Plenty of parents are unsettled by abysmal quality of videos aimed at kids on Youtube — which range from the merely dull/hacky/ultra-branded to the slurry of possibly-autogenerated brain porridge that James Bridle recently documented.
The design director and video-producer Rion Nakaya got sick of this same sludge, so she created The Kid Should See This, a site that curates genuinely gorgeous and thought-provoking videos — ones that aren’t necessarily aimed at kids, so anyone, of any age, would also dig them.
My favorites so far include “How does a bowling alley work?”, “A 15-color rainbow spiral made with 12,000 dominoes”, “How To Make a Navigational Chart”, and “Ballet Rotoscope”. I’m particularly into the ones like “Journey of a Letter: How a birthday card is sent and delivered in London”, which illustrate the marvels of the hidden infrastructure that underpins everyday life.
In selecting videos for TKSST, which are all pretty short, Nakaya not only looks for what she calls “wonder and ‘Wow!’ moments” but also seeks to clarify information that’s often misunderstood, like climate change science, evolution, and clean energy solutions, and amplify women and people of color working in STEM fields. While there’s some kids’ content in the mix—like this classic 1981 crayon factory visit from Mister Roger’s Neighborhood—she avoids all the clichéd and gimmicky stuff, like shows with over-the-top sound effects and zany mad-scientist hosts who make terrible puns. “Why dumb it down when the subjects can be compelling on their own?” she asks.