A bold manifesto arguing that the most complex challenges we face today—as individuals, businesses, and a society—require us to ask deeper questions, not seek easier answers.
RADICAL CURIOSITY:
Questioning Commonly Held Beliefs to Imagine Flourishing Futures
by Seth Goldenberg
Crown, August 2022
In a world with an endless hunger for innovation, why is it so hard to create audacious change? According to thought leader Seth Goldenberg, the answer to this question stems from how we, as a society, view questions themselves.
In RADICAL CURIOSITY, Goldenberg argues that because we value knowing above learning and prioritize doing over thinking, curiosity has become an endangered species. Only by rediscovering the power of questions can we hope to rewrite the commonly held “legacy” narratives that no longer serve us and to remake our organizations, our politics, and our lives.
With this empowering book, Goldenberg introduces the practice of Radical Curiosity through the lens of seven narratives that are going through significant transformation: Learning, Cohesion, Time, Youth, Aliveness, Nature, and Value. Along the way, he unpacks principles intended to spark our own questioning, including:
• Education is too big to fail, but maybe it should.
• Time travel isn’t reserved for DeLoreans.
• Let us now praise rural communities.
• Survival economics have made imagination a luxury good.
Blending philosophy, business strategy, cultural criticism, and fascinating case studies, RADICAL CURIOSITY is a new way of solving our most complex problems—one focused not on technology or science but on the power of human inquiry. By asking us to relearn how we learn, reengage in dialogue, revive our youthful sense of wonder, and rethink what we value, it reignites the curiosity needed to imagine and build a better world.
Seth Goldenberg is a designer, curator, and entrepreneur who harnesses the power of questioning to catalyze innovation and cultural change. He is the founder and CEO of Curiosity & Co., a one-of-a-kind bookstore, experience laboratory, and design-ventures studio, and the creator of the Ideas Salons, invitational thought-leader retreats that tackle the essential questions of our time. Goldenberg has led high-profile projects with clients such as Apple, American Express, the Oprah Winfrey Network, and the governor of Rhode Island. He also founded Dialog:City, the civic arts festival for the 2008 Democratic National Convention. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Wired, and Fast Company. He lives on the island of Jamestown, Rhode Island.

Dr. Alex Jadad is the creator of the Jadad scale, which has become the world’s most widely used methodology to assess the quality of clinical trials, and Tamen Jadad-Garcia is a health entrepreneur and philosopher. Here they combine their expertise to uncover the medical system’s unstable foundations, which condemn you to be ill. The Jadads begin this exploration with a simple question: “What is health?”
From human rights activist Michael Shaikh, this will be a sweeping survey on how food and food culture are invisible casualties of war and political violence. From Syria to Sri Lanka, Afghanistan to Bolivia, Shaikh examines how a community’s sense of history and identity is lost when food traditions are lost, and the people who are trying to restore and reclaim their heritage.
Maggie Hoyt is a quick-witted, house-sitting LA actress who’s dated one too many DJs. One night, while still grieving the death of her ex-boyfriend, she meets Rob, a charming tattoo artist who makes her feel like her best self—a feeling she hasn’t experienced in a long time. Their attraction for one another is electrifying and instantaneous. There’s just one problem: he’s married. Their precarious relationship forces Maggie to confront the love she’s been looking for, the guilt she’s been harboring, the grief she’s been hiding, and the woman she wants to be.
Belleville 1860: Lavender Fitch is a twenty-eightyear-old spinster, whose station in life is diminished after the death of her father, the local apothecary. Her only inheritance is the family house along with its extensive gardens. To make ends meet, Lavender resorts to selling flowers at the local market.