And I think after this conversation, you will too. So Scott, you wrote a book called Seek How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World. What got you interested in this topic?

Yeah, well, first of all, I'm so excited to be on this conversation with you. And I think that curiosity is a topic. Well, first of all, let me define curiosity. I think that's really helpful to just ground us into this conversation. Curiosity, I define it as the search for understanding. And I always talk about there's different levels of curiosity from shallow to deep and shallow curiosity being more, how's your day? How are you? What do you do for work? What's your name? Where do you live? Things like that. And then there's a deeper side of curiosity that goes beneath the surface. Questions that allow you to really understand the people that you're talking to, their values, their stories. It's a lot more meaningful. So, instead of what's your name, it might be what's the story of your name? Why were you named that? Who named you? Instead of where do you live? It might be what does home mean to you? Why is that important to you? And instead of what do you do for a job, it might be, when do you feel like you're flourishing? How would I know? And so, I like to start there before I talk about the origin story, because I think a lot of people have different conceptions of what curiosity is. And for me, it's about the search for understanding and a particular kind of search that leads to connection and it leads to transformation in some way. I got interested in this topic, this deeper form of curiosity. Really, on my road trip across the country in the wake of the 2016 presidential elections, I like probably so many people listening had felt such divisiveness in the family context and the workplace and just generally in society, you couldn't turn on the news and not feel anger and rage and the hate that was directed in all sides. And so, I went on this road trip for over a year. I basically lived out of my Priya. So, I took out the back seats and I put in a bed platform, I showered at Planet Fitnesses, which actually really my showers. And I basically went to places where people quote unquote seemingly hated me, a mega church to a Trump rally to a group that was professing anti-LGBTQ legislation. And what I realized is that I was holding a lot of stereotypes and a lot of discriminatory views on people because when I actually went to that Trump rally in Minnesota, when I actually went to that church in Georgia, I actually learned that there were so many people who were similar to me actually, who had a lot of the same values as me, who did not hate me. And those were just ideas and stories that I carried about myself. And I realized that through my curiosity, my deep curiosity, I was able to move past and transform my perspective of who the quote the other was. And it made sense because so many people had directed that kind of one dimensionality towards me as queer as someone who's Asian American, as someone who is progressive. I've been on the receiving end of that too, a lack of curiosity where people thought that they knew everything about me as a queer person or everything about me as someone who's Asian American. But there's so much more to me, right? No two Asians, no two queers, no two Republicans, no two Christians are the same. There's so much nuance and complexity. And I think that's what deep curiosity uncovers for us.

But how do you begin to chip away at that edifice?

I think for me, I've always come from a teaching and a research background. So right now, I'm affiliated with UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. And I also teach courses at UT Austin. And so I'm always in the spirit of how do we break down things from the social science, for instance, from the research and translate them in a way that's really easily understandable. You know, I don't know about a lot of people listening, but sometimes I read their white paper and I'm like, what? I don't understand what this is trying to say. And I have to like really work with my peers to really get to the juicy nuggets of that. I think what's really important is that there's wisdom in the science that just needs to be understood more clearly. In the same way that there's wisdom in the stories of people who I met, the hundreds of people I met on my journey, who may never make it into a white paper, but also have really rich insights and wisdom around this topic of curiosity. And so as I spent the last five years just like listening, learning, being in conversation, understanding the research, what I understood and took away as sort of like another layer above the road trip is that there's a lot to back this, you know, with this proposition up that that deep curiosity can lead to connection and lead to transformation. So for instance, there's a lot of research to say that when you are a more curious person, you are able to unwind a lot of the anxiety that you feel. And we know that today we are the most anxious workforce in the country so far. You know, Gen Z and millennials, especially, are really demanding for mental health support and to have a less stressful and a less anxious workplace. When we practice curiosity, we can actually unwind that anxiety. And I felt that in the conversations that I had on my road trip, right, when I said, I'm really here to understand you because I know that what I'm seeing on the news is probably not giving me the full picture. And I want to know you because I honor your humanity. And I really just want to understand who are you beyond the title of you voted for Trump or our voting for Trump. And you would be so surprised how much people let go. They don't have this defensive stance anymore. They're actually leaning in a little bit more. They're a lot. Their body position even opens up and they're willing to receive you even though you might also represent what feels scary to them or what gives them anxiety because maybe they've never met someone who's queer or maybe they've never had a deep conversation with someone who's progressive, who they do not know. And so for me, what I took away from that is, you know, a lot of us are holding anxiety and fear inside of us as we navigate our lives. And curiosity has this big piece to try to solve for that. There's also studies to show that, you know, when we're curious, we tend to have stronger relationships. We tend to turn towards the people around us. And I think that was really clarifying for me on the road trip and through the science and through my conversations. I want anyone listening in to think about a time when they were in a conversation with a loved one, maybe a romantic partner, maybe a sibling, maybe a friend, where they didn't feel like curiosity was being extended towards them. Right? For me, it feels like I don't matter. I'm not important. I'm being dismissed when someone's more interested in what's on their phone, when they when I feel like they're really not truly listening to me. And then I have folks then contrast that with visualization of when they really felt like someone was extending curiosity towards them. How did that make you feel? And what people often say is like, wow, like, I felt good, I felt happy, I felt like I was listened to, I felt like I mattered. And I think that last piece of like us feeling like we matter is so key. And it's like, why do my work like that's, that's my purpose is using curiosity to help people feel like they matter, because that's so, so important today in the workplace and our families and communities and the society at large. And it reminds me of the story of Oprah, who has interviewed so many people for the last 20 years, and she says, whether it's someone who has spent life in prison, or whether it's Beyonce after she teaches me how to twerk, at the end of our conversations, I always get the same question. And that same question is, how was that? Like, was that okay? Did I do okay? Was that conversation what you were looking for? And what she realized, and what I realized as well on my road trip, similar insight is that at the end of the day, everyone just wants to feel like they matter, that their story matters, that they have value and meaning in your life. And we can do that for others, the people around us, by extending curiosity towards them, and that thus strengthens the relationship. So that's sort of the supporting case for what I was like seeing and feeling on the road

trip.