My kind of curiosity is a little wide-eyed, and sometimes a little mischievous. Many of the best things that have happened in my life are the result of curiosity. And curiosity has occasionally gotten me in trouble. You can see some of that in T-Rex’s book choices. She’s got quite the collection. And this is the thing about books. It’s like leaping across lily pads. You might find one you like and from there you discover another and then maybe something in that leads you to one that’s a bit different. A journey of discovery without even setting foot outside your house. There’s just so much to learn and it’s all made so accessible by the clear, punchy writing and stunning artwork that we’re very much spoiled by when it comes to children’s books. Though I should add - not yet accessible enough in a world where not every child owns a book or has access to a library. Imagine if they did - imagine the great equalisers that books could one day be. Transporting us to other places The problem for this tradition of magic is that all of the stuff in it which was of any value – ideas of occult forces that fed into, for example, Newton’s conception of gravity or early studies of magnetism – eventually became assimilated into science. What was left was the folk traditions that have always existed, that really are pure superstition. So if you talk about the occult now, it is clearly discredited. Any value in that kind of thinking had long since transferred itself onto science, and we’re just left with the residue. But there’s a continuity between those early ideas about magic which goes through Rosicrucianism and eventually comes out in Mormonism in the United States. If I was going to do this job, I didn’t want to miss out on the only good part. I didn’t want to meet housekeepers, I wanted to meet the important people. I was curious about them.

The author combines the results of research with anecdotes to provide an illuminating volume on why curiosity is so important to lifelong learning and our advancement as a global society. He examines the risks inherent in some current technological trends, such as smart phones and internet searches, and how to overcome them. He looks at what arouses curiosity and what quenches it. Okay, not everyone was equally charmed by my style in those days. I was a little scared of Nardino, but not scared enough to stop shouting out the window. Calley and I never talked about curiosity. But being given the big office and watching Calley in action gave me another idea, a more evolved version of my meetings with the people to whom I was delivering contracts. I realized I didn’t have to meet only the people Warner Bros. happened to be doing business with that day. I could see anyone in the business I wanted to see. I could see the people who sparked my curiosity simply by calling their offices and asking for an appointment.Ron was kind of shy, and he seemed surprised by my phone call. I don’t think he really wanted to meet me. I said, “It’ll be fun, it’ll be relaxed, let’s just do it.” The point was to follow my curiosity, and I ranged as widely as I could. I sat down with two CIA directors. With both Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov. I met with the man who invented the most powerful weapon in history and the richest man in the world. I met with people I was scared of; I met people that I really didn’t want to meet.

Curiosity is recursive. It builds upon itself. If you want to become a more curious person, you need to start somewhere, slowly, and recognize that the more curiosities you pursue, the more curious you will become over time. My Polish grandmother was a Rosicrucian, but I never quite understood what they believed in. What do we learn about them from this book?When I started writing again, I worried I would “run out” of ideas. At first, the ideas came fast — writing after a long break unleashed a torrent of pent-up ideas. I had accumulated years of lived experience to write about. But as I continued, I started worrying my creativity would dry up at some point. The second I finished a piece I was proud of I would think, what if I can’t do that again? So that is where Rosicrucianism came from, and in this book Francis Yates argues that the early enlightenment – the emergence of science in the 16th century – drew on part of that tradition. It’s widely agreed that Francis Yates pushed this idea too far, into realms that can no longer be upheld. Nevertheless, the idea that there was some kind of link between the development of science and the emergence of secret brotherhoods in the early 17th century has to be taken seriously. You see this motif of secret brotherhoods appear again and again among the writers of that time who then went on to be influential in the history of science, particularly Francis Bacon.