Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:00]:
Welcome, advocates, to another episode of the Leading Equity Podcast. A podcast that focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their schools. Today's special guest is mister Jerry Culber. So without further ado, Jerry, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. It's great to be here. Well, the pleasure is always mine. I'm excited for today's conversation.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:21]:
We're gonna be talking about STEAM and introducing our folks of color, our students of color, for specifically into the STEAM fields. But before we get into that, I'd love for you to share a little bit about yourself and what you currently do.

Jerry Kolber [00:00:33]:
Sure. Yeah. So my background is I've made a lot of television that's, kind of educational entertainment, like Brain Games for Nat Geo and Brain Child for Netflix. Currently, I am the cocreator and host of a podcast called Who Smarted that comes out 3 times a week. Every episode is all about some sort of topic from science, history, engineering, culture, done in a scripted and fun way to get kids excited about learning.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:56]:
You are busy, man. I don't know how in the world you are publishing 3 episodes. I struggle getting 1 in a month a week. You're getting 3 in? Good job on that.

Jerry Kolber [00:01:05]:
I mean, it's my job. So, you know, that's like me saying, how do you manage to do all your work? You know? It's very bad. Fair bad.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:01:13]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jerry Kolber [00:01:14]:
Thank you.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:01:15]:
Even even when so I'm a school principal now, but even before, that's I I remember there was a time when I first started, I was doing 2 a week, but even that was a lot. So, I mean, you're scripting your thing and, you know, there's a whole production side. So good kudos to you and the work that you're doing.

Jerry Kolber [00:01:30]:
Yeah. I will I will thank you. I will say when we started this during the pandemic, it was kind of a side project to help kids get off the screen and, you know, all that. And we I don't know why we picked 3 times a week, I guess, because we didn't really have anything else to do because we were all at home, you know? And then when the show caught on and the pandemic stopped and we got back to work, we're like, wow. This is it's a lot of lot of episodes to do every week, but we have figured it out.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:01:53]:
Good. Alright. Well, let's get into it because you like you mentioned, you you've you've done a lot of work out there. You've worked with Nat National Geographics. You worked with Netflix. You've done some other things. You have your own show, obviously. There's a lot of things that you're doing.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:02:04]:
But you and I were talking before we hit record about your enthusiasm over the work that you're doing in the STEM fields and some of your passion in regards to introducing more folks of color into that field. I wanna start with what led you to that idea or that concept.

Jerry Kolber [00:02:22]:
So that that really came up when we were doing brain games initially for National Geographic about, gosh, 12 or 13 years ago. In that geo, like pretty much every science channel, most of their experts tended to be white male scientists. Right? And so as we were doing brain game, which was a show that was supposed to appeal to everybody in society and help them understand how their brain worked, we started noticing the same trend that the scientists that were getting sent to us and approved were mostly white guys. And we, you know, we we started to notice it, and then a couple of the the women I suppose there's some women of color who worked with us on the show, and they're like, hey. Are there any, are there any, like, black or late lady scientists in the world? Like because, like, it doesn't feel like it.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:03:02]:
Like

Jerry Kolber [00:03:02]:
Yeah. Yeah. We were starting to feel that too. So we then just made an effort to really, you know, shift the shift the needle on that show and provide visibility. What really made us feel like we were on the right path was we started to get letters from young kids, like, you know, in junior high and and high school saying that they'd now seen someone who'd inspired them. You know, it it confirmed this idea that visibility equals entry points for kids. If you don't see yourself or someone who looks like you, it's hard to imagine yourself on that path. It just became kind of part of the vocabulary of how we think about shows from that point forward.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:03:35]:
Well, first of all, thank you for noticing and utilizing the position that you're in in order to make some changes there. So what was okay. Once you started to notice things, what what was some of the things that you ended up doing as a result?

Jerry Kolber [00:03:48]:
If you look at later seasons of Brain Games, almost all of the almost all of the scientists are either either women or people of color or both. So, you you know, to the point where it was maybe, like, over overcorrected.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:04:00]:
That was the other director.

Jerry Kolber [00:04:01]:
You know what? Someone said that to me, and I was like, yeah. Okay. So sure. Our ones our one show is making up for 30 years of no you know, like, I think we're fine. But, yes, we just started making an effort there, but that that was, I would say, in some ways I wouldn't call it superficial, but that was more, you know, it was more like adding into something that existed. It wasn't until we did the next project that we actually were able to really think about that visibility and bake it into the project rather than add it in. And so so we were able to actually design the next show. It was, like, impossible to separate out the idea of visibility for people of color and stem from the show itself.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:04:39]:
So here's the thing, and I love this because as I'm thinking about it, it's it's one thing to say, okay. Well, we recognize that we had a bunch it was basically white men that were representing our show. So then we switched over, and then now it's nothing but folks of color or or women as L. That balance and I think sometimes what happens is people have really good intentions of trying to, you know, embed diversity when it comes to representation. But sometimes the the folks of color or sometimes the women are viewed as contributors, not necessarily as a baked in fabric of the the STEM field. So it sounds like your next project kinda was you you got your legs going and you kinda figured out which how how to navigate things going further. Is that right?

Jerry Kolber [00:05:28]:
That's exactly right. And we were able we were able to like, I I gotta tell you, like, this isn't, you know, this is I'm not saying this to make myself look like I did something amazing here because I'll explain to you why why we're able to do it. This is a very hard thing to pull off in in television. There's a lot of implicit and sometimes explicit bias in television. I don't think I'm telling you anything that you'd be surprised to hear because you you know? I I mean, I know you don't watch a lot of TV, but if you did, who would notice this? So this next project we did, we we actually met Pharrell Williams and his great partner, Mimi Valdez, because they loved Brain Games, that prior show I was talking about. And Pharrell was interested. He's always been interested in education and science. He wanted to do a show for kids specifically that would get them excited about science and things like motivation and how the world works.

Jerry Kolber [00:06:14]:
And he really was was very adamant that the show itself had to be really, really appealing to children of color and to young women because he knew that those were under underrepresented populations. Not as like, hey. Let's throw a few few kids in the cast, but, like, how do you make a show, like, from the ground up design it that way? And so brainchild was that was that show, and there was no way to pull pull that thread out of the show. Like, the the host was a young woman of color. The only science expert on the show is this amazing woman, Allie Ward. All all of the volunteers that we have in the in the experiments are, like, representational of the actual makeup of society, you know, rather than just like, hey. We had, like, a black family in one of the episodes. So it it just was baked into the idea of the show.

Jerry Kolber [00:06:58]:
And it it's like when I even still when I look at that show, I'm like, man, I wish more shows did this because it's done in a way that you just feel you you feel like you're in the world while you're watching the show. It doesn't feel added on or tacked on or, like, someone was, like, checking a box. So it just feels organic, and and the reaction we had from kids, all white kids, black kids, Latino kids, everybody told us that we were on the right path because kids just felt like they were seeing their actual world represented on screen.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:07:27]:
So when you say the folks are re so were they reaching out, like, via letters, Internet? Like, how how were you getting that in that data?

Jerry Kolber [00:07:33]:
Yeah. We get letters from from kids. We have, like, people would come on our website and send us send us notes. So, yeah, so it was the feedback was very clear.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:07:40]:
Okay. And and so, again, thank you for for this. I'm I'm curious. How did you connect how did you get connected with Pharrell Williams?

Jerry Kolber [00:07:49]:
Oh, you know, we just hang out now. I'm just like That was a homie. Right? So Pharrell was he was actually represented at the same agency we were at at the time. And he'd mentioned to his agent that he wanted to do something, like, in the world of of science. And he said, you know, I love this show Brain Games. Like, they seem like they know what they're doing. They seem like they're on the same like, the level thinking level that I'm on. And the agent was like, this guy, Chad, who who who's a friend, and and our agent was like, I know I know those guys.

Jerry Kolber [00:08:19]:
And, so there was a day where Chad's like, oh, can you guys go to this hotel? Pharrell's in New York. He's in room whatever. Someone's gonna meet in the lobby and and and go up with you. And we got to the hotel, and the person who was supposed to meet us was late and texted us and was like, oh, you can just go up. So, like, now we just, like, go up and knock on the door and, like, Pharrell opens the door, and we're like, oh my god. Like, I'm such a fan. And he's like, no. I'm such a fan of you guys.

Jerry Kolber [00:08:40]:
You guys are doing like, it was just this, like, immediate, like, humility from from both sides. And we ended up talking for for so long that first time about all these ideas that, like, his his team was eventually like, like, he's gotta go. Like, he's late for his next thing. And so then that just made it it just became obvious from that first meeting that, you know, we were gonna have a really, really good time making something really powerful together.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:09:02]:
Alright. Right. Thank you. Okay. Alright. Just I was just curious. So Yeah. You you

Jerry Kolber [00:09:05]:
needed to know. You needed to know. Now you know. Agents, man. It's agents. It's all ages.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:09:08]:
But if you were like, yeah. That was my best friend. We grew up to if you had that story, I would have been intrigued as well. So

Jerry Kolber [00:09:13]:
that would have also been a good story, but that was it was all all all through the agents. Yeah.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:09:18]:
Okay. Alright. So so the show is called Brainchow. Now if it's multiple seasons, where where we at right now when it comes to the availability on Netflix?

Jerry Kolber [00:09:26]:
Yes. So Brainchild was was 1 season, 13 episodes. It is still on Netflix. It still continues to do very perform very well for them. The other interesting thing with that show is both Pharrell and and ourselves wanted to create curriculum to make it easy to use that show in classrooms, whether it was a classroom teaching motivation topics or language literacy or or science stuff. And so we we hired a STEM team that created this awesome curriculum that can work for middle school or or or or upper grades. And, that's that's still available. It's totally free for any teachers that want it.

Jerry Kolber [00:10:00]:
It's at brainchildshow dotcom, and, still gets downloaded all the time.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:10:04]:
Alright. So I was gonna you can see it's like you were thinking ahead. Like, you already knew what the kind of questions I was gonna ask you because I I was gonna ask, like, is this a curriculum based type of show that science folks or STEM folks could bring into the classrooms? So it's middle and high school levels is the age? No.

Jerry Kolber [00:10:22]:
Sorry. It's L like elementary and middle school.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:10:24]:
Okay. So 3

Jerry Kolber [00:10:25]:
to 5 and then 6 to 8.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:10:27]:
And so, like, a teacher that's working in science, technology, engineering, mathematics could essentially watch the videos or play the videos for their students, and then there's a lesson behind it, some assessment, things like that?

Jerry Kolber [00:10:40]:
Yes. They we we made it super easy for the teachers to use the show because there's, you know, there's some great content there. The the curriculum, it has, like, the lesson plans, it's got activities, got, take home stuff, exit questions, all that kind of stuff.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:10:54]:
Okay. Okay. Alright. Well, that kinda leads to the next part that I wanted to kinda touch on in regards to STEM is the accessibility side of things. You know, we assume that everyone has a Netflix account and that they pay the the subscription fees and all those things or have the device to watch the the content and things like that. So I kinda wanna touch on maybe some of the accessibility challenges that you're seeing when it comes to the STEM field.

Jerry Kolber [00:11:20]:
Yeah. I mean, they're huge. I mean, there's a I mean, Eakins even if you first of all, like, even if you have a Netflix account, you might not know the show exists. Yeah. Netflix swears their algorithm is, like, telepathic. It's I know this because I know so many families that love brain games who have kids the age that would watch brainchild who've never seen brainchild pop up on their algorithm. So, you know, their their algorithm is okay, but it's it's not amazing. And so if it doesn't tell you the show exists, you don't know about it.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:11:48]:
Right.

Jerry Kolber [00:11:48]:
But at but at the even higher level, like, there's just a lot of kids whose families can't afford Netflix. They don't have Netflix for for some some other reason, or they don't have whatever the other streaming platform is. So so on that level, accessibility can be an issue. And then on the other level, like, the network can decide at any time to take the show down, and now it's not there anymore. And we've we've we have seen that happen with with shows that we worked on that people were still watching. So that's the problem. It's that how do we make shows and content that's gonna be great for kids no matter who they are, where they live, how much money their family makes, what their background is, that they can listen to anywhere, anytime, like, literally as long as there's some sort of Internet connection. Yeah.

Jerry Kolber [00:12:27]:
And the answer is exactly the same format you do, which is podcasting. It's free. It's everywhere. It's always available.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:12:34]:
Yeah. I I'm I'm sorry. I'm a big fan of podcasting. Like, folks have asked me, you know, how come you don't be a you know, why aren't you a blogger? Things like that. And I said, man, the the reach that you have when it comes to podcasting, the amount of individuals that I've met. I mean, I I know I'm nowhere near as many episodes as you have, but I I I'm, what, 365

Jerry Kolber [00:12:58]:
ish? That's a lot, man. That's pretty close to us. That's not far.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:13:04]:
3 a week? You're you gotta be at, like, 3,000 episode 3,000.

Jerry Kolber [00:13:08]:
Oh, no. You've been doing it for, like, 3 or 4 years. So we're, you know, we're I think we're, like, 5 5, 600. So Okay. You're definitely closer than anyone else I've ever spoken to. So, man, you're busy.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:13:18]:
Well L, here's the thing. Here's the thing. I'm a I'm a person of color. Right? And so, unfortunately, there's not a lot of education podcast hosts that are black, let alone of color. And I've just been very fortunate enough to be always ranked within the top 100 or so in the how to areas. Hence, this is how we got connected.

Jerry Kolber [00:13:37]:
Yeah.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:13:37]:
So it's there's a lot of accessibilities when it comes to representation of those who are hosting, those who are doing shows like this.

Jerry Kolber [00:13:45]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, the the other thing is, you know, we we also realize, like, the second you start doing video or TV, whether it's you or television Yeah. You have to cast somebody Yeah. To play that role visually. And the second you do that, you have created visibility for one group of people, and you've taken away a a pathway to visibility for everybody else. We never really thought about that until we, you know, we really started working with Mimi and and Pharrell because, you know, obviously, they they're people of color. They think about this a lot.

Jerry Kolber [00:14:16]:
And so when we created this who smarted show, we were like, this is interesting because we can create a host for the show that's a scripted host that we never have to show what they look like. And so every single kid listening gets to decide what the host looks like. Right? And so we've never created a cart even a cartoon image or any kind of image of the host. And when we get we get drawings all the time from kids, like, that they've drawn the trusty narrator, it runs the gamut. Like, some people think it it's like a white guy. For some people, it's like a black woman. Like like, it runs like, they and I Is that ambiguous? That would've been ambiguous. Yeah.

Jerry Kolber [00:14:55]:
Wow. Yeah. I actually do the voice for it. Like, I I do this, like, character voice for it. And, the voice definitely, like, I thought it was clearly me, but I have friends who who are like, wait. I thought that was a woman doing the doing the role. So, like so I think people just hear what they what they wanna hear on the voice. And so that's something that we think is a huge feature and benefit for the show is that any kid listening can decide if they wanna think the host looks like them, then the host looks like them.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:15:21]:
I love it.

Jerry Kolber [00:15:21]:
It's it's it's a way for them. They can imagine what they want and really connect that way.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:15:25]:
I love that. So is this a STEM based show, or is it just education in general?

Jerry Kolber [00:15:31]:
It's it's I would say education in general Eakins very strongly STEM. So we do a ton of episodes on on science and engineering. We will sometimes do, you know, history episodes. We do a lot of human body episodes. The kids sometimes will ask for, like, a pop culture episode. You know, it'll be like, you know, how did cereal get invented? Which turns into a STEM episode, you know, obviously. But, you know, we'll do, like, Roblox. We'll do whatever.

Jerry Kolber [00:15:54]:
You know? We get tons of requests for stuff. So we tend to always kind of come back into the into the STEM zone now.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:16:00]:
My understanding was cornflakes, for example, was an accidental discovery.

Jerry Kolber [00:16:04]:
It was.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:16:04]:
Hear about that? Okay.

Jerry Kolber [00:16:06]:
L food.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:16:07]:
Yeah. Yeah. I I remember they they burnt something on on accident. They got cornflakes, and Yeah. The rest is history. So Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:16:15]:
Okay. Alright. So tell me a little bit more about the show. I mean, it's called obviously, it's called Who's Smart It? Comes out 3 times a week. You would recommend now is this something that has some curriculum behind it or is it Eakins like a, you know, fun fact, something that we can introduce into our classrooms?

Jerry Kolber [00:16:31]:
Yes. So we're we're actually working on curriculum, which will come out sometime later next year, but it gets used in classrooms mainly as part of, like, transition time or to introduce a topic. So it's you know, every every episode is aligned in some way with some sort of science standard, but we haven't gone to the level yet of actually, you know, outlining all of that and making it really easy. But we hear from teachers that they mainly use it after recess, you know, coming back from lunch, settling kids in, or if they have a topic that's challenging that they know for Eakins, the kids can be challenged by, they'll find one of our episodes that relates to that topic, play it, and gets gets the kids because it's all funny and fun the way we do it. And it just gets the kids excited and thinking and talking. So by the time you get to the curriculum, it goes down a lot easier.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:17:13]:
Alright. So first of all, folks, the links are gonna be in the show notes, so make sure that you support, the work that's being done here. Because again, this is going to not only support a lot of folks that are interested in the STEM fields, but also it might introduce folks who have not thought about or considered the STEM fields as a possibility, especially when they're not considering seeing or hearing folks that they can relate to. I love, Jerry, how the the narrator is so ambiguous that we we're not even sure who it is. However, it gives the opportunity for imagination for those who are listening to kinda see themselves in that experience. What did that look like when you're kinda coming that coming up with that idea?

Jerry Kolber [00:17:57]:
So there's 2 two pieces 2 answers 2 parts to that answer.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:18:01]:
Okay.

Jerry Kolber [00:18:01]:
1 is, in terms of how we thought about writing the host, the idea was to make someone that kids would relate to, be excited to go on a journey with, someone who had some personality who could literally travel anywhere in time or space. He has all kinds of devices. He can miniaturize. He can travel back in time. He can go into a black hole, you know, whatever he needs to do. Right? So he's he's this kind of interesting character. So that's how we thought of the character. In terms of the voice of the character, that was just because we were doing it during pandemic, and I had a microphone.

Jerry Kolber [00:18:31]:
And I started doing it, and we thought this would be, like, for a few months. Sure. And then the and then that kept going, and the show kept growing. And at some point, I was like, okay. So would, like, now it's time to, like, cast someone else to to to do the voice. And everybody was, no. Like, every like, everyone who works on the show, everyone who listens to the show, you know, who knew that we were thinking about that. Our agents were like, no.

Jerry Kolber [00:18:50]:
No. No. You're it.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:18:52]:
And I was,

Jerry Kolber [00:18:52]:
like, accidentally became the host of the show that now has just, like, become huge, and it's fine. I love I love doing it. But it was not it was not intended that I was going to host a giant long running Eakins podcast, but I'm happy to do it. Yeah.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:19:06]:
I've been there. I started my show around the pandemic as well, and it always looked like yeah. I was just doing it just to help myself, you know, selfishly. I was bringing on guests that I I was just interested in topics. And then next thing I know people started listening and they started reaching out and wanted me to come speak and and it just became a whole thing. And so I've always kept it going. So I personally can try to stay relevant and understand what the trends are, the topics. So, like, this conversation here is helpful for me because sometimes I have these conversations with individuals who's like, you know, I'm looking for some stem information.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:19:38]:
I'll be like, you know what? I just spoke to Jerry, and this is a guy that you gotta listen to. Who's smarted? Like, you know, these are things that I can kinda be a broker, if you will, in a lot of ways. So it just keeps me relevant.

Jerry Kolber [00:19:50]:
Great. Yeah. Makes sense. And I I get the feeling. I've listened to some of your episodes. I think you'd like doing it.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:19:56]:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Jerry Kolber [00:19:56]:
I think I think people like talking to people. Like, you know, one

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:19:59]:
of the things I tell people, I was like, you know, look. Like, folks will come up to me and, you know, hey. I listen. I say, you know what? One of the biggest pieces I think that I take away from these podcast episodes is, like, you just hear the 30 minute snippet. That's the part that's recorded. However, I've spent 10, 15, 20 minutes sometimes, an hour sometimes, talking to this person behind the scenes, and we keep in touch. And so it's just the the amount of individuals that I know at this point is just amazing. So I I could imagine, Jerry, you've you've met all kind of scientists.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:20:30]:
You've had all these different experience. You've learned all these fun facts that you probably wouldn't have learned on your own time.

Jerry Kolber [00:20:37]:
Yeah. It's true. It's true. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, I have to tell you, you know, most podcasters are are who who good podcast for a while are really good at, you know, interviews, which you're which you're great at. Most people are not great at solo episodes, but you actually are. I listened to some of your solo ones.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:20:51]:
You know, I saw some thank first of all, thank you, Bill.

Jerry Kolber [00:20:53]:
Those are hard. You pulled them up.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:20:55]:
Don't be trying to blow me up now. I'm just trying to stay humble. But

Jerry Kolber [00:20:58]:
yeah. I'm in. I'm just saying.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:21:00]:
It's you know, I've gotten very comfortable. I I remember the very first time I was asked to speak, just just speak in general, like, as an adult. And I remember I was an 8th grade teacher, and we had 8th grade graduations from you know, you finish middle school, you're going on to high school. And the 8th grade class, they asked me, can I do their keynote for their graduation? I remember being terrified. I had never done any kind of speaking, any of those kind of things. I'm a very believe this or not, I'm very introverted. So I was just, like, not trying to do it. I came back the next day, because I told them no initially.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:21:32]:
Then I came back the next day, and I was like, okay. Alright. Can it's is the offer still there? Can I please do this? And they said yes. And so that was my first time. But I remember being on stage, I had literally scripted the entire speech out, and I was reading it word for word. And there's one part where it's, like, the graduating class, and so I asked the the students. I said, what do you wanna be when you grow up? So these are questions I had asked ahead of time. I had it written down into my speech, and I'm looking out.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:21:58]:
And I'm like, hey, Michelle. You said you wanna be a nurse. And I looked down at my my paper, and I got lost. Because that's, like, the third person of looking up, trying to find a person, give them eye contact, and say what they were wanting to be. And went back down, and I just remember sitting there like, oh my gosh. I almost just walked away, but I just powered through that speech. And that was Eakins like the spark for me that just kinda kept things going. So, yeah, solos aren't it's a lot easier now, but when I first started, oh my gosh.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:22:28]:
You I had to have everything word for word.

Jerry Kolber [00:22:30]:
Yeah. Yeah. No. It takes takes practice.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:22:33]:
Yeah. What about you? Like, are are you pretty what what are your thoughts on as far as doing solo episodes, or or do you do any solo speaking engagement?

Jerry Kolber [00:22:41]:
Yeah. I do. I mean, I I do speak now and then, and I could speak on, you know, everything from the educational podcast stuff, just podcasting in general. I don't we don't you know, everything I do on the podcast for Who's Smart It is scripted. We have a couple of other shows that I, you know, I'll go on and and speak, you know, off the cuff. But, Who's Smart It is just totally you know, there's we have great writers who write everything I say. So I I I could talk, like I feel like, like, 8 to 10 minutes, I I can solo after that. Like, man, am I like, I start to hear myself.

Jerry Kolber [00:23:11]:
Am I still going? Like, what am I talking about? It's a thing. Yeah.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:23:14]:
Then that's the one thing for me is I don't technically, I I I really don't like to hear myself. So, like, I'll I'll do the edits, and I'll do the episode. And then then sometime I won't listen to it again just because I'm just constantly critiquing myself. Oh, he was rambling too much, and and I should've said I should I was rambling too much. I should've stopped at a certain point and these Eakins of things, and I just don't like to hear myself. But that's my own personal critique from time to time.

Jerry Kolber [00:23:38]:
So Yeah. L, I think you sound great. So

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:23:40]:
Thank you. I I

Jerry Kolber [00:23:41]:
we're all we're all harder on ourselves than we would be on anyone else.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:23:44]:
Thank you. Well, first of all, thanks for listening to the show because not everybody that that I get guests have listened to the show. And then second of all, I appreciate the compliment because you can you can understand and appreciate the amount of work that goes into producing a podcast. So thank you for that. I'll I'll say this, Jerry. You know, it's been fun meeting you and and having these conversations. I wanna kind of before we move on and kinda wrap things up, I know you probably, based off your experience, you might have some strategies when it comes to introducing accessibility, STEM, or even just the based off of your experience when it comes to introducing students of color specifically and women into these fields, what kind of strategies could you provide that you've Eakins learned over that time?

Jerry Kolber [00:24:25]:
Honestly, the the the best thing you can do is find, you know, whether it's media or have speakers you can bring in, but people who who look like them, who are in, you know, real real role, like leadership roles in engineering or science or or technology, I don't think you can you can beat that. You can talk about it all day long, but when you bring in, you know, a 35 year old black woman who's a a leading researcher at a at a science organization to talk to the kids that are the younger version of her. There's just no better way to to create that kind of visibility and pathway. I I just I I can't think of any better

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:25:00]:
better way to do it.

Jerry Kolber [00:25:00]:
Whether that's doing it live or, you know, bringing in projects like, well, Mimi and Pearl made that show with the movie Sheldon Figures, any anything like that, you know, that's the way to do it. I I I I just think it's the best way.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:25:12]:
Yeah. But it requires us to be intentional about it. Like, this is something that we need to recognize. And and some and and if you're not thinking about it, because this is not even not your lived experience, it's not something that you have to worry about because you're used to seeing your representation. But it's this takes someone that's that's very mindful about how things are looking when it comes to the STEM fields, where the trends are going, and what are some things that can enhance what what's already happened. So, again, you have to be intentional about it.

Jerry Kolber [00:25:38]:
Yeah. L, look, I'll I'll just say I'll say this is, like, maybe as an argument for being intentional about it when you have a Sheldon other things, you know, for your time. I don't think we're gonna solve we have a lot of problems in our world. I'm not talking about politics, but, like, talking about just, like, resources and the weather. Like, whether you think stuff's man made or not, we have issues we have to address, and we're we're not gonna address them through changing everybody's behavior.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:26:02]:
Yeah.

Jerry Kolber [00:26:02]:
Right? We're gonna actually end up fixing those things through techno technological and engineering solutions. Like, let's just let's just jump through pretending that, you know, everyone's gonna start recycling and that's gonna solve the problem. It's like, that's important to do, but the problem's gonna be solved by by smart kids of today who grow up and come up with technology and innovation. And so why wouldn't you wanna activate every possible young mind that you could to start thinking that way? And when you look at the research that shows that that children are black children are 23% more likely to go to college if they have a black teacher at some point in elementary school, like, oh, okay. Let's let's figure out even we're not gonna figure that out, let's at least get some, like, role modeling to come talk to them and make sure they see that pathway because otherwise, you are you are just, like, literally leaving out a huge number of kids who are not gonna get inspired to go in that direction, who could potentially have been the mind that was gonna figure out how to solve some huge problem that we are we're all gonna face. So I think, you know, if it if it helps to think selfishly of these things rather than feeling like it's some kind of, you know, checklist thing, that's one way to think about it.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:27:09]:
So Powerful words right there, and I I didn't even know that statistic was there. So if they had one, just one teacher, you're more likely to go to college.

Jerry Kolber [00:27:17]:
Yeah. I'll send you the research. I was just I was just talking with someone else about it. It's it's it's pretty deep.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:27:22]:
Wow. Okay. Well, listen. I've learned a lot. I'd love for you to take us home with any final words of advice you wanna provide to our listeners out there.

Jerry Kolber [00:27:29]:
I've had a great time Eakins. I think we talked about a lot of stuff. The last thing I would say is, like, anything you can do to keep all kids curious. If they're asking questions, don't tell them you're finding their questions annoying. If you don't know the answer, write it down. Figure out a way to research with them later. I would just say anything you could do to not shut down kids who are being curious and inquisitive Eakins when it can be annoying sometimes is is good for for them and it's good for the world. There

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:27:52]:
it is. Alright. Mic drop on that. Listen, Jerry, if we we have some folks that want to connect with you, what's the best way to reach you online?

Jerry Kolber [00:27:59]:
You can email me well, you can email us at who's smarted at who smarted.com. That's great. But you can go to our company site and hit contact. We see all that. That's atomic entertainment.com. Okay. Yep.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:28:10]:
And your show is Who's Smart is the podcast? Is is available, like, I'm assuming on any platform that you can get your podcast from?

Jerry Kolber [00:28:17]:
It it is. And we actually have an ad free version that usually costs money, but we make that free for all educators. They can use the ad the version with no ads in their classroom. And that's at who's smarted.com, click educators, and they get the the ad free version totally free.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:28:31]:
Perfect. Alright. Well, once again, I am speaking with Jerry Colbert. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. This is great.

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