AI Summary
5 min readOn the Ezra Klein Show, host Ezra Klein and designer Debbie Millman take on a question that has spawned dozens of essays, YouTube videos, and dinner-table complaints: Is the world getting uglier? Millman, a veteran brand designer and host of Design Matters, offers a precise diagnosis. She argues the problem is not just ugliness, but something worse: vulgarity. "Ugliness can be very intentional," she says. "Vulgar is accidental because it doesn't have intention." Nobody sets out to make something truly vulgar, but we are surrounded by it—from the imposing, blocky silhouette of the Cybertruck to the "abluviation" of houses being squeezed onto lots with no regard for proportion or neighborly space.
The Two Axes of Design: Feeling vs. Numbness
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of The Ezra Klein Show
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (00:54) **Is the World Getting Uglier?** - Ezra Klein introduces the core question, noting the tension between drab, standardized architecture and the right's garish, attention-grabbing theory of beauty. He introduces guest Debbie Millman, a graphic designer and host of *Design Matters*.
- 2 (07:08) **Why Design Makes Us Feel** - Millman traces the human relationship with symbols and design back to prehistoric times.
- 3 (12:04) **The Drab vs. The Vulgar** - Ezra contrasts two critiques of modern aesthetics: the world is getting uglier (vulgar) vs. the world is getting drabber (making you feel nothing).
- 4 (15:29) **The Attention Economy's Double Effect** - Ezra and Millman explore how the attention economy drives both sameness and vulgarity.
- 5 (20:36) **Design as Deliberate Intention** - Millman defines design as the communication of differentiation through manufactured meaning.
- 6 (26:58) **The Friction of Convenience** - The conversation shifts to the trade-off between frictionless convenience and meaningful experience.
- 7 (29:40) **The Cost of Beauty** - Ezra and Millman discuss the economic and class dimensions of the ugliness debate.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
President Trump and the modern right have a theory of beauty. You see it in Trump’s gilded Oval Office, his imagined arch and his executive order requiring classical and traditional styles for certain federal buildings.
This isn’t my theory of beauty, but it is a theory. And it’s a response, in part, to something that a lot of people have been feeling, and not just on the right: that the modern world is ugly, or getting uglier.
I’ve seen at least a dozen articles or videos over the last few years asking, “Is the world getting uglier?” They point to the drabness of new apartment blocks, the sameness of new cars and the reign of “greige” in homes and fashion.
So I’ve wanted to do an episode on this for a while. Why does the world seem to be getting uglier, or drabber? And at a moment when the right has a clear answer to this feeling, does the left have any answer at all?
Debbie Millman teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and hosts the long-running podcast “Design Matters,” where she talks to creative people about design. In her long career as a brand designer, she revamped the logos for companies like Burger King, 7 Up and Häagen-Dazs. She’s also written a number of books on design, and recently wrote an article for Time magazine, “Is the World Getting Uglier?”
Mentioned:
“Is the World Getting Uglier?” by Debbie Millman
“Why Is Everything So Ugly?” by n+1
“How Did The World Get So Ugly?” by Sheehan Quirke
Book Recommendations:
“The Voice That Is Great Within Us” by Hayden Carruth
“Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel García Márquez
“Ulysses” by James Joyce
“Hunger” by Roxane Gay
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].
You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at More from this podcast