Curated Questions: Conversations Celebrating the Power of Questions!

"That is what a patriot is. Someone who loves the country enough to trade the myth for the question." - Ken Woodward We took a single question to two places: the garden of the Heurich House in Washington, DC, and a town-center street in Rockville. What are you asking, right now, about America at two hundred and fifty? We did not coach anyone. We asked, and we listened. What came back was not one m...

"When someone asks us about now, many of us answer with next." - Ken Woodward We took the mic into Union Market and asked strangers one question. What is your Right Now Question? Their answers, and the quiet trend running underneath them. On a warm June afternoon in Washington, DC, we stood in Union Market and asked the people passing through a single thing. Not what they do. Not where they are he...

"The avoided question and the awaited question. Same person. Two sides of one ache." - Ken Woodward Nearly all of the research on curiosity studies the person asking. A new study out of New York University, led by Dr. Niobe Way and Rachel Taffe, turned the lens around and asked the receiver instead. They gave 641 young people a single written prompt: what is the question you most wish someone woul...

"Ian thought a question was a way to find out who was above him and who was below him. The fire taught him it was a way to find out who was beside him." - Ken Woodward Ian told me he had gotten better at asking questions, and then said the thing that caught my attention. He used to be afraid to ask. Partially fear of looking nosy. Mostly afraid that asking one question would open him up to being a...

"The question was not broken. It was unfinished." - Ken Woodward Buried in the introduction of the twentieth century's most famously unread book is the most precise dissection of a question ever written. In this solo episode, we open Martin Heidegger's Being and Time and recover his anatomy of inquiry: every question has a subject, a source, and an intent, and most questions fail not from bad word...

"The smallest act of authorship is a question." - Ken Woodward Nine months ago, Naomi Campbell of the Right Question Institute said one word that gave me a word I had been searching for: agency. I felt it land in my body before I understood it in my head. I promised my listeners I would come back with an answer. This episode is that answer. Agency is the authorship of our own lives. Not control, w...

" The more you play around with it, and the more you see the power in a question, the more you realize that it actually is the cure for the uncertainty that ails many of us." - Larry Robertson Larry Robertson has spent three decades advising leaders on growth, innovation, and strategy. He is also a US Fulbright Scholar, a columnist, and the author of four award-winning books. His newest, Great Que...

"The invitation is not to be right. It is to be willing." - Ken Woodward The small decisions we make without examination carry consequences we never see coming. Ken calls this the long tail. It does not stay inside us. It speaks, votes, stays silent when silence enables harm, and over time shapes the people and institutions around us in ways no single decision can account for. Drawing on Roald Dah...

"A good answer can close a loop. A good question opens one." - Ken Woodward What if the quality of your questions has less to do with how curious you are and more to do with how much you know? A recent study from the Technion in Israel tracked 68 students over a semester of Introduction to Psychology. Researchers measured not just what students learned, but how their question-asking changed. The f...

"My tree was planted in a metal bucket." - Ken Woodward Some mornings, the ordinary holds the weight of everything. A walk to the garage. An attempt to correct a gait. A drift back to comfort. Ken opens this solo episode with that image and asks why returning to comfort is the default setting of an adult life. Drawing on the work of Nigerian-born British photographer and activist Misan Harriman, K...

"Some questions need eye contact. Some questions need silence. Some questions need the telltale crack in our own voice that tells you, you've finally said something true." - Ken Woodward We live in a moment when almost any question can be answered instantly, eloquently, and for free. That is a remarkable thing. It is also worth examining carefully. In this episode, Ken Woodward draws a distinction...

"Claiming your agency to question is a renegade step into your full humanity." - Ken Woodward April 12, 2016, marked the first public demonstration of Kenneth Woodward's obsession with questions. A decade, 80 episodes, and 140,000 downloads later, he returns to the shoreline to share what a decade of study, conversation, and lived experience has washed up at his feet. From a daily inquiry blog tha...

"It is easier simply to tell the truth, even if you've made a mistake, because what it does is build credibility over time." - Andrew Caulk What happens when the questions leaders most need to ask are the ones they're most afraid to voice? Andrew Caulk spent two decades in the Air Force as an information strategist, and he's seen how institutions, military, political, and personal, manage their na...

"Those scripts are not wisdom. They are load-bearing walls for other people's power." - Ken Woodward Every room has a question nobody asks. Sometimes that's a failure of courage. Sometimes it's something else entirely, a hierarchy so explicit it pre-sorts who is permitted to speak before anyone opens their mouth. In this episode, Ken reflects on a $100M federal acquisition program derailed by a se...

"The most powerful questions aren't really the ones that demand an answer, but really demand a presence." - Jenny Chan Jenny Chan founded Pacific Atrocities Education after her grandmother's death surfaced a box of wartime relics of military yen, rice rationing coupons, and decades of unexplained anger toward Japanese culture. That inheritance of unasked questions launched Jenny into the hidden hi...

"The harm was architectural. It was not a matter of intention. It was a matter of never checking the blueprint before I opened my mouth." - Ken Woodward The Questions You're Living Inside: How to Stop Answering Questions You Never Chose is the premise of this week's solo episode. Every question builds a room. Most of us never notice the construction. In this solo episode, Ken Woodward explores wha...

"It's not having the answers I teach people — it's having the questions. And that just upsets the entire architecture of safe thinking." - Phil Liebman Phil Liebman spent years being mentored by one of the most relentless questioners he'd ever encountered. It changed everything about how he leads and coaches. In this conversation, Phil unpacks the difference between knowing mode and learning mode,...

"Lean into courage and see what happens." - Eila Park Robertson Former ABC News journalist, award‑winning filmmaker, and crisis communications strategist Eila Park Robertson joins Curated Questions to explore what happens “when listening saves democracy.” Drawing from a childhood navigating violence, immigration, and loneliness, Eila shares how asking genuine questions became her superpower for bu...

"There's a difference between avoidance and stewardship of our own attention." - Ken Woodward When life grinds us down, something essential is revealed. In this solo episode, Ken Woodward explores why questions are the fundamental technology humans use to make sense of a world that has broken wide open. Drawing from a personal essay about growing up in rural Arizona and the disorienting experience...

"Every deflection is a small tax." - Ken Woodward In this solo episode of Curated Questions, Ken Woodward explores the hidden cost of defended answers and the quiet exhaustion that comes from maintaining stories that no longer fit. Drawing on conversations with Kevin Kelly and Phil Liebman, he examines the difference between exploitation and exploration, and why deep questioning is inherently inef...

"The only cost of liberation is the decision to pay attention." - Ken Woodward In this solo episode of Curated Questions, host Ken Woodward reflects on wonder, not as a luxury, but as a necessary practice for resilience. Drawing from his experience aboard a U.S. Navy submarine in the gray winters of Connecticut, Ken recounts how weeks without color prepared him to recognize wonder the moment it re...

Episode Summary "They’re literally allowing their past to define them, not refine them. And refinement is an active process, and you have to be prepared to do the work if you’re gonna grow." - Dr. John A. King In this powerful and unflinching conversation, Ken Woodward is in conversation with Dr. John A. King, author, speaker, and PTSD recovery expert, whose life journey moves from profound trauma...

"Sometimes my parents say ask three questions and then you can play." - Addy Graff In this delightful episode of Curated Questions, Ken Woodward sits down with eight-year-old explorer Addy Graff to discover how curiosity takes root early in life. A seasoned traveler who has visited roughly 40 countries and every neighborhood in Washington, DC, Addy shares how asking questions helps her learn about...

Episode Summary "I don’t want hope as a primary strategy for living well." - Ken Woodward In this solo episode of Curated Questions, Ken Woodward explores hope not as a feeling or slogan, but as a muscle, something built, weakened, and strengthened through use. Prompted by Alex Honnold’s free-solo climb and his own season of uncertainty, Ken reflects on the collapse of trust in institutions and th...

"You can only live with so much cognitive dissonance in your life." - Matthew Pridgen Matthew Pridgen joins Ken Woodward for a raw, wide-ranging conversation about how questions can crack open denial and move us toward truth, repentance, and reconciliation. Matthew shares his dramatic journey from addiction and a near-fatal suicide attempt to a decades-long pursuit of faith, justice, and historica...