#95 Dr. Lani Watson: Even Socrates Didn't Ask: On the Hidden Power of Questions

" This aporia, this state of confusion and bafflement, is actually a fantastically exciting, liberating, intellectually stimulating place to be because you're really facing something that you don't know that you thought you did." - Dr. Lani Watson

Dr. Lani Watson has spent her career on a question most of us never stop to ask. What is a question, and why does it hold such power?

Known online as The Questions Doctor, Lani is a philosopher and the author of Q: The Hidden Power of Questions in a World That Wants Answers. In this episode, we sit with the idea that questions are a kind of everyday magic. A power we all carry and rarely notice. They change our brains. They change our relationships. They shape the very answers we receive.

We talk about Socrates and the gift of not knowing. We talk about a world racing toward answers, and what we lose when we rush past the question. We talk about who gets to ask, and who does not.

Come sit with the questions a while. There is power in the asking, and it belongs to all of us.

This Curated Questions episode can be found on all major platforms and at CuratedQuestions.com.

Be sure to subscribe to the weekly Curated Questions Dispatch newsletter for more fun with questions and curiosity! (https://substack.com/@curatedquestions)

Keep questioning!

#93 Ken Woodward: Built to Reach, Not to Catch

"Nothing in us reports on an absence. No creature ever needed a sense for the path it did not walk." - Ken Woodward

More than sixty percent of Google searches now end without a single click. We type the question, read the summary, and leave. The trip is gone.

Neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff argues that curiosity needs a gap to switch on, and that learning deepens while the question stays open. The answer closes the window.

But the reaching is not our failure. Wanting the missing piece is old equipment, and it worked well for a very long time, because you used to have to walk over the ridge to find out. What changed is the hit rate. We catch every time now, in three seconds, and the machinery on the other side never gets to run.

This week we look at which gaps are worth keeping open, why resistance is the mechanism rather than the toll, and what ten years of a daily question taught me about the limits of my own idea.

This Curated Questions episode can be found on all major platforms and at CuratedQuestions.com.

Be sure to subscribe to the weekly Curated Questions Dispatch newsletter for more fun with questions and curiosity! (https://substack.com/@curatedquestions)

Keep questioning!

#85 Larry Robertson: What Will You Soon Realize You Already Know?

" 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 Question: The Art of the Ask and Getting More of What You Really Want, draws on more than 140 interviews spanning neuroscience, psychology, business, and the arts.

Larry believes we are not a storytelling species. We are a questioning species. He arrived at that conviction book by book, pattern by pattern, over two decades of research.

In this conversation, we explore the power of questions as a form of agency. We examine intellectual humility and what happens when you stop performing certainty. We discuss leadership, polarization, and the Braver Angels framework. We also unpack Larry's five-element Art of the Ask.

Questions are not a technique. They are a behavior. They are something you already know how to do. This conversation is a reminder to start practicing again.

This Curated Questions episode can be found on all major platforms and at CuratedQuestions.com.

Be sure to subscribe to the weekly Curated Questions Dispatch newsletter for more fun with questions and curiosity! (https://substack.com/@curatedquestions)

Keep questioning!