You know what’s curious: throughout that entire time, no one ever called my bluff. No one said, “Hey, kid, just leave the contract on the table and get out of here. You don’t need to see Warren Beatty.”

Curiosity has always constituted an evolutionary advantage. In a complex world that’s even more true as it’s impossible to know what might be useful in the future. Hence it’s important to spread our cognitive bets, i.e. to be curious. Curiosity as a personality trait is a solid predictor of academic and professional success. Watching him was intoxicating. I thought, I want to live in this man’s world. Who needs a life of brown accordion files? I want to work on a sofa, follow my curiosity, and make movies. 15 First, my life had just changed forever. When I reported for work as a legal clerk that Monday, they gave me a windowless office the size of a small closet. At that moment, I had found my life’s work. From that tiny office, I joined the world of show business. I never again worked at anything else.

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While some educational theorists have argued that filling children with facts stifles creativity (it's the basic message of TED Talks' most popular video, by Sir Ken Robinson), neuroscience has demonstrated that true creativity depends on being able to make novel associations among many different facts and concepts, and that a knowledge-based education is critical for that. I already explained that first step, insisting on meeting everyone whose legal contracts I delivered. I took two things from my success with that. First, people—even famous and powerful people—are happy to talk, especially about themselves and their work; and second, it helps to have even a small pretext to talk to them. 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!” PERSONAL TAKEAWAY:__ _Ask questions._ As technologies like Google make answers increasingly easier to access, success is no longer measured by controlling information (having answers). Instead, success is going to be gained by those individuals who ask the right questions. Fortunately, I am not shy about asking questions which is probably a symptom (and a cause) of my curiosity. The author traverses the topic through research and many stories and examples. He discusses the impact of modern digital technology on curiosity and presents a very strong argument for the importance of knowledge and knowledge-based education in supporting and cultivating curiosity. My only complaint is that I felt it was light on content and wish it delved deeper into the topics discussed.⁣

Digital technologies are severing the link between effort and mental exploration. The web erodes our penchant for epistemic curiosity focused on understanding. “Google can answer anything you want, but it can’t tell you what you ought to be asking."Illustration: Erika Meza There’s also something about children’s books that makes them such a safe space. The serpent replies with what is surely the most heedless bravado in history—unafraid of the knowledge of good and evil, or of God. He says to Eve, “You will not certainly die. For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 9 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. Very gradually, starting with that first law clerk’s job at Warner Bros., I consciously made curiosity a part of my routine.

Eve visits the tree, and discovers that “the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom.” 10The new office changed everything. Just like when you wear the right clothes for the occasion—when you wear a suit, you feel more confident and grown up—going to work in that real office changed my perspective. All of a sudden I felt like I had my own piece of real estate, my own franchise.

Something else happened during that year of being a legal clerk that was just as important. It was the year I started to actively appreciate the real power of curiosity. I think it’s because no matter what happens - and some are really quite hard-hitting - they end with a note of hope. Ultimately, a book wraps its arms around you and says, “it will all be okay”. Funny, big-hearted books do this x 1 ZILLION. When I’ve been overwhelmed, I’ve curled up with my two little people and a funny book at story-time and it’s been just the thing I needed. Rob Biddulph is always a winner for us and so is this new one - This Book has Alpacas (and Bears) by Emma Perry and Rikin Parekh. I hope T-Rex will do that for someone somewhere too. Sparking curiosity So that is where Rosicrucianism came from, and in this book Francis Yates argues that the early enlightenment – the emergence of science in the 16th century – drew on part of that tradition. It’s widely agreed that Francis Yates pushed this idea too far, into realms that can no longer be upheld. Nevertheless, the idea that there was some kind of link between the development of science and the emergence of secret brotherhoods in the early 17th century has to be taken seriously. You see this motif of secret brotherhoods appear again and again among the writers of that time who then went on to be influential in the history of science, particularly Francis Bacon.ONE THURSDAY AFTERNOON, THE SUMMER after I graduated from the University of Southern California (USC), I was sitting in my apartment in Santa Monica with the windows open, thinking about how to get some work until I started law school at USC in the fall. Calley would say, “Grazer, come sit in my office.” He’d put me on the couch, and I’d watch him work. His basic contention is that curiosity is what has driven scientific and cultural advancement, and that that this powerful impulse in humans may be under threat by the Internet and certain ill-founded educational philosophies.