Design Matters with Debbie Millman: 20th Anniversary Celebration with Memoirists

Podcast: Design Matters with Debbie Millman
Date: September 29, 2025
Guests: Elissa Altman, Thomas Page McBee, Ashley C. Ford, Josh Brolin, Isaac Fitzgerald

Overview

To commemorate 20 years of "Design Matters," Debbie Millman presents a special episode dedicated to memoirists she has interviewed over the years. Through vivid excerpts and intimate conversations, this episode delves into how these acclaimed writers make sense of their lives through storytelling, confronting trauma, family, identity, and transformation. Listeners are treated to candid discussions about the complexities of memory, the act of writing as survival, and the art of forging meaning from challenging upbringings.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Memoirist’s Path

• Debbie’s Interview Approach (04:00):
  Normally, Debbie starts with a guest’s childhood and progresses to their recent work, but with memoirists, their life is their work:

  “When my guest is a memoirist, well, that plan goes out the door… I can hold off until the end of the interview to talk about their most recent work, because their most recent work is about their life and their upbringing and their education and their career and their ups and downs.”
  (04:00, Debbie Millman)

• She emphasizes that memoir offers direct access to the shaping forces of a writer’s life and invites essential vulnerability.

2. Elissa Altman: Food, Family, and Emotional Survival

Excerpts from 2019 Interview

• Food as Identity & Family Division (05:50):
  Altman describes her mother’s utilitarian cooking versus her father’s passion for gourmet food—juxtaposing Swanson’s frozen dinners and clandestine trips to Manhattan’s fine restaurants.

  “My mother believed in Swanson's frozen dinners, the Gortons fishermen, and Green Giant canned vegetables… On Saturdays, [my father] would get me dressed, and...we would drive…into Manhattan to restaurants like Grenwill…he introduced me to food in a manner that was really secretive…a father daughter date.”
  (05:50-08:00, Alyssa Altman)

• Secrecy and Relief Amidst Divorce (09:11):
  Altman reflects on her parents’ divorce at 15, recalling both the trauma and an unexpected sense of relief:

  “My world was turned upside down. At the same time there was actually a sense of relief. The rage and the rancor that had…been the bedrock… was gone.”
  (09:11, Alyssa Altman)

• Writing as Lifeline (10:12):

  “I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t writing… I lived in a world primarily of adults…that was where I worked everything out.”
  (10:12, Alyssa Altman)

• The Yearning for Connection at the Table (13:40):
  Altman describes seeking community through hosting meals, filling a void left by her family's tense dinners.

  “I love feeding people...it has a lot to do with the fact that I did not grow up with a lot of joy around my dinner table. It actually was more like torture.”
  (13:40-13:59, Alyssa Altman)

3. Thomas Page McBee: Gender, Trauma, and Integration

Excerpts from 2020 Interview

• Transition as Unfolding, Not Epiphany (15:22):
  McBee frames transition as a gradual process of expansion, something universally human:

  “I think that there’s a way that we all have had transitions… being trans, obviously there’s something…dissonant to my environment…but we all have ways that we experience ourselves as different than the way other people see us.”
  (15:22-16:56, Thomas Page McBee)

• Authenticity and Cultural Constraints (16:39):

  “I think with any identity thing, it’s like you claim something and it’s still a rough fit… Gender…is kind of almost spiritual. There’s something mystical about it…”
  (16:39-17:28, Thomas Page McBee)

• Survival, Dissociation, and Writing (19:22):
  Having survived childhood sexual abuse, McBee discusses the lifelong work of repair and the indispensability of telling one’s own story.

  “The repair of integration…has been kind of a theme of my life…Having writing—a way to tell my own story—even when I wasn’t feeling like it was being told completely accurately by everyone else…got me through literally decades.”
  (19:22, Thomas Page McBee)

• Memorable Reading from Man Alive (22:48):

  “Every memory I have of those years is tainted, a hormonal sun, bleached gauziness...She got up on her elbows to look at me...No, she said…‘You’re like any other guy.’”
  (22:48, Thomas Page McBee, reading)

4. Ashley C. Ford: Imagination, Family Separation, and Longing

Excerpts from 2021 Interview

• Imagination as Power (24:45):
  Ford recalls her formative years with her grandmother as foundational to her sense of independence and personhood.

  “My imagination, my brain…made me feel like a powerful person. I loved having thoughts and stories that were just mine…it made me feel, I think, like a person.”
  (24:45-26:51, Ashley Ford)

• Memorizing Stories and Family Pride (27:21):
  She was celebrated for her astonishing memory, even memorizing and reciting biblical passages for relatives.

• First Visit with Her Father in Prison (29:58):
  A deeply affecting memory; feeling immediate connection and warmth despite warnings about interacting with men.

  “He put his arms around me…And I didn’t. I didn’t feel weird at all. I just felt loved, and I felt warm. And that feeling made me want to not let him go…he looked at me…because I didn’t know what it was like at that point to be looked at like that.”
  (29:58-32:33, Ashley Ford)

• Letters as Emotional Lifeline (32:43):

  “I felt like those letters were because my dad saw the real me…And those letters made me truly believe that there was somebody out there on my side.”
  (32:43, Ashley Ford)

5. Josh Brolin: Chaos, Loss, and Finding Sobriety

Excerpts from 2024 Interview

• Vivid Portrait of His Mother (37:13):

  “She was the zap in every electrical current we had felt. She was the alcohol in a mixed drink. She was the wildness in a sunset just after a horrible storm had passed.”
  (37:13, Debbie quoting Josh)

• Rejecting “Happiness” as Life’s Goal (38:13):

  “I, too, don’t think that’s the goal…You embrace whatever’s going on; life is a potpourri.”
  (38:13, Josh Brolin)

• Self-Destructive Urge and Alcohol (40:55):
  Brolin discusses drinking as both a destructive force and a temporary friend, an engine to be directed wisely:

  “Alcohol was a great friend for a while…It gave me a personality, it gave me a voice...until it didn’t. Until it bit me in the ass. And it always eventually bit me in the ass.”
  (42:23-43:39, Josh Brolin)

• Surviving a Dangerous Youth (44:12):

  “Why would I be dead? Because a lot of us died, a ton of us. Not a few—36.”
  (44:12, Josh Brolin)

• Family Trauma and Brother’s Withdrawal (47:01):

  “[When our nanny Ramona left]…that was the last I saw him…he drove his personality inside the garage of his brain and closed the door.”
  (47:01, Debbie Millman quoting Josh)

  He speaks of family humor and resilience:

  “I think we’re a pretty open family now…and I think, pleased that we survived it...a lot of compensatory humor...”
  (48:28, Josh Brolin)

6. Isaac Fitzgerald: Childhood Hardship, Parental Sorrow, and Survival

Excerpts from 2024 Interview

• Small World of Childhood, Large Impact of Adult Pain (49:35):
  Fitzgerald describes how, as a child, “your world is your home,” and how parental anguish shapes the child’s entire experience.

  “You don’t even realize that you’re filling this small child’s world with anger…When you’re older, a few years is not that long…but when you’re eight...that’s half your life. That’s all that you know.”
  (49:35-52:18, Isaac Fitzgerald)

• Mother’s Devastating Confession (54:04):
  Fitzgerald’s mother told him at age eight that she’d considered aborting him:

  “I don’t even understand how that could possibly be something you ever recover from.” (54:04, Debbie Millman)
  “The most human answer I have is, I don’t know if I have yet, but I think I’m working on it. I think that’s the work of living.”
  (54:10, Isaac Fitzgerald)

• Finding Meaning in Survival (55:50):

  “It made my life feel special. It made me realize that there was a risk taken to bring me into this world…everything after that felt like icing. My life was mine to do what I wanted to do with it.”
  (55:50, Isaac Fitzgerald)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Thomas Page McBee:

  “Gender, I think, is kind of almost spiritual. There’s something mystical about it…”
  (17:02, Thomas Page McBee)

• Ashley Ford, on being seen by her father:

  “I didn’t know what it was like to walk into a room and have someone light up because you walked into the room. And I wanted that bad.”
  (32:13, Ashley Ford)

• Josh Brolin, on family survival:

  “I think we’re a pretty open family now...pleased that we survived it.”
  (48:28, Josh Brolin)

• Isaac Fitzgerald, on forgiveness and freedom:

  “So many years of my life have been spent being angry at that moment...but there was a part of me that it made my life feel special…My life was mine to do what I wanted to do with it.”
  (55:50, Isaac Fitzgerald)

Timeline of Key Segments

• 00:00 - 04:00: Show open, Debbie reflects on her arc as an interviewer and the unique challenge of talking to memoirists
• 05:45 - 14:41: Elissa Altman on food, family, divorce, and the power of writing
• 15:22 - 24:05: Thomas Page McBee on gender identity, surviving abuse, writing as survival; reading from Man Alive
• 24:45 - 33:55: Ashley Ford on formative years, imagination, family separation, first memories of her father, and his letters
• 37:13 - 48:54: Josh Brolin on his chaotic childhood, his complex mother, addiction, family pain, and survival
• 49:35 - 58:21: Isaac Fitzgerald’s reflection on childhood trauma, his parents’ pain, and forging his own meaning

Conclusion

Through deeply personal stories, each guest demonstrates the power of memoir to both illuminate and mend wounds, to search for belonging, and to design the arc of one’s life through storytelling. Debbie Millman’s reflections and questions draw out moments of pain, humor, hope, and transformation, making this special episode not only a retrospective but a meditation on the human need to be seen, to remember, and to tell the truth.

Listen to the full interviews and discover more episodes at DesignMattersMedia.com