YouSaid · the spoken record

Joe Liemandt

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2026-03-31
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2026-03-31
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  1. “And they can do hard things. They love it. They have to be supported by an adult. So you have to have a guide who's awesome. You can't, if you just throw them in the deep end, that's not going to work, right? But get a guide who's going to bond with them, right? And we spend enough money, right? We pay teachers, right? Just let's shrink, let's refocus their role around what they want to do anyway, transform kids' lives, right? Let's get them all focused on transforming kids' lives where they're supporting them, high standards, right? Exactly the one or two that we knew, right, that transformed ours and just get that going in all the schools. But to do that, you know, back to it's a tough one. Now, that's why we have to go build, we're going to go build 10,000 schools, right?”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “That's incredible. And that is one. There was one where those stories are just, they do love doing hard things. And they can”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I don't like, you know, they do. They're like, parents are just like, my kid used to never, like, you know, these middle school sports kids. They're like, they used to skip school all the time, never on time, all these things, absenteeism is a huge thing. Like, they wake me up, and they're like, We better not be late Like alpha kids are like, is it Monday yet?”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Right? It just eventually it's going to catch up with you. And instead, we need schools where we show kids. It can be so fun. Like, you know, if you took out our first one, kids must love school more than vacation. Parents would not send their kids to the school because they'd be terrified of the high standards. And it's only because their kids come home every day and they're like, this is what the crap.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “To these days. And the problem with that is it doesn't. You know, when I where it really starts to manifest is in middle and high school where you're like, these kids are disengaged. Are addicted to TikTok and Fortnite, and they have mental health problems, and all these issues that are occurring. And they're the outcome of low standards, not high standards. People think it's, no, it's too hard. If kids don't engage, if humans don't engage in challenging things, right, that they love, that they can go do and accomplish, right? They do lose meaning. There is no meaning in a TikTok loop. And eventually it catches up with you. You can't eat sugar all day.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “So I love that story. That is now if every parent thought like you, we would have a different school system today. We would not have the academic results at our schools. One of the things I've learned as principals is your mindset that you just described is very rare. That parents in general want low standards at their school, and part of why schools, even private schools, right, react. Why does Harvard have great inflation? Harvard, right? And it's because there is pressure from parents and students to lower standards. That it is hard to keep high ste”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Those are the kind of apps, right? And they're working with some of the biggest influencers on the planet to do this, right, where they're like, okay, I want to come in this weekend or I don't want to go on summer break because I'm working on something hard and significant.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Character building, which is character building is always the hardest one because it's really hard to measure, but it's the only thing parents care about is my kid a good kid, right? Example. We just have examples, which is our we have middle and high schoolers who are building an app where they're trying to convince 100 million teenagers the key to their happiness is contributing to their community. And just that whole concept of how contributing to your community is a great character building exercise, they all have been experienced and they're like, oh, we can build this into an app and get this out to everybody. So, you have people learning how to vibe code.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “And back to bonding and hard things. You know, in parents back to They're like, you know, especially at a high in private school, some of these moms are like, My daughter's not rolling in the mud. That's never happening, right? And then at the end of the race, they're all covered in mud. And, you know, there's, they have all the pictures of they all, you know, bonded as a team to go through this really hard challenge. And so you're teaching, so we have metrics where, and we try to make them quantifiable. All our fifth graders, fourth and fifth graders can pass Wharton's leadership and teamwork simulation challenge that Warren MBA's take. Right. And so we have all these, you know, quantifiable metrics across those skills, right? Entrepreneurship, can you make a thousand dollars? Can you go raise $10,000? All those kind of things.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “That doesn't mean anything. So every third grader in our school can do a Rubik's cube. Every kindergartner can do a hundred piece puzzle. And so we write every eighth grader has passed a teamwork grit test, which is they all run a tough mutter, if you know what they are. Tough mutter and pass across the finish line at the same time.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “You would think these great project based workshops in the afternoon to teach these skills. So we're like, okay, how do we teach 1% better? How do we teach atomic habits? Okay, let's have them run 5K. We teach financial literacy. It really is. Our fifth and sixth graders launching food trucks, running Airbnbs, right? And so you can teach them when you have all afternoon, you have all this time to teach them. Now the biggest thing we do versus probably most others. Is we try to quantify everything. A lot of life skills are very soft. And that I can't run a scalable system if everything's, hey, you know, maybe it works. So like we talk grit. Everybody wants their kid to, you know, have grit, right? You can't read like Angela Duckworks' book. Okay, great.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Right. Mean girl high cafeteria. There's tons of movies made about it, right? But you can teach kids skills, right? You can teach them all these relationships. How do you teach them?”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “My kids are waiting. Everybody's waiting for that. So that's the second part, the time back, right? The engine where they learn 10 times faster. The third is. There's a set of life skills that we think really matter to kids that aren't just pure academics. And we went through them. But you do care about leadership and teamwork and entrepreneurship and financial socialization and relationship building, those skills. Socialization and relationship building, right? They matter so much. And we don't teach kids. Now, you experience socialization in school, some good, some bad, right?”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “That's time back, our time back engine. That's 10. And today it's at Alpha in 2026. Everybody in the world's going to be able to access it. And so everybody who wants to build a school based on Timeback is going to be able to next year. You hear that development team?”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “And the roles are different, and it's 10 times more awesome, but you're going to drop your kid off at school because you want them around other kids. And you need, kids don't grow up on their own. They need caring adults who are going to mentor and coach them, right? And help, you know, build, hold high standards. And so that whole loop is going to continue. And when we talk about building schools, that's going to be the future. It's just right now the whole day is six hours in class, right? Where we waste 90% of the kids' time. And we're like, okay, let's just stop that. Let's just stop that, right? And so that's what back to our thing of how we design school. The first part was, you know, they must love it. The second part was they need to learn 10 times faster. They can't sit in class all day, right? And so that's this engine we built that teaches kids 10 times faster.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Kate, my daughter, has a great such a relationship with Chloe. She trusts her And she trusts her to get her in, right? And, you know, even now she's in college, and when she comes back to Austin and she goes to lunch with Chloe still, right? So she has, you build these great relationships with them. And it's, you know, Everybody, when they think of AI tutor, they think of robot terminators and all that. And the answer is, you know, in 20 years, you know, predict the future, what's going to be the same in 20 years. Parents are going to drop their kids off at a building. In the building are going to be other kids and adults, right? You're not getting rid of school.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Putting her Stanford application in. And I'm like, can I read it? And she's like, no, right? She does not want to be judged by parents. Kids, adolescents do not want parents judging on them. And I was like, okay, and I just gave her a hug. I'm like, good luck because I knew Chloe, her guide, was going to hold high standards. And, you know, Chloe, back to we get really the best in the world, right? She's a Harvard grad and I know she knows the standard, you know, to get in.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “No, there's, I mean, our guides have great relationships with the kids. I mean, if you really want to get into it, like at high school, when we ask questions, we measure everything because if we're going to scale, I need the metrics to make sure the quality stays high. So in middle and high school. We actually asked the parents Do you trust your alpha guide so much to hold high standards so you as the parent can provide can only have to provide the unconditional love and support? Because you want to hold high standards, but you also want to provide support. And as kids get to adolescence, it gets hard for a parent to be both when you're holding high standards. They rebel against you, right? And I'll just take myself as a personal example. So my oldest daughter, you know, she's.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “So, those conversations are going to be like back to connecting. Hey, how was your weekend? How was the softball tournament? Did you win? Did you not win? You know, we've been working on this goal setting about your, you know, vision. You don't seem to be engaging in it. Do you really not like it? Is it too hard? You know, they connect with the kids and then sit there and help them understand what are you trying to do? How am I helping you hit your goals? Just what you would call coaching. It's absolute coaching.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “So it's a set of one, the best we get the top 1% of teachers who want to move over and come on over. So we get those and we're just like, you're not going to be teaching. And, you know, that's always the biggest surprise. Know since you're not in front of class, they're pulling the kids out one on one, you know”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Right, that these guides connect with your kids. And we call them guides and coaches because they're not doing academic teaching, right? So”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “The kids, no, all you care about. I mean, our parents obviously wish they were good about it, but you really care that these kids connect.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “All that's AI tutor learning science based will do that. Connect and motivate kids. Okay, you need to be the world's best. Are you the best at connecting and motivating kids? Can you hold high standards and high support? And if you're great on that, we want to hire you. And then the parent side, we actually have a dean of parents. So we design the school where they don't have to do that because when I first got in, the guy who is going through the teachers, he's like, oh, this teacher is great with kids, but not good with the parents. So don't promote. This person's not as good with the kids, but they're great with parents, so they should be promoted. And I was like, okay, no, I'm going to, we're going to build a school where they're great with kids and we'll find a way to deal with the parents, right? Because there are different skills.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “It was because she connected with you and got you to go see a bigger picture, right? And just inspired you to greatness and pushed you. And that is what great teachers do. And that's what they want to do. So we just narrowed the scope where we're like, nope, you don't need to know seventh grade science because AI does that. You don't have to know the 10,000 papers that are written on learning science of how to teach kids well.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “School systems. And those are five hard things to be good at, right? And so, when you have a hard spec, then we go and say, okay, let's underpay them. You're like, and it's a surprise that no one applies for the jobs, right? And that's why there's huge fall and all this stuff. And so in our world, I'm like, okay, well, how would I fix that, right? We're re-envisioning school. So how do we re-envision the role of a teacher? Well, we take, you know, what do teachers really want to do, right? And if you go talk to teachers, teachers did not become teachers to grade seventh grade science quizzes. They became teachers to connect and transform kids' lives. And we all had one or two teachers who did that for us. And it wasn't because she marked her paper up well.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “A good guide. Yeah. So teach, you know, when I think of a spec, there's a huge teacher problem, right? Teachers are burned out. They can't hire enough. You know, it's just tough, right? And just once again, me coming from the outside, right? General HR, HR 101, if I'm a business person, you know, okay, you can't hire a spec, you know, what's the problem? Either the spec's too hard, you're not paying enough, whatever you're targeting the wrong one. So there's five things really if you're going to be a teacher in a standard school, right? Standard teacher in front of a classroom model to do well. First, you have to be a domain expert in seventh grade science. Second, you actually have to be good at teaching, like what are the effective teaching? We all know researchers who know a lot, but they're really bad teachers, right? Third, you have to connect and motivate with kids. Fourth, you have to deal with parents. And then fifth, in a lot of our schools, you have a lot of administration.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “I can just one percent better every day. I can do 50 push ups. I'll do one today and two tomorrow, right? And they just learn these life skills that we don't learn till late because school doesn't teach them. But when you have all day, when you're not sitting in class, you can teach these things. And you teach it via hard things that the kids love, right? That they're engaged in doing things that they think are impossible and learning how to do the impossible.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Every day they do. And so she gets all the kids. You know, we teach growth mindset, right? And so she's like, How many of you think it's impossible? And all the kids are like, oh, it's impossible, Miss Faith, you know, can't do it. And she's like, well, I signed you up for the Jingle 5K at Christmas. This is in August. Signed you guys all up. We got to go run it. And she brings about to the track and they're all, oh, this is impossible. And she walks the track the first day with them all. And every single one finishes. And she's like, okay, so we've all established we're all going to finish the race, right? And then she comes out the next time and they run a quarter of the lap, walk the rest and half a lap, walk the rest every time and by December they're all running 35 minute 5ks. And when they cross the finish line, you know, at the jingle 5K to their parents, they're just like, oh, look. They're like, dad, I can do anything.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “I'm like, oh, because parents back to the standards, you don't want to see your kid fail. Parents naturally, it's protective. You don't want to see them struggle and fail. I'm like, oh, the parents really don't like this. She's like, don't worry. And I'm like, how are you going to get me to run 5K? First of all, she's like, we're going to teach atomic habits. And most of us as adults read it, 25 or whatever, you know, after college. But she's like, second graders understand 1% better.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Our afternoons are all these great project based workshops that teach life skills, and our life skills are leadership and teamwork, storytelling and public speaking, grit and hard work, entrepreneurship and financial literacy, and socialization and relationship building. So there's five categories of those. And, you know, our second grade teacher, faith, this was a year ago. She's like, All my second graders can run a 5K. And I was like, oh, I don't that she's like, kids are limitless.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Like literally, just like plug into the matrix. He's like, I would have sold my soul for that. And he's like, and then I went through the program. And he's like, now I don't even have time to play video games. Right. And he's like, because he's engaged on stuff of who he wants to go be, right? And that's what's happening to a lot of our kids, right? In society, and you totally can break them out. But that's what we have to do as a school. And back to high standards, the kids want to do it because it's hard. That guy's kids never worked harder on that project that he's doing that's transformed him to pull him out of the video game, you know, loop. And the kids want to do it. We have our second graders”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “And I'm just like, well, that's our job as a school, right? Our guys and coaches. This is what because you're not spending all your day in academics, we have afternoon workshops where they're able to go figure out their passion project, where they can get out of it, you know. why the world has to change and why everybody wants to change education is because we have too many people. There was a kid who came in and he was talking to our high school because he went through our program, but he was talking to the next set. And he's just like, you know, if you had told me like when I first started, you know, the whole program. Said, I'll pay you $100 an hour for the rest of your life to play a video games and just till you're dead.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “You are what you do. And so literally they then come in, like, oh, I guess I'm going to be the world's best TikTok scroller. And they're just so disappointed because they realize this is who they want to be, but this is what they're doing. This is how I'm spending my time.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Want to do awesome stuff and they diagram it out, right? And it's just like I want to be this, and it's awesome, right? And then you say, okay, we make them do 168 hour project, track every hour a year. And then they're like, oh, and then, because you are what you do. Yeah.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Right loops and they're just not engaged, right? And so when you come, when you move into an alpha middle school, we run a program, right, which is, well, what are you interested in? How are we going to engage or how are we going to get you out of that? And, you know, as a society, we create a world where all those kids sort of get stuck in it. So we do a values chart, a Japanese Ikagai, right? Think of a vision board, you know, fifth or sixth grade, where you're just like, And if you ask all these kids, they want to do awesome stuff.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “And every child development expert in the world will say the struggle, the cycle of you need to struggle and fail. I add in as a principle sometimes cry. Your road to success, supported by a caring adult. That loop is what child development is, right? And it builds self-confidence. It builds resilience, right? It's what why people 50% of America puts their kids in after school sports because everybody expects that cycle to be run in sports. But in schools, it's just not run, right? And we're like every kid needs this, right? It shouldn't just be in sports. We should just, they want to go do hard things. And so we start in kindergarten, but we'll talk middle school is like when we talk about middle school. You know, we have a middle school epidemic of scrollers, what we call consumers, right? They've been caught in the dopamine TikTok or the Fortnite playing.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Harnessed in and stuff, but we teach the kids growth mindset, right? And then you mic them up, you know, they're climbing up and they're like halfway out and they start to struggle and you can see the parents, but our guides, right, our guides and coaches who this is what they do all day, right? Our guides and coaches, their whole job, when you say what's the different role of the teacher? Because we don't sit in front of the classroom, think of a mentor who's going to guide and coach you. And their job is to hold high standards, but give you high support. To help coach you through it, just like a great coach. And then they'll see the kid get to the top. And when that kid gets down, they're beaming. They're beaming because they accomplish something hard.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Kids want to do awesome stuff. They do kids are awesome and they want to do awesome stuff and we need to give them an environment. And we start in kindergarten. Like our kindergartners, like here, the thing that freaks everybody out, right? And we do this like on a shadow day because we're like, come test it, right? No one's going to just drop their kid in this weird thing. Come test it. And so we do a shadow day. And one of the things we do is like we have a 40 foot rock wall. Kindergartners, and parents are like, Oh, my kid is not. That seems scary. I'm kindergarten. It's all safe. I mean, they're all right in.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Yeah. So generally, you know, if you're trying to build a school around. They love. There's this view of oh, just let them play all day, right? But that's actually not going to make them want to come during the summer, right? They have to be working on things that are ambitious, right? And significant to be able to do that. If they're just scrolling TikTok or playing Fortnite, they're not going to come, right? They can do that at home.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “Second, they can crush, crush their academics in just two hours a day. This six hours a day in homework, it's not necessary, right? We have the highest test scores in the frickin' country, two hours a day, right? If you're going to go more than that, it's because you have to really catch up because you're behind, right? And whoa, okay, you got to do three to catch up, two hours a day, crush it. And then third is the key to your child's happiness is high standards, right? And that is one that, you know, it's a hard one because I struggle with it as a parent too. I have two daughters, right? You know, you want to hold high standards, but when they're struggling, it's hard, right? But that high standards is why our kids love school so much.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Effect going right, and that's why you can see some tweets I did where I have all these kids like 790, 790, 790 math, 800 math SAT, you know, and it's all very doable. And it's just you and I in our world are like, this all sounds like magic and hocus pocus and all that stuff. And that's what sort of my job now is and why we're getting it out and opening the alphas and getting this everywhere is we have to educate everybody that this is possible. Like, you know, if You know, if I to your, if I was, if you have a parent in your audience and there's three things that I could put in their brain that they don't believe today, like if they have a kid in school, I need them to think A, not B, right? A is Your kid can love school, must love school. Like more than vacation, that should be the standard you hold”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “And that's where we've reserved as societies, right? This amount of time. And it is great to fill it up. And the kids actually are engaged. And if it is interesting and applicable, right? They do like it. And then there's also just a learning science concept that the more you know, the faster you learn. So acceleration curves, like where the average American in a time-based system, right, or it's not even American, global, slows down. Ours accelerate. Like if you actually took our high school kids. And measured them on how fast they're learning versus 2x. One, because the denominator is going way down because the other kids aren't learning, but also how much our kids learn, right? We'd be like, we'd be at five to 10x like at high school because it's sort of you have this.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “Can funnel new vocabulary words to them, right? All these kind of things where you can these AI tutors, when you solve the motivation problem, can fill these kids' head with awesome knowledge, right? And, you know, one of our design principles is we're given 12 years, right? Parents give us 12 years to fill their kids' head with awesome knowledge because we think we should make kids' heads an interesting place to hang out in because they have to hang out there for the rest of their life.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “Know and we also now can generate the article so they're interested back to engagement interest levels you can take that second third grade boys like I hate books and then you're like no no what's your favorite movie the Avengers who are your buddies and all of a sudden you're doing a choose your own adventure where you and your buddies are saving the world and that kid will click page by page for an hour You keep the Lexile level right within 10% of his difficulty level, so he doesn't get, it's not too hard.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “Yeah, and their coach. The coach was like, guys, stop screwing around, get it done so we could all go play. And their friends are playing. And so all of a sudden you have motivation. They want to go do what they want to do. They just have to, and it's not hard because we keep them at 80 to 85 percent. Just can't screw around. Stop just used effective techniques. Every kid, like they scroll, you know, if they have a lesson they're trying to read. They scroll to the bottom, look for some questions, search. They try to skip reading the article. And you're like, look, you actually have to read the article if you want to learn how to read.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “And then all of a sudden, it's like, well, go change these behaviors and you'll get out of here in two hours. So the unlock is like at the sports academy, right? It's a little meter and they have to be in the lessons until it goes green. And then they get to go play basketball or soccer or whatever, right? You know what the sport is, then you kid you.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “And they're like, okay, that seems pretty fair. And I went to my team. I'm like, great, we got two hours, right? Let's get every learning science paper. Let's read the crap out of them. Let's figure out exactly what we need to do so they can learn all the material in two hours, right? And so that's sort of the design of how we got the engine. And the waist meter, so if you're a student, and when you first come in, you're sort of screwing around and you're not really engaged. And so all of a sudden, your two hour learnings, three hour learning. And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I thought this was two hour learning. And you're like, your waist meter is at 50%. You're wasting 50% of your time, dude.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “Where our product name is Time Back, the most important part to educate a kid is motivating. So, to educate a kid, every educator will tell you you need a motivated student and you need to put them in lessons of the correct difficulty. Now, AI does that second part well. It knows what you know and don't know, and I'll give you second grade or fourth grade. It'll put them in the right difficulty. But how do you solve motivation? How do you solve motivation? So on my first week as principal, I have to make the kids love school. And so I went up to the fifth graders and they were brand new to school too. And I was like, do you love school? They're like, no. And I was like, what would make you love school? And they're like less school. I'm like, how much less? And they're like, none. I'm like, okay, that's right. And we basically negotiated two hours. I was like, look, if I, would you engage in the apps? Because I need you to engage in the app. If you don't engage and you're spinning your chair, you're not going to learn. Would you engage for two hours? If I gave you the four hours back to go do awesome stuff.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “But it's generating that. Now, the second, so that's one element, and then there's a second element, and this is actually the most expensive part of our AI. And one of our limitations right now is we burn a lot of AI, 10,000 bucks a kid right now. And we'll get it down to less than $1,000 and then a hundred. We're driving it down. But think of basically streaming the screen. A soda model to one of the best ones. And having, and then we have set things up to prompt the kid how to learn. It coaches. It's a coach. So it's like, look, kid, you're skipping those videos. You keep skipping the videos, right? You're not learning as effectively as you could. And so, literally, in the bottom of the corner, there's a little waste meter where it tells the kid, you're wasting time. And so this is back to the whole product design you have to do”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “All of those things are all baked into what we're generating and creating as a lesson. You know, we can do it as a video, right, with text and audio overlay, right? Make sure it's short so it's not passive intagement. So we can do all that as generating those lessons. And that's the key to the unlock. And you might be getting that second grade lesson. And I'm getting the first grade lesson, you know, because we're in the same class because the AI is just giving us whatever we need. Or maybe you probably need the 12th grade lesson. I need the first grade lesson.”

    2026-03-31 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Alpha School: AI and The Future of Education | Joe Liemandt · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source