Interrogate, curate, listen is Larry’s shorthand for what to do with information once you have more of it than you can use. Interrogating maps to the Question step in PQRST: don’t accept a claim, a deck, or a data point without pushing on it first. Curating maps to Read and Summarize: you gather everything available, then cut it down to the points you’ll actually use in the room.
Listening comes from the SuperModel layer, the perfect listening position, pen in hand, phone away, taking notes while the other person talks. Larry’s order matters: you interrogate and curate before you walk in, then you switch almost entirely to listening once you’re there. Doing it backward, listening first and interrogating later, means you show up without your fuzzy points flagged and get surprised in the room.
Curating is the step people skip most, because it’s easier to bring everything than to decide what actually matters. A curated set of points is also what makes the pen-drop close work later, since you need specific lines worth initialing.
Larry treats listening as active work, not passive politeness, which is why he pairs it with visible notetaking instead of silence alone. Interrogating your own material before the meeting is what keeps you from interrogating the other person defensively during it.
Together the three steps turn a pile of information into a short, testable set of points you can carry into any room. Larry walks through interrogate, curate, listen in the video below.
Details: Watch Larry demonstrate the listening position
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