Stay ConnectedSimplify is a podcast for anyone who’s taken a look at their habits, their happiness, their relationships, or their health and thought, “There’s got to be a better way to do this.” Join Caitlin Schiller and Ben Schuman-Stoler for conversations with authors and thinkers you know—and some you might not, yet—that sit at the intersection of reading, thinking, and daily life.
Simplify is now independently owned by Caitlin Schiller and Ben Schuman-Stoler.
Copyright: © 2017 Simplify
Simplify is back on January 12, 2026! We’ve got a new look, we’re independent now, and we can’t wait to share new episodes with you every other Monday from January 12th onward. This episode features one of Caitlin's favorite-ever interviews, with Kathryn Mannix.
To warm you up, we’re reissuing 5 of our favorite episodes. So, catch up on the great ideas you might’ve missed and get ready for Monday: you’ll hear from a cultural historian who will change the way you interact with the medical system.
Sign up for our new newsletter, follow us on instagram. See you there!
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Simplify is back on January 12, 2026! We’ve got a new look, we’re independent now, and we can’t wait to share new episodes with you every other Monday from January 12th onward. This episode features Liz Fosslien.
To warm you up, we’re reissuing 5 of our favorite episodes. So, catch up on the great ideas you might’ve missed and get ready for Monday: you’ll hear from a cultural historian who will change the way you interact with the medical system.
Sign up for our new newsletter, follow us on instagram. See you there!
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Simplify is back on January 12, 2026! We’ve got a new look, we’re independent now, and we can’t wait to share new episodes with you every other Monday from January 12th onward. This episode features Eli Finkel, and it's one of our personal favorites.
To warm you up, we’re reissuing 5 of our favorite episodes. So, catch up on the great ideas you might’ve missed and get ready for Monday: you’ll hear from a cultural historian who will change the way you interact with the medical system.
Sign up for our new newsletter, follow us on instagram. See you there!
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Simplify is back on January 12, 2026! We’ve got a new look, we’re independent now, and we can’t wait to share new episodes with you every other Monday from January 12th onward.
To warm you up, we’re reissuing 5 of our favorite episodes. So, catch up on the great ideas you might’ve missed and get ready for Monday: you’ll hear from a cultural historian who will change the way you interact with the medical system.
Sign up for our new newsletter, follow us on instagram. See you there!
This one features Tiffany Dufu, it's one of our most-downloaded episodes ever.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Simplify is back on January 12, 2026! We’ve got a new look, we’re independent now, and we can’t wait to share new episodes with you every other Monday from January 12th onward.
To warm you up, we’re reissuing 5 of our favorite episodes. So, catch up on the great ideas you might’ve missed and get ready for Monday: you’ll hear from a cultural historian who will change the way you interact with the medical system.
Sign up for our new newsletter, follow us on instagram. See you there!
This is one of our most popular ever episodes, featuring David Allen. We sound so young...
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
You know a magical connection when you feel it—that undeniable magnetism that pulls you together for a fit that's as much like home as it is an adventure. We see these sorts of connections in romcoms all the time, but they're not just relegated to the romcom realm. Magical connections happen in friendships, too, and Rhaina Cohen wants to dignify them.
This conversation with the writer and NPR Embedded producer/editor draws on some key stories and insights from her new book: The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center. Caitlin and Rhaina talk about why it can be beautiful and beneficial to distribute the "significant other" title across many people, what it looks like to treat friendships more like life partnerships, the friendship tradition and where we might have lost passionate platonic significant otherships, and the important work of letting the ones who love us see our mess.
In the Bookend, Ben and Caitlin discuss friendship, awkwardly thank each other for their friendship, and make further learning and reading recs. And thank you, listeners, for bein' a friend. :)
Caitlin's Rec: Rituals Roadmap by Erica Keswin
Ben's Rec: Caitlin's Guide on Adult Friendship and The Lonely Century by Noreena Hertz
Try Blinkist for free for 14 days by going to [https://www.blinkist.com/simplify\][2], tapping on Try Blinkist at the top right, and entering the code friendship.
Let us know what you thought of this episode, or just come say hi! Find Caitlin on instagram at @cschills https://www.instagram.com/cschills/[2], Ben at @bsto https://twitter.com/bsto [3]. You can write us all an email at podcast@blinkist.com [4].
This episode of Simplify was produced by Caitlin Schiller, Ben Schuman-Stoler, Maria Levacic & Stéphane Obadia at Blinkist
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Here's a chilling thought: experts are saying that we may soon be sustaining 100-year work lives. If that's true, then how many careers might we have? How will we know where to upskill? And how will we keep bagged lunches interesting for so many years?
Michelle R. Weise, researcher and author of Long Life Learning: Prepare for Jobs That Don't Even Exist Yet, offers ways to think through and prepare for the long life of work ahead. She outlines five principles for the educational ecosystem that can support the future workforce, offers ideas on how AI can actually help you become more marketable, and gives a super straightforward framework for knowing which skills you should develop to stay relevant in your job.
You'll also learn about what it means to become a "skills translator," able to showcase to future employers your unique aspects that lend a competitive edge over AI. Plus: listen up for why we all really need to stay alert to our discomfort on the job—it might be telling us something important.
Caitlin's Rec: Farai Chideya’s Simplify Episode
Michelle's Website
Try Blinkist for free for 14 days by going to [https://www.blinkist.com/simplify\][2], tapping on Try Blinkist at the top right, and entering the code reflect.
Let us know what you thought of this episode, or just come say hi on Twitter! Find Caitlin at @caitlinschiller https://twitter.com/caitlinschiller [2], Ben at @bsto https://twitter.com/bsto [3]. You can write us all an email at podcast@blinkist.com [4].
This episode of Simplify was produced by Caitlin Schiller, Ben Schuman-Stoler, Maria Levacic & Stéphane Obadia at Blinkist
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Today, our guest is an award-winning beauty reporter and critic whom you might have stumbled upon while reading her super popular newsletter, The Unpublishable, which, as HuffPost says, "basically gives the middle finger to the entire beauty industry." Writing about what the beauty industry won’t tell you, Jessica DeFino has built an identity as a reporter on a mission to reform it.
It all started, however, in a place as opposite as it could be: a few years back, Jessica was a product-obsessed editor for the Kardashian-Jenner Official Apps, embedded in the core of the beauty industry. This exact "behind-the-scenes" angle and her own beauty-product mishaps led her to start bravely and compellingly writing about what she experienced: mass marketing manipulations, pseudoscience, and consumerism that have become endemic to the beauty industry. Her fearless truth-telling on topics such as the politics of appearance in the Barbie movie, or why Madonna’s plastic surgery is not as subversive as she claims, makes her one of the most beloved analysts and writers on beauty culture out there.
Jessica doesn't reject beauty. Instead, she seeks to reveal the industry and culture built around it. Beauty remains an essential force we all crave as humans, but in order to reveal its roots, we have to dismantle the boring, mass-produced thing that beauty has become.
Recommended by Jessica:
Disobedient Bodies by Emma Dabiri
The Book of Ayn by Lexi Freman
Recommended by Caitlin and Ben:
Try Blinkist for free for 14 days by going to [https://www.blinkist.com/simplify\][2], tapping on Try Blinkist at the top right, and entering the code beauty.
Let us know what you thought of this episode, or just come say hi on Twitter! Find Caitlin at @caitlinschiller https://twitter.com/caitlinschiller [2], Ben at @bsto https://twitter.com/bsto [3]. You can write us all an email at podcast@blinkist.com [4].
This episode of Simplify was produced by Caitlin Schiller, Ben Schuman-Stoler, Maria Levacic & Stephane Obadia at Blinkist
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This week's episode of Simplify brings you a special collaboration: a conversation with Dhiraj Mukherjee, who is not only the entrepreneur behind Shazam (the app we all love and use so much!), but also a devoted impact investor focused on social good.
Drawing from his experience at Shazam, Dhiraj learned firsthand that the best way to predict the future is to create it. That’s why today, his work mostly focuses on investing in mission-driven companies aiming to create a better future for the planet, addressing critical issues such as climate action and inequality.
In this interview, Dhiraj shares some of his most valuable insights across his career, emphasizing the crucial importance of tapping into your instincts and developing your own taste and intuition. Moreover, it leaves us with a short but important reminder that optimism matters: every valuable change once started with nothing but hope for a better future.
UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Recommended by Dhiraj:
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates
Recommended by Caitlin and Ben:
The Social Animal by David Brooks
The Business of Good by Jason Haber
Try Blinkist for free for 14 days by going to [https://www.blinkist.com/simplify\][2], tapping on Try Blinkist at the top right, and entering the code impact.
Let us know what you thought of this episode, or just come say hi on Twitter! Find Caitlin at @caitlinschiller https://twitter.com/caitlinschiller [2], Ben at @bsto https://twitter.com/bsto [3]. You can write us all an email at podcast@blinkist.com [4].
This episode of Simplify was produced by Caitlin Schiller, Ben Schuman-Stoler, Maria Levacic & Ben Jackson at Blinkist
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Although we're at the tail end of 2024's symbolic new beginning, we're still confronted with the flood of discounted "detoxes," "cleanses," gym promotions touting a "New Year, new you," and the latest buzzword, "resets." Despite our desire to think that fad diets are relics of the past and that we have collectively moved away from diet culture, we may instead have fallen for a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Drawing from her personal narrative and investigative reporting experiences, Cole Kazdin, an Emmy Award-winning journalist, scrutinizes today's diet industry and the disorder it spawns in her debut book, 'What's Eating Us - Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety.' Walking us through the issues in our generation, she interviews women and the world’s most renowned researchers, revealing disordered eating as the crisis it is—a mental illness with the second-highest mortality rate (after opioid-related deaths)—and a topic that no one wants to talk about.
In this week’s episode of Simplify, Cole generously shares with us her hard-won wisdom for navigating true health while still living in a dysfunctional world. Even more importantly, the conversation will leave you with a gentle but revolutionary reminder of how gratifying it is to focus on how health is lived and felt in the body rather than the size you’re wearing.
Recommended by Caitlin and Ben:
Simplify Interview: Sonya Renee Taylor: Love Yourself, Save The World
Intuitive Eating by Evelin Tribole and Elise Resch
Try Blinkist for free for 14 days by going to [https://www.blinkist.com/simplify\][2], tapping on Try Blinkist at the top right, and entering the code kazdin.
Let us know what you thought of this episode, or just come say hi on Twitter! Find Caitlin at @caitlinschiller https://twitter.com/caitlinschiller [2], Ben at @bsto https://twitter.com/bsto [3]. You can write us all an email at podcast@blinkist.com [4].
This episode of Simplify was produced by Caitlin Schiller, Ben Schuman-Stoler, Maria Levacic & Stéphane Obadia at Blinkist
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
