Podcasts for Kids (i.e. Help for Parents)

• REACH: A Space Podcast for Kids (Soundsington Media) is "[an] exploration of our galaxy (and beyond!)," in which the hosts answer kids' questions (What IS space? Why is Mars red?), interview experts and suggest at-home experiments. REACH is from the same folks who created Unspookable, "a family-friendly look at the history, science, and power dynamics behind urban legends and scary stories all told through a modern lens." This past season the show released an episode about pandemics (in which kids chime in on how social distancing is going) and the Momo phenomenon. 
• Quaranteen'd (HodgePodge Media). "All-ages audio treasure hunt about a ragtag crew of kids, chasing breadcrumbs they believe will lead to the cure to a viral pandemic that has the globe on lockdown." The show was produced with zero human-to-human contact (a show for our times!). HodgePodge is also readying a whodunnit "parodying the podcast that launched 750,000 ships," and a musical called All Girl Werewolf Killing Squad.   
• Radiolab pulled a genius move and created Radiolab for Kids, a feed dedicated to family-friendly installments of the show. Episodes tackle everything from whether animals can laugh to the surprisingly global game of Tic-Tac-Toe. Co-founder Jad Abumrad hopes the show will "help parents keep their kids inspired, engaged, and occupied during this time of uncertainty and extended time at home." 
• Timestorm (Cocotazo Media), which follows "twelve-year-old twins who travel through time to preserve Puerto Rico's true history," returned to the airwaves last month. (Timestorm has also joined kids' network TRAX from PRX.)
• Kids These Days, produced by Michigan Public Radio and Community High School in Ann Arbor, provides an "unfiltered look" into what high school-aged kids are "thinking about, laughing about, and stressing about." The show recently released an episode about how kids are talking to their families about race.
• In May, Vox's Today Explained produced an episode for kids explaining how COVID-19 spreads and why staying home from school was necessary as well as this handy "Six Feet of Fun" activity sheet.
• The Weirdness (Gen-Z Media and PRX). This scripted adventure drama follows two middle-school kids as they investigate "why the creatures of legends are disappearing." Gen-Z is also home to the Six Minutes spinoff Remy's Life...Interrupted, which features bite-sized quarantine dispatches from an eleven-year-old host. 
• Kids Listen Activity Podcast (Kids Listen). This activity podcast features new episodes from Kids Listen's member podcasts, along with activities that can keep kids engaged.
• Goodnight with Dolly (Imagination Library). Dolly Parton hosts this video series (which can be played as audio), in which the icon reads a bedtime story to kids. The show also serves up printable activity sheets.
• And finally, I think of Parcast as the network for true crime junkies, but have recently learned that the production studio produces Dog Tales, "the true stories of heroic canines that have gone above and beyond their 'best friend' duties." Perfect for dog-loving humans of all ages. 

If this collection doesn't satisfy your appetite, take a gander at Sean Allen's 33 Kid-Friendly Edutainment Podcasts to Stay Sharp (helpfully organized by topic), The New York Times' Seven Podcasts for Stir-Crazy Kids, Nick Quah's 18 Great Podcasts for Kids to Get Your Family Through the Quarantine and Erik Jones' Survival Guide For Parents: Introducing Podcasts Into Homeschooling.

Finally, if you're willing to pay for content, check out kids' podcast network Pinna, which charges $39.99 per year for access to a plethora of podcasts including The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel, Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls (based on the book), and The Totally Unauthorized Minecraft Fan Show. Start 'em early, I always say.

Excerpts from Inside Podcasting Post-Show with Skye's Parents

Dad: How did you feel when you heard "Dolly Parton's America" was being made?

Skye: I was over the moon excited, like beyond. I was on Twitter, and I saw a post from Jad. And it had a picture of someone sitting in front of a monitor that had a picture of Dolly on it. The caption was something like 'Coming Soon' — some kind of teaser — you knew that this meant that they were making a show about Dolly. I think I audibly gasped when I saw it. I remember being so excited to put this into my newsletter and to let all my readers know that a podcast about Dolly was coming. More than any other podcast, I plugged this podcast so many times because I was just so personally excited.

Dad: How did you decide to interview Shima? 

Skye: A confession I have to make is that I have not been a Radiolab listener. And so I wasn't really that familiar with Jad or Shima. I knew who Jad was — I had written about him in my newsletter — and of course, I knew about Radiolab; it just wasn't part of my listening diet. And so when I reached out to someone I knew at WNYC, my natural question was, can I interview Jad? And they said, yes. And then it was like a long slog of trying to figure out when [to do the interview] — I was having scheduling issues because I share a studio with my boss Jason Calacanis. He has a few podcasts that he records in a studio, and I get the crumbs on the table, like whatever's leftover [laughter]. And Jad is very busy. 

Then around that time, [fellow newsletter writer] Erik Jones interviewed Jad for Bello Collective. And it was a great interview — people who are interested in this podcast should go and read it. But then I started thinking — here's this woman, who's the producer on the show. She's probably doing a lot of the work. I think producers sometimes don't get the credit that they are due. It ends up being all about the host and all about the "face" and what I have learned, just by writing about this business and talking to creators, is that the producers are often the ones who are doing the scriptwriting, doing the editing, figuring out storylines, figuring out questions, coming up with the angle. In that situation, it can often be much more of a partnership than a sort of producer-host situation, in which one is somehow better than the other. So I went back to WNYC and said, you know what? I'd like to interview Shima. And of course, that was still really hard to schedule [laughter] because Shima was busy, and then she was on a much-deserved vacation. In fact, the interview we did for last week's episode was her first day back at work after that vacation! And I didn't realize that until I was talking to her. She was so sweet about having scheduled it for her first day back. I was really thrilled about that.

Mom: I think that's fascinating and really fortuitous as it turned out. 

Skye: Yeah, really fortuitous. The other element of this whole thing is that I knew I would get a completely different angle from Shima. I knew that she would have had a completely different point of view and new stories to tell. I'm always looking for like, how can I have a different angle? How can I have a story that other people aren't telling so that they'll want to listen to my podcast? Because when they come to my podcast, they'll get something different. And then it was funny. I started telling people that I was interviewing Shima, and a few different people said, oh, she's great; you're going to love her. And I thought that that was just further confirmation that I was on the right track.

[Indeed it was! Listen to the full interview here.]

Quick Hits

• Adam Davidson's The Passion Economy is the latest show to leave paywalled podcast network Luminary. Clearly, a lot has changed during the 15 months since Adam penned this 11-part thread on why he was choosing the platform. In his closing tweet, the audio entrepreneur wrote, "So if you love podcasts, jump for flipping joy about subscriptions."
• On Thursday or Friday of this week (not yet nailed down by press time), OSM Audio's Shima Oliaee and Jad Abumrad will release their newest project into the Radiolab feed. Shima tells me that it's "another investigative look into America." (She sounds VERY excited about it, so keep your eyes peeled.)
• True crime review podcast Crime Writer's On has partnered with Facebook Watch to bring fans a video version of the show (pictured above). Fans can now participate in the fun by "viewing along with others, interacting within Facebook pages and even connecting directly with show creators and talent." As with the audio version, the show is hosted by New Hampshire power podcaster Rebecca Lavoie, with licensed investigator Lara Bricker, crime noir author Toby Ball, and Rebecca's crime-reviewing husband Kevin Flynn chiming in from the panel.
• SiriusXM has agreed to purchase Stitcher — a podcast app, advertising outfit (via Midroll), and podcast network (via Earwolf), all rolled into one — for an estimated $300 million. The company was formerly owned by E.W. Scripps Co., and prior to that, Deezer. Nick Quah thinks the deal "makes considerable sense." In related news, Sirius, which also owns Pandora, has recently expanded its partnership with Fox News, making the network's conservative talk-show content available on both its broadcast and podcast properties. 
• Reveal from PRX and the Center for Investigative Reporting has launched American Rehab, its first serialized podcast. The eight-part series is a result of three years of investigative work, in which the Reveal team "uncover[ed] a type of rehab that is flourishing by turning tens of thousands of people desperate for treatment into an unpaid, shadow labor force." (Um, what?) The first two episodes are available now. 
• E! News reporter Lilliana Vasquez is the host of newly-launched DNA of a Maker, which highlights "individual traits that set high-achieving women apart." The show's first two episodes feature Civil rights expert and creator of the #SayHerName movement Kimberlé Crenshaw, and #MeToo founder Tarana Burke.
• ICYMI: WNYC is facing backlash after announcing that former San Francisco Chronicle editor Audrey Cooper, a white woman without audio experience, has joined as editor-in-chief. The news arrived after multiple listening sessions with executives, in which staffers demanded they hire "a person of color, someone who deeply understood New York and who had experience in public radio."
• Reality-star-turned-margarita-mogul Bethenny Frankel, who got her start on a spinoff of The Apprentice, will launch Just B in September. Evidently it'll deliver "unfiltered, polarizing conversation with self-made moguls."
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