10 September, 2025. Maisie and Ben have a meandering conversation around embracing the unknown through the “spirit of exploration.” We cover our changing relationship with creative endeavours, Maisie’s focus on social impact, building extroversion, risk-taking, free will, and the power of connection among a laundry list of other tantalizing tangents.

Maisie has a deep interest in connection, community, and the intersection between social impact and creativity. She has a deep appreciation for language, and believes that the journey of self-discovery is essential to healing, emboldening, and growing us in equal measure. When she's not enjoying caffeine in various formats, you'll find her diving into creative pursuits. Explore more of her work at https://substack.com/@inlivingfire 

Ben talks about movies on his film podcast at deepcutpod.com, and writes about film at thekinetoscope.com. He lived a past life working in film production. Find him online at benjaminyap.me 

The Space

This episode was recorded in a Public Living Room, a crowd-funded community space in 195 Pearl Hills Terrace. If you enjoyed this conversation and would like to help us keep recording, please support the Stranger Conversations crowdfund. This supports their mission to build a third place at the intersection of self-exploration and collective good. You can follow them on Instagram @strangerconvos or go to linktr.ee/strangerconvos where you can find links to the crowdfund and find out more about what they do. 

Timestamps:

03:27 Relationship to the space

07:42 Spirit of exploration

09:14 What am I doing?

13:49 Building extroversion

15:22 Spontaneity

17:43 Social impact

21:51 Reframing creativity

37:42 Leaving conventionality behind

41:26 Contradictions

43:36 Does exploring stop?

51:18 Learning to let go

54:07 Risk

57:21 Difficult conversations / Inconvenience and friction

1:04:50 Ben’s current relationship to this podcast

01:12:40 Iron ricebowl question