YouSaid · the spoken record

Craig Mod

lines on the record: 174
first: 2025-03-25
most recent: 2025-03-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“McDowell, VCCA, Tinhouse, Ragdale, as a few of them, and all of them I've come out with just amazing friendships and got a lot of great work done too. So please go investigate. And if you're a rich mother effer listen to this thing, donate to support these things. I mean, like these are incredible, incredible institutions that don't require a lot of money to have a huge impact. And so being able to provide more scholarships and things like that is pretty powerful, pretty powerful stuff.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know it's difficult because it's like the people who probably need to hear these things won't be listening to this podcast or maybe don't even know this podcast exists. So that's often sometimes the difficulty in getting information to folks. But I think the residencies, artist residencies are one of the coolest things that we have. And most people overlook them or think that the barred entry is so insurmountable that like, why should I even try? Go out and There are huge lists and once you start to crack the code once you start applying and you should get aimed to get rejected by a billion of them but once you get into one or two of them you start to understand the code a little more and my god they're so much fun and so interesting and they are such a way to level up your practice whatever your practice might be to be surrounded by people who are also committing themselves to it working hard and providing unexpected archetypes I've had so many great friendships come out of I've done”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She's getting rejected by Gallery. She has this total breakdown. And you just go, oh my God, someone like Sally Mann at the peak of her career can still have a breakdown. Like it really is so theological, this belief you just have to believe and keep pushing and keep pushing. And she pushes through it and she creates some great work and whatever has a great show and blah, blah, blah. You have to cultivate that belief. Having your cost of living be a thousand bucks a month for everything all in is an easy way to help cultivate that belief. You could be uncompromising about it”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“S-A-L-L-L-Y Sally? And then a woman, M-A-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N-N, I think. Is her last name? And she, yes, if I say it fast, it sounds salomon. No, Sally Mann, you know, she has all these gorgeous ethereal black and white photos of her family that she took. And she gained so much notoriety. And anyway, there's this documentary about her. And in the middle of it, she's working on a new set of works.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Becomes theological. It really is. It's totally faith based. What creative practice isn't? What great creative practice isn't? I mean, my favorite moment of a documentary about photographers is The Sally Man documentary”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You think you're a student, you're probably a student, just email me and say, Hey, I'm a student. I believe you. You don't have to. I've had people send me photos of their student IDs. Don't send me a photo of your student ID. It's free. I'm happy to give you those memberships to give access to that stuff. But the membership allows me to do by keeping some of the stuff behind a curtain is I can be a little more vulnerable than when I'm out in front of my big newsletters where I send out to 50,000 people or 60,000 people or whatever. When it's a smaller group, I'm able to be more vulnerable, more honest. And the Q&As and stuff like that feel a little more intimate. So I create a little bit of artificial scarcity, artificial friction to enable us to have a deeper conversation, I hope.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Gives you access, it gives you access to all of the archives of all the writing of Done on My Walks and 120 hours of videos where I run board meetings every six months and I talk about what I've done, the projects I've worked on, how they've gone, what we're going to do in the next six months. And then I filled Q&As from the members and their incredible Q&A. I'm so lucky. My members are smart. They ask great questions. They're creative. They're wonderful people. And so you get kind of access to this huge archive. And the whole reason I make everything I do in the membership program is me speaking to myself when I was 20 and desperate and hungry and drinking myself into the pavement and wishing I had an archetype, wishing I had some kind of flashlight to show me how to do the work I wanted to do. This is me wishing I could give this to myself back then. And so it's free for students. If you're a student, you just email me and say, I'm a student. You get it for free. I'm very loose about what constitutes a student.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Combined with walking, and actually that gave me the permission to start committing to these big walks. So it's like everything builds on everything else, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, and then you realize you've kind of created this pretty big ladder of stuff. And so the membership program, if you join that, not to like chill, but the membership program gives you a podcast.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Big thing I do that's enabled a lot, and again, like to maintain this fierce independence, and we can talk about the random house deal in part two as well, because there's some interesting things about it that actually dovetails with what Brandon was talking about as well. I have a membership program called Special Projects that have been running now for six years since 2019. And that”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Basically, whatever the progenitor of cyberpunk to a certain degree. But also, he's a guy who has seen, I think, the coolness of Japan before most of the world saw the coolness of Japan. And he's written great books that involve Japan, like pattern recognition is an incredible book. I read it like once every couple of years. It's beautiful. There's a lot of poetry in it. It's a cool story. And it captures this quirky early 2000s Japan, which is...”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About this illuminating this part of Japan that you're not going to have access to. I'm proud of the book, I'm proud of where we got it, and I'm excited, so excited for people to read it. And I want to engage with people about it.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On your own, unless you've lived here for a long time and could speak the language and can understand the dialects and get the history. You're not going to be able to show up and go to this place and kind of dig in it in the way that I've been able to in this book for you. And so, you know, like whatever. William Gibson blurbed it for me. And that was like the hand of God coming down and saying, yes, I approve of your work. And, you know.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Comes out May 6th. The reason why it's coming out with Random House is I just felt like this story deserved a bigger platform than I could give on my own. And so I kind of went around and I was able to connect with an amazing editor who really got the book. She helped me elevate it to a place that I couldn't have gotten it to on my own. And I hope through Random House, they're going to make a lot more books than I could make. It's going to cost a lot less than my books cost. My goal is to really expand. The ideas of my walking, my walking practice, I write about my walking practice in this, but also just exposing this part of Japan. Like you are not going to be able to go and engage with this part of Japan.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the history, you know, I'm walking past stone markers that are 2,000 years old. I'm walking past pilgrim graves. I'm going to these, you know, the holiest shrines, these foundational myth shrines of Japan, Issei, Jingu, I'm walking, you know, down past Kumano. I'm walking past the most holy rock, the foundational rock where the sun goddess was born from. You know, it's like, so this history of the country comes from this peninsula. It's so atavistic in so many ways. And so it's a book about celebrating that, celebrating the people who live there, celebrating the industry, and celebrating this beautiful friendship I had with this kid Brian because no one is going to be able to remember him like I can. And I feel like I had a duty to remember this guy.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Old cafes, Quisaten, you know, in the countryside who are super surly and chain smoking. And I'm like, you know, the first person who's come in in days. And they're just like, sure, come on in. I ain't got no toast, but I got a lot of cigarettes and coffee for you, kid. You know, that sort of thing. I just love all these people. And it's a book about elevating who they are, elevating this peninsula. And the paths I'm walking are these thousand year old, 2,000-year-old pilgrimage routes.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The FBI busted in one day and tackled him, arrested him. It turns out that he was a bank robber. It's like, it was just insane, right? So the book just meditates on the fact that Mia and Wakayama are both working class in industry prefixures that have lost the industry, have lost the workers, have lost the jobs. And yet, there is a foundational social support network in place where the people aren't falling as far as I saw people fall. And certainly people aren't getting murdered. And certainly people aren't joining gangs or whatever. And certainly people aren't dealing with opioid crises and things like that. And so it's a joyous memory of this friendship I had with Brian. And it's also like this elevation of all these wonderful characters I meet on the peninsula. I love everyone I meet. I'm talking to fishermen. I'm talking to old farmers. I'm talking to women who are running.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right time. And so I basically ended up doing this walk. I wrote about this walk and Brian snuck into the narrative in a way that I did not expect. So this book is about, it is this walk, but it's also about our friendship, our childhood. It's about being failed by the systems. Like, why were we cleaved apart? Why, you know, we're side by side in first grade. How should two kids side by side end up in a position where I feel like I have to run away halfway around the world? And he gets murdered. And it's like him getting murdered wasn't. The crazy thing is that wasn't a big shock. When you saw kind of what was, you know, there were gangs. We had the head of security. We had like security guards in my high school, you know, like people, you know, there was like whatever. We didn't have metal detectors. We weren't quite at like Baltimore the wire level of like intensity, but it was like serious. You couldn't wear certain colors because they were gang related. You know, and the head of security, it turns out.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know how to bridge that gap. You don't have the emotional intelligence as a kid to think about that gap. And I always thought at some point we would be able to reconnect. And half of my childhood lived in his brain. His death was like losing half of my childhood was losing this brother, being adopted again, like what does blood mean? How does family get created? And he was absolutely as much of a brother as anyone. And I tried to engage with our friendship, our brotherhood in short stories. Actually, the first short story I ever had published was published when I was 18 at university in this national writing competition. It was a short story about me and Brian and some of our antics. And so there was an impulse in me to write about him, but I didn't know how to. And I tried a couple more times in my early 20s. It never worked. And then on this walk, I started thinking back about him. And it just, it was.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And my friend Brian was going to the high school that bad kids went to that couldn't hang in my high school. So it's like you can imagine where Brian was. And we graduated high school. And just a few weeks after he graduated, he was murdered. That murder, that loss, we basically stopped talking after middle school just because of you get separated and then your friend groups change”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thinking about this friendship I had with this kid Brian when I was in elementary school he was my best friend. He was the closest thing to a brother I had and we grew up side by side in elementary school and I happened to test a little bit better than he did and it kind of put me on this different track. We still had a gifted program back then. I was lucky I was able to go into the gifted program because I tested a little better that exposed me to computers. They had like one Commodore 64 or something and I used LogoWriter and that got me thinking about it's like you see how these things kind of compound these small chances these small luxuries and I got them and Brian didn't get them and by the end of high school we were so separated. My high school was called out during the Trump first Trump administration by Betsy DeVose. I think that was the Secretary of Education. She called up my high school as one of the worst high schools in America like on a national speech.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Reflect on Partially because in this COVID moment where I think for a lot of folks, it was this moment of reflection. Everything slowed down. Everything stopped. And it was the first time as an adult I went back to my childhood. I thought back to this childhood friendship I had. As I was walking the peninsula, I'd see little kids every now and there aren't that many.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About 12 years, 13 years. And I'd say that most of my walks have taken place there. I've walked thousands of kilometers of the peninsula. And probably my most profound walk happened during COVID, the height of COVID. It was 2021. Japan was still locked down. We still didn't know where this was going. Vaccines, I think, had not even arrived here yet. May of 2021. We didn't have vaccines in Japan yet. They came in July, July, August. I was like, well, I'm going to go on a big walk. It's like, I'm being careful. I'm tested. I'm not going to spread anything. I went on this walk and I did, it was about 600 kilometers. It took about a month. And I was writing, and we can talk about my walking and writing practice. I have this like whole ascetic practice connected with how I walk and how I write. But this walk in particular, I was writing every day, two, three, four thousand words, photographing every day, and I was thinking about life. And one of the things I started to”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you have Hokkaido up at the top, then you have Honshu, which is the big banana with the little dangly penis, which is the peninsula. You've got next to the penis, you've got Shikoku, which is where the 88 temple's pilgrimages. And then next to that, you've got Kyushu, which is kind of the bottom part of Japan. And then far away, you've got Okinawa. But the key peninsula is south of Kyoto, south of Osaka. It's Mie and Wakayama in Nara, part of southern part of Nada prefixures. And I've been going there for”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's my forthcoming book coming out with Random House. So this is a huge leap for me. I've always been fiercely independent. I produce my own books that are kind of fine art editions that sell for $100 a copy that are printed and bound in Japan, like I showed earlier, silkscreen, foil stamps, stuff like that. But I was working on this story for this book. This book is about a walk I did during COVID on the Ki Peninsula of Japan, which I've been to many, many, many, many times. And this is the peninsula south of Kyoto. So if you look at Honshu, I describe it in the book as the dangling penis of Japan, this peninsula. If you look”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Six or seven years ago, we connected because of writing. Again, like literally everyone in my life that I love that I want to hug, that I'll die for, that I want to protect with all of my life force. It's all connected to writing, all of it, every single thing. It's like shocking. So it's easy. You asked early why books like an hour ago, you asked me why am I doing books? And it's like, it is just undeniable that a fullness of life that I find. Is found through the writing and who that connects me with and the adventures it brings me on.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Stuff like that. Other contemporary writers Sam Anderson, who writes for the New York Times magazine, Sam Anderson is amazing. His favorite book is Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. He has the most generous, hilarious voice. He just wrote this incredible narrative nonfiction piece for the magazine about the legend of Leatherman, who is this guy who roamed, he rocked the circle in Connecticut in the 1800s and he wore a suit of leather and he became folklore of like all these towns and like people would like give him like bread and like give him coffee and like he got so sick he couldn't chew things and he would like dip everything in coffee and he'd eat cakes by dipping him in coffee i've known sam for like”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's like, no, like, what like. Mark up the books, my books. Like, if you buy my books, please write in them, dog ear them, like use them. That is the greatest part of them as objects is kind of putting your imprint on it and then coming back to it year after year, decade after decade, coming back to these things. So anyway, Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. So moving. Lynn Tillman, one of the people I met at McDowell, any of her stuff. She has a great book that just came out called Thrilled to Death, which if you're going to start anywhere with Lynn, she's so funny. She is so no bullshit. I love her so much like just as a human. I love her voice. You can look up how old she is on Wikipedia. She's in her 70s. She's been in the same East Village apartment for like 40 years. She has this like institution of the New York literary community and you just feel her pulsing with that New York voice and it's so funny and incredible. And this thrill to death is a collection of her short stories over her entire career.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Her book, her writing, her voice, her way of looking at the world, her way of showing me what's possible in terms of creativity of prose, of looking at the most mundane thing and making it so beautiful and quirky and weird. The opening scene of a cat with blood on its paws walking over the blanket and her waking up to find that. You know, it's like little sort of flower petals. It's like just all of it, finding that beauty. That is so infused how I try to engage with the world when I'm out on my big walks. I love it. And my thing now is I try to find first editions of these books and then I go through and I try to mark them up again. I love there's nothing I love greater than marking up a first edition because I think that's the greatest honor you can give to a book. Like this idea of being precious with it like what am I going to do? Like hold on to this stupid thing for 30 years and sell it and like give my stepdaughter like 200 bucks that I got for this first edition so she can buy like a bowl of ramen or something which is like probably the cost 200 bucks and 30 years.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would love to buy her a beautiful steak dinner if that's the sort of thing she said. I don't eat steak, but maybe she does. I feel like that's the thing you're supposed to buy people. I'd like to buy her an amazing dinner. She is.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Near Tinker Creek, and she just wrote the most beautiful poetic sort of diary, nonfiction, narrative nonfiction description of what it was like being out there. You know, and it's like her book is, I don't believe in mental blocks or like writer's block or anything like that. If I wake up in the morning, make a nice cup of coffee. My phone is out of sight. I'm not thinking about any of that crap. I'm not looking at notifications, make this nice cup of coffee. I'm smelling these beautiful Ethiopian beans. I sit down. If I'm like, oh, I don't really feel like writing or I don't feel like the juice is, I pick up Annie Dillard. I literally flipped to any page. I read two paragraphs. I can't stop myself from running over and starting writing. It activates something in my brain so strongly, so immediately. I love it. I mean, like, I've never met her.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is not ephemeral. It's immutable. It's sort of out there. It's the thing you keep coming back to. There's nothing I like more than rereading books. I mean, this is sort of like bad. I reread so many books and I just keep coming back to them over and over and over again. And that to me is kind of the greatest gift of art is to be able to rewatch things, to reread things. And when's the last time you rewatched like a YouTube short or something like that? You're like, oh yeah, let's go back, you know, whatever. There's like goofy things that you'll rewatch. But this relationship over decades you can have with an object, with a story, I think is really powerful. And to me, that's always been the thing.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Poetic work, they're at odds. And I think the thing you're talking about like content creators, there's a certain kind of ephemerality there. And the work that I'm trying to do, and I think the work that speaks to me.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It blows my mind that so many people have the smartphone in the room, and just having it on the table. So, like, when I am in serious writing mode, when I need, on my deadline, I need to get stuff done, I have the phone in such a place that I will not look at it or touch it or engage with it until at least after lunch. That is the soonest I'll touch it. And I feel palpably the chemicals in my mind shift as soon as I look at it, as soon as I touch it, as soon as I acknowledge it as an option. And I feel that those chemicals that get activated, the dopamine, whatever casino, those chemicals are 100% destructive of the creative impulse that allows people like Dennis Johnson to produce train dreams or to do that kind of deep.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lots of walking. I mean, honestly, a big part of, I think, for most young people today is just getting offline, like just block the internet using freedom apps like freedom, turn your smartphone off, don't sleep with your smartphone in your bedroom. I mean, these are very easy things, but like most people don't do them. I haven't slept with a smartphone in my room. I haven't slept with a phone in my room ever in my life. I've never had the phone in my room. Sometimes, you know, I lived in such small apartments. I just put it in like the kitchen, like on the stove because that was the only other unit of my house that was not my bedroom.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The work that I'm most proud of, and the work I'd say that is the first real work of mine that I feel like is truly me finding my groove, hitting my stride has all happened in the last six years. All connected with walking. So, if I was running a class, we'd be doing a lot of walks. Walking, I'd say all of this. Meeting these archetypes, going to McDowell, working in Silicon Valley, getting all these hugs from Enrique and Ben, all of this was leading up to allow me to lean into the walking in the way that I did. And it was in the walk that I kind of found how to truly commit to the work. I know this sounds very woo-woo and weird. No, it's not.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's very little sexual activity as far as I could ascertain, but like there was a lot of ping pong repression coming up. Any of these things, it's like Being in a room with people doing great work, committing to great work, and hearing them talk about it, hearing talk about what they'd worked on that day, what they were struggling through. Again, it just set these archetypes. I mean, that deficit I felt when I left and I got to school was just a deficit of archetypes, a deficit of templates of how to live and how to be in the world. And like each of these things, from when I was age, basically 29, 30, 31, connecting with Kevin Kelly, being asked to give these talks, you know, going in the art directors club is this weird little coda when I was 24 going to McDowell, hanging out with these people who are winning these incredible awards and working on great, really truly great work. They were giving readings, you know, at night. And I was just like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm here with these people, like reading this level of work. And it just feeds into that sense of, oh, maybe there's value here and maybe I have something to bring to the table. That was the biggest takeaway.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the biggest part was being around people who were doing quote unquote serious art and feeling like you had been selected to hang with them. And so the structure of it's really great because basically you don't talk to anyone from the moment you wake up until dinner. And then dinner you have to have, you're forced to kind of eat with everyone, which is great because it's like at the end of the day, you know, there's kind of like a tether to reality out there outside of your book or your composition or whatever. We would have dinner and then we'd have very fierce ping pong competitions. But, you know. Which would get sometimes almost like violent. Like there definitely were some friendships that were like broken up”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I could go to San Francisco. I didn't know anyone. I could just be up there. And there was a mystery to it, and I'd be in kind of like, I'd stay at like the four seasons, you know, and it would just kind of, there'd be this like, you know, because I was making all this insane money. I was like, okay, I can spend $300, $400 on a hotel room. Sure, let's go. This will be my treat. And I'd be in these kind of opulent, bizarre kind of like very non-aesthetic spaces. But the city would be out there and I'd just be working and then I'd go walk and downtown kind of walking North Beach at night. Going into”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a classic trope, right? I mean, the writer locked in the hotel room by the editor until he finishes the manuscript. It's just the classic trope. And I was living in Palo Alto and I was like, I want to explore the city a little more. I'd kind of write all day and then I'd go walk around at night, which maybe in San Francisco isn't the smartest thing to do, but that was my strategy. It just, again, felt intuitive, like, okay, it removes me from the scene. All my friends in California were in the bay. And so”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The language, the poetry of it, the story, the conciseness of it, the economy of the language. I mean, Dennis Johnson's first and foremost a poet. He does novels as well. There's a lot of people that fall into this category that I love, like Dennis Johnson's a big one. Ocean Vong is a more contemporary one. Ocean Vong Mega poet who then catapulted into novel autofiction land. Michael Andange, you know, he's first and foremost a poet. You read things like coming through slaughter and this is like a book of poetry in a form of novel slash historical fiction. I mean, it's just incredible. These are the things that spoke to me.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of the cabins have like grand pianos and fireplaces. And, you know, it's just this ideal, and you're surrounded by the best composers and poets, artists, novelists, non-fiction writers. And I went out there and I met a few people, one of whom was this woman Lynn Tillman. And from day one, it was just being so hungry and so ready and so accepting of being able to be around these people. I was just soaking it in. One of the first books Lynn recommended to me was Dennis Johnson, Train Dreams. I've since gone on to read that book. It's a novella. I've read that book probably 15, 20 times. I've mapped it out. There's very few books I've actually sketched out.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In New Hampshire. And you basically get a cabin. You're out there from anywhere from a month to two months. They cook all of your meals. They deliver you lunch in a picnic basket to your cabin.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do we have No, no, but the flipboard people were super upset. And so, like, that's one of the difficult things these aren't easy conversations to have to leave these things. I remember being like, okay, this is a great excuse. This is the most prestigious writing residency in America. And I need to go do this. And I'm going to use it as a break, but it's like a forever break. And I did that and I went out there. And again, connecting me to these archetypes, I'm out there. I get to this place and I'm just surrounded by booker award winners.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, no, no. Okay, I got it. Liz was in New York. Liz was founding the interaction design program at the School for Visual Arts.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because these things become like family and you feel terrible leaving them, and it upset a lot of people. I was one of the first people to leave, and I was like, Liz, it's not you, it's me. I need to do these other things.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just a clear example of that. And I met Kevin probably eight months after I joined, and he's like, come up to my house, let's do a walk in Pacifica and just talk. And I was just like, oh my God, I went up there. I did that walk with him. And I was like, this is what writing does. Everything that's happening in my life that is blowing my mind that's connecting to me, to people who I wish I had known when I was a teenager, who I wish I had my life when I was a kid, it's all happening because of writing. And so I apply for this writing fellowship at McDowell. I was like, where should I apply Liz? And she's like, McDowell. And I was like, okay, great. I've never heard of McDowell. This is the oldest writing residency in America. One of the oldest in the world of like these kind of formal writing residency places. It's the hardest to get into. I didn't know any of this when I applied. I apply on a whim. I get in, which I'm still not sure how I got in. It was pure luck that I got in. And I use that as my”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep. And so I'm following my nose. I'm like out here, I'm in the mix. I'm with these incredible people. I'm holding my own for the most part. But I keep writing. And the thing I notice is the more I do the writing, the more it opens doors, the more it connects me to even more people who are the kinds of archetypes I want to be in my life. And like meeting Kevin was.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I showed it to someone. I was like, Do you know this guy? And the person was like, You don't know Kevin Kelly? He's like, Yeah, you should be Kevin Kelly. And I met up with Kevin. And he was like, I like the way you think about publishing. Tell me about some tools. And I was like, who is this guy?”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's going to be a callback. And I was on stage giving a talk with the New York Times people about the New York Times app, and I was talking about digital publishing. And I got this email when I got off stage. And it was from this guy, Kevin Kelly I'd never heard of. And I was like, who's this guy, Kevin? Again, I just didn't have, no one was teaching me about these things. I did not have a background. I didn't Silicon Valley as much as I admired it and wanted to be out there. I didn't know the history of it.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, it's like, and you feel it getting $30,000 a month, you feel that changing the programming, changing your chemistry. And I had spent all of my 20s building up this asceticism and building up this ability to be uncompromising. And I didn't want that to be broken. And so I forced myself to just keep writing militantly. By the end of, I spent 15 months at Flipboard. And towards the end of it, Liz Liz was like, hey, you should apply for a writing fellowship. All the writing was connecting me to amazing people. I connected to Kevin Kelly because I was writing these essays. And I was giving a talk in New York City.”
2025-03-25 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #802: Craig Mod — The Real Japan, Cheap Apartments in Tokyo, Productive Side Quests, Creative Retreats, Buying Future Freedom, and Being Possessed by Spirits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT