What happens when you walk away from a hyper-optimized New York life to immerse yourself in learning one thing? Ravi Gupta explains why he moved to Italy to study cooking, rebuild his attention span, and escape phone-and-dating-app brain rot, drawing on previous "skillbaticals" devoted to powerlifting, screenwriting and surfing. Then Gupta digs into his five-part series Where the Schools Went, tracing how post-Katrina New Orleans rebuilt its schools as an almost all-charter system, what worked, what broke, and what the rest of the country should—and shouldn’t—try to copy.

This episode was taped at P&T Knitwear at 180 Orchard Street — New York City’s only free podcast recording studio.

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