The popular YouTube series What If asks hypothetical conundrums that sometimes have deadly implications, but the show’s new spinoff softens those questions in order to appeal to a younger audience. Underknown, the owner of the What If brand, has partnered with YouTube to launch What If Kids, which will offer up interactive science lessons on the YouTube Kids app.
What If Kids is less intense than its big brother, but the spin-off has already started tackling difficult questions with the same scientific rigor employed by other Underknown programs. An episode that asks “what if humans didn’t make garbage?” doesn’t shy away from the sobering context of that question. For What If Kids, the reality of human waste is an opportunity to educate children between the ages of six and nine about the importance of reusing, reducing, and recycling.
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Compared to the original What If, the spin-off is less about nuking Mars and more about reinforcing the lessons children are learning at school. “What If Kids isn’t just a show for kids, it’s a show tailored to fit the school curriculum. It’s made to educate in a very entertaining way, and we are excited for Youtube Kids to feature it,” said What If Kids producer Maryna Hordiienko in a statement. “We’ve seen first-hand how successful the original version of the series has been, and how engaged our audience is with the content, and so it felt only right that we make a version just for kids, who arguably have the most curious minds of us all.”
Why will the world’s youth listen to the lessons this series imparts? Well, it helps that a robot named Cosmo is involved. From the point-of-view of an intergalactic outsider, the cheerful host directs the topics of conversation in all What If Kids episodes.
Underknown was inspired to launch What If Kids after watching the original version of the series become the #1 science show on social media. Between Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat, What If has generated more than 15 billion minutes of total watch time. That makes it the crown jewel of Underknown’s educational empire, which recently expanded to include YouTube science channel Aperture.
According to a press release from Underknown, 30 episodes of What If Kids will roll out across a 30-week period. Beyond that, who knows? The show’s official homepage says that it could contain a “limitless” number of episodes, so perhaps we’ll be asking ourselves “what if ‘What If Kids’ only ran for 30 episodes?” somewhere down the line.
