Getting Smart Podcast Catching Up: School Choice, AI & Humanity, and Bottom-Up Innovation
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Mar 13, 2026 Conversations range from city transit and place-based learning to converting district property into affordable teacher housing. They explore early AI agent behavior and how incentives shape major AI companies. Research on parents valuing grades over test scores and a long-term Florida school choice study come up. The thread returns to investing in relational infrastructure and how bottom-up innovation spreads in education.
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Mexico City Pyramid Rising Story
- Nate McClennen described Mexico City's sinking center where Spanish terraforming buried a lake and the original pyramid is re-emerging as surrounding land settles.
- He suggested this as fertile ground for interdisciplinary PBL connecting history, science, and ELA using real civic change.
Moldbook Shows Agents With Persistent Memory
- Nate McClennen flagged Moldbook as an early demonstration of AI agents talking to AI agents and forming 'soul files'—persistent memory logs that agents reload when they reconnect.
- He noted this foreshadows autonomous agent systems operating behind the scenes and the implications for future learning environments.
Parents Overweight Grades Compared To Tests
- A survey of ~2,000 U.S. parents found both grades and standardized tests affect parental investment, but parents overweight grades when positive and under-react to high grades paired with low test scores.
- The hosts concluded grade stickiness and grade inflation hide objective signals from parents, reducing attention to learning gaps revealed by tests.