Poured Over: Debbie Millman on Why Design Matters
“It’s a great question. And no one has ever asked me that question. I think it’s taught me about how to construct the arc of a narrative.” We’ve learned so much from Debbie Millman and her fabulous interviews on her long-running podcast Design Matters. Since 2005, Debbie’s introduced us to incredible thinkers from a variety of disciplines, and now 55 of the more than 500 interviews she’s done are collected in beautiful (and provocative) new book, Why Design Matters. Debbie joins us on the show to talk about what design has taught her about interviewing, how she never really planned to be a designer (and what changed), her research process, the stories we tell ourselves about images, what’s next for her, and much more.
Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land on Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional bonus episodes on Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.
Featured Book: Why Design Matters by Debbie Millman
From this episode:
B&N: Let’s talk about your process for a second. How in the world do you prepare for something that becomes really intimate, and really telling? And you just convince people to go…and they trust you, which is really important.
Debbie Millman: I don’t know if I could codify it. But first and foremost, I only interview people I am really interested in; there has to be an intense curiosity….I’m endlessly fascinated by how people become who they are. It’s taken me a long time to discover who I am. And I’m talking about decades and decades, not just like a couple of years. And, and because I’ve been always so tentative about being who I am, I just am so interested in how people construct their lives. Where do they find their courage? Where do they find their stamina? How do they overcome heartbreak? How long does the feeling of being successful last for them? How do they navigate the choices that just humans have? And because it’s such a genuine curiosity, and not a gotcha curiosity, I think people have come to understand that my interviews really respect the journeys that their lives have been, as opposed to sort of TMZ gossip. (Not that there’s anything wrong with TMZ Gossip, it’s usually the first place I go when some big celebrity news breaks.) But that’s not the kind of show that I have….Interviewing has taught me how fragile, how truly fragile, everything in life is…it’s taught me how much struggle people really have. It’s taught me how, despite that struggle, people still yearn for more for better for love for acceptance. It’s taught me how fast we metabolize everything: success, failure. The one thing I think we don’t metabolize is regret. And that’s because there’s no closure to regret. So there’s nothing you can get over because it’s not finished, you’re still in the process of regret, and and how insidious regret is, I think regret is actually one of the most harmful of human experiences. I’ve learned how generous people are, because so many people have said yes to being interviewed by me. And I’ve learned how soft people really are at the center.