Ever wonder how to rekindle your child’s love of learning and develop them into critical thinkers? Join Dr. Tim Jordan as he sits down with Jerry Kolber, the creative mind behind the award-winning podcast for kids, “Who Smarted.” Discover the secrets to fostering critical thinking skills, turning everyday moments into learning experiences, and using storytelling to make education fun and engaging. Plus, learn how Kolber’s podcast and TV shows, including “Brainchild” and “Brain Games,” are inspiring a new generation of STEM enthusiasts by showcasing the brilliance of female experts.
Resources:
- Who Smarted
- Link for other educational resources by Jerry Kolber: Atomic Entertainment
Send suggestions for future show topics and feedback on these episodes to: anne@drtimjordan.com
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
How Parents Can Help Their Daughters Develop Into Critical Thinkers And Lifelong Learners
Dr. Tim Jordan here with a brand new episode of Raising Daughters. I appreciate you stopping by. This is a busy time of year. I know everybody’s busy. Take a little bit of time to listen in and learn some things about your kids, about your daughters, and about raising your daughters. I’m appreciative that you do that.
I decided to have a guest today. About a year ago, I had a guest and I’m not sure if you all listened to it. Her name is Angela Santomero. She’s a co-creator of Blues Clues and Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. She’s in the same kind of business as you. She had put on a new book called Life Clues. It was an interesting discussion about how she got into the business of educating kids and families, and all that kind of things. I came across your information so I thought it would be also an interesting discussion.
By the way, I’m talking to Jerry Kolber. He has an interesting background, which he’ll tell you about. He’s still in a lot of producing and TV kind of work and he found himself doing a lot of educational stuff for kids. He had a rated number one educational series on National Geographic called Brain Games and another one called Brainchild. He has a semi-ish new podcast for kids. That would be interesting to talk about. It’s called Who Smarted? He’s going to tell us how that title got to be. Jerry, thanks for joining the show.
Making Educational Content Fun And Engaging For Kids
Thanks for the intro. Brain Games was the first educational series that I did. That was at National Geographic and became a huge hit for them. It ran for about seven years. The whole idea behind that show was to create an engaging fun experience using a television that would help people learn about their brains and make it fun to learn. It works so well that it validated for me and my producing partner Adam that it’s possible to make great entertaining material that’s all so educational. That validated for us. That’s what we’ve done ever since. Pretty much everything we do falls into that world of super entertaining educational content.
The Winding Path To Creating Children’s Educational Content
I work with a lot of young women who are in middle school, high school, and college. They’re all freaked out because they think they should have their whole life planned out. They are pressured by their parents and the educational system like, “What are you going to do? What college are you going to go to?” All those kinds of things. I always tell them that they should interview every adult they bump into and say, “When you were my age, did you know you’d be doing what you’re doing now when you’re 30, 40, or wherever you are?” How did you get on this path to do children’s educational stuff?
When I was in college, I was not expecting what I would be doing. I was studying theater and film. I thought I was going to work in theater. I did work in theater for the first couple of years out of school. Every experience I had was great, but it also made me realize I was not going to be able to make enough money to live in New York. I started like most of the people making a living. Most people working in theater full-time either were older and owned companies or might have other sources of income and something like that.
Through the theater I was working on, I ended up getting introduced to some folks from Universal Studios because they had financed one of the shows I was working on as an assistant. Through that weird connection, I ended up working in television. In TV, I worked on scripting for years. I worked on Dick Wolf, the guy who does Law & Order. I worked on some of his shows. I worked for HBO on Sex in the City, and then eventually ended up working in unscripted television on the original Queer Eye For The Straight Guy as a producer for the first 60 episodes of that show.
That path took me far and I learned a lot about storytelling and how to create story out of documentary settings doing the unscripted work, but there was a point where I was getting a little burned out on it. I had always been curious about science and how the world works and understanding how things work. Right around the time I was getting a little burned out and doing reality TV stuff, I heard about an opportunity to work at Nat Geo, running their New York office while the wonderful woman Kim, who ran the office, was going out on maternity leave.
I ended up applying for it. That is the opportunity where I was able to bring my love of learning and education together with what I knew about great storytelling and entertainment. That’s where we created Brain Games. I don’t think I could have done that show any earlier because I had to learn everything that I learned from everything else. Even a little stint that I did at Children’s Television Workshop ten years earlier in 2000 where I saw and understood how they tell stories for Sesame Street. All of that came to be part of the ingredients that created Brain Games and the model that we still use for our shows.
Creating Lifelong Learners Through Critical Thinking And Curiosity
That’s what you going to hear from almost every adult you bump into. They didn’t go directly from A to Z. They zigzagged and they meandered. Most people have a long and winding road, We’re talking to Jerry Kolbe. He is the producer and one of the creators of the interesting, fun, and educational podcast for your kids called Who Smarted? We’ll talk about that in a moment, but I want to ask you a few other questions.
I feel like the educational system has beaten the creativity, imagination, and love of learning out of children. That’s a cynical comment. The author Ken Robinson wrote a book about how schools have done that. I can’t remember the title of that but he said that same kind of thing. I’m wondering where you sit on the fence with that, and then is what you’re doing a counter to that?
Generally, I would agree with that. Within the educational system, many teachers have made it their mission to keep things creative in the face of how hard that is because the system is designed, was designed, and remains designed to create good workers. Originally, our system was designed to train kids to work in industry and it hasn’t changed that much. We’ve added all kinds of testing requirements and other requirements.
Teachers’ jobs now are so different from when I was younger. When I was younger, there was a lot of room for creativity. I think now with the demands of parents, the system, and the tests, teachers are boxed in and there’s not a lot of space for it. There are a lot of teachers who still figure out how to make space for creativity and fun in the classroom, but it’s hard. Hats off to them because it’s harder than it ever was.
What we try to do with our projects is always create that opportunity for teachers to use without having to do the work. For instance, Who Smarted? is the podcast that we do for 8 to 10-year-olds. It is 15 minutes long. The episodes are all about science and history with 500 episodes. Any topic that a teacher is teaching, they can find an episode. A lot of teachers now use our show not just to teach the kids but to get them excited about what they’re about to learn. It’s a way to get them to focus and think that the topic is fun. When it’s time to learn, they’re excited to learn. They’re settled and ready. We try to make the teachers’ job a little bit easier using resources like that.
Let me read off a couple of the titles. I watched this one yesterday. What came up today was about anxiety, but it was “Why do your socks always go missing? Can some animals magically disappear? Lightning, Why do bananas go bad so fast? What happens when you mail a letter?” This reminds me of my old mentor in Boston. I can’t remember, but it was some museum in New York. They created a toilet. It showed where your poop goes. Kids could go in the toilet and go down pipes and all that kind of thing to show the whole process. That same kind of learning sounds like what you’re trying to do for kids.
Yes. That’s a very hands-on experience. We’re doing the same thing through storytelling. If we’re doing an episode on toilets. The narrator of our show will end up meeting a talking toilet. The talking toilet will take them on a tour of what happens. It’ll be funny and fun with a little kid’s humor stuff that adults also love. That’s the other thing about our shows. We always make shows that even if they’re for kids, they’re still fun for adults.
There’s a lot of kids’ stuff that adults don’t want to listen to. We think there’s such a huge opportunity whether it’s teachers in a classroom or parents with their kids to listen together, that co-listening and then have a conversation and learn together and discover together. I think that’s such a wonderful opportunity to make connections and memories. Whether it’s Who Smarted? or Brainchild, the Netflix series, everything we do, we want adults to have fun watching them too.
After I listened to a couple of the episodes. I’m older than you are. I just turned 70. In my day, we sing nursery rhymes in the car rides to places. We did things of that sort. I was thinking one of the best places maybe for this for parents was riding to school in the car or instead of turning on a stupid TV or people looking at their stupid pads, they could put on one of these things and listen and learn together, then have a conversation.
We’ve done some surveys and we think about 50% of listening is happening in the car. It’s happening on the way to school, on the way from school, on the way to the grocery store. To your point, it’s even more so than the nursery rhymes. It’s something that everybody can listen to and engage with. I love it when we hear from parents and they’re like, “We listen to this in the car rides when I take my kids to school, but a secret for you guys, I keep listening to it after the kid gets out.”
You’re very invested in educating kids. I think kids are natural-born learners. Kids are naturally curious. How do you help create a lifelong learner who’s interested in learning and will keep learning, especially in this day and age where everything changes so fast? Even as adults, they’re going to need to be lifelong learners.
We think about that a lot and we’ve landed on that. We’ve seen research around this and there’s not what I would call consensus. We feel like the way you create lifelong learners is you teach kids about critical thinking and how to be critical thinkers. The only reason you ever stop learning is that you think you’ve learned everything or you decide you don’t want to learn anymore.
I think the only way that you get to either of those is if you don’t understand how to think critically. You feel bombarded with information and you don’t know how to sort it out, so you tune out or you get into a silo of information that you decide is fully representational of the truth and everything else outside is wrong. That also only happens if you don’t know how to think critically.
We don’t say this out loud a lot, but we see our mission as teaching kids how to be critical thinkers, evaluate what’s around them, and understand that there are lots of points of view. Some things are true and factual, and some things are objective or subjective and subject to interpretation. Who Smarted? for instance, the format is always the same. There’s always the trusting narrator going on a journey of discovery and along the way, there’s going to be some fun. There are going to be characters, there are going to be facts, but there are also going to be experiences that we will ask the kids questions along the way.
We’re offering opportunities for the child to not only listen but to listen actively so that when we ask them questions and engage them, they’re having to use their critical thinking faculty rather than passive listening. Long answer, I think critical thinking is the key to training kids how to be global citizens in this age when we’re constantly bombarded with so much.
As you’re talking about that, the kids are listening with their parents in the car, for instance. It’d be a good opportunity for parents to pause and say, “What do you think?” Let your kids answer the question.
In the show, we try and build a little bit of a pause so the kids can say, “We hear you yelling out this answer or that answer.” I would imagine some parents would pause and have a conversation. It’s a great opportunity.
I learned yesterday that the first socks were grass and leaves.
I learned that too when I was working on that episode. I didn’t know that.
Thank you for that.
Anytime.
When you’re listening and you ask questions, that is one way for kids to develop some critical thinking skills. Ow about for parents with everyday kinds of things? How can parents encourage their kids to become more critical thinkers?
By asking questions. Encourage your kids to ask questions. Look at something and go, “That’s the power line. How does the power get through the power line?” or “How do these birds fly and land?” Anything that’s around you can become a topic of inquiry. The other thing with parents is a lot of times, kids will relentlessly ask questions to the point where a parent might be like, “Please stop asking questions” or “I don’t know.” That’s generally a good way to shut down natural curiosity.
As frustrating and possibly even annoying as it might be when a child is asking you questions over and over, instead of shutting it down, say, “I don’t know the answer.” It’s okay to say that as a parent. “I don’t know, why don’t we look at it up together when we get home,” if you want to make a bonding moment out of it. Encouraging research also is great.
As frustrating and possibly even annoying as it might be, when a child is asking you questions over and over and over, that can be a bonding moment to help your kids understand how to research. Share on XA lot of times, kids are asking these questions and they’re asking the parents. The parents don’t know. The parents might feel annoyed that they don’t have all these answers. Rather than treating that as a moment of frustration, it can be also a moment to help your kid understand how to research and look these things up. Be okay with not knowing.
A couple of other things might interfere with that process. Number one, parents are so rushed and they’re constantly rushing their kids. Number two, parents are distracted. Oftentimes, they’ve got their phone out or they’re doing 2 or 3 things at once. They may miss those opportunities where their kids are. We don’t follow our kids’ lead enough because when you’re following your kids’ lead and following their curiosity, there are natural questions that come up that they probably would ask us.
Maybe if you’re super busy, get them a notebook and say, “Write your questions down, and then let’s have a discovery hour together this weekend and go down that rabbit hole.” If you go on Google search, there’s a button that says “I’m feeling lucky.” When I tell people that, they’re always like, “I don’t think that’s there,” and then they see it. They’re like, “That’s always been there.”
If you click that “I’m feeling lucky” button. It’ll take you to some random website. We stopped recommending it because we couldn’t figure out whether they were always G-rated or not. We hadn’t had any issues with it, but we don’t know. You go on that rabbit hole of discovery with the topic and start. “If your kids ask a question, “Let’s set aside 30 minutes and explore that later or this weekend,” and then take the time and focus. Help them understand how to research and how to look for things.
The Importance Of Storytelling In Children’s Education
We’re talking with Jerry Kolber. He is the producer and one of the founders of a couple of educational products for kids. One of them is the TV show Brain Games and Brainchild, but also a podcast called Who Smarted? which I would encourage all you parents to look online and get because it’s a fun, interactive, short, but sweet way for kids to learn about some interesting things. There’s a lot of science and things that they may have questions about. It’s fun for kids. It’s fun for parents and also fun for you guys to do it together. You’ve mentioned several times the value of storytelling. Talk about that and also how parents can incorporate that more into their parenting.
Storytelling is how we share information as a species. Before we had the written word or any of that, we were doing oral traditions and passing things down by stories from generation to generation. It’s deeply encoded in our being and our brains that we like stories. Stories are a way of encoding information. I’ll take a step back and say if you’re just giving a child information or you saying, “Open your history book and read pages 10 through 20 tonight and memorize that stuff,” that’s a very passive experience with no emotion. It’s just data and facts.
Some kids can learn that way, but not all kids do. I was not someone who learned that way. If you take that same information and wrap it into a story, now you’re packaging information inside of a story. The story has stakes and emotions. You’re activating so much more of your brain and you’re encoding the information. This is like a brain’s neuroscience function. You’re encoding the information in a way that has emotional resonance when it’s storytelling rather than just data and memorization.
An example of this for people is if you ask them if they remember when their first child was born or where they were on a certain huge historical event. People can tell you in almost excruciating detail where they were, what it smelled like, what the day was like, and all of these things. If I were to say to you, “Can you describe exactly what happened to you nine days ago at 2:37 PM?” there’s no way. You might go back and look and guess where you were and figure it out, but you’re not able to recall it immediately with photographic and sensory detail as you can around emotionally charged events.
When people start to think about that, they start to understand that emotion activates and engages your memory in a way that is so deep that you encode the information in this durable way. We realize that when you can share information, facts, science, and history that way, kids are much more likely to remember it when it’s encoded within a story rather than delivered as dry information.
Emotion actually activates and engages your memory in a way that is so deep, you actually encode the information. Share on XBefore we came on, you were talking about how you have a special interest in your show about encouraging girls to be interested in STEM. Talk about that for a moment, please.
This is something we noticed when we were making Brain Games initially for Nat Geo. Most of the scientists on the show were males. Most of the scientists for Nat Geo and all the science channels were males. We then looked at the data in the science and engineering professions. Something like 45% of those professions are female. There are a lot of women working in these fields but are not being represented in the media in the way that they should be.
When you don’t see yourself represented on screen, you might not see an entry point for yourself into these fields. We made a point on Brain Games of bringing tons and tons of female scientists, neuroscientists, and experts to create that visibility because a lot of young girls are also watching the show.
We need to create that visibility (of women in STEM) because when you don't see yourself represented on screen, you might not see an entry point for yourself into these fields. Share on XWe ramped that up on the next show we did, which was Brainchild, a Netflix science series for slightly older kids and young teenagers. That show is about equipping kids with everything from understanding social media to motivation to how the space works. We did that show with Pharrell Williams and his creative partner, Mimi Valdes. All of us were aligned on the idea that we wanted to lean hard into representing society correctly in that show rather than how it’s typically done and told.
The volunteers on the show almost perfectly represent the makeup of the actual world in terms of backgrounds and ethnicities. We had a young woman host the show, which is very rare for a science show to have a female host, and then our expert on the show was a woman named Alie Ward who has a podcast called Ologies. She was our regular science expert.
We’ve heard from so many parents and young women that that show lets them see themselves in the role of being a scientist, being a researcher, or going into psychology where they hadn’t before. That validated for us the idea that visibility is important and essential. With our podcast Who Smarter? we do that as well. We make sure that there is a lot of visibility for young women and different kinds of kids.
I interviewed an author a year or two ago. I can’t remember her name. I should but I can’t. There are two authors of the book for National Geographic. I believe it was called No Boundaries. These two women who wrote the book had 2 or 3-page stories. It was a book written for middle school and high school girls.
These women had these interesting jobs all over the world. If a girl said I like animals, you can be a vet. There was a whole bunch of other things you could do. There’s a woman who is studying orangutans in Borneo. One woman was a volcanologist if that’s a word interesting. Just interesting jobs to open girls’ minds to a lot of things they can do that they probably don’t see every day to maybe inspire them like, “If I can see that, then I can probably be it.” You’re doing a good thing.
Thanks.
Addressing Parents’ Concerns About Children And Technology
The Who Smarted? Podcast is geared toward kids 5 to 10. Am I accurate?
I’d say 7 to 10, but 5 and 6-year-olds can still listen to it.
I don’t know if you’re encouraging kids to listen to it on their own or look at sites on their own. I was wondering because parents are worried about like, “My kids are too young to be on social media or the internet looking for things.” If something naughty comes on, are there protections? I’m curious about how you handle all those reservations that parents might have.
First of all, we don’t reach out to children directly and ask them to find the show. We know that close to 100% of the listening is driven by parents at least initially. In terms of making sure it’s a safe space, we don’t put the show on YouTube or any platforms like that where a kid may run into something that you don’t want them to.
We know that all the listening happens either on a podcast platform where once you’re in our show unless you actively leave the show to go listen to something else, you’re not going anywhere else or it’s on our website, which is very much a safe place with no possibility of anything that’s not right for a kid being there.
Most of the listening is co-listening. Mostly, it’s happening with parents either in the car or at bedtime or homeschool or in a classroom with teachers. Homeschool families use it a lot. There is almost always an adult present. If a parent chooses to let it play for their kids without them there, it’s going to keep auto-playing to the next episode. Your kid would have to be pretty savvy to figure it out. Also, it’s podcasting. I don’t know if you’re going to find a naughty podcast.
Not to worry about that. I think parents know their kids well enough to know they can be trusted with it alone. Most of our listening is co-listening. We keep very safe environments for both the families and the handful of brands that we bring on as advertisers.
How long has Who Smarted? been going?
We’re into our fourth year.
I’m curious about how you’ve evolved and what you’ve learned from doing this. I’m guessing you probably evolved.
When we started, we didn’t know anything about podcasting. We were like, “Let’s do a podcast and then it was like there are a lot of things. You have to learn. It’s adjacent to television production, but it’s quite different. One of the biggest things we learned is that with TV, you have to ask permission to make the show. You have to get money together, then the network owns the show and the relationship with the audience.
We never understood that until we started podcasting. We now have a very direct relationship with our audience, which we love. We love communicating with our listeners. We love that they’ll email us. We get ideas from them. We do shout-outs for the kids. This direct relationship allows us to see the impact we’re having. It allows us to hear from our homeschool parents, regular parents, and classroom educators about what’s working and what’s not working.
We’re able to evolve and respond to that. One of the things that we realized about a year ago is we were hearing from a lot of teachers that they love the show, but they couldn’t use it in their classrooms. They couldn’t use Who Smarted? in the classroom because it has ads on it. They didn’t want ads in the classroom. They also didn’t have the $40 a year to spend on the ad-free subscription. We said, “That’s easy. We’re going to offer an ad-free version to all classroom educators.”
Now, for any educator who wants to use Who Smarted? in their classroom without ads, just go to WhoSmarted.com. Click on educators and enter their email. Within a minute, they’re going to have a subscription they can use. We don’t make any money off of those episode plays. We’re impact-driven more than anything. For us, it’s exciting to know that more teachers can use Who Smarted? In the classroom that way.
We're impact-driven more than anything. It's exciting to know that more teachers can use 'Who Smarted' in the classroom. Share on XThe Future Of Educational Content And “Who Smarted”
What’s next on your trail?
We’re working on a new idea right now. That’ll come out in 2025. That’s going to be a short ten-minute show. That’s almost like the audio version of Brain Games in a way where it’ll train your brain by giving you historical examples of someone who’s achieved something, then explaining what the brain function was that allowed them to achieve this breakthrough and then training you a little bit.
On the way to work, you might learn a little more about critical thinking, how to be logical, how to solve math problems, how to memorize things, or how to remember names. All these different things that we all want to get better at. We’re uniquely suited to do that because we’ve been doing that kind of stuff for years. We love creating fun and short educational snippets. That’s going to be coming out in 2025.
You have a good track record so I guess that would help open up more doors for you. You’ve been doing this for a little while. We’ve been talking to Jerry Kolber. He’s a producer for a podcast for kids and parents called Who Smarted? If it’s okay, I want you to email me these links. You can say them now but I want you to email them to me because I will make sure I have links to however you want people to find you or your stuff.
The simplest one is to go to WhoSmarted.com. From there, you’ll get your links to listen on Apple or Spotify. You can listen on the site. Educators can get their free subscriptions there. For homeschool parents, we’ll give you 50% off the ad-free subscription if they email us. That’s all through WhoSmarted.com. If they want to check out our other stuff, it’s AtomicEntertainment.com. For purposes of what we’re talking about today, WhoSmarted.com is the best place to go to find our stuff. You can type in Who Smarted? into any podcast app and you’ll find it.
Conclusion And Call To Action: Checking Out “Who Smarted”
Thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it. Good for you for the work you’re doing. It’s unique and different. I’m glad you’re doing something for kids. I don’t know that much, but there’s not much on the market for that, I don’t think.
Not enough, honestly.
You’re feeding an important niche, so good for you. Thank you so much for being on.
Thanks.
‐‐‐
That was interesting. I hope all parents check that out. Go to wherever you get your podcast or wherever you get Raising Daughters and look up Who Smarted? You can also look online and get links and all that kind of thing. I listened to several of them. I thought they were fun and interesting. They’re short and sweet. These aren’t an hour long there. I think they are 5 to 8 minutes long, most of them and the ones I listened to. Your kids will find them fun. Interesting and quirky topics do interest kids. It’d be well worth your time. Listen to them together with your kids so you can ask more questions and have a conversation, and then you’re part of the learning process.
I’ll be back here as always with their brand-new episode in a week. If you have questions, send them in. Send an email to my wife at Anne@DrTimJordan.com. I will send an answer to you or do it here in the show. Thanks so much for being here today and listening to Jerry Kolber. I’ll be back here in a week with a new episode. Thanks so much for stopping by.
Important Links
- Jerry Kolber on LinkedIn
- Who Smarted?
- Atomic Entertainment
- Blue’s Clues Creator Angela Santomero Discusses How To Follow Life’s Clues To Find Happiness on Apple Podcasts
- Life Clues on Amazon
- Ologies
- No Boundaries on Amazon
About Jerry Kolber
Jerry Kolber is the co-creator and Showrunner of National Geographic’s #1 series, Brain Games, for which he received a Prime Time Emmy Nomination. Kolber and Atomic are frequent collaborators with icon Pharrell Williams, having created and produced Brainchild (Netflix) with Pharrell, as well as two upcoming documentaries.
Kolber is the co-creator and host of the world’s most popular 3x weekly kids educational podcast Who Smarted?, which had over 15 million downloads in its first three years.
Kolber’s other creator and Showrunner credits include Inked (A&E), Confessions of a Matchmaker (A&E), GE in the Wild (with Mythbusters’ Adam Savage), and the space documentary 14 Minutes from Earth (Netflix).
Kolber grew up in the swamp in South Florida. He was an avid cyclist, theater kid, and nationally ranked Lincoln-Douglas debater.