Audrey Wisch — How to Cultivate Curious Kids (EP.226)

I’ve always tried to encourage curiosity in my three children and now six (!) grandchildren. My kids often reminisce about my default response to their childhood questions: pointing to the bookshelf that flanked our sofa and saying, “look it up in there!”

Luckily, natural curiosity was never lacking in our household. Over the years, however, I have become increasingly frustrated when I hear about the stultifying, rote, curiosity-killing nature of our education system.

It was a pleasure, therefore, to speak to Audrey Wisch, an impressive young founder who, after witnessing first-hand how kids’ curiosity was being crushed, decided to do something about it. She left Stanford University to build Curious Cardinals, a personalized service that matches children with university mentors. What started as a pandemic project has grown into something much bigger - Audrey and her co-founder were named to the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 List in education, and Curious Cardinals has now delivered over 20,000 hours of mentorship to over 2,000 kids.

As you’ll hear in our conversation, Audrey’s approach to education is a breath of fresh air, focusing on agency and empowerment, meeting kids where their interests lie, and harnessing the benefits of technology.

I hope you enjoy our conversation! For the full transcript alongside bucketloads of other stuff designed to make you go; “Hmm, that’s interesting!” check out our Substack.

Important Links:

• Curious Cardinals
• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Show Notes:

• The Classroom: Disengaging, Uninspiring and Regurgitating
• The Chicken Nugget Strategy: Learning Through Interests
• Are Attention Spans Shortening?
• Why Mentors Matter
• Rose, Bud, Thorn: How to Design an Effective Mentorship Session
• The Perks of Proximity
• The RBG Approach to Disruption
• Against a One-Size-Fits-All Approach
• Curiosity, Lifelong Learning & Openness to Change
• Shakespeare on Snapchat
• The Changing Role of Memory
• Prompting via Socratic Iteration; Tapping into the Why
• How Audrey Became Interested in AI
• Why the College System Restrains K-12 Progress
• Hiring for the Output vs Hiring for the Input
• Audrey as Empress of the World
• MUCH more!

Books Mentioned:

• The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness; by Jonathan Haidt
• Paper Belt on Fire: How Renegade Investors Sparked a Revolt Against the University; by Michael Gibson