Curated Questions: Conversations Celebrating the Power of Questions
Hosted by Ken Woodward, Curated Questions is a thought-provoking podcast that celebrates the art and science of asking profound questions. This podcast is for curious minds who understand that the right question can unlock new perspectives and drive personal growth.
What to Expect
Insightful Conversations: Experts from diverse fields share their journey in mastering the craft of inquiry, revealing how it has transformed their lives and careers.
Practical Techniques: Gain valuable skills to improve your questioning abilities, applicable in both personal and professional settings.
Thought-Provoking Topics: Explore how questions shape leadership, personal transformation, and societal discourse.
Why Listen?
In an age of abundant information, Curated Questions reminds us that true wisdom lies in asking better questions. This podcast will help you:
1. Enhance critical thinking
2. Improve communication
3. Gain new perspectives on complex issues
4. Develop a nuanced understanding of the world
Join Ken Woodward and his guests as they explore the transformative power of thoughtful inquiry. Curated Questions is more than just a podcast – it's an invitation to embrace curiosity, challenge assumptions, and unlock your full potential through the art of asking better questions.
Subscribe now and embark on a journey to master the craft of inquiry, one question at a time.
Website: CuratedQuestions.com
IG/Threads/YouTube: @CuratedQuestions
What We Stop Seeing Once We Have A Name For It | Ken Woodward #108
"Same cells. A different question. And a different answer.” - Ken Woodward
A friend told me about a question they were asked: What is your wake? My body jolted before I had a single thought. Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake: On Blackness and Being had already broken that word open for me: the track behind a ship, the watch kept over the dead, coming up out of sleep. I couldn’t hear it as one thing anymore.
That sent me looking at other words I treat as single things, and I landed on one I use every day: brain. In September, a Stanford team published a study in Nature Neuroscience finding that the brain begins as two separate groups of cells, one building the front and one building the back. One organ, two beginnings. Their work points to how a familiar word and a long-held assumption can shape what we expect to find, and how a different question opened the answer.
From there I go back to the streets of Washington, D.C., and the word I wore on my chest for two years: Brown. Strangers kept stopping me to ask who it included, and each brought a meaning I hadn’t put there. Then back to my early twenties, standing lookout on a submarine in the Caribbean, watching a glowing green wake trail behind us. A memory that hasn’t changed, but no longer stands alone.
This episode is about the words we stop opening, and what we stop noticing because we already have a name for it. What word have I been letting stay one thing?
This Curated Questions episode can be found on all major platforms and at CuratedQuestions.com.
Be sure to subscribe to the weekly Curated Questions Dispatch newsletter for more fun with questions and curiosity! (https://substack.com/@curatedquestions (https://substack.com/@curatedquestions?))
Keep questioning!
29 Oct 2026
What Do We Owe The Things We Inherit? | Ken Woodward #107
"The dead don't get a vote, so the living write their lines for them, and the person writing the line is usually the same person who needs the money." - Ken Woodward
Mom handed me a plastic baggie with a ring and a note card. When she was twelve, her dying step-grandfather let her pick something from his shaving bag, and she chose his first wedding ring. Years later, a jeweler told her the ruby wasn’t real. Three weeks after Mom gave it to me, I gave it to my daughter.
This episode asks where I find value, and who gets to decide. I revisit my conversation with Rob Walker from episode 61 and his Significant Objects experiment, where invented stories turned thrift-store finds into collectibles.
Anil Seth’s work on perception helps me ask what changes when something isn’t what I believed, and what doesn’t.
Then I turn the questions on myself: my great-grandfather’s gold-tipped walking stick that I hold but don’t own, Jerry Colonna’s question about complicity, and what I’m willing to ask of the next generation.
This Curated Questions episode can be found on all major platforms and at CuratedQuestions.com.
Be sure to subscribe to the weekly Curated Questions Dispatch newsletter for more fun with questions and curiosity! (https://substack.com/@curatedquestions (https://substack.com/@curatedquestions?))
Keep questioning!
22 Oct 2026
What Would You Do If You Were Me? | Ken Woodward #106
"I sat there with them and realized I had no story to trade. Not a faded one. None." - Ken Woodward
With the election less than two weeks away, I caught myself asking how those knuckleheads could vote that way. Underneath it: I would never do that if I were them.
It starts with an observation from Jason Pargin about a particular question that is often misinterpreted and a couple others that sound alike. What would you do? What would you do in my shoes? What would you do if you were me?
I tell the story of my turn from straight-ticket Republican to bright blue, and the six months in 2016 when new friendships showed me how little I understood about lives I thought resembled mine.
Drawing on Melissa Harris-Perry’s Sister Citizen, Thomas Nagel’s idea of moral luck, and research on deep canvassing, I ask how much credit I can take for changing, and what I owe the people who pay for a vote.
It closes with sonder and a question: What don’t I know about the life behind this choice?
This Curated Questions episode can be found on all major platforms and at CuratedQuestions.com.
Be sure to subscribe to the weekly Curated Questions Dispatch newsletter for more fun with questions and curiosity! (https://substack.com/@curatedquestions (https://substack.com/@curatedquestions?))
Keep questioning!
Inside a recent episode
From Goals to Puzzles: How Questions Outperform OKRs in Real Teams! | Radhika Dutt #60
Published 4 Dec 2025 · Transcript excerpt
[…] What will we do next? But, you know, at the very beginning, I used to use this format, but like we don't even use those formal questions anymore. It's become a way of thinking about it. After every interview, we start thinking about what worked well, what didn't, what have we learned from this? […]
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