[upbeat music] Your kids are hearing about the news whether you're ready or they're ready or not. One study said two-thirds of kids aged eight to 14 are absorbing current events at least every few days, and almost none of it was made for them. They're getting the fear without the context, the headlines without any nuance, and the algorithms without any sort of filter.
And in a country arguing over whether to teach history or ban books, the question of who helps kids make sense of the world has never been more necessary and urgent. But someone is doing it. A few folks are actually. One example is a weekly print news magazine that launched the same month the country shut down. It is now the fastest-growing magazine in America.
Not the fastest-growing kids' magazine, the fastest-growing magazine, period. So what can I do to help the next generation build a healthy, lasting relationship with news and information? Every week, I ask someone working on the front lines of the future the most important question in the world: what can I do? I find out why they do the work and what you and I can do to support it.
I'm Quinn Emmett, and today's guest is Andrea Barbalich. Andrea is the editorial director of The Week Junior, the only weekly news magazine reporting current affairs directly to children ages eight to 14. Under Andrea's leadership, it has grown to over 155,000 subscribers, won a wall of editorial and design awards. I know I've recommended it before.
And they've built programs like their junior council, which we'll talk about today, where kids from across the country actually work with their editors, learn how to interview and write and produce real content for the magazine. Andrea's got 25-plus years in editorial leadership at places like Scholastic, Prevention, Child magazine. She's also the editor of a book I wish I'd frankly had as a parent years ago, wish I didn't need, called Feeling Safe: Talking to Children About War and Terrorism.
Andrea and I today, and I gotta tell you, this is truly, I think, one of my favorite conversations ever, we're gonna talk about how you explain wars and elections and climate change to an eight-year-old without either terrifying them or talking down to them, why a physical magazine is thriving in a world of eight-second attention spans, and what every parent, grandparent, teacher, and coach and more can do this week to help the kids in their lives become informed, curious, and resilient.
Let's go talk to Andrea. [upbeat music] Andrea, welcome to the show. You are basically a celebrity in my house. Not basically. [laughs] You are. I'm very excited to have you on the show today. Oh, thanks so much for the invitation. I'm thrilled to, to be having this conversation with you. Well, I will try not to ruin that for you, for me.
[laughs] I realized this morning I was tr- as I was counting the copies of The Week Junior that are just, of course, scattered throughout my home, because why would they be organized anywhere? I realized- [laughs]... it's like, at least for us, the cliché that's always true about, like, The New Yorker for adults in that there are- [laughs]... so many of them, they could just be, like, furniture essentially. So they're everywhere.
Back of our car, front of our car. Kids aren't even allowed to sit in the front. I don't know how they got up there. Couches, bathrooms, bedrooms. You got it. I mean- Well, thank you for subscribing. Oh, 100%. And, uh, I'm so thrilled to know that your family is enjoying it. That's amazing. Always happy to hear that.
I gotta tell you, and again, we'll get into all this, but the timing [laughs] of when you started it is at, turns out, pretty incredible, but also for the age of my children was really perfect. I always start folks with two questions, and it sounds a little bit like the same question, but it's not. And for some reason, folks like to answer the second one first. Are you ready? [laughs] I am. Okay.
Why do you have to do this work? So why, of everyone who could make The Week Junior, why does it have to be you? They contextualize each other. Why do you have to do this work? Why did you have to make The Week Junior? Does it... Do those make sense? I love all of those questions, and they are different, as you said. You're a delight. Thank you. So you're a good interviewer already. Oh, boy. I think that the work is vital all the time.
It's always important for us as caring adults to help children understand the world, what's happening in the world around them, and help them find their place in it, right? So to understand what's happening in the world, to be excited and interested about what's happening in the world, to be able to form their own opinion on controversial subjects, to think critically about what they're reading and hearing about, and ultimately to believe that they can make a difference in the world.
That's the mission, right? To raise engaged and aware and informed and involved citizens of the world. I would say that's a m- worthy mission all the time. Mm-hmm. But w- at the same time, we find ourselves in this time in our history that is incredibly volatile. We increasingly know how small the world is. We understand that
something that happens in an entirely different part of the world affects people in other parts of the world. We are bombarded with news all day long about very sometimes confusing events that change all the time. So what happened yesterday might not be true today. What ha- what's true today might not be true tomorrow, and it's all happening very rapidly. With all of that as a backdrop,
w- we're in this era of an incredible proliferation of media outlets. Mm-hmm. There is an endless array of media outlets where people can get information, and it's all the time. It's 24/7. And some of those outlets are irresponsible and error- inaccurate. All of that taken together makes itEspecially urgent right now that we try to help kids navigate their way through all of this and to feel knowledgeable about the world, and able to talk about it, and be able to form opinions about it.
That's what makes, I think, the mission of The Week Junior very important at this particular moment. As for why me, I would say, you know, I was very interested in the news from a very young age. I was fortunate to be raised in a family where the newspaper came into the house, and we watched the news at 6:00.
And, you know, we had conversations around the dinner table, and I had an aunt and uncle who were very involved in local politics, and cared very deeply about the world and getting involved and making a difference. So that was a, a wonderful foundation for me. And then when I got to middle school, I was chosen by my English teacher to write a column about our mid- about our school for the local newspaper, and that was it for me.
That was- Yeah... I'm gonna be a journalist. I never wavered. I never looked back. And I did go to journalism school, and I studied magazine journalism specifically. And when it came time for me to decide where I'm going to place my focus, w- of all of the subjects that I could cover as a journalist, where's my passion? What, where's my interest? What do I care about?
I gravitated toward children, and families, and child development, and liter- literacy and parenting. And so w- w- I think the opportunity at The Week Junior and why me is confluence of the two passions of my professional life, which have been, you know, the news and children, coming together to do something that isn't really happening in any other magazine in this country. And it's been, you know, just an incredibly exciting and rewarding experience for me.
And of all the things I could be doing with my career, I really feel that this is something that I'm just so passionate about, and it's kind of a, it's kind of a calling for me. It's not just a magazine. It's really a mission. I feel very grateful that I'm the one who, who gets to do it, and I think we have the best readers, the best audience of any publication in the country. It's been really incredible.
I love all of that. We should probably just stop there before I ruin it. [laughs] But thank you for your candor. Thank you for sharing all that. You spoke about the confluence, this intersection of your two great loves in this timely moment, among other things, the screens, like you said, the completely unedited, unregulated media sources.
Correct me if I'm wrong here. You launched The Week Junior in March 2020. Is that correct? An otherwise totally normal month for everybody. Everything shuts down. The children are home. Folks like myself are trying to teach preschool for about three hours before we just give up and go, "Is there anything I could hand this child that would keep them busy? Clearly this should not be my job."
But the mail's still showing up, and now somewhere between six years later, do you have the fastest growing magazine in America? D- is that what I read? It is the fastest growing magazine in America. And w- we did launch it at what turned out to be, you know, a- an unbelievable moment in our history where when we were...
All the months of planning that went i, you know, in the lead up to the launch, we never could have imagined- Mm-hmm... what would happen, and we didn't anticipate being in a pandemic. Our office shut down four days before our first deadline to the printer, so we all had to go home. We had to work remotely. We had to figure out how to get it done.
Didn't miss our deadline, and we haven't missed one since, and there hasn't been a slow news week since. [laughs] Shit. And it's been- You're welcome... [laughs] and it's been incredibly, you know, incredibly intense. Mm-hmm. But... And so on one hand you could say it's the worst possible time to launch this magazine, but it also happened to be the best possible time because of the, what you just said.
Kids were at home, couldn't go to school. They couldn't participate in their activities. They couldn't see their friends. They couldn't see their grandparents. And so in comes this magazine that is... Thank goodness for the US Postal Service not shutting down.
The magazine was delivered, and kids very quickly grew to love it, and their parents grew to be, you know, very appreciative of the magazine coming into the home, and sparking conversations, and giving kids something to do that wasn't on a screen. We just kinda took off from there. Difficult to explain to people who didn't have children during that time, for sure. But we were, and continue to be, of course, because things continue to be like they are.
Like you said, [laughs] you haven't run out of things to cover 'cause the news is the news. As we like to say i- in this work, many things can be true at once, which I, is also something I feel like I talk to my children about, or fortunately and unfortunately, you're not gonna run out of things to, to cover. What had to change? How long did it take you to realize we really have a very urgent purpose right now in a moment where... So my kids were, they were small.
I didn't show them the New York Times front page that said 100,000 people are dead, and then we, you know- Right... 10 times that. One, they didn't, they barely knew they had hands and feet at that point. They didn't know anything. [laughs] They can't contextualize that sort of thing. But you were saying, "I'm gonna deliver the news on a weekly basis to children in a hell of a time to do that."
How did that affect production? How did that affect, affect editorial decisions? When we were planning the launch, we planned for a very celebratory, festive cover. And I mean, the cover line was, "Hello, world." Mm. It was very positive, very upbeat. And about a week before the launch, the World Health Organization declared the pandemic. I remember very clearly hearing that-The World Health Organization said that and
literally three seconds later saying we can't run this cover and so we had to rethink it. How can we possibly be a news magazine if we don't go out and tackle head-on the biggest story in the world, the most serious health crisis in 100 years? We knew we had to face it, but how do we face it in a way that's true to the Week Junior brand?
Which, to be clear, was brand new. Right. It was, it was brand new. Nobody knew us. Right. This magazine did not- This is your brand. You're saying what we come out with is we're setting the bar for ourselves as well. We're making a statement from week one. So the deadline was on Tuesday. On Saturday, we ripped it up, we threw it away, and we started over.
And what we wound up with was a magazine that made the coronavirus, because that's what it was called then, it was called the coronavirus. Mm-hmm. It hadn't started being called COVID yet. And it was a red heart, and the cover line was Acts of Kindness. And we focused on the incredible...
Yes, we told the truth about what does it mean, what is a pandemic, and why did this happen, and how is this happening, and what's going on here, but then we also focused on the people who were helping other people, the doctors and the nurses and the first responders, and the ordinary neighbors and citizens who were stepping up to help other people, and that became the cover story, and it, and it became really an iconic cover for us.
It became, I would say, a blueprint for how we would cover any kind of story like this. We knew that this wasn't the only story we were going to do about the pandemic. The pandemic, at that point, we weren't sure how long it was gonna last, and we didn't think it would last as long as it did, but we knew this is an ongoing story and so it became the blueprint.
We told the truth and we were very honest and very direct, but as you said, limiting the details to facts that are age appropriate. There's no need to... We didn't need to emphasize the horrors of it. Mm-hmm. And then look for the helpers and focus on the helpers. So it's also... It's kind of what happened and then what are people doing about it. Those two things in combination are a recurring theme for us at The Week Junior.
Fortunately and unfortunately, right? Let's contextualize for a moment where we are now, 'cause again, my kids are 11, 12, 13, so we don't do phones. They... I feel like they've both given up fighting for them slash they're furious at me constantly. They just have stopped telling me. They have iPads. They can kinda text each other. Their friends, however, in their schools, Virginia banned phones during the daytime, but they can have them on buses, and some of their friends have them.
Most of their friends, pretty good about it, otherwise this stuff is inescapable. So you have this Junior Voices survey, I think, that you did with YouGov. Right. And I think it said 67% of kids ages... I apologize.
Your age range, it's like- Exactly, 8 to 14. Yeah. They hear about news at least every few days, if not daily, and like you alluded to, they are being saturated by w- however you wanna say it, absorbing a version of what is actually happening through all of these different sources, but no one's really curating that for them or not.
Besides your work and how much you're trying to be an antidote to that, what are you hearing, uh, when you talk to kids of that age who are capable of responding and parents about, I guess, what that unfiltered, relentless exposure actually looks like and what it feels like and what it does to them in conversations around the dinner table?
As you mentioned, we do a survey every year with YouGov, the polling firm, to gauge the attitudes and opinions of this generation of children. We also have kids and parents writing to us constantly. Our email inbox is overflowing with letters and photos and comments, and we're constantly in touch with children in this demographic and their parents, and I think we have a pretty good handle on what they think and what their challenges are as a result.
You know, kids, as you mentioned, I mean, it's incredible that even your 13-year-old doesn't have a phone. I think that's really admirable, and I think it's gonna hap- start happening more and more, that parents are gonna delay that. But in any case, even if they don't have a phone, uh, in this age group it's not possible to shelter kids from what's happening in the world. They're online. They study current events in school.
They talk to their friends. They're hearing conversations at home. They may hear, overhear media at home. So you can't prevent kids from knowing about events in the world. Mm-hmm. And they don't want you to prevent them from knowing about events in the world. When we ask them in our surveys, which we've done, you know, for the...
every year for the past six years, kids believe very strongly that it is important for them to be, uh, informed about what's happening in the world. Mm-hmm. They want to know. They tell us, "We wanna know what the adults know." They don't want information to be sugarcoated. They tell us that even if the news is difficult or upsetting, they wanna know about it,
but they want it explained to them in a way that is age appropriate. Mm-hmm. And most news is created for adults, you know, very long articles in many cases with, you know, information and words they may not understand. It's images, photographs, still photographs and video can be very upsetting and distressing. So what kids need is the adults they trust, and in, and I hope in our case, the magazine they trust, to explain it to them in a way that dials down the noise.
We like to say we're a calm voice in a loud world, that we explain things in a calm, direct, honest, always honest manner, and we are very careful about the details we include. We're extremely selective about the images that we choose, and we hope that this, you know, very specific approach to-Talking about the news for kids really helps them.
We always want to be a source of calm and understanding and explanation rather than a source of additional confusion or upset. What we hear from parents is that they appreciate that. They can see that's what we're doing and they appreciate the approach that we take and in fact that it helps them guide conversations at home so there's a real benefit to the whole family to helping kids understand what's happening in a way that's part, you know, geared toward them- Mm-hmm...
and then inviting that kind of conversation that's going to further their understanding and perhaps correct some mis- misconceptions that they may have. Kids get it wrong sometimes. They hear things that aren't true. They may be hearing bits and pieces or, and may not understand the full context and that's something else that we try to do at The Week Junior and that I think I know parents can do as well at home is to answer the questions honestly and help them,
y- you know, help them really see what's happening. Well, one, I just, before we finish in a long time, wanna thank you for helping to raise my children here because- [laughs]... it's a service and I am not nailing it myself. [laughs] So I appreciate it. I'm, every day my, every day my wife and I, we're just such nerds. We're both very proud to have curious, caring children and at the same time they ask so many questions all of the time. Can I have like a minute? Go read your Week Junior.
[laughs] Asa, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give them your phone number. You grew up in news, right? Middle school you were, you were writing a column. You understand that comes along with the job of making editorial decisions. Parents, what do they always say, right? Sign up. The, this is your life now. You have made a decision, now you have to do the thing.
And some of those decisions are gonna be much easier than others, but you're gonna get them context and opinions and perspectives and things will change, right? You can put a blanket in the bed with them. Definitely don't put a blanket with... Put them on their back. You know, it, it, it never changes. Formula, breast milk, the whole thing. But at some point you have to start making those decisions. How have they
changed for you and your team over the past six years in a world of it really is a, for parents, for news editors, a control what you can control. Like you both have so much power, but also you are fighting an enormous tide. How do you decide what to feature? How do you decide where to set the record straight?
What to include, what not to include and how has that changed as again, it's hard. We're living in the world's like worst game of telephone basically. I think that's the hardest part of my job. Sometimes we get comments from people who say, "I can't believe you can fill up 32 pages of a magazine every week for kids. How do you fill it up?"
How do you figure out- You know, "Where, where do you get all those ideas from?" And I say, "The hard part is not filling it up, the hard part is deciding what to leave out." Mm-hmm. And so we're very conscious of all the things you just said about the decision-making power that we have and how vital that is to the children who are reading the magazine.
So many difficult stories to choose from every week. One thing we say often is, "That may be a story but that might not be a story for The Week Junior." Can you give me an example of that if you don't mind? I mean, I'm sure there's seven million [laughs] of them right now but... Well we try to filter it through the lens of is this something that is so prevalent and being talked about so extensively that we can provide a service by helping to explain it.
You have a responsibility to almost do that, right? So, right. It's our responsibility and it's our opportunity. Mm-hmm. So is there something we can do to help the situation? Can we shed some light on what's happened or is this something that is really not age appropriate or there's nothing here for us to do? And many
of the stories that fall under the umbrella of politics I would say fall into that category. If it's just the Democrats and the Republicans fighting over something it's not really a story for us. If it's just an ongoing argument- Mm-hmm... there's nothing for us to say. But if it's a decision, if there's legislations that's passed or if the government shuts down- Mm...
because they can't agree, then it's a story because it affects everyone. Sure. I mean for us, for example, and I don't remember like a... Obviously the government has shut down or almost shut down 72 times in different versions over the past like seven days, but for us we live in a very heavily NASA Armed Forces area, right? A third of each of my kids' classes moves in or out every two years. I grew up that way.
I was used to it but when the government shuts down and then the military doesn't start getting checks or folks who work in CIA, whatever, I mean, you know, these, we got these folks everywhere. That is a material impression that's being made on them knowing that their friend's parents may very well be lining up at the church's food line down the street because most people
in the US are not, don't have a ton of savings. That is something where I would very proactively go, w- how, what is the best way to explain to them? Who is... Uh, 'cause the communicator matters too, not just the communications. Who is best suited to explain this to them that doesn't overwhelm them but helps them understand the magnitude?
Uh- And then there's, you know, there are three major wars going on right now, right? There's a war in Ukraine, there's a war in Gaza, and there's a war in Iran and other, and surrounding countries. So that is very important for children to understand. That's something that's a fact of life right now. Many children-Have people who are directly affected who may live there.
Many children have family members who are in the military. Then there are the effects such as, you know, the rise in gas prices, which is, affects families every day. We want kids to know about what's happening, and we will show a map of where it's taking place. But we're not going to cover that story every single week. An adult news magazine might have multiple stories about the war every week, but we try to provide the balance of we, we cover it when there's something that has changed. Mm-hmm.
Something that it is an event that is different from last week or the week before, and then we also provide a balance. A child opens the magazine, and the biggest story in the issue that week is about the war in Iran on the left-hand page.
On the right-hand page, we might cover a study about a dinosaur fossil, or we might do, you know, the story about the amazing birth of orangutans in the wild or, you know, Olympi- Olympians and Paralympians bringing home gold medals, something positive on the right to balance it. And so that's kind of how we navigate. And then for the most part, we don't cover violent crime, for example. If the story becomes so big and so unavoidable, we may cover it.
For the most part, that's something that we prefer not to tackle. And when we d- make those decisions, we're thinking about the age range of the kids who are reading this magazine. It's, if we say it's eight to fourteen and we know some seven-year-olds are reading it, when I make that decision, I'm thinking about that, that eight, that seven or eight-year-old who's opening up this magazine, and I'm thinking about their maturity level and their vulnerability and making my decisions based on that.
We haven't talked about that this is kind of pre The Week Junior, like, your life's work, how to talk to children about these extreme, often violent things. And it sounds like from your experience, a lot of the time is, "We, we might not cover it," because it could be so impactful to that seven-year-old or that fourteen-year-old. And like you said, only doing it when something has changed that's meaningful and really balancing that out.
That's all part of the editorial process is not just how do we word this headline or what photo we use, as important as those are. Of all the things we do, I would say we probably spend the most time on those decisions of what's going in the issue this week. There's the breaking news.
Those breaking news stories get decided on Monday, and the deadline's on Wednesday. That's how fast it is. That's how quickly we turn things around, and if there's something that happens on a Tuesday night, we can... or even Wednesday morning sometimes, we can get it into the issue. So w- we have to be very quick, and sometimes we make a decision on Monday, and we change our mind on Tuesday.
You know, that's just the nature of what we do. But then beyond the breaking news, there's many more pages in the middle and the back of the magazine that are about subjects that are not so difficult and so contentious. There's animal studies and scientific breakthroughs and sports stories and stories about new books and new movies and, you know, all the things that we know kids love.
And so again, it's that balance, telling the difficult story when we need to and not shying away from that. It is our responsibility. It is our mission, whether it's a war or a, a controversial Supreme Court decision or a protest throughout the country or a natural disaster that turns out to be devastating.
We have a responsibility to tell those stories, but then we also provide that balance so that kids are seeing that yes, terrible things do happen in the world, but also the world is full of exciting, fun, amazing things that happen and wonderful people doing amazing things in the world, and that's what we hope helps them maintain their hope and their optimism, the positivity and the curiosity that, that you just referenced.
We have to be able to show them that world, right? That it is not just theoretical or possible, that there are still people actively working to build it right now, right? For them and for themselves and because generations of people have done it before us. I wanna talk about how you're s- not just keeping these children's attention spans but, again, growing your readership.
Part of what makes me so thankful, besides the fact that you do such a wonderful job with this, and then so my first three jobs were in print. I love print, right? I truly do. So, so when this came around, we also... I, of course, went down the rabbit hole of there, there has to be more examples of this, and we're really big fans of Kazoo, which is fantastic. Honest History is one we found pretty recently, is really great.
They showed up with a Israel/Gaza issue, and I was like, "Uh, okay, you got a responsibility to try to do this right." And they did a really good job. And what I really appreciate ab- and again, I'm a Sesame Street kid.
I'm a Mister Rogers kid. Like, people who said, "This is what I think I can bring to it. This is what I think I can do, but I'm also understanding that this is a responsibility." And I think, again, it's part of the attention span thing is in, in holding off my thirteen-year-old and these kids from phones, part of what we've acknowledged, and we're very privileged to be able to do this, is we said, "Oh, we can't just say no.
We have to offer alternatives." And this was very helpful to us because when my daughter was like, "I think I might b- wanna play volleyball," we're like, "Congratulations. Here's a volleyball net." Like, it's not Roblox, you know? And my son was like, "Piano's fun." I'm like, "Congrats. Here's a keyboard." You know, we're trying to offer that, and I feel like The Week Junior and these other ones do a really great job of that. Because again, it's not... It's The Week.
You're saying, "I'm gonna show up every week and be this antidote for children who are otherwise overwhelmed and parents who are like, 'I mean, I'd like them to get the news, but I don't like the context of how it is being delivered to them right now.'" I don't have a question. I just wanted to say thank you for that. That's it. That's what-- I just keep thinking about that. That is really wonderful.
Let's talk about how my children would look at screens if their e- until their eyes melted for a second. So again-That's true, but also they carry this thing around. It's everywhere. Meanwhile, their attention span for their age is a nightmare, right? Because of the way it's being programmed. You and I grew up with like, oh, should they advertise cereal to kids on Saturday morning cartoons? Now it's everywhere all the time from influencers, whatever.
What do you seem [chuckles] to understand or have learned about the relationship between kids and this physical entity that everybody else in the digital media world have gotten wrong? Like, w-why is this working? I wanna just take one second to agree with you about the two other magazines that you mentioned. I think they're doing an amazing job, and their missions are very worthwhile, and they're doing j-just wonderful work.
When we were getting ready to launch The Week Junior, we heard a lot of skepticism. No child's gonna read anything in print. Mm. All kids wanna do is watch videos. Kids are glued to their screens. What makes you think this is, this magazine is gonna be a success? People told us we were absolutely crazy to be doing this, and we believed in it. It turned out to be w-we were right in our bet, in our gamble.
We, we believed that a quality product that really understood children and understood what it's like to be a 10-year-old and how they engage with the world would be successful. What I believe is that it's not so much the platform or the method of d-delivering the information as it is the information itself. If you create
a magazine in print that is informative and en-engaging and exciting and fun, kids will respond to it. And there are some things about print that are possible only with print. Mm. So kids love to get the magazine in the mailbox at their home with their name on it. That's something that you can't do with something that's digital. They like to collect the magazines in special folders, and they like to read the magazine to their dog or their cat or their- Mm-hmm... pet chicken. Mm-hmm.
They like to take it and read it on the monkey bars, and they like to read it in their tree house, and they like to take it with them on family trips, and it becomes this very physical thing that's theirs. Mm-hmm. When we first launched the magazine, we did the, we did a, a research study of the children who were reading it. This was within the first six months, and we made a word cloud.
The words that we heard directly from children and how they described the magazine. The biggest word in the cloud was love. Yeah, you know, kids don't think, "Oh, The Week Junior is really gonna help me learn something, and it's really good for me." They think, "I love The Week Junior. The Week Junior is fun.
The Week Junior is exciting, and I can't wait to read it when it comes. I run to the mailbox to get it, and I read it and I save it." Like you said, you have piles of The Week Junior all over your house, right? That is very common, and so just incredibly rewarding for all of us who create it. I think it comes from a deep understanding of children and a deep respect for their intelligence.
We really believe in kids, and I think that our belief in them comes through in how we write and how we edit and the photos that we choose and the mix of stories that we choose for them, that we believe that they can understand these difficult topics, whether it's a bit difficult world event or a research study or whatever complicated thing that is sometimes hard for adults to, to understand.
I mean, a Supreme Court decision about tariffs, you know, that's hard for all of us, right? Mm-hmm. So how do you explain that to a child? But how, and how do you do it in a way that makes the child feel confident? Mm. That makes the child feel, "I can have this conversation with an adult because I know what I'm talking about. I thought about this and I made up, I had made up my mind on this issue, and I can be articulate about it.
And then further, here's an action step I can take to make a difference." So it's all those things together, and I think it all comes down to the understanding that we have of kids and the belief, our belief in them and, and our respect for them and the choices that we made that are designed to be fulfilling our mission and fulfilling our responsibility, but also bringing a lot of excitement and joy and wonder to the amazing children who read it.
And you asked a question earlier about how has that changed over the past six years, and I would say- Mm... if anything, we've probably leaned more into the excitement and the fun. As the issues have become more and more contentious and more and more kind of fast and furious, w-we still cover the difficult stories that we need to cover. That is our responsibility.
But we also make sure that there is a lot of fun and excitement and wonder to balance that. And I think- Mm... we have probably leaned a little bit more toward that side of things just because of how difficult the world has been to... from the very first week when we launched during the pandemic to, you know, where we are now. My kids, we have this little idea, I don't remember where it came from.
It's the idea that they get, they're given a little trust, and a bunch of little trusts, should they succeed with them, might become a big trust, like staying at home alone, right? Not burning down the house. Whatever it might be. You've earned a lot of trust here because of not only your ability to inform them, but to contextualize things, to respect their intelligence, but respect this particular age range and the fact that their brains aren't completely wired yet, much less their emotions.
They're barreling into puberty, which I am now being re-informed is a complete nightmare, right? Everything is existential every day. Every thought, it's a nightmare. But at the same time, again, they're being overwhelmed by these phones and news sources earlier and earlier in more places than ever. Like you said, hopefully maybe there's gonna be some backlash to that.
I remember I heard this parenting thing once. It said, "Never forget this is their first time on this planet."It's ours too, but I feel like I've been here for twenty-seven generations at this point. You are taking that trust and saying, "I'm gonna be an intervention. I think I've earned enough trust to be an intervention in your children's lives before a detour, before they can get overtaken by those things," right?
The manosphere and all this other shit, all the stuff we do to little girls and their bodies and, and boys at this point. You're saying not just print, but the news can be not just informative and make you feel safe, but feel confident that there are reliable sources, there are people who are looking out for you, that facts can be verified.
H-how much does that, carrying that trust weigh on you as you do this every week? And again, two days ahead of time, you're saying, "We gotta switch the whole front page." It is an enormous responsibility that I don't take lightly. The fact that we launched during such an incredible, incredibly difficult time for the world did help us earn that trust quickly, but it's something that I know we have to maintain. We have to work very hard to maintain it.
It is a real privilege to be allowed into the home, to, to have this magazine going into the home where it's read by the child and read by the p- man- many parents read it as well, read it along with them. Many grandparents read it. I do believe it's a sacred trust that we are being trusted in that way to have that kind of influence on children. And
w- I lose a l- a lot of sleep over some of the decisions that I make. There have been some stories throughout our first six years that have kept me up at night for many nights straight.
When we ship the issue to the printer, I think to myself, "I hope I did, I hope I did okay. I hope I did right by America's children." I kinda have a checklist in my mind of how about this child, and how about this child, and how about this family, and how about their background, and how do I make sure that in a world as divided and polarized as this, that there can be this
one thing that everybody reads and agrees is doing okay by telling these stories and being fair about it? It's a real responsibility. We agonize over every word, every picture. We really hope at the end of the day, because it is in print, once it goes to the printer and it's printed, you can't change it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You can't take it back.
So every week, I just hope this is excellent, this is fair, this is balanced, this is clear, this is accurate, and this is something that will improve the child's life, improve the family's life, and be something that's very special. And I, you know, we launched six years ago, and some of those kids who read the magazine in the first year are in college now.
One of the children who were, who was a member of our junior council the first year we launched it sent me his high school graduation announcement last year. And so I see that they're growing up, and I think about, wow, you know, when they're older, I hope they think back on The Week Junior and think, "Oh, I read that magazine. I love that magazine.
That made, that magazine made a difference to me." And that's, you know... What could be more rewarding than that? So much of parenting, child raising, grandparenting, whatever the flavor is, reliably showing up f- in the small things, in the big things, right? And w- we've really struggled to do that as a country. You know, there was a report last week, I think, that said, you know, we spend
per capita like five times as much on the elderly as we do on children. And we can see that everywhere in our institutions, in the decisions we made, and complete lack of childcare, like homes, all this. I think it's probably really easy with how distracted our adults are these days, often understandably, and by all these decisions, for kids to feel like they don't matter.
We would only need to show them some of these statistics of how our country su- supports kids and families, and parents and mothers, and people who wanna become mothers [chuckles] for them to be like, "Boy, that doesn't look great any way you measure it." You mentioned your junior council. Th-this trust goes both ways. Like, by showing up every week, you have said, "You matter. We are paying attention to you, and we would also like you to participate."
Tell me about this junior council. What does that participation tell you about this next generation of kids who you are effectively helping to raise? Thank you. [laughs] Well, the junior council is a contest that we have. It's a program that we launched our very first year, and it's, 12 children are chosen to be on the council every year, and they spend four months with us meeting with our editors and with guest speakers that we bring in.
It could be anybody from, you know, an award-winning author to a member of Congress, to somebody who works at the World Wildlife Fund to talk to them about their work. And every semester, the, the children choose a topic that they care about. It could be anything from hunger to helping animals to helping the environment. This semester that we're working on right now is helping your community. And they...
This idea comes from them, and they learn about how to make a difference on, in that area, in their community, in their town, in their school, in their community. What can they do to make a difference? And then they write articles, they interview experts, and they have their work published in the magazine. And they, when they graduate from the junior council program, they become junior journalists. Mm-hmm.
And they are eligible to be chosen to report on stories that may arise. We've had kids go to, you know, red carpet events and interview-Movie stars. We've had one of our junior council members interviewed Michelle Obama when she had a TV program coming out. They interviewed the head of the FDA when the COVID vaccine was approved.
So they become junior journalists, and they can continue reporting for us at different times. The whole idea is for them to learn how to take action in a, on a cause they care about. [gentle music] And so we do have that program, but that's 12 kids every year. That's a theme that is running through The Week Junior every week. We have a lot of reader-generated content that we publish about kids, what they're doing in their community, what they're doing in their town.
They send us photos of, you know, the bake sale they had or how they sold bracelets to raise money for a cause, or- Mm... what their dreams are for America, or how they're going to... what they're gonna do for Earth Day. Constantly inspiring them to find their voice, believe in themselves, believe they can make a difference, and they are so excited to do this. They really- they're so passionate about the causes that they care about.
They're very caring. They're very focused on justice, and fairness, and equality, and, you know, how we can all join together to make a difference, and what can I individually do, and what can I do as part of a group. Mm. And you see this incredible optimism for participation in, in the world, and it's so inspiring for all of us. This is what we see over and over again with kids in this generation, and it really...
You see their enthusiasm, and it's infectious, and it really gives me hope. You know? It gives me hope that they are, it, just incredible human beings who will make a difference in the world and go on to live, you know, very rewarding lives. In the spirit of Sesame Street, and Daniel Tiger, and, God, what did my kids watch? What was that show we loved? I felt...
'Cause sometimes I watch them. Octonauts. Octonauts. I don't know if you know Octonauts. It's amazing. The little adventurers under the sea. My kids know 10 times as much about the ocean than I do, and it's like my job. They love nothing more to correct me, so that's super fun for everybody. You reach... What is your readership right now? What are we, April? God, it's April. 155,000. Amazing.
Uh, y- you're h- h- helping to raise, and trust, and protect, but educate, and inspire, and activate, even, this generation of, of young kids, and a lot of journalism still, probably understandably incorrectly, doesn't wanna lean into advocacy and activating people. But then a lot of others need to [laughs] in a justified way, 'cause we need to be more useful than ever. You're doing that.
You're reaching, you know, 155,000 kids and their families, and whoever else is reading it, the dog, as you mentioned. [laughs] But how do we expand that scope? What are concrete things, besides subscribing to The Week Junior- [laughs]... which you should do, that adults who are listening can help do to help the kids in their lives?
Kids they're teaching, they're raising, they're co-raising, they're grandparents of, whatever, to build healthy and hopefully resilient, durable relationships with news and information in society. What can they do right now? I think one of the most important things that parents can do is to have conversations with their kids, to not hesitate to talk about things that may be confle- complex or confusing.
And especially if kids come to you and ask a question, answer them honest- honestly, and, and directly, and calmly, and clearly in an age-appropriate way, and without providing more detail than their maturity level can handle. But also asking them questions. Asking them, "How do you feel about this? Do you know about this? How much do you... How much have you heard about this? Where do... What do you believe? Where do you stand?"
Helping them- Mm... to form opinions and to be able to talk to you about them. And they don't have to be the same as your opinions. Mm-hmm. You know? Oh, they're not. Don't worry. It's [laughs] They're not. Not even close. You know, kids can disagree, and I think that's a really important skill, especially in a country as polarized as ours, to be able to have conversations respectfully with people you disagree with.
So that's something that, that you can foster within the family. I would say that any conversation you have with your kids can be an opportunity to share your family values, whatever those may be. If there's a war going on, without necessarily taking sides, you can talk about, you know, "I'm really concerned for the people who live in this country and for the mili- members of the military who are fighting, and I'm hoping for peace, and I'm hoping they can reach an agreement."
That, all of that conversation really helps to reassure kids. I was talking earlier about there's always good people doing good things to help others. And so Mr. Rogers used to say, "Look for the helpers." They're always there. No matter what terrible thing might be happening, there's always people stepping up to, to help others, and to highlight those examples.
And then to take it a step further, and donation as a family that, that you can make. World Central Kitchen is setting up, um, in a war zone or a natural disaster site and feeding people. Do you wanna donate to that organization? If there's a, a decision that you disagree with in the government, can you write to your elected official? Encourage your child to write that letter. And then the next step is what can your child do on their own?
They can write the letter, they can ha- they can raise the money, they can get involved in some way in the cause that they care about, and may- if they're concerned about people being hungry in a war zone, there's also people who are hungry in their community that they can help. So I think all of these steps that we can all take to help our kids understand what's going on in the world, and to feel educated, and be able to talk about things that are happening and, you know.
It's a, it is amazing what questions kids ask, as you were saying, and to be able to answer those questions and have that conversation, I think that's the most important thing all of us can do, and to establish that trust. You know, we feel that wehave the trust of parents who will-- who bring us into their home, but there's also the trust between the parent and the child.
The children need to trust that you will answer their questions, you will be truthful, you're there for them, you're there to reassure them, you're there to explain difficult things to them, and that, we hope, you know, sets the-- lays the foundation for a lifetime of those conversations. The conversations only get harder as they get older. That's what we hope we're inspiring with what we're doing at The Week Junior. If my wife is in the bath, does she have to answer their questions right then?
[laughs] Or... 'Cause sh- they seem to not think that's a thing, and I'm like, "She's explicitly gone away from you for a reason." Right. So- She can do that. She can take that time. Perfect. [laughs] We'll, we'll write her a doctor's note. That was so wonderful. I was on a call with the folks from Sesame Street for legit, like, eight, maybe nine minutes, if I'm pushing it, about how to talk to younger children about climate.
And we, in those eight and a half minutes, we really talked about, not surprisingly, 'cause they've always done such a good job of this, about, it's about relationships and the ecosystem of which they're inextricably a part of, and we've lost a lot of that. But just send them outside if you can. And I was like, "Well, that's it. Eight, nine minutes with Sesame Street. Career wrapped up. I'm good. That covers it. Nothing else to aim for."
This is close to that, and I, I really appreciate it. I'm so glad it is you helming this ship. There's a lot of icebergs out there. This has been a really great conversation, and I'm so- And you're very-... grateful for your support. You're very kind. I always ask guests this last question of... And they're all like, "When would I have time to do that?" Are you reading anything these days you would like to recommend?
It can be about news, or it could be a coloring book. We often-- If parents like to talk about Dragons Love Tacos, which is also a great choice. Any books you wanna recommend? You would think that I would not have time to do that much reading for pleasure outside of the 24-hour reading assignment they, that I have as the- Correct... as the editor of The Week Junior.
But right now I'm reading the book Theo The Golden, which, um- Oh my God, my wife just read that. Which [laughs] She wouldn't stop talking about it. I'm really enjoying it. I'm not finished yet- Good... but I'm really enjoying that. I have been told the entire thing. Instead of reading my book, I have just been told what happens in that book. But it sounds fantastic. Can't thank you enough. I really appreciate this.
Everybody should get The Week Junior. And keep doing the wonderful work you're doing, too. [outro music] That's it. You can read our critically acclaimed newsletter and get notified about new podcast conversations at importantnotimportant.com. Thanks so much for listening, and thanks for giving a shit. [outro music]