Stories, science and secrets from the world’s brightest thought-leaders. Behavioral Grooves is the podcast that satisfies your curiosity of why we do what we do. Explanations of human behavior that will improve your relationships, your wellbeing, and your organization by helping you find your groove.
Episodes
Thursday Feb 19, 2026
Thursday Feb 19, 2026
In this special Grooving session, we unpack what happens when shared facts collapse and preferred beliefs take their place. Sparked by Kurt's firsthand experience during unrest in Minneapolis, this conversation explores why people reject lived experience, how identity defense and motivated reasoning shut down dialogue, and when it’s rational to stop trying to persuade altogether. Drawing on behavioral science, persuasion research, and real-world encounters, we examine how to choose your battles, why stories succeed where arguments fail, and what it actually takes to find common ground in a belief-first world.
1 months ago
Andrew — thank you for taking the time to listen and to share such a candid reaction. We genuinely appreciate the engagement, especially when the feedback is critical. You’re right about one important point: in that episode our examples leaned more heavily toward one side of the political spectrum. That reflects our lived experience and the contexts we personally navigate. It was not our intention to suggest that bias, blind spots, or false narratives exist only on one side of the aisle. They do not. Motivated reasoning, identity protection, confirmation bias, and tribal dynamics are human tendencies, not partisan ones. In doing so, we chose examples that felt immediate and familiar to us. We recognize that this choice can feel imbalanced to listeners whose experiences or media environments differ. Our aim with the episode was not to fact-check specific claims, but to explore why conversations across differences break down and what might help them go better. Many of the issues you mention are complex and contested, and a podcast conversation isn’t always the best place to resolve them. Instead, we focus on the underlying psychology of how people interpret information and defend beliefs. One lesson we take seriously from behavioral science, including Bob Cialdini’s work, is that people are more open when they feel heard and fairly represented. Your comment is a helpful reminder that balance is felt emotionally, not just analytically. We value perspectives from outside our own context, including yours from Canada, and in British Columbia specifically. We need to hear people’s first hand experiences and what is going on in the lives that they live. I would hope that we don’t just fall into the trap of reiterating the party line that are propagated by influencers and leaders. Thank you again for engaging and for pushing us to think more carefully about how our examples land with different listeners.
1 months ago
I was excited to listen to this eposode, because I have done a great deal of work on this topic, but you horribly disappointed. So many of the points you made targeted the ’other’ political tribe and demonized one man. You left no room for common ground by ignoring the plethora of examples of preferred beliefs on your ’side’ of the eisle. For example, you only told stories about Trump and Levitt, but zero examples about the false narratives on the the left - especially the church invasion in Minnesota, or the vastly higher likelihood per capita of trangender shooters, both of which are factual and both of which are a blind spot in leftist media. You clearly have not genuinely listened to non-Democrats, despite advocating for the practice. As a Canadian, I see the key points you’ve made as serious problems in our own politics. We have a serious foriegn interference problem in our universities and elections that make the similar problems faced by the US look miniscule by proportion. Yet, we have the same foreign powers pulling strings, the same utter lack of political viewpoint diversity in our institutions, the same themed protests, etc. For example, a teacher in Vancouver was just fined $750,000 for saying he believed there are only 2 genders. For crying out loud, it’s not the right who are being unreasonable! It’s conservatives who are being targeted, especially in BC. So when you produce a show about finding common ground, and you only criticise one side of the eisle, you show that you are not actually advocating for anything of the sort. What you actually did was say everyone has to do those things for you, or you won’t listen to them. The amount of projecting you did in this episode was insane.