Rowan Mangan:
Hello, Cahoot. We’re here with an episode today about making shiny, pretty things, or as we call them, “precious, pointless things” and why that’s important and why the culture will not let us understand that it’s important.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. And I think after you hear it, your life will be a little prettier and a little more precious and not pointless at all.

Rowan Mangan:
And you’ll have thought a lot more about Prada bags than you probably expected to today.

Martha Beck:
Absolutely. I would agree with that. So enjoy!

Rowan Mangan:
Hope you enjoy.

Martha Beck:
Hi, I’m Martha Beck.

Rowan Mangan:
I’m Rowan Mangan, and this is another episode of Bewildered, the podcast for people just like you, just like me, just like Martha Beck, who are trying to figure it out.

Martha Beck:
Uh-huh. Yes, indeed.

Rowan Mangan:
I see you’ve got a hairbrush in your hand there.

Martha Beck:
Oh, did I? Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
Just in case?

Martha Beck:
Trying to figure it out. Yeah, just in case of any emergencies.

Rowan Mangan:
Hmmm. Well you did tell us once about your piece of hair.

Martha Beck:
Oh my God, my piece of hair. Okay, that’s another episode. Let’s just move on.

Rowan Mangan:
All right. What are you trying to figure out?

Martha Beck:
Well, I actually want to talk about something that I think we figured out. Well, you figured it out, but I’m delighted by it because for years, literal years, we’ve been trying to figure out when people say, “Self-care, give somebody a treat, give somebody a wonderful spa day” or whatever, we’ve been trying to offer things to Karen and she’s like—

Rowan Mangan:
Karen is our beloved for our new listeners.

Martha Beck:
Our beloved third, and she is just very self-denying, “Oh no, I don’t need a massage. Oh no, I will just sit in my room and watch Scandi noir on a tiny, tiny screen.” But we gave you a big screen. “I will use the tiny one. It’s enough for me.” She doesn’t talk like that. That’s just how it is in my head. But while I was away, I had to be away for a while, you figured something out.

Rowan Mangan:
I figured out what Karen wants.

Martha Beck:
Oh my gosh. We used to have a game called What Does Karen Want? And it never, we never got any answers. But it turns out that what Ro did was send Karen out—

Rowan Mangan:
Wait, wait, wait. Let’s back up. Let’s not, let’s not rush this, because it came to me as I was scrolling Facebook one day. Now, Facebook is not often a place where we come to any great moments of awakening.

Martha Beck:
Speak for yourself.

Rowan Mangan:
You wouldn’t know.

Martha Beck:
I’ve never even been there.

Rowan Mangan:
So there I am on Facebook and I see this thing, this ad, oh no, I’m going to name something. I won’t name it. I see an ad for a place, and I, suddenly, it just clicked in, Marty. It was just like a divine message. When I saw an ad for a place local to us, I said, “This is it.” And what happened then?

Martha Beck:
You sent Karen out to be stretched.

Rowan Mangan:
On a Sunday morning. She headed out down to this place that I don’t want to name because they’re not paying us to name it.

Martha Beck:
Saddled up her bay pony and went down to the stretching place.

Rowan Mangan:
Down to the stretching place. And someone, we made an appointment for her to go and get stretched, her body. They stretched her body for her, and it blew her mind. I think it released serotonin or something, something. She was floating on a cloud. She just needed to be stretched. All this time, she just needed to be stretched.

Martha Beck:
All this time. And then I was gone for a long time, and every time I would talk to you on the phone, I’d say, “So where’s Karen right now?” And you’d say, “Oh, I sent her out to be stretched.” And it was kind of like sending out a pair of pants to be hemmed.

Rowan Mangan:
Well, I accidentally put her in the washing machine and she shrunk. And so then I had to get her stretched.

Martha Beck:
Aw, you didn’t go and just pin her to a wire outside and let the wind do it.

Rowan Mangan:
I’m just trying to decide whether or not to go into a rant about Karen not knowing that some things mustn’t go in the hot water and the hot dryer.

Martha Beck:
No, dear, no. That is a domestic dispute uninteresting to the folks out in the real world.

Rowan Mangan:
All right. It’s deeply–

Martha Beck:
Our weird relationship.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. All right.

Martha Beck:
So we figured something out and I thought it would be good to just celebrate that. Well, you figured something out, but I recognized that you had figured something out that I had tried to figure out for literally decades.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. She just needed a good stretching. Yeah.

Martha Beck:
She’s going to be so tall by the time we’re done.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. She’s going to be kind of flat but lanky.

Martha Beck:
Historically, when people were sent to be stretched, it wasn’t a positive experience. It was on the racks.

Rowan Mangan:
That’s a good point. Maybe that’s why it appeals to her Catholic self-denying thing is it feels like it’s part of the Inquisition.

Martha Beck:
Oh my God. We can get her a hair shirt and one of those collars with the spikes that stick you in the neck, maybe even a small man to run after her screaming about her sins.

Rowan Mangan:
That would be nice. And she already has ticks.

Martha Beck:
What? She has ticks like a deer?

Rowan Mangan:
No. Well, not all the time.

Martha Beck:
We should send her out to be de-ticked, then.

Rowan Mangan:
So what happens is our dog goes out and gets ticks and then comes in and transfers the ticks to Karen and then periodically, she goes, “Ah! That’s a tick!” We live in fear of ticks.

Martha Beck:
We do. So she has— What does this have to do with being stretched?

Rowan Mangan:
It was on the hair shirt. It was like a connection in my mind from the hair shirt reference.

Martha Beck:
Oh! No, I don’t think that Catholics ever used ticks to torture themselves.

Rowan Mangan:
Fleas. I don’t know. Look—

Martha Beck:
They just had fleas. They didn’t mean to. They just had ’em. And then they had plague and everyone died. And I read a book once and it was really interesting, a thought that I had never thought, but now I have thought it—the fleas that transferred the bubonic plague were sick. They were infected. They had bubonic plague. They weren’t well.

Rowan Mangan:
Are you sure?

Martha Beck:
Well, it said in the book that a third of Europe died because of sick fleas. And I was like, “Huh? Nobody ever mourns the fleas.”

Rowan Mangan:
But couldn’t they just be carriers? Couldn’t the fleas just be—

Martha Beck:
I didn’t write the book. I assume it was well researched. Maybe they asked the fleas.

Rowan Mangan:
How could fleas have the bubonic plague? Isn’t the bubonic plague—

Martha Beck:
A flea. Ticks don’t have that. I wonder if ticks that have Lyme disease—

Rowan Mangan:
Did I say ticks?

Martha Beck:
Yes. I wonder if ticks that have Lyme disease are like they have Lyme disease. And definitely the rats were probably sick because the bubonic plague came from China on the boats with the rats that had the plague. And then the fleas bit the rats and the fleas bit the people, and everybody died.

Rowan Mangan:
Did you know that there wasn’t just a bubonic plague? There were was also, did you know there was also a pneumonic plague?

Martha Beck:
Really?

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. That was more in the lungs and less in the bubons. There’s something that begins with a “bu” that has to do with—

Martha Beck:
Buboes. They would grow under your armpits. And I wonder if that’s where the word boobies came from?

Rowan Mangan:
Maybe.

Martha Beck:
It’s disgusting. Yeah. What did you just say? That there’s a pneumonic plague?

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, but with a P, not like a thing that helps you remember.

Martha Beck:
Right, I thought you said “mnemonic” plague, which is a plague where everyone sat around memorizing shit. “Oh, my I God, I can’t memorize. I can’t stop memorizing your credit card numbers. It’s a plague! A mnemonic plague.”

Rowan Mangan:
Oh dear. That’s not good.

Martha Beck:
Should we get to our damn podcast?

Rowan Mangan:
No, you have to ask me what I’m trying to figure out.

Martha Beck:
Oh, shoot! What are you trying to figure out?

Rowan Mangan:
For sure. That’s what I’m trying to figure out: “for sure.” I’m trying to expand my knowledge and ability to speak American. And there’s this thing, and I can’t quite manage it convincingly, which is: Americans say “for sure.” And it’s just like a little tick.

Martha Beck:
Oh God.

Rowan Mangan:
Everything’s a tick to me.

Martha Beck:
A mnemonic tick.

Rowan Mangan:
I’ve just got to check myself. Maybe it’s a message from the ticks that they’re on me.

Martha Beck:
It’s so funny when you say that you sound like this: “For sure.”

Rowan Mangan:
For sure. And that’s me trying my hardest because if I was to say it in my native tongue, at least the translation would go “for sure.” There’s just no “for sure.”

Martha Beck:
See, do I sound Aussie when I say “for sure”? “For sure.” Would I get away with that?

Rowan Mangan:
No. You sound like an American doing that thing where they go, “pshaw,” which they never say in real life. Yeah. No.

Martha Beck:
You sound: “for sure.”

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, for sure. It’s like that thing, that funny thing that we laugh about from a TV show where there was a movie called “Rural Juror.”

Martha Beck:
“The Rural Juror.” That was 30 Rock. That was an episode of 30 Rock.

Rowan Mangan:
I know, I wasn’t going to—

Martha Beck:
“The Rural Juror.”

Rowan Mangan:
I wasn’t going to call it out.

Martha Beck:
Oh, okay.

Rowan Mangan:
It was juror. But it’s the same thing. It’s like this weird, there’s no vowel sound: for sure. So I’ve been out practicing it in the world. It doesn’t go well.

Martha Beck:
Also Chinese.

Rowan Mangan:
I know. Yeah, I know. But also—

Martha Beck:
A Chinese person specifically from Beijing.

Rowan Mangan:
Really?

Martha Beck:
Yeah, because “sure,” that’s just a word of agreement in Chinese, so you hear it all the time. Sure, sure, sure.

Rowan Mangan:
Okay, so say “for sure.”

Martha Beck:
For sure.

Rowan Mangan:
For sure. For sure.

Martha Beck:
You’re doing—

Rowan Mangan:
For sure.

Martha Beck:
I see how hard you’re working and I love you very much, and I never even want you to lose your Aussie accent.

Rowan Mangan:
You just did a callback, like an in-joke callback to the time when I made our friend Liz noodles that were made out of—

Martha Beck:
Fungus.

Rowan Mangan:
Fungus.

Martha Beck:
Not even a good fungus.

Rowan Mangan:
No, it was like this weird, no-carb stuff back from the keto days. And holy moly, it was nasty. It had a weird capacity to sort of, what’s that noise? It squeaked when you bit into it.

Martha Beck:
It did squeak.

Rowan Mangan:
There was a squeaking.

Martha Beck:
Nothing should really squeak when you’re biting into it.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
I can’t think where it’s a good thing that something squeaks when you bite into it.

Rowan Mangan:
I totally agree.

Martha Beck:
Jell-O, maybe? Like, Ugh.

Rowan Mangan:
No, no. Shouldn’t squeak. Shouldn’t squeak. Yeah. So for sure, for sure.

Martha Beck:
And you gave, all she wanted was a simple bowl of pasta with butter to calm her and soothe her feelings. So we made her some fungus pasta, and she took a bite and she said, “I love you very much, and I see how hard you worked there.”

Rowan Mangan:
“And I won’t be eating this.”

Martha Beck:
“I won’t be eating this.”

Rowan Mangan:
It was a good lesson for us in boundaries as a little script. Little script.

Martha Beck:
Sweet. Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
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 you know 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!

Rowan Mangan:
All right, so why don’t we seamlessly transition into our topic for today, Marty Mec?

Martha Beck:
Well segued, Rowan Mangan.

Rowan Mangan:
I think I just called you Marty Mec.

Martha Beck:
Works for me.

Rowan Mangan:
I think I started saying Marty Moo, and then I tried to segue into Marty Beck seamlessly.

Martha Beck:
Marty Mec. Okay.

Rowan Mangan:
All right.

Martha Beck:
You sound not American. Okay, let’s say what we’re talking about today. I like it.

Rowan Mangan:
So we began sort of kicking this topic around a few—for those listening to this audio medium, Marty’s doing random things with her hands that if you were to join us—

Martha Beck:
My wrists, with my wrists.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh, I thought you were just dancing or something.

Martha Beck:
Waving my hands for no reason.

Rowan Mangan:
I thought you were just wiggling your fingers at me.

Martha Beck:
Well, you should do it too. You have them as well.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s an audio medium, woman.

Martha Beck:
Then why are we filming? Okay, go on, go on. Let’s tell the people what we are talking about.

Rowan Mangan:
You can go to YouTube and see her wiggling her fingers. So I made bracelets and then Marty was talking to our friend Kate about the bracelets and the beads and how we like them. Is that fair?

Martha Beck:
They’re beautiful, these bracelets you make are absolutely lovely. And I’m currently wearing eight of them at once. I mean, they’re just, I can’t not wear them because they’re too beautiful, and I love putting ’em all together and yeah, it’s just fantastic.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s probably why your arms are getting so muscular, it’s because you’ve got so many bracelets on at any given moment.

Martha Beck:
The weight of the beads is giving me massive guns. Anyway, Kate said, here’s the interesting thing: If you were to dig up a previously unknown Egyptian tomb from like 5,000 years ago and it was all intact and tomb raiders hadn’t gotten it, what would you find, that you would probably find? Pretty beads on a string— bracelets, necklaces— pretty beads on a string.

Rowan Mangan:
Pretty beads on a string.

Martha Beck:
And if you found a tribe that had not contacted other humans for thousands of years, what would they probably have? Pretty beads on a string. But there’s no need for pretty beads on a string.

Rowan Mangan:
No. Except, yeah, there’s no need for it, except that there is, and this is the sort of interesting paradox that we thought we would talk a bit about today because as many of our listeners will know, beads are shiny.

Martha Beck:
They’re shiny.

Rowan Mangan:
And they’re pretty.

Martha Beck:
Oh, so pretty.

Rowan Mangan:
And why do we need shiny, pretty things? We don’t. We objectively don’t.

Martha Beck:
And yet we always do. All over the world, people make shiny pretty things. People in the Arctic make beautiful, shiny, pretty things out of ivory from whales and walruses. People in the desert make shiny pretty things out of shiny things in the desert. But some of the shiniest, prettiest things seem to come from people living in the desert.

Rowan Mangan:
Just name some more places and shiny things that are there. I’m enjoying this.

Martha Beck:
Now I can’t. Now I’ve stalled.

Rowan Mangan:
What’s shiny among the mountain people?

Martha Beck:
All kinds of shiny.

Rowan Mangan:
What’s shiny among the meadow people?

Martha Beck:
Gold. Gold is shiny in the mountains. Gold rush. They found it in the rivers. Thousands of people went there for this thing that is only useful because it’s shiny and pretty. You can’t make tools out of it. Well, people had put it in their teeth for a while, but they did.

Rowan Mangan:
Sometimes it’s really fun to just let you roll. Just roll and just see where you go.

Martha Beck:
Oh God, it never ends, Ro.

Rowan Mangan:
I know, I know.

Martha Beck:
I’m deeply neurodivergent.

Rowan Mangan:
Yes. Yeah, me too. Just in different ways. So we are interested in shiny things. We are interested in pretty shiny things that are not useful to our culture. What’s it about? And what’s it about that we want to create beauty and create art? And what is that in our essential humanness that we want to do it, and what’s it good for? And music.

Martha Beck:
What?

Rowan Mangan:
Music.

Martha Beck:
True. There’s always music, isn’t there?

Rowan Mangan:
Mic drop. Mic drop.

Martha Beck:
You know what else collects pretty—we’re calling this precious and pointless—makes music and collects beads? Birdies, Birdies. Not all birdies, but a lot of birdies. There are birds that make, like the bowerbirds, you should know about them. They’re in Australia.

Rowan Mangan:
I do know about them.

Martha Beck:
Some of ’em only get blue things. They make a whole nest that is just made out of blue things.

Rowan Mangan:
Let me tell you about living in Australia. When you have a blue milk bottle and then there’s a little round plastic thing that’s under the milk bottle that separates it out to show when you’ve opened it already, you have to cut that plastic thing, or a bowerbird will accidentally get strangled by it.

Martha Beck:
Why?

Rowan Mangan:
If it’s blue. Because it’s, it’s blue.

Martha Beck:
Because it’s blue. They really do go for blue, huh? Yeah, because I’ve seen different species, they’ll go for orange or just one species, some like one day or one season, the bowerbird will build things only out of bright orange. And then the next year it’s black things, but shiny. I mean, and they sing too, and they’re descended from the dinosaurs.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh, here we go. All right, so, yeah, music is good, but there’s no evolutionary survival value to it, right? Music and art?

Martha Beck:
It’s a good point.

Rowan Mangan:
Precious, pointless things.

Martha Beck:
And all of the arts, dancing—why do people dance? There’s no evolutionary survival value to dancing except—and bright pretty beads and drawing pictures and singing songs—except for something in our being. Maybe it’s our souls. We need them. All people seem to need them. And I think that’s very cool.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, I mean, I really want to drill into the pointless, this idea of precious and pointless. And why dancing, I don’t know. Dancing I can find a cultural point to it. Like if you’re in fight or flight and you need to wiggle, you can wiggle. But there’s nothing that makes you want a shiny thing. And so it genuinely doesn’t do anything. In fact, you have to sit still to do it, which might get you eaten by something. And I just love how pointless can it get. Like with Cuckoo, our beloved Kirikoo, our Karen, our third, our love. She—actually, I’m good at figuring out things for Karen because I also figured out this for her, which was I thought, “What Karen needs—” Well actually, Sam Irby, it always comes back to Sam Irby.

Martha Beck:
It’s true. She is a goddess.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh my God. She did some sort of list on her Substack, I think, or her newsletter, that was all stuff she loved. And she had a coloring app, which I then immediately acquired. And something about the act of coloring made me think, “Karen would like this. This is precious and pointless.” And so now Cuckoo will sit there—

Martha Beck:
She’s obsessed.

Rowan Mangan:
—coloring with her little pencil on her little tablet for hours. It’s still delightful. Yeah.

Martha Beck:
It is! A little Scandi noir playing in the background, she’s coloring away happy as a clam, much stretchier than usual.

Rowan Mangan:
And we’ve got this—it’s so funny picturing someone coloring being more lithe and fit at the coloring.

Martha Beck:
You can reach further.

Rowan Mangan:
And so it’s like Cuckoo’s sitting there coloring precious, beautiful pictures. Pointless.

Martha Beck:
Totally pointless.

Rowan Mangan:
I like my little beading activity. Precious as utterly pointless except for maybe making your arms more butch. And you? What about you, you artist person?

Martha Beck:
I’ve been drawing and painting and things since I was little, little. And I tried to keep it under wraps for a while. But then after I wrote my last book, which was partly about creativity, I just gave it a go for a whole month and started painting. And it was like Vesuvius blowing up. I can’t stop. And so now I get up every morning, I got up today at five so I could just stand and paint. So it felt almost like I went around confessing it to people that I had this overwhelming need to paint. And I called the therapist that I’d been seeing long ago and said, “I have this incredible need to paint what’s wrong with me?” And she goes, “I don’t know. I’m taking a painting class. I can’t stop.” And I started to see people around me creating precious and pointless things. Now maybe my attention is going that way more, but these are people, like our beloved Cuckoo, that I’ve been watching. I know what they do. And suddenly they were making precious and pointless things at a level that seemed almost as compulsive as mine. I don’t know! It’s what’s happening.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s weird, right? ‘Cause I—it’s the same thing and to the point where we just think there’s something weird going on among the “other butterflies” or whatever out there in our Cahoot, because Marty will actually, is at the point of just saying to people upfront in the context of a conversation if she hasn’t seen them for a while, “So do you ever spontaneously start just making art all the time for no reason?” And people are like, “Oh, it’s funny you should say that actually.” And then they come up with some precious pointless thing.

Martha Beck:
I just got back from South Africa, and I left you beading away. And then I met someone completely new that I’d never met before. She’s absolutely delightful. And she just one day said, “I can’t stop beading.” And I was like, “When did this start?” “Just recently.” I’m like, what? People are making precious and pointless things. The other butterflies, I don’t know if it’s just the other butterflies, but it seems like that.

Rowan Mangan:
Feels that way. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s interesting that I feel like there’s something, some part of whatever this is that’s to do with the making of the beauty. And I was almost picturing it as an infinity loop of you make beautiful, beautiful, I mean beauty. I don’t mean it in some lofty way. I mean shiny, shiny and pretty. That is lofty. Yeah. Yeah, it is. So you make your beauty and then it’s almost like because you’ve spent—oh my God, I just have to tell people I got these cool glasses. So regular listeners know that there are very special tools that I like to acquire, very special tools, and so I have these little jewelers glasses now to do my beadings.

Martha Beck:
You are such a nerd.

Rowan Mangan:
I know. Well, you should see me in the glasses because talk about nerd. The glasses are so thick, the glass in them, but you can switch them out to get more and more like—

Martha Beck:
Magnification.

Rowan Mangan:
Thank you. Don’t know why that word was escaping me.

Martha Beck:
Mnemonic plague.

Rowan Mangan:
The mnemonic plague.

Martha Beck:
Mnemonic plague. Mnemonic plague there.

Rowan Mangan:
Mini, mani, money.

Martha Beck:
Okay, so jewelers glasses, different strengths. Go.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, it’s fun and it’s got a little light on it, on them. And so I can just happily bead away. That’s just for people who enjoy my tool fetish. So not in a lesbian-tool-fetish way, just in a straight-lady-tool-fetish way?

Martha Beck:
Yeah. A lot of when I see you beading it is definitely a big turn-on, but I have to say that those jewelers glasses don’t… Why is that so funny?

Rowan Mangan:
Oh my god. I know. I know, they’re sexy. All right, so I was on a point, did you want to say anything?

Martha Beck:
I don’t know.

Rowan Mangan:
So all right, so here’s my beautiful point. I got off track with the glasses. Let’s not worry about it. It’s fine. As you start making pretty things—pretty, precious, pointless things—I feel like you kind of turn up your own sensitivity to beauty everywhere in the world, and you become more aesthetically susceptible. And I just feel like everything looks more beautiful the more I try to make precious, pointless things. What do you think about that, Martha Beck?

Martha Beck:
Oh my God, it’s like once I start painting, and I’ve been painting every day for a couple of months now, and it just slays me. Everything. Somebody brings me a glass of water and I’m like, “Ahh!” The beauty of it, the beauty of the world just gobsmacks me. And you know what I think may be happening? The sociologist in me is always going, “Rrr?” Anxiety disorder is skyrocketing right round the globe.

Rowan Mangan:
You should write a book about that.

Martha Beck:
I probably should. Oh wait, I did. But it’s hard to get anxious when you’re actually making something creatively. It doesn’t have to be art, but I wonder if the conditions that are creating a spike in anxiety for some people are creating a spike in creativity as a way of channeling whatever’s happening away from anxiety and into something productive and beautiful. Just saying, okay, done.

Rowan Mangan:
Wow. I love that. So what we create, so it’s almost like we’re getting our instruments, our being, sharpened or honed.

Martha Beck:
You mean our brains, not your jewelers glasses? Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
No, I kind of mean our superpowers by our “instruments.” So I’m just trying to decide what level of woo to let this come out at.

Martha Beck:
Oh, go wooey.

Rowan Mangan:
Go wooey?

Martha Beck:
Go.

Rowan Mangan:
For sure.

Martha Beck:
For sure. Go Woo-woo-wooey.

Rowan Mangan:
Go wooey, Roey.

Martha Beck:
Wooey Roey. Go.

Rowan Mangan:
We are all honing our instruments in our little precious pointless things, like our beads and our iPad coloring, so that our creativity is supercharged, or brought up to top capacity, so that we are ready when the time comes to remake a better world. And that time has come.

Martha Beck:
It has come. It was really interesting because I always thought I’m being bad because I’m spending all this time drawing and painting. I’m always in my head trying to figure out how to solve a problem and I thought, “Oh, it’s wasting time. It has no point.” But I just went to see old friends and we talked to my older children and they’re like, “You seem really, really happy. You’re really different.” And here’s the thing, here was my point. It was about you being able to see beauty everywhere. Everywhere I went, I thought, “Why are people being so nice? Everyone is just so lovely. People are lovely.” And I was thinking about it. There was a security guard in one of the airports who threw her body out in front of a bunch of passengers and spread her arms wide and said, “You are forbidden.” And I was like, “Ohhh, she’s having such a bad day.” And then my attention drifted on to people who were being lovely. And I think it’s just— selective attention—it’s going to beauty instead of anxiety. Things that make me feel anxious and mean just don’t interest me, and they don’t keep my attention. When I’m in a creative mode, my whole attention drifts toward whatever is most beautiful in people and landscapes and objects—everything.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s kind of cool to think of creativity as a skill set, like a muscle group that gets honed and then sort of spontaneously gets applied to different things. So that me making my bracelets leads to me—and I dunno if this is true, it hasn’t happened yet— but me creatively thinking up a way of solving a problem or something just because I’m engaging with, I don’t know whether it’s a hemisphere—

Martha Beck:
Can I be a total nerd?

Rowan Mangan:
Oh, please.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. Well that actually is a real thing. When a skill learned in one place can be applied to a completely different thing, and it’s called a far transfer in the brain. It only happens in the right hemisphere. It’s when a totally different skillset is brought to something. You were telling me something about spreadsheets and music earlier.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
That’s a far transfer. Tell them about that.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s not exactly a far transfer, but it was a cool thing that my friend told me that when she was watching her partner working in Excel, I guess, or Sheets or something, he was working on spreadsheets, really complex spreadsheets and pivot tables and all of that stuff. And that she would watch him, his back’s to her and he’s working away and he’s adjusting this and putting this and filling the row of cells here with this formula and la la la and applying it over here. And she said, “It looked to me almost indistinguishable from when I see him in that position but he’s playing piano. And it just feels like the same part of him that’s playing piano.” Like a big concerto or whatever. Can you play a concerto on piano?

Martha Beck:
Yeah, you can.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. And then playing with the spreadsheet was the same thing. So yeah, it’s good.

Martha Beck:
And in fact, kids who play the violin are way better at math. That’s clearly, it’s like you say it’s a muscle group and it gets highly developed in one skill and then you learn to play the violin and then they throw calculus at you and you’re like, “Haha! I got this covered.”

Rowan Mangan:
I always felt like I was deceived about how much math is involved in music, that you think you’re just going to be able to play “Let It Be” or something, and instead you have to learn math. There is a lot of it. There is a lot in it.

Martha Beck:
No, but that’s not why kids who learn to play—

Rowan Mangan:
I know that, I’m just saying, people get deceived and it’s not right.

Martha Beck:
There’s a lot of math in music.

Rowan Mangan:
So there you go. Here’s what I think about the culture.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
I think that the culture messes with us by—so say that it’s innate in us that we want to make precious and pointless things because they’re shiny and pretty.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
Then the culture says, “Well, but is it Versace? Are those diamonds Versace?” And you say, “Well, it’s not relevant what place they came out of. It’s a pretty bracelet and it’s made from diamonds.” And it’s whatever, maybe they’re not even plastic, they’re real diamonds, but they’re not Versace. And the culture says, “Well, okay, but they’re not Versace. All right, okay.” And so you get co-opted, you get these beautiful things, co-opted by the Prada, Versace, like here’s your real Prada bag for $8,000 and here’s one that’s exactly identical to the naked eye that is $20 on the street. And that’s—there’s some value difference in those two things. And so to me, the stuff with your painting or the bracelets or the coloring, it’s like it’s real, it’s very concrete. Our little brains are like, “Shiny! Pretty!” right? And it becomes something really abstract in the way the culture likes to turn something that is into something that represents something else that is always nasty and hierarchical and setting people against each other.

Martha Beck:
And it always involves money. A Prada bag is $8,000 and a ripoff is $20. And also we will shame you, spit on you, and throw you into the street if we see that it is not an actual Prada bag.

Rowan Mangan:
And so I think it’s clear that the culture tries to shame us about having “the real thing” versus just a shiny thing that is pretty. But it was interesting because we tried to talk about this a little bit before we came on and we disagree totally. Yeah. We disagree about whether or not the culture successfully shames people en masse about the brand-name stuff. I was like, “Yeah, but no one falls for that.” And Marty’s like, “I think you’ll find people do.”

Martha Beck:
People do fall for it.

Rowan Mangan:
And it’s fun when we disagree on something, it doesn’t happen very often. And so we’re now going to play out our personal argument for all of you here in public. That’s fun.

Martha Beck:
I think, and maybe I grew up in a really strange environment. For sure I did. Everybody was Mormon. But another thing that was—for sure—the other thing that was very prominent in my school, elementary to high school, was that if you didn’t have the right brand of clothing, the shaming was, I mean, you couldn’t be acceptable. You couldn’t have friends. People would pull down—

Rowan Mangan:
Teenagers.

Martha Beck:
No, but still it continued through—okay so they would pull down the neck of your shirt to make sure it had the right tag on it because some people, like my sisters and I, to some extent, sewed our own clothing, and that was just right out. But my sisters were so good at it that they could really mimic. But it’s not good enough to have a handmade, brilliant article of clothing. It has to be from the Gap or whatever. And I think that carried right through. I mean maybe it’s because I wrote for Oprah magazine for a long time and I was sometimes around those people, but it’s like, oh, if you weren’t wearing the right clothes, if you didn’t have the right bag, if you didn’t have a nice car, if you didn’t live in—like the precious and pointless things you had to own, they had to be culturally validated by some brand thing that would make it astronomically expensive. But if you didn’t have that, you’d be shamed. And I think that’s been endemic throughout culture.

Rowan Mangan:
Interesting. I do agree with you about the high school thing. I think that when we’re in that formative sort of time, we’re trying to figure out a lot. And I can remember that Levi’s 501s thing was my version of whatever yours was. So I know that that’s true. Yeah. I mean, I really, I don’t know if, I don’t know if you were in a pod or I was in a pod, you know what I mean? I don’t know where that came from, but I definitely have spent my life surrounded by people who would be quite shocked to think that—and maybe to a fault, maybe too much, maybe they would be as judgmental of the Prada bag, as of the knockoff bag. I don’t know.

Martha Beck:
I think you sort of went that way.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh no, I have.

Martha Beck:
From a teenager, you’ve been like, “Yeah, screw that.” Right?

Rowan Mangan:
Which is just the same thing in its inverse. It’s not different. It’s just culture.

Martha Beck:
I put it to you. Sex and the City. Manolo Blahnik shoes, Jimmy Choo shoes, all the designer stuff. Everybody watched that and they were like, “Oh yeah, that’s what you can get if you are a local newspaper columnist in New York City.” No! You can’t afford that. But the whole point of the show—

Rowan Mangan:
Rent control. She had rent control.

Martha Beck:
Palatial Manhattan apartment. But the brand of the shoe and the brand of the bag—this was extremely important and people around the globe were watching that and going, “Yeah!”

Rowan Mangan:
Around the globe. This is the thing is you’re saying everyone felt that around the globe. And I’m like, I agree that the show was doing that. I just can’t stomach the idea that people who can’t afford Manolo Blahniks are losing sleep over it or who choose not to spend ridiculous amounts of shoes—of money on shoes.

Martha Beck:
I think it’s bizarre. I think it’s really bizarre. And people who get obsessed over, is it Prada or is it a knockoff, and they’re going to keep a friend if it’s real Prada and lose them if it’s not. I think that is just bizarre that they have turned precious and pointless into this weird distorted version where it becomes about judgment and class and levels of income. It’s weird. It’s very weird. And I don’t think I really buy into it. Or you would not, you and I couldn’t be together if I bought into it because you just have no time for that.

Rowan Mangan:
Well, you—I don’t want to shame you in the other direction, but it’s not like you’re busy trying to get brand-name clothes or anything.

Martha Beck:
No. Although you once got me brand-name clothes.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, I made a thing to get you fancified.

Martha Beck:
Fancy clothes.

Rowan Mangan:
No, but not because of the specific name. I was just like, let’s get you some good clothes for when you go on stage and stuff.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
Instead of—I wasn’t like, you need to have, what’s a clothing brand that people care about?

Martha Beck:
Armani.

Rowan Mangan:
Armani. Yeah. I wasn’t like, you need some Armani in your closet.

Martha Beck:
No, you just said you need some clothes that are not held together by safety pins.

Rowan Mangan:
This is literally what she does. There are a lot of safety pins in her. Well, we’re in agreement, we’re in violent agreement here.

Martha Beck:
But here I just have one story I have to tell you. And it was that I knew someone who worked in a company and one of her friends sold Cartier watches, and she introduced her friend to everybody in the company and they all bought these Cartier watches. And then she called me in a panic one day because someone had recognized, I don’t know if this is exactly right, that there was a diamond on the bezel. Yes. Of the watches that had been sold. I put to you again, a diamond on the bezel of the watch. And anybody worth their salt would know that there was no diamond on the bezel on a real Cartier watch. The diamond was on the wing-diggy or something, and there was this massive scandal that rippled through the whole company and she was afraid for her job.

Rowan Mangan:
Did she know she was selling knockoffs?

Martha Beck:
No, no, no. Their friend was selling knockoffs. No, she was horrified. Oh, absolutely. But the whole point is why were they paying umpteen zillion dollars for this thing in the first place? And oh my gosh, I got so shamed once for, I had my picture taken for a magazine and I tend to fry watches, so I would go to—

Rowan Mangan:
Not as tasty snacks.

Martha Beck:
No, no. Not in butter. But it is a fun idea. But I liked working out and I liked having a stopwatch. And so I would go to Target and buy a $10 watch and it would have a stopwatch, a little sport watch. And I loved them. I had a little light I could see at night and a picture was taken of me for a magazine, I think it was People magazine and I got phone calls from people: “Martha, what are you wearing on your wrist? What is that piece of crap? Why are you not dressed?” I was just like, well, what is wrong with you people now? It was a real firestorm that I was wearing this $10 watch. So I speak from experience, hard, hard experience, Roey.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. People are into it. No, I agree. I want to know, though, I want our listeners to tell us is—

Martha Beck:
What they think.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. Is it a really a widespread thing that people are buying this? Or are only some people buying it, and then it’s distorted how much that attitude has penetrated the culture.

Martha Beck:
And what you said, and I really want our listeners to hear this, is: “I don’t think any of our listeners would buy that.”

Rowan Mangan:
Not buy that object. That’s not what I meant. I meant, buy the idea that it means something different to have a nice brand.

Martha Beck:
To have a Cartier watch versus a $10 watch.

Rowan Mangan:
Have a Cartier watch, I don’t care. I just don’t think it’s any different from something of similar quality that doesn’t have that word.

Martha Beck:
I hear you. So listeners, do you agree with our position, which is it doesn’t freaking matter whether it’s Prada or not? Or are you like, “I would never leave the house with a Prada knockoff. How dare you even suggest it?” There’s no bias or judgment in our question.

Rowan Mangan:
No, it’s put very objectively. So my suspicion is that we have something to figure out here. I don’t think we’ve got to the bottom of it yet. So I would suggest that we take a little minute to collect ourselves and then we come back and figure this out.

Rowan Mangan:
So it is time to figure it out.

Martha Beck:
Yes, it is. So.

Rowan Mangan:
To me, the culture’s trap here, what we’re trying to figure out, is that the culture’s trap is to take something that’s precious and pointless and try to give it a point. That’s it. It must have a point. So it becomes, “This is Prada” instead of “This is shiny,” or “This is pretty.”

Martha Beck:
Mmm.

Rowan Mangan:
Right?

Martha Beck:
This is pretty, this is shiny, this makes me happy. I think that’s the thing is that something in us rises up when we make and use and observe precious, pointless things. And I mean, for me to start painting away like crazy at this time in my life, I’ve tried a lot of things that have given me a lot of joy, but I’ve never felt the quality of joy that I feel when I’m making precious, pointless things and then being more open to beauty. And I have to say in my sociological way, there’s a lot of data that says that people who do these artsy things that are completely pointless except for their beauty, they are healthier, they live longer. There’s no reason that we know of why they should, but they do. That’s the fact of it. So making precious, pointless things, if you want to give it a point, there’s a point. I don’t know.

Rowan Mangan:
So if you need a cultural cover story to justify to yourself or anyone else that you want to make pretty things, there it is. You’ll live longer. Boom. Done.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. You’ll be healthier. But try not to maybe need a cultural cover story. Yeah?

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. Because it’s beauty for its own sake, it’s creativity for its own sake. And learning to be okay with that is part of our learning journey.

Martha Beck:
Learning to love it. Yeah. Learning to just love beauty and creativity for their own precious and pointless sake. And that’s a great way to…

Rowan Mangan:
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 5708730144. 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. Bewildered is produced by Scott Forster with support from the brilliant team at MBI. And remember, if you’re having fun, please rate and review and 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.