The Art of Manliness - How Curiosity Conversations Can Supercharge Your Success

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:11.160 brian grazer is a hollywood producer whose films and television shows have been nominated for 43

00:00:16.540 academy awards and 217 emmys and grossed 15 billion dollars worldwide he's produced everything

00:00:23.520 from my favorite tv show of all time friday night lights to critically acclaimed and oscar-winning

00:00:28.260 films like apollo 13 and a beautiful mind grazer credits much of his success to his commitment to

00:00:33.560 a practice he calls curiosity conversations today on the show i talked to grazer who's also the

00:00:39.080 co-author of a curious mind expanded edition the secret to a bigger life about why he considers

00:00:44.420 curiosity conversations the superpower that fueled his rise as one of hollywood's leading producers

00:00:49.580 we talk about how these curiosity conversations are beneficial to have with everyone from vips to

00:00:54.720 ordinary folks how the ideas and connections they foster can enhance both your personal and

00:00:59.400 professional life what makes a curiosity conversation effective and how to make them happen after the

00:01:04.800 show's over check out our show notes at awim.is curiosity conversations

00:01:08.820 all right brian grazer welcome to the show well thanks for having me on i was thrilled to be on

00:01:26.440 the art of manliness can't go wrong with that that's an awesome site well i thank you i really

00:01:31.480 appreciate that so you are an academy award-winning movie producer and your credits include some classics

00:01:37.660 like apollo 13 a beautiful mind you got splash among many other films and you've published this book

00:01:44.940 called a curious mind where you share how the virtue of curiosity has played a pivotal role not only in

00:01:53.020 your professional career but also just in your life of living a flourishing life yeah and i want to start

00:01:58.980 off with this where you really learned the power of curiosity and it's how you got into the film industry

00:02:04.920 in the first place so how did curiosity lead you from going to law school to working in the film

00:02:10.940 industry basically graduated from usc undergraduate in psychology applied to usc law school got in planned

00:02:19.380 on going and as the semester and graduation came to a close about the first or second day into the summer

00:02:29.040 i overheard a conversation in my apartment complex with three law school grads talking about the easiest

00:02:37.740 summer job they ever had and so of course i leaned into that conversation and i closed my drapes in my

00:02:47.020 little apartment and opened the window further so i could eavesdrop on these three guys discussing the

00:02:53.620 virtues of their easiest job of all time and one of them sounded awesome because it came with a company car

00:03:01.080 it was available today because the guy just said i i just quit my job but it was the cushiest job of all time

00:03:08.340 and i thought well what could that be he said so and so i overheard he said it was to work

00:03:16.140 at warner brothers in the legal affairs as a law clerk so i thought i'm going to call up immediately

00:03:22.380 i call 411 then 843-6000 ask for the legal department at warner brothers and sure enough they said come on

00:03:30.320 in today we do need a law clerk and i got the job that day now i didn't really want to be a law clerk but

00:03:37.840 i thought well that's the field that i think i'm going into or at least planned on going into and so now i'm in

00:03:44.440 this little desk i'm in the office a tiny office with with a desk and nothing to do the whole week

00:03:52.060 like literally no jobs no assignment no filing and he was right it was the easiest job of all time

00:03:58.720 i mean on the verge of being the most boring job but then the following week they said deliver some

00:04:04.100 papers and i had to deliver these papers for what was going to be the movie heaven can wait that would

00:04:10.680 star warren baity so the papers were to go to warren baity and i then as i was delivering the

00:04:19.080 papers to warren baity an assistant said just hand me the papers at 21 i had the presence of mind to

00:04:26.020 just say well the papers will be invalid unless i hand them directly to mr baity and so i just

00:04:31.800 invented that on the spot and eventually i got up to mr warren baity and i spent an hour with him

00:04:38.220 and that was the beginning of my very first conversation what struck me from your story

00:04:42.940 about how you went from going about to go to law school to becoming a law clerk where you're able

00:04:48.460 to rub shoulders with actors and producers in hollywood was you had that curiosity but you took

00:04:54.800 action like you actually did something about it you called information and you said you know

00:04:58.840 i'm gonna actually gonna do something i think a lot of people they stop at the the interest and

00:05:04.080 that's as far as they go and it's always like a bunch of what ifs but it seemed like you had this

00:05:09.140 sort of carpe diem like well what do i gotta lose by trying to talk to warren baity yeah i did think

00:05:17.480 that as long as i'm polite and i'm thoughtful it shouldn't be too much of an imposition i just think

00:05:24.680 that if you come from a place of the generosity of spirit that people won't deny you or be offended or

00:05:34.640 cut you short and i've found that that is true even when i had absolutely no hollywood power and no

00:05:43.140 hollywood identity at all i just found that if you reach out to people with genuine interest the worst

00:05:50.500 it'll happen is you're just being polite and that's not such a high bar you know it's not a

00:05:56.760 function of religion it's not a function of anything other than you know simple things like

00:06:01.720 the golden rule or simple things like having trust in your fellow brother you know brother or sister

00:06:08.580 you know it's just really that so you get to have a conversation with warren baity how did you get

00:06:13.720 him to talk to you for an hour and what did you ask him what did you what did you talk about

00:06:19.160 well in order for your curiosity to be effective an effective means where you get to learn the most

00:06:27.420 about a person means where you have you know i would say a soul connection you have to have eye

00:06:36.980 contact you cannot be distracted you can't be looking around you have to be in a peaceful state

00:06:44.800 looking and communicating eyeball to eyeball with another human being and literally as as the adage

00:06:55.040 goes use the windows of their eyes is is the window into their soul and so i found that by being

00:07:04.440 genuinely curious not by asking a series of mechanically driven questions but by just allowing

00:07:13.040 yourself the freedom to just be and by just being you're going to find your way into questions and

00:07:22.560 conversations that are actually real and the more real you are by the connection of no no distraction

00:07:33.580 and eye contact the better your date will be with that person if you have interested eyes

00:07:39.480 and you're a good active listener most successful people want to talk about themselves and

00:07:49.060 oh look you're a master of it you get important people on your show and you get them to talk about

00:07:55.020 themselves because you have a reputation as as someone that has that approaches things through a an

00:08:03.580 attractive thematic and you have credibility and you ask good questions and you're a good listener

00:08:10.780 so it's as simple but as hard as that yeah um so with warren beaty i was able to i knew enough about

00:08:19.460 by reading the trades even as a little law clerk i would read the trade publications by reading the

00:08:25.560 trade publications it's somewhat demystifying because you're getting to understand you're getting

00:08:30.860 through the language of hollywood because just like every business has a language and the language

00:08:37.520 makes the heartbeat of the business complicated or more complicated than it has to be because it's

00:08:46.140 the language barrier do you ever try to talk to a composer it's very hard it's very hard to talk to

00:08:52.540 an engineer and that's a lot of it is language but if you can get through the language and become

00:09:00.520 somewhat adept then you will understand what the goals of that person are what are their goals

00:09:07.200 what are the things they are moving towards what are the things they're moving away from

00:09:12.360 oh yeah i love that idea of eye contact i want to talk more because you have some great advice

00:09:15.820 on eye contact and the power of having these conversations with people in person but that first

00:09:21.920 conversation you caught the bug and you started to systemize this right like that warren beaty

00:09:27.720 conversation happened spur of the moment and you were like this is amazing i want to do this more

00:09:33.100 i'm gonna do this all the time all the time so you made a goal for a while there was like one a day

00:09:37.100 right yes so i made a goal that i would do everyone that warner brothers had me they send me out on a

00:09:43.660 mission deliver papers to the author of the movie exorcist the exorcist or barbara streisand or

00:09:51.440 mama cass or i can name a lot of people so they send me out on these missions and i would turn

00:09:57.420 the mission into of curiosity conversation and then i realized i can do this with people that i have no

00:10:04.920 that i don't even have a mission i can reach out and say hi my name is brian grazer i work at warren

00:10:10.820 our brother's legal affairs this is not associated with studio business and i'd love to meet your boss

00:10:16.620 for five minutes and i've researched them thoroughly and after five minutes i will leave

00:10:26.140 and i won't make any requests i will not ask for a job and every person said yes every single one

00:10:33.080 and then you also you started to expand after a couple years you started expanding to people

00:10:37.460 outside of the film industry like you had a conversation with the guy that invented the

00:10:41.220 hydrogen bomb yeah jonah salk who created a polio vaccine princess die henry kissinger hundreds of

00:10:49.500 noble laureates including john nash which became a beautiful mind uh astronauts cia directors which

00:10:56.840 later became the television series 24 the rock star bono mc jagger of course all the tech founders

00:11:06.220 jeff bezos steve jobs bill gates larry page i mean i made a point to meet all of those people

00:11:16.280 and presidents of the united states and how did you decide like i need to talk to this guy what was

00:11:22.160 going on in your life like i need to have a curiosity conversation with bono well i'm a restless

00:11:30.060 person so what goes on in my life is a constant flurry of activity intellectual and emotional energy

00:11:39.100 so i burn a lot of energy just thinking like many people i'm not a special but um you know i'm i'm a

00:11:48.180 learner i'm a lifelong learner and the way to learn is to import people or subjects into your

00:11:55.600 universe your mental universe because you you know if you're have an actual day job which i did

00:12:02.240 even as being a movie producer television producer i had a day job that was to do that but i was never

00:12:08.420 going to give up on these curiosity conversations i found them literally the most fulfilling thing i was

00:12:14.180 doing that i've done in life i found that they served as a greater constellation of dots and experiences

00:12:21.900 with new worlds and people and that they often connected and proved to give me a very competitive

00:12:28.720 advantage in storytelling in movies and television i would was able to sign denzel washington or tom hanks

00:12:35.940 or eddie murphy steve martin you know so many of these people that everybody wants or russell crowe to

00:12:43.740 three movies and jodie foster everybody wants those actors everyone i was able to get the best talent

00:12:50.080 but the thing is that wasn't a side effect like that wasn't your goal going in no that was a side

00:12:55.440 effect that was a side okay so curiosity got you from law school to the film industry as a law clerk

00:13:01.080 but how did you go from being a legal clerk where basically you were just a gopher i mean you're just

00:13:05.660 delivering papers i was just a gopher yeah i was just to file papers periodically and gopher things

00:13:11.860 around yeah so how did how did you go from that to producing apollo 13 oh okay oh my god

00:13:20.060 how did i do okay so that was quite a distance but basically the way it started is i realized i had

00:13:25.580 no resources no money but i had a very active imagination and i was a doer so i would act on

00:13:34.480 things quickly well-intentioned but act do things do do do and i started writing short stories just

00:13:43.940 you know could be one page it could be two pages or ten pages no longer than that really and with

00:13:51.140 these stories that i wrote i would uh protect myself by copyright and i'd go pitch them and

00:13:59.560 eventually two of them became movies for television that i produced at 25 years old one was called

00:14:06.360 zuma beach the day in the life of zuma beach kind of american graffiti at the beach 24 hours

00:14:11.540 and where you break down the beach and the culture and the people in it and it got very very high

00:14:17.220 ratings and then the other one was a 20-hour miniseries on the 10 commandments using each

00:14:23.060 commandment as an underlying theme in a contemporary you know a contemporary story so now i have some

00:14:29.860 credibility my imagination and the doingness you know acting got me to a place where i was now produced

00:14:38.100 two high quality projects and then from there i just my career began and i then wrote the story

00:14:45.860 and script to a movie called splash just meant tom hanks falling in love with a mermaid and that was

00:14:53.640 really just about brian grazer finding the perfect girl and then i defined what that would look like

00:15:01.160 and then to get us to apollo 13 which is quite a distance i spent 10 years writing and producing

00:15:08.220 comedies like the produce the nutty professor and liar liar and parenthood and kindergarten cop many of

00:15:16.420 these movies and then i realized you can make a lot of money but you don't get enough respect producing

00:15:20.080 comedies so i thought i'm going to do a drama i want to do something that's really thoughtful and is

00:15:26.680 taken seriously and i learned through my curiosity conversations the expertise of space and traveling

00:15:35.720 into space and who does that but an astronaut i learned about astronauts i learned of jim level

00:15:41.500 who was the captain of the flight of apollo 13 i learned that he had written a 10-page outline

00:15:50.040 not so different than what i used to do on his failed mission to travel around the moon to get

00:15:57.800 to the moon and travel around it and then i said i reached out to jim level and said i'd really like

00:16:02.740 to make this into a movie and he had belief and trust that i could do that because i had success

00:16:07.460 prior success and and i was earnest in my conversation and that became the beginning of what became the movie

00:16:14.780 apollo 13 which got nine oscar nominations and that's that's that's what that was well there one

00:16:21.600 of the stories that stuck out to me in the book you mentioned in when you're telling your you know

00:16:26.480 shortened version of it that you started writing stories writing scripts but it was a curiosity

00:16:31.880 conversation that got you writing scripts you talk about how uh you got a meeting with lou wasserman who

00:16:38.620 was the head of mca and this guy has been in the he was a legend he was in the movie industry since

00:16:44.520 1936 like head of mca and you you somehow get in like i'm gonna get in a meeting with this guy i want

00:16:51.280 to talk because i want to know how what he does and how i can become a producer and i love the story he

00:16:56.060 says look buddy you somehow found your way into this office you're basically full of it i can see that

00:17:02.260 there's two ways you become a producer you got to have money you got to know people and he says you

00:17:06.920 don't have any of those things so only thing you can do is you can uh write you got to own the stuff

00:17:12.520 and he handed you a legal pad and a pencil he's all right start writing and then you wrote those tv

00:17:17.380 scripts correct that is exactly what happened he spoke the truth that i had nothing because no one

00:17:25.540 had like just said that directly to my face and i acknowledged that that was truthful and so i thought

00:17:32.620 well then i better find you know be really really really resourceful and figure out what i might

00:17:38.580 have so what i did have was a tremendously you know an active imagination like many other people

00:17:44.820 but i knew that i had to write those ideas down and turn them into either stories and in many of the

00:17:52.180 cases into screenplays and that's how it started because one man with a lot of wisdom cut me off from

00:18:00.220 going into his office and said stop right here and told me i was full of shit basically and you better

00:18:07.200 have something the next time you walk into this office another important relationship that you

00:18:13.540 developed because of these curiosity conversations was with ron howard right so ron howard directed

00:18:19.140 apollo 13 but you all have done lots of movies together how did your curiosity start that relationship

00:18:26.220 with ron well i still had that i was the early stages of my curiosity conversations and in that

00:18:36.000 discipline i would sentence myself to doing one per day and they could be you know a whole variety of

00:18:43.720 types of people at that time they weren't always noble laureates or henry kissinger or edward teller who

00:18:49.020 was the father of the hydrogen bomb they could be anybody that piqued my interest i'm on my

00:18:55.500 in my office at paramount as the 25 26 year old producer of television shows i look out my window

00:19:03.900 and i see ron howard richie cunningham on unhappy days and i thought i have got to meet richie cunningham

00:19:12.080 he's an american icon he's right in front of me basically and i'm going to call his office and set a

00:19:17.720 meeting so i do he reluctantly comes to my office because he's quite shy and as he entered

00:19:24.840 energetically i felt a different person than i had ordinarily felt in other words energetically

00:19:33.240 he exuded an energy of goodness about him which translated to me that whatever he tries to do

00:19:41.940 he will succeed at it so whatever he he wishes more than ever he could become in this case was to be a

00:19:50.240 theatrical movie director which he wasn't if he wishes for that to happen and that's his

00:19:56.100 obsession i bet that will happen and that's how that all came together and i sort of trusted his

00:20:04.120 soul and his energy and i told him the three or four ideas that i had written and he loved the one

00:20:10.520 that was an r-rated movie called night shift which later starred michael keaton and henry winkler

00:20:16.420 and then he at that moment where he wanted to do the r-rated movie i said well i also have a pg rated

00:20:24.700 movie that would be my preference and he says well i promise you i'll do it after and that was called

00:20:30.080 splash about a man a regular guy who falls in love with a woman and later learns she's a mermaid

00:20:37.020 why did ron want to do the r-rated movie what was going on there well what was going on there

00:20:41.580 was that was the time where he was the very wholesome image of richie cunningham and of course

00:20:48.980 he was also opie and and the andy griffith show and so he wanted to get rid of that image that

00:20:57.060 super super wholesome squeaky clean image and uh turn the dial a little bit you know he wanted to

00:21:04.160 reveal that he had more edge and that's what his goal was and that's why he said he wanted to do the

00:21:10.420 r-rated movie when you first had that meeting with with ron howard did you go into it thinking okay i

00:21:16.840 want to have this conversation so we work together or were you just you just wanted to know what was

00:21:20.600 going on with him i just wanted to know what was going on with him why he you know what made him

00:21:25.280 tick i all these meetings i defined these meetings for me that i would not ask for anything i wouldn't

00:21:33.420 have an agenda and an ask that i would i would permit myself to just have a pure conversation

00:21:40.480 about that person what they do for a living what they're passionate about what they think their

00:21:47.340 superpower is and get to the root of who they were as people and how they were able to optimize what

00:21:55.300 they were or that superpower into their professional power we're going to take a quick break for a word

00:22:02.120 from our sponsors and now back to the show something you talk about in the book when you have these

00:22:08.900 conversations with people you are curious in a specific kind of way you call it emotional curiosity

00:22:15.000 what do you mean by emotional curiosity well simply that's just that's that would be but as we all talk

00:22:23.160 about it as eq i basically want to know you know what what drives them often there's an injury an emotional

00:22:34.240 injury in their life that drives them and it doesn't have to be grand it could just be being cut from high

00:22:43.120 school football which was mine in front of 200 kids and that makes you you know the emotional injury

00:22:52.400 either causes it causes you to get through the emotional injury to attain your potential to

00:22:58.900 attain your goal the movie eight mile which i produced with eminem was really about that his emotional

00:23:05.000 injuries as a young kid living in a trailer park with an abusive mom in abusive irresponsible mom

00:23:14.800 caused him a lot of problems early in life and so in the movie and it caused him a problem of

00:23:22.880 not being able to even look at the audience when he was supposed to rap to the audience

00:23:27.640 and that is a huge barrier and in that movie it's about getting through those barriers

00:23:33.960 and deliberate yourself from those those issues that are holding you back okay so yeah when you have

00:23:40.360 these curiosity conversations you're not going to ron howard and say asking well tell me about your

00:23:44.440 technical approach to filmmaking you want to know like why does richie cunningham want to make an r-rated

00:23:50.360 movie that's a hundred exactly that's a hundred percent right why does richie cunningham now want to

00:23:55.640 make a an r-rated movie right or you you had one curiosity conversation with the guy who developed

00:24:00.900 the hydrogen bomb you're not asking him well tell me about the science you want to know

00:24:04.700 the story behind the story like how do you deal with grappling that you created this weapon they

00:24:10.800 can kill tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of people yeah you're a thousand percent right it

00:24:16.260 just i want to know what drives people yeah so with these curiosity conversations you're still doing

00:24:21.980 them do you still go for like just like regular people like you're not going for the big names like

00:24:26.120 do you have curiosity conversations with i don't know the the waiter or a barman at a hotel you're at

00:24:33.060 a thousand percent only just recently i took an uber an uber car and the driver i started i spoke to

00:24:43.620 him and he sounded russian he said no i'm serbian i said okay what's it like and i started talking to

00:24:51.180 him about serbia what it was like what did he do he was in the military then in security he i said do you

00:24:57.840 still do security i do part-time and then i asked him well you must do a form of martial arts which

00:25:05.160 one i bring up krav maga i bring up wing chun i bring up several of these akito karate several of

00:25:12.320 these disciplines that in fact i've tried myself also through curiosity and he said no i do one called

00:25:19.600 sistema and i thought what is sistema i got super excited and so he drops him off the house i said

00:25:25.940 show me what sistema looks like so he shows me what it looks like and i said can i pay you to teach me

00:25:32.800 this art form he said sure and so i start i started paying him by the hour to teach me this art form

00:25:40.660 so the answer is yes yes yes i do this with with regular people no yeah i i think uber drivers are

00:25:49.560 some of the best people have these curiosity conversations i do this not all the time you know

00:25:54.300 you have to put you put the feelers out and maybe the person wants to talk maybe they don't but i've

00:25:59.720 had some great conversations with uber drivers during my time i had one we were in my wife and i

00:26:04.000 were in la a couple months ago and our she was a taxi driver it wasn't uber driver she was a taxi

00:26:09.420 driver but she was from jamaica and she just started telling us about oh yeah i i was born in jamaica but

00:26:17.160 then i lived in the united states then i went back to jamaica to take care of my mother who was old and

00:26:21.340 just it was a it was amazing like she just talked non-stop and we just kept asking her questions and

00:26:26.540 just learning some really cool stuff that i otherwise wouldn't have known if i hadn't had

00:26:31.680 this taxi drive with this woman yeah and i agree with you with taxi drivers and and uber cars i not

00:26:38.740 long ago i was making a movie in hungary in budapest and i was supposed to that night have dinner with

00:26:47.360 the ambassador to hungary the u.s ambassador to hungary which i did and on the drive there the uber

00:26:54.620 driver told me so much about what was going on in hungary and the refugee crisis and it made me smart

00:27:01.960 for that dinner that i was having like 15 minutes from then you've done thousands of these curiosity

00:27:08.400 conversations and you talk about lots of them in the books but have any conversations been duds and

00:27:13.700 if so what what makes them a dud okay i'll tell you duds would be where i've done a lot of research

00:27:20.520 and i have expectations based on the research of learning something new and being mystified a little

00:27:28.880 bit because all these conversations should be mystifying as i should be mystifying to them

00:27:34.600 so it you lean in and and uh you know you're being things are being revealed so that was someone

00:27:42.460 that created a natural foods he's famous so i don't want to say his name a natural foods brand

00:27:49.460 and he was a dud because he he wasn't really into it at all he he i think he just wanted to own a rest

00:27:58.660 i don't know i i i he just wanted to own a restaurant and uh his motives were impure i thought

00:28:06.760 i don't know yeah yeah well another one that stood out to me was isaac asimov well isaac asimov who was

00:28:13.900 the most prolific science fiction writer that was a dud but i was the dud yeah because i mean it it reads

00:28:23.220 as though he was but he wasn't he you know was an expert in science fiction and this tremendous writer

00:28:30.240 and um that he and his wife met with me in new york and after less than 10 minutes they just got up and

00:28:40.720 left they said we're leaving we're we're afraid you're not we they didn't feel intellectually stimulated

00:28:47.360 by me and i say they're right because the i probably didn't know science fiction well enough

00:28:53.900 to attract his interest and that he didn't have outside interest really he had those those were

00:28:59.740 his interests okay so uh what makes prepared yeah you got to be prepared you got to be prepared and

00:29:06.460 then also make sure that the person you're having this conversation with like understands what you're

00:29:10.800 doing so it sounds i mean it's not i imagine what happens oftentimes you'll set this curiosity

00:29:16.160 conversation with an important person there's all these gatekeepers yeah you get on the schedule

00:29:21.020 and the person's schedule is just set by a team of people they have no clue they're gonna sit

00:29:26.780 they're like okay talk to brian grazer who's brian grazer i don't know i got 15 minutes with him

00:29:31.420 and they have no clue what's going on they're just trying to get through with this so they go on the

00:29:35.460 next thing yeah i mean i met with i hope my assistant's taking some notes but i got to meet with

00:29:41.840 the ceo of sequoia ventures john leone or it could be leone oh it's doug leone sorry doug leone and i

00:29:52.220 swear i think he thought i was the cia and i i said to him because he was so guarded unbelievably guarded

00:30:00.280 he said what are you doing what are you driving at he said to me i said well you seem very guarded

00:30:06.200 you're like a mafia boss or something and that was enough to get him to understand what i was trying

00:30:12.100 to say and flatter him at the same time because he wasn't he's a tough he's a serious guy man he's a

00:30:18.800 really serious and he looks like a formidable guy to me he looked also like a bodybuilder now he'd

00:30:25.860 probably laugh if he heard me say this i say it only as a compliment and then the walls came down and

00:30:32.180 we had a great conversation you're so you're big on having these conversations in person in person

00:30:38.720 and you've been talking a lot about eye contact yeah and in fact you wrote a whole book about the

00:30:43.260 importance of eye contact yes which is incorporated into my new book so yeah called a curious mind so

00:30:49.200 hopefully people will be you know new york times bestseller hope people go see it yeah read it so i

00:30:56.300 mean what is it about the in-person ask like why can't you do this on zoom like did you do these things

00:31:00.840 on zoom during the the lockdowns during the pandemic and like how are they different i did do

00:31:06.280 them on zoom when we couldn't meet at all during covid they were not very satisfactory because you

00:31:14.180 can't see people's you know there's no spot you can't study their body movement so you can't feel

00:31:22.420 their energy or chemistry in any way you can only kind of learn in the same way you might learn it

00:31:28.280 through a textbook or a video yeah and the eye contact is important too and on zoom report you

00:31:35.020 can't look people in the eye can't look people in the eye and you never almost never laugh on a zoom

00:31:41.620 yeah there's very little humor on zoom there's very little zoom humor no it's it's why i don't use

00:31:49.340 video on my podcast because that reason i can't look people in the eye and it's just for me it's

00:31:56.160 distracting i'd rather just hear your voice and make it almost like a phone call than have to deal

00:32:01.660 with looking at the screen then looking up at the camera and looking back down it's i don't like that

00:32:06.460 so i just go audio only really interesting but speaking of eye contact you've got some tips on how

00:32:12.340 to get the most out of eye contact how can you do eye contact i think a lot of people are uncomfortable

00:32:18.640 with looking people in the eye because they don't want to be creepy yeah any tips on eye contact

00:32:24.680 without being a creeper yeah if if look if you you know if somebody could think you're a creeper

00:32:33.040 or they're leery or they're you know so you what you do is you look at them so briefly so they

00:32:40.500 see that you're seeing them as a person but then you do divert your eyes down submissively so you're

00:32:49.260 not trying to have power over them in any way so something i've read is that you want to keep

00:32:54.800 eye contact for about five seconds so that's about as long as it takes to speak a sentence so you're

00:33:01.340 looking in in the eyes or the eye i mean i think you can really only look at one eye at a time and

00:33:07.440 something else i read is that looking at the right eye is best and then you look down for a beat then

00:33:12.400 you look back in the eyes so you're not locked in you're not staring them down no don't stare them

00:33:17.600 down you could you make sure you blink you know like don't uh don't do anything it could seem to

00:33:24.240 be aggressive yeah and you you had to learn how to use eye contact you tell a story where i think you

00:33:29.820 had like an assistant or somebody tell you it's like hey brian you know you don't look at people in

00:33:33.840 the eye when you talk to them and you're like i had no clue yeah it was actually ron howard it was ron okay

00:33:39.220 yeah he said he said um because i you know i have a little agd and so i my tendency is to bounce

00:33:46.520 around and um i was talking to the writers the very very successful writers of all of our successful

00:33:53.660 comedies lowell gans and bob lu mandel and ron said you know when you talk to lowell and bob lu

00:34:00.100 i don't think they feel respected by you and i go well why he says because you don't look at them

00:34:06.740 i go but i already know what they're saying and i'm paying attention ron he says you are

00:34:12.300 but you're not looking at them and i know they feel uh they don't feel respected i said okay and

00:34:19.760 i changed that immediately and uh let's say someone's listening to this and they love this

00:34:23.800 idea of curiosity conversations just having a conversation having that emotional curiosity

00:34:28.120 wanting to figure out what makes people what drives people what makes them tick

00:34:32.260 how do you recommend getting started i imagine it's not try to get a conversation with the

00:34:38.620 president of the united states who's that first rung in the ladder do you think um anyone that you think

00:34:45.240 is is authentically expert at anything yeah so you could just be i love this one guy so much he was

00:34:54.800 the best dad i've ever met i mean there were so many more successful people there around me and this

00:35:02.560 guy he was a an assistant caterer no he was the number two caterer on the amtrak that goes from la

00:35:11.060 to san diego and he was just a great father first i had a conversation with him and then i was always

00:35:19.040 we became friends and i was always proud to have him as a friend because he was such a good dad

00:35:24.880 it could be as simple as that someone that's a really good parent or a good teacher or uh you know

00:35:32.960 your martial arts instructor or your trainer ask your trainer a question you know you go to a gym

00:35:39.580 there's probably a trainer there ask them i mean it's so easy yeah well that guy who was a good dad

00:35:47.600 what made him a good dad what made him a good dad is beyond just that he spent a lot of his time he

00:35:55.720 spent time with his kids he understood what they were interested in and became interested in himself

00:36:02.860 he became really interested in skateboarding or wild posting stencils he would share have shared

00:36:09.880 interest they'd listen to songs together they'd both sing to songs so they'd put on a playlist and

00:36:15.640 they'd both sing to songs and there was actually three kids so he would do it you know one-on-one

00:36:21.960 or one-on-two or one-on-three but he was always that person he was in the he was very in the moment

00:36:28.880 okay so start in your social circle you have right now if you see someone that's got some kind of quirky

00:36:34.720 interest that they're an expert at find out like what got them into it what drives them to do that

00:36:40.160 and it requires you to pay attention that's another thing that that curiosity requires yeah pay attention

00:36:44.880 it requires you to pay attention so when you're at work you know if your co-workers work at cubicles

00:36:50.320 they probably got pictures or tchotchkes set up there that say a lot about them like well they

00:36:56.060 coach baseball or they love this film genre i don't know and then you can use that as well tell me about

00:37:02.420 that tell me more about what do you know about that so yeah pay attention let's say people start

00:37:07.000 doing that how do you go about setting up a curiosity conversation with you know vips how do you make

00:37:13.700 the pitch you always pitch to their staff or if you meet some vip you might say you know virginal oh my

00:37:23.960 god i'd really love to have a conversation with you i'd really like to have five minute conversation with

00:37:29.300 you and with a disclaimer you know that i don't want anything i just want to but some kind of you have

00:37:34.960 to come up with something and then don't ask them for their contacts ever and then you have to find

00:37:41.420 them and they'll be impressed that you found them and and you did it through the channels through the

00:37:47.280 assistants then you befriend the assistant that's easy to do just treat them respectfully like human

00:37:54.820 beings and and usually that you're trying to make people laugh ultimately get to know the assistants

00:38:02.140 yeah okay so i think that's some good advice there respect the communication channels yes and then also

00:38:07.880 just make it very clear you're not looking for anything you have no ulterior motives you don't

00:38:12.160 want a job you don't have an agenda yeah you don't have an agenda because i'm sure these you know these

00:38:15.980 vips they're constantly dealing with people with an agenda which is why they put gatekeepers in front

00:38:20.600 of them because they just want to avoid that stuff yeah exactly okay so how do you prep for a curiosity

00:38:26.420 conversation so you can have these on the fly right you can have them with your uber driver

00:38:30.320 uh etc but let's say you you set something up because you want to talk to i don't know the head of

00:38:36.600 some the wildlife department in your state for whatever i'm just i'm just coming up with this

00:38:41.060 how do you prep for that sort of conversation well it's not hard um you you know you would search them

00:38:50.280 and you try to find out what their interests are you go to social channels you go to instagram you

00:38:55.920 might go to twitter you might you but i like instagram because it's visual you learn a lot and if the

00:39:02.600 person's well known i always go to youtube i love youtube are there any starter questions you

00:39:07.440 recommend to help people get the conversation going like do you have any default ones you like to go to

00:39:13.200 i usually try to learn something about the person as we're talking about and i would ask them a question

00:39:21.720 that they wouldn't expect so you don't ask a scientist about science really you would ask them

00:39:27.200 you'd probably go to their sports or or what are they obsessed with doing that is in the non-science

00:39:34.700 world or what's an offshoot of that or what got them into it but you try not to ask them you know

00:39:41.640 you try not to get the keys to the kingdom like immediately yeah you know who does a really good job

00:39:47.340 at this is tyler cowen he's an economist at george mason university he's written a couple books but

00:39:55.320 he has a podcast called conversations with tyler where he has different people from all walks of

00:40:00.820 life but he asked like the like the weirdest obscurest questions but he does it in a way that

00:40:07.420 it digs out a lot from the person he's talking to so i think if you're looking if you if you're

00:40:13.140 wanting to look for some examples of some like really good kind of oblique questions or off the

00:40:18.240 wall questions that can get to some bigger things check out tyler cowen's podcast conversations with tyler

00:40:24.120 so okay you have the conversation and of course you want to be paying attention and then you want

00:40:29.040 this to be an organic thing or you just you ask follow-up questions and you know say tell me more

00:40:34.440 about that and then the conversation is over do you do anything after the conversation to process it

00:40:41.500 i write notes or i have somebody write notes for me or sometimes i will ask very seldom but i might say

00:40:50.400 can i record this and they'll say yes and that's what i do okay so you write notes and what's

00:40:57.880 interesting you talk about with a lot of these conversations and you you write the notes you often

00:41:04.060 don't take action on it right away sometimes you just you sit on it you don't even know what you're

00:41:08.760 going to do with this stuff for a long time a hundred percent i don't know what i'm going to do with

00:41:13.260 it yeah that's exactly right and so yeah you talk about you know you had a conversation with the

00:41:17.280 director of cia had no intention of you know creating a tv series after out of it but like 24

00:41:23.400 came out of it yeah well 24 was influence influence right yeah but so but it's there and so like when

00:41:31.180 you're out living your life you're working you can be like oh i had this conversation there's this

00:41:35.780 nugget there maybe we can we can use that stuff yeah exactly and i imagine these conversations they

00:41:42.560 beget more conversations like you talk to warren beaty yeah and then that can lead you to talk to

00:41:46.580 some other person a hundred percent yeah because then i'll want to know he'll have a point of view

00:41:51.520 about about why he makes movies or his sense of or what what if he's he is purpose driven what is the

00:41:59.940 purpose and then someone else is going to be of similar levels of accomplishment you're going to ask

00:42:06.180 them and and see if they're motivated by the same things or you just look to constantly expand your

00:42:12.080 mind bombard your mind with new things i really love this so i hope people after they listen to

00:42:16.760 this podcast they're going to go out and have a curiosity conversation uber driver is a great way

00:42:21.220 to start barista person at the checkout line start practicing but where else can people go to learn

00:42:28.320 more about the book and your work and how to have more curiosity conversations well you can order the book

00:42:33.840 and i think you probably get order it on amazon i'm assuming and you can buy it there's a bunch of

00:42:40.320 places all you have to do is look it up a curious mind you can order it on amazon and uh i would

00:42:46.420 suggest they just do that fantastic well brian grazer thanks for your time it's been a pleasure

00:42:50.840 yeah it's been a privilege i'll talk to you again i hope my guest today was brian grazer he's the

00:42:56.640 co-author of the book a curious mind expanded edition it's available on amazon.com and bookstores

00:43:00.780 everywhere check out our show notes at aom.is slash curiosity conversations where you find links

00:43:05.340 to resources where we delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the

00:43:16.740 aom podcast make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast

00:43:20.540 archives as well as thousands of articles that we've written over the years about pretty much

00:43:24.160 anything you think of and if you haven't done so already i'd appreciate if you take one minute to

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00:43:35.600 it as always thank you for the continued support until next time it's brett mckay reminding you to

00:43:40.580 listen to aom podcast but put what you've heard into action

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00:44:14.980 bye

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The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

How Curiosity Conversations Can Supercharge Your Success

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