Best of Design Matters: Lulu Miller

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This episode of Design Matters originally appeared in August of 2025

**Lulu Miller** (0:06)
She finally looked at me and was just like, what are you doing here? Your questions aren't going to bring him back.
I didn't have an answer. And I remember driving back like 14 hours to New York through this thunderstorm, just thinking like, I don't have an answer. I don't have the like backbone. I don't have the like ethical compass to be doing this work. This microphone is too powerful and I have not grown up enough to hold it. And at that time, I was just like, I want out. I should never do this. I'm messing with people's lives. I'm making people feel worse. I don't belong here.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:40)
From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman.
On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on. On this episode, writer and radio host Lulu Miller talks about the conflicts in her career and about going deep into reporting.

**Lulu Miller** (1:04)
Literally smelling the pocket notebooks in his archives that I eventually visited that had been collecting the sweat near his heart. Like, I got intimate with this guy.

**Debbie Millman** (1:18)
Lulu Miller is a Peabody Award-winning journalist, an essayist, the co-host of Radiolab, and the founder of the podcast Terrestrials. She's also the co-founder of Invisibilia, the groundbreaking NPR show that explored the invisible forces that shape human behavior. Lulu is also a prolific writer, and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and Catapult. And her first book, Why Fish Don't Exist, was named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Washington Post, The Smithsonian, and so many others.
Known for her curiosity, her rigor, and unmistakable voice, Lulu's work blends science, philosophy, and personal storytelling in ways that make us rethink what we think we know about the world and about ourselves. Lulu Miller, welcome to Design Matters.

**Lulu Miller** (2:19)
Oh, Debbie, it's so nice to be here.

**Debbie Millman** (2:22)
So Lulu, I want to start with this question. It was very bewildering to me, actually. Is it true that your least favorite word in the world is cerulean?

**Lulu Miller** (2:32)
I hate it. I can't believe you found that random interview. Yes, I think cerulean is like the epitome of everything wrong with words. I think it is this overly fancy showy word for something that we all have access to, a beauty we all have access to, the sky, the color is one of my favorite things that is out there. And then this word, to me, it's just too fancy. And I get that maybe in a sort of the way it sounds, it kind of sounds like pools and cerulean. I do get little images in my head, but I just think it's too fancy and it just makes people feel bad who don't know what it means. And I hate that word when I see it.

**Debbie Millman** (3:21)
Do you hate the color?

**Lulu Miller** (3:22)
I love the color. I think it is one of the best colors. And that's probably why I feel so passionately about the word. And like if I hear someone using it, I try not to be judgy, but I judge. Who are you trying to shut out with that word? And what pedestal are you trying to put yourself on top of?
I really have beef with that word.

**Debbie Millman** (3:45)
Well, in the four-color printing process, we have a bunch of different colors, one of which is a word that I hate. But I also hate the color, which is cyan, very, very close cousins of cerulean.

**Lulu Miller** (3:58)
Yeah. Why do you hate that? Why do you hate the word?

**Debbie Millman** (4:01)
The name is so cyan.

**Lulu Miller** (4:05)
Yeah.

**Debbie Millman** (4:05)
Really ugly, ugly word.

**Lulu Miller** (4:07)
Well, to me, cyan, I don't know, the Y gives it a little shimmer. Like, I like the cyan anyway. It's so weird, these associations we bring.

**Debbie Millman** (4:15)
But I love that you have words that you love and hate. I do, too. And it's fun to be able to talk to that with somebody that doesn't think I'm weird.
Lulu, you grew up in Newton, Massachusetts. Your father was a science professor. Your mother was a professor of humanities. Not a surprise, you started writing at a very young age. And I read that you did this by taking reams of computer paper, this sort of old school, continuous accordion sheet with tear away perforations on the side, from your dad's computer to his printer, and wrote for hours without ever tearing the paper. So this long sheet of paper would emerge with your writing. How long did the accordion paper get?