Steve Levitt

If you look at engagement levels of kids as they go through the educational system.

Kids in elementary school are by and large really engaged.

And through junior high and high school, there's a sharp drop off.

I honestly think that's going to be the key on which everything turns.

If we can get students engaged, we will have unbelievable results.

And if we don't, we are facing disaster.

Oh, it did for sure.

I mean, every idea that I have just put out there, I have stolen from one of my guests and repackaged it in my own words.

There's no doubt about that.

As it should be.

That's what knowledge transfer is supposed to be.

David Eagleman came on my podcast and he works on...

the plasticity of the brain.

That was such a good episode.

I love him.

He introduced me to this phrase of just-in-case learning versus just-in-time learning, which has transformed my way of thinking about the world because everything we do in school is, oh, well, we're going to teach you proofs about triangles because maybe you're going to, in 15 years, be an architect and somehow need this.

Of course that doesn't work because no one remembers it for five minutes versus just-in-time learning where somebody really needs to know something to solve some problem so they learn it.

For me, I spent 16 years failing to learn any math at all.

And then when I got admitted to MIT and I looked in those first syllabi at what I was going to have to know, I learned...

five years of math in three weeks because I needed to learn it.