Mark Cuban-Led Documentary Series 'How to Change the World' Heads to YouTube in September
Mark Cuban is backing a 10-episode documentary series about social entrepreneurs — people who start businesses designed to solve social or environmental problems — and it is heading to YouTube, not a traditional streaming platform.
How to Change the World premieres on YouTube on 10 September, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The series comes from World Within Studios, a nonprofit that works at the intersection of impact investing and storytelling, in partnership with Religion of Sports, the media company co-founded by Gotham Chopra.
Cuban executive produces alongside Geralyn Dreyfous and Chopra. World Within founder and CEO Rostam Zafari and co-founder Dylan Mulick co-created the series and also serve as executive producers. Victor Buhler, executive vice president of unscripted at Religion of Sports, rounds out the EP roster.
Each episode follows social entrepreneurs tackling what the series describes as pressing global challenges. The on-screen voices are a mix of business leaders and public figures. On the business side: Cuban himself, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, NYU Stern professor Scott Galloway, Acumen founder Jacqueline Novogratz and Our Place co-founder Shiza Shahid.
The cast widens from there. Climber Alex Honnold, Humans of New York author Brandon Stanton, former White House chef Sam Kass and former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan all appear. Individual episodes are directed by Mulick, Oliver Riley-Smith and Nicholas Mihm. Jason Bowers and World Within COO Jacob Mosler produce, with Radhika Womack co-producing.
What makes the project stand out is the platform choice. A documentary series with this calibre of names — a billionaire investor, a former cabinet secretary, a celebrated free-solo climber — would once have been a natural fit for a premium cable network or a subscription streaming service. YouTube, which has been steadily expanding its original programming, offers the series a free, globally accessible home. An official trailer is already live on the platform.
For viewers, that means no subscription wall between them and the series when it arrives next month. Whether the topic and the names translate into the kind of audience that YouTube originals have occasionally drawn — and whether a second season follows — will depend on the numbers once those 10 episodes drop.
