Magic of Programmed Index Cards Over the Forgetting Curve | Andrew Cohen
📑 Chapters
00:40 Andrew introduces himself
01:41 Brainscape and the reason behind it
03:05 Andrew’s background & personal motivations
06:25 The algorithm to help people remember things
12:45 Feedback mechanisms
15:05 Ways to understand when we’re wrong
18:30 Handling cognitive dissonance
19:20 Andrew’s own learning experiences
22:10 Different motivational strategies
24:52 Points and leaderboards
27:20 The role of childlike wonder in Brainscape
30:15 Andrew’s view on the future
33:40 Challenges when looking into the future
34:40 Corporate uses for Brainscape
37:15 Andrew’s magic
Watch the full episode here.
💕 Story Overview
In S4E5 of the @MAGICademy Podcast, my guest is Andrew Cohen. He is the founder of Brainscape, which is a programmed and adaptive flashcard app to learn and practice new skills and keep information fresh. We talk about his adventure and exploration of optimizing memorization, from learning a new language to optimizing skill and performance development; as well as how new technologies can support this optimization by helping us overcome the forgetting curve.
Andrew shares his views on the newest educational models presenting a more holistic approach, challenging their effectiveness, and advocating for a more traditional way of learning while still leaning on new technologies, algorithms, and feedback. He sees a way in which these new techniques can impact how we digest knowledge and how we can apply it to our personal and professional lives.
🌼 Magical Insights
Space Repetition Considerations: Despite the benefits of this way of studying, many people still favor cramming, which undermines the value of spaced practices. Also, the larger the educational settings are, the harder it gets to design these personalized space repetition schedules as individual needs tend to vary a lot.
Harnessing Cognitive Dissonance: Cognitive dissonance is triggered when talents encounter information that contradicts their existing beliefs or behaviors. This discomfort is what tends to motivate behavioral change or re-evaluation of beliefs. By strategically introducing dissonance into learning environments, educators can foster deeper engagement and critical thinking.
Feedback Mechanisms: Since Brainscape and similar apps already have a built-in feedback system that helps track the progress of the user, the next step could be implementing a unified feedback system that consolidates various feedback channels into the platform, not only the built-in channels. This would reduce fragmentation and would help platforms stay relevant and constantly updated.
Integrate AI: A way to further integrate AI would be to have it suggest supplementary materials based on individual interests and learning goals. If the talent is doing great in one particular subject but struggles in another, a system can be developed to recommend additional resources specifically designed to address those gaps.
⭐ What’s Andrew’s Magic?
Andrew says that childlike wonder played several roles in his career, especially motivating him to create his company, meet the people he was going to build it with and think of new ways of optimizing learning.
Conclusion
This episode helped explore the potential of new skill development models and new technologies to achieve a more efficient study. Andrew emphasized the importance of personalized learning and how modern tools allow everyone to harness the power of spaced repetition and active recall to enhance retention and understanding.
The way we see talent development can still be improved but it is through techniques such as mind mapping, flashcards, and structured study plans that talents will truly grasp what they are trying to learn, and be able to use this knowledge in developing their personal and professional lives.
If you would like to stay tuned with our future guests and their magical stories. Welcome to join us.
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Cognitive Dissonance Management Strategies
Repetition in Learning and its Importance
Role of Childlike Wonder in Andrew Cohen's Career
Using Corrections to Enhance Learning
Unlocking Self-Motivation to Boost Your Learning
Role of Spaced Repetition to Unlock Your Learning Potential
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Metcalfe, J., Xu, J., Vuorre, M., Siegler, R., Wiliam, D., & Bjork, R.A. (2024). Learning from errors versus explicit instruction in preparation for a test that counts. The British journal of educational psychology.;
Su, J., Ye, J., Nie, L., Cao, Y., & Chen, Y. (2023). Optimizing Spaced Repetition Schedule by Capturing the Dynamics of Memory. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 35, 10085-10097.;
Hossain, G., & Yeasin, M. (2017). Analysis of Cognitive Dissonance and Overload through Ability-Demand Gap Models. IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems, 9, 170-182.
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Andrew is the founder and CEO of Brainscape, a web and mobile education platform designed to enhance learning through scientifically-backed methods. Launched in 2010, Brainscape utilizes a unique approach called Confidence-Based Repetition, which leverages cognitive science to help users study more effectively. Cohen's journey began while he was living abroad, where he developed an Excel-based tool to aid his own language studies, which eventually evolved into the comprehensive platform it is today.
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Jiani (00:04)
Welcome to MAGICademy Podcast Today with us is Andrew. He is the founder of Brainscape, a mobile application with smart flashcards to help us learn any skills, whether it's mathematics or personal development skills, healthy habits, or develop new skills in workplace, you name it, and Brainscape.
got to cover. So so happy to have you and Ju with us today.
Andrew Cohen (00:34)
Good to be here.
Jiani (00:36)
Excellent. Yeah, so people probably have read about you, probably have met you or came across your videos, your webinars, all over the place. The question is, if you were to introduce yourself as of you 2024, how would you do that in a way that nobody else has heard about?
Andrew Cohen (01:10)
I consider myself somebody who is obsessed with optimizing learning and optimizing a lot about your performance. Whether that's through brain health or personal habits or of course with technology like through Brainscape which is the world's most efficient way to study, my personal brand and my obsession and where I'm dedicating my life is just optimizing your development.
Jiani (01:39)
Excellent. So you are living your value and mission through building this technology. And I'm curious, so people may wonder out of everything that you could get started, why Brainscape? And what does this name mean? What does what kind of mission and vision that you have behind this?
Andrew Cohen (02:06)
Well, I started as a problem that I had for myself. Studying was just too inefficient and there are probably about a thousand different flash card apps that are out there, all sort of competing with each other. And so I.
I saw that not as an intimidating amount of competition, but really as a sign of huge market demand, you know, the world, not just me desperately wants there to be a study platform that is, you know, efficient and effective and convenient and engaging and economical and all those things so badly that literally thousands of people are trying to develop apps that are better.
realize that it's just a matter of consistency and being persistent and understanding your user and being really close to the ground and creating something that ends up being 10x better than any of the other things that are out there. So now in Brainscape, it's the confluence of the make your own flashcards tools.
as well as a marketplace of where you can find the best flashcards. And we do both of those functions superior to anybody else, and then layered on top of it, the most effective way to study those flashcards. So if you can get all three of those things right, then you're going to have the best way to study.
Jiani (03:14)
Mm.
That's beautiful. Can you kind of guide us deeper into your founding stories where I remember that you're learning a second language, you're learning like a music instrument. What was the initial struggle that really piqued your desire and motivation to start exploring this problem space?
Andrew Cohen (03:58)
Well, like I said, I had the problem for myself of studying it. In my case, it was Spanish and French. When I was living abroad, working on some international economic development projects, I had to get really good at the language. So I made the first version of Brainscape in a Microsoft Excel macro. And what I really sort of stumbled upon in the process was the concept of spaced repetition, which is attacking your weaknesses more.
frequently and the things that you already know really well, you know, repeating them less and less over time. It's not rocket science, it's, you know, how most of us study, you know, with flashcards, right, we have the hard pile or the easy pile, but there was just so much potential for getting that algorithm smarter and smarter. And I realized that the principle of space repetition and
you know, focusing more and more of your efforts on your weaknesses is the same in any type of learning, whether you're learning a sport or you're learning, you know, Microsoft Excel or management skills or leadership or Python development or how to run meetings, you know, with your board, the, the more you repeat things that are weak.
It will solidify that knowledge until it's great for later. That's why, you know, learning how to ride a bike, you repeat it so much when you're a kid and it lasts for decades. And so, you know, somewhere along the way, I think people became allergic to the idea of doing drills, like, oh, you know, drills is it's old education. You're treating people like they're robots and not holistic humans, and you got to treat the real person. And, you know, I think people feel sort of.
Jiani (05:36)
Yeah.
Andrew Cohen (05:48)
to education as being now this like easy and compassionate educational experience. But I think that at its root learning effectively, you know, it is painful. It does take discomfort and effort and, you know, no pain, no gain, right? I don't think anything has changed.
in that realm. And so Brainscape is just getting back to the roots of learning with space repetition at the core and building it as a new foundation for a new type of learning platform.
Jiani (06:19)
Yeah, I can see both sides. I think deep down, I'm more of this like learning needs to be, you know, motivational, should be holistic and should be somewhat easy. You are trying to put people in that sweet zone where it's not too challenging or it's not too easy and then you get...
you're in the flow zone and it's kind of like the ideal space. And I can also see from your perspective where when we learn, it's an effort. It's like we have to become somebody that we were not previously. So we're basically actively shaping who we are by learning new information and memorization is number one kind of task. It's kind of the foundation. Like when we look at the Bloom's taxonomy, that's kind of just.
the foundation to get everything started.
Andrew Cohen (07:13)
Yeah, you can't make connections, right? You can't make connections between facts unless you know the facts, unless they're already in your brain. And so I think, yeah, you gotta put in the hard work.
Jiani (07:24)
Exactly. And so that would be curious like when you talking about the algorithm, what sort of algorithm do you actually use to really help people to remember? And I know a little bit like the spaced repetition is because we have this forgetting curve and
Andrew Cohen (07:52)
Mm-hmm.
Jiani (07:53)
after maybe 10, after a few days based on, you know, how memorable the information is, we only return maybe 7, maybe not even that, 20, like 20 percent of everything that we've learned if we don't repeat what we've learned. Tell us more on that part.
Andrew Cohen (08:16)
Obviously that percentage that you quoted is gonna be different for any type of information and varies from person to person. So what you need to do is customize that interval of repetition based on the person and the content. So if I just taught you a new...
word in Spanish. I don't know how good your Spanish is if I just taught you the word for meatball. Un poquito. Okay, so you know a little bit. Do you know how to say beer in Spanish? You might recognize it's cerveza. Does that sound familiar? La cerveza. Okay, so cerveza, it's a relatively easy word, right? Like you might've heard it before. Cerveza, you nailed it, right? So, right. So...
Jiani (08:40)
Un poquido.
Dear?
No.
Servisa? Servisa!
Andrew Cohen (09:04)
How long do you think you're going to remember that for? If we never practice it again, how confident do you feel in that word?
Jiani (09:14)
Not confident.
Andrew Cohen (09:15)
Not confident. So you might forget it in like two minutes. So for that particular word, I probably need to ask you in two minutes or 10 minutes or 20 minutes. So not necessarily, you know, one week later and you forget 20% of it. Like you might forget it completely in two minutes unless I ask you one more time, how do you say beer in Spanish?
Jiani (09:35)
Sarveisa!
Andrew Cohen (09:37)
Okay, now because you recalled it, because you had to use active recall, you had to do some effort, that's probably now going to prolong the amount of time that you can remember it. Maybe I don't have to ask you again for 10 minutes. And then in 10 minutes, if you got it right again, then maybe I can go an hour or two hours, and then eventually days. But if you got it wrong in 10 minutes, then okay, now we got to make that interval short again. So I got to ask you again in a minute or two. And so really getting that
for the person, it turns out that the optimal interval of time before you repeat something should be as long as possible before the person was just about to forget it. Because if you go longer than that, then they will have forgotten it and then you gotta relearn it all over again. But if you repeat it too soon, then you're wasting their time because they already know it pretty well and so like why am I just repeating?
Jiani (10:32)
cerveza
Andrew Cohen (10:34)
There you go, you're right. We're kind of wasting time. You already know, I should ask you again when it's more stale.
Jiani (10:40)
You're welcome to ask me anytime during this podcast recording. I hope I can get it Yes, yes, yes And how do you how do you find that time like um Is that based on like the accuracy that they get like it's kind of a science then like how do you identify that some moment?
Andrew Cohen (10:45)
I might. I'll write a little note to see how well you know it.
It's the user's confidence. So instead of just having like multiple choice and you know, you pick the answer, which number one is not using active recall. They're just recognizing it. And maybe they got lucky. Maybe they just picked C. And so how are we gonna know how right they were?
Instead, with Brainscape, because it's flashcards, you think of it from scratch. You think, do I know the answer? And then you flip it over. Oh, that's the answer. And then we ask you on a scale of one through five, how confident were you? So we're using the user, the learner's confidence rating to determine that interval of repetition. So the fives aren't gonna come up for a very long time. It might be days or weeks or longer, whereas the ones might come up in like one minute.
Jiani (11:32)
Mmm.
Mmm
Andrew Cohen (11:49)
user is able to curate their own personalized learning stream and they, over time, get better and better.
at learning how to assess their confidence, right? They, you know, writing something at two or three feels like something like, I know this decently well. I know this about a two or a three and it's a better way to sort of get to know your brain. If I were to teach you a very hard word in Spanish, meatball, right? The word for meatball, it's una albondiga. That's a hard word, right? Albondiga.
Jiani (12:24)
What?
Andrew Cohen (12:26)
and it has an accent on the O.
Jiani (12:27)
Una... Una alabóntica.
Andrew Cohen (12:33)
una albondiga. Right. So that's a hard word. It has a... Right.
Jiani (12:35)
Una albóntica.
Andrew Cohen (12:42)
Correct. But because that's so hard, you would probably rate yourself a confidence level of one. If you were, if you were rating yourself, cause that's hard. You're like, yeah, remind me in one minute. That's a hard word, right? Whereas, but maybe the word beer, do you remember?
Jiani (12:50)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cerveza!
Andrew Cohen (13:00)
La cerveza, right? So you're about a two, you're about a two on cerveza. So you can go another time, maybe up to a three. And so a three would be like 30 minutes or something like that, or an hour. So you're kind of learning your own pace of learning. And if you've got hundreds or thousands of words that you're learning or...
Jiani (13:02)
I'll be back!
Andrew Cohen (13:22)
medical diagrams or Supreme Court cases or cocktail recipes. If you're a bartender, just things that require you to learn, you can't afford anything except for the most optimized learning sequence. And that's what Brainscape provides right in an app or, or on a website. You can make your own flashcards. You could find flashcards created by people around the world, by publishers. And you can.
build your own study habits so you can see, you know, how you're progressing. You could, you can compete with yourself and you could compete with others, um, on your, on your progress. And that's really what keeps people motivated and coming back.
Jiani (14:05)
So you have really to be kind of radically transparent with yourself and your ability to recall. Um, and sometimes we may the, the ability to medic, it's kind of a meta cognition. So the ability for us to metacognitively understand our own judgment, uh, abilities of our own memorization abilities will, as they kind of continue the journey, will become much better. Is there a,
Andrew Cohen (14:09)
Correct.
Jiani (14:35)
a feedback mechanism to kind of tell them, oh yeah, you are accurately assessing your own memorization abilities. Is there any sort of like...
Andrew Cohen (14:45)
There is, this is one of people's favorite things about Brainscape is when you rate your confidence, they're color coded. So a red is one, a two is orange, and then it goes yellow, green, and blue. A five is blue. And so users, when they rate themselves, they're thinking like, oh, I want this to be blue. I wanna get the cards on blue, right? But then if, so you see when you rate it, the card, the whole card turns blue.
And then it goes away, X card. And then, so maybe a couple of weeks later, maybe that the blue, it comes up once in a while, right? 1% of the time a blue card comes up. It's very, very infrequently, but we just, we put the high confidence things once in a while just to keep you on your toes and make sure you still know it, right? And so when a blue card comes up, you see that it's blue. And so you mean, oh, I should know this, right? I should totally know this. And then you're looking at it and you're saying,
Jiani (15:40)
Yeah.
Andrew Cohen (15:44)
Beer, what is that in Spanish? Like, oh my gosh, it was blue. It was blue, but I forgot it, right? Or maybe a meatball, remember how to say meatball? Nah, exactly. So if you had rated yourself, if it came back and it was green or blue, and you're like, shit.
Jiani (15:46)
Surveys up!
Ha ha.
Andrew Cohen (16:02)
I forgot how to say this, but I rated myself high confidence. Maybe then I shouldn't have rated myself high confidence. So every time you get that feedback of like, you see that it was high confidence, but you forgot it. You start learning how to be a little bit more honest with yourself. Um, versus like maybe, you know, you gave yourself a one on beer, but
Jiani (16:02)
Hahaha
Andrew Cohen (16:25)
Now I keep asking you every 30 seconds and you're like, okay, we're wasting my time. Let's postpone that a little bit longer. Whereas meatball, you needed to hear that soon. It's una albondiga. Una albondiga.
Jiani (16:37)
Yes, albontiga. See, I think throughout this podcast our Audiences will learn those two words pretty well
Andrew Cohen (16:47)
You're gonna be eating so many meatballs and drinking so much beer at Mexican restaurants? That's right.
Jiani (16:50)
A bondica and cerveza.
Beautiful. And, um, when you, um, so when we learn, and I think based on our initial conversation, you're talking about this, um, our ability to recognize when we were wrong, like you mentioned when it's blue and then it happens to not, we're not really remembering it. It creates some sort of like cognitive dissonance and it actually helps us to memorize the content. Even
Andrew Cohen (17:11)
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Jiani (17:25)
more. Can you explain that a little bit more in details of how the mechanisms really work there?
Andrew Cohen (17:33)
Yeah, so Janet Metcalfe, who's at Columbia, whose research I look at a lot on this stuff, did a study in 2006 showing that when we feel like we're highly confident on some information or some skill, and then we end up being corrected, that somebody tells us, or the system tells us, actually you were wrong, but I thought I was so confident that triggers our brain.
to say like, wow, I should actually pay more attention to this. Like, why was this wrong? Because I was so sure. And so it turns out that being corrected on a previously high confidence wrong answer.
is so salient that it helps us learn that piece of information even better than if we had been more honest with ourselves to begin with. So there's really not too much of a risk of incorrectly
rating your confidence when you're a new Brainscape user, because the system itself policing, you're gonna learn how to rate your confidence better. And when you correct your own confidence rating after you realize that you did forget something, you're just gonna learn it better and you're gonna get to know your brain even better.
Jiani (18:54)
Well, two questions. The first one, when you say salient, what does that mean?
Andrew Cohen (18:56)
Mm-hmm.
Great question.
If you're looking at...
Have you ever played Wheres Waldo?
Jiani (19:16)
Oh, where's Waldo? Yes, yes, yes.
Andrew Cohen (19:17)
Yeah, yeah, right. You're looking at a big thing and you could stare at it forever. And like all these words are the same in Spanish, right? Like I've heard them all. I didn't know it, but you, you were so sure that Waldo was in this corner and you're in, he's not, but you've been staring at this corner like, where is he? Where is he? And then I tell you, Oh no, he's not in this corner. He's over here. And you're like, Oh, and then as soon as you see him, now he stands out. Now he's so salient.
And now every time I open up that page, I open the page and bam, I see him immediately. I was staring at the, previously I was staring at the page for 10 minutes and I didn't know he was there. But once I know, because I was so confident he was in another section of the page, once I was corrected and you told me where he was, now he's so salient, he stands out. And so that moment of being corrected will make that knowledge just...
Jiani (19:51)
Mmm.
Andrew Cohen (20:14)
stand out in your brain when you need to retrieve it. When you need the information, it's just, it's right there. That Waldo is available to your eyeballs now.
Jiani (20:25)
As if there's like a contradiction like where I thought it is but actually not so it creates like a Contrast where the brain tends to Register more there. There must be a lot of research on that I think yeah cognitive dissonance and how that leaves like a deeper impression in the brains. That's beautiful
Andrew Cohen (20:29)
Yeah.
Yep.
Thanks, everyone.
Jiani (20:51)
Yeah. The second question is when you're talking about, you know, having the ability to self correct and will that hurt our confidence? Like how would people, you know, what was like, Oh, I thought, you know, it's, you know, I thought I was like confident, but now it turns out like my own judgment can be flawed. Will that hurt their, um, confidence and how should people kind of healthily handle?
Andrew Cohen (21:15)
Mm-hmm.
Jiani (21:21)
this sort of like cognitive dissonance as they learn.
Andrew Cohen (21:25)
I don't necessarily think it hurts their confidence. I think it helps them become more realistic about their pace of learning and therefore help them allocate their study effort and study time more effectively. And so the better you know yourself and you know your limitations and you know your pace of learning, in the long run, the more confident you're gonna be.
in planning it for something.
Jiani (21:58)
I see that's good. And when you were initially building the Brainscape through excel sheet, did you use that specifically for language learning? And I know that you picked up the guitar later on. Yeah, so did you use that for playing like music or doing all sorts of like art skills?
Andrew Cohen (22:15)
Nah.
No, I didn't, I didn't start, I didn't start playing, um, guitar until years after I started Brainscape. And then I didn't think of using Brainscape for guitar practice until even years after that. And yeah, what I realized is, you know, playing guitar, it's, it's also about space repetition, right? Maybe somebody teaches you how to do a, a certain drill or certain riff. Oh, I just learned a really cool riff. But if you don't practice that riff again, in like five minutes or in an hour or tomorrow.
You're going to forget that riff and then you're going to have to learn it all over again in a couple of weeks, or you'll just forget it forever. And so every little drill, every little song, everything that you learn really should be sort of part of a space repetition practice sequence. And so I ended up making a little Brainscape flashcard for all the exercises and songs that I learned.
Um, and you know, I don't put the entire song in the flash card. I give myself a little reminder, like, remember it starts with the G or something like that. Oh, okay. Got it. And then if I forget it, then I, you know, I'll go relearn it on YouTube or something like that, but as long as I'm using Brainscape to sort of guide my practice. And I've, I've got it right there. And if I, if I do that song well, or I do that riff well, I'll increase my confidence. So it comes up late later. Uh, it ends up being a really effective way to guide myself.
Jiani (23:37)
Beautiful. And...
Andrew Cohen (23:37)
But early on, you're asking if I used it for anything besides language.
I was working in Panama on a World Bank project. And so I used it for my Spanish, but also for just a lot of banking concepts in general and government contracting terms that even if I was in English, they would have been sort of new concepts for me and the Excel spreadsheet that I, that I made this, this macro program for space repetition. People started asking me, like, you know, Hey, your Spanish is getting really good. What did you use?
program to study for my biology test in my master's program at the University of Panama or there was a public administration program and some of the public administration students were making their own flashcards in it and then they're emailing each other the Excel file so it goes viral over email
So I knew that there was, you know, demand for really good space repetition tool. And this was, this was a million years ago, like the iPhone was, was just coming out. So I thought, you know, this ideally should be a mobile, a mobile program. And Brainscape was kind of born from there.
Jiani (24:49)
That's beautiful. And I may ask you to play a little guitar.
Andrew Cohen (24:57)
I don't know if that's going to happen with this one because I don't have an amp here. This is an electric guitar so I use it for plugging in but you can barely hear it. So I just use it to sort of practice here in the office.
Jiani (25:13)
Yeah, if you're still open. So, and so, um, we also talked about, um, this motivation. Um, so when we are learning something, it's brand new, our brand needs time and repetitive practice to build new neural connections through, uh, repeating and through, um, self evaluating.
Andrew Cohen (25:15)
Ahahaha
Mm-hmm.
Jiani (25:41)
What are some key mechanisms that you or a key framework of thinking or I would say pedagogy or androgy that you use to help people be more of a self-motivated learner no matter what they're learning whether it's like corporate law whether it's a different new language or even like an art skill?
what are some motivational strategies that you implement?
Andrew Cohen (26:14)
We try to help make intrinsic motivation and motivators more salient and don't use as much extrinsic motivation. So we already sort of, we assume that there's some kind of extrinsic motivation that you're being led by, whether it's, you know, earning more money, getting into the better school, and that's sort of driving you. And so the intrinsic that they think you're that you're born of is...
really about the effort that you make along the way. And so I think there's a lot of apps, a lot of like sort of gamification that rely on things like, you know, you're earning badges or coins or leaderboards and things that don't really necessarily relate to learning yourself. So for Brainscape, that intrinsic motivation, it would be things like your daily streaks, right? Your commitment, how many days in a row have you studied? How many flashcards have you studied today? Or how many hours have you studied this week?
and giving you goals for it, giving you graphs to see how your habits are changing over time.
how many hours you have left in order to, you know, reach a certain amount of mastery. And so it's more like a fitness app where it's about your, we kind of say Brainscape is like a Fitbit for studying, right? Yeah. It takes the things that, cause we know it's difficult, like working out, exercising, it's difficult. It's pain in the ass, you don't want to do it, but having stats and metrics in front of you to help guide you along the way,
Jiani (27:34)
Oh, I like that.
Andrew Cohen (27:51)
is just an important part of that process to make it a little bit less painful.
Jiani (27:55)
I love it. It fits it for your new skills.
Andrew Cohen (28:00)
Hmm.
Jiani (28:03)
Indeed, when we are able to see charts and numbers, and just like one of the person that you mentioned, oh, I wanna see more blue. So visualizing our progress is definitely very important way for us to stay motivated. And what's the trouble with like points or leaderboards? What's the, why are they not?
Andrew Cohen (28:11)
Mm-hmm.
There's not a trouble with it. I think there's only so many hours in a day that software engineers and designers and product people have. And I think a lot of time they focus a lot on optimizing for those things, right, that the badges and the coins and less on the...
root of the learning experience itself and actually making the learning experience more engaging, you know, with more interesting content or, you know, the things that are going to give you a better sense of how much is left and how much you really need to go and how you need to pace yourself and all those things. So yeah, if you've already done a great job at all the latter,
right, the intrinsic motivators, and then you're going to sprinkle some leaderboards or badges on top, like that's fine. But I just, I think sometimes folks over optimize for gamification too early before the actual learning is great.
Jiani (29:39)
Yeah, because I remember when I was playing games, I'm not like a big game player, but I was intrigued by the motivational mechanisms that they put in their games. Feels like so addictive, just kind of like you want to play. And I think once you get in the zone, they does work on a very superficial level, because if you want to, if you have points, of course we want more points.
Andrew Cohen (29:52)
Mm-hmm.
Jiani (30:05)
If you have leadership board, of course, we want to do better than our peers. So it taps to a lot of kind of competitive level of consciousness. But like you mentioned, when we are really studying, like learning a new skill, it's not, yeah, competition is just a way for to get us like motivated. And when we feel lazy, we kind of just like nudge ourselves a little bit. But ultimately, it's a game. It's a competing game within ourselves, like.
us yesterday or us a minute ago, us a second ago. And the intrinsic motivation is really kind of the key that really differentiate people who just play for the superficial win or the play for the long longer time like long term win in terms of yeah you can speak
Andrew Cohen (31:00)
Mm-hmm.
Jiani (31:02)
I love that. What role do you think... Because one of the mission of the podcast is to kind of open conversation for people to talk about childlike wonder, especially among adults. And so what role do you think childlike wonder play in terms of like learning a new skill or trying to work with the forgetting curves through repetition and in a brandscape place?
Andrew Cohen (31:15)
Mm-hmm.
This probably isn't the answer you want, but I don't know that Brainscape has much of a role in the childlike wonder part. Like if we're Disney or some kind of imagination or career exploration type app in your interests, I think that would be a lot more eliciting of childlike wonder, but.
you know, somebody who's using Brainscape is sort of, they, they already come with such a clear motivation to do a very specific task. Like I need to pass this big exam, right? I need a study for the bar exam. I want to pass the nursing exam. And so, you know, the, the use of Brainscape sort of assumes that you already had really strong childlike wonder.
before you came. And that's the reason you're here is you already were really, really motivated by some kind of wonder and something. And then Brainscape is just 100% left brain. Like we're the left brain, like we're gonna get the really, really efficient way to get it done.
Jiani (32:42)
And personally, as a founder, what role do you think childlike wonder play in your career so far?
Andrew Cohen (32:52)
Um, I, in that case, all the roles, right? I mean, you start a company because, uh, it's a product that you want for yourself. Uh, or at least that's, those are the best types of companies. Um, I wonder in who my team is going to be, right? Like I knew I was going to found it, but I didn't know who is going to build it. I didn't know that I was going to end up being so close to these people. Um,
I didn't know, you know, I didn't know if it's gonna be for this particular role or that particular role, is it gonna be a man, is it gonna be a woman, are they gonna be in New York, are they gonna be remote? Like, it's just, the whole thing is a mystery, but you know they're gonna be important to you. And then they become important, and it's just such a joy learning more about.
Everybody I work with every day, there's always some new layer of the onion about their personality or their skill sets that I keep uncovering and new things that they could work on at Brainscape and explore their passions or find new things that they didn't even realize that they were passionate about and plant the seeds where they can develop those skills or even finance people's training.
Sometimes people come to me and say, Hey, I, I want to get really good at this skill. Um, that's also going to be good for Brainscape, right? I want to learn how to be really good at SEO or HTML, you know, for customizing our blog posts better or something like that. And I say, great, if you want to do this, here's some money, go, go take this test. And so, yeah, building a company, it's all about, uh, wonder for sure.
Jiani (34:34)
That's beautiful. And I know you've been spending decades building this company and as we look into the future with all the emerging technologies like...
virtual reality now we have AI and there's also like a brand machine like computer connection and one day we put a chip and we all know we can learn more and know more do more how do you foresee like
Andrew Cohen (35:00)
Hmm.
Jiani (35:06)
the future with all those emerging technologies? Are we specifically, are we using AI in any kind of capacity? Or do you see extended reality play some sort of role? I'm just curious. I wanted to see how you wonder.
Andrew Cohen (35:19)
And we're already using AI for content creation to accelerate taking source material and turning it into good flashcards and evaluating the flashcards. We already use some AI in the content algorithm, helping determine.
what you're going to study, how the algorithm gets smarter and more personalized for each user, recommending what other content you might be interested in, use of limited intelligence. So yeah, AI is going to continue being a big part of Brainscape. I'm not sure about mixed reality, you know, VR, AR. I suppose if there's learning environments that...
uh, emerge, uh, through those platforms and they could benefit from some space repetition. Brainscape could develop some sort of APIs that maybe power, um, those type of learning environments. I, I really, I'm not sure where the, where the future of those are going to be. Um, but no, it's fun to speculate. It's fun to speculate about brain machine interaction. You know, uh, there could be a chip in your brain that is teaching you Spanish while you sleep by, by like firing off certain.
neurons for you. And obviously, you probably need to fire off those neurons using the right space repetition pattern. So certain neurons for words or concepts that you need to repeat often, it's going to fire those really often. And the easy words, you know how to say, hello, oh, it's Ola. So it's going to fire those neurons in your brain less. So yeah, maybe there's a chip that you'll be able to have implanted or...
Jiani (36:58)
Leverage the algorithm that you developed. Yeah
Andrew Cohen (37:00)
Yeah, something like that. It could be, it could be interesting, or at least, you know, if, if not, like stimulating neurons to make you learn something, then at least like modular, um, modulating your attention or your focus. So if you're not paying attention, maybe like zapping you into attention or, uh,
Jiani (37:15)
Mmm.
Andrew Cohen (37:21)
recommending that you stop studying or just feeding in that information about how good was the attention when they rated their confidence. So if you saw a flash card and you're like, eh, I'll give myself a three, I'll give myself a five, but we could tell that you're not paying that much attention because of the chip, maybe that would impact the algorithm and how soon it's gonna come up versus if you were rating your confidence with high focus.
Jiani (37:47)
Oh, I love that.
Andrew Cohen (37:48)
Which brings me to a follow-up question for you actually. How do you say beer in Spanish? You're nailing it! All right. We're gonna upgrade you to a three. I'll text you later and I'll see if you remember it.
Jiani (37:52)
So raise up!
I still have a hard time memorizing the meatball. Albaolo.
Andrew Cohen (38:13)
Al Bondiga
Jiani (38:14)
A bondiga, see? That's hard. One, yeah. Oops. So beautiful. Any potential risks and challenges that we need to be aware of as we move into the future of all the wonder and possibilities and space repetitions?
Andrew Cohen (38:17)
We're gonna keep you on a one for that one. On red, you're red.
Yeah, I'm not too worried. I'm not too worried about AI becoming sentient and taking over the world, if that's what you're referring to. Okay. Maybe challenges is government and school moves slowly and Brainscape has grown. We have almost 10 million users now, believe it or not.
Jiani (38:46)
I'm not implying anything.
Andrew Cohen (39:03)
is we've mostly grown as a consumer tool, right? Like we, individual students will buy Brainscape, individual test takers buy Brainscape. We have plenty of classes and schools that buy Brainscape, but it's just, it's really hard to penetrate because there's so much bureaucracy, there's so much, there's not enough budget.
and everything. So yeah, that's, I think that the challenge to, to growth is, you know, trying to sell institutionally, but as long as, as long as we're able to keep growing independently with students and students keep discovering Brainscape and teachers keep independently discovering Brainscape, then I think we'll, we'll be in good shape.
Jiani (39:47)
Has corporate or skill development, are there any use cases in that space like workplace skills?
Andrew Cohen (39:53)
Oh, all over the place. Yeah. Everything where there's a certification, I mean, there, you know, real estate law, finance, um, met all medicine, like medicine, nursing, phlebotomy, like every, every healthcare certification. Um, and even now like more in the trades, got firefighters cause there's a lot of certifications you gotta take for that, believe it or not.
Jiani (40:06)
Medicine nursing.
Wow.
Andrew Cohen (40:18)
Wine, we're the number one wine and spirits platform for studying in the world right now. What else? Yeah, like plumbing, like everything, cosmetology. You could go on Brainscape and just dig around through the different careers. It's really incredible how many different things that we're covering every day.
Jiani (40:25)
Wow.
This is amazing. So as we went into the magical piece of the conversation, I would like to give a quick recap for our audience of so far, what we've talked about. So we talked about the beautiful story of Andrew and how he developed a application and evolve it from an Excel sheet all the way to a mobile app called Brainscape to help people to remember.
new concept, new language, new skills through algorithm-backed, through space repetition strategies. And we also talked about how the cognitive dissonance where, oh, I think I got it right, but actually it's not.
actually helps us to remember things much better and make our memory more salient. We learned a new word, what salience means in terms of neuroscience. We also explored the role of motivation and how we can potentially go beyond the leaderboards or points and help people to develop more intrinsic
idea, intrinsic abilities to motivate ourselves, not just to compete with others, but in a more long-term role. We explored the role of Childlike Wonder and how Andrew as the founder practiced and experienced the awe and the curiosity through Childlike Wonder every day with himself, with the team, and with the future of the product. We also explored, you know, the future, how
the emerging technology that like extended reality, AI and brand computer interaction can potentially be leveraged and by the product as well. Now let's move into the next phase, which is my favorite, is the magic. So
Andrew, when you were about 11 years old, what did you enjoy creating so much that time just disappeared for you?
Andrew Cohen (42:59)
maybe not as much creating, but dealing with was baseball cards. I was a collector of baseball cards as were a couple of my friends. And so I spent so much time organizing them, cataloging them, putting them into binders and stacks and cases and trading them with my friends and looking up the prices. Because there's a Beckett magazine who would tell you what the value of all the cards were.
Um, and it really, it taught me so much. I mean, right now my, my job for a living is organizing cards essentially. Right. Um, but it taught me about, uh, metrics, like, cause all the, all the cards that have the player stats. Um, and so I learned a lot about stats. Um, I learned a lot about like, uh, economic value.
Jiani (43:37)
No
Andrew Cohen (43:52)
that things have and supply and demand and entrepreneurship as I was trading and selling and negotiation so it was it was just such a perfect hobby for me as a jumping-off point into what I ended up doing for my career and I think You know young people if you're into if you're into sports or Pokemon or you know, whatever Collecting and selling cards is a really great hobby
Jiani (44:19)
I love that. I think baseball, a lot of entrepreneurs talk about baseball cards, collections and trade. It does have some sort of a correlation between what they're doing and the ability to track the stats and to negotiate for the mutual benefits and get things moving along. That's beautiful. Were there any particular challenges that you have to overcome to be
the version of Andrew as of 2024 today.
Andrew Cohen (44:53)
probably delegating more. I have a really, really great team and I'm very, very proud of them, but.
It's sometimes hard for me to step away out of the weeds and not be involved in certain things where I have a vision of how I think it should be done. But realizing that my presence in a room, oh, he's the CEO, right? It takes away agency from people to feel like they can lead and they could do a good job on something without me breathing down their neck. So yeah, learning how to create the conditions.
by which people can work independently and trust. It's something that every leader is constantly trying to get better and better because the more you can delegate and abstract yourself from processes, the more leverage you'll have, the more people that you have doing stuff for you. But it's a continuing challenge, especially when it's your company and when it's your baby. Yeah, to not be involved in everything anymore as you keep growing.
Jiani (45:54)
Baby.
Tough love. What would you say is your magic then?
Andrew Cohen (46:01)
Thanks for watching.
being able to see potential in people to grow into a certain role.
Usually when, because we never raised a big venture capital round all at once, you know, we're, oh my gosh, I just raised $10 million. And now I have to, I have to hire 50 people, you know, to spend the money really quickly and grow. Um, we've, we've grown, you know, relatively bootstrap. We raised some seed funding, but most of, uh, our hires have been because. We already were doing the process as a team, but there was one.
one area of the team where somebody was just so busy and we were bursting at the seams with too much work to do. And we had to define, okay, what are we going to take away from your role so that you can focus on what you're really good at and we can create a new role.
for a different person and how do we define what that role is and what is the profile of the person who would be really good at it and then identify is there somebody either on this current team already who could grow into it or where are we going to find that person externally and how are we going to know when we found the person who is really right for that role.
Um, I, I've become, you know, much better at that in the last decade and a half, uh, growing a company. Um, but I feel like I've, I've begun to nail that. Um, and, and understand sort of the, the cognitive processes of, um, growing somebody into a role and helping them feel empowered and helping them to see how that, um,
responsibility that they've been bestowed fits into the larger mission so that we're creating a culture of leaders who are all aligned to the same direction. And that's just, it's a beautiful feeling. And yeah, that's, I guess the conductor of the orchestra rather than any instrument is the magic that I'm at.
Jiani (48:27)
I love it. It's a very empowered way to lead. It's it's enable everybody to be a leader and to be at the same time to be a follower. So it's a very dynamic leadership environment which is you're helping everybody to
find their own magic in a way by being the
Andrew Cohen (49:00)
That's the idea.
Jiani (49:04)
And that's how the company grow and thrive and help more people to learn skills. It's beautiful.
Andrew Cohen (49:12)
That's the idea.
Jiani (49:18)
Mm.
Beautiful. Thank you, Andrew, for.
sharing your story and your philosophy and I wish there's more leaders like you who
Yeah, cool.
who look into the potentials rather than the history, look toward the future. Like when we live, we live in the present, but when we lead, we should lead in the future to see in terms of what this person can become and lead them in toward that direction rather than, oh, this is the track history that they've done. So.
It's beautiful.
Andrew Cohen (50:05)
Amen. Well, thank you for having me. Have fun.
Jiani (50:08)
Thank you, Andrew, for coming to the podcast. And for anybody who wants to get connected with Andrew, his information is in the show note below. So if you want to pick up any new skills, whether you're in the corporate, whether you're in the higher ed, whether you're in the government, wherever you are, whether you are a fellow entrepreneur, if you wanted to learn a new skill, definitely try to design your own.
smart flash card to help you memorize. Cerveza. A BALTICA.
Andrew Cohen (50:44)
Great. Sarvesa, go have some, oh wow, you nailed it. Everybody go out and have some bon legos and Sarvesa. Check out Brainscape and you can find me, Andrew Cohen, anywhere in the interwebs. I'm easy to reach.
Jiani (51:02)
Beautiful. Take care. Enjoy your day. Hehehehe.
Andrew Cohen (51:04)
Thank you, Jiani. You too.
Disclaimer:
The content shared is to highlight the passion and wonder of our guests. It is not professional advice. Please read our evidence-based research to help you develop your unique understandingAI technologies have been utilized to assist in creating content derived from genuine conversations. All generated material undergoes thorough human review to ensure accuracy, relevance, and quality..
