Bewildered

Many of us buy into the cultural idea that there is only one way to parent, and if we do it correctly, things will turn out okay, and everyone will approve of us. But when grown children leave home, parents don’t get to keep the identity they held for so long, and that can feel scary. On this episode of Bewildered, Martha and Ro discuss the challenges of launching grown-up children and findi...

Can we be free from the culture if we still use language? That’s the question Martha and Ro discuss in this episode of Bewildered. While we are all encased in the language we learned as children, when we learn a new language, we become aware that language is arbitrary and always evolving—and no one language can give a complete picture. Listen to the full conversation for Martha and Ro’s entertaini...

Blowing up your life—why such violent imagery? Martha and Rowan say it’s because the culture is so powerful you need an explosion to break out of it!  On this BeWild Files episode of Bewildered, they talk about making the decision to upend your life and the criticism we face when our choices don’t match the culture’s expectations. It’s a conversation about how language shapes culture,...

The culture believes there’s always a single right choice, and if you don’t make that right choice, you could end up wasting your whole life. So is it any wonder a lot of us freeze in panic when faced with making a decision? On this BeWild Files episode of Bewildered, Martha and Ro talk about how we can move past “decision paralysis” to find guidance in the liminal spaces, and ho...

Martha and Ro are back with another BeWild Files episode of Bewildered to discuss things that YOU, their listeners, are trying to figure out. This episode is all about codependency—sacrificing your own needs for those of someone else—behavior that can lead to exhaustion, resentment, even illness. And yet, our culture calls it “virtuous.” The good news? We can unhook from codependency t...

Our culture stresses that we should never, ever give up on anything, no matter what the cost to our happiness or health. Yet our bodies have a way of telling us when something isn’t right—first in a whisper but eventually, a scream. On this episode of Bewildered, Martha and Ro advocate for what they call “caving early”—giving up the moment you sense something isn’t right fo...

Martha and Rowan have a very special guest on this episode of Bewildered—the incredible Elizabeth Gilbert!  The bestselling author of EAT PRAY LOVE joins Martha and Ro to discuss the question: Why is our culture so hostile toward women who are single and childless by choice?  What follows is an engrossing conversation about the lies that benefit the patriarchy, the saving grace of oversensitivity,...

It’s that time again on Bewildered…Martha and Ro are bringing you another installment of The BeWild Files, where they talk about things that YOU, their listeners, are trying to figure out. In this episode they dive into questions from listeners Judy, Bryony, and Annette about masculinity and the pursuit of peace, how to explore identity beyond the binary, and the difference between wan...

Culture teaches us to strive for stability—and that once we have it, we’re never meant to change. But in nature, everything is always changing, including us. In this episode of Bewildered, Martha and Rowan explore the fascinating process of letting go of an old self to become a new one and the undefined “space for dreaming” that exists in between.  Don’t miss this insightful and...

Martha and Rowan are taking a brief break, but the podcast is still here for you! This week we have another "Best of Bewildered" episode for you to enjoy. Why is it that sometimes when life looks most amazing, it often feels so…meh? Martha and Ro dig into the difference between a life that’s prescribed by culture and one that we invent from our inner wild selves. Instead of embarking on “adventure...

Martha and Rowan are taking a brief break, but the podcast is still here for you! You can enjoy a couple of our "Best of Bewildered" episodes…starting with this one! We all have some kind of beauty or wisdom inside of us, but “perfection paralysis” often stops us from sharing it. In this episode, Martha and Ro offer insights into how you can get past perfection paralysis, what the opposite of perf...

Freedom. Many of us value it above everything else—so why does it sometimes feel so terrifying? In this episode of Bewildered, Martha and Rowan talk about how the culture teaches us to fear freedom—that to be safe we must do what is expected of us. But this kind of “safety” is murder to the soul. With uncanny insight (and plenty of humor), they explore how we can opt out of culture, embrace our fr...

When it comes to parenting, culture comes on strong. There are so many contradictory opinions out there, and the judgmental attacks on parents come fast and furious about every little thing. Under this kind of pressure, how can parents raise happy kids who follow their own true nature? That’s the question Martha and Ro explore in this episode of Bewildered, and their insightful conversation brings...

Have you ever found yourself answering “I’m fine” when the exact opposite was true? Toxic positivity, or what Martha and Ro call “happy-washing,” is the cultural pressure to force ourselves into a state of performative happiness. In this episode of Bewildered, Martha and Ro explore what really happens when we stop happy-washing, let go of culture, and come back to our true nature to express the ba...

A gracious German author once asked Martha if she was “a messy” after seeing the disorderly state of her hotel room. (She’d been frantically searching through her luggage moments before.) But is being "a messy" a permanent label that defines us? On this episode of Bewildered, Martha and Rowan delve into the dichotomy of mess vs. order and the beauty to be found in chaos. Tune in for insights on ho...

Is enough ever truly enough? In this episode of Bewildered, Martha and Rowan examine our culture's pursuit of "enough"—a pursuit that never satisfies because it never ends. Drawing on Asian philosophy, their own helpful (and often hilarious) stories, and the occasional anecdote from the animal kingdom, Martha and Ro argue that "enough" may not even exist—and reveal what we're all starving for inst...

Did you know anxiety disorders have risen 400% since the pandemic? (And that's just the diagnosed cases.) The cultural idea is that we're victims of our chemistry. But when it comes to anxiety, we have a lot more choices than we might think. In this episode of Bewildered, Martha and Ro talk about anxiety and its tendency to hack around any cultural solutions we throw at it. They also share the ans...

Is the culture trying to pull the wool over our eyes about time? (Spoiler alert: YES.) In this episode of Bewildered, Martha and Rowan explore the concept of time and our complex relationship with it. From the “rubber time” of non-Western cultures, to the experience of “premembering” events that haven’t happened yet, to Einstein's theory that time is just an illusion, Martha and Ro cover it all. I...

Every culture has what Martha and Ro refer to as “hooks”—powerful influences that compel us to behave a certain way and that even shape our identity. How much we buy into the culture determines the extent to which we become stuck on these hooks. In this episode, Martha and Ro dive deep to explore the cultural hooks that often pull us away from our true purpose. They also offer insights on how we c...

They’re back! Martha and Ro are bringing you another installment of The BeWild Files where they talk about the things that YOU, their listeners, are trying to figure out. In this episode, Martha and Ro answer questions about how to make money with integrity when you're in a hurry, how to become more creative and less critical when leading teams, and how nature helps us take intentional rest when w...

Do you strive for perfection? Or does the need to be perfect prevent you from striving? We all have some kind of beauty or wisdom inside of us, but “perfection paralysis” often stops us from sharing it. In this episode of Bewildered, Marty and Ro offer different perspectives on perfectionism and talk about its antagonistic relationship with creativity. Tune in for insights on how to get past perfe...

Back by popular demand! In this episode, Marty and Ro deliver another installment of The BeWild Files where they talk about the things that you, their listeners, are trying to figure out. Marty and Ro discuss the importance of contrarians and counterculture to the culture as a whole (and also to our own inner culture), the concept of sin as a tool of control, and how joy is key to accessing our cr...

Shame. It’s a powerful tool for socialization and the strategy culture uses to keep us in its little box. In this episode of Bewildered, Marty and Ro dissect the ways we can be shamed and how we can move away from that into what feels true for ourselves. We all have those areas in life where we’re vulnerable to shame, but we also have areas where we can never be shamed. Tune in to this illuminatin...

You spoke, and Marty and Ro listened: they’re pioneering a new type of episode featuring things that YOU, their listeners, are trying to figure out. Introducing…The BeWild Files. In this episode (which contains more factoids than you probably care to know about the private anatomy of various animals) they discuss different modes of viewing our life choices and the importance of rituals around chan...

Some of us have plenty of energy to meet every cultural demand, but most of us have less. Enter Spoon Theory, Christine Miserandino’s brilliant analogy in which every action we take costs us a unit of energy represented by a spoon. Our culture is invested in what Ro and Martha call “Spoon Privilege,” whereby people who naturally have a lot of energy (or “spoons”) tend to set the standard that come...