Design Matters with Debbie Millman
Jul 6, 2026 · 1 hr 23 min · 19 segments
Craig Mod is a writer, photographer, designer, and publisher whose work is rooted in attention—to the roads he walks, the books he creates, and the ways technology shapes our experience of the world…
Craig ModGuest
Debbie MillmanHost
[upbeat music] Craig Mod is a writer, a photographer, a publisher, a designer, and long-distance walker whose work is rooted in attention: attention to roads, books, technology, memory, and the lives we pass along the way.
Craig writes the acclaimed newsletters Roden and Ridgeline, and runs Special Projects, an independent publishing and membership community devoted to books, walks, photography, and the making of thoughtful work outside the machinery of the algorithmic internet.
He's also the author of several books, including Kissa by Kissa, Art-Space Tokyo, and the beautiful memoir, Things Become Other Things, a book about friendship, grief, class, adoption, Japan, and the alchemy by which motion can turn memory into meaning.
Your grandparents met there, your parents met there, and nearly everyone seemed connected to it in some way.
What did that factory mean to you as a child before you had a language for class or labor or escape?
Yeah, I mean, it was probably most through my grandfather, who I think he kind of identified the, you know, most strongly with being there.
And my grandmother, once I think she got married and was pregnant with my mother, she left the factory.
So everyone ended up leaving it except for my grandfather, and, um, he took a lot of pride of being there.
This was, like, our one indulgence as a family, is every summer we'd go to D- I went to Disney World probably literally 10 times, 10 summers in a row.
I, I could still probably to this day navigate Disney World without a map and know exactly where everything is.
I know where this is." And we would always go, and I think at Epcot Center, there was a special Pratt & Whitney-sponsored ride or exhibition or something, and he had a little card that would get us into the, the back, like, VIP.
[upbeat music] Craig Mod is a writer, a photographer, a publisher, a designer, and long-distance walker whose work is rooted in attention: attention to roads, books, technology, memory, and the lives we pass along the way.
Craig writes the acclaimed newsletters Roden and Ridgeline, and runs Special Projects, an independent publishing and membership community devoted to books, walks, photography, and the making of thoughtful work outside the machinery of the algorithmic internet.
He's also the author of several books, including Kissa by Kissa, Art-Space Tokyo, and the beautiful memoir, Things Become Other Things, a book about friendship, grief, class, adoption, Japan, and the alchemy by which motion can turn memory into meaning.
Your grandparents met there, your parents met there, and nearly everyone seemed connected to it in some way.
What did that factory mean to you as a child before you had a language for class or labor or escape?
Yeah, I mean, it was probably most through my grandfather, who I think he kind of identified the, you know, most strongly with being there.
And my grandmother, once I think she got married and was pregnant with my mother, she left the factory.
So everyone ended up leaving it except for my grandfather, and, um, he took a lot of pride of being there.
This was, like, our one indulgence as a family, is every summer we'd go to D- I went to Disney World probably literally 10 times, 10 summers in a row.
I, I could still probably to this day navigate Disney World without a map and know exactly where everything is.
I know where this is." And we would always go, and I think at Epcot Center, there was a special Pratt & Whitney-sponsored ride or exhibition or something, and he had a little card that would get us into the, the back, like, VIP.
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3 of 5
Birth Mother’s Kept Photo
The reunion carried an unexpected tenderness revealed
Creativity Lost to Phones
He warns about a subtle erosion of imagination
Hidden Toll of Adoption
Early in the talk, he highlights overlooked data
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7 of 25
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