Simplify

Recently, lots of thinkpieces have tried to explain why non-fiction book sales have declined. From Tim Ferris to publishing insiders, everyone's got a theory. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

We live in an increasingly noisy world, yet most of us spend almost no time thinking about how sound shapes our thoughts, focus, and relationships. In this episode, world-renowned sound and listening expert Julian Treasure breaks down why most of us aren't actually listening - and what would happen if we did. What usually happens is that people do what they think is "deep listening" - they nod and...

Do you want to live forever? Bryan Johnson - the gazillionaire tech entrepreneur who started the "don't die" movement - created headlines (and some schadenfreude giggles) when he announced he was diagnosed with autoimmune gastritis, which is incurable. The don't die website says: "We are at war with death and its causes. We are building towards an infinite horizon. We are fighting for the freedom...

If you’ve ever listened to NPR’s Planet Money , you know the vibe: They take dense, eye-glazing economic theories and turn them into cinematic, human-driven stories. Whether following a t-shirt across the global supply chain, buying a barrel of crude oil, or creating a shell company, Planet Money has spent over 15 years proving that economics isn’t just for academics - it impacts our lives every s...

What do you do when you're not feeling creative? What do people like Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jenny Slate, and James Acaster do? In this third installment of our new a/v format - EXTRA - Caitlin drives. Sparked by a supercut episode of Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out podcast, she asks Ben what he knows about creativity and how he approaches it. Together, Ben and Caitlin discuss how to discover your own...

What does a five-year-old boy learn from the word "buddy"? When Ruth Whippman started shopping around a book about boys in 2021, publishers mostly shrugged—boys, surely, have it great. Ruth, a British journalist, former BBC documentary-maker, and raising three boys, suspected masculinity was full of blind spots nobody was bothering to look at. By the time BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of...

Why do commencement speeches suck so often? That's easy. They suck when the speaker is out of touch with their audience - new graduates. That's why legendary ones like from David Foster Wallace and George Saunders and Steve Jobs are so good, because they balance personal experience in a way that connects with a new generation. This year, multiple tech CEO commencement speakers were booed across th...

When did "I resolve to be a better person" get replaced with "I resolve to tone my arms" in the register of resolutions? For a long time, philosophy treated caring about how you look as proof you weren't serious. Heather Widdows, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, thinks philosophy was simply wrong. In Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal , she argues that beauty has stopped b...

What if the fastest way out of the beauty standard is deciding you're a horse? This is the first of a new thing. On the weeks there's no interview, Caitlin and Ben take turns bringing each other one idea they found out in the world – a new term, a newsletter, a cultural weather system – and turn it over together. Caitlin drives this one, and she brings bimbo stoicism : a philosophy invented on Tik...

What did you make on the internet, back before anyone was paying you to? This time around, Ben takes the interview chair. He's talking with Joanna Walsh, writer, artist, arts activist, author of twelve books, several of them co-written with AIs she coded herself (badly and on purpose <3). Her new book Amateurs ! is a philosophical history of the internet we all built for free: the Tumblrs, the...

What if almost everything you're doing to "optimize" your health is, at best, doing nothing at all? Caitlin sits down with Dr. Nicola Guess —dietitian, Oxford nutrition scientist, and quite possibly the best BS detector in the wellness space. She studies blood sugar and diabetes for a living and dismantles nutrition nonsense for fun. The twist that makes her worth listening to: she used to believe...

AI replacing our colleagues, feeling lonelier than ever despite enforced physical presense at the office. What is going on with the workplace? Caitlin sits down with Christine Armstrong, researcher, author, and founder of Armstrong & Partners, who has spent years doing something refreshingly unfashionable: actually asking people what's happening at work, instead of just theorizing about it. Ch...

Diets fail us all the time, and yet we usually blame ourselves. This physician says that neither the blame nor the failure are necessary. In the episode, Caitlin sits down with Dr. Yoni Freedhoff—Canadian physician, obesity expert, and one of the first doctors in his country board-certified in obesity medicine—for a conversation about his book, The Diet Fix. Dr. Freedhoff's book really isn't a die...

10,000 downloads a month. 11 episodes. 6 months of independence. Caitlin and Ben sit down for a bonus episode to talk about where Simplify has been and where it's going. They bought the show back from Blinkist at the end of last year, set some ambitious goals, and hit all of them. This episode is a chance to catch up, say thank you, and let you in on what's coming next. They get into the ins and o...

What if the thing standing between you and a better day at work isn't a new habit—but just knowing which play to run? Amy Morin is the psychotherapist behind the 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do series, which has sold over a million copies and sparked one of the most-watched TEDx talks of all time. Her new book, The Mental Strength Playbook , takes a different tack. Where her earlier work...

What happens in the gap between updating your LinkedIn title and actually knowing how to do the job? Caitlin sits down with Deborah Caulet—leadership coach, former VP of People at Blinkist, and someone who's spent 15 years helping leaders figure out what they're doing (and why they feel like they aren't doing it right!). Deb works with first-time managers and founders at growing startups, coaching...

What if the part of you that knows what's actually wrong isn't your brain? This week on Simplify, Caitlin sits down with Dr. Arielle Schwartz —clinical psychologist, somatic therapy expert, and author of more books than seems reasonable for one person—to talk about what your body has been trying to tell you for years. Arielle has been working in somatics for thirty years, long before TikTok turned...

What if the stories running your life aren't really yours? This week on Simplify, Caitlin talks with Angela Natividad: a mythologist, writer, and advertising veteran—a trifecta that turns out to be the perfect preparation for the argument she makes in her book Remember His Name: Unmasking the Faceless God of the West . That argument, put simply: capitalism isn't an economic system. It's a religiou...

A loss isn't always a loss—sometimes, it's one of many stepping stones towards winning big. When you change how you think about what succeeding looks like, the long game of changing the systems we live in seems infinitely more doable.  This week on Simplify, Caitlin speaks with international human rights lawyer and author Nani Jansen Reventlow about her book Radical Justice— and about what real, s...

Most of us have gotten up on a Monday morning and thought: I simply cannot do this today. Our job is grinding us down in that slow, invisible way that work does when we're not managing it well. Psychotherapist, author, and podcast host Guy Winch has spent his career sitting with people who have experienced this for a passel of reasons from sabotaging coworkers to unrealistic goals. His new book Mi...

What if getting back at someone isn't as satisfying as we think—and what we're really trying to avoid is grief? This week on Simplify, Caitlin speaks with psychotherapist, teacher, and author David Richo about his book Sweeter Than Revenge , which makes the case that there's a better way to respond when people hurt us than the one our brains (and basically every movie ever made) are wired for. Dav...

Most of us have no idea what it means to repair harm, not just apologize for it. We also regard rage as frightening and out of place in loving, connected relationships. It takes a special person to demystify these staticky aspects of human relating—and we found her. This week on Simplify, Caitlin speaks with relational skills teacher Christabel Mintah-Galloway about repair: why it’s so difficult,...

What if the United States wasn’t just influenced by cult-like thinking, but shaped by it from the very beginning? This week on Simplify, Caitlin Schiller speaks with journalist and author Jane Borden, whose book Cults Like Us: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America explores how cult dynamics show up across U.S. history, politics, consumer culture, and self-help. From Puritan theology to superhero mo...

Strategy. It can sound abstract, intimidating, and vaguely corporate. So who better to help demystify it than Seth Godin? Seth returns to Simplify to talk about his book This Is Strategy, and to reframe strategy not as a rigid plan or a set of tactics, but as a philosophy of becoming. In this conversation, Caitlin Schiller and Seth Godin explore what strategy really is, why tension is not only ine...

Simplify is back! When you leave the doctor with a protocol for what ails you, do you wonder where the knowledge behind your prescription came from? In fact, we know how to treat today's woes thanks to the bodies of people who suffered—and nowhere is that data more inexact and editorialized than in women's health. Feminist cultural historian Dr. Elinor Cleghorn, who specializes in women’s health a...