An Army of Normal Folks - Kellie Lauth: How 25 Students Came To Own Patents! (Pt 1)

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

At a time when 67% of students are not at grade level, Kellie Lauth is revolutionizing education in America. Her nonprofit MindSpark is spreading an innovative approach called problem-based learning like wildfire across the country. And it’s resulted in over 25 of their students owning patents, starting dozens of companies, and a 15% improvement in STEM and literacy achievement! Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When we have people come in and kids present in front of them, they have to sign NDAs. The companies have to sign an NDA because you're not taking my kid's idea. That's not going to happen. No. Oh my gosh. It's the easiest cycle. Kids get immersed in a real-world problem. Industry brings it forward because it's authentic.

They provide the expertise in the mentorship because teachers don't know about AI and quantum and all these things, right? So industry provides that content, that expertise. They provide experiences. They immerse kids in this problem. Kids come up with a viable solution. They present it back to industry. And the solution gets lived out from age five to high school. Welcome to an army of normal folks.

I'm Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband. I'm a father. I'm an entrepreneur. And I'm a football coach in inner city Memphis. And the last part, it actually led to an oscar. for the film about one of my teams.

That movie's called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems are never going to be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits using big words that nobody understands on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks.

Guys, that's us, just you and me deciding, hey, you know what, maybe I can help. That's what Kelly Loth, the voice you just heard, has done. Kelly is the founder of MindSpark, which is spreading problem-based learning like wildfire across our country. It's resulted in 25 of their students owning patents, starting dozens of companies and a 15% improvement on STEM and literacy achievement. I cannot wait for you to meet Kelly right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors.

I'm Ibel Ongoria. And I'm Maite Gomez-Guan. And on our podcast, Hungry for History, we mix two of our favorite things, food and history. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells, and they called these Ostercon, to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way. Bring back the OsterCon. And because we've got a very

My Casa is Su Casa kind of vibe on our show, friends always stop by. Pretty much every entry into this side of the planet was through the Gulf of Mexico. No, the America. The Gulf of Mexico, continue to be it forever and ever. It blows me away how progressive Mexico was in this moment.

They had land reform. They had labor rights. had education rights. Mustard seeds were so valuable to the ancient Egyptians that they used to place them in their tombs for the afterlife. Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lewis here.

My book The Big Short tells the story of the buildup and burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely but lucky people who saw the real estate market for the black it would become, and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Eisman. We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding. Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened.

Now, 15 years after the Big Shorts' original release, and a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time. The big short story, what it means when people start betting against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, it is as relevant today as it's ever been, offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics. Get the big short now at Pushkin.fm. slash audiobooks, or wherever audiobooks are sold.

When news broke earlier this year that Baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first personalized gene editing treatment. It represented a milestone for both researchers and patients. But there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment and its creators. I'm Evan Ratliff, and together with biographer Walter Isaacson, we're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Dowdna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity. Listen to Aunt CRISPR, the story of Jennifer Dowdna with Walter Isaacson

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Talking about guns with others might not always feel comfortable, but it could save a life. Here's a way to start a conversation. Your family is going over to your neighbor's home for dinner for the first time. How would you ask if there are any unlocked guns in the home? Hey!

Hey, we're so excited for tonight. Before we come over, though, may I ask if there are any unlocked guns in your home? Our guns are stored securely, locked in a safe that the kids can't access. Awesome. Learn how to have the conversation at Agreetoagree.org.

Brought to you by the Ad Council. In the chaos of World War II, a king dies under mysterious circumstances and his children never stop searching for the truth. There's no nice way to put this. Times running out for Simeon and Maria Louisa to find answers to the question that haunts them. The Butterfly King is a historical true crime podcast from Exactly Right and Blanchard House. I'm investigative journalist Becky Milligan and I'm following the trail of King Boris III of Bulgaria. a ruler caught between Hitler and Stalin

and the shocking secrets behind his sudden death. If it's 1943 and you want to kill a head of state and you have access to a whole stock of sophisticated synthetic weapons, why wouldn't you use them? A royal mystery unlike anything you've heard before. The entire series is available now. Listen to the Butterfly King on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Kelly Loth is a lifelong Colorado who grew up on a ranch outside of Durango and with an awesome dad named Bob who made her break a wild horse at eight years old. The horse kept bucking Kelly off and Bob wouldn't let her come in the house until she and the horse figured it out and got along. It was one of Kelly's first experiences with problem-based learning, and such a childhood made her tough as nails, which she'd need for personal tragedies, such as her first husband suffering a massive stroke at only 32 years old, medically dying twice, needing to learn to walk and talk all over again, and mentally capping out as a 15-year-old, and professional

challenges, like an education system that didn't like this engineer, well, shaking things up. You're doing this teaching thing, and you're starting to have success with this interesting math, science-based problem-solving model of teaching young people, right? Yes. Before you even started anything, what did that initial success feel and look like? How was it quantifiable? Yeah, so I taught science, and I just, you know, science can be naturally engaging if you do a good job. And kids love labs and things like that.

But I started bringing in some of my friends from industry. I started getting involved in different projects with NASA and just some different partnerships around Colorado. And what was interesting was I had kids show up more regularly. It was middle school at this time. I had kids truly engaged. And so when I say that, it's like actively participating, actively discussing, raising their hand, wanting to be in their group, you know, not fighting, not bickering. Being interested. Yeah.

Being interested, wanting to know more, wanting to be, you know, in this role or not or in this role. And so I started, it was interesting to me. And at the time, the middle school I was in was a pretty middle class, you know, kind of a basic middle school, nothing too crazy going on. But even then I saw kids getting pretty excited about what was happening. and when I moved on to a title high school where things were a little bit different and started trying it out there in classrooms. Explain title high school for our listeners.

Yeah, so at least 50% free and reduced lunch. This one happened to be around 95%. So pretty low income area. Yeah, socioeconomic, high poverty area. And I started to see the same thing. Even there? Even there, right? Kids showing up, pretty excited, wanting to participate.

you know, not, you know, fighting, like I said, or not cussing each other out or just not being naughty. I started having less referrals to the office. Like just some things started changing. And so, again, I thought, I think there's something to this. And then after being a teacher for a long time, I had the opportunity to move to a district position in the district to oversee science with a team of two other amazing women. And sort of this perfect storm of we just started building this little notebook. literally a binder of really cool ideas that we had that if someday we got a school, how would it look and feel different? And what was important

to us was there was no exceptions. So it needed to be in a system with strong teachers union, crappy budgets, poor leadership, bad culture, naughty kids. You mean public school districts? I didn't want there to be any exceptions. I didn't want people to be able to come in and say, oh, but it only works because of this. Yes, because you have all these amazing kids who can read or, oh, it's only working because you're in this really nice neighborhood or whatever. So we just started building ideas and we started on our own time and our own dime traveling the country looking at different models of teaching and learning.

Everything from Montessori to high tech high, really interesting, like even private schools that were teaching like Buddhism and then Catholicism. And like we just started looking at all these different models of teaching and learning and just started gathering best practices and what was really working. And the high school, schools that were doing an amazing job where they were putting industry and kids together kept saying to us, this is cool, but we're not getting very far because the kids have no idea what they're doing, right? They're not ready for this. They don't understand this idea of suddenly being thrown into the world of work or working with industry. So you need to start young. That's our one

recommendation is you need to start young. Didn't at one point, was this before, after at one point, you went to a superintendent and said you wanted to do this? Yeah. So we built this little binder and we went to our superintendent and said... Is this then? This is when this happened? Yeah. Okay, I apologize. I'm trying to make sure I'm following.

Just said, we want a school. We want to open a STEM school. And STEM was sort of this buzzword. It stands for. It's an acronym. Yeah, yeah, science technology, engineering a math, and said, we want to use this as our hook, our PR move, and we believe in it. But under the public school system? Yep. I just want to school.

Not something that someone say, oh, you pick the smartest and brightest. And not even a charter school system, which there's nothing wrong with that. But, like, I want to. it to be in the system, right? They wanted it not outside. And at first, he said, no. We're not doing a school. And then... Why did he say no? I read that and my question next to it was why? So I think a few things. I think having considered what, like a special focus school, would they consider a magnet school, was scary. We never had had one in the district before. I think he felt like it would take kids away from other schools. So then there'd be this weird competition. inside the district. And I think it was just so new of an idea that it was just kind of easy to say no, right?

Do you think that goes back to the same mindset of the two teachers that told you to move from the receipt? Yeah. This is just the way we do things. Yeah, that's just what we do, right? Why are you upset now? We have neighborhoods, we have neighborhood schools. They're great.

Can we put in our nine hours and go home? Why are you doing this? You're making my life hard. Your pain, yes. But seriously. No, a thousand percent, yeah. Were you frustrated? Yeah, we were frustrated, but also, like, fired up.

And so, again, the three of us really came from this mindset of, like, we know what we're doing is going to be pretty cool. We didn't know what it actually would look like in terms of, you know, what it became. So you're getting back on the horse. Exactly. Literally. So we just kept building our little binder. Kept building the binder, building ideas, building all the things. And then this perfect storm happened where a number of charter schools applied to be chartered in the school district.

creating competition. We would lose families, right, from the public schools to these charters. And there was a lot of pressure on the board to do something different. So we went back and said, here's something different. Doesn't need to be a charter school. Just let us have a school. And he said yes. A new superintendent.

Same one. Same one. Same one. He said yes. So a little pressure worked. A little political pressure worked. And we got our school. And we pitched him the idea in kind of January, February.

and he said you can open with a handful of kids in the fall. You better get to work. Was it a lot like getting the classroom on the stage, the school itself? A thousand percent. So they cobbled like random money from all these different budgets. Here's the crappiest building we've got. Okay. I just want to, so to, and today, right, most high schools to open require between 125 to almost

$225 million to open. Yeah. A middle school about $65 million, right? We got $150,000 to open. school in the oldest building in the district that looked like a jail. Really? Yeah, it was abysible. And they said, here, you got your building, you got your budget, you go.

Knock yourself out. Yep. Let's see how successful your little binder can be. Yep. You give it your best. Okay. Tell us about that year. So by mid-year, we had a waitlist of over 250 families to get it.

Mid-year? What happened those first semester? Why did it happen so quickly mid-year? So we had this small group of teachers, and all we did was invest in them. You're going to be the best dang teachers on the planet come hell or high water. We're figuring this out. So we completely immersed them in this model of problem-based learning, which is very simple. It's probably one of the oldest forms of learning around, which is really you're just going to work on an actual real-world problem central to your standards, and kids are going to solve the problem.

This was a K-3-8 school, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So you're taking six-year-olds and saying, Here's an issue. Five-year-olds, yep. How do we fix it? Yes.

And you're teaching the teachers how to model education around that type of thing. So when you talked earlier about investing your people, you're not just talking to kids. No, no, no. Adults in the system matter just as much as the kids if you want this to work. And so we invested heavily in our teachers. We put them into industry forums. They went and joined Chambers of Commerce. They joined board associations of, like, bioscience and engineering.

Your teachers got a real-world view of what their students are going to have to do one day, so they got a better perspective of what problem-solving and what teaching needs to look like. And it wasn't because I wanted them to become scientists or engineers or whatever. I want them to understand what it looks like in the real world, because mostly when you come from education, you've only grown up in education. Academia, dude. So you don't understand what it looks like in this world of supply chain or advanced manufacturing or ag, right? And so I needed my teachers to understand the real world, to understand industry.

And now a few messages from our generous sponsors. But first, I hope you'll consider signing up to join the Army at normalfolks. By signing up, you'll receive a weekly email with short episode summaries in case you happen to miss an episode or if you prefer reading about our incredible guests. We'll be right back. I'm Ibel Ongoria. And I'm Maite Gomez-Guan. And on our podcast, Hungry for History, we mix two of our favorite things, food and history.

Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells, and they called these OsterCon, to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way. Bring back the Oster Khan. And because we've got a very My Casa is Su Casa kind of vibe on our show, friends always stop by. Pretty much every entry into this side of the planet

was through the Gulf of Mexico. No, the America. The Gulf of Mexico, continue to be it forever and ever. It blows me away how progressive Mexico was in this moment. They had land reform, they had labor rights, education rights. Mustard seeds were so valuable to the ancient Egyptians that they used to place them in their tombs for the afterlife. Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura

Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lewis here. My book The Big Short tells the story of the buildup and birth of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely but lucky people who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become, and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Eisman. We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding. Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened.

Now, 15 years after the Big Short's original release, and a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time. The big short story, what it means when people start betting against the market and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, is as relevant today as it's ever been, offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics. Get the big short now at Pushkin.fm.fm. slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. When news broke earlier this year that Baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first, personalized gene editing treatment. It represented a milestone for both researchers and patients, but there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment and its creators. I'm Evan Ratliff, and together with biographer Walter Isaacson, we're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner

Jennifer Dowdna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity. Listen to Aunt CRISPR, the story of Jennifer Dowdna with Walter Isaacson on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Talking about guns with others might not always feel comfortable, but it could save a life. Here's a way to start a conversation. Your family is going over to your neighbor's home for dinner for the first time. How would you ask if there are any unlocked guns in the home? Hey! Hey, we're so excited for tonight. Before we come over, though, may I ask if there are any unlocked guns in your home? Our guns are stored securely, locked in a safe that the kids can't access. Awesome. Learn how to have the conversation at Agreetoagree.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council.

In the chaos of World War II, a king dies under mysterious circumstances and his children never stop searching for the truth. There's no nice way to put this. Times running out for Simeon and Maria Louisa to find answers to the question that haunts them. The Butterfly King is a historical true crime podcast from Exactly Right and Blanchard House. I'm investigative journalist Becky Milligan and I'm following the trail of King Boris III of Bulgaria. a ruler caught between Hitler and Stalin and the shocking secrets behind his sudden death.

If it's 1943 and you want to kill a head of state and you have access to a whole stock of sophisticated synthetic weapons, why wouldn't you use them? A royal mystery unlike anything you've heard before. The entire series is available now. Listen to the Butterfly King on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I can't tell you how many times I've heard, first of all, I've said it.

I can't, how many people in the business, you know, I've got a fairly big business. People, when I hear professors talk so knowingly about some issue, economic issue, especially as it pertains to geopolitics, I want to reach to the TV and strangle them. And my immediate response is that's what happens in academia, when you're steeped in academia. And there's this old adage that those who can do, those who can't teach. Right, right. And you're breaking that down with your staff. Yes.

I love that. I don't think I got that from Alex's prop. I'm starting to kind of, well, nice job, Alex. But I'm starting to feel that. you wanted to give them some of the real world experience you got prior to coming into teaching. So, look, kids are going to come as kids, right? They're going to come at whatever level with all their gifts and all their challenges. But the one thing I could completely overturn, control, fix, invest in was the adults in this equation.

And that's what we did. We put teachers into project management training and said, look, if you're going to truly be the guides in the classroom and you're going to be facilitators of learning, you need to understand what it looks like to be project managers. and to coordinate different aspects of this. Well, you certainly weren't hiring teachers that were worried about their seat in the faculty lounge. You must have been getting kind of young, aggressive. I want to get after it. And so here's what's interesting.

We had a really, we started with a small staff. I mean, the teacher recruitment had to be different, too. So there was a different profile of who we were looking for. And so by mid-year, it was really interesting. We had a fairly traditional language arts teacher, but very excited about the model. But she was a little bit still really bent on, you know, following her standards and really being more traditional.

And she came in mid-year, and she said, I really need to talk to you guys. And I was like, dang it, this is going to go. Here we go, right? And she said, I just need to show you something. And she laid out a whole bunch of test scores from mid-year. And she said, what do you see? We had completely closed the literacy gap for all of our Hispanic males in six months. No way.

Yes. And she said, I don't know what's going on here. And I said, kids are learning. That's exactly what's going on here. Kids are learning. And so it just continued. Kids were, it didn't become about tests. It didn't become about any of the traditional stuff schools about.

It literally became about kids solving real world problems in their community. Give me an example that first year, rural world problems that you tasked children with. Yeah. So one of my favorite examples, kindergarten class, five-year-olds. So in Colorado at least, probably nationally as well, one of the big things kids learn about at nauseam in kindergarten is what it makes a good community, what makes a healthy and thriving community. It's a social science standard. So the teacher decided that around that standard, they would start mapping their community. They started looking around at all the things that make a healthy and thriving community and realize that their community wasn't that. Food desert, recreation desert, medical care desert wasn't healthy, wasn't thriving. And they live there. And so in little groups of five and six-year-olds, they decided to start tackling each of those different types of problems. How can we make our community better, safer, thriving? And one of my favorite groups was the medical care group. And my favorite day ever was

they organized themselves. They did all this research. And they came to me and said, we have decided that we want a mobile medical care unit to come to our school twice a week and provide care for anyone in the community who needs it at the school where my grandma can get on the bus line and get here and I want that to happen. Whoa, whoa, not just the students, anybody in the community? Anybody in the community. And I said, that's awesome.

They had a marketing plan. They had the little budget, and they presented it to me. So I got to call three mobile medical care companies and ask them to come to the school and present, and I didn't tell them who they were presenting to. I just said, come meet with us, we want to maybe engage your services. You did not have them present to a board of six-year-olds. Yes.

So this only works as authentic. It only works if you're going to live out these solutions. It only works if you're going to like kids solve problems. You had the six-year-olds sit at a table like shark tank and had grown-ass adults present to them. In suits. They had to look at you like you're out of your mind. And sit in chairs where their knees were up to their ears. And they said, oh, we're not meeting with you with you in the school board or you in the group.

And I said, nope, you're going to meet with my kindergartners because they're going to just choose, if you're worthy, to be in their community and provide services. So the kids had all their questions later. What did they say when you said that? They were appalled and they instantly loved it. You could tell, right? That was a good gauge because instantly you're like, okay, probably not going to work out for you, but we'll give it a chance. So they sat down and there was a panel of kindergartners who fired questions at them and, you know, how are you going to take care of my grandma? How are you going to make sure that we, you know, are safe?

all these pieces. And they had a whole set of questions. And at the end, they actually decided who comes. And still today, a mobile medical care unit shows up twice a week to the school. And they did everything. They advertised it. They got it. The word out there, they built little posters. We, this, one of the schools is located in the largest trailer park network west of the Mississippi. And so they would use different networks within the trailer park to advertise. And it's thriving. That is freaking great. And they were five. Yeah, I mean, this is not rocket science, literally. Unbelievable. Yeah, we've had kids, you know, patents. We've had kids start businesses. We've had...

What? Whoa, whoa, don't just say that. Tell me a patent. Tell me a business. Yeah, we've had kids start their own software storage companies. Software storage companies. Yeah, figuring out how to create, like, they created a platform for a software. First of all, what was the problem that led them to the solution?

So this was a high school group, and in it, they actually just had to create an app. to solve a problem in their community. That was open-ended. Just look around. Make an app to solve an issue. And at first they used kind of design thinking. They laid out what they thought the problem was, how they were going to figure out an app to do it.

And I think they thought it was a simulation. Like, we're not going to really build an app. We're going to just kind of pretend. No, we're building an app. Software companies to help them build their app. You see that medical bus out front? We're building an app. Building an app.

So they got to build apps. And then one group was so into what they had built, which was literally helping, this was early days. There's probably a million of them now, but helping homeowners find care for their pets when they're on vacation. And, you know, and this was early kind of 2000. So it was kind of a novel idea. But it was also to employ young people to do this. So you had kids who needed jobs, people who needed care for their pet, matching them all together.

That was our idea. So it worked. It worked. It worked so well that they still run it today. and they are making a lot of money. Still? Still? Yeah.

So we move them offline. So you didn't let somebody get these kids' idea and take it? No. So that's also what happens is now when we have people come in and kids present in front of them, they have to sign NDAs. The companies have to sign an NDA because you're not taking my kid's idea. That's not going to happen. No. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

It's the easiest cycle. Kids get immersed in a real world problem. Industry brings it forward because it's authentic. They stay alongside. They provide the expertise in the mentorship because teachers don't know about AI and quantum and all these things, right? So industry provides that content, that expertise. They provide experiences. They immerse kids in this problem.

Kids come up with a viable solution. They present it back to industry and the solution gets lived out. That's it. Over and over and over from age five to high school. Okay. So where does Latin English current events? Spanish and conjugating verbs fit into this model. Yeah.

So that all fits because what happens is when you're immersed in this type of problem solving, you're authentically reading and researching for that. You're authentically writing for that type of audience or that type of topic. And so kids are having to learn skills. They're having to learn how to do proper grammar and how to conjugate verbs and how to do these things, but they're doing it in a way that's authentic. They're doing it because they have to come up and present. to you know to you so your kids don't just get this good applied education through doing the

applied education they're still doing fine on the standardized test scores and they're getting those basics as well yeah the standards are there right we don't this again there's no exceptions so you don't get to not have standards you don't get to not do these things but we do so in a way where the kids are learning these things and then they're directly applying them in a story so you're reading for a purpose, you're writing for a purpose, you're learning math for a purpose. And they get to see that and it builds on itself. And again, that doesn't mean there's not direct instruction, right, where teachers start saying, okay, this is exactly how we're going to solve this algorithm. It's exactly how we're going to do this. But then you turn around and say, okay,

in engineering, this is why we need to know this, because in engineering, it's applied math and that's what it looks like. And now we're going to go and do this problem. I mean, it's bringing relevancy to an authenticity to learning. And kids get that. Like, they love it, right? you have kids wanting to learn more, wanting to go deeper into topics. Back to that, we're still on that first year, you open the door, 250 kids. By the end of that first year, you had 483 families on a wait list, and we closed the reading gap for our Hispanic males by mid-year. What was the gap?

So they were underperforming their white counterparts by about 60%. How much? 60. And in half a year you closed. completely close. They were on level. That is, I don't understand why every district in the United States is not flocking to wherever Colorado to sit on your doorstep and say, show me.

I mean, we do get a lot of visitors to see these schools in action because I don't think people believe it can happen or they don't believe it can happen in a public school with all the constraints. So we get hundreds and hundreds of people to come see it. And that's why we have so many schools. why the nonprofit started and all these things. Well, that's good because that indicates that there's people still that do care and want to make it right. They just need to learn how.

Yes. We need to reinvent the way we think about it. And I think, yeah, in Education Week, we're so fast to do this pendulum swing from one extreme to the other. And that's not what this is. This is just solid teaching and learning. We'll be right back. I'm Ima Lungoria and I'm Maita Gomez-Guan. And on our podcast, Hungry for History, we mix two of our favorite things, food and history.

Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells and they called these Ostercon to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way. Bring back the Ostercon. And because we've got a very Mikaasa esucasa kind of vibe on our. show, friends always stopped by. Pretty much every entry into this side of the planet was through the Gulf of Mexico. No, the America.

No, the America. The Gulf of Mexico, continue to be so forever and ever. It blows me away how progressive Mexico was in this moment. They had land reform. They had labor rights. They had education rights. Mustard seeds were so valuable to the ancient Egyptians that they used to place them in their tombs for the after. Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart

Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lewis here. My book The Big Short tells the story of the buildup and burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely but lucky people who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Eisman. We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding.

Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened. Now, 15 years after the Big Short's original release, and a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time. The Big Short Story, what it means when people start betting against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, it is as relevant today as it's ever been,

offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics. Get the big short now at pushkin.fm. slash audiobooks, or wherever audiobooks are sold. When news broke earlier this year that baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first personalized gene editing treatment, it represented a milestone for both researchers and patients. But there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment and its creators.

I'm Evan Ratliff, and together with biographer Walter Isaacson, we're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Dowdna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity. Listen to Aunt CRISPR, the story of Jennifer Dowdena with Walter Isaacson on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Talking about guns with others might not always feel comfortable, but it could save a life. Here's a way to start a conversation. Your family is going over to your neighbor's home for dinner for the first time. How would you ask if there are any unlocked guns in the home?

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Hitler and Stalin and the shocking secrets behind his sudden death. If it's 1943 and you want to kill a head of state, and you have access to a whole stock of sophisticated synthetic weapons, why wouldn't you use them? A royal mystery, unlike anything you've heard before, the entire series is available now. Listen to The Butterfly King on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I would have killed to have seen a bunch of five and six. six-year-olds interviewing a bunch of people in ties presenting a business plan. That is absolutely, there needs to be a movie with that scene in it.

So I've read that you're up to six student-run, fully registered to LLCs, the youngest of which is a second grader. And then you have like 15 or 16 patents. I mean, is that really right? So in one in this system, which there's a K through it, two, K-3-8s and then a 12th grade. We actually, that's doubled since those stats. So we have twice as many. So we have about 12 to 15 patents right now registered with the state of Colorado. And then, yeah, LLC's formed a lot. It was a really cool thing. In Colorado, we started a fund where there's just a little bit of seed money at Young Americans Bank, which is a bank for kids.

There's a bank for kids, really? There's a bank for kids in Colorado, but it's in Cherry Creek, which is one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Colorado. And so a lot of families who want to teach your kids financial literacy set up accounts there, things like that. But the kids I'm working with didn't even know about it, nor had access to it. So we set up a fund there, and they can come and pitch their ideas for a business, and you can be undocumented, you can be homeless, you can be in foster care, you don't need an adult to sign off, and you can get a loan to start your own business with a 2% interest rate, and if you don't pay it back, nothing bad happens to you. You just get to learn

and go through a course about failure. And people have used that thing to fund businesses that are currently running? Yes, and as they pay their own. Give me an example of a business. So as they pay it back, it just replenishes the fund. So they've, I mean, we've had everything started from small lemonade stands that have grown to be huge enterprises to the boys that I was talking about with this app. They went there to get a loan to have software so they could store stuff they needed to build their app,

big, small, it doesn't matter, and they have to pitch to a group of adults that get to approve or not approve their loan. All the loans are generally approved. But still, they have to go through the process and the learning process of what that is. I commit to getting them there. The schools commit to getting them down there because it's away from the schools. And again, transportation is hard for a lot of the families. So that's our commitment is we'll get you there. You pitch your idea. Let's go from there. All right. That's crazy. When you took the STEM problem-based, learning model to a struggling high school in your district, they went from like a 70%

graduation rate to over a 90% graduation. 69% yeah, to over 90, 92%. When was that? When did you do that? So we did that in 2010, 2011 school year. It's just unbelievable. Not unbelievable, wrong word. It's not incredulous.

That's also, I believe you. It's just, it's shut. Shocking. That's the word. And it almost, it seems so obvious. Yeah, I mean, when I walked in, because that was like sort of the next step was we had asked somewhere for eighth graders to go, where they suddenly weren't thrown into a high school that didn't match the type of learning they had. So this sort of floundering high school, the district said, take that over. Have it be a STEM high school. Let's see what will happen. And when I walked in to announce to staff, you know, there was a couple hundred teachers all dressed in their union colors. sitting, you know, cross-armed. Not happy about you. And I said, guess what? You get to become the next big STEM high school. And basically they've, you know, flipped me off, booed me.

One stood up and said, I'm going to do this just to spite you and show you how stupid of an idea this is. We're not, we don't want to do this. We're not going to do it. How many did you lose? So this is the crazy part of the story. None of them left. And some, a lot of them should have.

But they all stayed. They stayed for a year. and we just started working. Again, this required no materials. This was literally just professional learning, saying we're going to... There seems to be a little lack of commitment and their anger and angst. Or do you, if none left.

They're very much, again, I don't want to change. I'm dug in. And here's the other thing, right? And you probably know this. When you work with at-risk schools and hard-to-serve regions and populations, there's no one on the outside screaming about this. So you can be a really terrible teacher, and no one cares.

No one's going to say to you, this is not okay for kids. Parents just want their kids to go to school because they've got so much on their plate. They're worried about so much in their life that school is where their kids go. But if you were in a white or affluent or, you know, other type of school and you did any of the stuff that I saw going on, oh my gosh, parents would be up in arms. It would never happen. It would never fly. That's what I started saying is so true. If you don't get on this bus with me and figure this out, I'm going to start shining a big, bright light on what you're not doing for kids.

End of story. We're going to lay it all out there. So you either figure it out and start doing right by your kids, or everyone's going to know that you can't do this. I'm going to best guess three categories. Okay. A small handful that actually cared and were like, hell yeah, I'm on your side. Let's go, girl. A thousand percent.

Small. I'd say 15% of less. Then there's a greatest percentage that really hate your guts because now they have to work and they're going to be exposed for being horrific at what they do. And then there's another small percentage that actually really love your idea but are too afraid to speak up against the horde.

You named it. Like you nailed it. Yeah, that's exactly what happened. That's a weird dynamic to have to manage. Yes. The other thing that's happening in the school at the same time... You had to have been wondering where the knives were. Every day was, yeah. No, I'm dead serious.

No, I mean, yeah, you talk about having some thick skin, for sure. The other interesting thing that was happening at the same time was they also had, you know, they get to say how much they love their school and feel connected to their community teachers do. They get to kind of rate their school and it's a climate culture survey. And they had the lowest rating in the district. What a surprise. Yeah. And so besides, you know,

one of the metrics is besides changing this graduation rate for kids and flipping the script on that. The other thing that happened was by the end of, you know, after a year, a year and a half, they had one of the highest climate and culture surveys. What? Teachers wanted to come to work. They felt strongly about what they were doing. They had this identity. Even the ones that hated you?

Even the ones that hated me. Did you turn them? Most of them? I think we turned most of them. And then, you know, the principal did a good job of, you know, pushing out those who really truly didn't, didn't fit and shouldn't be there. Well, they probably shouldn't be in any sort. school. No, they should not. I mean, it's a, it's a, take up the burger flip. Exactly. It's a, it's a, it's a career, you know, this is maybe not their career for you. Conversation. But yeah, so, I mean, it's another career for you conversation. That's funny. But yeah, I mean, and so that was very compelling to people because, you know, the first school was this sort of lesson and we could to start something new. But you flip to this one. We get to have people choice in. We get to kind of figure this out. And this one was taking a big, mess, big hairy mess and saying, no, no, no, no.

Big problem. Big problem. And saying, no, no. We're going to show you what's possible with the resources and the people that you have and the families that you have. So, then you said, I think, and correct me if I'm chronological at all, but I think that's when you said, we have a bona fide thing here that works. And we've modeled it now from kindergarten through high school, and we've modeled it from a startup look-like jail with no budget to the crappiest school in the district with the worst scores. It's worked from five-year-olds to 18-year-olds in all kinds of socioeconomic situations, title schools, everything. There's more than just maybe something here.

This is a thing. It's a thing. And that's when you started Bynspar. That's that right? Yeah, so I was actually principal. So how did that work? Why? Yeah.

What was the genesis? Why not just keep doing this with more schools? What was your thinking behind it? When I read your whole story, I was like, well, why not just keep doing more of this? What is mind spark? And why? What was the, you know, what fueled you that? So the little bit of space in between the high school was there was also another K in the district that was actually.

that was actually being closed down. It was a failing middle school, had been failing for years. And so the superintendent said, I think we should make it as K-8 STEM school and be sister schools with the one you started in this high school. Do you want to go be the principal?

And that was not something I'd ever wanted to do in my life. And I told him he really need to take the weekend and think about that. And he told me, you need to take the weekend and think about that. He asked you to be the principal, and you said, you need to take the weekend and think of it. he might have considered that a bit condescending. Maybe.

And he said, no, no, you need to take the weekend to think about it. And so I ended up saying yes. And so part of this sort of odyssey to get to Mindspark... That's sassy. This Odyssey to Get to MindSpark, part of it is that I spent... I couldn't walk away thinking there's something here without having played a part in all these different roles. And one of those was leading this effort from within, right? I had done a lot of work with principals.

I had done a lot of work with teachers. I had been a teacher. They kind of felt like you needed this experience. Yeah, and here's the thing. I walked in, you know, it's going to be shut down. There was an eighth grader who raped a first grader on campus. An eighth grader had raped a first grader on campus. Oh, no.

And so it was a decimated. Parents were leaving. It made the papers. The only reason it didn't get national attention was because they found Jessica Ridgoy's body the same week. They found what? Jessica Ridgoy's body the same week that this happened. so it didn't get national attention. How do you emotionally deal with that?

I mean, there was no safety measures in place. It's a K-8 school, so you have big kids and little kids. So the K-8 model is in jeopardy of being decimated. Our STEM model that we worked so hard for is in jeopardy of being decimated because this really poor leadership that was there and this mess. You have all these teachers who signed up for this and are super excited to do something cool in a place that really needs them. They want to leave.

I mean, it just, I walked into this mess. An absolute dumpster fire. And that concludes part one of our conversation with Kelly Loth, and you do not want to miss part two that's now available to listen to. Together, guys, we can change this country, but it starts with you. I'll see you in part two. The heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down.

Unlock elite gaming tech at Lenovo.com. Dominate every match with next level speed, seamless streaming, and performance that won't quit. Push your gameplay beyond performance with Intel Core Ultra processors for the next era of gaming. Upgrade to smooth high-quality streaming with Intel Wi-Fi 6E and maximize game performance with enhanced overclocking. Win the tech search. Power up at Lenovo.com. news broke earlier this year that baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first personalized gene editing treatment. It represented a milestone for both

researchers and patients. But there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment and its creators. I'm Evan Ratliff, and together with biographer Walter Isaacson, we're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Dowdna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity. Listen to Aunt CRISPR, the story of Jennifer Dowdna with Walter Isaacson on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Whenever I got through the window, I tried to pick him up, and his body was stiff. I'm Ben Westoff, and this is The Peacemaker, a true crime podcast about a string of mysterious suicides at a Missouri university, and the fraternity brother tied to them all, Brandon Grossheim.

The lawsuit says Grossheim was one of the last people to see each victim before their deaths. Was he profoundly unlucky, or was something much darker at play? Listen to the Peacemaker podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm I Belongoria. And I'm Maite Gomesja-Guan, and this week on our podcast, Hungry for History, we talk oysters, plus the Mianbi chief stops by. If you're not an oyster lover, don't even talk to me. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster.

No way. Bring back the OsterCon. Listen to Hungry for History on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lewis here. My bestselling book, The Big Short, tells the story of the buildup and burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. A decade ago, the Big Short was made into an Academy Award-winning movie. And now I'm bringing it to you for the first time as an audiobook narrated by yours truly. The Big Short Story, what it means to bet against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, is as relevant today as it's ever been.

Get the Big Short now at Pushkin.fm. slash audiobook, or wherever audiobooks are sold. This is an I-Heart podcast.