On Margins

Sam Anderson is back, 10 months later, discussing his 2020 pandemic writing life. We cover his Weird Al essay, his NBA bubble excursion, how closely observing something makes for a wonderful writing exercise, and! we reveal our extremely obvious One Wild Trick to getting everything done in life.

Sam Anderson is a New York Times Magazine staff writer and the author of Boom Town, a book about the "great minor city of America" — Oklahoma City. This is part one of a two part interview. We recorded this conversation in March, 2020, just as the first lockdown of the pandemic had gone into effect.

An extended interview with Jon Gray, aka Gray318, the award winning, London based, book designer. Gray318 has designed covers for William Gibson, Zadie Smith, Salman Rushdie, David Foster Wallace, Robin Sloan, and perhaps most famously, for Jonathan Safran Foer.

An interview with novelist, essayist, and cultural critic, Lynne Tillman. Craig Mod sits down with Lynne Tillman at her apartment in Manhattan and they go through the covers of her novels, essay collections, and non-fiction books. 

In this episode we're talking with designer and letterer, Jessica Hische, author of the New York Times best-selling children's book: Tomorrow I'll Be Brave.  We discuss her unique production and marketing strategy for the book, how she chose her publisher, and how to respect the heck out of contacts you've built up over the years. 

An interview with Lisa Brennan-Jobs, author of the best selling memior, Small Fry. Lisa and Craig Mod discuss the design, production, and writing of this fascinating book about family, identity, and growing up in Palo Alto as the daughter of Steve Jobs.

Craig Mod has been walking the historical mountains and paths of Japan for the last five years. In April of 2018 he went on a solo Kumano Kodo walk and made this recording discussing the economics and production of his 2016 book, Koya Bound: Eight days on the Kumano Kodo. The book was made in collaboration with Dan Rubin and was sponsored by Leica Cameras. 

Kottke.org is a website. It is not an app. It is not a product. It is simply a static website, updated daily, running some rickety old blogging software. As of March of 2018 it's been consistently updated for twenty years. Kottke.org has shaped the way many of us have thought about news, blogging, and linking. We talk with Jason about his two decades of blogging, influences in his life that shaped how he works today, and what kottke.org would look like were it a book. 

Co-founder of Timbuktu Labs, Elena Favilli, delves into how the company went from an award winning but ultimately unprofitable children's magazine app company, to an international bestselling publisher of physical books around the world. We dig into why the iPad is perhaps not the best platform for publishers. How everything seemed so rosy back in 2011 for digital publishing. And how, ultimately, to build a strong and engaged community, they had to print a physical book. 

Technologist, futurist, author, and photographer Kevin Kelly discusses traveling during the golden age of global exploration. We cover how photography has changed over the years, his decades investigating Asia in the 1970s and 80s, and how he self-produced (eventually getting it published by Taschen!) his Asia Grace book in the 90s.

Designer and author Frank Chimero discusses the process behind his book, "The Shape of Design." We also dig into the normalization of paying creative people to make things via crowdfunding or patronage platforms, and why there's never been a better time to make books.

Researcher, ethnographer, and author Jan Chipchase has a new book — "The Field Study Handbook." We discuss how he came to produce this 500+ page magnum opus — a distillation of his life's work — and why he is self publishing.