WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

Hi, Rebecca Shear here.

Here at Circle Round, we're taking time off as we get ready to bring you the ninth season of our WBUR podcast,

featuring dozens of folk tales from around the world,

and an exciting lineup of live episode recordings across the United States.

This week we're bringing you a special encore edition of the podcast,

a really fun story you may have missed the first time around.

Enjoy!

We'll start today's show with a riddle. Ready? Here goes. You can have me, but cannot hold me.

You can gain me, yet quickly lose me. If treated with care, I can be great. And if betrayed, I will break. What am I?

Any guesses? The answer is trust. When you gain someone's trust, they feel they can rely on you.

But in today's story, we'll meet a character who loses the trust of a god.

I'm Rebecca Shear, and welcome to Circle Round, where story time happens all the time.

Today, our story is called Hungry Hippo.

Versions of this tale originally come from eastern, central, and southern Africa.

Some really great people came together to bring you our adaptation of this story, including Scott Lawrence,

whose voice you may know from Star Wars Resistance

on Disney Plus, and the Star Wars virtual reality series Vader, where he plays the title

role of Darth Vader.

So, circle around, everyone.

For Hungry, Hippo.

Way, way back, after the supreme spirit created the earth and sky, the powerful deity created

...