Spencer Bailey

We're now all on like a McDonald's fast food diet when it comes to our media consumption.

I see a future where people are going to want to return to what I would call slow food for media.

I want people to feel like they can make space for inefficiency.

Spencer Bailey is a writer, editor and cultural journalist whose work lives at the intersection of design, memory, architecture and human experience.

As the founder and editor in chief of The Slowdown and host of the podcast Time Sensitive, he has become known for conversations and storytelling that explore not just creativity, but the deeper questions beneath it.

Time, meaning, loss, attention and how we live.

Before founding The Slowdown, Bailey served as editor-in-chief of Surface Magazine, where he helped transform the publication into one of the most influential voices in contemporary design and culture.

He is also editor-at-large of the book publisher Faden, and his book Explore, the third in a series of books for Monticelli, will be published this month.

Spencer Bailey, welcome to Design Matters.

Thanks for having me, Debbie.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Spencer, I understand your wife refers to you as a feinschmecker.

Can you share what that is?

I have no idea how you found this.

Yes.

So I actually don't know the etymology of the word.

I believe it's German.

Maybe there's some Yiddish in there as well.

But it basically refers to somebody who has...

An appreciation for the finer things, starting with food.