Circle Round

Circle Round takes folktales from around the globe and reimagines them as richly produced audio plays, complete with music, sound design, and voice acting that puts most kids' media to shame. Host Rebecca Sheir narrates each story with a warmth that immediately pulls you in, and the production team at WBUR clearly spends serious time crafting every episode. These aren't quick bedtime reads -- they're full theatrical experiences that happen to be 15 to 25 minutes long. The show has been running for 9 seasons with 429 episodes, drawing from Afghan, Japanese, West African, Palestinian, Greek, Swedish, and dozens of other storytelling traditions. Recent seasons have featured live recordings at Tanglewood and Boston Symphony Hall with orchestral accompaniment, which gives you a sense of how ambitious the production has gotten. Celebrity voice actors pop up regularly, and each episode ends with activities designed to spark conversations between kids and parents. With over 16,000 ratings and a 4.5-star average on Apple, Circle Round has built a devoted audience of families who appreciate stories that actually mean something. Every tale explores themes like kindness, persistence, or generosity without being preachy about it. The stories themselves do the teaching. For kids ages 3 and up (the show says "3 to 103"), this is one of the most beautifully made podcasts in the entire kids' space, and it's all free.