The Curiosity Shop with Brené Brown and Adam Grant
Why Toughness and Kindness Need Each Other | The Curiosity Shop
Research professor Brené Brown and organizational psychologist Adam Grant are partnering on a new weekly podcast grounded in an unflinching commitment to learning and unlearning. At a time when public discourse rewards certainty over inquiry, The Curiosity Shop features two of the world's most sought-after experts on connection, change, and leadership making the case for slowing down, asking better questions, and embracing informed complexity over easy answers. Bringing together their left and right brain sensibilities — she’s a qualitative researcher; he’s a quantitative researcher — they explore some of the defining questions of our time, unpack the research reshaping how we live, lead, and love, and dive deep into the ideas, evidence, and cultural moments intriguing them the most. New episodes drop every Thursday. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Show Notes
In this episode of The Curiosity Shop, Brené Brown and Adam Grant explore what happens when trust, vulnerability, grief, and performance collide. Using insights from the San Antonio Spurs and Gregg Popovich's leadership philosophy, they examine why caring deeply is an act of courage, how shame quietly undermines teams, families, and organizations, and how psychological safety fuels excellence. The conversation moves through ambition and rejection, miscarriage and loss, community, emotional intelligence and empathy, and the ways people show up for one another through life's hardest moments. This episode explores how strength and kindness are not opposites and why building cultures of trust may be one of the most important things we do.
Victor Wembanyama on having Spurs legend David Robinson and Tim Duncan in the building - 2026, Yahoo Sports
Armored Versus Daring Leadership, Part 1 of 2 -
Brené Brown, 2021, Dare to Lead (Podcast)
Victor Wembanyama Emotional After Spurs Advance to the NBA Finals - 2026, Bleacher Report
Goals research summary - Gail Matthews, 2015, Dominican University of California
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead - Brené Brown, 2012, Gotham Books
Ring Theory Helps Us Bring Comfort In
- Elena Sandler, 2025, Psychology Today
Atlas of the Heart - Brené Brown, 2021 (Book)
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy & Adam Grant on Loneliness - Murthy & Grant, Authors@Wharton, 2024, YouTube
Andrew Garfield on grief and the loss of his mother – CBS, 2021, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
National Survey of Gun Policy - Center for Gun Violence Solutions, 2025, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Empathic Joy and the Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis - Batson et al, 1991, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Human empathy through the lens of social neuroscience - Decety & Lamm, 2006, The Scientific World Journal
The Making of an American – Jacob Riis, 1901, Macmillan
The Coach–Athlete Relationship Questionnaire (CART-Q) – Sophia Jowett, 2004, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports
Bad Is Stronger Than Good – Roy Baumeister, 2001, Review of General Psychology
Scarred for the Rest of My Career? – Erica Carleton (with Julian Barling), 2016, Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology
The evolution of shame and its display -
Landers & Sznycer, 2022,
Evolutionary human sciences
Moral Emotions and Moral Behavior – June Tangney, 2007, Annual Review of Psychology
The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain - Brené Brown and David Eagleman, 2020, Unlocking Us with Brene Brown Podcast
Unlocking the Mysteries of our Brain - Chris Anderson with David Eagleman, 2022, The TED Interview
Winning coaches’ locker room secret - Blanding on the research of Barry Staw, 2019, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business
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