Old & New | Season 8 Wrap Up Episode
In the newsletter this week: Season 8's Summary, Science, & Old toys, new uses.
🎙️ This Week on the Podcast
What a gift it is to amplify the voices and work of these incredible people. Season 8 was exceptional, and I know our listeners thought so, too.
Help us decide what’s up next in Season 9 by answering a few questions here.
📘 What I’m Reading
I found out about this pop-up science fair on TikTok, which I guess proves you can’t say that nothing good comes from social media.
With budget cuts hitting education, healthcare, climate science, and more, I was honestly inspired by what researchers and scientists did in response: they held a science fair in the lobby of a congressional building.
Why? To make it impossible for lawmakers to ignore what’s at stake.
Instead of another white paper or press release, they brought the work to life: real research, real innovations, real people explaining what we stand to lose if critical grants are canceled. The CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sudeep Parikh, put it clearly:
“The budget cuts would end America’s global scientific leadership.”
Now, sure—some of this is theater. But it got my attention. And maybe now it has yours, too.
This isn’t abstract to me. One of my college friends is a neuroscientist at Princeton, researching the long-term impact of early childhood trauma. One of my closest friends from childhood is a pediatrician and researcher studying the same through the lens of food insecurity in her medical facility in Washington D.C.
And guess what? The ripple effect of childhood trauma doesn’t stop at the child or their family. It hits schools, teachers, social workers, mental health providers, and principals—millions of professionals who show up every day to support kids carrying invisible burdens into their classrooms.
Cuts to scientific research aren’t isolated. They reverberate through our education ecosystem. And through our future.
I’m grateful for the researchers using their voices, their time, and yes—even a science fair—to make noise about what we stand to lose.
Because when you fight for funding, you're not just fighting for data. You're fighting for the real-world systems that hold our communities together.
If you’re curious, read it here.
💭 What I’m Thinking About
There’s a special kind of magic when a younger sibling discovers the older sibling’s toys—especially when the older one isn’t around to set the rules.
Right now, our older son is away, and our younger one has full reign of the house. While he’s always shown more excitement for his big brother’s toys than his own, this time it’s different. He’s on a mission.
This past weekend, he insisted I go down to the basement, dig through an unopened closet, and find the train set. Not the new one. The old one—the wooden one. The one with a slightly broken bridge and a piece of track that’s probably been missing since 2018, before he was born.
And just like that, it began. Hours of building, rebuilding, storytelling, problem-solving, and play. He’s created entire rail systems. Reimagined stations. Given the train’s names and backstories. He’s even found new ways to write—leaving little signs and maps along the tracks, just in case someone else wanted to “visit.”
If you ask most early childhood or elementary educators, they’ll tell you: open-ended play is where the deepest learning lives.
But how do we take it even further? How can parents and teachers help level up open-ended play so it builds critical thinking, executive functioning, and planning skills without turning it into a math lesson?
Here’s one idea we’ve been trying:
Before opening the toy box, sit down and plan the play together.
What do you want to build today?
What tools or materials might you need?
What problems could come up—and how might you solve them?
Can you sketch a blueprint? Or write a story to go with it?
This pre-play step doesn’t take long, but it opens up so much room for learning. It teaches our kids how to imagine, organize, adapt, and create—all through the lens of something they already love.
Turns out, the old train set wasn’t the only thing being rediscovered this weekend.