In this episode,  Rachael Thrash — educator, author, and Senior Director at Big Bad Boo Studios — joins Mike Caldwell to challenge the gap between student voice and student ownership. With 25+ years in education, Rachel argues that GPA-gated student councils and empty surveys exclude the students who need to be heard most. Through real examples of students solving real school problems, she shows what happens when kids are given genuine agency. She also walks through her new book Let the Learners Lead, a practical toolkit for educators ready to co-create school culture with students — not just for them

Dr. Brandon Bentz spent over two decades as a Head and Neck Surgical Oncologist — training at Northwestern, fellowshipping at Memorial Sloan Kettering, serving as a Naval officer on September 11th, and building a career that most physicians only dream of. Then, in his final year of practice, his mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, his father with Alzheimer's — and his hospital posted his job without a single conversation.In this episode, we unpack Dr. Bentz's story: the residency nights, the moral injury, the emotional weight of cancer care, and the moment he made the hardest decision of his career. This is not a burnout statistic. This is what burnout actually looks like from the inside of a surgical career.If you work in healthcare — or love someone who does — this one is not optional.

Schools are under enormous pressure to produce outcomes—test scores, graduation rates, and college readiness indicators. But what happens when those outcomes become the primary lens through which we see young people?In this conversation, Alexander Kopelman, founder of the Children's Art Guild and author of For Real: Helping Children Remain Their Authentic Selves in a Limiting World, explores the messages children receive about who they're supposed to be, why authenticity matters in learning, and how educators can create spaces where students are valued not just for what they achieve, but for who they are becoming.

In this episode, Priten speaks with Brad Bushman, professor of communication at The Ohio State University and a leading researcher on human aggression, about what children learn from violent media and why the same questions now extend to AI and robots. Bushman has spent decades studying how violent television, video games, music, and even scripture shape behavior. The conversation works through the mechanics of how children absorb behavioral scripts from role models, what parents can realistically control, how to weigh the evidence, and what happens as chatbots and companion robots become part of children's lives.Key Takeaways:Children learn behavioral scripts from rewarded role models, including media characters. Bushman explains that kids retrieve "scripts" for how to act in a given situation, and violent characters in media are almost always rewarded and rarely punished. Whether content is active (video games) or passive (TV) matters less than the content itself.The most effective parental mediation is the one parents do least. Restricting content and time helps, but watching alongside a child and actively discussing what they see is the most effective approach. Passive co-viewing is the worst option, because silence signals that the violent content is acceptable.Content matters more than the medium, but more senses amplify the effect. Reading violent text, hearing violent lyrics, and watching violent music videos all increase aggression, with effects growing as more senses are involved. In one study, scripture passages describing sanctioned killing increased aggression, especially among believers and especially when God was said to approve.Media violence is a modest risk factor, but the one we can actually change. Aggression is almost never caused by a single factor. Unlike low IQ, poverty, addiction, or being male, exposure to violent media is controllable, which Bushman frames like a media diet. In lab studies, just 20 minutes with a violent game produces measurable differences.Aggression toward robots and AI is a new and open question. Bushman cites HitchBot, a hitchhiking robot destroyed in the US after surviving trips abroad, and notes people are more aggressive toward robots framed as objects than as companions. Whether companion bots that never push back distort young people's expectations of real relationships is, in his words, something theory predicts but the data has not yet tested.

EP 30 - Stop Spamming Applications: How to Actually Stand Out in Your Job SearchAI has made it easy to write a polished resume and send hundreds of applications. That is also why the old volume strategy is breaking. In this episode, Aaron Makelky and Dan Yu talk about prompt injections in job postings, Aaron's test against four AI models, and why mass-applying can leave you buried in a pile of identical candidates.They also talk about what works better: referrals, networking, and permissionless projects that show a hiring team what you can do before they hire you. Dan shares his "zero for 200" Wall Street story, where 200 mailed resumes got no response and one softball game led to an internship.Timestamps:00:00:43 - Everyone is using AI to apply00:03:28 - Prompt injections in job postings00:04:30 - Testing prompt injections on four AIs00:06:33 - Should companies use AI traps?00:07:55 - Colleges teaching students to spam00:09:01 - Why the volume game is dead00:10:11 - Standing out with permissionless projects00:13:30 - Why custom work beats AI output00:18:24 - The power of referrals00:20:02 - Zero for 200: a networking story00:23:53 - Connection beats volumeCo-hosts:Aaron Makelky - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-makelky-m-a-ed-038b852a3/Dan Yu - https://www.linkedin.com/in/danoyu/Links:FutureProof You - https://futureproof-you.comFutureProof You on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/futureproof-you