How would you like to hang with the Kinetic City Super Crew kids? Their home is a high-tech supertrain. They spend their days tracking down lost homing pigeons, traveling through time to meet the astronomer Galileo or checking out giant-spider sightings. Adventure, detective work, plus all the pork rinds they can eat--does that sound like a great job or what?

Well, this crew's real job is to get kids psyched about science. Kinetic City Super Crew is a radio show produced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The show airs on 50 radio stations across the country and has 2 million listeners. Every mystery the kids solve involves science.

"You don't need punching, blasting, morphing and kicking to attract and hold kids' attention," says executive producer Bob Hirshon. He insists that the secret is to tell a good story. He must be onto something. The show just won a Peabody Award, one of broadcasting's highest honors.

Paul Simon, 14, plays crew member Max, who often leads the gang into trouble with his big mouth. "The hard thing about acting on a radio show is that you can't convey emotion with movement or facial expression," says Paul, who is from Bethesda, Maryland. "It all comes from your voice."

The actors spend a weekend each month recording several episodes. The stories can be silly. But the way the show attracts kids who think science is uncool is something the AAAS takes very seriously. "Our research shows that kids really remembered the science they had learned on the show," says AAAS education director Shirley Malcom. "Putting science in a good story really works!"

Daily News from TIME for Kids

April 18, 1997 World Report