Simplify

What if the most flattering thing anyone ever said about women was also the most limiting?

Feminist cultural historian Elinor Cleghorn—who kicked off Simplify's independent relaunch with Unwell Women—makes a triumphant return with her new book, A Woman's Work: Reclaiming the Radical History of Mothering. The premise she and Caitlin pull apart sounds harmless enough: that mothering is the natural province of every woman. Follow that idea back a few thousand years, though, and it turns out to be doing an awful lot of work for someone. Just not for mothers.

The conversation moves from a tiny clay boat crewed by women sailors in a Cretan cave to the founders of Silicon Valley, by way of Aristotle's distinctly horticultural theory of conception. They get into a stretch of history when a pregnant woman's word was the only evidence that counted, a Parisian midwife to royalty who was centuries ahead of modern maternity care, and the surprisingly tender origins of a word we now use as an insult.

There's also a thread about the Virgin Mary that might change how you hear the phrase "good mother"—and a clear-eyed take on what baby bonuses and motherhood medals actually reveal about the governments handing them out.

And keep an ear out for Zeus's forehead. It explains more about the AI boom than you might think.

Resources

Elinor's book: A Woman's Work: Reclaiming the Radical History of Mothering

Elinor's earlier book: Unwell Women , and our first conversation with her about it.

Ben's Rec: Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici

Caitlin's Rec: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Honorable mention: Midwifing the Mother, the Substack by former Simplify guest Angela Natividad.

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 [email protected]

This episode of Simplify was produced by Caitlin Schiller, Ben Schuman-Stoler, and Molly Hart, and engineered by João Lucas in Berlin, Germany, for Kollo Media.

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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.

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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 say "mmhmm" a bunch. But is that really listening? True deep listening is actually conscious listening. Gifting your entire attention to someone in a moment.

And the truth is, conscious listening is difficult! It requires energy and focus and time. But the upshot is massive: Truly feeling heard is such an amazing feeling. It leads to more connection and less suffering.

In this episode, Julian talks to Ben about actionable frameworks for changing your "listening position." They also unpack the difference in experience with video vs. audio content - and why audio quality in your remote meetings can make a big difference.

We spoke to Julian back in 2017 and that episode is definitely worth revisiting.

Julian's TED talk: How to speak so people will listen.

Check out Julian's app: Master Conscious Communication.

Resources

Guest's Recs: The DOSE Effect by TJ Power, Sounds Wild and Broken by David George Haskell, myNoise by Stéphane Pigeon

Ben's Rec: A Philosophy of Walking by Frédéric Gros

Caitlin's Rec: The Turnaround, Jesse Thorne's interview series with the world's great interviewers (Maximum Fun)

Sound generator Mynoise.net: This is a link to Caitlin's fav. Please remember to turn the whispers down- otherwise it's way too Halloween for everyday use.

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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 [email protected]

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.

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 to exist as long as one chooses. Why? Because we have things to do tomorrow. And tomorrow’s tomorrow. Until we no longer want tomorrow."

But Ben brought this topic to Caitlin because it's kicked off a discussion about the risks of longevity and the legitimacy of longevity in general. 

Caitlin shares what she thinks of longevity *routines* and what's legit vs. what's baloney.

There's one thing everyone can agree on though: we love our black plastic spatulas, even if the microplastics are killing all of us slowly. 

Dr. Ingrid Yang's article for Outside is here.

This episode was edited by Molly Rose Hart.

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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 single day.

In this episode, Ben talks to Planet Money reporter and host Alex Mayyasi, author of the New York Times bestselling Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life.

They talk about the counterintuitive lessons from classic Planet Money cases, like why ATMs actually increased bank teller jobs and what that teaches us about automation. Plus they talk about some of the structural issues with the economy today, how markets are underrated, and why restaurants are so important.

Check out Alex's Substack and new show, Gastronomics.

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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 unique voice, how ritual and reps beat raw motivation, and why creativity requires enough psychological safety and rest to actually bloom.

This episode was produced by Caitlin Schiller, Molly Rose Hart, and Ben Schuman-Stoler.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 Impossible Masculinity came out in 2024, masculinity had become one of the defining arguments of an election year, and her hunch looked a lot like foresight.

Caitlin and Ruth start with some science neither of them has stopped thinking about—what boys need from the very beginning, and what we tend to give them instead. From there, the conversation moves through a first day of kindergarten, an all-boys classroom that fell hard for Mr. Darcy, and the strange math of an identity defined mostly by what it isn't.

Then it goes somewhere harder. Ruth spent months building rapport with self-identified incels, and what she found in those forums surprised them both. It's a tender, unsettling stretch of conversation, and it lingers.

Afterward, Ben—father of two sons—joins Caitlin in the bookend to talk through what landed. Ruth's parting thought is one line from the book that quietly rearranges the whole ledger of who wins under patriarchy.

Resources

Caitlin's Rec: The Will to Change, bell hooks

Ben's Rec: Shuggie Bain, Douglas Steward

Ruth's book: BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity

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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 [email protected]

This episode of Simplify was produced by Caitlin Schiller, Ben Schuman-Stoler, and Molly Rose Hart, 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.

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 the US for being so out of touch with new grads' realities. When you’ve spent four years paying up for a degree, hearing an ultra-wealthy AI sponsor tell you to "get on the rocket ship" or whatever while the entry-level job market evaporates feels less like inspiration and more like an insult. Honestly, I'm proud of the grads for booing.

In this second edition of our new format - we're calling it Simplify EXTRA - we look at why traditional career advice is failing Gen Z, and what a genuinely useful path forward looks like. Ben drives this episode and brought Caitlin Jasmine Sun’s Substack article, 🌻 the old world is dying: opinionated advice for c/o 2026 graduates which offers some tips from one Gen Zer to other Gen Zers toward building a meaningful life when the old rules no longer apply.

Then Caitlin and Ben trade some life advice and share what they think future grads need to hear.

And yes, we’re still testing out our new video format! We’re tweaking the studio setup, playing with lighting, and dialing in the camera angles, so please send us your feedback - we’d love to know what you think.

Resources

• Jasmine Sun's article
• Bill Burnett - designing your life
• Email us at [email protected]
• Simplify on YouTube
• Simplify on Instagram
• Subscribe to our newsletter here.

This episode was produced by Caitlin Schiller, Molly Rose Hart, and Ben Schuman-Stoler.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 being a matter of taste and become a moral framework—a thing around which we build our days, measure our worth, and feel we've failed at, morally, when we fall short. The self became the body.

In this episode, Caitlin and Heather get into the four ingredients of the global beauty ideal, why so much talk about beauty "diversity" is fluff on top of a narrowing mean, and how a beautification practice goes from optional to invisible to required.

Caitlin also pushes back. Pretty privilege is real—and so is the sixteen-year-old who believes being perfect would fix everything actually wrong? Heather's answer is more honest than comforting, and it takes a detour through Emily Ratajkowski's memoir. They're refreshingly candid about why the way we look matters and what it means to not make the normie cut.

Resources

Heather's Book: Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal by Heather Widdows Ben's Rec: Aesthetica by Allie Rowbottom 

Caitlin's Rec: "I Wish I Could Have a Body in Private" by Amy Key, from her Substack So Glad I'm Me

Heather's campaign: #EverydayLookism Heather's website: heatherwiddows.com Coming soon: Selfie Culture by Heather Widdows

Also mentioned: My Body by Emily Ratajkowski; What's Wrong with Lookism? by Andrew Mason; Jia Tolentino's New Yorker essay on "Instagram face,” Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

More from Simplify on this topic: our episodes with Amy Key (Arrangements in Blue) and Elise Hu (Flawless)

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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 TikTok by a thirty-year-old Georgian creator called Babushka, who took the two halves of her own personality – a bimbo and a stoic – and made three tenets out of them. Ben had never heard of it. By the end he can recite them.

Then there's the homework, which is the fun part: find your twin animal. Not a spirit animal, not a personality quiz but an actual look at your own face that asks you to see something other than a list of things to fix.

The format still doesn't have a name. So email us at [email protected] if you have a good idea!

We're trying the video format out, playing with the studio cameras and the lighting so please do send us your feedback, we'd love to hear what you think.

Resources

• Babushka on TikTok: @babushka.en.
• "Wtf is Bimbo Stoicism? Unpacking the internet's wildest new beauty trend" by Laura Pitcher for Dazed
• Kibbe body types
• Email us at [email protected]
• Simplify on Instagram
• Subscribe to our newsletter here.

This episode was produced by Caitlin Schiller, Molly Rose Hart, and Ben Schuman-Stoler.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.