Bewildered

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Bewildered

Martha Beck and Rowan Mangan

What if we stopped listening to the controlling voice of the culture around us, and instead learned to reconnect with our own true nature? Sometimes we aren’t even sure why we feel so bewildered… and discontented… and even downright miserable. Often it’s because we have let the forces of society replace our own instinctive knowledge of what is right for us. Now, it’s time for us to find that voice again—before it’s too late. For Martha and Rowan, Job One is to live according to our deepest truths, making the commitment to feeling good even when it means looking weird. We believe that this is how we will reinvent our world—from the inside out— to create a society that’s kinder, more equitable, and more ecologically sustainable than the one we see around us right now. This is the vision that we laugh and stumble and chat and feel our way towards here on this podcast. Did we mention LAUGH? We want no part of personal and global transformation if it isn’t fun! So if you struggle to find a place where people who are as idealistic and brokenhearted, as silly and deeply sincere, as bewildered as you are—you might have just arrived. Welcome!

1 hour 42 seconds

Why We Need Your Art with Amie McNee and James Winestock
Did you know that the world needs your art?

On this special episode of Bewildered, our friends Amie McNee and James Winestock join us to talk about Amie's new book, We Need Your Art—and why your creativity matters now more than ever.

In this rollicking conversation, we discuss how making art is a revolutionary act, why art is needed in unprecedented times, and what it means to stay soft amid the hardness of the culture.

If you've been looking for a spark to light your creativity, this episode is for you!

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14 May 2025, 5:00 am
52 minutes 41 seconds

Out-Kind the Culture
Kindness. Our culture often frames it as something weak, naive, foolish, or passive—and there’s a reason for that. If we stay “nice” and subscribe to the culture’s idea of kindness, then we stay obedient and easier to control.

So in this episode of Bewildered, we get ultra-revolutionary around kindness. We’re talking about the most radical type of kindness—kindness toward one’s self—and how it’s a force that can change our cultural systems of cruelty to create the revolution we want. Come join us!

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30 April 2025, 5:00 am
52 minutes 44 seconds

How to Train Your Human
At the beginning of this game called life, we each get a human—a body that we get to steer through the world.

In this episode of Bewildered, we’re talking about the idea of “training your human”—because you are not your body, mind, or personality, but rather a consciousness that inhabits your human form.

If you can gently guide your human instead of forcing it to conform to culture, then your human can thrive while still being able to function in the world.

Want to learn how? Tune in and find out!

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16 April 2025, 5:00 am
1 hour 3 minutes

War of the Worldviews
Have you ever been drawn into conspiratorial thinking?

In this Episode 99 of Bewildered, we’re talking about how easy it is to get pulled into conspiracy theories because of a phenomenon called apophenia. It's the tendency to perceive connections or meaningful patterns between unrelated or random things—and it happens to feel delightful.

Want to learn more about apophenia, conspiracy theories, fractured worldviews, and how we can all come to our senses? Join us for this episode of the Bewildered podcast!

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2 April 2025, 5:00 am
46 minutes 11 seconds

Your Money or Your Life
“Your money, or your life.” Those two things are very, very different, but in our culture, they tend to get blended together. That’s what we’re talking about on this episode of Bewildered.

We explore how our culture is so focused on money it’s practically a religion. And how for many of us, this obsession with money can become an addiction because “you can never get enough of something that almost works.”

Want to try shifting your central focus away from money and work? Join us for the full episode!

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19 March 2025, 5:00 am
57 minutes 49 seconds

Clamor and Birdsong
Noise. It’s ever-present in our culture, and often it affects us in ways we don’t even realize.

In this episode of Bewildered, we explore how different sounds impact the nervous system—from disrupting sleep to interfering with brain waves to triggering fear in the amygdala—and what we can do to heal. (Hint: Birdsong is a powerful antidote!)

Tune in for the full conversation to learn about the physiological and emotional effects of noise and how to regain your equilibrium in an increasingly noisy world.

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5 March 2025, 6:00 am
38 minutes 46 seconds

Stand By for Further Instructions
This is a spicy time in history, and in between bouts of fear, we’ve been thinking about how to navigate through potentially dark and dangerous times.

Want to know our go-to strategy? Trusting our intuition!

In this episode of Bewildered, we talk about how intuition is heightened during uncertain and chaotic times, and how to recognize the messages your intuition is trying to send you. (Hint: It involves curiosity, synchronicities, and inexplicable joy.)

Tune in for the full episode to find out more!

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19 February 2025, 6:00 am
1 hour 5 minutes

You Have One Missed Call From Destiny
Intuition is like a call from destiny that we often miss because we're always "on the other line" with culture.

In this episode of Bewildered, Martha and Ro explore the concept of intuition and how to connect with it amidst all the noise of our cultural conditioning.

They talk about how to tell the difference between intuition and anxiety, the reasons we tend to ignore intuition, and how to hang up with culture so you can listen to the messages your intuition is trying to tell you. Don't miss it!

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5 February 2025, 6:00 am
52 minutes 31 seconds

How Not Anxious?
Martha and Ro are back with another episode of Bewildered, and it's a follow-up to their "Why So Anxious?" episode. This time they're talking about how not to be anxious, and why moving beyond anxiety is linked to creativity, your life’s purpose, and building a better society.

You'll learn ways to retrain your brain to have a completely different experience of being human in community—and how lowering anxiety can help us all create a more beautiful, more just world together.

Give it a listen!

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22 January 2025, 6:00 am
48 minutes 44 seconds

Why So Anxious?
Do you suffer from the odd bit of anxiety?

In this Bewildered, Martha and Ro are talking about Martha's new book Beyond Anxiety, which examines the causes of anxiety, its prevalence in our culture, and tried-and-true ways to overcome it.

Martha says that moving more activity into the right sides of our brains is the only way to conquer anxiety—and the first step to getting there is curiosity.

Tune in to hear more about cultivating curiosity to step out of anxiety and into a life of creativity and calm.

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8 January 2025, 6:00 am
46 minutes 36 seconds

Best of Bewildered: How to Get Started
In this Best of Bewildered episode, Martha and Ro answer a question from listener Josephine, who's trying to understand and overcome her resistance to doing things that are good for her.

The culture tells us that if something is good for us, we should just do it! Otherwise, we need to punish ourselves.

There's only one problem with that: Punishments don't work.

To learn how Martha and Ro use kindness and creativity to get past inertia and move through transitions, be sure to listen to the full conversation!

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11 December 2024, 6:00 am
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