Rowan Mangan:
And I’m Rowan Mangan. This is another episode of Bewildered, the podcast for people trying to figure it out, where we talk all about finding your way through the shoulds of culture and into the essential truths of your own nature.

Now, get excited because today we are bringing you a very, very special episode of Bewildered. I need to say, if I had an amount of money for every time we’ve been asked to bring this guest on the show, I don’t know, I’d have an island or something. Especially if the amount of money each time was a really significant amount of money that I was given. Not sure who would be doing the administrating of this system. It doesn’t really make sense.

Anyway, who is our exciting guest, Marty-Moo?

Martha Beck:
It is none other than Karen, our partner. For those of you who haven’t heard this before, we are a throuple.

Rowan Mangan:
Yes.

Martha Beck:
People wonder, what’s the third leg of the stool of our lives. That came out wrong, because you don’t want your life to be a stool.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh yeah, and I bet you could take that in any number of ways.

Martha Beck:
Still, the metaphor applies. A two-legged stool cannot stand, but a three-legged stool, like our relationship, does just fine.

Rowan Mangan:
Very sturdy.

Martha Beck:
Yes. Before we get into it, I thought I’d give you a little of the rundown, because we didn’t waste time getting demographic data before we got into just talking to the Karen. She grew up such a very good girl. Going to 12 years of Catholic school, being best athlete in the school for three years running, not realizing that probably meant there was a little gay thing happening. No, no.

So, just wanted to serve the world. Went off to serve in the Peace Corps in the Philippines, then she went on a relief mission to Taiwan. Thailand? She speaks Chinese and Tagalog, that’s all I know. And was helping refugees from the wars in Southeast Asia.

Later came back and got a PhD in social work and ended up with me publishing a paper. We did research and wrote this paper that got us in all kinds of trouble with the Mormon church. Yes, we did. And we did not care. And then, we got in more kinds of trouble. The three greatest enemies of the Mormon church in the latter days: intellectuals, feminists, and homosexuals. We met each other with two strikes each, intellectual, feminist. And then we got our third strike by having a fling-

Rowan Mangan:
Hooking up.

Martha Beck:
Just a fling. It was just a fling. That’s why I didn’t put any pressure on the relationship. Of course I wasn’t gay.

After we’d been in a relationship for a year, she told me, “I think I may be bisexual, if not gay.” I was like, “Lucky for me?” So that was it.

Rowan Mangan:
How many years ago was that fling?

Martha Beck:
Oh my God, it was almost 30 years ago.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
But, you know, it’s just a little thing. It’ll probably be over before we know it.

Rowan Mangan:
I’m so curious. We’ve already recorded the interview with Karen, and so I’m really excited for everyone to hear it, and I wonder if she’ll be surprising to listeners who know us or if she’ll just be exactly what they imagined her to be when they all asked us, “When are you getting Karen on the show? When are you getting Karen on the show?”

I’m excited to hear if anyone has feedback on their impression of Karen. It’s so funny that her name is Karen, I should say this as an aside, because she’s kind of the anti-Karen in the way that the word Karen is used descriptively these days. She’s like, Karen would be like, our Karen would be like, “I want to speak to your manager because your service is just excellent and I think you deserve a raise.”

Martha Beck:
She would. And she would not go home until that person had gotten a raise.

Rowan Mangan:
So, a couple of spoilers for the interview you’re about to hear. We’re going to discuss spoilers.

Martha Beck:
Now you’ve ruined it.

Rowan Mangan:
We’re going to play a game where Karen has to explain herself.

Martha Beck:
“Explain yourself!” Every partner should get to do that.

Rowan Mangan:
Yes. And then we just try to get inside the undercover culture band that is Karen Gerdes our most beloved.

Martha Beck:
Yes. And we hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed having the conversation.

Rowan Mangan:
Have fun, y’all, and stay wild.

And here she is. It is the Kariku, the Cuckoo, the Karen. Welcome, Cuckoo, to your own house.

Karen Gerdes:
Thank you.

Martha Beck:
Until this moment you have not been welcomed.

Karen Gerdes:
So nice to be with you.

Rowan Mangan:
Thank you for coming on. She’s so obliging. So many people, I mean, it’s ridiculous how many people have been like, “We need to meet Karen,” because you’re a woman of mystery.

Karen Gerdes:
Oh yes.

Martha Beck:
A mystery women.

Rowan Mangan:
So usually, Kooks, when we start the podcast, we talk a little bit about what Marty and I are trying to figure out in our lives as individuals. So, I would like to extend to you the question, what are you trying to figure out these days?

Karen Gerdes:
Well, as you both know, a few years ago I started watching Scandi Noir, and I have extinguished all my possibilities and I am desperately trying to figure out how to get more. And better. I don’t want the cheapos, I want the best actors from Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden. Things, the classics, like the Bridge and The Killing.

Rowan Mangan:
So good.

Karen Gerdes:
I’ve seen everything, and I cannot find something new that’s really high quality, so I’m desperate. I’m trying to figure out how.

Rowan Mangan:
Do you know what I think the problem is, to be really frank with you, is that the population of Scandinavia is at this point not big enough to support the amount of Scandi Noir TV series that you yourself need.

Karen Gerdes:
You make a solid point, since in a lot of the series, it’s the same actors playing different parts.

Martha Beck:
You know what you should do-

Karen Gerdes:
But they’re brilliant. I love them.

Martha Beck:
It just occurred to me that all you have to do is watch the ultimate Scandi Noir over and over, the tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Just over and over and over.

Karen Gerdes:
No, thank you.

Rowan Mangan:
Next time there’s a production, like a theatrical production of Hamlet, I really want them to blurb it with, “The ultimate Scandi Noir.”

Martha Beck:
It is!

Karen Gerdes:
I just want you both to know this is a serious problem for me, because it’s ruined TV for me. I can’t watch other things except for murder shows, and I’m running out of those, too.

Martha Beck:
It’s all right, Karen. I’m sure someone out there listening will start killing people so that they can make shows. Maybe even… We have listeners in Scandinavia, like, folks.

Karen Gerdes:
Oh, awesome. Tell them to get on it and make some more.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. Either commit real murders or act it out really, really well.

Rowan Mangan:
I know they’re doing their best, because I actually saw something from Iceland that said there’s only one, what do you call it, the sort of coroner, that sort of pathologist-

Martha Beck:
Yes, medical examiner.

Rowan Mangan:
… In all of Iceland, but there’s so many crime writers that this person has no time to do their job because they’re constantly consulting. This is true. And so, they keep doing these like, “Okay, I’ll come and do a Q&A and tell you how it works.” And they’re, all the writers are like, “But how do you do an autopsy?” Or whatever. And they can’t keep up with the demand, so it’ll come down the pipeline. We’ve just got to allow for Scandinavian pipelines.

Karen Gerdes:
Okay, well those Icelandic ones are really good, too. The best one is Trapped, I think.

Rowan Mangan:
Recommend Scandi Noir recommendations. We all watched The Bridge together and The Killing, and they were both good.

Karen Gerdes:
But I’d seen them before, that. I just have to tell you, I need some more.

Rowan Mangan:
I’m going to reveal something about Karen.

Martha Beck:
Oh?

Rowan Mangan:
I don’t want to start, because we’re about to sing your praises, but I’ve got to say something that is quite annoying about Kariku. It’s when you watch something with her that she’s already seen, she’s like, “Oh no, I don’t mind watching it again.” And then when you do the inevitable talking to the TV, “Huh, I wonder if that’s related to that other thing that happened earlier.” Karen will go, “Hmm… I bet you’d like to know.”

Karen Gerdes:
I love giving spoilers and you love getting spoilers. It’s a real problem.

Martha Beck:
How do you say-

Rowan Mangan:
I hate getting spoilers-

Martha Beck:
She hates spoilers. I love spoilers.

Karen Gerdes:
I know, Marty and I sometimes, on the side without Ro there.

Martha Beck:
How do you say-

Rowan Mangan:
You guys have got a side thing happening?

Martha Beck:
Yes, we do. Karen just spoiling and spoiling and spoiling the Scandi Noir. You could start your own podcast just to spoil Scandi Noir.

Karen Gerdes:
Oh, I could.

Rowan Mangan:
That would be huge. That would be huge.

Martha Beck:
In Iceland.

Rowan Mangan:
That’s right.

Karen Gerdes:
No, it’s got to be Denmark.

Martha Beck:
All right.

Rowan Mangan:
Karen’s Danish.

Karen Gerdes:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. So listen, I thought we could start off, Marty, by just each of us talking a little bit about who Karen is to us as individuals as a way of showing our Bewildered listeners just how wonderful she’s in so many ways. Apart from the spoiling and the smugness with the TV shows. So, do you want to kick that off and talk about you and Karen?

Martha Beck:
Yeah. A little history. I was sitting in my therapy session in Provo, Utah, trying to deal with madness all around me, and my therapist got this weird look on her face. And she was super, super professional and she said, “I’m about to do something incredibly unprofessional.”

She wrote down a name and a phone number and gave it to me. And she said, “I just think you guys would have a lot to talk about. This was a friend of mine.” All right, so I called, it was Karen. And I was like, “Well, this is super weird.” But we agreed to meet for lunch, and then I didn’t call back and she called back, and then we met for lunch. And I was like, “Wow, what a cool person.”

Rowan Mangan:
Wait, can I just ask, do you remember getting that call, Karen?

Karen Gerdes:
I do. Yeah. I was surprised to get the call, and I also thought Marty would probably be about 50 years old because her dad was like 90 or something.

Martha Beck:
He was about 90 at the time, and I was about 30.

Karen Gerdes:
Yeah, so, I was surprised that it was a fun lunch.

Martha Beck:
I was not just the doddering maniac you expected. I was the young and nubile maniac.

Karen Gerdes:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. Younger than you.

Martha Beck:
We just kept going to lunch and going to lunch and going to lunch. And my then husband and I had officially unmarried each other, and she just turned out to be a really great person.

Then we got together. There’s not a lot of details to say about that, but let me just skip forward a little bit.

I was helping her move and we were going through, she didn’t have a lot of possessions. We’re going through her stuff, and there were these photographs, and there were all these pictures of Karen wearing rubber waders walking through the streets of some very remote place in the Philippines. And always covered with children, like 10 children. She’d be walking along and they’d be hanging onto her or she’d be reading to twenty-five children. And then, there was a picture of her with Caroline Kennedy getting an award.

And I was like, “What the hell is this?” And she’s like, “Oh yeah, I was in the Peace Corps. I don’t know. They give awards sometimes, I guess. Presidential awards. It was no big deal.”

I was like, “What the… What? What? What?” And what I learned, she had never mentioned this, she doesn’t mention her magnificence. She keeps it under wraps, like a Scandi Noir, like a curtain of Scandi Noirness over her brilliant illumination.

Rowan Mangan:
She doesn’t give away the spoilers in her own life.

Karen Gerdes:
That’s right.

Rowan Mangan:
If they’re backward spoilers.

Martha Beck:
Skip forward another 10 years, she’s helping me raise my children, she’s allowing me to have a career, she’s helping me deal with my health problems. And somebody says to me, “Boy, Karen is the earth, the moon, and the stars to you.” And I said, “No, Karen is gravity. Because the moon, the earth, and the stars will disappear, but she is this constant force that is universal. She’s so reliable and so stable.”

You can base all your calculations on that force, and that’s just who she is. Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
One of the things that we’re going to try and convey in this episode about Karen is that there’s a lot of paradox, and for sure the steadiness and that constancy that you’re talking about with gravity is there, but she’s also, then she’s weird in weird ways. And I was just thinking-

Martha Beck:
Totally weird.

Rowan Mangan:
… When you said she helped you with your health problems, we hadn’t thought about this, but Karen’s a medical psychic. She’s not like your generalist psychic, she’s only psychic about medical things. But, we take this very seriously.

Martha Beck:
Can I tell-

Karen Gerdes:
Only for people that I love. Yes. I walked out, do not get on her bad

Rowan Mangan:
Side. She’s not taking calls.

Martha Beck:
So I was having this thing, it’s not a romantic disease. It’s called interstitial cystitis. And long story short, it’s extremely painful. It’s incurable and it usually leads to so much pain that people have to have organs removed. And I was diagnosed with this after an exploratory surgery. They had living proof I had this disease. So I went and told Karen and she looked at me and she said, yeah, it’s just going to go away. You don’t even have to change your diet. And I’m not kidding, when I got, they gave me a pamphlet for coping with it, and I opened the pamphlet too, and it said at the top of one page to keep yourself from committing suicide, remind yourself of your religious beliefs. That’s the medicine they had going on. So Karen, I was like, I choose to believe you. And the symptoms disappeared. They’ve sort of surfaced once or twice in the last 30 years. Other than that, absolutely nothing. But she won’t diagnose me clear of something that I actually need to go to the doctor for Karen. If you were a real medical psychic, you would just zap me. Well, but no, she just diagnosis correctly in bizarre ways. Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. He’s so weird, cuckoo. [inaudible 00:15:44]

Martha Beck:
And then there’s three of us here. You might think that row or I, because we’re on here doing the Bewilder, get back to nature, that we are the jazzy folks who said, let’s all get together because the three of us love each other so much. No, that would be Karen because she does not give a flying. Excuse me. But she doesn’t, can I say that love wins? What can I say?

Rowan Mangan:
We did talk about without Karen to spoil to give spoilers. We did in a previous episode, talk about the getting together of us. And we also talked about it on the, We Can Do Hard Things podcast with Glennon Doyle. So we won’t belabor that story. But I want to talk a little bit about Karen and Me because it’s so weird. It’s so weird how it was that we all came to be here and there’s so many, I feel like we’re seven and a half years that we’ve been together now.

Martha Beck:
I literally just looked at the clock thinking that’s how long we’ve been together. About seven… Going on.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. And there’s been so many different seasons of it. But instead of talking historically, for me, the biggest thing to tell you about Karen for me at the moment, is this sense of being in absolute lockstep as parents and how amazing it is to co-parent with both of you. But right now when we’re recording this, Marty is on a very tight book deadline and is must spend almost every waking moment in her book. And this is very important for our family that she can do this.

So a lot of the child-raising of the two offspring that we have in our house, Adam and Lila is shared between Karen and me. And it is such a thing in this culture where mothers that there seems to be a lot of discontented feelings about sharing parenting in couples, especially straight couples. And that thing about the mental load and all the domestic stuff to share parenting with Karen is just like, it’s just amazing. Last night I was like, oh, there was an accident at school that required some clean clothes being needed and some washing at our end. And I was like, oh, I need to do that. I text Karen. No, it’s already done. It’s already done. I already thought through all of that. Oh, we need to wash. No, it’s done. It’s already done. I’m like, “Where’s his school bag?” “Oh, I had just put it in the car for you already.”

Martha Beck:
That’s just amazing.

Rowan Mangan:
And I love co-parenting with you. And the other thing that I will mention in passing that’s just one of these quirks of the Cooke’s is that she is like the queen of working with bureaucracies. And it’s a really interesting skill that doesn’t kind of get called out as people’s superpower that often. But I remember you telling me Marty early on, you were like, she’s got this. She’ll just keep at it and keep at it and keep at it. Do you want to talk about that with Karen a bit?

Martha Beck:
Oh my gosh. Just taking care of these fish we inherited from our last homeowners. It takes so much admin to take care of three fish. There were five blue herons, got two of them. It was horrible. Ro and I fainted and were lying on the floor. Karen was running out and casting a net across the fish to protect them. But you’ll hear her on the phone to fish people who I think are fish people in some literal sense that they’re partly fish. And I mean no insult to them. And this is just one single function. I mean, there’s something for the generator and the blinds just always something breaking and Karen’s on the phone going, so when will you get out of rehab? Because we can work with that. It’s all right. I’m sure you won’t steal it again, whatever. She’s like pure compassion, trusts everyone, but just relentlessly works to take care of things until they get taken care of. And I have to say, I am spoiled rotten.

Rowan Mangan:
Me too. We’ll be right back with more bewildered. We don’t say this enough. We are so glad you’re a Bewildered listener and we’re hoping you might want to go to the next level with us. By which I mean if you rate and review the podcast, it helps new people find us so we can keep bewildering new souls and how much we love that. Ratings are very much appreciated. Obviously the more stars you give us, the more appreciation is forthcoming. Reviews are quite simply heaven and we read everyone and exclaim over them and we just love you all. Mwah. Do you want to play a game?

Karen Gerdes:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
Do you want to play a game, Mighty Moo?

Martha Beck:
I do.

Rowan Mangan:
Okay. So I’ve invented a game for today and the game is called Explain the Karenism now.

Martha Beck:
Oh God, help you all.

Rowan Mangan:
Karen is the only contestant on this game, but-

Karen Gerdes:
Oh, no.

Rowan Mangan:
Frequent listeners to Bewildered will know that every now and again we do a little item called Karenism where we enjoy you so much and we enjoy sharing you because we shouldn’t keep you all to ourselves. But thought it’d be fun. Usually we just say the Karenism and I’m like, we should make her answer.

Martha Beck:
Yes, answer for the karenism.

Rowan Mangan:
For her ways.

Karen Gerdes:
Well, I don’t really have an answer except to say I had a wonderful father who I loved so much and he was such a good man and he was a goofy, goofy, goofy. And I mean, he would make up little sing-songy phrases and sometimes he’d use the wrong word for something. And I guess I just got that little part of him in me because every now and then something pops out and I don’t even know where it comes from.

Rowan Mangan:
Great. Great segue into our first Karenism. Martha could you talk about the puzzle echolalia?

Martha Beck:
Oh yes. So Karen does puzzles and I’ve mentioned in another episode that we have to keep her in puzzles or she starts to pull out her own feathers and hair.

Rowan Mangan:
Especially if there’s no new Scandi Noirs, right?

Martha Beck:
I mean, what’s one to do? So she’ll be puzzling away and it’s a happy space for her. And then you’ll say something like, did anyone get any cheese? And she’ll say, “Cheesy wheezy peasy kneesy.” And we’re like, “Ah, okay.”

Karen Gerdes:
That’s it. My dad used to say, chippy whippy dippy going to get some chippy whippy dippy.

Rowan Mangan:
And so in our house when this happens, because it’s very frequent, we figure that when she is in the sort of relaxed state of mind that she’s puzzling Karen’s dad is able to access her and she sort of channels him. So whenever she comes out with the cheesy wheezy, whippy dippy, we’ll just be like, “Hi Charlie.”

Martha Beck:
Hi, good to see you. It’s so amazing that-

Karen Gerdes:
I do love that when you say that, it does make me feel good like he’s there.

Martha Beck:
Well, I think he is. Well, I think he really is communing with us about the nature of the universe. You go through life, you go through death, you get to the other side and everything is like chippy dippy, whoopee, whoopee. That’s kind of the meaning of life. And now he’s trying to, Karen is a medium to convey that message.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh my God, that’s so funny. All right, love Charlie. I’ve got the next one. We love Charlie. Cuckoo, explain to us why, when we ask you something about politics, do you need to stand up in order to answer? And I need to give a case in point, which is recently we three snuggle up and watch a TV show every night. We try to after we put all the other people to bed and we try to watch a TV show. No Scandi Noir at the moment to our great sadness, but I don’t know why, but there was some sort of thing. One of Karen’s special subjects is Donald Trump and what’s he up to lately? So that caused me to say, what are RICO laws again? Because read about them in some, and when I said that to Karen with the genuine want to know, I didn’t expect that she would need to actually pick herself up off.

Martha Beck:
Leap.

Rowan Mangan:
Leap-

Karen Gerdes:
She leapt into it on her feet.

Rowan Mangan:
… into a standing position. I think in order to gesticulate as a, I mean I don’t know.

Martha Beck:
And peace.

Karen Gerdes:
It’s how one releases passion. You have to stand up. I think in that particular case, when I read something really good, I read, I think it was in the Atlantic or somewhere about this Rico case in Georgia on Trump. And the way they explained it was just so understandable and I just had to share it.

Martha Beck:
Don’t stand up. Karen don’t you-

Karen Gerdes:
I just had to share it.

Rowan Mangan:
Right now. You need to stay next to your mic.

Martha Beck:
But yeah, I still don’t know what a RICO law is. I was just watching her pace and gesticulate. I just am there for the colors and the lights.

Karen Gerdes:
Think you’ve got to think of Amway. There’s somebody at the top and then there’s a few people under that person and then they plot how to get more people doing something that serves them at the top.

Martha Beck:
Oh, you’re explaining RICO. I just zoomed on that. But I’m grateful to know.

Rowan Mangan:
Which is a great segue to our next Karenism Marty, which is called Colloquially the Pivot.

Martha Beck:
This is sign language for Pivot, and we all know to do it .

Rowan Mangan:
Well, we’re in a mostly audio format. So

Martha Beck:
Put your elbow, your right elbow and your left arm, and then use your hand like the head of a great blue heron about to steal your fish and then move it from side to side to show a pivot. So I’ve used this example before, but I’m going to say it again. There was a time when Karen was counseling a young man who was suffering from depression and anxiety and he poured out his heart to her. One night he finally just opened up and it all came out. They were sitting together on a swing on a porch, and he finally finished bearing his soul and Karen turned to him and she said, how did chickens sleep? I mean, do they lie down? I’ve never seen one lie down. And he started laughing and laughing and laughing. And then he said, but back to me and my problems. And he went on for another five or 10 minutes, then he stopped again and she said, I mean really do they stand? What happens with their feet? And this is a very typical conversation with the cuckoo, right?

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. We talked about the ones that was more recent where I said, I love you guys so much and I realized that you people right here in front of me, my family are everything to me. And Karen looked up and nodded and smiled and said, “Adaine won the World Cup.” No, Adaine won the Tour de France.

Martha Beck:
Tour de France.

Rowan Mangan:
Adaine won the Tour de France.

Martha Beck:
You were just getting over COVID for the second time and you were like, “I have lived, I have come back to this table with you that I love.” And Karen said, “Adaine won the Tour de France.”

Rowan Mangan:
Karen’s nickname is Hasty Mcearly Pants. Do you want to give us some background before we demand that Karen explained herself on the Hasty Mcearly Pants?

Martha Beck:
We have got you. Now we’ve got you under lights and you have to explain it because this is how it works. Let’s say there’s a party at 6:00 P.M. It starts at 6:00 P.M. Okay, well first of all, Karen thinks you can’t be rude by being late. You have to come at least a quarter of an hour early. So it’s at 5:45 really, but 5:45 sounds very much in Karen’s mind, like 5:30. And she recalls that people get out of work at 5:00. So she’s pretty sure the party is at 5:00, which means leaving by 4:30 to get there. So we used to drive around, we’d get to a party and I would say, there’s no one here. When does it start? And she’d say right now, and I’d say, “Give me the invitation. It’s not for an hour Karen.” And she’d go, “Well, we have to get in there, make sure we’re there.” I’d say, “Karen, that’s not the way people do. People are late.” I hear people.

Rowan Mangan:
They’re in the shower right now, Cuckoo.

Martha Beck:
I am always late. It is my way.

Karen Gerdes:
So yeah, sources of conflict. And it gets to the point with air travel where you’re going days ahead of time, wait at the airport.

Rowan Mangan:
It keeps getting revised back, but it’s not just in the what time do we have to leave to get to the thing? It’s more general than that. The need for immediately and if not immediately, then sooner. We had a moment where when we first moved to the East Coast and it was getting frosty and Karen was getting herself because she is the queen of taking care of everyone, she was getting herself ready for I’m going to be a snow controller or whatever.

Martha Beck:
A standing controller.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, well, I mean, that’s right. She was calling on her ancestry.

Martha Beck:
Exactly.

Rowan Mangan:
So she got all this sort of stuff. She got herself a little snow plow. And she got herself a snow shovel. And there turns out there are these things that you’re meant to put on either side of your driveway so you don’t go drifting off or whatever. Now, the first day it began to snow that we were here, I don’t know, it’d probably been about 20 minutes. Would you say Marty?

Karen Gerdes:
Oh no. Yeah, guys are so bad.

Rowan Mangan:
And I see Karen busily getting her mittens on and all frantically. Yeah. And I’m like, what’s going on? And I swear to God, people will think I’m exaggerating. I swear to God, word for word. She said, “The forecast says it’s not going to keep snowing. I have to get out there and shovel this before it melts.” Do I lie?

Karen Gerdes:
Not a word of a lie.

Rowan Mangan:
Explain yourself.

Karen Gerdes:
Now. Marty exaggerated a little bit, but that is actually very true. I didn’t say that.

Rowan Mangan:
Why?

Karen Gerdes:
I have no idea. Except that I was excited to try that plow. I really wanted to. Now I’m kind of over it, so it’s like I won’t be rushing so fast anymore.

Rowan Mangan:
So it’s just all about different forms of having new toys that you want to try out.

Karen Gerdes:
Yes. Yeah. In that instance it was, I don’t know where the hasty comes from. I really don’t. I think that, again, I might have to blame on my dad. He hated to wait in lines. He hated to stay anywhere too long. And I just think that’s where I got it from. So it’s hard for me to hold back. It’s really hard. It’s just slow it down.

Rowan Mangan:
You don’t have to hold back.

Martha Beck:
Although I do have these fears that if anybody is on life-sustaining equipment, Karen May decide it has to be put away now.

Rowan Mangan:
Just get it over with.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, I do.

Karen Gerdes:
I know it’s really sad, but it’s true because you both know that I lost my mom in April, which was really hard. And the whole time I was looking at my sisters going, should we start cleaning up the apartment? And they just looking me, what? She just died here. And I’m like, yeah, but we got to do this. I think it was just a way not to have to deal with other things maybe. I don’t know.

Martha Beck:
I don’t know.

Karen Gerdes:
But the hasty is in me. It’s in me.

Martha Beck:
It is. Whereas the life flat on your face is in me. So we complement each other well that way.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, we all balance it out.

Martha Beck:
And it’s funny too because it goes to gifts. She buys gifts very early. She starts Christmas shopping in January.

Karen Gerdes:
That’s gotten better though. I haven’t been doing that lately.

Martha Beck:
That’s an illusion, sweetheart. You always say that. And then what happened? But she has this thing that never fails and she’s done it thousands of times. So funny. And it never fails. She’ll get something, some Three-Handled, brass covered family buy for someone, some weird thing that’s never been invented before. And she’ll have it. She’s like, this is going to be perfect. And I’ll say, yes, what a great gift. And this is in April for Christmas. And then she’ll say, I’m pretty sure I gave them this last Christmas. And I’m like, you’re doing it again? She said, “No, I’m pretty sure I’ll-”

Rowan Mangan:
This time it’s the exception.

Martha Beck:
And I’m like, “It was only invented last week.” “No, I gave it to…” So then she gives it to them again in an apologetic way and gets to work shopping on the next real gift. And she’s thrilled with the next real one until she remembers that she also gave them that one.

Rowan Mangan:
Wait, wait, so she-

Martha Beck:
They don’t know what that is.

Rowan Mangan:
… she’s given them the Christmas thing in July because she’s like, “Well, I gave it to you already anyway, so I just want to confirm that I’ve already given this to you last year.” And they’re like, “No, this is great. Why am I getting this wonderful gift? Thank you. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s so perfect.”

Karen Gerdes:
It really doesn’t work like the medical psychic. It’s more like a, it’s more, I must remember having given it to them, but I haven’t given it to them yet. So where does that come from?

Rowan Mangan:
It’s like a déjà vu.

Karen Gerdes:
But it’s so strong. That’s the thing about it.

Martha Beck:
It is. It is very powerful.

Karen Gerdes:
It happens over and over and it’s not just occasionally, every gift.

Karen Gerdes:
And I’m always shocked that I haven’t given it to him before.

Martha Beck:
Genuinely shocked, shocked.

Rowan Mangan:
Man have we cashed in over the years? Oh my, gosh. I’ve just got one. It was just so cute. And it was last night, so I’ve just got one more in the game if you don’t mind. This is good car this. So we often send each other on our little thread, which is our text thread, is called Wives. Because why not? So the Wives thread.

Karen Gerdes:
I used to be a Mormon.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, right. Our Wives thread is lately mostly populated by Instagram Reels. And last night Karen had sent us one, and I’m trying to remember exactly how it happened. We got together for our lovely little snugly TV time. And she sent it, or Yeah, she’d sent a reel and there was a sort of doberman or something in the reel. It’s usually animal things. And he was in a funny pose and Karen. I said, “Oh, that’s cute.” And Karen said, “Oh, the one where, yes, the dog is resting on its elbow so to speak.” And I’m like, “So to speak?”

Martha Beck:
How does anybody rest on their elbow? I mean, it was ridiculous. How does anyone [inaudible 00:35:52]-

Karen Gerdes:
It was more like the paw, right?

Rowan Mangan:
Well, I mean, yeah, his chin was on his paw.

Martha Beck:
He had elbows, he was resting on them. Everybody does. Dogs lie down with resting their elbows, so to speak.

Rowan Mangan:
So to speak.

Karen Gerdes:
So to speak.

Rowan Mangan:
What was the so to speak? What was that about, Cuckoo?

Karen Gerdes:
Actually it was because I was very confused. I really wasn’t sure what the dog was resting on. What body part.

Rowan Mangan:
Do dogs have? Elbows is going to be haunting Karen. Much like do chickens sleep?

Karen Gerdes:
Totally. Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
How do chickens sleep?

Karen Gerdes:
Exactly. They lock in. Actually, nobody knows how chickens sleep.

Martha Beck:
I do.

Rowan Mangan:
Are you kidding me? My God woman.

Martha Beck:
How can you know if you’re not a chicken?

Karen Gerdes:
I’ve been a chicken in so many lives. No, I have found people who know chickens. Well, all perching birds, this is what they do. All roosting birds have this reflex where they perch on a limb and when they go to sleep, their little claws lock onto the perch automatically while they’re asleep. Isn’t that cool?

Martha Beck:
That is cool.

Rowan Mangan:
Now, you know. So Karen, this is for Karen, not for Marty. Have you ever seen have seagull sitting in a tree?

Karen Gerdes:
I believe I have.

Rowan Mangan:
No, you haven’t. And I’ll tell you for why. Wrong feet.

Martha Beck:
Well, yeah.

Karen Gerdes:
But I think, are there seagulls in Africa?

Martha Beck:
Yes, there are.

Karen Gerdes:
Because I think I did see one sitting in a tree there. At Kruger National Park is a matter of fact.

Martha Beck:
Maybe there’s one in the world who’s learned to do it.

Karen Gerdes:
Maybe it was a different kind of bird. A duck or something. I don’t know.

Rowan Mangan:
Ducks also have the wrong feet.

Martha Beck:
Karen has a way of being definitive about natural of phenomena. One time we came in California, we came out of a movie theater back when there were movies. It wasn’t a Scandi Noir, and there was a fire because California is frequently on fire and there was all this black smoke over by the ocean. And we looked over there and said, what is that? Is that smoke? Is that a fire? And Karen looked around. Yes. She said, “It’s either smoke or dark fog.”

Karen Gerdes:
Oh, it looked like dark fog to me.

Rowan Mangan:
Dark fog.

Karen Gerdes:
I know, I know. But it just looked like that.

Rowan Mangan:
Smoke always… Oh my gosh. We just have a huge flock of starlings go by the window.

Martha Beck:
Oh, wow. I just had one just come in my window.

Rowan Mangan:
I heard it. It’s all because we’re talking about roosting birds.

Martha Beck:
They come this time of year every year. It’s so fun.

Rowan Mangan:
And they come once a day and it’s amazing. Wow. Anyway, sorry. That’s something you all can’t see, but I’m looking at it and it is fascinating. Thank you for explaining yourself so nicely, Carrie Coo. The next thing I wanted to do with you on this very special episode is where we really dig into what Marty alluded to at the beginning of our conversation, which is that of the three of us, you seem like this lovely sweet, you can make friends with the fish men and the generator people and all of that. And you just seem like this lovely, normal person and you are totally radical underneath it all. You are the most counter-cultural out of all of us by such a long way. Totally wild.

Karen Gerdes:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
And I was talking to you yesterday or the day before, we were talking about over dinner, about you coming on and about what the podcast is about. And you just said very casually in the way that you do, you just said, yeah, I stopped listening to the voice of the culture a long time ago and I was like, oh, this is what we want to dig into. So I want you to help us understand as a truly wild individual, undercover as someone completely pretty conventional lesbian, what has changed in the course of your life that led you to being able to stop listening to the voice of culture?

Karen Gerdes:
Well, first I want to say I was probably 36 when I started to let go of it. So I was in the culture for a long time and not out to myself even as a gay person. And I think what helped me to take a different path literally was falling in love with Marty. I mean, love is such a freeing experience and oh, I’m going to cry a little bit. I mean, I had so much love from my parents and they both loved me unconditionally. All they ever wanted was my happiness. And so I recognized that in Marty and she does love unconditionally. And it seemed to me, I was in the culture, I was teaching, I met Marty, and all of a sudden everything fell away. It was like, “Oh.”

And it kind of helped me to start opening up my life more and more and more and just trusting love more and more and more. And I think when I really started to totally let go of the culture was when I met you Ro, because meeting you was getting, I don’t know, I think I used to call it a water cannon of love that I felt coming out of my heart and coming back to me. And when you feel that nothing else matters, it’s like why should I not do this? Because somebody might think it’s weird when love is telling me, do it, do it, do it.

And then your mind can let go of all the constructs, the games, the things that you’re supposed to do. And I still am that normal person with a lot of people. But I don’t know, I think that the thing that makes me wild is love.

Rowan Mangan:
Can I ask you, that is so interesting because I feel like love is actually an area where the culture gets really up in your business. And I wonder if you speculated about what if Marty had been a man and you’re falling in love with her hadn’t been in any way counter cultural. If it had just been like, oh cool. Do you think you would’ve stayed? I mean obviously when the three of us got together it was like forget about it. That’s too far going normal’s in the rear view mirror.

Karen Gerdes:
That’s actually a fascinating question. I don’t know that I could have ever, because a part of me knew I was gay. I don’t know that I ever could have really fallen in love with a man. I certainly never had that experience before or since.

Rowan Mangan:
Good to know. Yeah.

Karen Gerdes:
I love plenty of, I love my brothers. My dad is the best man that ever lived and I loved him so much, but I don’t think I could ever fall in love with me. And I sort of tried a couple of times, but it never even came close to that.

Rowan Mangan:
If you have to try to fall in love, you’re probably not doing it right.

Martha Beck:
I know it’s too much work.

Karen Gerdes:
But it’s interesting. I think some people do work at it because, well, I just want to reiterate that I think what you two have in common, because you two are very different in a lot of ways, but what you have in common for me is that you both love unconditionally. You both want me to be happy. You both don’t give a, excuse me, that I love to puzzle and watch Scandi Noir. If it makes me happy, you’re happy. And I hope I can be the same to both of you. You are. But it’s that unconditional love that is everything. It’s not just love. It’s unconditional love.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. And I don’t know whether I learned it from you. I do believe it’s in all of us, but certain conditions bring it out. But I’ve worked with so many clients where they have what I call spider love, where a spider will tell you it loves flies and it means it, but it likes to crunch and munch them and it will wrap them up alive and suck the life force out of them as an expression of it’s love. And a lot of people are like that. I’ve got you locked into this relationship and if you leave, all hell will break loose. And they call that love and it feels like love. And the culture says, yep, that’s love. Othello’s love where he strangles his wife. That’s love. Spoiler love, spoiler alert. At least it’s not danish, but it’s a real measure. So I came to think when I was looking at clients, what does actual love do? Love actually is the feeling of wanting the other to be free.

Karen Gerdes:
Yeah, freedom.

Martha Beck:
It sets people free. So when Karen came to me and said, “I’ve been talking a lot to Ro and she’s really cool and I feel this water cannon of love.” And I just looked at her and said, “Yeah, you do. You’re in love.” And I looked inside myself, I’ve said this before, but it was so weird to me that I could clearly see that my significant other was in love with someone else and I was overjoyed. There was nothing but joy there.

Karen Gerdes:
Yeah, I do remember that.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. Amazing. I was like, this is amazing. I’ll move into the guest room. You two will be a couple. It’ll be amazing. I really, because you’d given me so much unconditional love and set me free so many times that it was effortless to give it back natural.

Karen Gerdes:
But you didn’t have to.

Martha Beck:
I know. That’s the miracle of it.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. It’s interesting because what we haven’t ever talked about is that we’ve talked about it when we haven’t shared is that it did actually really start with Karen and me coming together. And when we went and sat on the swing together, it’s so cute.

Martha Beck:
We we’re very preoccupied.

Karen Gerdes:
It was so cute.

Rowan Mangan:
We we’re preoccupied. That’s right. That’s what we used to say isn’t? The preoccupation. And it’s funny because I came to know you both through Marty’s work, but what it was actually, and I remember saying to someone who was living there with us, I was like, and it was before anything. It was before the preoccupation began. I was kind of attracted to Karen. And he was like, I don’t think that could be the case because I was a bit confused because, but yeah. And that’s where it got started from.

But I would love to ask you, because I think this thing about unconditional love that’s so interesting that you bring it up with us is that I actually think you do that better than either of us by far. And I’m genuinely curious to know because Marty and I work together. We do this podcast together, we do our day jobs together a lot of the time, even though the three of us are a unit, how do you not get jealous or possessive or whatever when Marty and I do so much that takes us away from you and to be just with each other.

Karen Gerdes:
Because you guys are doing your thing. I mean, you both love what you’re doing and I don’t want to be a podcaster.

Rowan Mangan:
You’re good at it though.

Karen Gerdes:
I don’t want to write books like you guys do. And I see you doing things that make you happy and it makes me happy. And the other thing I would say is that for a long time I really felt bad that Marty was working so hard by herself. I mean, I had a job, but what Marty was doing was amazing and I couldn’t keep up with her mentally or even physically such a hard worker. And then when you came along, I mean for me that was like, wow, watch these two together. Watch how Ro supports Marty. Watch how Marty supports Ro and you can keep up with her mentally and you’re interested in the same kinds of things. You can have conversations that are, I love listening to. I’m fascinated.

Rowan Mangan:
Not about RICO laws.

Karen Gerdes:
No, I have the two best partners in the world. I mean, I’m endlessly fascinated with both of you. That’s the other piece of it, I guess besides the love is just so interesting and I don’t want to do anything that you do and it doesn’t make me jealous at all. It makes me happy.

Rowan Mangan:
You’re so cool. How are you so cool? Final question. How are you so cool?

Karen Gerdes:
I don’t know other than to say what I think all my siblings would say that our parents loved us so hard and all they wanted was for us to be happy. And when you have that and it’s so stable and consistent and always there, even when I went and did crazy things like fall in love with a woman and then fall in love with another woman, I’m sure it didn’t make my mom happy, but she hung in there with me.

Rowan Mangan:
She sure did. Yeah.

Karen Gerdes:
She loved me even though. So I feel like I’ve been spoiled with love and I still have it.

Martha Beck:
Here’s to Charlie and Lisa, your parents, and just if anybody wonders is trying hard to be a good parent makes a difference in the world. The love that has spread from those two people through their six children and out into the world is literally incalculable. I mean, you want to change the world. They’ve changed the world.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, definitely.

Karen Gerdes:
It’s a joy to be able to give that to Lila now for us to give that to her. And it’s fun.

Rowan Mangan:
Thank you so much Carrie Coo.

Karen Gerdes:
Thank you both for letting me come on. And I love you both and I’m so proud of both of you for this podcast. It’s amazing.

Martha Beck:
Thanks. He’s so sweet for helping us. Now we need to go find some Scandi Noir.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, Scandi Noir.

Martha Beck:
Scandi Noir.

Karen Gerdes:
Wait, how do chickens sleep?

Rowan Mangan:
All right, thanks Coocs.

Karen Gerdes:
Okay, love you. Bye.

Martha Beck:
Hey, you guys stay wild.

Rowan Mangan: 
We hope you’re enjoying Bewildered. If you’re in the USA and want to be notified when a new episode comes out, text the word ‘WILD’ to 570-873-0144.

We’re also on Instagram. Our handle is @bewilderedpodcast. You can follow us to get updates, hear funny snippets and outtakes, and chat with other fans of the show.

For more of us, Martha’s on Instagram, themarthabeck. She’s on Facebook, The Martha Beck, and she’s on Twitter, marthabeck. Her website is, MarthaBeck.com. And me, I too am on Instagram. Rowan_Mangan. I’m on Facebook as Rowan Mangan. And I’m on Twitter as RowanMangan. Bewildered is produced by Scott Forster with support from the brilliant team at MBI.