, senior fellow and director of the Center for Universal Education at Brookings, discusses her new book (co-authored with Gene Sperling and Christina Kwauk) "" (Brookings Institution Press, 2015). “Girls’ education really is quite unique in terms of interventions you can do," she says. "Not because it’s a silver bullet; there are no such things as silver bullets. But, certainly in developing country contexts, it has so many high returns across such a wide variety of areas important for society.” In this podcast, Winthrop walks us through the evolution of girls’ education and how “Twenty-five years ago, girls’ education was an issue in every single country in the world.” She reminds us that there’s a reason to be optimistic: “There are a lot of huge gains in girls’ education. There is a lot to celebrate. Over the last twenty years, the number of girls who have been out of school have been cut in half.” Also in this podcast: Listen to , senior fellow in the Metropolitan Policy program and author of the book “,” answer a question from one of our listeners on how we define post-baby boom generations. And also stay tuned for the next installment of “Steve Hess Stories,” in which Senior Fellow Emeritus discusses his childhood in New York City and his first memories of the presidency. ______________________________________________ Show Notes: Also listen to our other podcast episodes about global education: , with Maysa Jalbout , with Julia Gillard , with Hafex Ghanem and Liesbet Steer , with Rebecca Winthrop __________________________________________________________ Subscribe to the Brookings Cafeteria on , listen on , and send feedback email to .