You're reading Scholé Supplement, the bi-weekly newsletter that celebrates curiosity, learning and life as a grokkist.
🎉 The Still Curious Podcast is back for Season 3
🎙 Multidisciplinary creative Sam Hoffman is crafting a story to get something done
🍬 In Snackables you can encounter surreal wildlife, meet an expert in designing learning experiences, and get a working understanding of nuclear fusion in a few minutes
🎉 Still Curious Podcast is back for Season 3
I'm very excited to share the new season of Still Curious with you, starting today.
Curiosity is a powerful gift that too many of us lose as we get older – ground down, beaten out of us or burnt away through our daily encounters with an uncaring world.
But some of us still have our curiosity intact. The still curious among us are the ones who are led through life by our interests. We don’t always have a clear destination in mind and we rarely get there in a straight line. We tend to live episodically, looking for what’s interesting and meaningful to us and then throwing ourselves into it with a sense of exploration, energy and wonder for as long it can hold our interest.
For Still Curious people, grokking new things is a way of life. We are grokkists. And whether we know it or not, behind our sometimes squiggly careers, we are quietly knitting together all our diverse experiences into a Red Thread, which we unspool to those around us as practical wisdom that enriches whatever practice we happen to be engaged in at the moment.
On the Still Curious podcast, I bring you cosy and engrossing conversations that go inside the rich lived experiences of grokkists from many walks of life as they reflect out loud about the paths they’ve taken and who they have become along the way.
What if I'm not really a podcast person...?
No problem. Each episode also has its own digest page that summarises the main points and takeaways, complete with audio highlight snippets and a full interactive transcript.
What's different in Season 3?
The most common feedback I get from guests is that I ask great questions.
With the new season, I'm leaning into further into the quality angle, which means less frequent episodes but more time spent on research, editing and post-production to produce a rich and engaging conversation throughout the full runtime.
Each podcast is a detailed case study sketch of grokkist life. In the new season, you can expect more direct discussion about being a grokkist, and my guests and I will more explicitly connect the red thread that runs through each guest's life experiences.
“I’m crafting a story to get something done” - Sam Hoffman | S3E1
Sam is a multidisciplinary creative with roots in copywriting and content creation for Broadway shows and Fortune 500s. He's also a high school speech and debate coach with one of the nation's top programs.
Sam has a mischievous personality and since a young age he has been driven by a desire to get a rise out of people and make them laugh. He's also bonkers obsessed with social media:
"At it's core, it's just a curiosity about people. And every single person, across every single political affiliation, religious affiliation, at least in the more developed world, has that thing in their hand that can make content. And they're doing it, words and pictures, and that's just wild to me. so I try to understand all the different language being used across all of these different places, I don't know, it's just the innate curiosity about human beings."
I had a great time with Sam discussing his squiggly career through advertising, content strategy and competitive acting coaching, and loved hearing his insights on creative strategy and the seduction of authentic storytelling and storydoing.
Key Topics
- Sam’s background and journey in corporate advertising, copywriting and content creation, and why he loves chasing eyeballs
- Sam's journey as a speech and debate coach, and why speech and debate is a great way to develop one's own voice and values
- What Sam means by authentic storytelling with purpose
"To grok, which is a way to find your own path and your own education and put different pieces together, is very much something that resonates with me. I do think I view myself as a grokkist. It's a path towards learning that I hope is something that can resonate with everyone and especially I think in the last decade or two, it's been easier than ever.
🍬 Snackables
Assorted awesome links, just because.
@colethesciencedude Nuclear Fusion In A Nutshell: Part 1 #fyp #science #nuclear #fusion #learn
♬ original sound - ColeTheScienceDude
Cole the Science Dude makes neat TikTok explainer videos on science/math/tech topics. Here he is talking about nuclear fusion. His videos are clear, short and accessible. TikTok at its best!
Interesting and entertaining article about the way mediaeval monks fretted about their wandering minds and found their own ways to concentrate while navigating the demands of work and social ties and the distractions presented by new technologies, hundreds of years ago. Own your workflow! (🙏🏼 thanks to Luke M)
Jet lag
A pair of apps for helping to manage jet lag and shift work, respectively, by keeping track of circadian rhythms, melatonin, caffeine and other factors. You'll know if it's for you.
An Insta account dedicated to surreal wildlife and pet portraits. You're welcome.
Dr Philippa Hardman
Philippa Hardman is someone to follow for anyone with an interest in instructional design or designing learning experiences more broadly. She gets right to the point, proposes thought-provoking solutions, and provides lots of useful resources. In this article, she does research which finds 'a whopping 98.8% of the learning experiences analysed were not optimised for learner motivation, learning gain or mastery.' Sounds about right! I don't always agree with Dr Hardman's conclusions, but I'm always richer for engaging with her perspective.