Extra Credit

Elijah gets his first driving lesson from Neal, who is a professional automotive journalist. This comprehensive Driver's Ed curriculum includes talking to a vintage-car fanatic about classic Volkswagen Beetles, and learning about the car of the future from an electric-car advocate. If only they could teach Elijah how to steer.    

When a controversy erupts at the Texas State Board of Education over a racist anti-Mexican textbook, Neal becomes determined to expose Elijah to as much Mexican culture as possible. They interview an undocumented valedictorian and a Mexican-American history professor.  Houston-based comedy rapper Chingo Bling calls in to teach Elijah some special vocabulary words.

Elijah, a comic-book fan, interviews Sana Amanat, the creative director of Marvel Comics, about being a "Muslim-American super hero." And John Hodgman stops by to discuss his doomed plans to play a super villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Alarmed by what passes for a poetry curriculum at Elijah's middle school, Neal takes Elijah to New York City to meet some actual working poets. Back in Texas, they visit a "Typewriter Rodeo," and along the way, Neal reveals the secrets of his own strange, poetic past.

Neal is terrified for Elijah's safety in Texas, where guns are as prevalent as popcorn. They visit a gun club in San Antonio to learn how to shoot responsibly, interview an anti-campus carry activist about how to protest guns using sex toys, and talk to a parent who lost her son to gun violence.

When Elijah decides not to have a Bar Mitzvah, Neal plans an emergency cultural trip to "The Jewish American Homeland" - New York City - with decidedly mixed results.

Neal and Elijah travel to Colorado for a more modern drug education. There, Elijah meets a marijuana journalist and a family of medical-marijuana activists, who teach him that there's more to learn about drugs than "just say no."

At a bar outside a convention of 1,700 biologists, Elijah learns about what he isn't hearing in school: evolution.

Neal sends Elijah to a sex ed program offered by a local church--one that involves practice midnight condom purchases, and lots and lots of lube.

After learning that some Texas schoolbooks refer to African slaves as "migrant workers," Neal takes Elijah on a road trip to Louisiana, where they visit a slavery museum on a former plantation.