Sometimes, I feel like I’m the only person who doesn’t watch YouTube. I only use it to learn how to fix something or keep the dogs I board entertained while I am out. I don’t watch much television in general, but I like scripted programming when I do.
My kids are the opposite. They’d prefer to watch YouTube over most of the television shows. That’s just a generational difference. My 12-year-old came to me yesterday and said, “YouTube was suggesting something for me that might work on your blog. It was explaining tariffs with bananas.”
I went to YouTube, did a search, and came across Primate Economics. It is a sprawling metropolis of exactly three videos totaling twelve minutes. The channel has a video with a million views and over 300,000 subscribers. Many people spend years making countless hours of videos and never get close to that kind of success.
Primate Economics explains business concepts using monkeys and bananas. It’s brilliant, and I obviously shouldn’t criticize such successful execution, but you know I’m going to anyway. First, I’ll present to you the videos. There are a couple of swears and extremely brief portrayals of the current United States President. Again, it is brief and not necessarily negative, but you can understand how politics would need to be mentioned in an explanation of tariffs.
Inflation Explained with Bananas
Stocks Explained with Bananas
Tariffs Explained with Bananas
My biggest criticism is that these videos move too fast. If you already know how inflation works, then it’s easier to follow. If you are learning a new concept (as you would if you are using monkeys and bananas), you’d want a slower video to give time for the concepts to sink in. That said, my 11-year-old said it was appropriately paced. Kids’ TikTok and YouTube Shorts brains seem to be wired differently. Or I’m just old. Both can be true.
My second criticism was already mentioned. It would have been very, very easy to make it kid-friendly, but it is kind of annoying that it isn’t. Fortunately, they’ve heard all the basic swears, so it wasn’t too bad. It’s also worth noting that explaining inflation to younger kids is something only Kid Wealth would be silly enough to attempt. Those kids are better off with this Monkey Math game, but unfortunately, it seems to be out of stock. I hope that’s not due to monkey tariffs.
The most valuable lesson with all this monkey business came in the car on the way to school. We discussed the YouTube channel itself. My fifth grader is a perfectionist taking his time to make everything perfect. My sixth grader puts a priority on speed and getting to the finish line. They have complementary talents when it comes to making videos, but this difference dooms anything they try to make together.
Primate Economics was an example of how if something is done right, it can be quite successful. At the same time, if they spent all their time in the monkey editing room, we would have never seen any cute cartoon monkeys. I explained the concept of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). This is the kind of compromise that they should look for. It’s quite possible that Primate Economics started off as Caveman Economics, Sloth Economics, Bunny Economics, etc., as the creators developed their skills. It’s just like we never saw the thousands of hours of practice that Michael Jordan put in. We only saw the result.
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