You want to make something big. Yet here you are with every practice and routine and productivity tool that signals you're trying, and somehow still not at the real thing. What is that?

Carin Huebner is a visual artist, former spiritual director, and the producer behind Make Human. She's also a person who has, in tears at a creative salon she was hosting, said: I just want to make. I just want to make. I just want to make. She asked the questions in this episode.

This is the foundation episode. We talk about what creativity actually is (not innovation, not art-making, not your output), why the shaming witness is the real engine behind most creative blocks, and what agency means when it isn't code for "your willpower just isn't strong enough." We draw the line between productivity and creativity.

We went sideways and came back. We laughed. There were bears.

There's a moment in here where Maria describes the thing that makes any transformative practice actually work: therapy, morning pages, a walk in the woods, a friend who just happens to have a lot of love in them. This may just be the foundation of what it is to Make Human.

In this episode

• Creativity vs. productivity and why that distinction is not about aesthetics

• Shame: what it is, where it comes from, and how it kills the thing before it starts

• What agency actually is when "you can create anything" starts to feel like a threat

• Truth-telling as the first creative act

• Your flavor of aliveness: the thing you bring to any room that isn't earned or performed

• Inner work is not self-indulgent because have you ever been around someone at war with themselves?

• Why makers need to have their say in what counts as human right now

Waypoints

[00:00:00] — What this podcast is for

[00:03:00] — How Maria got here

[00:13:00] — What creativity actually is (And what it isn't) 

[00:16:00] — Agency without the toxic positivity

[00:23:00] — Truth-telling as the first creative act

[00:31:00] — Shame, blocks, and the eyes of love

[00:46:00] — Your flavor of aliveness 

[00:50:00] — Why make anything right now 

Resources

• Secret invitation

• The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron — and the morning pages practice

• David Bedrick's work on shame and the shaming witness 

• Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) 

• The Zen Buddhist "maybe good, maybe bad" story

Have a creative quandary? Submit a question to be answered on the show

Got some creative resistance? Get your free audio guide to the Creative Resistance Practice for unblocking

The Make Human Podcast is for creatives and culture makers who don't simply want to make more things. They want to be more alive and make the world more alive in turn.

There's a version of creativity that's been reduced to output: something to optimize, measure, improve. Then there's creativity as a way of being: a spiritual and social path that includes how you meet your everyday life, your inner life, and the world you're trying to shape.

Here, we believe culture is what we make it through the way we live. 

You'll hear conversations with creatives and culture makers, alongside solo episodes working through what it actually looks like to live creatively in this moment.

If you're here to make something true, and to build a world you can be human in — follow along.

Follow the Make Human Podcast wherever you listen.

Have a creative quandary? Submit a question to be answered on the show

Got some creative resistance? Get your free audio guide to the Creative Resistance Practice for unblocking

Connect with Maria: mariabowler.com

Are you allowed to feel joy? Also, do you HAVE TO “choose joy”?

That question sits at the center of this conversation with my sister Kate Bowler, NYT bestselling author and professor at Duke Divinity School, whose latest book Joyful Anyway is about as far from a "good vibes" manifesto as you can get. Kate has spent years — many of them marked by stage four cancer, medical trauma, and the particular exhaustion of being a highly sensitive person in a world built for optimization — figuring out why joy keeps showing up anyway.

Joy and happiness are different. Happiness is math: accumulation, measurement, circumstances adding up. Joy has nothing to do with your gratitude journal and everything to do with whether you're willing to say a weird yes in the middle of a hard no.

We go deep on what ambition actually looks like when it's rooted in your aliveness instead of your achievement. We talk about the dance between structure and surrender.  We talk about what it means to witness yourself, what our limitations have to do with our humanity, and why the people who've lived through the most nos often feel joy more fully than anyone.

It's also one of the funniest conversations I've had on this show. Kate got bitten by a snake. She rented a pirate ship. She asked her surgeon to perform a magic trick. And I roast her at the end about a blanket. You'll want to stay for all of it.

In this episode

• Why "choose joy" is kind of a lie — and what you can actually do instead (hint: you can't open the door, but you can unlock it)

• How a stage four cancer diagnosis cracked ambition back open — and what that revealed about work as a space of self-belonging

• The hospital magic trick: what happens when you say a weird yes in the middle of the hardest no

• Why the depth of the no conditions the height of the yes — and why people who've been through the most loss often feel joy most fully

• What our limitations, scars, and very specific kinds of damage have to do with what makes us most human

Waypoints

[00:02:30] — Joy is not happiness (and happiness is just math)

[00:07:00] — Ambition, aliveness & closing the door

[00:17:00] — You can't open the door. You can only unlock it

[00:20:00] — The magic trick (and other weird yeses)

[00:36:00] — Snake bites, pirate ships & fear palate cleansers

[00:45:00] — What makes us human

Resources

• Secret invitation

• Joyful Anyway by Kate Bowler

• Kate's podcast: Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

• Everything Happens Initiative

• The film Rental Family (Japanese loneliness, witnesses, and the grace we give each other)

• Nick Cave on AI and the travesty of tribute songs without limits

Have a creative quandary? Submit a question to be answered on the show

Got some creative resistance? Get your free audio guide to the Creative Resistance Practice for unblocking

Where do you belong? What does it mean to belong? This is a big question for creatives.

I'm talking to Sebene Selassie: writer, teacher, and speaker who explores the paradoxes and possibilities of belonging through meditation, creativity, and nature-based practices. Her book You Belong is one of those rare texts that holds the spiritual and the social together without flattening either.

We talk about the difference between belonging and fitting in, and the question that haunts a lot of creatives: when am I translating, and when am I disappearing?

We accidentally invent several metaphors in this conversation, including one about orchestras that I will now be using forever. We also get into: the paradox that we're not separate and we're not the same, how to know when you're in the wrong room without making it a moral failure, and what silence has to do with finding a voice that actually feels like yours.

This one is thoughtful and funny, and if I did my job right, you'll feel something in your body while you're listening.

In this episode

• Why belonging and fitting in are not the same thing — and how confusing the two costs you your voice

• What it means to "translate" yourself for a room, when that's a gift, and when you're disappearing

• The orchestra metaphor that neither of them saw coming

• Why the inner work / outer work divide is a false binary

• What silence has to do with finding a voice that actually feels like yours (and why ease in creativity is not the same as not doing the hard things)

Waypoints

[00:00:00] — The belonging question 

[00:04:00] — Sebene's journey with belonging 

[00:08:30] — When am I translating, and when am I disappearing?

[00:20:00] — Not separate, not the same: the central paradox 

[00:33:00] — Silence, stillness & the voice that's already yours

Resources

• Secret invitation

• Sebene Selassie's Substack 

• You Belong by Sebene Selassie 

• Sharon Salzberg on the healing being in the return

Have a creative quandary? Submit a question to be answered on the show

Got some creative resistance? Get your free audio guide to the Creative Resistance Practice for unblocking

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