Learning Stack Ep. 005 TL;DL - Brandon Hendrickson on Wonder, Storytelling, and the Forgotten Tools of Learning

Too Long; Didn’t Listen: Brandon Hendrickson on Wonder, Storytelling, and the Forgotten Tools of Learning

For those of you who don’t have an hour for the full conversation, here’s the “Too Long; Didn’t Listen” of my episode with Brandon Hendrickson. Brandon is the creator of Science is Weird, a science program for kids built around the idea that nothing is boring (even the boring stuff), everything is weird, and wonder is worth preserving. I write preserve because after talking with Brandon, I came away possessed with the idea that wonder is something we can lose, but also something we can learn to recover. The primary methods of this recovery, if you are to take Brandon or his major influence, the educational philosopher Kieran Egan, as a model, are found in story, metaphor, and play. In these, we do not merely convey information about the world. The framing of the story, the metaphor, and the game create their own context.

What follows are some of the key concepts from the episode.

§1 Curiosity alone is not enough.

1.1. We often treat curiosity as a default state, but Brandon argues that unstructured appeals to student curiosity can lead to chaos and shallow learning. Instead, curiosity should be cultivated, not assumed, and that means making subjects shiny again. That’s his word for learning that’s emotionally resonant, rich in meaning, and intellectually alive.

§2 Teaching, by its nature, must be adaptive and as varied in approach as the needs of the students.

2.1. The best teaching doesn’t always look progressive or classical or fully guided or like that of a Montessori or Waldorf school.

2.1.1. Throughout his work and indeed throughout our conversation, Brandon draws from an array of educational traditions—Montessori, Classical, Waldorf, Unschooling—but resists dogma. He critiques modern classical education for giving kids adult-level content before they’re ready, and progressivism for focusing too much on student-led learning without adequate structure. The sweet spot, he suggests, lies somewhere at the confluence of the traditions and in honoring the intellectual tools kids possess from an early age—narrative, metaphor, riddle, and song, which he suggests are more ubiquitous than traditional academic forms like the lecture or socratic dialogue.

§3 Literacy changes the brain, but it isn’t everything.

3.1. While Brandon agrees that literacy is essential to accessing higher-order thinking, he pushes back on the idea that it’s the sole foundation for deep learning. Oral traditions, embodied experiences, and storytelling predate literacy and remain powerful modes of understanding and conveying meaning. He argues that our over-reliance on text may crowd out more emotionally engaging and developmentally appropriate forms of learning, especially for younger students.

§4 Storytelling isn’t fluff—it’s a structure.

4.1. Kieran Egan’s central insight, Brandon says, is that learning follows a narrative arc. Even in technical fields like botany or physics, the best teaching frames knowledge through stakes, characters, and conflict. For example, instead of diagramming flower anatomy, he teaches plant reproduction as a biological drama: trees can’t move, sunlight fries pollen, yet they must reproduce despite the stakes. He suggests that a lesson that frames the narrative arc thus lands and sticks better for novice learners than a worksheet or diagram could.

§5 Is education solved?

5.1. Surprisingly, Brandon says yes, with a caveat. He believes we already know enough to build classrooms where students become deeply educated and genuinely interested in learning. What’s missing isn’t knowledge, but execution: classroom-ready curricula, teacher training, and instructional tools that make knowledge about teaching and learning usable at scale.

5.2.Brandon laments the decline of shared storytelling, riddle culture, and joke-telling as vehicles for deep cognitive development. These weren’t seen as educational in the classical tradition, but they offered powerful, emotionally anchored ways for children to make meaning. He calls for a return to these forgotten tools, not in opposition to academic rigor, but as its foundation.