The thing is: I don’t know anything. Not really. And especially not compared to the entirety of what the 13,800 of you currently subscribed to this newsletter know - all those crazy skills and that hard-won knowledge and all the cool stuff you’ve picked up in your however-many-years on this planet.
(There is always something new to learn! For example, I just learned about the Doorway Effect from behavioural scientist Tanya Tarr. Who knew? Not me, for one.)
Frankly, I often think that me sitting down and writing this newsletter is the least interesting thing I could be doing with it. Sometimes I think this out of abominable laziness. (Pathetic yet true.) But mostly, I think it because I suspect that what’s in your head would be absolutely fascinating to learn about in a publication like this.
(Also the heads of the writers whose work I’ve been reading for it - which is why I’ve been doing those public readthroughs on Threadable. We’re currently looking at Simon Winchester’s Land. Click here to join.)
So: let’s put this to the test. This particular newsletter is actually a discussion thread, if you click through to the Web version of it. And if you’re willing, I’d like you to answer a question I always ask when I’m interviewing someone for this newsletter, which is:
What do you wish more people were curious about?
Give me your best, nerdiest and most heartfelt answer in the comments below!
Well, this has become a magnificently fascinating thread, thanks to all of you. And my suspicion that what's in your heads is way more interesting than what's in mine has been confirmed! Good lord.
I'm going to spend a few days trying and no doubt failing to catch up on comments, so - if you find yourself back here, check for updates in the discussion!
Also: those of you who have written about your nerdy interests in such glorious detail here who *don't* have a Substack - may I suggest you might try starting one? 😁 (Unless you've got better things to be doing, like Actual Research and stuff, in which case - carry on please, the world needs your discoveries.)
Origin of their food - both how it was produced, where and when. So many sweeping statements are made about 'how to eat to save the planet' without any understanding of how that food got to the supermarket. Fed up with being lectured by people who know little about food production. Bring back seasonal and local food initiatives.
Many people should be curious about the future of the human mind.. Will we one day be able to shift our consciousness into a digital space and occupy the bodies of robots,, even more importantly and as quirky as it is, what will sex be like if we become robots.. Will orgasms be a .gif playing in our eyes or how the hell will we experience orgasmic ecstasy?
Simulacra! When people say things like "what's even real???" or are sometimes overcome by an inexplicable sense of the uncanny, this is the thing they should be curious about.
The world population is about 7,942,645,086. I see that as 7,942,645,086 worlds to explore. We each live in our own little world. No one can live there with us.....but they can visit. Each visit is like a mini-vacation, full of beauty and wonder.
Hello! I wish people were more curious about how goods manufacturing scales up from a local kitchen or shop to a high-volume plant. I think there are more similarities than people realize, and a better understanding would alleviate unnecessary skepticism of "big industry."
New subscriber here. To be honest, I signed up because of that exchange you had with Alex Dobrenko, and because you are from Yorkshire. I've never been there, but my ancestors were, and I've always been curious about the place.
About curiosity: I used to teach research methods to university students, and I couldn't figure out what happened to their natural born curiosity. Somewhere along the way, they stopped wondering and asking really good questions, which made me very sad.
Me? I am an erstwhile fashion historian. That's not what I am up to on Substack, but it's what I did before I retired.
I wish people were more curious about things they see everyday. Like “How do I get clean water when I want it?” -- beyond the obvious “the city/town provides it.” Or “How did that power pole come to be exactly here.”
I wish more people were curious about astrology (yep, I went there.) But I don't mean the daily horoscopes. I mean the actual whole system of astrology and planetary cycles. I also wish more people were curious about living intentionally and not giving into all these modern societal norms that are making us unwell and miserable. I wish more people were curious about themselves and have a deeper sense of who they are and what they bring to others in a more heart-centred way. I could go on...but I'll stop here.
What captures my curiosity constantly may be a question others have. I want to hear from them if they have this curiosity: How come all of the money, attention, research and conversation about gifted people focuses on children? Because the gifted mind is forever--you are born with it. Because the gifted adult may live 70 or more years beyond childhood. Because the gifted professional could use some of that money, attention, and research resources to complete their life's work, how come we are not investing in these exceptionally talented people beyond highschool?
Interconnectedness, wholeness, healing and our relationship with plants since time's inception. I became interested over a decade ago after attending a "Serpentine" class. The herbalist gave us tinctures and teas of one herb, masked. She wrote what we tasted, felt, sensed. At the end she read an herbal monograph on that herb (red clover) and it sounded like she was reading our words. That night I felt like I had the flu or was going through narcotic withdrawal (I had ingested quite a bit of red clover 😂). BUT in the morning, the fluid behind my ear that had plagued me for about 9 months all drained out. The herbalist' best guess, as red clover is often used "for all things lumpy ", was that there had been a cyst in the fluid pathway. I was hooked. I recently retired from nursing (a tad early) and spend my time more productively in the garden and gathering herbs for herbal magic. We now have a small business even! www.unabandonedherbals.com
I wish I were just more curious rather than judgmental about everything. So I wish others were too. Think how much easier it would be if you knew someone would respond with curiosity instead of judgement? We’d all be so much more relaxed. 
I also wish we were all more curious about each other stories. Everyone has a story, and they’re all so much more interesting than we think they are.
I wish more people were curious about the world immediately around them. I understand that we have to block out most stimuli around us simply to survive and not be overwhelmed, but sometimes it feels like we're being too overwhelmed by our thoughts and not awe-stricken enough by the simple, even tiny, objects around us. I would love to encounter more people hunched over on the sidewalk watching ants carrying crumbs or fascinated by a flock of birds or studying frost patterns on windows. Nowadays it's more common to be surrounded by people with their heads dipped into their phones. It feels like we're missing out on the tiny miracles around us.
I wish more people were curious about...well, each other. That’s not very “sciency” but the world would explode with goodness, I think, if we all got over ourselves and took the time to learn from each other instead of instantly dismissing another person and his ideas. Four years ago I moved to a tiny little town in the southern U.S. where most of my neighbors are culturally very different from me. And then I started getting to know them. I’ve learned so much about poverty and racism and hospitality and love and tradition. If only we would take the time to get to know the people who don’t look like us or think like us, we might gain a better understanding of the world’s problems and potential solutions.
I wish more people were curious about the biological effects of non-native Electromagnetic Radiation (especially Wireless Radiation). This is a confounding variable for our current environmental and societal challenges.
In the U.S., we are relying upon outdated Wireless Radiation safety standards from 1996, despite over 11,000 pages of court evidence demonstrating these "safety" standards are insufficient. I share more at my Substack page: https://reclaimedwellness.substack.com
We are living during a time of rapid increases in Wireless Radiation and electro-smog. Many people—including children—are experiencing challenges to access basic services, such as groceries and medical facilities, due to the close proximity of cell towers, antennas, Smart Meters, WiFi routers, and radiating Smart devices. This creates a substantial density of electro-smog for our bodies to handle.
We are mammals with an innate electrophysiology, and we are polluting our environment with this invisible toxicant.
I choose to remain hopeful we—as a species and population—can become curious enough to improve this aspect before the harm to the environment and public health is too great to overcome.
Oh so many things, but the one I really wish people were more curious about is human inventiveness and enlightened self-interest. What is it that prompts these leaps of creative genius or inspiration to try something new? I mean, COFFEE. Seriously, who on earth first thought to make that? I've always been fascinated by the idea of who first thought to eat something weird and why. But coffee just baffles me. It needs first to be roasted, then ground, then processed through complex water and pressure physics, at very particular temperatures and conditions. I mean, how on earth did we get here? That's no simple process. What prompted someone to stubborn it out because darn these beans smell good and there must be something I can do with them? Everybody talks about how to roast coffee, brew coffee, the history of later tweaks and technical inventions to improve coffee consumption and production. But what's its origin story???
I guess I'd break all that down to wishing people were more curious about the everyday mundane things in our life, rather than taking them for granted. I love Bill Bryson's 'A Home' because he does just that. Wanders around his house asking questions like, why is pepper the spice we have alongside salt? Why is this room shaped like this? Then spirals out from those questions to big topics like the history of electricity, communication, or imperial trade wars and colonialism. All the big politics, inventions, history and moving and shaking of the world one way or another ends up writing - or written into - the materiality of our daily life. One of the many reasons I love household archaeology so much.
Our contributions to the waste stream. We throw so much "away", but it certainly doesn't magically disappear from our home planet. (Would that it did!) I would love to see more awareness around the realities of what happens to what goes in the bin and lean more toward the "reduce, reuse" sides of that little green triangle.
I wish people were more curious about each other. As time passes, I’m more aware that people just don’t want to listen any more. Not sure if this is since Covid, but it seems that interest in others has been overtaken by needing to talk about themselves. It’s a shame, there are some truly amazing people out there if we just give them the airtime.
This might seem a bit of a funny answer, but thread itself! When you start looking into the history of thread, and realize how many technological advancements were and continue to be made possible by thread, string, and yarn, (fishing nets, for example,) it gives you a newfound respect for the species. People always go on about the wheel and agriculture, but for my money thread is our most incredible invention.
I hope I'm not too late for this conversation, just seeing it now. My answer is death. We spend our whole lives terrified of death -- either thinking about it all the time, or avoiding it all together without approaching it with curiosity. I'm reading the Tibetan Book of Living & Dying right now, and finding mortality much less scary when it is approached with curiosity.
I just flew over Greenland and Nunavut yesterday and I'm desperately curious to learn more about Nunavut. So much empty space! So much snow! What's really there? What's it like there? What will happen with climate change. So many questions!
Science - specifically the science behind the benefits of kindness. Random acts of kindness are cool....but the real magic happens when people build kindness habits and develop a kindness identity.
I wish more people were curious about how living things become well... living
An egg has all that is necessary to deploy a full chick, and yet is really the same as a completely inert unfertilised egg.
How does that happen ? How does one single cell generate trillions of completely functionally different cells ?
And the problem works at several scales: how does a few hundred basically identical cells (the neuroepithelium) manage to generate a machinery as widely diverse as the brain ?
The answer is far from trivial, and even looking deeply at the mechanisms it's wild to imagine how all these differences appear out of nowhere (or rather minuscule variations)
I love all of the drama involved in history! I wish more people were curious about the nitty gritty of what was going on 200-2000 years ago because there is so much tea there! People have always been human, and humans have messy and often funny lives. Even seemingly boring political things tend to have a backstory that is little known or taught in school.
How time isn't an actual thing it was invented. And how the integration of time into our lives has been driven by things like the Industrial Revolution.
Boring, but I wish people were more curious about how politics and law actually work and how they are supposed to work so they could play a fuller part in how we are governed and improve the quality of it.
How do we know what we know - and more importantly, what we don't know? How can we get better at recognizing our uncertainties? I'm a cognitive psychologist, and so much comes down to how variably good humans are at not being sure.
No, I get it. Everyone has cats! Cats are all over the internet! Cats are half of what the internet is for! How could there be so much we don't know about cats?
... conventional wisdom says cats won't walk on a leash. I've got two who do.
Conventional wisdon says you can't tame a feral cat. One of my leashcats? Was the neighborhood feral tom when I met him.
I recently learned a few things I didn't know about dogs, because my roommate is raising a puppy & training him to be a service dog. I learned that puppies go through a couple of 'fear stages', natural parts of their emotional development when they're just way more likely to get scared of stuff. This is well known among dog trainers, apparently, just a thing you take into account when they hit that age.
Do cats have fear stages? Who knows? Nobody tries to train cats in any kind of systematic way. Nobody studies how to train cats, how much they might be able to learn if we really put in the work, what their potential might be as, say, service animals. Or pest control, but in a more directed way than they are. Or as companion animals, but companion animals who GO places with their people.
I can go to the park with my cats & have a picnic, just as easily as people do that with their dogs. I can take them hiking, or take them for a wander down Main Street, into any shop they're allowed in. & they LOVE it. I get hollered at -- yes, by my cats -- if I don't take them out as often as they want me to.
Why doesn't this happen more often? Why don't people THINK of it? Why don't we know more about what cats are capable of learning? & what could they learn to do that we haven't even thought to let them try?
I'm a freshwater ecologist and I was in my early twenties to learn what a natural river really should look like. People have settled close to rivers throughout human history, but we have altered so much of these incredible ecosystems that we just do not know what to miss anymore. I highly encource everyone who endulges me to look up historical maps (just google it- Arcanum is an excellent source) and compare landscapes then and now. Large rivers like the Danube looked like the Amazon from above, bursting with life and biodiversity (look up sturgeons like Huso huso- they look like dinosaurs and get get huge!). And just look up your home town. There always is or used to be a babbling brook close by.
And just turn around some stones in your river. You'll find caddisflies (a sister group of butterflies, that build there own homes and even jewelry if you supply them with shiny substrate in the right size).
And did you know you can determine the ecological state of a river by investigating aquatic animals? It's like playing detective!
I am an expert for dragonflies, but I gotta stop myself right here or I'll keep typing until my fingers fall off.
Jan 26, 2023·edited Jan 26, 2023Liked by Mike Sowden
So crazy you're mentioning the doorway effect--I've been working on a draft about it for Collected Rejections!
I have a million things I wish people were more curious about, but at the top of my list is just "how stuff--the vague general everything--works." How do bones break? How does glue stay glue until it's outside the bottle, and then how does it keep stuff together when it dries? How did people take baths in 1300? How did someone figure out lotion (and how does it work)? How is animation created? How do surgeons tell your muscles from your veins and your ligaments and your nerves if everything is so small and covered in blood anyway? Just... howwwww?
I wish that citizens and residents of the U.S. were more curious about how our government works, and how laws and public policy directly affect them and their everyday lives. Oh how I wish this! The more people who know the details and the facts, the more positive change can be made!
I love the premise of your newsletter and of being curious about absolutely everything. Question it all, it's fascinating and and a joy to read your deep dives. I'm always interested in history, throughlines of how we got to where from where, why we believe things that have no basis other than because-it's-always -been-done-that-way-we-think. Katherine May just wrote something brief about exploring humility, and her sheepish surprise in understanding that humility is a tool of the oppressor, to keep those oppressed civil, humble, etc. Those are the kinds of things that I find endlessly fascinating and important to shed light on, to understand how much underpins the actions of society in ways that are so not helpful in being a whole human being, so to speak.
Jan 26, 2023·edited Jan 27, 2023Liked by Mike Sowden
... since you asked...
Science has a sad record of ignoring or dismissing new evidence, especially if the source is from a lateral direction, i.e., not from the respected specialists in a particular relevant field. Research into many real-world unsolved problems can go astray because of their to-be-expected interdisciplinary nature. A lateral perspective is often helpful, but curiosity is paramount. Study Thomas S. Kuhn for more.
I have been bedeviled in my personal geological investigation by the lack of curiosity in many scientists today. One of my dear daughters (resplendent in ivory league robes and floppy hats): "Dad, don’t you know that curiosity killed the cat?” Seems that’s what you get from MIT, Cornell and Brown these days.
The most prolific water-holding landform in North America is an oddity often referred to as "Carolina Bays”, but go by differing names in different locales: Citronella Ponds, High Plains Playas, Nebraska Rainwater Basins, among others. USGS geologists soundly dismiss anything but a gradualist mechanism for their prolific presence on the landscape. My survey suggest there are somewhere near a 100,000 in existence. Yet, they get virtually no interest from anyone outside of the ecologists, who marvel at the diversity of the flora and fauna contained within in them.
Because of their obscurity, the 99% of them have been ditched , drained, clearcut, sterilized and farmed-over. The US Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Waters Act does not protect them nor their precious contents, as their nature as hydrologically closed basins does not allow them to participate In the “Navigable Waters of the US”.
Smithsonian Magazine published an article about them in September of 1997 (yes, only one). There is absolutely no mention of the term ”Carolina Bay” in the National Geographic historical index. Nothing in Scientific America, either. AAAS “Science” has several indexed references, but all short synopsis from last century. The only in-depth scientific inquiry (341 pages from Columbia University Press) about them was written in 1942 by Douglas Johnson, the President of Columbia University’s Geology Department. He stated "In more than 40 years of geological study, the writer has not encountered a problem so difficult, unless it be that of submarine canyons.”
And we know how difficult the solution to “submarine canyons” turned out to be 30 years later. Where is the curiosity about the Carolina bays? The cynic would say that since there is no proven solution, it must just be "the way things are, nothing to see here”.
One professional restoration engineer summed the problem up: "Given a confident belief that the answers are indeed out there in the sand, we come then to the true shame of the Carolina Bay story: the willingness of the current geophysical research community to tolerate and admit such a profound mystery in their midst. I've known respected professional earth scientists to brush off questions about Carolina Bay origin with references to alien landings and giant fish. With prodding, they generally elicit a thin collage of wind and wave theory faintly recalled from their student years. One gets the distinct feeling that the study of Carolina Bay origin is the 'crazy aunt in the attic' of the Coastal Plain researcher. And that visiting his dear relative is hardly worth the disturbing consequences." - quote from George Howard.
Not being an accredited geologist, I have no fear of being labeled the “crazy uncle/dad”. The Geological Society of America recently released a 30 page paper that I co-authored with my friend Thomas Harris. It comes as chapter 24 in GSA Special Book 553, a volume dedicated to concepts the GSA feels are "addressing an embryonic, speculative, but observationally supported, new concept worthy of further investigation."
Well, that hypothesis is indeed unconventional. More curiosity would be helpful when ingesting it.
Oh the phenomenon of UFO/UAP for sure. The US government finally admitted yes they exist and no we don’t know what it is. Most people don’t even register what that means! And it turns out that yes there is a faction that knows the facts and they don’t want to share. See the 32 pages of UAP language in the NDAA 2023 for what is suspected and known.
I want to know what is the purpose of human beings? Why have we evolved to become the creatures we are today? If humans had not come into being would this planet be better or worse off?
Jan 26, 2023·edited Jan 26, 2023Liked by Mike Sowden
I am a geologist and found your work, like many of us I assume, because of the Zanclean Megaflood thread. I have thoroughly enjoyed the geology topics to date, kudos. I love that geology is ubiquitous on this beautiful planet (it is a giant rock after all) and its ability to explain so much about where we live, find our food, our cultures, and so much more.
I am also interested in the interplay between our diets, physical activity/fitness, mood, cognitive ability, and the myriad ways they interact and affect each other. Which is the main driver? (Is there one?) How do they all interact? What can be done to improve them? What are the evolutionary reasonings/explanations for why they behave the way they do today?
What Victoria Rios said. The social norms and customs and beliefs are all real enough, but kind of arbitrary. The 'right' way to raise children is a really really broad range, but each culture has centered on a really really tight range of answers. We 'know' the right way to conduct yourself with elders (or with someone mourning, or getting married), but that is different in different cultures and examining those differences could lead us to deeper appreciation for each other and more empathy. Maybe.
Their own prejudices. I mean the inadvertent ingrained ones that we all have because of our unique set of life experience, privileges, and all that. I really really wish I could have more conversations about this stuff from the perspective of curiosity.
Plant anatomy and biology! How are hybrid plants bred and why can't you reproduce them at home? What is genetic modification? How do insects influence crops? What different soil qualities effect certain breeds?
As a culture, we are starting to care more about sustainable living, locally grown diets, encouraging native habitats, and reducing our meat consumption, but most people I know are practically taking the value of plants on faith. We should know *as much as it is practical to learn* about plants in general and food crops in particular! Agricultural science is old and vital, and the more people are familiar with it, the more likely innovative advancements are to happen!
I wish more people were curious about the physical characteristics of the area they live in. I saw a list a few years ago of ~30 things that 200 years ago everyone could answer and now few can. Things like -- what body of water does your drinking water come from? What is the primary soil type in your area? Which direction do storms usually come from? Where is the North Star and when is the next full moon? I couldn't answer all of the questions on the list and it's been fun doing the exploring required to learn more about my area.
I KNEW IT!
Well, this has become a magnificently fascinating thread, thanks to all of you. And my suspicion that what's in your heads is way more interesting than what's in mine has been confirmed! Good lord.
I'm going to spend a few days trying and no doubt failing to catch up on comments, so - if you find yourself back here, check for updates in the discussion!
Also: those of you who have written about your nerdy interests in such glorious detail here who *don't* have a Substack - may I suggest you might try starting one? 😁 (Unless you've got better things to be doing, like Actual Research and stuff, in which case - carry on please, the world needs your discoveries.)
Origin of their food - both how it was produced, where and when. So many sweeping statements are made about 'how to eat to save the planet' without any understanding of how that food got to the supermarket. Fed up with being lectured by people who know little about food production. Bring back seasonal and local food initiatives.
Many people should be curious about the future of the human mind.. Will we one day be able to shift our consciousness into a digital space and occupy the bodies of robots,, even more importantly and as quirky as it is, what will sex be like if we become robots.. Will orgasms be a .gif playing in our eyes or how the hell will we experience orgasmic ecstasy?
Ps: I have tried to explore this and here's what AI and I came up with: https://maniainc.substack.com/p/the-future-of-the-human-mind-will-it-be-replicated-digitally
The revolution is already starting and there are now Brain Machine Interfaces or BMIs in development: https://maniainc.substack.com/p/exploring-the-power-of-thought-from-brain-machine-interfaces-to-genetics-and-aging
Simulacra! When people say things like "what's even real???" or are sometimes overcome by an inexplicable sense of the uncanny, this is the thing they should be curious about.
Selfishness
Climate change
Wasted potential
The world population is about 7,942,645,086. I see that as 7,942,645,086 worlds to explore. We each live in our own little world. No one can live there with us.....but they can visit. Each visit is like a mini-vacation, full of beauty and wonder.
Hello! I wish people were more curious about how goods manufacturing scales up from a local kitchen or shop to a high-volume plant. I think there are more similarities than people realize, and a better understanding would alleviate unnecessary skepticism of "big industry."
Chemistry in general. I mean, it’s really freaking fascinating to me.
New subscriber here. To be honest, I signed up because of that exchange you had with Alex Dobrenko, and because you are from Yorkshire. I've never been there, but my ancestors were, and I've always been curious about the place.
About curiosity: I used to teach research methods to university students, and I couldn't figure out what happened to their natural born curiosity. Somewhere along the way, they stopped wondering and asking really good questions, which made me very sad.
Me? I am an erstwhile fashion historian. That's not what I am up to on Substack, but it's what I did before I retired.
Hi there!
I'm a great lover of curiosity and it's one of the things that guides my life and creative pursuits.
This may have already been said, but there are a lot of comments here!
I wish people were more curious about themselves - how they tick, why they react / judge / behave etc the way they do - you know what I mean!
I wish people were more curious about things they see everyday. Like “How do I get clean water when I want it?” -- beyond the obvious “the city/town provides it.” Or “How did that power pole come to be exactly here.”
I wish more people were curious about astrology (yep, I went there.) But I don't mean the daily horoscopes. I mean the actual whole system of astrology and planetary cycles. I also wish more people were curious about living intentionally and not giving into all these modern societal norms that are making us unwell and miserable. I wish more people were curious about themselves and have a deeper sense of who they are and what they bring to others in a more heart-centred way. I could go on...but I'll stop here.
Hi! What are your thoughts about Curiosity?
The impersonator may be dealt with already.
https://popularrationalism.substack.com/p/quick-note-popular-rationalism-hacked/comment/12531402
What captures my curiosity constantly may be a question others have. I want to hear from them if they have this curiosity: How come all of the money, attention, research and conversation about gifted people focuses on children? Because the gifted mind is forever--you are born with it. Because the gifted adult may live 70 or more years beyond childhood. Because the gifted professional could use some of that money, attention, and research resources to complete their life's work, how come we are not investing in these exceptionally talented people beyond highschool?
Interconnectedness, wholeness, healing and our relationship with plants since time's inception. I became interested over a decade ago after attending a "Serpentine" class. The herbalist gave us tinctures and teas of one herb, masked. She wrote what we tasted, felt, sensed. At the end she read an herbal monograph on that herb (red clover) and it sounded like she was reading our words. That night I felt like I had the flu or was going through narcotic withdrawal (I had ingested quite a bit of red clover 😂). BUT in the morning, the fluid behind my ear that had plagued me for about 9 months all drained out. The herbalist' best guess, as red clover is often used "for all things lumpy ", was that there had been a cyst in the fluid pathway. I was hooked. I recently retired from nursing (a tad early) and spend my time more productively in the garden and gathering herbs for herbal magic. We now have a small business even! www.unabandonedherbals.com
I wish I were just more curious rather than judgmental about everything. So I wish others were too. Think how much easier it would be if you knew someone would respond with curiosity instead of judgement? We’d all be so much more relaxed. 
I also wish we were all more curious about each other stories. Everyone has a story, and they’re all so much more interesting than we think they are.
I wish more people were curious about the world immediately around them. I understand that we have to block out most stimuli around us simply to survive and not be overwhelmed, but sometimes it feels like we're being too overwhelmed by our thoughts and not awe-stricken enough by the simple, even tiny, objects around us. I would love to encounter more people hunched over on the sidewalk watching ants carrying crumbs or fascinated by a flock of birds or studying frost patterns on windows. Nowadays it's more common to be surrounded by people with their heads dipped into their phones. It feels like we're missing out on the tiny miracles around us.
I wish more people were curious about...well, each other. That’s not very “sciency” but the world would explode with goodness, I think, if we all got over ourselves and took the time to learn from each other instead of instantly dismissing another person and his ideas. Four years ago I moved to a tiny little town in the southern U.S. where most of my neighbors are culturally very different from me. And then I started getting to know them. I’ve learned so much about poverty and racism and hospitality and love and tradition. If only we would take the time to get to know the people who don’t look like us or think like us, we might gain a better understanding of the world’s problems and potential solutions.
I wish more people were curious about the biological effects of non-native Electromagnetic Radiation (especially Wireless Radiation). This is a confounding variable for our current environmental and societal challenges.
In the U.S., we are relying upon outdated Wireless Radiation safety standards from 1996, despite over 11,000 pages of court evidence demonstrating these "safety" standards are insufficient. I share more at my Substack page: https://reclaimedwellness.substack.com
We are living during a time of rapid increases in Wireless Radiation and electro-smog. Many people—including children—are experiencing challenges to access basic services, such as groceries and medical facilities, due to the close proximity of cell towers, antennas, Smart Meters, WiFi routers, and radiating Smart devices. This creates a substantial density of electro-smog for our bodies to handle.
We are mammals with an innate electrophysiology, and we are polluting our environment with this invisible toxicant.
I choose to remain hopeful we—as a species and population—can become curious enough to improve this aspect before the harm to the environment and public health is too great to overcome.
Arthur Firstenberg, independent scientist and author of The Invisible Rainbow, wrote a great article about the tragic bird deaths on the Dutch island of Texel. This is one of many similar instances over the past few years: https://cellphonetaskforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Birds-on-Texel-Island.pdf
The article is worth a read when you have the time. May our curiousity lead us to a better outcome.
Oh so many things, but the one I really wish people were more curious about is human inventiveness and enlightened self-interest. What is it that prompts these leaps of creative genius or inspiration to try something new? I mean, COFFEE. Seriously, who on earth first thought to make that? I've always been fascinated by the idea of who first thought to eat something weird and why. But coffee just baffles me. It needs first to be roasted, then ground, then processed through complex water and pressure physics, at very particular temperatures and conditions. I mean, how on earth did we get here? That's no simple process. What prompted someone to stubborn it out because darn these beans smell good and there must be something I can do with them? Everybody talks about how to roast coffee, brew coffee, the history of later tweaks and technical inventions to improve coffee consumption and production. But what's its origin story???
I guess I'd break all that down to wishing people were more curious about the everyday mundane things in our life, rather than taking them for granted. I love Bill Bryson's 'A Home' because he does just that. Wanders around his house asking questions like, why is pepper the spice we have alongside salt? Why is this room shaped like this? Then spirals out from those questions to big topics like the history of electricity, communication, or imperial trade wars and colonialism. All the big politics, inventions, history and moving and shaking of the world one way or another ends up writing - or written into - the materiality of our daily life. One of the many reasons I love household archaeology so much.
Our contributions to the waste stream. We throw so much "away", but it certainly doesn't magically disappear from our home planet. (Would that it did!) I would love to see more awareness around the realities of what happens to what goes in the bin and lean more toward the "reduce, reuse" sides of that little green triangle.
I wish people were more curious about each other. As time passes, I’m more aware that people just don’t want to listen any more. Not sure if this is since Covid, but it seems that interest in others has been overtaken by needing to talk about themselves. It’s a shame, there are some truly amazing people out there if we just give them the airtime.
This might seem a bit of a funny answer, but thread itself! When you start looking into the history of thread, and realize how many technological advancements were and continue to be made possible by thread, string, and yarn, (fishing nets, for example,) it gives you a newfound respect for the species. People always go on about the wheel and agriculture, but for my money thread is our most incredible invention.
I hope I'm not too late for this conversation, just seeing it now. My answer is death. We spend our whole lives terrified of death -- either thinking about it all the time, or avoiding it all together without approaching it with curiosity. I'm reading the Tibetan Book of Living & Dying right now, and finding mortality much less scary when it is approached with curiosity.
I just flew over Greenland and Nunavut yesterday and I'm desperately curious to learn more about Nunavut. So much empty space! So much snow! What's really there? What's it like there? What will happen with climate change. So many questions!
(1) Albedo -- and why some more melting ice is really gonna suck for a lot of us. (2) When my Newsletter goes viral whatever that means :)
Well, other than JOLENE's Substack 🤣....
Science - specifically the science behind the benefits of kindness. Random acts of kindness are cool....but the real magic happens when people build kindness habits and develop a kindness identity.
I wish more people were curious about my posts
I wish more people were curious about how living things become well... living
An egg has all that is necessary to deploy a full chick, and yet is really the same as a completely inert unfertilised egg.
How does that happen ? How does one single cell generate trillions of completely functionally different cells ?
And the problem works at several scales: how does a few hundred basically identical cells (the neuroepithelium) manage to generate a machinery as widely diverse as the brain ?
The answer is far from trivial, and even looking deeply at the mechanisms it's wild to imagine how all these differences appear out of nowhere (or rather minuscule variations)
I love all of the drama involved in history! I wish more people were curious about the nitty gritty of what was going on 200-2000 years ago because there is so much tea there! People have always been human, and humans have messy and often funny lives. Even seemingly boring political things tend to have a backstory that is little known or taught in school.
How time isn't an actual thing it was invented. And how the integration of time into our lives has been driven by things like the Industrial Revolution.
Basically time is a social construct...
(ie. Minutes and seconds derive from the sexagesimal partitions of the degree introduced by Babylonian astronomers. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-chronicle-of-timekeeping-2006-02/ )
Boring, but I wish people were more curious about how politics and law actually work and how they are supposed to work so they could play a fuller part in how we are governed and improve the quality of it.
I think I am curious about absolutely everything everyone mentioned in the past day! Thanks for all those thoughtful answers!
How do we know what we know - and more importantly, what we don't know? How can we get better at recognizing our uncertainties? I'm a cognitive psychologist, and so much comes down to how variably good humans are at not being sure.
Cats.
No, I get it. Everyone has cats! Cats are all over the internet! Cats are half of what the internet is for! How could there be so much we don't know about cats?
... conventional wisdom says cats won't walk on a leash. I've got two who do.
Conventional wisdon says you can't tame a feral cat. One of my leashcats? Was the neighborhood feral tom when I met him.
I recently learned a few things I didn't know about dogs, because my roommate is raising a puppy & training him to be a service dog. I learned that puppies go through a couple of 'fear stages', natural parts of their emotional development when they're just way more likely to get scared of stuff. This is well known among dog trainers, apparently, just a thing you take into account when they hit that age.
Do cats have fear stages? Who knows? Nobody tries to train cats in any kind of systematic way. Nobody studies how to train cats, how much they might be able to learn if we really put in the work, what their potential might be as, say, service animals. Or pest control, but in a more directed way than they are. Or as companion animals, but companion animals who GO places with their people.
I can go to the park with my cats & have a picnic, just as easily as people do that with their dogs. I can take them hiking, or take them for a wander down Main Street, into any shop they're allowed in. & they LOVE it. I get hollered at -- yes, by my cats -- if I don't take them out as often as they want me to.
Why doesn't this happen more often? Why don't people THINK of it? Why don't we know more about what cats are capable of learning? & what could they learn to do that we haven't even thought to let them try?
Rivers!
I'm a freshwater ecologist and I was in my early twenties to learn what a natural river really should look like. People have settled close to rivers throughout human history, but we have altered so much of these incredible ecosystems that we just do not know what to miss anymore. I highly encource everyone who endulges me to look up historical maps (just google it- Arcanum is an excellent source) and compare landscapes then and now. Large rivers like the Danube looked like the Amazon from above, bursting with life and biodiversity (look up sturgeons like Huso huso- they look like dinosaurs and get get huge!). And just look up your home town. There always is or used to be a babbling brook close by.
And just turn around some stones in your river. You'll find caddisflies (a sister group of butterflies, that build there own homes and even jewelry if you supply them with shiny substrate in the right size).
And did you know you can determine the ecological state of a river by investigating aquatic animals? It's like playing detective!
I am an expert for dragonflies, but I gotta stop myself right here or I'll keep typing until my fingers fall off.
Love your newsletter. Keep curious!
So crazy you're mentioning the doorway effect--I've been working on a draft about it for Collected Rejections!
I have a million things I wish people were more curious about, but at the top of my list is just "how stuff--the vague general everything--works." How do bones break? How does glue stay glue until it's outside the bottle, and then how does it keep stuff together when it dries? How did people take baths in 1300? How did someone figure out lotion (and how does it work)? How is animation created? How do surgeons tell your muscles from your veins and your ligaments and your nerves if everything is so small and covered in blood anyway? Just... howwwww?
I wish that citizens and residents of the U.S. were more curious about how our government works, and how laws and public policy directly affect them and their everyday lives. Oh how I wish this! The more people who know the details and the facts, the more positive change can be made!
I love the premise of your newsletter and of being curious about absolutely everything. Question it all, it's fascinating and and a joy to read your deep dives. I'm always interested in history, throughlines of how we got to where from where, why we believe things that have no basis other than because-it's-always -been-done-that-way-we-think. Katherine May just wrote something brief about exploring humility, and her sheepish surprise in understanding that humility is a tool of the oppressor, to keep those oppressed civil, humble, etc. Those are the kinds of things that I find endlessly fascinating and important to shed light on, to understand how much underpins the actions of society in ways that are so not helpful in being a whole human being, so to speak.
... since you asked...
Science has a sad record of ignoring or dismissing new evidence, especially if the source is from a lateral direction, i.e., not from the respected specialists in a particular relevant field. Research into many real-world unsolved problems can go astray because of their to-be-expected interdisciplinary nature. A lateral perspective is often helpful, but curiosity is paramount. Study Thomas S. Kuhn for more.
I have been bedeviled in my personal geological investigation by the lack of curiosity in many scientists today. One of my dear daughters (resplendent in ivory league robes and floppy hats): "Dad, don’t you know that curiosity killed the cat?” Seems that’s what you get from MIT, Cornell and Brown these days.
The most prolific water-holding landform in North America is an oddity often referred to as "Carolina Bays”, but go by differing names in different locales: Citronella Ponds, High Plains Playas, Nebraska Rainwater Basins, among others. USGS geologists soundly dismiss anything but a gradualist mechanism for their prolific presence on the landscape. My survey suggest there are somewhere near a 100,000 in existence. Yet, they get virtually no interest from anyone outside of the ecologists, who marvel at the diversity of the flora and fauna contained within in them.
Because of their obscurity, the 99% of them have been ditched , drained, clearcut, sterilized and farmed-over. The US Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Waters Act does not protect them nor their precious contents, as their nature as hydrologically closed basins does not allow them to participate In the “Navigable Waters of the US”.
Smithsonian Magazine published an article about them in September of 1997 (yes, only one). There is absolutely no mention of the term ”Carolina Bay” in the National Geographic historical index. Nothing in Scientific America, either. AAAS “Science” has several indexed references, but all short synopsis from last century. The only in-depth scientific inquiry (341 pages from Columbia University Press) about them was written in 1942 by Douglas Johnson, the President of Columbia University’s Geology Department. He stated "In more than 40 years of geological study, the writer has not encountered a problem so difficult, unless it be that of submarine canyons.”
And we know how difficult the solution to “submarine canyons” turned out to be 30 years later. Where is the curiosity about the Carolina bays? The cynic would say that since there is no proven solution, it must just be "the way things are, nothing to see here”.
One professional restoration engineer summed the problem up: "Given a confident belief that the answers are indeed out there in the sand, we come then to the true shame of the Carolina Bay story: the willingness of the current geophysical research community to tolerate and admit such a profound mystery in their midst. I've known respected professional earth scientists to brush off questions about Carolina Bay origin with references to alien landings and giant fish. With prodding, they generally elicit a thin collage of wind and wave theory faintly recalled from their student years. One gets the distinct feeling that the study of Carolina Bay origin is the 'crazy aunt in the attic' of the Coastal Plain researcher. And that visiting his dear relative is hardly worth the disturbing consequences." - quote from George Howard.
Not being an accredited geologist, I have no fear of being labeled the “crazy uncle/dad”. The Geological Society of America recently released a 30 page paper that I co-authored with my friend Thomas Harris. It comes as chapter 24 in GSA Special Book 553, a volume dedicated to concepts the GSA feels are "addressing an embryonic, speculative, but observationally supported, new concept worthy of further investigation."
Well, that hypothesis is indeed unconventional. More curiosity would be helpful when ingesting it.
This thread. My god there are already enough ideas here to keep a family of four starving Substack authors going for months!
Oh the phenomenon of UFO/UAP for sure. The US government finally admitted yes they exist and no we don’t know what it is. Most people don’t even register what that means! And it turns out that yes there is a faction that knows the facts and they don’t want to share. See the 32 pages of UAP language in the NDAA 2023 for what is suspected and known.
I want to know what is the purpose of human beings? Why have we evolved to become the creatures we are today? If humans had not come into being would this planet be better or worse off?
Thanks Mike.
I am a geologist and found your work, like many of us I assume, because of the Zanclean Megaflood thread. I have thoroughly enjoyed the geology topics to date, kudos. I love that geology is ubiquitous on this beautiful planet (it is a giant rock after all) and its ability to explain so much about where we live, find our food, our cultures, and so much more.
I am also interested in the interplay between our diets, physical activity/fitness, mood, cognitive ability, and the myriad ways they interact and affect each other. Which is the main driver? (Is there one?) How do they all interact? What can be done to improve them? What are the evolutionary reasonings/explanations for why they behave the way they do today?
What Victoria Rios said. The social norms and customs and beliefs are all real enough, but kind of arbitrary. The 'right' way to raise children is a really really broad range, but each culture has centered on a really really tight range of answers. We 'know' the right way to conduct yourself with elders (or with someone mourning, or getting married), but that is different in different cultures and examining those differences could lead us to deeper appreciation for each other and more empathy. Maybe.
Their own prejudices. I mean the inadvertent ingrained ones that we all have because of our unique set of life experience, privileges, and all that. I really really wish I could have more conversations about this stuff from the perspective of curiosity.
Plant anatomy and biology! How are hybrid plants bred and why can't you reproduce them at home? What is genetic modification? How do insects influence crops? What different soil qualities effect certain breeds?
As a culture, we are starting to care more about sustainable living, locally grown diets, encouraging native habitats, and reducing our meat consumption, but most people I know are practically taking the value of plants on faith. We should know *as much as it is practical to learn* about plants in general and food crops in particular! Agricultural science is old and vital, and the more people are familiar with it, the more likely innovative advancements are to happen!
The etymology of words - i.e. the origins of the things we say, and also how the meaning of those things has changed and evolved over time.
For example, buxom used to mean pliant or obedient; as opposed to voluptuous or big-breasted.
Also idioms! I think idioms are fascinating too :)
I wish more people were curious about the physical characteristics of the area they live in. I saw a list a few years ago of ~30 things that 200 years ago everyone could answer and now few can. Things like -- what body of water does your drinking water come from? What is the primary soil type in your area? Which direction do storms usually come from? Where is the North Star and when is the next full moon? I couldn't answer all of the questions on the list and it's been fun doing the exploring required to learn more about my area.