At a Distance: 100 Visionaries at Home in a Pandemic

In March 2020, Spencer Bailey and Andrew Zuckerman were just starting The Slowdown, a New York-based media company that aims to make sense of a world addicted to speed, advocating for a more thoughtful and considered approach to the moment. As Covid-19 emerged and lockdowns began, a global slowdown unfolded with an immediacy that none of them could have foreseen. Immediately, they felt the need to record what the leading minds were thinking and feeling in real time. At a distance, a podcast of conversations focused on long-term and planetary-scale concerns was born.

Now organized as a book of 100 of these interviews, At a Distance offers a curated selection of wisdom shared by podcast guests. Presented in short narratives that capture the best thinking in an easily digestible way, the book contextualizes the surrounding political, cultural, and social climate with insightful editorial commentary. Guests including environmentalist and journalist Bill McKibben, psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, MoMA curator Paola Antonelli, food artist Laila Gohar, biologist Merlin Sheldrake, Buddhist monk Gelong Thubten, novelist Hari Kunzru, philosopher Kate Soper and landscape architect Walter Hood offer a fundamental sense of context and clarity, looking at the world from multiple angles, such as public health, the climate crisis, racial inequality, and Big Tech.

At once informative, intelligent, and deeply personal, At a Distance explores the dramatic changes that might be possible in the future, and provides a hopeful and rationally optimistic guide to the future.