Design Matters with Debbie Millman · Design Matters Media

20th Anniversary celebration with memoirists Elissa Altman, Thomas Page McBee, Ashley C. Ford, Josh Brolin, and Isaac Fitzgerald

September 29, 2025·54 min·4 clips

Thomas Page McBee describes gender as almost spiritual, pointing to something ineffable and beautiful in trans identity.

Debbie begins with gratitude. She mentions Apple Podcasts honoring her as a creator they love, then folds that recognition into two decades of making Design Matters. The anniversary feels personal without getting too polished. Instead of a simple look back, the hour brings together memoirists who know how private memory becomes language. The voices come in fragments: a world turned upside down, relief, gender, longing, alcohol, and the odd clarity that can come with remembering. Thomas Page McBee reads first. His passage from Man Alive stays with adolescence, desire, self-consciousness, and the shock of being seen plainly. When the girl tells him he is like any other guy, the moment lands softly. There is tenderness in it, and a kind of release. Debbie then turns to Ashley Ford. She introduces Somebody's Daughter by starting at age four, when Ford lived with her grandmother and great-grandmother on a little farm in Columbia, Missouri. Debbie asks how that place opened Ford's imagination, and Ford answers through routine. School had a pattern. Aftercare, pickup, weekends at the mall, movies, breakfast, and dinner made life feel knowable. Attention mattered just as much. Ford remembers her grandmother reading to her, sitting with her, and giving her a steady presence. The episode gives those small details room. Recognition, family attention, and early safety all begin to look like the material a memoirist keeps returning to.

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