We're working towards every teacher seeing themselves as a writing
teacher and every young person identifying as a writer, and that doesn't
mean they're going to go off and become a writer, but it does mean it's
going to be a tool for them to use in their lives and whatever path they
choose and a tool that they can use to understand themselves as well.
Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud.
I'm Corey Quinn, and this is an episode that
I've been angling to get for a very long time.
Laura Brief is the CEO of 826 National, which might not
mean a lot to you folks, but that is the beneficiary
of our regularly scheduled charity t-shirt campaigns.
They are a nonprofit focusing on helping youth creatively write, which
is something that I think is deeply important, given that no one seems
to know how to write to save their lives in most of this industry.
Laura, thank you for joining me.
Thank you so much, Corey.
It is such a pleasure to be here with you.
We've been working with you for so many years now,
and it's fun to be in conversation this way with you.
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And also, let me know what you think about it.
I've honestly been looking for this for a while,
and it's been on my list of things to try.
I'll be trying it this week.
Please, reach out, let me know what you think.
I will say that one of the funniest parts about this is the first
year we, we wound up selecting you as the nonprofit that we're
going to be supporting, we didn't coordinate with any of you
folks at first because we were sort of, seat of our pants style of
approach, which is kind of common for how we do these things here.
And it was just, at one point we've, so we've sent out
the donation, and then we got an outreach from you folks
that was a politely phrased version of, "Um, Hello?"
It was awesome, like, like, what is this psychotic thing
that you're doing with the sarcastic shirts and the rest?
It seems to definitely be benefiting what we're
doing here, but are you a dangerous lunatic or not?
Well, what's the answer to that question?
Exactly.
I think we found out the answer to that question.
If anyone's listening to this show more than one
or two episodes, they probably figured that out.
Instead of my talk with my hands describe the
vague shape of the organization, what is 826?
Thank you so much for asking that question.
826 National is the largest youth writing network in the country.
We work towards a country in which every young person in the
United States has the access, has access to the power and joy
of writing regardless of the classroom that they are sitting in.
We were founded, we have chapters now in nine cities across the U.S.
and we have a free platform for teachers called 826 Digital that
brings our tried and true ways to teachers and classrooms everywhere.
But we were founded here in San Francisco in 2002 by the author Dave
Eggers and the educator Nínive Caligari, and they had this idea.
They were aware that writing education was
not happening as it should in classrooms.
And along with that, they were aware that teachers needed
support bringing individualized attention to young people.
So they decided to come together and to give birth to
this organization that was about supporting the endless
possibilities when you combine young people and writing.
And we started at 826 Valencia and have just blossomed from there
and serve communities deeply through our writing centers, through
our work in schools, and as I mentioned, through this platform.
We serve about 730,000 students around the United States now.
That is a significant scale.
For those who are not familiar with David Eggers, because I
certainly wasn't when I started working with you folks, he
is the creator of McSweeney's Internet Tendency, which is far
and away one of my favorite pieces of satire on the internet.
It is, it is just so well done.
It absolutely is.
In case you hadn't picked up on this by now, a lot of the writing that I tend
to embrace myself is profoundly sarcastic, and satire is generally right there.
The problem is, is if satire isn't done well, it just comes across as mean.
Well, I'll let you know if we veer into that territory.
I've mostly been able to steer around that for most of the time, but it's
one of the reasons that learning to write and learning to tell a story
and to build a cohesive narrative is so deeply and profoundly important.
And it seems like, I'm going to be judgy here.
I was never much of an academic.
On paper, I have an eighth grade education after being
expelled from two boarding schools and failing out of college.
It was a fun ride.
It sounds so fun.
I bet you really enjoyed all of that.
Oh, it was, it was an absolute blast.
My teen years, spot on.
Great experience.
No notes.
Were you writing when you were a teenager?
Had you found writing yet?
Not yet.
No.
And that was part of the problem.
We were mandated to go to school.
12 years in a grade school in the United States of English classes.
And in so many cases, what the English classes
themselves focused on, from my perspective, was so banal.
It was, read this piece of literature that's hundreds of
years out of date, and we're going to basically do everything
in our power to drive you away from enjoying reading.
It's like we're gonna pick one of the most heavy handed symbolism-centric books,
drop it on top of you, and then wonder why you don't like to read for funsies.
My love of reading endured despite that sort of treatment, not because of it.
Absolutely.
And we take a similar approach to writing.
I think for us, writing isn't about the five paragraph essay.
Writing is about embracing who you are showing.
As you are, and writing about the things that bring you pleasure, bring
you joy, bring you sense of meaning Writing for us is not grammar.
It is not spelling.
It is really the act of being able to take
what's within you and put it on a page.
In whatever way you choose and to whatever end you choose.
Just listening to your journey and your journey as a, as a young person,
your educational journey as a young person, thinking what you were just
saying too about, I can't remember frankly whether this was something we
were chatting about right before we started recording or not, but talking
about the love of reading and how students are, some, some students
are developing a love of reading while some are struggling to do so.
And what is especially concerning to us is
that reading is, of course, so important.
You were talking about your daughter, your seven-year-old, who loves to read.
Six-year-old, seven-year-old.
Nope.
She's seven now and will remind you if you forget.
Okay, like, yep, they're great at that.
They're great at that.
Your seven-year-old who loves to read and what a beautiful thing that is.
My guess is she's learned to love to read
partially because of who her family is, right?
And partially because of what's happening at school.
What's happening at school around writing is abysmal.
In this country, we are no longer defining literacy as reading and writing.
We are defining it solely as reading.
So, you go to school and you can learn to read, but you're
unlikely to develop meaningful writing skills anymore.
And we have a bunch of theories about why this is.
One is, it's hard to teach.
Two is, it's hard to test for, right?
So you can see, you can easily measure how a student is progressing with
reading, but it's harder to measure how a student is progressing with writing.
The impact that that has on individual lives, but also on the course of
communities and on the course of this nation, we believe is profound.
Reading is so important.
Reading gives you access, right?
You can travel to worlds through your book.
You can borrow someone's mind.
You can, yes, you can borrow someone's mind, but
you can't share your mind, right?
You
can't share your mind.
Writing is how you share
your mind.
It was a crappy comment from some perspectives, but I
saw a comic, it must have been 20 years ago now, that
showed a picture of a keyboard and a mouse side by side.
You'll be remembered for this, pointing to the
keyboard, not for this, and pointing at the mouse.
And it's, yeah, you're remembered for what
you put out, not for what you consume.
Exactly.
So we really work on this question of who gets to learn to
write in this country and what impact does that have on the
course of lives and on the course of the country itself.
And we're working towards every teacher seeing themselves as a writing
teacher and every young person identifying as a writer, and that doesn't
mean they're going to go off and become a writer, but it does mean it's
going to be a tool for them to use in their lives and whatever path they
choose and a tool that they can use to understand themselves as well.
If it's even something as fundamental as
that is difficult in a business context.
How many folks have we worked with over the years that would have
dramatically benefited from a remedial business writing course.
I have to communicate clearly in writing, especially in the era of
distributed companies, and some folks are not particularly adroit
at getting their ideas and thoughts across, which is to the point
where now we start screening for that during the interview process.
We want a writing sample.
Absolutely.
And you just reminded me one of, I was talking with one of our board
members earlier this week, and she said, we were talking about writing
and the power of writing, and she was saying writing is thinking.
Writing is understanding.
Writing is communicating.
You can't take those things apart.
To write is to be able to critically think.
Writing is growth.
It is all, it is, writing is the product of what comes out on
the page, yes, but it's also this, this really important process.
One of the, I guess, big questions of our time
right now has been, the rise of AI in this space.
I worked with someone who had a, what I will lovingly refer
to, and he did as well, as the asshole in email problem, where.
Lovely guy, terrific to talk to, but everything he sent
in an email made you want to strangle him as a result.
And AI worked to his benefit because he would take the email he was about to
send, slap it into ChatGPT or ChatGippity as we in house pronounce it here.
And the answer that came out was like, make me sound like less of a jerk.
And it worked.
Great use case.
That reminds me of a different comic where it was this person on the one
side is like, great, turn these three bullet points into a blog post.
And then the other, like, something like,
turn this blog post into three bullet points.
It's almost an encapsulation protocol for public consumption.
I'm curious before we, I have a feeling you're about to
ask me my view on it, but before you do that, I'm curious.
I, in advance of this conversation, prepping for it, I heard from a little
birdie that ChatGPT is something that you have found really useful recently.
Indeed, though I've switched to using Claude for most of it.
It tends to be the better model as a result.
Because I have a couple of shortcomings
as a writer, and I'm fully aware of them.
One of them that's probably more relatable to most
people is the fact that I'm staring at an empty page.
That is one of the hardest things for me to start diving into.
I just need something to get me started.
And the second is that I write like I think, uh,
given my particular expression of profound ADHD.
I go from thought-to-thought-to-thought-to-thought,
and I veer off into tangents.
I have a love affair with the semicolon and parentheticals.
Because every thought comes with additional bonus content.
It becomes somewhat unstructured, and I found that AI is terrific
at both of these from the perspective of, first, it knows who I
am, and I'll come up with a few points, like in my writing style.
Write a blog post about, about topic X, making points A, B, and C.
And almost everything it says is completely wrong,
to the point where I find it borderline offensive.
So I go back and I fix the thing, but what I, what's left when I'm
done, is I've written virtually every word in the piece, but there's
a structure that is maintained to it at the end, which is a crutch.
I'm aware of that, but it's one of my weaknesses.
I usually have a different crutch in the form of
a human editor that goes through a lot of this.
She's a developmental editor because my, my grammar
and my spelling and my punctuation are on point.
Mom was an English teacher and was, it was very important to her.
We got that correct.
Really?
Oh, yes.
Oh, I love that.
I didn't know that.
So, it's never been, whenever I've talked to some
editors in the past, like, "Oh, okay, let's figure out,
like, let me look at this for subject verb agreement."
It's like, you aren't going to find anything that we disagree with.
Anything that we're going to disagree with
is stylistic more than it is substantive.
Like the Oxford comma, I have strong opinions that sometimes differ
from other people with a different, flash, wrong, strong opinion.
Right.
It belongs in the sentence.
Great.
The But that's just the way that the world works, and that's fine.
But what I would never do is have it write
something as me, and then try to pass it off as me.
Because what am I going to say about that in defense of it, when
someone asks me a question about it, when they deconstruct it?
It's, it's monstrous.
I mean, I've done the numbers on this.
Between the podcast version and the written version, uh, at
most people's reading speed, in my normal weekly newsletter,
I'm taking roughly a year of human time to consume it.
So it's, it's always been top of mind for me to be
worthy of that time that people are putting into it.
And AI generated slop is not something that is respectful of that.
Okay, I have a follow up question if that's okay.
Please.
So you write these beautiful, expansive things, and then
AI helps you structure it, if I am hearing correctly?
Yes, or alternately, it arrives at giving me a structure,
and then I fill it with those beautiful, expansive things.
I've gone both ways, and honestly, I find that having it
edited, It feels more in my voice, initially, when I do
it that way, but I also don't like a lot of its edits.
Well, whether you're going with path A or path B, do you feel like
your skill set for structure, or your toolkit for structuring your own
writing is being strengthened by interfacing with it, with that prompt?
Absolutely, because I see what it's changing.
And it makes sense, especially when I tell it to focus on those specific things.
That's handy.
The idea of not using it at all and pretending it's not there feels incredibly
indicative back to math teachers who said, "Oh, you have to be able to do this
all with a paper and pencil because you won't have a calculator in the future."
Now in practice, Of course we do.
We have ambient calculators in the room.
Say the right wake word, ask it a math problem, you'll get an answer.
The real reason you need to know how to do this is so that
you understand what a sane versus not sane answer look like.
It's okay, what's, what's my tip?
15 percent of $80.
Oh, $45.
That sounds right.
You want to be able to understand how this
works as you step through that process.
There's a, uh, That, I think, is the important lesson for the kids.
Yes.
But pretending these things don't exist?
That seems myopic.
Yep.
So, Corey, it sounds to me, like, you are using Gen AI in exactly
the way that we are wishing, wanting it gets used in the future.
And, not just in the future, actually, in real-time, in writing education
and in classrooms and with students as they're doing their work.
You know, you look at, it feels like there's, and maybe it's
just working in my field, but it feels like there's a headline,
every week that is talking about the end of writing, right?
Or the end of human creative expression because of AI.
And there's so many people worried that this is the really
nail, put the nail in the coffin of writing education.
And at 826, we're not worried.
We are not worried about it.
We know that writing is very much not just about the
product that ends up on the page, but about the process.
And about the transformation that occurs in a
writer when they go through the process of writing.
And while we fully embrace generative AI as a tool to help
students become writers, we would hate to see it replace
them having the opportunity to learn those skills themselves.
So we really, we think writing is an irreplaceable tool.
And we think that there's some really smart, careful ways that
teachers can use it and young people can use it to deepen their
writing skills, but that now is still a good time to write.
Now is forever going to be a good time to write.
This is no replacement for the human capacity to write.
We're not worried about it.
We're very mindful of it, and we're working with it and we spend a lot of our
days talking to people about it, but we're not, we're not worried about it.
One thing that I've always struggled with is I write the Last Week
in AWS newsletter which aggregates not just news from Amazon's
cloud stuff themselves, but also from the ecosystem surrounding it.
Folks who have written pieces about how to use these things,
and I don't know if what I'm seeing is AI driven or just shitty
writing that doesn't seem to understand the subject material.
And I don't particularly care, because neither one of those merits inclusion.
I read the things that I put into the newsletter,
not just the title that flies across my desk.
It's a curation question.
And I have to believe a lot of this is AI generated.
Now, am I not picking up on things that someone did generate with AI?
Possibly.
But if it's good enough content that it passes my reasonably high technical bar,
I find myself not particularly caring because there's an explicit endorsement.
Stamp of approval if you will, on everything that I put in the
newsletter saying, I believe this is worth your time to read.
And if I don't believe that, it doesn't go in.
And again, there's, there's other size and other constraints as well.
So if people are like, "well, I sent you a thing and you never included it."
I'm not saying your writing is terrible, though maybe it was.
It's just that week maybe there was too much
of an overemphasis on a particular thing.
Maybe it just didn't make the cut for a variety of reasons.
It's sort of a random grab bag, but something I've found is that by
reading what I, by finding things I don't like, it makes me more tuned
into what I do like, and I start writing in that direction myself.
I have another question for you, if that's okay.
Oh, you're always allowed to ask me questions.
So, like I said, we think a lot about the impact that learning to write
has on a person, and then the impact being able to write has on a person.
And as one of our students at 826 Boston said, which just struck me, is
that when we were thinking about AI, the conversation around AI and writing
education, The student said that when they're writing, they feel like
they're riding their imagination page by page, which is so beautiful, right?
That doesn't happen by typing in a prompt, right?
And I'm wondering, when you're writing how does writing make you feel?
Depends.
I- a lot of the writing that I do that I find myself being
the most freeform is when I'm writing conference talks.
I write an awful lot of those, and invariably I'll build my slide
decks out of a script, more or less, that become my speaker notes.
Usually the night before the conference while
I'm crying, but that's neither here nor there.
Procrastination is a way of life.
Ask me about it later.
Yeah, the problem that I have with that is that just, is the time pressure.
But other than that, being able to just cast aside, cast about and figure out
whatever it is that I want to write, that's freeing in a lot of different ways.
What's, what I found fun is when I'm just writing for me.
And I don't have to worry about publishing it or anything else.
The grammar is still impeccable because that's
the way I was raised is nails on a chalkboard.
I can see the typo on the page and almost nothing else when it's glaring at me.
But there's a, but it definitely lets me exercise a sense of
whimsy that I feel like in corporate life I never really got to.
My career has been whimsy for the last eight years, so I kind of run with it.
Thank you for sharing that with me.
I recognize that I was just thinking about, too, while it's clear to
me that you view writing and the capacity to write as important, even
with this tool available, right, that can help us put words on a page.
And we clearly, at 826, we believe that, I'm just
clear, that people listening may not feel that way.
That some of your listeners may feel like I've had many conversations in which
people are relieved that this tool exists because they don't have to work.
I'm relieved- I want to be clear in some cases,
I will use it myself as ways to remove work.
For example, I will write a one line sentence like, turn
this into, I'll do it myself, turn this into a polite email.
Now, I have the good sense not to send the one
that makes me sound like an imperious jackass.
But there's a, but that is, I will delay on doing that.
Just turn this into something nice.
And I still have to edit it so it sounds like my own voice.
That is a time saver, because it keeps me unblocked.
One area that I would love to use it, if it's even applied to me
anymore, which for better or worse, I've gotten to a point in my
career where it does not, but I was always terrible at writing resumes.
The AI has got to be perfect at that because it is resumes
are fundamentally bullshit and these things are a bullshit
generator, But it's a stylistic bullshit that the resume demands.
Honestly at this point, I run a company I don't have to
be looking for work in the traditional sense anymore.
Which is kind of lovely.
People will ask me to help them with interview practice.
I've got that on lock.
I was very good at passing interviews because I
was also very good at getting fired from jobs.
Whereas help me with my resume, it's like
I can't even help myself with my resume.
These things are terrible.
Find someone good at that, please.
But those, that stylistic approach, yes, absolutely.
Very often I will use it as well to just throw something together in a
letter to a representative for some topic that I care about where I don't
want it to look like the same every other form letter, but I really just
wanna register my opinion on a particular topic without necessarily...
I don't believe that there's a chance in, a snowball's chance in hell
that my senator is going to pick mine out of the gargantuan mail pile
from California and pick that one to read, but instead, it's like,
okay, another one in support of Proposition L or whatever it is.
Great.
Awesome.
I don't know what Proposition L was.
Please don't yell at me, San Francisco local politics folks.
Have they even had an L this year?
I don't know.
I just picked a letter out of a hat.
Well, if it's okay with you, I realize that in this conversation,
I'd like to make the case for why writing education is important.
Please do.
It's something I've internalized so strongly that it doesn't occur to me
that there's an entire side of the world that does not agree with that.
Which is okay.
I like to assume people hold my share my
point of view, which is a dangerous mistake.
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that, I think lots of people
do feel that way, and I think it's okay, and I'd love the
opportunity to help them see it differently, if possible.
You know, writing, as I said before, we really believe that writing is
as much about the process as it is about the product, and that writing is
transformational because it helps students, and not just students, but,
you know, adults as well shape not only their stories, but their futures.
And writing allows people to put complex emotions and thoughts
into words, to reflect on who they are, where they want to go,
to discover what matters to them, and it's a tool for personal
growth and a tool for, you know, professional or academic growth.
And in our programs every day across 826, across the country, we see students
discovering what's possible for them through putting their pen to the page.
And they can go on to use it in a variety of ways.
You know, some may go on to be software developers.
Some may go on to be authors.
But they are discovering themselves in that page.
Writing is very much a come as you are.
Writing accepts you for just how you are and
lets you, allows you to be just who you are.
And I think that we have, as Amanda Gorman, a 826 board member and also...
the National Poet Laureate.
Yes, exactly.
She puts it, which I find so beautiful and hopefully
I'm going to look at it so I don't butcher it.
She says, "Poetry is not a luxury.
It is a vital necessity of our existence.
It forms the quality of the light within which we
predict our hopes and dreams toward survival and change."
And that is very much how we see writing.
It's this intimate, personal tool that can transform your understanding
of yourself, but then it's this big, loud, public tool, right?
It can be a tool for democracy.
It can be a tool for social change.
It can allow people to reflect on their communities and what
they want from this country and be able to articulate that.
It can also be this personal, right?
And we are in a place in our country where young people across this
country are struggling with mental health like they have never before.
I think it was this last year, maybe it was even this year, the CDC reported
that 40 percent of teens are experiencing feelings of hopelessness and sadness.
Which is profound, and we know that writing is a tool that
the data shows us, our lived experience shows us, that writing
is a protective factor when it comes to youth mental health.
Being able to express yourself in writing helps you find a way through it.
It helps you learn how to sit with your feelings, helps you learn how
to express those feelings, and it is in that way and in so many ways
such an important tool for a young person to have in their toolkit.
And then we also think that writing, learning to write creates not just these
intangible things that we're talking about, but it creates measurable change.
It changes how students are able to express themselves and their ideas.
It changes the sense of pride that they feel around
their own stories and their own voices, and I think it
gives them a sense of agency, a sense of my words matter.
My words can go anywhere.
My words belong anywhere, and that is incredibly important as we're
investing in this next generation of young people in this country.
One of the, I guess, big challenges, I think, is that we have an entire
generation of folks, maybe this is a human experience, or that particular
age group, always, but a feeling unheard, a feeling disenfranchised,
of you're being, spending your entire day, dawn till dusk, being
told what to do, how to do it, why you're wrong, etc., etc., etc.
For me, it wasn't so much writing when I was a kid, it was reading.
Reading was my escape.
My parents moved around a lot, and I struggled to make friends.
This did not get easier in adult life, by the way, and so my friends were books,
which led to a rich inner life, but very much a, like, I would be called on in
class, and I would just be sitting there reading a novel, because it was what
I did in English class, of course, and they would try and catch me off guard,
and I would just answer the question without looking up and keep reading, and it
was infuriating, because I was right, but it was disrespectful, quote unquote.
That sort of is an encapsulation of my entire personality.
Right, but disrespectful.
Yeah, we're gonna lean into that.
I don't pretend to be a mental health expert.
I historically shy away from talking about the subject on this show,
specifically because if I give people advice on what database to use.
Great.
If I give bad advice, oops a doozy.
We'll figure it out.
If I give you bad mental health advice, the consequences are
significantly more dire than your website falling over for 10 minutes.
So, it's one of those, I try very much to stay in my lane.
But this is an area that you are a professional in.
You hold dual masters in education and counseling psychology.
You were a former, you're a former therapist for survivors of trauma.
This is, you're one of the few people I will, I'm comfortable
having this kind of conversation with on the air just because
it does not have the high propensity to do harm that an
enthusiastic amateur can do as applied to other areas of pursuit.
I don't know how to write code like that, but I'm going to try it.
And then we all laugh at the failure.
It's like, I'm going to screw up a generation of
kids and now we're all going to laugh at that.
No, no one will be laughing.
That's terrible.
Yeah, it's clear that there's a, every generation loves
to complain about new technology as applied to the kids.
This happened a hundred years ago with newspapers.
It was making people on the train antisocial.
There were op eds and screeds written about it.
We're seeing it now with technology in varying forms.
My kids are the iPad generation, though recently my
daughter discovered the love of a Kindle e-reader.
So it's, this is fantastic!
Keep going!
It's, it's nice to be able to see Like, the glimmers of hope.
And the reason she got into reading lately is because one of
her friends is into reading and dragged her into it, kicking
and screaming and wants to get me to read her same series.
It's like, oh great, how many books?
Oh my god, there are 28 books in this series.
Okay, I'm not saying it's bad writing.
Clearly she enjoys it, and it's a good narrative,
but the characters are not deeply complex.
There is no mystery as to whether good or
evil will triumph in the latest Dragon War.
It's, it doesn't hold my attention in the way that it needs to, but that's okay.
Part of what I learned with all those terrible English
classes growing up is that not everything is written for me.
It's true, but Corey, the more that I get to know you, the
more that I think when you were a young person, you would
have loved 826, and that you probably would still love 826.
When you were talking, I forget what you just said a moment, of how you said
it just a moment ago about, about school and the rules and, whatever you,
that's, that reflection on school and how that environment made you feel.
It made me just reflect on 826, and we maybe, it was
probably 9 months ago, 11 months ago, something like
that, Good Morning America wanted to do a piece on 826.
And we brought them to 826 Chicago, where it's, our writing
center is hidden behind a secret agent supply company.
And we brought in these incredible young people to talk to
them about who they are as writers, what they think about
writing, who, you know, their experience with 826, all of this.
And the reporter said to one of the students, I think he was
maybe 11-years-old, "what's your favorite thing about 826?"
And he said, "I don't have to raise my hand to go to the bathroom."
And that might sound minor, but to us, that is by design.
And that is huge.
I've worked with interns before who had to ask permission to go to the bathroom.
It's like, what are you going to do if I say no?
Just, just get up and go.
Yeah, exactly.
This is a workplace.
Teaching norms is important.
Yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
There's certain norms at school, and those norms are important, right?
And then there's norms at home, and then there's norms at 826.
We're a third space that really are intentionally built to be silly, to
be weird, to be whimsical, so that students can be their authentic self,
whether that's silly, serious, weird, whimsical, and they know when they
walk into that space, both by how it looks visually, and by what the
rules, quote unquote rules are, that this is a space that is different
from any other space in their lives, and this is a space just for them.
So when that kid said well I don't have to ask to go to the
bathroom, while the reporters might have thought that was funny
and minor, for us it was such an indication of, yeah, this space
is, outside of the writing component, this space is creating the
context that it's supposed to create in which that writing can occur.
We also work really hard to bring imaginations to life in a way that
sounds like you would have enjoyed when you were a young person.
We met your partner Mike earlier this morning at 826
Valencia, and we were showing him around our original 826.
And it was founded back in 2002, and Nínive and
Dave found a space that they thought was perfect.
It was on Valencia Street, and it was near, was in the heart of
the mission, near so many of the students that they hoped to serve.
They found this perfect venue, and they
learned that it was zoned for retail only.
And in 826 fashion, instead of giving up and moving on, they looked
around and they said, well, this looks like the hull of a ship.
Let's turn it into a pirate supply company.
And so far, San Francisco's premier and only pirate supply store.
Exactly.
826 Valencia, of course, is the local chapter.
I've talked to people who, about 826 National,
they had no idea what the hell I was talking about.
Two or three minutes in, they're like, wait, is this like 826 Valencia?
It's- yeah, I need to start remembering to mention
that to locals when we get into that topic.
It is exactly like 826 Valencia.
826 Valencia is our founding chapter.
And, um, from there it's grown to nine chapters and digital.
So they started with a pirate shop.
We now have a hunting supply company in New Orleans.
We have a time travel mart in L.A.
But the, what I was telling Mike this morning, and showing Mike
this morning is hidden behind this pirate shop where you walk
in, and you can dig for buried treasures, and you get to keep the
treasure if you trade it for a joke or a song or a story, right?
Well hidden behind this shop is this writing center, and the
writing center, and the way we approach writing is is intended
to be as fun for a young person as that pirate supply company is.
So we have, when students come in for a field trip, as was happening
today, we have a very, very grumpy editor named Captain Blue.
So I was volunteering there not too long
ago, and a group of third graders came in.
Three third graders came and sat at a table with me, and they
said, oh my god, we've heard no kid has ever met Captain Blue.
Are we going to get to see Captain Blue today?
Not technically true.
No one, no kid has ever gotten to meet Captain Blue and lived.
Right, exactly.
Didn't say that.
No, no, that's apparently called, "traumatizing
children," and most people frown upon that.
Exactly.
And I was like, well, you'll, you'll just have
to, you'll just have to wait and see, maybe.
And then this big, booming voice comes down
from the attic that says, This is Captain Blue.
I hear there's children here who think they're gonna write a story.
Children can't write stories.
And all the kids are all a twitter, and
then they get, they're like, "yes, we can.
We can write a story," right?
And we lead them through this workshop, right?
Where they learn to write a story, they co-create the first
half, and then each student writes the second half by themselves.
And those stories go up to the grumpy editor, Captain Blue, for him to approve.
And these faces of these young people, they sit at the bottom of this
ladder, looking up into the attic, hoping to catch a glimpse of Captain Blue.
And Captain Blue goes through their stories one-by-one and reflects back to
them something amazing they see in that story, and then says, "Approved."
And the student said, "Aye aye, Captain."
And just the love of writing that is born in that one
experience, and that's only one of our many, many programs.
But that is when I think about what you were saying about
school earlier and the sort of lack of finding your way into it.
826 is designed for every student to find their way into it and
for it to meet that student exactly where they are as creative,
wacky, smart, bold, powerful, little creators, you know?
What a great philosophy, and what a great approach.
And honestly, it makes me feel a little bad now about, I guess,
the followup line I have for this is that we are currently,
when this airs, still running our annual charity t-shirt drive.
This year features AI being force fed through a funnel into a goose, which is
how a lot of customers are feeling these days with all of the AI-centric tech
marketing being stuffed into them, regardless of whether they want it or not.
All proceeds, once again, to benefit 826 National, and you
can feel free to get yours at shitposting.fashion, which is
a URL specifically designed to be easy to say on a podcast.
Again, that is shitposting.
fashion.
Please feel free to grab yours.
Thank you, and thank you so much for
partnering with us on this for so many years.
It has supported so many students across the nation.
And I do have to say that this year, I don't know exactly how
many years we've been doing this, but a number of years we've been
doing this with you, and each year, you and Mike very patiently
sit down with us and explain the joke on the t-shirt to us.
Yep.
And we...
in all transparency, we nod.
We like maybe understand 20 percent of what you're saying.
Year of AMI vs.
AMI presentation with the $10 for the wrong
one that Amazon used as an internal one.
Yeah, that's a deep cut.
It requires some very nuanced explanation.
Yeah, yeah, we had no idea what you were talking about.
We appreciated it.
Knew that, that, that, but this year was the first year that
we were able to be in on the joke too, so we appreciated that.
The best jokes don't generally require a five hour
backstory exposition in order for it to make sense.
Who knew?
Well, it depends on your audience.
We're not your audience, right?
This is one of those that resonates, I think, with
an awful lot of folks who are just sick of the hype.
I know I am.
Laura, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.
If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to find you?
Yeah, our website, which is, www.826, the numbers,
826national.org, and, if it's okay, people can reach out
to me if they have questions at laura@826national.org.
And we will, of course, put links to that in the show notes.
Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you, Corey.
This was such a pleasure.
Thank you for this conversation and for your partnership over the years.
It means a lot.
Likewise.
Laura Brief, CEO at 826 National.
I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud.
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