Texas has taken over more school districts than any other state in the country, and a majority of those takeovers have happened in the last ten years under Governor Greg Abbott and Education Commissioner Mike Morath. The official story is accountability. The real story, according to this week's guest, is the construction of an entirely new model for public education in Texas, one designed to be cheaper, more regimented, and built on a workforce of uncertified, inexperienced teachers reading from scripted curriculum.

Marc sits down with Dan Dawer, a former classroom teacher of 11 years and a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, whose dissertation research has put him on the ground inside the Houston ISD takeover for nearly four years. Dan has interviewed close to 140 stakeholders across the district and has emerged with one of the most comprehensive views of what state takeovers actually do to communities, students, and teachers.

This conversation covers:

. Why the research overwhelmingly shows takeovers do not improve student outcomes, and which communities they disproportionately target . The shift from "conservative" takeovers (designed to restore districts) to "activist" takeovers (designed to rebuild them into something new) . How Houston's reported test score improvements may be driven by changes to the pool of test takers, not actual learning gains (including a 24% drop in 8th grade Algebra 1 enrollment and a 15% drop in Biology end-of-course test takers) . The financial throughline connecting property tax elimination, the absence of a state income tax, and the budget pressure to make public education cheaper . Why a Pennsylvania billionaire would care about Texas school board elections . The reality of the voucher program: most applicants were already enrolled in private school, and tuition routinely exceeds the $10,000 award . The teacher pipeline crisis (45% of Houston ISD's teaching workforce now has between 0 and 3 years of experience, and a majority of new hires statewide are uncertified) . The AI-in-the-classroom question, and why Dan worries about cognitive offloading and the erosion of professional teaching knowledge . An honest assessment of Mike Morath's ten years as Education Commissioner . Why the A-F school rating system is more variable than parents realize, and what families should actually be looking at . The toll road analogy that explains vouchers better than any political talking point

If you care about public education, your property taxes, your kids' classrooms, or the long-term direction of this state, this is the conversation. Dan brings the data. We dig into what it actually means.

Recommended reading from this episode: Takeover: Race, Education, and Democracy in America by Domingo Morel.

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EPISODE NOTES

Sara Hirsh Bordo has spent her career building stages for other people's stories — directing award-winning documentaries, founding the women's empowerment production company Women Rising, and being named an Architect of Change by Maria Shriver. But while she was busy lifting up everyone else, her own body was sending a message she couldn't ignore.

In this conversation, Marc and Sara — friends since their days as undergrads at TCU — go deep on her debut book, Autoimmunity and the Good Girls: How Permission to Put Ourselves First Has the Power to Keep Us Well, published by HarperOne/HarperCollins.

Topics covered in this episode:

• How Sara's career journey — from Estée Lauder and MGM Studios to Paramount Pictures to documentary filmmaker — was always driven by curiosity and storytelling
• What it means to be a "good girl," and why that conditioning starts in girlhood
• The connection between the caretaker archetype, birth order, and autoimmune disease
• How Sara funded the first quantitative research study at the intersection of female empowerment and autoimmunity — and what the data revealed
• Why 80% of autoimmune disease patients are women, and why so many go undiagnosed or unheard
• The role of self-suppression in chronic illness — and the science behind it
• Sara's personal health journey: Hashimoto's, cancer, tumors — and full remission
• How faith intersects with the struggle for self-sovereignty
• The butterfly as a symbol for transformation — and why the journey to flight matters more than the flight itself
• What Sara hopes the book ultimately does for the women who read it

Timestamps:

• 00:02:28 — Sara on what she actually does for a living
• 00:05:33 — The hero's journey vs. the heroine's journey
• 00:10:12 — On catalysts: cozy ones and crushing ones
• 00:15:47 — The lightbulb moment that led to the book
• 00:16:19 — What autoimmune disease actually is, explained plainly
• 00:19:18 — How Sara funded the first research study on this topic
• 00:22:24 — Beyond birth order: the caretaker archetype
• 00:27:43 — Sara's full list of diagnoses — and how they all went into remission
• 00:29:57 — Why women silence themselves in the doctor's office
• 00:32:01 — The whisper, the tap, the shove
• 00:33:32 — Why the word "feminist" doesn't appear in the book
• 00:39:30 — The battered butterfly in a German museum
• 00:44:58 — What Sara hopes the book's legacy will be

About Sara Hirsh Bordo: Sara is a 20-time award-winning filmmaker and Founder/CEO of Women Rising. Her documentary debut, A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story, won the Audience Award at SXSW and qualified for the Academy Award. She has directed campaigns for Toyota and ESPN, consulted on the Wonder Woman franchise for Warner Bros., and produced the first TEDxAustinWomen — the most-viewed TEDxWomen event in the world that year. A percentage of her author proceeds are being donated to the Society for Women's Health Research.

Autoimmunity and the Good Girls is available wherever books are sold, including Amazon, and the audiobook — read by Sara herself — is available on Audible.

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Chris McKenna spent 12 years in business risk consulting at Ernst & Young before a call to youth ministry put him face-to-face with the rise of the smartphone in kids' lives. What he saw there led him to launch Protect Young Eyes, now one of the most respected voices in the fight for online child safety.

In this conversation, Chris and I get into why he thinks "parental controls" is a destructive phrase, how to talk to other parents about screens without sounding judgmental (hint: think peanut allergy), what the recent Meta and social media court wins really mean, why the Australia law is being framed exactly the way Big Tech wants it framed, and what it'll take for screen-time legislation to have its seatbelt-law moment.

Chris's new book, Five Habits of the Tech-Ready Family: Raising Wise Kids in a Wild Digital World, comes out June 16 and is available for pre-order now.

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We discuss the "self-love and self-glory" forces driving parent behavior on the sidelines, why "winning is everything" coaching is still the default even when we know better, the private-equity gold rush turning kids into revenue streams, the scholarship myth, and the difference between development and competition for kids under 12. Jonathan also shares the John Wooden quote that reframed how he thinks about success, why he calls himself part of "the youth sports resistance," and the one piece of advice every sports parent needs to hear: let your kid lead.

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TCU's Sonny Dykes grew up the son of a coaching legend, but forged his own path through high school classrooms, scraping by in a dorm room at Navarro Junior College and the ups and downs that would make anyone question their path. In this episode, Coach Dykes opens up about the circuitous route that led him to one of college football's most coveted jobs - including what Mike Leach taught him about forging your own path, why he and his wife made a decision at Louisiana Tech that transcended football, and how leading the Horned Frogs to the College Football Playoff's National Championship Game only made him hungry for more. Honest, self-aware, and filled with lessons beyond the gridiron - this one is for anyone who's ever wondered if the long way around was worth it.

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It feels like Kevin Frazier has done it all — ESPN SportsCenter, Entertainment Tonight host, and much, much more. He's easily one of the smoothest broadcasters around - and one of the most versatile. But behind the Emmy-winner's polished delivery is a guy who grew up charting offenses on his dad's basketball bench, raced out of TV shoots to catch his son's playoff games, and still credits the grind for helping him work his way up a very tall TV ladder.

In our conversation, Kevin talks about what separates broadcasters and storytellers, how grateful he is for the many pinch-me moments in his career, and why family is the foundation of it all.

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Rep. Jasmine Crockett isn't one to back down from a fight.

She called out a witness in a congressional hearing for not understanding how witnesses work. She's running for U.S. Senate in a state where no Democrat has won statewide since the 1990s. And she wakes up some mornings and asks herself, "Girl, what were you thinking?"

That's Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett - Texas representative, civil rights attorney, and one of the most unfiltered voices in American politics right now. In this conversation, we skip the policy talking points and go deeper: how a math-and-science kid from Dallas ended up in Congress, what her preacher-teacher dad and federal government mom built in her, why she describes running for office as a necessary evil — emphasis on both words — and what she actually believes it'll take to flip a Senate seat in Texas. Win or lose, one thing came through clearly in this conversation: Jasmine Crockett is on the move.

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Allow me to re-introduce myself! It's a new season of Dream Job, though it's been a while. If you listened to Season 1, welcome back. If you're new here, great timing. Dream Job started as a podcast about fascinating people and the careers they built - the kind of conversations that make you rethink what's possible. Season 2 expands that idea. Same foundation: real people, real stories. But now we're going deeper - bringing in newsmakers, journalists, advocates, and people with unique insight into the moments shaping our world right now. Hosted by veteran journalist Marc Istook - 30 years in the business, with credits at CNN, the BBC, NFL Network, ABC, and more, and 7 regional Emmy Awards to his credit. Dream Job Season 2 is independent journalism meets human storytelling. Here's Episode 00: a reintroduction, a reset, and an invitation. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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In the preceding Episode 11, we met Charles Woods, a civil rights educator at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. This is his behind-the-scenes tour of the Institute, where he shares some of the amazing lessons found inside and stories from the 50s and 60s that are still relevant today.

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Charles Woods is a civil rights educator at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. His job is to share the lessons of the past with the people of today, and his work might be just as important now as ever.

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Megan Collins is the Style Girlfriend. She's built a career out of giving men style advice - from a woman's point of view. But her website and social channels don't stop at tips on how to dress. Megan's carved out a niche in the men's lifestyle space, sharing female perspectives on everything from clothing to grooming to travel to fitness to dating etiquette, and more. In this episode she shares how her unpredictable career path led Megan to create her very own Dream Job.

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Shauna Sever's job is delicious. As a baker and cookbook author, it's easy to be envious of the time she spends with tarts, brownies, cakes and confections. She talks about the joy of baking, her favorite ingredient, and debates the merits of choosing Styx vs. REO Speedwagon when it comes to her classic rock baking soundtrack. From beginnings as a journalism student in college to a regular on the Today Show, Shauna's journey couldn't have been sweeter.

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Lance Zierlein will tell you he has TWO dream jobs. As a highly rated sports radio host in Houston and a draft analyst for the NFL Network, Lance gets to do what he loves every day. Listen in as he talks about the Venn Diagram of his overlapping passions: sports, cooking, and entertainment, the importance of enjoying where you are in life, and how he's made a career out of just being himself.

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