Interview with Brains On! Podcast Host Molly Bloom

I’m a big fan of podcasts! I listen to several weekly when I’m cleaning, on the go, or even just relaxing. My children love to listen to podcasts as well! If you all have followed along on Instagram, in my Instastories I’m often sharing the podcast Brains On! as an example of how my children are learning on the go. Brains On! is a science podcast mad just for kids. Brains On! explores so many topics, and gets kids excited about science and learning. I was contacted to interview the host, Molly Bloom, but I knew it would be even more exciting if my children had the chance to ask her some questions! They thought it was super cool to talk to someone that they listen to weekly. Find out what they wanted to know about their favorite podcast below! 

MommyWeek Kids Interview

BabyCake: Where did you get the show idea from? 

Molly: About 6 years ago, I really wanted to do something for kids because I know kids are awesome and smart, and I had done a kids radio show in college. So I was working here at Minnesota Public Radio with Marc Sanchez & Sanden Totten and we were all kind of bored in our current jobs, and I was like “Hey guys! Do you want to try to make something for kids with me?!” And they were like “Yeah!” The three of us were brainstorming about it and we knew that we wanted to make something that showcased how smart kids are. We knew a bunch of kids in our lives who got really interested in a bunch of topics. We knew kids who were super impressed with dinosaurs, or plumbing, or bugs, or space, so it sort of made sense to do things in a science focused way because so many of those topics touched on science and we knew kids had lots of questions, so we sort of settled on this science idea. We knew that we didn’t want the show to talk down to kids because kids are super smart. We knew that we wanted to have a lot of kids on the show and those were sort of the basic principles of why we started. 

BabyCake: Also, where did you get Bob?

Molly: (Giggles) I think Bob’s first appearance was a one line appearance in a fake movie trailer we did. I think that was the first one. He was our stand in for shlubby humans. I think his first biggest part was in our episode about dogs sense of smell. (Yusuf: “I love that episode!”) I think that was his first big appearance. We liked him and thought he was funny, and whenever we need to show that humans are kind of silly, we use Bob! He’s voiced by a guy we work with here at Minnesota Public Radio and he has a lot of fun being Bob! 

BabyCake: Can you make an episode about cats? 

Molly: We have made one episode about cats! We started talking about how their eyes are super cool, and then we got into how their tails get fluffy. So we did an episode about cats a while ago. It’s probably time for a new cat episode! 

BabyCake: Do you have pets? 

Molly: Yes! I have two cats in my house, and my parents have a dog, so I get to see lots of animals. Right now we also have a mama duck in our backyard and she’s sitting on her eggs. She was there last year too for several weeks. So she’s kind of like apart of our family right now.

Yusuf: What’s your profession as of right now? 

Molly: I do this for my job. I make Brains On! It’s my full time job here at Minnesota Public Radio. I’m a podcast host and journalist and radio producer. 

Yusuf: Why do you think your podcast has become so popular with kids? You have a lot of listeners. 

Molly: I think that part of it is that we don’t talk down to kids. So I think that kids like that because kids are super smart and they can tell when people are not respecting them. I think because we do have a lot of kids on the show, it just makes our show better because the topics we’re covering, they all come from our audience. We don’t do a show topic if our audience hasn’t suggested it. We know all of our topics are interesting to our audience. I think that’s a part of it. 

Yusuf: Do you have any big goals regarding the podcast in the future? 

Molly: Yes! We want to keep making more ambitious episodes and do more complicated things. We’re also doing a couple of spin-off shows. We’re launching one next week called “Smash, Boom, Best.” That is where we do those debate episodes like Dolphins vs. Octopuses, so we’re doing a spin-off that’s only debates. It has some fun silly things, similar to our debate shows but it has a couple of new funny kind of elements to it that we hope people will like. We’ve been experimenting with making other new interesting shows that kids will like. We’ve also been playing around with making games for Alexa smart speakers. 

Yusuf: Do you have any kids and if so do they help with running the podcast? 

Molly: I do have a kid, she’s 2! So no she doesn’t help out yet, but she does inspire me sometimes when she does things or she seems interested in like ants, so that helped when we were working on our ant episode. Maybe in a few more years she can help. 

Yusuf: How did you come up with the name “Brains On!”? 

Molly: Back when we were brainstorming ideas for the show, we were really thinking of the vibe we wanted to capture. We started thinking hands on, and thinking, and kids to be thinking and curious about the world. We kind of went down that path and that’s how we got to it. 

We definitely enjoyed interviewing Brains On! podcast host Molly Bloom! There are a lot of fun & new episodes available just in time for summer! You can find Brains On! for free on their website, Apple Podcasts, Radio Public, and on Stitcher. You can also connect with Brains On! on social media on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.