Category: Uncategorized

Cheery Friday: The Ecstasy of Certainty

I just finished a book I couldn’t put down—Josh Ireland’s The Death of Trotsky—and it gave me a new way of thinking about patterns I’ve noticed in the world of education.

A bit of context: Leon Trotsky was one of the architects of the Soviet state, once second only to Lenin. Joseph Stalin, who eventually seized power, considered Trotsky his greatest rival—and spent years methodically hunting him down across two continents before finally having him murdered in Mexico in 1940.

Ireland gave me something I hadn’t quite seen so vividly before: just how akin to religious conversion the experience of becoming a communist could be. He quotes one fellow believer describing the moment of conversion as a “mental explosion”—new light pouring in from every direction, the entire universe suddenly snapping into pattern like a jigsaw puzzle assembled in a single stroke. Every question answered. Every former doubt revealed as mere ignorance. The colorless world of non-believers left behind forever. And once inside that feeling, almost nothing could touch them.

Whittaker Chambers’ memoir Witness captures this with one unforgettable image. Chambers had done his best to convey to Alger Hiss what was really happening inside the Soviet Union—the show trials, the mass executions, the machinery of terror grinding through the very people who had built the revolution. Now they are parting for what both men sense may be the last time, standing on opposite sides of what Chambers calls “a molten torrent—the revolution and the Communist Party.” And as they hesitate, tears come into Hiss’s eyes. What is devastating about that moment, read alongside Ireland’s portrait of the true believers, is what those tears don’t mean. They aren’t doubt. They aren’t horror breaking through. The cause Hiss had given himself to—so total, so morally consuming, so much like a religious conversion—could absorb even the knowledge of atrocity and hold firm. The tears were the cost of devotion, not its undoing.

This is what a truly unfalsifiable belief system looks like from the inside. The horror doesn’t refute the vision—it gets folded into it, becomes part of the necessary price, even a dark confirmation of how serious and world-historical the whole enterprise must be. It doesn’t feel like ideology. It feels like the one clear thing in a compromised world.

I’ve seen this mechanism up close. In the early 1980s, having learned Russian at the Defense Language Institute, I worked as a Russian translator for the Soviets. What struck me wasn’t so much the crude propaganda—it was the tap, tap, tap of a thousand smaller messages, so constant and so ambient that my communist colleagues didn’t experience them as messages at all. The beauties of communism, the evils of capitalism: not slogans, just reality. A worldview so thoroughly absorbed it had become indistinguishable from perception itself.

Which is why a video essay I stumbled across recently stopped me cold. It argues that Hollywood’s decades-long habit of portraying businesspeople as villains has quietly done something similar in the West—not through state decree but through the steady accumulation of images and stories until the conclusion feels self-evident. Researchers call the mechanism “narrative transportation”: we don’t experience it as persuasion, we experience it as seeing clearly. The uncomfortable corollary is this: the same tap, tap, tap, applied to any institution—science, medicine, education—would produce the same result. It doesn’t require a totalitarian state. It just requires enough repetition. The irony is hard to miss: Hollywood is itself one of the world’s great capitalist enterprises—yet the artists it employs have long chafed at their dependence on the financiers who get a say in their work, and that resentment has a way of showing up on screen, decade after decade, until the next generation of writers grows up taking it for granted.

Grand visions have always worked this way—across every era, every ideology, every cause that promised to finally set things right. What varies is the content. What never varies is the underlying pattern: the moral beauty of the framework, the discomfort that greets any question, the quiet but total insulation from disconfirming evidence. And education, it turns out, is no more immune to this pattern than anything else.

The dominant teaching framework of the last several decades wraps itself in language that is almost impossible to argue with: student-centered, inquiry-based, child-led. Who could object? Raising questions about it feels a bit like kicking puppies. And that feeling—that moral discomfort at even asking—is extraordinarily effective at keeping evidence at bay. When students don’t thrive under discovery-based approaches, the framework is never blamed. The implementation was wrong. The teacher needed more training. The test measured the wrong thing. No result is ever allowed to count against the vision.

That’s not science. That’s a belief system so morally beautiful it has become immune to disconfirmation—which is precisely the pattern Ireland illuminates so vividly in a very different context.

I wrote about this recently in my Substack piece “The Teaching Method That Can’t Fail (and Why That’s the Problem).” One reader who had worked across science, engineering, and finance wrote that of all those fields, education alone had shocked him—not for lack of intelligence among its practitioners, but for how often conclusions rested on moral conviction rather than evidence, and how reliably that conviction kept the evidence at bay. Regular Cheery Friday readers will recognize him: he’s Yellow Heights, author of Unbalanced: Memoir of an Immigrant Math Teacher—last week’s book pick, and well worth your time if you missed it.

Spotlight: The Mill Institute and the Case for Constructive Disagreement

If you care about open inquiry in K-12 education, the Mill Institute is doing work worth knowing about. Founded on the conviction that students need practice wrestling seriously with competing ideas—not just exposure to them—the Institute partners with schools to build the institutional structures, norms, and classroom practices that make constructive disagreement genuinely teachable.

Their current focus includes helping school leaders manage conversations about misinformation, broaden the range of perspectives in discussions of current events, and help teachers and students break out of intellectual echo chambers together. The data from their school partnerships are encouraging: teachers report measurable shifts in how students engage with views that differ from their own.

They’re now planning fall programming and looking to connect with K-12 leaders who want support in exactly these areas. Learn more at mill-institute.org or reach out directly at info@mill-institute.org.

The Ireland book is riveting, by the way. Start at page one and try to stop.

Still cheery, despite all of the above—

Barb Oakley

• Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!
• Mindshift—the book and MOOC
• Learn Like a Pro—the book and MOOC
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!

Cheery Friday Greetings from Barb Oakley!

Happy Friday! If you’re looking for a book recommendation, here’s one I genuinely mean: Nelson Dellis’s new Everyday Genius (Abrams Press)—and yes, I wrote the foreword, so you know I’m not just being polite.

Nelson is a six-time USA Memory Champion, which sounds impressive until you realize he started with the same average brain the rest of us have. What changed wasn’t his innate ability—it was the techniques he learned and practiced, under pressure, in real competition. That’s what makes this book different from the usual “unlock your potential” fare: these methods are battle-tested, not dreamed up in a lab.

The memory chapters alone are worth it. But he also covers mental math, card counting, speed reading, problem-solving, and—I’ll admit this surprised me—remote viewing and lucid dreaming. Whether you use all of it or just the parts that fit your life, you’ll come away thinking differently about what your brain can actually do.

Grab it this weekend. You won’t regret it.

When a Learning Scientist and a Memory Champion Walk Into the Same Podcast

Jeff Young’s “Learning Curve” podcast recently put together an unusual combination: me and Nelson Dellis, six-time USA Memory Champion, interviewed separately and then woven into the same episode. We didn’t plan our answers together, but we kept landing in the same place—which is either reassuring or alarming, depending on how you feel about what AI is quietly doing to human cognition.

Nelson’s side of the conversation is worth the listen on its own. He demonstrates how he encodes D-Day into a mental image involving Steve Jobs on a Normandy landing craft doing something I won’t spoil here. It is both ridiculous and impossible to forget, which is exactly the point.

Five Minds, One Mission: A Roundtable on Math Instruction

Something a little different this week—instead of a one-on-one conversation, I joined a lively roundtable on Kennet Fröjd’s podcast with four other people who have spent their careers trying to fix math education: Amanda VanDerHeyden (behavioral psychologist and founder of Spring Math), John Mighton (founder of Jump Math), Anna Stokke (mathematician and host of Chalk and Talk), and Craig Barton (author of How I Wish I’d Taught Maths: Reflections on research, conversations with experts, and 12 years of mistakes). What struck me about this conversation is that we all arrived at essentially the same conclusions from very different directions—behavioral psychology, cognitive science, classroom practice, curriculum design, and neuroscience—which I think is actually the most compelling argument that we’re onto something real. We dig into why multiple-strategy instruction backfires, what fluency actually means and why it matters, and why the biggest barrier to better math education isn’t teachers—it’s the layer of management above them. Worth a listen if you’ve ever wondered why so many kids leave school convinced they “just aren’t math people.”

Around the World and Back Again: Where You’ll Find Me in 2026!

One of my favorite things about this work is that it takes me everywhere—from Guatemala to Hong Kong, Tokyo to Göteborg, and a whole lot of places in between. If you’re in any of these cities and want to connect, or if your organization might be interested in a talk while I’m already in the region, just visit barbaraoakley.com to get in touch!

Here’s where I’ll be keynoting (mostly in person, but occasionally via web)

• March 9–13 — Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala City, Guatemala
• March 21 — IBM Tech2026, San Diego, CA (On “grokking” and “distilling” and your brain)
• March 31 — Healthcare Leadership Academy (webinar, UK)
• April 10–14 — The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Distinguished Speaker Series, Hong Kong
• April 16 — Coach A, Japan
• April 17 — Tohoku University, Japan
• April 18 — researchEd Tokyo, Japan
• April 25 — researchEd Colombia, Bogotá (webinar)
• Late April — Korea (dates TBD)
• May 5 — University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, TN
• May 11 — OMSCS Conference (Online Master of Science in Computer Science), Atlanta, GA
• May 21 — Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ
• June 5 — University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia (webinar)
• July 15–16 — Opening keynote and workshop, Biannual Cambridge Schools Conference, Cambridge, UK
• August 30–September 4 — co-chairing the 2026 Ernst Strüngmann Forum: “Memory, Learning, and Neural Adaptation in the Age of Cognitive Offloading,” Frankfurt, Germany
• September 17 — University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL, Gies College of Business
• October 6–9 — AHISA Leading Learning Caring Conference, Perth, Australia (webinar)
• November 20 — The Human Rise: Learning in a New Era, Göteborg, Sweden

It’s going to be quite a year! If you’d like to explore having me speak at your organization or institution—especially if you’re in one of these areas around the time I’ll be there—just visit barbaraoakley.com to get in touch.

That’s all for now. Have a happy New Year in learning!

Barb Oakley

• Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!
• Mindshift—the book and MOOC
• Learn Like a Pro—the book and MOOC
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!

Cheery Friday Greetings from Barb Oakley!

More Research, Worse Results—What’s Going On?

I’ve launched a Substack! My first post, “The Teaching Method That Can’t Fail (and Why That’s the Problem),” asks a question that’s been nagging at me for years. We have more research than ever on how to teach well. There are more education PhDs, more journals, more studies, more funded programs than at any point in history. And yet outcomes in country after country keep getting worse. How is that possible? Could the research itself somehow be part of the problem? The answer turns out to be yes—and the reason has a surprisingly simple structure. The comment section has turned into a conversation all its own, with psychologists, teachers, engineers, and parents from around the world weighing in. Have a look and join the discussion!

Book Pick: Unbalanced: Memoir of an Immigrant Math Teacher by Yellow Heights

What happens when a sharp-minded finance professional from China trades Wall Street for a whiteboard? Yellow Heights’ Unbalanced is a riveting, deeply personal account of one immigrant’s journey into American math teaching—and the bewildering educational culture he found waiting for him.

Yellow Heights came to teaching with the kind of intellectual curiosity and directness that made him successful in finance. What he discovered in his teacher preparation program stopped him cold. Instead of learning how to teach math well, he was immersed in ideology. Class time was devoted to exploring personal vulnerability rather than instructional methods. As the author dryly notes, what the program did not teach was that math teaching requires good math skills.

The real power of this book lies in what Yellow Heights saw once he got into the classroom. He grasped something many educators miss entirely—that learning operates at three levels: conscious understanding, mental muscle (the automaticity built through practice), and intuition. In American classrooms, he found students encouraged to explore but rarely required to practice deeply enough for genuine proficiency to take root—thinking without practicing, he writes, “can make learning empty and futile, like trying to learn tennis without wielding a racket.”

But his sharpest observations are about the culture of too much kindness. At his affluent private school, he watched well-meaning adults coddle students into fragility—providing so much accommodation that students never developed the skills to handle life’s inevitable challenges. He captures the self-fulfilling cycle perfectly: the more fragile students are perceived to be, the more support they receive, resulting in still more fragility, entitlement, and dependency. 

Unbalanced is that rare education book written by an outsider with no tribal loyalties to protect-someone who arrived with fresh eyes and the courage to describe what he actually saw. Yellow Heights isn’t grinding a political axe. He genuinely loves teaching, loves his students, and wants them to learn. That sincerity makes his critique all the more devastating. If you care about what’s actually happening inside American schools—and why so many well-intentioned efforts end up hurting the students they’re meant to help—this is essential reading.

What’s Resonating Right Now

A homeschooling mom named Janae recently posted a video comparing an 1877 arithmetic textbook to her son’s modern second-grade math book—and nearly 250,000 people watched it in under two weeks. The comparison is stunning. Ray’s New Primary Arithmetic from 1877 is a slim little volume that teaches one thing at a time: counting, then addition, then subtraction, then multiplication, then division, then word problems. It uses concrete objects like marbles and kernels of corn, progresses sequentially, and by the end is gently introducing algebra. Her son’s modern textbook, Envision Math 2.0, comes in two thick volumes with 13 authors, pages of Common Core standards, and asks second graders to “reason abstractly and quantitatively” and “construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.” The mom’s verdict? She finds the modern book so overstimulating and confusing that she can barely figure out what’s being asked. The 3,300 comments are flooded with teachers, engineers, and parents saying the same thing. This is what the cognitive science research has been saying for years, and it’s exciting to see so many people arriving at the same conclusion from lived experience. 

Evidence-Based Education Comes to Colombia

ResearchED Colombia launches in Bogotá on April 25—the first researchED conference in the country, and a landmark for evidence-based education in Latin America. The lineup includes speakers from the World Bank, Chile’s Aptus, and leading science-of-learning researchers, all focused on what the evidence actually says about how students learn. I’ll be presenting remotely on some fascinating new material about grokking and distillation in AI—and what it reveals about why a solid foundation in knowledge matters more than we thought. The conference is organized by Fundación Aprender a Quererte, whose founders include Morat, one of Colombia’s biggest bands. If you’re in Colombia or anywhere in the Spanish-speaking world, this is worth the trip. Details at researchedcolombia.com.

Calendar Party Trick (Courtesy of Nelson)

Let’s wrap the week with something a little different — and genuinely cool. In this quick video, Nelson Dellis (yes, the memory champion guy) walks through how to figure out the day of the week for any date — no phone, no calendar, just your brain. It’s surprisingly learnable — and just the right kind of nerdy to pull out at a dinner party or confuse your students into thinking you’re secretly a time traveler. Here’s the video!

That’s all for now. Have a happy month in learning!

Barb Oakley

• Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!

• Mindshift—the book and MOOC

• Learn Like a Pro—the book and MOOC

• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers

For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!

Why We Have Two Learning Systems: Max Bennett Made This Click

One book that has given me great insight as I dipped into it over these past few months was A Brief History of Intelligence by Max Bennett. What I appreciated most was how clearly it laid out why we have two fundamentally different learning systems—an older, model-free system for fast, automatic behavior, and a newer, model-based system for deliberate planning and simulation. Bennett doesn’t just describe them—he explains their evolutionary logic. The model-free system evolved first because it’s efficient: it repeats what worked before. The model-based system came later, letting us imagine possible futures before acting. What clicked for me was how this distinction maps onto everyday learning. Much of schooling aims at building the slow, deliberative capabilities we prize—things like reasoning, abstraction, or transfer. But when working memory gets overloaded, the brain defaults to the model-free system. That means students may fall into habits or superficial strategies even when we think we’re fostering deep understanding. Bennett’s evolutionary lens helped clarify why that happens—and why guidance and structure matter so much more than we often assume. [Hat tip: Brandon Hendrickson of Science is Weird.] 

Two Late Bloomers Talk About Learning, Struggle, and Second Chances

This week’s YouTube recommendation isn’t just a listen—it’s a reminder that brilliance can come from surprising places. In this conversation with John Mighton, mathematician, playwright, and the quiet force behind JUMP Math, we swap stories of being “hopeless” in math, getting books confiscated in class (twice), and coming to love a subject we once avoided like the plague. This is a great listen if you need inspiration about making changes in your life and career.

John and I share a similar arc—falling off the math train early, then climbing back on much later, one careful step at a time. We talk about what finally turned things around, what makes good math teaching so hard to scale, and why students don’t need to be taught less—they need to be taught better.

There’s some honest reflection here: how fear and learned helplessness can shape an entire life path, and how one good teacher—or one clear explanation—can change everything. It’s also a peek behind the scenes of our new course, Making Math Click, and why we both believe that math is far more accessible (and transformative) than people are led to believe.

You’ll hear a bit about flawed research incentives, air guitar pedagogy (it makes sense, I promise), and the odd story about division, group theory, and Sylvia Plath. But mostly, you’ll hear two educators trying—honestly and earnestly—to figure out how we can do better.

The course is perfect for teachers, parents, students, or anyone who thinks math is for “other people.” (It’s not.)

(The above link to the course is free–be sure to choose the “audit” rather than the “register for free” option.  If you have already gone into the course, go to your profile and remove it and then try the link again, choosing the “audit” link.)

Cheery Friday Spotlight: Bryan Betz and Learning How to Learn for English Language Learners

Looking for creative ways to introduce Learning How to Learn in your classroom—especially with English language learners? Meet Bryan Betz, an inspiring English teacher based in South Korea who’s combining academic language development with brain-based learning strategies. Bryan is running a book club where upper-elementary and middle school ELL students explore the core ideas of Learning How to Learn—from focused and diffuse thinking to chunking and metacognition. His students not only build essential study skills, but they also gain confidence in academic English.

Bryan has created a treasure trove of classroom-friendly materials: word-association puzzles, guided discussion questions, and clever fable pairings (like “The Blind Men and the Elephant” to teach focused vs. diffuse thinking). If you’re an educator hoping to adapt Learning How to Learn for multilingual learners, Bryan is happy to share what he’s doing—and learning—with others.

You can contact him directly at bbetz1985@gmail.com

AI vs. Human: Who’s the Better Writer (or Teacher)?

If you’ve ever wondered whether AI can write as well as a human—or teach like one—Patsy Bowden has been wondering too. In one piece, she revisits an old Coursera assignment to see if today’s readers (and AI detectors) can still tell the difference between authentic human quirks and algorithmic polish. In another, she dives into the strange new world of AI avatars teaching AI itself. Both are thoughtful, gently provocative reads about what it means to write, teach, and learn in an AI-shaped world.

• Do I Write Better Than Gen AI?

• Can an AI Teach AI? Learning From an Avatar

AI Can’t Learn for You (Sorry)

Next week I’ll be giving a talk for the National Science Foundation’s AI-Adult Learning & Online Education group on how we might use AI to support real learning—not replace it with shallow mimicry. I’ll share more thoughts from our recent paper, “The Memory Paradox,” including why memorization is still essential (yes, even now), how over-reliance on tools can quietly erode thinking, and why the popular idea of “just look it up” often undermines understanding. AI is here to stay—but whether it helps or harms learning depends entirely on how we use it.

🔗 Details and registration

Why Listening to Others with Differing Views Builds a Better Brain
In my recent conversation with Drew Perkins on the ThoughtStretchers podcast, we explored a topic that’s both close to my heart and backed by solid neuroscience: how engaging with opposing viewpoints—yes, even the ones that make us uncomfortable—actually strengthens our brain’s ability to think clearly. It’s counterintuitive, but shielding ourselves (and our students) from challenging ideas doesn’t make us safer—it makes us more brittle. If you’ve ever wondered what the inability to talk to others with different ways of thinking may be costing us cognitively (not to mention societally), you’ll want to give this episode a listen. And check out our “Speak Freely, Think Critically” course! (The link is to the free version, but be sure to check the “audit” button once you get in to ensure you’re in the free version.)

That’s all for now. Have a happy month in learning!

Barb Oakley

• Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!
• Mindshift—the book and MOOC
• Learn Like a Pro—the book and MOOC
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!

Cheery Friday—whenever it shows up in your inbox, from Coursera’s mighty email servers to you!

Greetings from sunny Tokyo! And (drumroll) our Book of the Week is!

Mental Models: How understanding the mind can transform how you work and learn, by Jim Heal & Rebekah Berlin. I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Jim Heal at the researchEd conference in Santiago, Chile a few days ago.  Jim is a rare and intuitive expert at translating deep research into practically-useful “on-the-job” insights—his presentation was so compelling that I immediately found myself digging into his and Rebekah Berlin’s compelling book Mental Models. Ever wondered how to best mentor a gaggle of new interns in learning new skills that you know how to do, but don’t even know how to put into words?  Jim and Rebekah’s book lays it all out, and far, far more: how to help learns create rich, accessible libraries (neural schemas) in their brains; how to make their learning “sticky,” how to structure and sequence ideas for best retention.  Whether you’re a leader, a professional, or an educator of any kind, you’ll find rich resources in this book. Highly recommended.

Fun Isn’t the Benchmark—Learning Is

In her characteristically clear-eyed style, Daisy Christodoulou dismantles the idea that education can—or should—be as “fun” as the latest TikTok trend. The core of her argument isn’t pessimism—it’s precision. Teaching aims at learning, not just attention, and that double aim makes it categorically different from entertainment. As Daisy notes, even the most well-designed learning tools are playing a rigged game: they’re optimizing for both engagement and understanding, while pure entertainment only needs to be addictive. It’s a sober but freeing insight. Instead of chasing the impossible, we can get back to what matters: designing instruction that works—even if it isn’t always fun. Read the whole article.

“Free Speech Is Like Air—You Don’t Miss It Until It’s Gone.”

This week, I joined the brilliant Bonni Stachowiak on the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast for a conversation that reached from Damascus in the 1400s to modern classrooms—and even the basal ganglia.

We talked about:

• Why metaphors are powerful tools for learning
  
• How free speech connects to neuroscience, history, and the classroom
  
• What Ibn Khaldun, narcissism, and the Roman Empire can teach us about intellectual humility
  
• And how we can teach courageously—without shutting down curiosity
  

It’s a conversation about learning, thinking, and teaching with integrity in an age of noise. Bonni is a wonderful guide, and this chat was one of the most memorable I’ve had.

🎧 Listen here: teachinginhighered.com/592

Whether you’re a fellow educator, a lifelong learner, or someone wondering how to foster real dialogue in challenging times—I hope you’ll find something that sticks.

A Hopeful Brain Hack for a More Civil Nation

In my recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, I touched on how our brain’s wiring can reinforce rigid thinking—and how that rigidity shows up in public life. Dr. Donna Chacko picked up the thread in her wonderful new blog post, diving deeper into how we can rewire our brains toward openness, curiosity, and real listening. She offers thoughtful, practical ideas—from mindfulness and meditation to the Enneagram and brave conversations with people who think differently. It’s an encouraging reminder that change starts with each of us. A heartening read for your weekend: We Can Rewire Our Brains and Revive Civility.

Need a Brilliant Nonfiction Editor or Book Coach?

Joanna Ng was my editor for over a decade on some of my favorite and most meaningful books. She’s a deeply insightful, thoughtful partner in the writing process—and she now has a brand-new website up at joannang.com! Joanna helps authors clarify their ideas, shape compelling proposals, and bring manuscripts to life with clarity, warmth, and power. If you’re working on a nonfiction book—or even just thinking about one—Joanna’s exactly the kind of calm, smart, experienced guide you’ll want in your corner. You can reach her at hello@joannang.com.

When David Joyner’s “DAI‑vid” Meets the Future of Teaching

Leave it to David Joyner (our co-instructor in “Teaching Online”) to make cloning yourself look like an act of pedagogical generosity. His new edX course, Foundations of Generative AI, isn’t just another MOOC—it’s an experiment in multiplying expertise. Joyner’s AI avatar, “DAI‑vid,” delivers the lectures, complete with a binary‑coded bracelet so you know when it’s the digital doppelgänger talking. What’s striking isn’t the gimmickry—it’s the principle. As Joyner puts it, AI doesn’t replace talent; it amplifies it. In his hands, it’s less about robots teaching humans and more about brilliant teachers scaling themselves to reach thousands who might never set foot in a Georgia Tech classroom. David’s course is a thoughtful reminder that the real revolution in education doesn’t come from replacing humans with machines—it comes from letting the best of both collaborate.

A Quick Tip About That Free Learning How to Learn Link

A few weeks ago, we shared a link to the full (free!) version of Learning How to Learn. (tinyurl.com/LHTL-free) Some learners who were already enrolled (and could only see Module 1) ran into a hiccup. The workaround?

Go to “My Learning” (under your Coursera profile), unenroll from the course, and then click the free link again—but be sure to select the “audit,” and NOT the “free 7 day trial” option. That should unlock full access [Hat tip Kevin MacTavish.]

Of course, many learners may still want to upgrade for a certificate—it’s a terrific way to showcase your learning on LinkedIn, and a great way to support Coursera’s amazing platform.

That’s all for now. Have a happy week in learning!

Barb Oakley

• Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!
• Mindshift—the book and MOOC
• Learn Like a Pro—the book and MOOC
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!

Cheery Friday!

Book of the Month: Anyone Can Play Music by Josh Turknett

I’m tickled to share a gem of a book with you—Anyone Can Play Music by neurologist and musician Josh Turknett. What makes this book special is how brilliantly Josh connects cutting-edge neuroscience with practical learning strategies. He explains how our automatic learning system (what he calls our “zombie subroutines”) works in the basal ganglia to create those wonderful automatic movements we need not just for music, but for any skill we’re trying to master. Josh’s insights about avoiding dependency on reading music and building true fluency by listening form uniquely counterintuitive, but useful learning insights. As both a neuroscientist-physician and accomplished musician, Josh brings a unique triple expertise that makes his teaching truly extraordinary. If you’ve ever thought you were “too old” or “not talented enough” to learn music—or anything else—this book will change your mind!

Free Speech Is Brain Food

In my latest Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Censorship Hurts Our Brains,“ I explore what neuroscience tells us about why open dialogue isn’t just a democratic value — it’s a cognitive necessity. When students (or any of us) are exposed only to one-sided messages, the brain’s habit circuits, especially in the basal ganglia, begin to lock in rigid grooves of thought that resist correction and flexibility. Cognitive flexibility, especially when taught early, helps preserve the neural agility we need for learning, empathy, and critical thinking. That’s the heart behind our course “Speak Freely, Think Critically.” 

I’ll be attending the MIT Free Speech Alliance Conference in Boston on September 25th. If you’re going to be there, please come say hello — it’s the perfect place to think together, learn together, and speak freely.

Juggling as a Part of Teaching 

One of the greatest aspects of world travel is the fascinating teachers I meet along the way. One such extraordinary teacher is Peter Bier, a Teaching Fellow in engineering mathematics at the University of Auckland—and also an accomplished juggler!

In his upcoming chapter for the book Juggling Education in the 21st Century, Peter describes a typical moment from one of his lectures:

“I’m standing in front of over 500 first-year university students, teaching them engineering mathematics, when I unexpectedly change gears and whip out some juggling balls from my bag. I juggle three balls, then four and then five, as I explain that our brains can deal with only so many ideas at once… To emphasize my point, I introduce a sixth ball and my pattern wobbles and then collapses.”

Peter’s juggling isn’t just for laughs—it’s a brilliant teaching tool. He uses it to illustrate physics concepts, anchor coding metaphors, and perhaps most powerfully, to teach students how they learn. Juggling becomes a gateway to everything from cognitive load theory to spaced repetition and deliberate practice.

His chapter, “A Positive Feedback Loop,” is full of insight, charm, and delightfully practical wisdom. And if you want to see some of that in action, check out his Traffic Light juggling trick, which brings cognitive complexity to life. (Here’s a little video showcasing his teaching approaches.) Peter Bier reminds us that great teaching doesn’t always come from the textbook. Bravo, Peter!

(Please contact the Youth Juggling Academy at YJA@juggle.org if you are interested in learning more about the curriculums and approach to juggling that the International Juggling Association is creating.)

Growing Whole, Curious, Critical Learners

In November, I’ll be back in Boston speaking at the hybrid conference Teaching Whole Learners: Applying Science to Create Social, Engaged, Thriving, Curious, Critical Thinkers (Nov. 14‑16, Boston or on Zoom). It’s a conference devoted to helping educators build learning environments where emotional well‑being, belonging, curiosity, and critical thinking all flourish. I’d love to see you there—or register for the online version and you’ll see some of my latest insights about how questioning narrows high-dimensional neural space to scaffold concepts for learners. (Trust me, it’s more fun than it sounds!)

Armenian magic: Conversations with the Great Dead

What if the greatest minds in history could speak to us today? That’s the irresistible premise behind Conversations With The Great Dead, a YouTube channel created by an imaginative historian and educator. Using a blend of AI and historical insight, he brings figures like Socrates, Cleopatra, and Marx back to life — and then interviews them about our modern world. The result? Thought-provoking, surprisingly funny, and sometimes delightfully unsettling conversations. After all, the dead have nothing left to lose… and everything left to say. (On a side note, I’m looking forward to arriving in Armenia on November 1st to meet the channel’s mysterious creator.)

That’s all for now. Have a happy week in learning!

Barb Oakley

• Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!
• Mindshift—the book and MOOC
• Learn Like a Pro—the book and MOOC
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!

Cheery Friday! (Emailing four million people at once is a bit like boarding a jumbo jet: not everyone gets on at the same time, so your Friday might arrive on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday….)

I’ve been working on something I’m especially excited about: SmarterHumans.ai. It’s a new platform designed around a deceptively simple goal — helping us actually remember what we learn.

Here’s the experience. You’re watching a Coursera lecture, reading a paper, or going through notes. With one click, SmarterHumans creates flashcards automatically — not just generic Q&A, but flashcards that are deep-linked back to the exact spot where you first saw the idea. When you review later, you’re not just testing recall; you can instantly revisit the original context in the video, PDF, or webpage. Add in a spaced-repetition algorithm that adapts to how well you know each concept, and you’ve got a memory system that fits seamlessly with the way real courses (like those on Coursera) are structured.

I’ve been using it with Coursera lectures as well as the deluge of new papers and books about genAI and breakthoughs in neuroscience. The difference is striking. Instead of scribbling notes I’ll never look at again, I end up with a living system: a set of flashcards that bring me back to the lecture itself. A concept that would have floated away after a week stays in play, resurfacing just when I’m about to forget it.

Why is this such a big deal? Because in today’s world, forgetting isn’t just a personal nuisance — it’s a societal issue. In our recent Memory Paradox paper, we traced how “outsourcing” memory (first to calculators, then to Google, now to AI) has contributed to something researchers are now measuring: IQ scores in developed countries have begun to decline. The more we rely on external aids, the less we engage the brain’s natural systems for building strong internal frameworks — what neuroscientists call schemata. Without those frameworks, our thinking becomes shallower, our creativity less flexible.

The paradox is this: forgetting is natural, even adaptive. But if we don’t practice remembering, we lose the very scaffolding that supports reasoning and problem-solving. That’s why retrieval practice matters so much. Every successful recall isn’t just a “got it right” moment; it’s a literal strengthening of the neural circuits that carry knowledge.

SmarterHumans is designed to make that process effortless. No juggling between note apps, flashcard apps, and course materials. No guessing when to review. Just a smooth loop of learning, review, and reinforcement — with your own materials at the center.

It doesn’t replace good old engagement, reflection, or practice. But it restores something modern education and technology have often left out: a way to keep what you learn.

And since September always has that back-to-school feel, here’s a little thank-you just for Cheery Friday readers: use the code CheeryFriday20 for 20% off at SmarterHumans.ai. It’s valid through the end of September—think of it as a nudge to make this your season for learning that really sticks.

Barb

P.S. The neuroscience is clear: retrieval practice isn’t about rote drill — it’s about building the circuits that make knowledge available for insight and creativity. SmarterHumans makes it easier to get those “memory reps” in, so ideas stick and stay alive long after the course ends.

• Uncommon Sense Teaching—the book and Coursera Specialization!
• Mindshift—the book and MOOC
• Learn Like a Pro—the book and MOOC
• The LHTL recommended text, A Mind for Numbers
• For kids and parents: Learning How to Learn—the book and MOOC. Pro tip—watch the videos and read the book together with your child. Learning how to learn at an early age will change their life!