Finding One More Molecule of Hope with Debbie Millman 7 | 20

Episode at a Glance: Debbie Millman 

Radical Candor Podcast Resources: Debbie Millman 

• Debbie Millman 
• Debbie Millman: Creativity, Leadership And The Courage To Tend | Radical Candor
• Design Matters
• Love Letter to a Garden

The TLDR Radical Candor Podcast Transcript: Debbie Millman

[00:00:00] Amy Sandler: Hello everyone. I am Amy Sandler, principal, coach, and podcast host at Radical Candor. Today in addition to these headphones, I am wearing another hat, that of aspiring gardener. And by aspiring, I mean I’ve got a fake tree in my office that doesn’t need any water, so I’m counting that as a win. We are really here today to talk about growth. Not just of plants, but really of creativity, of courage, of connection, and I could not be more excited, more honored to welcome Debbie Millman to this conversation. Debbie has been named one of the most creative people in business by Fast company. She is a designer, an author, illustrator educator, a brand expert, also an executive fellow at Harvard Business School.

[00:00:53] You might know her as host of the incredible Design Matters podcast, which has been 20 years running. Debbie’s got her newest book and let me pull this up here, Love Letter to a Garden, and it is exactly that. It is part memoir, part creative manifesto. It is chockfull of wisdom about what it really means to tend to the things that people that we love. So we’re gonna talk about gardening, gardening, creativity, failure, leadership. Maybe there will even be some gardening horror stories. Welcome to everyone listening and welcome to Debbie Millman. Debbie, welcome. 

[00:01:35] Debbie Millman: Thank you, Amy. It’s really lovely to be here. Thank you so much. 

[00:01:39] Amy Sandler: We are, we’re so excited to have you. And we are recording this today, April, 2025. And wow, this has been such a week for you and your wife, Roxane Gay. You are featured in a stunning New York Times article that was showcasing your beautiful home, beautiful garden. This feels a little bit like, and that’s not it. In addition to that, you had a huge event last night celebrating the launch of your new book, which we’re gonna talk about, but also 20 years of Design Matters with incredible guests. Krista Tippett, Esther Perel, Dr. Chelsea Clinton and more. So I would love to just hear how are you arriving in this moment after such a week? 

[00:02:21] Debbie Millman: Very gratefully. Very gratefully, very humbly. I just can’t believe that it’s been the kind of week it’s been. It’s just surreal and magical and mystical. Those are the words that I can come up with to describe it. I’m still in the midst of it, and so I feel like I am in a dream. It’s been an incredible week and I feel so grateful. Last night I was, we had this big celebration at Symphony Space and I had, uh, 20 of my all time favorite guests participate in something we call 20/20, which was asking all of those guests to pick their favorite parts of their interviews and share them with the audience.

[00:03:20] And then we did two interviews with Suleika Jaouad, and Chelsea Clinton, as you mentioned. And at the very end, one question I’ve been asked a lot this week as I’ve been talking about the podcast, a lot of people have been asking, so what, what kept you doing it all these years? Why did you keep wanting to do more? And I said, finally realized it last night, and I shared it with the audience, that I keep doing it as long as people are willing to listen. And so I just feel lucky that there are people that have connected with the show and are impacted by the interviews and find inspiration and growth in, in listening to it.

[00:04:05] Amy Sandler: That is so beautiful. I love that approach. People keep showing up, people keep listening. For folks who haven’t yet listened to Design Matters, how would you describe what you, what you do in that podcast and the transformation that happens even in one interview? 

[00:04:20] Debbie Millman: As we’ve been saying, the, I started the podcast quite by accident in 2005. I started it first as an internet, a live internet radio show. I did it at a time when I was feeling really worried that my artistic, creative spirit was being diminished and maybe even dying. I had been working in my career first as an aspiring writer and artist, and then moved into commercial art and then moved into branding. That’s when I started to achieve a modicum of success. And that was really intoxicating because I had never been successful. I actually spent the first 13 years of my career out of college in what I call experiments and rejection and failure, and so to have any kind of success at that time, this was 1995, was really intoxicating and I was very drunk on that.

[00:05:21] And I really committed myself to it for about eight years before I started to feel this longing to get back to some of the things that weren’t commercially viable, but still really important to me. And I got this cold call doing, about doing this radio show and I thought, that sounds fun and creative. Why not? And that’s what I, I what I thought they were doing, Voice America, was offering me a job. They were really offering me an opportunity to pay them to do the podcast. But that’s how desperate I was to actually do something creative and experimental and something I had no idea about. And so I signed on for 13 episodes. I ended up doing a hundred episodes with Voice America and then went more independent, and I started chairing a master’s in branding program at the School of Visual Arts and was lucky that they were able to build, the president allowed me to build a little studio in the in, in the space, studio within a studio, and started doing the show there.

[00:06:25] But I would describe it now less a show about how designers design, which is what it started as, to now, how the most creative people in the world design the arc of their lives. How do they become who they are? Design is very much about intentional decision making in any endeavor, whether it be a room, a piece of clothing, graphic design, product design. It’s all about making very deliberate decisions. And when I started interviewing more than designers and then that grew versus designers and artists, now it’s musicians, performers, scientists. Any person that makes something from nothing, it’s really about how they design the arc of their lives and the arc of their careers and the art of their practice in making something 

[00:07:17] Amy Sandler: I, I love hearing about that shift, both in terms of the actual show itself, but also your shift because people listening to Radical Candor, people who are on their journey, and whether as individual contributors into managers on a broader leadership journey. Something that really leapt out at me was just that sense that as you were getting more successful, that you felt like you were almost losing some of that creative spark. And I know some of the things where people shift into management is, the very thing that they love doing, and now they’re having to create a new skillset and maybe shift some of those very things that they loved about their work. So what thoughts do you have about that shift and what advice might you have? 

[00:07:58] Debbie Millman: The interesting thing about working in a career where you are constantly getting better at something and getting promoted and so forth, that at some point you do get promoted to manage other people doing the very things that you love doing, hands on. And management is a very different skill than any type of endeavor where you are making something. If you’re making a design or a spreadsheet or anything that requires looking at something and transforming it into something else is very different than managing the people that are doing the transforming. It requires so many different skills than making, and I think a lot of businesses get this wrong.

[00:08:45] They think if you have an expertise at making this thing that you make and become really excellent at it, that somehow those skills will translate to managing others doing it, and they don’t. They don’t. It couldn’t be diff, more different. And so you really do have to learn tremendously different skills in order to really be able to lead people, which is what management is. It’s not managing the minutia, it’s actually managing much bigger, grander aspirations to get people to be able to feel inspired enough to do their best work with and for you. 

[00:09:28] Amy Sandler: You mentioned the word inspiration, and one of the things that I have found about your work and design and this new book, Love Letter to a Garden, is that you could have simply put words on a page, but there is so much in the actual inspiration of the design, the whole experience of the book. And so what tips might you have for folks, whether they’re new managers or just anyone trying to communicate their ideas that will land in a more effective way for folks. 

[00:09:58] Debbie Millman: I think that who you are and what you represent is as important as your ideas, and so how you come to any endeavor is as important as the endeavor. I often say actually that it’s not the mistakes we make, it’s how we respond to the mistakes we make that gets us into trouble. Everybody makes mistakes, but how we respond to those mistakes and work through those mistakes is actually more important. There’s more growth potential in that. And I think that one’s way of thinking about our work, our philosophy, what point of differentiation we feel contributes to the way we see the world and the, and what we offer is as important. And in some ways, if not more important, because I think for creative people, ideas, easy.

[00:10:52] We, if being creative means you have lots of thoughts about how to make things, but how to create meaning from what we make. How to be able to communicate a point of view, a philosophy, a mission, even a particular style, that, that’s much more strategic. I could ask any designer to redesign a water label. They’d be able to do that in an hour, if I ask somebody to develop a new platform for a brand of water, a water delivery system, that would take a lot more strategic positioning and a lot more strategic thought. And so I think that anybody that’s looking to manage someone needs to be able to give them both the room, the space, I’m not talking about the physical space. I’m talking about the intellectual and creative space, and the power to do that kind of work. 

[00:12:00] Amy Sandler: You brought in power, you brought in mistakes, you brought in space. And so I wanna reflect back to you a wonderful episode that you did with Wharton’s Adam Grant, and spent a lot of time talking about feedback. It’s something we talk a lot about at Radical Candor, how to build more trusting relationships, being kind and clear to start by asking for feedback. And you said in that interview quote, I could get 500 wonderful evaluations and then one, you suck, evaluation. And that sort of demolishes me for a few hours. And that was a very strong relate for me. I actually, we were just sharing, I just did a TEDx talk this week on overthinking and that sort of perfectionism. And so first of all, you also said that was actually much better than you had been before. So what has been your journey about both receiving feedback as well as giving it. 

[00:12:54] Debbie Millman: In terms of giving it, I have had to manage people for a very long time. I became president of Sterling’s Design Division about 3 years after I got there and went from being the chief rainmaker to also the chief manager. And I, by nature, am not only very demanding of myself, I’m very demanding of others. However, one of the best comments that I got about my management style was that I’m always demanding, but I’m always fair. And that was really important to me. Because I really do expect a lot of myself and I always wanna be better, and I always want to be good. I have a very strong work ethic and I always have. I, from the time I was little, I was always working hard and trying to do well, and so I expect other people to have that same work ethic, and I’m not talking about the amount of hours that somebody is working. I’m not talking about being the first one in and the last one to leave, although, you know who doesn’t appreciate that.

[00:14:12] But I’m really talking about the way in which people work and the way in which they bring who they are to work. And so I feel a lot of comradery and a lot of gratitude for people that do wanna work hard, and that to me is indicative of their commitment, not only to themselves, but to the work and to the outcome and to who they’re serving with that work. So I would say that I’ve grown, I’ve been doing this for a really long time. I graduated college in 1983, became a real full on manager and director by 1998. So 15 years into my career, I would say those first 15 when I was managing other people was haphazard at best. I didn’t know what I was doing. I would get very frustrated and impatient very quickly. I look back on that with quite a bit of shame and regret because I didn’t know what I was doing. When I started working at Sterling, the senior partner at Sterling was very committed to training, and so first I was doing training with people that we hired, firms that we hired to coach and train.

[00:15:29] And then when we were acquired by Omnicom, I got the benefit of very serious training through Omnicom University, which was a collaboration with Omnicom, Harvard, and Babson College. And that really helped me understand leading with generosity, leading with a sense of allowing people, helping people and allowing people, and really coaching people to become the best that they could be. One of the best definitions of leadership that I learned through Harvard was the way to be able to inspire people to do things better than they ever thought that they could. And that’s what I try to do, especially now with my students. I want them to become the best version of themselves that they can and to get over any fear, any trepidation, any sense of not being good enough to be the best version of themselves they can be. And that is my commitment to them. And that’s why I expect them to work hard. I want them to work hard because I want them to work as hard on who they are as I am on helping them become who they are.

[00:16:48] Amy Sandler: I, I love that so much. And it ties into something else that popped up in that episode with Adam Grant where you talked about the relationship between competence and confidence. And you said how over the years, and I’m gonna quote and let me know where I’ve missed it, I’ve come to realize that confidence is really just the successful repetition of any endeavor. You’ve done this enough times, you can statistically predict that you’ll likely do it again. For those of us that can drive, we have car confidence. We didn’t start out with it, but we have it. So I love this definition so much. This relationship, especially for those of us that are really hard on ourselves, sort of chicken and egg, like where do we start with competence and confidence?

[00:17:31] Debbie Millman: Yeah. And I think that I have so many students that are waiting for confidence. I’ll do that when I feel more confident. You’re never going to feel more confident not doing it. You’re only going to become more confident doing it. We are not a species like giraffes or elephants that come out able to walk. We have to learn how to walk. We have to learn how to walk and learn how to talk and learn how to go to the bathroom. Why do we think that management or presenting or any type of leadership skill is something that we would just acquire? We have to learn how to do it. And babies try to walk. And I have a little niece that’s 2 years old and I was watching her learn how to walk and she’d hold onto things and then she’d fall and she’d cry and, but then she’d get up again. Now she has walking confidence. Now she knows how to walk. And it took a while. Now she’s learning how to talk. So I think that the expectation that we have that somehow magically just ’cause we want to do something well, that we won’t do it until we think we’ll do it well without ever having done it, is one of the biggest socialization mistakes or missteps that we have in our society.

[00:19:05] Amy Sandler: This is such a great segue into, did we talk about failure and gardening? Let me see if I can get this in the camera there. Love Letter to a Garden. I probably failed on that, but I wouldn’t know. Maybe if I keep doing it enough I’ll get the competence and the confidence. So much about this book, it is, it really is so beautiful. And there’s a lot in there about, first of all, you are developing kind of a, a relationship with wonder around gardening. And I am wondering also about this relationship between wonder and failure. So we’ll get to the failure, but can you tell me what drove you as this creative person to write a book about gardening? Like where did that all start, start for you? 

[00:19:50] Debbie Millman: That wasn’t even remotely on my bucket list, yeah, I’ll tell you. I have been gardening or trying to garden for most of my adult life. I first had an apartment in Manhattan with a little tiny deck outside the back room, and because I do love flowers and color, I immediately tried to create a container garden. There wasn’t any grass, it was just a wooden deck. But that didn’t stop me from trying to turn it into this sort of floral wonder, and I bought gardening pots and roses and plants, roses to me, were like the most beautiful plant at that time. I wanted them all around me and they smell so good and they’re pretty. And so I got all these different varieties of roses and put them in the pots. Now I didn’t know roses need a lot of sun and they also need a lot of water, and so within weeks they’d all died. And I was rather despondent. I did not have a lot of money and so I felt like I’d wasted a lot of money and killed a lot of beautiful plants.

[00:20:56] I was renting that apartment and when it came time when I had saved up enough money to be able to buy an apartment, one of the criteria that I had for what I was going, where I was going to hopefully be able to buy a place, was it for it to have a little outdoor space so I could once again try to have an outdoor garden. I gave up location for space. I bought a place in an apartment building at the time that was at the very northern tip of Chelsea, which was really like the most southern part of the Penn Station neighborhood. That’s, yep, it was not pretty and there were a lot of drugs on the block, but I had a bigger place with a little bit of an outdoor space, and that had actual like soil, there was a tree, and so I could plant things. It also had two really big established rhododendrons. Somehow I managed to kill those too. The idea of doing a book about gardening was not, again, in my wheelhouse at all. But during Covid I spent, I spent most of Covid in Los Angeles where my then fiance had a house, that’s where she lived before we met.

[00:22:13] I lived in New York before we met and still, we still have, for now, homes in both, but we are gonna consolidate soon. And suddenly, I was living in a place that had sun, that did have an irrigation system. Roxane had a backyard. And though it wasn’t a garden, it was grass and boxwoods. I still had space where I could turn it into a garden. And when I did, because I had so much time in my hands, I started to document what I was doing with little visual stories that I was trying to make this space more beautiful. And the folks at the TED Conference saw that I was doing that and asked me when TED went completely online that year, if I would make some interstitials about my experiences trying to garden. I actually, they asked me to do three different ones and so I did love letter to traveling ’cause I love traveling. I love the whole of sort of idea of exploring the world. And a love letter to storytelling and a love letter to gardening. And that got me an opportunity to create a visual story when I went on an expedition to Antarctica, one of my traveling experiences.

[00:23:31] I wanted to go, I had this dream, for many years, of when I turned 60 to take a trip to Antarctica, not only to see Antarctica, but also to witness the total eclipse of the Sun that was happening in Antarctica at that time. And so I went on this expedition, and Roxane, my now wife, went with me and I documented that just for the fun of it. And Afar Magazine saw what I did and asked me then to write a visual story for them. Fast forward a couple of years later, I get an unsolicited email from a lovely editor at Timber Press, which is part of one of the big four, asking me if I wanted to write a book on gardening. And I was like, is this a prank? And I said, if you want me to write a book about gardening for gardeners, you found the wrong person. I am still working at becoming like a decent gardener, let alone a gardener that is accomplished enough to write a book for other people. I said, but if you want me to write a quest book, like my quest to become a gardener, then I’m very happy to do that. And so she agreed, and that’s what I did. It’s this love letter to really trying to become better at something that you’re really terrible at when you start. 

[00:24:54] Amy Sandler: Thank you for sharing that story, because as you were telling it like, I really was visualizing like almost just these seeds being planted of TED Conference reaching out, and the interstitials and, oh yeah, I can do a visual story about storytelling and I can do a love letter about travel. Sure. And I, and my own garden. And so there’s something about, there’s that real quote about live the questions now. It’s not like you were like, I am gonna do a book on gardening, but these are the things that I can do and these are the things I’m passionate about. And even just the phrase love letter, because when I picked up the book as the reader, I felt like it was a love letter to me as the reader, and I also felt it was a love letter to your younger self. It was a love letter to the kid who found the dollar bill in the soil and saw the waterfall. Oh my gosh, yeah. So I would love it, Debbie, would you be open to just reading a little bit from the book for folks wherever you wanna go? 

[00:25:57] Debbie Millman: This is about a third of the way through after numerous documented failures. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become less comfortable doing anything I’m not good at. I worry I’ll look ridiculous and embarrassed myself. As I came face to face with the fact that I was not a good gardener, I realized it was time to ask for help. Maybe, just maybe, I could learn something new. I began to read as much as I could about as much as I could and to learn from some smart people around me. And then I write, this is my cousin Eileen, and she’s in her garden. She lives in Northern California and knows more about gardening than anyone I know. She took me under her wing and taught me about growing vegetables and attending to soil and how to compost. Together we planted potatoes to get more potatoes, which was a bit of a revelation.

[00:27:02] Amy Sandler: I wanna hear about what, how did the revelation come about? 

[00:27:07] Debbie Millman: Potatoes, you don’t plant potato seeds. You plant potatoes. You put a potato in the dirt in the soil. Those eyes that pop out of a potato when maybe you’ve kept them too long on your shelf, those are what grow flowers to then turn into in the roots, potatoes, more potatoes. So when you’re digging for potatoes, a plant that comes out, a green plant, but you pull that out and that’s where the potatoes are. So you put a potato in the ground and then that is what makes new potatoes. It’s magic. 

[00:27:51] Amy Sandler: It, it really is. And I feel as you’re saying that, I was like, oh yeah, I think I knew that once a long time ago and I didn’t remember it. And there’s something in your book that I found really touching just about, there’s this refrain about time, there’s this sort of visual about there was no time before time. Even what you shared earlier in our conversation of your niece and just the trying to walk and that sort of natural progression. And then there’s this part of us that starts to shut down trying new things. And your students, which I can relate to that sense of that sort of, let me get the confidence first and then I’m not gonna try it. And then now we get older and maybe we are super successful and afraid to ask for help, like that piece that you shared. And so I’m just, I’m curious like what was it in you that out created that sense of, I should know how to garden, or I’m afraid to, I should, I’m Debbie Millman. I should know how to make a garden. What the hell?

[00:28:49] Debbie Millman: Yeah. I never said that. I never said that.

[00:28:51] Amy Sandler: So it’s interesting how we put that onto other people.

[00:28:54] Debbie Millman: The thing is, I was more of, oh, I’m Debbie Millman. Of course, it’s a failure. I, one thing that I have talked about in the past, when, a couple of years ago when I was, when my book about my interviews came out, Why Design Matters, I was being interviewed by Brené Brown, and the book begins with my journey to starting the podcast, and elaborates on what I mentioned before about feeling like I had been losing my creative spirit, worrying that it might never come back. And it also went into a bit about how I’d had this sort of very late start to my career success, and she asked me why, why did you even keep trying? What kept you motivated to become more successful, to continue trying to make a difference with your work? And I really had to think about it because you know, you could always say, oh, I’m very resilient, or I’m really persistent, or I don’t accept failure.

[00:30:01] But that, I would still be despondent when I didn’t get something that I wanted, and I was still really afraid to go after a lot of the things that I wanted, and I still am to this day. But, and what overlaps with my quest for this garden over the decades was hope. And that when talking to Brené, I realized that I had one more molecule of hope then shame. Shame was still there. Still very vibrantly, kind of running through me, but the hope was one molecule bigger. And scientists talk about how maybe the universe was created because there was one molecule or atom or neutrino or core more matter than anti-matter. And that’s how we ended up all here. And that’s how I feel about my life. I have one more molecule of hope that things will be better, that things could be created, that success will come, that love will come. 

[00:31:20] Amy Sandler: I am, what a gift to, to hear you say that in your words. And I will take with me that one more molecule, one more molecule of hope than shame. And reflecting on this week that you’ve had that we started talking about, that’s been so magical and mystical, this sort of reflection back, for me, when I think about being in that spot of the planting the seeds, you don’t know what’s gonna happen. Is there a way to gather up those hope molecules for down the road? Or how are you trying to like absorb it and really celebrate that even in those despondent moments, that little bit of hope peaked out? Like, and what advice might you have for someone feeling more in the despondent, that, where’s my hope molecule? 

[00:32:06] Debbie Millman: I encourage people to wallow in that despondency, because you will metabolize it. We metabolize all of our emotions. People says time heals everything. It’s not so much time. I mean, it is time in the grand scheme of things, but humans are metabolizing machines. We metabolize food, we metabolize energy, we metabolize love, we fall in love, and that’s all we can think about. And we can’t even conceive of what the world is like without this love. And then two years later, separating like that. That doesn’t mean we don’t love. We just metabolize. And if we allow ourselves these feelings, if we allow ourselves to feel the shame, or feel the sorrow, or feel the grief, or feel the humiliation, or feel the sadness is really under all of it, it, you will metabolize that too.

[00:32:57] The only thing we can’t metabolize is regret. Because regret, there’s no closure. You can’t metabolize a woulda, coulda, shoulda, because you haven’t done the woulda, coulda, shoulda. So the only real way to fail, the real way to fail is to not try at all. And I’m very much a believer in what Dan Gilbert calls synthesizing happiness. Because we can go after what we want, feel happy. We can go after what we want, not get it, feel sad, but then synthesize something else and maybe feel happy. But if you don’t try it all, what do, you can’t synthesize regret? So for me, what I’ve learned and what took me a very long time to learn was it was okay to feel sad. To really feel sad. Like to go into your bed, put the blankets over your head and cry for a few hours or a few days, but you will metabolize that and then get up and outta bed.

[00:33:54] Now, I’m not talking about like clinical depression, which I’ve also experienced. That is much more debilitating. It is months, and you do need professional help. Which I’ve had. I didn’t get that job. I didn’t get that guest. I didn’t get that opportunity. I was rejected from this school or that program or whatever. Feel it. Don’t pretend it, it didn’t matter. So many people are afraid to admit that they feel bad about not getting something, or that they are like, ah, I didn’t wanna go anyway. Like you can say that you wanted to go and your heart is broken because you didn’t get accepted. Feel bad and then metabolize it and pick yourself up and try something else.

[00:34:40] Amy Sandler: I, I love that idea of metabolizing, synthesizing, really active and using that as a creative spark. I, I’m a breathwork teacher and my teacher David Elliot would often say, when there’s an emotion, like anger, mix some love into it, and that’s passion. When there’s some sadness, mix some love into it, and that’s that creative expression. And so in many ways it is like that garden, and it is that, that fuel. And I’m curious, since you do work with a lot of young people and people, students, like how open are they to this idea of metabolizing emotions and accepting it? What have you found resonates with them when you talk about that? 

[00:35:20] Debbie Millman: I think that because I am so radically candid with my students about my journey, that I think they trust me a little bit more because they see evidence of my life moving in that direction. And I think that if somebody becomes more aware of your struggles, they’re more likely to believe your advice and, or your point of view, or just the way you live your life. And so I think that they’re maybe buoyed by that. Because I am not urging them to shoot their shot the minute they graduate. I’m suggesting to them that they take small steps up the mountain because they can enjoy the journey.

[00:36:17] I think the joy is more in the making. I think that most creative people want success, but the joy is really from the making of the thing that other people appreciate, which then signifies success. But when they stop making things, that’s when they feel the emptiness. One of the questions that I ask my students and also ask in my column on Print magazine, print mag.com, I ask a question in this sort of Proustian interview that I do. One of the questions that I’m really curious about is how long did the feelings of accomplishment last with you? How long does the pride of accomplishment last? And most people say, I think the most that anybody’s ever said is like two weeks.

[00:37:10] And ’cause we metabolize that too, we metabolize that and if we metabolize that, we can metabolize anything. But what I really believe to be true is what they really keep seeking is the making. That’s where the joy is. And that making could go on forever. We don’t metabolize the process ’cause we’re in the process and so allow it to take its time. Think about again, I’ve been spending a lot of time watching my 2-year-old niece. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every time we just felt angry, we just cried? That’s what babies do. They cry. They want comfort. Now, of course, we can’t all go around as adults weeping into other people’s arms, but I think the world will be better if we could. 

[00:38:06] Amy Sandler: I think that acknowledgement of the sort of full range of human experience. I have a friend who is an amazing poet, poetry professor, Brad Aaron Modlin, and he shared a reflection with me from an artist who said that when it comes to our homes, like what we hang on, our walls, what we wear, the art, the design, the fashion, that these are some of the few choices that we actually have some control over in our lives. And so I’m curious because so much of your book is set against the backdrop of Covid and the grief and this sense of a world that feels very much out of control. And so have you found that design, gardening, it almost can give us a sense of agency, like we’re tending to those things that we can have some certainty or choice or agency? How does that that land for you?

[00:38:52] Debbie Millman: That’s a great question. I’ve been thinking a lot about control. I recently lost somebody very important to me to cancer. And in her journey through this illness, I became really conscious of the fact that we can’t control what’s happening in our bodies. We can certainly be careful about our diet and exercise and so forth. But we’re not willing, our hearts to beat. We’re not controlling our digestive track. We’re not thinking about how often we blink. Our bodies are really operating very involuntarily and we can’t control most of it. Sure, we can control what we put into it, but we don’t control what’s actually happening in it, in it. Which is terrifying. I know a lot of people that spend a lot of time tending to their diseases now. I’m 63, so of course a lot of my peers are dealing with lots of things. I’ve dealt with a bunch of things

[00:40:13] I couldn’t control needing to get a hip replacement. Either could get one or not, but I couldn’t control what was happening. Then think about the world. We’re living in a world where it’s very hard to have any sense of control. And not only that, we have no control of what’s outside. We have no control about what’s inside, and yet we want control. Humans desperately want to be able to predict what’s gonna happen tomorrow and understand that we’re gonna be saved. Maybe the only place we can control are our walls and our environments, our own environments. And I’d never thought of it that way. That’s really quite an astonishing revelation. ‘Cause I’ve been really feeling like completely outta control with what’s happening in the world, what’s happening in many people that I love and the struggles they’re having with disease or sickness. But yeah, we can control what we put on our walls. 

[00:41:11] Amy Sandler: I appreciate the reflection, the poignancy of it. Brad is an amazing poet, so I’m not surprised the question landed. And speaking of amazing writers, before we close, there are some beautiful recipes in this book from your wife, Roxane Gay, like a MacGyver of tomato sauces, for example, like,

[00:41:30] Debbie Millman: Just take the strawberry tall cake instead of a short cake. It’s a very tall cake.

[00:41:35] Amy Sandler: How did Roxane’s recipe writing come to be? 

[00:41:39] Debbie Millman: While I was gardening all of these wonderful plants and growing vegetables and so forth, I didn’t want anything to go to waste. And we had a lot of tomatoes. A lot of tomatoes. And so I would bring in the harvest. And so again, we were, it was very much in Covid and everybody was super concerned. That’s when we were leaving our groceries in the garage for 2 days to make sure that they were disinfected and we were wearing gloves in the supermarket and masks and whatnot. And so here I had all of these wonderful fresh vegetables and fruit, and I didn’t spray anything, just eating it off the vine. And so she started making things with it. And I’m not a cook. I’m an eater, not a cooker. When it came time to conclude the book, I thought, what a wonderful way to share that bounty, like literally and figuratively with people. Because Roxane’s such a prolific cook, such a prolific baker, that’s her love language, that why not share some of the things that she created and she was, she went along for the ride.

[00:42:55] Amy Sandler: It’s so beautiful and delicious. The reason I was reflecting on the beauty and the bounty of the recipes, and in many ways when you were talking about metabolizing and synthesizing, you plant the seed, you don’t know what will happen. Something springs up, it becomes into a recipe, then we synthesize it, then it goes back, and there’s just this ongoing cyclical nature to the whole process and, and just acknowledging that the sort of juxtaposition of the grief in Covid that led to baking and just holding that. I, I also feel having done some workshops recently with folks that organize grief workshops, there is this kind of collective grief that I don’t think has really been metabolized. And so my intention is that people literally putting their hands in the soil, like feeling that, helping metabolize whatever those emotions, giving people permission to have that space and that emotion. This book really is a gift, so I’m so grateful for it. Before we close, what is one thing that you would like to encourage people listening to this, just to, to plant after this conversation, after this book, what’s, what would be a, a next step you would encourage?

[00:44:06] Debbie Millman: If anybody’s looking to plant something pretty easy, that is very prolific, grows very quickly. Unfortunately is an annual, so it won’t come back next year, but is really, gives you a lot of immediate gratification are morning glory. Plant some morning glory around a fence or a window and watch it climb and watch it bloom every morning glory. And you’ll get a constant set, a constant stream of joy from it, but also know that we can’t control what’s in us or what’s outside. You also can’t control a garden, and that’s another really important lesson. You have to surrender to nature. So if it doesn’t get quite enough sun or if you don’t water it enough, it will not respond the way we want it to. And even if we do, we might not always respond the way we want to. And so you do have to learn a lot of patience in the process, but that’s also part of the joy. 

[00:45:13] Amy Sandler: I think we’ll close there with the patience, the joy, and the aspiration for morning glory, whatever the flower presents us with. Thank you so much for joining us, for really candidly sharing your experiences, the stories behind the book. It really is, I think you said it was 60 years and six months to really put the book together, and I am so grateful for that. Thank you for inspiring us to grow what you love and see more of that in, in the world. Thank you so much, Debbie.

[00:45:42] Debbie Millman: Thank you for doing this really beautiful work that you do.

[00:45:46] Amy Sandler: Thank you. That means a lot. It’s filling my cup to get these molecules of hope with you, so thank you. And for honoring the shame, shame as well.

[00:45:54] Debbie Millman: Thank you.

[00:45:54] Amy Sandler: Take care. Thanks all for joining us. We’ll see you soon. Thank you. The Radical Candor Podcast is based on the book, Radical Candor: Be a Kick Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott. Episodes are written and produced by Brandi Neal, with script editing by me, Amy Sandler. The show features Radical Candor co-founders Kim Scott and Jason Rosoff, and is hosted by me still, Amy Sandler. Nick Carissimi is our audio engineer. The Radical Candor, podcasting music was composed by Cliff Goldmacher. Follow us on LinkedIn, Radical Candor the company, and visit us at RadicalCandor.com.

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Episodes are written and produced by Brandi Neal with script editing by Amy Sandler. The show features Radical Candor co-founders Kim Scott and Jason Rosoff and is hosted by Amy Sandler. Nick Carissimi is our audio engineer.

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