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Paddy: Things become other things is about a 300 mile walk you set out for in May of 2021, along Japan's thousand year old pilgrimage routes The book is beautiful. You do this incredible job of, , digging into emotions and also releasing the tension of those emotions with highbrow bathroom humor at times.

can you first describe the route, the terrain,

Craig: it's on the Kii peninsula. So which is where the Kumano Kodo, UNESCO heritage routes are. , And this is the peninsula south of Kyoto Osaka. And it looks kinda like the dangling penis of Japan. It's also the most moist, part of earth in some ways. so it's the moist dangling penis and I'm sure you've had other people say moist dangling penis on your

Paddy: I, if I had five bucks for every moist dangling penis comment I had on this show, man,

PADDYO INTRO VO:

 Do you remember the movie "The Lawnmower Man"? Of course [00:01:00] you don't, because if your reservoir of obscure 90s pop culture references were that deep, you wouldn't need your old friend PaddyO here, so let me explain:

The movie is an early entry into the scifi canon of cautionary tales about human/computer interfacing, where a mind meld with technology gives the main character superhuman abilities that seem really promising until he, you know, kinda loses his mind. My folks also lost their minds when they found out my then 11 year old older brother Brendan snuck into the R-rated "Lawnmower Man." It was a yelling of epic proportions, which is why I've never forgotten the film and probably why I'm still kinda afraid of computers.

I thought about this movie a lot while talking to Craig Mod, a digital media designer who reminds me of the perfect marriage of human and computer and has low key influenced a LOT about [00:02:00] how we interface with our increasingly digital world. He did this through his work with publishing platforms like Medium and Flipboard, and his two decades of consulting in the start up world. And at this point, you’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with the out of doors, let alone a weird, pretty not so great, scifi film that probably should have discounted Pierce Brosnan from getting to play James Bond, but somehow did not.

Craig Mod walks a lot. He doesn’t hike, he doesn’t go on expeditions, he just leaves his home and … walks. For hundreds of kilometers at a time. Mostly on the ancient pilgrimage routes that crisscross his adopted home of Japan, where he moved for college and stayed. Mod has turned these walks into several fascinating books, his most recent being Things Become Other Things. But he’s also turned them into a kind [00:03:00] of practice—an outdoor meditation of sorts.

There’s a lot to this practice, which we’ll get into in a minute, but it’s the impacts of these walks that are worth considering. Mod grew up in a small blue collar town in the Northeast of the US. The town and his childhood were rough, and he has the emotional scars to prove it. His walks are a kind of therapy for that. And they're a way for him to rebalance and make sense of our lives in an increasingly distracting digital world and that’s the piece that I think all of us could benefit from — even more so than a long-overdue viewing of “The Lawnmower Man.”

MUSIC

Paddy: First things first, burnt toast. What's your last humbling and or hilarious moment outside?

Craig: I've had a couple of like, really silly, uh, bike falls in slow motion, um, over the years. Uh, you know, where you're just kind of like trying to [00:04:00] stop. And then I've owned like 15, 20 different bikes in the last. 20 years. I love, I just love bicycles and any different kind of bicycle, I wanna ride it.

you know, I've had a BD one, which has a terrible design, but it kinda looks cool, but it's so unstable. a German company, Riese und Müller, um, makes that, um, and, uh, you know, you're just riding and you'll kinda slow down and then the front wheel will just flip out in front of you and you go over the handlebars.

So,

Paddy: Like, that's the design of the bike. Like, it just turn, it takes like a hard Right.

Craig: oh, the, yeah, yeah. The front, the, the front suspension slash fork situation is if you don't have full control over the handlebars at all time, they just want not go straight.

Paddy: That sounds like fundamentally, a major issue with a bike cycle. Like

Craig: yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the, the whole

Paddy: so your last humbling, hilarious moment outside is like, well, I love bikes, but I am really bad at buying them because I get, I get this sideways front wheel.

Craig: I got the, I got the bad bike. [00:05:00] Uh, yeah. Yeah.

Paddy: All right, let's get into it.

MUSIC IN THE CLEAR FOR A BEAT

from all the research that I've done on you, I find it interesting to find out that you actually own a bike, or ma you have owned many bikes because of the many things you use to describe yourself.

Chief among them is Walker. And when you say walk, what exactly do you mean? I need you to define walk in your world.

Craig: Not bike. I mean, my walks, yeah. When I say I go on a walk, it's like, you know, anywhere from 10 to 40 days, that's, uh, that's a walk for

Paddy: That's a walk!. That

Craig: Yeah, yeah, So I don't even know, like yesterday I walked 10 K around Tokyo, just kind of doing errands. That's just normal. I don't know what that is.

That's just getting, this is moving through the world. Um, but like when I, yeah, when I talk about my walks, I would say yeah, you don't wanna do less than, fewer than 10 days. I mean, you really want at least 10 days.

30 is really good.

Paddy: 30? Gee,

Craig: 30 is good.[00:06:00]

Paddy: that is a walk. Do you have a, do you have a bar for like daily walk? , Is it like, oh, I'm going for a walk and you walk around the block? Or does that not count

Craig: that doesn't count? You have to cover some ground. I'd say like 5K is like minimum, probably like, you know, an hour, an hour, hour of walking, you know, you can get four, 5K done in an hour. Like, I feel like that's pretty good., but the point is to get your mind moving, to put your mind in kind of other space and to not be looking at your phone, to not be thinking about social, to not be listening to music or podcasts or whatever.

And to just be out there. And then in that movement, even if it's just an hour, I just find, you know, the mind solves things. , that's the whole point of the walking is the solving of things and meeting of people. It's not like, oh my God, walking is for me so wonderful and I just love walking.

And I, it's like, no, no, no, no. It's a means to many, many ends and it's, that means part that is exciting to me as a platform, as like a tool to do these other things.

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Paddy: Can you describe to me your first time walking where you were like, ah, [00:07:00] this is my thing, where it became less of like a, oh, I'm just gonna go to the corner store, or I'm gonna go see a friend and I'm gonna get there just by, sneaker rubber. What was the thing or the event that made it your vocation

Craig: So there's two world Heritage pilgrimage roots in the world. There's, the Camino de Santiago in Spain, and then there's. Kumano Kodo in Japan.

And I had gone on Kumano many times.

I've been walking the Kumano area since basically like 2010, but really 2013 was when I went on my first real kind of longer walk there. And I had done eight days, on Kumano Kodo. you're In the mountains for most of it. I mean, it's really mountainous, it's really a lot of up and down, it's very physical.

and you're kind of contending with that for a big part of it. And also, like, I didn't, I still didn't really know what to wear, and I was, I had the wrong boots on and like, I got these giant, crazy blisters and it was, it was just kind of a, a bit of a mess. And so the focus was less on, like leaning into and enjoying the walk or nature or anything like that.

I remember, I, I think, I think the first eight days I did on Kumano [00:08:00] alone. It was like at the end of March and it was just unseasonably hot. So I had packed all the wrong stuff and it was just soaking wet. And that's kind of what was causing all the blisters. You had all the sweat. So that was a walk alone.

That was like pretty serious distances, you know, 150K or something like that.

But, 2019 I had wanted to do one of these longer historical roots. And so kind of my mentor, this guy John McBride, Australian guy, , who I met almost 20 years ago now through the art world. Became really good friends and, uh, he started taking me on walks.

So John had done a bunch of that, these old roots when he was a teenager, and I had heard a lot from him about them. And I always thought, oh, that'd be a fun challenge. And also just like a fun physical challenge. Like, like what? What would it feel like to walk from Tokyo to Kyoto? You know, like, that sounds like a lot.

Paddy: Sounds daunting.

Craig: It's very daunting. And um, but I was like, if John could do it, I can do it. That's easy. And, uh, I just set, I mean, I was just like, all right, let's go. And that was From Tokyo to Kyoto, that's like 600 kilometers or so, [00:09:00] uh, six, 700 k depending on how you go. that was the first one where I was alone. and it wasn't mountains. I mean, there were bits with mountains, but for the most part it was really just, you know, you're walking on roads, you're walking on sidewalks, basically the whole way for, or for a big chunk of it, you're walking like rural country lanes and stuff like that.

That was the one whereby, uh, the halfway mark, I was like, okay, something special's happening.

Paddy: What was so special? What happened?

Craig: your body getting into that, just total walk refinement mode, I was doing big days, 30, 40 k days. 40 5K days with a pack that had too much stuff in it and kind of wearing the wrong shoes. And, um, yeah, it took like, the first week was terrible and painful and you know, my shoulders were like bleeding.

I wasn't wearing the pack the right way.

Paddy: Oh yeah. The shoulder chafe. Yeah. Not great.

Craig: I didn't know what I was doing. We fixed all that. I learned how to wear the waist strap and, uh, you know, cinch it and put all the weight on my butt and like magically then you can, you know, essentially walk forever carrying 20, 30 [00:10:00] kilos.

but what really happened was this almost like disembodiment this, um, shifting to a bobbing consciousness. Like that's the only way, that's how I was describing it in, in the writing I was doing, um, where you're just like this, your body is just such a finely tuned walk machine and you can just point it in any direction you don't feel any of the pain or the aches and you're just this kind of beautiful bobbing consciousness that's kind of just going down the road.

You know, bobbing, bobbing, bobbing, just observing things, talking to people, saying hello, taking photos. Yeah, it was fun that, that, and that, that was like nothing I'd ever, ever experienced before.

Paddy: Do you think the walking is a remedy or an antidote to your tech background and your tech work? How do those, the two things interplay, what's the relationship?

Craig: No. Uh, no, I'm not, I know there's a lot of guys who are like, I'm gonna be a woodworker now because I want to, like, touch real things. You know, that's, that's a trope, right? That's like a tech guy thing. It's like, okay, now I'm the woodworker. I'm gonna make chairs. Now , thankfully I was old enough to kind of recognize [00:11:00] what was important to me by the time I, got to Silicon Valley, which was like 29. I turned 30, right after I arrived. I was already so deep in books writing, but also like programming at the same time.

I mean, these things have always been, kind of had a dual presence in my life, um, all throughout childhood, all throughout my twenties, teenage years, twenties. So, no, I don't think it was a response to anything. It, it really was just, oh, this feels really good and I can, I can see how art can be produced using this as a, as a platform, and I can see how this gets me over, over my worst impulses and my laziness.

So that's, I, I'd say, I'd say that is what it was a response to. Mostly it was a, it's a training. Methodology for me to force me to write and think and look in a way that, I think I'd always aspired to, but I didn't know how to. And so that first big walk where I was every night, I was sending like a little SMSI built this weird like SMS uh, newsletter software again, like, you know, you can kinda like mix these things in fun ways.

and every night I'd have to like send a photo and like two [00:12:00] sentences about the day. that got me going on, doing what I'm doing now, which is where I'll write for four or five hours a night. , After a big day of walking.

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Paddy: You've described yourself as a skeptical techno optimist.

Craig: Yeah.

Paddy: What does that mean? What are you skeptical about? What are you optimistic about?

Craig: . I just had a, a nice long three hour conversation with Kevin Kelly and a, and a bunch of other smart people about optimism, uh, just like three weeks ago., Kevin Kelly, co-founder Wired, written a bunch of books.

He and I run these things called Walk and Talks around the world. Kevin has a death clock on his computer and, um,

Paddy: Like for himself or the world?

Craig: For himself. Yeah, he's

Paddy: Oh God.

Craig: yeah, he's obs he's sort of obsessed with like how many days he has left hours, he has left, left actuarily, and um.

Paddy: I want you to know that I have a free hug waiting for you, and I want to get that clock off your computer. Okay.

Craig: No, no, it's, it, it, it's, it's amazing. It's great. He loves it. He is.

Paddy: Is it

Craig: it's less, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's less dark than it sounds. So Anyway, we were in Spain and one of [00:13:00] the, the, the shape of a walk and talk is we get like eight people. and Then we walk for a week together, and every night we do a three hour conversation about a single topic. and so one of the nights we did, I was like, how do you reconcile optimism in what seems like such a outwardly, you know, kind of negative moment in history, you know, or like where the, the long arc of, of justice is not bending necessarily in the right directions anymore.

And is it. Does it become like a privileged and somewhat amoral position to, to be overly optimistic in moments like this? So that was, that was sort of, right.

Paddy: Great question.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Paddy: God, I am not gonna sleep tonight.

Craig: well 'cause it's like, you see, you see Kevin is Kevin, well hold on, we can, we get to a good place.

Paddy: no, this, this, that's a, that's a fabulous, fabulous thing to noodle on. And so

Craig: so yeah, so

Paddy: did Kevin and the rest of the group think on that?

Craig: well Kevin is like, famously optimistic. Like he's just like maniacally [00:14:00] optimistic and the reason why that this question came up for me is just 'cause social media is so not optimistic and there is this kind of, you know, hyper. Extreme kind of left sort of position where if you are overly optimistic, you are not recognizing the plight of, you know, or the, the struggles of everyone in the world right now, right? So I was kind of just thinking of it from that perspective and really great takeaways from this discussion. First of all, don't think of optimism as a position, think of it as a tool.

So it's just a tool for making decisions. So it's like you're gonna make a decision what is gonna drive that decision about like what your next action is? And it's like you can either think about getting to a better place and trying to make decisions push us a little further in that direction.

So I, you know, I think there's a difference between just blind optimism where you're just saying, oh, everything's gonna be okay and everything's gonna be fine, or whatever. That's not what using the tool of optimism is about. And then pessimism, uh, is actually really interesting to frame it as a self-soothing mechanism.

Paddy: When I think of pessimism, I would [00:15:00] not use the descriptor of self soothing there. So explain that to me.

Craig: right. So the framing is, uh, everything's going to hell, but at least I'm right.

Paddy: Oh,

Craig: Yeah,

Paddy: you've won because you are taking the moral high ground,

Craig: yeah. You've won because you see the truth and the truth is terrible. But for me, this was a really useful conversation to have and I think it, it, it clarified like kind of where I stand with, with most of this stuff too, I'm a realist who uses the tool of optimism to like drive a lot of my decision making. But I'm, I'm a, I'm an extreme, I'd say I'm, I'm maybe to a fault, a realist in a lot of ways. Um, which makes maybe sometimes what I say feel more negative than I intend, intended to be.

Just because I feel like I'm acknowledging that there is a lot of stuff that isn't great right now. You know? Or like I come from a background where I've witnessed. The failure of a lot of systems and people struggling through a lot of pain from a place where most people never are able to get out of or leave or, you know, sort of rise to a different station in life.

[00:16:00] Um, and so having seen that, that also makes me an extreme realist. And it also makes me feel like, uh, going to bat for folks who are in those positions because I can empathize with them is really important for me.

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Getting out there and doing a 40 day walk helps reframe you in the context of nature, other people the world, what you're capable of as a single entity, which is like exciting to feel that. , And also I think it, it connects back to, uh, where we came from and who we were a long, long time ago, in terms of like walking out of Africa essentially, and why, you know, why we may have done that.

It's because it feels so good to go on a great big walk. We're almost programmed to reward ourselves. Or to be rewarded for doing those sorts of things. And I think that that's feeling of smallness is really important in the grand scheme of nature. And I think that's, that for me, that's spirituality.

That, that defines a spiritual experience is feeling the smallness in the grandness of things

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It also just chemically balances you. I mean, if you're doing, if you're doing 30, 40 KA day for, [00:17:00] for 40 days, you're put into a a totally different mode of operating. Your, your system is just kicked. Like, it's almost impossible to be pessimistic, uh, or depressed when you're doing something like that.

Paddy: Well, you have rules around walking.

Craig: Yeah.

Paddy: What are they?

Craig: Yeah. Because I don't wanna, I'm not gonna, I don't wanna do, I don't wanna do 30 K and then not get the most out of it. I gotta, I gotta ring every little, you know. Drip of goodness if I'm walking 30 K. no social media, no news, no podcast, no teleporting essentially is like the, the blanket rule.

So you have, you have to be in the moment. You have to be present. You can't have your phone out doing some other thing that takes you away from where you are.

Paddy: You have a couple rules that, , really stand out to me. , One of them is that. You avoid transportation because, quote, a lot of interesting things happen in the interstitial, boring areas between good and suboptimal walking spaces.

What do you mean by good and suboptimal, and can you give me some examples?

Craig: So a lot of [00:18:00] people when they're like, oh man, I walked the Nakasendo. what they did was they walked like 15 K between these two towns called Magome and Tsumago, which are both beautiful towns that have kind of been almost like Disneyland esque, preserved from the Edo period to a certain degree.

They were kind of rebuilt and, you know, whatever. And like power lines are underground and the roads are paved really nicely. And, so walking something like that, walking those bits is obviously very comfortable. But these old historical roads, which, you know, 200 years ago would've been almost the entire way, I think quite.

Comfortable, you know, dirt, you know, tree lined, lots of shade, lots of great shops along the way. Tea shops, you know, you can get, uh, pounded rice, uh, treats. You can, you know, there was a lot of prostitution apparently. That was what everyone was doing. So it was like, you know, you're like sexually pleasured along the way.

So, I mean, there was just, there was, there was,

Paddy: It's got everything you need.

Craig: it's got no, I mean, I

Paddy: You got food, you got tea. You got a little, he he

Craig: Yeah, exactly. [00:19:00] So I,, i'm just giving you history

Paddy: Yeah, totally.

Craig: telling you the history. Uh, so, you know, 200, 200 years ago it was just pure pleasure the whole way, you know, gluttony and Yeah, everything. And, um, and so, but those, you know, those roads became the prototypes for like modern roads and then those modern roads there a lot of, you know, obviously you didn't need all that infrastructure because people weren't walking it anymore.

And then you, you have everything kind of coalesces around big cities, and then you have suburbs and then you have kinda like dead zones. And so the suboptimal walking bits of, um, something like the Nakasendo are, you're just walking past pachinko gambling par par parlors for like two days. You know, it's just like, it's just like tractor trailers whizzing by and big box shops and there's just no, there's no real village or small business joy. So like the scale of hu the human Scale, this is gone. And I'd say that that is not fun to walk through.

\ that's what I mean by, walking spaces that feel really good. So it's a [00:20:00] human scale. This, are you meeting a lot of locals? Are you meeting people who are living? Can you feel the lives being lived along the route or not? That to me is like a really strong indicator of goodness. Um, and then from that, I, you know, I'm, I'm out there to talk to people.

I wanna meet people, I want to hear stories. I wanna, I'm collecting archetypes of, what does a good life look like? What are the different shapes of what defines a good life? And that's sort of what I'm trying to collect. And if you're in the middle of big box stores and Pachinko parlors all the time, uh, you lose that.

But, those are the boring bits. They're kind of little bit stressful bits, but I think it's important to, walk through them because if you drive through them, you just ignore 'em. You don't look at it, you don't think about it. You just, and you're kind of through it quickly. But if you walk through it, it forces you to contend with a certain, part of the contemporary condition, which is like.

We've done a lot of this crap all over the world, you know, 'cause I like big box hell looks like big box hell in, in America, you know, it's like the Dollar Store. Dollar General is arguably a sort of cancer, you know, it's like a commercial cancer that just eats Walmart was maybe the original. It destroys small, [00:21:00] local, businesses.

And in that, in that sense, it, it's sort of a community killer. So, I think it's sometimes important to like look at that directly.

Paddy: Would you say the rules help you? Realize or continue to check that there's no such thing as an interstitial moment because either everything is sacred or nothing is sacred.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think the challenge of finding sacredness in, I. Pachinko parlors is important. I, I do. 'cause it's like you want, everyone wants to ignore it, you know, or walking through, uh, you know, more kind of impoverished industrial areas. It's like if you wanna know the country for real, you have to touch those spaces. from. Um, as,

Paddy: The walking then is an investigation of your own and just humanity in general. And so is that why you have other rules? Like you've gotta take a portrait before 10:00 AM um, you have to film five minutes of [00:22:00] nothing exciting happening, you have to record five minutes of audio. Do you impose those rules to investigate your own humanity within this, or just others in general?

Can you give me examples of this?

Craig: yeah. I mean, I, I, a lot of these creative rules, the portraits, the recordings, it's just a way to, to, to create structure around days that would otherwise be, just walking from morning to night. And it's, they're also meant to be kind of warmup exercises, uh, around looking. So the, the portrait thing is really powerful because you can go a day.

Without taking that risk of, you know, actually, you know, asking a stranger to take their photo is kind of daunting in a, in a way.

Paddy: incredibly intimate question to ask

Craig: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, and you're just putting yourself up to get rejected, you know, so that's like a big element of it. It's like, okay, yeah, you can ask this question, but like, chances are they may say no.

Most likely they'll send you, they'll, they'll say no. but oftentimes they don't. And that's that I, there's an energy that comes outta that, a positivity and so you [00:23:00] start to get these kind of interesting stories outta people really quickly. And that's inspiring. I get so much energy out of those interactions because, don't know, they just signal that potential that, you know, living in Tokyo where I won't talk to strangers.

you know, for the most part. Just because you get, you kind of like end up in your little bubble and out on the road doing the walks, having those rules, , is sort of a reinforcement mechanism. You just over and over and over and over again, you have these archetypical experiences and then you just be, you learn to believe in them., The walks have taught me, I mean, in such a powerful way that every day is an opportunity to connect and hear these stories and find these kind of moments of incredible delight, heightened delight, almost like spiritual delight.

And it all costs nothing. It's all like, it's that, that's what's these, these experiences are accessible to anybody at any time. Um, but if you don't have the rules, you might not start. Taking the steps to kind of catalyze some of them. So like the portrait rule, I, I would easily go for a week without taking a portrait, but because I had that rule, it's like, okay, great, it's almost 10:00 AM Oh my God, I haven't taken a photo of someone.

Let me just grab this old [00:24:00] lady on the side of the road. Hey, can I take your picture? You know, that sort of thing. And it doesn't matter if the photo's good or not, you know, you try to take a good picture, but it's just about that the, the act of unsticking yourself and then remembering, oh wow.

Yeah, that's right. I can just talk, I can literally talk to anyone I'm passing on the street and have a potentially really interesting experience or, uh, interaction. And, and yeah, you bring that back to your day to day.

Paddy: Has the walking made you a better person?

Craig: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. For sure.

Paddy: kinder, softer, more vulnerable? What do you think?

Craig: Oh, just, you know, more observant in the world, like just a, a, a sharper sense of, , attention control, that's a big part of being a good human is just, you know, controlling your attention. It's controlling the locus of attention throughout your body. You can kind of move your , it's like the cursor of attention throughout your body. And, you know, controlling your attention is a way of controlling your emotions.,

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PADDYO VO

More from Craig Mod lover of long walks after the break.

MIDROLL MIDROLL MIDROLL

Paddy: What's interesting to me, is, a lot of what you're walking seems to be about [00:25:00] is the examination of otherness, right? About those around you, about the culture that's surrounding you. And to me, your new book things Become Other Things is notably different because it seems that you turned more inward in this walk or the walk helped you turn more inward.

Things become other things is about a 300 mile walk you set out for in May of 2021, along Japan's thousand year old pilgrimage routes and through depopulating villages, and you've described it as transformative. Can you first describe the route, the terrain, how long the walk was, time, distance-wise, like day to day?

Can you first just give me the visceral details of the walk and why you set out for it?

Craig: Yeah, so it's on the Kii peninsula. So which is where the Kumano Kodo, UNESCO heritage routes are. , And this is the peninsula south of Kyoto Osaka. So if you look at like Kyoto and Osaka map, there's like a, a bit of land below [00:26:00] south of them, and it looks kinda like the dangling penis of Japan. That's kind of how, that's the easiest way to picture

Paddy: Uh huh.

Craig: it's Honshu's dangling penis. It's also the most moist, part of earth in some ways. so it's the moist dangling penis and I'm sure you've had other people say moist dangling penis on your

Paddy: I, if I had five bucks for every moist dangling penis comment I had on this show, man, I would be a billionaire

Craig: it's hard to get to, it's because it's hard to get to. A lot of the spiritual history wasn't, uh, kind of scrubbed away in with modernism and with certain contemporary laws. So there's a sync syncretism between Buddhism and Shinto that's still present on the peninsula, and that's one of the reasons why it got UNESCO World Heritage Listing. And there's all these roots. They all connect at this one place called Hongu, the main shrine. and it looks like a spider web kind of coming out from Hongu.

And I'd done little bits and pieces, this one, that one, the other one, this, you know, twice, 3, 4, 5, [00:27:00] 6, 7 times this one, whatever. And I, it was the middle of COVID peak. COVID. Japan's totally locked down. . Lockdown in the sense like people couldn't come into the country. So it was, it was almost like going back to the Edo period where foreigners were not allowed into the, in the borders, And yet there's no restrictions. and so I was like, okay, I want to go back to the peninsula. There was a few route that I hadn't touched fully.

And so my goal was to just kind of like connect lot of these spaces between route that I hadn't been to and like to kind of just do a big walk. So I, it was 30 days the height of COVID. I just wanted to get out and move my body and just be, back in the world. And it was in that kind of bizarre denuded. Of human state, you know, 'cause everyone was sort of inside, of walking the peninsula that, yeah, I did start to reflect back on, childhood and this childhood friendship in particular and just thinking about why am I here?

I'm 41 years old. Why am I doing all these huge walks alone in Japan? Like, this is a pretty weird thing. And so the COVID walk, because of that kind of silence and I think just the energy of the world at that time, it made for a really [00:28:00] self-reflective moment. And that's what's in the book.

Paddy: the book is beautiful. It's poetic in both. Its photos and its prose, and you do this incredible job of, digging into emotions and also releasing the tension of those emotions with highbrow bathroom humor at times. Like, which as a never ending 14-year-old, I just can't tell you how much I appreciate that.

and it reads almost as journal entries and letters to your friend Brian. And so in that way, the reader almost gets to be,, in the corner secretively reading your journal, but also gets put into this place of we are Brian. Now. I don't want to give away the book to our listeners, but what about this walk made it so transformative? What felt different

Craig: The COVID part of it was a big part of it. But also, you know, the peninsula is not wealthy. It's a blue collar, working class, blue collar place. [00:29:00] So it's like everyone's a fisherman or logger or farmer. Um, it's very salt of the earth and. A lot of the industries have have left, like they have, you know, in many countries all over the world, and, walking through an environment like that where it is socioeconomically depressed and yet there isn't violence, there isn't drug abuse

the people who are left are taken care of to a certain degree. Like you feel social systems in place to support these people. Like, it's not perfect. Of course it's not perfect and like, you know, people die alone and like there's, you know, these kind of weird, you know, like a body will just be in a house for.

A month and you know, then someone will finally smell it and you'll be like, oh, I think, you know, you know, Takahashi Sun's dead now. You know, it's like that. There's, there's some lonely, weird stuff that happens, but for the most part, there, there's way, way, way more, uh, support sort of implicitly ambiently, than the town I grew up in, which was also sort of a post-industrial, you know, driven by airplane engine factory.

A lot of jobs through that, um, kind of place where the, those jobs were disappearing when I was a kid. And what was [00:30:00] replaced was not, any kinda social safety net, any kind of like, protection from the government, from the state. Uh, it was violence, and that was either through, parents kind of being, , abusive to their kids.

So you had like this kind of bully culture, so the sons would be kind of like weird bully figures. And the daughters were, you know, I remember going to middle school, getting to middle school, seventh grade, and um, everyone was just talking about how much sex was happening in the bathrooms of middle school.

You're just like, whoa. That's, that's intense. Yeah. Yeah. That's like, you know, thinking back on that this kind of. Violence, either manifesting in actual violence or being driven to sort of, sexual activity as like a response to the violence or response to sort of, uh, the lack of resources or whatever, or archetypes, positive archetypes. so having these two different models of , what can exist in a socioeconomically depressed environment?

just got me thinking more and more, especially during COVID, where there are fewer people. And I was kind of in this place of solitude walking the peninsula, about why [00:31:00] Japan was like this and why the place I came from wasn't. And um, and, and so then it becomes this letter, uh, to Brian. The whole book is sort of framed as a letter to Brian. And we had these kind of very dramatically different, uh, outcomes, you know, and whatever. It's like, it's sort of a spoiler, but it's all, but it's important to kind of, I think, recognize what happens to Brian. So it's like, you know, first grade we're standing side by side. We are equals like on every measure, we're best friends all through elementary school and then I test a little better.

And so I get like incrementally put into slightly better environments inside this already not optimal environment. He doesn't test as well. Um, his parents can't help him out as much with homework, blah, you know, blah, blah, blah. And he kind of goes in a different direction. You kind of keep pushing him more and more in a violent direction.

As soon as we graduate, I'm like, okay, I need to just get as far away as possible. I need to run to the other side of the earth. And like that was kind of my response to the violence. and the lack of kind of support in the town. And then a week after we graduate, uh, he's at a party, he gets murdered, you know, and that was sort of, uh, his [00:32:00] outcome.

And so, you know, we have two kids, first grade, side by side and by the end of high school we are both, responding to this violent environment, that doesn't feel, uh, supported in, I'd say equally. Kind of extreme ways. And so again, that was like, I'm 41, why am I doing these like 30 day walks alone in the middle of nowhere Japan?

Like, that's a very weird, like, let's be honest, that's, that's a, that's a weird thing to do.

Paddy: yeah,

Craig: if you're, if you're a grounded, uh, grounded, healthy person, you're not doing this. You just aren't. Like there's a trauma that drives someone to go do that. And um, I was just reflecting on that kind of the bizarre, that bizarre trauma and like my response to trauma was in my twenties to drink myself into the ground.

And then in my thirties to start finding like healthier ways through physical activity. And so the walks are be becoming this kinda apotheosis of like response. Whereas Brian, on the other end, it was like a more violent response.

He just didn't have these archetypes or didn't have the, the grades or the resources to get out of town. And that led to, to death, you know, really 17 years [00:33:00] old, uh, being murdered. It's kinda stupid. So. I don't know, just, just that environment, the circumstances, the peninsula itself, this socioeconomic kind of vibes of that place, all that together, made me think back on, on that friendship and where we came from in a way that I've wanted to for essentially, you know, almost 30 years, but didn't have the, the guts or the skills to really do so.

PAUSE PAUSE PAUSE

Paddy: What about the physical act of walking allowed you to access really this like traumatic event and memories in potentially a safe way?

Craig: well, I, I think that those boring, that boringness, you know, of the, of the long days where you're not teleporting, , and forcing you to turn towards those uncomfortable places. In our day to day, when we have one millisecond of downtime where it could be potentially we feel boredom swooping in, you just grab the phone immediately and you're doing more Candy Crush or whatever.

It's like we, we, you know, we, any uncomfortable emotion now is mitigated by. [00:34:00] The, you know, the soma of, uh, of our smartphones or whatever, infinite connectivity. So when you take that away and yet you're not just sitting in your house, you know, like, I don't know, what's the, the classic stoner thing is like, you're sitting in your house, you're smoking weed all day, and like kind of a depressive state playing video games or whatever.

Like, when you're not doing that, when you're doing this elevating activity, which is like, you know, a 30 K walk is gonna elevate you, it's gonna make you feel good, like you've accomplished something. Even if you've done nothing else that day, you've walked 30 k and your body rewards you chemically for doing that.

So you're, you're sort of in a, in a more, I'd say optimistic place. A more positive place. And so when these. Complex emotions and memories emerge. You're able to turn to them, I think, in a more compassionate way. And Without walking, I wouldn't have been able to do that.

Paddy: In the pages of your book, in these scenes, I kept thinking of this Portuguese word, suadade or suadade. if you know it. , There's not an exact English translation, but it loosely translates to the love that remains, [00:35:00] and I understand it as, uh, a deep emotional longing that lingers through the passage of non-linear time.

It's the present and memory and emotions and nostalgia and melancholy all wrapped up into one thing, one kind of buzzing thing. It's both joy and sadness at the same time. To me, your book is dripping with this. Do you think walking in this particular walk puts you in that state, into that feeling?

Craig: Yeah. I mean,

it's interesting to think about how much of the, how much of the walking is, is sitting in kind of a, that sort of in Japanese would be like, almost like Natsukashii is like a similar word

Paddy: What does that translate

Craig: not basically what you just said. I mean, it's sort of, it feels, it feels like it occupies. It's not a hundred percent, but close to that it's sort of, it's nostalgia, but with extra layers added onto it.. That longing for the thing that hasn't even disappeared I think if you look [00:36:00] at our catalog of, of human emotions that state of recognition of. The beauty of it, of things, the fleeting beauty of it. Um, you know, Japan does a lot of that just in terms of, obviously Buddhist influence of like non materialism and, uh, you know, we're all gonna die and things disappear.

I think Japan, being in Japan itself kind of trains you to, to enter that register.

Paddy: Specifically in this walk, does it tap you into an emotional state and at the same time, a creative state that you otherwise could not have entry to?

Craig: I, I would, I wouldn't say, I wouldn't go so far to say you could not have entry to it. What I think it does is it just makes the entry way easier and. it almost removes the onus on you to generate or find the entrance to it, to that emotional state. And by just doing the walking itself. So it's, it's almost like this, um, like a side glance at the, at that state, you know?

So it's like if you look directly at it, you can't get in there, or it's hard to get in, or it's like just hard to, it's, you know, just to sit down and like, work with all this, this crap going on and shit buzzing and whatever. But when you start walking, it's [00:37:00] almost like this wormhole into it. Um, that's much easier to enter, you know?

'cause it's just like, okay, I'll just move. I just gotta move my feet, go to that direction, don't look at my phone. And you get there, you just enter that state. So it's sort of a hack to get there. I, I wouldn't say it's only accessible through walking, but I'd say that walking makes it a lot easier to, to feel it and inhabit that state.

And then when you're not walking, it's easier to get there because you kind of know what it's like to be there, if that makes sense.

Paddy: Well, in this specific journey, in your walk of the Kii Peninsula, what thing within you became a other thing? What was transformed within and about you?

Craig: I mean, I think recognition of that friendship, and being able to, turn to it with I think a lot of compassion, you know, and it's like, and the book is sort of like sly political. I mean, it's like, it's, it's kind of political without being didactic about it, but it's like, I'm just telling our story. You know, I'm just talking about how we grew up.

And I, you read that and you go. Uh, well, we should do better as a society to not [00:38:00] have these kids grow up like this. Like I think that's just implicit in the descriptions, but there's no blame being placed on say, any of the local actors, you know? And it's like the town isn't to blame and, you know, the families, the parents aren't to blame.

And it just kind of, um, I think this recognition of trauma, being passed down, what you see and what you all, you know, you know, and that makes your world tiny. And I think, you know, it's like you look at your parents and you look at their parents and like my dad for example, is just like layers and layers of like kind of abusive fathers before him.

And so it's like, how can you expect this guy to even. Have a sense, like the smallest sense of what to do, as a, as a quote unquote good dad. And then as I've gotten older and I've met these kind of incredible archetypes of really great fathers, it's freaked me out about how bereft that, that experience with like this father was.

The impulses that you want to kind of carry a kind of anger towards that. I think a lot of people carry resentment or whatever, but for me, um, it isn't that, I think it's just this compassionate understanding is what's come out of it. You know this book I've [00:39:00] worked on for four years, so it's like four years of your life, I'm kind of sitting with these stories or emotions being able to, to sit with those things and come out out the other side.

recognizing and hopefully honoring the, that that friendship I had with Brian, uh, and his position in my childhood as this really important figure, Probably the most important figure. I, I can't really imagine anyone else who, I had nearly that sort of connection with. and being able to like, kind of thank him for that.

and have a certain amount of closure, I think on this, this wound that was there. 'cause when you're 17, you don't know how to process murder. and I spent years trying to poke that thing that was that box of emotions around him getting murdered. And, uh, I would try to write about it here or there. And then finally it was with this project, this book that it was like, okay, I think. We've waited long enough and we've done enough work on ourself, and we kind of understand the world in a way, in a holistic way that I think allows us to do justice to the memory and the, and, and what [00:40:00] happened,

that couldn't have existed.

That couldn't, it just couldn't have existed otherwise, it couldn't have happened otherwise.

Paddy: So it sounds like to me that the walk and then the work, the writing, that, that became the book, these things led to a sense of peace, even forgiveness.

Craig: Yeah. Well, just understanding, uh, you know, just this elevated state of like, okay, where does the blame lie for these environments? And recognizing that it isn't an an individual decision, you know, it's the, the people of, uh, a town that is economically impoverished and resource. Bereft did not choose that.

You know, and so it's like this, this American, uh, idea of, oh, you just have to fix it yourself, or it's your fault. The situation you're in is psychotic, right? That's like a psychotic way of, um, thinking about things for so many, so many environments. And so being able to get to a place where I recognize that and can kind of, I think, articulate that, uh, was really powerful.

[00:41:00] And, um, you know, I'm glad I I, I'm glad I got there on the, on the other side.

PAUSE PAUSE PAUSE

Paddy: In relation to your walks and the writing that comes from it, you've said there is a place in the world that looks and feels like this, given a little gumption, similar places can probably be found near wherever you may be. How can I, how can the audience listening find our own big walks, like the ones that you write about in our own worlds?

Craig: The real. Critical thing is to to be offline, to kind of put the phone away, to not be on social media, to not read the news, um, to, to do that.

And then also not do it at the end of the day either. So in the walk, but also when the day's done, have a notebook, have a book that you just sit with. And if you can't take a week or take 10 days or take two weeks or whatever, um, the next best thing you can start to do to cultivate this, this awareness, sense of awareness or control, is get your [00:42:00] phone out of the bedroom.

I'm sure most listeners sleep with a phone right next to their bed. Don't do that. Get the phone outta the bedroom. And put it in a place where you won't see it in the morning either. So it's like you wake up and try to get to lunch without touching your phone and, uh, that will.

Be a good first step. And then when you do a walk, you know, start with your neighborhood. If, if that's something you haven't done before, and put the phone away. Don't walk with the phone or put it in your backpack if you want to have it for emergencies. But, um, don't have it readily available. Like you have to dig for it if you're gonna, if you're gonna walk around with it.

Uh, you know, just the very easy first steps.

Paddy: Well, in terms of finding big walks, quotes around big, whatever we deem big, what's the big why here? what will walks do for us? What should we be looking for when we're out there and how do we find it?

Craig: These are great questions. My goal is Maxim is to like get the, as many full days as possible. So to ring the most fullness out of a day as humanly possible. You know, so like you get in bed at the end of the day and you're just like, holy crap. That was like, there [00:43:00] was no more fullness.

I could have had that that day. And I think if you're candy crushing all day, you don't feel that. So it's like if that, that's the opposite. Like what if you candy crushed all day, sat on the couch, whatever that is, you're trying to get to the opposite of that. And, until you understand what a full day feels like, it's hard to believe in it, and it's hard to reach for it.

And. Once you do understand what a full day feels like, and you do it over and over and over and over again, you start to imprint that on your neurons and your shape of your brain changes around fullness. You start to feel the things in your life that take away from that. I think you become more sensitive to it.

And again, it's like sort of almost like an attention focused thing. And, um, once, once you become attuned to that, when even when you're not doing the big walks or when you're not doing these attention slash fullness focused activities, , you're able to say no to more of the pernicious crap that kind of invades our life.

You know, or like the chaos of social media or whatever. You're able to kinda turn away from that. what I like about the, the term fullness is like that can take whatever shape. It needs to for you. So a full day for you might be like family related [00:44:00] stuff or kids stuff.

You know, it's like, it might just be like, you know, literally just like spending 10 hours with your son or daughter, you know, and just like looking at the world or reading books or doing whatever that is, that could be, that could be for you, like the most full thing possible. Or it might be as an artist or creator, like getting three or four incredible hours of deep focused, you know, flow state work in like that could, that could be it.

And then you're done. Great. You're done for the day. Everything else is a bonus. But at the end of the day you can go, okay, I got the fullest bit of that as possible out. And you know, I think like to get, you know, metaphysical, spiritual or whatever, like the pur, like the greatest respect you can have for our consciousness, like this weird miracle of consciousness is to just, is to get that fullness.

It's to, to be like, alright, I did for me, you know, this weird chemical configuration that defines me. Whatever that is, the things that I feel drawn to, I was able to give my full heart and attention and, and soul and like gaze of the day to that thing. and I can say [00:45:00] without any qualification that that was the most I could do today.

That was great. Let's do that again tomorrow. You know, the shape of your days is the shape of your life. It's just like, that's all we're aiming for. And for me, big walks, big crazy walks in the middle of nowhere alone, like a psychopath. Uh, that for me was, is my training ground for understanding this, for understanding, understanding what that fullness feels like, because I'd never had anything close to that, uh, in my life up until I started doing this.

So that's the goal.

MUSIC IN THE CLEAR FOR A BEAT

Paddy: So it's time for the final ramble. One piece of gear you cannot live without.

Craig: The chicken fingers.

Paddy: Chicken

Craig: one, one, no. One piece of gear. Chicken figures for everything. I can't. Uh, I'm so nervous. I'm so nervous. I can't do it. I can't do it. Uh, what do I, uh, what do I say? How do I, uh, what are words? I'm gonna cheat. I'm gonna say global positioning.

Satellites pretty good.

Paddy: pretty damn good. Best outdoor snack.

Craig: A Yōkan,

Paddy: [00:46:00] What is that?

Craig: which It's a weird, it's a very old Japanese snack that is kind of like a fruit rollup if you condensed it into a rectangular block. so I don't, I actually don't know what it's made of,

Paddy: what is your hottest outdoor hot take?

Craig: Oh god. My hot take is mountain bikers, mountain biking, down mountain pilgrimage Paths should be shot in the face. They should be shot dead in the face.

Paddy: is there a way that you could say that that is potentially PG 13 and not, uh, eighties? R.

Craig: Uh, they should be shot in the thigh. Should be, I think mountain bikers, mountain biking, down mountain pilgrimage paths. And I'm just gonna, I'm just saying I've only seen white guys doing this. I've never seen a Japanese guy do this. There's, there seems to be a white guy, uh, sort of impulse to do this.

I think they should be, uh, I think they should be [00:47:00] jailed. Uh, in solitary confinement for like a couple years. That's what I think the punishment should be.

Paddy: That is a spicy take. I I wanted the spice. You gave me the spice. I appreciate

Craig: murdered, murdered, or jailed of the two.

MUSIC IN THE CLEAR FOR A BEAT

PADDYO OUTRO VO:

Craig Mod is one of the most fascinating people I've ever chatted with. He's a tech genuis, a writer, photgrapher, and a walker of many many maaaany kilometers. His latest book, Things Become Other Things, is avaialble everywhere. You should find it and buy it. It is beautiful. You can check out more of Craig's work on his website Craig Mod dot com. And follow him on Instagram at Craig Mod.

 And sidenote, dear listeners, do you know how much we love you? So much. So much that we want to hear about your guest nominations, show reactions, and any and all pod [00:48:00] thoughts. So email us at �����ԹϺ��� Podcast At �����ԹϺ��� Inc Dot Com. Afterall, we are making this show for you and your ear holes...and your heart too.

The �����ԹϺ��� Podcast is hosted and produced by me, Paddy O'Connell. But you can call me PaddyO. The show is also produced by the storytelling wizard, Micah "Grumble Grumble Smile Grumble Grumble" Abrams. Music and Sound Design by Robbie Carver. And booking and research by Maren Larsen.

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