Send us a text Adolescence is often seen as something to endure — awkward years full of turbulence and struggle. But what if these years could be a time of discovery, adventure, and growth? In this episode, Jesper and Cecilie Conrad talk with Chris Balme on the launch day of his new book, Challenge Accepted: 50 Adventures to Make Middle School Awesome . We were introduced to Chris by our friend and former guest, Blake Boles , and quickly said yes to the conversation. Chris shares why adolescence...
Aug 21, 2025•47 min•Season 1Ep. 134
Send us a text How can we recover the essential human connections that make life meaningful and sustainable? How can we create a world where neighbors know each other's names, children play freely outdoors, and no parent faces the overwhelming challenges of raising children alone? Sarah van Gelder, founder of YES Magazine and author of "The Revolution Where You Live," joins us to explore the troubling fragmentation of our social structures and the promising alternatives emerging in response. A g...
Aug 13, 2025•51 min•Season 1Ep. 133
Send us a text In this episode, we talk with Ben Feliz (14) and Addison Harding (13), home-educated children and contributors to the anthology “Hidden Voices Speak.” Addison came up with the idea for the book, Ben designed the cover, and they worked together with others to publish it. Both care deeply about children’s rights and wanted to respond to recent news stories and new UK legislation affecting home education. They discuss the motivation behind the anthology, which was to give home-educat...
Aug 06, 2025•42 min•Season 1Ep. 132
Send us a text We sit down with Andrew and Heidi Schrum, just three weeks away from starting their life as a full-time nomadic worldschooling family. They ask us direct questions about our seven years of unschooling and worldschooling. We discuss how the biggest changes happened in us as parents—not our children. We describe letting go of academic pressure, seeing teenagers choose their own academic interests, and how travel creates natural learning opportunities. We also talk about why we stepp...
Aug 03, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 131
Send us a text We sit down with Heidi and Andrew Schrum, who are about to leave home and begin travelling full-time with their two young children. They ask us what we wish we’d known at the beginning, and we talk through everything from reluctant kids and screen time to preparation that doesn’t help and the emotional crash that often comes six months into travel. We also get into how to parent while unschooling—without stepping back too far—and how public perception shifts when you reframe unsch...
Jul 23, 2025•53 min•Season 1Ep. 130
Send us a text Charles Eisenstein is an author and speaker whose books and essays explore themes of community, human connection, economics, and social change. He is known for works such as The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible . Charles joins us to explore how modern family structures have evolved and what's been lost in our transition from community-based living to isolated nuclear families. What gets lost when we accept today’s idea of “normal” life? Together with Charles we dis...
Jul 17, 2025•51 min•Season 1Ep. 129
Send us a text What if our traditional education system is fundamentally misaligned with how humans naturally learn? Jesper and Cecilie Conrad continue their conversation with Jamie Rumble, exploring the philosophy and practice of unschooling within a nomadic lifestyle. Jamie shares how his background, including influences from Paulo Freire and the concept of eco-pedagogy, shapes his approach to teaching and learning. The discussion challenges the traditional structure of schooling, contrasting ...
Jul 09, 2025•1 hr 22 min•Season 1Ep. 128
Send us a text We got an email from Jamie Rumble... "I’m a Master of Education student at Cape Breton University, Nova Scotia, Canada. For my thesis, I’m researching how digital nomads are adapting their lifestyles in response to climate change, and what insights their experiences might offer for future education and planetary citizenship." We thought it could be an interesting talk and said yes, given that we could use the recording for our podcast. In this episode, we, Cecilie and Jesper Conra...
Jul 03, 2025•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 127
Send us a text What happens when a single mom chooses to reject conventional norms, embraces van life, and takes her daughter out of traditional education? Vanessa Woozley joins us to share her inspiring story of courage, resilience, and transformation. Vanessa’s adventure began with short trips, gradually evolving into full-time worldschooling in a van. She dispels myths about needing significant resources or a traditional two-parent household to pursue a life of travel and alternative educatio...
Jun 25, 2025•58 min•Season 1Ep. 126
Send us a text When Jack Stewart turned off the internet, he discovered that digital connection often acts as a “social appetite suppressant”—satisfying on the surface, but not deeply nourishing. In this conversation, Jack explains how removing online distractions led him to seek out in-person connection, from literally knocking on neighbors’ doors to organizing his own book and writing salons. We discuss the qualitative difference between digital admirers and real friends, and why meaningful co...
Jun 19, 2025•55 min•Season 1Ep. 125
Send us a text Sociologist Jennie Germann Molz joins the podcast to discuss her book The World Is Our Classroom: Extreme Parenting and the Rise of Worldschooling . Jennie is a professor at the College of the Holy Cross whose research explores mobility, technology, and alternative forms of family life. Drawing on both academic insight and her own experience traveling the world with her ten-year-old son, she examines what happens when families move beyond traditional education models and choose to...
Jun 11, 2025•53 min•Season 1Ep. 124
Send us a text After her eight-year-old son was expelled from school in the UK, Corianda Shepherd and her partner Joel left behind a life that no longer worked. They moved to rural Spain, bought the first house they saw, and slowly built Shepherd’s Rest—a worldschooling community where families live together, learn in nature, and reject the idea that difference needs to be managed or corrected. This episode is not just about homeschooling. It’s about what happens when the social structure become...
Jun 04, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 123
Send us a text What if the real magic happens not when you push harder, but when you let go? We explore surrender as a powerful, often misunderstood key to living a fuller life. Kute Blackson is a transformational teacher and bestselling author of The Magic of Surrender. Known for his dynamic presence and multicultural background, he’s guided thousands worldwide through teachings on surrender, purpose, and authentic living. Kute shares how walking away from his father’s Ghanaian mega-church, fol...
May 27, 2025•59 min•Season 1Ep. 122
Send us a text In this episode, we explore how modern culture has stripped childhood of the freedom it needs to thrive—and what can be done to bring it back. Our guest is Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids and co-founder of the nonprofit Let Grow, launched with Jonathan Haidt, Peter Gray, and Daniel Shuchman to champion independence, resilience, and real-world learning. Together, we unpack how fear, measurement, and control have come to dominate parenting and education. From the rise of i...
May 21, 2025•37 min•Season 1Ep. 121
Send us a text What happens when your child simply won't fit inside society's educational box? When Anna Vestlev Sandfeld realized her son didn’t fit into the structure of kindergarten—and likely never would fit into traditional school—she and her husband chose unschooling. In this conversation with her cousin Cecilie and co-host Jesper, Anna reflects on the first year of stepping away from the system. Anna shares how the loss of her first child shaped her parenting values, what it meant to leav...
May 14, 2025•50 min•Season 1Ep. 120
Send us a text Outschool founder Amir Nathoo explains why education built on passion—not curriculum—may be the only way to truly prepare kids for a rapidly changing world. We talk about his shift from traditional schooling in the UK to building Outschool, how becoming a parent deepened his beliefs, and why interest-led learning offers more than just flexibility—it offers resilience. Amir shares the emotional challenge of stepping away from conventional paths, how Outschool helps parents manage f...
May 06, 2025•28 min•Season 1Ep. 119
Send us a text Ever wondered what life could look like if you broke free from the conventional 9-5? David Cole and his family sold their home in Chicago in 2019 and haven’t stopped moving since. Cecilie and Jesper talk with him about how they made the shift from occasional travellers to full-time nomads. "I think what stopped us the most was mindset," David reveals, reflecting on their journey from dreaming to doing. After years of passionate but occasional travel, they finally made the leap—sta...
May 01, 2025•41 min•Season 1Ep. 118
Send us a text Dr. Cam joins us to discuss parenting teenagers and why efforts to control them often create more distance. She explains how control can undermine trust and why focusing on connection leads to better results. We discuss the difference between respect and obedience, and how letting teens say “no” builds confidence and self-trust. Jesper shares his shift from being a “parenting by volume” dad to being more present and connected, and how time made the biggest difference. Dr. Cam desc...
Apr 23, 2025•49 min•Season 1Ep. 117
Send us a text In this conversation with author and speaker Jacob Nordby , we explore the paradox of freedom in modern life. Is it simply doing whatever we want—or does real freedom require something deeper? While many consider freedom to be about doing whatever they want without constraints, Jacob challenges this perception. "A lot of people assume that freedom means the ability to do whatever they want," he reflects, "but we're learning that most of what we think and believe happens pretty unc...
Apr 16, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 116
Send us a text Yasmin and Andy left a comfortable life in the UK to join a small off-grid community in the jungles of Belize. Fifteen years after cycling through Central America, Yasmin and Andy returned—this time with three kids and a desire for a different kind of life. What began as a plan to visit intentional communities in Europe shifted during the pandemic, eventually landing them in a small permaculture community in Belize. They describe the emotional and practical steps behind leaving th...
Apr 10, 2025•58 min•Season 1Ep. 115
Send us a text In this episode, we speak with Amanda Diekman about how her parenting changed when her six-year-old son went into autistic burnout. He lost verbal communication, stopped eating most foods, and couldn't follow basic routines. Faced with a crisis, Amanda chose to stop trying to fix him and instead removed demands to create safety. She explains how this shift became the foundation of low-demand parenting—an approach that prioritizes accommodation, reduces expectations, and gives chil...
Apr 02, 2025•50 min•Season 1Ep. 114
Send us a text Luz and David from Evolving Education left careers in biotechnology to explore and document alternative education models worldwide. Frustrated by rigid schooling systems, they traveled to over 170 learning centers to understand how children learn best outside the traditional classroom. In this episode, we talk about how compulsory schooling originated in 19th-century Prussia as a system designed to produce obedient soldiers and workers, a model later exported worldwide as a tool f...
Mar 26, 2025•51 min•Season 1Ep. 113
Send us a text Iris Chen, author of Untigering: Peaceful Parenting for the Deconstructing Tiger Parent , shares how she shifted from a strict, high-expectation parenting style to a trust-based approach. Raised in a Chinese-American household, Iris grew up with academic pressure and obedience as the norm. She carried those expectations into her own parenting—until she saw how control and punishment were harming her relationship with her children. A parenting workshop on neuroscience led her to re...
Mar 19, 2025•57 min•Season 1Ep. 112
Send us a text The moment you carve, knit, bake or start folding paper, something remarkable happens in your brain. The anxious spiral of thoughts quiets, stress hormones recede, and you enter a state that Dr. Anne Kirketerp calls "meaningful self-forgetfulness." Dr. Anne Kirketerp is a psychologist, researcher, and craftsperson who pioneered Craft Psychology —the study of how hands-on creative activities impact mental well-being. With a background in both psychology and craftsmanship, she has s...
Mar 13, 2025•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 111
Send us a text What does it mean to truly connect in a world that’s becoming more digital by the day? Asger Leth is a Danish filmmaker, writer, and creative visionary known for his documentary and feature filmmaking work. He gained international recognition for Ghosts of Cité Soleil (2006), a gripping documentary set in Haiti, and later directed the Hollywood thriller Man on a Ledge (2012). Asger has spent years living and working globally with a background deeply rooted in storytelling and cine...
Mar 05, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 110
Send us a text Much of modern work is defined by routine, efficiency targets, and the need to appear productive. But how much of it is actually necessary? Dennis Nørmark , Danish anthropologist, author, and speaker, argues that a significant part of today’s work culture is built on pseudo-work —tasks that maintain appearances rather than create real value. As the co-author of Pseudo-Work: How We Ended Up Being Busy Doing Nothing , he examines why unnecessary work persists and how it shapes our p...
Feb 26, 2025•57 min•Season 1Ep. 108
Send us a text Traditional education often fails to nurture curiosity, creativity, and deep engagement. In this episode, we explore a different path—one that is flexible, self-directed, and built around each child’s unique interests. We discuss homeschooling, unschooling, and modular education, breaking down how families can step away from rigid school structures and embrace learning that feels natural and meaningful. Our guest, Manisha Snoyer, is an entrepreneur, educator, and founder of Modulo...
Feb 19, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 108
Send us a text What makes Danish parenting unique, and how does it raise happy, resilient kids? In this episode, we talk with Jessica Joelle Alexander , bestselling author of The Danish Way of Parenting , about Denmark’s highly regarded child-rearing approach. The Danish approach to raising children is shaped by principles from Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783–1872), a Danish pastor, philosopher, and educator who emphasized personal formation ("Dannelse") as equally important as academic...
Feb 12, 2025•1 hr 28 min•Season 1Ep. 107
Send us a text How can unschooling create a safe and empowering educational path for children? In this episode, we talk with Essie Richards about her transformative journey from traditional schooling to unschooling in rural Cornwall, UK. Essie shares how her family chose this path after her son faced bullying, leading them to embrace self-directed education as a way to foster curiosity, confidence, and emotional well-being. Our conversation delves into the principles of unschooling, focusing on ...
Feb 05, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 106
Send us a text Sugata Mitra is a renowned educational researcher and innovator best known for his revolutionary "Hole in the Wall" experiment, which demonstrated the incredible capacity of children to teach themselves when provided with access to technology. A TED Prize winner and creator of the "School in the Cloud," Sugata’s work challenges traditional educational systems and advocates for self-organized and emergent learning as the future of education. After a lighthearted opening about weath...
Jan 29, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 105
