Bewildered^TM

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 & Ro discuss the importance of contrarians [...]

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 [...]

You spoke, and Marty & 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 [...]

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 [...]

Sleep: it’s not just for wimps and sissies.

Until Martha and Ro dug into the topic of this podcast—the innocent little universal need for SLEEP—they didn’t realize how much of a cultural minefield sleep is. There is SO MUCH sleep-shaming [...]

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. Ro [...]

In this episode Martha and Ro talk about the “ultimate spiritual lifehack” for dealing with other human beings. Conflict is everywhere, and you can’t win enough arguments to ever escape the culture of argument itself. So Martha and Ro [...]

In this episode, Ro and Martha talk about a disheartening phenomenon that can happen when you bring your truest truth into the world. Instead of positive or negative feedback, some people just won’t get you. This non-response is weirdly [...]