Bob Greenberg is the founder of the Brainwaves Video Anthology—a YouTube channel that offers a library of conversations with the likes of Noam Chomsky, Jerome Bruner, Ken Burns, Sir Ken Robinson, Cornel West, Rick Hanushek, and Henry Louis Gates. He’s spent years recording conversations with Nobel laureates, National Book Award winners, and influential thinkers on education. He came to this project after 30 years as a classroom teacher (and 15 as a magician). Finding the whole exercise pretty intriguing, I reached out to Greenberg in order to learn more about his project. Here’s what he had to say.
– Rick

Rick: Bob, what is the Brainwaves Video Anthology?

Bob: The Brainwaves Video Anthology is a YouTube channel I created in 2014. Today, it has over 2,500 videos with over 8 million views in 195 countries. I have filmed Nobel laureates, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winners, U.S. senators, a presidential inaugural poet, and a secretary of education. My oldest subject was 99, and the youngest was 7.

Rick: How’d you get started?

Bob: I spent 30 years as an elementary school teacher. After retiring, I decided to get involved in professional development for teachers. To that end, I approached Yong Zhao, then the dean of global affairs at the University of Oregon. After learning about a project I designed for my 2nd grade students, where they used Skype to communicate with peers in New Zealand, Russia, South Africa, Bulgaria, Lebanon, and other countries, he asked me to put together a proposal for an online course on global education. I began filming teachers from around the world as guest lecturers. The course fell through, but I continued filming, thinking that another university might be interested in it. After about a year, I had nearly 50 videos but no course in which to feature them. One day, a friend suggested that I start a YouTube channel.

Rick: What are your hopes for this project?

Bob: To be honest, this started off as a passion project, which unintentionally became my full-time job. I try to make these authors, teachers, and professors accessible to a wider audience. In a sense, I never retired from teaching; I’m still spreading knowledge. Through this project, I’ve had the chance to meet some of the most interesting people, including linguist Noam Chomsky, Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman, documentarian Ken Burns, historian Timothy Snyder, and education professor Linda Darling-Hammond. I hope my viewers get to meet and learn from these people, too.

Rick: How did the pandemic affect your efforts?

Bob: During COVID, I returned to the roots of this project and connected with teachers around the world. I asked teachers in Gaza, Ukraine, China, South Korea, Kazakhstan, Iceland, Kenya, Egypt, Jordan, Malawi, Argentina, Mexico, Canada, and other countries to share their experiences. I wanted to know how they adapted to the global pandemic and school closures.

Rick: How much does it cost to do this?

Bob: These videos are offered for free on YouTube. I do receive some income, which helps cover expenses, but the rest comes out of my pocket. Things can add up quickly: I often spend $500 to $1,000 per month on hotels, gas, parking, tools, video equipment, and books.

Rick: How do you decide who to include?

Bob: If I’m watching an author on TV, I’ll Google their name and write to them. Some never respond, but those that do usually say yes. I try to interview experts on timely topics. For example, when critical race theory was all people were talking about, I asked law professors at Georgetown, Columbia, and Boston University to explain it to me. When book banning became the hot topic, I spoke with librarians, the head of PEN America, and the American Library Association.

Rick: Do you have a favorite interview?

Bob: I interviewed Jonathan Kozol in 2015. He wrote Death at an Early Age in 1967 about his experience teaching 4th grade in one of Boston’s most overcrowded inner-city public schools. He has been my hero ever since I read his book in college. I got to meet him at his home in Cambridge. His house was built in the 1700s; the original doorbell was a rope that passed through the wall to ring a bell. After I set up, I found this National Book Award-winning author standing in the kitchen writing with a pencil and a yellow legal pad. He doesn’t use a computer. We walked back into the living room. He showed me a hand-drawn Christmas card from his friend Eric Carle, author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. He talked about his friendship with Fred Rogers. Jonathan Kozol, my hero.

Rick: What moments particularly stand out for you?

Bob: In Philadelphia, there was the 5-year-old who climbed all over his father during the filming. One subject had to calm his German Shepherd by playing the guitar. I once filmed a young professor at his home on a Sunday morning. When I arrived, he was still in his pajamas. He said, “You’re just going to shoot me from the waist up, right?” Then he put on a sports coat, and we began the interview. I once interviewed Imam Abdullah Antepli at Duke University. The topic was Cross Faith and Cross Culture Engagement. It was Easter Sunday, Passover, and Ramadan! Now that’s really Cross Faith and Cross Culture Engagement!

Rick: What insights linger from these conversations?

Bob: That’s an easy one. Three insights really stuck with me, and I repeat them all the time.

The first is from Jonathan Kozol: “Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood taught me lessons that I really never learned anywhere else throughout all the years I was teaching and working with children, and that lesson was not to impose an arbitrary sense of adult intention on a child, not to give a child, you know, like the 50 items of necessary wisdom but to listen to children and to draw wisdom out of their own voices.”

The next is from Noam Chomsky: “A leading physicist who taught right here [at MIT] used to tell us that it’s not important what we cover in the class, it’s important what you discover.”

And finally, from psychology researcher Peter Gray: “Children who are just a little bit older than us, who’ve just recently learned something themselves, are often our best teachers.”

Rick: How do you think about your impact?

Bob: While I use Google Analytics to track how well a video is performing, I don’t think the impact can be judged on those grounds alone. I’ve had professors tell me that they’ve used my videos in class. Television stations, book publishers, and online newspapers have asked for permission to use clips. More to the point, I once checked a book out of the library in the days before computers. Ten years later, I checked out the same book. There was a card in the pocket with a date stamp. No one else had checked out that book in the past 10 years. But it was still there waiting for me when I wanted it. That’s how I feel about my videos. A video may not get a lot of views immediately, but my hope is that one day someone will discover it when they need it.

Rick: You’ve spoken to many remarkable people. Drawing on that, if you’ve one piece of advice for teachers or school leaders, what would it be?

Bob: The best teachers are the ones who teach children, not subjects. The best teachers are those who inspire. The best teachers teach students not just to learn all the right answers but to ask the right questions. Finally, as educator Yong Zhao says, the best teachers enhance every child’s strengths rather than fixing their deficits.

This piece has been edited for length and clarity.