Curiosity isn't just about asking questions or exploring novel experiences. It's about what happens when you do.
In this episode of The Connection Effect, host Bill Groner sits down with psychologist, researcher, and author Todd Kashdan — one of the world's leading experts on curiosity — to explore what curiosity really is and why it's far more powerful, more complex, and more trainable than most of us realize.
Drawing from 25 years of research, Todd unpacks curiosity as a five-dimensional strength: not just a feeling of wonder, but a system that involves tolerating uncertainty, navigating the tension between what excites us and what scares us, and finding the motivation to step toward the unfamiliar rather than away from it.
Bill and Todd explore why curiosity is so underestimated, and what the science actually shows about its benefits: from slowing cognitive decline and generating vitality, to building agency, easing loneliness, and helping us connect across deep political and personal divides. This is curiosity not as a personality trait, but as a way of being — and a skill anyone can build.
00:00 Introduction: The Curiosity Expert
02:11 Meet Todd Kashdan: From Panic Attacks to Curiosity Science
03:15 Residual Unsatisfied Curiosity: The Insight That Changed Everything
03:49 The Five Dimensions of Curiosity
05:59 Approach-Avoidance Conflict and Anxiety
06:54 Curiosity as a Dormant Strength
10:12 Is Curiosity Nature or Nurture? (Baseline + Coaching Model)
23:33 Curiosity and Cognitive Decline
27:38 Curiosity as an Agentic Superpower
30:00 Control, Hope, and Our Inner Lives
33:19 Bridging Political and Personal Divides with Curiosity
39:04 Teaching Curiosity: From Classrooms to Workshops
42:05 Hope for the Future
45:14 Final Reflections and Invitations
