" 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!

"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 between two kinds of questions: tool questions, which AI handles brilliantly, and threshold questions, which require something the machine cannot provide. Time. Risk. The sound of your own voice saying something true for the first time.

This is not an episode about the dangers of AI. It is an episode about the quiet cost of convenience, what we give up when we trade a live, risky question for a fast, polished answer. And what it looks like to protect the capacity for wonder in an age that makes outsourcing almost everything feel like efficiency.

Three practices. A few guardrails. And one question to carry with you when you close the machine.

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?

#81 Ken Woodward: What the Machine Can't Hold