Art and entertainment influence almost every generation to an extent.
John Muir and Aldo Leopold influenced naturalists in the 1940s; Jacques Cousteau and Carl Sagan inspired current professors to study fields such as oceanography and space; and Bill Nye and the Kratt brothers motivated current STEM students to pursue degrees in their respective fields.
Around the mid-1990s and early 2000s, PBS Kids began airing science-related shows that defined many Generation Z childhoods: The Magic School Bus, Bill Nye the Science Guy, Cyberchase, Sid the Science Kid.
These shows, available to folks with and without cable, made science more accessible for young viewers, some of whom are now studying STEM fields at UW.
“I know for me, and a lot of the friends that I talked to, these shows were pretty fundamental in kind of getting us interested in science and even knowing it existed,” Sam Kreling, a graduating Ph.D. student in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, said. “I think it's really critical for kids to be exposed to these different science topics, whether it be wildlife biology, or how the human body works … I think there's still a lot of misconceptions on who can be a scientist, what science even is.”
Kreling vividly remembers a Magic School Bus episode on bat echolocation, which catalyzed her love for bats. Years later, she would study these mammals in Madagascar.
Kreling also explained that shows like Zoboomafoo exposed her to a world outside of what she would have seen in her backyard growing up in Northern California. She said she was a nerdy kid who enjoyed watching the science shows and documentaries PBS offered.
Zoboomafoo also made first-year Ph.D. student Claire Jensen realize that everyday people could interact with nature.
“I did kind of think that the Kratt brothers were a little bit crazy, and I thought that they probably had some special training, or there's something special about them that let them do their job,” Jensen said. “But I also thought it was really cool that they could display the outdoors and animals for people.”
Jensen grew up without cable and said that it made going over to her grandmother’s to watch shows like Hannah Montana feel like a treat. However, she recognized that the shows PBS aired felt more relevant and educational than those from Disney Channel and Cartoon Network.
“I think economic factors like whether you can pay for cable, or whether you want to pay for cable, shouldn't be a factor in whether you can have child-appropriate TV,” Jensen said. “I'm not saying that I think every kid should watch TV growing up, but I'm saying if there is a TV, they should have something to watch that is beneficial, a little bit educational. And so I think what PBS Kids tried to do was maybe connect kids to [more realistic] themes.”
Jensen, who studied computer science as an undergraduate and uses those skills in her current Earth and space sciences work, said that while she loved shows like Cyberchase, she doesn’t believe they influenced her to study her respective fields.
“I think maybe watching Cyberchase and not thinking that I could be one of those kids also maybe kind of helped me think that I couldn't do computer science, or that it was a little bit harder to do it,” Jensen said. “And I don't really know why I thought that the Cyberchase kids were so special, but I guess I just didn't have any other people to go off of.”
A 2019 report showed that within North American children’s television content, 65% of characters were white, and only 38% of characters were women. Jensen said she was luckily able to find organizations and extracurriculars that supported her passion for computer science, but would have liked more representation on screen while growing up.
PBS Kids improved its representation through more recent shows such as SciGirls and Wild Kratts. However, a recent action by the Trump administration threatens the future of all PBS entertainment.
President Trump asked Congress to rescind the $1.1 million that it originally set aside for PBS and NPR for the next two years. This loss of funding would hit small and rural communities particularly hard, as their local PBS and NPR stations usually heavily rely on federal funding.
Kreling believes these cuts threaten science communication and accessibility. Having been interviewed by KUOW — Seattle’s local NPR station — she believes it’s important to have outlets that are good at communicating research to the general public.
“I think it's just so important to have these public broadcasting services,” Kreling said. “[Where] if people have questions, there's actually someplace they can go to get answers and get exposed to things that they wouldn't normally be exposed to on a daily basis.”
Reach Science Editor McKenna Sweet at science@dailyuw.com. X: @mckenna_319 Bluesky: @mckennasweet.bksy.social
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