Human Restoration Project

6:40

To Learn is to Be w/ Cassie Nastase

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/10/03

Earlier this summer we released audio narrations of pieces from our upcoming progressive education primer, the opening essay, We Are Worldbuilders, and Teaching in the Wreckage of the Real, that you can find on this podcast feed. But these two upcoming episodes are special.The next episode after this one will be episode 200, and it’ll be a listener guided look back through our archives going way back to the before-times of 2018. If you want to share an episode that was particularly special or

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27:23

Building the Appalachia of the Future w/ Appalachian...

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/09/19

"Appalachia has a history and culture worth preserving, and a future worth pursuing," reads The Big Idea on AFP's homepage. The Appalachian Futurism Project’s mission is to leverage educational, cultural, and economic resources to develop an ecosystem across the region where young people are part of imagining and co-designing the Appalachia of the future. And joining me to talk about are two of the people doing this work, Dustin Hensley and Hannah Askew of the Appalachian Futurism Project, based out

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58:19

People-Based Learning w/ Dr. Jane Shore

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/09/05

In case you’re not familiar at all with the Katamari video game series. As the player, you navigate this ball that starts off small at first until everything in the environment sticks to you, and by the end of a level you have entire buildings, trees, cars, and all manner of flora and fauna stuck to you. I have the sense that my guest today is a human katamari. Every experience and interaction sticks, and she’s made it the mission of her life to make sense of it all. Dr. Jane Shore is an author,

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47:34

The Myth of the Unmotivated Student w/ Dr. Erika Patall

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/08/22

At some point every exasperated teacher has thrown up their hands and repeated some version of "these kids just aren't motivated." Yet schools respond to unmotivated kids with the same toolkit every single time — carrots and sticks, points and prizes, lunch detentions, indoor recess, and on and on. Viewed through the lens of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, we start to see how the daily experience of school conspires to frustrate and thwart almost everything we understand about motivation. And

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56:44

Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the...

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/08/01

On Friday, July 31st, we hosted Dr. Ginie Servant-Miklos for a Q&A about her book Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World As We Know It. This was the conclusion of our Pedagogies of Collapse book club, where we met biweekly to discuss the book and its implication for education. Here is the full unedited Q&A. I wanted to give you a heads up that this conversation gets heavy pretty quickly, includes explicit language, and remind you that HRP is a nonpartisan

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52:23

The Power of Critical Play w/ Dr. Mary Flanagan

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/07/18

We all grew up playing games — I fondly remember playing Go Fish with my grandma and her next door neighbor, as a 90s kid who grew up with an NES, it felt like every console generation was a leap forward in graphics and game quality, and, regardless of who you’re cheering for, tomorrow’s World Cup final will be watched by an estimated 2 billion people.But even though at some point many of us stop playing games—even if we don’t stop paying attention to them—we hold onto the experiences, the feelings,

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68:34

Restoring Humanity to "Special Education": Global...

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/07/04

Hey there, Nick here at Human Restoration Project. We took the longest break in our podcast’s history last month, and I hope you were able to take a break, too. We’re back for biweekly releases through the summer starting today with Dr. Sarah Benson. Sarah is Associate Professor in Inclusion and Disabilities at the University of Birmingham campus in Dubai where she teaches students from around the world as Head of Subject group for the School of education and lecturer for inclusion and special needs

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27:27

Teaching in the Wreckage of the Real: A Narration

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/05/30

This summer, HRP is reading Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World As We Know It, by Ginie Servant-Miklos, and we’re inviting you to join us. Visit humanrestorationproject.org/book-club to sign up for our summer book club, where we'll meet to discuss the ideas and implications of Pedagogies of Collapse and be joined by the author, for a Q&A on July 31. I’ll include a link to the book in the show notes, which is available on Open Access through Bloomsbury. Hope to

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14:30

We Are Worldbuilders: A Narration

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/05/16

Progressive education is a world-building project rooted in the radical hope that schools can become something fit for human beings.This summer, HRP is reading Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World As We Know It, by Ginie Servant-Miklos, and we’re inviting you to join us. Visit humanrestorationproject.org/book-club to sign up for our summer book club, where we'll meet to discuss the ideas and implications of Pedagogies of Collapse and be joined by the author, for a

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57:19

The Future of Public Education is a Community School...

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/05/02

This conversation started 2 years ago, when I ran into Kelly McMahon at a summer conference. Kelly’s a kindergarten teacher at Hoover Community School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and I was curious about what that label “community school” means in practice for teachers, students, and the community served by this new model for the area.I’ve since learned that just because your kids attend Ames Community School District, for example, that doesn’t mean they attend a “community school.” Kelly put me in touch

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67:51

The Promise (and Persistent Myths) of Montessori...

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/04/18

Montessori schools are some of the few that wear their pedagogy on their signage: Cottontail Creek Montessori School. Montessori Children’s House. Acappella Montessori. (just to name a few of the dozen or so in Iowa). While the majority are private schools, there’s a growing number of public Montessori schools and programs as well. I think because of these two factors, being largely private and one of the only public-facing pedagogies around, you don’t necessarily have to be acquainted with the

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4:40

Spring Break 2026: HRP Summer Book Club & Montessori...

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/04/04

This summer, HRP is reading Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World As We Know It, by Ginie Servant-Miklos, and we’re inviting you to join us. Visit humanrestorationproject.org/book-club to sign up for our summer book club, where we'll meet to discuss the ideas and implications of Pedagogies of Collapse and be joined by the author, for a Q&A on July 31. I’ll include a link to the book in the show notes, which is available on Open Access through Bloomsbury. Hope to

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88:58

Reanimating the Art of Teaching w/ Gary Stager

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/03/21

There’s a quote from the great conservationist John Muir that goes, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." My guest today, Gary Stager, has been working in education since before I was born, and I turn 40 this summer, so the sense that you get talking to Gary about teaching and learning is that when you try to pick out anything by itself, you find it hitched to everything else in the universe.Gary has been prolific as an author and

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44:03

What Prison Can Teach Us About School w/ Jennifer...

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/03/07

Tomorrow, I’ll be trading Iowa for a couple days in Los Angeles, where the HRP team will be presenting for the third year at LearningInspirEd’s Student Power Summit. It’s in LA this year in partnership with Homeboy Industries, the largest gang rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world. The founder, Father Greg Boyle, is quoted on the Homeboy homepage saying, “We imagine a world without prisons, and then we try to create that world,”. And I’m really looking forward to meeting and talking with

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43:13

Making School Meaningful w/ Lauren Porosoff

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/02/21

Whether it was during her nearly two decades as a middle school humanities teacher or as diversity coordinator or grade-level team leader, my guest today kept returning to the same question: why does school so often feel like the opposite of learning?Lauren Porosoff’s answer isn't a new program or a new curriculum, instead she offers a holistic way of thinking about how systems are connected to outcomes. And Lauren joins me today to talk about compensatory programs: the wellness kits, the diversity

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41:42

From Meritocracy to Human Interdependence: Redefining...

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/02/07

In a 2021 interview, Michael Sandel, author of the book The Tyranny of Merit argues that if merit can be understood as competence, a good thing to be clear, “The principle of meritocracy, simply put, says that if chances are equal, the winners deserve their winnings.” But as we grapple with meritocracy, or systems built around the idea that those who get ahead are deserving, he says, “What makes merit a kind of tyranny is the way it attributes deservingness to the successful.” How are we supposed to

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57:04

Changing My Mind About Schools (and Everything Else)...

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/01/24

“This is a book about my life, about admitting ‘I was wrong,’ and about how important it is to say it out loud,” is how our guest today, Diane Ravitch, begins her 2025 memoir, An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else.What follows is her incredible life’s journey spanning nearly nine decades, from learning to write as a left-hander using a quill pen at her Texas public school to becoming one of the most influential leaders of the modern conservative American

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27:13

Why Fascists Fear Teachers w/ Randi Weingarten

Human Restoration Project ·

2026/01/10

HRP is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3), and the views expressed by our guests are their own and do not constitute and endorsement.“Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping?” The most dangerous person in the world is Randi Weingarten. It’s not a close call.” At least, that’s what Mike Pompeo, the former CIA Director and former US Secretary of State, told a reporter in 2022.Three years later, Randi Weingarten’s rebuttal takes the form of a book, Why Fascists Fear

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99:39

Crash Course Social Studies Education w/ Raoul Meyer

Human Restoration Project ·

2025/12/20

If you’ve taught or attended a high school course in the last decade, you’ve probably watched a Crash Course video. Their dozens of playlists on topics from Biology and Environmental Science to Economics and World History hold hundreds of videos and have collected over 2 billion views. Maybe even just hearing the title conjured John Green’s urgent cadence and the characteristic cartoon aesthetic in your mind, or the show’s outro, if you couldn’t hit the pause button fast enough, where John thanks

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60:07

Cultivating Creativity and Connection in the...

Human Restoration Project ·

2025/12/06

How do you define creativity?Would you be able to spot creativity in the wild?What about creativity in the classroom?This endless human quest to define the seemingly undefinable, and somehow make it useful for educators, is what today’s guests Tom Rendon and Zachary Stier set out to do, bringing together philosophy, neuroscience, and site visits, in a years-long collaboration that became Creativity in Young Children: What Science Tells Us and Our Hearts Know.In this conversation, Tom and Zach help

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