Episódios
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You are bored for a reason!
Your contradictions were never a problem to solve!
Maria shares a quick programming note — Make Human is taking July off and returning in August — and reads you two original meditations.
Waypoints
[00:00:00] — A summer pause, and two pieces to sit with
[00:01:00] — Begging you to be weirder
[00:02:30] — A genre of one
[00:04:00] — Resist the flattening
CTA
YOUR SECRET INVITATION HERE
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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This episode is about the tension between the daily “job” of making vs. the need for a big transcendent “why”.
Maria's producer Carin Huebner came to the conversation with a live wire. She'd finally gotten into the darkroom after weeks of circling it, and she made, in her own assessment, zero successful work. What happens next?
In this episode
Why the question "what is this for?" can be both essential and the thing that keeps you out of the room
Erotic energy, Eros, and what it actually means to be a sub to your vision
Anger as data — what it’s actually pointing to
Why most of us only ever get the next instruction, and how to stop making that wrong
Waypoints
[00:00:00] — Why Carin finally got into the darkroom
[00:03:30] — The tension between the job and the why
[00:10:30] — Both ends of the binary are forms of obedience
[00:22:30] — Sub to the vision
[00:25:00] — What actually is vision?
[00:36:30] — Rules as permission
Resources
Sally Mann — Art Work
Steven Pressfield — The War of Art
Nathan Hill — Wellness
Will Arnett — Is This Thing On?
Hilma af Klint — referenced for automatic painting and receiving vision
Michael Pollan — A World Appears
Annie Dillard — The Writing Life
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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Estão a faltar episódios?
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You already know what burnout looks like on the outside. But Amelia Hruby describes something subtler and more insidious: still doing all the tasks, still checking boxes, still showing up, and feeling absolutely nothing.
If you’ve ever found yourself completing everything on the list and wondering where the desire went, you’ll love this episode on creative burnout, seasonal rhythms, and the hidden cost of saying yes.
Amelia Hruby is a feminist writer, podcaster, and platform critic with a PhD in philosophy. She’s the host of Off The Grid and the founder of Softer Sounds, a podcast production studio she’s currently in the middle of sunsetting. Her new book, Your Attention Is Sacred Except On Social Media, is out now.
Maria and Amelia discuss being alienated from your own creative impulse, and why the answer is rarely try harder.
YOUR SECRET INVITATION HERE
In this episode
Burnout isn't always inertia
Why consistency doesn't require discipline
Seasonal rhythms as a survival strategy, not a spiritual practice
"Bridge desire" — Maria's term for the 70%-fit that turns the dial toward what you actually want
What makes something feel human
Waypoints
[00:01:33] — The burnout practice
[00:03:15] — When pleasure stops being accessible
[00:10:45] — The sabbatical that became a sunset
[00:29:45] — Consistency is desire, not discipline
[00:50:00] — What makes it human
Resources & mentions
Amelia’s website
Off The Grid (podcast) — leaving social media, creative business, and platform alternatives
Your Attention Is Sacred Except On Social Media — Amelia's new book
Dana Amir — psychoanalyst; saturated vs. unsaturated stories in therapeutic relationship
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 unblockingTheme song by deadmen
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What do you do when your work has nowhere to go? When the credentials keep accumulating and you still don't feel like enough? When the scroll takes you under and you don't know why you went in?
In this first Listener Questions episode, Maria is joined by her producer, Carin, to answer real questions from real people who are trying to make things, live honestly, and not lose themselves in the process.
Carin brings the follow-up you needed someone to ask, the real-life example that grounds, and the reminder that the questions in this episode are more connected than they look.
You want to be in relationship. With your work, with the world, with yourself. This episode is about what gets in the way of that, and what you can do today.
In this episode
Why wanting an audience isn't ego and what it actually is
What autoregulation has to do with your screen time problem
Why getting the credentials, the agent, the gallery slot won't scratch the itch and what might
On finding form without a map
Whose voice is telling you you're not enough yet?
Waypoints
[00:01:00] — The photographer with a full hard drive
[00:13:30] — On gatekeepers and house shows
[00:16:30] — I need more qualifications before I can start
[00:28:00] — The scroll problem
[00:35:00] — How do you meet the form of your art?
Resources
Secret invitation
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Kate's episode of Make Human — referenced for its "most epic complaint story"
The Dunning-Kruger effect
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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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
If this episode landed for you, please rate and review the show on your listening app — and send it to someone you'd want to talk about this with.
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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 —
How a stage four cancer diagnosis cracked ambition back open
The hospital magic trick
Why the depth of the no conditions the height of the yes
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
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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
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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
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