Choose to be Curious

New Year, Timeless Wisdom! John L. Jackson, Jr., Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, Valoria Walker and Jack Zhang drop some serious wisdom. I’ve pulled segments from four conversations to carry us into the new year. Forget new resolutions, try returning to things you know have worked for you already! Theme and other music by Sean Balick.

BONUS: Innovation advisor Larry Robertson and I talked much longer and more widely than I could accommodate in one episode. I can't bear for you to miss out on his insights, so here's a little bonus pack, with lessons gleaned from Naomi Osaka and others, in honor of rebel leadership everywhere. My original interview with Larry was 3 years ago (July 2021). One unexpected benefit of some digital hou...

I'm taking a little break in December. I'm calling it Curiosity R&R -- Curiosity Respite & ReAirs, so this is a quickie... It's been a packed 8 1/2 years of production and I need a rest. Radio audiences will have uninterrupted programming -- and you can get a peek here. Links on my website. I also provide a sneak preview of what's coming in 2025. :) But mostly I just want to say thank you for list...

Birds seem like a delightful lens through which to view curiosity: Here’s a species that lives among us, is literally part of the scenery, but to which many of us are almost entirely blind. But when we choose to be curious about birds, suddenly it's like a whole new universe emerges in our own backyards.  We see things we didn’t see before.  We hear things we didn’t hear before.  We learn things w...

I don’t subscribe to the idea that some people are curious eaters while others just aren't. I think we may have a baseline of food curiosity, but I also think that baseline can shift. And I imagine that’s what caught my attention when I spotted The 2024 Consumer Curiosity Report – findings from a survey of 850+ early food adopters, conducted by Curious Plot, a marketing, communications and consult...

On the 20th anniversary of his thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail, Adam Segel-Moss left home, family, and work for a little over two months to hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. He’s home now, reflecting — as one would — on what it meant to walk and wonder through all that time and space. Adam Segel-Moss on the Pacific Crest Trail: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=86930750 T...

It may be hard to think about "uncertainty" as a good things right now, but hear me out. Certain words keep coming up in this curiosity context: exploration, innovation, creativity, trust-building, learning -- and uncertainty. Not the "uncertainty" of the world today--which feels very heavy right now--but the "uncertainty" of allowing room for new thoughts... And along comes Maggie Jackson, award-...

Leland Ko came on my radar when he was one of four gifted young cellists selected by Yo-Yo Ma to participate in a program called Music-Art-Life in 2023.  It was, for me, a chance to luxuriate in curiosity. I wondered: Did their knowledge, skill, and feel for the music mean their curiosity about it was qualitatively different than my own? If so, how? Find Leland Ko online: https://www.lelandko.com...

Periodically I set myself a curiosity scavenger hunt theme with a fixed duration – 77 days of feet, a long hot summer of art, a month of biophilia, a week in the kitchen – and then I just keep my eyes open and my camera handy. It's a joy. The thrill of the hunt; the challenge and delight in finding something new in the very familiar; the excuse to get outdoors, whatever the weather; the visual pun...

I found myself thinking about the exquisite agony of a Hitchcock suspense when I came upon an article in Scientific American, "Why Curiosity Makes Us Patient." Abby Hsuing & Alison Adcock assert curiosity makes us hungry for knowledge, but not necessarily in a hurry to get it. It's a finding that runs in the face of a whole lot of curiosity theory that supposes curiosity is an urgent desire to kno...

The Ig Nobel Prizes recognize research efforts that make you laugh...and then think. They celebrate the unusual and honor the imaginative. They are, in my mind, a delightful and very deliberate celebration of curiosity. Ig Nobel Prize founder and editor of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research Marc Abrahams joins me to talk about the origins and contributions of this quirky prize. The awards...

What if museums were sticky, stinky, noisy places? What if they were sensational? Psychologist Alison Eardley is on a mission to make museums more accessible and inclusive -- physically and conceptually -- for all audiences. Her work draws on all of our senses, engaging us far more deeply with what's before us. What if museums helped us tap our collective curiosity to co-create our visits? More ab...

For the 250th episode of this brave little enterprise, I invited psychologist and curiosity researcher Todd Kashdan to join me to rethink some of the old curiosity standards. The research has evolved and we're going with it. What better way to keep the curiosity alive than by questioning what we think we know? More about Todd Kashdan: https://toddkashdan.com Theme music by Sean Balick; “Shift of C...

...In today's conversation, Todd Kashdan and I touched on evolving understandings about curiosity across the life span, the challenges inherent in certain kinds of curiosity, and a more nuanced way to think about "the curiosity zone". But I couldn't fit the whole conversation in 28 short minutes, so here's a little bonus -- a peek behind the production curtain, and some of the rich conversation th...

From the moment I set foot on campus, it was clear that Olin College of Engineering has a special and very intentional relationship with curiosity.   Olin embodies a willingness to try something new, make mistakes, and learn from those experiences. Gilda A. Barabino, Ph. D., is president of Olin and sets that curiosity tone. More about Olin College of Engineering at https://www.olin.edu Theme musi...

The big questions of astrophysicist Mario Livio's new book Is Earth Exceptional? The Quest for Cosmic Life are as close as we get to an ultimate curiosity -- questions about the origin of life, the universe, and where and how those two intersect. Dr. Livio worked with the Hubble Space Telescope and is a bestselling author of seven books. Together with Jack Szostak, a biochemist and Nobel laureate,...

In 2007-2008, Chris Kolenda led an 800-paratrooper task force in eastern Afghanistan. While there, he motivated a large insurgent group to switch sides, the only example of such success in the 20-year history of the war. We can learn a lot from his stories. Find Chris Kolenda here: https://chriskolenda.com Theme music by Sean Balick; “Turning to You" by Landsmen Duet, via Blue Dot Sessions.

Once you know it, you see it everywhere. Ever since Gregg Potter put collaboration on my curiosity radar, I'm seeing it in everything. Gregg is a collaboration coach and founder and executive director of the International Institute on Collaboration. He knows a thing or two about how people work together toward shared objectives -- whether they think of it that way or not. Five skills work together...

Curiosity, biodiversity, rewilding -- these are the exciting places Carolin Sommer-Trembo Ph. D. takes us today. Carolin is an evolutionary biologist. Her big goal is to focus attention on animal behavior as it effects evolution and biodiversity. To get there, she has studied curiosity in cichlid fish in Africa's Lake Tanganyika, combining some good old-fashioned field work with exciting new inves...

I could listen to peace-builder and story-teller Kiran Singh Sirah all day. Not because he's a gifted and generous story-teller -- he most certainly is -- but because his world view is so encompassing, so uplifting, so empowering. So beautiful. Our conversation about curiosity, stories and belonging gets to the heart of who we are as humans, and what we can be as a society. Pull up a comfy chair,...

We all want to understand the world around us, but sometimes our curiosity can lead us down some strange paths. Dr. Joe Stubbersfield is a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Winchester in the UK. He's curious about how our various stories and narratives might shape -- and are shaped by -- our curiosity. Joe has researched how morbid curiosity can lead people to conspiracy theories ...

I'm intrigued by the concept of social enterprises -- businesses with a sense of purpose larger than themselves. Timothy D. Craggette is founder and Chief Education Officer of NAASBI, The National Association for the Advancement of Small Business Innovation.  He trains business owners and supports small business innovation through the association and his radio show/podcast The Swift Kick Show. Tim...

Anne-Laure Le Cunff is a Choose to Be Curious trifecta: researcher, theoretician -- and practitioner. A neuroscientist and deep thinker about the personal and social implications of our curiosity, she conducts tiny experiments to focus closely on how we use our time and energy to best effect. Anne-Laure is the founder of Ness Labs, a collective platform for curious people, where “ambitious knowled...

What do people who know and appreciate a place deeply see that I might not? The Mount Vernon Trail winds its way along the river, a combination national park and major commuter artery. It's a place I find myself frequently and I wondered: what am I not seeing in this place that is so familiar? The Trail is there because the Potomac River is there, an always-scenic but often-silent companion. What...

Annabelle Tometich -- writer, editor, former food critic and now author -- joins me to explore the tricky, high-traffic intersection of identity and curiosity. Who gets to decide identity? How do we determine our own, let alone someone else's, identity? How might we allow ourselves and others a little grace to figure these things out? Find Annabelle Tometich at https://annabelletometich.com Theme...