In general, podcasts gravitate to one end of the order and chaos spectrum. You either have the freewheeling, roundtable discussion style of many interview and comedy podcasts, or the carefully crafted, edited and produced shows that walk you through the story. The Past and the Curious, one of my favorite shows for families, neatly rejects that polarity, making a show that feels at both once carefully planned and produced and like a session around the backyard firepit. Produce

For an on-demand medium, podcasting has a cozy relationship with spur-of-the moment storytelling. Some of the best comedy podcasts—like improv4humans, Spontaneanation—rely on improvisation to drive the story and find the laughs. But in the world of kidcasts, scripts tend to dominate. Not so with What if World?, the brainchild of producer Karen Marshall and storyteller Eric O’Keeffe. Every week, O’Keeffe takes a “What if?” question submitted by a kid listener, along with a sug