The Posse recruitment and selection process is structured around stimulating and often intensely reflective questions. Debbie builds communication skills and leadership qualities into the scholars’ experience by constantly asking them about themselves and the world around them. At student gatherings, board meetings, and staff retreats, Debbie uses question exercises as “catalysts for dialogue.” She shows participants pictures or news stories about a topic that cuts close to home—race, class, climate, the election—and asks:
When you think about this, how does it affect or influence your everyday life?
How does it affect your job?
Where are you in this story?
She asks a roomful of people to form two lines facing each other. Everyone gets a question and has sixty seconds to answer.
What labels do you use to describe yourself, or do you use no labels?
Are your labels different from labels others use?
What’s the greatest risk you’ve ever taken?
She asks a group to sit in a circle.
What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever experienced?
If you were to sit down for lunch with your nineteen-year-old self, who would you see?
What percentage of you is your dark side?
“We create a structured framework around the question,” Debbie explained, in order to build relationships, provoke conversation, develop leadership, and create bridges between communities. At a time of increasing diversity in America, and as everything seems to get more complex, Debbie argues that leadership starts with an ability to ask and to listen, to bridge differences and build community. She’s betting the future on it.
“The question as a tool is the core of everything we do,” she says.
Poems of Humanity
David Isay, like Debbie Bial and Sandra Day O’Connor, is also investing in the future. Isay is creator of StoryCorps, a project that millions of listeners hear on podcasts, NPR, and online. StoryCorps invites ordinary citizens to interview one another. Parents, children, husbands, wives, friends, and partners produce remarkable conversations that evoke a rich and enduring spoken mosaic of American life. StoryCorp’s declares that its mission is to “preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world.”
Forty-minute interviews get edited to three minutes. Each interview is intensely personal in its own way: A mother forgives the man who murdered her son and says she hopes to see him graduate from college; a military veteran asks his wife “What made you stick around?” as he wrestled with rage and alcohol driven by his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); a man with Down syndrome answers his mother’s questions about growing up with a curse he now calls a gift.
The appointment with a microphone, Isay told me, creates time and license to ask about subjects that normally get buried or dismissed. StoryCorps offers a list of “Great Questions” to get the conversations started.
What was the happiest moment of your life?
Was there a time when you didn’t like me?
What makes us such good friends?
StoryCorps interviews are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, allowing participants to leave a legacy for future generations.
Isay told me that many of these conversations become “poems of humanity.” He’s right. Each story speaks in its distinct cadence, offering a unique journey to an individual’s life story. The poetry happens because someone asked.
Always Asking
It was inspiring to hear from these people who work so hard to advance the culture of curiosity. It is a message educators try to convey to students every chance we get: A successful education is one that only gets you started. It’s not the questions you’ve answered, but the ones you have yet to ask that will lead to discovery, ensure your place in the world, and help you succeed at a time of rapid change.
I tried to do my part over the years and when my kids were young, though I encountered some predictable resistance. I had a reputation for mealtime interviewing. I asked about school, homework, sports, friends, weekend plans—all the activities that kids are into and parents want to know about. I thought I was being a good dad, projecting my interest in my kids and their friends, encouraging them to tell stories and share with the family. But my questions could cause fifteen-year-old eyes to roll. My son would say, “Dad, it’s dinnertime. Stop being a reporter.” I defended myself, of course, and asked again.
What was one new thing you learned in school today?
If you could visit any time and place in history, where would you go?
What’s the book about?
Who is your favorite teacher? Why?
Who do you confide in when you are confused?
My son Chris recalled that “as kids, we used to joke that Dad could ask the same questions in thirty different ways.”
As the kids got older, my questions grew up too.
Does money matter?
How much is too much?
Is there something you believe in so strongly that you would give your life for it?
How do you know if you have had a successful life?
While my household interviewing became a family joke, my kids did answer my questions most of the time. Now that they are grown, they still trot out the “Dad’s playing reporter” line when it fits, and we all have a good laugh. Sure, I overdid it at times, and I realize a fine line exists between asking enough and asking too much, between showing interest and prying. That’s why listening is so important. It not only helps you learn, it also helps you shut up. But I’m glad I asked all those questions. My curiosity in their lives reflected both my interest in their present and my investment in their future. I’m pretty sure they’ll grill their kids someday, too.
My life has been enriched at every stage by the opportunities I’ve had to question. I have been invited into people’s lives and adventures, taken on fascinating journeys because I’ve had license to ask more. Different places and different audiences have afforded distinct opportunities.
For years, I hosted CNN’s Sunday morning talk show. Each week, I questioned prominent people and dove into the issues, triumphs, setbacks, and controversies that had made headlines. I questioned the Israeli prime minister in the midst of crisis. I spoke with the CIA director as he walked me around the agency to show a slice of how they tracked the world. I asked medical experts about the latest global health crisis. It was the hard news, the front page of cable news, driven by questions that explained the story.
At The George Washington University, I started the Conversation Series, a more informal discussion with public figures in front of a live audience. My questions there revolved around the guests’ accomplishments, their views of public life and their explanations for the positions they took. With my next-generation crowd in mind, I asked how my guests got started and what they recommended to young people who wanted to make their mark. I came to think of these interviews as conversations with the future.
On NPR, I had the pleasure occasionally to host the Diane Rehm Show. Diane captained her very smart show for more than thirty-five years. Her story is richly ironic. Growing up in Washington DC in an Arab household, Diane was not allowed to question her parents or much else in her life. Such behavior was considered disrespectful. Yet she became one of the great interviewers, demonstrating that radio is a magical and intimate medium. Sitting in for Diane, I had a chance to interview a fabulous range of people, from bestselling authors like Jane Goodall and Nicholas Kristof, to experts too obscure for cable TV but ideally suited to insightful conversation on public radio. The questions here embraced complexity.