Thanks to Sonya Terborg (@terSonya) sharing a tweet from @FriedEnglish101 this weekend, I discovered Pickle this weekend. Pickle is an ethics podcast for kids produced by WNYC. The episodes look to be an average of about 20 minutes, and cover topics like, “Would an Elephant Visit a People Zoo?” and “The Friendship Formula.”
Pickle is hosted by two adults – Shumita Basu and Carl Smith – but they consult the “BrainsTrust” of kids during each episode. I would guesstimate the target age group for this podcast would be 8 years old and up based on the topics and episode lengths. It seems ideal for family discussions and enrichment classes, and individual topics could be integrated into curriculum as well.
Pickle currently has only 6 episodes (from December 2017), so I’m not sure what the future holds for this podcast. According to the website, the original series (wouldn’t that be Cucumber?) was an Australian Broadcasting Corporation production, Short and Curly, which has a few more episodes to offer on its website.
For more resources on talking about ethics with students, check out Not Just Child’s Play, Kids Philosophy Slam Contest, Teaching Children Philosophy, and 8-Bit Philosophy (appropriate for secondary students). Also, I recently posted about using some of the thinkLaw curriculum with my students, which is another great way to bring in ethics and critical thinking into your classroom.
