Mythbusters is back, but in a tweaked format.

Adam Savage fronts with a team of six young people. Jamie, Kari, Tory, and Grant are absent, only appearing in video flashbacks to the previous show.

Mythbusters with kids could have been horrific, but they've managed to make this entertaining and informative. They've increased the amount of STEM stuff. We see people doing a bit of math while planning something out. The kids are smart, and the show allows them to be smart while also being children. Adam is a great fit, being a big kid himself but also filling the role of a pseudo parent and giving friendly advice (often around safety, such as the tag strap used to manoeuvre huge steel plates).

The old show had a some problems. They'd have too many pre-break "what's coming next" and post-break "here's what happened before", and they'd chop up the myths being tested into tiny little bits. They still do that, but not nearly as much.

It's a fun, entertaining watch, and it's safe for families to watch together.

Everyone loves the idea of “Yes, let’s teach girls and young women about technology careers!” However, too often I see people put their attention on “What do I want to say?” rather than “What does it actually help them to hear?"

Let's say you are planning to hold a school event to encourage more girls to get into STEM careers. What, explicitly, would you include on the agenda? How would the agenda differ based on age or grade level? What metrics would you use to judge whether the event was a success?

I’d like to hear from people who have personally been involved in such events, as organizers, sponsors, and attendees. If you attended: What should have been included, that you later wished someone told you?

I’m writing a feature article in which I aim to provide a checklist of “what to include” for those who plan these sort of events. So please let me know how to refer to you in the article.

I'm doubling down here folks :) My prior post was called-out for being click-baity and rightfully so. The title was especially poor. I'll try to do better moving forward.

I'm starting a discussion here because my hope is that we can talk about the ideas within the article, rather than the article itself.

Here was the original post for those interested: https://tildes.net/~humanities/3y1/mark_cuban_says_the_ability_to_think_creatively_will_be_critical_in_10_years_and_elon_musk_agrees

I posted the article because at it's core are several interesting observations/propositions from two billionaires, Mark Cuban and Elon Musk, that presumably know a lot about business, and in Musk's case, a lot about STEM, and have a history of making winning bets on the future.

The article supposes that:

• Many (most?) STEM jobs will become automated
• This will happen very quickly; more quickly than we anticipate
• Creative skills will soon become more highly valued than STEM skills

There was a time when parents told their kids to "become a lawyer or a doctor" but after enough time we end up with too many people going into the same profession and there is more competition for those jobs as the market becomes flooded. I know anecdotally that's happened for lawyers (not sure about doctors).

I can see this happening with STEM as well.

Should parents encourage kids to pursue STEM but pair this with equal study in the humanities? Is STEM the next target of automation? Will creative skills be more highly valued? Will engineers find themselves in the bread line?