A podcast about the future of education in the age of AI. We bring together interdisciplinary voices to explore how we can shape more desirable futures for learning.
Education Futures
Claim This Podcastby Svenia Busson & Laurent Jolie
54 episodes
Updated Daily
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Podcast Overview
A podcast about the future of education in the age of AI. We bring together interdisciplinary voices to explore how we can shape more desirable futures for learning.
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
10/19/2025
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Recent Episodes
July 2, 2026
Alpha School: 2 hours of academics, the rest for life skills
<p>MacKenzie Price is the co-founder of Alpha School and the AI-driven 2 Hour Learning model that powers it, a Stanford-trained psychologist who left the traditional path the day her daughter came home from second grade and said, simply, "school is boring."</p><p>In 2014, working alongside the colleague she still calls "the OG, the Original Guide," Price opened the first Alpha campus in Austin, Texas, betting that AI-personalized, mastery-based instruction could compress a full day of core academics into two hours. The bet paid off: Alpha students now grow two to five-and-a-half times faster than peers on <a href="https://www.nwea.org/map-growth/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">NWEA MAP Growth</a> assessments, and the model has expanded to more than 50 campuses, including <a href="https://sportsacademy.school/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Texas Sports Academy</a> (low-to-no-cost, athletics-focused, partly funded through Texas education savings accounts) and <a href="https://waypointacademy.school/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Waypoint Academy</a>, a wilderness-based program. This fall she's taking the model international, with new World School campuses opening in Ecuador and Kenya, building on an earlier pilot that brought the model to roughly 1,000 Ukrainian refugee students.</p><p>Price built Alpha around three commitments: kids learn twice the material in a fraction of the time, kids build real-world life skills through afternoon workshops, and — first and foremost — kids love school. By Alpha's own surveys, 95% of students say they do, and as many as 60% say they'd rather be in class than on vacation. She hosts her own Future of Education podcast and shares Alpha's experiments with more than a million followers across social media.</p><p>In this episode, MacKenzie talks with Svenia Busson about:</p><ul><li>Why AI-driven mastery learning can compress a school day into two hours — without losing depth</li><li>The "guide" model — trading lesson plans and lectures for one-on-one motivation and emotional coaching</li><li>Cognitive load theory in practice — keeping every student in their own zone of productive struggle</li><li>Paying kids to learn — the financial-literacy logic behind Alpha's motivation system</li><li>Texas Sports Academy and the wilderness-based Waypoint Academy — turning "selection bias" into a design principle</li><li>Bringing the model into public schools, and new World School campuses launching in Ecuador and Kenya</li><li>Alpha X projects — the teenagers behind a self-produced Broadway musical, a six-figure jewelry brand, and CPR-certified rescue training</li><li>Why MacKenzie believes philosophy, not computer science, is becoming education's most valuable subject</li></ul><br/>
June 29, 2026
What AI is doing to a generation of disengaged kids
<p>Jenny Anderson is an award-winning journalist and author with 25 years in the field, including a decade covering finance at The New York Times — where she won a Gerald Loeb Award in 2008 for her coverage of Merrill Lynch ahead of the 2008 financial crisis. She later pioneered coverage of the "science of learning" at Quartz, and now contributes to The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post. </p><p>She is the co-author, with Rebecca Winthrop (Director of the Center for Universal Education at<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/centers/center-for-universal-education/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><u><a href="https://www.brookings.edu/centers/center-for-universal-education/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Brookings</a></u>), of The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better (<u><a href="https://www.thedisengagedteen.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">thedisengagedteen.com</a></u>) — the product of five years of research, including a<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-disengagement-gap/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><u><a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-disengagement-gap/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">survey of more than 65,000 students and 2,000 parents</a></u> conducted with Brookings and Transcend, into why so many children lose their love of learning in adolescence. She writes the weekly Substack newsletter<a href="https://howtobebrave.substack.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><u><a href="https://howtobebrave.substack.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">How to Be Brave</a></u>, reaching tens of thousands of educators and parents. She is a senior fellow at the <u><a href="https://www.centerteenflourishing.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Center for Teen Flourishing</a></u> and co-host of Ask the Kids, a podcast with Transcend Education. </p><p>In this episode, Jenny talks with Svenia Busson about:</p><ul><li>The disengagement gap — why 75% of kids love school in primary years, but only 25% still do by 10th grade</li><li>The Four Modes framework — Passenger, Achiever, Resistor, and Explorer — and why fewer than 4% of students land in Explorer mode</li><li>Why phones and AI aren't the root cause of the teen mental-health crisis — academic pressure consistently ranks higher</li><li>School models built for agency —<a href="https://www.bigpicture.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><u><a href="https://www.bigpicture.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Big Picture Learning</a></u>'s semester-long internships,<a href="https://www.redbridgesf.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><u><a href="https://www.redbridgesf.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Red Bridge School</a></u>, and<a href="https://valorcollegiate.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><u><a href="https://valorcollegiate.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Valor Collegiate Academies</a></u>' "school within a school"</li><li>Assessment in the age of AI — competency-based learning, portraits of a graduate, and why parents resist abandoning high-stakes exams like the GCSEs</li><li>The AI silence at home — why most teens use AI regularly while<a href="https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/the-dawn-of-the-ai-era-teens-parents-and-the-adoption-of-generative-ai-at-home-and-school" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><u><a href="https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/the-dawn-of-the-ai-era-teens-parents-and-the-adoption-of-generative-ai-at-home-and-school" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">few talk to their parents about it</a></u></li><li>AI, writing, and "cognitive stunting" — what outsourcing the first draft costs a developing thinker, building on<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/opinion/writing-creativity-ai.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> </a><u><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/opinion/writing-creativity-ai.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Rebecca Winthrop's NYT piece</a></u> on AI and creativity</li><li>What parents can actually do — testing the tools themselves, and protecting space for productive struggle</li></ul><br/><p></p>
June 25, 2026
What "no tech sundays" can teach us about AI
<p>Bethany Koby-Hirschmann is a designer, social entrepreneur, and co-founder and Chief Vision Officer of <a href="https://famstudio.co" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Fam Studio</a>, a research and design practice based in Somerset, England. She holds a BA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice from the University of Bath, and is completing a PhD on youth co-creation and the uses of enchantment. In 2012, after finding a discarded laptop in a skip near her home in East London, she co-founded <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_Will_Save_Us" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tech Will Save Us</a> with her husband, Daniel Hirschmann, on the conviction that children should be producers of technology, not just consumers of it.</p><p>Tech Will Save Us grew into a STEAM company selling in 97 countries and partnered with the BBC, Microsoft, Samsung, and ARM to design the <a href="https://microbit.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">BBC micro:bit</a> — a pocket-sized computer distributed free to a million UK children that has since reached more than four million users worldwide. After selling the company in 2021, Bethany founded Fam Studio, which co-creates with families and children to build technologies, learning content, and experiences centered on people and the planet. Current projects include a multimodal "Imagination Tool" that uses generative AI to bring children's voices into large-scale co-creation, and a wellbeing-and-AI research partnership with Oxford's <a href="https://reuben.ox.ac.uk/artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Reuben College</a> and its <a href="https://oxfordccai.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Child-Centred AI Design Lab</a>.</p><p>In this episode, Bethany talks with Svenia Busson about:</p><ul><li>Finding a laptop in a skip — the origin story behind Tech Will Save Us</li><li>Designing the BBC micro:bit with Microsoft, Samsung, and ARM — reaching four million children across 97 countries</li><li>Why Fam Studio exists to serve "the village," not just the child</li><li>Techno-optimism versus AI anxiety — holding both at once</li><li>Whether AI reinforces the industrial-era school model or finally breaks it open</li><li>Building the "Imagination Tool" — using generative AI to bring children's voices into co-creation at scale</li><li>"No Tech Sundays" and the house rules her family set for her teenager's AI use</li><li>Moving from human-centered to life-centered design — what biomimicry teaches educators</li></ul><br/><p>She closes with future-guest picks: Caroline Essame, author of Why Nature Matters (<a href="https://www.routledge.com/Why-Nature-Matters-Supporting-Childrens-Learning-and-Wellbeing-Through-Nature/Essame/p/book/9781032899206" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Routledge</a>); Noan Fesnoux, creative adviser to Dubai's Museum of the Future (<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/noanfesnoux/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>); Liz Robinson, CEO of Big Education (<a href="https://bigeducation.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">bigeducation.org</a>); and Jenny Gibson of Cambridge's PEDAL Centre (<a href="https://www.pedalhub.net/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">pedalhub.net</a>).</p>
54 total episodes available
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