Podcast Summary: Bewildered

Episode: "Flying Blind"
Hosts: Martha Beck & Rowan Mangan
Date: October 15, 2025

Overview

In this playful yet profound episode of Bewildered, Martha Beck and Rowan Mangan explore the experience of "flying blind" — navigating a rapidly changing world without the traditional cultural instruments and guidance that once provided a sense of safety and certainty. Drawing from personal stories, mixed metaphors, wit, and wisdom, the hosts discuss how society's instructions often fail us when true change arrives, and how to tap into our deepest inner compass for direction. Themes include living outside of convention, finding safety within, and cultivating the skill of trusting one’s own senses, even when it means "looking weird." As always, the show is laced with humor, storytelling, and a refusal to take transformation too seriously.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Moving House as Metaphor for Bewilderment (00:36–07:45)

• Martha and Rowan open with comic reflections on their new, character-rich home, full of quirks and painted-over oddities — from outlets to (shockingly) a dead mouse (03:14).
• Rowan's mother’s arrival is met with messy chaos and the excitement of bear tracks, highlighting the reality of being thrown into unfamiliar, unpredictable situations.
• This move becomes a living metaphor for "flying blind": encountering unplanned turns, improvising, and dealing with the unknown.

Quote:

• "The bewilderment is so thick, you could, like, cut it out with cookie cutters and bake it up for strangers."
  — Rowan (01:50)

2. Setups for Flying Blind (07:45–15:11)

• Rowan and Martha briefly detour into sports injuries and the peculiar interests of her personal trainer, returning to the theme of finding comfort outside the expected and familiar.
• The hosts reflect on the lack of preparation for this episode and announce that, even in producing their podcast, they're "flying blind" — drawing a clear analogy to everyday life transitions where the cultural instruction manual simply isn't available.

Quote:

• "What we do not have this time is help... So today's podcast is called Flying Blind."
  — Rowan (15:02)

3. The Flying Blind Metaphor Unpacked (15:23–24:19)

• The main metaphor is introduced: life as a cockpit, with an instrument panel (society’s rules, expectations, and instructions) that suddenly stops working or is "painted over."
• Rowan riffs on being forced out of the culture’s safe paths (standard education, job, marriage, etc.), highlighting the anxiety and disorientation of going off-script.

Quote:

• "All the instruments are what? They're gone. They're in Cyrillic."
  — Martha (16:23)
• "The instrument panel is everything you've been taught culturally, socially, since you were little about how to fly the plane, how to fly your life."
  — Rowan (17:00)

4. When Cultural Instruments No Longer Work (24:19–30:07)

• Discussion turns toward how traditional structures (jobs, authority, government) are themselves shaky or crumbling. Even conforming doesn’t guarantee safety anymore.
• Marty (Martha Beck) recounts observing how, especially during major social change, people tend to rush toward "big, solid structures" for safety — only to find these structures are vulnerable.
• The metaphor of the 2011 Sendai tsunami is introduced: people seeking refuge in seemingly sturdy buildings that ultimately are swept away.

Quote:

• "You will never be given instructions on ways to live without the structure."
  — Martha (24:19)
• "The problem right now is that all the parental figures are either falling apart or they're diabolical... you will be cared for if you conform. It's a broken promise."
  — Martha (24:54, 25:03)

5. Tsunami vs. Surfing: Two Responses to Change (30:07–34:13)

• Martha describes her emotional response to watching real videos of the Sendai tsunami: witnessing people’s faith in structures literally washed away.
• By (apparent) YouTube accident, she finds contrasting footage of a surfer riding a massive, "rogue" wave, who, stripped of safety gear, chooses to ride and embrace the chaos rather than run from it.
• This becomes a pivotal metaphor: in a world ruled by change, safety lies not in clinging to crumbling conventions, but in shedding unnecessary baggage, meeting the wave naked, and learning to ride.

Quote:

• "The safest thing to do when you are in a world governed by change is to strip down... Go out naked with a board and deal with the change. Dance with the change. Ride the change. Find joy and a thrill in the absolute terror."
  — Martha (33:44)

6. Practicing Flying Blind (34:13–42:28)

• Rowan shares stories of "voluntarily flying blind" through solo travel, improvising in strange places, and the skills developed through such experiences — including the lighthearted tale of navigating a narrow Indian street, a cow, and a surprise encounter with Australian celebrity Andrew Denton.
• They discuss the unexpected positive synchronicities ("weird stuff happens") that come from stepping off the mapped path.

Quote:

• "You do get very relaxed in fly blind situations."
  — Martha (38:52)
• "When you do go into the fly blind zone, weird stuff happens, right? Synchronicities. We're getting woo woo already."
  — Martha (41:12)

7. How to Navigate Without External Instruments: The Inner Compass (43:04–54:16)

• Martha shares her process after leaving the Mormon church: explicitly learning to pay attention to the "granular sensations" of her body as a guide when external roadmaps no longer applied.
• They explain the practice of the "body compass" — noticing relaxation vs. tension, expansion vs. contraction, when considering choices.
• Rowan brings up her training and personal discoveries of how subtle, individualized these signals can be (e.g., naming her feeling of "right" as "Tingly Cathedral"; Martha’s is "ton of bricks").
• Martha references Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, noting the physiological data that supports the body's subconscious wisdom about good and bad choices long before the conscious mind can catch up.

Quotes:

• "My body was actually incredibly intelligent...I would get pain, like real systemic pain, organs starting to break down, and then I'd make a different decision, and suddenly I had energy and less pain."
  — Martha (44:00)
• "When you're making a decision that is wrong for you...there will be tension in the body. When you make a move toward something that is right for you...there will be loosening in the body, relaxation, opening."
  — Martha (51:44)

8. Trusting the Process — Learning as You Go (53:15–54:16)

• Small choices, practiced daily, help develop the skill of navigating without external rules.
• Over time, this practice leads to increased confidence, adaptability, and the ability to respond intuitively to change.

Quote:

• "After a while, for a while, it's like, damn, I wish the instrument panel was still working. And then after a while you're like, no, this'll do, this'll do. And then you're like, oh, this is gonna take me to a new place."
  — Martha (52:17)

Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• Painted-over mouse as metaphor (04:06)
  • "She painted over... a dead mouse. I hope he was dead at the time." — Rowan
• Rowan’s sports injury musings (08:48)
  • "Sports are bad. Someone makes their body go in a weird way. Well, what my personal trainer did tell me was that he loves that..." — Rowan
• "Instrument panel" explainer (17:00)
• Sendai tsunami story (25:51)
• Surfer Mike Parsons on the rogue wave (31:20–33:44)
• Rowan’s "Tingly Cathedral" (51:54)
  • "The feeling of the absolute spot on... I called it Tingly Cathedral." — Rowan
• Martha on building the muscle of trusting yourself (53:03)
  • "...you're balancing and adjusting continuously. But you trust your instrument, which is now your body, and your intuition, and your emotions, and everything connected to it, your spirituality, all of that."

Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:36 – Personal chaos as metaphor for bewilderment
• 07:45 – Tangents about sports, injuries, and learning from them
• 15:23 – Introduction of the "flying blind" metaphor
• 24:19 – Why the instruments of culture fail us in times of change
• 25:51 – Martha’s narrative of the Sendai tsunami
• 31:20 – The rogue wave surfing video and its lesson
• 34:13 – Voluntarily practicing "flying blind" via travel
• 43:04 – How to use "body compass" as authentic inner guidance
• 49:10 – Malcolm Gladwell's "red deck" example from Blink
• 51:44 – Martha’s universal generalization: tension vs. opening as inner guide
• 53:03 – The cumulative effect of daily small choices

Conclusion: How to Stay Wildly Bewildered

Martha and Rowan close the episode with encouragement: By practicing small acts of trusting your own body and instincts—instead of defaulting to culture’s failing instructions—you become resilient, agile, and more ready for a world of accelerating change. Rather than striving for safety through conformity, the path to true safety lies in embracing your own nature, one sense and one step at a time… and finding some joy and laughter along the way.

"This could be fun. And that exact feeling is how we Stay Wild."
— Rowan (54:16)

For More

Follow Bewildered on Instagram (@bewilderedpodcast), subscribe for notifications, or check out their community at WilderCommunity.com.

(All direct quotes are faithfully attributed by speaker and timestamp; slightly condensed for clarity where needed.)