Why do seasons change? Why does it get darker earlier in the winter and why is there more daylight in the summer? Why are some seasons warm and some are cold and icy? Why do some places not have seasonal changes at all? We’re learning about solstices, equinoxes and seasons in this episode of But Why. Our guide is John O’Meara, Chief Scientist at Hawaii’s Keck Observatory. And kids around the world tell us what they like best about their favorite season. 

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How are babies made? We speak with Cory Silverberg, author of What Makes A Baby, for answers to questions about how we all come into the world. This is a conversation that welcomes all kinds of families as we answer questions about why babies don't hatch out of eggs, why boys have nipples, why girls have babies but boys don't and why some people look more like one parent more than the other. Later in the episode we also explore how we get our last names and how two people can have the same last name when they're not related. We made this episode with our youngest listeners in mind, but parents may want to preview this episode on their own or listen with their kids.

Book recommendations from Cory Silverberg

Books Geared to Kids 4 - 7 (ish)

What Makes a Baby

By Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth

A book about where babies come from that works for every kind of family, regardless of who is in it and how the child came to be.

What's the Big Secret: Talking about Sex with Girls and Boys

By Laurie Krasny Brown and Marc Brown

A simplified and clear introduction to reproduction, genitals, and touch. Leaves out a lot of kids and families, but better than most.

Who Are You? The Kid's Guide to Gender Identity

by Brook Pessin-Whedbee and Naomi Bardoff

Also simplified, but a good introduction on gender identity written and illustrated for younger children.

Books Geared to Kids 7 to 10 (ish)

The Care and Keeping of You: The Body Book for Younger Girls

By Valorie Schaefer and Josee Masse

Only for girls, and not trans inclusive, but still one of the best books to cover a range of sexuality and puberty related topics.

It's So Amazing! A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families

By Robie Harris and Michael Emberly

Covers reproduction including intercourse gestation and birth, with a focus on heterosexual, gender normative parents and kids.

Sex Is a Funny Word

By Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth

Covers body parts, boundaries, touch, and an extensive gender section for kids and families of all identities and orientations.

Stacey's Not a Girl

By Colt Keo-Meier, illustrated by Jesse Yang

A picture book about a kid who knows they aren't a girl, but isn't sure if they are a boy.

Why is the Burj Khalifa so tall? That’s what 5-year-old Simon wants to know. The Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world and it’s located in Dubai. 6-year-old Isabel, who lives in Dubai, visited the tower and gives us the bird’s eye view in this episode! Plus, Janny Gédéon, architecture educator and founder of ArchForKids answers lots more questions about tall buildings: How are tall buildings built? How do they stay up? Why are so many buildings squares or rectangles? How do they make buildings that are taller than cranes?

Resources

Architecture workshops and online learning: ArchForKids

Download our learning guides: PDF | Google Slides | Transcript

Why is the Burj Khalifa so tall? - Simon, 5, Chicago

Activity

Try making the tallest tower you possibly can, just using paper. (Newspaper works great if you have some newsprint lying around. But printer paper or construction paper is fine, too.) You should focus on making it strong and stable. Strong means that it can hold something. Stable means that if it’s pushed to the side it can stay upright. You can use cardboard for the base, but otherwise, see how you can do with just paper. Need a hint? Janny says to think about the ways you’d stay stable when playing sports.

Squirrels are everywhere. Three hundred or so species of these often adorable rodents live on every continent except Antarctica. No matter where you live, city or country you’re bound to have squirrels nearby. How much do you know about our bushy-tailed neighbors? How fast do squirrels and chipmunks run? Why do squirrels have big bushy tails? Do squirrels get sick? Why do they like nuts better than berries? How do squirrels eat acorns? How do squirrels sleep? Are squirrels nocturnal?  Answers to your squirrel questions with Ben Dantzer, scientist at University of Michigan. Plus some observational activities you can do to learn more about squirrel behavior!

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Submit your squirrel observations to iNaturalist

How do squirrels climb up trees? -Rachel, 5, Alabama

Squirrels have long nails and they have five digits (fingers or toes) on their paws just like us. 

And squirrels are expert climbers. “Some tree, or arboreal, squirrels are really well adapted to climb up trees whereas ground squirrels also have nails or claws, but they use them primarily for digging and not for climbing,” explains Ben Dantzer. “Tree squirrels have this especially long middle digit that helps them climb up and down trees.”

So an extra long middle finger and they can do something else that humans can’t. “The most helpful thing they can do is when they climb down a tree, squirrels can turn their back feet around when they’re climbing down head first. They turn their rear feet entirely around so they can use those claws to hang down from a tree and walk down easily.”

What? Tree squirrels can turn their feet all the way around so they’re backwards when the squirrel is climbing down a tree?! Time to go outside and see if you can observe that in the wild!

The FDA recently gave emergency use authorization to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for kids age 5 to 11. With all the news and conversation about this development, kids are curious to know more about the Covid vaccine--and vaccines in general! So in this episode we answer questions from kids and parents, including: Why does it have to be a shot? How do vaccines work? How does a vaccine trial work? Should an 11.5yo get the shot as soon as it’s available or wait until age 12 to get the larger dose?

We speak with Sofia and Nico Chavez and their parents. The kids took part in the vaccine trial at Stanford University. We’re also joined by Dr. Jenna Bollyky, an investigator in the Stanford trial site, and Dr. Mark Levine, Vermont’s Health Commissioner.

Download our learning guides: PDF | Google Slides | Transcript

Strategies to prepare kids for shots

Vaccine Info from the CDC.

“Why do they have to use needles for shots?”  - Nina, 6, Maryland

“In general, vaccines are a way to train your immune system without having to get sick,’ explains Dr. Bollyky

Your immune system is how your body works to fight off sickness from things like viruses.

Most vaccines use a small protein from the virus you want to fight, or from a similar virus – and they put that little protein in your body in a very small and weakened or changed amount to help your body learn how to fight the real invader. But giving the vaccine as a drink or a pill wouldn’t work, because of your stomach acid!

“Whenever we want to give a protein or something that your body turns into a protein, the acid in the stomach does a really good job of breaking down that protein. So it’s really hard to get a vaccine that comes as a pill,” Bollyky says.

“Why can’t we drink medicine to keep us safe from the virus, instead of shots? - Eloise, 5, Texas

In order to get that vaccine into your muscle, where it needs to go, a doctor or a nurse uses a thin needle. They do have to poke you, but that doesn’t mean they like it. “If we could give it as a pill we would,” Dr. Bollyky promises! While that poke might hurt, sometimes the anticipation of the shot is worse than the real thing.

The reason your arm sometimes aches after getting a shot is that the immune cells are coming to be educated. “The cells around where the medication was delivered, they’re doing their job, they’re taking in the information they need and are starting to train your immune system,” Dr. Bollyky assures us. “So that immune response is exactly what you want to teach your body to fight the infection should you encounter the real virus later.”

It’s normal to feel a little tired or run down after some vaccines, including the COVID vaccine. But if you feel very ill, you should contact a doctor or health care provider.

Why do apples have stems? Why do fruits start out as flowers? How did the first apple grow when no one was there to plant its seed? Why can you make a seedless grape and not a seedless apple? Why are apples so juicy? How is apple juice made? Why are apples hard and pears soft? In this episode we take a field trip to Champlain Orchards in Shoreham, Vermont to learn more about apples. Our guides are 10-year-old Rupert Suhr, his father, Bill, and apple expert Ezekiel Goodband. 

Download our learning guides: PDF | Google Slide | Transcript 

Flower to Fruit Image

Why are some fruits a flower before they’re fruit? - Grayson, 8, San Jose, California

Actually ALL fruits start as flowers (but not all flowers turn into fruit). Growing fruit is a way that some plants reproduce. Fruit is the nice ripe container that holds the seeds, which humans or animals will eat and then spread around (often through their poop), allowing new plants to grow.

But that process begins with a flower. The outer part of the flower often has beautiful colors and shapes and smells—and that’s all part of the way the plant tries to attract a bee or other pollinator:

“The flower has an ovary at the base of the petals. The petals are enticing a bee to come with the pollen from another blossom that it’s visited and there’s some nectar that the bee can collect and while the bee is doing that it’s shedding some pollen,” explains Ezekiel Goodband. “That pollen completes the information that the apple needs to start growing. So the flower is to attract the bee.”

That ovary at the base of the flower will start to grow and that will become the apple that you eat. If you look at the bottom of an apple—the opposite end of where the stem is attached to the tree—you can actually see where the flower used to be. It even kind of looks a little bit like a tiny flower.

We’re exploring a part of the world that not much is known about—in fact, you could be one of the people who help us understand and learn more about this very important, and very large, part of our earth.

The land underneath the ocean is as varied and interesting as the terrain up on dry land—with mountains and canyons, plains and forests. (That’s right, forests! There are kelp forests where the kelp is as much as 150 feet tall!) In this episode, what’s known--and unknown--about the bottom of the ocean. How deep IS the deepest part of the ocean? And how was the Mariana Trench formed? We get answers from Jamie McMichael-Phillips and Vicki Ferrini of Seabed 2030, a global collaboration designed to map the sea floor, by 2030.

Resources

Download our learning guides: PDF | Google Slide | Transcript

Seabed 2030 

Visual: What Lurks In The Depths Of the Ocean? (CBC Kids)

“How deep is the deepest part of the ocean?” –Freya, 8, Wellington, New Zealand

The deepest part of the ocean is the Challenger Deep, 11,034 meters in the Mariana Trench. It’s about seven miles deep! How did the trench get so deep? 

The same processes that formed canyons and mountains on dry land also formed the depths of the ocean and the islands that peek above the water.

In the case of the Mariana Trench, it was formed by the process of subduction—when one tectonic plate slides under another. A tectonic plate is a gigantic piece of the earth’s crust and the next layer below that, called the upper mantle. These massive slabs of rock are constantly moving, but usually very slowly, so a lot of changes to the earth’s structure take place over a long time. But sometimes something like an earthquake can speed that process up.

A trench is formed when one plate slides or melts beneath another one.

The Mariana Trench is the deepest trench in the world—farther below sea level than Mount Everest, is tall!

Kala wants to know why we say soccer in the United States, when the rest of the world calls the game "football." In this episode we hear from people who make their living in the game: professional players, coaches and commentators.

Download our learning guides: PDF | Google Slide | Transcript

"What happened with the words soccer and football goes back to the 1800s when the game was developed. There were two groups of people in Britain who got together to set the rules of two different games, one that was known as rugby football, and another that was known as association football. From those two first words: 'rugby' and 'association,' came two very separate games. Rugby was abbreviated to the word 'rugger.' And out of the word 'association' came 'soccer.' That's the root of where the two differences came."

So although these days you probably won't hear many Brits calling the sport "soccer," the word actually originated there. Americans brought the nickname to the US, and as the sport became popular, soccer stuck.

"When you look around the world," says Coach Saward, "there are all sorts of different forms of football: American football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby football and association football. I think for the clarity of everyone over here when we say the word football, we think of people running around with helmets and pads on; so soccer is a very clear distinction."

In this episode of But Why we visit a credit union to learn what money is all about. And Felix Salmon, Anna Szymanski and Jordan Weissman from Slate Money answer questions about why money plays such a big role in modern society. How was money invented? Why can't everything be free? How do you earn money? How was the penny invented? Why are dimes so small?

Download our learning guides: PDF | Google Slide | Transcript

Related Episodes: What Is The Biggest Number?

Resources: How To Talk To Kids About Money, Million Bazillion podcast

Who invented money? - Luca, 9, Ashland, Ore.

There's no first person we can point to who invented money. The idea of money has evolved as human society got more complicated. In the early days of humankind, people mostly bartered. Bartering is essentially trading.

But over time people realized they needed to have a system for dealing with things when there wasn't an easy trade. If you have something I want but I don't want anything you're offering because I really need something else, how do we work it out? That's where the earliest forms of money emerged. First they were things like shells or rocks. Then pieces of clay with symbols or faces pressed into them. These things don't have much value by themselves, but if everyone agrees that they're going to use them as a symbol of value, you can trade them and start a system of payment.

Eventually these objects became more formalized, turning into coins and paper dollar bills, like the ones we use today. These days there's another method of buying and selling: the credit or debit card.

Five-year-old Odin in Wyoming is about to start school and he sent us this question: If I’m terrified about kindergarten do I have to go? What should I do if I’m scared? What if kids are mean to me? In this episode, tips and suggestions from our listeners for kids returning to school, along with answers from guidance counselor Tosha Todd and National Teacher of the Year Juliana Urtubey.

Download our learning guides: PDF | Google Slide | Transcript

Related Episodes: Why Do We Have To Go To School?

First day of school book recommendations from Tosha Todd

First Day Jitters

Night Before Kindergarten

Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten

The Kissing Hand

Back to school tips

Make a hug button! Draw a heart on the inside of your hand. Draw a heart on your parent’s hand. Squeeze them together to charge your hug button. If you feel nervous at school, push the hug button and it will send you a hug. - Tosha Todd, school guidance counselor

Keep a picture of your family in your backpack. You can share with your teacher the things your family does for fun. That will help your teacher understand your family. - Juliana Urtubey, National Teacher of the Year

If you're nervous try to have fun and try to make some friends and the school year will be a lot better.-  Zoe, 10 Colorado

Remind yourself that you are brave and confident. - Clarissa, 8, Ontario

Get into a school routine now. Pick out your clothes the night before. Maybe pack your lunch too. - Tosha Todd

When I start school I feel nervous, but when I step in I feel ok. For the first few days I play by myself. When those first few days are done, I play with others. - Julius, 8, Ontario

Take a deep breath, be kind to someone and they'll be kind to you. - Zoe, 6, California

Get everyone's names and if you forget them it's ok to ask again. - Lucy, Vermont

Say hi to all the kids. - Ben, 6, Michigan

You're going to make friends, and your mom and dad will pick you up; they're not going to leave you there forever. - Sly, 7, New York