By Louise R. Shaw

It's all about the questions.

And if you ask the right ones, you'll travel to new places and be better informed about things in fields other than your own and gain insights from experiences other than the ones you've lived and get closer to the people you think you know but maybe you really don't.

With the holidays upon us, now is a great time to ask the right questions.

We talked about it when I was invited to Columbia to meet with students interested in journalism.

OK, it wasn't Columbia's School of Journalism in New York, in case you assumed so for just the briefest second. It was sixth-grade newsletter writers at Columbia Elementary in Kaysville, Utah. But still, we talked about journalism.

I had been invited to teach about interviewing, something I did most days as a reporter.

My colleague, Jenniffer Wardell, suggested I shouldn't just lead kids through a discussion on interviewing, but should actually do an interview. Jenniffer has also been known to teach journalism workshops, though I'm not sure she has ever been invited to Columbia.

While their advisor, Mrs. Badger, was out of the room, we started thinking through interview questions we could ask her for a story. Their first ideas involved favorite colors and hobbies.

That's a start, I said, but doesn't she have an accent? Yes, they said, she's from Australia.

Hmmm. That's an easy one. Why don't we ask her about why she came to America, I said. And what she thinks about it? And what it's like in Australia? And how she ended up teaching here? And be prepared to change the rest of our questions if her answers take us in different places.

And when she returned, every student asked a compelling question and every answer took us to a place we'd never been before and helped us know a bit about kangaroos and a bit about the rewards of teaching. And I didn't mind a bit that as I was driving home, I realized I didn't know her favorite color (or maybe I should spell it Australian-style: favourite colour).

Asking the right questions is how I learned that two young boys at a school in Bountiful, Utah want to be scientists but aren't sure they want to work for the government, because then their work would have to be kept secret. It's how I learned what it would be like to be on a humanitarian mission in Indonesia and how I learned the difference between Alzheimer's and just getting forgetful as you get old.

I asked some veterans who had been interviewed by their grandchildren for a school project, if they'd ever talked about their service with their families before. Not much, was the usual answer. Maybe just the good things, was another.

My husband and I once sat down with an uncle who had served in World War II, asked a few leading questions and then listened as he recounted his experiences in amazing detail, even after decades had passed. It became clear he hadn't shared those experiences with other family members. Maybe it was too difficult. Maybe they hadn't asked.

I won't tell you how old I was before I started enjoying the table talk of people in different generations with different interests and abilities, but I won't go back to the old way.

Multiple generations will be thrown around the same tables as we celebrate Thanksgiving and then Christmas. Some, who are younger, may want to escape to their iPhones as soon as the eating is over. Some, who are older, may think they can't talk the same language as the latest generation.

But if we ask the right questions, we will learn more not only about the world around us, but the amazingly interesting people in it.

Let's try it.

This column first appeared in the Davis Clipper on Nov. 21, 2013. I still mean every word!!