Ted Audio Collective.

When I am with other black women writers and they talk about what made the difference from them.

They talk about when they were girls and they read Tony Morrison.

When I was a girl, there was no Tony Morrison. From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Melman.

For 19 years, Debbie Melman has been talking with designers and other creative people about what they do,

how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on.

On this episode, Nell Irvin Painter talks about history and art.

As a historian, I knew what the values and the standards were. In art, I didn't.

Sometimes you can tell a lot about writers from the names of their books. Here are three titles by Nell Irvin

painter. Southern history across the color line. Creating Black Americans, African American History, and its meaning 1619 to the present,

and the history of white people.

Now Ervin Painter is a distinguished award-winning historian and she's written a lot about the

South in the 19th century and about race. She's also a retired professor emerita from Princeton University and by all rights she could be resting comfortably on her laurels

But she is not because she is also an artist.

The title of another of her books is Old in Art School, a memoir of starting over.

These two pursuits, history and art, come together beautifully in her brand new book,

I Just Keep Talking, A Life in Essays, which is punctuated throughout by images of her paintings.

Nell Irvin Painter, welcome to Design Matters.

Thank you so much Debbie.

I'm glad to be here.

I love the title of your podcast. Thank you.

Because design does matter. Yes it does. Yes it does. Yes it does. Now your parents fell in

...