Pod Insights The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe 451: Meredith Olson—Better Education Now About this episode Meredith Olson is president of Vela https://vela.org/, a nonprofit that funds everyday entrepreneurs who are ditching the traditional school model in favor of something a little more… flexible. Vela doesn't run schools—it supports people creating their own. From homeschool co-ops to microschools in living rooms and libraries, Vela empowers parents, students, and entrepreneurs to reimagine education outside of traditional systems. With more than 4,200 schools being supported, Vela is quietly fueling one of the most important grassroots education revolutions of our time.
Transcript 16,378 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:03 Mike Rowe? Mike Rowe here. It's The Way I Heard It with an episode called Better Education Now.
0:08 Speaker 01 Now, Mike, now.
0:10 Mike Rowe? Right, now.
0:10 Speaker 01 Come on.
0:11 Mike Rowe? Now!
0:12 Speaker 01 Bring it on.
0:12 Mike Rowe? How long do we have to wait for better education?
0:15 Speaker 01 I don't know, but it's already passed now and we don't have it.
0:18 Mike Rowe? But we're gonna.
0:18 Speaker 01 Yes.
0:19 Mike Rowe? Hey, my guest is Meredith Olson, a really interesting woman who I met years ago at Stand Together. And Stand Together, of course, is a, I guess, let's call it a celebration of bottom-up solutions. They've been sponsoring people you should know.
0:36 Speaker 01 Yes.
0:36 Mike Rowe? Over on my YouTube page. Anyway, Meredith sort of morphed through that organization and wound up running an education, I guess, let's call them an educational entity?
0:49 Speaker 01 Sure, yeah.
0:50 Mike Rowe? VELA, V-E-L-A. There are only about 10 people in this nonprofit, and they oversee 4,200 schools that are somewhere between private schools and public schools with a dash of homeschooling thrown into it.
1:08 Speaker 01 That's it, yeah, yeah, that's right.
1:09 Mike Rowe? Right? So, long story short, there's a video on my Facebook page right now that's generating lots of questions from people who are super interested in exploring these schools. You have to think of them like, like, community schools. Some of them are in buildings that look like it could be an elementary school building, but very rarely. Most of them look like a dentist's office.
1:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
1:36 Mike Rowe? These are intensely local schools, and they're run by founders who are also teachers and effectively principals.
1:44 Speaker 01 And also, some of them look like farms, or...
1:47 Mike Rowe? That's right.
1:47 Speaker 01 You know, a petting zoo.
1:48 Mike Rowe? That's right. They could be anywhere in the country. They're in every state, 4,200 of these things. They've served over 5 million kids. Point is, I spent a day visiting a couple of these schools and was blown away. I was initially skeptical because I just didn't understand how something with so little structure could yield such great results. But the results are in and the evidence does demand a verdict and 5 million satisfied learners can't be denied. So I wanted to talk to Meredith and ask her some of the questions that are popping up in the comments section of the video, which I invite you to look at over on my YouTube channel.
2:32 Mike Rowe? I normally don't do this kind of thing, but it just feels like everything's kind of lining up at the same time. And I, look, our education system, she's way more charitable than I am. I think our public education system is in terrible trouble. I really do. And I'm just looking at the results as they compare to other school systems around the world. I've talked to so many school teachers who are frustrated with the mechanism that's in place right now and a lot of parents who frankly feel betrayed, you know, and after the lockdowns and, look, public education is a marvelous invention and it certainly served us well. Yeah. But times are evolving and changing and alternative methods are beginning to rise
3:15 Mike Rowe? and VELA, V-E-L-A, is definitely one of them. And, look, I can't speak for anybody but me, but I'm pretty sure millions and millions and millions of voters and taxpayers are hoping and praying for better education. When? Now. That's what I'm saying, Charlie. I think you're gonna like Meredith. She's smart and she's on to something big and we'll prove it right after this.
3:44 Mike Rowe? Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who want to work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training, like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this academy guaranteed you- A job at the end of the training period. Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's Workforce Academy by Meta. This is a five-week, highly immersive, pre-apprenticeship program that gets you all the necessary certifications you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately.
4:26 Mike Rowe? I'm talking about AI-proof, six-figure jobs, helping to build out the new infrastructure that our economy is depending on. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, welders, fiber optic technicians, these jobs, they are all in demand like never before. And again, every graduate of America's Workforce Academy is guaranteed a job on a Meta website. I first announced this program a few months ago, and I have been watching the response ever since. It's extraordinary. This is a nationwide, unprecedented fast track to a long-term career in a skilled trade. If you, or your spouse, or your kid, or your grandkid are looking for a straight path
5:09 Mike Rowe? into a career with no cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy.
5:27 Mike Rowe? So Meredith, you were a, what kind of engineer?
5:29 Speaker 02 Mechanical.
5:31 Mike Rowe? And where'd you study?
5:32 Speaker 02 Virginia Tech.
5:33 Mike Rowe? And you grew up in, what, Richmond?
5:35 Speaker 02 Richmond, Virginia. Yeah, born and raised.
5:38 Mike Rowe? So, did you know you were going to be an engineer when you grew up?
5:41 Speaker 02 When I grew up, no. You know, I never really thought about what I wanted to be growing up. I mean, I think I was good at math, I liked reading, I loved art.
5:50 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
5:50 Speaker 02 And at the time, so this would have been, I was a child of the 80s. And when you're trying to think about what's next in your career, or at college and career, you think about, how am I going to get a job?
6:03 Mike Rowe? Right.
6:03 Speaker 02 What am I going to do, right? And so at the time, this was late 80s, early 90s, there was a huge opportunity for women to go into engineering. And I thought, you know what, I love math.
6:14 Mike Rowe? Did it feel like-
6:14 Speaker 02 I love art. I love design.
6:16 Mike Rowe? Did it feel like a reverse commute of sorts at that time? Like, were you going in some direction that made your family go, uh-oh, is this dangerous? Or something?
6:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, no, not at all. My mom and dad were both very open-minded about whatever career I might choose. They were, I was a child of divorced parents. They were divorced when I was an infant. But they both loved me very much and supported whatever I wanted to do. So I had single parents. Growing up, I went to my neighborhood public school. I had great teachers. My education was good. Like, it wasn't great, but it was, it was good. And it wasn't the, like, highly selective best public school in town, but it was a good school. And so, you know, I thought, okay, I like math and I enjoy design and art. And so it felt like if I studied engineering, I could design things.
7:08 Mike Rowe? So I guess the point of just the, the personal probing is that you are the product of a fairly traditional education, a public school, and then a decent university, and then, you know, the encouragement to try new things and so forth and so on. And
7:26 Mike Rowe? can somebody still do that today? Can you still get that kinda?
7:31 Speaker 02 Yeah. No, I think you can. I think you can, but it was a little bit easier, I think, when I was a kid. And so you didn't have all of the technology influences. You didn't have an overly scheduled life. I mean, I grew up at a time where I would come home from school and there was no one around. My parents were working. And so the kids all ran-
7:50 Mike Rowe? What'd they call them? Latchkey kids?
7:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, they called them that, but we never really thought about it that way. It was more, um, think, like, think about the movies of the time. Think about E.T. or The Goonies, right? Where were the parents? Right? Where were they? No, I mean, like, the kids were getting into trouble after school. They were, this was their free time. This was their creative time. So you went to school all day and then you came home and you explored, right? And so that was the childhood that I experienced. So I loved school, but then I loved being at home, just exploring. And like, this whole thrill of discovery. But like, is that what happens today?
8:26 Mike Rowe? That's the question I was, I was getting at, you know? It's like, when I talk about the product of a traditional education, that's exactly what I meant to say, because if you are, then you're also the product of a certain time.
8:37 Speaker 02 That's right.
8:38 Mike Rowe? And that time came with a certain permission. In fact, you'll remember field trips and permission slips.
8:46 Speaker 02 That's right.
8:46 Mike Rowe? And very, you know, simple things that, you know, parents, you have to sign it and you guys are going, maybe wandering out of the safe space a little bit.
8:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's right.
8:56 Mike Rowe? To see what can be learned out in the world.
8:57 Speaker 02 Uh huh. Yeah. So think about your time. You had your structured permission time during the day. You had compliance at school. It was like a conformity exercise. There's bells and there's class periods and you have homework assignments that are due and your parents are signing things. But then when you come home from school, nights and weekends and after school, that's your unstructured time.
9:17 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
9:17 Speaker 02 Right? That was your free time. The world was your canvas and you were just like having at it.
9:22 Mike Rowe? That's what I want to jump right into, this, this weird line between structured time and unstructured time. And how, once upon a time, it seemed to have been drawn pretty brightly and pretty straight.
9:34 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
9:34 Mike Rowe? What you're doing at Vela, in a lot of ways, is just blurring that line all over the place.
9:40 Speaker 02 That's right.
9:40 Mike Rowe? I think in a great way. I mentioned in the preamble, there's a video up now that you and I shot back in, was it October?
9:48 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
9:50 Mike Rowe? So many questions. People are really super interested in what's happened here. And I guess I should really jump in by saying that, I think the last time I saw you, you guys had 3,500 of these schools.
10:04 Speaker 02 That's right.
10:05 Mike Rowe? Where are you now?
10:05 Speaker 02 So now we're at, as of today, so I have to check every day because we're adding new founders to our network. But as of today, we're at 4,276. I mean, it's almost 700 new founders just this year in 2025.
10:18 Mike Rowe? And was I correct, also in the preamble, when I talked about the space you guys are occupying feels, to me, like somewhere between a traditional homeschooling approach and a traditional public school. There are elements of both, but man, it seems like the headlines have caught up with your mission.
10:38 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
10:38 Mike Rowe? And a lot of people, a lot of parents, concerned parents who might not be comfortable assuming the burden of educating their kid, hard stop, are gravitating to these.
10:50 Mike Rowe? Non-traditional approaches?
10:52 Speaker 02 That's right. I mean, it's a whole, I would say there's definitely been a paradigm shift. It's sort of a, almost like a lifestyle shift where you're seeing increasingly, whether you're a family, a parent, a kid, an educator, where there's a desire to own your own education, if that makes sense. It's hard to get those words out, but like, rather than passively receiving an education that's given to you, you're owning it and driving it, and you feel the right and the responsibility to go pursue the education of your dreams. And so that's a different, that's a different thing.
11:24 Mike Rowe? Well, are you talking from the perspective of the student or from the parent?
11:28 Speaker 02 Both.
11:30 Mike Rowe? What most informs Vela, and after you tell me that, tell me what Vela means.
11:37 Speaker 02 Okay, so what most informs Vela is this idea that good people are talented and they should be able to have the dignity to make decisions about their own lives, right? And that includes the ability to make decisions about their own education. And so when we see people who are talented and motivated and they're self-determined, amazing things happen. So we see them learning from each other, we see them seeing problems out in the world, and then coming up with solutions to solve those problems.
12:05 Mike Rowe? And before you tell me what Vela is, and I, spoiler alert, I know the answer, and I love it. But when you talk about this kind of network and connectivity, you're talking about the relationship with your founders. And when you're talking about founders, you're basically talking about the teachers in these small micro schools.
12:23 Speaker 02 That's right.
12:23 Mike Rowe? Who basically function as a principal as well, right? They're this amalgam of all the authority figures I've ever known, but just weirdly without all of the weight that comes with, oh no, I'm in the principal's office, or uh-oh, you know, the teacher wants to have a word. All of that got blurred, too.
12:44 Speaker 02 It does get blurred. So you have people, so many people go into teaching for all the right reasons. They do, because they love children, they love education, they care about holistic human development. They care about making sure that kids are on the right path in life, right? And so they deeply are connected to that idea. But for whatever reason, they might feel in a traditional environment that they're constrained, that they're not able to, like, express their craft the way that they would in an ideal setting. And so many of those teachers now are saying, you know what, I can do this. I don't need to be stuck in a big institution. I can go and start my own thing. I can deliver education the way I think kids best learn.
13:26 Mike Rowe? Wow, this is, okay. It's gonna get a little personal. We'll circle back to what Vela means. Now it's become a tease. Don't let me forget to ask you, but let me talk a little bit more than about, like, before we really get into why this thing is moving the needle, I want to better understand what's broken and how it got broken. Because the people you just described were my mom and dad. They both taught public school. My sister-in-law is the principal in a public school. My nieces teach in a public school. They all,
14:03 Mike Rowe? they all feel called to varying degrees to do this thing, and they're all wonderful people.
14:09 Mike Rowe? Now, when I look at the union that oversees public education, and when I look at local municipalities and local state governments, and all of the battle for money and funding, and throw in a little PTA and all of the drama and so forth, and, I mean, my God. I don't want to speak for anybody specifically, but I've seen great teachers will. Break.
14:34 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
14:35 Mike Rowe? And I just wonder how many of those people listening right now would be interested in this. Because we always kind of default to the parents and the kids. But it's the teachers themselves that I think are also grappling. Anyway, long way of asking you what's busted.
14:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, so let me ask you, do you think it's broken? Because I'm not sure that it is.
14:56 Mike Rowe? Well, I know that in Baltimore, a vast majority of high school graduates are reading at a seventh grade level.
15:06 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
15:07 Mike Rowe? I know that in my hometown as well, math proficiencies are even worse. So if we're comparing ourselves to the rest of the world, and if we're looking at, you know, that kind of data, it ain't great, is it?
15:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, no, I mean, so here's how I think about traditional education. I think that it's delivering exactly what it's been designed to deliver.
15:31 Mike Rowe? Hmm.
15:32 Speaker 02 Right? And I think it does it pretty well. So traditional education is reliable, it's efficient, it's familiar. We know what it is. It's designed, if you go back to the 1890s and the Committee of Ten that originally designed secondary education, their goal, and I'm gonna mess up the quote.
15:50 Mike Rowe? Who's the Committee of Ten?
15:51 Speaker 02 So it was a committee of university administrators, university presidents, led by, I believe, the gentleman's name from Harvard was Charles Elliot.
15:59 Mike Rowe? Mm hmm.
16:00 Speaker 02 Okay, so he convenes this committee, and at the time, consider that our society was industrializing. And so we still had in the United States largely an agrarian economy, but it was beginning to industrialize. And so the ideal for education was a very egalitarian concept, this concept of common schooling or public schooling. The idea was every student should be taught every subject in the same way and to the same extent regardless of their ultimate destination. So that was one of the quotes that came out of the report. Right, and so the idea was if you are destined for the farm, the factory, or for some form of higher education, you would have the same common foundation.
16:40 Mike Rowe? A baseline.
16:41 Speaker 02 That would be your baseline, right? And so the reason that we take the scope and sequence that we take now in secondary education, the reason that you take biology and then chemistry and then physics and in that order dates back to the 1890s because they prescribe that that sequence. And so I think that was well conceived. It was well planned. It had great goals, right? What's happened over time? We then had the whole period of industrialization, scientific management, sorting and ranking and measuring everything. That led to the advent of standardized assessment. You know, the bubble test that we're all familiar with, right?
17:20 Speaker 02 And so then we started to design education and deliver it in order to identify the talented 10, the top 10%, the people who are going to be our future leaders.
17:30 Mike Rowe? Ah, the gifted and talented.
17:33 Speaker 02 Right, exactly.
17:35 Mike Rowe? As opposed to the cursed and backward.
17:37 Speaker 02 Right, and so you've got to design these instruments that help with talent identification, right? And we've all taken these tests. And so again, I think public education does a really good service in offering education broadly that follows a common standard to as many students as possible. And I believe today about 83% of all students in America, all school-aged children, are receiving some form of public education. And so I don't know that that's a problem. I actually think public education works really, really well for a great number of people. And in fact, I would say that public education sets the standard. What Vela Partners, Vela Founders that we support are doing, they're not setting the
18:20 Speaker 02 standard, they're setting you apart. So they're doing something different. So it might be better, it might be worse, but it's different and better for the students who are pursuing that path, right?
18:32 Mike Rowe? Well, Todd Rose is on your board?
18:36 Speaker 02 He is.
18:36 Mike Rowe? Is he?
18:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, he's been with us since the beginning. So we first started exploring the concepts of what became Vela about a decade ago. And he was, he was a thought partner with a small band of thinkers and intellectuals, and we were trying to think about what's next in education.
18:57 Mike Rowe? Couple of weeks ago, on this very podcast, I talked with Brooke Rollins, our Secretary of Agriculture, about the incredibly complicated business of delivering affordable beef to our citizens without disadvantaging American ranchers. We also discussed the very controversial decision to import 300,000 metric tons of ground beef from various foreign countries and the maddening policy that allows meatpackers to label imported meat as a product of the USA. Well, shortly after that conversation, one of my sponsors, Good Ranchers, reported an unusually high level of interest in their product. And this is not surprising.
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20:42 Mike Rowe? Well, I only bring him up because he's sat where you're sitting, and we've had a couple of really lively chats. And he's, oh, I don't know, I mean, maybe a little less charitable in the way...
20:55 Mike Rowe? I mean, you're, look, you're, you're very nice and you're very kind and I think everything you've said is true, but I also think that at base, when you talk about that industrial time.
21:07 Speaker 02 Right.
21:08 Mike Rowe? So many of the tropes and the artifacts of, of a factory were brought into the school from the ringing bell to the regimentation to the, right? I mean, these things really ran in a top-down way.
21:21 Speaker 02 Uh huh. So we didn't have computers back then. We didn't have all these machines. And so we had to create the human machinery. So what were we teaching kids at the time? To do automatic tasks, to do them quickly, to do them at a high quality, to do them well, right? Many of the tasks that we were taught and the processes that we were taught were critically important during that time. We now live in a creative economy. We live in a, in a different economy. It's a high-tech economy, right? And so how are we preparing students for this current future, which is changing rapidly?
21:54 Mike Rowe? Well, isn't that the thing that's broken? Isn't so much of the public school system clinging to an older economy?
22:02 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
22:03 Mike Rowe? And aren't we painting with a, a pretty broad brush? I mean, if we're trying to inspire whatever the creative synapses are that can fire in a kid's brain, are, is that happening by and large on the public school stage?
22:19 Speaker 02 Yeah. I mean, I would say that the public school is, again, it's reliable and it's efficient and it's going to continue, right? It's, it's the big cruise ship, right? The big ocean liner that's out there. Will it change course over time? Absolutely it will, right? But it'll only change course if there are influences from the outside that come in that try new methods, right?
22:41 Mike Rowe? Little speedboats and dinghies.
22:43 Speaker 02 Exactly.
22:44 Mike Rowe? Blowing past the cruiser, going in different directions, uh, in uncharted waters.
22:48 Speaker 02 That's right. I think that public education will adapt and will continue to adapt over time, but it'll do so when there are people who are working in the unstructured, permissionless space who are showing the art of the possible. And so that's the good news. But I mean, consider too, you know, when we talk about large institutions, think about, I like to think about analogies a lot. So what are some analogies that we could look at that help describe what's happening in education? So one might be hoteling.
23:18 Speaker 02 Okay, so you stay at a hotel. Let's say you go into a Marriott and you go into a Marriott in New York City.
23:25 Mike Rowe? Am I Ambassador Gold at this point?
23:27 Speaker 02 Yes, absolutely.
23:28 Mike Rowe? Okay, so I've got points, I got status.
23:31 Speaker 02 So what are some of the features of the Marriott?
23:34 Mike Rowe? Oh, when I go to the Marriott, well, I'm gonna get a free breakfast the next day. I'm gonna have access to the club level where the coffee is free and they might put out a cocktail in the evening. And there might be some credit, there might be some other credit, maybe for the spa.
23:52 Speaker 02 Right.
23:52 Mike Rowe? Something like that.
23:53 Speaker 02 Okay, so is there a spa?
23:55 Mike Rowe? Well, I sure hope so.
23:56 Speaker 02 You hope there's a spa?
23:57 Mike Rowe? I've been on the road a long time, Meredith.
23:58 Speaker 02 Okay, is there a restaurant?
24:01 Mike Rowe? Yes, there's a restaurant.
24:02 Speaker 02 There's a restaurant. Is there a swimming pool?
24:04 Mike Rowe? Yes, there's a swimming pool next to the spa.
24:07 Speaker 02 Okay, and in your room, what are some features of the room?
24:11 Mike Rowe? Well, I would have hoped there would be an amenity waiting for me, maybe some fruit, maybe, maybe some champagne if they know my profile, I don't know. Maybe there would be a little mint by the pillow.
24:28 Speaker 02 Right.
24:28 Mike Rowe? Perhaps.
24:29 Speaker 02 But even more basic, shampoo, conditioner, and iron.
24:33 Mike Rowe? I would hope so, indoor plumbing, all that stuff, yeah, they got everything in a Marriott.
24:37 Speaker 02 Now imagine that you're at a Marriott in Singapore.
24:40 Mike Rowe? Okay.
24:41 Speaker 02 Are the amenities the same or are they different?
24:43 Mike Rowe? Well, they're gonna be different, for sure.
24:44 Speaker 02 Right, but a lot of the things that you saw in New York at the Marriott is in common with that hotel in Singapore, right?
24:51 Mike Rowe? Well, sure, they have to have a standardized approach.
24:54 Speaker 02 That's right.
24:55 Mike Rowe? They have to, but McDonald's fries taste pretty much the same everywhere in the country, but to your point, they are different in Europe.
25:02 Speaker 02 That's right, okay, but you're, and you know about what you're gonna pay.
25:06 Mike Rowe? Yes.
25:06 Speaker 02 You have a pretty good sense.
25:07 Mike Rowe? Yes.
25:08 Speaker 02 Okay, now let's contrast this with, let's say you go to New York and you decide to stay at an Airbnb.
25:13 Mike Rowe? Okay.
25:16 Speaker 02 Do you have any expectation of any of those amenities?
25:18 Mike Rowe? Well, I have hopes. You know, I have dreams. I have Yelp, or I have whatever, you know, crowdfunded or, right? I'm gonna look for the stars, I'm gonna read the comments, but no, my expectations is-
25:32 Speaker 02 Do you expect a spa?
25:34 Mike Rowe? I do not.
25:34 Speaker 02 Um, how about a full-service restaurant?
25:36 Mike Rowe? No, I don't.
25:37 Speaker 02 Yeah. How about shampoo and conditioner, maybe?
25:39 Mike Rowe? Maybe, maybe.
25:40 Speaker 02 Maybe. But, but it's gonna be different, right? But you're thinking, I might get some local color, I might stay in a neat neighborhood. I'm getting a different sort of like boutique experience compared to the Marriott, right?
25:53 Mike Rowe? They might have a pool table.
25:54 Speaker 02 That's right. You might be in a part of town that isn't built up with a bunch of hotels. And then now, how about if you stay at an Airbnb in Singapore?
26:04 Mike Rowe? Well, I don't. Is there such a thing?
26:08 Speaker 02 I don't know.
26:09 Mike Rowe? Well, I can't, I can't answer that with any degree of certainty. If I were in Singapore, I can tell you this. I'm, I'm relatively adventurous. I'm certainly curious. But I'd be going to the Marriott before I'd be going to the Airbnb.
26:23 Speaker 02 You'd be going to the Marriott, okay.
26:24 Mike Rowe? In Singapore.
26:24 Speaker 02 In Singapore.
26:25 Mike Rowe? Yeah, for sure.
26:25 Speaker 02 Okay, so which is better? Let's say you're going to New York. The Airbnb in New York or the Marriott in New York? Which is better? Objectively.
26:32 Mike Rowe? God, that's such a good question. Well, it depends. Am I, am I on a walkabout with some friends, or am I traveling for business?
26:38 Speaker 02 Right.
26:39 Mike Rowe? If I'm traveling for business, it's the Marriott all the way.
26:41 Speaker 02 All the way, it's just easy, right?
26:42 Mike Rowe? Yep.
26:43 Speaker 02 Okay, so this is what's happening in education. So when our founders, who are generally operating very bespoke, customized learning environments for the specific target market that they're serving, they're more like these little Airbnb locations. Right? These proprietors of, who are offering a highly customized experience. And so, the question of whether or not they're better than your traditional public school is almost moot. Because it's offering something completely different. So just as we wouldn't compare, like a local Airbnb to a Marriott, they're both offering accommodation, but it's a completely different experience.
27:20 Mike Rowe? So interesting. I thought you were gonna take the bait. I thought you were gonna tell me, you know, Vela is the solution to a broken system. Because that's been my, my experience. And even going to Vela, I'm, I'm thinking of-
27:36 Mike Rowe? Oh, Pam. You introduced me to Pam, a founder, teacher, principal, force of nature, this woman is.
27:45 Speaker 02 She is.
27:45 Mike Rowe? Who's operating her school, which is called the Isadora.
27:50 Speaker 02 Isoraleen Dean.
27:51 Mike Rowe? Yes. And folks, if you were driving through this parking lot and you glanced up, you'd swear it was your old dentist office. I mean, it doesn't look like a school. But to your point, you're gonna make the Airbnb point.
28:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's right. And so, look, sometimes I'm on the road and I'm gonna stay at a Marriott. Other times, I'm gonna pursue an Airbnb. So it really depends on your unique circumstance, depends on your unique family situation, what your values and priorities are, and how you can best satisfy those. So this is like a highly personal decision. So what we're finding in this world today is that families are making that decision on their own. They're looking, let's say you've got four kids, I have four kids. Maybe one kid, one of my four kids should be in a public school setting. Maybe another one should be homeschooled, one-on-one, in the home. Maybe another one should be in a small, alternative environment. That's the level of variation that we're seeing. So we're seeing variation within families.
28:51 Speaker 02 We're seeing tremendous variety within cities. And then you're seeing this happening. I mean, there's something in the water because it's happening all across the country.
28:58 Mike Rowe? Well, you know, we were talking about that offline, you know, anecdotally here at MicroWorks. I haven't done anything different this year. We've been at this for seventeen years now. We have ten times the applicants today as we did a year ago today for these scholarships. Why? What is happening broadly to make, maybe it's the kids themselves, but I suspect it might be parents too, who are saying, you know something? I ought not affirmatively discourage my kid from learning a trade. Maybe we should just put all of this on the table. Is something like that happening within families? I mean, I think you just kind of answered it, but you have a front row seat to it.
29:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think it's definitely happening. So I would say that families are becoming more self-reliant, more resilient, more independent. And they're looking to themselves to solve problems. So we're seeing this culturally just writ large, right?
29:56 Mike Rowe? Does it surprise you that that would happen after COVID?
30:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, you know, this is really an interesting, interesting conversation. I know you mentioned that you'd been talking to Todd Rose, and this is something that Todd and I have talked about as well. So when you have a situation like the pandemic, you could have a couple of different outcomes. So you could have almost like a flight to safety. So in scary times where people flock to the relative comfort and safety of large institutions and experts and centralized authorities. But you could also have people go the other way, where during tough times that are uncertain and scary, then you go back to the core of like, what are your values and who is closest to you? And you go back to, I mean, it's like going home.
30:45 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
30:45 Speaker 02 And relying on self.
30:47 Mike Rowe? Well, I wonder, look, I appreciate that you don't want to just pile on to the status quo, but sure seems like a lot of parents, looking back at those mandatory closures and looking back at some of the arguments that were being made to keep those schools closed. I mean, it sure feels to me like the message being sent was, there are a lot of important things here to consider, but your kid is nowhere near the top of the list.
31:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's right.
31:17 Mike Rowe? That, right? And so that, that really felt like, and I don't have four, I don't have any kids, but boy, everybody I know does. And they all articulated some version of feeling like, wait a second, we can't count on some bureaucracy to make decisions that are in the best interest of Johnny or Sally.
31:39 Speaker 02 Oh, look, COVID was the moment that changed everything, right? I mean, the need for innovation in education was obvious. What we were doing was not working and it wasn't, systems were not flexible enough to adapt on a moment's notice to the changing conditions on the ground.
31:54 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
31:55 Speaker 02 Right? And so what happened in that moment? Well, again, people solve problems, good people solve problems, and they started to. They just started to solve them. And you saw this with private schools. You saw this with home education. You saw this with the emergence of a lot of new models that are out there. Right? And then some public schools adapted really, really well. So they didn't all struggle, but too many did.
32:17 Mike Rowe? For sure. In the same way that your familial experience might vary from the Smiths or the Joneses down the same street. Florida was a very different place than New York.
32:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's right.
32:30 Mike Rowe? California was a very different place, right? And so, you know, it just keeps coming back to this idea that whatever it is we think we know broadly, be careful because that broad brush is going to get a lot of paint on things that really ought not be painted. And so I guess, I mean, when I left Katie's school, what was that called? Green?
32:54 Speaker 02 Green Gate Children's School.
32:55 Mike Rowe? Green Gate, yeah. I said to my business partner, Mary, I said, "That about better than anything I've ever seen proves definitively that a cookie cutter approach is the real devil in all of this."
33:16 Mike Rowe? What if, say, five years ago, some big oil company offered a promotion that gave you a chance to lock in the price of gasoline at $2.50 a gallon for the rest of your life? Would you have taken that deal? Or what if a nationwide grocery store had given you an opportunity to lock in the price of ground beef at, say, $2 a pound for as long as you live? Would you have taken that deal? Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, those deals were never on the table, but this one is. Today, as in right now, for a very, very limited time, Pure Talk is offering every American the opportunity to purchase unlimited talk, text, and data, along with a 30 gig hotspot,
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34:44 Speaker 02 I met Katie in 2020 and we were still, I mean, this was right at the beginning of the pandemic and she was having a tough time and I'll tell you why. So Katie had been a teacher. She'd also been a homeschooling mom and she had been in a homeschooling, like a homeschooling group, right, with other families who were homeschooling. And she had decided to bite the bullet, take the leap and start her own school. And so, right before the pandemic began in March of 2020, she had signed a lease where she rented a church. And so, this was a church that had expanded and had moved and they had the old building, right? And so, she signed this lease. And then, the other shoe drops. COVID happens. Shelter in place. You know, how is she going to pay the rent? She has families
35:29 Speaker 02 who, you know, what's going to happen? Their kids aren't going to come to school, right? And so, she was, she was terrified about what was going to happen. So, we met her at Vela. Vela gave her a grant and the grant enabled her to expand the outdoor play area. So, there was a small fence around that outdoor play area. But the grant enabled her to build a bigger fence to increase the size of that outdoor play area, which meant that she could open her doors during COVID, during shelter in place because the kids were outside. Right? And so, that enabled her to actually grow her enrollment so that she could continue to survive during COVID. So, she not only did her, you know, she was worried that her business would go under and it grew and it thrived and it continues to thrive. And she's,
36:13 Speaker 02 I think you saw when you were there, she's now building additional buildings to satisfy all the additional demand from families. So, we were all told, you know, when we first started this thing called Vela, and I'll get back to your question in a minute about what the name means. But we faced all kinds of questions from people. The critics basically said this wasn't going to work. I've spent so much time working with education reformers and people in the education establishment. And we would share ideas, I would share ideas about what could be possible if you allowed for more entrepreneurship in education. And I generally receive responses where they said, "Look, that's a fool's errand, Meredith. What are you doing? Don't go here. Like, these operators are not legitimate. This isn't gonna work. It's not gonna last. It's gonna go south."
36:56 Speaker 02 And so the critics came to us and they asked a bunch of different questions, right? First, they said, "Well, are you gonna, how are you gonna find these people?" So we knew that creative types like Katie existed, but we had no idea how to find them. And so they said, "You know what? This critic said, 'This is never gonna amount to anything other than a small niche market for the wealthiest families, and it won't be sustainable over time.'" Well, here's what we found. We found people like Katie out there. We've had more than 9,000 applications for support from founders of these new models. It's not stopping, right? And then, "Well, are these kids gonna be wealthy kids only? Is it a small niche market?" Well, we found that about 93% of all the founders we support are serving low and middle-income families.
37:41 Speaker 02 So this is remarkable, right? People are investing their own time and their own money, and these are not wealthy people in order to offer something better for their kids.
37:50 Mike Rowe? Well, I know there can't be a pat answer for this, but what does it cost to get your kid in a Veila school? It's gotta vary wildly.
37:57 Speaker 02 It varies wildly. I would say, so some numbers. So here's some fast facts. So the median learning environment in our network is charging about $450 per month, per learner. And so if you think about being in school for 10 months out of the year, it's about $4,500 a year per learner, which is a lot of money.
38:16 Mike Rowe? Yep.
38:17 Speaker 02 It's a lot less than your typical public school or typical private school, right? So this is low-cost private education. So that's normal. In our network also, we've tried to get a better handle on how large are these learning environments? The typical one, the median size, is about 55 students in one of these learning environments. So that gives you kind of a ballpark of what this looks like. Are there larger ones? For sure. Are there smaller ones? Yes. More expensive ones, cheaper ones. I mean, there's a wide degree of variation.
38:47 Mike Rowe? So is there, is there protocol? Like, I mean Pam and Katie, as I recall, were very different people in very different neighborhoods. Is there any kind of top-down thing involved here? Or is it all bottom-up?
39:07 Speaker 02 Right, good question. I would say that what's animating this movement is a bottom-up approach, right? And so people are, you know, they're basically posting a shingle. They're advertising themselves for business. They're attracting customers. They're growing through word of mouth. And then they are delivering on the academic and personal growth goals that are demanded by families. Right? And to the extent that they're satisfying those families, they come back. They earn their trust. They earn their business. And I mean, this is truly the power of the private sector at work. We're just seeing it in education in a way that we're not used to it.
39:42 Mike Rowe? I love it. But what are you hearing from local school boards? And where does the criticism come from? And how do you comply with a world that is still besotted and enthralled by standardized tests? How do you, I mean, how do your graduates fit into that machine?
40:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, great question. And so we, the way we think about accountability, we do think accountability is critically important. We think that the nexus of accountability happens between the families and the founders. So let's say you're Katie and you're leading one of these school environments. Those families are holding her accountable for education delivery. Right? And it's up to her to come up with measures of assessment and then performance that satisfies their needs. Now, how do they do that? And we would say that there's a range of different ways. So the way that you're going to assess performance at a Montessori school or like a Waldorf school or another, you know, sort of like self-directed learning community is going to look different than it would at a classical school or at a project-based learning school.
40:44 Speaker 02 But every single one of these methods, these educational methodologies has a way to assess student progress. And so those practitioners, like those founders, are delivering. On those models for their families, right? Okay, so now, how do they do it? You asked that question. We've asked our community. We want to know, how are you thinking about learner outcomes? And we ask questions like, do you have the students sit for the state assessment? The standardized test? What, you know, how are you doing this? What we found is more than a third, it's about 36% of our operators, are using some form of standardized assessment. Now, this is really interesting because consider that they're not required to generally by state law. And so they're voluntarily doing this. These tests are not cheap.
41:29 Speaker 02 They're expensive. So they see value in purchasing the test in order to communicate those results to the families of the kids. Importantly, they're administering the test not to comply with a bureaucratic requirement or a government requirement, but they're doing it in order to better communicate with families. So to the tune of more than a third of them. Okay, so that's one category. Then there's another category of what I'll call education technology that has embedded assessment. So there's this whole category, whether you think about Khan Academy, or Xern, or iExcel, like all of these different software packages that are out there that offer embedded, they're adaptive technologies that offer embedded assessment.
42:13 Speaker 02 And so more than two-thirds of our operators use some form of adaptive ed tech that has ongoing assessment of student performance. So they're utilizing methods. They just, and they're actually, in many cases, they're utilizing the same methods that traditional public schools are using.
42:29 Mike Rowe? But does the outside world understand what success looks like vis a vis these accreditations, if that's even the right word to use? How do we know that a graduate from a Veila school, oh, Veila, oh, right? Like, I mean, and again, I'm only asking for, as the, as an outsider looking in, but if, in fact, your whole network of 4,200 schools is as bespoke as a bed and breakfast model.
43:01 Speaker 02 Right.
43:03 Mike Rowe? Then what's your brand? Like, what brand emanates from that bullion base of unpredictability?
43:14 Speaker 02 Bullion base?
43:14 Mike Rowe? A bullion base, it's a, I believe it's French for, "Look at all the interesting things on my plate."
43:19 Speaker 02 That's right, so that's what this is, there's all these interesting things. So you asked, "How does a kid take the next step?" Right? Okay, well, they have a high school transcript. They fill it out and complete it, just like kids in a traditional school would. There's tools for doing this, for alternative education. They take, they sit for and take the SAT or the ACT. Or the CLT, I think that's the classical literacy exam. And, um, and they score, they get benchmark scores.
43:47 Mike Rowe? Classic, CLT is a thing?
43:49 Speaker 02 I think that's what it's called, mhm.
43:51 Mike Rowe? Did you take that?
43:52 Speaker 02 I did not take that, did you?
43:53 Mike Rowe? I did not.
43:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:54 Mike Rowe? But you know what my brother did? My brother dropped out of college.
43:57 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
43:58 Mike Rowe? Because he was bored to death. And then he realized he, like you, wanted to be an engineer. And he learned that you can actually sit for, what do you call it, the board, the test, the...
44:12 Speaker 02 Well, they have those CLEP exams as well.
44:14 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
44:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
44:15 Mike Rowe? He didn't go back to school, he went to the library.
44:18 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
44:18 Mike Rowe? And in about two months, read 2,000 pages on all of it. And just smoked it.
44:26 Speaker 02 So all of these things are possible, right? And so, consider, I know you work all the time and it's, um, it's not called vocational education anymore, but, you know...
44:37 Mike Rowe? Oh, the trades?
44:37 Speaker 02 Uh, right, exactly. Um, the trades and career and technical education. There are dual enrollment programs all across this country. Here's a little secret, homeschooling kids take those programs all the time. Right? So you might be having part of your studies at home, or in a homeschooling group, or in a hybrid homeschool environment, and part of your high school studies are taken at the local trade school down the, down the street.
45:00 Mike Rowe? Hmm.
45:00 Speaker 02 Or at the local community college down the street.
45:03 Mike Rowe? You know, to circle back, part of what I think was a, I can't think of a more harebrained decision in the history of modern education than taking shop class out of high school, along with home ec. And whatever passes for financial literacy these days. Those basic things seem to have been deliberately and systematically removed in the 70s for the most part, early 80s, you know, when I was in high school. And so, that broad-based benchmark of all these different things, that really became diminished. And it happened so fast, that people kind of forgot about it.
45:43 Speaker 02 That's right.
45:44 Mike Rowe? So where do the trades, for lack of a better word, fall into the potential of Vela curriculum?
45:51 Speaker 02 Oh, there's huge potential here, right? So, at Vela, we don't have a standard curriculum. We just have a collection of founders, who are all doing things their own way. And what we are seeing is a renewed emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning activity, on practical arts. I, oh gosh, we have a founder we support, that has what they call a common arts curriculum. They learn how to black shoe horses, blacksmith horses.
46:14 Mike Rowe? Ferries.
46:15 Speaker 02 Right? Yes, exactly. But they're learning, you find that many of these locations have a heavy emphasis on agriculture, on farming, on horticulture, on permaculture, right? And they're, so they're learning how things grow. If you think about a typical education you're spending, kids generally spend, you know, two to three hours a day in focused, core academic instruction. Now, it's spaced all throughout the day with other, you know, like passing periods, enrichment classes, lunchtime, right, homeroom. And so, your two and a half to three hours of really intense core instruction is spaced during the day. Well, what if you reimagine the day?
46:57 Speaker 02 So what if you focused on core in the morning, and then in the afternoon, you had time to go on nature treks every day? Or you had time to, you know, like engage in animal husbandry, right? We are seeing this happening all over the place. We're seeing an emphasis on more nature-based learning, on more athletic activity, getting outside, going on a hike every day for three miles.
47:25 Mike Rowe? I'd like to talk about initiative, if I could, for just a moment. Here at MicroWorks, we value it a great deal. In fact, it's the most important quality we look for in our work ethic scholarship applicants. But everybody wants it. I'm talking about the quality in a lift driver that inspires him or her to carry your bags to the door without even asking, or the grocery clerk who shows you where an item is on the shelves, or a doctor who personally calls you to explain your test results. If you're hiring, you want to encourage initiative because it's invaluable. And ZipRecruiter has a way to allow a candidate to tell you, in their own words, why they're interested in your job. Not just why they're qualified, but why they're interested.
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48:59 Mike Rowe? Well, one of the first things that struck me, just at a glance, was the relationship with risk.
49:05 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm. Climbing trees.
49:07 Mike Rowe? This fascinates me. Those kids weren't just climbing trees. They were 25 feet in the air in trees. They were...
49:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
49:14 Mike Rowe? We've got footage of these girls doing these crazy somersaults off of the swing set. And it felt like, when we first sat down and started talking, we were talking about that time in our youth.
49:25 Speaker 02 So we had this unstructured playtime, right?
49:28 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
49:29 Speaker 02 What if education could be like that, all day long? That's what we saw at Green Gate with the somersaults on the swings.
49:37 Mike Rowe? But it was more than that. It wasn't just like, you know, recess at the next level. There was a geography class going on while it looked like some sort of art class was happening. The kids were drawing and at the same time, they were technically, I guess, in a geography space. And then over there, the same thing was sort of happening with math, but it was kinetic. It was, I mean, there was, there was activity. It was cerebral and kinetic at the same time.
50:07 Speaker 02 That's right. So it turns out you can learn, you can make academic progress and acquire knowledge even as you're building skills of independence and resilience.
50:18 Mike Rowe? Wow. Okay. If I could just bring this back to me for a moment. I, sometimes, Meredith, in the course of my work, I'm called upon to memorize large chunks of
50:29 Speaker 02 Right.
50:29 Mike Rowe? of material. I'm good at it, or facile, anyway, if I can move.
50:35 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
50:36 Mike Rowe? Right? So if you tell me to memorize three stances of a Robert Frost poem, I can do it pretty quick if I'm walking while I'm doing it. And if I have to deliver it to a camera, then I need to be able to block it out. And so what happens for me, especially with memory exercises, is that the recall is linked really, really closely to the action. And I know the same is true of actors. You see them blocking a play, you know, and sometimes if you change the blocking, they'll just go, they'll go blank. So why in the world would we fill a classroom full of chairs and make everybody sit absolutely still as they attempt to somehow
51:20 Mike Rowe? process massive amounts of information that are just being thrown at them?
51:26 Speaker 02 It should not be a surprise that many young people struggle with this. We see this frequently with young boys, like they need to be rambunctious, they need to get out, they need to play, right? But they also need to learn. And so I think you can accomplish both. So the compliance environment of schools can and should change.
51:44 Speaker 02 There's a young woman, I can remember going to a location, it was called Acton Buckhead. It's located in a beautiful botanical garden outside of Atlanta.
51:53 Mike Rowe? Sounds like a great name for an action hero, too, by the way.
51:55 Speaker 02 Oh, no, totally.
51:56 Mike Rowe? Acton Buckhead.
51:57 Speaker 02 And the beauty of Acton School is every student is on their own hero's journey. It's a self-directed learning facility.
52:02 Mike Rowe? Is this like Lord Acton, that guy?
52:05 Speaker 02 Yes, and these environments are really interesting. I love all learning environments. I love classical learning environments, I love self-directed learning environments. I think every single one of these is beautiful in its own way and can work for the right child. In this particular learning environment, when we went to visit, we had a chance to interview, interview the kids. And as we were interviewing the kids, there was a question that we raised to this young woman, who I want to say she was 12 or 13, middle school age girl, right? And we said, okay, if you were to meet the principal of a local high school, what would you ask the principal? And she said, I would ask, and I was just floored by her answer.
52:47 Speaker 02 She said, I would ask, why is it that when you turn 18 and you're a senior in high school, you have to ask permission to go to the bathroom? And then the next day, you're expected to be an adult, sign a lease, and pay all your own bills? Why does that make any sense? There was so much wisdom in what this young woman shared, and I thought, well, gosh, why do we do that?
53:13 Mike Rowe? Because...
53:14 Speaker 02 Why?
53:15 Mike Rowe? Well, maybe because we're just trying to boil the ocean. And while you're trying to teach basic algebra, you're also trying to teach obedience, or manners, or permissions. I mean, it's an awful lot to do at the same time, but I don't know. I mean, like the basic dignity of being able to use the can when you need to use the can.
53:37 Speaker 02 That's right.
53:38 Mike Rowe? Should preclude that level of permission, it seems.
53:40 Speaker 02 And I think that this works for a great number of kids. What about the kids that want something different? What if high school looked completely different?
53:49 Mike Rowe? I like to be told to go to the bathroom.
53:51 Speaker 02 You do?
53:51 Mike Rowe? No matter what I have, no matter what.
53:53 Speaker 02 What if high school looked more like college?
53:57 Speaker 02 What if you went three days a week? And the other two days you were at home, working on your studies?
54:03 Mike Rowe? Well, I mean-
54:04 Speaker 02 And you had more control over your time. But with that kind of independence comes responsibility, right?
54:09 Mike Rowe? Of course.
54:09 Speaker 02 Because you've got to deliver.
54:10 Mike Rowe? And assumptions. Let's assume you have a home where your studies are encouraged. Right? And now, certain people in a top-down world are going to look around and say, because that environment doesn't exist, we can't do that. And because it would be unfair to only encourage that for the people who do have access to a home environment that would encourage studying, because that would be unfair, well then, no. We're all going to come back and we're all going to do it this way. And so, we're in a very Temple Grandin way, shoveled into the chutes.
54:39 Speaker 02 I love Temple Grandin.
54:40 Mike Rowe? No, she's, I mean, well, to your point, you know? I mean, yes. She, she was a different learner.
54:47 Speaker 02 That's right.
54:47 Mike Rowe? For sure.
54:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, and so she was able to become a different inventor. Because her perspective was completely different. She saw the world in a different way.
54:57 Mike Rowe? Here's why I believe you. And here's why I like you. I've always liked you. And I want to talk about from whence you came. Because, you know, Charles Koch, it's not a secret. He was really helpful for MicroWorks. And I met you through Stand together, which evolved somewhat organically out of the Seminar Network Program. You were there early, early on. And now, you've, now you're running Vela. You're running 4,200 schools with, how many students, would you guess?
55:26 Speaker 02 So, Vela founders, so we don't actually run anything. We have 10 employees at Vela. But what we do is we create a network. And we offer funding. We offer a little bit of funding that helps build confidence in founders. We connect them to knowledge, to tools, to resources, and to each other. It's all self-service, on-demand. We believe very strongly in voluntary exchange. And so, what we found is that by inviting founders to participate in opportunities to get better, to learn from each other, to come together live, virtual, you name it. They're more likely to participate, more likely to engage, and they actually go further faster as a result. And so, um, how many, you asked, how many do we have right now?
56:10 Speaker 02 So we have 4,276 founders collectively. They've benefited more than 5,000 people in some way, kids, families, adults. Um, in actual learning environments, there are about 350,000 students who are, are in an environment led by a Veila founder. It's remarkable.
56:30 Mike Rowe? Well, when do you become an existential threat to whatever the status quo is?
56:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, you know, that's an interesting point. I want to see more low-cost private education solutions. Everything that sort of sits between home education and private education because I think that's the engine of innovation.
56:51 Mike Rowe? But are you in a zero-sum game? And again, I'm not asking you to beat up on the status quo, but there's a finite number of kids who need to be educated.
56:59 Speaker 02 That's right.
56:59 Mike Rowe? They're either going to go here or there, or there, or there, or there, or there. So when you get into this quasi semi-private world, how competitive is it? Because you don't want to get into the whole varsity blue madness. Like, how do you think about that?
57:16 Speaker 02 I think it's a good question. So what's interesting is that our founders aren't, they don't feel very competitive with the public system. In fact, about half are former public school educators, right? And so they love public education. They just want to do something different, right? And so, so it's, I think you're right. There's a finite number of kids out there. And realistically, we're seeing a shift away from public education. Since the pandemic, more than a million students, um, we've seen a decline in public enrollment by about a million students since the pandemic. Where are the kids? Where are they going?
57:52 Mike Rowe? Well, it sounds like 355,000 of them are available.
57:54 Speaker 02 Right. Well, about half of the shift is that these kids are receiving some form of private or home education, and they weren't before. Then there's demographic decline. So there's just, there's fewer kids coming into the system than there are graduating. And that's just the, the demographic reality of birth rates and people waiting longer to have kids and having fewer of them. Right? Parents are older when they have their first child now, and so they don't have as, as many children. And so we're seeing a reduction, a decline in the number of kids. We're also seeing this big shift where, where kids are moving increasingly into some form of private or home education. And these are, are low cost alternatives. So these are not like your traditional elite private schools.
58:37 Mike Rowe? Yeah. The compliment that I was meaning to pay you a minute ago was that during the lockdowns, it was important to me to get, to get Dirty Jobs back on the air because,
58:49 Speaker 02 Right.
58:50 Mike Rowe? You know, a big essential working show and a lot of people were asking, why don't you get out there and shoot it in the thick of this thing? And I didn't have a good reason not to. So one of the first places we went was South Dakota. And there we are at Crazy Horse. And talk about risk. These guys, they let me rappel off the front of Crazy Horse's face and do some work on his nose, you know? And then I've got these giant drills and I'm working on his, if you haven't, folks, if you haven't seen what's being built, it's going to take another 50 years to finish, but not far from Mount Rushmore is a monument to Crazy Horse. It's probably four times the size and it's a private undertaking.
59:31 Speaker 02 And it's a single family undertaking.
59:33 Mike Rowe? It's a single family. Right.
59:35 Speaker 02 So wild.
59:35 Mike Rowe? And they've been at it now for half a century and it's going to take another 50 years to finish it.
59:39 Speaker 02 Didn't they have more kids so that they would have more people to carry on the project?
59:43 Mike Rowe? 13 kids.
59:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
59:44 Mike Rowe? They basically sired his own workforce. And when you read about the work ethic and when you read about the, the passion and the determination and the full on hard headed stubbornness that it took Gustav unpronounceable last name, Taylor, you remember his last name? Chuck, if only we had a small handheld device tapped into a large compendium of shared knowledge in some kind of cloud situation. We'll get his last name because it's important. I'd like to get it right. Because the point is, in the midst of filming Dirty Jobs during a lockdown, in a fairly risky way, I looked up and saw you and your family. It was so jarring for me because I've only ever seen you in like hotel ballrooms.
1:00:29 Mike Rowe? Right? Like these stand together functions, like, that looks so much, no, it can't be. But it's like, you were literally there with your family on, on a kind of field trip.
1:00:39 Speaker 02 We were. We were on the Great American Road Trip.
1:00:42 Mike Rowe? Yes.
1:00:42 Speaker 02 Yeah. And we were there wearing, you know, like sweatshirts and jeans with like our masks on because you had to do that.
1:00:49 Mike Rowe? I know.
1:00:49 Speaker 02 Right?
1:00:50 Mike Rowe? I know. And I was doing this, I was wearing a mask because I was like drilling into granite. And the whole thing was, was dirty and dangerous and beautiful and interesting as hell. There you were. There were some other people there too who, who had ventured out.
1:01:07 Speaker 02 Yeah. So they, at the end of every day after the park closes,
1:01:11 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
1:01:11 Speaker 02 they take a small group on a tour. And so in exchange for a donation to the Crazy Horse Foundation. So we thought, our family was there, when are we ever going to see Crazy Horse again? So we made a donation to the, the foundation and we got on a van and did like a little van tour after the park closed. And so we get to the top and they said, oh, by the way, Mike Rowe is here filming. I'm going,
1:01:37 Speaker 02 how is this, how is this happening?
1:01:38 Mike Rowe? He owes me money.
1:01:39 Speaker 02 And I, and I told the, I told the gentleman who had, who had, was conducting the tour for us, I said, wait a minute. And I went over and said, Mike, what are you doing?
1:01:48 Mike Rowe? And, and honestly, my brain shut down for about five seconds. I was just like, huh, huh.
1:01:53 Speaker 02 What is going on?
1:01:54 Mike Rowe? What are you doing here? Chuck, can you also find a picture of Crazy Horse? Just so people can see what we're talking about?
1:02:00 Speaker 02 We were right by the face.
1:02:01 Speaker 01 I believe I can. Uh, his name is Korshak Zolkowski.
1:02:06 Mike Rowe? Zolkowski, yeah. Yeah, I met one of his daughters, uh, who was technically, I think, in charge of the memorial at that point. But it is, his, his family tree looks like a wall of ivory.
1:02:18 Speaker 02 Okay, so like bringing it full circle, think about what it means to be an American and the American dream.
1:02:22 Mike Rowe? Yep.
1:02:23 Speaker 02 And that gentleman and his wife and their family, they had a vision of what that giant rock formation could be.
1:02:29 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
1:02:29 Speaker 02 Right? And then they just got after it.
1:02:32 Mike Rowe? Look at that.
1:02:33 Speaker 02 Look at that. Yeah, that's the vision of what it could be. And that's where we are today. They had a vision of what was possible and the future that they're imagining. So all we're doing at Vela is investing in founders who are doing the very same thing in their own small way in their community.
1:02:49 Mike Rowe? I like analogies too and metaphors. You're chipping away.
1:02:55 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
1:02:56 Mike Rowe? You're chipping away at the rock, waiting to see what's going to come out of it.
1:03:01 Speaker 02 Right, and it's not perfect. You know how many, I mean, driving up to Crazy Horse?
1:03:06 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
1:03:07 Speaker 02 They had all that equipment that had failed on the side of the road, right? And, and they had war stories that they were telling. Just like that, every single one of these founders has those war stories.
1:03:22 Mike Rowe? So as some of you may have heard, I went to Congress 16 years ago to testify before a House Subcommittee. And then again, a year later, to testify before a Senate Subcommittee about the need to reinvigorate the skilled trades with some kind of national effort that would make a more persuasive case for a lot of good jobs out there that didn't require a four-year degree. Well, 15 years later.
1:03:49 Mike Rowe? I finally heard back from the government and I am delighted to tell you about a program called BuildFreedom.us. This is the national PR campaign that MicroWorks has been talking about for a decade and a half now and it's focused on three or 400,000 excellent jobs in the defense industrial base. These are the electricians and the plumbers and the steam finners and the pipe fitters and the CNC operators and the shipbuilders and so forth. But in this case, all of those trades are focused on building out our national infrastructure through the defense industrial base. So people who are building our autonomous weapons, our planes, our ships, it's only
1:04:34 Mike Rowe? a matter of national security and it's a very big deal. And on a personal level, it's really been very gratifying. Build Freedom donated $10 million to MicroWorks. The money's available right now for you if you want to pursue a skill that's in demand and work in the defense industrial base. I think it's an opportunity of a lifetime. Go to BuildFreedom.us, see what's available and then apply for a scholarship from MicroWorks. The money's there, burning a hole in my pocket. Go get some. BuildFreedom.us. Well, in just further testaments, the way every single thing is connected, whether we know it or not, look at that thing. That's exactly where I was.
1:05:13 Speaker 02 It's unbelievable. They made a lot of progress since then.
1:05:16 Mike Rowe? Huge progress. Yeah. Don't let me forget, Chuck, we need to invite one of the Zawkowskis on here.
1:05:23 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, yeah, great idea.
1:05:26 Mike Rowe? They would like, I know they would come and I just think this is, I mean, Meredith is right. This is a great American story. It's a family story and it's an educational story too. I mean, what, what is the purpose of a monument really but for to remember, stimulate curiosity, right? Satisfy wonder, all of that stuff? I mean, that's about the biggest statue you're gonna find that does that.
1:05:53 Speaker 02 And think about how much they've learned, the technology they're using today. I mean, they showed you about the, like, the diamond blades that...
1:06:00 Mike Rowe? Today, but they were using like precision dynamite. I mean, the most targeted sort of blasting. And those guys are like billy goats. They just up and down thousands of stairs a day, carrying buckets filled with rock. I mean, it was so... Sisyphean.
1:06:19 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
1:06:19 Mike Rowe? It quixotic even.
1:06:21 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
1:06:22 Mike Rowe? I mean, who today would take on a project whose completion was 100% guaranteed,
1:06:31 Mike Rowe? if it happens, to happen long after your death?
1:06:33 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:06:35 Mike Rowe? Who's got that kind of vision anymore?
1:06:36 Speaker 02 I it's tough, right? Only somebody who loves to attack big, hairy, audacious problems. They see complexity and they think rather than saying, I can't do this, nobody could do this. They think, how do I break it into pieces?
1:06:50 Mike Rowe? Hmm.
1:06:51 Speaker 02 And then start to attack it one bite at a time. Right? That's a talent.
1:06:56 Mike Rowe? What does Vela stand for? What's it mean?
1:06:58 Speaker 02 So Vela, um, the etymology of the word, it means different things in different languages. But generally, it means, so in many of the Latin languages, it means a candle or a light or a constellation. There's actually a constellation in the southern hemisphere that's named Vela.
1:07:18 Mike Rowe? Mm hmm.
1:07:18 Speaker 02 And so often it's used in sailing,
1:07:23 Speaker 02 sailing languages, right? So sailing.
1:07:26 Mike Rowe? Oh, sailing.
1:07:27 Speaker 02 Sailing.
1:07:27 Mike Rowe? I thought you said saline.
1:07:28 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:07:29 Mike Rowe? Like a.
1:07:29 Speaker 02 Sailing.
1:07:30 Mike Rowe? Bringers lactate.
1:07:30 Speaker 02 So like journey.
1:07:31 Mike Rowe? D5W. Like a drip.
1:07:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, so oftentimes like nautical companies are named Vela.
1:07:37 Mike Rowe? Mm hmm.
1:07:38 Speaker 02 Right? So it's like a journey and, and it's a light. It's a beacon. And then in some languages in Africa, it means to appear. Right? And so it's to make known, to make aware. So we selected the name Vela very intentionally because the idea was that we knew that these creative, innovative people are sailing to the frontier of education. And our job at Vela was to help light the path and make this appear and known to the world.
1:08:08 Mike Rowe? This, according to your website, is more than 355,000 learners.
1:08:14 Mike Rowe? In total? You're looking at 5.3 million.
1:08:17 Speaker 02 Yes, so we have two types of founders we support. So we have those who are operating what we call learning environments. So that's a place where children learn, right? And it could be one day a week, two days a week, three, four, or five days a week. Could be part-time, could be full-time.
1:08:32 Speaker 02 There are about 350,000 who are in these physical learning environments. Then, we have another class of founder who are providing all of the tools, the supports, and the resources that make that kind of alternative education possible. So they offer content, academic content and tools, curricular resources. They might offer backend operating tools and resources. So it's now easier than ever to get access to the business tools, the information tools, and the academic tools to start your own learning environment. So these things are very sort of, they go together, right? So think about, like if you're operating a hair salon. So you have all the implements in the hair salon.
1:09:16 Speaker 02 You've got the chairs, you've got the scissors, you've got the shampoo and the conditioner, and then you've got the hair salon itself, and you have the people and the relationships. So for me, when I pick a hair salon, I've been going to the same stylist now forever.
1:09:30 Mike Rowe? Well, clearly.
1:09:31 Speaker 02 Right.
1:09:31 Mike Rowe? You're quaffed and it's amazing.
1:09:33 Speaker 02 As many people do, because I want that relationship experience that's bespoke. I like my stylist, I know all about her life, she knows about my life, right? But the tools that she uses, well, hell, I mean, they're in salons all across the country, right? And so we're investing in both, both the people who are delivering something unique and highly customized, as well as the tools and resources that make this whole movement possible to scale.
1:10:00 Mike Rowe? I went to a salon in Zurich about 15 months ago. What was it called? Sammy's Finest Barbers, right, Taylor?
1:10:08 Speaker 04 Finest Barbers.
1:10:09 Mike Rowe? Finest Barbers, yeah. I had a big meeting. In Liechtenstein. And I got a glimpse of myself in a plate glass window. And I thought, man, I need a haircut. So I went in and I talked to the guy who ran the place. And just such a great entrepreneurial story. He's got like six or seven shops all throughout Switzerland. He speaks half a dozen languages. You know, now, this is a guy at a glance, you might dismiss as a hair cutter. But he had a trade, right? And he was really good at it. And he had an entrepreneurial spirit, which was terrific. And so I was a little uncomfortable because like you, I go to the same person all the time just because we need certainty in our lives, right?
1:10:53 Mike Rowe? And while I was getting my haircut in the mirror, I noticed a guy who finished up his thing and then he went over and he sat in a special chair. And Sammy, was it Sammy who actually ran the joint?
1:11:05 Speaker 04 Ingles.
1:11:06 Mike Rowe? Ingles, yeah. He goes over to this pot and he takes off a lid and the steam comes out. And he takes two Q-tips and he sticks it in and he pulls it out. And the ends of the Q-tips are covered with black wax. It's hot and steam coming off of it. And he kind of twirls it around and he walks over and the guy leans his head back. And this Ingles guy sticks the toothpicks, the Q-tips into his nostrils, right? All the way in. And then he pinches them and holds it there for about 30 seconds. And then he yanks them out. And the amount of hair stuck onto this wax, Meredith, right?
1:11:51 Mike Rowe? Now, I'd never seen anything like this because I'd never been a Zurich before. I don't know how they do it over there. But the next thing I knew, I was there getting all the hair pulled out of my nose.
1:11:59 Speaker 04 So you did this?
1:11:59 Mike Rowe? You bet I did.
1:12:00 Speaker 04 You signed up for it?
1:12:01 Mike Rowe? You bet I did. You're, absolutely. And this is a good place to land the plane, really, because to your earlier analogy, you know, sometimes it's a Marriott, sometimes it's a B and B, sometimes it's the salon, you know? And sometimes you're flat on the, your back, getting all your nose hair pulled out by a man who speaks six languages. And, and sometimes you're.
1:12:25 Mike Rowe? You're on the top of a giant Indian doing dangerous work and you and you run into a woman who's running 4,200, not running, but overseeing 4,200 semi-private schools. How much weirder does the world get, really?
1:12:42 Speaker 02 Yeah. Yeah, so our goal now is just to, how do we connect more families to this work? So the demand is there, the open-mindedness is there. How do we make it easier for people to find these connections so that they can go do, like as you did, get this narrative?
1:13:00 Mike Rowe? Go ahead. Get that hair pulled out of your nose.
1:13:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:13:03 Mike Rowe? I'll tell you, man, that Zurich air in my newly hairless nostrils was so invigorating.
1:13:10 Speaker 02 How bad did it hurt?
1:13:11 Mike Rowe? It wasn't pleasant, but it was over very quickly.
1:13:13 Speaker 02 Right.
1:13:14 Mike Rowe? He counted me down from three, of course, and pulled it on two. So it made my eyes water.
1:13:18 Speaker 02 Was there like an after balm?
1:13:22 Mike Rowe? Not really.
1:13:24 Speaker 02 No.
1:13:25 Mike Rowe? I mean, there were some schnops down the road in a beer garden.
1:13:30 Speaker 02 A server malfunction.
1:13:31 Mike Rowe? Yeah. So what do people, let's, I mean, as we wrap it up.
1:13:35 Speaker 02 Right.
1:13:36 Mike Rowe? There are probably parents listening who are really curious to know if this would be a good fit for their kids, and there are probably some teachers listening who are wondering if maybe this would make sense for them. What's the next step for both?
1:13:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, great question. So.
1:13:53 Mike Rowe? By the way, it's the only kind of questions I ask, Meredith.
1:13:56 Speaker 02 You only ask good ones?
1:13:57 Mike Rowe? I've tried a lot with disappointing ones.
1:14:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:14:01 Mike Rowe? It impacts listenership negatively.
1:14:03 Speaker 02 So, okay, so to the first question, if you're a teacher and you're considering doing something new, the best thing you can do is just talk to your fellow teachers. See who is doing something unique in your neck of the woods, because this activity is happening in every community nationwide. If you want to find, I recommend someone, one of our founders, I absolutely adore her, her name's Mackenzie Oliver. She was Missouri State Teacher of the Year. She ended up moving to Florida where her husband's family was from. She ended up becoming a public school teacher and became Florida Teacher of the Year.
1:14:38 Mike Rowe? Oh, wow.
1:14:39 Speaker 02 Started homeschooling her own children when they were young because she had an idea of what she wanted for her children. Right? That turned into Lighthouse Learning. And she now has, she has 90 kids now, people who wanted her to be their teacher. Next year, she'll have 120 kids and she'll be K through 12, all the way through. This year, she was K through 8, so she's adding high school. She also, some of these people are just amazing, like, supercharged entrepreneurs. She has a podcast called Teacher Let Your Light Shine. And so on this podcast, she's trying to basically make this world known to traditional teachers and tell them that they can do it. You've got it. You've got what it takes to make this happen, and McKinsey can show you how.
1:15:21 Speaker 02 And so I would, I'm just shamelessly plugging McKinsey's podcast because she's so incredible. That's, that's one place to go. For parents, again, this movement is growing through word of mouth. So talk to your friends, talk to your family members. See, find other people in your community who are educating their children in a different way. And then also stay tuned. So Veila, as we continue to evolve, we've been at this now. We opened our doors in 2019, but we were in the planning stages well before that. Just this year, we are getting ready to launch a new mobile app where, for the first time, we'll be connecting parents directly to our founder community. So you'll be able to, to search based on where you live and find nearby founders
1:16:06 Speaker 02 who could be very interested in serving your children.
1:16:09 Mike Rowe? When do you expect that'll be?
1:16:10 Speaker 02 So we expect by the end of the summer that we'll be up and running.
1:16:13 Mike Rowe? Great. And that'll be free?
1:16:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's right. We are, Veila is a nonprofit organization, and we exist to help support founders and families who want to own their education, who want to own their own path in, in, with their educational journey of their kids. So yeah, we're, um, download the app.
1:16:31 Mike Rowe? As you know, and as I've told you before, I'm, you know, fundamentally an optimist, I think, but I'm also fundamentally skeptical. And so if this were...
1:16:43 Mike Rowe? When did this launch?
1:16:44 Speaker 02 We launched in 2019.
1:16:45 Mike Rowe? Okay, so if this were 2020, 2019, 2020, I'd probably be going, yeah.
1:16:52 Speaker 02 It's crazy.
1:16:52 Mike Rowe? Sometimes a great notion, right, whatever. But five million students served.
1:16:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:17:00 Mike Rowe? Forty, forty-two, are you in every state?
1:17:02 Speaker 02 We're in all 50 states, rural, suburban, urban, you name it. Consider this, and I know we started this conversation talking about, about public education. Gallup conducts surveys on, you know, opinion surveys on the American public all the time. On a recent survey this year, they asked for American satisfaction with public education. Among many other attributes of American life, there's 24% satisfaction. That was lower than almost every other attribute of American life. It was lower even than paying taxes. So consider that, right? So the reason Vela has been so successful is because there are so many good people, whether they be families, educators, kids, who are craving something different.
1:17:46 Mike Rowe? So without bashing the status quo, can we at least agree that there's room for improvement?
1:17:49 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
1:17:51 Mike Rowe? Right? You know, I, I should, I know Chuck has dined for me to shut up now, but there is this one last little topic, and it goes back to Stand Together. And specifically with regard to the American dream. They seem to be interested in every year in something similar, but something slightly different than the prior year. I mean, right, right now, I know they're really focused on the 250th anniversary of our country. And right next to that was the American dream. Is it alive? What does it mean? And they invited me to, to speak, and I think this was Palm Springs a year and a half ago, about all of that. I was happy to, but you mentioned Gallup, and it just made me think of a survey that I saw that,
1:18:37 Mike Rowe? I don't remember the specifics, but the percentage of Americans who believe the American dream is dead. Shocking. It's very adjacent, I think, to the fact that in nineteen, I think it was eighty eight, eighty percent of Americans define themselves as very or extremely patriotic.
1:18:57 Speaker 02 Right.
1:18:58 Mike Rowe? And today, the number is like thirty eight percent. And those two things somehow or another felt connected to me. And education must surely be a part of that.
1:19:11 Speaker 02 Oh, for sure. Absolutely. So we've seen this declining trust in institutions. We're seeing people despairing. Well, what better way to fix that than to roll up your shirt sleeves and do something about it? And so that's what we're seeing. This bottom up approach is people exercising those muscles to do something different, to live that American dream. Right? People want to be empowered. And what Vela is doing, I mean, we're not the only organization doing this. Many good organizations are doing that.
1:19:37 Mike Rowe? You mentioned Montessori.
1:19:38 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:19:39 Mike Rowe? Is that similar? I mean, it feels like it.
1:19:43 Speaker 02 For sure. I mean, Montessori is one of many different, you know, sort of education methodologies that exist. But it's definitely increasing in popularity now. People love the spirit of discovery. They love the self reliance, the practical life skills that are imparted. They love their creativity. I mean, that is what is really animating, I think, so much of this activity. We're seeing the same kind of rise in classical education. People are craving to go back to basics.
1:20:10 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
1:20:10 Speaker 02 Right? Like, what is, what does it mean? They talk about the good, the true, and the beautiful. What does that mean in education?
1:20:17 Mike Rowe? Think about the rise of podcasts. You know, my old boss, John Hendrix, who founded the Discovery Channel, built that whole empire on satisfying curiosity. And he did it within the limitations of broadcast and cable. Well, that ship has sailed. We're, the, the, there is no governor left. We can talk about this as long as we want and on as many podcasts and in as many formats. And, and you can, I mean, look at Rogan and look at some of these other, the vast curiosity of the human spirit is being satisfied today like never before. And that's the optimistic part of me saying.
1:20:56 Speaker 02 Absolutely, right? So there's, I don't think there's reason to despair. I think there's reason to be hopeful. I mean, look at podcasting. What is it? It's a bottom-up way to enable human connection.
1:21:06 Mike Rowe? There it is.
1:21:07 Speaker 02 Faster, quicker, better than having some very large.
1:21:12 Mike Rowe? Deeper and wider, too.
1:21:14 Speaker 02 That's right. That's right. So the things that we try to do are fundamentally the same over time, but the methods that we use are constantly changing.
1:21:24 Mike Rowe? Last thought. Are you haunted, as I am, by the fact that if I have one of these things, and I'm holding up an iPhone, if you're just listening?
1:21:34 Speaker 02 You have some text messages that came in.
1:21:36 Mike Rowe? I do. Oh, calls are coming in. Oh. Huh. No, J.D. Vance, not now.
1:21:41 Speaker 01 Maybe later. Maybe later you take care of that, what do you think?
1:21:45 Mike Rowe? The idea that when you and I, when you were in school in Virginia and me back in Maryland, we did not have immediate access to 98% of all of the information in the world. We didn't have a liberal arts degree charging on our kitchen counter or in our back pocket 24/7. We have it today. And to what extent is that kind of access going to inform the future available?
1:22:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, great question.
1:22:12 Mike Rowe? It's the only kind I ask, Meredith.
1:22:14 Speaker 02 I know. We talked about that earlier.
1:22:15 Mike Rowe? They just get better.
1:22:17 Speaker 02 They do get better. So think about this. What's the purpose of technology? Is it meant to control you? Or is it meant to enable you to do more and better than you ever imagined? Right? Because the risk in education is that we take technology and we utilize it and tailor it in order to turn humans into better robots. Rather than enabling technology, humans, teaching humans how to enable technology so that they can live far better lives. Those are two very different paths that we could go.
1:22:50 Mike Rowe? Well, they're, they are certainly different. It's kind of like one path would be marked efficiency and the other would be marked effectiveness.
1:23:01 Speaker 02 Right.
1:23:02 Mike Rowe? And they both want to get you to the same place, but they are different. When you conjure up robots, it's hard not to think of that famous Huxley quote. He said, "The greatest threat to freedom is total anarchy, but the second greatest threat is total efficiency."
1:23:22 Mike Rowe? So. In that march toward total efficiency.
1:23:27 Speaker 02 Right.
1:23:28 Mike Rowe? Vis a vis our relationship with technology, what will we lose in the bargain?
1:23:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, so think about something you've already lost because of that phone. I can tell you, I can share something I've lost.
1:23:38 Mike Rowe? All right.
1:23:39 Speaker 02 Okay, so when I was growing up, I graduated from college and I got dropped off in Europe. I flew over there, went to Europe for six weeks. I had no phone, didn't have a credit card. You've probably done this, right?
1:23:51 Mike Rowe? I have, yeah.
1:23:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. No phone, no credit card. I had a calling card, like an AT&T calling card, so I could call home if needed. And I had traveler's checks, right? And then I had that book, Let's Go Europe. And you would tear off like sections.
1:24:04 Mike Rowe? Such a Meredith's book.
1:24:05 Speaker 02 It is.
1:24:05 Mike Rowe? Let's go Europe.
1:24:06 Speaker 02 Right, no, totally. And I haven't been very animated, you know me, I'm usually very animated. I haven't been very animated on this, on this discussion today. But, okay, so after you finished a city, you would tear off that section of the book and throw it away so that your bag was lighter, right? And then by the time, you know, months, two months later, you're flying home, your book's gone. Okay, we did not have a phone with Google Maps to tell us where to go. So the first thing you had to do in any city.
1:24:32 Mike Rowe? Figure it out.
1:24:32 Speaker 02 Is figure it out. You would get off the train and you would, you would find a map. And then, and I mean, it wasn't a grid system for the roads in most of these cities. I mean, it was confusing as hell. You might not speak the language, but you had to navigate to wherever you were going. Self-sufficient, self-reliant, figure it out, right? Okay, when you go to a city, do you have any idea where you're going today?
1:24:58 Mike Rowe? I, I do not.
1:24:59 Speaker 02 No, right.
1:25:01 Mike Rowe? I, I do not.
1:25:01 Speaker 02 You key it into Google Maps.
1:25:03 Mike Rowe? Right.
1:25:03 Speaker 02 Right, we've lost our, those neurons in our brain that were helping us figure out navigation and sense of direction, we've turned them off because our phone does it for them, for us, right? So you've got to ask yourself, ask yourself this, well, wait, should we not be using that technology and instead training our brains? Or have we freed up more space in our brains to do other things?
1:25:25 Mike Rowe? I don't know.
1:25:26 Speaker 02 I don't know either.
1:25:27 Mike Rowe? I don't know, but I know this, good luck prying the calculators.
1:25:32 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:25:32 Mike Rowe? Out of public education, good, I mean, nobody would stand for that. Now, has it made us, you know, more reliant on a tool and less self-sufficient?
1:25:44 Mike Rowe? Yeah, maybe, but somewhere in there is a trade.
1:25:48 Speaker 02 So how can you accomplish both? Where you're increasing your self-sufficiency, right? And your independence and your freedom, while simultaneously using these technology tools to accomplish even more?
1:26:00 Mike Rowe? I wonder, I don't know that you can have all of that in the same space all the time. I think part of what tech does is it forces you into a new space that you have to homestead essentially and like figure out a new area. Yeah, I joke with Chuck about this a lot, you know. The first time I came to LA and you were out here long before me, the Thomas Guide was the Bible. You can't make any sense of LA unless you have this phone book sized pamphlet in your car and its grids and its pages and, you know, I don't remember cursing it. I remember being grateful for the fact that I had it.
1:26:42 Mike Rowe? I only think back negatively now when I realize all I can, I just pick up the phone and give it an address and it tells me what to do. And then pretty soon, I'm not even going to have to drive the car. I'll just sit in the backseat and tell it where to go.
1:26:56 Speaker 02 Getting the Waymo.
1:26:57 Mike Rowe? So, good deal or bad deal? Do we become more efficient at the expense of something human? Is it a fair trade? What do you think?
1:27:09 Speaker 02 I don't know, but I will say that that craving for meaning.
1:27:12 Mike Rowe? Then say it right on that microphone so people can hear you.
1:27:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, so man's quest for meaning, what does it mean? What is our purpose?
1:27:19 Mike Rowe? You're talking Frankel?
1:27:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:27:20 Mike Rowe? Yeah.
1:27:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, no, and I think, I will say that like we are seeing this inside our, our community at Vela. We're seeing a massive growth in classical education. Why? Because they're searching for meaning. We're seeing massive growth in Montessori education. Why? It's the same thing. It's the quest for meaning.
1:27:39 Mike Rowe? It's so funny. David Mamet just sat right there talking about.
1:27:45 Mike Rowe? All of this through the lens of writing and the elegance and the simplicity of communicating in a way that doesn't have any fat attached to it.
1:27:53 Speaker 02 Right.
1:27:53 Mike Rowe? And the, you know, the talent, the skill, the, what you have to do as a tradesperson to become that facile with the language. And what potentially happens to all that art and all that intellect when the AI gets to the point where you can't tell the difference between American buffalo
1:28:16 Speaker 02 Right.
1:28:17 Mike Rowe? and whatever you tell the machine to print.
1:28:19 Speaker 02 But this is the onward progress of technology, right? Throughout the history of mankind, wasn't it, I might have this wrong, but didn't Plato say something like, "The act of writing things down makes you dumber," right?
1:28:32 Mike Rowe? Yes, right. But actually, that was the founder of Play-Doh who said that. And he was very upset about the impact of children's toys. No, look, I mean, I, there's a great line in Inherit the Wind at the end of the Scopes Monkey Trial. When the guy who's basically playing Clarence Darrow talks about this. And I haven't thought about it in years, but he's got the science book in one hand and he's got the Bible in the other. And he basically puts them together. But that comes at the end of a speech where he, he's bemoaning the cost in the bargain we're talking about.
1:29:15 Mike Rowe? Like with telephones, he talks about the charm of distance. And, okay, now we've just made the world a lot smaller and a lot closer and a lot less interesting and a lot less wondrous. And the same thing with, with jet travel. You've made it smaller. Isn't that great? You can see more. But somewhere in there, we gave, we did give something up. And I, I'm no Luddite, but I do admit to constantly worrying that...
1:29:48 Mike Rowe? I should have taken the effective path and somehow or another I paid my toll for, you know, the efficiency highway.
1:29:55 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
1:29:55 Mike Rowe? And here we go.
1:29:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, so I think we all have to do what makes the most sense to find that meaning, recapture relationships and restore the wonder.
1:30:03 Mike Rowe? I'd love to chat more, but I need to check my messages now.
1:30:06 Speaker 02 All right.
1:30:06 Mike Rowe? This has really been great. Chuck, how long we've been talking?
1:30:09 Speaker 01 An hour twenty one.
1:30:10 Mike Rowe? You were terrific. Really, thank you so much. I mean.
1:30:14 Speaker 02 You know, I'm terrified.
1:30:16 Mike Rowe? Hey, we're still recalling, so don't.
1:30:18 Speaker 02 That's okay.
1:30:18 Mike Rowe? Okay. Honestly, then, but why? You are in a position right now that most people really dream of being in. You've got five million people who have been impacted by a thing that you're running. What scares you most? I swear that's my last question.
1:30:36 Speaker 02 What scares me the most about coming here and being terrified?
1:30:39 Mike Rowe? You just said you were terrified and I don't know why.
1:30:42 Speaker 02 Well, because I think, um, we all have different talents that we bring to the table, right? And different traits. And by nature, I'm more of an introverted person. I draw strength from within rather than from without, like from other people. So experiences like this are, I will do it, but they're taxing, right? Whereas I bet you get energized by it.
1:31:06 Mike Rowe? Look, all I'll tell you is if you have an opportunity to travel to a strange city and somebody wants to yank all their hair out of your nose.
1:31:14 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:31:14 Mike Rowe? Let them do it. Do it.
1:31:16 Speaker 02 I will do it.
1:31:16 Mike Rowe? Let them do it.
1:31:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'm always up for trying new things, but things like this are scary. They're tough. I'm an engineer. We started there.
1:31:25 Mike Rowe? That's right.
1:31:26 Speaker 02 I'm an engineer. I like to solve problems. I like to take big, complex things and divide them into little pieces. That's what I do. And I like to work with amazing people who can make it all happen, right? But being on like a talk interview, that's, oh, wow, that's terrifying.
1:31:43 Mike Rowe? Good. I'm glad. We should all do stuff that scares us because in the end. Swear to God, I'm done after this.
1:31:50 Speaker 01 That's all right. I got one little fact check after you.
1:31:53 Mike Rowe? All right, well, go ahead and do yours first, because I'm not gonna give you the last word. That's crazy.
1:31:57 Speaker 01 That seems fair.
1:31:57 Mike Rowe? You're just a producer, for God's sakes.
1:31:59 Speaker 01 It was according to Plato's Phaedrus that Socrates suggested that writing could negatively impact memory.
1:32:06 Speaker 02 There we go.
1:32:07 Speaker 01 He believed that relying on the written words might lead people to forget how to recall information from within themselves.
1:32:13 Mike Rowe? And this is why you should be terrified, because there's always a pedant in the Greek chorus, ready to swoop in and tell you how you got it wrong.
1:32:19 Speaker 02 And correct us. That's right. There's always a teacher's pet.
1:32:21 Mike Rowe? Always.
1:32:23 Speaker 01 I'm not a teacher's pet. I may be a pedant.
1:32:26 Mike Rowe? You are a pedant. You're a teacher's pedant.
1:32:29 Speaker 01 That, that I'll take.
1:32:30 Mike Rowe? Finally, we have a title for this episode. No, my final, final point is that in 2019, I'd have been skeptical. I really would have been. But there's a terrific title of a book I quote a lot called The Evidence Demands a Verdict.
1:32:48 Speaker 02 Hmm, I love that.
1:32:49 Mike Rowe? Well, you've got the receipts now. Veila has some evidence. And folks, if you're thinking about what's best for your kid, or what's best for you, or what would be good for your community, it's not an endorsement, kick the tires, but by all means, go to veila...
1:33:06 Speaker 02 Dot org.
1:33:06 Mike Rowe? Dot org.
1:33:07 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:33:08 Speaker 01 That's V E L A.
1:33:09 Mike Rowe? V E L A. And take a nautical journey into enlightenment. That's not bad. You can use it if you want.
1:33:18 Speaker 02 I love it. Yeah.
1:33:19 Mike Rowe? You're welcome. Thanks again.
1:33:21 Speaker 02 Thank you.
1:33:59 Speaker 03 I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge. But in this world, the advertisers really like to judge. You don't need to write a bunch, just a line or two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Not four. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. And not three. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Definitely not two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. We need five. All you've got to do is leave a quick... Even if you hate it. Five. Especially if you hate it. Review. Review. Thank you.
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