Show Notes
A Spanish adaptation of Sold a Story is now available. Hosted by journalist Valeria Fernández, the podcast is condensed into one 58-minute episode, plus a conversation between Fernández and Emily Hanford for Spanish-speaking parents whose children are learning to read English in American schools.
- Listen or share: Sold a Story en español - Learn more: soldastory.es
More from Sold a Story
Zig Engelmann gets the chance of a lifetime: Put Direct Instruction to the test in one of the largest education experiments ever conducted. The results could have changed the direction of American education. Instead, they’re contested — and ultimately cast aside.
At an experimental preschool in Illinois, Zig Engelmann and his colleagues begin turning his ideas into a classroom teaching method. Along the way, they make a series of discoveries about effective instruction. Their mantra: “If the student hasn’t learned, the teacher hasn’t taught.”
In the 1960s, an education outsider named Zig Engelmann begins challenging conventional ideas about what young children can learn. He teaches his 4-year-old twins basic algebra. But he has a hard time getting anyone in education to take him seriously, until a professor gives him a chance to see if his ideas will work in a classroom.
Sold a Story is back with a new season that goes beyond reading. Emily Hanford explores an approach to teaching that's been largely rejected by the education system — despite decades of evidence that it works.
The New Yorker staff writer David Owen opened a recent piece with a personal story: To hide that she couldn’t read, his niece turned pages when her classmates did. Owen joined Sold a Story host Emily Hanford for a live conversation about his December 2025 article “Dyslexia and the Reading Wars.” The event was part of the Eyes on Reading series at Planet Word, a museum in Washington, D.C., dedicated to words and language.