Chris Balme | Challenge Accepted: Turning Adolescence into Adventure Chris Balme

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Adolescence is often seen as something to endure — awkward years full of turbulence and struggle. But what if these years could be a time of discovery, adventure, and growth?

In this episode, Jesper and Cecilie Conrad talk with Chris Balme on the launch day of his new book, Challenge Accepted: 50 Adventures to Make Middle School Awesome. We were introduced to Chris by our friend and former guest, Blake Boles, and quickly said yes to the conversation.

Chris shares why adolescence is one of the most powerful stages of development — with a brain growing faster than at any other time, and social awareness reaching new heights — yet why conventional schooling so often gets in the way. Drawing on twelve years of research with adolescents worldwide, he shows how adventures like starting a business, creating guerrilla art, or camping solo can help young people step into their capabilities and keep their curiosity alive.

Peter Gray, author of Free to Learn, praise the book:

“Buy this book for every middle schooler, or about-to-be middle schooler you know. It just might provide the spark that turns what can be difficult years into years of awesome adventure and growth.”

We also explore Chris’s own path from unhappy student to educational innovator — founding a lab school and creating an apprenticeship program that connected more than 17,000 young people with real-world mentors (including one who learned to fly a plane at twelve!).

Whether your teen is in traditional school, alternative education, or learning outside the system, this conversation offers inspiration for supporting adolescents in ways that honor their emerging maturity, creativity, and desire to contribute.

🔗  Relevant links

Books mentioned in the podcast

🗓️ Recorded August 15th, 2025. 📍 Lindale, Grange-over-Sands, UK

See Episode Transcript

Autogenerated Transcript

Jesper Conrad: 

Today we're together with Chris Balme, and first of all, Chris, a warm welcome. Thank you for taking the time.

Chris Balme: 

Thank you. Thank you for pronouncing my last name correctly on the first try.

Cecilie Conrad: 

Yes, even on the try, try yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 

So, chris, the reason we are talking today is I got an email from Blake Boles, who we have had as a guest on our podcast, because he has written a book with the fantastic title why Are you Still Sending your Kids to School, or Children, I can't remember it correctly and he wrote me an email and said hey, you know what? I think you guys would enjoy talking with Chris, so why don't you invite him? And he also has a book coming out. So here we are. That's more or less what I know, chris.

Chris Balme: 

So here we are all right, we're starting pred.

Chris Balme: 

Blake is amazing yeah, that's the title of your book well this book is a conversation exactly, yeah, blake, and I have this debate all the time as, uh, you know, I'm still. I have one foot in the system. He has all, all body parts limbs outside of the system, and we were trying to find ways to bring some of these ideas of more self-directed learning for those folks who are still in the system or not. And this new book which comes out today it's so exciting to talk with you both on launch day is all about helping middle schoolers go on adventures so that they can figure out how awesome they are and change the story of middle school, which has got to be one of the saddest stories of any part of the education system why?

Cecilie Conrad: 

I was also wondering can you expand that, because I find the whole thing very sad yeah, yeah, I agree with you define middle school first for those who are not american that would be including myself.

Chris Balme: 

Yeah, so in the states. Well, a curious signal about how confused this time is is that it doesn't have a clear definition, but the most common is grades 6 through 8, ages 11 through 14 in the us. Okay, it's by year, give or take here and there, and I think most people, at least in the us and at least some other countries I've been to, would say this is the worst part of at least the K through 12 system. And the amazing thing to me is how we replicate this story and tell kids like oh, this is going to be rough, this is going to be awkward. I hope you get through it as quickly as you can.

Cecilie Conrad: 

And to me that is such a signal it's not going to be quick. Yeah, it's not quick. That's like very logical to begin with.

Chris Balme: 

Yeah, and I mean, from the brain science perspective, it's one of the most fruitful times of growth of our whole lives. Actually, your brain never grows faster than it will after that, so we can do so much better, and that's basically. My whole work has been trying to design better experiences for middle schoolers in particular, in schools, out of schools and now, through this book, getting them out into the world.

Jesper Conrad: 

What made you write?

Chris Balme: 

a book Because that's quite a big task to jump into. Personally, I can't not write. It's just something that my brain does to make sense of the world. I've been writing ridiculous numbers of journals since I was nine years old, but this book came around 12 years ago. I was starting a laboratory middle school, kind of an experimental school that would be much more student-centered, much more getting them out in the world, and we were trying to figure out how do we? We need some kind of a framework so that we don't just default back to the old traditional ways and the old traditional curriculum.

Chris Balme: 

So our thought experiment was could we create a framework of curriculum that was only experiences? So you couldn't define anything. You know that was, you know English unit three, but just only experiences. And we interviewed people from middle school age through late in life and asked them what do you remember the most positively about the middle school years? And, of course, after people got done sharing their traumatic side, many of them had a lot of them said it was things like you know, I started a business, I got my first job, I went camping by myself, all of these things. And so we just compiled this list and in the last 12 years we've been testing it with kids all over the world in school, out of school, homeschool, all kinds of things, and so this book is the 50 things that we think really work for middle schoolers to go get out there.

Jesper Conrad: 

Yeah, what is number 35? Just to be curious, let's see how good you can. I have a copy here. Okay, number 35. Let to be curious, let's see how good you can be. I have a copy here.

Chris Balme: 

Okay, number 35. Let's start there. Number 35 is, oh, it's called Train your Brain and it's about different kinds of meditation, but trying to not do it kind of the way that has been forced on a lot of kids. So, if you know, sit down, be quiet, kind of the compliance side of meditation. That can be the dark side of it and rather have them feel like it's just tuning in. To use the old hippie word, it's tuning into what you're noticing. Favorite way to teach it amazing teacher at our school was you know, kids would walk in in the morning when they were doing this and there would be like a single strawberry in front of each kid and the challenge was just eat the strawberry as slowly as you possibly can and that's your meditation, just noticing things like that and it's that really on the curriculum nowadays, because my one of my hardships with the public school system is that when I hear about it, we don't have our kids in it.

Jesper Conrad: 

But when I hear about it, we don't have our kids in it. But when I hear about it, it has become so controlled what people need to learn on, on which time, et cetera that I can almost be afraid that there's no room for what you wanted with your book.

Chris Balme: 

I agree. I mean. That's why I think most of this book is about things that can happen outside of school hours, where kids take more agency and I think you're fans of Peter Gray's work as well and that's been a big influence and he was kind enough to write a blurb that's on the cover of the book about. Basically, this is a way to keep your spark, keep your curiosity during years, when otherwise school can shut it down. I think middle schoolers maybe of any age group are really babied and underestimated, kind of treated as younger, less capable people than they are, and if they start to believe that story, that's really the worst outcome of all. So this is about things that they can do, where they realize that they're powerful and that you know, for most of human history these were people who were out there doing things in the world for other people and feeling more and more valuable as a result. I think we've lost that a little bit in school, so this is meant to jailbreak them a little bit.

Cecilie Conrad: 

It's meant to inspire things to do outside of school.

Chris Balme: 

That's right. Yeah, yeah, I can share more of the some of the challenges. If you want.

Cecilie Conrad: 

I have a thousand questions yeah, please fire away I don't know where to start because I have a really big problem with the word curriculum and you mentioned that. But maybe we should skip that, then I also. I I feel like I just have to unload my whole chaotic brain right now yeah also I'm thinking about. What is the trauma, the middle school trauma?

Cecilie Conrad: 

yeah and can we reverse it by doing something fun for the rest of the time? So if we are complying to the school system and we're giving up 30, 40, 50 hours a week to that, can we fix all that trauma by doing something fun on the weekends? Maybe we can. I'm not saying we can't. I think you're trying to solve the same problem as we're usually talking about solving, by not doing school. So I'm just curious.

Chris Balme: 

It's on my mind too.

Cecilie Conrad: 

Are we just putting a patch on the problem by having fun on the weekends, or can we actually solve it? And if we solve it, I would guess my guess would be that school makes even less sense for the kids once they start getting agency and having some real experiences in life.

Chris Balme: 

I think you're right, you know it's. I guess the way I think about middle school is first and foremost developmentally. And does school let kids do their developmental work or not? And does school let kids do their developmental work or not? And I think, unfortunately, traditional school directly blocks a lot of the developmental work that middle schoolers need to do and that's why I think we see it as a rough and traumatic age more than anything else, because we're getting in their way.

Chris Balme: 

For example, it's the most socially motivated time probably in the whole human lifespan. All your radar to read the social world has turned on. You're flooded with new information you never noticed before and all you want to do is figure out how to make sense of that. If school says you know talking with your friend is cheating or is disruptive will be punished, then you're fighting. You know the strongest social drive ever and everyone's frustrated. But I do think for kids where there isn't an option, there's no way to get out of the school system, that having other parts of your life that are developmentally aligned with you, that let you do your developmental work around identity and connection and contribution, that's only positive and, yes, it would be better if they could do that all day, every day, but anything is better, maybe even creating that gap and making even more dissonance and making the school feel even less meaningful.

Cecilie Conrad: 

It can hurt during the years of being trapped in that system in case you are actually trapped in that system, but having a feel of the other thing and knowing that, okay, it actually does not make any sense. This, I just have to get through it because that happens to be my circumstances. It's probably better on the long run, even though it's not necessarily better in the moment.

Chris Balme: 

I think so. I mean, I think, yeah. I mean, middle schoolers are so smart and they can code, switch, you know, they can understand that there are different games we play and you know different parts of life, different rules. So I think it's better for them to have access to a better game, even if it makes the other game more aggravating as a result, and they might make different choices if they have more liberty in high school maybe to select their path. You know that could be informed, they could keep more of a sense of agency versus. One of the things that makes me so sad about traditional education is how passive kids become. They that kind of like given up on the hope of making this interesting for themselves or letting their curiosity lead. So if we keep that alive, even in the outside hours and of course some schools are going to keep it alive inside school then you know all the better yeah, it seems like there's a growing number of alternative schools and a lot of the projects I hear about both in uk and the states.

Jesper Conrad: 

I can tend to look back at denmark and being like, oh, we only have like we don't have that many free schools and alternative schools, as I think there is a growing movement worldwide that people want something different for their kids, so I think it's growing one. What are your favorite of the 55 to do personally?

Chris Balme: 

my personal favorite is there's one that's called be a stealth artist, and the challenge is to create a work of art and then install it as if it was meant to be there in some other place, like hang it on the wall of your favorite cafe, for example, you know, non-destructively but just to realize that you know art is meant to break rules and move someone else and put in your art up where it's not technically supposed to be. I think there's something about that that speaks to the adolescent urge to start to change the world a bit yeah I really like that one, yeah, yeah no, but it, it.

Cecilie Conrad: 

I remember an american teenage girl we knew she did as a prank. I can't remember was it for. Was it for valentine's day with a not a boyfriend, not a romantic interest at all a friend? They did the most awkward couples photos where they look really weird and as if it was these posed couples photos. They did a lot of them and they framed them and then they put them in all of their friends houses everywhere.

Cecilie Conrad: 

They made I don't know 25 and just put them up. That's really funny. That was actually that's kind of what we're proposing there same, except it wasn't art. Was it art kind of? Yeah?

Chris Balme: 

yeah, yeah, that sounds like art.

Cecilie Conrad: 

It was a fun idea.

Jesper Conrad: 

Yeah, and it reminds me of some of the street art I love the most. It's these, as you say, non-destructive, but with a quirky smile on where they have done something wonderful, and I mean it just makes me smile and it makes me happy when I see them Modifying street signs. Modifying street signs. Modifying street signs and it's yeah, it's super wonderful, yeah yeah, yeah, exactly.

Chris Balme: 

I think there's something that that's a part of the gift that adolescents have to offer the rest of the world is to kind of modify our old routines, and if we let them, that's how they keep us alive. I think also yeah yeah, I don't know.

Cecilie Conrad: 

I've been thinking recently about. I had a really good conversation a few weeks ago with a transformational leader friend I have about about the things we keep talking about. We keep talking about unschooling my husband and I, because we're unschoolers, and I will keep talking about unschooling because I think it is one of the best strategies for allowing for our offspring to make sense of the world as they grow up. But actually unschooling is a way of solving the problem that the school system we have and basically the whole culture around bringing up children it's very outdated and in many countries not so much in the country we come from, which makes us a little bit off sometimes when we observe it.

Cecilie Conrad: 

But in many countries the relationship between parents and children and between teachers and children is very, very much not leveled.

Cecilie Conrad: 

So it's a very top-down thing where we are way more equal with our children and teenagers in our society our former, where we came from before we became nomadic. So the problem really is that the way we do childhood doesn't really it doesn't exist in harmony with the reality of the society the kids can clearly see they will be part of when they are 25, let's say, and we think unschooling is a very good way of. If we just take schooling out of that system, we take the whole idea of curriculum out of that system, then it becomes way better. But there are other ways to do it and what you propose is one of are other ways to do it and what you propose is one of these other ways to do it. We're trying to solve a problem and there will be several ways to solve it. So, even though having fun in the weekends is not going to not be painful, weekdays maybe do you think there is a spillover effect definitely.

Chris Balme: 

Yeah, I mean, I think it's also each kid's journey, you know, through this could be so different. So you know, I have three kids one goes to a traditional school, one goes to an alternative school and one I'm unschooling.

Chris Balme: 

So I'm kind of I feel like I have hands in all the whole thing yeah very confusing, but that's because of what they've chosen and what seems to be working for them. You know there are kids that want the huge thing that school has is so many other kids and there are kids that just want that social environment but are maybe not being served by other parts of it. So yeah, I think anywhere we can get this in around the edges and help them. You know, like I was saying earlier, when they do their developmental work then they make developmental progress and they go beyond. That kind of belonging is everything stage. You know you've got to start there, but then you can go beyond it to figuring out how do I achieve things? And then how do I achieve something that's authentic to me, where I'm bringing myself out into the social world, knowing their consequences.

Jesper Conrad: 

If they can tinker toward that in some part of their lives, I think it affects how they show up in in all parts so, chris, there is um one very obvious thing that just came to my mind, which is we haven't mentioned the title of your book. We just started talking yeah, so, so, so please tell me about the title about of your book. And also, as I said, we got this email from Blake, so I actually didn't look into if this is your first book or if, where are we with the whole? Chris, tell me a little more about yourself, the name of your book and your way to it.

Chris Balme: 

Yeah, so this is book baby number two. So the first one came out three years ago. I thought actually this one was going to be the first, but it took longer to gestate. So the first one came out and was called Finding the Magic in Middle School, and that's really to help adults make sense of middle school and understand developmentally whether you're in school or out of school just what are kids driven to do at that age, so that we can help them and not accidentally battle them, which so often happens.

Chris Balme: 

But the whole time I was writing that book I was thinking I really want to write directly to kids and so that's what this book is. So it's called Challenge Accepted subtitle 50 Adventures to Make Middle School Awesome, and it's written completely for kids. Everything in there has been tested by lots of different middle schoolers all over the world and it's basically you know after a short intro. Just it's a choose your own adventure kind of style 50 short chapters. Each one gives you kind of a why this might be cool. You know, feel free to cross this out if it's not cool to you, but if it speaks to you, here's why it might be cool and then, like a very practical, here's how to do it. And that's it.

Chris Balme: 

That's the complete book nice 11 to 15 was the age yeah, yeah, 11 to 14 in the US.

Jesper Conrad: 

I would accept the sneaky art. Yeah, I would accept that one. I like that idea.

Chris Balme: 

I think one of the most fun ways to use it, if you're going to bring it into a family setting, is to have the kids give the parents the challenges and then, in the course of choosing one for their parents, they may notice some that they're intrigued by as well yeah, so how is the plan to get the book used?

Jesper Conrad: 

is it through the school, through the teachers, or is it to the parents that give it to their child? What is, what is your plan with it?

Chris Balme: 

Yeah, my dream with it is that kids discover it by accident. I think that's the ideal way, you know. So I had a Kickstarter campaign to help produce it and everyone who supported it. I'm sending them extra copies and asking them to leave them in random places where a middle schooler might walk by. So I think that would be my dream. They just see it like what is this strange colorful book and flip through it. Second to that would be that some adult who's just really cool and intriguing to them you know, their cool aunt or someone like that just passes it to them. Check this out, no questions asked, kind of thing. And then, of course, parents and teachers are very welcome to give it as well, but sometimes that comes with more complications or expectations but that has to do with that ruined relationship I talked about before yeah I mean some parents, some children actually do trust their parents to come up with good ideas, even in the middle school age.

Cecilie Conrad: 

I mean a lot of relations are good and we could also build on that and maybe it would be even good for a struggling relationship between a middle school child and the parents that parents read the book first came up with.

Cecilie Conrad: 

Hey, we could do all these fun things instead of doing chores and math and whatever extracurricular adult composed time kind of way we spend the time that we have, the precious time we have together we're in the situation right now that one of our kids have just left us just for a month for a month to go traveling with her boyfriend and you sit back with. I mean, we have a surplus of children, so we have enough to play with.

Jesper Conrad: 

But you get that feeling.

Cecilie Conrad: 

They are really precious, the hours we have with the children. So even the slightest little, I'll force you to empty the dishwasher. Why would I? Why would I sacrifice the conversation we could have had or the fun we could have had or the music we could have heard, or whatever, in order to do some sort of top-down, trying to think that I can teach you how to be a good person? I think we've learned a lot about how to handle life and how to be a good person, how to have fun and how to live in accordance with your values, and all these things from our children, exactly when they've been in these years between 11 and 14.

Jesper Conrad: 

Damn, they're wise, they really are yeah, we see the with our youngest. Sometimes then like I find myself talking to him like he's a young one and then sometimes when, when he talks, I'm just like blown back. I'm like oh yeah, you're 13. And oh man, you have so much on your mind. Sorry, because he's my little one.

Cecilie Conrad: 

Yeah, we kind of forget, because he's our fourth child and he's 13 years younger than the oldest. I want him to be little.

Jesper Conrad: 

Yeah, just some years. I remember how it was when I was young myself and all the thoughts I have when I was in this age group and you don't feel respected by adults often.

Cecilie Conrad: 

Because you are not respected. Yeah, it's an accurate sense this is because you can see right through things.

Chris Balme: 

Yeah, I agree. I think that's you know. So many parents, traditional or non-traditional, are so shaken up by this age because they don't see that the speed of change is shocking chances to reset your relationship because you're going to be unless you're really aware of this, you're going to be kind of shocked and have to constantly update your model of who your child is. Maybe it's the chance to break out of the old kind of boss you know, adult control mode, and be more of a companion.

Cecilie Conrad: 

Yeah, the sooner you do that, the the better.

Chris Balme: 

Exactly.

Cecilie Conrad: 

Yeah.

Chris Balme: 

It's going to get rough during these years. If you don't, they will let you know.

Jesper Conrad: 

Chris, which of the challenges are your kids most tired of? If you have used them as tryouts, they're like Dad. Not again, not that one.

Cecilie Conrad: 

I'm not doing any more random art putting it up. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Balme: 

That's a good question. I have to say, my own middle school daughter was definitely the most ruthless editor of this book. She went through it and held nothing back. Yeah, let's see what are they. I'm just flipping through it here. The one that she wants to do next is kind of a classic one.

Chris Balme: 

It's to create a time capsule and kind of take some memories from this age with her best friend and bury them in the backyard, which I think will be fun. So that's next on her plate. Let's see. My own child rolled her eyes at the challenge that is called find awe in nature. It's like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I do know other kids who really enjoyed that one. So you know, that's the choose your own adventure style of it.

Jesper Conrad: 

I have done some time capsules, mostly for fun. One was when we rebuilt the kitchen and then I put in a note underneath where I just said why did you break down the kitchen? It's just me having fun with it.

Cecilie Conrad: 

You also put something under a floor once. Yeah, I also put something under a floor once, yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 

I also put something under a floor. One of the floorboards was broken and needed to be changed before we moved out of an apartment, and I slid in a note, and I think that is 20 years ago maybe, and it still hasn't. I have never heard from them. Do you know, though?

Cecilie Conrad: 

No, we had some very good parties in that apartment, yeah, wow.

Chris Balme: 

That, no, I we had some very good parties in that apartment. So yeah, wow, that's a great inspiration. This is the adult version, maybe a challenge accepted.

Cecilie Conrad: 

Well, we did it with the kids. I think maybe also just our mindset is I'd like to read that book, I mean yeah, we do these kinds of things with our children.

Cecilie Conrad: 

That's the only thing when you let the child find it and randomly do these things. A lot of things we do project style. We like to do them together. We like to find projects like this Could be go for a walk, it could be do an art project, Could be whatever kind of time capsule. Right now we're doing hand dolls to make theater. We usually try to find something where at least three we're a family of a lot of people. We're accumulating as our children have romantic relationships now.

Cecilie Conrad: 

So we have four children and two sons-in-laws now. So we're usually a lot of people, at least three of us before we start a project, because we realized that, as you said, the social part of it, and I think, yes, it's huge in middle school years, but it's huge in life, really social life. I want to be social. I don't want to miss out on spending time with people I love, yeah. So we make these kinds of projects and we usually, at least if three people are interested, we'll start a project. It's very rarely we do things on our own.

Chris Balme: 

Yeah, I love that. I mean that. Just it speaks to how well you've maintained those relationships and not fallen into the usual trap of feeling more and more distant as they get older.

Jesper Conrad: 

Yeah, chris, I'm still curious on you. You're from California and I haven't heard enough about you. Which career did you end up in? As you're writing about middle school, I presume you ended in a teacher role, and how did that happen?

Chris Balme: 

Very accidentally. I mean, I was a really frustrated and unhappy middle schooler and high schooler myself. I went to very traditional schools and I remember walking out of the high school building thinking I will never set foot in a school for the rest of my life. And of course that was a challenge to the universe that requires more sense of humor than I had in that moment. And you know that was a challenge to the universe that requires more sense of humor than I had in that moment. And you know, lo and behold, four years later I became a teacher and I had a long, you know windy road in those four years.

Cecilie Conrad: 

That was a short never.

Chris Balme: 

Yeah, it's a short, very short. Never, but I think I didn't know it then. But I feel now like I was kind of called to that because I had some healing to do. There was something there that was kind of unfinished business for me to think about. You know, why did it have to be so bad? Or did it have to be so bad? And I feel pretty strongly it did not, and there are ways to make kids' adventures much more adventurous and not kind of being dragged through. So to make a long story short, I've always kind of worked, I guess, on the fringes of the school system, you could say. So first thing I did for 10 years I ran an apprenticeship program. The idea was to let middle schoolers go do awesome apprenticeships in any possible kind of job and just connect with the world and see that there's so much out there people willing to bring them along. We had kids like learning and what's your role, then?

Jesper Conrad: 

to find the places. Yeah, exactly what is the most awesome you found. Did one of them have an apprenticeship as an astronaut, or something I wish Still?

Chris Balme: 

waiting for that. But yeah, I mean the very first year we started that program, one of the first kids we got said you know, we asked for three choices and he said the same thing for all three. He said pilot want to fly a plane? And I was like, oh great, how are we possibly going to make this happen? And I remember talking to my co-founder and we said you know, we're going to make one phone call and if it doesn't work, we're going to tell him you've got to give us some other options. We make one phone call to a local small airport flight school. Get this wonderful guy named Dave explain our situation. We've got a 12 year old. This is all he wants to do. And he said yes, on the spot.

Jesper Conrad: 

So I'll teach him how to fly.

Chris Balme: 

Okay, well, that was a. That was a lesson for me that I had underestimated how willing people are to respond to a really motivated kid, and I mean I remember crying on the side of the runway while this kid took off in a small Cessna plane, you know, at the controls. So it's possible, and over 10 years we had 17,000 apprenticeships that we created so many Almost every job you can imagine, including some that seem like they might be too dangerous to do Kids were involved in, and I just think it's to me it's one of the most basic ways that we can welcome kids into the world and educate, but it's not commonly done.

Jesper Conrad: 

Yeah, I think it's one of the best ways to learn. I love learning from people.

Chris Balme: 

Exactly that's what we're wired for, I think. So I did that for a long time and then I wanted to start a school. So I felt like this is a program that gets to plug into schools, but could we redesign the whole school and make it something much more kid focused, much more developmentally aligned, and it's in that kind of sometimes awkward place where it's still a school and there's still curriculum that word but it also is, I think, a much more kid-focused place.

Jesper Conrad: 

They have much more agency and you call it a lab school?

Chris Balme: 

Yeah, we call it a lab school Basically to try to give ourselves permission, and we're working with some universities here on the West Coast who wanted to put some of their research into action. We thought if we call it that then maybe people will know that we're doing experiments and take it less seriously in a sense, or give permission that we can try something different and some of them will not work and that's part of it.

Jesper Conrad: 

It's one of the things I praise my school time for is that the teachers we had. There were three teachers that went together and were inspired by a local alternative school and we became an experimental class in the public school system and it was only one or two weeks a year for three years, but it meant so much to me that we went out and all subjects we had were centered around one thing, for example, an excursion to a local stream, and then math, history, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera dived into that one, and I think it has helped form my holistic mindset of trying to understand things, that I, when I go into a thing, I try to get the wholeness of it. So I think making these lab-like schools will help many, because I personally would probably, if I went to school today, have a whole alphabet.

Cecilie Conrad: 

You'd get all the letters yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 

I would get all the letters that you could give someone, but I survived on having a big motivation and a big dreamy heart and mind and then I dove into some things. That was really fun.

Chris Balme: 

I love that. I love that. Yeah, that's essentially how the school that I helped to start works. It's all interdisciplinary projects and then adventures out in the world, you know, in nature, in the city.

Cecilie Conrad: 

That's the school our only school child have been in as well. It was just based on what the kids want to do and on projects.

Jesper Conrad: 

Oh yes, and even though I had a very I praise my school for having had that. I praise my school for having had that. I remember as a parent I was afraid when I heard about what Cecilia planned for our daughter to go to this alternative free school and I am the one of me and Cecilia who haven't went to university. I made projects, I made a film by going to high school and then when people have a gap year, I took six gap years and stuff like that. But at the same time and I mentioned it because it's just fun how stuff can flick in our mind like that I saw myself as a rebel who did what I wanted to. But when my own oldest daughter should start the school, I was like, ooh, a free school, that's ooh. I don't like that. Can we get normal here? Which was what I thought for so many years.

Jesper Conrad: 

I don't know how it happens, yet I think normal creeps up on us.

Cecilie Conrad: 

It does and we hear these voices. It has a lot of momentum.

Chris Balme: 

We're social-queued creatures and we just get unconsciously tugged back to that as a safe place. But it's not that safe actually, if you think about what can be lost there.

Cecilie Conrad: 

Yeah, that's the thing. All the things they don't do while they're trapped in that system is quite scary, and all the skills that are not developed.

Jesper Conrad: 

I'm curious about the connection from Blake. How have you two met and what is the connection? Is it the learning or are you just knowing each other from old times?

Chris Balme: 

Yeah, we were connected by a kind of radical teacher who's one of these people also, who's straddling these worlds of school and unschool, and I think at first it was around my first book, or even a little before that came out. We started talking about being writers and getting these messages out. I also I started when the pandemic started, kind of like an advisory program for middle schoolers from all over the world that could just connect online and more or less make sense of what it's like to be an adolescent and have spaces for really honest, brave conversations about that, and Blake was thinking of doing some similar things. We've shared a lot of ideas around that, but it's become a wonderful friendship. We just spent a couple days together cooking up all kinds of crazy ideas and reading each other's writing. It's so helpful Back to the importance of being accompanied on your adventure to have good company, people who are wanting to walk the same trail.

Jesper Conrad: 

So being a writer, then I guess this isn't your last book. Are you already working on something new?

Chris Balme: 

yeah you, you know me too well already. Yes, I've got probably about five something news in my mind. The project that I promised myself I'm going to do next after this book launches, is a novel. It's uh. Personally, I'm starting to feel like the. The freest space I can imagine to think through ideas I want to think through is fiction, and which genre?

Jesper Conrad: 

of fiction. Are you in, then? Which genre?

Chris Balme: 

genre? I think it'll be. You know, I'm really taking inspiration for this project from Ursula Le Guin. I don't know if you know her work Amazing American Sci-Fi, so I think it'll have science fiction aspects to it. She writes really beautifully about how, you know, she contemplated kind of being a philosopher but felt like you know, no one's going to read this, no one's going to connect with this. But if I write through story, I can weave my philosophy in in a way that might, you know, really come to life in other people. So that's my hope with it.

Jesper Conrad: 

Yeah, I love that. I actually just had a long dialogue with our oldest son, soam, about science fiction, because he asked me so, dan, why is science fiction your favorite genre? And I thought about it and the answer that came to me was actually it's not because I like spaceships I actually don't care about spaceships or anything of all this. It is because I see it as thought experiments of what if this happened and continued. A lot of them is a satirical view on something, a strain in society. And then, if you enlarge that during 200 and 300 years, I actually find science fiction as some of the most critical of our current society, where they are just taking one thing and then they're enlarging it. And, as I said, spaceship doesn't do a lot for me, but often that is the setting, because it's kind of easier to accept than a parallel world. It's easier to see it some years in the future. So I personally love that about science fiction.

Chris Balme: 

I'm the same way and I love spaceships, so I really it has everything I could ever possibly want.

Jesper Conrad: 

I have to recommend a book.

Chris Balme: 

So the Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin is one of my favorite books of all time. And it's exactly that. She takes these two societies and just follows them for hundreds of years One more capitalist, one more socialist, communist. And it's not a simple story. It's not like, oh, one of them turns into a utopia. It's two complicated societies with people interacting, and I love it. It just makes me feel so alive to read.

Jesper Conrad: 

I will read that as my next one and if I must give a recommendation back then, there's an Italian author who actually made me want to learn Italian on a level where I could read some of his books that hasn't been translated into English.

Jesper Conrad: 

He's called Stefano Beni and in one of his books there's just this idea that made me laugh all the time. It is I think it's the one called Baol, but the idea and I love it is that every day at midnight there's a new subject that you are allowed to talk about and you're not allowed to talk about anything else for that day, and then it changes at 12. And I just it's such a good kicking the nuts on society where people they just have this like what's in the news talk about that for the whole day with their colleagues and then the next day a new story in the news, and I just love it that it is by law I love that idea, coming back to adolescence, of doing social experiments, like one of the most fun projects we did at the school I started was, you know a couple weeks where students basically were.

Chris Balme: 

they had permission to do experiments on each other and social experiments and they were trying to learn a good experimental design and controls. But you know, you'd walk down the hall and all of a sudden someone would rush up with you know, ask you a question, give you a donut and then ask you another question right after someone was experimenting on you, not with anything in the donut, but with you know how things something like that would make you feel or change your mood. I think that's such a fun, playful thing to do with kids, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 

Can I contribute to the sci-fi conversation Please, because I actually officially don't like sci-fi? Okay. I feel a little kicked out of the conversation here.

Cecilie Conrad: 

I feel a little kicked out of the conversation here, I like when I read a novel that I can relate it to my life experience, and sci-fi is outside of that. It works with things that don't exist and for the most part I don't like that. But I actually just read a sci-fi novel. I think it would pass as a sci-fi novel and I read it for the second time and the reason I read it again was that it's actually so good. I made all three of our still at home children made. I recommended all three of them to read it and they are all three of them reading it now at the same time, which is quite fun to read the same book.

Chris Balme: 

I got to hear what this is.

Cecilie Conrad: 

It's by Matt Haig.

Jesper Conrad: 

You know him. He wrote the Midnight Library.

Cecilie Conrad: 

It's called the Humans and it's just such a moving story about what it is to be human.

Chris Balme: 

Wow.

Cecilie Conrad: 

As it has an alien in it.

Chris Balme: 

it must be a sci-fi story. There's no spaceship, Sounds like it's sci-fi.

Cecilie Conrad: 

But there is someone from a different planet and a different, so I just wanted to put it out there. It's a really, really, really good book and I keep quoting it and I keep thinking about it and I might even read it for the third time at some point.

Jesper Conrad: 

All right, I'm going to get a copy. I think.

Cecilie Conrad: 

I'm going to put some quotes up on our very limited wall space in the van. It's a really good book and it's short. You'll read it in a week.

Jesper Conrad: 

Chris. Yeah, it's a really good book and it's short. You'll read it in a week, chris. Back to you and your book. So, during the writing process, what have made the biggest impression on you of finding these different challenges? Is that one of them, or multiple? Or in the process of talking with these adolescents all over the world, what? What stands out as a? Hey, I learned something here.

Chris Balme: 

I think, the best. So we've tested it with kids on four continents probably maybe close to a thousand kids now and I think the thing that stands out is just how fun it is to talk with kids about these and their sense that you know when they're doing it with friends because most of them are, if not designed to do with friends, they're better with friends how fun it is to feel like you're sharing the experience. Like sometimes they'll challenge each other. We'll pull one we made a deck of cards out of them and we'll pull them randomly, kind of see what you get. Are you willing to try it? So less maybe about any one experience, but just like the feeling of like we're going on a bunch of crazy adventures, we don't know what we're going to do next.

Chris Balme: 

We're with each other you know, today we're starting a business because that's the card that we pulled, or you know, we're going on the challenge to. I did one with students where this was through the school. They all went solo camping, which for most of them was the first time, but we were in the same kind of broad area and that was so fun. I will never forget the feeling of the next morning kind of tending the central campfire and middle schoolers just kind of sporadically emerging from the forest, groggy, and telling the story of their night and what they had experienced. And you know all the outrageous. You know what they had experienced and all the outrageous fears that had come into their minds. So I just think having adventures together to me that's kind of the best part of life and I think for adolescents especially that is the best part of life. That's what I want this to create.

Jesper Conrad: 

Fantastic. I find that a really good place to end the podcast. So if you can share to people where they can read more about you and your books and also, again, the title of the book so they can go out and find it.

Chris Balme: 

Thank you. So my name is Chris Baum. You can find me at chrisbaum B-A-L-M-E dot com and this book is called Challenge, called, challenge accepted, and it's in all the places Amazon, hopefully your local bookstore, or they can order it for you. I hope people enjoy it and thank you so much for having me.

Cecilie Conrad: 

It was fun and congratulations on the launch. It's today. Having a little glass of champagne or coffee first and champagne after. Well, it's later in the day.

Jesper Conrad: 

Yeah, fun with that and thanks a lot.


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