Julian Treasure is a sound designer, a musician, and a public speaker—his TED talks have been viewed more than 40 million times!—and he’s also a master of what he calls the “silent skill:" listening.

In this episode, Treasure talks to Caitlin about the 7 deadly sins of speaking, how your listening shapes who you are, and why certain cities sound so delicious to our ears.

Plus, Caitlin finds out why she feels old every time she walks past an Abercrombie & Fitch store.

After their conversation, Ben Schuman-Stoler joins Caitlin to make a booklist about sound, listening, communication, and Sam Harris.

For more info, including links to everything we discussed in the episode and a voucher to use Blinkist for free, go to https://www.blinkist.com/magazine/posts/simplify-communication-julian-treasure

This season, we are collecting your voices, dear listeners (not as creepy as it sounds)! Specifically, we’d love to hear how you would answer one of the questions we always ask our guests: “What have you discovered was much easier than you initially thought it was?”

You can just record your answer with a voice memo app of your choice and then email it to us at [email protected]. We are looking forward to listening to your responses, and stay tuned—you just might hear yourself on a future episode of Simplify!

If you want to say hi to Ben and Caitlin in the meantime, you can find them on Twitter: @bsto and @CaitlinSchiller.

Your hosts are Caitlin Schiller and Ben Schuman-Stoler.

Stellar research and production assistance by the outstanding Natallia Darozhkina.

Thanks to Nico Guiang for our fantastic intro and outro music. Listen more on Soundcloud or check him out on Facebook.

Sound and editing by Ody Constantinou and Ben Jackson.