The captain, Al Haynes, was left to somehow guide the vessel, its crew, and the passengers to the ground. The spiraling debris punctured the aircraft and cut all of its hydraulics lines, making the jet nearly impossible to steer. Thirty years ago, on July 19, 1989, at 37,000 feet in the air, the titanium fan disk in the tail-mounted engine of United Airlines Flight 232-a DC-10 carrying 296 people from Denver to Chicago-exploded above the cornfields of Iowa. Time Sensitive is produced by The Slowdown, a media company that tells stories across the cultural spectrum-from art and architecture, to food and fashion, to climate, technology, and beyond-that capture an emerging worldview. Theme Music: Billy Martin Illustrator: Diego Mallo Website Design: Apartamento Studios Born and raised in Colorado, he lives in Brooklyn. A trustee of the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, New York, Spencer is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Dickinson College. He is also the author of In Memory Of: Designing Contemporary Memorial s (Phaidon, 2020) and Tham ma da: The Adventurous Interiors of Paola Navone (Pointed Leaf Press, 2016). His latest book is Alchemy: The Material World of David Adjaye (Phaidon, July 2023). From 2013 to 2018, he was the editor-in-chief of Surface magazine. He has written at length about architecture, art, culture, design, and technology, and contributed to publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Fortune, and Bloomberg Businesswee k. He is also editor-at-large of the book publisher Phaidon and a contributing editor at Town & Country. Spencer is the editor-in-chief of The Slowdown and host of the Time Sensitive podcast. Host Spencer Bailey interviews leading minds about their life and work through the lens of time-how they think about time broadly and how specific moments in time have shaped who they are today. Candid, revealing portraits of curious and courageous people who have a distinct perspective on time.

Flight 232 by Laurence Gonzales