Simplify

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. Christine is one of the world's top voices on the future of work, and she goes well beyond boardrooms and TED stages. She visits call centers in the north of England and local authority offices drowning in AI-generated letters to study the quiet erosion of the relationships that used to make work feel like it mattered.
The conversation moves through two tangled questions: what is AI actually doing to our working lives (as opposed to what we've been promised it will do) and why are we so lonely, even when we're technically surrounded by colleagues? There's a thread about the gap between what CEOs think their companies are doing with AI and what workers on the ground are experiencing. A thread about what happens when the "human" becomes the luxury tie, and a surprising riff on gossip.

Resources
Ben's Rec: The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
Caitlin's Rec: Better Offline podcast by Ed Zitron
Also mentioned:
Armstrong & Partners — Christine's research and speaking consultancy
The Mother of All Jobs: How to Have Children and a Career and Stay Sane(ish) by Christine Armstrong (Bloomsbury, 2018)

Let us know what you thought of this episode! Find us on Instagram at @simplifypod. Subscribe to our newsletter on beehiiv here. Also, you can email us at info@kollomedia.com
This episode of Simplify was produced by Caitlin Schiller, Ben Schuman-Stoler, and engineered by João Lucas in Berlin, Germany, for Kollo Media.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 diet book at all. Its premise is simple: any diet can work, and the trick is understanding the handful of reasons they usually don't.
They get into why a diet built on hunger is doomed before it starts, why food is so much more than fuel, and why exercise—for all its gifts—is a surprisingly lousy engine for weight loss. There's a thread about the marshmallow test, a reframe of willpower as biological rather than a measure of your moral fiber, and a 10-day reset built on one radical instruction: notice your own patterns before you try to change them.
The part that lingers is the gentlest: Yoni's phrase, "your best weight" that isn't a number at all, but the healthiest life you can honestly enjoy. Not "can I eat less," but "can I happily eat less?"

Resources
Featured Book: The Diet Fix: Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work by Dr. Yoni Freedhoff
Ben's Recs: A small stack of willpower-and-habits books: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal, Atomic Habits by James Clear, and Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. Plus his Guardian piece on refusing to be a salad purist: "French beans good, cucumber bad. Please, no."
Caitlin's Rec: Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, which is a callback to an early Simplify episode and the origin of the immortal "G-BOMBS" (greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, seeds)
Also mentioned: Dr. Yoni Freedhoff's blog Weighty Matters.
Let us know what you thought of this episode! Find us on Instagram at @simplifypod. Subscribe to our newsletter on beehiiv here. Also, you can email us at info@kollomedia.com
This episode of Simplify was produced by Caitlin Schiller, Ben Schuman-Stoler, and engineered by João Lucas in Berlin, Germany, for Kollo Media.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 outs of funding Simplify and why neither of them is interested in a race to the bottom. There's also a thread about what Simplify has always been—a lens, not a quick fix—and how that's becoming more true, not less, as the show evolves.
And they have a couple of things to ask of you.
Those Two things:
1) Please fill out the Simplify listener survey—it takes just a few minutes and genuinely shapes the show.
2) If Simplify brings something to your life and you'd like to help keep it going, you can donate at buy us a coffee. It means more than you know.

You can find us on Instagram at @simplifypod. Subscribe to our newsletter on beehiiv here. Also, you can email us at info@kollomedia.com
This episode of Simplify was produced by Caitlin Schiller, Ben Schuman-Stoler, and engineered by João Lucas in Berlin, Germany, for Kollo Media.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 was preventative, this one is urgent care. Fifty plays you can run in the moment you need them: before the presentation, during the spiral, in the middle of a task that feels completely pointless.
Caitlin and Amy get into why positive thinking can actually leave you less prepared, what happens in your brain when you step away from a problem and the answer shows up in the shower, and a surprisingly simple vagus nerve trick that can drop your anxiety in thirty seconds. You'll also hear how Amy arrived at this work through personal loss that reshaped everything she thought she knew about helping people.
Mental strength isn't about pushing through pain at all costs. It's about having enough clarity on your own values to know which battles are yours—and enough flexibility to let the rest go.

Resources
Amy's new book: The Mental Strength Playbook by Amy Morin
Amy's rec: How to Not Know—launching May 2025
Caitlin's rec: Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life by Luke Burgis
Ben's rec: Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by Nir Eyal
Also mentioned: Amy's podcast Mentally Stronger, the 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do series (6 books), Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman

Let us know what you thought of this episode! Find us on Instagram at @simplifypod. Subscribe to our newsletter on beehiiv here. Also, you can email us at info@kollomedia.com
This episode of Simplify was produced by Caitlin Schiller, Ben Schuman-Stoler, Molly Rose Hart, and mixed & mastered by João Lucas in Berlin, Germany, for Kollo Media.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 them through the messy, humbling transition from high-performing individual contributor to someone whose job is to make other people shine. It's an identity shift, she says—and your sense of self has to catch up.

They get into the classic traps: the leader who becomes their own bottleneck because delegating feels slower than just doing it, the difficult conversation that gets avoided for weeks because the anticipation is worse than the thing itself, and the imposter syndrome that 85% of professionals have felt at some point. Deb shares her CLEAR framework for navigating hard feedback conversations, and there's a thread about what it actually means to be kind versus nice at work — and why the difference matters more than you'd think. There's also a moment about AI's role in leadership that takes a surprising turn.

The conversation lands on a deceptively simple piece of advice for anyone staring down a new role and feeling the weight of everything they don't yet know. It's the kind of thing you'll want to remember on a Monday morning.

Resources

Deb's Rec: Work Rules! by Laszlo Bock 

Ben's Rec: Radical Candor by Kim Scott 

Caitlin's Rec: A.Q.: A New Kind of Intelligence for a World That's Always Changing by Liz Tran

Deborah Caulet's 7-Day Difficult Conversation Challenge (free) Deborah Caulet's 12-Week Leadership Bootcamp. 

Let us know what you thought of this episode! Find us on Instagram at @simplifypod. Subscribe to our newsletter on beehiiv here. Also, you can email us at info@kollomedia.com

This episode of Simplify was produced by Caitlin Schiller, Ben Schuman-Stoler, and engineered by João Lucas in Berlin, Germany, for Kollo Media.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.