Welcome. Welcome to the 1,000 hours outside podcast. My name is Jenny Urich and I have never

been more excited than I am right now to be across the camera from Peter Gray.

Dr. Peter Gray, correct?

You can just call me Peter. Just call you Peter.

Peter.

Peter Gray's book Free to Learn and I also have his other new ones.

You can see all my tabs here. It changed my life and so I just want to publicly say to you Peter thank you. I'm sure people say it all the time but you have changed my life you have changed our family's life you have

changed life for our children it's a generational impact what you have done and I

speak around the country at homeschool conferences and every single presentation I do includes your quotes and

includes your book and so your impact is just so far reaching.

It's amazing how one book can just permeate so deeply. So I just

wanted to say thank you to you and to say thank you for being here. Could you take a minute to introduce yourself

and maybe tell a little bit how you came to this book here?

Sure.

So I'm a research professor at Boston College.

I retired quite some years ago from teaching,

but continue to do research and writing.

I'm an evolutionary psychologist which means that I'm interested in human nature and how our nature came about my natural selection.

And for many years now, I've been primarily interested

in children's nature and more specifically in the natural ways that children explore and learn about the world around them.

My research has led me to become an advocate for what I call self-directed education, where children are learning through their own initiative.

Children, I'm convinced, come into the world biologically designed to educate

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