Shows / Bedtime World Tour
Bedtime World Tour
Every night, Bedtime World Tour visits a different culture's oral tradition and tells one of its folktales — from the Arctic to the Amazon, East Asia to West Africa. Genuine, credited stories, retold in the same quiet, warm voice and ending not on a stated moral but on a single image to fall asleep to. Gentle enough for children, calming enough for the adults reading to them. Each episode is tagged by region and by how rare the tale is, so you always know which corner of the world you're in…
Episodes
Bedtime World TourThe Master Maid — Northern Europe & Scandinavia (Rare) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Norway, where a prince trapped in a giant’s mountain hall meets the brilliant servant known as the Master Maid. With a spool, a little…
Bedtime World TourThe Talking Skull — West Africa (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Nupe country in Nigeria, where a hunter hears a skull speak beneath a silk-cotton tree. When the wonder refuses to repeat itself before…
Bedtime World TourThe Stonecutter — East Asia (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Japan, where a weary stonecutter wishes himself into every form of power he can imagine—from wealth and royalty to sun, cloud, wind, and…
Bedtime World TourAnansi and the Fish Basket — Mesoamerica & Caribbean (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Jamaica, where hungry Anansi fills a basket at the seaside only to have Tiger take every fish. On the road home, beneath a perfectly clear…
Bedtime World TourThe Clever Girl and the Ghoul — North Africa & Maghreb (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Morocco, where a girl follows a distant glow to borrow one coal from a ghoul. When he tracks her home and breaks through six of her seven…
Bedtime World TourThe Bag of Winds — Mediterranean & Southern Europe (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the wine-dark sea, where Aeolus seals every dangerous wind inside a leather bag and leaves one gentle breeze to carry Odysseus home. After…
Bedtime World TourHow Fox and Raven Made Day — Arctic & Circumpolar (Rare) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Iglulik in the eastern Arctic, where the first world lies beneath one long night. Arctic Fox calls for darkness, Raven calls for daylight…
Bedtime World TourDewi Sri and the Gift of Rice — Southeast Asia (Rare) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Java, where hungry villages wait beneath an empty sky. Dewi Sri, Ki Sedana, and a flock of sparrows carry a handful of heavenly seed to…
Bedtime World TourThe First Strawberries — North America Indigenous (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the homelands of the Cherokee, where the first couple parts after an angry quarrel. The Sun places fruit after fruit beside the woman's…
Bedtime World TourThe Fisherman and His Wife — Western Europe (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the low German coast, where a fisherman releases an enchanted flounder and asks for nothing in return. His wife begins with one small…
Bedtime World TourNyaminyami, the River Spirit — East & Southern Africa (Rare) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Kariba Gorge on the Zambezi, where Tonga communities knew the river as a living presence long before concrete crossed it. When a vast dam…
Bedtime World TourThe Twelve Months — Eastern Europe & Slavic (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to a snowy Czech and Slovak mountainside, where Maruška is sent into January weather to find spring violets, summer strawberries, and autumn…
Bedtime World TourTiddalik the Thirsty Frog — Oceania & Pacific (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Gunaikurnai Country in southeastern Australia, where Tiddalik wakes with a thirst so great that he drinks every pool, creek, and river…
Bedtime World TourThe Simorgh and the Boy on the Mountain — Middle East & Persia (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Iran, to the Alborz mountains, whose peaks stand so high above everything else that the birds who nest on them are the only creatures that…
Bedtime World TourManco Capac and the Golden Staff — Andean & Amazonian (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel high into the Andes, in Peru, to the shore of Lake Titicaca, where the water sits so high in the mountains that the sky seems to begin at…
Bedtime World TourThe Tiger, the Brahmin and the Jackal — South Asia (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the Punjab, in the north of India, to a hot white road with the dust lying still and nobody about. There is a tiger in a cage beside that…
Bedtime World TourWhy the Sea Is Salt — Northern Europe & Scandinavia (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Norway, to a farm under a dark hill on Christmas Eve, with the snow coming down and nothing at all in the pot. A poor man goes to his rich…
Bedtime World TourThe Tortoise and the Feast in the Sky — West Africa (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Season Three opens in Igboland, in the south-east of Nigeria, in a year when the rain did not come. Tonight we travel to a tortoise called Mbe, who is the…
Bedtime World TourMomotaro, the Peach Boy — East Asia (Well-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
The last episode of Season Two. Tonight we travel to Japan, to a village between the hills, for the story almost every child in Japan can tell you by heart. An…
Bedtime World TourThe Dwarf of Uxmal | Maya Bedtime Story — Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the Yucatán, to the ruined Maya city of Uxmal and to the tallest building in it, which is shaped like nothing else the Maya ever built. An…
Bedtime World TourThe Doomed Prince — North Africa & Maghreb (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel back to ancient Egypt, to a story written on the back of a papyrus in the British Museum. At the prince's birth the Seven Hathors say he will…
Bedtime World TourPandora's Jar — Mediterranean & Southern Europe (Well-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to ancient Greece, to a poem a farmer named Hesiod wrote for his brother around seven hundred years before the common era. It was never a box…
Bedtime World TourKiviuq the Endless Wanderer — Arctic & Circumpolar (Rare) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the Arctic, to a man whose story is not one story but dozens, told across thousands of miles by people who had never met each other and…
Bedtime World TourMaria Makiling of the Mountain — Southeast Asia (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the Philippines, to a mountain in Laguna that lies along the horizon in the shape of a sleeping woman. Maria Makiling was the diwata who…
Bedtime World TourHow the Chipmunk Got Its Stripes — North America Indigenous (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the woodlands of what is now New York State, for one of the shortest stories in this whole series. A grandmother and her granddaughter go…
Bedtime World TourThe Bremen Town Musicians — Western Europe (Well-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Germany, to a road going north in the autumn, and to four animals who have all been told in one way or another that they are finished. A…
Bedtime World TourThe Hare and the Hyena — East & Southern Africa (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Zanzibar, to a tale in which the smallest animal survives on nothing whatsoever except nerve. A lion, a hyena and a hare plant a garden…
Bedtime World TourThe Magic Swan Geese — Eastern Europe & Slavic (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Russia, to a village at the edge of a wide field. A girl is left in charge of her little brother for one afternoon and goes off to play…
Bedtime World TourHinemoa and Tutanekai — Oceania & Polynesia (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Aotearoa New Zealand, to a wide lake with an island sitting in the middle of it. Hinemoa is of too high a rank to choose for herself, and…
Bedtime World TourThe Conference of the Birds — Middle East & Persia (Rare) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Persia, to a poem written eight hundred years ago by a man who kept a chemist's shop and wrote in the evenings. Every bird in the world…
Bedtime World TourThe Llama and the Flood — Andes & Southern Cone (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel high into the Andes of Peru, to a manuscript written in Quechua four hundred years ago by someone who never signed it. A man takes his llama…
Bedtime World TourSavitri and the Lord of Death — South Asia (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to India, to a story tucked inside one of the longest poems in the world. Savitri chooses the man she wants and is told, before the wedding…
Bedtime World TourThor's Journey to Utgard — Northern Europe & Baltic (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Iceland, and to the strongest person in Norse myth, who spends one long evening being beaten at everything. Thor cannot open a food bag…
Bedtime World TourWhy the Sun and Moon Live in the Sky — West Africa (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to southern Nigeria, to the time when the Sun, the Moon, and Water all lived upon the earth. Sun visits his friend Water again and again, but…
Bedtime World TourThe Crane Wife — East Asia (Well-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to a snowy mountain village in Japan, where a young man frees a white crane from a hunter's cord and asks for nothing in return. That night a…
Bedtime World TourThe Hero Twins of Xibalba — Mesoamerica & Caribbean (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the highlands of Guatemala, where the K'iche' Maya Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque follow a summons into Xibalba. The lords below expect…
Bedtime World TourThe Shipwrecked Sailor — North Africa & Maghreb (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel four thousand years into ancient Egypt, where a sailor survives a wave that takes his ship and wakes alone on an island filled with every…
Bedtime World TourMedio Pollito, the Half-Chick — Mediterranean & Southern Europe (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Spain, where a proud little chick with one eye, one wing, and one leg decides that an ordinary farmyard is much too small for him. Medio…
Bedtime World TourThe Girl Who Married the Moon — Arctic & Circumpolar (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Kodiak Island, off the coast of Alaska, where the Alutiiq built their houses down into the ground and cut a skylight in the roof to let…
Bedtime World TourTam and Cam — Southeast Asia (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Vietnam, to the rice country where the paddies go flat and green to the edge of the sky. Tam does all the work in a house that belongs to…
Bedtime World TourThe Rough-Face Girl — North America Indigenous (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the northeast woodlands of North America, to a Mi'kmaq village on a wide lake where the greatest hunter in the country lives at the far…
Bedtime World TourThe Elves and the Shoemaker — Western Europe (Well-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Germany, to a narrow street in a cold town, and a shoemaker who sits down one evening with exactly enough leather left in the world to…
Bedtime World TourUnanana and the Elephant — East & Southern Africa (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Season Two opens in the hill country of southern Africa. Tonight we travel to a woman who built her house in the middle of the animals' road and would not be…
Bedtime World TourThe Firebird — Eastern Europe & Slavic (Well-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
The last episode of Season One. Tonight we travel to Russia, where a Tsar counts the golden apples on his tree each morning and keeps finding one gone. His…
Bedtime World TourHow Maui Slowed the Sun — Oceania & Pacific (Well-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we go back out into the Pacific for the second great deed of Māui — the one that gave the world its long afternoons. In the old days the sun ran across…
Bedtime World TourThe Fisherman and the Jinni — Middle East & Persia (Well-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we return to the Thousand and One Nights for one of the very first tales Scheherazade tells. An old fisherman casts his net four times a day and no…
Bedtime World TourHow Night Came to the Amazon — Andean & Amazonian (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the great slow rivers of the Amazon, to a time before there was any such thing as night. The world was all one endless day, and nothing…
Bedtime World TourThe Blue Jackal — South Asia (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to India, to the Panchatantra, for the small and slightly sad story of a hungry jackal named Chandarava who runs from a pack of dogs, falls…
Bedtime World TourEast of the Sun and West of the Moon — Northern Europe & Scandinavia (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to Norway — deep pine forest, long winter dark — for the story of a farmer's youngest daughter who rides away on the back of a great white…
Bedtime World TourThe Weaver Girl and the Cowherd — East Asia (Well-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to China, for a love story people have been telling — and looking up at — for more than two thousand years. A poor cowherd with one old ox…
Bedtime World TourQuetzalcoatl and the Grain of Maize — Mesoamerica & Caribbean (Rare) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to ancient Mexico, to the world of the Aztecs, for the story of how the people were first fed. When the new humans are hungry and nothing…
Bedtime World TourRhodopis and the Rose Slipper — North Africa & Maghreb (Well-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to ancient Egypt, to the banks of the Nile, for what may be the very first Cinderella story ever told. A foreign servant girl, mocked and…
Bedtime World TourThe Ant and the Grasshopper — Mediterranean & Southern Europe (Well-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the sun-warmed hills of ancient Greece for one of the oldest little stories in the world. All summer the grasshopper sings while the ant…
Bedtime World TourSedna, Mother of the Sea — Arctic & Circumpolar (Well-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the far Arctic, to the edge of the frozen sea, for one of the oldest and most important stories the Inuit tell. A young woman who loved…
Bedtime World TourSang Kancil and the Crocodiles — Southeast Asia (Well-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the green jungles of Malaysia to meet Sang Kancil, the tiny mouse-deer andthe cleverest creature in the forest. Hungry for the ripe fruit…
Bedtime World TourHow Raven Stole the Sun — North America Indigenous (Well-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the misty coast of the Pacific Northwest, to a time when the whole world lay in darkness and one clever black bird decided to do something…
Bedtime World TourStone Soup — Western Europe (Well-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to a little village in the hills of France, where three hungry travelers arrive to find every door shut and every cupboard "empty." So they…
Bedtime World TourThe Lion's Whisker — East & Southern Africa (Lesser-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the highlands of Ethiopia, where a woman longs to win the love of a grieving stepson who has closed his heart to her. A wise healer sends…
Bedtime World TourVasilisa the Beautiful — Eastern Europe & Slavic (Well-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the deep birch forests of Russia, where a kind girl with a tiny wooden doll in her pocket is sent to the hut of Baba Yaga — the witch…
Bedtime World TourMaui Fishes Up the Land — Oceania & Pacific (Well-Known) | Bedtime World Tour
Tonight we travel to the wide blue Pacific, to Aotearoa, for the story of how the youngest of five brothers pulled a whole country up out of the sea. Stowed…