Curiosity is pretty important. And in this episode of the Curiosity Podcast, Anna Starkey, creative director of top UK interactive science center We The Curious, explains why she believes curiosity will allow humanity to survive and thrive in the 21st century. A curious person herself, Anna Starkey's areas of experience include live television production, comedy writing, classical music and live arts events, physics and neuroscience, and children's animation. Hear her discuss different types of curiosity, connections between curiosity, memory, and learning, and how to encourage a culture of curiosity. Additional resources discussed: We The Curious Anna Starkey's website Follow Anna Starkey on Twitter @annastarkey Do schools kill creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson TED Talk Bring on the learning revolution! | Sir Ken Robinson TED Talk How to escape education's death valley | Sir Ken Robinson TED Talk Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter withCody Gough andAshley Hamer — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Curiosity is pretty important. And in this episode of the Curiosity Podcast, Anna Starkey, creative director of top UK interactive science center We The Curious, explains why she believes curiosity will allow humanity to survive and thrive in the 21st century.
A curious person herself, Anna Starkey's areas of experience include live television production, comedy writing, classical music and live arts events, physics and neuroscience, and children's animation. Hear her discuss different types of curiosity, connections between curiosity, memory, and learning, and how to encourage a culture of curiosity.
Additional resources discussed:
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/the-importance-of-curiosity
CODY GOUGH: Hey, Cody Gough here. Some exciting changes are coming to the Curiosity Podcast. So please stay tuned at the end of this episode for a couple of important announcements. We will not be releasing a new episode next week. So if you're a regular listener, then you'll want to hear why and when we'll be back. Stick around. I'm curious. Why is curiosity so important?
ANNA STARKEY: Curiosity is super important because, I think, it is the thing that will allow us to survive and thrive in the 21st century.
CODY GOUGH: Wow, that's pretty lofty there.
ANNA STARKEY: Yeah, I mean, if you're going to do thinking, you might as well think big is what I reckon.
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ASHLEY HAMER: Hi, I'm Ashley Hamer. And Cody and I are here with the award winning curiosity.com.
CODY GOUGH: This week, we're curious about curiosity itself. We're going to get pretty meta.
ASHLEY HAMER: Every week, we explore what we don't know because curiosity makes you smarter.
CODY GOUGH: This is the Curiosity Podcast.
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ASHLEY HAMER: Curiosity, what is it? Where has it gone, and why does the human species need a new age of curiosity?
CODY GOUGH: We searched for answers and found some in the United Kingdom. Anna Starkey is the creative director of We the Curious, an interactive science center, and she recently spoke about curiosity at TEDx Bristol.
ASHLEY HAMER: We were able to connect over nearly 4,000 miles to help satisfy our curiosity about Curiosity.
CODY GOUGH: And technology can only do so much. So please excuse the sound quality if she sounds like she's an entire Atlantic Ocean away from us.
ANNA STARKEY: Yeah, I think it's the thing that accelerates our evolution as human beings. If you reverse every cool thing, every discovery, every invention, every creative thought backwards, curiosity is at the very start of it. It's kind of the Big Bang for innovation.
CODY GOUGH: Anna, you just gave a TED Talk at TEDx Bristol. And your TED Talk was literally about curiosity. Not to get too meta but you spent probably 17, 18 minutes up there explaining what it is, where it's gone, why does the human species need it. Why did you decide, I need to talk about Curiosity for this TED Talk?
ANNA STARKEY: I think it was because it's been on my mind massively because of the work that I'm doing at the moment but also because-- I don't know-- it's just the thing that, I think, that we all have. Like, lots of people will go, oh, I'm not a scientist, or I wasn't very good at it at school, or I can't do maths.
And lots of people might also say, I'm not very creative. I'm not an artist. I can't draw. But pretty much everyone is curious about something. We were all curious as kids. And some of us hold on to it, and some of us for loads of good reasons like that drops off as you become an adult.
So it feels like curiosity is this common trait that we all have. That is an amazing engine for everything. So I just find it to be this really exciting positive concept to dig into. And that increasingly, I think, it's more and more important in the world to have citizens that are awake and able to ask questions.
CODY GOUGH: And when you say curious, do you mean skeptical or wondrous or are you able to define it a little bit more, or do you just mean broadly?
ANNA STARKEY: I guess, I mean, a bit of both, I suppose. So I've been doing lots of my own research into curiosity and trying to gather up what everyone thinks about it. And I've been discovering as I go along that there are really different types of curiosity.
And the first type that we have when we're kids is this what's called diversity of curiosity, which is the-- I guess, it's what the internet is particularly feeding that kind of-- it's like a transient interest in something new and something-- it's the kind of-- it's the clickbait thing really.
And so there's that kind of curiosity. But then there's this longer term curiosity that drives knowledge and experience generating curiosity. And that's the one that, I think, it's easy to lose, and it's the one that I think really gets us places.
I mean, there's a whole bunch and loads of people who look at it differently. But there's also empathic curiosity, which is a kind of interest in how other people are feeling and what their wants and needs are and what their well being is like. And obviously, I think, as human beings, we need empathic curiosity as well. So it's kind of a combination of all those things. And the more you dig into it, the more curious curiosity becomes, I suppose.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, that's interesting. What's the most surprising thing you found in your research?
ANNA STARKEY: Well, I guess, I've been-- it's interesting because, I think, people are starting to really dig into curiosity from a science research point of view. So like back in the '50s and '60s, there was a surge of interest in curiosity. And people are picking up again now.
But it's just finding things like one of the most recent pieces of research I read was that we're just starting to find out why we learn better when we're curious. And they're finding that it might be-- a state of curiosity might be connected to dopamine, which is the reward chemical in your brains. And actually dopamine is connected to memory. And there was this really interesting study that if you're in a state of curiosity about something, not only do you remember that something much better, but also you remember facts around that that you weren't originally interested in.
ASHLEY HAMER: The study Anna is talking about was published in the Journal Neuron in 2014. Researchers from the University of California, Davis, recruited 19 volunteers to read more than a hundred trivia questions, ranging from what is the term dinosaur actually mean to what Beatles single lasted longest on the charts at 19 weeks? Instead of trying to answer the questions, though, the volunteers just had to rate how curious they were about the answer.
Next, the researchers monitored the volunteers brain activity in an fMRI machine while they got the answers to the questions. The answers to the two we mentioned, by the way, are terrible lizard and Hey Jude. But between seeing the question and the answer, a random phase flashed on the screen with no explanation.
They found that when people were curious about the answers, they better remember them 24 hours later. Just as Anna said, that curiosity was linked to a burst of dopamine in the volunteers brains. Even cooler, they were also better at remembering the faces they saw before learning the answers that piqued their curiosity, which shows that curiosity can even help you learn incidental information you aren't so curious about.
That makes sense when you think about it. Someone who loves to cook remembers a lot of math so they can convert recipe measurements. And someone who loves to paint learns a lot of chemistry so they can know what paints work with others. The take home message, if you need to learn something, put it in the context of something you're curious about.
ANNA STARKEY: So it's just all that stuff that's kind of starting to unravel that, I think, is really exciting. And, I think, what we don't have necessarily a handle on is how we go from, oh, I've just like got this quick passing interest in something and what makes some people then discard that and what makes other people go into it really deep and maybe devote their whole life to that thing that they're curious in. And, I think, that's the bit that we don't fully understand.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. Anna, you work at We the Curious, which is a science lab in Bristol, right?
ANNA STARKEY: Yeah. So it's an interactive science center. So it's kind of like a science museum but with a whole load of interactive exhibits that you can get your hands on. It's actually taken from the model that was the Exploratorium in San Francisco, which is an amazing place to visit.
So, yeah, it's full of all that kind of stuff. We've got a planetarium. We've got two floors of exhibits. And we've kind of-- we've reshaped the whole place to be about curiosity as a starting point and seeing if we can start to--
So our new vision is to build a culture of curiosity. What would it be like if we lived in a society of curious people? And that's really what we're starting to try and do. It's how can we scaffold and support and inspire people to be curious?
CODY GOUGH: It's an interactive science center. And so science education and education in general is clearly one of your interests. Where do you see people's curiosity starting to fall off? You mentioned that little kids are kind of naturally curious creatures. Where does that disappear and how do you encourage that to come back?
ANNA STARKEY: Well, I mean, kind of anecdotally, we're all-- like age five or six, we're all asking-- it's key question asking age. Again, I read somewhere that some kids at that age ask like 300 questions a day. And at some point, I guess, just because of the density of questions coming out, the frequency of them, I think, particularly in school we start getting conditioned to learn facts and pass exams and kind of regurgitate answers.
And something I mentioned when I did my talk was, it feels like we get conditioned to-- you put your hand up in class not to ask questions as much as you're there to answer them. And, I think, that's where it starts to change as the education system starts to kind of push us through these particular routes.
And certainly in the UK, we're still in a place where mostly you have to decide whether you're going to be in the sciences camp or the humanities camp. And it's often hard to make choices where you go. I want to study physics and art and design.
People are still expecting you to pick one discipline. And I think that's where it starts to fall off. And, I think, it's just about-- it's about empowering people to start asking questions. And question asking, I think, is right at the basis of everything because scientific inquiry about the world around us and artistic inquiry about the world around us it's the same thing.
It's curiosity. And that starts with asking questions. So that's how we're trying to encourage it and get people back on that path again.
CODY GOUGH: What do we do to encourage this culture of curiosity and help people grow more as people consistently be on the age of five or six?
ANNA STARKEY: Yeah. Well, it's really about-- because, I think, a lot of people if you're not confident to ask questions. Because if you ask a question then, you might feel you're going to look stupid. You're revealing what you don't know. It might be embarrassing in a work situation. It might not feel right to you in class.
So it's really about kind of saying, you know what? When you're on a process of discovery, whether you're an artist or a scientist or whoever, it's about opening up that process. Because, I think, we present science certainly as a kind of endpoint. It's like, oh, here are the results. Here's the stuff we discovered or didn't discover. Here's a kind of talk or a presentation about it.
But actually opening up science in process so that people can actually get involved in an experiment as it's going along, I think, is the thing that allows you to get in there and get curious about it. Because if you're presenting everything as kind of already done, then that's much less emotionally engaging. And the emotion is the big bit.
That someone has describes-- one researcher described curiosity as being the knowledge emotion, which I really love. Because it's kind of weird, I think, that you-- do we even imagine that there would be-- why is there a feeling, a kind of desire associated with like knowledge gathering? Why have we evolved that way?
And, I think, we've evolved that way because it motivates us to head into the unknown and invent stuff basically. Yeah, I think, it's about opening up the process because the process of art and the process of science is normally closed to people who are not practitioners of either discipline.
ASHLEY HAMER: This is exactly why there's been a big push for storytelling when it comes to science communication. It's easy to forget dry facts about a subject. But put it into a narrative with a protagonist and a challenge and it's liable to become a part of you.
You might not care about the rings of Saturn, but what if you heard the tale of how Galileo first thought Saturn had two arms? The expansion of the universe might sound too big to fathom, but it becomes personally relatable when you hear the underdog story of how Henrietta Swan Leavitt made our discovery of the expanding universe possible.
Our brains are wired for narrative. We love following a character and feeling their emotions. And research shows that when we feel strong emotions while we're learning something, we understand and remember it better.
CODY GOUGH: What do you think will happen when we achieve this culture of curiosity?
ANNA STARKEY: Well, if you start to look at where all the research is pointing and just get a sense of it for yourself, I think, to live in a culture of curiosity is to be in a society which is more connected. Because if you're curious, then you kind of-- it removes your preconceptions and your unconscious bias.
If I meet a new person and I'm curious about them instead of designing stuff about them already because of what they look like or whatever, then I'm going to be connecting that with that person. And it's going to make me more compassionate. The empathic curiosity is going to kick in. And I'm going to be more compassionate about that person.
And, I think, if we're asking questions, whether it's-- it doesn't mean that you all have to be a scientist or everyone has to be an artist. But it means if you're asking questions, then you can ask questions of everything that's going on around you, which means as a society you're going to be more resilient.
You're not just going to be accepting the status quo and swallowing fake news and just allowing whoever's in power to kind of wash a bunch of stuff over you. You're going to be more awake about that kind of stuff. So, yeah, it's about all of those things, I think. I think it would be a really progressive society to live in.
CODY GOUGH: You mentioned there are a couple of different types of curiosity. We've talked a little bit about empathic curiosity. Were there any other ones that you focused on in your TED Talk? How can we maybe help us understand the different types of curiosity and what they offer?
ANNA STARKEY: Yeah. So the big one is this thing called epistemic curiosity, which sounds like really heavy going but basically just means to do with knowledge and that whole thing of a longer term curiosity that drives you to investigate something, I suppose, and gather knowledge about it and generate knowledge actually if you're in the business of doing that. So, I think, all of the greatest innovations have come about because of people pursuing their epistemic curiosity.
So our modern world just wouldn't be recognizable without that type of curiosity. There would be no internet. There would be no smartphones or simple stuff that we take for granted-- roads, electric guitars.
Anything you can imagine really has come about because of people having a question and then just pursuing it until they get somewhere rather than that kind of just kind of glancing like, oh, that thing on the internet was cool in my timeline, or I'm just curious to know how many likes I've got today. And then you're done. You don't do anything with it.
But, I think, it's that active-- I keep using the phrase like curious activists. How do we become curious activists that actually do something with our curiosity instead just kind of-- just sitting on it ourselves, I suppose?
CODY GOUGH: There's two sayings. I'm going to ask you how you feel about both of those. One saying is, there's no such thing as a stupid question.
ANNA STARKEY: OK. So no such thing as a stupid question. Well, I think, where that's coming from is absolutely right, which is like if we're going to get everyone asking questions, then it doesn't matter what question you start asking because actually you start with a question.
And the whole thing that, I think, that scientists and artists do is to refine that question. The skill comes in, asking a question and testing it and then refining it and asking it a different way. And then more questions rise. And then you keep going down that route.
And then something else happens. And you're prepared to fail. And then you're prepared to go off in a different direction and ask another question.
So, yeah, basically, I think, that's the best way to start, is feel like there is no stupid question. But, I think, what it comes down to is after a while, once you get-- once you develop the skill of asking questions, you can ask questions that take you deeper and further quicker, I suppose.
I think that's what it's all about. I think the idea that if you don't know something, then you're kind of ignorant and that's stupid is nonsense. It's like no one got anywhere by pretending that you knew everything.
In fact, the best piece of advice I was ever given was at the beginning of my working life in TV. And a producer said to me, he said, you know what? Absolutely everyone is making it up all of the time. I've remembered that to this day. I think it's brilliant.
ASHLEY HAMER: Admitting what you don't know is powerful. If you'll indulge me, I have a personal experience with that that I'd like to share. I didn't start out as a writer or even as a science nerd. I actually started out as a musician.
I went to this really competitive school for jazz. And in my first year, people were ruthless. If you admitted you hadn't heard this musician or didn't have that album, there were insecure people who would make you feel like less than nothing.
So I learned early on that I shouldn't admit what I didn't know. Sometimes, even pretended to know about something just to get by. Luckily, by the time I got to grad school, I had grown up a bit and built up more confidence in my abilities. And I decided that I would never fake knowledge again.
If someone asked me if I knew about this musician or heard that album and I hadn't, I'd say no. Tell me about it. Unsurprisingly, once I was OK admitting my ignorance, I quickly became a lot less ignorant.
Look, nobody knows everything. And most people are afraid they'll be found out. If you show the confidence to admit what you don't know, you might be surprised how many people are eager to help you learn.
ANNA STARKEY: So, yeah, it's not about being stupid, but it's about starting to understand how you refine questions and how you ask-- how you ask a more beautiful question that is going to take you somewhere more interesting. And I think the reason I ended up talking at TEDx Bristol was because the theme this year was about dare to disrupt.
And my point, I suppose, one of them was that life is chaotic. You cannot plan it. Disruption is going to come down the line and hit you whatever you do. So actually embracing that is the best thing that we can do, and the best tool that we have to navigate an uncertain future.
And the unplannedness of life is to be curious because you can't know what you're going to need to know tomorrow. You can't know what skill you're going to need in 10 years time. So the best thing you can do is be a agile thinker. And curiosity is what takes you through that very kind of pre-programmed thing, which is to be very uncomfortable. Our brains have actually evolved to-- not-- particularly want to sit in uncertainty for very long.
And I learnt this from a really, really amazing neuroscientist called Beau Lotto who was kind of a mentor, I suppose, in that world. And I worked in his public lab for a while. And it's just so interesting that the brain doesn't want to be in that state. We want to get out of it quickly.
But actually, the longer you sit in uncertainty, the more creative you can be. Actually, John Cleese, the comedian, talks about that quite a lot. And like when you're sitting and trying to write a script or come up with ideas with some mates in a room, it feels just kind of a bit uncomfortable when you're all sitting there and you haven't hit the idea yet. But the longer you can put up with that, the more likely you are to come up with a really cool idea out of the end of it.
ASHLEY HAMER: Scientists call the ability to put up with uncertainty, tolerance of ambiguity. A 2016 study in the Journal of Creative Behavior found that the higher your tolerance of ambiguity, the greater your capacity for creativity. According to the researchers, that's because creative problems, whether that's the perfect ad campaign or the perfect punchline to a joke, are usually complex and don't have just one answer.
When you're OK with uncertainty, they say, it's easier for you to reject partial or imperfect solutions to a problem. That means that people who are tolerant of uncertainty are better able to, quote, "grapple with complex problems to remain open and increase the probability of finding a novel solution," end quote.
ANNA STARKEY: There is no script. But the best way to deal with no script is to be curious.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, absolutely. And so you're basically saying that you never know what kind of knowledge you're going to need, and we're just naturally hardwired to do this. And I have to mention now that you've kind of alluded to television and working in a lab, I mean, you certainly have a diverse background that I just want to briefly mention.
I mean, you've been a producer at the BBC. And you've also performed and written stand up comedy and sketch comedy, preschool and children's animation, and classical music. Are you a musician as well?
ANNA STARKEY: Oh, no. I can't claim to be a musician. I love music, but I've been lucky enough to work around a lot of classical music.
CODY GOUGH: So, yeah, I mean, from television to laboratories to now a science research interactive science center, across all these things, I mean, you're setting a pretty high bar for curiosity you realize?
ANNA STARKEY: Well, yeah, it was kind of accidental I've got to say. I realize in retrospect I never really had a plan. I was lucky enough to be able to of follow what was interesting and where my heart was taking me, I suppose.
And so, yeah, I guess, looking back at it probably because I have been curious, I have gone and done a bunch of different stuff that I might not have otherwise done. And, I think, it has taken away the fear that you might have because I didn't know how to do any of those things before I started doing them.
And, I think, rather than being fearful of it, I guess, I was curious to go, OK, what happens if I now stop writing children's animation and go and become a researcher for the BBC proms, which is the big classical music festival? And I'm being curious about-- that kind of takes away the pressure of deciding, oh, if I go and do that, I might fail.
It's like, well, I'm just going to be curious to see what happens if I go and do that. And I might fail, or I might be OK at it. That's a subtle but really important difference, I think.
CODY GOUGH: It really struck me when you were talking about asking the right questions and some critical thinking. And you've also mentioned education. So over in the United Kingdom, it sounds like you may be facing some of the same challenges as here in the US where people are encouraged to really choose one focus or one specialization and kind of stick on that track. Do you see any progress towards remedying that?
ANNA STARKEY: Well, I think, there were amazing teachers doing amazing things out there. That's for sure. Even within the system that is set up are doing and achieving incredible things with their students. Yeah, I think, we are still kind of in what I view is a bit of a Victorian system really, the whole kind of keep quiet, get through your exams, regurgitate facts is kind of-- it was designed to spit out people into a really regimented a kind of system that belongs to a century ago.
And, I think, some people are starting to make a noise about that for sure. And there are-- an amazing TED speaker. I think, he's got the highest TED hits in the world is Ken Robinson, who talks about-- Sir Ken Robinson in fact now-- who talks about why we need creative education system.
So there are definitely people kind of switched on and passionate and doing something about that, but it's not -- I wouldn't say that it's happening immediately nationally. I think that's going to take some real shifts at governmental level. But that's the bit that's really tough and doesn't seem to be the thing that they're focusing on at the moment.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, I mean, that's an international issue. I think a lot of places seem to be trying to find ways to quantify education. And that's a really hard thing to do while encouraging a lot of really creative thinking because it's hard to measure things like creativity and curiosity and critical thinking skills and all those things in a very objective way. So that can be a bit of a challenge, certainly not unique to any one location in the world.
ANNA STARKEY: No, no. I think you're right. And you put your finger on it. I think we don't have a metric yet for creativity or curiosity and maybe we never will. But, I think, A, I think we need to investigate it more. I think there is more research that can be done to understand it better.
But, I think, it's also about longer term thinking and realizing, I suppose, the kind of patterns of this century so far and thinking about the immense changes culturally and societally and in technology. We don't even know what we're educating our kids to go and do. We don't know what their jobs are going to be. We don't know what the world is going to look like.
15 years ago if you'd said, I want to be an app developer, people have been like, what are you talking about? What is that job? So I think that's what we need to wake up to is that we're not equipping people with a forward arrow.
I think that's what's missing. We're equipping people to do the same sort of things over again. And, I think, it was Einstein who said, if you keep attacking a problem in the same way, that's really kind of a sign of madness because you'll just keep getting the same results.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: The actual Einstein quote which he probably did say even if the evidence is shaky is, the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result.
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There was one other phrase that I wanted to run by you. How do you feel about curiosity killed the cat?
ANNA STARKEY: Huh. Well, there was a great phrase that was not mine. I'm borrowing this from a fellow TEDx speaker, [INAUDIBLE], who's brilliant. And she said, well, curiosity was framed. And, I think, she's right.
CODY GOUGH: [LAUGHS]
ANNA STARKEY: Curiosity doesn't kill cats. I think it gives you nine lives. I've actually looked into the origins of that phrase. It's super interesting. It turns out that as far back as you can trace it, the origin was actually care killed the cat, not curiosity killed the cat.
And care at that time, actually meant like anxiety or worry. So actually the origin of phrase is anxiety killed the cat, which makes a whole bunch of sense. Stress will wear you down. And there's an extension to the phrase, which not many people know, which is curiosity kill the cat but satisfaction brings it back.
When you put all that together, like don't get stressed. Find a satisfying way to live your life. That's really the origin of the phrase. And I think somehow it's been kind of misappropriated over the centuries. And we've ended up with this thing that kind of makes you want to-- again, I sort of--
I feel like the Victorian era is to blame. The Victorian era gave us a load of amazing innovation and all sorts of great stuff, but it's that kind of don't be too curious, kids. Don't kind of peek behind the curtain. Don't press the red button. Don't be naughty. Don't break the rules.
And that's a kind of cautionary tale. Well, I just think we need to get rid of it now and come up with something else. Curiosity launched the cat into space--
CODY GOUGH: [LAUGHS]. We'll work on--
ANNA STARKEY: --and the cat loved it.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, we'll work on popularizing that one. I like it a lot.
ANNA STARKEY: OK.
CODY GOUGH: I just want to ask quickly about the red button. I think the red button you mentioned was even in the description of the TED Talk you were going to give. Is there any particular significance to that analogy?
ANNA STARKEY: Yeah, it relates to a moment in which I was standing in a physics lab. And there was a red button amongst many other buttons on the wall and loads of monitors and stuff. And above the red button, there was a sign, which said "do not press."
And I remember seeing this sign in the button. And then I remember pressing the button. And the whole room powered down. It was like [IMITATING ELECTRIC WHIRR] and all the screens went blank, and they started flashing.
It's a visceral memory that I have, but it's also like a metaphor because, I think, we have this tendency to put up big DO NOT PRESS Signs in our heads whenever we're confronted with the unknown or when we're not being curious enough. And, I think, curiosity is about removing the do not press signs that are imaginary. Obviously, if there's a big red button that says do not press, don't press it. I don't--
CODY GOUGH: Why did you press it?
ANNA STARKEY: Because I'm an idiot.
CODY GOUGH: [LAUGHS].
ANNA STARKEY: But, I think, there's an important thing to remember, which is that we create unnecessary do not press signs when we're not comfortable with not knowing things. And, I think, that's what we need to remove. I think we need to be bolder and get curious about stuff instead. It's about re-imagining that proverb.
And you know what? I'm still here. I pressed the red button. Nothing happened. The room went black for a bit. And then I did leave before I found out what else happened.
CODY GOUGH: You didn't lose a job over that or anything?
ANNA STARKEY: No, no. I mean, I probably will now I've said it out loud both in a TED Talk and on your podcast. So that was probably ill advised.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ANNA STARKEY: It was a long time ago.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, great. Statute of limitations is definitely passed. I'm sure there's no one's going to come after you over that. That's a really great visual, though, but sometimes-- yeah, the [? attendant ?] there when it doesn't really need to be.
ANNA STARKEY: Yeah, notice when you've imagined the sign instead of when it's really important.
CODY GOUGH: I would like to wrap up with a segment we call the curiosity challenge. Hopefully, I'll teach you a little something fun and new to satisfy your curiosity, which seems to be very grand based on all the different things you've done in your life, which is quite a spectrum, which is really cool. So I understand that at some point in your career, you worked with stop motion animation. Is that correct?
ANNA STARKEY: That is correct, yeah.
CODY GOUGH: And there was something you did involving penguins?
ANNA STARKEY: Yeah, if anyone knows the animation Pingu, I script edited that for a little while, which will make a lot of people laugh if you do know it because there aren't actually any words.
CODY GOUGH: [LAUGHS]. I thought as well sometimes those are the hardest things to script and act actually. Well, I've got a question for you about penguins.
ANNA STARKEY: OK.
CODY GOUGH: So this is pretty random, but there was actually a kind of an ancient penguin, the colossus penguin. It was the largest penguin Earth has ever seen. It lived between 37 and 40 million years ago on the Antarctic Coast.
ANNA STARKEY: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: This was a pretty big penguin. An average emperor penguin is about 1.3 meters tall. So my question for you is, how tall was the colossus penguin?
ANNA STARKEY: Oh, my gosh. This is such-- this-- I'm intrigued already. I want it to be enormous now. I'm kind of-- I want to be on one of those icebreaking kind of cruise ships and see the penguin looming over the horizon before I see anything else. 1.3 meters is the emperor penguin. I really want it to be like about 3 meters tall. I want it to be at least twice that.
CODY GOUGH: I want it to be at least twice that as well. Sadly, it's not quite three times that, but it is almost twice that. And the average colossus penguin was probably taller than Michael Jordan at 2 full meters tall.
ANNA STARKEY: No way. That is amazing.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ANNA STARKEY: OK.
CODY GOUGH: And due to it size, it could probably hold its breath for longer periods than other penguins. It may have hunted underwater for up to 40 minutes at a time.
ANNA STARKEY: That is awesome. I'm Googling the hell out of this when we finish this call. That's amazing. It's taller than me. And I thought I was tall. That's very cool. I wonder if that's why it died out. Was it just too tall?
CODY GOUGH: It might have been. I mean, I'm also tall. I'm about 6 foot 4, which--
ANNA STARKEY: Oh, wow.
CODY GOUGH: --I think is around 205 centimeters-ish.
ANNA STARKEY: Yep.
CODY GOUGH: And I definitely hit my head on lots of things. So--
ANNA STARKEY: It just get--
CODY GOUGH: --for all we know--
ANNA STARKEY: It kept knocking itself out on low hanging bits of glacier. That's natural selection.
CODY GOUGH: Absolutely. Exactly, natural selection. All right. Well, yeah, so that was my little bit of trivia for you.
ANNA STARKEY: Thank you.
CODY GOUGH: And then I understand that you have a question for me.
ANNA STARKEY: I do have a question for you. It kind of only works if you've watched Pingu, seeing as we've been talking about penguins in that show. But you know the sound effect where Pingu is walking along the ice, and he's like little plasticine feet are kind of slapping along the snow. The sound is made by the guy who invented Pingu, kind of slapping his forearm in the voice studio. That's how you make the sound of big penguin plasticine feet slapping along the ice in Antarctic stop motion.
CODY GOUGH: Wow. Is that what penguins stepping sounds like?
ANNA STARKEY: I have no idea. I've met penguins on a beach in South Africa, but that was on sand. And they really weren't making the same sound. So I don't know. I don't know if it's-- I would probably-- I would wager that it is not true to life.
CODY GOUGH: There are penguins in South Africa?
ANNA STARKEY: Yeah, what's it called Boulders Beach. Yeah, they come over from the Antarctic, I think. And they're on Boulders Beach if you want to go and visit them in the very tip of South Africa. It's not that far-- a drive out of Cape Town as I remember. It's incredible. And they're all just sitting there on these boulders on the beach.
CODY GOUGH: Wow. There's a bit of trivia I did not realize. I didn't know they went that far north.
ANNA STARKEY: Yeah, yeah. No, it was amazing. It surprised me too, but it was a great experience. I've got a photo of me literally sitting with my arm around a penguin.
CODY GOUGH: That's incredible. Well, thank you so much for the trivia and for helping satisfy my curiosity. I agree with you that curiosity is a very important quality for people to have. And if people want to visit We the Curious, that's in Bristol, correct?
ANNA STARKEY: That's in Bristol, yeah. Everyone's welcome. That's the whole point. And we have a website. And there's all sorts of cool stuff coming up down the line.
CODY GOUGH: Thanks for the conversation. It was fantastic.
ANNA STARKEY: Thanks so much, Cody. It was great.
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ASHLEY HAMER: Still curious after learning all about curiosity? Then you're in the perfect mindset for this week's extra credit question. To help artificial intelligence get better at complex tasks, researchers at the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab are trying to give it a sense of curiosity. To do that, they're having AI play a game. The question is, what game is it? The answer after this.
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CODY GOUGH: Let's talk about the Curiosity Podcast, shall we? So here's the deal. Ashley and I want to take some time in December to really process your feedback. This means we're going to be holding off on releasing a new episode next week. But we'll be back in mid-December to wrap up 2017 with a bang. I promise.
After that, we're going to kind of relaunch the podcast in January. And this means you might not see us in your feed for a week or two. But, again, I promise we will be back in full force in 2018.
And the reason we're doing this is simple. Even though we've got a five star rating on iTunes, we can always improve. And we want to look at all of your reviews and emails and social media comments to make sure that we're on the right track and giving you what you want. We're going to tweak a few production elements to make the show really crisp, clear, and fresh in the meantime.
And as part of the relaunch, we really-- and I mean really want to know what you want to hear on the Curiosity Podcast. Please email us at podcast@curiosity.com and let us know. Who do you want us to talk to? What questions do you want answered? What ideas do you have that would make the show more fun for you to listen to?
Now is the time to chime in. I promise I will personally read and respond to every single email we receive. Because believe it or not, we are actually not some gigantic multinational corporation with a billion people. We are here to listen.
Again, that email address is podcast@curiosity.com. And your feedback will truly shape the future of the Curiosity Podcast. So please, stay subscribed and stay curious. And we'll talk to you later this month.
ASHLEY HAMER: Ready for the extra credit answer? The game researchers are using to teach AI curiosity is Super Mario Brothers. By giving AI incentives for discovering its predictions are wrong, in other words, for being surprised, the researchers made it curious about every aspect of the game and eager to take Mario to unpredictable places. You can see a video of AI playing the game on curiosity.com.
CODY GOUGH: That's all for this week. I hope we've satisfied your curiosity for now.
ASHLEY HAMER: Or ignited it. For the Curiosity Podcast, I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough. Talk to you soon.
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