Synthesis School Co-Founder on Game-Based Learning and Breaking Age-Segregated Education

Chrisman Frank [00:00:00] How I see it. And I think that religions are like these sources of ancient wisdom and parts of them are gonna be wrong because humans are fallible. And it's, it's, you know, we can always make progress by course correcting, but if you throw out the whole thing, you kind of, you know, you don't, you don't arrive at a better solution. 'cause it takes time to figure out what the good solutions are. I'm Christina Hudson Kohler, an egg processing manager living in Syracuse, New York. And you are listening to the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:29] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we explore something that is deeply important to me, the education of children. I have on today, a man named Chrisman Frank, who has started up a program called The Synthesis School, where they bring together children to be able to do a different sort of problem solving that helps them think about education and grow in what they know and what they're curious about In very interesting ways. I met Chrisman through the world of Twitter. I saw him interacting with people that you may remember, Anna Lorena Rega, talking about this school. And I have to say, many of the things I expected Chrisman to say he didn't say. And his take on education throughout this entire conversation is novel and will challenge you. And we'll give you some new ways to think about, Hey, how does this apply to me? Is this something that I want for my kids? I really enjoyed this conversation with Chrisman, and I'm sure we will have him on again for future podcasts. Right now, most of my time when I'm not doing interviews is spent doing Legacy Interviews, which is where I, in interview loved ones of people to discover what is their life story. To have them tell about their childhood, about their career, about why they chose who they married and what their role as a parent was. And then we always finish off with them describing their legacy and the things that they wanna leave behind. This has become a great service, one that has grown and grown, and now I'm doing mostly full-time. And so if you're interested in having me interview a loved one so that you can preserve it on video to share with the family, or to leave something behind, you can go to Art Store, Articulate Ventures, and click on the link for Legacy Interviews.

Vance Crowe [00:02:15] We are working on moving into a new studio, but we also do them over Zoom. So if your loved one has a little trouble getting around, we would love to be able to interview them. We can do it just the same way we do these podcast interviews. All right, without further ado, we're gonna head to this interview with Chrisman Frank. Chrisman. Frank, welcome to the podcast.

Chrisman Frank [00:02:35] Hey, hey, thanks for having me.

Vance Crowe [00:02:38] Well, I think education is always on the minds of people that have kids, right? How am I gonna get them ready for the world that's around them? I think particularly in today's day and age, education is at the very top of people's minds in between COVID restrictions and people realizing what's going on with public education, and then with just some of the things that are being taught in schools that I think, I think frighten a lot of parents. So I'm excited to have you on to talk about your program that goes by Synthesis School. So maybe the best place to start is what is Synthesis and how are you involved with it?

Chrisman Frank [00:03:11] Yeah, yeah. So I mean, to to that, to your point about, you know, education being on a lot of people's minds today, I think, you know, there's a couple reasons for that. One is there's this like breakdown of institutional trust and, and there's sort of like this realization that maybe the people who are teaching the kids and setting the curriculum don't have the same values as as, as the parents, right? And in many cases, the, the, the not, not, you know, not, not so much the teachers or the people like running the system are, they're just explicit about that. Like, parents don't, shouldn't get a say in what the kids learn. Like we're, we're the experts. So I think that's where like a lot of this, you know, a lot of the kind of heat comes from in that, in that regard. So syn synthesis, we got our start actually Elon Musk was kind of in the same position as, as a lot of parents. I mean this was like seven or eight years ago, but his kids were going to, you know, really fancy private school and he just realized the school was not doing the things that he wanted to do. And so he hired my co-founder, Josh, who was a teacher at the school and said like, Hey, let's, let's start, let's start from first principles and just think like, how do we build, you know, an education for, for our, for our kids that teaches 'em to solve problems? 'cause you know, the world's got lots of problems. If we wanna move technology and science forward and, and just build a better world and have more progress, we need kids who can solve problems. And it's not clear that that is even the goal of the current system.

Chrisman Frank [00:04:43] And if it is the goal, they're not achieving it very well. And so Josh went there and he went to a SpaceX and started a school for Elon's kids and a handful of other families at SpaceX. And he developed this really cool problem solving class called Synthesis, which is sort of, you know, this is where the company gets our, our name. It's, it's the kids. They, they, they solve problems in the form of team games. So it's sort of like a team sport for, for problem solving. And I went down to SpaceX and saw this about seven years ago, and I saw the kids engage with it. They were, you know, they were like 12 years old shouting these really complex sounding arguments at each other. And I was just blown away by both, by how engaged they were and, and by the sophistication of, of, of their conversations. And I was just like, wow, this is the future of education. And I was really excited about that. And then as soon as that kind of high wore off, I, my stomach kind of sank. 'cause I had a 2-year-old at the time and I was just like, I'm never gonna be able to get him this kind of education. And, you know, that just made my stomach sink. Like I wanted the best for him. And, you know, just kind of seen the promised land and then had it taken away. 'cause like, I'm not an engineer at SpaceX. I couldn't get my kid in that school. And so I tried to convince Josh to, to, to do, to, to start a school in the Bay Area where I was living at, at the time for, so my kids could join it. And he, he was just like not really interested in that and kind of had his hands full working for Elon.

Chrisman Frank [00:06:18] But fast forward, you know, five years Josh and I become, become good friends and kept talking about education, you know, kind of how things should be and kind of talked about doing something together in the future. And, and then COVID hit in, in, you know, 2020 and people kind of started looking at education, you know, kind of, kind of looking at different options outside the system, very forced to because of COVID shutting the schools down. And at that same time, Elon's kids finished with, with Ad Astro, which was the SpaceX school. And so Josh was kind of, you know, free to, to do his own thing, be a free agent. And so we started this company, which basically takes that class from at Astra, which is, you know, only available to a handful of families and, and was the most innovative part of, of the most innovative school. And we're trying to make that available to everyone. So that's, that's the company in a nutshell.

Vance Crowe [00:07:08] So when I was approaching you about this, 'cause I know I've had Anna Lorena Rega on, and I know she's been a very strong proponent of synthesis school. I was under the impression that what you were doing was several hours a day, maybe four or five online, but now it's sounding like this is the synthesis part of the school is not all day, every day online. Can you tell me a little bit more about just like, how does it work in practice?

Chrisman Frank [00:07:33] Yeah, yeah. So it, it's, it's primarily, most, most people are doing just an hour a week right now. So just kind of like the, that one sort of sort of class period. And we just started there because it's, you know, strategically as a company, there, there are a lot of people that get into education and they do something like they start a school and you kind of try to do all the, all the pieces of it at once. And what we, what, you know, Josh and I talked about this a lot, but what, what they had at, at Astra, like most, a lot of it was like kind of normal stuff. Like they would, they were doing normal math, but they were just doing it faster. They were doing biology, but they're just doing it faster than like normal places. But it was like kind of the, the standard system. But there were synthesis and, and it primarily is like this totally different thing that's like, you know, it's just hard to get anywhere else. And so our strategy has been like, get that to as many people as we can. Let's build this up and, and scale that out. And by doing that, we are attracting the kind of students we want to build a network. So the people who are most likely to advance science and technology in the future and solve complex problems and move humanity forward. We're building a network of these kids and we'll start adding more, more classes and more experiences till, until eventually you can get, you know, four or five hours a day on, on census. But I don't actually think that's, I don't know how necessary that is in our age range, like eight to 14, I think my, my son's in synthesis and he does like two hours a week.

Chrisman Frank [00:09:04] I would like to ramp it up to like, you know, 90 minutes, two hours a day, something like that. He's eight. And I think that's enough, like intensity and, and rigorous learning time. And then the rest of the time we have 'em, like outside in, in the woods or, or going to the beach or just, just being a kid and like playing, right? So there's, there's this intense like learning how to think and solve problems. And it, it is very intense. It's like exhausting. You can't, you can't do it all day and then, and then the rest of the time, you know, go read books or, or be a kid.

Vance Crowe [00:09:31] Well, I gotta say, this is actually a big plus for me. I remember when I was looking at what you guys were doing and thinking about it being a large model of being online, I was like, it doesn't really matter how cool it is. I don't want my children online all the time, and I'm very interested in this. I have a daughter that's not quite too yet, but just in the same position where you're, you're already beginning to understand, hey, there's some education that has to be done outside of the house on some level, right? They like, there's just things either I don't have time to do or that other people probably have a capacity that I don't. Yeah.

Chrisman Frank [00:10:02] So

Vance Crowe [00:10:03] When you talk about synthesis school or that hour that they're spending, can you describe what, what that's like?

Chrisman Frank [00:10:09] Yeah, yeah, a little bit. Some, some of it's kind of, kind of kind of secretive so the kids don't know exactly what to expect, which is, which is part of the fun. But they'll, they'll learn basically if they, if they sign up and they, and they start, they'll start in foundation, which is kind of like getting, getting the basics of synthesis. It's a three month program. You kind of see, you get the basics and you figure out, you know, if, if this is something for you and you want to continue in, you'll be in a class with, with, with 15 to 18 other students. And then you're just gonna be thrown into, we'll put you in the, you know, like zoom breakout rooms. So groups of like four, three or four. And you'll get a problem that's basically looks like, like a video game and you'll just be told like, okay, figure it out. And then all the kids will like, you know, be like, what? Like, what, what, what do you, they're waiting for instructions and we're just like, there's no instructions. Like you're gonna, you figure out how to play the game and how to win. And so we, we will leave them for like 10 minutes trying to figure out the, the situation and then, and then the, the game will, will end and they'll, they'll have scores and then we'll kind of bring everybody together and then be like, okay, what did, what did you learn? Like, what did you figure out? And then again, they're, they'll kind of start off if they're in normal school, like kind of kind of shy about that and not know what to say and not want to give the wrong answer. But it, you know, eventually they get kind of drawn, drawn into it and start throwing out some, some conjectures and some ideas and, and criticizing each other's ideas. And then, and then, so we'll do that reflection period, and then we'll go back and play again and see what we learned. So they're, they're doing, doing, you know, doing the scientific method, you know, effectively just give them, give them these problems to figure out.

Chrisman Frank [00:11:43] And then once they figure it out, you give them, give them a harder one. And there's always this competitive collaborative element to it, you know, kind of like a team sport, which adds another degree of complexity to the, to the experience, right? It's not enough to just figure out how the world works. You

Vance Crowe [00:11:58] Have

Chrisman Frank [00:11:58] To be able to communicate that and work with other people and make, you know, collaborative decisions.

Vance Crowe [00:12:03] Yeah, it's funny there, there's like an emphasis on cooperation and teamwork among kids in school, but what you don't really understand until you get out into the real world is group projects do have a hierarchy. There, there is almost no, you know, when you're in a corporation, if you're working on something, if somebody doesn't hand in their work, that becomes very apparent very quickly. Whereas when you're in school and group work, there's some level of complete openness that that competition isn't there. It's, it's like an artificial environment that feels really, really artificial.

Chrisman Frank [00:12:39] Yeah, actually, it's really interesting. Josh kind of dealt with that when he was coming up with, you Have a fly there or something. Josh dealt with that when he was coming up with the idea for synthesis. He was, he was giving kids these questions because he was just meeting with Elon like every, every month or so while he is running the school. And kind of, he'd go to Elon's house and Elon would be on the phone talking with people from his various companies and Josh kind of like, listen in on, on this and kind of just listen how he thinks and how he solves problems. And then he'd give the problems to the kids. So he'd be like, Hey everybody, how would you move SpaceX from LA to Brownsville, Texas? Like, how would you approach that? It's a whole company that makes rockets. How are you gonna move that? And the kids really, they, they engage with that. They like those kind of questions because it's, you know, it's quite, quite complex and there's a lot to think through. And, but, but at the end of it, they would do like a report and then Josh would be like, okay, like, cool, you know, they didn't give grades, but it's like, you know, you, you get an A or you get a B and, and it's very inert. And he realized there was something cool about having the kids solve problems, these open-ended problems, but if it's just to like, please the teacher, then it doesn't feel real. And so that's when he added the element of like, the competition to it. And then it really clicked. Like the kids are really, really excited about it because it's real. There are stakes now and they're some, they're objective, right? Like it's, they, you deal with an actual reality in a game, not just like, did you fit it into the teacher's mind of like what they're looking for.

Chrisman Frank [00:14:14] Like, you know, you can, there there's like an objective judge there, which just, you know, adds a completely different element. Makes it way more engaging.

Vance Crowe [00:14:24] And so from the synthesis side of it, you guys have actual teachers that check in on those four students that are, that are working. How does, how does the teacher student relationship work?

Chrisman Frank [00:14:34] Yeah, we usually have two. We have like a teacher who's like someone, someone who's, who's not, not always like a trained teacher, but just someone who's older and has like more, more life experience and, and more gravitas. And then we'll have like a TA who's usually younger, like a college student or someone, someone straight outta college and they're, they're floating around to the different rooms and kind of checking in on the kids and ask 'em questions. And then they're leading the Socratic discussion after the kids play the games. And then usually about once a month they're like, they're meeting with the students one-on-one or in small groups to give like more direct like feedback and, and coaching. Or they're sending videos to the, to home, home to the, to the parents and to the kids on, on specific feedback and like course corrections.

Vance Crowe [00:15:20] So what's your background in, in raising kids or teaching kids? I mean, you had said, yeah, I mean like, so you have, you have like a, you have a 7-year-old you said, or an 8-year-old?

Chrisman Frank [00:15:30] 8-year-old now. Yeah. Yeah. Just, just turned eight, 8-year-old al and almost 6-year-old be six in, in June and then two and almost 3-year-old. Yeah. Also, also turns three in June. So two boys, older ones and then, and then young girl

Vance Crowe [00:15:45] And then teaching background.

Chrisman Frank [00:15:48] No, I was never, never a classroom teacher. I was, when I moved to the Bay Area, I was kinda looking for looking for a job, a way to make money. And I started tutoring. So I, I was, became a math tutor and I ended up starting a little tutoring company that I ran for, for a few years. Just, you know, I i I, it, it coming from like a small town had no idea that you could make money like that, but I was kind of tutoring like the, you know, wealthy like Silicon Valley people's kids and in, in math and it was, it was a, it was a fine gig and then expanded it to be like a little, a little company. So it got the kind of like, it, it just, it it opened my eyes, you know, to just how poorly the, you know, instruction is, is done in, in the system and just how, how poorly things are presented and, and just stoked the fire for me to like, try and make things better. So yeah, I, I did that, I did that for a while. I started a company that then got, we got into a program called Imagine K 12, which is now part of it's been folded into Y Combinator, which is the startup, you know, world's most famous startup accelerator. So we got in there and quickly like, just realized that the tutoring business was like, not the kind of not gonna reach the kind of scale to impact the world that like those guys were looking for. And so, but just being part of that made me really, really opened my eyes to like a much bigger, bigger world. 'cause you had like Paul Graham who'd founded Y Combinator come in to speak, you had the, the CEO of LinkedIn came, came to chat with us and all these other founders who'd built things that were, you know, being used by millions of people.

Chrisman Frank [00:17:20] And it was just like, it was the first time, you know, I'd really thought like, wow, like I, I could do something that, you know, reach that number of people and had that kind of impact. So our, our company like was the tutoring company was not gonna scale that fast, but our, some of our classmates in that program, it started a company called ClassDojo, which is like a messaging service for, you know, people in, in school. The teachers can message the parents and, and talk about the kids and just stay in closer touch. And so I ended up joining there. It was a couple thousand users at the time, now it's like 50 million. So spent like seven years there, scaling that up and kind of learning the tech industry and again, just going around and like visiting different schools and kind of learning about like the, the industry and like the state of education everywhere from like, you know, really fancy private schools to public schools in, in rural areas. So I kind of got like a good bird's eye view doing that. And part of that was I went down to meet Josh at, at SpaceX, which, which kicked off this, this synthesis adventure as well. So been been in it for a while, kind of know, know my way around the idea mazes and education and yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:18:25] So outside of the synthesis school, how are you educating your children?

Chrisman Frank [00:18:30] Yeah, I, I have a tweet thread about this. We basically, they're, they're, they're with like a, like a, not not exactly like a tutor, like a, like a mother's helper now. So all three of them, they'll just have a couple hours in the morning where I think they're, they're like building marble run right now. I just went out there and checked that out. So two of them are building like a marble run. And then the other, the other one is working on like a typing, typing game. Eight year olds, like learning how to type. So we do that for two days a week. The other three days a week they, they go to like a homeschool charter in our area. So that's like, it's, it's free 'cause you use like government funds to do it, but it's, it's, there's no, there's no pretense to doing anything academic in the school. So they just go and they play with other kids and, and they'll like build, they built a bridge, like a da Vinci Bridge the other day. They put on school plays. They do this three days a week for like four or five hours each morning. And it's just social development. It's like, it's, you know, to to the, the concept here I think of is like we, we bundle together education, which is learning how to think in terms of concepts, right? To understand like deep concepts that apply across situations in the world when we bundle that with child development, which is like a different thing, right? They're, they're really completely different. There's no reason to bundle them. And I think with the internet that cognitive development and education, that stuff is gonna be done way better by the internet. And then you can do child development. You can, you can break these two things apart. And so that's how we approach it.

Chrisman Frank [00:20:01] The kids, they're like outside, they're in the forest or, or they're going to the beach or they're just playing with other kids and we're not thinking about education like for most of their waking hours. But then, you know, we have them, they, they read a lot of books. We play chess, we do, we do things like synthesis to make them smarter. And we just kind of separate those two things. And I'll say since, since COVID and since starting the company, I've gotten to know a lot of like high profile, you know, individuals and families. And I find that is basically the norm. That's kind of what, you know, everybody at least is talking to me is doing. And there's some selection bias there. But I think the people who are anyone who has that has the means is kind of trying to do that, that same thing, like gotta have our kids have social development in, in a community and get around other people. But I don't trust like the local option to teach him to be smarter. I, one of our, one of our engineers said this the other day, he's like, if you go local, you get like local class education or like maybe at best like regional class and then you go on the internet, you can get world class. And so yeah. Anyway, that, that's how I approach it. That's how I think about it.

Vance Crowe [00:21:08] I'm in total agreement about the, the child development. And in fact when I was first starting the adventure of trying to figure out where will we send violet to school, you start looking at the standard alternative, right? Which is Montessori, right. And some kind of program like that. And there's a lot of benefits to it. But one of the things I didn't know about Montessori until I dug a lot deeper into it is how much, how rigorously structured things are. Yeah. I mean, like the kids are put into a pattern and they have freedom within that pattern. Yeah.

Chrisman Frank [00:21:38] But

Vance Crowe [00:21:38] It is still a very rigorous system. And so when I encountered something like the Waldorf School where they treat the child development, I mean the first seven or eight years when you're in the education program, they don't even go inside. They're outside at all times playing in sand or mud or with trees or whatever that is. And that really, really speaks to me. But at the same time I am, I'm, I'm really afraid of getting all the way to seven or eight years old and then having them wake up and be like, oh, there's some fundamental concepts that would've been a lot easier for you to have picked up on while you were being educated that you didn't pick up because you were treating the child, the, you know, the development side of it. This kind of dreamlike time as something that would go on forever, right? So I have, I feel this tension that you're describing, and I think the, the education that you're describing in my circles are largely the ones that people want but are incredibly difficult to put together because you have to put them together yourself Yeah. In addition to doing whatever you're doing for work and other living.

Chrisman Frank [00:22:44] Yeah, yeah. It's hard. And that's kind of like our aim is just to be the, you know, be we, we like, I think we'll build into like a one stop shop whether we partner with other people or, or whatever. But I think people are kind of looking for someone that they can trust who has similar values and who's thought deeply about this. And, and I think, you know, having to piece it all together, like we're kind of in that, you know, phase with our, with our kids now, and it's, and it's difficult and, you know, we would love if we just had someone we can trust to kind of turn that over and, and, and can think through this stuff for us. I will say, how, how old's your, your daughter Violet, did you say? Is it

Vance Crowe [00:23:20] She's two. She's two. Okay. Almost two. Yeah.

Chrisman Frank [00:23:22] That's a cute name. I like that name. Yeah, I mean, I think one, one point to make is like even the Spartans did not enter the aga like the, the training until they were seven and the Spartans are like pretty hardcore, right? So you think if like if they could have gotten, you know, more done something more hardcore, like by pushing it younger, they would've done it. So there is something like, it's not that beneficial to accelerate learning. Like, like you, you, there, there is like, just, just developmental stages, like I'm finding this in my son, but somewhere between like seven and eight he developed the ability to think conceptually like it, there's just this massive leap in conceptual ability. And so there's really not that, there's not that much point in talking about abstract things before he was that age. There's just like developmental milestones. However, I don't totally agree with the Waldorf approach because I think you can sort of imprint reading and, and math like Ari arithmetic and number sense. I think you can do those things and I think it's kind of important to do those things. Like you, I think it most likely kind of changes how your brain develops and you can start doing those things that, you know, we waited until about five to start to start doing that. So that, that's kind of how I would approach it as your kids grow up, like the, by far the most important thing, like get outside, like be a kid. Social development by age four is critically important. So that's kind of like all you should think about providing a stable home environment. If you're a dad, you gotta chase him around the house and be the monster.

Chrisman Frank [00:24:52] Like, that's super important, but you don't have to worry about the academic stuff until, until later.

Vance Crowe [00:24:59] Yeah. I mean we are very fortunate in that we have an area behind our house that has got a creek. There's all kinds of flowering trees and we've started planting fruit trees. And one of the things that's the most amazing to me about Violet is the number of trees she can name and the number of things that she can pair together. I mean, even before she can speak words, I can hand her a pine cone and she can tell me which of the trees it came from or

Chrisman Frank [00:25:24] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:25:24] We can go pick flowers and she knows exactly where they came from in a large area. And if I had been sitting there in the house trying to do that with flashcards, I'm sure she'd have some rote memorization, but it is so much more sophisticated because the models are all just slightly different. Yeah. So it's not like her doing a one-to-one memorization.

Chrisman Frank [00:25:43] Yeah. And I think you learn, my, my kids did a forest preschool in the, in the city in San Francisco and they would just, they'd go around and just explore all day and like they'd, they'd turn over a log and then they'd talk about like, why is the log, you know, rotted on the other side and what are the bugs doing there and what, which, what are these bugs? And they learn to name things and all that. And yeah, I think that to me that's, that's what we should strive for as a society is to, is to let every kid have have that kind of experience. I just think it's, I think it's good for the soul. I I think it, it changes, you know, who they are as people and it's, it's, and it's like child development, it doesn't matter. She'll forget all the trees. Our kids will forget all the, all the names of everything, but it doesn't matter. It gives you this like sense that you can, you know, go out and explore and understand things and like, you know, the world is a good place. And I think that's, that's, you know, if I, if I could snap my fingers, I would, I would try to give that experience to as many kids as possible.

Vance Crowe [00:26:37] Well, there's an interesting tension about being in the city and being able to do this in mass. You know, there are a lot of, a lot of my audience are feedlot operators for, for the cattle system, right. And they talk about, you know, in a lot of ways apartments or series of apartments or CAFOs and it is really difficult to take human beings that are packed in that, you know, do everything through tubes where the experience of nature is always contained within a, you know, a block of sidewalks Yeah.

Chrisman Frank [00:27:08] To

Vance Crowe [00:27:08] Be able to get them to have that feeling. And I, I wonder if some of the internal chaos that we feel now is that we've, we have taken cities way beyond the scale that they've ever been before and now, you know, how does the human mind adapt to that? And, and it's kind of an interesting experience we're in right now.

Chrisman Frank [00:27:25] Yeah, yeah. I mean I, I had like a really great experience in San Francisco because we lived near Golden Gate Park and just Golden Gate Park is like a marvel of, of the world as far as I'm concerned. It was like sand dunes and then they just built it up, planted all these different trees and flowers and it's totally beautiful. It's massive. And you know, I I I think it's like a, like a good like model for development. I don't know what it would be like in, in New York or there's like way fewer parks, you know, but we, we, we at least felt like we could get, you know, somewhat out in nature, which is a cool thing about San Francisco. You've got like the density and the museums and all that. And then you, you felt like you could get, you know, at least some semblance of nature or at least like a garden, a large garden at least.

Vance Crowe [00:28:11] Well, the interesting, one of the interesting things about San Francisco, so I used to live in Mendocino and I actually got to meet their lead arborist. And I think that when San Francisco was developing as a city, they deeply thought about having that integration between trees and parks and the city in a way that people now, whatever it was, 50, 70, a hundred years later, being able to benefit from. Whereas in New York it just didn't happen that way. And if you wanna have a little area of grass and same thing I guess in San Francisco, but, but you know, that's a multimillion dollar piece of grass and, and it just,

Chrisman Frank [00:28:46] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:28:47] It, it definitely separates people from whatever it was that they were spending their time, however they were spending their time before as children. It's definitely a different experience in the last 100, 150 years.

Chrisman Frank [00:28:59] Yeah. Yeah. There's less what are, it's like, I've heard this term, like there's, there seems to be less unowned space, like when I was a kid in a small town where you'd like, they were just like, there'd be empty lots and stuff where you'd go to play and it's now going back, it's like everything's been built out. Like you wouldn't get that sort of experience of going to like, play in the woods or play in like the empty lot or whatever. Like everything's kind of spoken for now, which is, you know, different, different way to grow up.

Vance Crowe [00:29:29] So do people living in the countryside to hear somebody say I'm living in California is like a foreign concept to them. What makes you decide that California is the place you wanna be?

Chrisman Frank [00:29:41] It's, I, I rode my bicycle across the country after college and that, that was really it. I was just like, I, I'll, I'll try to ride my bicycle across the country. That was like my post-college adventure. And, and then when I got here I was surprised San Francisco's so cold. A lot of people don't know that it's, it's, it's kind of cold year round, so not cold, cold, but it's like 60 degrees and like windy and, and foggy a lot of the time. So I went down to San Diego, lived there for a while, learned to surf, you know, spent a couple years kind of working and, and, but, but spending a lot of time like learning to surf and, and having fun there and then, and then moved up to, to the Bay area. So I don't, I don't know, California is just, you know, the, the ocean and, and the, the scale of like the mountains and everything. It was just such a, so different from growing up in Virginia. And at the time it was like a really, you know, in, in the Bay area it was this really interesting eclectic kind of population that was really open to ideas, which is, you know, something, something that really was inspiring and like exciting to be around. It's kind, kind of become the environment there has become more stultifying in the last 10 years or so. But at the time it was this really exciting, like the wild west kind of, kind of feeling.

Vance Crowe [00:30:56] I had that exact same feeling and the idea that you could, I, I learned to surf when I was up in Mendocino. Wow. The idea that you could touch the electricity of the, of the, of the globe, right. That's the way surfing felt for me. And there was just nothing like that in central Illinois. Yeah.

Chrisman Frank [00:31:10] And,

Vance Crowe [00:31:11] And but, and like I also agree that it's funny in so many ways California puts itself as being progressive, but now it seems like they've frozen in some way, right? Like their progression is much more conservatism and it's a, it's kind of a flipping on the head of like, there's very little desire for change or if that change comes, it has to be only within a certain paradigm. Yeah.

Chrisman Frank [00:31:33] It's very, it's very strange. I don't, I don't know. Yeah. I I don't know what to make of it. It's, it's not exactly conservative, it's more like a, it's just like a wishful thinking. I, I I guess I would say wishful thinking and kind of like a mob slash herd mentality. So you, you have kind of like a complete, if you think of like the, the ideal of like a liberal or progressive, it's someone who's like open to new ideas and questioning things. And I would say in that sense it's kind of, it's like there's a handful of things that you're allowed to be open to and, and to question. And then everything else is kind of off limits. So it's, yeah, it's got gotten a little bit weird. Glad to be out of there.

Vance Crowe [00:32:13] What is the world, what is the world that you're expecting you're gonna send your children out into by the time they hit 18 or 21 as you're preparing them with education, you have to have in mind something that you think the world is gonna look like. What are you expecting?

Chrisman Frank [00:32:28] Yeah, no, I don't know. I, it's, it's hard. I think, I think computers and information technology and networks are going to be, continue to be an important facet of the world. I mean, this is sort of like predicting the continued rise of cities, you know, at the, at the dawn of the 20th century or the continued kind of proliferation of industrial technology in the, in the 20th century. Like I think information technology is going to continue to be important. I also think a lot about, you know, I had to move to the Bay area to get the, you know, the internet was not as developed, you know, 10 years ago. So it was, you, you, you found like a high density of kind of lateral thinkers in the Bay Area that you couldn't find easily. And when I moved out I was worried about getting disconnected from that. But I just found on that, that my intellectual community was kind of on Twitter anyway. And so it didn't matter so much. Now I live in kind of like a small town, just, just just off the coast and I still feel like intellectually connected and, and, and there's, so there's some kind of, I, I get that, which I never got growing up in like my small town, but now I can get that living in a small town and, but I also have like more space and like nature and, and things like that. So I, I, you know, I I expect my kids will probably do some kind of like information like knowledge work, you know, some something like that.

Chrisman Frank [00:34:02] They're gonna be, the information environment I think is just gonna continue to, you know, we're not gonna go back to where you have so much less data and information in, in jobs. Like, we're all gonna have to be kind of centers and like partner with computers and, and learn to think with computers and, and lots of data and information. Like, I expect that to continue. But yeah, o other than that, I, I think it's, it's kind of hard to say. I think that's kind of, kind of the fun of it. So that's why, you know, I want my kids to, to be able to get out into nature and, and you know, if they become farmers, like great, I was thinking like become farmers or become like scientists and, and technologists or maybe become both, but like the, I don't want them to do anything in between like working like a, a large bureaucracy or, or something like that. You know, I, I think it's like work, work on the ends of the bar Bill.

Vance Crowe [00:34:49] If you talk about cities and their growth and kind of the concept of this infinite growth, the Stewart brands or the Joffrey Wests of, of the world, do you think that we'll continue the, the migration from rural areas into cities? Like right now, you know, it was about five years ago that 50% of the population now lives in cities. Do you think that will just continue until basically everyone's living in a city?

Chrisman Frank [00:35:14] I, I, I don't know. I I mean yeah, I, i I don't know about that. I, I think in some sense, yes, and I, I think also with the rise of remote work and with what I mentioned about, you know, the, the, the, there's a couple things in cities where you've got, you've got an advantage. Like there's, in San Francisco there was like a, there's a bakery that was selling like, you know, $7 avocado toast. And like if you, if you're into that, you're really into avocado toast and there's a place that, you know, that sells that and it's really great and there's all these kind of different sort of bakeries and coffee shops and restaurants and, and all that kind of thing. That's like a draw for the city and it's a draw for young people as well. 'cause there's like, you know, better, better mating opportunities. There's a more liquid market for like, mating opportunities in the city. So I think in that sense, there's always disadvantages for cities. But then you have this counterbalancing force, which is like the, the intellectual environment of the cities, like the coffee shops and, and, and, and that sort of thing where you'd, you'd go maybe like hang out and, and talk to people and exchange ideas. Now that's, that's the internet is like a better place for that. So that's kind of a counterbalancing force where people can move out of the city. So I, as far as how that plays out, like I, I don't really know. I expect to see some online communities go turn into offline communities. So I expect there will be people who like buy a plot of land and move there with a bunch of, you know, a handful of friends and like start a new village or city or something like that where they can have more land and open space and then use kind of the internet to stay connected to, to the pulse of things.

Chrisman Frank [00:36:49] But beyond that, the cities grow or, or fail. Like I had no idea,

Vance Crowe [00:36:54] You know, when you think about those off, like taking online communities and moving to offline, whether it's stuff like game B that, that people are talking about that trying what? Game B Oh, you've not heard of game B? So game B is, Jim Rutt is a guy that actually took a, a group of people and said, Hey, if we wanted to have an alternative to the game, a world which is the the rat race, the climb up, the cure, the bureaucratic ladder until you get to a point where you make enough money that you can jump out and retire. What if we were to create a different game that would allow for there to be communities, right?

Chrisman Frank [00:37:30] Right. And

Vance Crowe [00:37:30] I think one of the, the things that's really difficult about starting your own community is that there are certain aspects of human nature that can't be overcome. So if you've ever talked to anybody that's joined a cult Yeah.

Chrisman Frank [00:37:42] Right?

Vance Crowe [00:37:42] Where the cult gets to a certain size and unless you have these really hard and fast rules and people have some values that allow them to transcend it, you have people cheating on one another. You have people, you know, and, and sexual, like changes are really big. That's one of the reasons cults break down the fastest. Yeah. But you also have things

Chrisman Frank [00:38:03] Like, yeah, we have, we have a stable arrangement like, like the, the, the mating and like sexuality is like, we, you never maybe get this perfect, but people who like want to throw out all the rules. It's like, well, like it's, people are always trying that and it always,

Vance Crowe [00:38:18] And it always fails because yeah, you're hitting this like, this like red line. And it was funny, there's a, there's a young guy, Arjun Kimani, who actually I was talking with on, on Twitter today and he had a very interesting blog post I think it's worth mentioning, which was that he said, there's an irrationality that goes along with faith that like, we just don't accept. Right? So like, if you're a logical, rational person and you say, well how do we know that this had happened or this is the right way to do things? Well it's because God said so, right? Like, we don't accept that. And so, but it's that irrationality, it is that belief in some higher thing that allows you to be able to form people into these groups to be able to do some kind of a commune. But it's funny because the people that are so longing for these types of groups are often highly rational people that are trying to resolve the conflicts of society using engineering or trying to create a game B. Yeah.

Chrisman Frank [00:39:23] It's

Vance Crowe [00:39:24] A weird tension that I think is worth exploring that you almost need religion or at least some higher faith in order to be able to transcend human nature to make these communities work.

Chrisman Frank [00:39:34] Yeah. I I I've thought about this a lot. I don't think religion is, is irrational. It's a, it's a rationality that includes time, right? So ideas that are in religions that are successful, they at least, you know, these ideas didn't, didn't get all the people killed, right? And so there's some rationality in, in time where you might rationally think in your head like, well we should, you know, we can, we can live in a cult and have like total sexual freedom. But you have to, you're not gonna be the first person to think of that. And the fact that that's not the, the primary mode of human living, like irrational person could think like, well why, why isn't that? Maybe there's something I'm missing, I'm missing. I think rationality can include the idea that there, there are things that you, that you might be missing. That's, that's a, that's at least how I see it. And I think that religions are like, these sources of ancient wisdom and parts of them are gonna be wrong because humans are fallible and it's, it's, you know, we can always make progress by course correcting, but if you throw out the whole thing, you kind of, you know, you don't, you don't arrive at a better solution. 'cause it takes time to figure out what the good solutions are.

Vance Crowe [00:40:50] Yeah. In genetics there's this concept called linkage drag. So let's say you're breeding for tomatoes and you wanna be able to get a stronger peel in it. So you breed for getting the stronger peel and you accidentally bring some features in that you maybe didn't want. Maybe the the seeds got thicker or, or created some kind of waxy thing on the leaves that made it grow less good. I think that religion suffers from linkage drag and the ones that really transcend time are able to cut those things off. Right. But if you're an outside observer approaching it and you're like, wait, why are we doing the Passover feast? We're saying the same thing that we did last year. Everybody already knows what this is supposed to be saying and what this is all about, but it's the act of doing it that is actually the valuable thing. And the linkage drag of some other weird belief that's incorporated into that is something that makes it probably appear irrational. I I I like your concept that the, that rationality becomes clearer if you add in time in a way that doesn't, when you're just looking at how does that look right now?

Chrisman Frank [00:41:51] Yeah, I mean I, I think too, what you're seeing kind of in with kind of the progressive sort of craziness, so San Francisco is probably the best example where it's, you have some kind of like, kind of, kind of some, some nutty people in charge of things. It's just you, you can't change too fast. Like we, we all of us, my, my friend Joe Norman and colleague at Synthesis now, a complexity scientist wrote a paper, wrote an essay about this saying all of us are conservative progressives like that we recognize there are good things about life that we want to conserve, and then there are things that we can improve on and that we wanna make progress on. And you just, you can't go too far in either direction. It's just kind of like a, in the computer science lingo, it's like an np hard problem. Like there's, there's no computable solution. We just kind of have to try things out and, and, and figure it out. So this is why humans are probably always gonna fight because there's just no, no clear answers to these things. Some things you just have to try to figure out if they work or not, and you know, that's the

Vance Crowe [00:42:51] Yeah. And we kind of live in a world where it's very difficult to even understand how close we are to, to what is normal. Like that concept of this is water by David Foster Wallace. Right,

Chrisman Frank [00:43:04] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:43:04] Where you're living in this world and you've always lived in this world, so you don't understand that this is actually a relatively new invention. Yeah. One of the things that happened when I lived in Africa was that one, it stays light a lot longer. Mm. So it's like 8, 8 30 and it's always 8, 8 30 that it, that the sun went down. Mm. But then you don't realize that most people don't have lights on at night, so you actually get tired at night. Mm. Whereas like, if you've lived your entire life where there's always been light bulbs, you just expect that it's the natural state that I kind of feel awake at 10. I can get a lot of work done, but once it's, it's so difficult to know what those things are. Yeah.

Chrisman Frank [00:43:44] That

Vance Crowe [00:43:45] Because they're, they're so ubiquitous in our worlds.

Chrisman Frank [00:43:47] Yeah. And it's difficult to decide, I like this game B idea because it's, it's sort of just interesting for me to think about people kind of opting out of, of the whole, of the whole thing and just just, you know, 'cause I, I think there's some yearning that we have for like a past time when everything was perfect that, that I think, well, you know, maybe, maybe that's true. Maybe maybe things used to be better. But I I I tend to, I tend to think not, I I tend to think things aren't perfect right now and we can, we can improve them, we can make progress, but I think we, in a lot of ways we have made progress from the past and at least I don't want to go back to, you know, being totally like a hunter gatherer or, or subsistence farmer. So it, it's, it's interesting to see people experimenting though.

Vance Crowe [00:44:33] Matt Ridley always talks about, he wrote the book The Rational Optimist. Yeah. Like, if you don't think things have gotten better, just look at dentistry. Right? Like the, the, like the hellscape that was your mouth and your teeth before that. The other interesting thing about game B is it's not a total opt out. So Jim and the people that are around this idea, who I actually think would probably find synthesis school very interesting, talk about this paric, like the being a parasite on game A while you get game B going. So it's not this total like, Hey, let's just leave our our city and go into a commun unit saying some of us may need to have corporate jobs in order to be able to have some of the access to the systems while we get other things built up. So healthcare being a good example, right? You don't wanna just like abscond from the system and have no healthcare if a heart attack comes up. So it wouldn't be a bad idea for somebody to have the regular corporate job that has that insurance while you set up a much better,

Chrisman Frank [00:45:28] This is system, this is, this is where the normalization of remote work just becomes super interesting, right? Because our, our company's like totally remote and they're good high paying jobs. They pay you enough to live in San Francisco where the cost of living is extremely high. But like, you don't, you can live anywhere. Like you could live in some place where you're, you know, cost you $10,000 a year to live or something like that. And so it's, if you think in, in terms of those numbers, you know, one person with a, with a a game, a job could support 10 or, or 20 others or maybe maybe even more if you had, you know, if you had kind of infrastructure built around that. So I, I, I do expect to see a lot more experimentation there. I, I don't know, you know, if that's, I don't know how long the timeframe or how long that would take to compete with, with cities, but it's definitely, it's definitely a trend. It, it seems to me like that idea is in the ether and, and people will try it.

Vance Crowe [00:46:19] Yeah. And I think that one of the necessary, but probably not sufficient requirements is in a couple, there was probably a lot of, you know, where one person was like, I want to go out to the countryside and I want to have this rural life. And then after the experience, you know, when I was living in Washington DC I lived in a 480 square foot apartment. Now, luckily I moved out there and, and moved to Missouri where I could get a lot more land for a lot less. But I cannot imagine the psychological change that would've occurred to a person that was living in a 480 square foot apartment, imagining the urban life being the one that they wanted to shoot up the ladder and, and go, I can't, I can't imagine thinking if COVID came around again, they'd, they'd stick around for another go round of lock being locked in such a small place.

Chrisman Frank [00:47:06] Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, that's, it'd be interesting to see how cities bounce back. Yeah. I I I don't really know. I mean, I think as far as, I, I think it's one of the cool things about synthesis is like, just you don't have to, you know, predict or, or worry about these things too much. I think the only prediction is that, you know, science and technology will continue to be important. And if you want your kids to be able to contribute or, or have access to those modes of thinking, I think we can do that better than than anyone in the world. And I think we can, and you know, we can reach people who live in these, you know, these game B communities or like a rural farming community or, or a city. Like the goal is to make it so if you're a billionaire or you're like a, you know, a subsistence farmer, you basically, everybody has access to synthesis for their kids. So even if you're a billionaire, you can't buy like a better version of, of education, you know, at least, you know, in, in the cognitive, cognitive skills domain for your kids.

Vance Crowe [00:48:01] What is your pricing model? How does it work for somebody to be able to sign up for synthesis? Yeah,

Chrisman Frank [00:48:06] So right, right now it's, it's $180 a month, which, which is, which is just kind of where we just sort of like, you know, picked, picked a number and, and we, you know, the idea is to like lower the, lower the prices as we go, as we get more efficient in, in doing this, we've also just had kind of extraordinary demand. So we've got, you know, twice as many people on a reservation who've like done a paid reservation and are on the wait list. Then we have enrolled right now. So try to, you know, we're very, very small companies still, you know, it's a size of like a couple, a couple large high schools, like something like that. And so we're trying to get in as many people as we can and kind of let the, let the wealthier people who can afford it and can take the risk on something new, fund the development to make it more effective and more efficient so we can get it to more people. The UL ultimate goal, you know, being able to get, you know, millions or tens of millions of kids a year in synthesis versus, you know, the tiny number that we have right now. So kind of like,

Vance Crowe [00:49:09] Yeah. And what does the path look like to get to something that big? I mean, that will be, if you have such personalized things where like a human is jumping in there, that's that's gonna take some work. Yeah,

Chrisman Frank [00:49:19] There's a couple. So the, the Montessori idea of of, you know, there's, there's a structure, so there's freedom, but there's freedom within a structure. The more structure we can put into the system, then the less training that the, the people have to have. And so that makes you able to deliver, you know, the same or, or actually like better service in, in, in many instances because you have sort of like going back to that religion idea, like there's, there's a time element where these, these ideas have been built up over time, similar to that in, in synthesis, right? Like where we take all these smart humans running these little experiments, you know, with ev every different class of kids, and then take the best learnings from that and build that into the system and make that the structure that we then get to everybody. And so you can reduce the reliance on, you know, hyper educated, hyper intelligent humans who are scarce and thus super expensive and put a lot of that into the system. There's another way which is, you know, if you think about, about industrial school, I think one of the most sociopathic ideas is the age segregation thing, right? Because you don't, if you're like the bottom of the class, you just have the same position in your class the whole time you move through school. So you never get the experience of if you're the smartest kid, you never get to like, be behind or have someone you can look up to who's smarter than you, who you can, you can emulate. And you also, there's not this expectation that you're gonna help the people who are younger.

Chrisman Frank [00:50:51] So if you're the, if you're the kid who's like behind you, never get a chance to like teach math because you're always just like struggling yourself and you're behind. There's no one who's younger than you. But that's the way Human Society has, has developed is that we, you have always somebody who you can look up to and always someone who you're a little bit ahead of. And so I think we can use this in synthesis, and we've already started experimenting with it where the kids who are advanced and who are doing really well can help out the younger kids and then as, as part of like their own education, right? So you can, you can have basically the kids helping each other out because really a 12 year old's probably like, you know, if they're a really, you know, they've been through this system and they're just a little bit ahead, they're probably better at it than a 25-year-old to teach, you know, an 8-year-old, someone who's like a couple years behind them. And anyone who has kids will see this like, my, I can get my kid to do anything. If we take, you know, his friend who's, who's two or three years older and, you know, if his friend takes up skateboarding, like he wants to take up skateboarding if it's, you know, so I, it's, it's like just a very natural way for humans to learn and also can probably effectively, you know, much decrease the cost, much more decrease the reliance on hyper intelligent, hyper educated adults who are expensive and are scarce and less expensive.

Vance Crowe [00:52:11] Man, I think that is a brilliant observation. You know, I think of my own daughter, right? Where she's the little one now and she has a older cousin to her who's just the greatest thing in the whole world. Yeah.

Chrisman Frank [00:52:22] And

Vance Crowe [00:52:23] That poor kid for many years was the youngest cousin that was picked on and left behind and crying. Yeah.

Chrisman Frank [00:52:29] But

Vance Crowe [00:52:29] You see him blossom and he is actually a different kid now that he's the one teaching and being looked up to. Yeah. And I had never really thought about the damage that that would do on scale. And in fact, most of the people making the rules now are the ones that were at least at the top half of the class that never really experienced that. But it is,

Chrisman Frank [00:52:47] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:52:48] Really important for people to feel both sides.

Chrisman Frank [00:52:51] Yeah. One, 100%. It's one of the greatest things for synthesis. A lot of the kids we get are are kind of like, you know, super, super gifted and they will, they'll, they'll come in very overconfident and they'll kind of get smashed in one of the games and then it'll be really rough for them, but they'll recover quickly, their kids and, and they'll want to get better. And then they, and they kind of drop that like ego about being the smartest person in the room and they just start wanting to get better. And I think that's, it's much better to go through that at like age seven or eight than it is like at 23 or 24 or whenever, when you, when you

Vance Crowe [00:53:27] Enter workforce. Yeah. And so many of the things that we were doing before, things like Boy Scouts and, you know, being, working on the farm, that it kind of happened as a function. Well, Chrisman Frank, I could go on and on. This was a really interesting conversation and I'm glad to see this very different kind of thinking about education. You have a lot of the classic understanding, but also some new ideas too. So if people wanted to learn more about Synthesis School or follow you, how would they go about doing that?

Chrisman Frank [00:53:53] Yeah, just go to Synthesis is, is our website. And then I'm, I'm on Twitter at chrisman Frank.

Vance Crowe [00:54:02] Well, thanks man, for coming on. We'll, I'd love to check in with you in a few months or a year to find out how things are going.

Chrisman Frank [00:54:07] Cool. Yeah, thanks for having me. It was fun. Talk soon.