Dr. Hui S. Jiang explores how a focus on maximizing gifted children's potential can create harmful pressure and anxiety. When success becomes the measure of worth, children learn to equate their identity with achievement, leading to perfectionism and fear of failure. Dr. Jiang shares how parents can break this cycle by intentionally shifting focus away from outcomes, normalizing struggle, creating non-performance spaces, and verbally affirming unconditional love. This thoughtful examination reminds us that our children's worth isn't measured by accomplishments, and that genuine curiosity and joy in learning matter more than external validation.

Sapienship researcher Dr. Jim Clarke discusses how to speak to students about the world's biggest problems and all the amazing resources for K–12 education that are being created at his workplace, Sapienship. Sapienship is the social impact company co-founded by “Sapiens” author Yuval Noah Harari and his husband Itzik Yahav, and headed by Naama Avital. 

Professor and author Dr. Frank Keil joins the podcast to talk about the academic superpower that is “wonder”, why generalist polymaths make for better specialists than specialists, and how to re-ignite wonder in our children if they’ve lost it along the way.

Dr. Pamela Cosman, author and professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, San Diego, talks about how to make STEM subjects more fun and engaging for kids, and the specific power of learning STEM through fiction.

Charlene Wang, author, founder of LivingOS, and previously a product manager at Google, discusses parental and cultural expectations and why our kids might need to break free from some of them on their path toward success.

Dr. Monica Burns, founder of ClassTechTips.com and edtech and curriculum consultant, discusses how parents should think about picking an edtech product at home, what a content vetting process could look like, and how important it is for parents to model a healthy relationship with technology.

Math Coach Vida John talks about the concept of learned helplessness, why math contests aren’t just for really “math’y” kids, and why some students who struggle at math end up becoming the best mathematicians.

Lenore Skenazy, President at Let Grow and Founder of the Free-Range Kids Movement, discusses how giving our children opportunities to learn independence at a young age helps them to become independent adults.