Listen "Episode 289: Craig Mod"
Episode Synopsis
Craig Mod is a writer and photographer. His podcast is On Margins.
“You pick up an iPad, you pick up an iPhone—what are you picking up? You’re picking up a chemical-driven casino that just plays on your most base desires for vanity and ego and our obsession with watching train wrecks happen. That’s what we’re picking up and it’s counted in pageviews, because—not to be reductive and say that it’s a capitalist issue, but when you take hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital, and you’re building models predicated on advertising, you are gonna create fucked-up algorithms and shitty loops that take away your attention. And guess what? You need to engage with longform texts. You need control of your attention. And so I think part of what subverted our ability to find this utopian reading space is the fact that so much of what’s on these devices is actively working to destroy all of the qualities needed to create that space.”
Thanks to MailChimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
@craigmod
craigmod.com
Criag Mod on Longform
[01:15] Flipboard
[01:26] On Margins
[02:40] "Roden Explorer's Club," Craig Mod's Newsletter
[09:30] McSweeney’s
[20:30] "Embracing the Digital Book" (PRE/POST • April 2010)
[22:25] Books in the Age of the iPad (PRE/POST • 2012)
[25:30] Post Artifact Books & Publishing (PRE/POST • 2011)
[43:10] Primitive Technology
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
“You pick up an iPad, you pick up an iPhone—what are you picking up? You’re picking up a chemical-driven casino that just plays on your most base desires for vanity and ego and our obsession with watching train wrecks happen. That’s what we’re picking up and it’s counted in pageviews, because—not to be reductive and say that it’s a capitalist issue, but when you take hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital, and you’re building models predicated on advertising, you are gonna create fucked-up algorithms and shitty loops that take away your attention. And guess what? You need to engage with longform texts. You need control of your attention. And so I think part of what subverted our ability to find this utopian reading space is the fact that so much of what’s on these devices is actively working to destroy all of the qualities needed to create that space.”
Thanks to MailChimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
@craigmod
craigmod.com
Criag Mod on Longform
[01:15] Flipboard
[01:26] On Margins
[02:40] "Roden Explorer's Club," Craig Mod's Newsletter
[09:30] McSweeney’s
[20:30] "Embracing the Digital Book" (PRE/POST • April 2010)
[22:25] Books in the Age of the iPad (PRE/POST • 2012)
[25:30] Post Artifact Books & Publishing (PRE/POST • 2011)
[43:10] Primitive Technology
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
More episodes of the podcast Longform
Introducing "Origin Stories"
12/09/2025
Episode 585: John Jeremiah Sullivan
26/06/2024
Bonus: Mailbag
26/06/2024
Episode 584: Ta-Nehisi Coates
19/06/2024
Episode 583: Jay Caspian Kang
12/06/2024
Episode 582: Joseph Cox
05/06/2024
Episode 581: Tavi Gevinson
29/05/2024
Episode 580: Rachel Khong
22/05/2024
Episode 579: Kelsey McKinney
15/05/2024
Episode 578: Lissa Soep
08/05/2024
ZARZA We are Zarza, the prestigious firm behind major projects in information technology.