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"The avoided question and the awaited question. Same person. Two sides of one ache." - Ken WoodwardNearly all of the research on curiosity studies the person asking. A new study out of New York Univer…

"The avoided questio…

"The avoided question and the awaited question. Same person. Two sides of one ache." - Ken WoodwardNearly 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 would ask you, and why. More than ninety-seven out of every hundred had an answer ready.In this solo episode, Ken sits in that other chair. He walks the eight kinds of questions people long to receive and …

"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 WoodwardIan told me he had gotten better …

"Ian thought a quest…

"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 WoodwardIan 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 asked one back. I knew that fear from the inside, so the two of us got on a call to dig in.This episode follows what we found. The scarcity in the house that raised him, and how a stretched mind cannot …

"The question was not broken. It was unfinished." - Ken WoodwardBuried in the introduction of the twentieth century's most famously unread book is the most precise dissection of a question ever writte…

"The question was no…

"The question was not broken. It was unfinished." - Ken WoodwardBuried 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 wording but from missing parts.We test the anatomy against the streets of Washington, D.C., including a backyard in Marshall Heights where a five-hour-and-forty-five-minute conversation revealed what sixty-…

"The smallest act of authorship is a question." - Ken WoodwardNine 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…

"The smallest act of…

"The smallest act of authorship is a question." - Ken WoodwardNine 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, which none of us has. Authorship is something smaller and more stubborn. It is the refusal to be only what the world wrote about us. And the smallest act of authorship, it turns out, is a question. The m…

" 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 RobertsonLarry …

" The more you pla…

" 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 RobertsonLarry 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 storytellin…

"The invitation is not to be right. It is to be willing." - Ken WoodwardThe small decisions we make without examination carry consequences we never see coming. Ken calls this the long tail. It does no…

"The invitation is n…

"The invitation is not to be right. It is to be willing." - Ken WoodwardThe 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 Dahl's collapse, a question posed by author Jason Pargin about what we would actually do in someone else's position, and a personal story from a church lobby that still lands hard years later, this episode…

"A good answer can close a loop. A good question opens one." - Ken WoodwardWhat 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 …

"A good answer can c…

"A good answer can close a loop. A good question opens one." - Ken WoodwardWhat 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 findings are worth sitting with. Domain-specific questions got sharper, more original, more complex. General questions did not improve. In some cases, they declined.Knowledge doesn't flatten curiosity. I…

"My tree was planted in a metal bucket." - Ken WoodwardSome 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 open…

"My tree was planted…

"My tree was planted in a metal bucket." - Ken WoodwardSome 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, Ken investigates the mourning that accompanies genuine personal growth. The mourning for the world you thought you believed in. The mourning for the person you were sure was good enough.Ken traces his ow…

"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 WoodwardWe live in a m…

"Some questions need…

"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 WoodwardWe 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…

"Claiming your agency to question is a renegade step into your full humanity." - Ken WoodwardApril 12, 2016, marked the first public demonstration of Kenneth Woodward's obsession with questions. A dec…

"Claiming your agenc…

"Claiming your agency to question is a renegade step into your full humanity." - Ken WoodwardApril 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 that cost him Sleep, to 1,300 conversations across 2,085 miles of Washington D.C. streets, to podcast conversations with some of the world's deepest thinkers, questions have been the through line.In this m…

"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 CaulkWhat happens when the questions leaders most need to ask are …

"It is easier simply…

"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 CaulkWhat 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 narratives by avoiding the hardest inquiries.In this conversation, Andrew and Ken explore how misinformation and disinformation actually work, why truth is more strategically sustainable than deception, …

"Those scripts are not Wisdom. They are load-bearing walls for other people's power." - Ken WoodwardEvery room has a question nobody asks. Sometimes that's a failure of courage. Sometimes it's somethi…

"Those scripts are n…

"Those scripts are not wisdom. They are load-bearing walls for other people's power." - Ken WoodwardEvery 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 senior stakeholder who wielded disruption as a weapon. The question that could have changed the outcome existed. It just never reached the person who needed to hear it.Drawing on that experience, a chance…