[3] On July 19, 1989, a month before his fourth birthday, Bailey survived the crash landing of United Airlines Flight 232 in Sioux City, Iowa.
[7] Reporting for The New York Times Magazine, in October 2011, he spent a night at Zucotti Park and a nearby McDonald's during the Occupy Wall Street movement.
[9][10] Over the next three years, he interviewed authors, celebrities, politicians, and cultural figures such as Al Sharpton,[11] Tony Hawk,[12] Rodney King,[13] and Cyndi Lauper[14] for a "How to ..." column.
[27] In May 2019, with Andrew Zuckerman, Bailey co-founded and launched the media company The Slowdown,[28] which produces the Time Sensitive podcast[29] and an email newsletter,[30] and operates an "editorial studio.
"[31] On Time Sensitive, Bailey interviews actors, artists, entrepreneurs, journalists, novelists, musicians, and others, with previous guests including the author and translator Jhumpa Lahiri,[32] the poet and playwright Claudia Rankine,[33] and the fashion designer Gabriela Hearst.
[35] Writing about the company in 2024, Galerie magazine noted, "At the heart of The Slowdown is co-founder Spencer Bailey’s desire to convey to his audience that time is our greatest luxury and also a treasured gift.
"[39] In the fall of 2024, The Leading Hotels of the World announced that it had named Bailey as the editor-in-chief of a five-year, five-volume book series celebrating the global luxury hospitality collection, to be published by the Phaidon imprint Monacelli, with The Slowdown overseeing the editorial direction of the entire project.