#1233 Ana Lorena Fabrega on Artificial Intelligence Fixing Our Broken Schools

Ana Lorena Fabrega is an entrepreneur, writer, and the Chief Evangelist at Synthesis. In this conversation, we talk about the state of the education & schools, critical thinking, independent thought, what parents can do, what they are doing at Synthesis, and her new book 'The Learning Game.' ======================= Backed by world-class investors, including Google's AI Fund, Range has redesigned wealth management from the ground up. Range delivers a tech-first experience that provides fast, high-quality, transparent wealth management services making it simple to optimize and grow your wealth. With Range, you get comprehensive services like tax optimization, investment management, and estate planning with no hidden fees. That means no AUM fees. Get started today with code POMP15 for 15% off any quarterly plan for your first year at ⁠⁠⁠⁠range.com/pomp⁠⁠⁠⁠ ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 250,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Ana Lorena Fabrega is an entrepreneur, a writer, and the chief evangelist at Synthesis. In this conversation, we talk about the state of the education and schools. We talk about critical thinking, independent thought, what you as a parent can do to better help your

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

  kid become intelligent and become a problem solver, and then what they're doing at Synthesis and how they are leading a revolution for the education industry with artificial intelligence and a personalized tutor. I really enjoyed this conversation with Ana, and I hope that you enjoy it as well. Once you get done listening, go and check out her new book called The Learning Game: Teaching Kids to Think for Themselves, Embrace Challenge, and Love Learning. Here is my conversation with Ana Lorena Fabrega. This episode is brought to you by Range. Are you day trading, a crypto enthusiast, or a tech worker? Or are you just an overall investing enthusiast? Listen up, you need Range. Backed by some of the world-class investors, including Google's AI fund, Range has redesigned wealth management from the ground up specifically for us. They deliver

• 1:28Anthony Pompliano?

  an all-in-one, tech-first experience that provides fast, data-driven, high-quality services to anyone looking to manage their money in a modern world. Get all your stuff done in one single place. Tax optimization, investment management, equity compensation planning, and small business support, they handle it all. And the best part is, you ain't going to be asked to pay 1% because they don't have any assets under management fees. You're not also going to be asked to do quarterly meetings in a stuffy office with a dude with bad cologne and a tie, because you can message them whenever you want. You won't be asked to walk in the door with hundreds of thousands of dollars to get started either. They don't have minimums. The bottom line is this: Range offers incredible optionality when it comes to management.

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Managing your money. The founders built Range for themselves to solve all these old school problems and now it's available to all of us. Use code POMP15 for 15% off any quarterly plan for your first year at range.com/pomp. Again, use code POMP15 for 15% off at range.com/pomp.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:55Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Anna here with me. I thought a great place to start is you've got this new book coming out. It's all about the learning game, but school is a horrible way for people to actually learn. It's more of something that people just do to try to get past the game of school. What's the problem in school? You're a teacher, you've seen Inside the Belly of the Beast. Like, what are the problems and how do we fix them?

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, so in my book, The Learning Game, I talk about the difference between the game of school and the game of learning. So the game of school is what most kids learn to master, right? Which is this idea of raising your hand before, you know, so you get that participation grade, you pretend like you're paying attention, you find the shortcut so that you can get the boring stuff out of the way, you do the assignments, you don't question your teacher. So it's all these things that kids pick up quickly in order to appear as if they're learning. And so that doesn't really transfer to real learning, which is why a bunch of kids graduate from high school with a bunch of academic junk that they don't know how to apply in the real world and with no idea of what they're

• 3:56Speaker 02

  good at, what they want to do, how they want to spend the rest of their lives. And so the learning game, and this is what I talk about in the book, is how do you opt out of that and actually do the things that will prepare kids for the real world. And so in the book, I present sort of what the future of education would look like, or what real learning would look like if we built a system that was for how the world is today. And so I go over the way that kids are being taught in school right now and then contrast it to how kids really learn.

• 4:28Anthony Pompliano?

  How do they really learn, though? Like, what is the Actual way that they learn.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  So they learn when they know how to apply what they're learning to the real world. So if you think about all the things that they're learning in the curriculum, they often ask why, like, what is this going to serve me for? And often, teachers don't have an answer. The reality is that two thirds of the kids going through grade school right now will end up doing jobs that haven't been invented yet. And so all this time that they're spending in school, learning, and that we're teaching them is really not that important because that's constantly and quickly changing. It's way more important to teach them how to teach themselves, how to pick up the things and the skills that they need when they need it. So that's one. The other thing is civilization advances only to the extent that people can think critically and solve problems together. And so the lack of an education system that cultivates the skills

• 5:15Speaker 02

  is therefore our primary bottleneck. In school, kids are learning how to parrot back answers, how to mimic their teachers, how to do what everyone else is doing, how to learn to pass a test, and then after the test, they forget. I mean, think about the things that you learned in school. How much of it actually stuck over the years? Or how much are you actually using nowadays? You know, it's very rare. And one of the big things that research shows that knowledge decays really quickly. So unless you are using productively what you learn, you know, in the next fourteen days, you forget about it. And so what I would see a lot as a teacher and was very frustrating was that we would spend all these hours going through these units and curriculum and tests and all this. And then after the test, that kids usually got good grades,

• 5:58Speaker 02

  then they had no idea how to apply that to an open-ended problem. And so this was very concerning. I ended up leaving the system, trying to find alternative learning experiences. And I came across these guys that were working at Synthesis, which we've talked about in the past. And what we're doing there is actually remarkable work and what I think will be the future of education. And we can talk about that in a bit.

• 6:22Anthony Pompliano?

  So my experience in middle school and in high school, really, high school probably, was there was two different types of education happening. There was the classroom education, and then there was the hallway education. And I got way more out of the hallway education than I did in the classroom. And I remember things that they would teach us, like dissecting the frog, right? You gotta cut up the frog or whatever. Like, you know, kids were, first of all, were doing crazy stuff. And so it like took away from the lesson. But secondly, I remember thinking to myself, like, what am I really going to need this?

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:49Anthony Pompliano?

  The other thing I always laugh about is the Pythagorean theorem. Right? It's like, who has used the Pythagorean theorem at any point in their life unless you're an engineer?

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:59Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, how much of it is like, being exposed to that stuff helps you understand like, eh, cool, I get the frogs, but like, biology is not my thing. Oh, I get, you know, this, uh, you know, very kind of, uh, um, complex math, uh, equation, but you know what? I don't want to be a mathematician. I don't want to go into that type of field, uh, in engineering. And so, exposure leads you to kind of hone in on what you actually want to do? Like, how do you balance, I couldn't tell you what the Pythagorean theorem is today, but I could tell you, I knew that after going and studying some of that stuff, I was like, this isn't for me. And so, like, I did get value, but maybe not in the way that the school intended?

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, here's the thing. Um, it, the way that school exposes you to the different topics, which of course you should get exposed to them, does not match the way that we learn. And so, for example, this idea of isolating topics by subject, and then, you know, every forty-five minutes, we ring a bell and you need to close whatever you were learning in math, and then open up the science, and then close science, and then open every forty-five minutes, that really affects the way that you're consuming this content. The way our brains work is that learning is interconnected. So you need to be able to synthesize ideas from different fields and understand how math fits with science and literacy. And so, a way better way to do it is through projects, or when you have common, like a common theme, and then you start to say, okay, what do I need in order to solve? You give kids a

• 8:15Speaker 02

  problem, a real challenging problem, and then they're going to need different tools and different things in order to solve that problem. And that's the moment where you start introducing them. So, kids actually understand why they're learning this different subjects. And I think that that would actually change the way you think about, you know, becoming a scientist, or becoming, you know, or wanting to pursue a career in that field. And so, that's one thing. And then, the fact that we, you know, we, learning is very grounded on curiosity. So you need to be very excited about something in order to learn about it. You can't force kids to learn, which is usually what happens in school. Like you were saying, now we're going to learn about this, but maybe Anthony wasn't ready to learn about that at that particular moment, because you were not interested in it. Once you develop

• 8:58Speaker 02

  an interest in something, that's the moment where you, you know, that's so sort of like your gate, and that's That's when you take advantage of that and you teach kids whatever it is that you want to teach them. And so if we actually, and this is something complicated to do in school when you have thirty kids and you have a curriculum to do. But if you actually start by where kids are interest interested in, um, things are very, very different. Like the results are, and it's something as simple as that, like the results are very different. They actually absorb the content, they want to keep going because humans, you know, especially kids are hardwired to learn. Like we, we want to learn, we want to understand things, we want to deconstruct things. The problem is that kids enter then into a system where suddenly, you know, they have no choice over the subjects that they're learning, the way they're learning, the way they have to showcase what they're learning.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Um, and then they start to associate learning with something negative and then they don't want to do it anymore. And this is really concerning, right? Like we need to cultivate lifelong learners. That should be the, the whole point of education. And that's really not what's happening, which is one of the reasons why I left.

• 9:56Anthony Pompliano?

  So it seems to me, uh, my experience with school is like very similar to a lot of people who end up going into certain types of fields, right? If you want to be a doctor, I've got a brother who's a doctor, like you gotta go through the system. You gotta get the licenses, you gotta go get the education, pass the test. And like, there's a whole system, uh, that I think a lot of people would say, we actually want our doctors to have a traditional education and like kind of get all these, uh, kind of, uh, pass all these filters that we know that they're high quality. For me, I hated regular school. Like I would spend more time trying not to do the homework than if I had just done the homework. But if you sat me down in a class that I was interested in, I get A's. And teachers are always like, I don't understand, like you get like a C or a D in this class, but you get an A in this class. Like, how is that possible? It's like, I don't care about that class, right? But this one I actually do.

• 10:38Anthony Pompliano?

  So how does a school kind of morph itself or evolve itself in your opinion? To actually almost like fit the content and the topics to kids? Like, should we have people go in and say, you have to do four years of science, you have to do four years of math, you gotta do four years of this? Or is it more so like, let's figure out what you're interested in and then just help you go become more like that or learn more of that information? And maybe you'll pick up some science along the way or some math along the way, but it's less of a rigid, uh, you know, kind of requirement. And it's more so, uh, outcome based almost than it is like the input based system that we have today?

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so a few things here. First, I think that having been in the system for a long time and trying to do things differently, it's very clear that the system's broken and it cannot be fixed and it cannot be reformed. It's always going to be there. I really believe it's going to be hard to get rid of it because parents need a place to send their kids to school. You know, when they have to work. It's a babysitting center essentially. And so that's one of the main reasons why I don't think it's going to go away. But that being said, you know, we need to create an alternative system. Like I'm really convinced at the beginning, you know, I've spoken to a lot of people that are trying to reform and add things. But the outcomes are pretty much the same. The system was created a long time ago for very different purposes. And we can talk about that later.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  But what I've noticed is that kids, like in school, we spend teachers most of our time trying to remediate kids weaknesses. And so we determine, okay, Anthony's not good at this and not good at this. And so we torment you and we put you in support groups and we try to really, instead of doubling down on the things that you, on your strengths and the things that you already have a natural talent for and a desire to do. Usually people like what they're good at. And so imagine if schools actually focused on making you better at the thing that you're already good at. And then obviously get, you know, they give you exposure to like a general contents in a more effective way. And we can talk about that later too, how to do that. But the outcomes would be vastly different, you know, kids would be graduating from school, knowing what they're good at.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  Knowing, you know, having years of practice, getting even better at that. And so that they can come to the world, be productive and actually be passionate about doing something that's relevant. And so that's one of the big things. Like I was very frustrated how it was always about remediating kids weaknesses. It's like, no, like everyone's going to be good at one thing and not so good at another thing. So instead of trying to make everyone great at everything, let's just figure out what they're already good at and make them better at that. So that's one thing. And then the other thing is the way that you expose kids to different. So we've known for the longest time that the best way to learn, you know, hardcore academics is through one-on-one tutoring. And, you know, we've known this for many, many years, you know, that's why Alexander the Great had Aristotle as his tutor.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  Now, of course, it's not viable for every kid in the world to have. A private tutor. Why not? Um, well, a one-on-one human tutor because of resources, because of, you know, like you, it's very expensive to get that. So a lot of people wouldn't be able to. However, the holy grail of education is how do we use, is to figure out how we use technology to create a superhuman tutor. That can then teach you all these things that you learn in school in hours and, you know, so many years and that you don't really learn effectively and you forget. And so at synthesis, you know, we've actually, this is part of what we're doing this year. We launched a tutor. It's called a synthesis tutor that is based on groundbreaking research, um, funded by DARPA. You know, the R and D department of the Department of Defense in America.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  And that they're in charge of coming up with all the emerging technologies to use by the military. So they came up with like the early GPS, the internet, early self-driving cars. And so we actually built upon their discoveries with modern AI tools. And we came up with, um, a really interesting solution to this problem of how do we teach kids hardcore academics. And so the synthesis tutor, the way it works is we've, um, built upon the best teachers out there, the best tutors out there. So we record, um, these teachers for hours and hours and hours and we capture their mannerisms. We capture their examples. We capture their stories. Cause we know that, you know, very different from the apps or GPT or all those things that are very, um, like generic.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  The, the, the synthesis tutor is actually capturing all the human elements that make tutors amazing. And we're putting this and making it available to everyone. So what DARPA discovered a few years ago. And they spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to create this technology. Was that, you know, students that used the digital tutor for 16 weeks to learn IT. Outperformed Navy technicians that had been in the field for 10 years. So this is remarkable results, right? And we're building upon that to teach kids. We started with math this year, but we plan to use it to teach all STEM subjects. So when you look at other tutors out there, like the reason why tutors are so good is because they take you from the middle of the pack to the top 1%.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  So that's like, you know, the difference between going to get community college and go into an Ivy League. Remarkable. Our tutor is way better than that. It will take you from the 50th percentile to the 99.99999 percentile. And so these are the results that they got back then with the students and we're seeing sort of the same results right now. And we're very optimistic that if we use this technology to teach all subjects, we are going to have, you know, this is the kind of thing that pushes civilization forward. This is the kind of thing that's really changing the way that we teach and learn. And so what would happen is that your kids would be learning in an hour a day from the best, you know, technology out there, this core academics. And then they would have the rest of the day to actually be kids.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  A lot of what's happened with the traditional school system is that we've robbed kids from their childhood. It's the most important informative years of their lives that they're spending, you know, five days a week for seven hours a day for 12 years stuck in this places where they can barely move. They can't talk. They can't do the things that we know that kids need to do in order to develop as healthy and happy individuals. It's a legal prison. It's a legal prison. There you go. Yes. I can say that. You probably can't say that, but I can say that. Yes. Yes. There you go. Um, I do agree with you though. And so, um, imagine if we're able to do that and, and we can talk about, you know, how like I've, after I saw the way that the tutor, the digital tutor teaches kids, I was really amazed because in school we teach for the test.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  And so our whole focus is to get kids to memorize things and then give us back the right answer. We don't really focus on understanding. And again, really hard to do when you have 30 kids to stay with them and be infinitely patient and stay with the kid that doesn't quite get it until he or she gets it. It's really hard to do that. But with the tutor, what we've noticed is when a kid gets something wrong, the tutor's thinking about, you know, all the possible and diving into all the possible misconceptions that you have. And then it will help you get to the right answer and discover the right answer on your own. So kids are walking away with the depth of understanding that they wouldn't get anywhere else. That's why it's so remarkable. And this is what real tutors do. And the tutor that we created, you know, it's, it's, it's meant to imitate the best tutors out there.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  And so what I often, you know, we, we started with math this year and our curriculum architect. Called Dr. James Tanton. So he has a PhD from Princeton in mathematics. So he's obviously an expert in his field. He is the ambassador of the Mathematical Association in America. He's written 25 textbooks in math. He has won 10 awards of teaching excellence internationally. So he's like the real deal. And when you meet him and you hear him talk and the stories and he makes you fall in love with math. This is like the teacher that every parent would want for their kids. And so now we've able to capture Dr. Tanton through this digital device. And he even says it himself, it's incredible how the digital tutor ends up being even better than me, because it

• 18:20Speaker 02

  progresses over time. It captures all your stories, all your example, your mistake, and it becomes even better than the actual human itself. And so imagine if you can give this kind of education to your kids, how much more effective would it be, the learning process, and then all the options that they would have after school to actually work on the things that they're interested in, working projects, if they want to start a business, they can go ahead and do that. If they want to play sports, if they want to just be kids and have free play, whatever it is that they want. So it's really promising, and I'm very excited about that.

• 18:49Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you have this individual tutor, this kind of one on one tutor, it's a machine, it's not a person, right? The kid knows it's a machine. Do they, are they more like sympathetic? Do they change their behavior because it's a machine versus a human? Like, what are some of the things you all are seeing there?

• 19:05Speaker 02

  So it's incredible because the kids forget that it's that it's like a digital tutor. And you can all, you know, you don't have to hear it from me, you can try it for free on synthesis.com/tutor. It will blow your mind. Like, it throws you memes, it says be right back, I need to use the restroom really quickly. It has like sounds, it's talking to you. It gives you a workspace where you get to like try things and it doesn't work. It talks to you, it gives you stories, it remembers the things that you guys talk about. And it's like personal things about your brother, about, you know, this trip that you had. It will remember and bring it back to you, to the point where kids actually feel that it's a real teacher. And I'll give you an example. At the early days, when we first launched the tutor, we received an email from a really angry parent saying, you know,

• 19:48Speaker 02

  there's a bug, and the bug is really effective. My daughter because she's actually come to believe that the tutor is the is a real teacher. And so when the bug is saying something nonsensical. My daughter is, you know, freaking out because she thinks that the teacher is having a psychotic breakdown. And we're like, whoa, OK, first, of course, we need to be careful about the bugs and we need to work on this. We can't go too fast that we break things. But second and most importantly, whoa, like she actually thinks that this is a real human. And so that to us is the most important element because again, there has to be a relationship. You need to care about whoever's teaching you something in order for learning to actually happen. And so it's really remarkable, like you actually feel like you're learning in this case from Dr. Tanton.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  And so another example is one of the kids was going through the orientation and was clicking on the things. It's actually for the parent and the parent was behind him. And the parents like, yeah, just click yes, just because I want to hear. And one of the questions was, um, parent, like, do you feel like your child sometimes struggles to pick up on math concepts? You know, right away. And the parent was like, tells the son like, well, you don't, but say yes, just because I want to see the answer. And the son turns around and he's like, Mom, why would I lie to the tutor? I can't lie to the tutor. So they actually feel like there's a real human there. And you can, again, try it yourself so that you experience. I've never seen anything like that. Like, one of the things that I was most hesitant about AI was like, I was like. A computer can never replace a human like that cannot happen. Like for me, when I was a teacher, one of my biggest qualities was.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  That I was able to foster this really deep relationships with my students. They knew that I cared and that incentivized them to learn. So it's like, how can we possibly replace that with AI? But after trying it and realizing how we've really captured the essence of a human, it's just remarkable.

• 21:32Anthony Pompliano?

  What are teachers saying about this? Are they scared by it? Do they hate it? Do they like it?

• 21:36Speaker 02

  So it's obviously a threat for many teachers because that's where we're heading. And it's going to eventually replace a lot of the teachers. I haven't like particularly spoken to teachers about it, but.

• 21:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you not popular in the schools anymore?

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Well, no, I actually wouldn't say that because I really always talk about the hard effort that teachers like. Teachers are not the problem. The problem is that teachers are stuck in this traditional school system that won't let them do the things that they naturally want to do to help kids learn. And so I really don't think it's, I actually think the teachers are working really hard to try to do the right thing. But then, you know, we get burnt out by all the things. Yeah. But I think that, you know, eventually this technology will be available for schools that are, you know, willing to change their ways and try something different. It will be available to parents, it will be available to kids, even to adults. Like it's just, you know, we're trying right now a curriculum on complexity science, which, you know, usually don't learn until, if anything, until like college. And we're teaching it to eight year olds and they're grasping the content. So really this technology can be used for anyone to learn more effectively and in a more entertaining way.

• 22:38Anthony Pompliano?

  When you see these kids coming out of these sessions, how much of it is, I learned two plus two equals four, right? From a math perspective versus they can go and now they're doing something in their day and they can recall it, they can apply it, all that kind of stuff. Like i- is it possible to, in these sessions, also teach them the real world application like you were talking about earlier? The schools don't have, where now you can almost like model out different scenarios, play different games, those types of things?

• 23:06Speaker 02

  So everything we're teaching them, like if you look at the way that Dr. Tatin has structured the math curriculum, and again, this is available on our website. You can see the breakdown of what we're teaching and when he, it's very, very different from any math curriculum that I've used in all the schools that I've been to. Because it's actually grounded on, okay, let's start with the history of math, like where do numbers come from? So it's, it's kind of crafted in a way that it builds your understanding. So we don't teach you like two plus two equals four. We go more into the general concepts and you, you end up learning that, but we actually focus on the deep understanding. Cause kids have to build a number sense in order to be able to execute all this like formulas that then, you know, maybe a little bit boring. But if you understand math well, then you're able to do all that. So that's what we're focusing on.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  So for example, the lesson that's available online for anyone to try for free is how to learn binary numbers. So it's like how computers work. Again, you sometimes don't learn. This until college. And so the way, I mean, I I taught binary numbers in one of my schools. And it's so different from this lesson. Like, I I didn't even understand it. And then I didn't realize that until I tried the digital tutor. And I was like, oh, my God, this makes so much sense. And so the way that it works, kids don't really realize that they're learning math. It's more like we're learning something that we can immediately use to understand something better in the real world. Does that make sense? And again, you need to try to to to kind of see that. But everything is relatable. Everything is relevant. There's an explanation, unlike in school, for everything we do. And the interesting thing is that that's one of our products, that's a digital tutor.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  But for both the digital tutor and the simulations, the complex team simulations, that was our first product, where kids learn the soft skills that they don't learn in school, that they're going to need in the future, like how to communicate, how to problem solve, how to work in teams, how to react when something, you know, under pressure, how to make trade offs, how to engage in conjecture and criticism, how to fail and pick yourself up and pivot, like all these things, and how to figure things out when you don't have instructions. All these things are fundamental for you to do whatever it is that you're going to do in the future. It doesn't matter. And we're not teaching it in school. And so both of our products are grounded on this counterintuitive insights that kids want to learn and kids want to be challenged. And so in school, they put, they give you a speed limit, right? They put you by grades.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  You learn up to here according to the curriculum. Kids are bored. Some kids don't get it. At Synthesis, we have no speed limits, so we will push you as fast and as far as you're willing to go. And this is very, very different. And so everything we do is based on real challenges that kids have to solve, you know, real problems. And when you think about it, what do we know about the world that our kids are going to inherit? That's constantly changing and chaotic, right? What do we know? We know that kids are going to have to work in groups and collaboratively with people from different backgrounds, different cultures, different ways of thinking. We know that kids are going to have to grapple with complexity that doesn't come with instructions and that's hard and, you know, to figure out real problems. And we know that they're going to do both of these things on their own.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  They're not going to have an adult or a teacher or a parent telling them what to do or instructions. And so how do we prepare kids for that kind of? Future, we need to give them practice, working in teams, working with different groups, and we need to give them practice grappling with complexity. If you think about what most of the innovative companies do, they all tend to do the same thing. They align teams on a mission that everyone understands, and then they hire the kinds of people that are going to make the team better. Few things in the world are achieved alone, right? Like, if you think about our biggest problems, the way that we achieve things and we find answers to our complex problems is by working collaboratively and being aligned on a shared mission. Think of SpaceX, think of NASA, think of Apple, right?

• 26:45Speaker 02

  So, we often talk about the remarkable people that are changing the world, but it's really the hard work of dedicated teams of people that are making a difference in the world. So, how do we give kids practice, constant practice, working in teams to solve society's greatest problems? And that's what we're doing at Synthesis. And I think that that's the kind of education that we should be focusing on.

• 27:08Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, I believe, I've invested in the company multiple times and think that you guys are on the right path here. One of the things with a tutor that's really interesting to me is the ability to change teachers. How many schools did you go to?

• 27:19Speaker 02

  So I went to 10 schools growing up.

• 27:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so I went to six over 12 years. And I always, in hindsight, looked at it as you kind of are in the lottery. Like, what school did you end up in, who the teacher was? And if you're in fifth grade math, there's no changing the fifth grade math teacher. Like, that's who you got. And if they're great, awesome. If they're not great, that's just the luck of the draw. But also, they could be good for one student and not good for another. And so it's a matchmaking, almost to some degree. With this, it seems like what you could basically do is if a student is using a tutor and for whatever reason, they're not really kind of compatible or they don't feel like they're learning, you eventually, over time, could have multiple tutors and you just swap it out with the press of a button. And there's a different tutor with a different style or a different, you know,

• 28:06Anthony Pompliano?

  kind of humor or whatever to really engage the kid, right?

• 28:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:12Speaker 03

  Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai/spotify.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  We actually have different voices, different accents. And you know, if you prefer a female teacher or a male teacher, like we actually have that. The the basics of it, it's still Dr. Tanton and his ideas and the way that he teaches. But the other thing that's amazing is that the the tutor is adaptive. And so it will catch on the way that you think and how long you take to solve a problem and where you're stuck. And it will over time, obviously, you can't see this after one session. Your kid has to go through it multiples, you know, through multiple sessions for it to start mapping out, you know, how does Anthony learn? And then it will teach to your style. It's really personalized. And I mean this, like when I worked in schools, we would often get like, oh, this is the new app and it's personalized learning and it will pick up on you.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  No, it will track how many right answers you got and it will, you know, but it's not like what we're talking about, like real adaptive learning. So eventually, what we want to do is spot this incredible teachers, you know, in physics, in math, we would have the math one and science and all these subjects and capture everything that and it could be multiple teachers, right? Like you were saying, and capture the way, what makes them so remarkable and so so great? Because remember that in order to be a good teacher, it's not only being an expert in your field, you also need to understand the art of teaching. And so finding that person is difficult, but once we find them and we're able to capture their essence, it can be multiple again. And that's really where the magic happens, right? And then with this adaptive programs, and again, we're just getting started. This is just going to get better and better over time.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  But we really think that we're we're going to get the results that the DARPA team got with this, you know, when they first tried out this technology. And it would be, you know, we're solving the biggest problem in education right now. And so it's really remarkable.

• 30:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Where can people go try the tutor if they want to try it?

• 30:18Speaker 02

  Synthesis.com/tutor. And you can try, again, the binary lesson is available for free. And you can also look at the content that we're coming up for next year with all the different topics.

• 30:29Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Now I want to talk about this book, The Learning Game: Teaching Kids to Think for Themselves, Embrace Challenge, and Love Learning. One of the things schools do a really good job of, or at least they try to, is teaching you what to think.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:42Anthony Pompliano?

  It sounds like this book is much more focused on how to think. And as I've read it, I think the critical thinking, the independent thought, all of these pieces of thinking that people understand are important, right? If you ask someone like, "Hey, is critical thinking good?" They're like, "Yes." If it's independent thought, "Good." They're like, "Yes." But no one ever teaches you how to do it.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And so what do you think is kind of the path to being able to teach that critical thinking and independent thought? Whether somebody is a kindergartner, they're a high schooler, or even an adult in many cases still needs to learn how to do that stuff.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. So again, you said it right. Schools are not teaching you how to think. They're teaching you what to think. That's why we're so focused on this one-size-fits-all curriculum. That's why we're focused on, you know, assessing everyone the same way and teaching the same subjects to everyone. But actually, in order to teach kids how to think, you have to do things, you know, the opposite of what we're doing in school. So you need to give kids opportunities to question things. And you need to teach them what's the right way to question things. And, you know, schools have sort of this aversion when kids question the teacher because it's like, it's considered disrespectful or like a threat to authority. And the reality is that oftentimes, we don't have the answers. They're like, "Well, why are we learning this? We don't even know because we look at the content and we're like, 'I don't know when you're ever going to use this in your life.'"

• 31:58Speaker 02

  And so the way to sort of like react to that is like, don't question things. But really, when kids question, when we question things, we innovate. Like, that is how we get to, you know, different answers to different problems. And so, teaching your child how to be a skeptic and really engage in, you know, that's one of the main things. Like, letting your kid question everything and teaching them how to question things. Also, surrounding them, unfortunately, school is filled with conventionally-minded people. Again, because we train them that way. Everyone's doing the same thing at the same time. And so, trying to find alternatives outside of school where your kid is exposed to, and with the internet, this is really easy, right? There are a bunch of learning communities with kids from all over the world, so you're not just stuck with the kids in school and, you know, that are very similar to you.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  But you expose them to kids that will challenge their thinking or adults, you know, that will challenge their thinking that will, you know, that have different biases that you have to detect. And you, again, one of the best ways to do this is to engage them in solving problems. Cause that's where, you know, you hear these kids talking and communicating and all these things will come up. And you let them, you don't intervene. So a lot of what happens in school is that we're trying to script everything and give them instructions for everything and make sure that they are on the right. But really, one of the main things is just letting your kid, you know, struggle, letting your kid get confused, letting your kid, and then that is where he starts or she starts learning really what, you know, how to do it on their own, when you don't intervene, when you don't give them instructions.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  And so a lot of it is, you know, when you think two, two very important skills that kids will need in order to learn how to think for themselves is how to figure things out for themselves and how to fail and pick themselves up and keep going. Like, these are two things that you're gonna keep doing for the rest of your life. We, in school, learn not to fail, cause, you know, you make a mistake and you get that back grade, that it's on your report card, and then it haunts you for the rest of your life. But if you think about it, failure is gonna be part of your life forever. And when is a time where you should be able to learn how to fail? When you're a kid, when the stakes are low, right? Like, when it doesn't mean, like, you know, if you start to practice how to fail when you're an adult, you can mean a failed marriage, a failed business, like, that's catastrophic failure. How do we avoid that by giving them practice over and over and over again? A great way to do it, and people are against this, but video games.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  If you look at video games, kids are constantly failing and they pick themselves up and they're like, okay, what did I learn? What do I need to do next time to get better? And so they keep going and they keep going, and they're getting that exposure to failure. Video games are not the only way, but it's one way. So you expose kids to failure at an early age and you walk them through how to react when they don't get things right and what do they learn about it? So you kind of like reshape the way that we think about failure. And then figuring things out, like something that we do really well at Synthesis is we throw kids in these simulations and we don't tell them what to do. And the kids are so frustrated because they don't know what to do when you don't give them instructions. It's incredible. Like, they get super frustrated and we're like, you're gonna have to figure it out, cause in the, in the real world, nobody wants to hire somebody that they need to tell you what to do all the time. They want people that are proactive, that figure things out.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  How can we expect for kids to know how to do that if we don't give them practice? So that's another thing that you do to teach kids how to think for themselves.

• 35:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What can parents do to make their kids smarter? Right? Like you're talking about making them anti-fragile. I know there's a whole chapter in the book and, and kind of having skin in the game and things like that. But what could a parent do that increases the probability of their kid being a problem solver, being intelligent, all of those things? Like, obviously, go sign up for Synthesis, right, would be one thing. But like, what else can they be doing, uh, kind of in their home or when they're interacting with their children?

• 35:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so first find out if, because the system does work for some people. So if your kid is thriving in the school system, then great, you know, that works for them. But the first thing is figuring out if, if that's the right way of learning. If you don't see them excited to, or wanting to keep learning, or, or being challenged in the appropriate way, then you need to find alternatives. You need to find, and nowadays, there are a bunch of things that people are coming up with in the alternative education space that are really appealing and that could work for your family. And so it's a matter of having the courage to venture out and try something different. And if it doesn't work, you try something else. But, for example, um, you have a lot of forest schools nowadays, where kids are actually learning in nature and learning about things that they come up with. So they're not-

• 36:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Excuse me, what, what is that?

• 36:09Speaker 02

  They're called forest schools.

• 36:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, like go into the woods?

• 36:12Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, but also it could be the beach. Like, they're called forest schools, but it could mean like, you know, wherever you are, but outdoors. And instead of kids learning from a curriculum, they're learning from things that they encounter in nature or things. And so it's, it's immediately relevant to whatever it is that the kids are learning.

• 36:25Anthony Pompliano?

  So it's like a persistent field trip?

• 36:27Speaker 02

  It's like a persistent field trip. And believe it or not-

• 36:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Man, damn, my parents were screwing up. Why did they send us that?

• 36:32Speaker 02

  Exactly, and you can imagine, kids are active, kids are moving around, they're socializing, they're actually learning from real things. And so there's no textbook or curriculum or, no, it's like, it's, you know, it's very unstructured. And some people are like, oh, whoa, like, no.

• 36:45Anthony Pompliano?

  But do they learn math, or do they just learn like how to like start fires with like dry wood?

• 36:49Speaker 02

  No, they do, they do learn the subjects, uh, you know, through what they're encountering. And then they go and they meet and they have like a circle and they actually go over. And there is some direct teaching that happens, but it's like based on whatever it is that they are encountering. So that's an example of something very extreme.

• 37:01Anthony Pompliano?

  This is what to do when a bear comes.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Right, right. Um, it's, it's, it's, it's more relevant than that. But, but anyway, what I'm trying to say is when people, um, look at- At the, you know, they're like, ah, now, okay, I understand the system's broken. I know that it doesn't work, but I can't homeschool my kid. And, and I'm like, well, you need to think about education as a spectrum. On the far left, you have, you know, the traditional school system. And on the far right, you have homeschooling or world schooling, which are the parents that travel with their kids, which I think is fantastic, or unschooling, where parents actually don't do anything about it, and they just expect their kids to learn on their own. So, and you have, you don't have to go, you know, all the way to that extreme. There are a bunch of options in the middle that you can actually choose from and, and, you know, find an alternative that's better for your family. And so what I talk about in my book, I give parents alternatives, I give parents options,

• 37:48Speaker 02

  but then I don't necessarily try to convince them, you know, you have to take your, your kid out of school tomorrow. I mean, although some of them may, but I, I kind of paint a picture of why our current school system is no longer meeting the needs of our kids today, and why it's so important that we course correct this now, and why we need more people working on this now, um, so that more alternatives can be available. And now with all like the school choice and all these things, it's really giving power, uh, parents the possibility to engage their kids in different learning alternatives. And so I would say, yeah, like having the, the, like, a, a lot of parents are scared that they will make a mistake and they're like, oh, this is my one chance. But the reality, no, and you know, and I've been through this system. When people ask me, what am I gonna do with my kids?

• 38:33Speaker 02

  I'm like, I'm not concerned about, cause I already know what happens in school, and there's very little learning. So whatever happens outside of school is gonna be more productive.

• 38:40Anthony Pompliano?

  I was gonna say, every parent does homeschool, right? When your kid gets off school at whatever, three o'clock, four o'clock, four thirty, whatever time school gets out these days, uh, and they go home, even if you work three jobs and you see your kid for 10 minutes a day, you're teaching them something. They're gonna emulate you, they're gonna mimic you, they're, they're going to do something. They're gonna extract some sort of information from you. And Unfortunately, sometimes it's bad information, sometimes it's good information. But I think that everyone homeschools their kid to some degree is an idea that most people don't think of it that way because like, you know, I send my kid to school. But if we could switch that thought process, it probably would have a bigger impact on them. Right?

• 39:23Speaker 02

  Absolutely, and I think that one of the first steps to do that is to think about, well, where did this system come from? Because a lot of people are like, oh, I went through the system and I turned out fine. But if you really stop and you think about deep, you know, deep thoughts of your school experience and you realize how many hours were wasted, how much more productive your time could have been spent as a kid if we did something different. And when you stop and think about, well, where did education come from? Like, does it make sense for what for our needs today? I think that's when parents start to be like, oh, because education used to be the job of parents and teachers and like one-on-one tutors and the church. But this started to change about 200 years ago in a region of Germany called Prussia.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  So at the time, you know, the they had been defeated terribly by Napoleon. And so the government leaders were like, okay, we need to take charge of educating the younger population so that they're ready for this not to happen again, to fight war. So the goal of education was to train kids for the military so that they never got defeated again. And that was what actually started the basis of our modern school system. So this idea of specialized buildings, having a squadron, which was a teacher that would teach the subjects, extended school year, mandated attendance, a standardized curriculum, like all these ideas came from that. So again, education was used as, you know, nation building. And so that started to change with World War II, when, you know, World War II revealed to the importance of a nation's manufacturing capacity.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  And so the United States obviously dominated because their assembly line and factories could produce better and stronger tanks and bombs and guns and everything than their enemies. And so the goal shifted from training a generation of soldiers to fight war to training people to be manager, you know, to manage factories and work in the assembly line. So the United States led the next development of education, you know, in history. And so the theme was standardization and efficiency. So they would group kids by age. They would put them all through the same curriculum. They would hire specialized teachers to teach its subject. They would extend the school day so that they would maximize output.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  They would reduce things like, you know, talking and playing and all the things that make, you know, socializing so that they would minimize waste. And anyone who did not feel fit the mold was labeled as defective. So literally the whole system was, you know, modeled to, you know, a factory. And so then around nineteen sixties, we had this whole idea of like, oh, let's use standardized tests to sort of measure if things are working. And so it would work like, um, ki- kind of similar like when a manufacturer wants to see if a car is working. So this assessments would use, they would use them as quality control. And so they would serve for administrators to know, you know, as reassurance that their system was working and to keep schools accountable. It's very hard to see the benefits of the modern school system in the United States.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  So over, you know, in the past fifty years, standardized test scores have improved only by a small margin. You would think that a system that was designed to train factory managers would advance a nation's productivity and standard of living. But actually, since the nineteen seventies, everything, you know, the, the rate of improvement has actually declined. So nowadays, half of Americans can't read beyond sixth grade level. And if you look at the confidence in public schools, it's at an all time low, like it's even below government and big businesses. And if you look at our most famous inventors out there, like, you know, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Oprah Winfrey and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. They're all famous for dropping out of their degree programs.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  And their stories are so powerful because they all highlight something that every student feels like, what's the point of school? Clearly, it was designed for a very, very different time, for a very different purpose, yet we continue to use the same model. And if parents realize this and realize that they're not preparing kids for the kind of world that we're living in. I think that they would say, okay, this is priority. I need to find alternatives.

• 43:24Anthony Pompliano?

  I completely agree. Um, where can we send people to find this book? The Learning Game: Teaching Kids to Think for Themselves, Embrace Challenge, and Love Learning. That's what it looks like. Where can we send people?

• 43:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you can preorder the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, like anywhere, thrift books, anywhere where you order books. The book comes out September 5th, so in a month. Yeah, so you can find it.

• 43:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And when people read this, and if they sign their kid up for synthesis, what is the idea? Is it that it replaces school? Or it is a supplement to traditional school or whatever they're already doing?

• 43:57Speaker 03

  Everyone's got a hard question about AI, your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai/spotify.

• 44:20Speaker 02

  So for synthesis, right now, we're working on building that alternative model. Eventually, we will have a full stack replacement for the K through 12 model. Right now, we have two, you know, you know, we're trying to do that one remarkable product at a time. Right now, we have two products, a digital tutor for the hardcore academics and team simulations for the soft skills. And so you can start by that as an enrichment program. Eventually, you can actually sign up and it will replace all of your kids' education. And in terms of the book, well, the book is for, you know, teachers and schools that are looking to change their ways, students or kids that want to fall in love with learning again, and parents that are frustrated with the options available for their children, and really, anyone who wants to unlearn those unhelpful lessons taught in school

• 45:03Speaker 02

  so that they can make room to learn the things that will actually serve them in the real world. And so my hope with the book is that whoever reads it will gain confidence to rethink education for themselves, to venture out and try new methods, old and new, actually, because a lot of them are old ideas that are still relevant today, to have the courage to unlearn the things that, again, are not helpful, and hopefully find an alternative that works for their family. So.

• 45:31Anthony Pompliano?

  I have one last question for you. I was texting with your husband before this episode, and he's an amazing guy. What is one thing that you've learned from Fernando over the years that you will forever remember?

• 45:45Speaker 02

  So it's interesting, it's interesting because my husband is very, very different from me. Like actually, the school system worked wonders for him. And so I'm here like the rebel educator trying to do things. And now we're trying to raise a kid. So you can imagine our conversations at home. But I think that he's taught me the value of balance and really finding, you know, it's not just my ideas and the way I think about things. I always have to contemplate the counter argument. And I think that, yeah, he's taught me to have a balance and to, and to see both sides of things.

• 46:16Anthony Pompliano?

  If he had to give you a grade on your ability to have balance today, what do you think he would give you?

• 46:22Speaker 02

  I think he would give me a B plus.

• 46:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. We'll have to ask him. All right. Thank you so much for, for doing this. Where can we send people to find you on the internet?

• 46:31Speaker 02

  You can find me on Twitter, AnnaFabrega11. You can find me on YouTube, also Anna Lorena Fabrega, Ms. Fab. You can find me on Instagram, Ms. Fab underscore Learning Lab. And you can sign up for my newsletter, Fab Fridays, on Substack.

• 46:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. All right. Thank you so much for doing it again.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me.