Design Matters with Debbie Millman

Laverne Cox—best known for her groundbreaking role as Sophia Burset on Orange Is the New Black—is an Emmy-winning actor, producer, advocate, and one of the defining cultural figures of our time. She joins live at the Pride Book Fair in New York City to discuss her new memoir, Transcendent, reflecting on what it means to survive, heal, and become more fully yourself in a world determined to define you.

Craig Mod is a writer, photographer, designer, and publisher whose work is rooted in attention—to the roads he walks, the books he creates, and the ways technology shapes our experience of the world. He joins to discuss his memoir Things Become Other Things and how memory, loss, and the paths we travel, both literal and emotional, shape the stories we tell.

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Piera Gelardi is a creative entrepreneur, writer, New York Times bestselling author, and co-founder of Refinery29, the media company that helped redefine digital media for a generation of women. She joins to discuss her new book, The Playful Way, which explores how play, curiosity, and creativity can help us navigate work, relationships, and everyday life.

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Maria Popova is the creator of The Marginalian, where for two decades she has traced the connections between science and poetry, astronomy and love, nature and consciousness, all while building a body of work animated by wonder and rigor. She joins to discuss her new book Traversal, the search for meaning in an indifferent universe, and what poetry, astronomy, love, and wonder can teach us about being alive.

Ann Patchett is the bestselling author of ten novels, including Bel Canto, Commonwealth, The Dutch House, and Tom Lake, the co-owner of Parnassus Books, and the recipient of numerous literary honors. She joins live at the TED Conference to discuss the creative process, the lessons she's learned from love and marriage, and why she continues to find evidence of generosity and hope everywhere she looks.

Spencer Bailey is a writer, editor, and cultural journalist whose work explores the intersections of design, architecture, memory, and human experience. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Slowdown, host of Time Sensitive, and former editor-in-chief of Surface. He reflects on surviving a plane crash, growing up without his mother, the role storytelling has played in understanding his own life, and why slowing down may be e...

Michael Arden is a Tony Award–winning director and actor whose productions, including Parade, Maybe Happy Ending, and Spring Awakening, blend intimacy, spectacle, and extraordinary humanity. Across film, television, and theater, his work returns again and again to questions of belonging, connection, and what becomes possible when people truly feel seen. He joins to discuss the childhood experiences that shaped him, his journe...

Julia Sweeney is a writer, performer, and actor whose work spans Saturday Night Live, acclaimed television roles, and a groundbreaking body of one-woman shows that blend wit, humor, intelligence, and inquiry to redefine personal storytelling. She joins to reflect on the unexpected turns of her career, how comedy became a way to navigate trauma and identity, and how embracing contradiction and reinvention shaped both her work and he...

Bobby Hundreds is a designer, writer, and co-founder of the pioneering streetwear brand The Hundreds, and currently serves as Global Creative Director at Disney Consumer Products. Recorded live at Canva Create in Los Angeles, he joins for a conversation about growing up between cultures, building The Hundreds from the ground up, and why the strongest brands are built through storytelling, collaboration, and community.

Manoush Zomorodi is an award-winning journalist, author, and host of NPR’s TED Radio Hour whose work explores how technology shapes our minds, bodies, attention, and sense of humanity. She joins Debbie Millman live at the launch of her newest book, Body Electric, which examines the physical and psychological consequences of our increasingly screen-centered lives.

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Mauro Porcini is the President and Chief Design Officer at Samsung, where he leads a global design organization shaping products, experiences, and ecosystems for billions of people through a deeply human-centered approach to innovation. He joins to reflect on his journey from Italy to global design leadership and to discuss the human side of technology amid financial instability, digital toxicity, and existential anxiety.

Jodi Kantor is a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist at The New York Times whose reporting has reshaped our understanding of power, accountability, and the systems that govern our lives. She joins to discuss breaking the Harvey Weinstein story, her investigations into the Supreme Court, and how to build a meaningful career in a rapidly changing world.

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Cy Gavin is a painter whose work resists easy categorization, moving between figuration and abstraction, landscape and memory, and exploring perception through material, atmosphere, and inquiry. In this live conversation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he joins to discuss his unconventional upbringing, his shift away from drawing, and what it means to embrace uncertainty in the creative process.

Pum Lefebure is the co-founder and chief creative officer of Design Army, an internationally acclaimed design studio known for blending art, commerce, and cultural storytelling into visually striking, strategically driven work. She joins to reflect on her journey from a shy, art-obsessed child in Bangkok to a global creative leader, and to explore what the rise of AI means for the future of human creativity, vision, and value.

Santiago Carrasquilla is a Colombian-born director, designer, and founder of Art Camp, a multidisciplinary creative studio known for blending hand-drawn illustration, 3D animation, live action, and emerging technology to create work rooted in human emotion. He joins to discuss his global upbringing, creative evolution, and the relentless drive and optimism behind a career devoted to making work that truly moves people.

Timothy Snyder is a leading historian of Eastern Europe, the Holocaust, and political conflict, and the author of more than a dozen books, including Bloodlands, Black Earth, On Tyranny, and, most recently, Unfreedom. He has spent his career using the past to help us see and understand the present with clarity, and joins to discuss how we misunderstand freedom, why truth and empathy are under threat, and what this political moment a...

Ada Limón—24th U.S. Poet Laureate and author of seven poetry books, including The Carrying and Bright Dead Things—joins to discuss her new book, Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry, her childhood between two homes, her deep sensitivity to the natural world, and how poetry became a way to make sense of life’s strangeness, loss, and love.

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Lidia Yuknavitch is the bestselling author of The Chronology of Water, Reading the Waves, and The Big M, and a writer whose work blurs genre to explore themes of memory, embodiment, grief, and transformation. She joins to discuss her childhood, her early life as a competitive swimmer, the film adaptation of The Chronology of Water directed by Kristen Stewart, and how storytelling can reshape the narratives we carry.

Jack Schlossberg—writer, lawyer, political correspondent, and the only grandson of President John F. Kennedy—joins live at the On Air Fest to discuss political legacy, internet culture, and the future of Democratic leadership. With humor and candor, he reflects on growing up in a historic political family, the power and peril of social media, the spread of misinformation, and why authenticity and risk-taking are essenti...