PODCAST · society
Choose to be Curious
by Lynn Borton
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. Now syndicated and available via Pacifica RadioNetwork.
Episodes
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Ep. #345: Curiosity, Music-Making & Peace-Building, with Diego Carneiro
Diego Carneiro is a Brazilian-born cellist. He’s had a wide and wonderful musical career, including performance, conducting and composition. But what makes him special is his role as an ambassador of peace and the arts – opening both ears and hearts through the bigness of his own. Diego...
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Ep. #344: No Do-Overs in Paradise, with Stephen Collector
Photograph and author Stephen Collector’s career has been an exercise in curiosity and sustained attention. A lifetime of being outside, looking closely at landscapes, animals, and people, noticing what others walk past. Stephen Collector: https://www.stephencollector.com Theme music by Sean...
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Ep. #343: Curiosity & Biomimicry: Learning from the Genius of Nature, with Sara El Sayed
Biomimicry is “the conscious emulation of nature’s genius.” What might we learn by attending to nature's solutions? Sara Aly El Sayed, Director of the Biomimicry Center at Arizona State University, has thoughts! Biomimicry Center: https://globalfutures.asu.edu/biomimicry-center/ Theme music by…
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Ep. #342: Curiosity in Communications & PR, with Greg Abel
When I wanted to think about curiosity in communications and PR – in the professional work of finding effective ways to tell our stories to one another, under all sorts of circumstances – I knew Greg Abel was the guy to talk to. Greg Abel: https://www.abelcommunications.com Theme music by Sean...
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Ep. #341: Ready or Not: Curiosity & Emergency Preparedness, with Davyne Dial
What might choosing to be curious about the unthinkable offer? Davyne Dial is general manager at WPVM radio in Asheville, NC. Hurricane Helene taught her we should all be more curious about the very things we don't want to think about. WPVM 103.7, Radio Asheville: https://wpvmfm.org Theme music…
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Ep. #340: In the Mix: Curiosity, Unsureness & AI, with Maggie Jackson
Be honest: how often do you reflexively defer to AI? What if that same system told you it had some uncertainty about its answers? What would be different, and why? Author and journalist Maggie Jackson and I dig into what happens when we shuffle the certainty deck and reinsert unsureness in AI…
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Ep. #339: Untrammeled Curiosity & Civic Thought, with Stephanie Almeida Nevin
The Yale Center for Civic Thought is dedicated to encouraging thoughtful public discourse and civically responsible intellectual life by helping students practice disagreement, curiosity, and thinking without the pressure to perform. Stephanie Almeida Nevin is executive director of the Center for...
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Ep. #338: Make It Your Own: Autotelic Curiosity, with Pierre-Yves Oudeyer
Researcher Pierre-Yves Oudeyer and his team are studying autotelic curiosity, that marvelous ability to self-generate and self-select our own learning objectives, goals or games. They design robots to learn like babies... Pierre-Yves Oudeyer: https://www.pyoudeyer.com Theme music by Sean Balick;...
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C2BC-337 BONUS Analogies with James Fuller
Sometimes we just get carried away with the Big Jar of Wannabe Analogies. And so it was this time: we were into it!
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Ep. #336: Curiosity & Life-Long Kindergartner, with Lakshmi
What do you think of when you think of "kindergarten"? What about the prospect of being a life-long kindergartner? Join me and Lakshmi as we lean into what makes that mindset so rich and why returning to those roots is wise and wonderful. Check out Lakshmi & NoomaLooma: https://www.noomalooma.com...
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Ep. #335: The Hidden Power of Questions, with Lani Watson
Philosopher Lani Watson’s new book "Q: The Hidden Power of Questions in a World That Wants Answers" invites us to wrestle with unaskable and unanswerable questions to understand the real power of our questioning practices. Lani Watson: https://www.philosophyofquestions.com Theme music by Sean...
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Ep. #334: Curiosity & I, with O'Nell Agossa
O'Nell Agossa has a personal pact: curiosity is who he is. His first book is part memoir, part allegorical road trip buddy story, a thoughtful, slightly trippy, poignant tale of self-discovery. Curiosity & I: Let Curiosity Guide You is a novel about research and theory -- but mostly it's a...
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Ep. #333: Curiosity, Architecture & Legacy, with Alexander Josephson
How does curiosity inform architecture? How do architects' designs elicit curiosity? And what stories do they leave behind for the future to unpack? Toronto-based architect Alexander Josephson sees curiosity at the center of anything done well. Alexander Josephson is founder of Toronto-based...
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Ep. #332: Curiosity, Faith & Believing in Everything, with Jen Dary
In her book I Believe in Everything: A Memoir of Illness, Motherhood and Magic, Jen Dary chronicles her experience with a brain tumor. It's a story of wonder, unknowing, uncertainty, belief -- and curiosity. Jen Dary: https://www.jendarywriter.com Theme music by Sean Balick; “The Big Ten” by...
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Ep. #331: Great Question: The Art of the Ask & Getting More of What You Really Want, with Larry Robertson
Larry Robertson makes the case: we aren’t just a “questioning species”, questions are the source of our flourishing. When we learn to use them well, we all benefit. Larry Robertson: https://lrspeaks.com Theme music by Sean Balick; “Great Great Lengths” by The Balloonist, via Blue Dot Sessions.
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Ep. #330: Curiosity & A [New] American Dream, with Philippa Pham Hughes
Happy Semiquincentennial! Washington DC-based social sculptor, speaker, and writer Philippa Pham Hughes and I luxuriate in curiosity, this crazy big milestone, and letting ourselves dream about the next 250 years. Theme music by Sean Balick; “Cradle Rocks” by Nursery, via Blue Dot Sessions.
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Ep. #329A Toes in the Grass
I know I'm relaxed when I'm barefoot in the grass. Something about the smell. The slightly damp, uneven texture under my feet. The associated breeze and bird song. It pulls me fully into the moment, settles me. So I'm putting my toes in the proverbial grass this month. Here are some great re-airs...
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Ep. #329: Curiosity & the Come Together Music Project, with Shaka Mitchell
Shaka Mitchell says, “I have seen firsthand how sharing a song can shortcut barriers and spark curiosity about perspectives vastly different from our own…"At a time when we can use all the connective tissue we’ve got, why not turn to something as fundamental as music to build our curiosity…
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Ep. #328: Curiosity in Raccoons, with Hannah Griebling
The research made headlines: the raccoon raiding your garbage can might just be solving puzzles for the fun of it. Animal behavior scientist Hannah Griebling's work focuses on raccoon cognition and human-wildlife conflict. Short version: they win. They love the challenge. The masked bandit as a...
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Ep. #327: In a Good Place, with Leidy Klotz
Have you ever noticed how much a space influences how you feel? How a place can put you in a good place...or not? How might we design and inhabit spaces that make choosing curiosity easier? Leidy Klotz offers tips to navigate the spaces around us, making both the best of them and feeding the best...
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Ep. #326: Marking Our 10th Anniversary, with Lynn Borton
Ep. #326: Marking Our 10th Anniversary, with Lynn Borton by Lynn Borton
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Ep. #325: Dance Your PhD: Curiosity & Synchrony, with Manisha Biswas
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...
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Ep. #324: Sister Cities: Pairing Curiosity & Trust, with Fred Blanton
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…
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Ep. #323: There Are Clues Everywhere, with Amber Wiley
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…
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Ep.# 322: Not Knowing, with Lady Borton
Lady Borton has spent many years living and working in Việt Nam, providing relief service 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 me, “Because I don't know…
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Ep.# 321: Curiosity & Purpose Commons, with TeRay Esquibel
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:...
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Ep. #320: Wikipedia & Making Time for Curiosity, with Lisa Seitz Gruwell
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...
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Ep. #319: Curiosity & the Essential Question of News, with Art Cullen
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. He has a lot to say to and about the people and place he clearly loves, and mourns. A place he knows so well, and yet still...
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Ep. #318: Curiosity & The Humane Space, with Lauren Henkin
I don't know about you, but sometimes the curiosity just isn't there. So I "fake it until I make it"-- I act like 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 the...
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Ep. #317: Chronolog & Time-Lapse Curiosity, with Ky Wildermuth
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...
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Ep. #316: We of Action: Curiosity in Activism, with Micaela Pond
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. WOFA: https://wofava.org Theme music...
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Ep. #315: Late Bloomer Living: Curiosity & Play, with Yvonne Marchese
Yvonne Marchese is the lovely and effervescent host of Late Bloomer Living a weekly podcast devoted to redefining what's possible in midlife and beyond. She's a self-described age agitator, play instigator and believer in do-overs on a journey of discovery around that aforementioned play -- which...
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Ep.#314: "Curiosity is the thing that drives you to figure out who you really are," with jimmy Hatch
Ep.#314: "Curiosity is the thing that drives you to figure out who you really are," with jimmy Hatch by Lynn Borton
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Ep.# 313: Curiosity, Kids & Learning to Learn, with Elizabeth Bonawitz
Kids are learning machines! But how do they do it? Cognitive scientist Elizabeth Bonawitz is helping us understand how children learn to learn and what role curiosity has to play in those processes. From dinner placemats to trading stickers for science facts, she finds creative ways to get at the...
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Ep. #312: Curiosity in Emergency Medicine, with Dr. Chris Ford
How does an emergency department doctor manage the chaotic swirl of unknowns that show up at their door every day? What are they to make of the needs that emerge from the complex socioeconomic soup in which we all swim? Is curiosity a tool of choice? And are there lessons the rest of us might…
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C2BC-311 BONUS: Malka Ranjana Kopell & Palma Joy Strand
...there was just too much goodness here, so I made the hard choice to move the analogies and lovely final reflections to an added clip. Theme music by Sean Balick; "Town Market" by Onesuch Village, via Blue Dot Sessions.
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Ep. #311: Civity: Engaging Others with Respect, Empathy & Curiosity, with Malka Ranjana Kopell & Palma Joy Strand
Malka Ranjana Kopell and Palma Joy Strand are co-founders of Civity, a word they created to describe a culture of deliberately engaging in relationships of respect and empathy with others who are different. They offer tools and trainings to help us all do just that. No surprise, curiosity plays…
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Ep. #310: Wine & A Taste for Curiosity, with Alicia Towns Franken
Sommelier and wine consultant Alicia Towns Franken embodies a tantalizing combination: wine --as another in my periodic series on curiosity and our senses--and an actual boots-on-the-ground effort to encourage and enable curiosity where barriers have long existed. Wine Unify:...
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Ep. #309: Curiosity & Re-Evaluating Failure, with Samuel West
Curiosity gets a lot of credit for success. For me, that raises an interesting inverse question: what about curiosity and failure? Who better to invite into that conversation than Samuel West, creator of Museum of Failure, a collection of failed products and services from around the world. Museum...
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Ep. #308: CheapNFreeDC: Curiosity, Passion & Purpose, with Estee Levine
Research tells us that by leaning into externally-focused curiosity – “what do I notice that the world needs?” – and internally-focused curiosity – “How might I be able to contribute?” – we can find meaning and a sense of purpose in our lives. We can find what lights us up. Estee Levine did just...
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Ep. #307A: Might Curiosity Hibernate?
I’m taking a little break in December. Call it some curiosity R&R — curiosity respite & re-airs. I’ll get a production break, and my radio audiences will continue to enjoy uninterrupted listening, thanks to Pacifica Radio Network, with four great C2BC Classic re-airs. We'll be back with a great...
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C2BC-307 Bonus: Analogies (6 min)
I couldn't fit everything in this week, so here is what Jack Laws and I drew from the Big Jar of Wannabe Analogies. #analogy Episode webpage: https://lynnborton.com/2025/11/27/curiosity-nature-journaling-with-john-muir-laws/
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Ep. #307: Curiosity & Nature Journaling, with John Muir Laws
"Slow down to the speed of wonder." ~ John Muir Laws This is an episode about nature journaling, but Jack would be the first to say: it isn't about the journal, it's about the journey. He's developed interdisciplinary programs that combine art with science and train us to observe the world with...
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Ep. #306: Skip the Small Talk, with Ashley Kirsner
Enough with the polite, front parlor pablum of the past -- and onward toward rich discussion, mindful discourse, self-disclosure, and – dare I say it? – curiosity! Wanting to do something about the epidemic of loneliness among her peers, Ashley Kirsner set out to find a way to help people build...
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Ep. #305: Curiosity & Creativitry: The Know-How, Practice & Mastery of Creativity, with Stan Lai
“Creativitry," writes legendary playwright Stan Lai in the preface to his new book of that name, "Doesn’t exist as a word. Just as all creative things do not exist -- until they do. "Rhymes with Artistry, and Chemistry, and Sorcery. "The know-how, practice and mastery of creativity." The overlap,...
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Ep. #304: Curious in Mind & Body, with Qudsiya Naqui
How might understanding the experiences of disability help us be more curious about our own and others' minds and bodies? And, most importantly, how might any of that help us be kinder and more patient with ourselves and each other? I’m profoundly grateful to legal scholar and disability...
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Ep. #303: Curiosity & Finding Good, with Brian Fretwell
Brian Fretwell's work grows out of a rich mix of neuroscience, anthropology, leadership and what you might call self-interested curiosity. Rather than obsessing about where we fell short and consoling ourselves we will learn from our mistakes, he encourages us to learn from our successes instead....
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Ep. #302: Curiosity at PechaKucha Night Knoxville, with Lila Honker & Matthew deBardelaben
What if there were a mechanism – a format – that kept novelty high, provided some assurance that the information being imparted was important (at least to someone), and that might tap into things we know perhaps a bit about? Wouldn’t that seem like a pretty great curiosity vehicle? I give you...
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Ep. #301: Birdability & Making Curiosity Accessible, with Cat Fribley
I've been thinking about being more curious about what accessibility around curiosity really means and entails. I was delighted to sit down with accessibility advocate and Birdablity executive director, Cat Fribley to explore the curiosity lessons to be learned from the organization -- and from...
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Ep. #300: Curiosity & Listening with the Energy of Fourteen Hearts, with Haru Yamada
“Kiku” is a Japanese word for listen. It is comprised of smaller characters that together, as my guest Haru Yamada puts it, “generate the secret alchemy of listening: an ear 耳 on the left and fourteen 十四 hearts 心 on the right …conjuring a person listening with the energy of fourteen hearts.”…
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Choose to be Curious have?
Choose to be Curious currently has 414 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Choose to be Curious about?
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. Now syndicated and available via Pacifica RadioNetwork.
How often does Choose to be Curious release new episodes?
Choose to be Curious publishes regularly with 414 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Choose to be Curious?
You can listen to Choose to be Curious on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Choose to be Curious?
Choose to be Curious is created and hosted by Lynn Borton.
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