22. Sal Khan: “If It Works for 15 Cousins, It Could Work for a Billion People.”
People I (Mostly) Admire
Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher
4.6 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 16 May 2026
⏱️ 44 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | When Sale Khan started posting a few free instructional videos on YouTube 15 years ago, |
| 0:09.0 | I don't think anyone could have imagined what Khan Academy would become. |
| 0:13.0 | More than 115 million registered users spread across 190 countries in 46 different languages. |
| 0:20.0 | And it's gone way beyond videos. |
| 0:22.6 | Now there are over 70,000 practice problems, quizzes, and articles, |
| 0:25.6 | even state-of-the-art SAT prep. |
| 0:28.6 | All of it available completely free to students and parents. |
| 0:34.6 | Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt. |
| 0:39.6 | I spend much of my time these days working through my center at the University of Chicago to try to change the world for the better. |
| 0:46.3 | And I can't tell you how much we've struggled and how little impact we've had relative to what I would have hoped for. |
| 0:52.7 | Sal Khan makes it look easy, but in reality it is incredibly hard. |
| 0:56.7 | So today, I have two goals. |
| 0:58.7 | First, I want to get inside the head of Sal Khan to understand what the special sauce is that has made him so incredibly successful in this area, |
| 1:06.5 | so I can do better myself. |
| 1:08.0 | Second, although he doesn't advertise it, I have the suspicion that Sal Khan's ambitions go far beyond Khan Academy. |
| 1:15.1 | I think he has an even bolder plan in mind, |
| 1:17.5 | a complete rethinking of how education works. |
| 1:20.4 | I also have radical ideas for the future of education, |
| 1:23.0 | and my pipe dream is that our visions might align |
| 1:25.6 | and there could be an opportunity for us to work together. |
| 1:28.2 | So let's see. |
| 1:42.3 | Selcon, what a treat it is to get to talk to you today. |
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