantastic” Richards, whose nickname rather oversells his peculiar superpower of stretchiness, is played by Pedro Pascal in a lighter vocal register than usual; he’s married to Sue “Invisible Woman” Storm – played by Vanessa Kirby. They are basically mom and dad to a couple of guys who are to all intents and purposes teen boys: Sue’s brother Johnny “Human Torch” Storm (played by Joseph Quinn) and superstrong Ben Grimm played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach. They are essentially two grown men who live with Reed and Sue in a cheerfully infantilised state, and what complicates things is that Sue is now suddenly pregnant long after the couple had given up hoping. (There is apparently no IVF in this alt-reality universe.)

So the question arises: will the baby have superpowers doubled, superpowers squared? Is that how it works? Or will it be a kind of bittersweet affliction like that stoically accepted by Ben Grimm? And talking of the consequences of love, Ben Grimm is poignantly in love with a local schoolteacher (Natasha Lyonne) who is maybe unwilling to overlook his granite appearance, and it looks very much as if Johnny is having some amorous chemistry with the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) who arrives on Earth as the emissary of the colossally destructive Galactus (Ralph Ineson) – who says he might spare Planet Earth for a terrible price.

The result hangs together as an entertaining spectacle in its own innocent self-enclosed universe of fantasy wackiness, where real people actually read the comic books that have made mythic legends of the real Four. I have expressed my dissatisfaction recently with superhero films which have to finish with AI cities collapsing – and, yes, this is what happens here, but at least this finale emerges from the established story premise, and works well with the tone of uncomplicated fun. (I was once in a minority for liking the now all-but-forgotten Ioan Gruffudd iteration of Fantastic Four for very similar reasons.)

There is much incidental fun to be had in luxuriating in the film’s hallucinatory 60s production design, down to the imaginary movies being shown in cinemas in Times Square: The Emperor’s Twin from Disney and an Alistair MacLean-type adventure called Subzero Intel. Then when the baby is born, Ben Grimm earnestly brandishes his copy of Dr Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care, a permissive book which conservatives were later to blame for raising a generation of undisciplined slackers. Certainly, Kirby’s Sue Storm looks very good for a sleep-deprived new mother with no childcare staff other than one small goggle-eyed robot. As for paterfamilias Reed, he always wears his tie, though sometimes tucks it into his shirt. Overall a very silly movie – though it’s keeping the superhero genre aloft.

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Ben Gunnery

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Imagine the best and worst olive. Take a second. Maybe close your eyes to immerse yourself in the exercise. What does the best olive look like? How about the worst? What is the texture of the best olive? How does the worst olive taste?

I ask myself questions like this before every taste test, a mental exercise to help calibrate all the scores I’m about to give. But sometimes there are surprises, things so exceptionally good, bad or different they exist beyond the imagination. Things I thought weren’t possible in a supermarket product or maybe at all. This taste test was full of them.

The taste test was done blind over multiple rounds, each featuring whole olives of a different ripeness – green, purple and black. The tasters – 15 friends – tasted 22 olives (some pitted, some not), scoring each on appearance, texture and taste. I ate about 55 olives in 90 minutes.

So, that best and worst olive you imagined: you probably came close with the best. There are sadly no big surprises at that end of the supermarket. But, unless you’re wildly imaginative, or you’ve eaten the exact same olive I have, you’re probably way off the mark on imagining the worst.

The best green olives

Sandhurst Sicilian Whole Green Olives, 280g, $4 ($1.43 per 100g), available from major supermarkets

Score: 7.5/10

Usually when I eat an olive, I feel as though my mouth has just won a fight – satisfying but it’s still a bit of a violent experience. These olives are more like rolling down the gentle slope of a flower meadow while wearing head-to-toe cashmere. Other reviewers said they tasted like green tea, artichokes and various white cheeses. Two related it to the Cantonese and Teochew concept of gan, or unsweet sweetness (written 甘), which you’d use to describe tea. “I want to draw a still-life painting of these and compose a thesis on their depth of flavour,” another wrote. Oddly, the three reviewers who didn’t like them all mentioned medicine, carpet or both.

The best purple olives

Ceres Organics Kalamata Olives, 320g, $10 ($3.13 per 100g), available from Woolworths

Score: 7/10

Unlike the green olive round, there were no standout purple olives, which is why this uncontroversial 7/10 olive is one of two winners. As one reviewer wrote: “Strong, salty but kind of straight shooting – no real funk or gasoline vibes.” That’s talking about how they taste, anyway. Texturally, they were all over the place, some firm but some disconcertingly flabby, like eating a partly mushy strawberry. Drop a handful in a pasta and it won’t matter much, besides the fact it cost $10 to do so.

Macro Organic Whole Kalamata Olives, 350g, $3.30 ($0.94 per 100g), available from Woolworths

Score: 7/10

There was a strong correlation between salt and nuance. While the saltiest olives were powerful and sometimes snackier, they sacrificed some character to get there. Macro’s olives are a great example. They have almost half the sodium of other products, and reviewers described them as balanced, funky, vegetal and “unapologetically olivey”. Some thought that was a 9/10 feature, others a 5/10. They’re also a beautiful dark shade of purple, like Grimace emerging from a pool in a racy teen romcom, the moonlight glistening on his hair.

The best value

Deli Originals’ Whole Kalamata Olives, 350g, $2.49 ($0.71 per 100g), available at Aldi

Score: 6.5/10

Salty, sour and uncomplicated. A classic mid-range kalamata but a bit uglier. What you want to cook with, not serve on a platter for guests worried about your financial security. One reviewer wrote: “Doesn’t have a strong sense of self.” While true, I’m happy for its purpose to be a soldier in the grocery coalition that’s fighting for my hope of one day owning a home.

The rest

Muraca Whole Italian Large Olives, 580g, $8.95 ($1.54 per 100g), available at select grocers

Score: 7/10

I recently had a dream where I was an alien living on Earth, masquerading as a human, and the only way I could ever hang out with my friends was at dress-up parties. These olives are always at the dress-up party. While they look like olives, they’re unusually enormous, they’ve got a juicy, meaty texture and a nutty, grassy flavour that I haven’t tasted in any other olive. In my dream, it didn’t really matter whether I was human or another organism – I found enough people to like me. Same with these olives. As one reviewer said: “Sticking out into its own territory but I’ll follow it there.”

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Always Fresh Olives Pitted Sicilian, 230g, $4 ($1.74 per 100g), available at major supermarkets

Score: 6.5/10

Always Fresh sells two kinds of green olives: these weirdly green ones (more like a moss green than any olive you’d find on a tree) and another less green variety that’s way bigger and more expensive. Although we gave the huge ones a better score (7/10), I think there’s use for both. The bigger ones are for maximalists and hedonists. They’re sour, salty and, thanks to the novelty size, fun. The smaller ones are fruity, nuanced and delicate – they have no vinegar and less salt than any other olive we tried. These are for people who prefer baroque covers of pop songs over the real thing.

Penfield Olives Australian Pitted Green Olives, 250g, $4.49 ($1.80 per 100g), available at select grocers

Score: 6/10

On texture, these were the highest-scoring olives of the day. Many reviewers described them as meaty, firm and almost crunchy. But it’s hard to give a nuanced description of their taste due to the 4,750mg of salt in the jar (that’s a whopping 1,900mg per 100g). Their kalamatas are similar but a bit fattier. Are they good olives or bad olives? I don’t know, depends on your salt tolerance. I’d be careful cooking with them, but if you like your martinis in leather pants with the crotch cut out, this is worth a try.

Wicked Pitted Kalamata Olives, 450g, $4 ($0.89 per 100g), available at Coles

Score: 6/10

Listening to the other reviewers progressively eat and describe this was akin to reading internet commentary about child rearing: how are there so many radically different opinions about this? One said they tasted like cherry pie filling, another like petrochemicals. I thought they were quite wine-like in flavour, while others said anchovies and menthol. The only similarity is the intensity of all those flavours, which makes sense as they were also the most sodium-dense product of the day (1,990mg per 100g). My favourite comment was: “Straddling the line between exciting and disturbing.” Like meeting your clone – you won’t know if you like it or not until you experience it.

Mount Zero Organic Kalamata Olives, 300g, $9.70 ($3.23 per 100g), available at select grocers

Score: 5/10

The first thing I wrote on my scorecard was: “What is this?” I knew it was an olive, a kalamata specifically, but I had no idea how an olive could be bitter and sweet in the way wine is (sort of hinting at sweetness but no actual sugar content) while also kind of nutty and oily. One reviewer said it “tastes like a failed fine dining dessert”, which I thought was apt, because like all great art, fine dining should be divisive. I think many people will love them, but few will feel neutral.

Always Fresh Black Olives Pitted, 220g, $3.50 ($1.59 per 100g), available at major supermarkets

Score: 5/10

Each score is an average of all the reviewers’ scores, but a 5/10 average could be made up of 6/10 and 4/10 scores, or by 1/10 and 10/10 scores, and those are very different things. This was the latter. “Notes of petrol”, “taste like soggy bread” and “battery acid”, said the dissenters. “Weirdly ersatz floral”, “pleasant fruitiness” and “nostalgic blandness, giving Pizza Hut vibes but with a hint of creaminess”, said their opposition. I thought it was faintly floral and buttery, like tasting an olive through a cloth. Somehow, I still gave them a 7/10 – but maybe even the most minimal, weird Philip Glass song feels special after listening to 21 tracks of hardcore EDM.

Monini L’Oliva Leccino Pitted, 150g, $4.90 ($3.27 per 100g), available at Coles

Score: 3/10

I have eaten many terrible things in my life and both Monini’s green and black olives are right up there with the worst. Like primary school orchestra dissonance, early AI videos and my grandparents’ cooking, they’re bad in a creative way, so much so I would have no idea how to recreate the experience. Had I not been in an olive taste test, I could have easily guessed them to be a non-olive entity. One reviewer wrote: “Conduct a study into the psychology of people who knowingly buy this. Or perhaps give them a Covid test.” Which is exactly what I’d like to do to the two people who gave them a positive score.

Products cut for brevity

Green Valley Pitted Kalamata 6.5/10
Coles Whole Green Olives 6.5/10
Always Fresh Pitted Giant Green 7/10
Always Fresh Organic Kalamata Olives Pitted 6/10
Sandhurst Pitted Kalamata Olives 6/10
Penfield Olives Pitted Kalamata Olives 5.5/10
Woolworths Pitted Whole Kalamata Olives 5.5/10
Ceres Organics Green Olives Pitted 5/10
Coles Pitted Kalamata Olives 4.5/10
Monini L’Oliva Bella Di Cerignola Pitted 3.5/10

Ozzy Osbourne’s final concert earlier this month raised around $190 million for several charities, according to multiple news outlets. 

The rocker, who died Tuesday after battling a number of health issues, performed his final concert, “Back to the Beginning,” July 5. 

Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, the event’s musical director, wrote on social media of the concert, “‘Back to the Beginning’ More than 190 million dollars will be donated to houses and hospitales [sic] for children. Boom. We set out to not just create the greatest day in the history of heavy metal,” according to The Independent. 

The proceeds will go to Cure Parkinson’s, Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Acorn Children’s Hospice.

REMEMBERING OZZY OSBOURNE, THE ‘PRINCE OF DARKNESS’

“THANKYOU @ozzyosbourne for trusting me to be the Musical Director of the ‘Back To The Beginning’ show,” he wrote on Instagram. “It was over a year of hard work but heavy metal was the music that made me love music and it was a labor of love. We raised a ton of money for a great cause and so many great musicians & bands & fans all over the world paid tribute to the ALL TIME greats.”

Osbourne told The Independent in 2022, “I will get back on stage if it f—– kills me, because if I can’t do it then that’s what’s gonna happen anyway, I’m gonna f—— die. I love to see them audiences.”

The charity concert was the highest-grossing of all time, according to Billboard. 

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Osbourne played with Black Sabbath during the Birmingham, U.K., and bands like Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Slayer, Tool, Pantera, Halestorm, Alice In Chains, Lamb of God, Anthrax, Mastodon and Gojira also performed.

The concert lasted around 10 hours and culminated with Osbourne singing with the original lineup of Black Sabbath while seated on a throne. 

Osbourne struggled with his health in the last few years of his life and was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2003. 

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The Black Sabbath frontman admitted he couldn’t walk anymore on a Jan. 29 episode of his Sirius XM show, “Ozzy Speaks.”

“I may be moaning about how I can’t walk, but I look down the road, and there’s people that didn’t do half as much as me, and they didn’t make it,” he said at the time.

In 2003, Osbourne was in a serious ATV accident when his quad flipped onto him while he was riding around his London estate.

In 2022, the “Mama I’m Coming Home” singer underwent surgery to remove and realign pins in his neck and back. Ozzy’s back problems likely stemmed from the all-terrain vehicle collision.

At the time, he underwent emergency surgery for “a broken collarbone (and) eight fractured ribs that were pinching crucial blood vessels and damaged vertebrae in his neck.”

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“I’m just waiting on some more surgery on my neck,” he told Classic Rock magazine in May 2022. “I can’t walk properly these days. I have physical therapy every morning. I am somewhat better, but nowhere near as much as I want to be to go back on the road.”

Fox News Digital has reached out to reps for Osbourne and Morello for comment. 

Fox News Digital’s Tracy Wright contributed to this report. 

Rose Leiman Goldemberg, the playwright and Emmy-nominated TV writer who was behind the telefilms The Burning Bed, starring Farrah Fawcett, and Stone Pillow, starring Lucille Ball, died Monday in Cape May, New Jersey, a publicist announced. She was 97.

The Staten Island native also penned Letters Home, a 1980 play about famed poet Sylvia Plath that has been translated and produced all over the world and was filmed for television in 1986.

Her telefilm résumé included 1976’s The Land of Hope; 1980’s Mother and Daughter: The Loving War, starring Tuesday Weld and Frances Sternhagen; 1982’s Born Beautiful, starring Erin Gray and Polly Bergen; 1985’s Florence Nightingale, starring Jaclyn Smith, and The Booth, starring Teri Garr; and 1989’s Dark Holiday, starring Lee Remick.

Goldemberg adapted The Burning Bed, which aired in October 1984 on NBC, from the 1980 book written by battered housewife Francine Hughes, who wound up on trial for the murder of her abusive ex-husband, “Mickey” Hughes.

Named the No. 7 TV drama of all time by critic Matt Zoller Seitz, The Burning Bed sparked public discussion about women’s abuse. And as Francine, former Charlie’s Angels star Fawcett demonstrated that she could be a serious drama actress.

The telefilm earned Goldemberg two Emmy nominations (she also served as co-producer) and won the WGA award for best dramatic adaptation.

In the 1985 CBS telefilm Stone Pillow, Ball shed her comedic roots to star as an elderly homeless woman living on the streets of New York.

Born on May 17, 1928, in the Port Richmond neighborhood of Staten Island, Goldemberg began writing stories at age 5 and entered Brooklyn College in 1944 at age 16. After receiving her bachelor’s degree, she earned her master’s from Ohio State University.

Upon graduation, Goldemberg started working at the new TV Guide magazine, reviewing scripts and writing plot summaries. Deciding to become a screenwriter, she studied at the American Theatre Wing and Columbia University and learned from the likes of Lee Strasberg and Ira Cirker.

Her screenwriting career began with Sunday morning religious dramas on CBS.

Her play Gandhiji was chosen for the O’Neill Conference in 1970, when she was a mother and full-time teacher. It premiered in 1977 at the Back Alley in Washington and received a Robbie Award.

The Land of Hope was a pilot for a CBS series about the immigration experience in America and was set in New York’s Lower East Side during the early 20th century.

Letters Home premiered as part of the Women’s Project at New York’s American Place Theatre in 1979 and dramatized the correspondence between Plath and her mother. It was later produced in London, Montreal, Copenhagen, Tel Aviv, Los Angeles and other cities and was directed as a 1986 telefilm by Chantal Akerman.

Sophie, about singer-actress Sophie Tucker, was first produced at the Jewish Repertory Theater in 1987 and starred Judith Cohen. Another musical, Picon Pie, starring Barbara Minkus as actress Molly Picon, bowed at the Santa Monica Playhouse in 2002 before playing off-Broadway in 2005.

Her work has been archived in the New York Public Library for Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. 

Goldemberg also taught English and Theater at City College in New York, at Valley College in L.A. and at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, New Jersey. She wrote several books, poems, articles and short stories as well.

Survivors include her son, Leiman, nieces Kathy and Debbie and nephews David and Michael. She was married to computer designer Raymond Schiller from 1949-68 and to cosmetic chemist Robert Goldemberg from 1969-89.

What a tremendous breath of fresh air. Amid the indefatigable rise of movies cynically re-spun for the stage, this musical adaptation of the 2010 film featuring Cher and Christina Aguilera goes its own eccentric way. With its monster sound, energy and blinding bling, it is no less than Burlesque 2.0.

The original Burlesque brought together Cher’s stadium-sized voice and Aguilera’s “mutant lungs” (to quote a line from the film). Which duo can compare to that? This one, it turns out. You could generate electricity with the combined sound of Orfeh, as burlesque club owner Tess, and Jess Folley as Ali, a small-town singer with a big voice. Ali still blows the roof off this burlesque lounge but the musical is grittier and less sanitised.

The film revolved around Ali’s hunger for fame, with a subplot of financial ruin around the club akin to that in Moulin Rouge. Ali is now a too-loud gospel singer (“Beyoncé trapped in a Taylor Swift body”) who goes to New York not looking for fame but a long-lost mother. So many of the plotlines turn new, unexpected corners.

With music composed by Aguilera, Sia, Todrick Hall, and Jess Folley, it keeps old songs such as the signature tune Show Me How You Burlesque and Something’s Got a Hold on Me and adds fabulous new numbers, big and fizzing and hugely witty, including the rap-infused Call Mama Daddy and the jazzy Ammo.

The biggest surprise is that this reworking is done by Steven Antin, the film’s original writer and director. His musical underworld is not nearly as dark as Bob Fosse’s but not saccharine either, and far raunchier and more outre than the film. Antin’s script is so contemporary that it references Baby Reindeer and contains a show-stopping joke about the Coldplay concert’s kiss-cam couple. The humour seems peculiarly British in spite of the American accents.

Todrick Hall’s choreography is a sensation, with jaw-dropping athleticism, balletic moves and circus acrobatics, while Marco Marco’s “more is more” costumes deserve an award. Hall, also the show’s director, is an absolute blast as a performer. He doubles up as Ali’s old gospel teacher and Tess’s right-hand man at the lounge, blowing Stanley Tucci’s benign gay best friend of the film out of the water.

Ali’s slow-burn romance with Jackson (Paul Jacob French) is cute when it could grate, with French providing a fantastically funny number in Natalie, in which he dumps his ever-absent ex-girlfriend by phone. The song seems coyly to poke fun at the earnestness of the film – an endearing send-up. The show as a whole bares it artifice every now and again, but without indulging in knowingness.

Asha Parker-Wallace, as Ali’s rival Nikki, makes her professional debut with an almighty voice while Tess’s ex-husband Vince (George Maguire) is now a conniving Brit (less panto villain, more Hamilton’s King George III). And where Cher was a kindly fairy godmother type, Tess is a hard nut with fierce energy and a vague resemblance to Michelle Visage.

The whole thing is very RuPaul. There is no lip-syncing, as in the film, but enough leather, feathers, sequins and disco ball lighting for a season of Drag Race. Plus harnesses, thongs and bared, bouncing flesh, too. Jake Dupree, as the gender fluid Trey/Chardonnay, is phenomenal, complete with nipple tassels in one striptease, while Alessia McDermott and Jess Qualter, as the kinky twins Summer and Spring, bring more of the burlesque spirit.

It is over-adrenalised and messy in its plotting, but you forgive the blips. This is a production stuffed with personality, spectacle and wow factor. Come for the nostalgia, perhaps, but stay for the new kicks: bigger, naughtier and camp as hell.

Let’s talk about books! You make lots of them. When researching for this interview, your book with Phaidon, In Memory Of: Designing Contemporary Memorials, stood out because time and honoring time is really what memorials are about. Can you explain your role at Phaidon and your involvement with books?

After announcing that I was leaving Surface, I was invited to be Phaidon’s editor-at-large by the [now former] CEO, Keith Fox, and [Editorial Director] Emilia Terragni. The first book I pitched to them was In Memory Of, which I spent three years writing. Having had an image of myself being carried out of a plane crash turned into a memorial, making that book allowed me to look at something deeply personal to me while exploring the global culture of memorial-making that became very prolific post-Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Memorials are some of the greatest spaces on Earth because they combine the power of art and architecture, which Noguchi knew all too well. The book makes a case for abstraction over figuration and argues against placing the human figure and form on a pedestal, and more towards spaces that allow what I call a “polyvocal experience”, where there’s multiple voices and things at play that aren’t just a statue telling you how to remember something. Multiple meanings and metaphors are imbued throughout the whole thing. Later in 2023, again in a fortuitous habit, I was asked to pitch on a Leading Hotels of the World project, after meeting the CEO, Shannon Knapp, at a holiday party. We’re making five books: one book a year for five years. We published the first one, Design, in December last year, and the second, Culture, this past June. The next two books will be published in consecutive Junes, and the fifth and final book’s release will coincide with leading hotels’ 100th anniversary.

How would you describe the current media landscape, and where do you position The Slowdown in that?

I think the media landscape has become so fractured and noisy. We’re leaning into the slow thing with in-person interviews and intimate, long-form conversations. I describe us not as a media company, but as a culture-forward media company, meaning that we view culture as the most important thing that’s feeding the planet. People really desire community, so I’m trying to build a whole community around The Slowdown. In 2023, we celebrated our five-year anniversary and threw this big dinner at Eleven Madison Park, inviting more than 25 former Time Sensitive guests. It was wild to have that brain power in a room together. It felt like the modern day version of the Algonquin Round Table, with Daniel Boulud sat next to culinary historian Jessica B. Harris, plus Ghetto Gastro’s Jon Gray sat next to Kim Hastreiter and Teresita Fernández and Elizabeth Alexander. The list goes on. That was the room! I hope that’s a microcosm of what The Slowdown is on a much bigger scale. What time is it?

We’re almost done! Now that you’ve celebrated your fifth anniversary, you’re one year past what you said is the ideal amount of time to be an editor-in-chief. Are you looking back?

I’m turning 40 this year and when you have those big birthdays, it’s usually a moment to reflect on all you’ve accomplished, but also, by this age, many of your most formative interviews have started to pass away, and you realize how sacred and important those conversations were. When I spoke to Tina Barney two years ago, she said this work was important because it was for posterity. I really do think these conversations will become archived and become part of that posterity for a lot of people. I first felt that when Zaha Hadid died. Our conversation was one of her last in-depth interviews. It was the same for Rodney King. I had a mini column at the New York Times Magazine and I was one of the last people to interview him. To be able to say and know that I had the opportunity to bring someone’s valuable words into the world and be that vessel for them is so humbling.

I always feel very keenly aware and mindful of this when covering people who are either very, very young, where their practice will be shaped by what you put out there about them, or people who are very, very old, knowing that that will be a reflection on their legacy.

Last year, I interviewed the oldest guest we’ve had on Time Sensitive, Thaddeus Mosley, a 99-year-old sculptor from Pittsburgh. He is the closest living artist to Brâncuși and Noguchi, in my opinion. Getting to interview Thaddeus was another one of those moments of like… wow.