Can something free still cost you something? Almost every choice comes with a price that never shows up on a receipt, and plenty of adults forget to count it.

This family-friendly show for kids explains opportunity cost, the idea behind every hard choice: a birthday party or a big match, college or a paycheck, a steady job or a business of your own. Two kids work out the hidden price of choices they already face, do the math on one of the most expensive decisions a person can make, and hear how a company name made up on the spot led to a brand you have probably worn. Then the idea gets turned upside down. If every hour has a price, should you feel bad about a movie, a sleepover, or a night of pure fun? And what is someone who never stops working really giving up?

Best for ages 7 to 12.

Junior Boardroom is a family podcast where kids break down business, money, and how the real world works. Hosted by Raina (10), Devin (8), and their dad Mel. More at juniorboardroom.com.

Why can't a country just print more money and hand it out, so that everybody has enough? It sounds like an obvious fix to poverty, and most adults cannot explain what is actually wrong with it.

This family-friendly show for kids answers it without economics jargon. It is about the difference between money and the things money is for. Money is a promise that you get a turn at something real: an apple, a seat, a place on a team, a house. Promises can be printed in an afternoon. The real things take a season, or a year, or a decade. Two kids work that gap out for themselves, testing it against places they already know and arguing with their dad about whether it is fair, and end up with the question worth asking any time someone says more money will fix a problem. Is there more stuff? And if there is not, how long would it take to make some? It closes with a country that printed anyway, and what its money was worth by the end.

Best for ages 7 to 12.

Passports explained for kids: what a passport actually is, why every country issues its own, and why officers at the border ask the questions they ask. Raina (age 10) and Devin (age 8) find out what is printed inside a passport, why only your own country's government can issue you one, why even a baby traveling on a parent's lap needs one, and why there is no single passport for the whole planet.

Then they take on passport control itself: why a country wants to know where you are staying and how long you plan to be there, how those questions differ from the ones you get coming home, why fruit, plants and soil cannot cross a border while a souvenir rock can, and what the face-scanning machines at the airport are comparing your face to. A kid-friendly guide to passports, citizenship, borders and customs, recorded after the family's trip to Costa Rica.