PODCAST · society
Not Simple
by Wendy Bittner & Rebecca Scott
Not Simple is created by people who care deeply about the way we as humans oversimplify the complex problems of the world. Will we solve those problems in this podcast? Probably not! But we encourage you to join us as we embrace their complexity and try to think differently.
Episodes
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Not Simple: Claudette Rowley, Designing Spaces That Support Your Nervous System
Claudette Rowley is a wellness-first interior designer who helps people create spaces that not only look beautiful but also support their well-being. Drawing from her background in social work, coaching, and cultural transformation, Claudette practices neuro-aesthetic design - an approach…
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Not Simple: Dan Minnich, Making Adventure Accessible for Everyone
Dan Minnich is the co-founder and Executive Director of Waypoint Adventure, an organization creating outdoor adventure programs for people with disabilities in the greater Boston area and western North Carolina. Waypoint's mission is to challenge people with disabilities to discover their…
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Not Simple: The Transformational Power of Personal Storytelling with Lisa Tilstra
Lisa Tilstra: The Transformational Power of Personal Storytelling Lisa Tilstra is a coach, podcaster, and storytelling enthusiast who describes herself as a "creative disrupter." After years of telling stories without recognizing their value, Lisa now understands storytelling's power for...
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Not Simple: Divorcing Differently, A Collaborative Approach with Nanci Smith
What if divorce could be a path to healing, rather than harm? In this conversation, attorney Nanci Smith offers a window into the world of collaborative divorce—a non-adversarial approach designed to help families navigate separation with dignity, empathy, and support. Drawing on over 30 years of...
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Not Simple: Mark Rovner, Mindful Self-Compassion
Mark is a trauma-informed coach with roots in somatics, development, and mindfulness. He is also a trained teacher of Mindful Self-Compassion and believes how we talk to ourselves is more than just a way to feel better. It's also instrumental to our growth as leaders in a complex world. He came…
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Not Simple: Cathy Carroll, Leading a Family Business With Love and Logic
Cathy Carroll is the granddaughter of an entrepreneur who led a Fortune 500 company and the daughter of an entrepreneur. She led a turnaround of her father's manufacturing business and encountered the distinctions between leadership in a corporate domain and leadership in a family business. She...
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Not Simple: Robin Katcher, Cooperative Leadership
"Societal change requires movements and networks of organizations working together—but what if the way we work together could be even better? Could it lead to greater freedom for our leaders and more realistic expectations? ... No one person holds the answer, but when the right people come...
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Dr. Jaime Lee, the Power of Rest
"How do you experience rest while doing what you love? What if we could even experience a sense of relaxed focus while hosting a party for 20?" In our latest podcast episode, we dive deep into the art of grounded leadership with Dr. Jaime Lee, a fellow CL colleague. Jaime believes that true...
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Victoria Leavitt, Sex Differences in the Brain
"So it's not that our brain constrains the activities we can engage in and the behaviors that we have. It's the other way around. The behaviors we engage in change the brain we have." Dr. Victoria Leavitt is an assistant professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University who studies brain...
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Barry Bales, Small Moves
"In addition to it being small moves, I would say consistent moves. What are those consistent practices help that create the conditions for impact?" CL colleague Barry Bales thinks of leadership as an action rather than a title, and he knows that sometimes the most effective actions are small…
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Elena Tochilina, War in Ukraine
"It's like our mind wants to categorize things, and it's much easier to feel pity than trying to embrace the complexity that life goes on and you can live in the midst of war." Elena Tochilina is a Ukrainian coach and consultant as well as a colleague at Cultivating Leadership. In this…
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Fred Jones, Meanwhile
"I care about supporting people more as wayfinders and what it might take to ditch the maps and find your own way—and keep learning and growing." CL colleague Fred Jones is a lover and collector of questions that he stays with a long time. One of those questions: how do you help people create…
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Rehema Kutua, Primary Care
"It matters how we feel because how we feel and how we're doing impocts everyone." TV has taught us that doctors are sexy, mysterious superheroes, but what is really happening at the other end of the stethoscope is more complex than we realize. Rehema Kutua, a pediatrician and certified coach…
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Bill Pullen, Change
"There's a deep sense of letting go, of surrendering so they can open up into a new possibility for themselves, whether it's becoming a coach or becoming a senior leader or leading in a new way." We all know changing behaviors and habits is hard, but our language around it often "just"...
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Jennifer Garvey Berger and Carolyn Coughlin, Unleash Your Complexity Genius
"Carolyn and I got excited about the question of how does your body know how to handle complexity in ways that are exciting and useful and even joyful—and how can you amplify that?" Wendy is back in the host's chair, talking to her longtime friends and colleagues about their book, Unleash Your...
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Human Work, Leanne Holdsworth and Naryan Wong
"What we're seeing as we start to humanise organizations is this acknowledgment that actually leadership exists within everyone." Leanne Holdsworth and Naryan Wong recently led their Cultivating Leadership colleagues in a research and writing project that resulted in the book Human Work: Five...
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Leading Through Covid, Jarel LaPan Hill
"I think we do ourselves such a disservice to not acknowledge that iterative process, to just pretend that it's yes/no, black/white. It's never been the world we live in, but it certainly isn't now." Jarel LaPan Hill, the former city manager of the City of Santa Fe, NM, shares the complexity...
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Eileen O'Grady, Unconventional Wellness
"I spent two decades writing prescriptions… and it occurred to me that what determined somebody's health was really what they were doing between visits." Dr. Eileen O'Grady is a nurse practitioner, a wellness coach, and the author of Choosing Wellness: Unconventional Wisdom for the Overwhelmed…
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Jennie Snyder, Educational Change
"We tend to think if we send teachers off to a two day workshop magically they'll come back to the classroom and be able to do something different that will impact the lives of children." Dr. Jennie Snyder, deputy superintendent for instructional services for the Sonoma County Office of Education...
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Ciela Hartanov, Sensitivity
"There is so much emergent change that's happening around us, so we need every piece of this human condition to be able to be okay and to thrive and to be resilient." Dr. Ciela Hartanov is the founder of humcollective, and her book, Reclaiming Sensitivity, will be out in the new year. She and…
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Parker Mitchell, Talking Our Way to Better Teams
"We try to help people ask additional questions, to say 'How might I work differently than Wendy and how can I take a couple of steps to be closer to where she is so that our differences can be strengths?'" Parker Mitchell is the founder of Valence, a software company specializing in building...
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Sarah Dasher, Stigma and Disclosure
"The world doesn't allow a lot of room for messiness these days, as messy as the world is." Sarah Dasher is a communications professional, a college professor, and a person living in recovery. She and Rebecca talk about the dual issues of stigma and disclosure for people in recovery—and living…
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TJ Fairchild, Coffee and Connection
"Every moment in my life where I've learned some massive truth or had some big epiphany has always been in some small group or coffee shop experience. Human connection is ridiculously important to me." TJ Fairchild, founder and CEO of Commonplace Coffee, has a mission to create environments that...
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Dominic Longo, Leadership Development and DEI
"The world demands that all leaders be inclusive leaders. If we're not leading inclusively, we're really not leading in some crucial dimension." Not Simple welcomed Cultivating Leadership colleague and founder of Flourishing Gays Dominic Longo to discuss how organizations compartmentalize...
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Amiel Handelsman, Jewel Kinch-Thomas, & Greg Thomas, Interdependent Independence
"I see democracy as a reflection of and a demonstration of how much we value each other as human beings. And in that light, it is very relational. It is very interdependent." Not Simple welcomes back Greg Thomas and Jewel Kinch-Thomas of The Jazz Leadership Project and executive coach Amiel...
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Kerry Arabena, Developing Healthy Families
"As women, when you carry a daughter, you're also carrying your grandchildren… so having a quality experience of pregnancy will impact two generations down the line." Kerry Arabena is the Managing Director of First 1000 Days Australia, which focuses on a child's first 1000 days, from…
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Jewel Kinch-Thomas and Greg Thomas, Jazz and Leadership
"You don't always know exactly what to expect, but you know that everyone is bringing their best to that moment and so then what is created is something that is reflective of all of those bests coming together." Jewel Kinch-Thomas and Greg Thomas are the co-founders of the Jazz Leadership…
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Monica Hopkins, Criminal Justice & Urbanization
"We are the largest incarcerator in the world. That is our response to everything. I think it is the place where we cannot afford to oversimplify anymore." Monica Hopkins is the executive director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia, and she came to Not Simple to talk about the US criminal...
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Rachel Simmons, Asking for Help
"The more complex work that I've tried to do is to really dig into those unwanted identities… and say, 'Well, is it really true that I'm a burden to others?'" Rachel Simmons, coach and author, stopped by to explore our oversimplified binary of capable/needy and why it's so hard to ask for help.
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Tom Draffen, Adoption & Identity
"Even that simplifies the process; it's just a box and a name on a tree and then you pick up the phone and there's a voice on the other end of it and it alters the landscape just a hair." Tom Draffen is a retired Marine Corps air traffic controller and a coach/consultant. He joined Wendy to…
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Nicolai Tillisch, Ambition
"What we find is that there are three aspects of life that they are good at nurturing… performance or achievement, personal growth, and well-being." Nicolai Tillisch is a colleague at Cultivating Leadership and the co-author of the best-selling book Return On Ambition. Here he introduces us to…
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Aletha Snowberger, Reopening Schools in a Pandemic (2)
"The problem with strategic planning in a pandemic is there are so many different elements in there that impact our ability to have student achievement, but we can't lose sight of that goal." Six months after she first spoke to Wendy about the complexities of reopening school during Covid,...
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Rebecca Scott, Setting Boundaries
"I'm trying to say yes to the things that bring me more joy." After a long hiatus, Not Simple is back with producer Rebecca Scott, a Leadership Coach and part of the Catalyst team at Cultivating Leadership, joining Wendy to unpack the complexities of setting boundaries.
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April Carson, Public Health and COVID
"Public health is happening in communities, in neighborhoods, where you live, where you work, and there's not really enough appreciation for that." Epidemiologist April Carson joins Wendy to discuss public health and the complexity of getting people to listen to simple messages—especially during...
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The Poseidon Adventure: Leadership Lessons from the Gods
"There's something very powerful about the fact that we see ourselves in stories." Ann Kowal Smith, CEO of Books@Work, returned to discuss Franz Kafka's very short story "Poseidon" with Wendy and a few colleagues. Together they discover the leadership lessons and complexities within what is, at...
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Amiel Handelsman, Racial Identity in America
"There's one race, the human race. There are cultural groups. There are differences in skin tones and facial features and body features, but these don't dictate who we are." Amiel Handelsman is an executive coach and writer, as well as a semi-retired podcaster. He joined Wendy to discuss the many...
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Jerry Mayer, US Elections
"This could be the year that Americans find out that their simple assumption that we do elections well or right will be forever destroyed." Jerry Mayer is a professor of Political Science at George Mason University and a self-proclaimed obsessive about all things election-related. He joined Wendy...
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Susan MacDougall, Friendship
"The reality is that friendships are infinitely messier and nastier and deeper in all sorts of ways good and bad than just two people who like each other and get along and are nice to each other." Susan MacDougall, an anthropologist at Cambridge University, joins Wendy to discuss the complexities...
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Aletha Snowberger, Reopening School in a Pandemic
"We're also focused on your students' needs, their emotional needs and well being first, before we teach them algebra and physical science." On the eve of a new school year, elementary and middle school principal Aletha Snowberger talks to Wendy about reopening school in a pandemic. From the...
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Adam Kahane, Collaboration
"Getting stuff done peacefully is what most people want most of the time, and so the challenge isn't to get them to do it but to remove the obstacles to them doing so." Adam Kahane, a Director of Reos Partners and author of several books, including Collaborating with the Enemy, joins Wendy to...
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Wendy Moomaw, The Polarities of Eradicating Racism
"I want the doing and the learning to happen simultaneously. I don't want you to say 'I don't know enough and therefore I can't do anything.'" Wendy Moomaw, an executive coach and founder of the Conscious Collaboratory, and our host begin their conversation exploring our experience in the...
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Ann Kowal Smith, Encouraging Collaboration and Inclusion
"What Books@Work has helped his team to do is separate the person from the idea." Ann Kowal Smith is the Founder and Executive Director of Books@Work. She talks to Wendy about how using the lens of narrative fiction and non-fiction can supercharge collaboration and inclusion in the workplace.
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Stephanie Marrs, Challenging Our Assumptions About Health
"People in poverty, people with addiction problems … there are assumptions that those people actually don't care for themselves and don't care for their life or their health." Stephanie Marrs is a nurse practitioner with a passion for public health. She joins Wendy to discuss how we oversimplify...
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Akasha, Talking About Race
"[It's] like the elephant has been named. And it's been claimed. And now we can do something with the elephant." Wendy is joined by her Cultivating Leadership colleague Akasha, whose work focuses on engaging across difference, to talk about race in America and the Caribbean--and the ways we do…
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Elizabeth Mayo, Revisiting Risk
"What we want to look for is those threads such as behavior that we can both use to forecast but also help seed--how do we help take that thing that we want to be true and help drive the market in that direction?" A year after she first appeared on the podcast, Elizabeth Mayo, Global Director of...
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Wendy Bittner and Jennifer Garvey Berger, Teaching Leaders in a Virtual World
"I'm thinking about this whole space the way poets think about a sonnet. There are specific constraints. Those constraints mean that most things are impossible, but an artist can figure out how to make great things happen inside the constraints." Guest host Keith Johnston has an "in house chat"...
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Melissa Garber, Working with People Who Have Offended
"When emotions are so big, the quick fix is to be violent, use drugs, be aggressive, escape . . . because those feelings are dangerous. And for most of the guys they never learned how to experience that." Wendy talks to Dr. Melissa Garber, a clinical psychologist helping violent offenders in a...
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Dean Parkin, Uluru Statement from the Heart
"The really hard challenge when you're talking about empowerment is it's a fundamentally different conversation around the way that power is then distributed, the way that power is shared, and the way that power is exercised." Dean Parkin is a part of the Quandamooka people, an investment analyst...
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Denise Van Eck, Failure
"A reframing of what failure is, what it means, and the importance of it can completely transform the way a person understands themselves and the challenges in the middle of a complex situation." Denise VanEck is owner of Thought Design, author of Failure: Laboratory Workshops, a coach, and...
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Richard Whitt, Human Agency in the Digital Era
"If we really want to build a web of trust it has to be built on human relationships." Richard Whitt, a fellow at Georgetown University and the Mozilla Foundation and founder of the GLIAnet Project, talks to Wendy about human agency in the digital era, the impact of technology in our daily lives,...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Not Simple is created by people who care deeply about the way we as humans oversimplify the complex problems of the world. Will we solve those problems in this podcast? Probably not! But we encourage you to join us as we embrace their complexity and try to think differently.
HOSTED BY
Wendy Bittner & Rebecca Scott
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Not Simple have?
Not Simple currently has 62 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Not Simple about?
Not Simple is created by people who care deeply about the way we as humans oversimplify the complex problems of the world. Will we solve those problems in this podcast? Probably not! But we encourage you to join us as we embrace their complexity and try to think differently.
How often does Not Simple release new episodes?
Not Simple has 62 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Not Simple?
You can listen to Not Simple on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Not Simple?
Not Simple is created and hosted by Wendy Bittner & Rebecca Scott.
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