Your best people aren't lazy. They're burned out. And there's a difference — one that costs you performance, retention, and culture if you can't spot it. FRIED: The Burnout Podcast is a top 1% global show with over a million downloads, hosted by keynote speaker and burnout expert Cait Donovan. It's the show for leaders, executives, HR professionals, and high-responsibility humans who want to understand burnout at a systems level — not just survive it personally. The core question FRIED keeps…
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This episode is a reminder that there are people fighting for human leadership, inclusivity, responsible AI and more as we move into the future of work. FRIED Fam, In June of this year, I got to work with one of my very favorite clients again (repeat business is so fun when it's people you truly enjoy), the National Council of Nonprofits. I had sessions in the afternoon, so I went to the…
What is emotional intelligence? Cait breaks down what emotional intelligence actually means, tracing the term back to its 1990 origins and Daniel Goleman's four domain model: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. She digs into Dr. Tasha Eurich's research showing that while 95% of us believe we are self-aware, only 10 to 15% of us actually are, and shares a…
What if the exhausting voice in your head isn't your inner critic but something closer to an inner dictator, running a full scale propaganda campaign to keep you safe instead of happy? Repeat guest Owen Fitzpatrick, social psychologist and author of the new book Inner Propaganda , joins Cait to unpack how our brains build the beliefs that quietly drive burnout, perfectionism, and people pleasing.…
Creativity expert Dr. Natalie Nixon has spent 25 years studying what activities happen right before your best ideas, and they aren't what you think. They include: staring out a window, folding laundry, taking a walk, admiring a flower. In this episode, she and host Cait Donovan dig into why rigor curdles into rigidity, why that's the exact moment burnout takes hold, and why doing less better might…
Cait opens with something rare: a public correction. She has been telling audiences for years that the hippocampus shrinks during burnout. New research says it doesn't. And that changes a lot. In this solo episode, Cait walks through a landmark August 2025 review of 17 MRI studies to give you the most current picture of what burnout actually does to your brain. The result is not what you might…
Dr. Zarya Rubin spent twelve years as a neurologist before realizing the career she'd sacrificed everything for no longer matched who she'd become. What she figured out on the way out is exactly what most corporate and nonprofit leaders are missing right now. In this episode, Cait and Dr. Zarya break down three concepts every HR and people leader needs in their vocabulary: Moral injury — the gap…
There's a story from the 1840s that is going to make you furious. And then it's going to make you look at burnout solutions very differently. Stress spreads like a nasty bug. We have the data. We know what interventions work. We have the results. And we are still not doing what needs to be done. Let's talk about why. Want to bring this work into your organization? Book Cait for a keynote,…
Burnout does not start with overwork. It starts with miscommunication. Robyn Hatcher , keynote speaker and former soap opera writer for All My Children and One Life to Live, joins Cait to break down why every company has a show bible and what happens when the cast stops reading from the same one. This is an episode about the drama no one is writing on purpose and the silence that is writing it for…
Burnout searches just hit 24.8 million per month, and searches for burnout recovery grew 1,000 percent year over year (for those not great at math, that's 10x more searches for burnout recovery this year as compared to last year). Cait digs into a recent Inc. magazine article by Lucia Auerbach to unpack what those numbers really mean and why the conversation is far from over. Spoiler: Gen Z is not…
EPISODE SUMMARY Cait Donovan has spent the last seven years building one of the most rigorous, nuanced frameworks for understanding burnout in the world. In episode 350, she finally tells the full story of how she got there -- and it turns out it started long before she knew burnout was a thing. From a failed organic chemistry test at Boston University to an acupuncture practice in Poland with a…
