In a time when the Trump administration has stripped federal funding from PBS and is partnering with right-wing video publisher PragerU to pump out AI-generated videos of the founding fathers barking conservative catchphrases, it is now more important than ever to remember all the good this type of high-quality, thoughtful, original children’s programming has done. Doing the research for this piece allowed me to revisit several other PBS Kids’ shows whose influence on me I had, until recently, taken for granted. For example, Cyberchase, a cartoon following the adventures of three kids learning math and science to solve problems plaguing the digital universe, AKA Cyberspace. It’s thanks to that show I knew what symmetry was before my first-grade teacher even got around to it in class! And who can forget that bop of a theme song? C-Y-B-E-R CHASE!

Liberty’s Kids, a historical fiction cartoon about three kids who live through the American Revolutionary War, is another. It even had a stacked voice cast for several historical figures like Walter Cronkite voicing Ben Franklin, Dustin Hoffman as Benedict Arnold, and Billy Crystal as John Adams, just to name a few! That line in the show’s theme song about how “the truth will rise and fall” definitely hits differently nowadays, as well. But The Magic School Bus was my favorite. Miss Frizzle is proof that kids can have abnormal experiences and still be better off for it. No Spider-Man assault or Elsa toilet humor, just an octopus in the neighborhood and a river of lava with the comedic charms of Lily Tomlin to guide it.