Catherine Ritchie — senior wellbeing and experience leader at a Magic Circle law firm — on growing up neurodivergent in a house full of music, why dancing is a form of stimming, how she uses long wordless mixes to protect focus at work, and what it looks like when an employer designs intentional sound into the office itself.

In this episode, Rob chats to Catherine about how music sits at the centre of how she navigates work, energy, focus, connection and recovery.

We get into:

• Growing up in a house where putting headphones on and sitting quietly together was a normal evening

• Why dancing is a form of stimming, and the kettle-on / headphones-on micro-ritual she uses to discharge energy

• Using jazz to break out of hyperfocus — and why unpredictability matters

• The red-pen sign on the office door: how Catherine signals her focus needs at work

• Why long wordless mixes work better than lyric-led music for deep work

• “Curating the playlist of life” — and why your own taste matters more than the algorithm

• Designing intentional sound into a workplace — what Clifford Chance is building, and why a wellbeing hub shouldn’t sound like a club

• The “gift to yourself” of building a playlist on purpose

• The pattern-recognition superpower, and why masking it at work is a missed opportunity for everyone

Guest: Catherine Ritchie — Senior Wellbeing & Experience Lead, Magic Circle Law Firm coach

Host: Rob Stephenson — author of Music Is the Answer (Wiley, August 2026), wellbeing practitioner, keynote speaker, DJ

Pre-order the book and explore the MITA world at musicistheanswer.live