For our final episode of Season 11, the author James Frey joins us to talk about his latest novel, “Next to Heaven,” a rollicking, raunchy, absurd-yet-not satire about the one percent of the one percent living in a fictional Connecticut town. Frey also reflects on the 20-plus years since publishing his first book, “A Million Little Pieces,” which blew up in controversy and became a soaring media spectacle; his long-term study of Taoism and how he tries to live according to the ways of the Tao as much as he can; his writing as a gateway to being as vulnerable, open, and bold as possible; and why love, for him, is the greatest drug there is.

The writer, journalist, and political commentator Molly Jong-Fast joins us to discuss her new memoir, “How to Lose Your Mother.” Reflecting on a devastating year—one in which her once-famous mother, the author and second-wave feminist Erica Jong, was diagnosed with dementia and her husband with a rare form of cancer—Jong-Fast talks about her mother’s best-selling 1973 novel “Fear of Flying” and her own actual fear of flying, 27 years of sobriety and how her time in A.A. has transformed her life, and the importance of confronting the vicissitudes of aging and one’s passage through time.

The Polish-born, Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade joins us to discuss the profound and impossible-to-pin-down nature of time, the unfathomability of all things, the humor and irony of being human, and the relief of knowing that some questions have no clear answers—and never will.

The chef and restaurateur Thomas Keller, whose restaurants include the three-Michelin-starred The French Laundry in Yountville, California, and Per Se in New York City, joins us to discuss his recent “Chef’s Table” episode on Netflix and his cameo on the FX show “The Bear,” memory-making as a key part of his hospitality operation, and why persistence is the greatest form of pleasure.

The drummer, percussionist, and composer Billy Martin talks about his three-plus decades of making experimental, boundary-pushing, and uncategorizable instrumental jazz-funk-groove music as part of the trio Medeski Martin & Wood, his concept of “rhythmic harmony,” his deep reverence for bamboo, and why he views sound creation as a sacred act.

For our latest “site-specific” episode, we visit the British architect and designer John Pawson at his country home in the Cotswolds to discuss the problems he sees with trying to turn minimalism into a movement; his deep-seated belief in restraint, both in life and in architecture; and his humble, highly refined approach to creating sacred spaces, whether a monastery in the Czech Republic, a church in Germany, or a basilica in Hungary.

The Lebanese-born, Paris-based architect Lina Ghotmeh—who, just a week after we recorded this episode, won the competition to design the British Museum’s Western Range, which holds a third of the museum’s gallery space; was also recently announced as the architect of the new Qatar Pavilion in the historic Giardini of Venice; and is the designer of the Bahrain Pavilion at the just-opened 2025 Osaka Expo—details her “archaeology of the future” design approach; reflects on the long-view, across-time qualities of her work; and outlines what she believes is architecture’s role in shaping a better world ahead.

The artist, author, and aesthete extraordinaire Leonard Koren, renowned for his cult books including “Wabi-Sabi,” “Arranging Things,” and “Undesigning the Bath,” shares his love for the “fussy and beautiful” Japanese tea ceremony, details his best and worst baths, and explains why he views his life as one long aesthetic experience.

The acclaimed English-born, Kyoto-based travel writer Pico Iyer discusses his new book, “Aflame: Learning From Silence”; the reverence he has found through his hundred-plus visits to a Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur, California, across the past three decades; the purpose and joy of travel; and what he finds most essential in life.

The London-based furniture and fashion designer Faye Toogood discusses the enduring fame—and fun—of her Roly-Poly chair; her career trajectory from magazine editor and stylist to designer; her reflections on her past and present “assemblages”; and how she embraces play in her work.

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of the best-selling books “The Tipping Point,” “Blink,” and “Outliers” and the host of the Revisionist History podcast, talks about his latest title, “Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering”; the disappearance of what he calls “the critical enterprise in America”; and how A.I. is complicating his famous “10,000-Hour Rule.”

Richard Christiansen, founder of the garden-pleasure apothecary Flamingo Estate, talks about his lifelong connection with beekeeping and honeywhy more brands should embrace “radical inconsistency” in their products; and how reading a book by Jane Goodall, and later befriending the anthropologist and conservationist, changed the course of his life. He also shares his circuitous journey from Australian farm boy, to running the New York City creative agency Chandelier for nearly two decades, to now overseeing a global collective of growers from his seven-acre home and farm in the hills of Los Angeles.

The geologist Marcia Bjornerud, author of the new book “Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks,” discusses the power of looking at the world through a Deep Time lens, why we’re currently in what she considers a “golden age” of geoscience, and what a “time literate” society would mean for humanity and the planet.

Nachson Mimran, the co-founder of The Alpina Gstaad hotel in the Swiss Alps as well as the co-founder of the decarbonization, refugee empowerment, and “human optimization” organization to.org, discusses his big-picture view of the word hospitality; how a family tragedy led him and his brother to create to.org; and his bold vision for building transformative spaces for culture, art, and well-being in refugee settlements.

The novelist, essayist, and cultural critic Jonathan Lethem, author of the new book “Cellophane Bricks: A Life in Visual Culture” (ZE Books), discusses his passion for book dedications; the time he spent with James Brown and Bob Dylan, respectively, when profiling them for Rolling Stone in the mid-aughts; how his writing is, in part, a way of dealing with and healing from his mother’s death in 1978, at age 36; and why he views his work as “fundamentally commemorative.”

The lighting designer Lindsey Adelman discusses her recent decision to shift her company away from a large-scale production operation and toward a smaller, more intimate “studio” model; the great surprise of having one of her designs installed in Vice President Kamala Harris’s Washington, D.C., home; her love of hosting; and the various writers and artists who have helped shape her conceptions of light over the years.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger discusses the staying power of Philip Johnson’s Glass House as it turns 75, the evolution of architecture over the past century, what he’s learned from writing architects’ obituaries, and the Oreo cookie from a design perspective.

The artist Francesco Clemente discusses collaborating with the chef Daniel Humm on the soon-to-open Clemente Bar at Eleven Madison Park, frescoes as the most luminous artistic medium, the lifelong influence of the artists Cy Twombly and Joseph Beuys on his work, his deep affinity with India, and the certain timeworn quality to his art.

Historian and author Sarah Lewis, the founder of the Vision & Justice initiative and an associate professor of the humanities and African and African-American studies at Harvard, discusses the tension between pedagogy and propaganda; the deep influence of Frederick Douglass’s 1861 “Pictures and Progress” lecture on her work; how a near-death car crash altered the course of her life and her new book, “The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America”; and the special ability of certain photographs to stop time.

Rita Sodi, the chef-owner of I Sodi and co-owner (with her life and work partner, Jody Williams) of Via Carota, The Commerce Inn, and Bar Pisellino, discusses learning to cook from her mother, her atypical journey from fashion to food, and some of the stringent rules she follows in the kitchen and in life.