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.

reggie-watts1 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?

reggie_watts3To 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?

reggiewatts2To 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?

reggie-watts1To 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?

reggie_watts3To 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?

reggiewatts2To Hannibal Buress: Being from Chicago, do you think deep-dish pizza is worth it? And also, do aliens exist?

reggie-watts1To Ben Kingsley: If you were infinitely tall, would you find that the power would override your judgment and you would destroy everything around you?

reggie_watts3To 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?

reggie-watts1To 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?

reggiewatts2To 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?

reggie_watts3To 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?

reggie-watts1To 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?


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About the Author

Innovation expert and questionologist Warren Berger has studied hundreds of the world’s foremost innovators, entrepreneurs, and creative thinkers to learn how they ask questions, generate original ideas, and solve problems. He is the author or co-author of 12 books, including his three books on questioning: A MORE BEAUTIFUL QUESTION: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas; its follow-up THE BOOK OF BEAUTIFUL QUESTIONS: The Powerful Questions That Will Help You Decide, Create, Connect, and Lead; and BEAUTIFUL QUESTIONS IN THE CLASSROOM: Transforming Classrooms Into Cultures of Curiosity and Inquiry. Warren’s writing has appeared in Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, and The New York Times, and he writes the “Questionologist” blog for Psychology Today. He lives in Mount Kisco, New York. Follow him on Twitter at @GlimmerGuy and subscribe to his blog posts

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