Kurt Nelson and Tim Houlihan - Behavioral Grooves

Action Design Radio

Don’t look now – it’s a crossover episode! No, not Alf meets Gilligan’s Island, or The Simpsons meets Family Guy. It’s Behavioral Grooves meets Action Design Radio!

Kurt Nelson is the founder of The Lantern Group, a behavioral design and communication agency, and Tim Houlihan is the founder of the BehaviorAlchemy consultancy. Together, they also team up to host the Behavioral Grooves podcast, where they interview top practitioners and researchers in the various fields of behavioral science, and mix things up with their passion for music.

In today’s episode, they discuss with Erik and Zarak their origin story for how Behavioral Grooves was born, favorite episodes, the evolution of behavioral science in general over the 20+ years they’ve both been working in the field, and its infinite applications. The endless quest for knowledge and a passion for satisfying their curiosity is what keeps them coming back with such enthusiasm for these topics after so many years and 160 episodes across their two podcasts.

Other topics include:

• "Accidental" behavioral scientists – the bicycle store owner who implements choice architecture, or the manager of a nonprofit organization in Africa who uses social proof to improve public health
• • They may not have sophisticated data or use behavioral language, but they’re running experiments and putting the right tools into action just like behavioral scientists would
• Understanding failures and how to learn from them
• Replication issues
• Yet another plug for Zarak’s favorite beard product, Cowboy Magic – official sponsorship here we come?
• And of course, what music everyone is groovin’ on these days