The Curiosity Shop with Brené Brown and Adam Grant - Are You a Preacher, Prosecutor, Scientist, or Politician?

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

Do you find yourself defaulting to “Preacher” mode when you’re under pressure, or starting to act like a “Prosecutor” when someone challenges your ideas? Brené and Adam unpack four mental modes – Preacher, Prosecutor, Politician, and Scientist – to explore why we often cling to being right rather than getting it right. In this episode, they discuss how these defensive stances are shaping our response to AI, Brené’s “bounce” method for emotional hypothesis-testing, Adam’s go-to “strategy of small losses,” and ways to stay curious when the stakes are high. You can find The Curiosity Shop on ⁠YouTube⁠ and ⁠Instagram⁠ (@thecuriosityshop). 0:00 - Introduction and Emoting 3:00 - Thinking Under Thread 11:00 - Testing Your Gut with Small Experiments 22:30 - The Integrity of Commitment: The Making of This Podcast 27:15 - Four Thinking Modes: Scientist, Preacher, Prosecutor, Politician 33:57 - When Opinions Become Beliefs 42:48 - The Social Costs of Changing Our Minds 51:30 - A Missing Mental Model: Teacher 59:30 - Wrap up Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know - Adam Grant, 2021, Book Eric Ries on ‘The Lean Startup’ - Eric Ries, 2011, Knowledge at Wharton Learning Through Failure: The Strategy of Small Losses - Sitkin, 1992, Research in Organizational Behavior Affective Forecasting - Wilson & Gilbert, 2003, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology Atlas of the Heart - Brené Brown, 2021 (Book) The Science of the Deal - Adam Grant, WorkLife with Adam Grant Podcast The Power of Vulnerability - Brené Brown, 2011, TED The Surprising Habits of Original Thinkers - Adam Grant, 2016, TED Beliefs Are Like Possessions - Abelson, 2007, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour We Need to Talk about Astrology - Adam Grant, 2024, Substack  The Diplomat - Cahn et al., 2023-present, Let's Not Turn This Into a Whole Big Production & Well Red, Netflix (TV series) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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made the switch. So why not you? Try Odu for free at Odu.com. That's ODOO.com. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce and more. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-O-F-Frey at O-D-O-D-O-O-com. Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling spreadsheets? Yes? Good. This is for you. Because on Spotify, there's an audience that's different, locked in, loyal, invested,

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I think you're more emotional than you think. I think that's probably true. But I'm so much less emotional than most people that it's easy to stereotype myself as lacking affect. I think that little feeling box is busting at the seams. And I think in just in no time whatsoever, it's going to just boof. And then we're going to have like a moating, touchy-feely Adam Grant. I think that's coming. Yeah, I'm waiting for the data on that. I don't buy it. That's okay. You can wait on the data. I see it. My emotional me sees emotional you. Welcome to the Curiosity Shop.

A show from the Fox Media Podcast Network. Hi, everybody. I'm Brne Brown. And I am still Adam Grant. It's good to see you, Adam. Same. What are you wearing? That looks like a soccer football jersey. This is my Liverpool Football Club sweatshirt. Rough season, but we won the Derby against Everton.

this is big news. And so I am celebrating my team because, as we both know, celebrating small successes and wins, this is a big win, though, is important despite the larger context of a tougher season. So go Reds. Thanks. Way to end on a high note. I mean, I love my Liverpool football club very, very, very dearly. Okay. I pitched this idea to you for this podcast today. because it's one of your frameworks. It's been really meaningful to me,

and it's stressing me out. That's my goal in life. I wake up in the morning thinking, how do I stress Bray Brown out today? I know. You're winning. I'll create a framework. Okay, let's go to the framework that's pissing me off.

Segway. I'm telling you why. I'm telling you why this is pissing me off. This is a framework that was, when did you write, when did this come out and think again? I think again came out early 2021. So I was, I guess I was writing it in 2019 and 20. Okay. And this is a framework around modes.

Is modes a fair word? Modes that we can enter. specifically politician mode, preacher mode, prosecutor mode, and scientist mode. And one of the reasons why it's really frustrating to me right now is, and I want to know what your reflection is on this. In the world right now, with everything that's going on, I need, my nervous system needs more scientist mode in myself and others.

And it is waning, dude. It is a scientist mode. Even my scientist friends are going into politician preaching and prosecutor mode. Are you observing this or is it just, I mean, I know there's an attack on science, but just in the way that people are presenting arguments and talking about issues, are you seeing this? I would love to actually love to see Tate on this, but from my observation, yeah. I think, well, I think it's, you know, it's probably worth just saying, preaching, prosecuting, and politicking, they happen a lot under threat.

So somebody attacks one of my beliefs, and I think I need to now start serving the Kool-Aid that I've been drinking for years. That's pre-term mode. somebody makes an argument I don't think is persuasive and I lock into prosecutor mode and I try to win the case. And I realize I need people's approval and I start politicking and lobbying people and flattering them and brown nosing and doing whatever I can to appease my audience. And that's that's politician mode. And I think that we live in a world that is creating threats that make all of the whole. those modes more sensible in the moment than they might be if there was less flux or less stress. Because, I mean, when the world is changing under your feet, it's really helpful to feel like

you have some ideals to preach. And when somebody makes an argument that your job isn't going to exist, it gives you a sense of confidence and security to prosecute them. and when you're wondering whether you're going to have support from a group of people, appeasing them, appealing to them, gives you a sense of belonging. And I think that that is all completely understandable and often the exact opposite of what we need to do in a time of stress and turbulence. Tell me, I mean, tell me about your experience of these things, because it sounds like you're doing them.

I think AI, adoption is a really good example where I'm seeing a lot in the C-suite or among senior leaders, but also just across individual contributors and people managers. I'm seeing it. I'm seeing the same thing about AI in my personal life. People go into preacher, the death of humanity. It's over for all of us. You know, this is the devil. I see prosecutor, which is, you know, here's what it's going to do. Here's how it's going to affect us. You're wrong about this.

You're right about this. I'm seeing politicking, well, there could be really good information. What do you think? And we could increase productivity. And it's going to give you more time. You know, it's like whatever. The one person will say four different things in four days based on the way the weather's blowing.

What I'm starting to learn if we use AI as an example of scientist mode. is scaring me, and I want you to tell me yes or no, if I'm right about this, scientist mode requires deep time and deep thinking and expansiveness. I think it benefits from all those things. I don't know if it always requires it, but yes. Okay, okay. Because one of the things that we saw early,

and we do have the data on this, is that people made AI decisions early, organizations did, at a preacher and politic mode. They said, let's adapt it. They didn't even align it with business strategy. Let's just get a plan. Get a plan.

How? What do you have the plan to do? I don't give a shit. Just get a plan by Thursday. The boards of my ass. Okay. I don't know why I'm sounding like a 50s guy, 1950s like a Jersey guy, but there you go.

That was my interpretation of what was happening in rooms I was in. You're in Mad Men. I'm in Mad Men. Yeah, yeah. There was no scientific thinking. Okay. Here's the new technology. here's what it does.

Here's what we do. How can we deploy it against this? How do we iterate test change? I iterate test change. Yeah. And so what I'm wondering, okay, I'm hearing you rejecting my argument that, not rejecting, but modifying my argument, that it requires expansiveness, that scientific thinking requires expansiveness.

Does it require pause? I think it depends on the way that you're putting the scientist's mindset into action. So, okay, tell me more. So, you know, when I think about it as an alternative to the others, I think about, you know, preaching, I'm just proselytizing my existing views. Prosecuting, I'm going to attack your views or your proposal. And politicking, I don't even have views. I'm just trying to figure out what you think and, you know, get on board with that. And I think what makes thinking like a scientist powerful is it reminds you that every opinion you hold is just,

a hypothesis. And every decision you make, it's just an experiment. And I think you're spot on that developing informed opinions takes time. Like, good thinking is hard and sometimes slow. And you're also right that doing good experiments requires both space and a broader view of what you're trying to accomplish and what different options. might be as opposed to saying, well, there's one way to go. Let me just implement that. I think the reason I'm hesitating a little bit is that there's a version of thinking like a scientist

that can be done very quickly. So it's, I mean, it's basically what Eric Reese was talking about in Lean Startup, where you create a minimum viable product. It's a, you know, it's kind of a rough prototype. And then you put it out quickly. You gather feedback from the market and you iterate. And I think that that's a version of scientific thinking, too, where you can just say, Hey, I've got this idea. How would we test it quickly? And then let's see what we learn and let's adjust. And I wonder if you can get to the same, I might be wrong.

I'm not going to let my ideas become part of my identity by just doing sort of quick, short testing of ideas that you want to by saying, let's pause, let's step back, let's do deep reflection. It's okay, so it's really interesting to me. I love the idea of small experiments. I think about everything in my life that way. Like just, but I, and I can do it pretty quickly, probably. What's the hypothesis? What are the data we need to test? Does this hold water?

Is this true? And then if not, what did I learn? And how do I just get to the new hypothesis, not the answer. I just go from hypothesis to hypothesis, basically. Yes. Oh, okay, so you mentioned small wins earlier. Yeah. In the context of Liverpool.

SimSikkin wrote a great paper on what he called a strategy of small losses, which is what's the tiniest experiment you could run to figure out if your hypothesis is wrong? And then that saves you a ton of time and energy and maybe money too, because you're able to rule it out as opposed to sort of throwing a lot of good money after bad. And so it sounds like you find yourself doing that on a regular basis. I do. I really, I think, I think in terms of hypotheses all the time. And it's probably just because it's maybe my training.

But I think also it's interesting. I want to go down. I want to see if we can mind meld two things. You and I had an interesting, you and I had, when we started the podcast, you had one idea in your head of how it would run. I had a different idea in my head. and part of our hypotheses, they were different hypotheses about the best

and most effective way to do it. And during a call last week, you said to me, man, you've really changed your mind. And I said, you said something like, you changed your mind, you changed back, and now I think you're changing again. And do you remember saying this? Yeah.

Yeah. And it was interesting. because I said, oh, I was in the bounce. And you looked at me like, what are you talking about? And this has saved my marriage. So the way I test hypotheses is very different than the way my husband, Steve, test the hypothesis. And he's, he speaks in this language because he's a pediatrician. And so he's always looking at differential diagnoses and ruling things out and ruling things in. So he kind of thinks like that. When we say, I think this is a good idea, we should, we should change neighborhoods or we should put, you know, I like this public school, we should move to this neighborhood or whatever. The way I test that hypothesis to me is I get immediately on the internet. I find the house we're going to buy. I go to some meetings at the school. And while that's happening, he is in full-fledged panic. Because he's like, she's moved. Because I'm emotionally moved into.

into a new house. I'm emotionally moved into a new neighborhood. I'm like, I'm calling him from the grocery store and like, hey, I'm at the new HEB in our new neighborhood. He's like, we have not moved. We have not even tested this. We have not even made a decision. I'm like, no, this is what testing it looks like for me. I'm in the new HEB. I'm at the new grocery store. It's great. They have a tortilla. You know, like, you know, like. And so what we started saying to each other is we're going into the bounce. I and, and, and I'm going to test my, the bounce. we're in a bounce like where this is how

this is the hypothesis testing period is called the bounce. Why? Because I'm bouncing all around. Got it. I'm saying I'm moving, I'm not moving. We're going to run the podcast this way. We're not going to run this way.

I hate this way. I'm in the, I'm in the because why are you laughing? Because I do that, right? Yeah, you do do that. And it's, it, I didn't fully understand it until you describe it now. Because I'm used to people, I know lots of people who are indecisive or wishy-washy. Yeah.

But they usually have ambivalent opinions and a lot of uncertainty. And you bounce from one extreme to the other. No, I don't. And I'm not ambivalent or wishy-washy. I am trying on, I'm speaking your language here. This is how hypothesis test. I say, we're thinking about this move. I am moving in emotionally to this house in this neighborhood.

I'm going to the school meetings. And meanwhile, Steve has a very, he's collecting data. He's like, how long is the drive? What is the commute? What do we do here? What is the tax system over there? You know, like he's doing something else. Then he'll say, I'll say, I love it.

I love the new neighborhood. I think we should go. He's like, nope, we're not coming out of the bounce until this date. and I'll say, no, let's go now. And he's like, so he'll come back to me a week later and say, I'm ready to move. I'm like, oh, no, I've already moved back. I didn't like it over there at all. So we have different ways of testing our hypotheses.

Yes. I have to fully embed the minimal viable product. I have to do it. I have to, you know. And so one of the things I was noticing in my own private life and work life is, When I'm in the bounce, I have to watch becoming a preacher, a politician, or a prosecutor. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And this is what I was getting at when I misspoke a moment ago and said, you go from one extreme to the other. It sounds like you're going from one extreme to the other.

Yes. And I misperceive it as you actually having, like, you loved, you loved an idea and now you hated it, when really that was your mode of experimentation is, I hear you. I hear you. you saying you have to embody it. You have to live as if you've already committed to the option in order to know what you really think of it. Yes. What do you call that? Smart. Is that the first word that comes to mine? No. No, I was actually thinking Herminia Ibarra provisional self. You are trying on a new wardrobe. You haven't bought it. But you're looking like you're looking at this wardrobe from every angle and you're admiring everything that's great about it. And then you find something you don't like about it, and then you try on a new wardrobe, and the whole thing

starts over. Okay, what does that mean? I think it means that you, I mean, I'm not going to say anything you don't already know, but you experience things in order to decide about them. You do something that most people don't do. Yes. The part that's unusual about this is a lot of people decide, a lot of people make big decisions by imagining how they would feel in the future. And they're doing a Gilbert and Wilson style affective forecasting exercise. Yeah, yeah. Which, which you wrote about in Atlas of the Heart and how bad we are at it. Very. And, and terrible at it. And so what you're doing is, you're solving that problem. So most of the time, I think, I think the mistake that a lot of people make is they trust the affective forecast. And they say, okay, you know, I love the thought of this new neighborhood.

and I can see raising my kids there, and so I'm going to move there and be really happy. And then they show up and they realize, oh, like, I'm on a main road, and there's a ton of noise, and I didn't really think about that because I love the house, and it's also doubled my commute, but I didn't think about that because I didn't drive from work to the new neighborhood. I just drove to the new neighborhood.

And you actually go. Like, you go and you do the drive. Like, you imagine the commute. you sit on the lawn and you hear what the noise is like. And so you are time traveling. You're putting yourself in the situation as if you've already committed to it

so that you can experience what it's like as opposed to just imagining what it will be like. That's a better hypothesis testing strategy. But if I... Sorry, Steve. I... But if I don't do that,

I immediately become a prosecutor and a preacher. Because you don't force yourself to get out of your existing preference or comforts in and actually try on the new experience. No. And I'm so scared about what I'm going to find that I'm going to convert you and be an evangelical person around my beliefs. I'm so afraid. Or I'm so afraid that I'm going to attack your ideas. So the only way I can stay in scientist mode is to test the hypothesis with my. selfhood. Yeah, yeah. And then the challenges you've gone from being at risk of preaching the status quo to preaching the change and making sure that the people around you know that this is part of how you

are iterating and vetting. Not not you've already made up your mind. Yeah, and that's why we call it the bounce. And it has, it's interesting when we, you know, you have very. small windows to move, I think, when your kids are in school. And so we had a window between middle school and high school that we were thinking about moving, leaving Houston. And we went into a bounce and we gave ourselves 90 days. And on March 1st, we were going to share the move stay ratio with each other on Post-it notes. So there was no like bandwagon or halo effect, no anchoring.

We were just going to turn them over at the same time. And that morning over coffee, I said, are you ready? And, you know, he said, and I had fully inhabited the move. I had rejected, I had done all those things. But I spent no energy preaching, attacking, politicking people. I just was in the bounce. So I had full permission to do my hypothesis. Testing. And it was really interesting because we said on the count of three, we were going to turn it over. And on the count of three, we turned it over. And my post-it note said 51-49 stay in Houston. And his said, 51-49 stay in Houston.

Wow. Yeah. But it's how we stay married because what he told me before we came up with this idea is when I'm afraid, my prosecutor and preacher are feel dangerous. And he can feel backed into a corner. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that.

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I want to read this paragraph on this model, this framework that kills me about how and why we slip into these mindsets. I think it's really powerful. I come back to it. I have to tell you Adam all the time. In a like, damn you Adam, kind of way. So we slip into the mindsets of three different professions, preachers, prosecutors, and politicians. In each of these modes, we take on a particular identity and use a distinct set of tools. We go into preacher mode when our sacred beliefs are in jeopardy. We deliver sermons to protect and promote our ideals.

Prosecutor mode when we recognize flaws in other. people's reasoning. We marshal arguments to prove them wrong and win our case. Politician mode, when we're seeking to win over an audience, we campaign and lobby for the approval of constituents. The risk is, this is the line, the risk is that we become so wrapped up in preaching that we're right, prosecuting others who are wrong and politicking for support that we don't think about our, we don't rethink or think about our own views. And I would, I would have. argue here that you write, we do so much of this that we don't bother to rethink our own views. I would argue, I would make a slight edit to this line and say that we don't even can think

about our own views, much less rethink them. Sometimes I can, do you think polling people is part of politicking? Like, what do you think I should do? What do you think I should do? Is that part of politicking? Sometimes. I think it depends on the motives why you're doing. Oh, that's interesting. That's interesting. The same way that changing your mind is learning, but changing your position is flip-flopping. I think polling people, pulling people, if you're just adding them up and trying to go with the favored option, that's politicking. Pulling people and saying, you know what, I don't know that I'm thinking about this in the right way, or I don't know that I've considered all the information,

and I want to take that in to pressure test my hypothesis, that is not politic and that's thinking more like a scientist. But, you know, as you read this to me, like, okay, so are you asking me to rethink, think again? Because it would be ironic if I weren't willing to. Am I asking you to rethink think again? You did, you actually made me rethink something in it when we were talking about these ideas, which is, I think sometimes, you actually made me rethink two things, three things, three things. We could talk about all of them.

But the first one is sometimes I'm too harsh on preaching, prosecuting, and politicking. And I forget to acknowledge there's a time and a place for those. Preaching is marketing. We all need marketers in our lives. I think, you know, prosecuting is often how we prevent bad ideas from seeing the light of day. And I think politicking is, you know, is sometimes necessary for getting a coalition to support something unproven. And I think, you know, you said, hey, wait a minute. Like, let's not just say we should always go into scientists mode.

Let's make sure that people recognize there is value in having a skill in each of these areas. I think that's true. I love prosecutors when I'm writing a book. Like, they are my challenge network. They are the people who question arguments that aren't well supported and push me to make a stronger case. I need that. I don't think either of us could have given a TED talk if we didn't learn a little bit from preachers. No.

About how to advance an idea and communicate it and make it worth spreading. And so, yeah, I'm curious because you're now, you approach this conversation from where I normally am, which is too much preaching, prosecuting, and politicking. How are you thinking about when those are useful modes and when they're not? So, from a dare-to-lead kind of vulnerability perspective,

I don't think these are useful modes for me when they are armor for me. Oh, oh, say more. Armour against what? Anxiety, uncertainty? Fear of, vulnerability, uncertainty, perfectionism, not wanting to outsource my decision so I don't have to take accountability or responsibility for them. You know, I have this contract with my

stylist who does my hair, who basically it says, I understand that Caitlin will never give me a perm no matter how much I want one and how much I'm stuck in the 80s. I will never ask for micro bangs, even if things are really hard. Like, this is the contract I have with her. But one of the things that I find myself doing is I can pull people about what they think I should do, where to an event, my close friends, or how to handle an issue when I know damn well what to do. But I don't want to take responsibility for it because it's going to have some consequences that are tough. And I'd like to outsource the decision making, and I'd like to,

spread evenly the consequences of the decision-making over many people. So for me, I can use these, I can use all of these, including scientists, as armor. Yeah. Yeah. And so the distinction then comes down to something very similar to where we land with shame, which is these, if you're going to use any of these, modes of thinking and communicating, they should be aligned with your values, not just your current emotional state. That's it. And I think, again, which seems to be the theme of all of our podcast, self-awareness, is hugely important. What am I doing? What's driving it? And how is it serving or

not serving? You know? Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting as you talk about armor, I think that I never realized it until now, but prosecutor mode is armor for me. Really? It's costly, I think it's costly to give up on things that you believe, especially if you've based life choices on them. Yeah. I'm thinking about Robert Abelson having written that we start to treat our beliefs like possessions over time. God, yes, yes. We display them on mantles.

Horde and protect. Yeah, exactly. And I think once you get invested in an opinion and turn it into a belief, it becomes a way of life. And so, you know, sometimes I find myself just leaping into prosecutor mode because it's easier to not have to give up a cherished possession. I believe for the longest time that hard work was the key to success. And I organized my life that way. And when people argued that luck and opportunity mattered more than I thought, I was like, no, no, no, I want to live in a world in which the harder I work, the more luck I have.

And I've kind of created that world around me, and I don't realize all the ways I've been lucky. and it took way longer than it should have for me to abandon that belief because it was so easy to prosecute it and find so many examples in the world and so much evidence. And it's like, okay, just because hard work increases the probability of success doesn't mean that it guarantees success. Why was I not willing to recognize that? Why did I have to prosecute that for so long? Because it had become part of my identity. I think this is the scariest thing we do when we use these mindsets as armor is.

is we turn our opinions into beliefs and we turn our beliefs into our identities. And all of a sudden, who I am is what I think, when in fact who I am should be what I value. That's hard in this world. Increasingly hard. Increasingly hard. And this is another thing.

So this is the second thing that you have changed my mind about. I normally leap from, there are three steps in order to, help people change. Step one is you open them up to a new possibility. Step two is you help them overcome the barriers to realizing that possibility. And then step three is you build a habit around it or a practice around it. And one of the things you made me realize, Renee, we haven't talked about this, is I normally just skip right from step one to step three. We do this thing. It's wrong. therefore we should do the other thing.

And you always want to pause and say, why aren't we? What's the barrier? Why is this hard? That's really funny because yesterday on Slack, there was a Slack that said we have, we're going to have it. We'd like to introduce a new way of doing something with social approvals or something. And I said, really appreciate the time and thought, put it into this, happy to look at a new process. Can I ask what problem we're trying to solve? And then, you know, our colleague came back with, yeah, with a very clear, like, here's what we're trying to do because I promise you that this is built inside of me from reading the inner game of tennis for decades, reading it every year for decades.

And that whole idea that performance equals potential minus interference and spending as much time on identifying and getting rid of an interference. as building potential has really, I think it's also my love affair with systems theory and not changing the problems we can see but understanding the mental models because it's a very different way of saying what you're saying. I become a prosecutor especially and a preacher especially when you are introducing,

not you, but someone is introducing or threatening my mental models. and my mental models are not what I value, but how I make sense of the world and how I make sense of the value that I contribute. And so, and I think you and I ran into this very much when we were, you know, starting to build a podcast that I had really serious mental models around

this is the way it needs to look because this is the way I've always done it. And you had a lot of you must have learned this from me before you used it against me because you were like For us, not against you. Oh yeah, for us.

Yes, sir. Yes, yes, Father Grant. You said, you know, what is it you're not willing to let go of? Like why, you know, and so I think to me this is fundamentally this framework is fundamentally

the work I want to do over the next couple of years. I want to, in this season of my life, I need to understand how I test my hypotheses and, you know, help people understand that. And hopefully we can find some happy shared ground. But I also, I want to stop prosecuting and preaching. I saw this quote on Instagram the other day that said, I don't fight anymore. I don't argue. Two plus three equals six. Good for you, man. If that's what you think, have a great day. I want, I want a little bit more of that because for me, what drives me going into preacher mode and prosecutor mode is attaching morality to issues. Yeah.

Yeah, you are a fast moralizer. I am. I'm like, you know, if you believe two plus three equals six, then you have no value for this and that. And then there's going to be this outbreak of this. this disease, this is I'm getting you from your belief to you're killing all of us in three sentences. Which is so funny because I have a, I have a more, I have a narrower version of that problem. When, when somebody believes something that I, I have strong conviction is false, I think it's my job to rescue them from that, that incorrect belief. You do, you do think that. You do think it's

public service. It is public service. I'm like, if I can just help. you see that astrology is bunk and the earth is not flat. Your life will be so much better. You will be less wrong. And you will. And what I don't think about is, wow, not only do you have to abandon a belief system that you've invested a lot in, but also you might lose your entire community. Who shares those beliefs? That's what's attached to identity. It's community. Yeah. And so it never comes. occurs to me to say, hey, come on over here to the round earthers. There are a lot of interesting people and some new ideas that are going to help you. Or, hey, I think the purpose of astrology

is for you, part religion and part psychology. You're looking for a cosmology, a larger order to things, and you're also trying to make sense of all the messiness and complexity of human beings. Guess what? There are great religious communities. Maybe that's not your cup of tea. I also happen to belong to a community of really great psychologists who can, you know, teach you a little bit about the frameworks that we use to understand the differences between people and what, you know, what we respond to when we experience other people as, you know, aligned or not aligned with us. And there's a, there's actually a place where you can belong and, you know, and find meaning and connection. I never have that conversation with people. I think I should.

Yeah, I think identity is tied directly to belonging and community. And I think those are the big losses that people are experiencing now over and over and over as more groups turn to ideology and prosecuting and preaching and politicking and are very fast to cut anyone from those groups that introduces any idea of critical thinking. So people are not just, these are not just modes of being. These are survival and belonging and community and family. This is like the not invited to the Thanksgiving dinner kind of bullshit right here. And as a Scorpio, I'm so concerned about your disbelief of astrology because I only believe it when the news is good for the day. And something's happening where like Taurus is moving out of something. it's supposed to be like the end of April 25th. It's supposed to be the end of hard things or something for Scorpio's.

So I am for it right now. Okay, Brene, confirmation bias, Brown. I see you. I raise you. I, in a Shakespearean sense, I am hoisting you with your own petard. Okay. Well, here's this in a Brunei Brown sense, which I'm no competition for the bard. But if the psychologist want to move more people over from astrology to psychology,

you're going to need better graphics because the graphics and yeah everything's pretty you're in astrology. Better graphics. We also need better language. Calling people neurotic and disagreeable is not going to bring them on board. Yeah. And you need to democratize and make more accessible the work because I think, I don't know. That's what I do.

Yeah, you do do that. But not enough. there's no necklace I can get with the cute scorpion thing on it. And that's what I'm for. Yeah, and I don't want you to wear a necklace because then that identity has become a literal possession, not just a figurative one. I want you to try it on. What about my longhorn? Oh, you're allowed to have a sports team identity.

A university identity. Absolutely. But that's different, right? That's not locking yourself into a belief. That's an affiliation. interesting I think we should I think we should treat our opinions

let me just ask you what sign are you I can't answer that question I don't believe in science come on just come on if when's your birthday can't do it

can't do it I can't I cannot I cannot dignify this with a response really signs are fictions yeah

I mean I wrote a substack about this couple years ago called we need to talk about astrology because I was so tired of having the conversation But one thing I did not include in it is you're not even the sign you think you are.

Because the charts were drawn 2,000 years ago. And the positions of the positions of the planets have changed. And so most people, I think, if I remember correctly, most people are off by a month from what they think their sign is. This explains so much. It explains nothing, nothing at all. But here's the thing, Bray. God, you're so easy. It's not even fun anymore.

I know. You're just, just take the bait so quickly. Here's, I think, the important point. Actually, I think I've never really thought about this before, but I think we should treat our beliefs as provisional. I think the more that our thoughts are like hunches or tentative opinions, the easier it is to treat them as hypotheses. and then run the little experiments to find out during the bounce or, you know, during the analysis, however you do it, what might be the values aligned choice. And I think we're just too eager to say, well, this is what I believe. And I'm going to, I'm going to shout it from the rooftops.

And I'm going to post it all over my social media. And everybody's going to know what I stand for. And the moment you put that out there, you are trapping yourself in a prison of your own making. because you have made a public commitment to now adhering to that belief. And of course, if we lived in a world that made it easier to admit that we were wrong and treated that as a sign of growth as opposed to a mark of stupidity or ignorance, that would be less of a problem. But I don't think we live in that world yet. I think you and I both have micro-communities of people who actually dole out respect

when somebody admits they were wrong, right? Yeah, for sure. We just did an episode where you said, I was totally wrong about humiliation. Yeah. And I was shocked at first, and then I thought, wow, that's a mark of a real scholar. Bray not only changed her mind,

she put it out there and said she got it wrong. But most people lose status for admitting that, or they fear they'll lose status for admitting that, and so they don't. And I want to know how we can build a world where it's easier for people to say, you know what? I preached this idea last year. You know what? I've realized I was missing something important. I prosecuted you and I have actually become aware that I might not have been correct there.

And for people to say, wow, you've evolved. Thank you. As opposed to you are inconsistent. You're a hypocrite. I no longer respect you. So treat beliefs as what? We treat beliefs as, as potential hypotheses. Yeah, hunches. This is how I got clear on God. Did not expect you to go there. No, this is, I think I just was raised. That's a big hunch.

No, I was raised with the belief that all this is true. Like, I was, because you know, raised in the church, Catholic church, this is all true. And then when I got into my 20s, I decided I'm not going to completely prosecute the idea, nor am I going to believe it fully. I'm just going to treat it as a hunch and spend a couple of decades testing it. Turns out for me it's true. Yeah.

But I did challenge it from every corner. For me, and it's a personal thing, but it rattled my faith in church and doubled down my faith in God. So that was an interesting experiment, which, yeah. So I think, the application

is really broad. And I will say, I have to give you kudos, you're a rethinker. You really walk your talk. It's been wild to watch. You change your mind to rethink things.

And I respect it. I do. I just respect it. I think if we do, everyone gives lip service to always being curious and curiosity and learning, curiosity and learning. And if you're really committed to that,

you have to be equally committed to rethinking and realizing your hypothesis was wrong. You know, if you're allowing for new data. That's, I mean, some people call it changing your mind. I think of it as growing. But I also think, you know, just because I am willing and able to think again doesn't mean I always do it at the right time

or in the right direction. And one of the things I've noticed over the last few years, and I've gotten some really good feedback about this, is sometimes my standard of proof is too high. So somebody brings me a suggestion or an idea or a concern. I'm like, show me the airtight evidence or the bulletproof logic. And if not, I'm good where I am. You've not met my level of... Your threshold. Yeah, exactly.

And what that means is sometimes I'm too reluctant to try something unproven. And so I need to be quicker to say, you know what? I don't have to change my mind yet. I just have to recognize the possibility that there might be a better way. And like, let's run the pilot. And inhabit your hypothesis like me. Yeah. Let's bounce around a little bit.

Yeah, let's bounce. The bounce is super helpful. Do the trial. Yeah. I like that a lot. Now, okay, this actually is a good segue to the third thing that I think you've pushed me to rethink on this, which is,

I know if you remember this, we were at a conference in Europe last year, and you asked me, you asked me about a missing mental model from the framework. I do remember this. Teacher. Yeah, teacher.

At first I was like, yeah, that's cute. It rhymes with preacher. Good job, Bray. And then I thought about it. And I realized, yeah, when I think about my identity, my professional identity, and particularly the work that I do that's public facing, that lives in the center of the Venn diagram of scientists and teacher. Scientists and teacher or preacher?

Scientists and teacher. Because... Oh, that's your... Oh, yes, yes. Yeah. And so I realized, I think there is something missing because... If we think about explaining ideas or translating ideas or synthesizing knowledge, to move from scientists to preacher mode means you're going to oversimplify ideas in a way that's inaccurate

at best and dangerous at worst. 100%. You're going to talk about, like, you're going to be, you're basically going to be offering, you're serving up the best thing since I spread. You only talk about the upsides of your pet idea. You don't admit any of the downsides. in teacher mode, you can say, hey, here's something I learned. And here's how it's complicated.

But I think the pros outweigh the cons, and here's why. And I want to share that with you and have a dialogue about it. And that has unlocked for me, I guess, a level of comfort in saying, yeah, we do this in the classroom all the time. We talk about messy research. We say this doesn't undermine the validity of it. There are limitations. The question is, do the strengths outweigh the limitations? And let's figure out how to weigh that.

And I think that's part of what we ought to be doing more of. So I love this teacher idea. Where have you landed on it? How do you think about it fitting in? I mean, we are teachers. Yeah. So, yeah. So I think it's probably next to scientists how I wrestle with ideas the most.

Because I don't, unlike prosecutor, unlike prosecutor, unlike politician and unlike preacher, I can embrace the messiness as a teacher. It's exactly what you said. Like, my job is discomfort. My job is to push people into a stretch that's going to leave stretch marks, you know, cognitive stretch marks. And so I think I'm at my best in the teacher. It's something I've yet to weaponize. And so I don't know, I actually thought about it more that I don't think it is a mode. I think it's an identity which in order to remain sacred cannot be subjected to the other modes to the preacher. I have to stay scientist. That's good. That's very good. You know, as I listen to you talk about it, I never thought about it this way before, but I think that,

It's what teacher mode is what saves you from moralizing. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And I think that works in part because your style of teaching is very Socratic. You are not a sage on the stage. When you teach, you think about how do I bring learners along with me? And you also think about what can I learn from my students. And that forces a level of openness that wouldn't exist otherwise.

Yeah, I always feel like my students get rip. off because I learned so much more. Like I should be paying them because I always learn so much more than I teach. But yeah, I think since I made this shift a couple of months ago when I was really dealing with some hard stuff at work into thinking about these modes as my armor, I've added them to my, like even in my coaching, we talk about them as armor. And so it's how I self-protect. It's such a helpful lens.

And, you know, I'm just thinking about how I use scientist mode as armor sometimes, which is not, I mostly think about the upsides of scientist mode. Covered a bunch of evidence and think again that just randomly assigning leaders to learn to think like scientists improve their decisions. It improves their decisions because they're quicker to pivot away from bad ideas and tests better ones. And being fast to admit they're wrong makes it easier to figure out how to get it right. and that seems like a good thing. But for me, scientists mode is armor to avoid having to build systems and processes that might constrain me and might limit my autonomy and might prevent me, I fear, from thinking again ironically. And I'm like, no, no, I want to keep testing hypotheses.

I don't want to get too attached to anything. But the reality is we can't do that all the time. And so I've tried to reserve scientist mode for, I've got to really invest in that. We talked about this when we were talking about strong ground, I think, you know, in decisions that are highly consequential and irreversible. That's when I have to go into scientist mode right away. Yes, yes. And that's where it's necessary. But if you're dealing with the lower stakes or easier to undo decision,

I'm less worried about have we rigorously tested the hypothesis. Have we considered all alternatives? Have we run every experiment that we could? And I think I've frustrated you a little bit by doing this because I want to look at a hundred podcast titles, at least before we decide we're excited about the curiosity shop. I want to A-B test whether we should have the word the in the title or whether it should just be curiosity shop. I want to look at a million design options and try to figure out the right logo.

And you fall in love with one. Or maybe you bounce between a few different options and then you're good to go. Yeah. That's armor for me on unimportant decisions, and it's learning on important ones. It's a big, I mean, that's a big insight. I think, I think if everyone listening right now took a few minutes to think about, here are four ways of being, what's happening for me when I slip into these, and where are they, when and where are they strengths, and when or where are they, like kind of

the worst of me because I'm in fear. I think it's a really interesting exercise. I also think the styles are contagious. And I think it's why when someone starts politicking in a team meeting, you can see other people come out of a more productive mode and start doing the same thing. They're very, because armorers can be contagious, perfectionism, different ways if we protect ourselves. I do want to, we're at time, but I go. Oh, go. go go go please no no just a really specific example of that that I see all the time somebody checks in with you before a meeting or after a meeting and all of a sudden you realize well I have to have the pre-meeting and post-meeting to have influence and then what gets said in the meeting becomes

meaningless because everybody is politicking by having the conversations behind closed doors and trying to lobby for what's going to serve them yeah for sure and that the contagion it becomes systemic it's just like oh this is how we do business and that shit is will eat you alive. You gave a great example on the last podcast of what show to see what? Pluribus?

To see invisible armies stuck in the worst version of, yeah, the worst version of group think and group talk that I can imagine. I'm going to share a TV show where I literally rewatched one. I've been,

I've beenged all three seasons. It's one of the smartest shows I've ever seen. I love it. Um, the diplomat. Haven't seen it. Oh my God. On Netflix. Oh, with Carrie Russell. It's so, it's so Alison Janney's in it now. It's just the cliffhanger from season one to two, I was like, wow, someone can write a cliffhanger. The cliffhanger between season two and three, I was like, this is the best, this may be the best cliffhanger I've seen in TV history. And then, yeah, I mean, it's just, yeah, no, it is, it is a big claim. I had goosebumps. I rewatched it 20 times just the ending because it was so incredible. But I rewatched episode four in this last season with your model in front of me. And it's such an

interesting, it's so interesting to watch. We have some of the West Wing writers on it. And so it's just smart. It's fast. It's dialogue heavy. It's intricate. It's just, but I really watched that show thinking, oh my God, they're politicking. They're just, oh, God, this guy is such a preacher. He's in such preacher mode right now. But I used it because you can watch them picking these modes up and putting them on and then peeling them off and putting the next one on. It's a, you should clip it when you teach. I'm going to teach this. I'm going to actually teach it in an MBA class. I want to teach your think again piece. And I'm going to use clip. from that show to teach it.

Wow. Okay, I'm moving it up in my queue. I have to finish Daredevil Born Again and Fringe, and then Diplomat will be next. I haven't even heard of the other two shows. You don't watch Marvel or DC, do you? No, I'm not in that universe. Okay, got it.

That one won't help you. And Fringe is going back. It's post-alias and lost great bad robot. Sci-fi. we would have such a hard time finding shows to watch together. I think the diplomat sounds like a good overlap in our tiny, tiny center ven. In our center venn, like political thrillers that are really smart. That and sports comedy drama, Ted Lassau.

Oh, Ted Lassau. I almost wore my Richmond AFC yesterday. I have a sweatshirt. People are like, I've never heard of them. Like, they're fictional, but they're great. All right, I will see you next week. I am going to be mindful going into the week between this and our next recording to watch my mode of operation. And be very clear when I'm in collaborative decision-making with people, let them know I'm in the bounce.

I think just making that explicit and even introducing people to the fact that there is a bounce is great. And I think my, I never had that concept before. And I think my takeaway is I need to do a little more bouncing. Let's do it. I like it. I'll be sitting in the front yard of whatever house we're looking at, smelling the grass, trying to see. Can I see myself here? All right. Thanks, Adam. Thank you. The Curiosity Shop is produced by Bray Brown, Education and Research Group, and granted productions. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award-winning shows at podcast.com.