Podcast Summary: Bewildered

Episode: The Fear of Touch and Time
Hosts: Martha Beck and Rowan Mangan
Date: September 3, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode of Bewildered explores the ways modern culture distances us from our own instincts and natural joy by stoking fear of genuine touch and anxiety about time. Through playful storytelling, personal anecdotes, and insightful commentary, Martha Beck and Rowan Mangan examine how societal forces monetize, outsource, and pathologize the most essential parts of being human—connection, presence, and tactile experience. The conversation swings from chickens in living rooms to the meaning of true abundance, always returning to the question: How can we reconnect with our own nature despite cultural pressures?

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Chicken Incident: Rediscovering Connection

• 00:00–01:00: Rowan shares a text from friend Kate, who had to bring chickens into her living room due to a flooded yard, sparking reflection on the loss of direct, nature-based experiences in modern life.

• 21:10–23:57: The excitement around Kate’s chickens serves as a gateway to discussing how rare and precious direct contact with animals (and by extension, life itself) has become in urban, commodified culture.

  “I got chickens and suddenly like you’re back into something that feels nourishing to the soul.” – Martha (21:11)

• The hosts humorously dissect the fact that keeping chickens is not about economics but about reconnecting with the source of food, touch, and a slower, more tactile existence.

The Mystery of the Scorpion Claws—Participation in Nature

• 07:56–17:35: Martha tells the story of finding daily piles of scorpion claws outside her cottage in South Africa and her detective quest to figure out which animal was leaving the “clutter.” Through this adventure, she experiences deep participation in the natural world.

  “Participation in nature is so enlivening... compared to the stuff we’re dealing with here, it was such a lovely break.” – Martha (17:35)

The Outsourcing of Touch and Community

• 24:52–34:30: Beck and Mangan lament how innumerable aspects of lived experience—caring for children, advice-giving, storytelling—have been monetized and outsourced, replacing direct, communal, and tactile relationships.

  “We have to ask permission to have interactions between living things that are profoundly normal for human beings... You could just get a chicken.” – Martha (24:52)

• The role and value of unpaid caregiving (usually by women), the shift from community advice to Google, and from storytelling around fire to industrial-scale entertainment.

The Paradox of Materialism and Disconnection

• 35:19–39:49: The hosts explore how “materialism” has ironically become less about contact with real, physical things and more about pixelated, virtual experiences—and how the search for meaning now tends to be directed to abstractions and transactional relationships.

  “This kind of spirituality… is very much about getting into the body and the senses and what is it to be in this human form. And that’s actually what, like, that’s more material, you know, it is.” – Rowan (36:41)

The Culture-Nature Split: Afraid of Touch and Time

• 37:36–41:10: Beck points out that culture’s avoidance of genuine touch and obsession with saving for the unknown future has left people psychologically “desiccated.”

  “We live in a culture that is afraid of touch and time. It’s afraid of touching anything because that doesn’t monetize it... And it also preys on the fear of the future.” – Martha (37:44)

• They trace the roots of this to the start of agriculture and surplus, noting that hoarding and separation are not inevitable but culturally driven.

Transaction vs. Relationship

• 40:35–44:12: Mangan observes that industrial cultures have traded relationship for transaction, leading to a society that finds the grossness in touch and continuous fear of scarcity.

  “We’ve traded relationship for transactions... What culture is saying in all this is like, ew, gross, get it off me.” – Rowan (40:46)

Money, Abundance, and the Fear of Death

• 52:29–55:14: They connect the cultural obsession with monetization, saving, and “making time” to an underlying, often unspoken, fear of death—suggesting that hoarding money and resources is, at heart, a coping mechanism for existential anxiety.

  “What is money… if not fear of death?” – Rowan (52:58)

Reclaiming Sense and Abundance through Touch and Presence

• 56:08–59:00: The hosts propose that the antidote is simple, though radical: be present, cherish tactile connections, and see true abundance in moments of touch, time spent together, and direct experience. Acceptance of mortality increases the value of presence.

  “I used to not hug people because I was afraid of touch. But we’re all going to die. Oh my god. Hug everybody. We’re dying. Who cares what he thinks? Who cares what anybody thinks?” – Martha (58:30)

Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• On Connection and Nature:

  • “Being out there in nature, trying to figure out, you know, the only thing I was trying to figure out for those few days is what was eating scorpions. And let me tell you, compared to the stuff we’re dealing with here, it was such a lovely break.” – Martha (17:54)

• On Capitalism and Touch:

  • “Every situation where one person's body touches another person's body... is immediately sexualized. That shows how much the culture has moved away from the concept of touch as something that is natural, necessary, and multi-form.” – Martha (50:16)

• On Transaction vs. Relationship:

  • “A transaction can never be symbiotic because it’s not an exchange in the moment. It’s like a hypothetical future exchange. Right. And so, yeah, look, I just want to cuddle a chicken.” – Rowan (46:08)

• On Scarcity and Abundance:

  • “The effect of that is that it kills our sense of abundance. We have more stuff... and people feel impoverished in the middle of... They can be drowning in clutter and feel impoverished.” – Martha (43:11)

• On Death, Presence, and True Value:

  • “To make a friend of death is the way I kind of get my bearings... I say to myself, okay, we’re all gonna die. How much does it matter given that we’re all gonna die?” – Martha (57:02)
  • “Hug everybody. We're dying. Like, who cares what he thinks? Who cares what anybody thinks? I adore this man. I’m going to hug him because... I'm glad I hugged him that time. It made my life rich.” – Martha (58:30)

• Ani DiFranco Quote (as requested by Martha):

  • “Meanwhile, the wild things are not for sale any more than they are for show so I’ll be outside in love with the kind of beauty it takes more than eyes to know.” – Rowan quoting Ani DiFranco (60:47)

Conclusion: How to Reconnect

Practical Takeaways

• Remember who you are and ground yourself in the present moment.
• Challenge the notion of “wasted time”—there’s abundance in the now.
• Seek touch, relationship, and direct experience over pixelated or transactional substitutes.
• Accept mortality to cherish connection: “Make a friend of death.”

Episode Tone Warm, playful, gently irreverent, and deeply sincere—hosts mix humor with heartfelt introspection, making heavy topics accessible.

Important Segments by Timestamp

• Chickens as a Lens: 00:00–01:00, 21:10–23:57
• Scorpion Mystery: 07:56–17:35
• Touch, Outsourcing, Capitalism: 24:52–34:30, 37:36–41:10
• Transaction vs. Relationship: 40:35–44:12
• Abundance, Money, and Death: 52:29–59:00
• Ani DiFranco on Wildness and Authentic Beauty: 60:47

In short:
Martha and Rowan invite listeners to notice, with tenderness and humor, how the culture’s fear of touch and time causes bewilderment and disconnection—and to recover joy, presence, and true abundance by returning—again and again—to our senses.