A conversation will Bill Krueger. Bill is a high school english teacher and hockey/baseball coach. We discuss Bill’s time in the air national guard, the ethics of joining the armed forces, what do you do in the national guard, why Bill left the air national guard, why Bill wanted to become a teacher, changes in society over the decades as seen through TV shows, why Bill got into english, the disproportionate attention that high school sports get vs academics, the classes that Bill is teaching, the (non)importance of essay-writing, remedial english classes and the bad behavior of english students, coaching high school sports, the violence of hockey and other contact sports, the roles of different body types in sports and the algorithm-izing of baseball, inequality in sports, why hockey players often have January birthdays, free will and how everything comes down to luck, lobsters, the consequences of not having free will, how you don’t create your thoughts, at what point someone becomes not regular enough to be on this podcast, and Bill's advice to spend time with your grandparents.
*when referring to a movie with George Lopez teaching math to kids, I was combining two different movies in my head. One is the 1998 movie “Stand and Deliver” where Edward James Olmos teaches math to underperforming Latino students. The other movie really does star George Lopez but it’s about a robotics team, not mathematics. It’s called “Spare Parts.” That one came out in 2015.
*At 1:34:00 I say “when you get to the professional level [of hockey] something like 90% of the players have January birthdays.” It is not nearly so high as 90% of players, more like 30%. But the point still stands that a disproportionate number of professional players have January birthdays.
Book to read: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell