Motivating topics for students is so important and underrated. It's also super hard I think. For one thing, everyone responds to different motivation. Some people are motivated to learn basic algebra more by the possibility of extending it into applied math so they can get a good job as an engineer. Others don't have any interest in that, but rather would be motivated by the beauty of pure math. And students themselves have no idea what they like.

But yeah, I can think of so many examples of things that I would have been way more into in school if I understood how they mapped onto the adult world. Statistics is probably at the top of that list though.