Two Great Storytelling Podcasts
Originals by kids and ancient stories
The Snarf is back! It’s been a hectic few weeks (I feel like it’s a sign of the times and life with young kids that I feel that statement needs no explanation), but this one is a two-fer. Or a zero-fer if you’re counting the number of books reviewed, but if either of these work for you, it’s many many hours of free content.
Today I’ll review a couple of our favorite podcasts, Story Pirates and Greeking Out. We’re not big kids podcast listeners, but these are great for long car rides and occasional bath times and other times when you could use someone else to do the story telling. Let’s start with
The basic idea with Story Pirates is that kids send in stories and the Story Pirates turn them into long narratives with songs. That concept has way more staying power than you might guess because it’s a really well done show. It manages to effectively combine the wacky ideas that kids come up with all the time (“it’s raining scorpions and we have to cook them all in a volcano so gorillas will eat them!”) with well-written stories and fun songs.
The episodes weave together a few stories, so there might be a recurring sketch that pops up between stories and finally resolves at the end. The actors on it have legitimately good comic timing, and can deliver lines in a way that the adults in the car might appreciate as much as the kids. It gets some sincere laughs out of me, and even when it doesn’t it’s an enjoyable listen, as long as you’re not turned off by random humor.
The other component of a Story Pirates episode is an interview with the kid who submitted the story idea. The host of the show, Lee, manages to have respectful, almost NPR-like interviews with kids in the 7-12 range (something like that), that don’t feel condescending. He sincerely treats the kids and their ideas as worthy of respect and praise, but the conversations don’t feel saccharine or boring because the topics will be something like, “How did you come up with the idea of an ice cream monster that joins the opera?”
It’s a fun, goofy show that I don’t mind having on, especially compared to, say, the same kids album on repeat for multiple hours (whatever gets you through the drive, amiright?).
Oh, and there’s actually a whole Story Pirates media world that includes books and live shows, but I haven’t delved into that. Let me know if you have.
If you want to try some similarly well told but otherwise completely different content and style, you can look up Greeking Out.
These are Greek myths, narrated by the host of the show with help from a snarky robot. The robot, the Oracle of WiFi, (played by a human) provides some definitions of terms and helpful undercutting (“There is no evidence that anyone actually moved mountains”) in case the kids are taking the stories a little too seriously. There’s some good comic chemistry between the host and robot that keeps things on the lighter side.
The stories are presented in a way that’s fun and easy to understand, but there’s only so much you can do to sanitize the Greek myths. Be ready for carnage and tragedy. There have been a couple of moments that I was worried about Leo would react to a story, but so far he’s loved every episode. The stories, led by temperamental gods, feel big and exciting, and the storytelling brings out their drama while taking some care to not make them too emotional.
I’ll occasionally hope he gets hooked on the Greek canon and gains a huge store of common cultural knowledge shared by millions, but mostly they’re just good stories, told by a host who clearly loves them and wants the next generation to hear and enjoy them.
So, those are two options, one with complete originals, and the other with stories that are thousands of years old. With both, if you get on a good kick with them, the archives run pretty deep.