451: Meredith Olson—Better Education Now

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe

Episode 451: "Meredith Olson—Better Education Now"
Date: September 23, 2025
Guest: Meredith Olson, President of Vela Education Fund

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Overview

In this lively, far-ranging conversation, Mike Rowe sits down with Meredith Olson, president of the Vela Education Fund, to explore the current landscape and future of education in America. They discuss innovative micro-schools, the growing appetite for customized learning, why traditional systems haven’t kept pace, and how Vela supports over 4,000 grassroots education founders nationwide. Central themes are innovation, agency, resilience, risk, and adapting to meet students’ true needs—delivered in a tone both skeptical and hopeful.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The State of American Education: Skepticism & Hope

• Mike expresses concern over "terrible trouble" facing public education, citing declining proficiency statistics (15:06).
  • “Our public education system is in terrible trouble... millions and millions of voters and taxpayers are hoping and praying for better education. When? Now.” — Mike Rowe [01:09]
• Meredith acknowledges challenges but offers a nuanced view:
  • Public education provides a reliable, efficient foundation for 83% of students, delivering what it was designed to do (15:33, 17:43).
  • The system's industrial roots mean it can struggle to adapt to today's creative, tech-driven economy.

2. Meredith Olson’s Path and Perspective

• Meredith describes herself as a product of traditional public schooling, with supportive, open-minded single parents, good but not exceptional schools, and plenty of unstructured time for discovery (06:37–09:32).
• She transitioned from mechanical engineering (Virginia Tech grad) to supporting grassroots innovation in education after seeing the need for bottom-up solutions.

3. What is Vela? The Rise of Micro-Schools

• Vela is a national nonprofit with about 10 employees, supporting over 4,200 micro-schools ("learning environments") that blend elements of homeschooling, private, and public schooling.
  • “They oversee 4,200 schools that are somewhere between private and public schools with a dash of homeschooling thrown into it.” — Mike Rowe [00:36]
• Schools are hyper-local, often unconventional in setting (dentist offices, farms, etc.), and collectively serve 5.3 million learners.
• The Marriott vs. Airbnb Analogy:
  • Traditional schools: standardized, predictable—like Marriott hotels.
  • Micro-schools: bespoke, varied, locally flavored—like Airbnbs.
  • “The question of whether or not they’re better is almost moot because it’s offering something completely different.” — Meredith Olson [26:52]
• Diversity Within Families:
  • Families often choose different education models for each child, reflecting a newfound independence. (29:11)

4. Post-Covid Shifts: Why the Surge?

• COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed a move toward self-reliance in education after systemic inflexibility during closures.
• “Covid was the moment that changed everything… The need for innovation in education was obvious. What we were doing was not working.” — Meredith Olson [31:53]

5. Accountability & Assessment in Micro-Schools

• Accountability is relational (family-to-founder), not bureaucratic.
• "The nexus of accountability happens between the families and the founders.” — Meredith Olson [40:21]
• About 36% voluntarily use standardized state assessments; 2/3 use adaptive educational technology (e.g., Khan Academy) for ongoing measurement.
• Graduates can move on seamlessly: They build transcripts, take SAT/ACT/CLT, and tap into dual-enrollment/trades programs. (43:40–45:24)

6. Rethinking School Design: Emphasizing Risk, Agency, and Wonder

• Unstructured risk and play:
  • Schools like Green Gate and Greengate Children's School allow kids to take physical risks, fostering resilience and independence (49:19).
  • Learning is kinetic and multisensory—kids engage minds and bodies.
• Practical skills & trades:
  • Many founders reintroduce blacksmithing, agriculture, and hands-on arts, which traditional curricula had lost in the past 40 years (46:12).
  • “A renewed emphasis on hands-on experiential learning... learning how things grow, how to blacksmith, permaculture, daily outdoor treks.” — Meredith Olson [46:12]

7. The Meaning and Vision Behind ‘Vela’

• Etymology:
  • ‘Vela’ means candle/light/constellation in Latin languages; also “to appear” in parts of Africa, and relates to nautical journeys.
  • “Creative, innovative people are sailing to the frontier of education. Our job at Vela was to help light the path and make this appear and known to the world.” — Meredith Olson [66:00]

8. Technology’s Double-Edged Sword

• Discuss the tradeoff between efficiency and human agency with tech tools like smartphones.
• “Is [technology] meant to control you? Or is it meant to enable you to do more and better than you ever imagined?” — Meredith Olson [80:39]
• Both agree on the necessity of balancing independence/self-sufficiency with the affordances of new tech.

9. Cultural Shifts, Agency, and The American Dream

• Growing disenchantment with institutions fuels grassroots innovation and a resurgence of classical, Montessori, and other “meaning-seeking” models.
  • “We’re seeing a massive growth in classical education. Why? Because they’re searching for meaning.” — Meredith Olson [85:41]
• “Declining trust in institutions... what better way to fix that than to roll up your shirt sleeves and do something about it?” — Meredith Olson [77:37]

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Public Education’s Design:
  • “It’s delivering exactly what it’s been designed to deliver… reliable, efficient, familiar. If you go back to the 1890s and the Committee of Ten, their goal was every student should be taught every subject in the same way regardless of their ultimate destination.” — Meredith Olson [15:33]
• On Families Leading Change:
  • “Rather than passively receiving an education that’s given to you, you’re owning it and driving it. You feel the right and responsibility to go pursue the education of your dreams.” — Meredith Olson [11:02]
• On Risk and Resilience:
  • “Those kids weren’t just climbing trees. They were 25 ft in the air… it was cerebral and kinetic at the same time.” — Mike Rowe [49:21, 50:21]
• On the ‘Evidence Demands a Verdict’ for Vela:
  • "In 2019, I’d have been skeptical... the evidence demands a verdict. 5 million students served.” — Mike Rowe [90:56; 91:16]
• On Institutional vs Bottom-up Change:
  • “Public education will adapt but only when people working in the unstructured, permissionless space show the art of the possible.” — Meredith Olson [23:02]
• On the Journey (Analogy to Crazy Horse Memorial):
  • “You’re chipping away at the rock, waiting to see what’s going to come out of it.” — Mike Rowe [63:04]
  • “Every single one of these founders has those war stories. They're tackling big, hairy, audacious problems.” — Meredith Olson [63:21, 65:03]

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Important Timestamps

• [01:09] – Mike introduces the episode’s theme and Meredith Olson’s work.
• [10:15] – Meredith shares rapid growth: 4,276 schools this year.
• [15:33–17:43] – Meredith details the Committee of Ten and origins of our school model.
• [26:46] – Marriott vs. Airbnb analogy for education models.
• [31:53] – COVID’s “moment that changed everything.”
• [38:17] – Micro-school funding number: median $450/month per child.
• [40:21] – Accountability in micro-schools; assessment practices.
• [46:12] – Trades, hands-on learning, and curriculum flexibility.
• [49:19]–[53:29] – Importance of risk, unstructured play, and learning agency.
• [55:41] – Vela’s impact: 4,276 founders and 5.3 million learners.
• [66:00] – The meaning of ‘Vela.’
• [80:39] – The role and risks of technology in education.
• [85:41] – Rapid rise of meaning-centered education (classical, Montessori).
• [91:16] – "Evidence demands a verdict" and Mike's shift in perspective.

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Action Steps & Resources for Listeners

• For Parents:
  • Talk to community members and educators about alternative models; look for micro-schools locally.
  • Stay tuned for Vela’s forthcoming app, which will connect families to micro-school founders (expected by end of summer 2025). [73:04]
• For Teachers:
  • Listen to the “Teacher Let Your Light Shine” podcast by MacKenzie Oliver for guidance on starting new learning ventures. [73:05]
  • Connect with innovators and micro-school founders for inspiration and support.
• For All:
  • Visit vela.org for more information, resources, and inspiration.

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Conclusion: Room for Optimism

While Mike maintains healthy skepticism, both he and Meredith land on a hopeful note:
Bottom-up innovation, risk-taking, and community agency are fueling a renaissance in American education. Amid declining satisfaction with public institutions, grassroots leaders—like Vela’s network of founders—are “chipping away at the rock,” building creative, custom solutions for the challenges of our age.

"There’s no reason to despair. The evidence demands a verdict." — Mike Rowe [91:16]

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For more information, visit vela.org

Transcript

[Mike Rowe]

Mike Rowe here. It's the way I heard it with an episode called Better Education. Now, now, Mike. Now, now. Come on now. Bring it on. How long do we have to wait for better education? I don't know, but it's already past now and we don't have it. But we're gonna. Yes. 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. Oh, I guess let's call it a celebration of bottom up Solutions. They've been sponsoring people you should know.

[Meredith Olson]

Yes.

[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. Sure. Yeah. 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 the dash of homeschooling thrown into it.

[Meredith Olson]

That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

That's right.

[Meredith Olson]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

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 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 office. Yeah, yeah. These are intensely local schools and they're run by founders who are also teachers and effectively principals. And also some of them look like farms or. That's right, a petting zoo. 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. My YouTube channel. 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. 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 going to like Meredith. She's smart and she's onto something big. And we'll prove it right after this. You don't need to be a CFO to benefit from downloading and reading the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning. It's free, it's fascinating, and it's really essential for anybody who's trying to understand the impact of AI on business today. You can download it for [e-mail] Mike. And the reason you should is simple. We're living in an age where the experts do not agree with each other on anything, it seems. Interest rates, inflation, the stock market, tariffs, a manufacturing renaissance that may or may not be on the horizon. Nobody knows. Nobody's got a crystal ball. But one thing's for sure, AI is going to impact all of that along with the way your business operates. Which is why 42,000 companies have already future proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle. This is the number one cloud ERP out there. NetSuite brings together everything. Your accounting, your financial management, inventory, HR. All of it goes onto one fluid platform, which means you close the books in days instead of weeks and spend a lot less time looking backwards and more time looking forward to whatever's next. Learn [e-mail] Mike and while you're there, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning. It's an eye opener and it's free. Netsuite.com Mike that's netsuite.com Mike that's netsuite.com I said netsuite.com he said netsuite.com/Mike. So, Meredith, you were a what kind of engineer?

[Meredith Olson]

Mechanical.

[Mike Rowe]

And where'd you study?

[Meredith Olson]

Virginia Tech.

[Mike Rowe]

And you grew up in what? Richmond.

[Meredith Olson]

Richmond, Virginia.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay.

[Meredith Olson]

Born and raised.

[Mike Rowe]

So did you know you were going to be an engineer when you grew up?

[Meredith Olson]

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.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Meredith Olson]

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, Right. 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. Did it feel like I love design?

[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?

[Meredith Olson]

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 good. And it wasn't the 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.

[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 can somebody still do that today? Can you still get that kind of.

[Meredith Olson]

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 raised, didn't.

[Mike Rowe]

They call them latchkey kids?

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah, they called them that. But we never really thought about it that way. It was more, think about the movies of the time, think about ET or the Goonies. Right. Where were the parents? Right, 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 love school, but then I loved being at home, just exploring and, like, this whole thrill of discovery. But, like, is that what happens today?

[Mike Rowe]

That's the question 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.

[Meredith Olson]

That's right.

[Mike Rowe]

And that time came with a certain permission. In fact, you'll remember field trips and permission slips.

[Meredith Olson]

That's right.

[Mike Rowe]

And very simple things that parents. You have to sign it. And you guys are going maybe wandering out of the safe space a little bit to see what can be learned out in the world.

[Meredith Olson]

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. Yeah, right. That was your free time. The world was your canvas, and you are just, like, having at it.

[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. What you're doing at Vela, in a lot of ways, is just blurring that line all over the place.

[Meredith Olson]

That's right.

[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? 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.

[Meredith Olson]

That's right.

[Mike Rowe]

Where are you now?

[Meredith Olson]

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.

[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. 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 non traditional approaches.

[Meredith Olson]

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.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, are you talking from the perspective of the student or from the parent?

[Meredith Olson]

Both.

[Mike Rowe]

What most informs Vela and after you tell me that, tell me what Vela means.

[Meredith Olson]

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.

[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 we're talking about founders. You're basically talking about the teachers in these small micro schools.

[Meredith Olson]

That's right.

[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 oh, you know, the teacher wants to have a word. All of that got blurred too.

[Meredith Olson]

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, but for whatever reason, they might feel in a traditional environment that they're constrained, that they're not able to 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.

[Mike Rowe]

Wow. This is. Okay, it's going to 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 feel called to varying degrees to do this thing. And they're all wonderful people. 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, I mean, my God, I don't want to speak for anybody specifically, but I've seen great teachers will break 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.

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah. So let me ask you, do you think it's broken? Because I'm not sure that it is.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I know that in Baltimore, a vast majority of high school graduates are reading at a seventh grade level. 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 that kind of data, it ain't great, is it?

[Meredith Olson]

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, 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 going to mess with this.

[Mike Rowe]

Who's the committee of 10?

[Meredith Olson]

So it was a committee of university administrators, university presidents, led by, I believe the gentleman's name from Harvard was Charles Elliot. 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, a baseline. 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 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. 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 in society.

[Mike Rowe]

The gifted and talented.

[Meredith Olson]

Right, exactly.

[Mike Rowe]

As opposed to the cursed and backward.

[Meredith Olson]

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 age 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's, Vela partners, Vela founders that we support are doing. They're not setting the 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.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, Todd Rose is on your board.

[Meredith Olson]

He is, is he? 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.

[Mike Rowe]

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[Meredith Olson]

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 different economy. It's a high tech economy. Right. And so how are we preparing students for this current future, which is changing rapidly?

[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? And aren't we painting with 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, is that happening by and large on the public school stage?

[Meredith Olson]

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.

[Mike Rowe]

Little speedboats and dinghies.

[Meredith Olson]

Exactly.

[Mike Rowe]

Blowing past the cruiser, going in different directions in uncharted waters.

[Meredith Olson]

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, when we talk about large institutions, 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. 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.

[Mike Rowe]

Am I Ambassador Gold at this point or just a guy off the street? Absolutely. Okay. Okay, so I've got points, I got status.

[Meredith Olson]

So what are some of the features of the Marriott?

[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, right? Something like that.

[Meredith Olson]

Okay, so is there a spa?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I sure hope so.

[Meredith Olson]

You hope there's a Spa.

[Mike Rowe]

I've been on the road a long time, Meredith.

[Meredith Olson]

Okay. Is there a restaurant?

[Mike Rowe]

Yes, there's a restaurant.

[Meredith Olson]

There's a restaurant. Is there a swimming pool?

[Mike Rowe]

Yes, there's a swimming pool next to the spa.

[Meredith Olson]

Okay. And in your room, what are some features of the room?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I would have hoped there would be an amenity waiting for me. Maybe some fruit, maybe some champagne. If they know my profile. I don't know, maybe there would be a little mint by the pillow, perhaps.

[Meredith Olson]

But even more basic. Shampoo, conditioner and iron.

[Mike Rowe]

I would hope so. Indoor plumbing, all that stuff. Yeah, they got everything to Marriott.

[Meredith Olson]

Now imagine that you're at a Marriott in Singapore.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay.

[Meredith Olson]

Are the amenities the same or are they different?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, they're going to be different for sure.

[Meredith Olson]

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?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, sure. They have to have a standardized approach.

[Meredith Olson]

That's right.

[Mike Rowe]

They have to. You know, McDonald's fries taste pretty much the same everywhere in the country. But to your point, they are different in Europe.

[Meredith Olson]

That's right. Okay. And you know about what you're going to pay. Yes. You have a pretty good sense.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes.

[Meredith Olson]

Okay, now let's contrast this with. Let's say you go to New York and. And you decide to stay at an Airbnb.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay.

[Meredith Olson]

Do you have any expectation of any of those amenities?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I have hopes, you know, I have dreams, I have Yelp, or I have whatever, you know, crowd funded or. Right. I'm gonna look for the stars, I'm gonna read the comments. But no, my expectations.

[Meredith Olson]

Do you expect a spa?

[Mike Rowe]

I do not.

[Meredith Olson]

How about a full service restaurant?

[Mike Rowe]

No, I don't.

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah. How about shampoo and conditioner?

[Mike Rowe]

Maybe, Maybe, maybe, maybe.

[Meredith Olson]

But. But it's going to 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. They might have a pool, right? They might have a dark pool table. Yeah, 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?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, is there such a thing?

[Meredith Olson]

I don't know.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I can't answer that with any degree of certainty. If I were in Singapore, I can tell you this, I'm relatively adventurous. I'm certainly curious, but I'd be going to the Marriott before I'd be. You'd be going to the Marriott In Singapore.

[Meredith Olson]

In Singapore, yeah, For sure. 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?

[Mike Rowe]

God, that's such a good question. Well, it depends. Am I on a walkabout with some friends or am I traveling for business?

[Meredith Olson]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

If I'm traveling for business, it's the Marriott all the way.

[Meredith Olson]

It's just easy. Right? 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 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.

[Mike Rowe]

So interesting. I thought you were going to take the bait. I thought you were going to tell me, you know, Vela is the solution to a broken system. Because that's been my experience. And even going to Vela, I'm thinking of. Oh, Pam. You introduced me to Pam, a founder, teacher, principal, force of nature. This woman is, who's operating her school, which is called the Isadora Israel Lane Dean. 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.

[Meredith Olson]

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. 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.

[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 17 years now. We have 10 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.

[Meredith Olson]

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.

[Mike Rowe]

Does it surprise you that that would happen after Covid?

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah. You know, this is really an interesting conversation. I know you mentioned that you'd been talking to Todd Rose and. 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. 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 and relying on self.

[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.

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah, that's right.

[Mike Rowe]

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.

[Meredith Olson]

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. 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, for sure.

[Mike Rowe]

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. 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.

[Meredith Olson]

Green Gate Children's School, Greengate.

[Mike Rowe]

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 dumb. This episode is brought to you by Prizepix, America's latest number one fantasy sports app. Why? Probably because football is back on tv and studies show that millions of fans who love, love, love to watch football. Also love, love, love to play prize picks. Now, full disclosure, fantasy sports is not really my jam. And if I'm being honest, I haven't watched a football game from start to finish since the Colts snuck out of Baltimore in the Dead of Night, March 28, 1984. I never really got over that one. But not everybody carries a grudge like I do. And today, millions of true fans who didn't get their hearts broken 40 years ago are winning real money by watching the game they love and answering one simple question. More or less. That's how simple prize picks is. All you do is build a lineup of two to six players, then you consider their projected stats for the game, and then you pick, more or less. Pick right, you win money. That's why Prizepix is America's number one fantasy sports app. The gameplay is simple, the payouts are big, and the withdrawals are quick and secure. Bottom line, sports fans who really know the game, are cashing in on their knowledge. Download the app today. Use Code Mike at $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. That's Code Mike to get $50 in lineups after you Play your first $5 lineup. Colts still miss you. Keep your eyes on the [e-mail] Mike.

[Meredith Olson]

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 who, you know what's going to happen? Their kids aren't going to come to school. Right. And so 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 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, 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 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 and education. And, and I generally received responses where they said, look, that's a fool's errand. Meredith, what are you doing? Don't go here. These operators are not legitimate. This isn't going to work. It's not going to last. It's going to go south. And so the critics came to us and they asked a bunch of different questions. First they said, well, how are you going to 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 going to 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 going to 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. 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.

[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 vela school? It's got to vary wildly.

[Meredith Olson]

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. 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 like 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.

[Mike Rowe]

So 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?

[Meredith Olson]

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.

[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?

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah, great question. And so 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 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. 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 ask 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, 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 Zurn or ixl, like all of these different software packages that are out there that offer embedded. They're adaptive technologies that offer embedded assessment. 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 school schools are using.

[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 Vela school. Oh, Vela. 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, then what's your brand like? What brand emanates from that Boolean base of unpredictability? A Boolean base. I believe it's French for look at all the interesting things on my plate.

[Meredith Olson]

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 sit for and take the SAT or the ACT or the clt. I think that's the classical literacy exam. And they score. They get benchmark scores.

[Mike Rowe]

Classic CLT is a thing.

[Meredith Olson]

I think that's what it's called.

[Mike Rowe]

Did you take that?

[Meredith Olson]

I did not take that. Did you?

[Mike Rowe]

I did not. Yeah, but, you know, my brother did. My brother dropped out of college 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.

[Meredith Olson]

Well, they have those CLEP exams as well.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, yeah. He didn't go back to school. He. He went to the library and in about two months, read 2,000 pages on all of it and just smoked it.

[Meredith Olson]

So all of these things are possible. Right. And so consider. I know you work all the time in it's not called vocational education anymore. But the trades, Right, exactly, 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 street or at the local community college down the street.

[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 HOMEC and whatever passes for financial literacy these days. Like 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, that really became diminished and it happened so fast that people kind of forgot about it.

[Meredith Olson]

That's right.

[Mike Rowe]

So where, where do the trades, for lack of a better word, fall into the potential of VELA curriculum?

[Meredith Olson]

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. 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, farriers, 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. So they're learning how things grow. If you think about a typical education you're spending, kids generally spend two to three hours a day in focused core academic instruction. Now it's spaced all throughout the day with other passing periods, enrichment classes, lunchtime 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? 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 engage in animal husbandry. 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.

[Mike Rowe]

SkillsUSA is the number one workforce development organization for students in America. They have over 440,000 members, and I'm working with them to double that number over the next five years. Why? Because SkillsUSA is awesome and our best hope of closing the skills gap in the next 10 years, which we simply must do. SkillsUSA is in all 50 states. You'll find them in middle schools, high schools, post secondary institutions. They don't just focus on technical skills, though. They also focus on workplace and personal skills that employers are desperate to find. Soft skills, in other words. I've been to several of their national competitions. I've seen with my own eyes how transformational this program is. I've seen kids compete for the gold in two dozen separate vocations, and I've also seen them get hired right off the competition floor by some of the biggest employers in the country. It's really extraordinary. Here's the ask. Get involved. Join the skilled trades movement by starting a chapter at your school or partnering or volunteering for SkillsUSA. It's easy to do and important. Get more [e-mail] Mike. That's skillsusa.org Mike. I'm talking skills, US skills. US skills USA. Well, one of the first things that struck me just at a glance was the relationship with risk.

[Meredith Olson]

Mm. Climbing trees.

[Mike Rowe]

This fascinates me. Those kids weren't just climbing trees. They were 25ft in the air in trees. They were. 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.

[Meredith Olson]

So we had this unstructured playtime, right?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Meredith Olson]

What if education could be like that all day long? That's what we saw at Green Gate with the somersaults on the swings.

[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. I mean, there was activity. It was cerebral and kinetic at the same time.

[Meredith Olson]

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.

[Mike Rowe]

Wow. Okay. If I just bring this back to me for a moment. Sometimes, Meredith, in the course of my work, I'm called upon to memorize large chunks of material. I'm good at it. Or facile anyway, if I can move, 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 process massive amounts of information that are just being thrown at them?

[Meredith Olson]

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. 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.

[Mike Rowe]

Sounds like a great name for an action hero too, by the way.

[Meredith Olson]

Yes. Oh, no, totally.

[Mike Rowe]

Acton Buckhead.

[Meredith Olson]

And the beauty of Acton school is every student is on their own hero's journey. It's a self directed learning facility.

[Mike Rowe]

This is like Lord Acton.

[Meredith Olson]

That guy. 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 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. 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 and 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? Why?

[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.

[Meredith Olson]

That's right.

[Mike Rowe]

Should preclude that level of permission that you use.

[Meredith Olson]

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?

[Mike Rowe]

I like to be told to go to the bathroom.

[Meredith Olson]

You do?

[Mike Rowe]

No matter what. I have. No matter what.

[Meredith Olson]

What if high school looked more like college? What if you went three days a week and the other two days you were at home working on your studies? Well, I mean, and you had more control over your time. But with that kind of independence comes responsibility. Right?

[Mike Rowe]

Of course.

[Meredith Olson]

Because you've got to deliver.

[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.

[Meredith Olson]

I love Temple Grandin.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, well, to your point, you know, I mean, yes, she, she was a different learner.

[Meredith Olson]

That's right.

[Mike Rowe]

For sure.

[Meredith Olson]

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.

[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 Stan together, which evolved somewhat organically out of the seminar network program. You were there early, early on. And now you're running vela. You're running 4200 schools with how many students would you guess?

[Meredith Olson]

So Vela founder. 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, and so how many you asked, how many do we have right now? So we have 4,276 founders. Collectively they've benefited more than 5,000 people in some way. Kids, families, adults. In actual learning environments. There are about 350,000 students who are in an environment led by a Vela founder. It's remarkable.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, when do you become an existential threat to whatever the status quo is?

[Meredith Olson]

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.

[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 that's, 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?

[Meredith Olson]

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 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. We've seen a decline in public enrollment by about a million students since the pandemic. Where are the kids? Where are they going?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, sounds like 355,000 of them are available.

[Meredith Olson]

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 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 kids are moving increasingly into some form of private or home education. And these are low cost alternatives. So these are not like your traditional elite private schools.

[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.

[Meredith Olson]

Right.

[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 and it's a single family undertake. Single family. Right.

[Meredith Olson]

So wild.

[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.

[Meredith Olson]

Didn't they have more kids so that they would have more people to carry on the project?

[Mike Rowe]

13 kids.

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

Basically sired his own workforce. And when you read about the work ethic and when you read about 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? Gustav. No. Chuck. If only we had a small handheld device tapped into a large compendium of shared knowledge and 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 and in these. Right. In these, like, like, these stand together, function like that looks so much. What now? It can't be, but it's like, you were literally there with your family on. On a kind of field trip.

[Meredith Olson]

We were. We were on the great American road trip.

[Mike Rowe]

Yes.

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah. And we were there wearing, you know, like, sweatshirts and jeans with, like, our masks on. Because you had to do that.

[Mike Rowe]

I know, right? 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.

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah. So they. At the end of every day, after the park closes, 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 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, Mike Rowe. How is this happening?

[Mike Rowe]

He owes me money.

[Meredith Olson]

And I told the gentleman who had. Was conducting the tour for us. I said, wait a minute. And I went over and said, mike, what are you doing?

[Mike Rowe]

And honestly, my brain shut down for about five seconds. I was just like, what is going on? 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?

[Meredith Olson]

We're right by the face.

[Mike Rowe]

I believe I can. His name is Korshak Ziolkowski. Ziolkowski, yeah. Yeah. I met one of his daughters who was technically, I think, in charge of the memorial at that point. But it is his family tree looks like a wall of.

[Meredith Olson]

What do you think about? Okay, so, like, bringing it full circle. Think about what it means to be an American in the American dream.

[Mike Rowe]

Yep.

[Meredith Olson]

And that gentleman and his wife and their family, they had a vision of what that giant rock formation could be. Yeah, right. And then they just got after it.

[Mike Rowe]

Look at that.

[Meredith Olson]

Look at that. Yeah. That's the vision of what it could be, and that's where we are today. But 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.

[Mike Rowe]

I like analogies, too, and metaphors. You're chipping away. You're chipping away at the rock, waiting to see what's going to come out of it.

[Meredith Olson]

And it's not perfect. You know how many I mean, driving up to Crazy Horse.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah.

[Meredith Olson]

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.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, in just further testaments to the way every single thing is connected, whether we know it or not. Look at that thing. That's exactly where I was.

[Meredith Olson]

It's unbelievable. They made a lot of progress since then.

[Mike Rowe]

Huge progress. Yeah. Don't let me forget, Chuck, we need to invite one of the Zukowskis on here. Oh, yeah, yeah. Great idea. They would. 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.

[Meredith Olson]

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 today, but they.

[Mike Rowe]

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. Quixotic, even. I mean, who today would take on a project whose completion was 100% guaranteed if it happens to happen long after your death?

[Meredith Olson]

That's right.

[Mike Rowe]

Who's got that kind of vision anymore?

[Meredith Olson]

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 and then start to attack it one bite at a time? Right. That's a talent.

[Mike Rowe]

What does Vela stand for? What's it mean?

[Meredith Olson]

So, vela, 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 Bela. And so often it's used in sailing. Sailing. Languages. Right. So sailing. Sailing, as you said, sailing, yes.

[Mike Rowe]

Like a springer's lactate.

[Meredith Olson]

So, like, journey.

[Mike Rowe]

Like a drip.

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah. So oftentimes, like, nautical companies are named Vela. Right? So it's like a journey, 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.

[Mike Rowe]

According to your website, it's more than 355,000 learners. In total, you're looking at 5.3 million.

[Meredith Olson]

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, five days a week, could be part time, could be full time. 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. 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 for ever.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, clearly, right, you're quaffed.

[Meredith Olson]

And maybe it's amazing, as many people do, because I want that relationship experience that's, that's like 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 the. Both the people who are delivering something unique and highly customized, as well as the tools and resources that make this whole movement, movement possible to scale.

[Mike Rowe]

I went to a salon in Zurich about 15 months ago. Was it called Sammy's Finest Barbers? Right, Taylor 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.

[Meredith Olson]

Need a haircut.

[Mike Rowe]

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 haircutter. 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 or. Right? And while I was getting my hair cut 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. Ingalls. Ingalls. 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 and it's hot 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 Ingalls guy sticks the toothpicks or the Q tips into his nostrils, right all the way in. And then he pinches him and holds it there for about 30 seconds, and then he yanks him out. And the amount of hair stuck onto this wax, Meredith. Right. Now, I'd never seen anything like this because I'd never been to Zurich before. And 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 waist.

[Meredith Olson]

So you did this?

[Mike Rowe]

You bet I did.

[Meredith Olson]

You signed up for it?

[Mike Rowe]

You bet I did. 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 your back getting all your nose hair pulled out by a man who speaks six languages. And sometimes you're on the top of a giant Indian doing dangerous work, and you run into a woman who's running 4200. Not running, but overseeing 4200 semi private schools. How much weirder does the world get? Really?

[Meredith Olson]

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.

[Mike Rowe]

Get that hair Pulled out of your nose?

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

I'll tell you, man, that Zurich air in my newly hairless nostrils was so invigorating.

[Meredith Olson]

How bad did it hurt?

[Mike Rowe]

It wasn't pleasant, but it was over very quickly.

[Meredith Olson]

Right.

[Mike Rowe]

He counted me down from three, of course, and pulled it on two. So it made my eyes water.

[Meredith Olson]

Was there like a posture balm?

[Mike Rowe]

Not really. I mean, there were some schnapps down the road in a beer.

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

So what do people. Let's. I mean, as we wrap it up, 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?

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah, great question. So, by the way, it's the only.

[Mike Rowe]

Kind of questions I ask, Meredith.

[Meredith Olson]

You only ask good ones.

[Mike Rowe]

I've tried a lot with disappointing ones. It impacts listenership negatively.

[Meredith Olson]

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 name is 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.

[Mike Rowe]

Oh, wow.

[Meredith Olson]

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 yout 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 mackenzie can show you how. And so I would. I'm just shamelessly plugging MacKenzie's podcast because she's so incredible. 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, Vela, 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 search based on where you live and find nearby founders who could be very interested in serving your children.

[Mike Rowe]

When do you expect that'll be?

[Meredith Olson]

So we expect by the end of the summer that will be up and running.

[Mike Rowe]

Great. And that'll be free.

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah, that's right. We are. Vela 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 with their educational journey of their kids. So, yeah, we're download the app.

[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. When did this launch?

[Meredith Olson]

We launched in 2019.

[Mike Rowe]

Okay. So if this were 2020. 2019. 2020. I'd probably be going, yeah, it's crazy sometimes. A great notion, right? Whatever. But 5 million students serve.

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah.

[Mike Rowe]

40, 42. Are you in every state?

[Meredith Olson]

We're in all 50 states. Rural, suburban, urban, you name it. Consider this. And I know we started this conversation talking about public education. Gallup conducts surveys on 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.

[Mike Rowe]

So without bashing the status quo, can we at least agree that there's room for improvement? Right. You know, I know Chuck is dying 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 speak and I guess it 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 I don't remember the specifics, but the percentage of Americans who believe the American dream is dead is shocking. It's very adjacent, I think, to the fact that in 19, I think it was 88. 80% of Americans define themselves as very or extremely patriotic. And today the number is like 38%. And those two things somehow or another felt connected to me. And education must surely be a part of that.

[Meredith Olson]

Oh, for sure, absolutely. So we've seen this declining trust in institutions where 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.

[Mike Rowe]

You mentioned Montessori.

[Meredith Olson]

That's right.

[Mike Rowe]

Is that similar? I mean, it feels like it for sure.

[Meredith Olson]

I mean, Montessori is one of many different 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 the 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 creating craving to go back to basics. Yeah, right. Like what is, what does it mean? They talk about the, the good, the true and the beautiful. What does that mean in education?

[Mike Rowe]

Think about the rise of podcasts. You know, my old boss, John Hendricks, 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. 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 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.

[Meredith Olson]

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.

[Mike Rowe]

There it is.

[Meredith Olson]

Faster Quicker. Better than having some very large production and wider, too. 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.

[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, you.

[Meredith Olson]

Have some text messages that came in.

[Mike Rowe]

I do. Oh, calls are coming in. Oh.

[Meredith Olson]

Huh.

[Mike Rowe]

No, J.D. vance, not now. Maybe later. Maybe later. You take care of that. What do you think 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 of Velo?

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah, great question.

[Mike Rowe]

It's the only kind I ask. Meredith.

[Meredith Olson]

I know we talked about that earlier.

[Mike Rowe]

They just get better.

[Meredith Olson]

They do get better. So. 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.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, they are certainly different. It's kind of like one path would be marked efficiency and the other would be marked effectiveness.

[Meredith Olson]

Right.

[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. So in that march toward total efficiency vis a vis our relationship with technology, what will we lose in the bargain?

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah. So think about something you've already lost because of that phone. I can share something I've lost.

[Mike Rowe]

All right.

[Meredith Olson]

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? Yeah, exactly. No phone, no credit card. I had a calling card, like an AT&T calling card, so I'd 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.

[Mike Rowe]

Such a. Meredith's book.

[Meredith Olson]

It is let's Go Europe, 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 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, figure it out 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?

[Mike Rowe]

I do not.

[Meredith Olson]

No. Right.

[Mike Rowe]

I do not.

[Meredith Olson]

You key it into Google Maps. 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 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?

[Mike Rowe]

I don't know.

[Meredith Olson]

I don't know either.

[Mike Rowe]

I don't know. But I know this. Good luck prying the calculators out of public education. Good luck. I mean, nobody would stand for that. Now, has it made us more reliant on a tool and less self sufficient? Yeah, maybe. But somewhere in the country.

[Meredith Olson]

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.

[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 it's grids and it's pages. And, you know, I don't remember cursing it. I remember being grateful for the fact that I had it. 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.

[Meredith Olson]

Get in the waymo.

[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?

[Meredith Olson]

I don't know. But I will say that that craving.

[Mike Rowe]

For me, then say it right on that microphone so people can hear you.

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah. So man's quest for meeting meaning, what does it mean? What is our.

[Mike Rowe]

You're talking Frankl.

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and I think I will say that like we are seeing this inside 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.

[Mike Rowe]

It's so funny. David Mamet just sat right there talking about 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. And the. You know, the talent, the skill, 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 and whatever you tell the machine to print.

[Meredith Olson]

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. Yes.

[Mike Rowe]

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, 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. 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's bemoaning the cost in the bargain. We're talking about, 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 I should have taken the effective path. And somehow or another, I paid my toll for, you know, the efficiency highway. And here we go.

[Meredith Olson]

Yeah. So I think we all have to do what makes the most sense to find that meaning, recapture relationships and restore the wonder.

[Mike Rowe]

I'd love to chat more, but I need to check my messages now.

[Meredith Olson]

All right.

[Mike Rowe]

This has really been great, Chuck. How long we've been talking? An hour 21. You were terrific. Really. Thank you so much.

[Meredith Olson]

I mean, you know, I'm terrified.

[Mike Rowe]

Hey, we're still recall lesions, so don't.

[Meredith Olson]

That's okay.

[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 5 million people who have been impacted by a thing that you're running. What scares you most? I swear, that's my last question.

[Meredith Olson]

What scares me the most about coming here and being terrified?

[Mike Rowe]

You just said you were terrified, and I don't know why.

[Meredith Olson]

Well, because I think. Oh, 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.

[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 the hair out of your nose.

[Meredith Olson]

That's right.

[Mike Rowe]

Let them do it. Do it.

[Meredith Olson]

I will do it.

[Mike Rowe]

Let them do it.

[Meredith Olson]

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.

[Mike Rowe]

That's right.

[Meredith Olson]

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. A talk interview, that's. Oh, wow. That's terrifying.

[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. That's all right. I got one little fact check. After you. All right, we'll go ahead and do yours first, because I'm not going to give you the last word. That's crazy. That seems fair. You're just a producer, for God's sakes. It was according to Plato's Phaedrus that Socrates suggested that writing could negatively impact memory.

[Meredith Olson]

There we go.

[Mike Rowe]

He believed that relying on the written words might lead people to forget how to recall information from within themselves. 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.

[Meredith Olson]

Incorrect us. That's right. There's always a teacher's pet.

[Mike Rowe]

Always. I'm not a teacher's pet. I may be a pedant, but I'm not. You're a teacher's pedant.

[Meredith Olson]

That.

[Mike Rowe]

That I'll take. 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.

[Meredith Olson]

I love that.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, you've got the receipts. Now Vela 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 vela.org.org that's V E L A. V E L A. And take a nautical journey into enlightenment. That's not bad. You can use it if you want.

[Meredith Olson]

I love it.

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks again.

[Meredith Olson]

Thank you.

[Mike Rowe]

This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long. But if it made you smile, then share your satisfaction in the way that people do. Take some time to go online.

[Meredith Olson]

And.

[Mike Rowe]

Leave us a review. 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 got to do is leave a quick five star review. All you got to do is leave a quick 5 star review and not 3. All you got to do is leave a quick 5 star review. Definitely not 2. All you got to do is Leave a quick 5 star review. We need 5 stars. All you got to do is leave a quick Even if you hate it. Especially if you hate it.

[Meredith Olson]

Thank you.

[Mike Rowe]

Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now, and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads, go to Libsynads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today.