Is Curiosity Dangerous?

You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.

Guess what, Mango, what's that?

Well?

So I've been thinking about that old saying curiosity killed the cat, right, I know, we teased it in yesterday's episode. It's got me wondering if maybe we're a tattoo hasty and committing to a week long series about being curious. I mean, we've got families to think about, Mango. Can we really commit to this?

There's no whimping out now. We are only on day two. Besides, haven't you heard the second part of that phrase, Curiosity killed a cat, but satisfaction brought it back.

Okay, great, great? So raising the dead always ends well?

Right, I know, but that phrase is really just a way to discourage people from asking too many questions. And when has other people's annoyance ever stopped us from asking questions?

Not even once? I can't think of one time. I'm more of a dog person anyway. So I think you've convinced me. I'm back on board. Let's do this.

I like it. So, for the sake of all the curious cats out there today, we're going to investigate whether asking questions really is as dangerous as some people would have as believe. Along the way, we'll examine how cultural views and literary depictions of curiosity have changed over time, as well as what it means to stay curious in a world where answers are easy and always at our fingertips. So muster your courage, sharpen your claws, let's dive in.

Hey their podcast listeners, Welcome to the part time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm here with my friend manguesh hot ticketter and on the other side of the soundproof glass making a poster of some kind. That's our friend and producer Dylan Fagan. I can't quite tell what it says, though, Dylan, will you hold it up to the glass? It says reward five thousand dollars for the capture of history's most notorious cat killer.

Come on, Dylan, I've never heard of a man hunt for an abstract concept for five grand I think it's word.

Yeah, I think I'm gonna I think I'm gonna go focus on that. But I'm not sure which is less likely, someone physically capturing curiosity or Dylan ponying up five thousand dollars. I've never seen him give five thousand dollars to somebody of you, so I'm not surprised he's reacting so negatively to the phrase, because for as often as that expression gets thrown around, I don't think many people actually like it or even agree with the sentiment.

Yeah, it's one of the darker idioms of the English language, many of which are cat based. For some reason.

I guess you're right and thought about that. You got scaredy cat, you got copycat and some cat.

No room to swing a cat, more than one way to skin a cat, right, lots of cat animosity, And as.

We've talked about this many times before, I'm a little freaked out by cats for all of our listeners. Before anybody gets mad, I don't hate cats. I'm just sort of freaked out by that. But now I'm thinking they have way more reason to be afraid of us.

Definitely, And I think curiosity Kill the cat is extra going because not only does it make us imagine a dead cat, it also maligns curiosity, which is something most of us enjoy. In fact, we sent our friend Mitra out to Brooklyn to ask people how they felt about the famous saying and spoiler alert. Pretty much all of them hated it. There were two people in particular, Herman and Lindsay, who did a great job breaking down why it's such a terrible concept. Here's what they had to say.

I think it's a very negative perspective to have on curiosity. You have to be curious if you want to learn, if you want to grow, if you want to evolve, and things like that. Question anything and everything. Anybody that's frowning upon you questioning it. Yeah, it's probably a beast side.

When I think of curiosity, kill the cat, it feels like control. It feels like a repressive kind of ethos, like don't ask too many questions, just accept things the way they are, turn a blind eye to things that you can't explain, or else you might die like that cat over there. So that expression never really resonated because it feels like just some kind of patriarchal, repressive kind of idea. You know.

It's interesting she brings up the patriarchy because some historians actually think that's why a cat was chosen as Curiosity's target in the first place. Cats are historically associated with femininity and traditional male dominated cultures. Women were the last people who were supposed to be asking questions.

Yeah, it's no coincidence that Eve was the one who ate the forbidden fruit in the Bible, or that Pandora is the one who opens the box that unleashes evil on the world. Those are some of the earliest examples of storytelling we have, and both of them cast women's curiosity as the source of humanity's woes, like it's not really that subtle.

No, it's not. And sadly, we can trace the threat of misogyny all through the development of Western culture, especially with the many attempts to keep women out of academia and institutions of learning. But that isn't to say women were the only ones who've been discouraged from asking questions.

Is kind of ironic when you consider that curiosity helped us build civilization in the first place, right, Like, how else would we have mastered the ability to create fire if not by observing it right or wondering how it worked, or trying to replicate it all those things.

Yeah, that's true. But you know, once civilization was up and running, the focus quickly shifted to maintaining the status quo. Right wrong, there, that became, you know, the real focus, and those empowered decided the best way to do that was to limit the public's ability to ask questions. Previously, most people were just too busy to indulge their curiosity, but the rise of civilized society provided a new deterrent, the lack of moral authority.

So what do you mean, like leaders told people it was wrong.

To be curious, exactly, Like just in the stories you referenced, being curious was no longer considered just a dangerous use of time. It was condemned as a violation of the natural order. But rather than explain all this myself, Gabe actually set down with a full time genius, Barbara Benedict. She's an English professor at Trinity College and the author

There are all sorts of prohibitions against asking questions from revered sources. Start with the Bible, which tells the lay people not to inquire into God's mysteries, not to ask questions that haven't already been answered, because God has kept things secret for his own sake. He moves in mysterious ways, and you better just accept that. And there is a kind of reflection in the social sphere to the political sphere.

So, this war on public curiosity, it was really just a means of control by the upper classes.

I guess that's right. But you know, back then, no one would have used the word curiosity to describe what was actually being fought, and that's because curiosity didn't refer to inquisitive thinking until around the seventeen hundreds. Before that, the words meaning was much closer to the Latin form, which was derived from cura or care. So curiosity in the Middle Ages referred to an unusual level of carefulness

So even though the meaning was totally different, there was still a kind of classessm tied up with early conception of curiosity, like only the wealthy could afford to buy curious objects.

I'm guessing right, right, and the powers that be made it clear this kind of curiosity wasn't something the average person should aspire to in their own life, Karen. Attention to detail were luxuries for a very chosen few. Everyone else was supposed to stay in their lane and let good enough be good enough. And in fact, the infamous phrase was originally care killed the cat. Really, it's true.

I don't know what I mean.

Is well, it's thought that Johnson was using care and the sense of worry or concern, basically saying, don't let stress or anxiety get the best of you.

So, in other words, akuna matata exactly.

I don't know why I didn't just write that. And the reference to a cat is also kind of tough to explain, since cats aren't really known to be overly concerned about things.

Yeah, I mean mostly just food and ear scratches.

Right, Yeah, it's a pretty short list, which is why my best guess is that it's not actually the cat who's stressing in this scenario. And what Johnson was really saying is that a person's anxieties can become so toxic that they even intrude in the care free life of a cat. So while the phrase wasn't aim specifically at the kind of care displayed in curious objects, it did warn against excessive care in general.

So I could see how stress and worry might be bad for a person. But why would just caring about something be dangerous? Like if someone cared enough to look into why the sky is blue? How is what's a threat to society?

Well, in that case, I think someone in the Middle Ages would say that you're prying into sacred knowledge, like you're overstepping the limits of what humans are meant to know. But according to Professor Benedict, it's also about social conformity. By expressing care for something that others consider trivial, you're also setting yourself apart from the crowd, and by extension, you're making yourself a target.

There's a strong social and moral resistance to curiosity in all of its forms, because it's subversive, because it's asking questions are not supposed to be asked, and therefore, if a character is pursuing an inquiry, there must be something slightly wrong with him or her Because the artists are all out there and most of us have accepted that. But for this quirky person. Somehow they have to push the envelope and go a little bit further than anybody

I really kind of love that she frames curiosity as this subversive acts. Like, obviously it's natural to care about things and to ask questions, and yesterday we talked about how our brains are hardwired to be curious. But once you put all these systems in control into place, whether it's religion or the state or peer pressure, the mere

And so what was there? People who are like he's gone can be curious now or what happened?

Not exactly, but before the wars, Charles was thought to have been appointed by God, and after his death there was no divine retribution. In fact, the country was doing pretty well, so suddenly the whole idea of authoritarianism gets called into question. Right, people start to think, maybe God doesn't care who the king is, and maybe that means he's laid back about other things.

Too, like questioning how society should function or why the sky is blue?

I guess right, And that new mindset paved the way for all sorts of radical developments, including the rise of empirical science. Previously, people believe that everything worth knowing was revealed to them by God, but in the late sixteen hundreds, English philosopher John Locke suggested that we learned through our five senses and from reflecting on the knowledge we gain from those senses. So that kind of levels the intellectual playing field. You don't have to be a member of

That's exactly right. And you know this is also the era when people started to assemble their own collection of curious objects, fossil shells, scientific equipment, artifacts from other countries. We typically think of this trend in relation to the fancy sort of cabinet of curiosities that later became the basis for modern museums, which is something I know you and Gabe talked about in your episode on tiny museums.

The Royal Society for the Advancement of Learning, which Charles the SECA established in sixteen sixty two, was deliberately looking at objects of nature to explain how they worked and to ask all those naughty questions about you then, how clouds dropped rain, and the generation of the sexes, and the movement of the spheres, and all those things that

That makes me feel so much better about my stick collection.

You've got the best stick collection I've ever seen, Mango. But you know, seriously, it's tempting to view collecting as consumerism ron a muck or someone trying to fill a void by hoarding a bunch of stuff. But there's also another way to look at it. Like the word curate also comes from the Latin word for care, as we talked about, and curating a collection turns it into an intellectual exercise, a way of exploring curiosity. So think about it.

That's a really lovely way to look at it. Yeah.

I mean, these kinds of collections were a major source of knowledge and inspiration for people in the seventeenth century, and they were meant to be shared. People gave tours of collections as a form of after dinner entertainment. And I feel like this is such a great concept and we kind of need to bring it back, you know. So every day this week we've got a listener activity and anyone who participates has a chance to win a part time Genius prize pack. We introduced this yesterday and

Yeah, they could be anything you want, natural, artificial, old, new, stuff you own, stuff you'd like to own. We are not picky, and we are not here to judge. We just want to know what sparks your sense of curiosity. We are going to pick one person at random to win a prize pack, and if you want a bonus entry, make an actual video showing us your cabinet of curiosities and tag us. The deadline is Sunday, October twenty six. Details and links are in the show notes and on our social media accounts.

All right, Mango, so what would you put in your cabinet?

You know, I actually was thinking about this a little bit, and I'm not that much of a collector. I mean, I've got like some stuff that like I've got these old binoculars that my grandfather, who was in the forestry Service, used to use, and they're like brass and beautiful. But it was actually thinking that I've got all my old iPhones from the first iPhone. Oh, and so like just how you catch shelf of like like the other variations

Into Oh that's fun, haven't it. That's fun?

How about you.

I actually like to think back on the things that I collected or was interested in the past that I honestly, and I don't say this in a joking way, I just have no interest in now, Like things like baseball cards and stuff like that that I was just so consumed by as a kid, And it's just kind of fun to look back and think, like, what was it that it was so interested in this or other things

That's really awesome. Okay. Well, so you mentioned earlier that the printing press came along around the time when Europeans were starting to embrace the concept of curiosity, and by the eighteenth century print was in full swing. It was spreading new ideas and new questions all around the globe. This gave rise to modern journalism, which of course is all about investigation, but it also helped people create the novel. One genre of novel became immensely popular right off the bat,

The detectives become objects of curiosity in themselves.

Exactly, and that's one of the strengths of novels in general. They can give you insight into interior lives of people who aren't like you. But again, in this case, the detective was defective, right, So there was kind of a social judgment at work here, sort of like going to see the quote unquote freaks in a sideshow, right, Like the genre was simultaneously stoking reader's curiosity while also implying

Well, I do want to dig into that because, and this is going to sound shocking, Mago, but I actually think the naysayers are onto something here. Curiosity is dangerous.

Well, you've got some explaining to do after the break, but before that, we've got a positile some ads. Welcome back to part time genius. You know, well, I've known you for a very long time. I didn't think you could still surprise me. But I was not expecting you to say that you agree with that old timy idea that curiosity is actually dangerous.

All right, Well, let's think this through, right, So, curiosity without any caution or self restraint can actually do a lot of harm, Like if a curious kid touches a hot stove, or if you hear a noise outside your tent while you're camping go outside to investigate and get mauled by a bear, that sort of thing. But the

So far, this seems more like a story about the dangers of a lack of curiosity, right, I would have so many questions if a stranger showed up claiming to be my wife and then spent the night sewing some mysterious garment. Yeah, but this guy just rolls with it.

I've never told you this is how I met my wife. This was a fifteenth century, so he probably didn't have too much else going on. And anyway, the woman tells him to take the garment to the market, where he's able to sell it at an insanely high price. So now they're this thriving, happy couple, and the woman says she's willing to keep the gravy train going, but on one condition. She'll continue to make beautiful clothes to support them, but only if her husband never enters the room while

Room and based on the title, I'm guessing he sees the crane.

That's exactly right. She's been disguised as the woman the whole time and has been secretly plucking out her own feathers to make this dazzling clothing. But now she's so heartbroken that her husband broke his promise that she flies away and she never comes back.

That is brutal. So I guess I do see your point that relentless drive to know things can override everything else, even our own sense of self protection.

That's right, and it actually reminds me of something Professor Bennedict said about the nature of curiosity and the complications of trying to wield it responsibly.

Curiosity is fundamentally, as I said before, it's insubordination, it's subversive, it crosses boundaries. It's no respector of persons peering, peeping, prying. They're all transgressive, and they're all kind of also, you might even say imperialistic, because they're assuming the power in the person who is inquiring. They have the power and right to invade and to possess your secrets. There have to be some kind of restraints on inquiry that respect

Yeah, I mean, a balancing act is a good way to think about it, because even deprivation, curiosity can have some positive applications. The drive to find an answer can push you to work extra hard and think outside the box, which may not be the case if you're exploring a topic just for the fun of it. The flip side is when you don't really care what the answer is, so long as you feel like you've found an answer, meaning what exactly, Well, I keep thinking about something I

So this is a kind of curiosity that actually makes you less curious because it convinces you you already have the answers, even when they might be the wrong ones.

Which is weird, right, But it can be tough to wrap your head around. So I wanted to go back to Lindsey, who we heard from earlier. She told me to something that perfectly encapsulates what I'm talking about.

I have a cousin who believes that the Earth is flat, and a lot of people believe that, and I guess in a conspiracy theory kind of situation, you almost stop being curious and assign your identity and belief system to this weird structure that somebody says is how the world is. And it's almost like your blinders go up and your curiosity turns off.

All right, So what's the solution here, how do we combat that type of mindset.

Well, the solution to flat eartherism is to go watch the sunset over the horizon. But when it comes to navigating the pitfalls of deprivation curiosity, the only real enddot is to keep an open mind and try to stay humble. Socrates famously said, the only thing I know for certain is that I know nothing, and that is such a healthy frame of mind to have, especially in the information age, when you can ask AI a question and get an instant answer, right or wrong.

Yeah, it's worth mentioning too that material security plays a role in healthy curiosity. So remember we talked earlier, back in the Middle Ages, curiosity was pretty much a luxury. So unfortunately, in some ways that's still true. Studies have actually shown that while levels of curiosity don't vary by nationality, they do vary based on economic status. So, for instance, the Greater Good Society Center at UC Berkeley collected data

So again, it's about having some intellectual humility and just like getting comfortable with uncertainty, right, like, the best way to find common ground is to stay curious about other people and how they view the world.

That's exactly right. In fact, Professor Benedict says that being curious can help us bridge our differences, even in today's incredibly divided society.

I think the curiosity in a cultural context leads directly to tolerance, because you are asking what other people are like, how they work, what's important to them, what do they eat. All of that requires the kind of empathetic understanding of otherness, if you like. So there's no doubt in my mind. That the respect thankful practice of curiosities. We're bringing people together.

I love that so much, and I love that phrase, the respectful practice of curiosity. I like to think that's what we do with this show.

Yeah, I would say we're mostly respectful. Mostly.

Well, our mostly respectful exploration of curiosity will continue tomorrow when we will be talking about animals. Does your pet experience curiosity the same way you do? How does being in captivity affect wild animals and their curiosity? We'll find out, and I promise not a single dead cat insight.

All right, Well, that does it for today's episode. Thanks to Mitra Banshahi for collecting field tape for us. We appreciate you so much. And thanks to Professor Barbara Benedict for sharing her expertise. I heard she also showed Gabe one of the objects in her own collection. It was a mummified shrew from ancient Egypt. I've never shown gave my mammified truth from ancient angel, which is just a

Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson and Me Mongashtikler, and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvel and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Vine Shory.

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