There’s no shortage of interview podcasts. It’s a reliable format that is comparatively quick to produce as content when compared to scripted or documentary style podcast episodes. When every celebrity from Joe Rogan to Amy Poehler has an interview podcast, it takes real skill to stand out from the crowd. In my opinion, Adam Grant’s podcast Rethinking is the gold standard. As well as being personable, charming and funny, Grant manages to link his conversations to psychology research, drawing key insights from his guests and connecting their anecdotal thoughts to more substantive research.

As someone with a keen interest in why and how people change their minds, I was particularly taken with his latest episode: Talking People Out of Hate With Daryl Davis and Former Neo-Nazi Jeff Schoep. Since the 1980s the Black jazz musician Daryl Davis has partaken in conversations that have led over 200 members of the Ku Klux Klan to renounce their membership of the White supremacist organisation. As well as recommending everyone check out the episode immediately, I thought I’d use this short blog article as an opportunity to reflect on some of my key takeaways from the interview.

A Tiger Can’t Change Its Stripes but a Person Can Change Their Mind

Firstly, Davis points out the unhelpful nature of the expression “a tiger can’t change its stripes”. The phrase implies people’s behaviours are as fixed traits like genetics. However, this is untrue. Things like hatred, racism and misogyny are learned behaviours, and as Davis highlights, anything that is learned can also be unlearned.

The Individual Has to Change Themselves

Another key idea from the conversation concerns the nature of real change. Davis emphasises that genuine transformation cannot be forced on someone. It has to come from within. A conversation may be the initial impetus that leads someone to question their beliefs but ultimately it is the individual who changes their own mind – not the conversation partner.

When people say we’re converting people, we want them to feel like they’ve done it themselves. They have to feel like they’ve done it themselves because if they say [anyone else made them change…] that’s not real change. That’s a forced change. Real change has to come from the heart and from the mind so the individual has to do it themselves.

A Change of Mind is Rarely Instantaneous

Schoep’s personal story of changing his mind in conversation with Davis shows how subtle and fragile the first steps toward transformation can be. He explains that a single question from Davis planted the initial seed of doubt: “how can someone hate me when they don’t even know me.” Although this moment had a real emotional impact, Schoep is clear that recognising the truth did not immediately transform how he lived.

I’d like to say right at that moment everything changed, my whole life changed. It did on the inside, but it took time. It took time because I’d been involved in this stuff for a lifetime – it was 27 years total.

What Schoep describes here is something psychologists often observe. When a belief system is tied closely to a person’s sense of identity, change becomes much more than a shift in opinion. It requires loosening a structure that has shaped their worldview, their social circles and even their sense of purpose. Letting go of such a framework can feel like losing a part of oneself. This is why even when the intellectual realisation arrives in an instant, the practical and emotional process of change unfolds slowly. 

“He’s Not Telling Me I’m Wrong, He’s Showing Me How Wrong I Was”

Grant highlights a well-established finding in psychology: direct confrontation tends to activate defensiveness, whereas genuine curiosity invites reflection. Change often happens not through telling someone what to think, but by asking questions that help them inspect their own reasoning.

In psychology we would say if somebody is defensive or resistant to change the worst thing to do is to directly tell them to change or attack their position. The best thing to do is to get really curious and to start to interview them and say “hey, I’d love to understand your attitudes a little better” and then ask them questions […] that bypass their defensiveness, that lead them to reflect genuinely and […] then realise that […] maybe they don’t have good reasons to hold the views that they hold and then start to find their own reasons to change.

Individual not Ideology Defence

One of the most revealing moments in the episode is Schoep’s description of how he used to rationalise violent acts committed by members of his movement. Instead of questioning the ideology, he framed each incident as the work of a lone “bad apple.” This pattern allowed him to defend the belief system while dismissing any evidence that threatened it.

You try to set [racist abuse] aside and go okay, that was just one incident. And I would do that sort of thing psychologically whenever there was mass-shootings, whenever there was somebody who had done a terrible crime that was affiliated with the ideology, you always try to say “well that was a crazy person!”. [It’s] Never the ideology, [it’s] always the individual. You’d say “well that person had some screws loose, there was something wrong with them”. But when it happens again and again and again and again and again you have to at some point start re-evaluating and going you know what, maybe it is the ideology.

Recognising this pattern was an essential part of his process of change. Though I largely think the point Schoep’s making here is a good one, I’m slightly nervous about dispelling the ideology vs individual distinction entirely as in some contexts that distinction matters. For example, when acts of terrorism are carried out by individuals who identify as Muslim, it is unhelpful to treat those actions as evidence that Islam itself is violent when the overwhelming majority of British Muslims reject violence and interpret their faith in peaceful and compassionate ways. In situations like this, I fear that linking the violence to the ideology rather than to the individual risks fuelling Islamophobia and contributing to further hate crimes. (These are my rough thoughts at the time of writing anyway).

De-escalations are More Achievable Than a 180 Flip

Schoep stressed how it is rare for someone to instantly reverse their beliefs. Most people move gradually away from extremism rather than jumping directly to an opposing worldview.

If you go into these situations and expect somebody to do a full [180] degree turn in a snapping of fingers, that is almost unheard of. […] The vast majority, like the hundreds of people that we know that have left [extremist groups], it’s a process, it takes time. […] I know when I first got out they automatically think you’ve flipped to the other extreme, so I’m getting all of these emails going you know “what’s the deal, did you really leave the movement? are you ANTIFA now? are you a communist now?”. […] So a lot of times what I’ve found in those conversations with people that originally came at me kind of hard, is “wow, so I could leave the movement and still be conservative or still be somewhere over here on the right just not be a racist” and you’re like “yes, that would be great. Or you can be on the Left, just don’t go way out to the extreme”.

As someone who would broadly consider themselves on the left of politics, it can be tempting to assume that any meaningful departure from extremism should naturally lead a person toward my own set of beliefs. Yet Schoep’s reflections are a useful reminder that genuine progress does not require a person to adopt an entirely new ideology. What matters is loosening the grip of hatred and dismantling the harmful frameworks that shaped their behaviour. Moving into a space that is less extreme, less rigid and less defined by fear is already a significant achievement.

Find Your Line

There is a tendency to assume that meaningful anti-hate work must involve direct engagement, but Davis offers a broader and more compassionate view of what participation can look like.

Find your line. And what do I mean by find your line. [Schoep] and I are on the front lines, we’re out there with these people so to speak. Some people, they can’t do that. They can not bring themselves to sit down with a KKK member or a neo-Nazi, “I can sit with those people, I’m afraid of them” or “I’m afraid I might punch them out, they just irritate me” or whatever. Got it. You don’t belong on the front line. Maybe you can be on the backline […]. Find the line where you most feel comfortable and participate because we all have to work together.

This point feels especially important when we remember that different forms of harm affect people in different ways. For some, talking to a misogynist may feel too painful and personal to manage. The conversation might cut too close to their own experiences and have a real impact on their mental health. For others, that same discussion might not touch them as deeply, which means they are able to engage safely and constructively. The goal is not to push everyone into frontline dialogue but to recognise that people have different thresholds and different strengths. What matters is finding the place where you can contribute sustainably, without overwhelming yourself, so that the collective effort against hate remains strong and diverse.

In conclusion, this episode of Rethinking offers a powerful reminder that meaningful change is possible, even in places where hatred feels deeply entrenched. Through the insights of Daryl Davis and Jeff Schoep, we see that transformation is rarely sudden, never simple and always shaped by empathy, patience and genuine curiosity. If more of us can find our own line of contribution, no matter how small, we can help create the conditions where change becomes more likely.