By Jess Miller
Public media has long been a source of educational content for children. But the future of this programming is murky in light of the Trump administration’s threats to public media funding, attacks on scientific research and attempts to reshape public understanding of American history.
Molly Bloom has been creating kids’ educational content for over a decade at American Public Media’s APM Studios. In 2012, while working as a digital producer for Minnesota Public Radio (APM Studios’ parent company), she and two of her colleagues, Marc Sanchez and Sanden Totten, created “Brains On!” an educational science podcast “for kids and curious adults.” Since its creation, “Brains On!” has inspired a universe of APM Studios kids’ podcasts – including the history podcast “Forever Ago” and the debate show “Smash, Boom, Best” – appeared on numerous lists of best educational podcasts for children and been nominated for multiple awards.
Despite the current uncertainty surrounding public media, Bloom says, the show’s guiding principles – embracing kids’ silliness and seriousness, acknowledging their intelligence and not talking down to them – won’t change.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
How did “Brains On!” come to be?
Marc [Sanchez], Sanden [Totten] and I were all working in the Minnesota Public Radio newsroom. And I had been kicking around this idea to make something for kids, because at the time nothing really existed in the public radio world for kids. We settled on “Brains On!” because those guiding principles of not talking down to kids, having lots of kids’ voices in the show, making it interesting for parents, highlighting kids’ expertise – science became the best vehicle for that. And a podcast became the way to do that because kids wanted on-demand things. They weren’t listening to the radio.
How has your approach to making the show changed since you started?
At the beginning, we were focused on doing things that were evergreen. And most of our shows are still evergreen. But when the pandemic started, we were forced to do news again because it was a science story that affected every single one of our listeners. And since then we’ve done a little bit more timely things. Now we also have a history show [“Forever Ago”] where we have learned a different skill set. Because history is really different from science. When you’re doing stuff about science, you can say “this is about DNA” and you can talk about DNA. But when you talk about history, you have to decide what context is necessary and how to talk about really hard things. Because most history turns out to be really hard, and scary and sad.
How does your approach change when talking about potentially more controversial topics like vaccines?
For vaccines and things like that, we don’t see those as controversial topics, because we follow the science. We’re not there to cover debates over these topics. We’re just talking about the science and how to explain what’s happening. And that’s well established. Even though people might want to say vaccines are unsafe, they are not. And we’re not going to talk about that on a show for kids because it’s just not what we’re covering. We talk about how vaccines are made, and how they work and how they were invented.
We give a lot of good context that I feel like could be really helpful to adults and kids alike who are asking questions about vaccines. We don’t want to dismiss the fact that there are people out there who might be hesitant about vaccines. But we just want to give them good, solid information that is fact. It helps that we have been around for so long and that kids and families trust us. And because we’ve done really silly things too, they’re very comfortable with us.
Where do you get your information from?
We talk to scientists. We interview people. Another is academic journals. We’ll read their research.
Have you ever gotten any pushback on any episodes?
We have gotten very limited pushback, because we are really careful about how we present information. And I think part of that’s coming from a newsroom. We have good reasons for the things we do. So if people do pushback we have a way to talk to them about it. But people don’t push back that much.
One episode that we got some pushback on was when we did one about belly buttons. In that episode, the scientist we were talking to was an OB-GYN and they said that in their field, the standard practice is now to say “pregnant people” instead of “pregnant women.” And so we did that too. And most people, I think, who listened to the episode did not notice that at all. We got a couple emails from people who were angry that we had not said “women” and that we said “people.” But we got more emails from people who appreciated it. We heard from a couple trans fathers who had given birth who were really appreciative.
Why do you think it’s important for children to have access to media like this?
I think it’s important for a lot of reasons. I think one is to encourage kids to be curious, and open-hearted and open-minded when they look at the world. To give kids the tools they need to navigate the world like critical thinking, asking questions. Understanding what good sources of information are. There’s a lot of talk in education circles about giving kids “mirrors” and “windows.” So mirrors are letting them see themselves in media. And windows are letting them see into other people’s lives and worlds. And we think about that a lot. I think it’s also good for kids to know that they are respected as kids and not as “future adults.” Who they are right now is important and what they wonder about and what they care about is important right now.
“Brains On!” is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, and your parent company, Minnesota Public Radio, receives funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. How are you navigating this new landscape both for public media and science journalism?
It’s a bummer. I’ll just say that. Our grant is almost over. So I don’t think our little remaining funding that we have from the grant is going to get pulled. But it does affect future funding potentially. We’re not changing our approach to how we cover anything in response to this. I’d say the only change we’re making is reminding people that we are public media and that they can support us. And public radio might be something that is actually in their lives and that they should care about.
There are a lot of smart people thinking about future public media. We’re looking at it from our little tiny corner of the world. For us, we interview scientists all the time when they’re losing funding left and right. And that’s really hard to watch happen. So [we’re] just trying to make something to give people a little bit of an escape from hard news. We have an episode coming up about weather stations because a kid asked “What do weather stations do?” Turns out the National Weather Service is very important. So to make an episode about that feels good right now.
Jess Miller is a 2024-25 fellow at the Center for Journalism Ethics and a graduate student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He interned at APM Studios from June through December 2024.
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