Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It

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Books are basically magic. They’re as rich and varied as life on this planet and they’re a big comfort, a mini-education, and a portal into whole new worlds. They’re a safe space where everything is possible and nothing is out of reach. Diane and I did our best to celebrate that in our book and I hope young readers will feel some of that joy and wonder too. I was motivated to read _Curious_ because my girlfriend and I were interested in understanding the difference in our relative levels of curiosity. We observed that I demonstrate particularly more curiosity than she does. For example, I regularly struggle to not compulsively, and rudely, take out my phone during dinner to search for an answer to some unknown question that arises during dinner conversation. I am also often distracted by the exploration of some random topic, be it virtual reality, or artificial intelligence, or crustacean aquaculture. We wanted to know if there were methods to help her discover topics of interest, particularly in the context of searching for an interesting career path. No one today ever says anything bad about curiosity, directly. But if you pay attention, curiosity isn’t really celebrated and cultivated, it isn’t protected and encouraged. It’s not just that curiosity is inconvenient. Curiosity can be dangerous. Curiosity isn’t just impertinent, it’s insurgent. It’s revolutionary. I think it means that we can ask any question. That there is no reason why trying to understand the minutiae of a gnat’s leg is out of bounds. It’s not necessarily too trivial. Some of the people who supported the rise of curiosity in the late 16th and early 17th centuries made the point that scientists still make today – that you never know where something is going to lead when you start asking questions. It’s small questions that have led to some of the biggest discoveries. In grad school, I studied what developmental psychologists refer to as “socioemotional skills”. What are often thought of as “soft skills” such as behavioral skills, social skills, self-expression, and introspection are traits people can learn and improve on. I wrote my thesis on how educators can encourage children’s curiosity. I knew logically traits like creativity can be nourished and improved like any other skill. But I still worried about somehow ‘using up’ my creativity if I wrote too much.

When it comes to enhancing epistemic rather than diversive curiosity, nothing beats reading interesting books, and my children know I will always gladly answer their literary questions, at least. And ask some valid questions myself: Here’s the remarkable thing. Curiosity isn’t just a great tool for improving your own life and happiness, your ability to win a great job or a great spouse. It is the key to the things we say we value most in the modern world: independence, self-determination, self-government, self-improvement. Curiosity is the path to freedom itself. The author combines the results of research with anecdotes to provide an illuminating volume on why curiosity is so important to lifelong learning and our advancement as a global society. He examines the risks inherent in some current technological trends, such as smart phones and internet searches, and how to overcome them. He looks at what arouses curiosity and what quenches it.

First, my life had just changed forever. When I reported for work as a legal clerk that Monday, they gave me a windowless office the size of a small closet. At that moment, I had found my life’s work. From that tiny office, I joined the world of show business. I never again worked at anything else. There is interesting contrarian discussion arguing against Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Sir Ken Robinson about schools killing creativity. The more ideas (facts) we have in our head, the more opportunity for combining them into new creative patterns. This is something I can agree with. The truth is that when I was meeting someone like Salk or Teller or Slim, what I hoped for was an insight, a revelation. I wanted to grasp who they were. Of course, you don’t usually get that with strangers in an hour. I met with him on Friday at 3 p.m. He hired me at 3:15. And I started work at Warner Bros. the next Monday. I found _Curious_ to be interesting, but disappointing. I was disappointed because a majority of the book was dedicated to unrelated diversions. If you're an avid reader like me of non-fiction self-help, psychology, business, and biography literature you will be familiar with a majority of the anecdotal tangents contained herein. The entrepreneurial fairy tales of Steve Jobs and Walt Disney; the inquisitiveness and creativity of Ben Franklin; the success predicting ability of "grit" and the marshmallow test (boy do I get tired of reading about this test -- I probably would failed it as a child, yet I'm a successful adult); and so forth. I was hoping for a more detailed discussion of curiosity, particularly how to _cultivate_ curiosity, but it wasn't there.

The serpent is appealing directly to Eve’s curiosity. You don’t even know what you don’t know, the serpent says. With a bite of the forbidden fruit, you will see the world in a completely different way. Curious is a book that defines the place of curiosity in our lives today. Where it comes from, why we have it, what we do with it, while making the case for why we need to resurrect it. Barbara Benedict is a professor at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and a scholar of the eighteenth century who spent years studying the attitude about curiosity during that period, as scientific inquiry sought to overtake religion as the way we understand the world.

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But then he began his long focus on baby studies. Many of the studies themselves were fine, even enjoyable, but by the time he got to attachment theory, I felt like, "Come on already." At that point, I was still feeling relatively positive. That was until his anti tech rhetoric ruined the entire book for me. I still enjoy that he wrote about curiosity, and I would certainly read another book about curiosity from a different author, but it's unlikely I would ever read another book by this author. The transformative power of attention to bring life to seemingly mundane things gave me more than a pause, it opened a sense of possibility into discovering the enigma of ennui, while uncovering the novelty inherent in normal. Staying curious allows us to never be bored again.

My message was clear: I worked at a real place, I only wanted five minutes on the schedule, I did not want a job. And I was polite. And so on. After counting 17 "Why"-questions in a row during one session, I was exhausted and lost my patience, yelling: It was, however, in the last chapter that I felt myself on the verge of unsettling an idea I have had shelved since my teens - that I will need to have interesting experiences to write interesting things. Okay, not everyone was equally charmed by my style in those days. I was a little scared of Nardino, but not scared enough to stop shouting out the window. He didn’t do any writing or typing, he didn’t carry piles of work home from the office each day. He talked. He sat in this elegant living room, on the couch, and talked all day. 14 In fact, the contracts I delivered were just the final act, formalizing all the talk. Sitting there on Calley’s sofa, it was clear that the business part of show business was all about conversation.The new office changed everything. Just like when you wear the right clothes for the occasion—when you wear a suit, you feel more confident and grown up—going to work in that real office changed my perspective. All of a sudden I felt like I had my own piece of real estate, my own franchise. The second part of the book rehashes that material in ‘seven ways to stay curious’. The idea is to provide practical guidelines to develop and maintain a spirit of curiosity. Leslie seems to veer a bit from his initial position of relentless advocacy for epistemic curiosity in that he aims for a balance between the diverse and epistemic, hence for a cognitive investment in detail and the big picture, in the mundane and the abstract, in theory and practice. Ron was kind of shy, and he seemed surprised by my phone call. I don’t think he really wanted to meet me. I said, “It’ll be fun, it’ll be relaxed, let’s just do it.” All you have to do is look to the Bible to see. The first story in the Bible after the story of creation, the first story that involves people, is about curiosity. The story of Adam, Eve, the serpent, and the tree does not end well for the curious. I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of curiosity meetings. It’s the thing I look forward to, and often the thing I end up enjoying the most. For me, when I’m learning from someone who is right in front of me, it’s better than sex. It’s better than success.

This guy got my attention. I opened the window a little more so I wouldn’t miss the rest of the conversation, and I quietly closed the curtain. But at Warner Bros., I discovered the value of curiosity—and I began what I consider my curiosity journey, following it in a systematic way. Curiosity goes in and out of vogue. Clearly the author of _Curious_ argues that curiosity is a good thing, with a few exceptions. This has not always been the case and is not consistent across cultures. The ancient Chinese dynasties, for instance, favored _exploitation_ over _exploration_. Whereas the Europeans embarked on long voyages and embraced (kind of) new cultures, the Chinese chose instead to remain a closed society. The Chinese are still catching up. I hope to accomplish three things in this book: I want to wake you up to the value and power of curiosity; I want to show you all the ways I use it, in the hopes that that will inspire you to test it out in your daily life; and I want to start a conversation in the wider world about why such an important quality is so little valued, taught, and cultivated today. By the time I was a young man, curiosity was part of the way I approached the world every day. My kind of curiosity hasn’t changed much since I eavesdropped on those guys at my apartment complex. It hasn’t actually changed that much since I was an antsy twelve-year-old boy.

CURIOSITY FAMILY DINNER BOOK CLUB

So there you have it. The first story, in the foundation work of Western Civilization—the very first story!—is about curiosity, and its message is: Don’t ask questions. Don’t seek out knowledge on your own—leave it to the people in charge. Knowledge just leads to wretchedness. The greatest way for a parent to use books to spark curiosity and inspire a love for learning is to spend lots of time talking and listening to your child,” says Stoufer. She suggests listening carefully and taking note of their interests. You could even follow up with your child’s teacher to find out what’s coming up at school so you can explore those topics more at home together. To some, questions like these feel challenging, even more so if you don’t know the answers. Rather than answering them, the adult simply asserts his own authority to brush them aside. Curiosity can make us adults feel a little inadequate or impatient—that’s the experience of the parent who doesn’t know why the sky is blue, the experience of the teacher trying to get through the day’s lesson without being derailed.