Rowan Mangan:
It’s so exciting.

Martha Beck:
And they’re helping us figure it out.

Rowan Mangan:
They are probably closer to having it figured out than anyone I’ve ever met. Yeah.

Martha Beck:
I think so too. And Amie’s written a book. Actually, they work together.

Rowan Mangan:
Let’s let them introduce themselves.

Martha Beck:
Well, why? I want to talk.

Rowan Mangan:
Because I want to hear their two-minute, I want them, I want you to bio yourselves. Yeah. Please introduce yourselves.

Martha Beck:
Yes, please.

Amie McNee:
Hi. My name is Amie McNee.

Martha Beck:
Hello, Amie McNee.

Amie McNee:
And I am so grateful to be here. So I am a writer, author, creativity coach, and my book, We Need Your Art is Out. And basically what it’s here to do is remind you that you are here on this earth to make things and to use your incredible brain to create, to remind you that this is serious, this is important. And that now more than ever before, we absolutely need you to start taking art seriously. And so that is the crux of my work. I basically just bully people to make them create things.

Rowan Mangan:
Perfect.

Martha Beck:
It’s working. It worked on me. I mean, I read this book when it first got to me in galleys, and it gave me this surge of creativity that went beyond writing. And then I kind of wilted. And I read it again before this interview, and it was like watering a plant. I just said, “I can make art again!” Amie’s a magician. Really.

Amie McNee:
I’m so grateful, Martha.

James Winestock:
And I’m James. I’m Amy’s partner. I like to call myself her support person. And I think I’m here because we needed a three-to-one ratio of Australians to Americans. That’s now international law.

Martha Beck:
Always. The world should be that way.

James Winestock:
That’s what it has to be. And I am along for the ride with Amie. I guess I’d describe myself maybe as sort of a research assistant slash I kind of do the taxes, but also first pass editorial. I’m kind of in the background frame. I feel like I’m the Rowan. I’m the Rowan.

Rowan Mangan:
There’s a reason that—

James Winestock:
We’re on this side.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. It’s something like what do the Australians do? Well, just a bit of everything, really.

James Winestock:
Yeah. You know, whatever needs done, roll up your sleeves.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, no worries. We’ll take care of it.

Martha Beck:
Go rescue a wallaby.

Rowan Mangan:
I really think of you as British, even though—

Amie McNee:
I have a funny accent as well.

James Winestock:
I do too.

Rowan Mangan:
You have a both accent.

James Winestock:
Amy has both passports. So it’s accurate to say either way.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. Nice. Nice.

James Winestock:
I know. Very fancy.

Martha Beck:
That is so liminal, so ambivalent.

Amie McNee:
Mysterious.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Amie McNee:
Thanks, guys.

Rowan Mangan:
Mysterious when needed.

James Winestock:
She goes really posh when she’s, has to public speak. So she’ll suddenly become very Oxfordian throughout the course of this podcast.

Amie McNee:
I will. I certainly will.

James Winestock:
When we’re by ourselves, it’s a lot of F’s and C’s in the broad Australian accent.

Rowan Mangan:
I just want to let you know this is a safe space for your F’s and C’s.

Amie McNee:
Thank you so fucking much.

Rowan Mangan:
Very, very welcomed here.

Martha Beck:
One of my favorite things in the book is she makes a special stipulation at the beginning: “I love the word fuck. Okay, so in order to get this published the way the publishers wanted, I have substituted the word ‘screw.’ I mean, fuck!”

Amie McNee:
They allowed me the asterisk. Thank God. I was like, I need people to understand that this is a really important part of my vocabulary.

Martha Beck:
Me too.

Amie McNee:
It’s so important to me.

Martha Beck:
It is le mot juste.

Amie McNee:
Oh, Martha gets it. Of course Martha gets it.

Martha Beck:
There’s so many.

Amie McNee:
Of course Martha gets it. Yeah. I love to say “fuck.” I have a necklace on right now that says “fuck.”

Rowan Mangan:
I saw that. I love that necklace. I actually want it.

Amie McNee:
Yeah, you need that.

James Winestock:
But don’t you think it’s not a very shocking thing in Australia, right? It’s just like us saying “so” or “like.”

Rowan Mangan:
Well, it’s like they say that Australians, an Australian is someone who call their enemy “mate” and their friend “cunt.”

James Winestock:
Exactly.

Martha Beck:
And my little American ears are like, “Oh! Ah!”

Amie McNee:
Yeah, it does shock people saying “cunt” to Brits as well. They’re not good with it.

James Winestock:
Well, it depends. I like the further north you go.

Amie McNee:
Yeah. Interesting.

James Winestock:
The more appropriate. It is. But we live in Oxfordshire, so.

Amie McNee:
It’s very, it fascinates me because I think it’s a rule that I love to break and it really does upset people very much. Very much. I get a lot of flack for it.

Martha Beck:
It’s what you’re about, really.

Amie McNee:
Yes. Thank you. Sorry, Martha.

Martha Beck:
Oh, keep talking.

Amie McNee:
Someone said the other day, “I’m really excited to get your book and I really support your work, but I just want you to know that whenever you swear, I get very disappointed in you.”

James Winestock:
Thanks, Mom.

Amie McNee:
And I was like, “Fuck it. Fuck!”

Rowan Mangan:
Oh my God. “Disappointed in you.” That is so great because that is what we’re kind of talking about with how the culture sounds. And so often the culture just sounds generally disappointed in us.

Amie McNee:
Very disappointed.

Martha Beck:
Very disappointed. Very disappointed.

Rowan Mangan:
“I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed.”

Amie McNee:
I’m disappointed.

Rowan Mangan:
So the book is called We Need Your Art. Yes. Fucking great title right there. And I was falling asleep last night thinking about this book, listening to this book. And I had this revelation only partially inspired by the Ambien that I had consumed.

Martha Beck:
In quantity.

Rowan Mangan:
In quality.

James Winestock:
American dream.

Rowan Mangan:
That I thought about that Uncle Sam poster of your country needs you?

Martha Beck:
We need you.

Amie McNee:
It’s we want you for the Navy, I think it is.

Rowan Mangan:
That’s right, yeah.

Martha Beck:
It was the armed services. It was during World War II.

Rowan Mangan:
And so this title, We Need Your Art, I love so much because it comes out at you in the pure voice of the culture. And so you get yourself as the title begins, you get yourself girded and galvanized and ready for, ready to be, like what does it need me for?

Martha Beck:
Ready to be used.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. Does it need my life for cannon fodder? Does it need my labor to be exploited to keep billionaires in yachts?

Martha Beck:
Billionairing.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. And then when you say the word “art” at the end of that sentence, we need your art. It’s like it turns it into this zen koan of paradox and invitation. And I feel like one of the things that I’ve heard Marty talk about a lot with the way that our brains are structured is that our right hemispheres of our brains, where all our creativity tends to come from—oversimplification.

Martha Beck:
Oversimplification. Stipulated!

Rowan Mangan:
One of the things that the right hemisphere also does is it likes to solve mysteries. And we are kind of all fans of mysteries in the fiction world, right? And I feel like that’s what you create when you go, “We need your art.” It’s like, “Huh? How can you need something that is not economically rational in that way?”

Martha Beck:
And yet with my sociological training, it is so deeply true because all those consumptive and extractive things that the culture has been doing to people for the last few hundred years have come to a point, a precipice, a break. And we keep hearing about unprecedented levels of problem. And I’m not even going to talk about what they are.

Rowan Mangan:
“Unpresidented,” did you say?

Martha Beck:
Unpresidented.

James Winestock:
Well, yeah. If only.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. But I mean, it’s like the ecosystems and the people and the societal impacts and the markets and everything, they’re all shattering. And what do you need to solve an unprecedented problem? You cannot use the old calculations, the old strategies of logic. And so what part of your brain is best equipped to encounter an unprecedented problem and solve it? The side that does art.

Rowan Mangan:
So can we ask you, Amie, why—I have these two words ringing my head even now, which I feel like a lot of people listening will be in that mode of unprecedented, unprecedented, unprecedented. And so can I ask you to kick us off, why do we need our art even now?

Amie McNee:
Even now. Yes. Especially now. I think this has been almost one of the most heartbreaking parts of this journey of putting this book out there in the world is that when I say, “We need your art,” people are like, “Well, not right now. Have you seen the world? It’s a disaster out there. I’m not going to spend my time having a play with my paints when there’s a crisis going on.” That’s been almost one of the most devastating responses I’ve been getting, and I’ve been seeing it a lot. People are like, “It’s not for hard times. Art is for peace times, for when we’re safe.” And trying to retell that story that art is for when it’s very, very difficult.

Martha Beck:
That’s right.

Amie McNee:
I mean, art is for always, but it has never been more needed than right now.

Martha Beck:
Absolutely.

Amie McNee:
But people are really struggling with me saying, “I need you to sit down at your piano and I need you to sing, and that’s going to solve problems.” People are like, “No, it fucking isn’t. I’m avoiding, or I’m numbing,” and not understanding the power that creativity and the arts gives us and the role of the artist in building this next step, building this future world. And we have to build something different now, and we need our creative faculties to do so because profound change is needed. And change is made by the artists. And people are refusing to see that that is the artist’s job because we’ve lived in a culture that sidelines creativity for so long that’s seen it as frivolous as for perhaps those who have spare time, for the lazy. The story is bull crap. It’s shit. And it’s been told to us to keep us silent and small. And we now need to take our paintbrushes, our phones if we’re filming stuff, our pens, and we need to fucking do something about it. It is the artist’s job to create this next phase.

Rowan Mangan:
And one thing that I feel like is just exactly in line with what you’re saying is that it’s not, the story that gets told is “It’s for when there’s spare time, it’s for the idle rich” or whatever it is like that. But that’s not actually the agenda. The agenda is if you stay in the left hemisphere of your brain, then you continue to give your life for cannon fodder and give your labor for billionaires because you aren’t questioning. And as soon as you get out your paintbrush or sit down at the piano, you open up a way of thinking that creates where there was, that creates everything from amazing art to solutions to climate change. And it’s all coming from that same source that you have to start with paintbrushes or whatever.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, I was fascinated to learn that James is, he and I share a special interest, but he’s much better at it than I am. He understands what happened in Rome and the fall of the Roman Empire. And we were talking as we walked to the studio about what brought Rome down. We didn’t get to my next point, which was what came up through the cracks. I mean, I sort of know, but I haven’t gone back and really scrutinized the history. And I think it’s really pertinent now. Was it or was it not, the creative people? I mean, I’m thinking Italian renaissance, which was way after, more than the century, more than the millennium after, I think. But when humanity started to thrive again, what I think happened partly is this flowering of the arts. And they reached back into the Greeks and they back to the best of the Romans, and they incorporated it and started making art like the David, like the Mona Lisa. Could you speak to history a bit?

James Winestock:
I mean, actually Amie and I are both medievalists as well because we both did it at university, we did a lot of the same courses at university together. So Amie’s actually going to be great to talk about this too. But I think something that’s really interesting is how do we—we preserved a lot of that information through the monasteries, and we preserved a lot of that information. We have this time capsule of the arts that was getting hidden and kept back, and then it was sort of unleashed. And it’s a bit more complicated than that because we also, when Europe began to go east and we went to the Middle East, the Middle Eastern cultures had also preserved a lot of the Western art because there was a lot of cultural cross-pollination. And we kind of rediscovered a lot of that when we went east as well. But you’re right, it was like, I mean, we’ve got in so much trouble of for calling it the Dark Ages, and we’re not allowed to call it the Dark Ages.

Martha Beck:
The medieval times.

James Winestock:
And the medieval times kind of means that in-between, the middle times.

Martha Beck:
The problematic times.

James Winestock:
Yeah. But it was actually, I mean Amie, you’ll be able to speak to this better than me, but art was still going on everywhere in medieval times. It wasn’t like, maybe it wasn’t the high art, but I mean, Amie literally writes historical fiction about medieval Europe.

Amie McNee:
Yeah, I think you’re right. This idea that, I mean, we don’t call it the Dark Ages. Yeah. This was definitely a no-no, because it’s not true. It is like this emerging of playing and creating, and you see medieval paintings and we laugh at them now because they seem very basic, those hilarious pictures of dogs that don’t look quite like dogs. But there’s this almost experimentation of how we want to express ourselves that moves into the Renaissance period. And I specialized in medieval pornography.

Martha Beck:
Oh, cool.

Amie McNee:
Medieval sex work and medieval erotica, essentially. And lemme tell you, they were writing and drawing some seriously randy and fun and exciting things. Art existed and was being created and had emerged from that era. And then, yeah, I guess then there was an elevation, I guess, when the Renaissance came.

Martha Beck:
So right now, would you say where it feels a bit like the barbarians were in—there are no barbarians, we are the barbarians. The call is coming from inside the house for us Americans. So how do we preserve, how do we cloister, as it were, and keep making our art, no matter what, because that’s what I loved about reading your book for the second time after some history had passed, was you speak in the first person: “I need you to paint.”

Amie McNee:
I do.

Martha Beck:
“I need you to play the piano.” And to have someone saying, “I need that,” it took me into a part of myself that was compassionate and cooperative rather than just scared shitless.

Rowan Mangan:
You created a pathway through the left hemisphere to the right hemisphere by saying that because it kicks into our obedient, “Oh, you need me to? Okay. Yeah, showing up for, reporting for duty.” And then you’re like, “Play!”

Martha Beck:
So how does that work for the two of you? You’re both incredibly creative. You have this great podcast, you’re promoting this wonderful book. Do you feel like you’re a cloister creating beautiful illuminated manuscripts? How do you position yourselves in the world? And what can you tell us about how to be creative, to find other creatives, to be in creative community with others? We need your lessons about We Need Your Art.

Amie McNee:
Thank you, Martha.

Rowan Mangan:
Tell us what to do, please.

Martha Beck:
Please tell us what to do.

Amie McNee:
All right, guys. Sit down. Okay. I need you, and you’re going to be really surprised to hear me say this, I need you to make some art.

Martha Beck:
Yeah?

Amie McNee:
Yeah. It’s crazy. Yeah. I mean, for us, this journey is going to be huge. I think when we commit to our creativity, we’re committing to seeing all of our darkness and all of our light. This is not just a commitment to the creative act, like the craft, this is a commitment to ourselves. And I think that is why this trip of, or this demand that I’m making of us to make and produce art, it’s not just, “Oh, that’s nice. There’s another painting in the world.” Because when you made that painting, you made yourself. The making of art is the making of ourselves. And we need to understand that this is so much more than the product. And I think we’ve lived in a world that has said, “Oh, okay, art’s fine, but let’s see the product. How much are you producing? How much is it worth?” Not understanding the journey that creativity takes us on. So I think that’s why a lot of people really struggle when they hear me say, “We need your art.” They’re going like, “Well, why? How is that actually going to make a difference? How is my song that I’m putting out going to make a difference or how is my book going to make a difference?” And it’s like they in themselves will create ripples of change, but it’s you. It’s also what’s happening to you as you create that is going to make profound change in the world.

Martha Beck:
Because what fires together wires together in the brain. And if you’re forcing, not forcing yourself, if you’re inviting your right hemisphere to solve a problem, it does it in a very different way than the sort of procedural logical left hemisphere, which adds up the numbers and tots up the totals and divides by three, and then comes up with a solution and it shows its work. The right hemisphere, which is the place where true creativity happens, it needs a problem pushed to the level of an impasse, absolute stuckness, and the fear and the anxiety that comes with that. And then it needs to go for a walk and it needs to go look at art. It needs to watch someone paint a picture or listen to some music. Feed it art, and just don’t even pay attention to anything else. And after a few days, a few weeks maybe, that problem you’re wrestling with the unsolvable problem, the total impasse will dissolve into this burst of understanding, which then becomes your new way to live. And you of course rightly say your ultimate artistic creation is yourself. Your brain has rewired itself for a quantum leap toward the solving of a problem. And it can’t do it without the ingredients of an impasse and art, taking in art.

Amie McNee:
I love that. There are two things there. The resistance is the way. It’s just such a beautiful, I love problem solving. And I think that that’s such an integral part of art that I never really realized. All of the blocks that we get and me and James navigate all the time, it’s always an opportunity for us to be more creative.

Martha Beck:
Okay, wait, wait. Slow it down. Break it down. I want to hear how you take a problem and then put your brilliant minds together with everything about the world and give us an example.

Amie McNee:
Yeah. What problem have we faced lately?

James Winestock:
I think it was like saying, we were talking on the way here as well, Martha, about David Wengrow and David Graeber’s new book, The Dawn of Everything, or not so new anymore.

Martha Beck:
So good.

James Winestock:
And the thing I love the most about them is that absolutely everything that they do, they go, “Is that true?” And kind of like you said, obviously you talked about when we’re integrity with Byron Katie’s work as well, is that absolutely true? But you can apply that question to everything else. It’s not just about your internal thoughts, right? It’s like if you’re trying to start a business and then you go, “Well, if I start a business, I have to have a five -page business plan. I have to do this, this, and this.” And you go, “Well, is that absolutely true? And if that’s not absolutely true, then what does that open up for me?” And I think that’s what we do all the time.

Amie McNee:
Yeah. I think we’ve had a beautiful journey of putting this book out there, but have definitely had things thrown our way that were a bit like, oh, okay. I had planned to come to New York. We were going to do events. And the publisher said, “Oh, nobody’s asked for you, so there’s not going to be any events.”

Martha Beck:
Oh my God.

Amie McNee:
I didn’t know that that’s what had to happen. And so, oh, that could have been easily internalized. And they literally said, “Nobody asked for you.”

Martha Beck:
Oh my God.

Rowan Mangan:
And they were very disappointed.

Amie McNee:
They were so disappointed. “Also don’t swear.” And so looking at that, does nobody want me? Is that absolutely true? No. And then going in and having a look and finding creative communities, and with the help of our agent, she was able to create beautiful little events where we got to be with creatives and connect in such beautiful, intimate ways. And that’s just for a second there I was like, “Nobody asked for me?” You know? And you have that moment, that inner child where it’s like, “Oh no.” But like you say, I just took care of her. I was like, “It’s okay, baby.” And I have a very soft voice from that part of me. Like, “You are so wanted and so needed, and there are people out there who need this book, and we’re going to find them for you, and we’re going to do it on our own. Me and James and Amanda, we’re going to figure this out.” And I have that very, because I do have a very strong emotional reaction to problems, especially when they seem like, “Oh, nobody wants you.”

Martha Beck:
Oh, the phrasing.

Amie McNee:
That kind of thing. I’m very sensitive, and so of course that impacts me. But then I realize it’s a challenge to overcome, and I love a challenge to overcome. And I think that’s why I’m here.

Rowan Mangan:
You’re so interesting because on the one hand, you’re interested in transgression so much, all that medieval porn and all of that sort of thing. And yet you love problem solving. So it’s like there’s this, mess it up and make it come down in a new way.

Amie McNee:
Yes. Which is what I feel artists should be doing. Let’s fuck shit up right now. And then make something new.

Martha Beck:
Yes. Oh my God. I mean, I think the “fuck shit up” is basically being done for us.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, that’s being taken care of.

Amie McNee:
But I want to fuck up the fuck-ups.

Martha Beck:
That’s it. Yeah!

Amie McNee:
I want to fuck the fuckery up.

Rowan Mangan:
Fuck up the fuckery.

Amie McNee:
Fuck up the fuckery. And so I think that’s why I have this obsession with what rules are there? How can I break them? And so whenever I come up against something that feels like it’s putting me into a, what you call it, mold. And then I get almost excited. I get pissed off immediately, but then I’m like, “Oh, but I could break this mold.” And that’s such a delight for me. And I want all artists, we, we’ve been conditioned to fit into the mold. Like Martha says, we’ve been conditioned to have these perfectionist narratives so that, “Oh, you can create art but only if it’s perfect. You can create art if only if it goes through the right streams. Only if it says something that’s not too bold.” I want artists to whenever they feel that, “Oh, you can, but only if…” for you to be like, “This is a fucking exciting opportunity for me to fuck up the fuckery.”

Rowan Mangan:
Yes. I love that.

Amie McNee:
I like it too.

Martha Beck:
And I love the chapter on failure in your book and how you are an absolute champion at failure.

Amie McNee:
Yeah, let’s fail.

Martha Beck:
And a long time ago, I realized that the people I knew who were very successful, like Oprah for example, the thing they all had in common was that they had failed more than people who considered themselves failures. They had failed five times more often. So there’s that, but then there is a surrounding ambiance that tells people failure is a crushing, shameful thing. There’s a hardness to the culture, and you just say, we need to be soft as artists. And I’ve been finding that I need to soften and soften and soften into my art. And it’s so counter what I learned at Harvard. Everybody drink. Every time I say “Harvard,” drink—water. So you can be both soft in your art and tolerant of the literal hardship that comes at you. You both are that way. You both have been just staying in there in spite of it all. And please tell us how that works. How do you do it?

Amie McNee:
James, how do you navigate failure?

James Winestock:
Well, I mean, I’m very lucky that I never have to confront it face on. I do because I’ve written novels that have never sold, and that was really, really hard for me. But getting to witness Amie. Amie’s always a few years ahead of me, which I find really helps me because I watched Amie be rejected by publishers hundreds of times. You hear about things like, oh, you hear, oh, Stephen King, he sent his manuscript out to five people and they all rejected it. I’m like, five people? Come on, bring it on, pop those numbers up. That’s nothing. Literally we’re talking hundreds and hundreds. And I remember Amie was trying wait for seven years before she made any money from her writing, really genuinely trying, genuinely trying.

Martha Beck:
Right.

James Winestock:
And I watched that and I was like, I guess I have to put in at least seven years. I’m probably going to, I mean maybe it’ll happen before that. But I mean, watching Amy, the resilience that Amy had and also the tears, there was a lot of tears. It was really hard. It wasn’t easy, but just watching Amie’s ability just to get smacked in the face, cry for five hours, get back up again and try again, was just like, I don’t know. Even now, it’s like you have this stubbornness, this obstinacy within you. And she’s such a stubborn person, and I need to draw on that energy. I’m not stubborn like her. I’m a pushover. So Amie has to, I have to channel my inner Amie when things start going wrong for me because Amie just will put a stake in the ground. The more you tell her no, the more she’s going to say yes.

Martha Beck:
I love that. It reminds me of a quote from Jack Gilbert’s poem, A Case for the Defense where he says, “We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.”

Rowan Mangan:
I also think it interrupts the narrative that says, you are either gritty and hard and you don’t give up, or you are sensitive and soft and fluffy.

Amie McNee:
I love that, Rowan.

Rowan Mangan:
And to say, no, you’re going to be both. And that the destination of being in a true creativity is that it’s going to continue to hurt. You’re going to continue to have five hours of crying for every dopamine hit of sales.

Amie McNee:
We’re not getting somewhere. There’s not an end to this. The creative life is always a life of vulnerability, and you don’t get to a point where it just stops being vulnerable. If you do, something’s gone wrong. I really believe that.

Martha Beck:
I don’t think you get to a point where the hardships stop hard hitting you. I mean, we know some very, very successful writers who did something that didn’t go instantly to the top of the bestseller listing and stay there for eight years. It was only there for seven years. And they get upset. They catch slack for that.

Rowan Mangan:
Internally as well as externally.

Amie McNee:
They actually feel it. Yeah, I think there’s a fallacy that if I could only get so successful, then I will be immune to the vulnerability of creating, the vulnerability of failure.

Martha Beck:
Let’s wipe that one out right now.

Amie McNee:
It’s a lie. And I think people are almost like that’s what they’re trying to strive for. It’s like, no, the journey is and always will be vulnerable, and you always will fail. I was on the Jay Shetty podcast the other day, and Jay is incredibly successful. And I remember telling him about how many rejections I get, and he looks me so earnestly in the eye, and he goes, “Me too.” And I was like, what? What we’ve got to remember this, that everyone, no matter how successful you are, it is constant because we are constantly putting ourselves out there in a way that is vulnerable.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. I’m going to tell a little Jay Shetty story.

Amie McNee:
Oh, please.

Martha Beck:
And it’s short, but it pertains. When he was in college, he’d just spent some time as a monk and he was in college and he thought, “I’m not sure I like the way people think here. I think we should all be more like monks.” So he put up these flyers and said, I’m going to do a lecture called Be Like a Monk or Think Like a Monk, which later became a huge bestseller. And he showed up in the classroom and no one came. And he stood up in front of the class and he delivered his full speech to an empty room. He would not be stopped.

Amie McNee:
He put his stake in the ground. I love that.

James Winestock:
And Amie has that in her. And that’s the amount of workshops that I’ve been to with Amie. Her first workshop she ran in Sydney, it was me, it was our friend Mackey, it was some random lady who had picked up a flyer on the side of the road, and that was it.

Amie McNee:
I was like, “Let’s go!”

James Winestock:
We’d gone to the shops and we’d bought a whole kind of cheese and charcuterie board, and we set it all up and we were so ready. And then just.

Amie McNee:
Artists are so pure, the earnestness of us, the earnestness of us is so beautiful. And I just fall in love with all of us who are trying, we are daring to give a fuck. And I think right now a lot of people are just opting to apathy, but artists dare to give a fuck. We dare to care. And again, I think that’s why it’s on us to create a better world because we’re daring to care.

Martha Beck:
I’m thinking about some of the research I’ve read on trauma. One was a study done on these kids who’d been on a bus that was hijacked, these school kids. A criminal, a terrorist took over the bus. I don’t know what he did with the driver, but he drove these kids for hours and hours and parked it in a cave in the darkness. And these were little school kids. And afterward, almost all of them had PTSD. But there were a few kids who would not stop saying, “There’s got to be a way out. We’re going to do this, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this.” And they just kept trying and they took the roof off the bus and they got out and it was still dark. And they’re like, “We’re going to find the way out.” They didn’t suffer as badly in the aftermath, and they kept the others sane.

Amie McNee:
Yeah, interesting.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. And I think what you’re asking us to do if we can, is to be those people who say, “No, I will not stop creating.

Amie McNee:
Yes, Martha. That’s exactly why I’m asking.

James Winestock:
I mean, I’m only here. I only exist because of, so my great- my grandmother was in Auschwitz. She was in Auschwitz for five months.

Martha Beck:
Oh my God.

James Winestock:
And my great-grandmother. The same thing. Five months in Auschwitz with a baby with a 7-year-old. And that’s all she did. If the Nazis said go right, she went left. If they said, we’re moving this block. She stayed. And then that’s the only reason they survived. That’s the survival mechanism.

Martha Beck:
Wow.

James Winestock:
Otherwise, I think only a thousand children made of Auschwitz. And my grandma was one of them. And it was just that.

Amie McNee:
I love it. It gives me just full shivers. “Go this way.” She went that way. “Do this.” She did that. And that’s the energy I want for us. And that’s what I think, this is how we’re going to make it through. And not just make it through, but make something better.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. And still by refusing to harden even in the stubbornness.

Amie McNee:
Yes. I wanted to come back to that Rowan, because I thought you said was really beautiful because I think we have this image of thick skin, hardened. I speak to a lot of artists and I work with a lot of artists who have calcified themselves because of how vulnerable this is. And because the world is very, very difficult. They’ve become so hard and very difficult to access. And I think we’re told this story that that’s how the artist will survive, but I think that’s how the artist dies.

Rowan Mangan:
Yes, exactly.

Amie McNee:
And I want us to be soft, and I want us to defend softness with everything we have. And I want this book to talk to the softness within all of us and to say, “You are so needed and we need you to stay soft

Rowan Mangan:
And I don’t quite know how you achieved that alchemy in the book of making these really ballsy demands while also making the reader feel so held and so inspired. Actually, it’s a really weird kind of.

Martha Beck:
It made me want to ask about the whole topic of vocation because your book doesn’t read like somebody who decided on a topic and then did a good job with it. Yes, it’s that. But it goes beyond. There’s an alchemy to it that to me feels like something, and I go this way anyway, but something mystical almost so that a vocation to keep alive the spirits of your readers. It’s like you’re going on, like Florence Nightingale going through the ranks of wounded soldiers, going, “This is my vocation. This is my vocation.” I’m here. I need your art. I’m here. I need your art. And it touches so deeply because it has that deep truth to it. And I don’t know, have you always had it? Is that what it is?

Amie McNee:
What do you think, James?

James Winestock:
I think you, because you have been in so much pain when you wanted to be a writer and you wanted to be creative and you couldn’t do it, I think you have this, you want to be that mother for that version of you, and that lives within you all the time. I think that that gives you the heart that I think whenever you see a creative in pain, you sort of see that version of yourself as well. And you often say to me, “I want to be the person that I needed in that moment.” And I think I definitely think you’ve developed that in response to that.

Amie McNee:
Yeah, definitely. I experienced acute pain and a weird amount of shame for how badly I couldn’t handle it. I could not handle regular work life. I could not handle doing labor for someone else. I could not handle what everyone else seemed to be able to handle. I was acutely depressed in these work systems, and it was particularly work systems that really did a number on me. And I was like, “All I want to do is create, and I don’t understand why everyone else isn’t asking for the same thing.” And I felt so alone. I was like, “I have to have a life where I tell stories and I make things and I impact people. Why is no one else asking for this?” So I internalized that as there being something wrong with me. So this was my journey. And I think when I finally gave myself permission, when I finally understood that I’m being called, I’ve been called, the relief was just so profound, and how could I not give that to everybody else? We’ve all been called, we have creative callings. We are here to make stuff. And I knew it wasn’t a lightning-bolt moment for me, but it was profound. And it sunk in probably over about a year where I was like, “No, this is what I’m actually here for.” And that’s what many of us are here for. No, that’s what we’re here for. And I don’t know, since that revelation for myself, I have to keep talking about it.

Martha Beck:
So, oh, this is beautiful. I do believe we all have a vocation. NASA did a study in the sixties that I keep citing where they tested people for creative genius, and they gave it to all these highly educated adults and 2% tested as creative geniuses. Then someone gave it to four- and five-year-olds, and 98% of them tested as creative geniuses.

Amie McNee:
That’s so cool.

Martha Beck:
And the researchers blamed the school system, but I think it’s the whole society. And so what I want to ask you as a follow-up is I believe everyone’s born with a genius and a vocation, and you found yours through basically having the culture beaten out of you. And it either makes people hard or it makes people soft, and it makes most people hard. For people who are listening to this and going, I don’t have a vacation. A vacation—

James Winestock:
Maybe we all need a vacation.

Martha Beck:
If they’re saying, “I don’t have a vacation, I don’t have a genius.” They’ve lost—I don’t believe they don’t have it—but is there a way to it that you two have found that can help people resurrect their knowledge of their own vocation?

Amie McNee:
Do you know, Martha, ironically, this is a huge amount that I learned from you because of your work with curiosity and learning how to play again, I feel like is a lot of what I’ve learned from you and having, just taking that pressure away from needing something to be incredibly productive or needing it to be a job title that makes sense actually just accessing that in a child and being like, “What are you interested in?” Which speaks so much to your work. I don’t dunno. What do you think, James?

James Winestock:
I mean, I agree. Curiosity is so, I think that I love the curiosity section in Beyond Anxiety. I mean, I think it’s stunning. And to me, curiosity and for both of us, I think curiosity is definitely very high up in my core values list. It’s probably number one, maybe number two. And it’s just like I’ve kind of made that into what I do for Amie is often I read things and then I summarize them for her and to sure, for the book, we had to do a lot of research. And Amie does eventually get around to reading these things. But I feel like I do the trling through first. I follow my curiosity, then I’m like, “Amie, you should probably read this.”

Amie McNee:
James is a beautiful person to learn this from because I would say that you didn’t feel a lot of purpose or a particular calling, whereas I was so, I was so strongly called, and I’m grateful for that. But also it meant that I didn’t get this playtime almost, which James gets, which he gets to follow all these different threads.

Rowan Mangan:
Can I just say something? So NASA did this study, right? But the only reason Marty knows about the NASA creative genius study is that I found on Instagram one day while I was scrolling mindlessly.

James Winestock:
Well, exactly.

Rowan Mangan:
And I went in and I showed her my phone and I said, “You’ll like this.”

Amie McNee:
What would we do without the two of you? We would have no cool studies.

James Winestock:
I say my job is to read whatever is I’m curious about at the time. And then it always ends up coming back. I mean, sometimes it doesn’t, but it always ends up coming back. Right? It’s like you just follow that curiosity. And then eventually—I couldn’t live a life without curiosity. I was living a life without curiosity, and it wasn’t good.

Rowan Mangan:
I want to ask you something about that because Marty and I are super woo-woo. And when you say that, my little inner hippy person goes, “Oh yes, yes. Because your curiosity is taking you in the direction that you’re being guided by some sort of cosmic force.” What do you think about that, mate?

James Winestock:
It’s hard for me. It’s hard for me.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. I thought it might be.

James Winestock:
Yeah, I mean, I know you listen to Unpublished, so I know that this is why you know this is hard for me because that’s a part of my—I always want to be logical and I always want to be left brain. And it’s really hard for me, and that’s why it’s been important for me to have art because I get to crack open the right brain every day and I get to write a fantasy story, but it’s really hard for me not to be in the left brain.

Amie McNee:
But what’s interesting is you had a religious upbringing.

James Winestock:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
Well, that’ll make you, that’ll get you right off the bat.

Amie McNee:
Yeah, maybe that’s part of why.

Martha Beck:
Can I tell a tiny story that’s nothing. Well, it’s tangential. Ro and I once went to see a woman who was performing at the same gig where I was, and she was a psychic and she was doing psychic readings. And I’d seen her TV show and I totally thought she was the real deal. She calls a woman out of the audience, and then she says, “Your father and your brothers are here.” And the woman was an Australian. And the medium said, “Well, they don’t believe in this bullshit. They say you’re just being an idiot. Don’t believe this woman. And she’s like, they keep yelling that it’s all bullshit.”

Rowan Mangan:
The ghosts, the dead relatives did not believe in ghosts. They were like, “Oh, come on, mate.”

Amie McNee:
That is incredible. That wouldn’t be you, James. I feel like if you were a ghost, you’d believe in your own ghostliness.

James Winestock:
I definitely do believe, I think I definitely do believe that—it is really hard for me to put, because I can’t even conceptualize it with words because I’m so like, used to—

Amie McNee:
Just go with the flow, babe.

James Winestock:
I know, a lot like Marty.

Rowan Mangan:
Just let the energy take you.

James Winestock:
Like the university was my safe space. I would’ve stayed at uni my whole life. It was so safe, right? Like you just read these books, you read these articles, and then you produce something that no one’s going to read, and then you keep going on that cycle. That was my safe space. It’s hard, really hard for me to step outside of that, but Amie’s always been really great with it as well. I feel like Amie’s helped me to see the energy of creativity as well.

Amie McNee:
The magic, yeah.

James Winestock:
I can see it, and I was going to save this for Unpublished, but we can do it now. But I was going to say something that, and I know that you and Tim Ferris, I know you’ve been on Tim Ferriss a couple of times, and I, Amie and I are big Tim Ferriss listeners, and Tim often says the difference between zero and one is just crazy. And the difference in me, the spiritual energy that I have from a little bit of creativity versus none, it’s like a different person. And Amie knows, she goes, “You haven’t written in a couple of days, have you?”

Rowan Mangan:
Wow.

James Winestock:
You can just feel it. It’s such a huge difference. And I haven’t written for, because we’ve been traveling, I haven’t written for seven days and I can feel it.

Martha Beck:
That’s so interesting.

Rowan Mangan:
Can you unpick that? For you, what’s it like when he hasn’t been accessing his creativity?

Amie McNee:
He’s less soft.

Martha Beck:
Softness again.

Rowan Mangan:
Interesting.

Amie McNee:
Yeah. He’s less soft. He’s hardened, he’s calcified. And as soon as you write, there’s a softness to you that is so, like, I can approach you and I can be with you and we can co-create. Whereas if you haven’t created in a long time, there’s more up here. Yeah, there’s a barrier. And the creativity act just pulls it all away.

Rowan Mangan:
Wow. No wonder we need art.

Martha Beck:
Well remember when we were first getting to know Liz Gilbert, Liz looked at Ro and said, “Ro is like me. She’s from the soft planet.”

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. We cry in puddles on the couch with blankets.

Amie McNee:
I’m a big crier as well.

Rowan Mangan:
We were just talking on the way over about how much we love to cry.

Amie McNee:
Do you cry, Martha?

Martha Beck:
Oh, I used to cry constantly. My ex-husband called me Puddles, but that’s because I was married to him. God bless him. Yeah, I don’t cry as much. Not nearly as much as I used to.

Amie McNee:
It’s interesting, isn’t it?

Rowan Mangan:
But sometimes, you’ve actually been crying more lately just about like, “Oh, I saw a chipmunk.”

Martha Beck:
I cried yesterday. Oh my God. I was at the hospital and my son had an emergency. He was getting a pacemaker put in, and all these nurses and doctors came running in to help. And I stood in the hall and just sobbed. And someone came up to me and said, “I know it’s really scary.” And I’m like, “No, there’s just so much love. There’s so much.” I saw all these angels who weren’t getting paid squat and giving their lives to help this man with Down syndrome that they did not know. And yeah, I cry for that, but I also cry from self-pity a lot lately too.

Rowan Mangan:
Well, it’s a nice balance. You want to spark the balance. You got to have enough self-pity.

Amie McNee:
You do. I do believe that, actually. I actually do believe in self-pity.

Martha Beck:
I was interviewed by a psychologist, a male psychiatrist last week, and he said, “Our culture has stolen the tears from men.”

Amie McNee:
Yeah, I would love to talk about that. And I was actually just thinking this would be a beautiful way to talk about it. Because I’ve seen James cry maybe four times.

Martha Beck:
Wow.

James Winestock:
Maybe less than that.

Amie McNee:
Yeah. And I have a real interest in We Need Your Art accessing men, actually, and the vulnerability of art being available to men. And I think for you, I think it has allowed you so much softness, but yeah, you don’t cry a lot.

James Winestock:
No. And I think going back to, I’ve already shared a little bit, but I think going back to being third generation removed from the Holocaust, from a family that’s had a lot of emotional pain, it was always extremely unsafe. I don’t think—no one in my family ever expresses emotion. It’s like a very subversive thing. And I remember getting in trouble for crying a lot when I was little. I just, I want to say I love my family and they’re all lovely people, but that’s definitely, it’s not a crying family. It’s not an emotional family at all. And I dunno if it’s a gendered thing or not. Because my sisters do cry. My sisters were probably allowed to cry and it was probably maybe more focused on me.

Martha Beck:
We should inject you with estrogen and just let you—

James Winestock:
I know, right? I mean, Amie was always, I always thought, when we first got together, Amie would cry every day. And I was like, “Oh my God, someone would’ve to die for me to cry.” And I was like, “Who’s died?” Every day I’m like, “Who’s died? Who’s died? Who’s died?” And it was just shocking for me. It is taken years and years and years for me to be able to look at Amie crying and be like, “Okay, everything’s okay. She’s fine.” And I think the same, similarly for making art. I always felt like, and it kind of goes back to—going back to capitalism. Capitalism is really good at exchange value. And I thought that’s a very masculine virtue. It’s very bad at experiential value. So like I often, I think I very much internalized that things have to have exchange value. Things have to have a monetary value for them to be worthwhile and worth you doing. And Amie and I often talk about how we think that we’ve been hit—like Amie’s story around art was—I’m trying to—Yes, please. You go. Take over.

Amie McNee:
I think we’ve been told really different stories. And mine was that I could never make money with my art. And that James’s was, if you were going to make art, you had to make money with it. So I speak to a lot of men who are obsessed with monetizing their art, and I speak to a lot of women who would never dare. And it’s just a gendered story that that’s really interesting. And so James was also like, “Why are you so, why do you feel like it’s rebellious to make money with your art?” And I was like, “Why don’t you?” But for James, it’s rebellious for him not to make money with his art.

Martha Beck:
That’s right. Yeah.

Amie McNee:
And I think this is a nuanced conversation and we get to look at both sides as a form of rebellion, I think. But it is interesting because I do think it is a conditioning of our genders.

Rowan Mangan:
Right, but there’s also kind of this cool way that you think that I know from listening to your podcast Unpublished, which you also use the left hemisphere to fuck with the fuckery a bit. I am obsessed with the stuff that you were talking about when you read, I want to say it’s called Anti-Fragile?

James Winestock:
Yeah, yeah. Often listen to that stuff.

Rowan Mangan:
And also the like, keep it small, how capitalism will tell you if you’ve got some success, you’ve got to scale up, scale up. And you can actually use the left hemisphere to say, “Is that true? Is that absolutely true that we need to do that?” And so when Marty in Beyond Anxiety talks about the brain, it’s never, “This one’s good and this one’s bad” because we have to have both or we can’t make art.

Amie McNee:
It’s a collaboration.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. And also artists should eat. We should eat. Yeah.

Martha Beck:
Occasionally.

Amie McNee:
We should eat and we should thrive.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Amie McNee:
Yeah. I love that you say that. Whenever we make a choice, I do have that part of me that’s, whether we want to call it ego, but when someone says, oh, if someone was to offer me a podcasting contract, I’d be like, oh, that sounds really exciting. They want my podcast. That could be so cool. And then James is particularly helpful at this. It’s like, yeah, but is that really what you actually want? And simplicity for us is one of the most beautiful parts of what we do and how we create. And keeping things simple always feels so rebellious. And no matter how big we get, I want to just be fucking recording the podcast, not editing it, and just posting it immediately. And again, it feels, because it feels like a form of rebellion to me. It’s even more exciting. It’s so delicious. Fuck yeah.

James Winestock:
In our podcast the other day, the doorbell went and then Amie realized it was her medication. She had to go get it. So she just runs downstairs with the microphone and she goes, and the whole conversation with the post is in it. And she gets up there—

Amie McNee:
I didn’t realize.

James Winestock:
And she goes, “We’re keeping that in, right?” It’s just me talking to the microphone while simultaneously there’s a postman talking. And we were like, we want to keep that in, not because—because we know it’s bad. We know it’s terrible listening. It’s confusing. But I think it’s important to show people that we live that. It’s not a laziness. It’s like a conscious choice to be a bit weird.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
I’m so inspired by that.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. I think you have to drill down and down and down through the layers into your authenticity. Because I mean, I keep hitting layers of acculturation that happened to me when I was a tiny toddler. I start to realize, oh, that’s been in there the whole time.

Amie McNee:
That’s so interesting.

Martha Beck:
And I mean, I’ve been at this a few decades, and so the fact that the culture has layered me with so many, just peeling the onion, peeling the onion. And when I get down to, as we’ve been talking, I’ve been thinking about the union of hard and soft, and then it gets down to the union of matter versus the non-material. When you get all the way to the center, what happens is you peel off the last layer and there’s this spaciousness in which your point of consciousness has decided to see things subjectively for the edification of consciousness as a whole. I know this is my own personal cosmology.

Amie McNee:
You’re safe, James.

Martha Beck:
Consciousness is real and no one knows what it is. All right? There you go. But yeah, so to go down and down and down until I wanted to ask you both, has there been a moment when you felt like you were absolutely authentically yourself, not only in being but in expression? How does that look for you?

Amie McNee:
I feel entirely in my integrity right now.

Martha Beck:
I love it.

Amie McNee:
And that’s in part to you, Marty. Your work has done huge things for me, but I feel so who I’m meant to be. And I don’t know that I ever felt like this, if I’m honest. It feels very, very good.

Martha Beck:
Is this happening to you too, James?

James Winestock:
I feel amazing, yeah. I was just thinking about how I actually had a meta moment 10 minutes ago being like, “My God, I’m on the Bewildered podcast in the studio. And I was like, this feels like this is an amazing and cool way for my life to be going.”

Amie McNee:
Yeah. I feel like, I don’t know why I’ve really felt it very clearly for me the last few weeks. It’s like I’m just on the path.

Martha Beck:
We were talking about this in the car and tell them what we were talking about in the car.

Rowan Mangan:
So I was just saying to Marty for myself that I’ve had this very unfamiliar sensation for the past few weeks of having little to no anxiety, especially in the self-consciousness department or just that general, very Australian, shrink yourself down, be less, be unobtrusive and all of that. And it’s sort of just lifted unexpectedly. And Marty was saying the same, that your anxiety, I mean, Marty doesn’t have anxiety anymore. She’s beyond it!

Martha Beck:
That’s pretty much true. I was crying yesterday and the day before because I was experiencing anxiety and I’m like, “My whole book is a fraud.” And then what happened was—

Rowan Mangan:
I started crying about not getting enough attention on my things. And then you cheered up a lot. It was great how that worked.

Martha Beck:
But it was because she pulled me into a new way of expressing myself. I’d been doing podcast after podcast, interviews, all wonderful people and very privileged to do it. Book tour stuff. And then it just went dead in the water. And I thought, “All the creativity’s gone. Now I’m anxious and I don’t know how to create.” I was trying to push forward and it was like a boiled spaghetti noodle that I was trying to shove forward.

Amie McNee:
Oh my God, what a good image.

Martha Beck:
And then Ro started talking about how people need to have their anxieties addressed at a new level now. And we started talking about how can we do that? Put out more material that is not just for anxious people, but for people who are truly, deservedly afraid right now. And suddenly, all the depression lifted, all the anxiety was gone, and it was just like choke. We are in a very dangerous position. I feel no anxiety. Because it was my creativity moving me. And this is what I was saying when we were having lunch. Your creativity is really not yours. It’s a being, and it moves. And it moves—you may have heard Liz Gilbert’s story about how she was writing a novella and abandoned it, and then she had lunch with Ann Patchett who was writing a novel with all the same plot details. So creativity is a being that’s moving through us. And I wonder, when Ro was saying this, I really have seen it just this absence of any kind of stress at all. And now you’re saying the same thing. I’m feeling the same thing. Is this just happening to us?

Amie McNee:
Yeah. Interesting. Is it because we have very important work to do, perhaps?

James Winestock:
Yeah. Amie and I have had this conversation. It’s so weird that you guys have the same thing because we were literally talking yesterday about how neither of us have been anxious this week. I mean, Amie is diagnosed anxious.

Amie McNee:
And I have my OCD as well.

James Winestock:
This last, and I have bouts of anxiety as well. And we’re both saying this week, and I think it’s because we’re not anxious at all. And I think it’s because we’re on a mission this week. We’re here.

Amie McNee:
Yes, we’re on a mission.

James Winestock:
We’re in New York. We’re here to spread the message, and that’s what we’re doing. And it’s like, how can you be anxious? How can you worry about that email from the bookkeeper?

Amie McNee:
When it’s such a bigger picture here.

James Winestock:
When you’re spreading the message. It so obviously doesn’t matter.

Martha Beck:
Yes. I’m actually getting the chills.

Rowan Mangan:
Okay, so if you were going to design a unit, a human unit that had a mission to do, but you had to remote control it—

James Winestock:
Oh my God.

Rowan Mangan:
Right?

Amie McNee:
Hey, sci-fi just woke up here.

James Winestock:
I’m a huge gamer. I’m like, yes, I can be about this.

Rowan Mangan:
Then wouldn’t it make sense to keep them on the path that when they started to stray off, they get all this staticky, anxiety, depression, dah-dah-dah, and then you get back on and it’s like the rumble strips on the side of the road, or which there was a Tesla driving, riding those rumble strips all the way. Sorry.

Martha Beck:
Metaphor!

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. And so just to what you’re saying, when you’re on your purpose, that stuff goes away because you’re obeying.

James Winestock:
The Way of Integrity is such an important book, I think for both of us, because both of us feel like at times we’ve almost felt disabled by our inability to not be integrity.

Amie McNee:
Yeah.

James Winestock:
How sick we both get. We get so sick. I have been like the times when I ended up, I’ll just try office work. I’ll try work in an office. Within a month, within a week, I’m sick. I’m sick.

Martha Beck:
Physically. Yeah.

James Winestock:
Sometimes I feel like, what’s wrong with me? But then sometimes also when I look back on it, I go, it’s an amazing advantage in so many ways.

Amie McNee:
Both of us are so sensitive.

James Winestock:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. Us too.

Amie McNee:
And so when we are out of integrity, and James is actually, I would say ironically, I’m famous for my sensitivity, but ironically James, I’ve never met someone so sensitive to integrity ever in my life.

Martha Beck:
That is amazing.

Amie McNee:
As soon as you are—and sometimes it’s very, very difficult for James because if he is a little bit off, he’s not okay. And that is very hard to navigate because this is a difficult life.

James Winestock:
Because you got to do your taxes.

Amie McNee:
Well, yeah, but if something’s not right, it’s very hard for you. And again, it’s a blessing, but it’s very challenging.

Martha Beck:
I also think—I love to snow ski. Only good thing about being raised in Utah.

Amie McNee:
Wait, are you saying just skiing? Are you saying, like snow skiing is skiing?

Martha Beck:
Snow skiing, yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
She just means skiing.

Amie McNee:
Okay, great.

Rowan Mangan:
I don’t know where this came out. It’s not even a thing.

James Winestock:
But there’s water skiing.

Martha Beck:
Water skiing. But if you’re on a flat slope and you’re going slowly, you can correct. There’s lots of time to correct. If you are on a very steep slope in very difficult terrain, you’re using high-quality equipment and every quarter-inch of displacement takes a massive toll and you could completely wipe out. So doesn’t it make sense that if we’re all given these sensitive, we were given sets of equipment—you know, here are your genes. You are born with this. You were born with this family history, epigenetics. I don’t even know. You have high-quality material. Now we’re going to put you in some really difficult terrain. Now ski.

Amie McNee:
That’s such a great way to say it.

Martha Beck:
You have to be, that was the one thing when I wired up my brain—many, many years ago, I had my brain mapped and I said I want my anxiety to go down. They were unable to achieve this, by the way, but I had to make this little arrow on the screen go down and they said, “We don’t know how you make it go down. Just make it go down.” And the only thing that flatlined my anxiety was thinking about skiing on the edge of a cliff in a blizzard. No anxiety. And the reason was that I was absolutely present. And what I’ve been feeling lately and what I was thinking in the car is, “Yeah, we’re suddenly free from anxiety, but we need to be absolutely present. Like on the exact, you pick a line skiing and you ski your line. And you’ve picked a line. You’re going to reawaken people’s art. You’ve picked a line, you’re going, what is your line?

James Winestock:
Support Amie to reawaken people’s art.

Rowan Mangan:
And write amazing novels.

Amie McNee:
Yeah, and write great books.

Martha Beck:
Fantastic. And your line, it has to do with your child and with community.

Rowan Mangan:
Community. Community building.

Amie McNee:
I see that in you, Ro.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh my gosh, it’s getting really noisy in here. In that community now.

Amie McNee:
I feel that.

Martha Beck:
And for me it was like, stop pushing your book, start doing this other thing. And I was like, oh, I’m back on my skis.

Amie McNee:
You’re back, yes.

Martha Beck:
I’m back on my skis. Whoosh!

Rowan Mangan:
And that happened in real time. That was phenomenal. You just went.

Martha Beck:
I literally couldn’t, we were going to do Pilates and I couldn’t lift my arms and legs. I was that dead. And then Ro started, you know I was being sad about society and we decided to do this other thing, and suddenly I went, whoop! And I went to this workout and lifted more weight than I’ve ever lifted before in my life. It was so cool. It’s shit or champagne out there now.

Amie McNee:
I love that.

Rowan Mangan:
Sometimes it’s both. A lot of the time it’s both.

Amie McNee:
Yeah. I think this is the perfect way to describe both of us, actually. And I love that. I love it. I feel like I’m going down a very difficult slope right now, but I have got the best fucking skis on and I know what I’m doing and it feels so good. I’m tired, though.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, you’re are.

James Winestock:
Your quads are shaking.

Amie McNee:
Yeah, my quads are shaking. I’m like, I’m going to enjoy the hot chocolate at the end here. But it’s so freeing and so beautiful.

Rowan Mangan:
I love that you two can immediately grab the metaphor and start extending it. Quads shaking, there’s a hot chocolate.

James Winestock:
I mean, I love to ski as well. Amie doesn’t, so she’s always thinking about the hot chocolate.

Amie McNee:
I am focused on the hot chocolate. It’s a beautiful feeling when it’s going well, but I’ve got a lot of fear on those slopes. Yeah.

Martha Beck:
Oh, it’s scary as hell.

Amie McNee:
It’s the surrender.

Martha Beck:
And that’s what it—to surrender to doing exactly what your fear tells you not to do.

Amie McNee:
That’s exactly what it is.

Martha Beck:
To lean as hard as you can in the direction your body screams is the wrong way to go.

Amie McNee:
No wonder you love skiing, Marty. It’s the perfect metaphor for everything you do.

Martha Beck:
But isn’t it for all of us? Like, your grandmother, they said go left. She went right. I think that’s the way to stay on our skis now.

Amie McNee:
Yes, I agree.

Martha Beck:
Anyone out there, we need your art. Read this book and then start feeling the pressure that comes on you when you’re not in your authenticity and you’re not creating and start finding your line and skiing your path. Because it’s not just happening to the four of us.

Amie McNee:
No, it’s not.

Martha Beck:
It’s happening to possibly 12 or 13 other people.

Amie McNee:
Possibly a dozen of us. And listening right now.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. I mean we need We Need Your Art.

Amie McNee:
Thank you, guys.

Rowan Mangan:
So badly. And I’m so excited that Bewildered listeners get to hear you too. And we get to have you in the flesh here. It will not be, it’s not the first time that we’ve talked all things Amie McNee on Bewildered. It won’t be the last.

Martha Beck:
Not going to be the last.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. But thank you both so, so much for coming on.

Amie McNee:
We are so grateful.

Martha Beck:
Thanks for being our friends for decades before we met.

Amie McNee:
Oh, fuck.

Rowan Mangan:
There it is.

James Winestock:
It’s so full circle for us. We actually did, we did a Way of integrity episode of Unpublished. I think it must be just after it came out.

Martha Beck:
What? Oh my gosh!

James Winestock:
Because Amie read it and loved it so much. And then she was telling me about this thing that she did, she did the challenge. She did the integrity cleanse. And she didn’t lie for a few months. We tried not to lie for a few months.

Amie McNee:
Yeah. I had to confess to a lot of lies.

James Winestock:
And it was really transformational.

Amie McNee:
It was fucking amazing.

Martha Beck:
Wow. That is so cool.

James Winestock:
And so this is obviously incredibly thrilling for us to be here.

Martha Beck:
Thank you, guys. We love you so much. And everybody out there, run, don’t walk or click and just have it delivered.

Rowan Mangan:
Ski.

Amie McNee:
Ski down the hill and get We Need Your Art.

Rowan Mangan:
And that’s the hot chocolate is We Need Your Art.

Amie McNee:
Oh my God. Stunning.

Rowan Mangan:
Thank you.

Amie McNee:
What a place to end.

Rowan Mangan:
Stay wild, motherfuckers.

Martha Beck:
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.