A sneaky way to boost kids’ literacy

This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox’s newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions.

I had been listening to Bust or Trust for almost a year before I realized it was supposed to be educational.

The podcast, my older kid’s favorite, examines mysterious phenomena like alien abductions, haunted houses, and spontaneous human combustion through the eyes of co-hosts Athena Kugblenu, a skeptic, and Tiernan Douieb, a believer. It’s basically The X-Files for kids ages 6 to 11 (or, as I explained to my kid the other day, The X-Files is Bust or Trust for grown-ups).

My kid and I like the show because we enjoy hearing about eerie discoveries like the Devil’s Footprints, a set of cloven hoofmarks that appeared in England in 1855, appearing to travel right over houses and high walls. My kid also appreciates that the hosts sometimes make fart jokes. 

But the creators of Bust or Trust, Carla Herbertson and David Smith, had something more sophisticated in mind when they launched the podcast in 2023.

“I was really worried that children are getting their news from sites like TikTok and Snapchat and YouTube,” said Herbertson, co-founder with Smith of the UK-based children’s audio company Small Wardour. “I really wanted to do something around fact-checking and critical thinking.”

That’s why each episode features several pieces of “evidence” supporting the existence of its spooky subject, like the story of a doctor who appeared to burn to death without a cause, while Kugblenu offers critiques (the doctor may have fallen asleep smoking his pipe). Listeners — the show’s “chief detectives” — are invited to evaluate the evidence themselves and send in voicemails with their conclusions, which are featured on the show.

Bust or Trust is one of a wave of podcasts that are quietly reinventing kids’ entertainment right now, drawing kids in with immersive storytelling at a time when fewer children are reading for pleasure and concerns about young people’s media diets abound. 

According to a 2023 survey by the entertainment advisory company UTA, 48 percent of US kids listen to podcasts at least weekly, and 93 percent of parents said their children had gotten more interested in the medium over the past year. A survey by Edison Research found that a more modest 29 percent of kids had listened to a podcast in the last month, but that share jumped to 52 percent if parents were podcast listeners as well. Popular shows such as Story Pirates can rack up 1 million downloads per month, and smaller players are entering the space with new approaches and formats. 

“In 2017, there was basically just us and Wow in the World, and now there’s so many great podcasts that are growing,” Story Pirates chief creative officer Lee Overtree told me. “It’s a really exciting time.”

For parents, podcasts can be a welcome alternative to TV or TikTok, and a source of entertainment during long car trips. But for kids, the medium can be something more: a gateway to a love of learning, and a way to practice media literacy skills in a time when they are sorely needed.  

“They give you so much,” Nora, a 10-year-old podcast superfan from Massachusetts, told me. “I like podcasts that kind of bring you into a different world, but also give you information at the same time.”

What podcasts teach kids

Kids have been listening to the radio for generations, but podcasts, specifically, exploded in popularity at the beginning of the pandemic, with families stuck at home and parents desperate for screen-free entertainment options, Overtree told me. Since then, as the adult podcasting market has endured its own boom-and-bust cycles, the smaller but undeniable kids’ market has continued to grow. 

On Story Pirates, the top kids’ podcast in a recent ranking by Edison Research, professional performers act out young listeners’ stories. Nora was featured on a recent episode with their story, “The Audition,” about aspiring singers trying out for the buzzy new musical Doggies (no relation to that other musical). Listening to the podcast gave them confidence in their own creativity, Nora told me. “I thought I wasn’t good at writing stories before I heard Story Pirates,” they said, “but really, if you pay attention to the world around you, you can do anything.”

“Just by immersing these kids in a creative community, they are learning that they are writers, even if they’ve struggled at school or haven’t found the right environment,” Overtree said. “That’s our literacy goal.”

Listening to audio isn’t the same as picking up a book, but researchers and educators say podcasts can teach a lot of the same skills as reading, from story comprehension to reflective thinking. The shows can also teach kids new words and concepts — in a Bust or Trust episode about vampires, for example, co-host Douieb explains that “infamous” means “when something is well-known for being awful.” 

Podcasts are also energizing for kids, getting them excited about new topics and activities. In a 2016 survey by the nonprofit Kids Listen, 74 percent of caregivers reported that their kids started conversations about podcasts after listening. The kids in the survey were also “likely to quote or reenact part of the episode, tell others what they’ve learned, ask to listen again, get more information, or request to do an activity inspired by the podcast,” the group found.

Television can accomplish some of these goals, too. I’m not an anti-screen parent by any means, and I can name several science experiments that my older kid has attempted after seeing them on TV (at least one was way messier than the show let on).

 But podcast proponents say there’s something special about audio storytelling. Overtree calls it a “magic trick”: “When you’re listening to audio and you’re being asked to supply the pictures in your own head, your brain is doing real work.”

A podcast can be like “a gym for your imagination,” Overtree said.

Training future news consumers

As much as kids’ podcasts inspire praise from educators and parents alike, podcasts for adults are a source of a lot of anxiety right now, especially among progressives. Bro podcasters such as Joe Rogan and Theo Von have an outsized influence among young men, so much so that some credit them with delivering the election for Donald Trump. Meanwhile, popular podcasts like Huberman Lab have been criticized for spreading misinformation and promoting unproven supplements. If kids’ podcasts are a gateway to learning, they might also be a gateway to listening to less wholesome podcasts.

But some kids’ creators are thinking about the media landscape and doing their best to prepare their young listeners for it.  The creators of Bust or Trust, for example, are hoping to show them how to disagree productively with one another. Even though the hosts come at, say, Mothman from two different perspectives, they never insult or fight with each other, instead listening to the other’s point of view. They also extend the same courtesy to the young “chief detectives” featured on the show.

“The tone of the program is that you can have a difference of opinions,” Herbertson said. “That’s okay. You can still be friends.”

Meanwhile, the popularity of podcasts may have something to teach educators, media outlets, and families about what engages kids and keeps them coming back. Part of the appeal of audio, for both kids and adults, Overtree said, is a sense of authenticity, “a feeling that the creators actually have control and they’re not puppets” of some big company telling them what to say. Those creators also have an ability to interact directly with their audience in a way that’s difficult with, say, television.

“When someone’s in your ears, and they’re talking to you, it feels like someone’s inside your own head, and that’s powerful,” Overtree said.

What I’m reading

Last year, just 55 percent of kids got vaccinated for the flu, the lowest rate in 12 years. This year the rate is shaping up to be even lower. Meanwhile, at least 205 kids died from the flu last year, and experts think the real number could be even higher.

The House passed a defense bill last week including a provision denying gender-affirming care to the children of military service members. Democrats are now trying to strip that provision out of the bill.

As school bus service continues to deteriorate around the country, more carpooling startups are hoping to fill the void.

My older kid and I are reading We Found a Monster, by the author of The Secret Spiral of Swamp Kid (which we were reading last week).

From my inbox

Thanks so much to everyone who sent in their favorite kids’ podcasts! Next week will be the thick of the holiday season for many families, and winter break for most American kids. Winter break is shorter and weirder than summer — fewer camps, less swimming, more long car trips or plane flights to visit relatives. 

What do the kids in your life like to do during this little hiatus between the old year and the new? Are they playing with cousins? Hoping for sledding weather? Complaining that they’re bored? Let me know at anna.north@vox.com.