John Hendricks’ Curiosity Gears Up for Global Launch

A multi-year, multi-platform venture, Curiosity: The Questions of Life is slated to make its U.S. debut on Discovery this August before heading to sister channels across Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia Pacific beginning in September.

Curiosity: The Questions of Life intends to explore a range of topics, from intelligence and neuroscience to nanotechnology. The show is the brainchild of John Hendricks, the founder and chairman of Discovery Communications. "I thought, wouldn’t it be great if we had a weekly series that really spoke to the heart of the Discovery mission?" Hendricks told World Screen recently. "That was the genesis of the Curiosity idea, that we would have a long-term franchise that people could rely on week after week that would be a permanent fixture on a Sunday night, the way that 60 Minutes is a permanent fixture on CBS on Sunday night. Viewers come to expect that 60 Minutes is going to bring them two or three great stories about what’s happening in the world. That’s what we want to do with Curiosity."

Calling the initiative "our largest programming investment, exceeding that of even Planet Earth as well as Life," Hendricks sees Curiosity as having a broad reach, from young adults to "lifelong learners." Each of the planned 60 episodes will attempt to answer a "big question," Hendricks said. For example, "Are we alone in the universe? Or, why is cancer so desperately hard to cure? We’ve been huddling with major universities across the country, ranging from Princeton, the University of Maryland, Cornell, getting some of the top experts to first identify the huge questions and then come up with the best answers that we can provide at this time."

Discovery has lined up Intel as a presenting partner, which will use the show as a global marketing platform in more than 40 countries. The partnership includes short-form vignettes featuring Intel employees discussing what sparks their curiosity. In addition, Intel will be the centerpiece of a “What Makes Us Curious” feature to air during each episode. Online, Intel has exposure, video, podcasts and branding on certain areas of Curiosity.com, which will expand on the questions asked in the TV series.

The series is also accompanied by a Spark Your Curiosity educational initiative, Discovery Education has developed six companion curriculum topics drawn from the questions examined in the series to engage students in topics like science, technology, engineering and math. "As kids start their teenage years, there’s a magic time like in middle school, where if kids have an interest and they’re very curious, you really want to intrigue them at that moment to consider exploring science, technology or medicine," Hendricks told World Screen. "We’ve had a number of projects through the years that address education in the classroom, and Discovery Streaming is now a service that’s in more than half of the nation’s classrooms. It’s a tool that the teachers can use to really excite kids, especially students in the seventh, eighth or ninth grade. Michio Kaku, one of our scientists working on Discovery specials, talks about making sure that schools don’t destroy curiosity by focusing on memorization of facts, rather than on these huge questions like are we alone in the universe. It may be a question like that that will get a kid excited about astronomy, for example. That’s what we’re going to try to do through Curiosity—have dimensions of curiosity that are for adults who are just lifelong learners, as well as packages for the classroom and for kids in their leisure time, so they can enjoy it on their tablet devices or PCs or their laptops on weekends or at night."