PODCAST · education
Education vs. Schooling
by Sol Smith
Learn how to learn more effectively by abandoning what you think you know and becoming a pliable thinker. What you've learned and how you've learned in school hasn't been enough. You can abandon the illusory world of a stagnant education that has been sold to millions for the last thousand years and access powerful, natural learning. Mindset, brain plasticity, and elements of Zen and Flow show us how to leverage a Liberal Arts Education in order to find a better version of yourself.
Episodes
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S3EP10: The Borders of Culture
We are exposed to so much popular culture everyday that it's astounding. You've seen more stories than Shakespeare, you've heard more music than Mozart, you've seen more diverse images than Caravaggio. And we are more influenced by this culture than you can imagine. What would true media literacy...
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S3Ep09: Television as Myth Maker
The medium of television has some very deep concerns for psychologists. The more we learn about it, the more we know how such a powerful medium can change the way people work together. In the second half of the 20th Century, the Sitcom became the formula that designed the expectations people had...
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S3Ep08: Intro to Television
The defining characteristic of our culture is the ability to tell stories. Stories have guided the fabric of our culture since our larynx became capable of speech. We learn through stories what the expectations are of our culture, who we should be, what we should look like, what values we should...
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S3Ep07: The Music Industry
The music industry does something really amazing: it creates identity templates and invites us to reform ourselves through them. This makes us easier to predict, easier to please, and much, much easier to sell to.
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S3Ep06: American Music
American music reflects the dichotomy of the country: great wealth and oppression. Popular music in America has always been the voice of the counterculture, the voice of the working class (or slave), and the spirit behind that culture is what makes it so powerful. In this segment, we switch gears...
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S3Ep05: Ad Creep
Wrapping up our talk about advertising, let's go full-foil-hat and take a look at the underside of advertising that we would rather avoid. Advertisements are sneaking into our daily lives, grabbing our attention in ever more engaging ways, embedding themselves into the fabric of our days.
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S3Ep04: Gender Stereotypes in Ads
Why do some people consider ads "harmful?" Part of it has to do with the amazing power they have to perpetuate stereotypes. When stereotypes become powerful, they become expectations; when expectations get out of hand, they become demands. Advertising uses cultural stereotypes to deliver messages...
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S3Ep03: Intro to Advertisig
Having covered the cultural groundwork on which popular culture is built, we are finally now able to discuss advertising. Responsible for nearly 20% of the American economy, advertising is a huge presence in all of our lives. The first and more important rule of advertising is the one that you…
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S3Ep02: The American Dream
Our popular culture is based on a rather vague, idealistic notion that is most often called "The American Dream." It's a dream of wealth, success, and, ultimately, "more." This is the very foundation on which advertising, television, the internet, and your personality are built. We must…
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S3 Ep01: Who Are Yo?
Most people haven't spent enough time with the question of "Who you are?" We take for granted the world that we perceive through the bodies we inhabit and the stories we've been told. This episode kicks off Season 3 with a broad look at culture and what it means to be a part of it.
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S2E12: You're Fine
In this season (and, perhaps, series) finale, we recap what exactly we are trying to do here: we are thinking about thinking and considering our options when it comes to how we choose to pilot our lives. By being mindful of our thinking, not instantly reacting to stimuli and situations, we can...
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S2E11: Cultivating a Sense of Purpose
You cannot control the circumstances of your life. You are in an environment that you didn't choose, working with values that you didn't choose, trying to choose to do something that matters to you. Your sphere of influence is exceedingly limited, and if you just borrow meaning from the world...
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S2E10: Literary Analysis
The primary way in which we humanize ourselves is through fiction. Sounds like an insane hyperbole, but fiction is the distinctive factor of personhood, above all else. Through fiction, we have built massive social structures, directed collective effort, and essentially created a new world (for...
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S2E09: Communication Codes
How we talk might seem like it makes sense, is natural, and is the right way to communicate; however, many, many arbitrary habits and norms have been built into how we code our own communication. While we communicate directly, indirectly, and through metamessages, we build trust, competition, or...
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S2E08: Emotional Intelligence
Logic, intelligence, and strategy are great, but as great as those things are, they are not good predictors of happiness, wealth, or success. One place where the structure of formalized education really fails us is in dealing with emotional intelligence. In order to access all the aspects of…
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S2E07: Thinking With Purpose
Hopefully, by now, you've begun to distrust some of the conclusions that you come to. I don't want you to question your own alignment here, wondering if you're in fact a good person or not or whatever, but to question the justifications and basic truths that you aren't used to questioning. In…
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S2E06: The Information Cycle
Not being boring about actual information can be a challenge, but herein, we try. How we are informed about the happenings of the world is important to how firmly and reliably we understand the outside world. This is something that we can all take for granted in "The Information Age," but more…
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S2E05: Our Cognitive Biases
We construct a narrative that paints us in a pleasing light, not matter how far we may stray from the ideals that we think we hold dear. Our brains are excellent at doubling-down on bad decisions in an effort to resolve the dissonance in our heads as we try to hold two truths that conflict with...
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S2E04: Our Picture of the World
We have a high degree of confidence in ourselves; in our opinions, our understanding, and our daily version of the world that we see around us. We also have a high degree of confidence in the experts around us, of every walk. However, we probably shouldn't? The world is not what we think it is…
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S2E03: The Academic Conversation
Why do we bother with the formality of skepticism and the scientific method? These ideas seem so familiar as to represent basis of how we normally think, but this falls into yet another one of those cognitive illusions that we are so prone. There are vast holes in our knowledge that come from…
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S2E02: Meet Your Brain
Common Sense is often relied upon for making big decisions. In many, everyday ways, it serves well because you are navigating a world that is familiar and even repetitive. However, when interacting with larger groups of people, when interacting with people from different walks of life, and when...
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S2E01: Thinking and Intelligence
Being smart is great. But even a smart person is open to misinformation, poor thinking, and crappy decision making. Thinking skills are not hardwired, but are systems that are taught and learned, even if you don't know that they're happening. This episode opens up the theme of the second season:...
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Episode 14: Building a Better Reality
In the Season One Finale, we wrap up any loose ends and solve every problem that had been left on the table in the previous 13 episodes. Okay, not quite, but we do talk about our overall notion of reality and why allowing it to be disturbed and disrupted opens you to creative and cognitive…
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Episode 13: Perfection Sucks
While striving to be better and to learn how to make things better is a great thing, perfectionism has a tendency to stop people in their tracks. The idea that perfection exists and is attainable is more like a defense mechanism than it is a work ethic. Jumping into action, taking the leap, and...
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Episode 12: The Body and Mind Connection
Intellectuals tend to see the body as the thing that carries their head around so that it can do important things. Much to their disappointment, the brain cannot be separated from the body and more effectively than the mind can be separated from the brain (in function, y'all; we aren't talking...
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Episode 11: Metaphors and Seahorses
One reason why people spend so much time decoding symbols and metamessages is because it's a large part of how we think. In fact, most of what we see, hear, feel, and consider to be objectively factual is only brought into our inner worlds by means of metaphor and representation. While that all...
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Episode 10: Language, Symbols, and Reality
The most astonishing thing you'll ever do is just about completed by age five. It's not a new idea to look at how language informs our thinking. In this episode, we take a look at how looking into our thinking through our language, we are able to see more clearly how our perception molds our...
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Episode 09: Lateral Thinking
Probably the most practical episode of the lecture series, this puts the pieces of the previous eight together into a roadmap for new thinking. By now, we've established that most of how we interact with our environment and relations is through thoughts and behavior patterns that we did not...
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Episode 08: There is No Secret
This episode, we address one of the biggest myths that drives the hopes and expectations of people in the adult world: the idea that there is a finish line. Power and authority are deeply codified in our culture as something real that can be possessed. The idea that you can study and work and...
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Episode 07: The Cage
In some ways, this episode is an extension to episode 06, but takes us into a bit darker territory. In what ways are we so immersed in our context within our current culture that we cannot tell the difference between who we are and our indoctrination? If we look at people from history, it's easy…
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Episode 06: The Loss of Intrinsic Value
One reason that people limit their own learning, or choose to study something they don't like instead of something they love, is because they can't see how to properly monetize it. It would be a lot of fun if this episode told you how to make money in your sleep so you can pursue your passions…
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Episode 05: Obstacles to Learning
Since weighing anchor, we've left the shore far behind, to the point where you might not recognize what it looked like even if it came back into view. This episode is our thesis; we are looking at our purpose here. There is a lot of stuff that looks and acts like learning, but 'aint learning....
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Episode 04: White Belt Mentality
The challenging nature of learning is deceptive. Things that we think of as tools--like "common sense" and our brain--can be just as distracting from real learning as anything else. This episode talks you through the reason to undergo formalized and intentional learning.
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Episode 03: Mindfulness: The First Step in Training Your Thinking
If you don't govern your thoughts, there are plenty of monied enterprizes who will happily govern them for you. Taking the fist step to understanding how, when, and why your thoughts and feelings surface involves maybe the most difficult task you can possible do: sitting and doing nothing.
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Episode 02: Why Teaching Doesn't Work
Examining the really strange system of instruction that is so familiar to us, yet often alienating.
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Episode 01: Founding and Pitfalls of Education
What are the basic ideas of Education? How do these ideas reach people and how do they alienate people? It's deep and complicated.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Learn how to learn more effectively by abandoning what you think you know and becoming a pliable thinker. What you've learned and how you've learned in school hasn't been enough. You can abandon the illusory world of a stagnant education that has been sold to millions for the last thousand years and access powerful, natural learning. Mindset, brain plasticity, and elements of Zen and Flow show us how to leverage a Liberal Arts Education in order to find a better version of yourself.
HOSTED BY
Sol Smith
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Education vs. Schooling have?
Education vs. Schooling currently has 36 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Education vs. Schooling about?
Learn how to learn more effectively by abandoning what you think you know and becoming a pliable thinker. What you've learned and how you've learned in school hasn't been enough. You can abandon the illusory world of a stagnant education that has been sold to millions for the last thousand years...
How often does Education vs. Schooling release new episodes?
Education vs. Schooling has 36 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Education vs. Schooling?
You can listen to Education vs. Schooling on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Education vs. Schooling?
Education vs. Schooling is created and hosted by Sol Smith.
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