I was so serious about the curiosity conversations that I often spent a year or more trying to arrange a meeting with particular people. I would spend hours calling, writing letters, cajoling, befriending assistants. As I got more successful and busier, I assigned one of my staff to arrange the conversations—the New Yorker did a little piece on the job, which came to be known as “cultural attaché.” For a while, I had someone whose only job was to arrange the conversations. 17 Enjoyable read, and I learned a few things which is always nice. Still, I found the argument that modernity's abundant and easy-to-access information is a threat to curiosity to be pretty weak (I often imagined an old man shaking his fist at "things these days", and the phrase "first world problems" crossed my mind more than once). I think it's clear that people intrinsically interested in a topic will take off their gloves and delve into it no matter whether the answers they're looking for are easy to find or not. Further, what's wrong with masses of generally incurious people having easy answers at their fingertips? If the effort to find an answer doesn't exceed their mild curiosity, they may be just as happy to go on in complete ignorance on the topic, which offers no improvement on the human condition in general. I understand the author's concern is also about all of the garbage that threatens to distract us from potential "eureka!" moments, but this is how it's always been, HuffPo/TMZ or not. One needs to master more self-control if one truly wishes to achieve any goal, intellectual or otherwise. The author also admits that serendipity often plays a part in sparking curiosity- maybe the accidental stumble down wikipedia rabbit hole is one futuristic, inclusive version this. I felt like the author was aware that he was making a half-hearted argument on this point.

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. You can see some of that in T-Rex’s book choices. She’s got quite the collection. And this is the thing about books. It’s like leaping across lily pads. You might find one you like and from there you discover another and then maybe something in that leads you to one that’s a bit different. A journey of discovery without even setting foot outside your house. There’s just so much to learn and it’s all made so accessible by the clear, punchy writing and stunning artwork that we’re very much spoiled by when it comes to children’s books. Though I should add - not yet accessible enough in a world where not every child owns a book or has access to a library. Imagine if they did - imagine the great equalisers that books could one day be. Transporting us to other places types: diversive, epistemic and emphatic curiosity; epistemic main focus in the book, typically what Leonardo da Vinci did.

I was baffled by the entertainment business, and it seemed as if even many of the people in the entertainment business were baffled by it. It was hard to understand how movies and TV shows got made. It was definitely not a linear process. People seemed to be navigating in a fog, without instruments. I wanted to understand the distinction between a lawyer’s belief system and what he or she was good at. What was Bailey’s purpose in life, and how did that mesh with his talents?

Yes, it was. The position of a lot of theologians in the Middle Ages was that there was no need to be curious, because everything we needed to know was in the scriptures, or in Aristotle and Aquinas which had acquired the status of quasi-scripture. The idea was that there was no need to look any further than that. Curiosity, under Leslie’s careful examination, is revealed in a way that makes the reader, well, more curious. The book travels into the realms of the philosophical, historical, social and economical. It places curiosity at the crossroads where necessity and danger meet. It is an exploration that leaves the reader feeling like a cold war spy, bound to their dangerous duty to be curious yet cautious about how they reveal their motives. Calley, on the other hand, was one of the hippest guys in the world. He knew movie stars, he socialized with movie stars. He was highly literate—he read all the time. He sat on his couch, with ideas and decisions winging through his office all day long without rules or rigidity. I would recommend this book to parents or educators who would like to refresh some common sense reflections on why we work daily to create an environment of inquiry, and how we can keep it alive as adults as well. Curiosity can be trained, and nurtured, or stifled, depending on how much we work on it and feed it.I went right to the telephone, dialed 411, 2 and asked for the main number at Warner Bros.—I still remember it, 954-6000. 3 Whoever you are and whatever start you get in life, knowing stuff makes the world more abundant with possibility and gleams of light more likely to illuminate the darkness. It opens the universe a little.” p.193 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 ability to stimulate curiosity, on the other hand, can save lives, as Scheherazade experienced in the 1001 nights she told cliffhanger stories that needed to be finished before she was ready to die. Obviously, as a mother and teacher, I focus on stimulating curiosity, rather than punishing it, as it is part of effective learning. That's the theory, anyway. When I started writing again, I worried I would “run out” of ideas. At first, the ideas came fast — writing after a long break unleashed a torrent of pent-up ideas. I had accumulated years of lived experience to write about. But as I continued, I started worrying my creativity would dry up at some point. The second I finished a piece I was proud of I would think, what if I can’t do that again? That’s what my “I have to hand these papers over in person” line was, a pretext—it worked for me, it worked for the assistants, it even worked for the people I was visiting. “Oh, he needs to see me in person, sure.” 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. I would hand over the documents with graciousness and deference, and since it was the seventies, they’d always say, “Come in! Have a drink! Have a cup of coffee!”We hear the term “intellectual curiosity” bantered about so often these days. Ian Leslie goes beyond the rhetoric to remove any ambiguity about what this term really means and why it’s something that we need to embrace. He does so without preaching and also shows the reader HOW to accomplish the embrace. I flew home thinking he would be great at hosting this TV show. In those days, before reality TV and Nancy Grace and Greta Van Susteren, we were thinking of it as a miniseries. We did a deal with Bailey, we hired a writer, but in the end it never got made. His office was spacious, it had windows, it had two secretaries, and most important, it was right next to the executive suite—what I called the “royal” offices—where the president of Warner Bros. worked, as did the chairman, and the vice chairman. 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. I felt that rare sensation of believing that this book was written TO me, as it touched on themes very near and dear to me (i.e.- “daydreaming”).

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. Do you remember when you were young and put everything you touched in your mouth? Endlessly annoyed the living hell out of every adult within earshot with a barrage of ‘but whys’? And flat out just refused to accept, ‘because I said so”, as a suitable or worthy response. Well Ian Leslie, the author of Curious - The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends On It, is hoping you have not left that precocious and inquisitive little bugger behind.The book is divided into 3 parts. In the first part the author discusses curiosity early in life, types of curiosity, and the difference between puzzles and mysteries. The second part explores the history of curiosity and the importance of questions and knowledge. The third part describes seven ways to stay curious.⁣ Curiosity is recursive. It builds upon itself. If you want to become a more curious person, you need to start somewhere, slowly, and recognize that the more curiosities you pursue, the more curious you will become over time. Whenever you can connect real life to reading, your child will have a greater understanding of the world around them, says Stoufer. She recommends exploring books from the National Geographic Kids and Who Would Win? series to get started, then heading out for a walk around the neighborhood or nearby park to let curiosity — and discovery — run wild! 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.