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The Golden Table

Jacob Chastain 5 Episodes Oct 12, 2026

The Golden Table is a podcast that explores education as something that happens everywhere, not just in classrooms. Hosted by educator, author, and longtime podcaster Jacob Chastain, it brings together education, culture, music, books, art, technology, philosophy, and the world around us. The show asks what we are listening to, reading, and becoming, and how those questions connect to how we learn, think, create, disagree, and live together. The central idea is that everything is connected, and listeners are invited to pull up a chair and stay for the conversation.

Episodes

#10 54% of Adults Read Below a 6th Grade Level Oct 12, 2026 48:10 Hello everyone, and welcome to the Golden Table podcast. Here we talk about the intersections of knowledge, from pop culture, to personal experiences, to history and research. It's all a part of the table, but it's on us to pull up a chair. Today we are broadly discussing reading—but if I am being honest, we are truly analyzing what contributes to creating readers or fostering a reading life in p

#9 As a Creative Mind, You May Need to Hear This Oct 5, 2026 33:14 Being creative can feel exhilarating—but it can also be frustrating, lonely, and downright exhausting. Sometimes the thing you care most about creating feels impossible to make. Sometimes you wonder whether anyone is listening. And sometimes the hardest part is continuing to create when the work isn't being recognized, appreciated, or even understood. In this episode of The Golden Table, Jacob Cha

#8 How Did Print Books Survive? Sep 28, 2026 58:05 The book was supposed to be dead by now. Kindle. Nook. iPad. E-books. Amazon. The collapse of Borders. Around 2010, the future seemed obvious: physical books were disappearing, bookstores were doomed, and digital reading was going to replace print. Except it didn't. E-books won a place at the table. Audiobooks won a place at the table. And somehow, the physical book stayed. So what happened? And m

#7 Consuming vs Discovering Sep 21, 2026 39:07 Is it really a teacher's job to engage a student who has decided education has no value? We start with a clip from last week's episode and a question that probably makes some educators uncomfortable: Where does a teacher's responsibility for student engagement actually end? Then we take the conversation somewhere bigger: growth requires risk. We say we want to grow, but how often do we keep consum

#6 The Failure of Grit Sep 14, 2026 44:21 What if we've been teaching kids to succeed when we should be teaching them how to fail? Failure is inevitable. Trying something and getting it wrong is inevitable. So why do we spend so much time designing schools, classrooms, and even lives around avoiding it? In Episode 6 of The Golden Table, we sit with failure—not as a motivational poster or a buzzword, but as one of the most important parts

#5 Contradictions in Our Identity Sep 8, 2026 48:13 Episode 5 of The Golden Table sits in the uncomfortable, beautiful mess of identity, finding yourself, and learning to trust the process when you have absolutely no idea where it's going. We talk about the versions of ourselves we leave behind, the contradictions we carry, and the strange reality that maybe being a complete person means containing multitudes rather than having everything figured o

#4 What Happens When We Stop Caring? Aug 31, 2026 56:21 What if indifference is more dangerous than failure? This week on The Golden Table, we start with music, listener letters, and the albums currently fighting for space in my headphones. Then a letter from Jaziel—one of my former students—forces a much bigger question onto the table: What happens when we stop caring? Not just about school. About people. About ourselves. About becoming someone worth

#3 Kids Want to Learn, They're Disengaged Aug 24, 2026 54:31 What if students aren't actually tired of learning? What if they're tired of outdated strategies, predictable routines, and crusty curriculum? In Episode 3 of The Golden Table, we take a hard look at student engagement—and start by looking at ourselves. What pulls us into something? Interest. Mood. Novelty. Discovery. The tension between what's familiar and what's new. So why do we expect students

#2 Growth as Self Acceptance Aug 17, 2026 58:59 What does it mean to grow when the thing you've built your life around starts to feel stagnant? In Episode 2 of The Golden Table, Jacob Chastain sits down at the table to explore growth—the uncomfortable, exhilarating, sometimes painful process of becoming something different than what you were. We talk about the feeling of being stuck in teaching, work, or life, and why novelty matters—but novelt

#1 What is Knowledge? Aug 9, 2026 53:15 Hello and welcome everyone to the first ever episode of the Golden Table. We are getting right to it in this episode. After a brief overview of the show, we dive into essential questions around what knowledge is, who gets to access it, and who decides what knowledge is worth having. Along the way we unpack why gold is precious and timeless, The New Colossus, and even touch on Tool's famous song,

The Golden Table

Episodes

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