Listen
This one came to us as a recommendation, and it didn’t take long to see why.
No Stupid Questions is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network and is hosted by Angela Duckworth, the research psychologist behind the bestselling book Grit, alongside tech and sports executive Mike Maughan.
Each week they take a deceptively simple question and pull it apart, drawing on behavioural science, personal experience and a genuine curiosity about how people actually think and act. Topics range from why we get emotional about complete strangers to the psychology of making predictions, and the conversation always offers some good food for thought.
What makes this one resonate for us at Liminal is something we see in our own work all the time. The best client conversations often start with the questions that feel almost too basic to ask. Why does your firm do it that way? What does that term actually mean? Who is this really for?
In financial services, where jargon and complexity can obscure as much as they explain, it’s often these seemingly “stupid” questions that unlock the most interesting and useful answers. And yet the instinct to appear knowledgeable means people hold back from asking them.
Duckworth and Maughan model exactly the right approach: they treat curiosity as a serious tool, not a sign of ignorance. For anyone in an advisory role, that’s a genuinely valuable reminder. Give it a listen, especially if you’ve ever bitten your tongue in a meeting when the obvious question needed asking.
