As part of the 20th anniversary of Design Matters, Debbie Millman shares Part Two of her most surprising first questions, the curious openings that sparked honesty, humor, and revelation. These excerpts highlight the unexpected moments that shaped some of the show’s most memorable conversations.
Debbie Millman:
Is it true that your father’s uncle… I understand you were once arrested… You’ve said you are known as Swami… When you were in high school-
Curtis Fox:
From a TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they’re thinking about and working on. On this episode, in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Design Matters, we’ll hear more first questions Debbie has asked over the years and their answers.
Sarah Jones:
I love that you’ve asked me that question. That’s true. Where do you get your information?
Brian Koppelman:
Seth Godin gave you that for sure.
Debbie Millman:
Somewhere in the midst of Design Matters history, I started doing something that I still do today: I began each interview with a playful deep-cut question. I started to do this mainly to disarm my guests inquiring about a detail of their life they hopefully had never been asked before. A few weeks ago, we did a whole episode of these first questions and answers. In this episode, back by popular demand, you’re going to hear some more first Q&As from some of my favorite guests, and similar to our last episode, I’m not going to share who the guest is until after you hear their response. Yes, it’s another round of Guess the Guest. And let me say in advance, this one is not as easy. Even I, the host, have been flummoxed by some of these voices, so I will provide just a few hints along the way.
Here is guest number one from 2016. You grew up in Toronto and were always considered a creative child, which you stated is code for everyone always bought you art supplies for your birthday. What kind of art did you make when you were little?
Adam J. Kurtz:
I was just one of those people that was creating their own reality, which is code for, I was like an awkward gay loser, but didn’t know what that was yet. And so I was-
Debbie Millman:
You and me both.
Adam J. Kurtz:
That was it. I think everyone but me knew, so my bedroom would have monthly themes where I would hang clouds from, we called it boondoggle, that plastic craft string. I don’t know how to better explain that.
Debbie Millman:
I’ll have to run over to Michaels and check.
Adam J. Kurtz:
Yes. Basically, my upbringing was like a nonstop Michaels.
Debbie Millman:
That was illustrator, designer and writer, Adam J. Kurtz, whose books include Pick Me Up: A Pep Talk for Now and Later.
Okay, here’s an easy one, also from 2016, given you’ll briefly hear his last name. Is it true that your father’s uncle, a man named Morris Koppelman, created a patent for making the first ever egg carton?
Brian Koppelman:
Seth Godin gave you that for sure.
Debbie Millman:
Oh no, he did not.
Brian Koppelman:
And I bet that you’ve had a long talk about it.
Debbie Millman:
Really, he didn’t. I swear to God he did not.
Brian Koppelman:
That’s his favorite fact to go back and forth-
Debbie Millman:
Of course. That’s why we love each other.
Brian Koppelman:
… we talk about it. My dad’s great, I think, great, great uncle Morris did invent, has a patent for the egg carton, that’s true.
Debbie Millman:
And is the family still receiving residuals, royalties?
Brian Koppelman:
No. No, Morris was a great inventor, and I think a bad businessman.
Debbie Millman:
Almost always. Other than Steve Jobs and maybe one or two others, right?
Brian Koppelman:
Yes, where there’s been nothing but familial pride is about all that we got out of that.
Debbie Millman:
And was he also an egg farmer?
Brian Koppelman:
All I know about him is the legend. And then, because there was no financial benefit, at a certain point, my sisters and I became really skeptical of that story. It sounded made up, so when the internet got really good and thorough, I did search for it at some point just to see if it was true, and it turned out to be true.
Debbie Millman:
Well, just so you know, I found it on your father’s Wikipedia page.
Brian Koppelman:
Great.
Debbie Millman:
The grandnephew of Morris Koppelman, the inventor of the egg carton, is the Emmy-winning director Brian Koppelman. In 2016, when he joined me on Design Matters, he was the co-creator, showrunner, and executive producer of the Showtime series Billions.
If you love one-person Broadway shows, you’ll certainly be able to guess mystery guest number three. The first thing I want to ask you about is your upbringing. What was it like growing up in the UK?
Sarah Jones:
Well, I love that you’ve asked me that question. I don’t get it all the time. And the reason for that is probably a bit complicated, but I suppose I should say right away that the reason it’s challenging for me to talk about my upbringing in the UK is that there was no such thing. I actually speak the Queen’s English, but I’m from Queens, New York. Like you.
Debbie Millman:
Yes, indeed. Queens in the house. Now, I saw an interview that you had with Seth Meyers on his show, wherein you told him you kept a job for months by impersonating an English woman, so tell us about that.
Sarah Jones:
I really did, and I’ll be myself to tell the story because otherwise she’ll slip in. But there was a moment in New York where you could get a job as a hostess in the front of a restaurant, sort of looking down your nose at people. It’s not the most noble job, but I walked into a fancy restaurant and said, “Are you hiring?” And they said, “Well, we really only want to hire English girls.” I guess that reinforces the snootiness at the front of house. And I thought to myself, I can do that. And I said, “Well, okay, when’s the manager in?” And they said, Well, come back Tuesday. And I came back Tuesday like this, and I met the manager, and I promptly convinced him that this was me, and I took the job and kept the job. Now, as you can imagine, I had co-workers who were also from the UK. It was sort of like, “Oh, where’d you go to school?” “Oh, I’m sorry. Getting a phone call had to go. Bye.” I had to dodge my identity conversation.
Debbie Millman:Now, I understand that after you left that job, you ended up meeting one of your co-workers in the gym, and you spoke in your normal tone, and he was like, “Where did your accent go?”
Sarah Jones:
It was so embarrassing. First of all, being in the gym in a flop sweat, like walking up to somebody realizing you know them and you’re go, “Hi. Yeah.” And he was like, “Oh.” He just looked so crestfallen that the sexy British girl he remembered was this nasal American plain old gym rat. Anyway, so yeah, let’s just say we didn’t date. Nothing happened after that.
Debbie Millman:
Well, you never know, right?
Sarah Jones:
You never know.
Debbie Millman:
I could see that whole kink thing, like Sarah talked like an English girl now. Oh, boy.
Sarah Jones:
Let’s save that for later.
Debbie Millman:
Yes. Yeah. Sarah Jones is the playwright and performer whose multi-character solo performance in Bridge & Tunnel won a Tony Award in 2006. It was just the two of us in the booth in 2017. But afterwards, I felt like I had interviewed most of New York City.
Guest number four. Here’s a hint. I say oy, you say, yo. I need to start by asking you a rather trivial but potentially polarizing question. I understand you can’t live without Bounty paper towels.
Deborah Kass:
That’s true. Where do you get your information?
Debbie Millman:
Oh, I have my sources, and I don’t ever give them away.
Deborah Kass:
That’s really funny.
Debbie Millman:
But really, Bounty? I like Viva much better.
Deborah Kass:
Really? Oh, Bounty’s a quicker picker-upper. I don’t know.
Debbie Millman:
And this is not a sponsored podcast-
Deborah Kass:
No, it’s not.
Debbie Millman:
… so nobody has to worry about her being authentic.
Deborah Kass:
No, it’s like, I don’t know. I think I inherited it from my grandmother. She had really particular tastes in paper products.
Debbie Millman:
Now, do you keep a lot of paper products around?
Deborah Kass:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
See, I’m a person that has a lot of paper products in storage. I just feel safer when I have a large quantity of paper products around me.
Deborah Kass:
I completely concur because it ends up we have a lot in common, including a need for a big backup on the paper products. I’m never happy unless I see that really well-stocked shelf.
Debbie Millman:
Yep, I hear you.
Deborah Kass:
Yep.
Debbie Millman:
That was the legendary artist, Deborah Kass, in 2017. If you pass the Brooklyn Museum, out front, you will see her magnificent, giant yellow sculpture of the word oy, which becomes yo if you’re coming from the opposite direction.
Guest number five is a ten-time bestselling author, podcast host, and someone who has given one of the most successful TED Talks of all time. Is it true that when the movie Grease first came out all those decades ago, you saw it 25 times?
Brene Brown:
I was trying to remember exactly, so I went with the most conservative number that we could come up with, but yes.
Debbie Millman:
Really?
Brene Brown:
Oh, yes. I used all of the money I had saved up, all my Christmas, birthday card money. I saw it at least 25 times.
Debbie Millman:
Was it because of Olivia Newton-John, John Travolta? What was the allure? Was it the two of them together?
Brene Brown:
No, I don’t even think it was that part. It was the singing and the dancing, and this is going to be high school, and I can’t wait.
Debbie Millman:
Olivia Newton-John, I think, was my first crush. I went and saw her when she was still a country music singer back in the seventies.
Brene Brown:
Seventies, late seventies. Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
I totally get it.
Brene Brown:
I think it was that. And I think it… I started smoking.
Debbie Millman:
Yes. I actually read that you wanted to be Olivia Newton-John with a cigarette and a catsuit, winning over John Travolta.
Brene Brown:
Yeah. I just thought… And until I watched it maybe 10 years ago with my daughter, who’s now 18, so maybe she was probably 10 or 11 when we watched it, so maybe it was eight years ago, seven years ago, I was like, “This is completely inappropriate. We have to shut this thing off.”
Debbie Millman:
Cover your eyes.
Brene Brown:
Yeah, because the moral of the story is don’t be the good girl, get the catsuit, buy a pack of Marlboros.
Debbie Millman:
Stockard Channing ruled in that movie.
Brene Brown:
Oh, yeah. And so, oh, I loved it, and I aspired.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, I wish my listeners could see your face right now. Your eyes are sparkling.
Brene Brown:
It was.
Debbie Millman:
Now you were born Casandra Brene Brown. The great Brene Brown in 2017.
Guest number six, one big hint is dropped in this one. The first thing I want to ask you about is your teddy bears. I understand you have a collection that includes bears that have been to Mount Everest, one that has traveled to the Bismarck, and one that has even been on the Titanic, so what’s this with you and bears?
Richard Saul Wurman:
When I founded TED in 1984, I was fat.
Debbie Millman:
Fat as in heavy.
Richard Saul Wurman:
Yeah, I was piggish, and it was called TED, so I thought the teddy bear would be a kind of self-deprecating mockery and that people liked teddy bears. And I gave everybody a teddy bear and designed a new one every year. And then I had all these teddy bears, and then people asked me, said they were going to Mount Everest or they were going to the Titanic. I knew people.
Debbie Millman:
People actually took it to the depths of the sea?
Richard Saul Wurman:
Oh, yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, wow.
Richard Saul Wurman:
And then it squishes down to a very little thing when it gets down there, and then it pops back up when it gets up, so I have a few of them that have been there, and I lose some as I move to different houses. Different teddy bears went to different-
Debbie Millman:
You have lots of them.
Richard Saul Wurman:
One went to up in Canada, and it was taken by a bear, so we don’t have it, but a bear took it.
Debbie Millman:
Sort of meta?
Richard Saul Wurman:
Yeah. I’ve never been asked that question before about my teddy bears. They just are.
Debbie Millman:
That was architect and inventor Richard Saul Wurman, the founder of TED. That interview from 2017 turned into one of my most difficult interviews, but I learned a lot, and Richard and I became friends. Now we’re up to guest number seven. How many of you guessed correctly so far? This next guest is from 2018, midway through the first term of the President at that time. I understand your mother was the only child of a very wealthy businessman, as well as a disowned heiress. How on earth did she get disowned?
David Cay Johnston:
My agent wants me to write a screenplay about this. My mother testified against her father in the spring of 1941, so before Pearl Harbor, when America was still relatively innocent. He was tried for alienation of affection by his mistress’s husband. Now, if you went to a lawyer today and said, I want to sue this woman alienating my husband, you’d be laughed out of the law office. But back then, there was a trial my grandfather lost. He had to pay $10,000, which is a lot of money in 1941, and the star witness against him, who had the records of the hotel rooms in the trips, was my mother.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, my goodness. How did she find all that information or get all that information?
David Cay Johnston:
Well, she worked for him in the business.
Debbie Millman:
Quite a scandalous background there.
David Cay Johnston:
Oh, yeah. The trial was covered by newspapers from far away in some of the big cities. One of them, the headline was “Sin in the Northwoods.”
Debbie Millman:
It sounds like a romance novel. That was investigative journalist and author, David Cay Johnston.
Here’s guest number eight. Hint, he’s one of the most successful set designers on Broadway and designed one of the most successful Broadway shows of all time. When you were in high school, I understand you became class president by virtue of a write-in campaign. Where were you in 2016?
David Korins:
It is a true story about the write-in vote, and it brings up a little bit of shame and guilt when you asked me that question.
Debbie Millman:
Why? Why?
David Korins:
Because there was a woman who was freshman, sophomore and junior year, the class president, elected proper. And she did, I think, a good job and we all didn’t know better, and we didn’t know what even the elected officials of our class did or were supposed to do. But when it came time to do the senior class voting, I was a little bit of a wise ass, surprise.
Debbie Millman:
My eyebrows just shot to the ceiling.
David Korins:
And I was not sure that the two people who had announced their candidacy were going to do anything different or beyond the status quo. And so we went to the assembly, and I raised my hand, and I said, “Could I run?” And the principal who didn’t love me, he didn’t hate me, but he didn’t love me, said, “No, you had to announce your candidacy in this…” And I just said, “I’m sorry. We just heard these two speeches. They were not that interesting. They didn’t say that they would do anything for our class that seemed interesting.”
And really, the only real big thing at play was the class trip, which I thought was a big deal. We all thought it was a big deal. And so I said, “Could I run as a write-in vote?” I didn’t really know what that meant, but he said, “I guess.” And so I went to my homeroom, and I wrote out the three things I thought I could accomplish, including this great class trip. Don’t ask me where because I don’t really remember where to, but it was an important trip. And I wrote those things out, and I went to the, dating myself, mimeograph machine.
Debbie Millman:
Those with the blue ink that smelled amazing?
David Korins:
Yeah, that I think for sure made everyone sterile, those. And I ran off a bunch of copies, and I handed them out to everyone’s homeroom, and at the end of the day, when they counted the votes, this is over the loudspeaker, “And by write-in vote, David Korins.” And I won, but the real shame and guilt is because what we didn’t know is that when you graduate, the senior class president is responsible for planning the reunions in perpetuity, which is a disaster if you think about it.
Debbie Millman:
Absolutely.
David Korins:
Who knew at 17 that that was a thing that you had to do? And I basically left town and didn’t really ever do that because I knew that someone had taken care of it, and they planned the five and the 10 and the 15. I just recently went back from my 20th.
Debbie Millman:
What was that like for you?
David Korins:
It was amazing, actually. I had no idea what it would be like, but the little guy who used to get picked on became the chief of police in my hometown, and some of the big bullies became-
Debbie Millman:
Divine retribution.
David Korins:
… cops underneath him. It was actually pretty amazing.
Debbie Millman:
That high school politician was the Tony Award-winning set designer and creative director, David Korins, who has designed many Broadway shows, including Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen, I spoke to him in 2018.
In 2018, I also spoke with guest number nine. You said you are known as “Swami Mommy” in your inner circle, so I’m wondering how did that come about? What’s the story behind that?
Sukey Novogratz:
I was always trying to find alternative ways to help heal my kids. Not originally, I was definitely the classic, give me the doctor, give me the best doctor, and life sort of changed when my daughter… We moved back from Asia. We were living in New York, and my daughter had high blood pressure. She was five at the time.
Debbie Millman:
Wow.
Sukey Novogratz:
And the endocrinologist was like, “Well, let’s change your diet for the year, and then we’ll check it again.” I thought whole foods, what was I doing wrong? Okay, I’ll take the salt out of the mozzarella. But honestly, I thought I was doing a great job diet-wise. A year passed, we go back and the endocrinologist is like, “Nothing has changed, so she’s going to have to go on a pill for the rest of her life.” Oh, I don’t really like that. And so I went to my one woo-woo friend that I knew from the music school, and she said I should see this Doctor Polesky at the Continuing Health and Healing Center. I went there, I did full disclosure, go to other doctors who also were like, well, it looks like she’s going to have to take a pill, so I went to Dr. Polesky. And the first thing I noticed is when I got there, he said hi to me very kindly and then went with my daughter, Gabby, to do puzzles while they had a discussion for a half hour.
Oh, that’s a first. And then he came back to me for three minutes and said, “Well, we’re going to first try chiropractic work, and then maybe we’ll do some homeopathic work, and maybe some of this, and we’ll see what sort of works and doesn’t work. And maybe at the end of the day, she might have to take a pill, but let’s try these things.” Now, mind you, Dr. Polesky was a regular doctor. What was it? Harvard. Totally credited. And another full disclosure, my father, who is always a big chiropractor, all this other stuff, I always thought he was like crazy, like, “Go see a real doctor.” I couldn’t even share with my dad, who was around at the time, to say, “I’m going to take Gabby to see the chiropractors.” I was embarrassed. We went, and this wonderful woman comes in with this beautiful glow. And she was at the same facility, and she starts looking at Gabby and doing some body work on her. And she’s like, “Oh, do you know your daughter has an extra rib?” And I’m like, “No, I didn’t know that.” Not crazy. I have an extra rib.
And my father used to always joke, it’s because I didn’t want to give it to Adam, so that’s not so crazy, she has one, an extra one. And she’s like, “Well, you know she’s so compact and so I believe it’s putting pressure on her pancreas. And so that’s probably setting off her adrenals and maybe her high blood pressure, so let’s just release this rib and wait 20 minutes and took her blood pressure.” And sure enough, she was normal.
Debbie Millman:
Wow.
Sukey Novogratz:
And that was sort of the single deciding moment for me of just like, oh, wait, there’s stuff here that’s really valuable. Because at what point would I stop my daughter’s medication? At 19, and say like, oh, let’s go off those meds and see if you’re okay now.
Debbie Millman:
Let’s experiment with your blood pressure.
Sukey Novogratz:
That would never happen, so for the rest of her life. And then in all that development, what’s doing that to her liver, all this stuff, who knows? And so that was sort of a life-changing moment and made me be a seeker with all things. And so all the moms be like, call me Swami Mommy or whatever, Sukey mom or whatever it was.
Debbie Millman:
“Swami Mommy” is Sukey Novogratz, who joined me on the podcast to talk about the book she co-wrote with her sister titled Just Sit: A Meditation Guidebook for People Who Know They Should But Don’t.
All right, A few more to go. Here’s guest number 10. You’ve said that you have no recollection of your 21st birthday or what you did last Christmas, but as long as you live you will never forget how when you were six years old, your mother sneezed, her dentures fell out of her mouth, hit the kitchen floor with a sharp clack, rattled sideways across the linoleum floor while your mother in her tight skirt and white stilettos chased them down. Would you say this epitomizes your childhood?
Simon Doonan:
In a way it does. I think the point that I was trying to make when I wrote that anecdote was that for me, I kind of remember the jarring things more clearly than I do the pleasant things, like the day at the beach, which was kind of perfect. You don’t really… Well, I don’t really remember it very clearly, but when things go horribly wrong or when they’re very jarring or dissonant or theatrical or melodramatic, those are the things that I remember most clearly. And that’s not necessarily a nice thing. That’s just the way it works in my head.
Debbie Millman:
She was in her thirties when she had all of her teeth pulled to get her dentures. Why did she do that?
Simon Doonan:
Well, back then, after the war, post-war England was very squalid and deprived. And it was the 1950s, after the war was not an abundant time. I think a lot of the reparation money was going to Germany, to countries in Europe. And in England, we still had rationing. And my recollection is that most adults over the age of 25 had dentures. There were dentures everywhere, like soaking in glasses everywhere. We lived in a two-roomed flat with no kitchen and bathroom. My parents had cardboard in their shoes.
I’m not complaining, I’m just saying I’ve seen things go from that kind of grim post-war thing… And I think that’s why the sixties was such a sharp contrast. I was actually interviewing Paul Smith the other day, and I said to him, “Why do you think the sixties had that look, the Carnaby Street thing? Why did that happen?” And he said, “Well, after the war everybody was very threadbare. And so the mod kids, it was a way to rebel, was to wear these very persnickety, tidy…” If you look at those early pictures of David Bowie when he was a mod, it’s just so neat because everything seems so threadbare and chaotic.
Debbie Millman:
Ask a question about dentures and you come away with a deeper understanding of the mod movement and the swinging sixties. That was author Simon Doonan, the former creative director of Barneys.
Here’s guest number 11. He has the best hair on television. Given all of your major accomplishments, how do you feel about New York Magazine recently including you in an article titled “The Golden Era of Male Hair?”
Anand Giridharadas:
Obviously, as a writer, you’re hoping for that Pulitzer or that National Book Award or that Nobel, but in the absence of such honors, it was one of the greatest honors of my life. I’d be lying if I said otherwise.
Debbie Millman:
In a Reddit ask me anything that you did one commenter said, “I don’t have any questions, but your hair looks amazing.” What is it about your hair that seems to warrant so much attention?
Anand Giridharadas:
You have to ask bald people that. I think one of the things that happens is my hair is very polarizing, like everything in America today, so when I go on television, there are people who say nice things about it. And then there’s a lot of people who I suspect are follically challenged men in their basement somewhere who voted for Donald Trump and don’t want me in America anyway, and for whom my hair is the ultimate offense, and they just want to deport it, so I get a lot of hate mail. Also, probably way more than the love mail, specifically-
Debbie Millman:
Really?
Anand Giridharadas:
Yeah, like your hair needs to go back to its country, that kind of thing. But the trolls are getting more creative. Go back to your country is so unimaginative. I think telling someone’s hair to go back to its country, it’s interesting hate.
Debbie Millman:
Does it hurt your feelings?
Anand Giridharadas:
No, I’ve learned things from my trolls. I’m not going to repeat them here, but I would say one out of every 10 things trolls tell you is actually useful information.
Debbie Millman:
Can you give us one example?
Anand Giridharadas:
Yes. I go on MSNBC a lot, where I’m a political analyst, and often after an appearance, people will give you these horrible, horrible comments on your appearance. And it’s terrible. Who are these people who actually-
Debbie Millman:
Why do they bother to watch?
Anand Giridharadas:
Right before going to work, they’re like, Let me just make a couple mean tweets about someone’s appearance. But one out of every 10 of those is this kind of like a useful sartorial tip in there. One guy was like, “With that shirt and that suit, this guy has no neck.” I was like, “That’s pretty mean.” And I started looking at the pictures. I was like, I have a shorter than average neck. I’m not ashamed to say.
Debbie Millman:
I have to look at your neck.
Anand Giridharadas:
It’s probably 40th percentile. And so I asked a friend of mine and they’re, “Simple, just wear T-shirts with your suit jackets.” And I tried that, it looked a little better, so I do that sometimes. I was like, thank you, troll. My wife is never going to tell me the truth about my neck length.
Debbie Millman:
Well, she probably likes the way your neck went.
Anand Giridharadas:
She may not. I don’t know. But sometimes you just have to go on TV and endure the wrath of Trump voters to find out important truths about your body.
Debbie Millman:
That was the writer and political commentator, Anand Giridharadas.
He joined me on the podcast in 2018 to talk about his New York Times bestselling book, Winners Take All. Guest number 12 is from 2019 and is the last one for this episode of Guess the Guest. I understand you were once arrested for closing down the Holland Tunnel. Can you bring us back to that moment and tell us more about it?
Patricia Cronin:
Well, it was the early nineties, and it was the Casey versus Webster Supreme Court decision, and we were pro-choice, different groups of feminists, and there was WHAM, the Women’s Health Action Mobilization. There was WAC, the Women’s Action Coalition, and lots of different organizations got together, and we just decided that’s it, we have to stage a huge protest and go to the streets. And so we did go and blocked the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, and yes, we were all arrested.
Debbie Millman:
How did you close it down? You just stood in front of it?
Patricia Cronin:
Oh, yeah. You lay down. We did training for this. Absolutely. You know how to go limp. You know how to not get up. But yes, we were arrested. They took Polaroids of you while you’re being picked up and dragged into the paddy wagon.
Debbie Millman:
And were you in jail?
Patricia Cronin:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’s kind of a funny story because my grandfather was a detective in the NYPD, and my father grew up in the Bronx. It’s like, besides being white and English speaking, you know what I mean? It’s the one card. You know what I mean? I don’t have a lot of cards I can ever play anywhere. You certainly don’t have a class card, so I thought, well, my grandfather was a detective in the NYPD. And they say, “Oh, that’s great. What would he think of you now?” I’m like, “Well, he’s dead. He doesn’t think much of it right now.” And on my way out when they finally released me, because you have to go for a court appearance later on, they slipped me the Polaroid of me being arrested. They’re like, “Go on, get out of here.” But I have this document, this Polaroid of me being arrested, which I love as a souvenir, a little badge of honor.
Debbie Millman:
Absolutely. Is it framed and somewhere in an important place in your home?
Patricia Cronin:
No, but I should frame it. I’m making a note right now.
Debbie Millman:
That was artist, Patricia Cronin.
You can hear more than the first questions and answers; you can hear the full interviews and hundreds of other interviews with some of the most creative people in the world on our website, designmattersmedia.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Next week we’ll have another special episode called from the many years I’ve been podcasting Design Matters. Yes, this is the 20th year we’ve been podcasting, and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.
Curtis Fox:
Design Matters is produced by the TED Audio Collective, by Curtis Fox Productions. The interviews are usually recorded at the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the first and longest-running branding program in the world. The editor-in-chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Weiland.