In this episode, Priten speaks with Paul Blaschko, an assistant teaching professor of philosophy at Wake Forest University. Paul's work sits at the intersection of liberal education, critical thinking instruction, and course design. The central question driving their conversation: in an era of AI that can generate plausible-sounding arguments and explanations, can we still teach students to think critically—or must we fundamentally reimagine what critical thinking means?Key Takeaways:EdTech should solve existing problems, not create new ones. Paul approaches technology as a tool only when he's already facing a pedagogical challenge. This shifts the question from "what can this tool do?" to "what does my classroom need?"YouTube explainers preceded ChatGPT in reshaping how students research and learn. Long before AI, students were outsourcing understanding to video tutorials rather than wrestling with dense texts, revealing a deeper shift in how students approach knowledge.Critical thinking instruction requires direct practice with real arguments, not shortcuts around difficulty. There's no substitute for students actually constructing and defending their own positions through dialogue and written work, even when AI can do it faster.Scaling critical thinking instruction demands new infrastructure, not just new pedagogy. Paul and his team are testing whether platforms like Think Arguments can help instructors manage the feedback and iteration needed to teach reasoning at scale across institutions.AI may not replace the professor's role so much as expand it into explicit curation and judgment. In a world where explanations are abundant, the teacher's value shifts toward deciding which frameworks matter and helping students evaluate competing arguments.Paul Blaschko is an assistant teaching professor at the University of Notre Dame. He teaches God and the Good Life, a course dedicated to asking the big questions about meaning, morality, and faith. He also serves as the Director of the Sheedy Family Program in Economy, Enterprise, and Society, a program devoted to exploring how the humanities can help us find meaning in work. With Meghan Sullivan, he has co-authored The Good Life Method (Penguin Press, 2022), a book about how philosophy can help us live better lives. He is currently working on a book on the philosophy of work (under contract with Princeton University Press), and is the co-founder of a Notre Dame based tech start-up that aims to solve problems with dialogue on the internet.

As a healthcare executive, you are accustomed to scanning the annual balance sheet for the "usual suspects": multi-million dollar MRI machines, exorbitant pharmaceutical costs, and the crushing weight of regulatory compliance. But hiding within those numbers—completely invisible on any standard financial review—is a massive gaping hole that is bleeding your hospital dry. We call this the phantom cost of fear.In this episode, we pull back the curtain on the "Humility Advantage," a groundbreaking clinical report released in March 2026 by J Alexander, Adel Malas, and Chief Medical Strategist Dr. Brandon Bentz of Excelerate You. We aren’t just talking about "soft skills"; we are dissecting the hard, empirical neuroscience of interpersonal risk-taking and its direct impact on your bottom line.Inside the Episode:The $1.7 Million Exit Interview: Why a single specialist leaving can cost a hospital up to $1.7 million, and why the "financial bleed" starts the second a clinician psychologically withdraws.The Amygdala Hijack: Why traditional "resilience training" and meditation apps fail. We explore how chronic stress physically thickens the brain's fear pathways, making empathy and curiosity biologically inaccessible.The Air Force Blueprint: How the military used "Red Boards" and "Stop Work Authority" to return $500 million to the Department of Defense—and how these exact mechanisms translate to the OR and ICU.The 16-Week Rewiring: A deep dive into the GOLD Operating System and the four stages of psychological safety. Learn how to move your team from "Quiet Quitting" to "Active Disclosure" using biological circuit breakers.The Workforce Capital Audit: Why J Alexander, Adel Malas, and Dr. Brandon Bentz argue that this audit is an existential necessity for Critical Access Hospitals and a fiduciary responsibility to the community.If you are a CEO, Chief Medical Officer, or Nursing Director, you are currently making a choice: you can continue to let capital bleed blindly into turnover, or you can intentionally redirect it toward a neuroscience-grounded solution.Is your leadership culture an asset or a liability?Download the full clinical evidence report and start your audit today: https://excelerateyoucoaching.com/white-paper

In this episode teacher leader Laura Stam shares personal experiences in her journey to continual improvement in her teaching practice.Laura also describes her experience of participating in an instructional coaching cycle for the first time.Links:X: @stamstam193Facebook: @Mrs.Stam.2021

Dr. Mario Acosta spent 20 years of his educational career as a teacher, instructional coach, assistant principal, academic director, and principal leading schools with diverse profiles. He was named the 2022 Principal of the Year in the state of Texas while he was the principal at Westwood High School, a U.S. News & World Report top-50 campus and member of the High Reliability Schools (HRS) Network.His latest book is The Schools Our Students Deserve: A Comprehensive Framework for Shaping Exceptional School Culture.In this episode, recorded for The Authority Podcast, Mario and host Ross Romano discuss:What are the schools our students deserve? Are we asking this question enough?The current state of schools and identifying the gapsOutcomes students deserve…The values to center in a school’s cultureMany schools saw temporary bursts of innovation after the pandemic, but struggled to sustain them. How can leaders build on the urgency of that moment and create lasting change?How does a leader take charge of the culture? Building support from the communityAttracting high-quality educators and retaining them long-termAbout the hostRoss Romano is a co-founder of the Be Podcast Network and CEO of September Strategies, a coaching and consulting firm that helps organizations and high-performing leaders in the K-12 education industry communicate their vision and make strategic decisions that lead to long-term success. Connect on Bluesky or LinkedIn I also host Sideline Sessions, a podcast for coaches and parents of student-athletes. The show features conversations with coaches and performance experts in the NFL, NBA, NCAA, Olympics, and more. Listen here: https://bit.ly/3Rp0QGt 

Dr. Chad Dumas is a Solution Tree PLC at Work®, Assessment, and Priority Schools associate and international consultant, presenter, and award-winning researcher whose primary focus is collaborating to develop capacity for continuous improvement. His latest book is The Teacher Team Leader Handbook: Simple Habits to Transform Collaboration in a PLC at Work®.We discuss:Foundations and actions of teacher team leadersHow important to establish the mission of the PLC?The book has Swiss Army Knife-like tools for leaders — you don’t use them all every time you pull out the knife, but you have what’s needed for the situationRole and responsibilities of the teacher team leaderThe assumptions a team leader must makeWho selects the leader?When it’s time to build capacity and when it’s time for a resetGet the book here: https://nextlearningsolutionspress.com/ttlh/Hear my previous conversation with Chad on episode 132, Let’s Put the C in PLC with Chad Dumas.About the hostRoss Romano is a co-founder of the Be Podcast Network and CEO of September Strategies, a coaching and consulting firm that helps organizations and high-performing leaders in the K-12 education industry communicate their vision and make strategic decisions that lead to long-term success. Connect on Bluesky or LinkedIn I also host Sideline Sessions, a podcast for coaches and parents of student-athletes. The show features conversations with coaches and performance experts in the NFL, NBA, NCAA, Olympics, and more. Listen here: https://bit.ly/3Rp0QGt