What Makes Us Curious? | Dr Mario Livio

Dr. Mario Livio is an internationally known astrophysicist, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a best-selling author, and a popular speaker. In his new book “Why? What Makes Us Curious”, Dr Livio delves into the subtleties and nuances of what constitutes our human capacity for curiosity and uses examples from Leonardo Da Vinci, Richard Feynman & many more to demonstrate the manifestation of curiosity throughout history. Expect to learn the different types of curiosity and their roles in our lives, how you can cultivate a more curious mindset for yourself & those around you, and who Dr Livio considers to be the most curious individual ever to have lived. Further Reading: Why? What Makes Us Curious - http://amzn.eu/d/i0VNbPW Follow Dr Livio on Twitter - https://twitter.com/Mario_Livio - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/modern-wisdom/id1347973549 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0XrOqvxlqQI6bmdYHuIVnr?si=iUpczE97SJqe1kNdYBipnw Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Chris Williamson?

  Hello friends. This week I'm sitting down with Dr Mario Livio. He's an internationally known astrophysicist, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, bestselling author and a popular speaker. His new book, Why, What Makes Us Curious, is a bit of a departure away from his previous topics on physics and astrophysics. And it's really, really interesting. The field of curiosity is a lot deeper and more complex than I thought. Curiosity sounds like one word. Turns out that it is a whole host of very different and subtle things that all contribute together to manifest what we consider to be curiosity.

• 0:48Chris Williamson?

  So through the lens of the great Richard Feynman, Leonardo da Vinci and many other famous historic examples, Dr Livio manages to lay out a lovely landscape for us to understand curiosity in this podcast. I owe him an awful lot for finding time to come and speak to me. I'm trying to avoid too much public audible masturbation here while I introduce this particular podcast, but feeling very excited about the next few months, I have booked, without a doubt, some of the best minds on the planet to come on this podcast. Mr Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind is coming on. Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Advertising, which is one of the biggest advertising companies in the world.

• 1:33Chris Williamson?

  Tiago Forte of the Praxis blog, plus an awful lot of other guests that I can't even talk about yet. And on top of that, myself, Jonny and Youssef are doing our first ever live podcast this week for Communicorp's Christmas conference. Now, Communicorp own Smooth FM, capital FM, in a number of different areas, along with a few other broadcasting companies. And for some reason, they are allowing us to sit down in front of all of their marketing executives this Thursday and talk about influence, the podcasting platform generally, and doing a live Q and A on stage. In front of an audience at the Tyneside Cinema. So although my sphincter is puckering with the nerves,

• 2:16Chris Williamson?

  I'm absolutely buzzing to get stuck in and hopefully, as long as they let me do it, I'll actually be publishing the podcast live through this channel as well. In the meantime, we're going to find out what makes us curious. Here's Dr. Livio.

• 2:47Chris Williamson?

  Mario Livio, welcome to Modern Wisdom. How are you today?

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Thank you. My pleasure.

• 2:54Chris Williamson?

  It's really good to have you on. So when I was having a look at the different options to go through for this podcast with yourself, your backlog of books is, it's pretty vast. There's an awful lot that we could have decided to cover. But your most recent book is on curiosity. That's right.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Correct, yes.

• 3:15Chris Williamson?

  So.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  It's called Why, What Makes Us Curious?

• 3:19Chris Williamson?

  That's a departure from the maths and physics based books that you've published before. What's the reason for this move towards this? What, what particular curiosity drove you to write about curiosity?

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Right. So indeed it is a departure. I am an astrophysicist myself and all my previous books were either about, you know, physics, mathematics, things like that, astrophysics. I'm neither a psychologist nor a neuroscientist. So indeed this is a departure, but what happened was that I was always and still am an extraordinarily curious person.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  And about five years ago or so, a little more, I just became extremely curious about curiosity itself. So I spent the last five years or so, um, you know, reading almost every article that, you know, about research that was done on curiosity in both psychology and neuroscience. Uh, I interviewed many researchers that work in this field. Actually, not that many, because not that many work in this field specifically. Um, and I visited some labs and this resulted in this book.

• 4:42Chris Williamson?

  Is it, to a broad degree, quite new ground then, that you've been doing, putting the work of what is curiosity together? You said that there doesn't appear to be a vast body of knowledge that already exists. Was, did this require a lot of work on your part?

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Yes, a lot of work on my part. I, I mean, look, uh, let's face it, I mean, the researchers in psychology and in neuroscience, they do the real work on curiosity. Uh, what I have done was trying to put together, um, you know, some sort of a summary of the type of work that they have been doing. Um, I, I did discover that, you know, some of them are so immersed in, um, very, very specific topics regarding curiosity that, um, you know, sometimes even they are not fully aware of the whole picture, you know, in, in terms of the research done in this field.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  So hopefully my book, you know, does serve some purpose of, uh, uh, trying to give the slightly bigger picture, even if by a non-specialist.

• 5:50Chris Williamson?

  I suppose that coming from outside of the field affords you the learner's mind and allows you to see everything with a fresh perspective, which obviously means that you're able to draw from all of the different subject areas. So if we're going to begin with the book, then where does it start? Does it begin with what makes us curious or what curiosity is? Did you manage to define curiosity?

• 6:15Speaker 01

  So it starts more with some sort of a definition, but the definition turned out to be more complex than I originally thought. And it was, in fact, psychologist Daniel Berlin, who some years back defined at least four types of curiosity. And I started with that. There are actually, by the way, more than the four that he defined, but that is a good starting point. So I started with that by defining these four types, which I'm happy to explain what they are, in order to, you know, really get more later, more deeply into what each one of them means.

• 6:57Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely. Let's fire away.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Yes, so the four types that he described were perceptual curiosity. Again, the names are names given by him. Perceptual curiosity is the curiosity we feel when something surprises us or when something doesn't quite agree with what we know or think we know. Or, you know, when something is ambiguous. We don't know, is it that or is it that? Think, for example, I don't know, of some children in some remote village in Tibet seeing a white person for the first time. That's perceptual curiosity. Then there is epistemic curiosity.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  That's a curiosity that drives all scientific research. It drives also the best works of art. This is when we really ask why and try to understand things more deeply. You know, everything I've done in astrophysics was driven by this type of epistemic curiosity. Then there are two other types. Berlin actually put them on axis, you know, like axis in mathematics, you know. So on the axis that's perpendicular to the one I just described, he put two other types of curiosity. One, he called "diversive curiosity". Um. That's maybe the most common manifestation of that is,

• 8:28Speaker 01

  you know, young people today who are constantly on their cell phones checking for text messages. Uh. Basically, you know, it's the type of things we do toward of boredom uh and things like that. Or, you know, when somebody's uh waiting impatiently to see what the new iPhone model will look like.

• 8:48Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Um. And then there is specific curiosity. Specific curiosity is curiosity about a very specific thing, you know, like uh, uh, who was it that wrote uh the dead, the old man in the sea? Or uh, uh, what was the name of the actress in the French movie we saw last week, you know, and things like that? Um. So that's, these are the four types that he described.

• 9:17Chris Williamson?

  Okay, and do those tend towards particular personality types? Was there a correlation that was shown between why someone may have a particular kind of curiosity?

• 9:29Speaker 01

  I think all people have to some degree all of these four. I I mean, you know, I'm sure you had times when you tried to, you were curious about something very specific. You you you you know, you wanted to remember, oh, what what was it that we did there, you know, at that restaurant or whatever? So that's specific curiosity. Uh. Epistemic curiosity, okay, scientists maybe do more of that than others. Uh, or researchers of any types, uh, because they really try to answer, you know, this how and why questions perhaps more broadly than others, but others also have times when, you know, they try to research something.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Um. Perceptual curiosity, everybody felt, I mean, everybody was sometimes surprised by something. They thought they know something and they turned out to be something else and so so there is no question uh that that you do that. And diverse if curiosity, you know, this thing you do not to be bored. I mean, at this point, I mentioned young people before, but in fact. We're all like that now. I mean, you know, you enter any coffee shop and half the people, if not more, on their cell phones checking for things. So, yeah, so, so everybody experiences all these four types, but some maybe experience more of one type than others.

• 10:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I get that. I understand. Is there a role that each of these types of curiosity play within people's lives? Did you find anyone who was incredibly proficient in one area?

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Well, like I said, I mean, some people are more epistemically curious than others. I mean, in particular, you know, great scientists who devote their entire life to research a particular topic, they are very epistemically curious in that respect. So, so that, of course, does define some types of people. I, you know, I devote in the book two chapters to two of the people that I regard as being, you know, perhaps the most curious people in history. One is Leonardo da Vinci and the other is physicist Richard Feynman. And, you know,

• 11:52Speaker 01

  for example, in the case of Leonardo, which is better known perhaps, he was curious just about everything. You know, he was interested in every natural phenomena, you know, of course, in the arts, in, you know, one day he could investigate why the sky is blue and on another, what is the length of the tongue of the woodpecker? On another day, you know, he was interested in perspective, in painting or on light and shadow. So really, literally every day almost, he was researching something. So there aren't too many people like that, quite like that. There was

• 12:36Speaker 01

  only one topic, by the way, which he wasn't interested in, that was politics.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and that was very wise on his part because I remind you, he lived at the same time of the Borgias and they basically killed everybody who was interested in politics. He, on the other hand, managed to get funded by them. So clearly, this was very clever on his part.

• 12:58Chris Williamson?

  You think that that was a conscious choice by Da Vinci to avoid getting himself embroiled in a potentially existential threat by using his cognitive capacity to actually get stuck into politics?

• 13:10Speaker 01

  I'm sure it played some role in that. I mean, it is also true that, you know, history wasn't too interesting for him compared to other topics. But, but yes, politics, he definitely wasn't. And I believe that conscious choice, you know, played a part in that.

• 13:31Chris Williamson?

  So you touched on Richard Feynman as well. Why, what made him a good case study for curiosity?

• 13:36Speaker 01

  So, so look, Feynman, first of all, okay, he was an incredible physicist, of course, Nobel laureate in physics. So first of all, in physics itself, in physics itself, unlike many others who are very focused in a particular field of research, Feynman worked in every area of physics. You know, he almost didn't prioritize. He could one day work on quantum electrodynamics, which, you know, is this theory of the subatomic world and light. And on another, he could work on, I don't know, the friction between our shoes and the floor, things like that. So really very, very different topics and

• 14:18Speaker 01

  they all seemed interesting to him. So that's one thing. But in addition to that, you know, he was a bongo drummer, even went to Brazil to study, you know, drumming. He was an expert in safe cracking, for example.

• 14:36Chris Williamson?

  Was he really in breaking into safes?

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, he was.

• 14:40Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 14:41Speaker 01

  And even at one point, he even, he had a friend who was Jerry Zortian, who was a painter, and he wanted to learn how to draw. So he came to this agreement with Zortian that, you know, one week he would teach Zortian physics and the other week...

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Zortian would teach him how to draw and they did this for about a year or so. So it was even interesting in drawing, he was interested in biology. He actually spent a whole year studying with people from the biology department about things in biology. So he was again some sort of Leonardo, only with a simply with a much stronger emphasis on physics.

• 15:27Chris Williamson?

  That's absolutely fascinating that I knew Richard Feynman was a was a very interesting individual and I've looked into his the Feynman technique, as many of the listeners will know, is one of the particular approaches that me and some of the other co-hosts are using to try and remember books and remember what we learn. But I didn't realize just how broad and how deep his curiosity went.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, he basically said, he literally said once, you know, that everything is interesting if you go deeply enough into it.

• 16:01Chris Williamson?

  That's a very good way to put it. So what do you think drives people to be curious? Is it are we evolutionary programmed to be like this? Is it more of a cognitive motivation where we realize that what's at the end will be rewarding and worthwhile if we continue to pursue our curiosities?

• 16:23Speaker 01

  So, well, first of all, there is no question, right, that that curiosity developed as an evolutionary thing. I mean, people had to be curious in order to survive. I mean, you basically had to know that you cannot just walk off a cliff and suppose to, you know, continue your life undisturbed. So, so people clearly curiosity in itself developed as an evolutionary tool.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Now, having said that, you know, we know that there are huge differences among different people in their curiosity, both in terms of the things they are curious about and the intensity of their curiosity. So in that, again, there have been many studies done on this, in particular studies with identical twins reared apart, which were done, because you know, then you can find all kinds of differences that are not genetic, yes genetic. And curiosity, like all psychological traits, has a strong genetic component, about at

• 17:34Speaker 01

  the 50% level, which means, you know, if your, if your parents were, were very curious, your grandparents were very curious, you're likely to be a very curious person too. So, so about 50%, that's that. But that, of course, leaves the other 50%. And the other 50% is, of course, determined by everything around you. It determines by which kind of house you grew up in, by your parents, by your siblings, by your teachers in school, by your, your pastor at church, in what country you, you were born, at what time, and so on.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  So all of those things, of course, determine both the things you are curious about and the level of your curiosity.

• 18:22Chris Williamson?

  That's really fascinating that it's 50/50.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Roughly 50/50, yes.

• 18:30Chris Williamson?

  So, did you discover any approaches which environmentally can encourage the onset of curiosity? Is there a curiosity workout program that we can, that we can put ourselves through to improve that?

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Yes, so, so, so, look, I mean, my book was intentionally not written as a how-to book.

• 18:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  But, you know, of course, I, you know, found all kinds of things while researching. And there are things that one can do to enhance curiosity. In particular, I'm asked this type of question, you know, about what you do to make your children more curious and things of that nature. So there are some things you can do. One is to ask many questions. The other is to answer questions, but to answer, to answer them in a particular way. I'll give you an example. Suppose that, you know, you have a five-year-old girl who asks you why, I don't know,

• 19:38Speaker 01

  why birds can fly and we cannot. It's a good question.

• 19:42Chris Williamson?

  Good question.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  Yes, and so instead of trying straight to answer the question, you can do the following. You can say, "Why do you think that birds can fly and we cannot?" And the girl may come up with some idea, you know. For example, she may say, "Oh, well, maybe because birds are small and light and we are big and heavy and we cannot fly," right? That's a legitimate answer to this. So then you would say, "Oh, yes, so let's see if that's correct." Because if this is the reason, then that would mean that there are no birds

• 20:29Speaker 01

  that are heavier than us, right? So you say, "Okay, so let's try to check if there are birds that are heavier than us." And then, you know, you can sit with a girl next to a computer and try to do a search, find out and this. So you see, by having a conversation going this way, you can encourage epistemic curiosity, for example. Another thing that you can do and actually should do... Is that if you want to, you know, again, try to encourage somebody or, you know, enhance their curiosity,

• 21:11Speaker 01

  is to start with something that they are already curious about. Instead of starting with something that you think they should be curious about. I'll give you again a couple of examples. Let's say in the case of children, okay? So suppose you think that children should know that the earth has gravity, there is such a thing as force of gravity, and gravity make things fall towards earth and things like that. Now, if you take a five-year-old and try to explain to him

• 21:51Speaker 01

  or her that from what I just said, that may bore them to tears. So what you have to do is start with something that you know that this child is already curious about. For example, I mean, an example I like to give is that, I don't know if that's true in the UK, but in the US, children of five, six are all somehow fascinated by dinosaurs.

• 22:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, exactly the same here.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you start with dinosaurs, you know, because they are already curious about this. So you start with dinosaurs, show them various kinds of dinosaurs and this, and what they do, and they're big and they're small, and they're big and they're this and that, all that, things that they are really curious about. And then you say, "Ah, and you know, actually, all the dinosaurs, they got extinct. Actually, even we know why and we even think we know when." You know, I mean, they got extinct some 66 million years ago, and it came because some large rock, an asteroid, hit the earth.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  We even know where it hit, somewhere in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. So, and you know why that rock came to earth? Because the earth has this gravity which attracted this.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Rock, you know, which then accelerated towards earth and hit it. So you started with something they are curious about. And you reached that point which you wanted them to know. So that's, that's one way. The same applies, by the way, to adults.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Suppose you know somebody that is obsessed with some celebrity. I don't know, take, take some celebrity. Okay. Magnus Carlsen just won yesterday, again, the world championship in chess, for example. Not a huge celebrity, but as far as chess goes, he is a celebrity. Because he has been now for a good number of years champion and he defended his title for the third time, okay? Okay, but you know that this person that you're talking to is not interested in chess at all. He's actually only interested in money.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  So you start with money. You say, do you know how much the world chess champion money? How much money he makes a year? And, you know, this, he or she probably doesn't know. You say, well, it turns out he has made eight million dollars last year. So that already makes him somewhat curious, yes? And then you can start explaining, you know, how come he made this? Because he has become a huge celebrity in Norway, he's Norwegian. You know, every kid knows him.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Yesterday, when he played, you know, Norway has only like, what's that? Something like five million people or so. About a million of them were watching the, the game, you know, and things like this. So you, you, you start with the money and get into the chess and the other things.

• 25:24Chris Williamson?

  So you begin with something that has an existing curiosity and then latch other curiosities on to it?

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 25:30Chris Williamson?

  Fascinating. That's fascinating. So during the research for the book, obviously, we've discussed Da Vinci and Feynman from the past. Did you get to meet any exceptionally curious people that are around today?

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, some of them I met, others I spoke to on the phone or in Skype or in other ways. Yes. But yes, I actually interviewed, well, first of all, I met the researchers, which themselves are quite curious, the researchers that do work on curiosity. But I also chose 90 individuals that I regard as exceptionally curious who live today and which I interviewed for the book. So I'll give you examples that I'm sure some of them at least you know. So for example, one that I'm convinced you know is Brian May.

• 26:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I was not expecting that. Was not expecting that name to come out of your mouth.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Okay, so Brian May is the lead guitarist of Queen, of course, but you may or may not know that he's also a PhD in astrophysics, where he actually finished his PhD more than 30 years after he did his bachelor's in astrophysics.

• 26:48Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  And lead guitarist for Queen. But he was also chancellor of university in Liverpool. He is a world expert in Victorian stereophotography and he is a huge activist for rights of animals. So you see, I mean, he is best known, of course, as lead guitarist for Queen, but he has many, many other interests and some of which, you know, some that require real work, like doing a PhD in astrophysics.

• 27:23Chris Williamson?

  He's risen to the top of his field within a number of fields there.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Right, right. So he was one that I interviewed. Just to mention a couple of others.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Again, some of them you may know, some not. Noam Chomsky is a famous linguist and, you know, did a lot of work on music, on the brain. He's a big political activist. Wrote many, many books and so on.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Somebody that you probably don't know, but I'll mention something that you probably do know.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Jack Horner is a paleontologist from University of Montana. He discovered much of what we know about dinosaurs. And he was science advisor to all the Jurassic Park movies.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  And, but in addition to this, believe it or not, he's extraordinarily dyslexic. He can read today at the level of a second grader. And, you know, when I asked him, but how is it possible? I mean, you're such a leading researcher. How is it possible that, you know, you can hardly read? And he told me, you know what? When you do everything first, you don't have to read that much.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  You know, so that's what was in his case, you know? He tried to do everything to be the first who does that.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  So, yes, another person from the UK that is fairly well known in the UK, and if not, should be even more well known, that's Lord Martin Rees. He's also Astronomer Royal for Britain.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Again, a person who, of course, did a lot of work in astrophysics, but also wrote things about risks to humanity. In fact, founded a center for risks study.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Has recently published a book about the future and so on. So again, very interested in many topics. So nine people like that.

• 29:49Chris Williamson?

  Well, that's such an eclectic mix of interests. I guess could only be driven by this furious level of curiosity. A couple of names that some of the listeners may know, and you may as well, who come to mind. Brett Weinstein, brother of Eric Weinstein.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  I don't know him personally now.

• 30:10Chris Williamson?

  So Brett Brett is an evolutionary biologist and Eric, who's his brother, is the managing director of Teal Capital. And on his most recent podcast that he did with Joe Rogan, he went from about as deep knowledge in cephalopods and octopuses as I could have imagined to playing the harmonica, to talking about Native American, Native American music, how the the ukulele had moved around different areas of the world. It was such a diverse range of interests that he'd obviously taken to the absolute end. You know, he knew as much about

• 30:55Chris Williamson?

  them in a field as anyone who was an expert would do. And I think that kind of polymath approach, it's just so interesting to people nowadays. And it must, there must be a complementary mechanism whereby people who are specialists in one field, open up pathways to become, to have greater understanding in others. You know, yourself is a perfect example, having doubled down in physics and astrophysics for so long permitted you to, I'm not going to put words in your mouth, I doubt that the book was easy to write by any means, but I'm sure that there were a number of skills and curiosities which had aided you from your past in writing this book in the future.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  That is correct. In particular, I mean, you know, research methods and things like this, and the love of research. In fact, in all my books, the part that I enjoy the most, actually, in writing books is actually the research part, when I do all the research work, because I am sort of by nature, a researcher, and that's the part that I really enjoy. I enjoy that more than the act of writing itself. You know, I enjoy studying about all these things. And this is also why, by the way, my first book was straight on astrophysics, but all the following five books were all not precisely on my, you know, day to day

• 32:23Speaker 01

  work, because I decided to work on things that were somewhat different from my everyday work, because that allowed me to do more research on them.

• 32:36Chris Williamson?

  Because if you'd been doing things on your day to day work, you would have known everything already.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, my, the first book, you know, all I had to do basically is, is take my, my daily work and try to put it, you know, in, in a language that it would be understandable for a layperson. But I didn't have to do a lot of research for that. But in all the coming, the following five books, I had to do quite a bit of research on each one of those books. And of course, more than most actually on this last book, why, what makes us curious? Because this was really outside my field.

• 33:15Chris Williamson?

  So you afforded yourself the luxury of being able to research into new fields. I can draw a little bit of an analogy there between your profession and mine. So I've been a, I've run nightclubs for 12 years. And often when I have a night off, my friends will message me and say, oh, you're off tonight, man. Like, do you fancy coming out with us and going on a night out? And I'm like, no, that's not what I want to do. That just feels like me going back to work.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Yes, I understand.

• 33:44Chris Williamson?

  Um, so during the writing of the book, were there any real surprises or anything that you didn't expect to discover which you, which you came across?

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, there, there were quite a few surprises. I, I mean, first of all, I wasn't aware of these different types of curiosity that I mentioned. Um, you know, I thought of curiosity as one thing. Uh, but what I discovered in particular was that there is a big difference between perceptual curiosity. That's the curiosity when we're surprised or something, you know, doesn't agree with what you think we know. And the epistemic curiosity, that's the, what drives research. Um, first of all,

• 34:29Speaker 01

  In terms of the psychological state in which they put us.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Perceptual curiosity, the thing that surprises us, puts us in a state of unpleasantness, in an aversive state. And the curiosity is the mechanism that tries to get us out of the unpleasant state. That's the way that one works. On the other hand, epistemic curiosity actually puts us in a state that is pleasant. It's a state of an anticipation of reward. You know, like when you're expecting somebody to give you a piece of chocolate. Or when you, you know, see a movie you wanted to see for a long, for a long time before that. So they are very different in terms of the psychological state.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  But since we now can also do research in neuroscience, and scientists have done that, meaning they take people, they stick them into functional MRI machines, and they make them curious in a certain way, and they see which areas of their brain are being activated. And what they discovered was, believe it or not, that in the case of perceptual curiosity, the area of the brain that is being activated is indeed an area that is associated with conflict and with unpleasant feelings. While in the case of epistemic curiosity, the area that is activated is the area that's associated with anticipation of reward.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  So these two types of curiosity are really different, both in terms of the psychological state in which they put us, and in terms of the area of the brain that is being activated. So I would almost go so far as say that had we known this from the start, we might have even not used the same word, curiosity, for both types of this curiosity, because they are really different things.

• 36:32Chris Williamson?

  They're so different.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, we might have called one interest and the other, I don't know, anxiety or something.

• 36:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, totally.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  So, um, so, so this was one thing that, that I didn't know before, and therefore it surprised me. I must say... I was also a little bit surprised. You see, to me curiosity was a very big thing. I mean, like I said, because I was always so curious. So I always thought and still think that, you know, this drives almost everything we do. I mean, you know, you don't read a book unless you're curious about this. You don't see a film unless you're curious about this. You don't listen to this podcast unless you're a little bit curious about this. And you don't even engage in a simple conversation if you're not a little bit curious about the topic of the conversation, right? So, and of course curiosity drives education.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  It drives all the basic research. It drives, you know, some of the greatest works of art and all that. So to me, this was a huge thing. And yet I was surprised that among psychologists and neuroscientists, for example, relatively a small number of people devote really all their work to the study of curiosity. Um, I guess, you know, maybe I had I known more, I should have expected this because the thing is that people, for example, who do neuroscience, the field is so vast, uh, you know, and, you know, for example, there is a huge number of them who study, how can you help in the case of Alzheimer's disease, you know, things like that.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Um, and, and, and so that the number of people who actually regard curiosity as their main focus is relatively not a huge number of people. So that was another surprise for me.

• 38:23Chris Williamson?

  It's a subsection of a subsection within a discipline, isn't it? I suppose.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Right, that's right.

• 38:29Chris Williamson?

  So one thing that I've found quite interesting was the, the point on the, the fear that certain types of curiosity give us. And I can think to 50,000 years ago, 100,000 years ago, hunter gatherer tribes out on the plains. And too much curiosity or seeing something that's new, really the only successful way to interpret that would be a potential threat. Because if you didn't interpret a new or different looking bush or a new or different looking animal as a potential, uh, uh, something to be anxious or fearful about. The chance of you walking over to it and being killed means you're dead.

• 39:11Chris Williamson?

  So if if nature is able to discriminate us away from that kind of curiosity, piquing our interests to go and look at more, we actually have a better chance of surviving. Because if you run away from the animal and it wasn't dangerous, then you don't really lose anything. But if you go towards the animal and it is dangerous, then you're dead.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  Right, so you you touched upon the right thing, but you you didn't say at the end the most important thing, which was that it was through curiosity that you actually can overcome the fear. You see, because by learning more about that, you are much less fearful of it. So yes, you see something new. This puts you into this surprised mode or, you know, this unpleasant mode. But then, if you're curious about it, you discover more about this, and that's how you overcome the fear. So I actually coined this phrase in the book, curiosity is the best remedy for fear,

• 40:17Speaker 01

  which I I'm kind of proud of, even though I discovered I wasn't the first to formulated something along these lines. So the idea is that we we are really very often, things we are afraid of are things we don't know enough about or know very little about. I mean, this this cause cause all kinds of, you know, racial things and and social things, you know, and so on. When there is a group of people that are different from you and and in in some ways, and and these people, as long as you don't know anything about them, you might be fearful about them.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  If somebody just, you know, I mean, currently there is worldwide a big immigration problem, right?

• 41:07Speaker 01

  If somebody would come and tell you, oh, well, all immigrants are terrorists, then you know, you are very fearful. But once you become a little bit more curious about this and then and you discover that this seventy year old woman who is crossing borders with his three year old grandson because she wants to somehow run away from all kinds of atrocities. She is really not a threat to you and she's not a terrorist. Neither is her grandson.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  So by putting your curiosity to work, by understanding more, by learning more about things, you are much less afraid of them.

• 41:57Chris Williamson?

  Curiosity oddly is kind of cause and effect in this situation then to one degree.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right.

• 42:04Chris Williamson?

  So what else? Were there any other surprising surprising revelations that you came across as you went through the the research for the book?

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Well, you know, there are surprises that are associated with particular people, you know, when I looked for this this extraordinarily

• 42:21Speaker 01

  curious people, I mean, you know, you mentioned some people that do a number of things. Another person, for example, that that I interviewed is Fabiola Gianotti, who is the Director General of CERN, that's the European Centre for Nuclear Research. She actually led the group of thousands of scientists who discovered this subatomic particle, the Higgs boson, a few years ago. But believe it or not, the first degree she did in university was in music.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  And she is an accomplished pianist to this very day. So, you know, she she really loves music. She still plays, listens all the time to music. She is also an avid cook. She loves to cook. And she sees similarities between physics and and cooking. Because there are certain rules, but there is also creativity. So, I mean, so, you know, so you discover all these things about people you didn't know. I interviewed

• 43:32Speaker 01

  This woman Marilyn Vosavant. She's a person that actually did not finish even her undergraduate degree. She went for a couple of years to university, but then stopped. But she is the woman with the highest ever recorded IQ.

• 43:51Chris Williamson?

  Really?

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, in fact, the IQ tests don't really even work when you get to those numbers.

• 43:59Chris Williamson?

  How high, how high was it?

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Two hundred twenty eight.

• 44:03Chris Williamson?

  Oh, my God.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Yes, she has a recorded IQ of two hundred twenty eight. Just so that you appreciate that Richard Feynman, one of the greatest minds in physics ever, is a hundred twenty five. She is two hundred twenty eight. And she, you know, and even though she has no formal education, she knows a lot. She actually has a column in a, in a weekend magazine where she answers questions in mathematics, in logic, in linguistics, things like that, and so on. So, you know, again, you, you hit upon these people that you may have heard about a little bit,

• 44:47Speaker 01

  but, you know, you talk to them and you realize how interesting this all is.

• 44:52Chris Williamson?

  Is speaking to someone with an IQ which is that high, even as someone who is a, an accomplished intellectual like yourself, does it feel a little bit like sort of standing at the feet of giants?

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Well, yes, you know, we all stand, of course, on the shoulders of giants. This is famous Isaac Newton quote.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  You know, he said, you know, if I, if I've seen farther than others, it's because I stood on the, on the shoulders of giants. Some people claim that this was a little bit of an ironic remark made to Hook, whom he wasn't in particularly good relation with. But interestingly, let me just mention this as a, as a side remark. Brian May, whom I did interview, is the person, living person, who looks the most like Isaac Newton.

• 45:57Chris Williamson?

  Just visually.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  If you've ever seen a picture of Newton, yes, both the hair and the nose and he really looks like Isaac Newton.

• 46:07Chris Williamson?

  Do you think that was a conscious choice?

• 46:11Speaker 01

  No, I'm sure his hair had much more to do with him being a famous rock guitarist than with Newton.

• 46:21Chris Williamson?

  Isaac Newton potentially could have taken up a different career if he'd wanted to.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  I kind of doubt it because Isaac Newton was, you know, one of the greatest, if not the greatest genius to have ever lived, but he was not exactly an easy person and I don't think he was a person who sort of enjoyed life.

• 46:47Chris Williamson?

  He had some very, he had some very bad traits, didn't he? Didn't he enjoy going to see hangings and executions and stuff? Wasn't that one of his favorite pastimes?

• 46:56Speaker 01

  I'm not sure that he did that, to be honest, but he did, he did engage in a variety of debates and battles with various scientific adversaries and so on.

• 47:11Chris Williamson?

  If you were to pick a curiosity hero throughout time, have you got one that you admire the most or?

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Well, Leonardo beats everybody hands down. Leonardo da Vinci beats everybody hands down. I mean, there has not been something like this, neither before nor after. I don't think that, I don't think anybody comes even close.

• 47:37Chris Williamson?

  That's a big accolade.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  Yes, but you know, he deserves it.

• 47:43Chris Williamson?

  He definitely does. So, one thing I wanted to touch on before we finished was the book cover of Why. I thought it was very interesting. Where did you get, where did you get that designed?

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Well, you know, usually before my book appears, the publisher, which is Simon and Schuster in this case, sends me a few, well, I take that back, they don't immediately send me a few, they send me one suggestion for the cover. I don't know why, but almost invariably until now, and this is my sixth book, I always didn't like the first cover that I've seen. And then I say, no, I don't like that, I would like something different. And then they send me something different, and this was it, you know, with a huge question

• 48:34Speaker 01

  mark in color on a white background, and the question mark, of course, comes under the word why. So I thought, that's very fitting, I mean, you know, why is what really is the sort of essence of curiosity.

• 48:51Chris Williamson?

  I get that. Well, Mario, thank you very much for your time. I think the topic of curiosity definitely appears to be one that's a lot more vast than I would have thought. Definitely, I agree with you that finding out that there's different types, after you realise that, it's one of those things that's an aha moment, but of course, the same kind of curiosity that makes you wonder, wonder about a new landscape in front of you, or a new animal that you've just seen, is not the same one that makes you want to go and see that film in the future. It's, they serve different purposes and they work on different mechanisms.

• 49:30Chris Williamson?

  So it's odd that something which I wouldn't have guessed in advance makes so much logical sense afterwards, if that makes, if that holds true.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I understand. And by the way, I mentioned that there are other types of curiosity as well, for example, morbid curiosity. You know, the fact that you get all this rubbernecking every time there is an accident on the highway, right? I mean, even people on the other side of the road, they love to look at what happened, right? So, yeah.

• 50:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's totally correct. Would you be able to tell the listeners at home where they can find you online?

• 50:11Speaker 01

  Well, I do have a webpage. It's mario, my first name, -livio.com.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  There is also a Wikipedia page about me. I do have a Facebook page. And I am on Twitter as well, which is mario underscore livio is my handle.

• 50:32Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic. Well, I will make sure that all of the links to your website and your socials are in the show notes below. So if anyone wants to get the book, Why, What Makes Us Curious? Or any of your other work, Golden Ratio, or the entire back catalogue, which I feel like we could have gone on all night to go through. But I really appreciate your time. Thank you very much for coming on.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.