EVERY SPOKEN WORD
130 min read · 25,665 words- 0:00 – 0:28
Start.
- CMCraig Mod
Every weekend, I would book a hotel in San Francisco, and I'd go up there and I'd lock myself in the hotel room from Friday night. I'd do a late checkout on Sunday. Every weekend, I'd go up there and I would just write new essays about digital books and publishing.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- CMCraig Mod
I couldn't compromise. That writing part of me, the literary part of me, I could not compromise. I had spent all of my 20s building up this asceticism and building up this ability to be uncompromising, and I didn't want that to be broken. And so I, I forced myself to just keep writing militantly.
- 0:28 – 1:15
Good morning, Good evening
- TFTim Ferriss
Good morning.
- CMCraig Mod
Hello.
- TFTim Ferriss
[speaking foreign language]
- CMCraig Mod
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[speaking foreign language]
- CMCraig Mod
[laughs] You're good, you're good.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, Japan-US is always a little tricky with the time zones. I typically do kind of end of day my time, early morning Japan time.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
But this morning's good. It's getting me back on Central Standard. I, I was coming from mountains, so this is like three hours before I usually get up [laughs] .
- CMCraig Mod
Okay, jeez.
- TFTim Ferriss
Just totally fine. No, it's good. I mainlined some caffeine, and we are ready to go off to the races. This is gonna be fun, man.
- CMCraig Mod
I-
- TFTim Ferriss
Always love an excuse to do creepy internet sleuthing on my friends.
- CMCraig Mod
[laughs] Oh, no.
- 1:15 – 3:24
What would make this a worthwhile conversation?
- TFTim Ferriss
What would make this, I ask this question always... You know all the housekeeping rules, bathroom break, water break. If you start something, you're like, "Ah, let me try that again," we can clean it up and post-
- CMCraig Mod
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... since this isn't Carnegie Hall. What would make this time well spent? I know you got the new book. Anything come to mind? Like, this comes out, you've done interviews, you're a pro. You know how to weave prose. You're a man in the public to some extent. What would make this time well spent?
- CMCraig Mod
Probably the most, like, affecting story of the last year or so of me is the adoption stuff, like meeting my birth mom.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, for sure.
- CMCraig Mod
That's pretty fecund of emotion-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
... a lot going on there.
- TFTim Ferriss
Might wanna work on that headline, but I like it [laughs] .
- CMCraig Mod
You know, that's a thing. And then all the stuff that's happened with the cities has been really, I think, kind of a weird-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- CMCraig Mod
... journey.
- TFTim Ferriss
I got, like, the very short kind of summary tease of things, but I don't know the story, which always makes it more fun for me as well.
- CMCraig Mod
In terms of, like, what will listeners get the most out of, I think that story about the cities and The New York Times stuff and what's come out of that I think is an interesting... Because it encompasses a lot of, like, what does travel mean today? Why are we traveling?
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
What does overtourism mean? How do you handle these massive tourism surges that are happening? Is there a way, like-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- CMCraig Mod
... to mitigate them or to send them to different, different parts of the country? So I think that's, like, really interesting. I think the adoption stuff is really interesting. I mean, everything ties into the walking, you know.
- TFTim Ferriss
What about you? This comes out, and three months after it comes out... I appreciate you being so listener focused because God bless my dear listeners. But as far as this interview, like, it comes out, what would make it, you look back and you're like, "Goddamn, I'm so glad I did that. I'm gonna point people to that interview"?
- CMCraig Mod
It aligns very much with what I think would be interesting for listeners to listen to. Basically, I haven't talked about the adoption stuff in English anywhere.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
I haven't written about it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Awesome.
- CMCraig Mod
This is, like, the first time me doing anything public about that.
- TFTim Ferriss
The debut of the fecundity.
- CMCraig Mod
The emotional garden. So I think that being able to, like, kind of crack that nut well would be really nice.
- TFTim Ferriss
Cool. Totally.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah. And everything else, I don't know. I'm just happy to chat.
- 3:24 – 5:08
How Craig and I first met.
- TFTim Ferriss
Let's just chat, man. Let's just chat. I mean, we never have trouble doing that. I was trying to think how we initially connected. Do you even remember? Was it through Mullenweg at some point maybe? I don't know.
- CMCraig Mod
No.
- TFTim Ferriss
There's something else.
- CMCraig Mod
There are two moments that we met, one in 2011, right in the beginning of 2011.
- TFTim Ferriss
Uh-huh.
- CMCraig Mod
I was at... What's the neighborhood you lived in in San Francisco?
- TFTim Ferriss
Glen Park, down south, just south of the Mission.
- CMCraig Mod
Isn't there another one kind of up where, like, Ev lived up on the hi- like you kind of go up... Not Pacific Heights or anything like that, but-
- TFTim Ferriss
Let's see.
- CMCraig Mod
West.
- TFTim Ferriss
It was close to Bernal Heights.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
West. Boy, I'm a left-right kind of guy, embarrassingly.
- CMCraig Mod
Anyway.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
I was working in a cafe there with one of the Flipboard engineers.
- TFTim Ferriss
Ev must have been in a fancier place. Okay, Flipboard, right.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Well, this is as good a place as any. Yeah, let's keep going. Okay.
- CMCraig Mod
I said hi to you there. I said, "Hey. Oh, hey, it's yeah, da, blah, blah, blah," and you were like, "Oh, cool. Yeah, Flipboard's great."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- CMCraig Mod
And then we exchanged words in the bathroom at-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
... Foo Camp.
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, thank God. I was like, "Oh, shit. [laughs] What, what happened here?"
- CMCraig Mod
At Foo Camp.
- TFTim Ferriss
Power exchange? How did we end up at the power exchange? Kidding.
- CMCraig Mod
I think it was the Japan walk. That was the first time we ever really-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- CMCraig Mod
... talked. So that was two and a half years ago now already, which is-
- 5:08 – 7:13
Growing up in a post-industrial Connecticut town.
- TFTim Ferriss
Let's just hop into it then. You mentioned Flipboard, so let's start there. At one point, you lived in Silicon Valley.
- CMCraig Mod
I did, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And for a lot of people, that's the dream. But you left Silicon Valley, ended up back in Japan. Could you just give us a bit of a thumbnail sketch? It doesn't even need to be a thumbnail. We have all the time in the world. But where did you grow up? We'll make it the really boring back in childhood intro. But where did you grow up? How did you end up at Silicon Valley, and why didn't you stay in Silicon Valley?
- CMCraig Mod
So yeah. I mean, it's funny you start with Silicon Valley because that was probably, like, that was the shortest period of anything I did in my life, for the most part. It was very truncated.
- TFTim Ferriss
The reasons for which it's truncated, I think, might be interesting, though.
- CMCraig Mod
I mean, I grew up in this sort of like- ... lower middle class, like, kind of post-industrial town. Like, I grew up in this town where, like, an airplane engine factory was, was the heart of the town.
- TFTim Ferriss
What state was that?
- CMCraig Mod
This is in Connecticut, weirdly. You really don't think of Connecticut as, like, an industrial state, but there is-
- TFTim Ferriss
There's plenty
- CMCraig Mod
... stuff happening.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah. And, you know, ever since I was really young, I mean, I loved books, I loved writing. I was sort of, like, drawn to that, but I was also really drawn to video games. And, like, I did not grow up in a place where people were reading. Like, there was no one, you know, no one around me was reading Ulysses [laughs] . You know?
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
It was like, it was pretty, uh, like, culturally a bit of a desert. But there were video games and, you know, those came from Japan, and that was sort of intriguing to me. That was, like, my first contact w- I'd say, with a culture outside of the town I came from. And there were computers, and I was really, really lucky. Like, we did not have much money, and our school districts were not well-funded. And I look back on it and I was extremely, extremely lucky with these chance opportunities I had, which basically enabled me to do everything I'm doing now. Very, very, very sliver, sliding doors style chances of opportunity.
- 7:13 – 8:04
The kindness of a tech-savvy stranger.
- CMCraig Mod
My family couldn't really afford a computer, but my neighbor bought one, and my neighbor was divorced.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- CMCraig Mod
And he lost his son in the divorce [laughs] , so he was, he was kind of, like, lonely. I was, like, really hungry to be using computers. I was, like, you know, eight or nine years old, 10 years old, and I started going over there so much to use his computer that he just gave me the key to his house.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
And he bought me my own phone line. He was really kind. He was just genuinely just a kind guy. About 10 years ago, I went to go find him and just say thank you for having lent me his computer. I mean, it really changed my life, this computer thing. And he had passed away.
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, no.
- CMCraig Mod
He had had a heart attack. So if you have someone in your life that you really wanna thank, go thank them while they're [laughs] , they're around. But you know how it is when you're a kid, you don't realize kind of the luck that you've fallen into with something like that.
- TFTim Ferriss
For sure.
- CMCraig Mod
And so
- 8:04 – 9:54
IRC, ANSI art scene, and making connections in the Internet's early days.
- CMCraig Mod
that was going on, and then I started using, at his place, I st- I got onto IRC. I started using PPP emulators to be able to use Mosaic. I was, you know, I was in the ANSI art scene.
- TFTim Ferriss
What does PPP stand for? Just gonna take a brief side quest here. We don't need to get into the hyper specifics, or what was it? [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
It's so funny that we're starting here because this is, like, such a bizarre, almost like a footnote to, like, everything I'm doing now. Like, everything I'm doing now is so, feels so removed.
- TFTim Ferriss
I like starting with the footnotes.
- CMCraig Mod
Well, this is the pretty serious footnote. So I don't even remember what PPP stands for, but basically you had shell accounts, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
So you had these text-based shell accounts that these were, like, the first ISPs.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yep.
- CMCraig Mod
I swear to God, this is gonna get more literary. If anyone's listening, [laughs] this is gonna get way more litigious.
- TFTim Ferriss
Internet service provider. Even I know that one.
- CMCraig Mod
No, but, like, we're gonna talk about books and walking in Japan and stuff. That's all coming. But this kind of genesis story is sort of interesting-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
... in that, you know, you had these text-based things. You could use IRC, which is like chat.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
It was like Discord.
- TFTim Ferriss
Sure.
- CMCraig Mod
Old school Discord.
- TFTim Ferriss
I remember that.
- CMCraig Mod
Not owned by anyone. It was totally open. You know, like, hosted on university servers, stuff like that. And I got connected with the ANSI art scene in there, and I started doing ANSI art. I was really kind of captivated by design and by computer programming in the sense that it allowed... what it could do for storytelling. That's kind of how I, how I saw it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And that's what sort of really captured my attention. And so I started working, you know, doing artwork with these guys. I was, like, 12, 13. These guys were all, like, five, six years older than me. They were mostly in California. A lot of them were.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And they were all sort of getting into the internet. And so when I graduated high school, I had these weird connections that I had made on this text chat room when I was 13 [laughs] .
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
And these guys were like, "Hey, we've started, like, a design agency. We're doing a startup," whatever. "Come out for the summer. Be an intern." So that was, like, my, that was my connection. And
- 9:54 – 12:17
From adoption to exploring hometown escape options.
- CMCraig Mod
essentially, like, you know, I didn't grow up with money, and no one around us had money. There was no wealth.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
Looking back now, I mean, there was absolutely no real wealth happening in our town. And if you look at the GDP statistics and stuff like that, I mean, it's sort of like, you know, 20% of the national GDP was the average-
- TFTim Ferriss
Wow
- CMCraig Mod
... sort of GDP per capita of our town.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
America's GDP is really high. Like, per capita GDP-
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... is, like, $85,000. Way higher than Japan, for example. Japan's like-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... 40, 45, something like that.
- TFTim Ferriss
I didn't realize that was such a high discrepancy.
- CMCraig Mod
The delta's pretty insane. So I basically, you know, did not come from money, and so I saw two ways to get out, essentially. From a very early age, I'm adopted, so there's a sense of disconnection from that, and then from a very early age, I realized the place that I was growing up in was very, very tiny, and I needed to get far away.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
For a number of reasons, but I knew I needed to get away, and I saw money as critical for that escape.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And I saw two ways of making money, and one of them was the stock market, and I joined the stock club as soon as I could at high school, and I was super geeking out. And as soon as, I think I was 18 or 19, I was 19 when I opened an E-Trade account. I think I was, like, one of the first probably, like, 10,000 people to have an E-Trade account.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
I was like, "Yes, okay, I need this." Very weird, I mean, 'cause there was no one in my family-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... that had ever bought a stock.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
You know, I was raised by my mother and my grandparents. My father was sort of out of the picture even though it was an adoption.
- TFTim Ferriss
This is your adopted mother?
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah, my adopted parents. Even though they adopted me, they got divorced when I was, like, two. I mean-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... which was good. My father wasn't a great guy, so it was good to kind of push him to aside. But, like, there was no archetypes for me of like, oh, this is how you generate wealth or create wealth or cultivate wealth or grow wealth. There was absolutely none of that, or even just how to engage culturally with the world, you know-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... to think about literature or to think about art. So I was just kind of, like, scanning the horizon.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- 12:17 – 13:59
Driving cross-country to a Silicon Valley internship.
- CMCraig Mod
for. Anyway, so you have, like, lifestyles of rich and famous. What do those people do? They buy stocks. You know, they invest in stocks, blah, blah. Stuff like that.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
So I was like, "Okay, I need to do that to get out." That's like step one. And then I just loved the potential of the internet. Like, as soon as I saw the World Wide Web, I was like, "Yes, this is where I wanna write. This is what I want to build on top of." Like, it was just so obvious to me. I was like 14-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... when I used Mosaic for the first time, and it was just, "Oh, okay, great. I don't have to think about anything. This is just what I do." And very quickly, I realized, like, if I became good at web stuff, I would be making more money than anyone in my town, you know?
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
It was, it was just like this weird, again, this arbitrage of kind of information and skill, and I just saw this very early on. So the ability to kind of go out to Silicon Valley as, like, an intern. I drove my Honda Civic. It was an, like a '93 Honda Civic with no power or anything. I basically had to, like, crank the thing to get going. Drove across America and went out there and interned. And I just, I really loved it, and I loved the people and the culture and the opportunities, and it really just set my mind ablaze. I mean, it was really exciting. And I was kind of working on blogging software before Blogger launched. When I talk about opportunity and they say basically wealth is unevenly distributed, but really what you're talking about is opportunity being evenly distributed. And when you listen to the genesis story of someone like Bill Gates, he's just surrounded by this abundance of opportunity. You know, like the fact that the university had these terminals he could use, and people were all kind of cultivating his ability to take, you know, advantage of these opportunities.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And there's definitely an alternate reality where, like, I had a little more opportunity. I was in Silicon Valley a little bit earlier, and I just had the sense of self-worth and confidence, I think, to do things differently and build stuff.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And that was, like, one timeline that didn't happen.
- 13:59 – 16:06
Pursuing the desire to live abroad.
- CMCraig Mod
And I went out there and I loved it and I enjoyed it, but at the same time, I, I really wanted to live abroad. I knew I needed to get away. And because of certain things that had kinda happened and things that I felt in my town, the people of my town not being supported by the greater whole, I kind of had this, from a very early age, a lack of, I would say, belief in the American system, and I just felt like-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- CMCraig Mod
... I had to leave America. There was a very strong impulse, like I have to get outside of this country and to see things differently. This felt important to me for some reason, intuitively.
- TFTim Ferriss
What about the system? When you say system, what specifically, right? Because we'll spend a lot of time talking about Japan, I am sure. But, you know, Japan is... it's not exactly North Korea.
- CMCraig Mod
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
It's similar to the U.S. in some respects.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
What do you mean by the American system in that context? Could just be a felt sense of something, right? It doesn't have to be super Wikipedia.
- CMCraig Mod
In the moment, I had absolutely no words for it. I had no way to describe it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
You're operating from a lack of experience. You haven't seen enough of the world.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
But you just... intuitively, there was a sense of, "Okay, we aren't being supported." And then when I went to college, that was the big shock for me, was getting to college and meeting everyone else and immediately feeling this gap of kind of abundance.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right.
- CMCraig Mod
I was lucky. I scored really well, even though I'm bad at tests taking. I don't like taking tests. I tested well. I was able to go to a good college, really, some, you know-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... a really good university. And it was just, the first three days, four days, I was just in shock. I was like, "Oh, these people are from a different planet." The resources they had, the archetypes they clearly had in their lives, the way they've learned to learn, to speak, to move through the world, like what they expe- ... I was just like, "This doesn't compute for me at all." And it was immediately-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
... I bounced off of it so fast.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
I was just like, "I can't be here. I, I shouldn't be here." There's something fundamentally missing, broken, sort of lacking inside my chest. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And-
- TFTim Ferriss
I get it
- CMCraig Mod
... that's what drove me to just go, "Okay, I should live abroad. I need to leave this country, in part to rebuild that on my own."
- 16:06 – 17:24
Attending Waseda University in Japan at age 19.
- TFTim Ferriss
Got it. Okay. So when did you move to Japan? At what year, what age was that?
- CMCraig Mod
I was 19. 19, and it was 2000.
- TFTim Ferriss
2000. Okay. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah. Which is insane. I can't believe-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, yeah
- CMCraig Mod
... it's been 25 years now.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay.
- CMCraig Mod
It's a long time.
- TFTim Ferriss
Got it. And you, just to paint a picture for folks, so you, you move to Japan when you're 19, and then you bounced around after that. You didn't stay in Japan the entire time. Am I right? Of course, because we met after that.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah, sort of. So to give you, like, the, the macro timeline.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
I go when I'm 19. I stay for a year. I go to university there. I love it. While I'm there, the Silicon Valley bubble, the first bubble pops. So there really isn't a Silicon Valley.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
My plan was to go to Japan. I applied on a whim to university there, and I applied independently. Normally, when you kind of do study abroad, you're, you keep paying your American university fees and you go to this international.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, right. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
And I looked at the fees for Japanese universities, and for, like, a year with homestay, it was like $8,000, 5,000. It was, like, an absurdly affordable amount of money.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And, you know, there was scholarships avail- It was like, why wouldn't I just go do this? Of course I'm gonna do this. But my plan was to drop out and move to Silicon Valley and just build stuff. Just work, write, build.
- 17:24 – 18:41
Seduced by the Ivy League: A momentary return to the States for a UPenn education.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay, so Japan for, like, a year or two, and then go back to Silicon Valley? Something like that?
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah, Japan for a year, and then in the middle of it, everything collapsed, and then I was like, "Okay, well, maybe I should graduate university."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
So I applied in the middle of it as a transfer student to a university I thought I would like better than the one I was at before.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- CMCraig Mod
And I got in. I ended up going to UPenn.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yep.
- CMCraig Mod
And so for me, I was the first person in my family to go to university. Certainly big university. My mom went to community college, then she worked her butt off to become a elementary school teacher, but I was the first person to go to, like, university, university. My father didn't go anywhere. My grandparents were both working at the airplane engine factory. So this was a big deal, and should I have gone to Penn or not? Honestly, it was just the Ivy, this [laughs] incredible sense of I have to create or generate on my own- ... a sense of self-worth.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And the draw of an Ivy was just too big. So anyway, I ended up getting in, much to my shock, and so after that first year in Japan, I went back, went to UPenn. I did that for two years. In the summer between, I came back to Japan, did an internship at a magazine, and then as soon as I graduated UPenn, I was back to Japan, going back to Waseda, doing another year of intensive language studies in their, in a grad program. And then I basically just stayed since
- 18:41 – 23:01
Craig's advice for adults who want to pick up the Japanese language.
- CMCraig Mod
then.
- TFTim Ferriss
All right, we're gonna take yet another side quest, 'cause it's not really a footnote. I know quite a few people who've moved to Japan. You're the only non-Japanese person as an adult I know who speaks exceptional Japanese. As you're aware, there are a lot of foreigners who kind of stay in the expat bubble, which is fine. People do that in the US too when they move here, for instance. Plenty of examples of that. How did you learn your Japanese? If there are people listening who think to themselves, "Man, I would really love to learn Japanese," any thoughts based on your own experience?
- CMCraig Mod
Well, I think in general, language learning is easier if you have a musical background.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And I grew up all through my teens obsessively playing drums, just drumming-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- CMCraig Mod
... drumming, drumming. Playing, playing jazz, playing classical, playing in big band orchestras, playing everything. So I think listening, being a good listener obviously is paramount. But when I got to Tokyo, I did a home stay. They couldn't speak one word of English.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And I immediately just joined the music circle at university, which was only Japanese people. I wasn't trying to avoid the international crowd, and in fact, the international group I was with were amazing. I got to the school, I got to Waseda, and the international program was what I had always dreamed and hoped university would be.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
It was super international, super mixed. Kids from all over the world. They were all extremely serious about their studies. They were all way better Japanese speakers than me. I had had, like, one year of university Japanese before I came. To give you an example, there are 13 levels.
- TFTim Ferriss
Which is not a lot. [laughs] Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
Which is not a lot. It's nothing.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
I mean, basically I could barely say hello, and even that was probably not, not correct.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
So there are 13 levels of Japanese class at the university. I was in two. There were kids who came from SOAS in London who had done one year at SOAS.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Sorry, you said SOAS and I thought about the muscle [laughs] that causes me so many problems. What the hell is SOAS?
- CMCraig Mod
SOAS is the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, wow. Unfortunate branding. [laughs] But yes. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
They have the most total badass language program. Like, honestly, if you wanna learn Japanese, go to SOAS.
- TFTim Ferriss
I see. All right.
- CMCraig Mod
Just go to SOAS.
- TFTim Ferriss
I got it.
- CMCraig Mod
Those kids, they had done one year at SOAS. They arrived in Tokyo. They were in level 10, level 11 out of 13.
- TFTim Ferriss
Holy shit. Good for them.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah, no, it was insane.
- TFTim Ferriss
Must be a brutal boot camp. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
They were amazing. Yeah, it is, it's br- like, 70% of kids drop out of it or something like that.
- TFTim Ferriss
Babysitting mutants. Yeah. [laughs]
- 23:01 – 33:31
Bizarre homestay experiences.
- TFTim Ferriss
Because to teach, if you're at a home stay like I was when I was 15, I had three different host families, not because I was a delinquent, but that's how it was set up. You would rotate through different families over the course of a year. And the first, let's just say, first family, pretty much a wash, because I-
- CMCraig Mod
Mm
- TFTim Ferriss
... couldn't communicate at all, nor could I ask them questions in Japanese to clarify what they were saying. And then the second family probably took me a month before I found my legs and could finally start communicating with them.
- CMCraig Mod
My host family was very lovely, but completely, completely bonkers.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
Let me paint this picture for you. So they ran an udon noodle shop, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
So every meal was udon.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
So... [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
So udon are, you should explain, but it's just, like, these very thick noodles, right?
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah, so it's like, soba is sort of... Soba is weird because it's both, like, the fast food of Japan in the sense, like, there's tachigui soba in front of stations that you can go to at 7:00 in the morning and just slurp something up before you go to work, and it costs, like, two bucks.
- TFTim Ferriss
Which means standing and eating, literally, right? You're at a countertop standing.
- CMCraig Mod
Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
Tachigui. But at the same time, soba can also be incredibly refined, where you spend $30 on a bowl, and it's, like, two slurps and you're done. And so anyway, soba's got that weird, that weird kind of gamut, but udon is, like, firmly just, like, working class food. Like, it doesn't really get fancy. And so there's some places that try to make it fancy, but it's really not that fancy. This is a working class family, so it was sort of ironic. I left my working class town to go across the world, and I g- I get plopped down basically in, in a way, in a place that felt really... I was like, oh, okay, I know these people. I know this part of town.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
It was a very working class part of Tokyo, and, you know, there was, like, kinda homeless people out walking around that I'd, like, say hi to all the time, and I'd go to the arcade and there'd always be, you know, this kind of weird, like, middle-aged people that just clearly didn't have jobs playing Street Fighter all the time, so we'd just play together.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
I was like, "I get this. These are totally my people." So they had a udon shop, and there was an 11-year-old son, and unfortunately for me, he slept in his parents' bed, so he didn't have any privacy. He had discovered his penis soon after-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
... I arrived, and he decided that he was going to release frequently around the house in different pla- so-
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, Jesus. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
So, so, so I would be-
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, my God. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
I'd be trying to send an email at the kotatsu. It's November. It's kinda chilly. I'm sitting under the kotatsu.
- TFTim Ferriss
What's a kotatsu?
- CMCraig Mod
Kotatsu is a low table with, like, a heater underneath it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
Basically, you put your legs under it. There's, like, a big, heavy blanket that kind of... Everything that's under the table's kind of a mystery. You don't know what-
- 33:31 – 35:25
How Craig wound up back in Japan to work in publishing.
- CMCraig Mod
Yep.
- TFTim Ferriss
All right. So we've covered a bunch of that. Now, tell me when you left Japan to go back to UPenn. I guess we can kind of peg it in your macro timeline. You get back. What happens after UPenn?
- CMCraig Mod
The summer between junior and senior year I did an internship in Tokyo-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- CMCraig Mod
... at a magazine, and the editor-in-chief there was like, "Hey, I wanna start a publishing company. Do you wanna, like, be the art director?" I was like, "Yes."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- CMCraig Mod
Like, just because I knew when I was 19, one of the summers in Silicon Valley I did an internship with, like, a startup, like a small design agency, and it was great. And then the second summer I got a job with a bigger company.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And I got a taste of, like, being in a company, and what does that mean, and being part of the system and that. I was just immediately like, "Okay, I can't do this."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
I just couldn't do it. I was like, "Okay, this isn't for me."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] This system is broken, whatever this is. [laughs] I can feel it in my chest.
- CMCraig Mod
This isn't for me. I can't do this. And I remember walking around San Francisco that summer that I was working at the big company, and I was just, like, talking with my friend Rob. And I was just like, "Yeah, I..." And they offered me. They're like, "Hey, we'll pay for college. Stay with us." You know, I was like, whatever. I was kinda talented at doing web crap. Like, back then-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- CMCraig Mod
... not many people were, and I was like, "No, I can't do this." I was like, "I'm running away to Japan."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
I had always had this fierce independence. It's connected with where I come from because, like, where I came from, I saw, you know, there was no healthcare. People were fairly struggling. A lot of my friends, their sisters were pregnant as teenagers. It was, like, kind of endemic. People just weren't really being supported. So from a very young age, I was like, "I have to be independent. I have to control my destiny. I have to be sort of pathological about making sure I'm secure-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... till I get to the next stage." And so being independent was really important to me. My buddy, you know, the editor-in-chief's like, "Hey, let's start a publishing company." I was like, "Great. Let's do that. I'll move back to Tokyo as a student. I wanna go do grad school stuff anyway. We can start, like, getting the publishing company up and running."
- 35:25 – 39:59
Developing design sensibilities at UPenn with Sharka Hyland and Joshua Mosley.
- CMCraig Mod
And when I was at UPenn, I had a couple of amazing professors. The reason why I picked UPenn was because it had a computer science and fine arts program, and it was called the DMD, Digital Media Design.
- TFTim Ferriss
Huh, that's cool. I didn't realize that. That's early. Early, early.
- CMCraig Mod
Super early, 'cause you had the MIT Media Lab, but that was only grad school. And I loved John Maeda's stuff, Ben Fry's stuff, Casey Reas's stuff. That was all coming out of M- MIT Media Lab, and I was so into all that. But I was too young to go to MIT as a grad student, and I was like, "Okay, where can I do this?" And, you know, and it was like NYU kind of had a program that was, like, technology, I think, and maybe CMU had technology and theater, and UPenn had fine arts and computer science. So I was like, "Great. Let me do that." And the fine arts component was incredible, and I had two professors that kinda changed my life. One was Joshua Mosley, who, he was an a- a claymation animator guy. He runs the department now. He was just this incredible archetype of, like, the artist. Like, doing these bizarre claymation things.
- TFTim Ferriss
Wait a second. So even at that time he's doing, like, claymation stop-motion stuff-
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... in this digital media lab?
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah. Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Okay.
- CMCraig Mod
And teaching us how to use the latest 3D programs.
- TFTim Ferriss
Huh.
- CMCraig Mod
It was this totally interesting kind of, like, analog digital thing happening.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
I had some amazing photography professors. My focus was photography. But I also had a design professor, Sharka Hyland, who was, like, this Eastern European... I don't really know what her background was, but she was, like, the meanest unless she liked your work in which she loved you.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
It was, like, one of these teachers that she would not pull any punches, and so, like, everyone has their designs. Like, I remember we had to, like, design a book cover, and I had, like, you know, what was it? The Sun Also Rises or something. I think it was a Hemingway cover. Everyone's got their stuff up on the wall. And kids are, like, crying because she's like, "This has gotta be j- I hate this. You, this, you, this sucks. This is terrible. This is bad"
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
But, like, being very specific. More specific than I'm being.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. Let me tell you the ways I hate this.
- CMCraig Mod
[laughs] Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
So many. Where do I start?
- CMCraig Mod
She was amazing. She was so great. She blew open my mind about design and about book design, and it got me obsessed with wanting to make books. I'd always loved books. I'd always loved technology. All the tech stuff, the blogging stuff, the online writing, whatever, the news groups, all this was interesting, but nothing, nothing really captured my attention like physical books. And around the same time, McSweeney's, the publisher out of San Francisco, Dave Eggers-
- TFTim Ferriss
Pirate shop
- CMCraig Mod
... he's got his Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius comes out. That's an incredible book, right? The, in the moment, that was like, "What is happening?" This book is so meta. This is, like, you know, this is so much fun. You know, he's funny. It's a moving story. And he founded McSweeney's, and McSweeney's was doing so many interesting things with the book as a form and design.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And basically this editor-in-chief and I were like, "Hey, let's do, like, mini McSweeney's that's kind of connected with Japan." That was kind of the thesis.
- TFTim Ferriss
Well, let me pause for a second here. So Sharka, was that the name? What a fucking name.
- CMCraig Mod
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] I think I'm getting that roughly right.
- CMCraig Mod
Sharka Hyland, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Sharka Hyland. That is-
- 39:59 – 42:04
Craig's color blindness and its influence on his design aesthetic.
- CMCraig Mod
20s doing. And I think Sharka saw in me that I had a certain intuitive, like, eye for design.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
Even though she was so critical, and she was critical of some of the things. [laughs] I remember she asked me, she's like, "Why did you make that red?" And I was like, "I don't know. I kind of like red" She's like, "Look at this idiot. He doesn't even know why he made it red"
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
I was like, "Oh, man" But really, the reason was I'm color blind, and, like, I don't really see that many colors, and so I was like, "Oh, red is, like, a color that, like, is easy for me to use"
- TFTim Ferriss
Well, hold on a second. So let me just double-click on that. [laughs] I know this is my habit, but when I think of color blind, usually I think of red as one of the most commonly missing colors-
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah. Red, green
- TFTim Ferriss
... 'cause you don't have the cones. Right. Red, green.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah. Red, green, but, like, a strong, vibrant red I can see really well.
- TFTim Ferriss
Ah.
- CMCraig Mod
And so that's kind of what I was drawn to.
- TFTim Ferriss
Fascinating.
- CMCraig Mod
If you look a lot of my early design slash all of my design, it's basically black, white, and red.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
That's what I've been riffing off of for 25 years.
- TFTim Ferriss
The Sin City color palette, yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
But Sharka, I would say, saw enough of, like, potential slash an intuitive sense of design that she elevated it. I did some branding work. I did branding work for the publishing company that we... I started with this guy, the editor-in-chief, and, you know, she kind of reviewed it, and she, like, gave me all this amazing feedback. So she really-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- CMCraig Mod
... she made me feel like I could do it, which was incredible.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm. I had one teacher in elementary school kind of like that. It was b- like, a brutal woman, but if she decided she really loved you-
- CMCraig Mod
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... then she paid attention. And I don't know if this is true with Sharka, but was it your intuitive sense, or did you reflect in what you did in the class in some way pointing to you caring more than other students? I'm just curious about that. 'Cause I remember the moment when this teacher went from brutalizing me to actually deciding, "Okay, now I'm gonna give you a little extra attention" It's because I spent, like, 10 times more time than I needed to on this class project-
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... where I illustrated all of these different components of it, and she was like, "Oh, okay.
- 42:04 – 43:52
Without a time machine, Craig lives vicariously through his daughter's opportunities.
- TFTim Ferriss
All right. Fine"
- CMCraig Mod
I'd like to say that I was caring more, but I'm not sure I knew how to work yet.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- CMCraig Mod
When I think back to who I was back then, I don't think I, I'd understood what really truly committing to, like, a creative project felt like.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
I'd never experienced that. Like, I wish I could go back in time. Going to university, I think, when you're 18, 19, 20 is such a waste. You just don't know what you're doing.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
I certainly didn't. There's a part of me that's like, "I would really love to go back to school"
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Yeah?
- CMCraig Mod
As a footnote, I just dropped my stepdaughter off at boarding school. Big backstory to all of this. But I dropped her off. She's going to school in New Zealand. We wanted her to kind of, like, find an interesting place. This is my ex's kid. We can talk about this and adoption and, like, what blood means for family or whatever, but, like, I consider her... She's my daughter, you know, even though-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- CMCraig Mod
... whatever. Like, it's a complicated situation. And anyway- ... to New Zealand, and I brought her there in January, j- the two of us. I took her down to school. I went to, like, the parent initiation and all that stuff. She's 15, and I was so excited for her. I mean, it was a little bit embarrassing. I was probably too excited.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
I was like, "Oh my God." I would have literally cut off a finger to have had this opportunity when I was 15-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... to be able to come to a place like this. It's not that fancy. It's like, you know, whatever. I didn't want her surrounded by a bunch of pricks.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
It's very, like, sane. It's like a sane boarding school. It's not, it's not fancy.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
But there's resources, and there's, like, a great music program, and she can take piano lessons and guitar lessons, and there's, like, a great sports program and all this stuff. And I was just like, "Oh my God, you are so..." [laughs] I'm like, "You don't understand." I'm like shaking her.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
She's like, "Please stop. You're embarrassing me. Go, leave, please. Dad, get out of here."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
But I was just like, "This is so incredible." I know how I could use those resources.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
In a way, I think even when I was at UPenn, I didn't quite, I didn't quite understand. But I did. I worked hard.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
I was committing to these things. I was working hard.
- 43:52 – 48:08
Struggling with spirits of sauce and the supernatural.
- TFTim Ferriss
You know, I think we're gonna weave in and out of Japan, so I feel like we can, we can pause on that for a minute. I ultimately want to get an idea of what it is, like, what are the things in Japan that attract you so much to it?
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
That keep you there, maybe things that people miss. But I wanna ask you, as maybe a segue into some of your huge walks and trips in general, tell me if this makes any sense, 'cause I have not read the full context on this-
- CMCraig Mod
Mm-hmm
- TFTim Ferriss
... because I didn't know this story, but I wanted to ask you about it. 2009 hike to Nepal, is that enough of a cue?
- CMCraig Mod
Oh, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Okay. Can you, can you tell this story? [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah, that's an inflection point. I just got, like, goosebumps, actually.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- CMCraig Mod
I really struggled with alcohol in my 20s. In my teenage years, I didn't touch anything. I was militantly straight edge-ish.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And basically, looking back now, I realize I had such a strong impulse to make sure I could get to whatever the next place was. Anything I saw that could hold me back, which included falling in love or doing drugs or anything like that that was like a, a retarding agent, as a teenager, immediately I was like, "Okay, I, I don't need this." And I got to Japan, and it was like, "Oh, this is a place to reinvent myself," and I started drinking, as you do, 'cause people drink so much here.
- TFTim Ferriss
Sure.
- CMCraig Mod
And it turns out that I can drink a lot. I can have 15, 20 drinks, not throw up.
- TFTim Ferriss
Oof.
- CMCraig Mod
I black out, sure, but, like, there's something in my genes that allows me to just drink, and then after two or three drinks, something activates where it's just all, all we live for is more drink. And I think, you know, for most of my 20s, because I had such a low sense of self-worth because of where I came from, because I felt this abundance of people around me that I didn't feel I had, and I didn't know how to ratchet that up.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And I had this desire to produce culture or to produce art, to produce literature at a level that I didn't know how to, and I didn't know how to bridge that gap. And what I ended up doing was, because I didn't have mentors, because I didn't have archetypes near me, I just drank like a fish. And I played a lot of music, 'cause that was one thing I did have kind of like a mastery over.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
Played a lot of music, and I played a lot of that blacked out.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
I'm really lucky I didn't die. I mean, it would be one of these things where many, many mornings of my life I've woken up, and it's just been checking is my face okay, did I break my skull open or, you know, something like that. And I was madly in love. I fell madly, madly in love. I was 26, 27 years old, and I just... I had the most incredible love connection I'd ever felt, this, like, otherworldly sense of being in love with this person. And we connected so intensely and immediately went on a 40-day trip.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
Like, a week after meeting. A 40-day trip through Tibet. We went to Tibet. I was possessed by a spirit.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
Like, I spoke in tongues. We hiked up to a glacier.
- TFTim Ferriss
Wait, hold on. I mean, we can't really... skipped over getting possessed by spirits. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
[laughs] It was-
- TFTim Ferriss
What? [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
We stayed at this one little hotel in Lhasa that had not always been a hotel. You know, it was this old structure. And, you know, woke up the next morning, and my girlfriend was being very strange. She was being very weird.
- 48:08 – 51:59
A Tibetan dream reader and lost love.
- CMCraig Mod
was happening. And even now I'm, like, getting full body goosebumps right now.
- TFTim Ferriss
Ugh. God, this is, like, straight out of Paranormal Activity or something. I'm just like, oh God.
- CMCraig Mod
It was so bizarre.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
And you have to imagine, I don't know if you've ever been in love to this degree where it just feels like everything in the world is fated. Like, everything is a sign that you need to be together, that this is magic.
- TFTim Ferriss
Sure.
- CMCraig Mod
Like, only these things can possibly happen because you're connected, you're together. I remember we, like, pulled out our books on the first day of the trip. We had both brought The Stranger by Camus. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
It was like, "Oh my God, we're fated." And I went back to, to the hotel, and I went to the manager, and I was like, "Hey, I don't think we can stay here tonight." He's like, "Oh, what's wrong?" And I was like, "Well, you know, I was kind of possessed, saw this..." He's like, "Did you see the woman?" And I was like, "Yeah." [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh God.
- CMCraig Mod
He's like, "Oh yeah, yeah. We know what's going on with that. Here, we'll take you to the dream reader." And so- I was like, "What? You'll take me to the dream reader?" So I ended up ... I'll try to truncate this, 'cause it can kinda get a little bit long, but-
- TFTim Ferriss
I mean, I'm not sure anybody listening wants you to truncate this particular story [laughs] so, I mean, go wherever you want.
- CMCraig Mod
The manager's like, "Okay, take him to the dream reader." And I'm thinking, "Okay, this is a scam. I'm getting scammed."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
Something weird's going on. And he takes us, and we go to, like, the outskirts of Lhasa. We go to this, like, really kind of weird apartment block that was just made of concrete. It was maybe, like, two or three stories tall. And he takes us to this room on the third floor, and there's a line of people, a line of Tibetans waiting at this door, and they were all waiting to have their dreams read. So it was like, "Okay, this is bizarre."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- CMCraig Mod
We stand in line. We go inside. We sit down inside. The most beautiful ... I don't know how old she was. She was anywhere between 15 and 1,000 years old.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
She was just this creature of just the most bizarre light walks out. It was like being in The Matrix. You know the, the scene in The Matrix where they're like with the spoon and the bending, and you're in this-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- CMCraig Mod
... random apartment, and the TV's on. You know, it was like that situation.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
She comes over, brings some yak buttermilk tea, some cookies, 'cause someone's in the dream reader room.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And we're waiting for them to get out, and then our turn comes up. I go in there. You go into this room. It's all candles, Dalai Lama photos, like, all this stuff. You- it's like you feel like you're in this really holy space. And the guy from the hotel interprets for us, and I tell her the dream. I tell her what happened, and she gives me this blessing, puts a white wreath around my neck, gives me this little satchel of seeds and tells me to put them under my pillow when I sleep, and then writes me a prayer. And she says, "Okay, here's these three pieces of paper. You have to take them to these three temples, and they will burn them for you tonight. They'll know what to do. Just tell them the dream reader sent you."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
"And you'll be okay. You'll be fine. Everything will be good." No one's asking me for money.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
The hotel guy's like, "Oh, you can, like, leave a tip if you want or whatever." And, like, you know, it was like $2 or something. I, like, put $2 in the little thingy.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right.
- 51:59 – 53:53
Craig's journey to self-worth: Running, charging more for work, and building confidence.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
But losing her was probably the biggest psychic damage I'd ever encountered in my life, you know, as an adult.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And I remember just lying in my tiny apartment in Tokyo, my six-mat tatami room apartment in Tokyo. It was 3:00 in the morning.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- CMCraig Mod
I wanted to die. It was rock, rock, rock bottom.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- CMCraig Mod
Th- this isn't, like, a Rich Roll story. I didn't, like, get up and run 40 miles or anything like that.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
But I was like, "All right. I'm gonna start running," and I went out and I ran, like, 5K at 3:00 in the morning through the streets of Tokyo.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And I was like, "That felt good." And I was like, "Okay, I need to stop drinking, and to stop drinking I'm gonna run this marathon in November." I think it was, like, July when this happened. And I just started preparing for that, and these were actually the first steps for me to deliberately address this lack of self-worth that I'd been carrying around for all of my adult life and that had, I think, driven me to drink the way I drank, that to give in to whatever those genetic impulses were and to start to go, "Okay, we're gonna run. We're gonna be someone who runs." A l- lot of this is also, like, very Atomic Habits style stuff.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
Who are you gonna be, and how are you gonna set your self up to be successful? I'm gonna be a person who runs. I'm gonna be a person who doesn't drink. I'm gonna be a person who charges a lot.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- CMCraig Mod
At this time with the publishing company thing, we were producing these books that were winning awards and making absolutely no money.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
And so I was consulting, doing web design consulting and stuff like that, and I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna start charging absurd amounts of money for my time. The worst that can happen is people reject." And they started accepting it. And I was like, "Oh," little by little.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
All these stupid little steps from the time I was basically 27 to 30, these were the most important years of tiny little steps of, "Okay, my time is more valuable. I'm gonna be a person who runs. I'm gonna be a person who can take care of himself." I still drank even though I tried to not drink, but I, I started lowering. It took me about four full years to completely get off the sauce-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... in a really dangerous way.
- 53:53 – 56:33
The transformative experience of climbing to Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal.
- CMCraig Mod
And part of it culminated in going to Nepal and climbing up to Annapurna Base Camp.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And that was after we had broken up, and I'd felt like all the magic in my life was done. I felt like there was no way for me to experience magic again. And again, it's this totally irrational sense of scarcity. The amount of scarcity I felt as an adult in my 20s is just shocking. It was this fathomless sense of scarcity. Like, the money's not gonna be there. The love isn't gonna be there. The support isn't gonna be there. And then when I lost her, I was like, "I'm never gonna have anyone who will ever love me like this person loved me, and, like, I'm never gonna be able to create like I created with this person." And I had to start proving to myself that that wasn't true. I was like, "Okay, I'm just gonna go to Nepal, and I'm gonna climb up Annapurna, go to Base Camp." It was a pretty random choice.
- TFTim Ferriss
What's the elevation on something like that roughly? Do you have any idea?
- CMCraig Mod
It's headache elevation. That's the elevation.
- TFTim Ferriss
Headache elevation, yeah. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
You're definitely not comfortable. You're definitely at altitude sickness levels.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, 13,550 feet. That's high, yep.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's gonna be enough for altitude sickness, for sure.
- CMCraig Mod
I fly out there. I go to Pokhara, which is the town that kind of everyone starts the trek from. I wasn't gonna hire a guide. At the last second I thought, "Okay, maybe I shouldn't do this alone," and I went to, like, the random guide shop and I said, "Hey, do you have a guide that I just want him to be there to make sure I don't die. I need to be alone. This needs to be kinda like a solo thing. I'm being like a weirdo."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
The guy's like, "Yeah, no problem. No problem, yeah."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
He gives me this young guide. He must have been, like, 18, and he was the sweetest- Most compassionate, incredible human. We bonded as brothers. By, you know, he was calling me older brother, I was calling him younger brother. Dai and Bai. And I got to base camp on my 29th birthday, and it was a full moon, and I put this thermos of coffee or hot water in my jacket, and I walked out to the edge of the moraine, looking out over... Essentially, you're on the moon up there. I mean, it really is just incredible.
- TFTim Ferriss
The edge of the moraine?
- CMCraig Mod
A moraine is sort of like when a glacier pulls back and it leaves this kind of valley, essentially.
- TFTim Ferriss
I see. Got it.
- CMCraig Mod
You're kind of at this lip, and, like, it's a huge fall down, but you're also in this... uh, not caldera, but you're in this cradle.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
You're surrounded by Annapurna and Machapuchare and, like, all these other mega peaks. It's just amazing. The base camp is in this cradle-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- CMCraig Mod
... of just beauty, and lifeless. It's like you're on the moon. I sat up there, and it was just a really important moment to sit there and not have a smartphone and not to be, like, taking photos and, like, trying to tweet or whatever. That trip was so powerful to me.
- 56:33 – 1:02:02
Writing a camera review that went viral and paid rent for two years.
- CMCraig Mod
I came back and I was like, "I have to write about this."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- CMCraig Mod
"And I have to write about the camera that I was using, and I have to create something from this. I have to wrest something from this experience, give it form." And I wrote this ridiculous camera review that was kind of one of the first... I don't wanna say it was the first field review. You know how, like, everyone does, like, the field review of, like, iPhone cameras-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- CMCraig Mod
... and stuff now?
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
But this was early. I mean, very early. This is 2009, and it was the Panasonic GF1.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
It was this tiny little camera. I think it was made to market to women because it was, like, meant to be this, like, really tiny, cute camera. But it was also this amazing camera. And it was Micro Four Thirds, this new technology, this new sensor, and I was like, "This is really kind of exciting, really cool." And I wrote about that, and the article went bananas.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] What happened as a result of that article going bananas? Like, what dominoes did that tip over?
- CMCraig Mod
That article was the first, I think, long form-ish. It was mixing design.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
It was mixing the web.
- TFTim Ferriss
And when you say mixing design, that means you had multimedia components or a mixture of photographs and texts. What do you mean by that?
- CMCraig Mod
There was a lot of designers on the web like Zeldman, Jason Santa Maria-
- TFTim Ferriss
Sure
- CMCraig Mod
... Liz Danzico, working in the early mid-2000s, late 2000s, you know, refining the CSS spec and, like, showing, you know, CSS Zen Garden, showing what you can do with design and stuff like that. You know, there was blogs and stuff, but there weren't really articles that were, like, long form design in the same way you do for, like, a magazine.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
There was a guy in Tokyo who I was sharing a studio with, Oliver Reichenstein, who was running this thing called Information Architects, and he was doing it. And again, this is, like, the power of archetypes. I would sit next to Oliver. I'd watch him work on these mega articles about t- typography or whatever and design these beautiful pages, and I was like, "Oh, that's how the work is done. This is how long it takes."
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
"This is how much you have to refine." I took that archetype of Oliver, who was generous enough to give me studio space in his studio, and I applied it to this walk and to this camera review. This guide too. There was this love that I wanted to give this thing because, you know, we came down from the mountain, and the guide, his name is Hom, H-O-M. And we come down and we're saying goodbye, and it's, like, such an emotional goodbye. We don't wanna say goodbye. And he goes, "Dai, older brother." He goes, "Like, a month before we met, my older brother died in a motorcycle accident, and I've not had any happiness since then. And meeting you, it was like meeting him coming back." And we're both just sobbing. Like, "Oh my God, I love you. Oh!" You know? [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
I came out of that Nepal experience believing in magic and believing in that kind of love and being able to, like, generate it on my own.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
Not having to have that person. Again, rationing up this sense of self-value and, like, I can produce-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... these kinds of experience on my own. And I wanted to give that to the article, and so I just worked on it for weeks and weeks and weeks, which is-
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... was a long time. It wasn't that big of an article, but I was, like, refining.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, it's a long time.
- 1:02:02 – 1:07:53
The article that changed Craig's life.
- CMCraig Mod
And I did that, and then, like, a month after that, the iPad came out, and I had been doing all of this book design. I'd been winning awards as a book designer. When I was 24, I was asked to be a judge in the Art Directors Club in New York City.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
I thought it was a joke email. It was one of the Winterhouse people.
- TFTim Ferriss
Remind me, Winterhouse. This is?
- CMCraig Mod
Winterhouse was this incredible seminal design studio in Connecticut.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay, yeah. I definitely didn't know what this was. Okay, I'm glad I asked. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
Winterhouse was this just incredible early, late-'90s, 2000s design studio, and one of the directors there was a board of directors for the Art Directors Club, and he had just been watching my work online. I was doing these kind of experiments. We were putting out these books, and he's like, "Oh, this kid is doing interesting stuff. He should come and be a judge." I had these things that were happening that were sort of signals that were hard for me to believe in. I always... T- this is a fluke. This is a fluke. I'm not valuable. This happened accidentally. And then I'd go to the Art Directors Club, and I'd meet all the people there, and I'd be like, "Oh, my God. I'm not supposed to be here." Just this incredible infinite of imposter syndrome. And anyway, but there's this slow ratcheting up, and the iPad comes out, and then I was like, "Okay, I've been doing these books." I'd been doing a lot of digital work. I'm like, "I can write about the future of books on the iPad." Again, committed to this article, and I wrote this thing called The Books and the Age of the iPad. I hit publish here in Japan at night. I went to bed, and I woke up. The New York Times had written about it. I had like hundreds of emails in my inbox. It really changed my life. Suddenly, I went from being this invisible person to being this voice about books and digital media and where things were going.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
I went to South by Southwest like a month later, and it was just insane. Everyone I wanted to meet, wanted to meet. All of m- these heroes, these des- design heroes, these design thinkers, everyone wanted to meet.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's good timing a week later, right? I mean, that's incredible timing.
- CMCraig Mod
It was like a month later, but it was just like the energy-
- TFTim Ferriss
But the half-life of that article was still alive and well.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right?
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Question, how much time did you put into that particular piece?
- CMCraig Mod
Oh, I remember writing and rewriting the intro, like, 50 times.
- TFTim Ferriss
The reason I'm asking is that it strikes me this is a hugely leading question/commentary going into a question, but the fact that your camera review and your experience climbing Annapurna was rewarded after so much effort, sort of along the lines of, I guess it was Oliver who put so much work into a creative project, and you said earlier with Sharka, like you didn't really know how to work yet, right?
- CMCraig Mod
No, no.
- TFTim Ferriss
The fact that you were rewarded after putting so much into it is such a blessing in a sense, right? Because when I think of the work that you do, it's like quality, quality, quality. There is like a Jiro Dreams of Sushi aspect to it, but it could've cut a different way, right? I mean, like you could've done something that was done kind of fast and cheap and dirty, and holy shit, your life would be very different potentially, you know?
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah. I listened to the Brandon Sanderson interview.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. Yep.
- CMCraig Mod
I mean, that's an incredible interview. Just talk about tenacity.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
Like infinite, infinite tenacity. Writing six, seven books before you go to the market to even try to sell them.
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, my God.
- CMCraig Mod
It's crazy.
- TFTim Ferriss
Didn't even try, right? [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
It's totally crazy.
- TFTim Ferriss
Because he heard that your first five books are garbage, he's like, "Okay, so I just won't even try to sell them."
- 1:07:53 – 1:12:06
The enduring power of physical books in the digital age.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
We're gonna bounce around chronologically for a second. What are your main creative focuses now, or just in the last handful of years?
- CMCraig Mod
Making books. That's it. Writing books. That's it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay, why? Because a lot of people listening, right, they'll say, "Wait, books? I thought books are kinda dead."
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Like, you just talked about the iPad. What kind of books are we talking about?
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
So why books?
- CMCraig Mod
Books have always been the focus since I was eight, nine years old.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
You know, it's like I've just always been drawn to them as objects. It's always been there. Everything else has been a kind of side quest in support of the books, in support of-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... building up self-worth, in support of building up a financial foundation, in support of becoming independent, all of that.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And I mean, there's a reason why I left college and I didn't go back to Silicon Valley, I didn't go to Silicon Valley, and I immediately helped start this independent publisher. Because I, I felt so drawn to the power of these objects and the immutability of them. And even in the face of, like, the rise of the internet, to me that still, to me felt like there was so much value there, and that value wasn't gonna disappear.
- TFTim Ferriss
Got it. And just for clarity, because you're implying it, but these are physical books. These are, like, physical beautiful artifacts-
- CMCraig Mod
Physical books
- TFTim Ferriss
... right, that people can interact with.
- CMCraig Mod
And the whole thesis of that iPad piece too was, look, don't make throwaway books. Make incredible physical books. Make beautiful physical books that lean into all the qualities that make physical things amazing.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
You know, and the books that I'm producing, the books that I make, you know, it's like how do you do cloth bound with silk screen?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
You know, beautiful papers that open, you know, full bleed. Just, you know, every page, every spread is a lay flat spread. You know, it's like how do you lean into this stuff, these qualities that can't be replicated elsewhere?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
And I've just been lucky in the sense that they're still valuable and people are still really into books. [laughs] Like, we didn't-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- CMCraig Mod
... we didn't entirely throw them away. And the digital stuff kind of ended up being a red herring, and it never really went where we thought it would go, in part because of monopolies, in part because of Amazon over-controlling the market, in part because there just isn't that much money to be made in digital books. The investment side of things just really isn't there. You almost need, like, a Rockefeller who'd just be obsessed with digital books, and they would fund it, you know, to great personal loss. It's like they always say, "How do you make a good fortune? Start with a great fortune-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
... and, and found a publishing company."
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, or a restaurant. [laughs]
- 1:12:06 – 1:16:19
How being adopted prepared Craig for life as an outsider no matter where he hangs his hat.
- TFTim Ferriss
We're gonna double-click on the walks. I hate to interrupt, but I'm gonna do it.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Because I don't wanna gloss over something you said.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Which is I guess around, if I'm remembering what you said 15 seconds ago, 2013 or so?
- CMCraig Mod
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
You were flailing a bit in Japan, wondering why-
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... you were there. Was that always somewhere in the back of your mind or your thinking, "Why am I here in Japan?" And if not, how did that surface? Like, why did that become an element?
- CMCraig Mod
As an adoptive person, I think my entire life is defined by that flailing.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
You just, you just don't feel like you belong anywhere.
- TFTim Ferriss
Got it. So it could've just as easily been in fill-in-the-blank city in the US. It was just-
- CMCraig Mod
Um-
- TFTim Ferriss
... "Ah, what am I doing here?"
- CMCraig Mod
It could've been anywhere, but obviously, like, Asia, living in a country where you are obviously the minority and where you can never become accepted-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... as a true citizen, where you're forever gonna be an immigrant-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... you're never, ever gonna be fully integrated, is a weird choice. It just comes from all this scarcity, trauma, self-worth, all this stuff. Like, for me, I think being adopted, the narrative I concocted in my head was that I was thrown away.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
I had very few facts about who my birth mother was. I knew she was 13. I just assumed it had been terrible circumstances, so I was born from a certain kind of violence. In the adoption paper that we had, it said the father had been ... There had been a car accident, and then he got in a fight at it and was murdered at the scene of the car accident.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
So I was like, "Okay, there's just violence everywhere, so I'm kinda thrown away." My self genesis, my genesis story that I concocted was one of just pain and kind of like- You don't belong here. And so I think part of what, what was great about Japan was that as soon as I landed, I felt a few things. One was society was taking care of people. I was walking past so many people every day in the street who were so much better taken care of than where I came from. I immediately felt that.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And I was like, "Okay, this is interesting." And across, like, all socioeconomic kind of strata. It wasn't like, oh, everyone here is super rich. It was like, no, I, like, get these people, that everyone is kind of being taken care of in a way that, like, I felt subconsciously. And because I will never be able to integrate fully, they can never throw me away.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, there's a safety in it.
- CMCraig Mod
There's a huge safety of being in a place that can never throw you away because you're never gonna be part of the thing.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
I mean, it's a really sad way of framing it, but that is 100%, I think, what for me made me feel comfortable here.
- 1:16:19 – 1:20:08
Craig's time at Flipboard.
- CMCraig Mod
And Japan and Tokyo for all of its, you know, megalopolis-ness is a very provincial place. It does not think internationally. And if you want to kind of work on projects that are bigger and be around archetypes of people that are just thinking bigger, you kind of have to leave. So that was why I, I went to Silicon Valley. And it was dovetailing with all those articles, and I had developed this kind of a little bit of online celebrity and mystique, and that allowed me to join Flipboard-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... as employee number, like, eight or nine, super early, and just learn. You know, Mike McHugh is this incredible guy.
- TFTim Ferriss
What was Flipboard for people who don't know?
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah, I know. It's so long ago now. The iPad came out. Flipboard came out six months later, and it was the most beautifully designed social media magazine.
- TFTim Ferriss
It was a very big deal at the time. It was very, very buzz heavy, right? I mean, this is something people were talking about.
- CMCraig Mod
It was the first app that needed a waiting list.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
'Cause it, the servers couldn't handle people.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
It was the first waiting list app. And it was like you'd give it your Twitter feed, and it would create a magazine out of all the articles, and it was just pages flipped. Marcos Westkamp designed it. It was just gorgeous. It was just beautiful. There was the Berg group in London doing, like, future studies about what books could be. There was a Push Pop Press people, Mike Matas, doing experiments around digital design on the iPad. All these beautiful design experiments, and Flipboard was kind of part of that milieu of folks that were experimenting, right? And it was like, great, yeah, this is, like, totally my wheelhouse of, like, digital publishing, book design, beautiful design, and I get to hang out with people who are the top, top, top of their class, just incredible pulsing humans, like generous and brilliant. I mean, I moved out there, and I, I moved out to a house two blocks from Steve Jobs, old Palo Alto. I had two roommates, these two guys, Stanford d.school grads who just graduated. They were 24. I was 30. I just turned 30 when I moved out there.
- TFTim Ferriss
D.school is the design school.
- CMCraig Mod
Design school at Stanford. These guys were such incredible people. I moved out there. I hadn't realized what a dearth of hugs I had had-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
... in my life up until that point.
- TFTim Ferriss
Sorry. You mean in Japan?
- CMCraig Mod
I had had no hugs.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hug withdrawal, yeah. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
I got to this house in Palo Alto. These two guys, we had no furniture. Our refrigerator just had, like, hummus and kombucha in it.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
No one knew how to cook anything, and I was sleeping on a yoga mat for the first, like, two months, and then a tatami mat in this, like-
- TFTim Ferriss
Jesus
- CMCraig Mod
... in this little back room.
- TFTim Ferriss
The yoga mat. What a youthful back you have, so resilient.
- CMCraig Mod
Just pure asceticism the whole way. Living in th- that house with Enrique Allen and Ben Henretig, these two guys, and feeling their love, and these were two people who came from incredible families full of love and brilliance. That was life-changing to me. I met up with Liz Danzico a couple months after I moved in there. We went to have pizza in New Haven at Sally's, I think, A Pizza. And Liz, after dinner, she took my shoulders, and she just said, "Craig, you are a different human." 'Cause we had known each other since I was about 26, and I was 30, and I moved into this house, and it was like a sponge. I was so ready to accept this love of people and to work with these incredible people and to just, I don't know, believe, again, believe in that self-worth ratcheting up. But the entire time I was at Flipboard, I was getting paid $30,000 a month.
- TFTim Ferriss
Nice. [laughs] Two years of Japan. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
The rent in Palo Alto was 1,000 bucks a month for me for my share of the house. I didn't have a car. I just walked to the office. I was spending no money. I was like, "This is great. I'm just gonna bank all of this." [laughs] This is, like, pure future freedom. That's all I saw it as. I told Mike McHugh, the CEO, I was like, "Mike, look, I'm not out here to work at this company forever. Like, I'm so hungry to do-" ... X, Y, and Z, all these things I wanna work on, all these things I wanna
- 1:20:08 – 1:20:53
Writing in hotel rooms on weekends.
- CMCraig Mod
do. And, you know, being out there and being close to everyone, every weekend I would book a hotel in San Francisco, and I'd go up there and I'd lock myself in the hotel room from Friday night, I'd do a late checkout on Sunday. Every weekend, I would go up there and I would just write new essays about digital books and publishing.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
I couldn't compromise that writing part of me, the literary part of me. I could not compromise. That paycheck... What are the three most addictive substances? Carbohydrates, heroin, and paychecks, right? That's what they say.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
Right? And you feel it. Getting $30,000 a month, you feel that changing the programming, changing your chemistry. And I had spent all of my 20s building up this asceticism and building up this ability to be uncompromising, and I didn't want that to be broken. And so I forced myself to just keep writing militantly.
- 1:20:53 – 1:22:52
Meeting Kevin Kelly and landing a MacDowell writing residency.
- CMCraig Mod
And I spent 15 months at Flipboard, and towards the end of it, Liz was like, "Hey, you should apply for a writing fellowship." All the writing was connecting me to amazing people. I connected to Kevin Kelly because I was writing-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... these essays, and I was giving a talk in New York City.
- TFTim Ferriss
Kevin Kelly's gonna be a callback for later. He'll return.
- CMCraig Mod
He's gonna be a callback. And I was on stage giving a talk with the New York Times people about the New York Times app, and I was talking about digital publishing. And I got this email when I got off stage, and it was from this guy, Kevin Kelly, I'd never heard of, and I was like, "Who's this guy?" No one was teaching me about these things. I did not have-
- TFTim Ferriss
Wow
- CMCraig Mod
... a background. Silicon Valley, as much as, like, I admired it and would want to be out there, I didn't know the history of it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
I showed it to someone. I was like, "Do you know this guy?" The person was like, "You don't know Kevin Kelly?" He's like, "Yeah, you should meet up [laughs] with Kevin Kelly."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
And I met up with Kevin, and he was like, "I like the way you think about publishing. Tell me about some tools."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
And I was like, "Who is this guy?"
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] That's a good Kevin impersonation. Do you wanna give just, like, two lines on Kevin, just for people who have not heard my multiple interviews with him?
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah. I mean, he's like the sage of the Valley, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. He's got a big, white Amish beard, built his own house.
- CMCraig Mod
Amish beard, tiny guy.
- TFTim Ferriss
Tiny guy.
- CMCraig Mod
Co-founder of Wired.
- TFTim Ferriss
Exactly. It goes on and on and on. He, along with Stewart Brand, are sort of like the Forrest Gumps of Silicon Valley, who have just-
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... been there for everything.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah. I'm following my nose. I'm, like, out here, I'm in the mix, I'm with these incredible people. I'm holding my own for the most part. But I keep writing, and the thing that I notice is, like, the more I do the writing, the more it opens doors, the more it connects me to even more people-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... who are the kinds of archetypes I wanted to be in my life. And, like, meeting Kevin was just a clear example of that. And I met Kevin probably eight months after I joined, and he's like, "Come up to my house. Let's do a walk in Pacifica and just talk." And I was just like, "Oh my God." I went up there. I did that walk with him. And I was like, "This is what writing does." Everything that's happening in my life that is blowing my mind, that's connecting to me to people who I wish I had known when I was a teenager, who I wish I had in my life when I was a kid, it's all happening
- 1:22:52 – 1:30:46
Bridges burned and discoveries made at MacDowell.
- CMCraig Mod
because of writing. And so I apply for this writing fellowship at MacDowell. I was like, "Where should I apply, Liz?" And she's like, "MacDowell." And I was like, "Okay, great. I've never heard of MacDowell." This is the oldest writing residency in America, one of the oldest in the world, of, like, these kind of formal writing residency places. It's the hardest to get into. I didn't know any of this when I applied. I apply on a whim. I get in, which I'm still not sure how I got in. It was pure luck that I got in.
- TFTim Ferriss
Eh, maybe. [laughs] Continue, though. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
It feels like luck. And I use that as my way of being able to get out of the company.
- TFTim Ferriss
I didn't know that was the way out.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay. Here we go.
- CMCraig Mod
These things become like family, and you feel terrible leaving them.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
And it upset a lot of people. I was one of the first people to leave. I was like, "Liz, it's not you, it's me. I need to do these other things."
- TFTim Ferriss
Wait, Liz was upset after recommending it to you? [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
No, no, no, Liz wasn't. Everyone at the company was.
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, I see. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
Liz wasn't at the company.
- TFTim Ferriss
I was like, "Wait a second, Liz. That seems unfair."
- CMCraig Mod
No, no, no, no.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay, got it. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
Liz was in New York.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay.
- CMCraig Mod
She was founding the Interaction Design program at the School for Visual Arts.
- TFTim Ferriss
I see. Okay. I was trying to put it together 'cause you said New Haven Pizza. I was like, "Is New Haven a neighborhood [laughs] outside of where I think it is?" Okay, got it.
- CMCraig Mod
No, no. But the Flipboard people were super upset. That's one of the difficult things is, like, these aren't easy conversations to have, to, like, leave these things. I remember being like, "Okay, this is a great excuse. This is the, the most prestigious writing residency in America, and I need to go do this, and I'm gonna use it as a break, but it's, like, a forever break."
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And I did that, and I went out there. And again, writing connecting me to these archetypes. I'm out there. I get to this place, and I'm just surrounded by Booker Award winners.
- TFTim Ferriss
Where is the writing residency, MacDowell?
- CMCraig Mod
New Hampshire.
- TFTim Ferriss
New Hampshire, okay.
- CMCraig Mod
Up in New Hampshire. And you basically get a cabin.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
You're out there from anywhere from a month to two months. They cook all of your meals. They deliver you lunch in a picnic basket to your cabin.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- 1:30:46 – 1:31:42
Justifying a round two.
- TFTim Ferriss
So I've got a couple of thoughts I'll throw out for you, Craig. Number one is I suggest we just do two recordings. We're not gonna cram everything into this conversation. There's no fucking way.
- CMCraig Mod
Okay.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I don't think we should try. I think we should just do two episodes so we can put them out very close together, maybe back to back. That's my suggestion because-
- CMCraig Mod
Okay
- TFTim Ferriss
... we have so much to talk about and there's no reason to rush it. There's just zero reason, if you're open to it.
- CMCraig Mod
Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
That would be the first recommendation. I mean, the huge walks are such a huge chapter and such an important chapter, and I think people will benefit from that so much. I think we get there. We will talk about the new book before we wrap, but we're already at one hour, 45 minutes. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
I know.
- TFTim Ferriss
If you're cool with it, I just say we do two and maybe we record tomorrow, maybe we record the day after and just rage.
- CMCraig Mod
Perfect. Let's do that.
- TFTim Ferriss
I think that's what we do.
- CMCraig Mod
Yep. Love it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Because people are gonna want more. And trust me, folks, if you're listening, you want the round two and you wanna continue
- 1:31:42 – 1:35:30
Craig's advice for aspiring creatives.
- TFTim Ferriss
listening. But I wanna ask you, and I don't know what label to apply here. For the creatives or aspiring creatives listening, and on some level maybe I will put aside, and this is not to denigrate anyone who self-identifies this way, but content creators because I think that can turn into like a shrimp farming exercise where volume is the game.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I wanna maybe just put that aside for a moment. But for people who are drawn to some art form, some medium, could be photography, could be writing, could be fill in the blank, you didn't have an archetype. Let's say you're teaching a class. Now you're the archetype. You're up in front.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
You're the Sharka. Maybe you're not as brutal, but [laughs] you're up there. What are the types of things that you would teach or focus on or assign as exercises or readings or anything else? Like, what might be some of the ingredients in that class?
- CMCraig Mod
I mean, I would say all of the work that I'm most proud of, and the work I'd say that is the first real work of mine that I feel like is truly me finding my groove, hitting my stride, has all happened in the last six years.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And it's all connected with walking.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
So if I was running a class, we'd be doing a lot of walks.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
All of this, meeting these archetypes, going to MacDowell, working in Silicon Valley, getting all these hugs from Enrique and Ben, all of this was leading up to allow me to lean into the walking in the way that I did.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
And it was in the walk that I kind of found how to truly commit to the work.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
I know this sounds very woo-woo and weird and circuitous, but-
- TFTim Ferriss
No, it's not, because I actually know more of the story, so [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah, yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... people will get it when they get it.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah, yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] All right, lots of walking.
- CMCraig Mod
Lots of walking. Honestly, a big part of, I think for most young people today, is just getting offline. Like, just block the internet using, like, Freedom, apps like Freedom.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
Turn your smartphone off. Don't sleep with your smartphone in your bedroom. I mean, these are very easy things, but, like, most people don't do them. I haven't slept with a phone in my room ever in my life. I've never had the phone in my room. I lived in such small apartments, I just put it in the kitchen, like on the stove, because that was the only other-
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... unit of my house that was not my bedroom.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
And it blows my mind that so many people have the smartphone in the room. Just having it on the table. So, like, when I am in serious writing mode, when I need... when my deadline, I need to get stuff done, I have the phone in such a place that I will not look at it or touch it or engage with it until at least after lunch.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
That is the soonest I'll touch it. And I feel palpably the chemicals in my mind shift as soon as I look at it, as soon as I touch it, as soon as I-
- 1:35:30 – 1:39:44
Books Craig has reread multiple times.
- TFTim Ferriss
Besides Train Dreams, what books have you reread a lot?
- CMCraig Mod
Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
- TFTim Ferriss
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek?
- CMCraig Mod
Creek, yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay.
- CMCraig Mod
And it's really frustrating because, like, this is, I think, the first book she published. She was in her 20s when she wrote this.
- TFTim Ferriss
I think I see where this is going. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
She went to live in this cabin near Tinker Creek.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
And she just wrote the most beautiful, poetic, sort of diary, nonfiction, narrative nonfiction description of what it was like being out there. I don't believe in mental blocks or, like, writer's block or anything like that. If I wake up in the morning, make a nice cup of coffee, my phone is out of sight. I'm not thinking about any of that crap. I'm not looking at notifications. Make this nice cup of coffee. I'm smelling these beautiful Ethiopian beans. I sit down. If I'm like, "Oh, I don't really feel like writing," or, "I don't feel like the juice is..." I pick up Annie Dillard. I literally flip to any page. I read two paragraphs. I can't stop myself from running over and starting writing. It activates something-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
... in my brain so strongly, so immediately. I love it. I've never met her. I would love to buy her a beautiful steak dinner if that's the sort of thing she's... I don't eat steak, but maybe she does. I feel like that's the thing you're supposed to buy people.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
Love to buy her an amazing dinner. Her book, her writing, her voice, her way of looking at the world, her way of showing me what's possible in terms of, like, creativity of prose, of looking at the most mundane thing and making it so beautiful and quirky and weird. The opening scene of a cat with blood on its paws, you know, walking over to the blanket and her waking up to find that. Just all of it. Finding that beauty. That is so infused how I, I try to engage with the world when I'm out on my big walks.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
I love it. And my thing now is I try to find first editions of these books, and then I go through and I try to mark them up again. There's nothing I love greater than marking up a first edition. Because I think that's the greatest honor you can give to a book. Like, this idea of being precious with it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
Like, what am I gonna do? Like, hold onto this stupid thing for 30 years and sell it and, like, give my stepdaughter, like, 200 bucks that I got for this first edition so she can buy, like, a bowl of ramen or something-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
... which is, like, probably gonna cost 200 bucks in 30 years? No. Mark up the books.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
My books. Like, if you buy my books, please write in them. Dog-ear them. Like, use them. That's, that is the greatest part of them as objects, is kind of putting your imprint on it and then coming back to it year after year, decade after decade, coming back to these things. So anyway, Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, so moving. Lynn Tillman, one of the people I met at MacDowell. Any of her stuff. She has a great book that just came out called Thrilled to Death, which if you're gonna start anywhere with Lynn, she's so funny. She is so no bullshit. I love her. I love her so much just as a human. I love her voice. She's in her 70s. She's been in the same East Village apartment for, like, 40 years. Like, she is this- ... institution of the New York literary community, and you just feel her pulsing with that New York voice, and it's so funny and incredible. And this Thrilled to Death is a collection of her short stories over her entire career, and it's amazing.
- TFTim Ferriss
Amazing.
- CMCraig Mod
Stuff like that. Or more other contemporary writers, Sam Anderson, who writes for The New York Times Magazine. Sam Anderson is amazing. Also, his favorite book is Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. He has the most generous, hilarious voice. He just wrote this incredible narrative nonfiction piece for the magazine about the legend of Leather Man, who is this guy. He walked this circle in Connecticut in the 1800s, and he wore a suit of leather, and he became [laughs] folklore of all these towns, and people would give him bread and give him coffee, and he got so sick he couldn't chew things, and he would dip everything in coffee, and he'd eat cakes by dipping them in coffee.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
I've known Sam for, like, six or seven years. Again, we connected because of writing. Again, literally everyone in my life that I love, that I want to hug, that I'll die for, that I want to protect with all of my life force, it's all connected to writing. All of it. All of it. All of it. Every single thing. It's shocking. So it's easy. You asked earlier why books, like an hour ago you asked me why am I doing books, and it is just undeniable bu- that a fullness of life that I find is found through the writing and who that connects me with and the adventures
- 1:39:44 – 1:51:28
The story behind Craig's new book, Things Become Other Things
- CMCraig Mod
it brings me on.
- TFTim Ferriss
Well, let's talk about your own writing, and specifically, let's talk briefly about Things Become Other Things, and then we'll not try to cram too much into this. I mean, we've covered a hell of a lot of ground. We're already at two hours.
- CMCraig Mod
[laughs] Sorry.
- TFTim Ferriss
You don't have to be sorry. I mean, this is what I want. When you're like, "I'll truncate this," I'm like, "Don't truncate it." [laughs] This is not TikTok. This is long form. So [laughs] I want to encourage my listeners to engage with long form because if you're playing the short game, even as a consumer, you are training yourself. You are being trained, maybe is a better way to put it-
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah. Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... to become something that I'm not sure you want to become. So Things Become Other Things.
- CMCraig Mod
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
Tell me and tell us about Things Become Other Things.
- CMCraig Mod
It's my forthcoming book coming out with Random House.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
So this is a huge leap for me. I've always been fiercely independent. I produce my own books that are kind of fine art editions that sell for 100 bucks a copy, that are printed and bound in Japan, like I showed earlier, silkscreen, foil stamp, stuff like that. But I was working on this story for this book, and this book is about a walk I did during COVID on the Kii Peninsula of Japan, which I've been to many, many, many, many times, and this is the peninsula south of Kyoto.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
So if you look at Honshu, I describe it in the book as the dangling penis of Japan.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
This peninsula.
- TFTim Ferriss
Do you wanna just lay out the main islands of Japan so people know where we are?
- CMCraig Mod
So you have Hokkaido up at the top. Then you have Honshu, which is the big banana with the little dangly penis which is the peninsula. You've got next to the penis, you've got Shikoku-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
... which is where the 88 temples pilgrimage is. And then next to that you've got Kyushu, which is kind of the bottom part of Japan.
- TFTim Ferriss
Down south.
- CMCraig Mod
And then-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- CMCraig Mod
... far away you've got Okinawa. But-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- CMCraig Mod
... the Kii Peninsula is south of Kyoto, south of Osaka. It's Mie and Wakayama and Nara, part of... southern part of Nara prefectures. And I've been going there for about 12 years, 13 years, and I'd say that most of my walks have taken place there. I've walked thousands of kilometers of the peninsula, and probably my most profound walk happened during COVID, the height of COVID. It was 2021. Japan was still locked down. We still didn't know where this was going. Vaccines, I think, had not even arrived here yet. May of 2021, we didn't have vaccines in Japan yet. They came in July. July, August. And I was like, "Well, I'm gonna go on a big walk." You know, it's like I'm being careful. I'm tested. I'm not gonna spread anything. And I went on this walk. It was about 600 kilometers. It took about a month, and I was writing. And we can talk about my walking and writing practice. I have this, like, whole ascetic practice connected with how I walk and how I write. But this walk in particular, I was writing every day, 2, 3, 4,000 words, photographing every day, and I was thinking about life. And one of the things I started to reflect on, partially because in this COVID moment where I think for a lot of folks, it was this moment of reflection. Everything slowed down. Everything stopped. And it was the first time as an adult I went back to my childhood. I thought back to this childhood friendship I had. As I was walking the peninsula, I'd see little kids every now and... There aren't that many kids left in Japan, certainly not on the peninsula, and I'd see little kids every now and then coming back from school at the end of the day. And it started me thinking about this friendship I had with this kid, Brian. When I was in elementary school, he was my best friend. He was the closest thing to a brother I had. And we grew up side by side in elementary school, and I happened to test a little bit better than he did, and it kind of put me on this different track. We still had a gifted program back then. I was lucky. I was able to go in the gifted program 'cause I tested a little better. That exposed me to computers. They had one Commodore 64 or something, and I used Logo Writer, and that got me thinking about pro-- It's like you see how these things kind of compound, these small chances, these small lucks, these small opportunities, and I got them and Brian didn't get them. And by the end of high school we were so separated. My high school was called out during the first Trump administration by Betsy DeVos. I think that was the Secretary of Education. She called out my high school as one of the worst high schools in America-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
... on a national speech. And my friend Brian was going to the high school that bad kids went to.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
That couldn't hang in my high school. You can imagine where Brian was. And we graduated high school, and just a few weeks after he graduated, he was murdered.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm.
- 1:51:28 – 1:53:34
Craig's Special Projects membership program.
- CMCraig Mod
The big thing I do that's enabled a lot, and again, like to maintain this fierce independence, and we can talk about the Random House deal in part two as well, 'cause there's some interesting-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- CMCraig Mod
... things about it that actually dovetails with what Brandon was talking about as well.
- TFTim Ferriss
Would love to.
- CMCraig Mod
I have a membership program called Special Projects-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... that I've been running now for six years, since 2019, and that combined with the walking, and actually that gave me the permission to start committing to these big walks. Everything builds on everything else. Slowly, slowly-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm
- CMCraig Mod
... slowly, slowly, slow, and then you realize you've kind of created this pretty big ladder of stuff. And so the membership program, if you join that, not to like shill-
- TFTim Ferriss
You're on a podcast. You may as well. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
But the membership program gives you access to all of the archives of all the writing I've done on my walks, and 120 hours of videos where I run board meetings every six months and I talk about what I've done, the projects I've worked on, how they've gone, what we're gonna do in the next six months, and then I field Q&As from the members. I'm so lucky. My members are smart. They ask great questions. They're creative. They're wonderful people. And so you get kind of access to this huge archive. Everything I do in the membership program is me speaking to myself when I was 20 and desperate and hungry and drinking myself into the pavement and wishing I had an archetype, wishing I had some kind of flashlight to show me how to do the work I wanted to do. This is me, you know, wishing I could give this to myself back then. And so it's free for students. If you're a student, you just email me and say, "I'm a student," you get it for free. I'm very loose about what constitutes a student. If you think you're a student-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
... you're probably a student. Just email me and say, "Hey, I'm a student." I believe you. I've had people send me photos of like their student IDs. Don't send me a s- photo of your student ID. It's free. I'm happy to give you those memberships to give access to that stuff. But what the membership allows me to do by keeping some of this stuff behind a curtain, is I can be a little more vulnerable than when I'm out in front of my big newsletters where I send out to 50,000 people or 60,000 people or whatever. When it's a smaller group, I'm able to be more vulnerable, more honest, and the Q&As and stuff like that feel a little more intimate. Create a little bit of artificial scarcity, artificial friction, to enable us to have a deeper conversation, I
- 1:53:34 – 1:55:52
In praise of unexpected corners.
- CMCraig Mod
hope.
- TFTim Ferriss
And people can find that at craigmod.com as well?
- CMCraig Mod
craigmod.com/membership.
- TFTim Ferriss
That's where people can find it all. So we were [laughs] going to discuss so many things, and we are gonna discuss those things in round two. One of them is the membership community, because you have very clear rules-
- CMCraig Mod
Oh, yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... that also make it vibrant-
- CMCraig Mod
Oh, yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... and prevent it from becoming a monster you need to feed that consumes rather than enables your creative life.
- CMCraig Mod
Exactly.
- TFTim Ferriss
You've figured it out over time, and we are gonna talk about that. There are so many things we're gonna talk about. [laughs] It was just foolish of me to think that we would be able to cover all of it in two hours. Fucking ridiculous. There's no way.
- CMCraig Mod
Well-
- TFTim Ferriss
So [laughs] anyway, go ahead.
- CMCraig Mod
You were like, "Hey, let's start with eight years old." [laughs] So...
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] I knew there was, I w- I don't want to say a risk. I knew there was a possibility, distinct possibility, that that would take us afield, but we never would've gotten to being possessed by demons-
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... if [laughs] or spirits. I'll be, I don't wanna [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
They were probably benign. Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
... smack talk whatever happened to end up in you when you were cradling some invisible object asleep overseas. But this is the fun of long form for me.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it.
- TFTim Ferriss
Because I don't want to know exactly where it's going.
- CMCraig Mod
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
So much of my life is regimented. So much of it is planned. There are so many times when I execute to spec, and part of what I'm trying to inject more in my life, whether it's playing with fiction and just starting with a few characters in a scenario and letting it rip, or having conversations like this, especially with someone I've spent time with, is ending up in unexpected corners.
- CMCraig Mod
Yep.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right? There's so much to that, and it's similar in a sense, I mean, this is perhaps not the best comparison, but when you say all of the best things or so many of the beautiful relationships have all come from your writing, part of that is not overplanning, right? You focus on the work.
- CMCraig Mod
Mm-hmm.
- TFTim Ferriss
You create beauty and quality, and then you release it into the wild and you see what happens.
- CMCraig Mod
It becomes theological. It really is.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
It's totally faith-based.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- 1:55:52 – 1:57:04
Lessons learned from the Sally Mann documentary.
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, man. Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
What creative practice isn't? What great creative practice isn't? I mean, my favorite moment of a documentary about photographers is the Sally Mann documentary.
- TFTim Ferriss
How do you spell that? Sally Mann.
- CMCraig Mod
S-A-L-L-Y, Sally, and then-
- TFTim Ferriss
M-A-N?
- CMCraig Mod
... spells, a w- a woman. M-A-N-N, I think is her last name.
- TFTim Ferriss
I see. Got it.
- CMCraig Mod
And she, yes, if I say it fast, it sounds [laughs] Salomon. Uh, Sal-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Yeah
- CMCraig Mod
... Sally. No, Sal- Sally Mann.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- CMCraig Mod
She has all these gorgeous, ethereal black and white photos of her family that she took, and she gained so much notoriety. And anyway, there's this documentary about her, and in the middle of it, she's working on a new set of works, and she's getting rejected by galleries. She has this total breakdown. And you just go, "Oh my God, someone like Sally Mann at the peak of her career can still have a breakdown." Like, it really is so theological, this belief. You just have to believe and keep pushing and keep pushing. And she, you know, she pushes through it, and she creates some great work and it, whatever, has a great show, and blah blah blah. You have to cultivate that belief, and having your, you know, cost of living be 1,000 bucks a month for everything all in is an easy way to help cultivate that belief. [laughs] You know? You can be uncompromising
- 1:57:04 – 2:00:32
Parting thoughts and a preview of round two (coming later this week).
- CMCraig Mod
about it.
- TFTim Ferriss
All right, Craig, we are going to very quickly record and release a round two. Everybody who's listening to this should tune in for that for sure. My God, I mean, [laughs] honestly, in part because I'll just give people a, a quick teaser, right? With the exploratory bullets, and I ask all guests to send ideas for exploratory bullets, we literally didn't get to effectively any of them.
- CMCraig Mod
[laughs] Right.
- TFTim Ferriss
The huge walks, walking as a tool for focus, reclaiming attention, your rules for walking, the art of slowness, your wild strange celebrity in Japan around mid-sized cities. Didn't get to that. The Kevin Kelly saga continues. We did not get to that. The very wild, incredible stories related to adoption, sort of adult chapters. All of that and more we're gonna cover tons and tons. And I promise everybody I won't start at eight years old, [laughs] so we'll stick to the script a little bit more. Craig, at least for this conversation, anything else you would like to say? Any comments or anywhere you'd like to point the people listening?
- CMCraig Mod
It's difficult because it's like the people who probably need to hear these things won't be listening to this podcast or maybe don't even know this podcast exists. That's often sometimes the difficulty in getting information to folks. But I think the residencies, artist residencies are one of the coolest things that we have, and most people overlook them or think that the bar to entry is so insurmountable that like, "Why should I even try?" Go out, and there are huge lists. And once you start to crack the code, once you start applying, and you should get... aim to get rejected by a billion of them. But once you get into one or two of them, you start to understand the code a little more. And my God, they are so much fun and so interesting, and they are such a way to level up your practice, whatever your practice might be, to be surrounded by people who are also committing themselves to it, working hard, and providing unexpected archetypes. I've done MacDowell, VCCA, Tin House, Ragdale as a few of them, and all of them I've come out with just amazing friendships and I've got a lot of great work done, too. So please-
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm
- CMCraig Mod
... go investigate. And if you're a rich mother effer listening to this thing, donate. Donate to support these things.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- CMCraig Mod
I mean, like, these are incredible, incredible institutions that don't require a lot of money to have a huge impact. And so being able to, like, provide more scholarships and, and things like that, it's pretty powerful. Pretty powerful stuff.
- TFTim Ferriss
I love it. All right, everybody, the end. [laughs]
- CMCraig Mod
The end.
- TFTim Ferriss
Craig Mod, craigmod.com. You can find all things there. And, uh, so nice to see you, bud.
- CMCraig Mod
You too.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's been a minute.
- CMCraig Mod
See you tomorrow. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Yes, [laughs] see you tomorrow. And for people listening, of course we'll link to everything we discussed in this episode at tim.blog/podcast. There will not be another person with the last name Mod, [laughs] so you can search for Craig Mod and he will pop right up, of course. And until next time, which will be pretty soon, round two with Craigor, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others and to yourself. We'll talk more about cultivating irrational belief and faith in oneself in round two.
- CMCraig Mod
Sounds good.
- TFTim Ferriss
So until then, thanks for tuning in
Episode duration: 2:00:43
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Transcript of episode B87ATe3Bxh8
