The inquiring mind of Reggie Watts: A Top 12 list of his questions
I don’t know if they qualify as “beautiful questions” but there’s something oddly fascinating about the imaginative questions that band leader and “disinformationist” Reggie Watts asks the guests of James Corden’s The Late Late Show.
Over at the culture website Vulture.com, they’ve been keeping a running list of the questions Watts has asked over the past year and a half (it numbers in the hundreds at this point). As a “Why • What if • How” guy, I particularly like some of the bizarre “What If” scenarios Watts comes up with. And I love that no matter what answer he receives, Watts responds, “That is correct.”
Below is my own Top 12 list of favorite Watts questions, plus a video clip of Susan Sarandon doing a nice job answering one of Watts’s strangest queries ever.
To Will Ferrell: If you’re in the South of France and you pour yourself a nice glass of wine, and a beautiful cat suddenly strokes your leg and you’re surprised, do you think it’s a ghost at first?
To Rob Corddry: You’ve been in several, maybe seven, time-travel movies. Do you believe that once time-travel exists you’ll realize that you actually always were traveling through time?
To James Van der Beek: When you’re driving in a car, are you anticipating the behavior of people based on the angles of the cars that you see in traffic, or are you simply enjoying the ride?
To Naomi Campbell: If you had to choose between muffins, cookies, crackers, crisps, or just a good time inside of a boat, which one would you choose?
To Allison Janney and Jesse Tyler Ferguson: If you were surrounded by a thousand children who seem to look alike, and they were heading towards you in an ominous way, and you’re real close to a really amazing maze garden, what would you do?
To Hannibal Buress: Being from Chicago, do you think deep-dish pizza is worth it? And also, do aliens exist?
To Ben Kingsley: If you were infinitely tall, would you find that the power would override your judgment and you would destroy everything around you?
To Ken Jeong: If you were an immensely heavy person but still looked exactly the same, would you warn people before getting on top of them?
To Matt Damon: In your training for the Bourne series, in learning different fighting techniques and how spies would think in certain situations, do you ever find yourself assessing exits and placing yourself in an opportunistic situation inside of restaurants or buildings?
To Taye Diggs and Amy Landecker: If you were camping on a field in a plain in Idaho or Wyoming, and you saw a bunch of gophers coming out of holes, slowly making their way to you, and you notice that they were holding very small knives, what would you do?
To Kurt Russell: Do you think that, if there was a giant cat that you could control with your mind, would you have it run around through town and scare people, or would you have it help out at a ranch if they were underpowered?
To Paul Rudd and Diane Lane: In 1987, there were some pretty interesting things happening in the world. Robotics was on the verge of completion and no one knew exactly where we should put things should we be given them. Do you think, in your opinion, the movie Working Girl had any impact on where we are today?
“Why has a book like this never been written before? Here is a persuasive case for the simple and yet extraordinary power of a question. Fascinating, engaging stories give life to a strong argument about how much can be accomplished, in every domain of our lives, ‘just’ by asking questions. Innovators, entrepreneurs, citizens, parents, teachers, idealists and realists—all of us have much to gain by reading 
“Questions have literally moved mountains, powered rockets, and instantly developed images. Berger focuses on what he calls ‘Beautiful Questions’… that can lead to game-changing answers and results. These are questions that, once raised, tend to get people thinking in a different way.”
“The desire to ask bigger and better questions is on the rise… Warren Berger has been tracking a movement toward questioning that is running very strong in Silicon Valley, but also seems to be spreading throughout the business, nonprofit and education sectors.”
Warren on the web