Simplify

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.

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 it into a buzzword, and her gift is making something that can feel slippery and slightly woo-woo feel concrete and useful. And, delightfully, she'll get us there via rivers, vagus nerves, and the wisdom of your gut.

The conversation moves through somatic therapy itself, what an actual session looks like, and why the chairs aren't bolted to the floor, polyvagal theory broken down for a five-year-old, and why some of the most stubborn anxiety patterns aren't really about what's happening out there, exactly—they're about what's happening inside your. body.

There's also a thread that quietly runs through the whole episode about how our earliest experiences—earlier than we usually consider—shape how safe the world feels in our bodies for the rest of our lives. 

Her parting demystification of the field is one for anyone who's tried to fix themselves quickly and wondered why it didn't stick.

Resources:

Arielle's Recs: The Post-Traumatic Growth Guidebook,  the work of Janina Fisher 
Ben's Rec: Braiding Sweet Grass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Caitlin's Rec: Tell Me Where it Hurts by Dr. Rachel Zoffness

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.

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 religious one.

We get into what that actually means—the hidden god at the center of it all, the ancient mythologies that laid the groundwork, and a concept called the egregore that might be as unsettling as it is useful. Angela also makes a case for why the stories we tell ourselves about productivity, laziness, and whether we're doing enough aren't pointing to personal failings. They're architecture that someone built, and understanding that is the first step to not being entirely at their mercy.

Resources
Remember His Name: Unmasking the Faceless God of the West by Angela Natividad
Midwifing The Mother, Angela's Substack
The Dawn of Everything by Davids Graeber and Wengrow
How to Re-Enchant the World by Serge Latouche

Caitlin's rec: The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr
Ben's recs: The Kingdom by Emmanuel Carrère / The primary texts (the Bible, the Quran, the Avesta — just dip in!) / Bad Cousins podcast

Let us know what you thought of this episode! Find us on Instagram at @simplifypod. Subscribe to our newsletter here. 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.