How To Walk Through—And Away From—A Digital World, with Craig Mod

Outside Podcast

Sports, Wilderness

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 June 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Craig Mod may think in binary code, but he does so from the perspective of a visual artist. Mod is…well, a lot of things. He’s a writer, a photographer, and a digital media designer. And he’s likely influenced your life, even if you have never heard his name. Craig worked on massive digital platforms, like Medium and Flipboard, and has spent two decades as a tech start up consultant. But to make sure he can unplug from his computer-centric work, Craig walks. As in many, many, many kilometers-long multi-day walks, mostly on the ancient pilgrimage routes that crisscross his adopted home of Japan. Craig has turned these walks into several fascinating books. In his most recent book, Things Become Other Things, Craig took on a 300-mile trek through Japan’s ancient Kumano Kodō, which transformed into a meditation on his life, the forces that shape us all, and the power of slowly moving through nature in an increasingly distracting digital world.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode of The Outside Podcast is brought to you by Defender.
0:08.9	You know, the adventure-ready family of vehicles capable of carrying all your gear plus
0:14.7	eight humans to any and every rugged locale. Yeah, that defender. Well, in addition to being a world-class adventure
0:23.4	mobile, did you know that for the last five years, the Defender Service Awards presented by
0:28.8	Chase has celebrated nonprofits that positively impact their community? This year, winners are
0:34.7	awarded a custom Defender 130 and $30,000.
0:39.3	I know it's awesome.
0:41.3	What's even more awesome-er-est is that you, dear listeners, can submit a deserving organization from your community in one of five different categories,
0:51.3	including outdoor accessibility and education, which is presented by
0:55.7	your good friends here and outside. You've got until July 25th, so get to it. Learn more and
1:02.1	make nominations at Land Rover USA.com forward slash defender service awards. Vendor Service Awards.
1:21.2	This is the outside podcast with Paddyo. Things become other things. It's about a 300-mile walk you set out for in May of 2021
1:33.9	along Japan's thousand-year-old pilgrimage routes.
1:38.1	The book is beautiful.
1:39.3	You do this incredible job of digging into emotions and also releasing the tension of those emotions with
1:47.5	highbrow bathroom humor at times. Can you first describe the route, the terrain? Yeah, so it's on the
1:54.5	Key Peninsula, so which is where the Kumano-Kodo, UNESCO heritage roots are. And this is the
1:59.8	peninsula south of Kyoto, Osaka.
2:02.0	And it looks kind of like the dangling penis of Japan.
2:04.4	It's also the most moist part of earth in some ways.
2:07.1	So it's the moist dangling penis.
2:08.6	And I'm sure you've had other people say moist dangling penis on your show.
	...

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