Alana learns to lead Socratic convos

So, um, yeah, I know that, uh, you know that there's this 9-year-old boy who wants— whose dad wants him to learn some history from you, and you read the emails. So tell me just a little bit about how you're thinking about it, and then maybe I can help you kind of get started. Does that sound good?

Yeah. Um, so I think this is really interesting because it's going to give me a chance to be the Michael of the conversation. I've never really done that except for little discussions with my brother if he has a question or something. It's going to be someone totally new that I'm going to have to forge a relationship with, which is also exciting. We both have some commonalities, just things in common that we both have enjoyed and loved. For example, I believe he does jiu-jitsu up where he lives. Yeah, I believe I have an old teammate that trains at his gym, so it'll be really exciting to talk about those things. I know he has an interest in history. As of late, I've been a little more interested in history than I have in the past, so I'll be able to talk about it with him a little bit more. I've never been that big of a history bug, so I'm sure I can learn stuff from him too. So that'll be great for me.

Terrific. Before diving into the history piece, you say, and I like the way you put it, you'll be the Michael in the conversation.

Um, I—

in class at TSC, the Socratic Experience, occasionally you've led sessions a little bit, is that correct?

Yes. Um, I, I just feel like this time it'll be a little, it'll be a little different because it's one-on-one, I guess. And then with a class, there's also the moderator or the guy that's there. And then there's multiple people, so, you know, everybody has to speak, so it's kind of mixed up. But with one person, I feel like it's different.

For sure. First of all, there's more responsibility because you say in a class, first of all, you've got the guide's backup, and second, you've got lots of people to potentially talk with. So just two of you, and if he's not really engaging, then you kind of figure something out. Do you know what it means to build rapport? No, that means basically to build relationship, you know, get him talking. I would say the first thing that I do, again, before we even get into history, is, you know, get him talking, ask him about his life, what he loves, what he cares about. You could talk about jiu-jitsu. Um, I would say before we can really begin educating anyone, you need to have some connection and some conversational connection. And sometimes I have no idea, I've not met him, so I don't know if he's very shy or if he's talkative or, you know, my bet is a lot of times, you know, when you meet a stranger, some people are a little bit shy. The good news is I would expect you as a 12-year-old girl are not terribly intimidating to him. You know, talking to a grownup is different.

I'll try not to be.

Yeah, but I think building rapport, I would say before you even worry about history, get to the point where you got, the two of you can just have an easy, engaging, fun conversation. You know he feels comfortable with you. Um, you know that he knows that you care about him, and, uh, he knows that you're interested in him. Um, does that make sense as kind of a framework?

Yes, definitely.

And it could be it only takes 5 minutes, maybe takes 15 minutes, maybe takes, you know, 20 sessions. I doubt it'll take 20 sessions. My bet is more 5, 10, 15 minutes. But I would say, yeah, do that first. And then in the history situation, um, he is not necessarily interested in history. His dad wants him to learn history, which is a little bit different. But the way I think of that is to come from something that you're interested in. So going back to the fact that you're becoming more interested in history, you and I talked about this maybe 4 or 5 months ago, Bring me up to speed in terms of the nature of your interest in history these days.

So, I mean, right now it's just listening to podcasts in the car with my dad. We're driving a bit more because we're going on a wrestling in a little down south, and we fill most of that time with listening to history podcasts. So after we finish the World War II Pacific Front podcast, My dad has introduced me to a podcast called Martyr Made, and we're listening to actually his very first episode in which he jumps in very deep, where he launched a series called Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem, which is something I've never— like, I've heard about so much because there's conflicts going on and have been going on for a very long time, but, you know, I've never really exactly paid attention to that stuff. Which I probably should have, but now I am. I'm learning a little bit about it, and there's still so many other things that I need to listen and learn about, but that's, that's what we're listening to right now.

Great. Um, before going back to the Pacific Theater, um, can you say more about this, the new podcast? What exactly are you learning so far?

Um, I believe it starts right after World War I, where Britain, um, promised France much of, you know, Palestine and Syria. So it talks about the conflicts between Faisal and the Arabs, between, um, and Weizmann and the Jews, and Britain and France, and just that big tumble for, I guess, land and stuff. But it kind of goes deeper, just like not just the history but some of the I guess, cultures of the Arabs and the tradition of everybody else. Um, and, you know, just the more philosophical stuff, a little deeper than you'd normally expect a history podcast to go down. So I think that's especially interesting. It's made it really nice to listen to.

I'm impressed you remember so many names and so much detail. How recently did you listen to that one?

Um, we've been listening to the first 3 episodes over the past maybe 2 weeks, 1 and a half.

Got it. No, that's great. And then going back to World War II, was it only the Pacific theater or did you also learn about the European theater?

That particular podcast was, I believe, solely about the Pacific theater with the Japanese.

Got it. And are those really your 2 most kind of deep dives into history or Really the Pacific Theater? Was that your first deep dive into history?

Yes.

Okay, cool. One of the things, again, I don't know what this boy is going to be interested in. So the way I think about kind of pulling back up to the Socratic dialogues in Be the Michael is you want, ideally you want some intersection between things you're interested in and things he's interested in. And what's tricky is we, you and I have no idea what he's interested in. And I expect that he's not going— because he doesn't know all the things that you know about those two pieces, he may not be interested. He may or may not be interested. So I think the problem I would think about solving in, you know, maybe a first conversation after building rapport is, does he think there's anything at all interesting in history or nothing at all? Interested in history. The reason I often like to ask sort of extreme either-or questions early on is to get a sense. I mean, if he says there's absolutely nothing in history I'm interested in at all, then you know you've got a harder problem. Whereas if I'm kind of sort of interested in this bit of history, that bit of history, then you can dig in and see where he's interested with the potential of maybe then going back and finding a book or a podcast or something that's connected to his interest. Does that make sense?

Yes.

Um, and then going to the hard case again, the way I think about preparing for anything, and I, I would imagine you think this way about jiu-jitsu, whether you realize it or not, is that you want to prepare for the hardest case. You know, if it could be that you'll get on a conversation with him, you and he will have this incredibly fun, dynamic conversation about history, no problem. But The other option or the other extreme is it's hard to get him to say anything. He doesn't seem interested. He's resentful. He's tuned out. He's bored, you know. And so I always like to anticipate the most challenging situation, and then I can go in with, in this case, questions, you know, to be ready for the most challenging situation. Makes sense?

Yes, definitely.

And just to check, would you say that when you prepare for a jiu-jitsu match, you prepare for the most challenging situation. Yeah.

Yeah.

So in some ways, same thing with Socratic dialogue. Obviously this is very different. It's verbal, intellectual. It's not conflict, but still you wanna be just in case it's hard to connect with this kid. What do I do? So I've got some ideas, but I wanna throw it back to you. Suppose you get on a call, maybe you are successful building rapport on some things. By the way, to give you one piece of information. Um, his, he and his dad may be building a plane together, which I think is really cool. And I think my understanding is he's super excited about that. So my bet is you could probably get him talking about that and you, and then the jiu-jitsu thing. So suppose you, um, get him going about jiu-jitsu and, um, you know, building a plane. What, what are some ideas you have as to maybe how to shift it a little bit in the direction of history?

Well, if we're talking about planes, one way I was thinking I could nudge it over is just ask him if he knows any history about planes. That's kind of straightforward. I'm not really sure if there are any other more subtle ways to do that, but do that, and then I assume that it's going to lead a little bit over to the side where we want it to go, the conversation, I mean. Usually that's happened with me and other people.

So that's a great idea. And by the way, what do you know about the history of planes?

Um, I know it's making— I know, um, the two brothers who first made planes. I don't know which year. Um, and I know that it's evolved over time, and I know Amelia Earhart, um, and how Hawaiian Airlines started. But that's something I can learn about too.

Got it. Um, the Wright brothers are the brothers who invented the airplane. And by the way, if you're at all interested in reading a biography, there's a wonderful biography of the Wright brothers, just something that I found fascinating. And by the way, one of my strategies is always to come from a place where I'm interested in it. I think if you're trying to get somebody else interested and you don't care, that doesn't work. So one of the things I found really interesting is that the Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics. So airplanes did not exist. You know, some people wanted to create flying machines. There were lots of experiments, lots of failed experiments. But the Wright brothers actually, I believe they had a bicycle repair shop and they leveraged their knowledge of how to repair bicycles into what became kind of the very first plane. Does that seem interesting and surprising?

Yes, definitely. I remember that.

Yeah. Um, so yeah, you can get into him about, and you can talk about, you know, suppose the way I would also do it too is, hey, uh, suppose we were to explore history, you know, are you interested in planes? Are you interested in a war? Are you interested in history of jiu-jitsu? Everything has a history. Um, you know, and just see if he's interested in how there's one way of looking at history where it's the past and okay, this happened 100 years ago, 200 years ago. Another way of looking at history is this is how things came to be. Does that make sense to you?

Yes.

Um, by the way, are you interested in the history of jiu-jitsu?

Yes.

What do you know about the history of jiu-jitsu?

I know that it was evolved from a bunch of different martial arts, um, and I know that there are multiple variations of it, um, but the only one I really know is Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Um, I know that the Gracie family, although that's a really common name in Brazil, I think They, I guess, just started like a family of fighters and they started spreading the sport by, you know, fighting and doing matches and then spreading it to the US and eventually elsewhere.

I know very little about the history of jiu-jitsu, but I have heard of the Gracie brothers and my impression based on my shallow knowledge is that, yeah, they played a major role and it's not clear to me exactly how much they kind of created a new form of martial art versus kind of developed, promoted, popularized it. But, you know, that's something where if he was interested, the two of you could listen to a history of Gracie Brothers of jiu-jitsu or something like that. So in a first conversation with him, I would mostly focus on building rapport, a connection, and it would be better. I'll put it this way. It would be better in the first conversation for the two of you to have so much fun talking that he's like, 'Wow, I love talking to Alana. I can't wait to talk to Alana again,' than for him to say, 'Well, but then she wanted to go into history and it's boring,' and you know what I mean? So your strategy should be to— and I'll also keep it short. You know, you and I back in the day, sometimes it was short of 7 minutes, 10 minutes, 12 minutes. You know, we're going a little bit longer now because you're older, but I would say better to keep it short with him so He's implicitly, if that was fun, then drag it on too long. No, I, I see this as kind of, oh, let's call it psychological jiu-jitsu. Your, your goal is to get him to be, uh, excited about the conversation with you. And so then when there's another one, yeah, I'm happy to get on a call with Ilana. And then, you know, you know, keep going. But each time I would say deepen the the intellectual side of the conversation. Make sense?

Yes.

Um, and then, yeah, since we have so little information, we can't plan a lot more than that. Um, but I would say before going into the conversation, you might think of various other bits of history that you either know and are interested in. Um, something that I think some people are interested in is the history of their own family. Would you say you're interested in the history of your own family?

Yes.

There you go. Um, you know something about your grandparents, a little bit at least?

Yes, at best.

Yeah, and a lot of people, they don't even think about that as history. They just think, oh, my grandmother this, my grandfather that, but that's history, you know. Um, and one other way that I get kids interested in history is, you know, if their grandparents were involved in something depends on where they lived, where and when they lived. Then there are other things going on. Um, you know, so for instance, uh, do you know what decades— do you know when any of your grandparents were born or what decades they were alive or anything like that?

Um, my grandfather on my mom's side, I believe, was born in the 1940s. I'm not sure which year though.

Okay, that's super useful. But one way to think about that is, um, you know, he would then be too young to have fought in World War II because, you know, that was happening in the 1940s. But maybe depending on exactly what year, maybe he was a kid or a teenager in the '50s, and then again, either a teenager or young adult in the '60s. Um, and then yada yada yada, '70s, '80s. Do you, do you know any, anything about the '50s or '60s?

Um, no. Um, he is a veteran of the Vietnam War, though. He was a doctor. He didn't actually—

so that tells us a lot right there. So he was probably in his 20s in the '60s when the Vietnam War was primarily— it extended into the early '70s. Um, but that tells us something about, you know, when he lived. Because you know he was in the Vietnam War, Does that make you a little bit more interested in the Vietnam War?

Yes.

Okay. So again, the way I think of this is as you are aware of your own personal connections in history— one way, jiu-jitsu is a personal connection, in another way, you know, for him, maybe airplanes is a personal connection to history. In your case, um, your grandfather's role in the Vietnam War is a personal connection to history. Then You know, then there's a reason to go back and, yeah, what happened anyway? What was that like for him? What was going on? And one of the things I think school history doesn't do a good job of, it just throws this stuff at you, and often you feel no connection to it at all. Um, you, you haven't been in a regular school for a while, but do you remember, do you ever remember being in a history class where it was just kind of thrown at you and you were not very connected to it?

Um, I remember classes where subjects was thrown at me, but I wasn't, I wasn't, I guess I wasn't really ever in a normal classroom. Actually, my old personal school tried to do things differently.

Yeah.

Um, but I can imagine.

Yeah. That's the thing. You've never really been in a normal school.

No.

Great. Which is great. Um, yeah. So, uh, jiu-jitsu, airplanes, your own interest in World War II and now the Middle East. Um, and then family history. Um, any other? Well, actually, I don't know if he would be interested, but when you're reading these books, when you're reading Jane Eyre, I would assume that gives you a little bit of interest in the 19th century. And when you're reading Homer, that gives you a little bit interest in Homeric, uh, Greece and Troy. Is that true?

Absolutely. Yes.

So part of this is they often say we learn best when we start to teach. And even teaching Socratically is a form of teaching. And so this is an opportunity for you to think about all of your different personal connections to history, and then whatever he's interested in, you can, or, you know, I just know a lot, so you and I can pick a book or a movie or a podcast or something that then you and he can listen to or read and or watch, and then that way, that's kind of a path into going more deeply into it. Sound good?

Yes.

Okay, um, in which case, we've been going for a while. Any other questions or thoughts on your side?

No, nothing.

Okay, I can't wait to hear. I don't know when you and he will schedule a first call, but I would say, you know, go ahead and reach out and see if you can, and if nothing else, build rapport. And let's get Alana playing the Michael role for a 9-year-old. Sound good?

Yeah. Yes.

All right, have a wonderful day. Bye-bye.

Bye.