How to Be the Partner in Change, Not the Arbiter

Healthcare has never had more ways to reach people: calls, texts, emails, portal nudges, AI outreach. Yet health still isn't communicated in the most relevant way to the people who need it most.

Rex Wallace talks with Michelle Bellon, CEO of Rescue Agency, a behavior change company whose work covers vaping, substance use, healthy eating and mental health. Michelle explains why knowledge is rarely what's missing, why fear and facts make people tune out, and why anyone asking for change should take on some of the burden of it.

In this conversation:

• The "whoa moment": why up to 95% of behavior runs on autopilot, and how to create space for someone to reconsider
• The McDonald's drive-thru test: building healthy swaps that cost no more time or money
• Why people don't have to change for your reasons to make a real change
• Why communications designed for everybody reach nobody
• When nudges work, and when they go into the abyss

The apps in your pocket are built to keep you. A behavioral scientist explains how to tell when technology is caring for you and when it is quietly working you over.

Eden Brownell works at the intersection of behavioral science and AI. She started in theater, moved through the foster care system and public health, and now studies how the systems around us shape the choices we make. Rex Wallace sits down with her to pull apart one uncomfortable question: are the tools transforming our lives designed to help us, or to hold us in place?

They get into the difference between empathy and persuasion on a screen, why good design makes it easy to leave, the dark patterns hiding inside everyday apps, and what we lose when we hand off our ability to choose. Eden also shares something personal about connection, patience, and what AI can and cannot be for the people who use it.

If you lead a team, build a product, or care about the human on the other end of the technology, this one will stay with you.

In this episode:

• Why behavioral science has to lead AI, not follow it
• The difference between caring about members and caring about numbers
• Context beats character: designing for the person at their lowest
• The dark patterns we live with, from autoplay to the cancellation maze
• What we lose when we outsource our choices
• Connection, patience, and what a machine cannot be

Books mentioned: Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman, Grit by Angela Duckworth

The HumanUp Imperative explores human connection, leadership, and the future of how we work. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Healthy relationships are mismatched 70% of the time. That's not a problem to fix. According to today's guest, it's the whole design.

Dr. Claudia Gold is a pediatrician and co-author of The Power of Discord with Dr. Ed Tronick, the researcher behind the famous Still Face experiment. Their work shows that the out-of-sync, messy, imperfect moments in any relationship are where trust actually gets built.

Rex and Claudia get into what that means at work: why curiosity beats certainty, what emotional absence looks like on a team, why "good enough" is essential and not just acceptable, and why "not knowing" might be the most underrated skill a leader can develop.

If you've ever felt a working relationship go sideways and didn't know how to fix it, this one's for you.

Find Claudia: ClaudiaMGoldMD.com | LinkedIn: ClaudiaMGold