This is the third in a series of articles on Interview Lessons' 5 kinds of interview: testimonial, conversational, exploration or curiosity-driven, journalistic, and story focused.

What is a curiosity-driven interview?
The third type of interview in our Interview Lessons system is the curiosity-driven interview.  The curiosity-driven interview is all about listening.  What makes this style unique is that the interviewer does not begin the conversation knowing exactly what the discussion will cover.  Success at this style of interview requires the interviewer to be completely present, to be curious, and to be willing to ask simple questions.

Everything In Service of the Mission
"The Tim Ferriss Show" is consistently at the top of the iTunes charts and one of the most successful interview podcasts there is. How does Ferriss think about interviewing? He says "I’m always keeping in mind what my listeners can use, which makes my job easy, because I have a very clear mission for my podcast.” Everything he does is in service of that mission.

THE RESEARCH
As part of my research to help you be a better interviewer and stand out from the crowd, I've been studying successful interviewers. How do they think about their craft? In other posts, I'll be talking about tactics, strategies, and methods specific to interviewing for oral histories, testimonials and other interviews with specific goals, but today I want to look at the philosophy of some of the best journalistic and documentary interviewers.

GROUNDBREAKING DOCUMENTARY FILM
One groundbreaker in the documentary film world is Errol Morris. Before there was the podcast Serial there was his best-known film "The Thin Blue Line." It's the true story of the arrest and conviction of Randall Adams for the murder of a Dallas policeman in 1976.  Errol Morris's background is as a private detective, so clearly he had the spirit of curiosity.