Rob Alvarez Bucholska
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Crafting Engagement Through Educational Entertainment with Jerry Kolber | Episode 378

 

If you’re struggling to keep people engaged and loyal in your product or business, check out my FREE gamification course to learn how to do just that: professorgame.com/freecommunity-web

“I’m better than almost anyone at making complex subjects easy to understand for anybody.” – Jerry Kolber. On this episode Jerry shares his journey in revolutionizing edutainment with popular shows like “Brain Games” and his podcast Who Smarted. Dive into the fascinating world of gamifying education, learn about the intricacies behind creating engaging content, and gather insights on building a successful podcast.

Jerry Kolber is a creator and producer of children’s educational content. Revolutionizing Edutainment with National Geographic’s Number 1 Series “Brain Games“, Netflix’s “Brainchild” and now his podcast Who Smarted. Jerry uses games and storytelling to make kids and parents laugh as they discover a love for learning.

Rob is a host and consultant at Professor Game as well as an expert, international speaker and advocate for the use of gamification and games-based solutions, especially in education and learning. He’s also a professor and workshop facilitator for the topics of the podcast and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY (LSP) for top higher education institutions that include EFMD, IE Business School and EBS among others in Europe, America and Asia.

 

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Lets’s do stuff together!

Looking forward to reading or hearing from you,

Rob

 

Full episode transcription (AI Generated)

Rob:
Hey, this is Professor Game, where we interview successful practitioners of games, gamification and game thinking to help us multiply engagement and loyalty. I’m Rob Alvarez. I’m a consultant, I’m a coach, and I’m the founder here at Professor Game, and I’m also a professor of gamification and game inspired solutions at IE University, IE Business School, efmd, EBS University, and other places around the world. And before we dive into the interview, if you’re struggling with engagement in your business and are looking to find out how to make your users stay with you, you will find our free community full of resources quite useful. You can find it for free in. The links below in the description engagers. Welcome back to another episode of the Professor Game podcast, and we are here with Jerry Colbert. So, Jerry, we first need to know, are you prepared to engage?

Jerry Kolber:
I am so ready to engage.

Rob:
Let’s do this. Let’s take off.

Jerry Kolber:
Yeah.

Rob:
Jerry Colbert, who is the creator and producer of children’s educational content. He’s revolutionizing edutainment with National Geographic’s number one series, Brain Games, Netflix’s Brainchild, and now his podcast, who Smarted. He uses games and storytelling to make kids and parents laugh as they discover a love for learning. So it couldn’t be more or better adjusted for the podcast. Jerry, welcome to Professor Game. Is there anything we’re missing that we should mention before we start with other questions?

Jerry Kolber:
No, man, that’s great. That’s it. I’m happy with that intro. Thank you.

Rob:
Amazing. So, Jerry, we would like to know a little bit about you. How do your days go? What do you do regularly, like, what’s up in your life? We would want to be in your shoes for, I don’t know, a day, a week or whatever you want to go for.

Jerry Kolber:
Sure. I mean, days for me are a mix of creating. Right. So some sort of writing or coming up with new ways to gamify education for our different audiences. A lot of. We do a lot of recording. So whether I’m in a studio or my. We have an actual small studio in the office. I actually host Whosmarted, and then I’m also on one of our other shows called Slaycation. And then there’s always a chunk of.

Rob:
You know, Slaycation I’m curious about. What’s that about?

Jerry Kolber:
That one’s not for kids. That one is not for kids. But Slaycation is a true crime show. So that, that’s for. For. For adults, but done in a little bit of a different way. Gamified Slightly, actually. And, and then I’d say about 30% of my day is dealing with just, you know, ongoing kind of running the business stuff, staying on top of things. And, and then, and then I always spend some time every day doing some, some marketing activities. So whether I’m doing work on online or putting ads together for some of our shows, or doing interviews with folks to get the word out, that’s pretty much it.

Rob:
Awesome, awesome. Love that. Plenty of stuff. Your business is essentially about creating content and about creating exciting content in this case. So that sounds awesome. And side comments. I don’t know if this is something that you guys know, Jerry, he saw a Star wars sweater I have on and he said something about it. I don’t know if you want to say that here on the podcast as well, Jerry.

Jerry Kolber:
Yeah, no, actually I made a documentary about 15 years ago about Star wars fans, the most intense Star wars fans. It was called Jedi Junkies. And it’s a fun little like 80 minute doc. So I was recommending that to Rob.

Rob:
I will definitely watch that. I’m trying to see where I can find it, and when I do, I’ll definitely let you guys know as well. For now, I just found it on dvd, but that was a super quick search while we were talking at the start. So I will definitely link that up on the show notes. So, Jerry, we, you know, we have fantastic guests, always. We have people who have been doing this for a long time, relatively short time, super successful, like you and others. Everything in between. Well, when people see you on a show, you know, initially many of the audience tend to put people like in a huge pedestal and it’s like, oh, yeah, he’s done it, but how would I be able to achieve something like that? And one of the ways we sort of ground our guests in the best of ways is by looking into one of their failures or first attempts in learning, as we like to call them, as well. Especially when using games or fun and that kind of stuff to help people learn stuff like you do every day. So is there a story that you can share with us? It doesn’t have to, you know, you don’t have to share any details you don’t want to share. If there’s any corporates involved or anything of, you know, again, fail time where things just didn’t go your way and how did you come out of it? What did you learn from it or wherever you want to go with that story, huh?

Jerry Kolber:
That’s a really good, interesting question. I mean, I don’t, I just don’t use the word failure, honestly, like, so I. It’s like a funny. Like, for me, it’s a. I totally get what you’re asking. I tend to think of everything as like just a learning, A learning opportunity kind of grist for the mill and.

Rob:
You know, first attempt at learning, fail.

Jerry Kolber:
Wait, what’s that?

Rob:
First attempt in learning. So.

Jerry Kolber:
Oh, first attempt at learning. There you go. That’s perfect. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, I. Because I work in television or, you know, did a lot of. Have done a lot of television. And to do that, you’re always out pitching ideas, right? And so I always. People like, wow, you know, you guys have had so many successes with Brain Games and Brainchild and all your shows. And I was like, yeah, they are. But, you know, for every show that you see that we’ve made, I’ve pitched probably 50 shows that didn’t get made. But I don’t, you know, like, we don’t think of them as failures necessarily. They’re just shows that didn’t get made. And so within each of those is something that ends up in another. In another project. So, like, who Smarted? The family podcast that we did now really grew out of Brainchild, which is a show we did for Netflix. In fact, who Smarted was the original name of the Netflix show, Brainchild. That’s the name we wanted to use. And Brainchild was a show we did for Netflix for kids and families all about science. And Netflix did not like the name who’s Smarted? They didn’t like the fart joke in the name. So we were like, okay, so we’ll use it, we’ll use it somewhere else. But I would say that out of every show that we do, every project we do, you know, we see what works really well and what doesn’t, and we just keep building on that. I would say one of the things that we noticed, for example, in the, in the original version of Brain Games that we did for Nat Geo, they were an hour long and within that hour was like a 10 minute mini documentary about some, like, pretty academic thing about the brain. And we did focus groups and we could see that that’s when people lost interest, right? Because we’d said, here’s this show, Brain Games, and you’re playing games with the show and you’re doing experiments, and then all of a sudden it just stops and there’s a documentary in the middle. And what we realized was we had failed at that point to deliver on the promise of the show. Like, suddenly you’re just watching a little Documentary within the show. And so when we recreated that show as a half hour show, we easily cut 15 minutes out right away by cutting out that documentary section because we just knew that it just didn’t align with what we promised. I think that’s a really important lesson for me is whatever it says on the box that we’re delivering to someone who’s listening or watching one of our projects better be what’s inside the box. Right. So make sure we deliver on what we promise.

Rob:
There’s, there’s something I, I also, you know, besides the stuff that I do, I also teach operations and supply chain management and there’s this quote unquote formula that I like to, to discuss with people. And it’s, you know, how, how satisfaction. Yes. It has to do with what you deliver, of course. But there is something else that is there also that is what people expect and what expectations you set for what you’re going to deliver. So if you over promise, it doesn’t matter, you know, how well you deliver on what you were always going to deliver. If you over promise, people are going to be upset. They’re expecting more or something different, as you were saying. Right. So you know, if, if you can always. And salespeople always disagree.

Jerry Kolber:
Right.

Rob:
If you can under promise so you can over deliver, it’s the best place for satisfaction. And in my opinion, what I’ve seen in my world is that over delivery is the best marketing tool.

Jerry Kolber:
Yeah.

Rob:
You have to get some people initially.

Jerry Kolber:
That’s why operations always hates the sales department.

Rob:
It’s hard. It’s a hard relationship. And I talk about this relationship with my students.

Jerry Kolber:
It is true.

Rob:
It’s difficult, you know, because sales is trying to go as high as they can with their promise to get more clients. It’s natural. Right. The interests are sort of in, in a way, in a way it’s, they should be aligned same company. Right. But they’re misaligned sometimes and the incentives are difficult to align often. But it is true that sometimes you, you, you borderline over promise and then you put people on difficulty on the other side. If you under deliver under promise, then you have a harder time selling, which is their job. Right. So it’s, it’s a difficult one. It’s a difficult balance. For sure.

Jerry Kolber:
It is, yeah. Yeah. Because the sales teams in their, their incentive is, is more sales and the operations team incentive is delivering. Right. And so like delivering a product that’s on budget and on time and yeah, they often are not in alignment. And we see that in our business as well. Like, you know, we have people go out and pitch a show that’s, you know, they’re like, it’s going to be this. It’s going to be that we’re going to travel here and travel there and all these special effects. And then you get the budget and you’re like, okay, well, here’s what we can actually do. And then the network’s like, but you promised all this stuff. And we’re like, right, but then we got this budget, and so here’s what we could actually do. And you have to manage, you know, you really have to manage that conversation well, because it is that. It’s. It is that tension between what you sold and what you can. What you can make. So we’ve. We’ve always taken the position of, like, sort of like, try to, like, promise what we can deliver or a little under promise and then. And then over deliver.

Rob:
Absolutely, absolutely. I love that. Again, you can see I’m an operations person in that sense. Yeah. But I have also been on the sales side. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been on that side. I’ve been working with the people in sales. Not as a salesman, per se. I never been. I don’t know if good enough for that or you just don’t enjoy it too much. But I’ve been on that side. I kind of understand a lot of that. And I talk about all those incentives as well. But anyways, anyways, love that story. Very, very key lessons learned from. Again, even sometimes, if it doesn’t have anything to do with sales. When you’re promising something to your audience, right, you’re promising. You’re offering something to your players, your users. You want to make sure you at least meet that expectation or some more, and then some, if you can. So, Jerry, how about we turn it around and talk about one of the many successes you guys have had? How did that go? You know, maybe if you have any keys to that success, we want to be there with you and enjoy some of that big success that you guys have had.

Jerry Kolber:
Yeah, we could talk about who Smarted. Who Smarted is our. Our Big Family podcast that we started about four or five years ago. That was a project that started during the. During the pandemic. We had our whole team of researchers and writers and game producers and actors, and we couldn’t go out and shoot any TV shows that we thought we were going to be making. And we realized there was a lot of anxiety with kids being on screens all day long. It was just making them really anxious. They’re doing school on the screens, they’re watching TV on their screens, they’re playing games or doing homework. So we thought it was an opportunity for us to create a show that would be short enough to be for car rides or break time or bedtime, but that would also be fun for parents to listen to, and that would be educational for kids. And that’s how who Smarted was born. And we started making the show in our closets and editing it ourselves. And we were doing all the voices and really didn’t have, like, a big team working on it. And we. I think we had like a hundred listeners the first month, and we had like four or 500 the second month, and we’re like, wow, this is great. And, you know, then it was a thousand, then ten thousand, and then word started to spread and we guess about, you know, a year in, the show was up to something. Like, we were doing like 100,000 downloads a month, and we.

Rob:
How many shows a week or a month?

Jerry Kolber:
We were doing three shows a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And they’re scripted and there’s sound effects, and it was like. It was overwhelming, actually. Like, it got to the point where, like, I was like, I don’t think we can keep doing this. Even though we have a big audience, we weren’t making any money from it. And it was just a huge time suck and money suck. And, you know, everyone around me was like, no, no, no, we got to keep doing it. It’s like, the kids love it. We’re having this huge impact. It’s like, you know. And so that became a challenge to figure out a few things, which was, how do we keep operationally making this show? And then how do we figure out how to make the show self sustaining financially and operationally? We actually looked at the series and we’re like, okay, what can we streamline? What can be sort of templated? What has to be unique for each show? Can we. Instead of having six different characters in every episode, every 15 minute episode had six characters, by the way, which was insane. We were like, can we have like two or three other characters? So we just sort of figured out how to make. Make it operationally possible. And then we eventually found a network partner called Starglo who was able to help us sell ads and sponsorships on the show. And so who Smarted now is, you know, sort of the cornerstone flagship family series. We do. We. It’s doing close to 700,000 monthly downloads. Um, it’s all over the world. It’s in classrooms it’s in home schools and it’s actually, you know, it’s sustaining itself, like, financially. So. So for us, that was just a huge success story to go from, you know, not knowing anything about podcasting and just having this idea and having it do well and then really well and then figure out how to turn it into a business and, and a business that’s, you know, impactful, like, who Smarted is. Is a very positive influence for. For a lot of families and a lot of. A lot of kids. So that. That for me, is the most recent, you know, success story that I’m really, really proud of.

Rob:
Love it. And is there. Because, I mean, I. My brain starts going like, oh, but they did this, and they did this other thing. But of course, you guys were on the inside and many of the things you were observing, what was sort of working is there if you were to start this over again or help somebody get this started. Of course, it’s not during the pandemic anymore and, you know, the opportunity happens when it happened. But are there any, I don’t know, key insights that you got from this? Anything you would say, well, you know, maybe doing this is the way. Way to go in the future?

Jerry Kolber:
Yeah, absolutely, man. There’s a whole bunch of things I wish people had told us when we started this that I would tell. I tell anybody who’s starting a podcast or anything online. You know, first of all, most of the advice that you get is bad. We got a lot of advice and I tried it all and most of it was really terrible and sent us down the wrong path. And you start to realize, oh, this advice is coming from someone who read the advice and is now rehashing it. Like, there’s just not. There’s not a lot of people who’ve had a lot of success who are really shining light on the path. And the biggest thing I would say before you get into, you know, there are definitely some really specific strategies you can use to grow a podcast very quickly. But before you get there, the biggest thing I tell people is, is, is, you know, everyone’s like, oh, I want to. I want to start this, you know, nutrition podcast or this, this, like, you know, podcast on, like, building your body or a podcast about education or, you know, and, you know, I’m going to, I’m going to. These are my competitors and this is what I’m going to do to try and do it. And I’m always like, stop, stop. You need to make your show non competitive, right? You. You don’t want to be Competing with other shows. So if you’re competing with other shows, that means your show is similar to other shows. And so therefore, you haven’t figured out your show’s unique DNA. And I always say it’s like we call it the 3Vs over here. It’s like your vision, your value, and your voice. So your vision is, what is the unique transformation that you’re offering a listener when they come to your show, when they exchange their time, what do they walk away with? What is the vision that you’re leading them towards? Not just information, but, like, some sort of transformation. And then the value you offer is what are, like, some real strategies and tactics that they can employ to get towards that vision. And then voice is the third V. And that’s really your point of view. Like, what’s your background? What’s your unique voice? What’s your personality? And if you can kind of nail those three things, then you have a show that you.

Rob:
You’re.

Jerry Kolber:
You can’t compete with anyone because no one has a show like yours, right? Then your show is so unique that anyone who. Anyone who’s going to find it, who loves it, is going to stick around because you are. You found your people, right? And so that’s what I just. I just tell everyone is like, nail those three things first, and then we can talk about, you know, marketing strategies. And there are some that people don’t talk enough about that work really well. But that’s the first step is, like, really figuring out your show’s DNA. And everyone thinks they have it figured out. And I’m like, okay, if you have it figured out, then why isn’t your show growing as fast as you want? You know, not to be harsh about it, but, like, it’s like, okay, but.

Rob:
To be fair, to be fair. And we are a niche podcast as well. It’s hard to compare because I do follow some podcasts that I know get, like, millions of downloads. I don’t even aspire to that. Like, millions of downloads. I mean, it depends very much on the type of show and what’s the audience that you’re aiming for. In our case, we are niche, and we’re happy with being niche, right? We’re not going to get the millions of downloads.

Jerry Kolber:
Millions of downloads. I’d be worried, honestly, like, what is going on? Me too. That’s what I tell people, too. Like, success. Like, people are saying, well, how are we get millions of downloads? Like, you don’t need necessarily millions of downloads like our show does, because just for what our show is for the cost of making it, supporting it. We need that audience and it’s a general entertainment show. But success for, for a niche show might be 500 downloads or a thousand downloads or 10,000 depending on the show. But what you’re trying to do is have impact with the right audience and to find your people, you need to, you need to have your show really firing on all the cylinders of like what makes your show unique and non compet competitive.

Rob:
And there’s, there’s from, I don’t know, you’ve probably heard of John Lee Dumas. Yeah. And one of the things he says is, well, the first thing that you need to do is have a good podcast. Yeah, your podcast needs to be good and you’re not going to be good when you start. And that’s normal. I’m not even sure I want to listen to my first episodes. You know, I’m probably a different, not a different person, but as a podcaster, I’m sure it was very different. Now over almost 400 episodes away, you know, it’s, it’s different. Yeah, it’s different. You’ve had the experience. If you want to be a podcaster, do a podcast and do it again and then do it again. And that’s the way honestly, if, if on your worst day a million people and people were able to find you, then they probably were not going to come back. Right. You’re literally worst episode. You want to have a few episodes on your back when you know, you viral, if you ever get that chance. Right. So absolutely, I completely agree with that. Couldn’t agree more. Jerry. When you’re creating your episodes or you know, because you’ve had not just, just one, but I’m guessing that there’s some sort of strategy or series of steps when you’re trying to create these edutainment products. So it’s, you know, there’s educational content, it’s entertaining. Is there a process that you follow or something that you could share if other people wanted to do? Of course not your show because nobody’s going to do your show ever, as you were just sharing. But something, you know, along the overall lines of how to do this kind of stuff or how to help people receive some learning with entertainment. At the same time, I would love.

Jerry Kolber:
To tell you that I have a process that’s okay. Well, I don’t, I don’t. I mean we, my, my producing partner, Adam Davis and I, our process is like, hey, what do you think of this idea? You know, like we’ll, like, we’ll See, we’ll see. We’ll see something and go, that’s interesting. And then, because, I mean, this is a thing that I actually take take exception with, a lot of people. A lot of people who have achieved success will then tell you, oh, here is the exact process I used. Would you like to follow it? Right. Like, and I. I find that often they’re creating a story in reverse, right? We’re like, like, look, the truth is, the process of creating something successful is a combination of intuition, skill, luck. It’s. It’s. It can be messy, you know, but for us, our process is we. We just were constantly bouncing ideas off each other, and we find that, you know, if we’re still talking about the idea, six or seven conversations in and it keeps coming up, then maybe one of us should, like, write it up and, like, think about it. And then we keep kicking it around. And if survives that process being written up and thought about, then maybe it goes into the eyeline of some other people at the company. But it’s a very organic process because the shows we create are combinations of education, games, and just world building. And so it’s a really, like. It’s lots of different things coming together. And I think that because we’ve been doing this now for 15 years, we just have kind of an intuition for how to do it. But I will say that if we just keep. If we keep talking about something, we keep coming back to it, and we’re excited, we’re talking about it, and we start riffing on it, then maybe we have something. We do have a rule. I will tell you, we have one rule, which is this. No matter how much anyone at our company loves an idea, if we can’t sit in a meeting and in two minutes come up with 20 episodes, then it’s not something we move forward with. That’s. That’s kind of our. You know, that’s a benchmark for us because.

Rob:
Makes sense.

Jerry Kolber:
Yeah. If you can’t quickly come up with, like, oh, we could do this, and we could do that, we can do this, we can do that, and you’re struggling to get to five or six ideas for episodes, then as much fun as the idea might be, we realize it doesn’t have, you know, it just doesn’t have enough, like, legs and life to it for us to invest in it. So.

Rob:
Makes sense. Love that, Jerry. And Jerry, you. You’ve been on the. On the podcast. You have a lot of experience on this. Is there. Is there somebody that you would like to listen to? Interviewed somebody answering These questions that you would say, well, that might be an interview that I’d be really curious to. To listen to somebody that inspires you. Real. Well, not real or unreal. More. More live or you’re from the past. It could be even. Is there somebody that, like, you think would really inspire you?

Jerry Kolber:
Hmm. Uh, I. Yeah, I’m trying to think of some. Like, I actually, I’m always. I’m always looking at the Dada movement for inspiration. Like, there’s a lot of. Like, there was like, these. These various people who’d create, like, surreal, surrealist games. There’s a bunch of them. I’m trying to think of if there’s one in particular. But I would like to interview someone from the past about how they were thinking about games and game creation in their culture, because I think sometimes we mistake progress for progress, and culture is not always necessarily a positive thing. We oftentimes, especially now, with the amount of information coming at us, we forget that there has been 100,000 years of human history before us, and there’s a lot of. A lot of great stuff there that we just sometimes are reinventing the wheel. And we could actually be going back and looking at how someone else built a wheel 100 years ago and learn from that. So I would probably go back in time because I think the texts and the ideas that have survived 100 or 200 or a thousand years are the ones that obviously have provided some benefit over time to lots and lots of different eons of. Of people and different cultures. So that’s where I would go. Someone. Someone from the past. I don’t know exactly who, but.

Rob:
Interesting, interesting. And. And. And talking about recommendations, how about a book that you recommend to this audience to the engagers.

Jerry Kolber:
Oh, you know a good book. Persuasion. Persuasion by Robert Cialdini.

Rob:
Cialdini. Yeah. I was.

Jerry Kolber:
I was gonna ask, you know that one.

Rob:
Talking about that one. It’s a fantastic book. Yeah.

Jerry Kolber:
You know that book? Yeah.

Rob:
When. When I. Actually, when I purchased it many years ago, I couldn’t, like, I. I’m guessing it has changed, but I couldn’t find a new book. Like, I have to purchase a used book. Was. It was interesting because I think there.

Jerry Kolber:
Might be a new version of it. But I think if you’re interested in. In games and engagement and human psychology. That’s a fantastic book.

Rob:
No, it’s that one. And now I’ve seen. I could find, like. I could find something that called like. Something like Free Suasion, but by Cialdini as well, but it’s not The Persuasion book, like that one has its. It is true that some specific things could be dated, but the whole psychology behind it is what I think is extremely, extremely valuable. So love that recommendation.

Jerry Kolber:
When we did Brain Games, so much of that show was inspired by Cialdini’s book Persuasion, and then also Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow was great as well. But we were able to use that book to kind of just like whether we literally did experiments from it or were inspired by was amazing how when you recreate those experiments with the budget that you get from Nat Geo, how often they actually align exactly with what he said would happen in the book. So it’s a great book.

Rob:
Fantastic book for sure. And you know, Jerry, you’ve done many great things in this world, but what would you say is your superpower, that thing that you do better at least than most other people?

Jerry Kolber:
Oh, that’s easy. I am better than almost anyone at making complex subjects easy to understand for anybody.

Rob:
Love that. Super important in a space like that one. There’s no way around it.

Jerry Kolber:
Yeah.

Rob:
Super complicated stuff. Making it digestible for people to learn, essentially.

Jerry Kolber:
Yeah.

Rob:
I, I, there’s been all these discussions about, or especially like, you know, people like to rename things and, you know, from learning. No. Instructional designers. So now it’s, now it’s learning, experience, design. It is true, like, I agree that it’s not more about teaching, which sounds like you’re pushing people. It’s more about facilitating learning and all that. So, so the whole naming around more than, again, teaching. It’s more about facilitating. I completely agree. And the only way to do it is to simplify. Well, not simplify. It sounds like you’re, you’re making it, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re simplifying the subject. It’s not about simplifying. It’s making it understandable, as you were saying before. Because I think almost everything can be made understandable for almost anyone if you find a good way to do it.

Jerry Kolber:
I agree. I think, I think, you know, our whole, like, sort of the core of our core belief here at this company is that we people are, we generally don’t give everybody credit for being as curious and intelligent as, as they are. And there’s a lot of people who are heavily invested in, in gatekeeping around subjects and making it more complicated than it needs to be. And we, we don’t necessarily. Like, we people are like, oh, wow, you’ve taught people so much about the brain and brain and brain games, and you taught people about Neuroscience. Like, I didn’t teach anybody anything. I created a show that exposed them to ideas and. And concepts around neuroscience that they never thought in a million years they would understand. But we made it easy by gamifying it and making it fun. And then if they want to go on and learn more, like, I just got them excited about the brand of neuroscience, right? Like, I’m not teaching. Literally teaching neuroscience. Like, they would have to go. And, you know, we hear that all the time from people. They stay, they watch one of our shows, and they’re like, hi. I never knew things worked that way. I never thought I could understand that. And then they go off and they buy a book or they research, and they start to go down that rabbit hole on their own. That’s what I think. When you’re talking about learning experience, designers is like, creating those. Those entry points and not feeling like you need to, like, give everybody all the information all at once, because that’s when people are like, bye, you know, shut down. It’s like, give it. Give people enough information in a fun way that is somehow related to their own experience by either explaining how they can get better at something or. Or explaining how the reason someone did something to them that they think is crazy is not actually crazy, or, like, why people behave the way they do. Give them some relatable stakes in what you’re explaining, and you’ll. They’re hooked. They’re hooked, and then you have them, and then you can, you know, explain whatever it is you want to. But it’s. It’s really about, like, creating the right front door for these subjects, and that’s what we’re really good at.

Rob:
Love it. So, Jerry, what about your favorite game? Which one would you say is that one right now?

Jerry Kolber:
My favorite game is Catan. Settlers of Catan. Do you know that one? It’s a. It’s a fairly complex world building. Yeah, it started in Germany, but you’re like. You’re building out, like, settlements. And it’s deceptively. It’s complex and simple because, like, it really. It does, like, mirror the idea of, like, how do you build, you know, build civilization and resources? And, you know, there’s a. A lot of randomness but also strategy to it.

Rob:
But it started a sort of a. Well, some. Many claim. I’m not. I’m not a historian of board games in any way, but many claim it. It was one of the ones that started this sort of movement, this. Of Neo board games or whatever they’re called, where, you know, Monopoly and that kind of games used to be the thing and now there’s, there’s, there’s alternatives to it. Some people love Monopoly. I used to enjoy it. I don’t enjoy it much anymore. I enjoy other alternatives. In fact, there’s Monopoly. There’s one which is a card game which I enjoy a lot more. It’s faster, you know, everybody can be engaged at the same time doing stuff, which is one of the turn based problems of Monopoly for me at least. And Catan has sort of started, as far as I’m aware, started that, that thing. And there’s, there’s, you know, an infinitude of board games nowadays for many other reasons as well, but they sort of kicked off. They opened the gates as you were saying before. They opened the gates to this being. I don’t know if possible, but at least being plausible for people.

Jerry Kolber:
Awesome. I didn’t know that. I like the game.

Rob:
Love it, absolutely love it. And love the game as well. It’s one of the games I’ve played several times, but it’s weird that I don’t own that one. Yeah, it’s one of the small issues that it does have is it doesn’t have a two player good version. So playing at home with my wife is still not an option. My daughter’s too young yet to be able to play. So I’m still hooked on games that have at least an alternative for two players. Jerry, you know, we’re arriving to the end of the show. I don’t know if there’s anything else you want to share with the listeners. Where can we find out more about you, your work, whatever you want to guide us before we say it’s game over essentially.

Jerry Kolber:
Sure, yeah. I mean if you’re looking to listen to who’s Smarted, which is a Great show for 8 to 10 year olds and their, their families, it’s great for homeschools and classrooms. That’s@whosmarted.com or on any podcast player. And then the other show we have for kids is called Mysteries about True Histories where we each episode gamifies some aspect of learning about math or history in a way that’s very fun for kids. That one’s getting adopted a lot in classrooms to help kids understand history and math in a fun way. And Mysteries about True Histories is also on all the podcast apps. And if you’re trying to find me, I am on LinkedIn at Jerry Kolber. J e r r y dash k o l B E R.

Rob:
Amazing, Jerry, thank you very much for all your insights. All of the knowledge that you’ve been able to give us here, all the experience that you’ve shared. However, Jerry and Engagers, as you know, at least for now and for today, it is time to say that it’s game over. Hey Engagers and thank you for listening to the Professor Game podcast. And since you’re interested in this world of creating motivation, engagement, loyalty using game inspired solutions, how about you join us on our free online community at Professor Game On School. You can find the link right below in the description, but the main thing. Is to click there. Join us to platform called Skool. It’s for free and you’ll find plenty of resources. There will be up to date with everything that we’re doing, any opportunities that we might have for you, and of course, before you go on to your next mission, before you click Continue, please remember to subscribe using your favorite podcast app and listen to the next episode of Professor Game. See you there.

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