11:00 AM Pacific Time: Thursdays
Choose to Be Curious is a show all about curiosity. We talk about research and theory, but mostly it’s conversations about how curiosity shows up in work and life.
Hosted by Lynn Borton.
Manisha Biswas danced her way into my heart. She was the 2025 social science category winner of the Dance Your PhD contest – a prize she won for her interpretative performance of her thesis, “The Powerful Outcomes of Collective Synchrony”. The Dance Your PhD contest was launched in 2008 to help educate people about complex theories through interpretive dance. I … Continued
When the world feels like it’s breaking apart in a million places and even more pieces, I find myself wanting to learn from folks who are leaning into curiosity about the other, people who believe we can promote peace through what Sister Cities founder Dwight D. Eisenhower called “people-to-people diplomacy.” Fred Blanton is one of those people. Fred serves as … Continued
I’ve been wanting to do a show about curiosity and community engagement in urban planning for a long time. Amber Wiley’s Model Schools in the Model City: Race, Planning, and Education in the Nation’s Capital is a fascinating, densely-researched look at how Black Washingtonians drove urban planning and design policy for public education. The book is, … Continued
Lady Borton has spent many years living and working in Việt Nam, providing relief services during the war and collecting stories and history ever since — trying to make sense of the era, the place, the people — before the stories are lost to time or erasure. She wrote to me, “Because I don’t know … Continued
Do you have a sense of purpose? What does that mean to you? And, what place does curiosity have in finding and living one’s purpose? There’s a lot of research going on around purpose. Purpose Commons is moving that research into practice — and focusing it on youth. Purpose Commons’ executive director TeRay Esquibel and … Continued
As the world’s largest online information resource, Wikipedia knows a thing or two about how our curiosity shows up. I wondered: as our information landscape changes, how does Wikipedia adjust? And our curiosity? Lisa Seitz Gruwell, Chief Advancement Officer at Wikimedia Foundation, joined me to reflect on what’s worked and the importance of making time … Continued
Art Cullen is the editor and co-owner with his brother John of the Storm Lake Times Pilot, a weekly newspaper in that Northwest Iowa county seat – a town of about 12,000. In 2017, Art won the Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Writing “for editorials fueled by tenacious reporting, impressive expertise, and engaging writing that successfully challenged powerful corporate agricultural … Continued
I don’t know about you, but sometimes the curiosity just isn’t there for me. I “fake it until I make it”– I act like I’m curious. I behave in curious ways, in hopes the feelings will follow. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were an app for that? Enter The Humane Space. Lauren Henkin created … Continued
Chronolog is a way to generate time-lapse images of Earth, powered by your camera — and your curiosity. Used by organizations worldwide to monitor the environment and inspire our stewardship of our natural resources, this nifty citizen science effort capitalizes on our casual interest. Pretty clever. Theme music by Sean Balick; “A Catalog of Seasons” … Continued
Teacher Micaela Pond felt called in yet another direction following the first election of Donald Trump. She soon emerged as a formidable community organizer. I asked her to reflect on curiosity in the work of fighting authoritarianism through community action. Theme music by Sean Balick; “Spunk Lit” by Love & Weasel, via Blue Dot Sessions.
