#69 Addy Graff: Ask Three Questions — Then Go Play

"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 a-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 people, cultures, and new experiences. From sampling adventurous foods like snails to practicing French in local shops, she demonstrates a fearless approach to discovery.

Addy reflects on lessons from school about thoughtful versus superficial questions and explains why the best ones invite stories rather than one-word answers. Encouraged by her parents to ask meaningful questions at the dinner table, she is already developing the habits of a lifelong learner.

Whether researching travel for the book she is writing or choosing the most interesting path while wandering a new city, Addy reminds us that curiosity is less about age and more about posture. One that keeps the world expansive, welcoming, and full of possibility. Follow along on her adventures through her Dad's Instagram account at https://www.instagram.com/austinkgraff/

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!

#66 Ken Woodward: What Happens When A Question Is Asked?

"Questions are not neutral; they're interventions." - Ken Woodward

What actually happens inside us when a question is asked?

In this solo episode of Curated Questions, Ken Woodward explores the neurological, emotional, and psychological impact of being asked a question.

Moving beyond techniques or tactics, Ken examines how questions hijack attention, trigger chemical responses in the brain, open unresolved mental loops, and sometimes activate fear or defensiveness.

Drawing from neuroscience and a powerful encounter during his Washington, D.C. walking project, he reflects on a question that has remained open for years: What real difference are you making?

This episode reveals why some questions feel like relief before they’re answered, why others linger long after they’re asked, and how certain questions don’t just reveal who we are, but actively shape who we become.

Questions, Ken argues, are not neutral requests for information. They are interventions. And understanding their power changes how we ask, how we answer, and how we live with them.

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

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

Keep questioning!

#65 Mitchell Osmond: Everything Is Hard - Choose Your Hard

"Literally everything in life is hard. The question is, what cost are you willing to pay? And you pay that willingly and happily because you value it." - Mitchell Osmond

In this episode of Curated Questions, Ken Woodward sits down with Mitchell Osmond, founder of Dad Nation Co., and host of the Dad Nation Podcast (Top 5% globally), to explore a hard but liberating truth: everything in life is difficult; the question is which difficulty we choose.

Mitchell shares the moment a single question at a funeral, “Are you living a life worthy of imitation?” forced him to confront his health, marriage, finances, and legacy. From that reckoning emerged a framework for growth rooted in discomfort, integrity, and honest self-inquiry.

Together, Ken and Mitchell examine why confidence is built through keeping promises, how avoiding hard questions quietly shapes our futures, and why legacy is forged at home as much as at work.

The conversation challenges the myth of ease, reframes struggle as a signal of alignment, and invites listeners to define success on their own terms. Ultimately, this episode is a call to stop outsourcing meaning, and to choose the hard that leads to a life worth living.

Mitchell is launching a new group coaching program, the High Performance Husband Accelerator! All the details can be found at https://www.dadnationco.com/accelerator

Mitchell is offering The Connection Code as a gift. 50 questions to spark the fun and get the fire back is available at https://www.dadnationco.com/code

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

Keep questioning!

#64 Ken Woodward: What Questions Are You Carrying Forward? Reflections on 2025

"What are the questions you will be carrying into the year, such that it will be a celebration of your becoming?" - Ken Woodward

This year-end Curated Questions episode is a reflective curation of the questions that shaped several conversations throughout 2025. Rather than offering a rapid recap of every episode, Ken highlights a handful of moments that reveal how intentional questioning can clarify purpose, interrupt unhelpful patterns, and guide meaningful becoming.

Across stories from entrepreneurs, scientists, artists, and personal reflection, the episode explores questions that ask us to define the change we seek to make, consider who we are becoming, and choose where to place our attention. Along the way, listeners are reminded that good questions often emerge only after many imperfect ones, that perspective shapes dignity and connection, and that small mental reframes can act as powerful resets.

As the year closes, the episode becomes an invitation: to name the questions that mattered most in 2025, to carry one forward with intention into 2026, and to trust that a better world is built by those willing to keep questioning.

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

Ensure to subscribe to the Curated Questions Dispatch weekly newsletter on Substack.

Keep questioning!

#62 Haru Yamada: Flashlights, Lanterns, and the Way We Listen

"Not being a hundred percent sure all the time is a weird strength." - Haru Yamada

In this episode of Curated Questions, Ken Woodward is in conversation with Dr. Haru Yamada, a sociolinguist, intercultural communication scholar, and author of Kiku: The Japanese Art of Good Listening, to explore what it really means to listen. Haru traces her early understanding of questions back to age four, when she moved from Tokyo to New York and had to use questions as a tool for language, belonging, and survival.

Together, they unpack how culture shapes communication: English often rewards “flashlight” questioning, the precise, content-driven clarity, while Japanese culture tends to favor a “lantern” approach that illuminates context, relationship, and what isn’t said. Haru also shares the harrowing accident that reshaped her understanding of listening as a health practice, linking felt-heard experiences to relational, mental, and even physical well-being.

In a noisy, multitasking world, this conversation reframes listening as an active, life-giving skill, and a compass for navigating each other with empathy.

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

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#44 AI Alan Turing: What Machines Can’t Imitate - On Questions, Doubt, and the Discipline of Curiosity

"I suspect beauty comes when a question both sharpens and enlarges your vision." - AI Alan Turing

In this special episode, we step back to a cold December night in 1951 and into the warm, wood-paneled room of The Britons Protection, a historic Manchester pub. Across the table sits Alan Turing, the mathematician, wartime codebreaker, and one of the founding figures of computer science, who is brought to life through an AI simulation.

Best known for his role at Bletchley Park during World War II, Turing devised techniques and machines, including the Bombe, that cracked the German Enigma code and helped shorten the war by years. His groundbreaking 1936 paper on “computable numbers” introduced the concept of the universal machine, and became the theoretical foundation for modern computers. Later, at the University of Manchester, he advanced early computing, explored artificial intelligence, and even pioneered mathematical biology.

Our imagined conversation, grounded in historical detail and Turing’s own writings, delves into his enduring fascination with questions: how to ask them, when to abandon them, and why some are worth carrying for a lifetime. We discuss the interplay between beauty and inquiry, the discipline required to avoid seductive but unproductive lines of thought, and the place of doubt as an essential human strength.

We also revisit his famous “imitation game” — now known as the Turing Test — and consider the boundaries of machine intelligence, the dangers of mistaking simulation for genuine dialogue, and the questions that only humans can keep alive, all while wrestling with the meta question, "Is this machine thinking?"

This episode blends history, philosophy, and imagination while inviting you to consider what it means to think, to doubt, and to remain fully human in an age of advancing machines.

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

Keep questioning!