Joe Liemandt is the principal at Alpha School, the top school in America. His kids score in the top 1%, and they only sit in class for 2 hours a day. Here is how they do it. Joe dropped out of Stanford, built Trilogy into a billion‑dollar software empire, and then spent the last decade doing something almost no one in tech would: he walked away from enterprise software to rebuild K‑12 education from scratch. His schools, called Alpha School, now produce kids with perfect SAT scores, Ivy League acceptances, and research submissions to Nature before they’ve graduated high school. He’s committed over a billion dollars of his own money to roll this out to everyone. In this conversation, Joe explains why the traditional classroom wastes 90% of a child’s time, and what happens when you replace it with an AI tutor that knows exactly what your kid knows, doesn’t know, and loves. He walks through the exercise his middle schoolers do that quietly destroys most of their phone habits: a week‑long audit where they track every hour and then compare it to the person they say they want to become. It’s the closest thing to a reality check most kids ever get, and it works because they give it to themselves. He also gets into why he believes the real problem with school isn’t AI, teachers, or curriculum, but rather motivation. He explains why kids are starved for high standards and why the three beliefs every Alpha parent has to accept are harder than they sound: that your kid should love school more than vacation, that academics can be crushed in two hours a day, and that the key to your child’s happiness is holding the line when it would be easier to let it slide. He explains the difference between a teacher and a guide, why kids trust AI feedback more than adults, and the quiet reason so many "A students" at elite private schools are actually three to seven grade levels behind. If you’re a parent, a teacher, or anyone who’s ever wondered whether the way we’ve been educating kids for the last century is actually the best we can do, this conversation will stay with you for a long time. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Episode page and show notes: https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/joe-liemandt/ Follow Joe Liemandt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liemandt/ Thank you to the sponsors for this episode: Granola AI: The AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings. Get 3 months free at https://www.granola.ai/shane Check out the Granola Notes for this episode: https://notes.granola.ai/t/bab06a09-d808-41ad-8e20-e9a88444f636-009c2hma Shopify: https://shopify.com/knowledgeproject *Shane Parrish* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/farnamstreet/ X: https://x.com/ShaneParrish LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shane-parrish-050a2183/ Books: https://fs.blog/books/ Website: https://fs.blog/ Newsletter: http://fs.blog/newsletter *The Knowledge Project* uncovers the timeless principles that drive lasting success. Learn more at https://fs.blog/podcast