KATE SULLIVAN: It is a picture-perfect day in Palo Alto, California: the perfect place to meet a man whose work and innovation has changed education around the world.

KATE: Sal, how are you?

SAL KHAN: Hey, good to see you.

KATE: Today, Sal Khan is taking me to his favorite restaurant.

A place that has brought the flavors of South Asia to Silicon Valley.

KATE: That is a To Dine For first.

SAL: It's good.

There's a lot in there.

KATE: We're discussing Khan Academy, how tutoring family members online turned into a global phenomenon.

A non-profit delivering free, world-class education to more than 200 million users worldwide.

They're going to cure our diseases.

They're going to solve our problems.

KATE: Yes.

SAL: I pinch myself every day that I get to work on this.

KATE: And then, what's next for Khan Academy and what Sal is doing to change the future of higher education.

SAL: How do you make sure you have the skills you can participate in this AI world?

And it's a human world, not an AI world?

Are there ways that we can scale that?

Have people do things with each other in their community?

[Upbeat music] KATE: What's better in life than a bottle of wine, great food, and an amazing conversation?

My name is Kate Sullivan, and I am the host of To Dine For .

I'm a journalist, a foodie, a traveler with an appetite for the stories of people who are hungry for more: dreamers, visionaries, artists: those who hustle hard in the direction they love.

I travel with them to their favorite restaurant to hear how they did it.

This show is a toast to them and their American Dream.

To Dine For with Kate Sullivan is made possible by... ♪♪ FEMALE ANNOUNCER: We support the doers and dreamers.

Those working today toward a more secure tomorrow.

At American National, we're proud to help you make that future possible.

[Wine dribbling into glass] KATE: Hello everyone!

Today, I'm in Palo Alto, California on my way into Pakistani-Indian restaurant, Zareen's.

I am meeting a visionary entrepreneur and author and an icon in the world of education.

I can't wait for you to meet Sal Khan.

KATE: Sal, how are you?

SAL: Hey, good to see you.

KATE: It is a pleasure to meet you.

SAL: Oh, likewise, likewise.

KATE: Thank you for doing this.

SAL: No, I get a meal out of it.

[Chuckles] What's better than that?

KATE: This is a no brainer, right?

SAL: Exactly.

Anytime.

We can do this every week.

KATE: Sal and his family aren't the only ones who frequent Zareen's.

The Bay Area is home to the second largest Indian population in the U.S., as well as one of the largest Pakistani populations.

Zareen's is bright, vibrant, and has been recognized by The James Beard Foundation as one of the top restaurants in the region, bringing a taste of home to many of its residents.

ZAREEN KHAN: I want everybody to enjoy the complex flavors we have.

But, I still want it to be accessible for people who are not that familiar with the food.

KATE: In 2009, Zareen Khan, no relation to Sal, started teaching cooking classes.

The classes turned into a catering business and in 2014 Zareen went after her American dream and opened her first restaurant in Mountain View.

ZAREEN: When I started uh the cooking classes, it was something that I want to do different than my corporate job, as in tech.

I love everyday.

I wake up excited, thinking about "oh today, I'll do this, something creative, or I'll make a change to the menu."

KATE: Zareen's passion and excitement are on full display with our meal today.

We're having chicken tikka masala thali: charcoal grilled boneless chicken in a tomato cream curry served with rice, daal lentil, chopped pickled salad and mixed greens drizzled with tamarind chutney.

We're also having panipuri: crispy bread bites filled with potatoes, chickpeas and chutneys.

And dahi puri, which adds yogurt, shredded beetroot and crispy sev noodles.

And a favorite of Zareen's: chicken memoni samosas handmade pastries filled with chicken made from a secret recipe handed down for generations.

ZAREEN: The samosas are my mom's recipe.

She's from Bombay, so it's very Bombay style.

I grew up eating this, ever since I was little.

I used to make it with her, so it's in my blood.

So when I opened the restaurant, that was the first thing I added to the menu.

KATE: Four locations later, Zareen's is the perfect place to share a meal with Sal Khan and find out about his own journey, shaped by passion, innovation and educating others.

KATE: Wonderful.

Oh, I'm so excited to be here.

SAL: As am I. KATE: [laughs] This is your restaurant.

SAL: This is!

KATE: You picked this.

SAL: You know, I don't normally come here for lunch in the middle of the day, and y'all are treating me.

KATE: Yes.

SAL: So that, you know, food's always more delicious when it's free.

That's... KATE: Isn't that the truth?

SAL: It is...It's true.

[Laughs] KATE: But you could have picked anywhere, right?

This is home for you.

Why did you choose this one?

SAL: It's classic Pakistani, Indian, South Asian food.

But they do have some dishes that you don't normally get at like your run of the mill Indian or Pakistani restaurant.

So that's one.

But the other is, yeah it's kind of got a fun vibe, I'm not like really into fancy restaurants.

Like this is me dressing up.

KATE: And is this a nod to your roots?

Are you Pakistani?

Or are you Indian?

SAL: I am, it's complicated.

So, I was born and raised in New Orleans.

My family is Bengali... KATE: Okay.

SAL: And my mother comes from West Bengal, which is now in India.

And my father's family came from East Bengal, which is now Bangladesh.

KATE: Ah.

SAL: And my wife is Pakistani.

KATE: So, when you come as a family, both you and your wife can be united at the table, right?

SAL: Yes, yes.

WAITER: Sorry to interrupt.

Got the chicken samosas for you.

KATE: Yes.

I've heard about these!

WAITER: Grandma's secret recipe.

KATE: Yes, I can't wait.

Thank you.

I'll let you go first.

[Crunching] Mmmm.

SAL: Good.

KATE: Sorry, I take a moment on my food here.

SAL: No, I mean, this is like- you do this for a living.

You're like a interviewer, restaurant critic, all in one.

KATE: Eater!

Right?

Well, I'm really curious to hear how Khan Academy began, because it all started with you tutoring.

Right?

What happened and why did you start tutoring?

SAL: Yeah, a little bit before we moved out to the Bay Area, this was 2004.

I was a year out of business school.

We got married in New Jersey, where my, my wife grew up, after she immigrated to the U.S.

And um, it just came out of conversation after the wedding that my 12-year-old cousin Nadia, who was up here from New Orleans- up in in New Jersey for the wedding, was having trouble in math.

So I offered to tutor her remotely.

Slowly but surely, one: I just had to work on her self-esteem.

She got caught up with her class.

She got a little ahead of her class.

At that point, I became what I call a "tiger cousin."

[Kate laughs] I called up her school and I said, "I really think Nadia Rahman should be able to retake the placement exam."

She was put- placed into a slower math track and they said, "Who are you?"

[Kate laughs] And I said," I'm her cousin."

And they let her.

And the same Nadia was then placed into an advanced math track.

So I'm hooked.

I start tutoring her younger brothers who are at the time- KATE: Ok and what are you doing for work at this point?

SAL: I was working as an at an analyst at a two-person hedge fund.

KATE: Okay.

You're a finance guy?

And they know you're good at math, you know, can you please tutor?

SAL: And I was feeling a little, you know, they're in New Orleans.

I'm in Boston.

When I had left New Orleans, she was like 2 or 3 years old.

So I was like, this also be a fun way to connect.

KATE: Right.

SAL: So, yeah, I started tutoring her, her younger brothers.

Word spreads in my family.

Free tutoring is going on.

And so, I'm now tutoring 5-10 cousins every day after work.

KATE: They're in New Orleans.

SAL: They're in New Orleans.

So we would get on a speaker, we would get on a phone.

And then and then we would use instant messenger.

And then, I eventually found some software that, if, and I bought my cousins these little note, this tablets that um if I write I could see their writing, they could see my writing.

And if they write on the same I could see theirs digitally and we would do it over the phone.

And so that's that's how we started.

KATE: That's amazing.

SAL: You know, it was it was it was fun for me.

You know my wife, she always used to give me a little bit of grief.

Like you you got this education and these skills, you know.

Do...you want it just to be about, picking stocks?

And and I always had a, explanation.

I said, "Well, you know, in a capitalist system, you need people to set the price."

And, you know, but it wasn't a good answer.

But I always said, no I want to do this until I have enough resources that my my dream was one day to start a school and be like a, a Dumbledore type figure.

And I said, well, you know, it's one thing to say that, but let me at least... BOTH: Try it out.

KATE: Through tutoring his cousins, Sal realized that many kids struggling in school didn't have issues with intelligence or hard work, but just needed more practice with difficult subjects.

Using his expertise from MIT and Harvard Business School, Sal created a program to give students practice time while monitoring their progress.

He called the program Khan Academy.

Soon after, a friend suggested recording his lessons as videos and uploading them to YouTube to reach more students.

SAL: Oh, wow.

KATE: Thank you and what is it?

WAITER: This is the panipuri, a traditional kind of South Asian bites.

Potatoes, chutneys.

I would start with the yogurt one.

It's a bit of a mouthful, but just pop it in, like a shot.

KATE: Just go for it.

WAITER: Yeah and then this one.

Sal will show you.

Just pour it in, very traditional.

KATE: Fantastic.

SAL: Yeah, just pour this in into the... WAITER: The other two.

SAL: Yeah.

[Crunching and laughs] SAL: It's good.

There's a lot in there.

And these you can pour this in.

KATE: That is delicious.

SAL: Yeah.

Pani means water.

KATE: Yes.

SAL: I mean, cause when else you have something crispy that has something so liquid in it.

KATE: Yes.

It's like somebody hit the piñata and it all explodes in your mouth.

Amazing.

SAL: Exactly.

And you have to do it, like you have to make it right before you eat it.

Otherwise it'll get soggy.

KATE: That is a To Dine For first.

Yeah, that was really good.

SAL: Good.

KATE: All right.

At that time, it wasn't- the vision wasn't to create this entire system of educational videos?

SAL: I initially said that's a horrible idea.

YouTube is for cats playing piano for you know, dogs on skateboards.

I mean, now we know YouTube can be a very credible way to not only learn... KATE: But it was back then, you're right.

SAL: Back then, no one took it seriously, including me.

And um, I went home that weekend.

I kind of got over the idea that it wasn't my idea, and I, um gave it a shot and, you know, I just- those first videos are still there.

You don't see my face in them, it's screen capture.

At the time, this was, we forget this was before phones had cameras.

KATE: Oh yeah.

SAL: I didn't have a good video camera in the house.

WAITER: Chicken tikka masala.

KATE: Oh, amazing.

SAL: You got a regular one here.

KATE: Yeah.

Thank you.

SAL: After about a month, I had about 50 or 60 videos for them.

And I asked them for feedback, and they somewhat famously or infamously told me they like me better on YouTube than in person.

[Kate laughs] And...what they're saying, and I think in fairness to me is they really liked having it on demand.

They really like being able to pause and repeat.

Sometimes we would cover something in the tutoring session, but then it's 11:00... KATE: They could rewind.

SAL: They can re-watch and rewind.

KATE: Yeah if they don't understand.

SAL: Exactly, and there was no embarrassment.

Like I tried to be not- non-judgmental, but if if there is some concept they forgot from fifth grade, like dividing decimals, it's kind of embarrassing to say it.

But here, no no judgment.

So now, because of the videos, when we got on the phone, I was able to focus more on the human aspect of things like, "hey, what's going on?

Hey, I noticed you're not doing as much work as you were before.

Are you feeling stressed?"

Or, you know, I was able to do much more of that or do deeper problems than what we were able to do on video.

So I kept going.

Soon became clear, people who aren't my cousins were watching, it's YouTube, and I started getting amazing letters from folks all over the world.

You know, this is the reason I'm um, I'm going back to college.

I got I got letters from people deployed in Iraq saying, "We're using this in our downtime.

I now want to go back to college and be an engineer."

KATE: Are you kidding?

SAL: Oh no.

It's wild.

We got a letter in the early days from a young woman in Mongolia, 16-year-old.

And it turns out there's a group of engineers from Silicon Valley actually, who used their vacation to go to Mongolia and set up computer labs with internet in orphanages.

And she was one of the orphans.

KATE: You're kidding.

SAL: But she she's just talking about how she uses Khan Academy, and she later became one of our top translators of Khan Academy into the Mongolian language... KATE: You're kidding me.

SAL: A few years later.

So you can imagine, you know I was a hedge fund- I was an analyst at a hedge fund.

KATE: And you had just done some crazy videos for your cousins??

You had no- with no intention that it would reach Mongolia!

SAL: Exactly.

I mean I read a lot of science fiction books, but I could have never imagined.

And I- it just felt really, really good.

KATE: In 2008, Sal turned Khan Academy into a non-profit with the mission of providing a free world-class education to anyone, anywhere.

In 2009, he decided to quit his day job at a hedge fund and work on Khan Academy full time.

With a newborn baby at home and his wife studying to be a doctor, the Khans lived off Sal's savings for nine months.

Sal saw that his lessons were continuing to make a difference for tens of thousands of students around the world, but it wasn't sustainable without investors.

Eventually, California philanthropist Ann Doerr gave an investment which changed everything.

SAL: Ten months in and no one noticed it.

And we were living off of savings.

Our first child had been born, I was stressed.

I was not sleeping well.

KATE: A lot of anxiety.

SAL: A lot of anxiety.

What have I done to my career?

A $10,000 donation came in, which wasn't going to allow me to, you know, live off of it.

But it was like, that's real money.

And I emailed who it was.

Her name was Ann Doerr based in Palo Alto.

I said, "Thank you so much for this generous donation.

It's the largest one we've ever gotten.

If we were a physical school, you would have a building named after you."

[Kate laughs] And Ann responds back.

She's like, "I'm local.

I'd love to meet you.

I didn't realize you were one guy operating out of your house."

And over lunch, she's just like, "what's your goal?"

And I explained, you know, free world-class education, videos, exercises, localizing the language of the world.

I used to I showed her a big notebook of testimonials, and then she said, "well, how are you supporting yourself?"

And as proud of a way possible, I said, "I'm not."

And so, she kind of processes that.

She paid the bill.

[Chuckles] We part ways.

KATE: You're all about a free lunch, Sal, we know.

SAL: I'm all about a free lunch, if I can get one.

And when I'm driving into my driveway, I get a text message from Ann and it says, you know, "Thanks for lunch.

Um, you really need to be supporting yourself.

I've just wired you $100,000."

KATE: Wow.

SAL: So, that was a good day.

KATE: And that was really the beginning.

SAL: Folks from Google reached out saying, "Oh, we're looking to fund a project that has a chance of educating the world.

And a lot of us are using Khan Academy."

They also were surprised that I was just one guy.

And then that summer, Nadia and her brothers had flown up and I was doing a summer camp for middle school students.

And um, I get text messages from Ann, which you can imagine I, I now take very seriously.

[Laughs] And essentially she's like, "I'm at the Aspen Ideas Festival in the main pavilion.

Bill Gates is being interviewed by Walter Isaacson, the last five minutes talking about Khan Academy."

KATE: Stop.

SAL: No.

And I'm like, "What?

What is she talking about?"

And so I boot the nearest seventh grader off of a computer.

I'm looking for footage of it, and Walter Isaacson asks Bill Gates, "What are you excited about?"

Just random open question.

"Yeah, there's this new website called Khan Academy.

There's this one guy, Sal Khan," and he, he like knew it deeply.

He's like, "yeah, his wife let him quit the job.

He used to run a hedge fund and this and that."

And he's like, "Oh, I use it.

My, my kids use it.

I use it myself."

KATE: Bill Gates said he used it himself?

SAL: Yes, I was like shaking when I'm seeing this.

I was like, "What do I do now?"

Two weeks later, I'm about to record a video and my cell phone rings, I look at it it's a Seattle number.

I answer it, "Hello?"

"Hi, my name is Larry Cohen.

I'm Bill Gates', Chief of Staff.

You might have heard he's a fan."

"Yeah, I heard that."

"And if you're free over the next few weeks, we'd love to fly you up to Seattle and learn more about what you're doing."

And I was looking at my calendar for the month completely blank.

And I said, "Yeah, you know, I got to do- I got to do some laundry, cut my nails."

KATE: Let me see.

Oh, this is a tough month.

SAL: Yeah maybe, maybe I can sneak you, squeeze you in.

So when he said, "How can we help?"

I was like," Look, this is the dream.

I would want to build out the software platform.

I'd want to build out the teacher tools.

I want to localize it."

And he said, "No, that makes, make sense."

And um, and you know, He's like, "Send a proposal of what it would take."

And so by fall of 2010, all of a sudden we got, for over the next two years, $2 million of funding from Google and $2 million of funding from The Gates Foundation.

KATE: Can you give people a sense of what someone can experience when they go to Khan Academy, and just how far reaching it is?

SAL: I zoomed in to a um, MIT conference or something, and I spoke there.

The kids were asking me questions, and then the conference organizer says, you know, "There's someone in this room that you really have to meet."

Her name is Fatima and she grew up in Afghanistan.

Wasn't allowed to go to school because of the Taliban, but she had a laptop and an internet connection and so Khan Academy was her school growing up.

KATE: Her only school?

Was Khan Academy.

SAL: And when she's 17 or 18 years old, she decides that she would like to go to the U.S., study computer science, and she applies to MIT.

Now, the MIT admissions office, they're they're blown away, but they're like, you have no grades, you have no transcript, you have no SAT scores or AP scores.

But, if if you can validate your knowledge on Khan Academy, on this other sister non-profit that we started during the pandemic called Schoolhouse.world, which is, it's a way to certify, you record yourself doing the Khan Academy.

And actually you can get and give tutoring.

There's a whole bunch of things you can do.

KATE: You can test and you can you can prove that you are learning.

SAL: Exactly and create a portfolio, a video of you doing it.

So she did that and then she was admitted to MIT.

KATE: Unbelievable.

From Khan Academy?

SAL: From Khan Academy!

Khan Academy and Schoolhouse got her from Kabul to MIT.

And then I get an email from her, She's like, "Oh, I'm going to be in Palo Alto."

So it's like, meet us at Zareen's.

KATE: You guys met here?

SAL: We were right over there at that table.

KATE: Sal, let me just stop for a second.

I mean, this is a girl, would never have gotten an education any other way than through your non-profit that you created from tutoring.

What did that mean to you personally?

SAL: You know, there are certain things I can maybe do in my own life.

And there were times in college I said, maybe I'll be a lawyer, maybe I'll be a doctor, maybe I'll try to go be a researcher and try to cure diseases.

Wouldn't it be cool if someone who used Khan Academy cures a disease one day... KATE: Yes.

SAL: Or solves climate... KATE: Yes.

SAL: Or writes the next great novel, or becomes the next great director?

KATE: Yes.

SAL: And now we're starting to see it a little bit, um where, you know, I think Fatima is an example of that.

KATE: What does that tell you about the untapped potential of so many people in this world?

SAL: Oh, you know, look, I always think about it.

For every Albert Einstein, Marie Curie that becomes Albert Einstein or Marie Curie, I don't know, I'm making a guess.

There's at least 50, but probably more like 500 who are right behind them or who are just as good as them, but never got that level of... KATE: That are uneducated somewhere in the world.

SAL: Uneducated... KATE: Are working in a rural environment.

SAL: Never get the opportunity.

KATE: Yes.

KATE: Today, Khan Academy is available in more than 50 languages in 190 countries, teaching math, science, writing, humanities, S.A.T.

prep, and more.

They also launched Khan Academy Kids, offering early math and literacy lessons, which has been downloaded more than 43 million times.

The success of Khan Academy led to Sal receiving the American Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award, honorary doctorates from Harvard and Carnegie Mellon, and being named one of Times' 100 Most Influential People in the world.

In 2025, Sal was chosen to be the New Vision Steward of the TED organization and has since announced the Khan TED Institute, a big idea which Sal hopes will reshape higher education.

KATE: When you think about the highest cost of college education, I mean we have kids the same age, Sal, right?

So we think of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that we are going to have to shell out down the road when they could get on, potentially a Khan Academy or a Khan Academy-like education.

Will that be the future of college?

SAL: So we actually are starting, we announced it a little a few weeks ago, something called the Khan TED Institute.

I've also taken on a new role at TED doing everything I'm doing at Khan Academy.

But the idea is, can we create- I don't see it as competition, but an alternative pathway to get a bachelor's and/or a master's degree.

KATE: An alternative pathway to a college education.

SAL: A college education.

And the idea here is high scale.

So a lot of the, you know, especially elite education, a lot of the difficulty is, you know, 70,000 kids apply to Stanford and they're going to admit 2,000 of them.

What are they- So we're going to have high scale, low cost.

We've publicly said that the cost of the whole degree, not tuition, the whole degree will be sub $10,000.

KATE: Wow.

SAL: We're going to make it so that anyone can attend.

KATE: Right.

SAL: And we, it's going to be a different type of experience.

It will be online.

But most of the experience is we're going to put people in scenarios with other people.

KATE: Yes.

SAL: There's going to be a very human experience, even though it's online.

KATE: Which is key.

SAL: We're building your communication, your collaboration, and you're building a portfolio of skills.

And we're launching this in collaboration with some of the top corporations in the world; McKinsey, Bain, Microsoft, Google, Accenture, Replit.

To really make sure that what these students are learning, it's building their core academics, their people skills, but also, uh very relevant skills for whatever the job market is.

How do you make sure you have the skills you can participate in this AI world?

And it's a human world, not an AI world.

And then, uh the meaning and connection, the same type of, awe and connection that you get at the TED conference, are there ways that we can scale that?

Have people do things with each other in their community.

So I'm super excited about it, and I think it's very complementary to what we've been trying to do at Khan Academy.

KATE: You know, when you look at all that you do, right?

Because there's many hats you wear, from being that very first tutor to your cousin, to scaling Khan Academy, to being a spokesperson, to explaining the story, all of it.

When do you feel most yourself and when do you feel like you're really contributing?

Like this is Sal, at his best?

SAL: I and I actually really do enjoy things like this, and I'm enjoying telling the story and I like to ham it up sometimes.

KATE: Yes.

SAL: But I think when I can geek out, with a book, learn something deeply... KATE: Learn.

SAL: ...And then create something and, and just be in my closet and make a video, especially of something deep that I I'm excited about.

That's when I feel most "me."

KATE: Yes.

SAL: But, you know, I think it is.

I once again, I pinch myself.

I'm lucky because I get I get to do that still.

KATE: It brings me to my next question, because over the years, you know, from working at a hedge fund to doing this really groundbreaking and important work, what is your definition of the American dream?

SAL: I define the American dream as being able to have the opportunities to fulfill your potential, and, America isn't perfect.

There's a lot of stuff to work on, but, there's I think, no country as large, as diverse and as open that provides more opportunity than the U.S., does.

And I can't even imagine actually one that's that's close.

Um, and you know, it's I'm, I'm in this position because I was born and raised here.

My wife is in this position because she was able to immigrate here when she was 12.

So yeah, that's the American dream.

KATE: But by your definition, you were taking your version of the American dream and giving it to the world.

SAL: That is my hope.

That is my hope in every in every sense of the word.

KATE: Well, what's the what is the greatest barrier to someone accomplishing their dream?

You can dream it.

But what is the biggest barricade?

And that is a lack of education.

SAL: It's a lack of education, lack of opportunity.

And so, if we can make that pathway clearer.

KATE: Yeah.

SAL: And a little, you know, we'll make a positive dent to the universe.

KATE: Well I'm going to take this mango lassi and make a toast.

SAL: There you go [chuckles].

KATE: Thank you for this meal.

And thank you for your inspiring words.

I've enjoyed it so much.

SAL: Oh no, thank you.

KATE: Cheers!

SAL: Thanks for the lassi.

[Laughter] KATE: I love when a meal is a portal to someone's culture, a snapshot of everyday life and where they really love.

And that is the case of Zareen's and Sal Khan.

What an amazing story.

Sal started tutoring his cousins.

Turns out he was good at it.

In turn, his small steps forward helped educate the world.

His American dream is to bring world-class education to the hardest reach corners of the world and he's doing it.

Few people have ever dreamed so big and had such a profound impact as Sal Khan.

[Uplifting music plays] KATE: If you would like to know more about the guests, the restaurants, and the inspiring stories of success, please visit ToDineForTV.com or follow us on Facebook and Instagram @ToDineForTV.

We also have a podcast.

To Dine For , The Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

To Dine For with Kate Sullivan is made possible by... FEMALE ANNOUNCER: We support the doers and dreamers.

Those working today toward a more secure tomorrow.

At American National, we're proud to help you make that future possible.

[Wine dribbling into glass]