Stuff You Should Know - How Jim Henson Worked

Episode Date: January 6, 2015

We've already recorded an episode on The Muppets, but Jim Henson was such a neat guy we delved into him even further. Learn all about the man behind the Muppets who was so much more than just a master puppeteer in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Just a Skyline drive on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation, he's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all, and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times, it'll be funny, we'll push the envelope, we have a lot to talk about. Welcome to the Most Dramatic Podcast Ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Howdy. And Jerry for the last time this year. Yes. I was informed this year and she's all smiles.

She is. Not very nice, Jerry. How'd you like that presentation earlier? The sensitivity training? Uh-huh. It was great. Yes, people, because we work for a corporation, we have things like sensitivity training. And in those trainings you get shown video examples of various forms of harassment.

And they are the best, most fun things to watch ever. Pretty overt. Yeah, I could watch those all day long. I was wondering how much that production company made from that. Yeah. You know, they did about like five little vignettes, I'm sure they paid the actors like literal peanuts. They were bad actors.

They were like, there's the peanut bucket over there, you can pay yourself. Yeah, the one that really got me was the, actually they were all really funny, but the one with the old guy in the factory loading boxes, like a shipping warehouse. Right. And they were giving the old man a hard time about everything. Because he was old? Yeah, because he was old and they were giving him a hard time because he was out of work for a while and they had to cover for him, the old man, and he had the back brace on

that you know he sat. And he just looked on his face, he just kept getting a little more like pouty the whole time. Yeah. I was like, dude. That's good acting. Stick up for yourself. Tell these young kids, you know, what to do.

The back brace prevents them from it. Anyway, I just had to bring that up because I just think that stuff is so funny. And what's funny is people really do some of that stuff that you're like, what? There's some creeps out there. That was a really weird setup for Jim Henson because he's the least harassy guy he was probably ever. Yeah. He certainly comes across that way.

He's a genuinely good dude. It's not one of these stories you hear about like maybe some of your favorite children's books writers or cartoonists or something, maybe it were kind of bad people. No, apparently not at all. Yeah. He was not only. So there's a lot of quotes in this article, John, no, John, I thought John Strickland wrote it.

It turns out that's not the case. I'm surprised. Yeah. Because he's friends with or down with at least one of Jim Henson's kids. Oh, really? Who I believe lives here in Atlanta. Oh, wow. But in this article, it's one of those things where everybody who compliments Jim Henson,

who worked with him, they go to the trouble of complimenting him in a way that's not just like, oh, he was such a great guy. They all back up just a little bit because they're cognizant that that doesn't get it across. Sure. And they want you to understand that they're talking about more than just the great guy like, oh, he's dead. And I'm not going to speak ill of the dead.

And he was a great guy and that's a really thoughtless, polite, inoffensive thing to say. Sure. So like Frank Oz said something like, he was a great guy. But at the same time, you know, he was a human, but he was still a really great guy. Right. So like what you're thinking of as a great guy, get rid of that and actually replace it with a genuine human great guy.

Yeah. So as a filmmaker, he's a puppeteer, obviously, but he was a filmmaker first and foremost, which a lot of people kind of forget about. Yeah. Did you watch any of these? Oh yeah. That's a tough, tough job, super stressful. And you and I have seen it can make good guys and good ladies be real jerks under stressful

situations. You know, it's a tough thing. There's a lot of money on the line each day. It's like everybody relax, it's just millions of dollars. But Frank Oz, I think that's the point he was making, like even when he would get frustrated in a stress like that, it was, he was still a good guy behind it all. Yeah. And I read a, I read an, I guess it was a book review of a biography about him that showed

that it was all, somebody said it was all just play to him. Like work was play. Even though he worked really hard, he was able to commit himself like that to his work because to him, he was having the time of his life all the time. And apparently like there was just, there was no line between work and play, which now that we've seen that sensitivity training could have gotten him in a lot of big, you know, a lot of trouble, but he, he, he just enjoyed the life that he had from what I understand. Love cars.

Yeah. I noticed that was the same color as Kermit the Frog. He had a Rolls Royce early on from his work. Yeah. Let's talk about, let's talk about the guy. Yeah. I mean, if you haven't, I just need to go ahead and say, if you haven't listened to the episode on the Muppets, this is a, what I consider just a more in depth part two on

the man himself. Right. But that's one of our favorite all time episodes. And from feedback, one of the great all time fan episodes. Yeah. It was a great episode. Yeah. It was just a lot of fun.

And so I hope this augments that one. I hope we do it justice. So that's actually one of the reasons why we can do this episode because we already did a Muppets episode. And they tweeted about us too, remember? The Henson company did. Yeah, they did. Which was huge.

They approved. It got their actual approval. That's right. Man, that was something. The, the Muppets episodes, its own thing. It's about Muppets. It's about Jim Henson and it's appropriate that we're doing this because he was more than just the Muppets, even though everybody pegs him with the Muppets and like, that is

a huge thing. He was more than that. And like you said, he was a filmmaker, but originally started out as a puppeteer, but kind of a reluctant one. Yeah. He was born in 1936, September 24th, James Murray Henson, M-A-U-R-Y in Mississippi. And his grandmother, maternal grandmother, was a painter and a quilter and a needle worker. And apparently it was a big inspiration to him just to seek out the creative in life.

Right. Which is pretty great. Yeah. And one of the, one of the things he got into, well, he was originally kind of a fan of ventriloquism a little bit, but he said later on in life that he was never, he was never like obsessed with puppets or anything like that, like you would have expected him to be. And as he went to college, I think in Maryland, he got into, he started out as a studio artist. That's what he was studying.

Yeah. He loved television above all else. Right. From the time he was a little kid, he was just transfixed by the tube. He almost kind of made himself destined to be on television by being obsessed with it. Yeah. And he kind of stumbled into puppetry in college and he started out as a studio art major and ended up graduating with a homec degree because homec was the only degree that offered puppet

making courses. Yeah. He majored or he took a puppetry course at first and then a bunch of textiles and crafts courses, which is a great way to, you know, start building and making your own puppets. Right. He graduated with a homec degree, but by the time he graduated, he was already extremely successful. But the Rolls Royce that I mentioned, he bought in time to drive to his college graduation

because he'd already created successful shows in his town. Yeah. I think he was in high school, he was on the local TV station doing little guest spots. And then in 1955, the show Sam and Friends debuted and that, you know, he also did work on the side making money with, I think he did some of the like really cool concert posters of the day. Right. Really colorful, silk screen posters.

And Sam and Friends did really well, but he still wasn't quite sure. Like I still don't know if I want to, you know, I'm a filmmaker, I did these short films, really sort of weird abstract short films. Live action. Experimental. Totally experimental. Did you see the timepiece? Yeah.

That one was pretty cool. It was great. And it's way. And did you see the cube? I watched parts of the cube. That was, did you see the end? No. Oh, you've got to see the end.

I skipped the middle because I was like, okay, I get where you're going with this. Yeah. Well, we should just set it up real quick. The cube was a show on NBC. It was a one hour show in 1969. The name of the show NBC did was called Experiments in Television, and it was a different thing each week. And he had one week's installment called the cube, which was a guy just stuck in a white

room, but other people could come in and out of the room, but he could not, right? Yes. Okay. And he starts to go kind of crazy. And it has the look and feel of a color TV ad, like all lots of overacting and like Carol Burnett s characters and stuff like that. Yeah. The sentiment behind it and like that, everything behind it is really neat and it really gives

you a good, an eye-opening example of like what Jim Henson was capable of, but also like what he was into because, you know, when you think of him, you think of Muppets and Sesame Street in particular. Sure. And these are weird abstract art films, not unlike, you know, you watch like a Jim Morrison art film from film school and it's kind of the same style, you know, that was what was going on back then. Yeah.

And he actually got nominated for an Academy Award for Timepiece. I think Jim Henson had Jim Morrison beat by a mile as far as experimental films went. Yeah. I'll agree with you there. So like I said, he wasn't quite convinced that puppetry was his future because he was a filmmaker and he was like puppets are still kind of kid stuff. But post-college, he did the old tour of Europe and in Europe, puppeteering is a whole different business.

It was a lot more serious and a lot more, I guess, treated as art. Yeah. Exactly. And he said, you know what, I am going to give this a shot, came back to the U.S., married Jane and even though he and Jane separated, they never divorced. Oh, really? I thought they did. No, they never fulfilled the divorce.

They stayed separated. Okay. So then he started making TV commercials and formed his own company in 1963 with, I don't know if he formed it with Frank Oz, but he hired Frank Oz and Jerry Jewel, who ended up being obviously legendary puppeteers. And lifelong collaborators of his. Yeah. Yeah, but he started out making basically a puppet-based commercial ad agency in New

York in 1963. Yeah. And they weren't making funny commercials back then. He was really pretty revolutionary at the time. Right. And they, I mean, they did pretty well for themselves. And one of the smartest moves he made early on was all of his contracts said that he retained the rights to any of the creations he made for these companies.

Yeah. So he was creating what some of the things that would later become famous muppets, like the Cookie Monster, was originally made for a chip maker. It was this puppet that couldn't get enough of these chips. Yeah. He was a real steeler and he stole cheese wheels. Yeah. Okay.

That's what it was. Yeah. And he ended up being the Cookie Monster. And the reason he ended up being the Cookie Monster is because Jim Henson retained the rights to that creation. That was, he was a very savvy business guy too. Yeah. And he was, he was using somebody else's dime, these, these advertisers like budgets to kind

of hash out and form and make his muppets. Yeah. And Ralph the dog started out on Purina commercials and was later a sidekick on the Jimmy Dean show in 1963. Which I remember that from the muppets episode, Ralph was the first big muppet and he's such like a bit character now that, you know, it's just mind boggling to think he was the one that started it all, even before Kermit, before Big Bird. It was Ralph.

Kermit kind of stole the show, I think. Yeah. And we'll talk a little more about Kermit and where he came from right after this. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison.

It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all and now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward and letting everybody hear from me.

What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Welcome to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. On the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the

cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so it's 1969 and a very, very big thing happens to Jim Henson. He was invited to be on the pilot of a show created by the children's television workshop called Sesame Street. He did not create it. Some people think he did, but he did make his mark by creating most of the iconic characters. And if you were a fan of the old Sesame Streets back then, not all, but many of those little

short films, the little claymation ones or the live actions, he directed those as well, which is pretty cool. I think I knew that. Did you? Yeah. He was our rustic. Yeah. No, he was their rustic.

That's right. Rustic is ours. That's right. So, Chuck, the whole thing that changed everything for him was Sesame Street. He wasn't a creator of Sesame Street, they hired him on, and they actually kind of won him over because remember one of the things that Jim Henson always struggled with his whole career was he wanted to explore places that puppets had never really gone to in themes that they hadn't gone to, at least not in the modern age.

But he was fighting against them not being taken seriously. Yeah. It wasn't like he was anti-puppet by any means. He was anti-kids because one of the big reasons he signed on with children's television workshop was their goal to educate kids, meant a lot to him, but like you said, I think to merge those worlds successfully was a big part of his goal and struggle for a little while. Rustic, by the way, made the little interstitial things for the stuff you should know television show, the animations, which is why I reference him.

So the children's television workshop, which is now called the Sesame Workshop, from what I understand, they won him over big time. He makes all of these characters from like Big Bird, and I think Kermit came before Sesame Street, and he started out, and I think we talked about this in the Muppet episode too, he started out looking really weird. Yeah, like a lizard almost. Yeah, not cool at all, like really kind of freaky, which is something that I, now that I know a little more about Jim Henson, I think maybe he might have even been going for.

But one of the things that Sesame Street allowed him to do was to really kind of explore something that he'd long been obsessed with, which was television and where it converged with puppets, which was all new territory, and Jim Henson was at the bleeding edge of it. Because if you think about it, when you go to a puppet show live, you know, you're looking at what's essentially a mechanism for hiding the human, and there's just a little area that the puppet can move around in. A little tiny, thick stage. Yeah.

So Jim Henson stepped back and said, okay, the television is that little tiny area that the puppet can move around in. But it also opens up the whole world for a puppet because you're using camera angles and there's editing, and it's not in person. Yeah, just frame out the people. So and again, we talked about this in the Muppet episode. He created something called Platforming Up to where the puppeteers no longer had to crouch down to maneuver the puppets.

Yeah, because he was a tall guy. Yeah, tall and lanky. Man, he was skinny. Oh, those running shots and timepieces. Exactly. Because he was in it. They were hysterical. Yeah, and he weighs about 70 pounds somehow.

His big lanky legs. But so yeah, the performers could stand up, which was a huge weight off. Yeah. But at the same time, because you're working with cameras and stuff like that and they have the whole universe to move around in, and Jim Henson wanted them to move around as much as possible, it also put them in some weird positions. Yeah, if you ever, well, some people might think it's like kind of ruining the thing, but I think it's really neat if you just look up on Google Images' Muppet Show behind the

scenes pictures. Yeah. And it'll show the stage sets, you know, like six feet off the ground and all the people standing beneath. I think it's awesome to look at, but some people don't like, you know, they want to keep that illusion alive. Right. So depending on what kind of person you are, either seek that out or don't.

And we gave that warning in the Muppets episode, too. Did we? Yeah. Yeah, I think they're really cool pictures. I agree. Because, you know, a lot of times they're looking at video monitors standing there, contorted using both hands, like, the way puppeteers work together to me is just a miracle. Because they're acting as the puppets, but they're moving, still moving among one another

as humans underneath, which can be really complicated. In fact, we know some really, really talented puppeteers here in Atlanta. Yeah, the Center for Puppetry Arts is, I think the nation's largest puppeteer organization. And that is where we had our TV show debut party, premiere party, like it was a really cool experience. Like Emmett Otter and the gang are right there on display. I think the Henson and Kermit cut the ribbon for the grand opening back when it opened and ended up donating like 500 puppets and Muppets to the Center for Puppetry Arts.

So if you ever visit Atlanta, people always email us and say, what should we do? I highly recommend going and checking out the Center for Puppetry Arts. Yeah, because they have a museum with, like you said, Emmett Otter. Oh man, all sorts of cool stuff. There's a sketchy, like a full-size, life-size sketchy, behind glass, scary as you can imagine. Yeah, but I was talking about Raymond Carr, our friend, who I hate to keep bringing up the TV show, but it all kind of overlaps. He was a production designer for Stuff You Should Know on Science Channel.

Yeah. And he and his friends, Brandon and the gang, are amazing puppeteers, and they're doing some really, really leading edge, like, cool stuff here in Atlanta. Like these giant puppets operated, like, you know, 15-foot-tall puppets operated by, like, six and eight people. Have you ever seen the Space Man that they do? No. Oh man, it's unbelievable.

It's really cool. It's like, I don't know how tall he is. He seems like he's 20 feet tall. And they, you know, do these at parades and stuff, and it's just really, really cool stuff. That's awesome. Yeah. But Henson is a huge inspiration to them, obviously. Oh yeah.

I think anybody who works even remotely in puppets has got to be inspired by Jim Henson. He's the man. And one of the other things that he came up with was, that was based on putting muppets or puppets on TV, was using softer materials. Yeah. Everything else was, like, up to that point, stiff wood, marionettes, ventriloquist dummies, that kind of stuff. Right.

He used, like, foam, and it allowed the puppets themselves to have more expressive faces, which was great for close-up on TV. Yeah, absolutely. And it also, I mean, now, looking back, he just, are like, well, yeah, of course, it's what puppets do, that's what... I know. But that was Jim Henson that came up with that, and it changed everything because it took something like, I mean, imagine Howdy Doody.

It was like, yeah, it's cool, you know, it's Howdy Doody or whatever, but with a close-up or far away, he looked exactly the same. It was like a wood head with, like, a moving lower jaw, and, you know, he gave you nightmares. With Kermit the Frog or something like that, the fact that he could have different expressions and react differently and his emotions could be shown on his face, that made him that much more popular, that much more approachable to people who were into him. Absolutely. Which is everybody.

Yeah. Yeah, show me someone who doesn't like Muppets in any form. I get it if you don't like it anymore, maybe, but your heart is cold and dead inside. For a while, and this is something I don't think I knew, he dabbled on Saturday Night Live in season one, Lorne Michaels got him a deal to perform some sketches, and ultimately it wasn't a huge success and it wasn't the greatest marriage, but it was pretty cool that he was seeking out, you know, different avenues to get those puppets on television. It was.

The big break came in 1975, he wanted to make the Muppet Show, and he had a lot of trouble in the U.S. still, even though he had his various successes on commercials and stuff, so he had to go to London, and a TV producer named Lord Lou Grade gave him a deal with Grade's ATV Studios and said, you know what, you can make your show, and the Muppet Show was born. Oh yeah. Butter Bing, Butter Boom. That was it.

That was it. I really see Jim Hinton's love of variety shows and just kind of, well, just the stage in the Muppet Show, because if you think about it, the whole thing is set backstage at a variety show. It's such a great idea when you look back at it, like we take it for granted a little bit because we were kids, but now as an adult, it's like what a perfect way to frame this world is it's basically like 30 Rock, or 30 Rock was the Muppet Show. Right.

Well, the Muppet Show started all that. Yeah. I don't know if Carol Burnett was before the Muppet Show. Yeah, it was before. Was it? Yeah. So she did a lot of backstage stuff, didn't she? I wonder who started that.

I don't know. Hers was more sketch. Yeah, but some of it was like backstage. Was it? I believe so. Yeah, I don't remember that. Unless I'm hallucinating right now. They need to have a good old fashioned variety show again.

Yeah, they don't have those anymore. Those were big back in the day, you know, like a host comes out and then there's sketches and singing. Sure. Remember our cabaret? No, it wasn't cabaret. What was it, the episode we did? Oh, Burlesque?

Burlesque, yeah. Yeah, how that started out in vaudeville and Burlesque had, that's where standup comedy came from. That was an interesting episode. Yeah, I missed those variety shows though, like the Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton and Kelburnette, all the Vandrel sisters. Although Kenny and Dolly could just sit on a couch and stare at the camera for an hour and I'd watch that.

Yeah, they are the best. Great entertainers. Yeah. Love those two. All right, so where are we in our timeline? Well Chuck, the Muppet shows just hit. Oh, that's right. Things are going pretty well.

They have been going pretty well already for Henson. Apparently in 1970, Rubber Ducky hit number 16 on the Billboard charts. And for those who don't know, Ernie is voiced by Jim Henson. So Jim Henson sang a song, Rubber Ducky, that made it to number 16 on the Billboard charts. That was 1970, a year after The Cube, before the Muppet show even happened. Before Sesame Street even, right? No, Sesame Street was 69, I think. Same year as The Cube.

Wow. That's crazy. The new touchstone for his life, The Cube. Yeah, PC and BC. So the Muppet show was a huge hit. It won a lot of awards. It garnered critical praise and won the hearts of children all over the world. But it was also for adults too.

Oh yeah. I think that's why he was able to pull it off in Great Britain, because they have better senses of humor. Yeah, and speaking of adults, he got into some more serious themes with his next great show, Fragile Rock. Yeah. In 1983. I never saw a second of that show.

Oh man. Really? It wasn't on HBO. Yeah, it was one of the first HBO original series. We either had Showtime or we didn't have HBO or anything. It was awesome. Fragile Rock was great. And the idea there is you had the Fragile Gang, and then you had, well, you had three

different groups. You had the home of Doc, who was an inventor, and his dog, Sprocket. You had the Fragils, who shared caves underground of Fragile Rock with their neighbors, the Doozers, and the Gorgs, and these gigantic creatures that are in Gorg's garden. And the whole point of that show was to show how different types of people can live together and work together in peace. Right. It was really cool.

Didn't know it at the time when I was, you know, 12 years old. But what I was learning about was acceptance, and he won three cable ace awards, five international Emmys, and Fragile Rock was one of the first big hits for HBO as far as TV goes. Yeah. Great, great show. Lots of great songs that, I mean, he had every kind of, like, he had reggae, rock, country bluegrass. Really?

He was all over the map with the music and Fragile Rock. And he, I mean, he wrote a lot of songs too. I think he wrote Rubber Ducky. I'm sure he wrote a lot of the stuff on Fragile Rock. It was just yet another thing he did was write music. Like Renaissance Man. The other show that he came out with in the 80s, in the mid-80s, that I was big time into was Muppet Babies.

I never saw one second of that. I love that show. Yeah. We're just enough apart in age where, like, certain things I saw, I was, you were too young for, and then certain things I was too old for. You know what's weird though? I'm just going to say this. So Yumi and I are the same age.

Her sister is like five years younger than us. And I used to love Muppet Babies. Yeah. Yumi's sister used to watch Muppet Babies. So Yumi was like, why were you watching Muppet Babies if my younger sister was watching Muppet Babies? And Yumi didn't watch Muppet Babies? No.

She watched like Donahue or something like that. I watched Muppet Babies. I'm not ashamed anymore to say it. Well, when was that? 1984? I was 13. So yeah, I was just, I was starting to be a teenager. Muppet Babies didn't appeal.

Yeah. I think it was on for like four or five seasons. So maybe I was watching it at the beginning of the series and Mika was watching it. That's what I've been telling you, Mika. In 84, you would have been what? Eight? Oh yeah. That's perfect age for Muppet Babies.

So I think, I think we just saw it on different ends of the series is what it was. Is that what it is? But have you ever heard of Ron Funch's? Yeah. The comedian? Yeah. Yeah. He has a little bit about Muppet Babies that's pretty hilarious.

Oh really? Yeah. He's awesome. Love that guy. Yeah. We saw him live. He's just a beautiful human being. Muppet Babies was cartoon though, right?

Right. Yeah. He was like a live puppets, correct? No. It was cartoon. Okay. It was so cute. Were they just the regular Muppets as babies?

Yes. Oh, we'll have to watch that sometime. Yeah. And they like use their imagination and like Gonzo had a thing for Indiana Jones. So he was frequently like exploring caves and like swinging on vines with the Indiana Jones fedora on and that kind of stuff. We'll see how we'd probably enjoy that now. You would.

Yeah. Definitely. All right. Chuck, he did even more TV that we'll talk about in a second, okay? Okay. Okay. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back.

The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all and now he's sharing the things he can't

unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day, truly every day of my life. I think about this and what I want to say.

Attention to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best

decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the

nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, and we're back and we're still in the 80s. That's right. And you were talking about other TV.

As we said, the man loved television and filmmaking and so he got away from the Muppets and Puppets every now and then, collaborated with Raymond Scott, who was an electronica pioneer actually, on shorts called Ripples and Wheels That Go, and he did that for the Montreal Expo in 67, and I know we're jumping around in time, but we're just trying to paint the full picture here, not going necessarily in order, and then he also did this cool thing called the Floating Face, which was a sketch that was on The Tonight Show and the Mike Douglas Show in the 60s, which did you see any of that? A little bit.

A little bit weird. It was like two eyes and a mouth, and there were like these invisible wires and background images, and it was definitely a little more on that surreal tip, the Henson surreal tip. Not kid-oriented necessarily, but he got into the movies with the Muppet movie, which was a big hit. So good. It still holds up, man. It's still so great.

And if you want to know more about that movie and some of the cool facts from it, go again, listen to the Muppet episode. As a matter of fact, pause this, go listen to the Muppet episode, and then come back to this one. Yeah. And you will probably enhance your experience. Agreed. Or listen to them both at the same time.

But he followed the Muppet in 1982. He made the Dark Crystal, which was puppets, and it was based on some drawings by fantasy artist Brian Froud, and there were no humans. It was all puppets, and I don't think it holds up as well, but it still looks pretty good. Well, yeah. I think it actually is probably better received now than it was originally. I think critics appreciated it, but it didn't do so well at the box office, but now it's

become kind of a cult classic for sure. And one of the reasons why it didn't do that well at the box office is because audiences didn't quite know what to make of it. They heard Frank Oz, who co-directed it, Jim Henson, and puppets, and I think they went expecting the Muppet movie. This is 1982, and they got the Dark Crystal instead, which is really dark. The theme is good versus evil, and the evil in it is really, really evil. And the stuff that happens to some of the puppets, including really cute puppets, is

really horrifying, and I read this awesome quote by Frank Oz, and basically he says, like, Jim thought it was okay to scare kids. As a matter of fact, he thought it wasn't healthy for kids to never be scared. He purposefully was trying to scare kids, and he wanted to take the tradition back to grim fairy tales, which were very, very dark and graphic. Oh, yeah. That's a good point. That's what he was going for with the Dark Crystal.

Yeah, I think it was ahead of its time, for sure. Yeah. If you look at some of these, like some of the CGI movies today, I think that Dark Crystal was a precursor to a lot of those. Right. Then he went on to make the movie The Labyrinth. With Bowie, right? Yeah, David Bowie and a very young Jennifer Connolly.

Now, that was a legend. Oh, okay. Good movie. But this was written by Terry Jones of Money Python fame, and then rewritten a bunch by a bunch of other people, including executive producer George Lucas. Labyrinth was okay. Not bad. Again, not a huge hit for Henson, though, as far as movies go, but he was still out there

exploring these cool fantastical worlds and fantasy worlds. He still had a lot of cred, even in the late 80s. If you think about it, his heyday was the late 70s, early 80s with the Muppet show, the Muppet movies. Then after that, it was like, yeah, I'll try this with Jim Henson. I'll try this with Jim Henson. Even still, he was on a pretty great streak. At the end of the 80s, he had two TV shows on the Jim Henson Hour and Storyteller.

The Storyteller. Yeah. The Jim Henson Hour. He was always pushing the boundaries. The Storyteller looking back now, or I'm sorry, Jim Henson Hour looking back was really different from what you were getting at the time, because it was all over the map. You had certain shows that were like four or five sketches in one, and then three of the episodes were full on one-hour little mini-movies.

Oh, really? Yeah. From beginning to end. It's like a Louis. Yeah. That's a good point, actually. One of the little mini-movies was called Dog City, which was great. It was narrated by Rolf, and I remember watching this.

It was like a film noir gangster thing with puppet dogs. The main character, A.C.U., was the guy who did Elmo, Kevin Clash, did the character of A.C.U., and that was fantastic. I think Dog City went on to be a TV show in its own right, too, for a little while. But it was really good. I mean, it's total gangster crime, film noir, but it's, you know, Rolf the dog, the gang. I love Rolf. It was really cool.

The Storyteller, I hadn't seen before. I was, I guess, aware of, but I don't know why I wasn't watching it, because it would have been right there for me. Yeah. It was in 2012 and 1988, but I watched one today, and it was really good. It's like human-puppet interaction, which is, and it's just seamless. One of the things from studying this that I've realized is we take for granted and expect our puppet-human interactions to be so seamless that we don't even realize that we're looking

at puppets right then. The reason why we expect that is because of Jim Henson and the people he worked with and inspired to work so hard at creating that illusion. Well, yeah. The illusion that these are living, breathing things, he would go, I remember Kermit as guest on talk shows. He wouldn't go out as Jim Henson. He would go out as, I mean, he did those appearances as well, but Kermit the Frog would be a guest

on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Or host. Or host at Tonight, guest host at The Tonight Show. And Larry King. Yeah, and it was all a part of this goal of making these real people or real living things, not people. Yeah. Apparently somebody who was working with Jim Henson was, I guess, a director of The Muppet

Show would be giving Jim notes on Kermit, and Jim would just respond, like let Kermit respond. That was freaking out. And the director said, eventually, you're just sitting there, you turn and you address Kermit. And he'd just force you into, like, interacting with the puppet, even like during a note session. Yeah, and probably without feeling silly or stupid or anything. You know, it probably seemed like a totally normal thing to do.

Eventually. Once he forced you to do it. He also pioneered the Henson Performance Control System and won an Academy Award for that, and that was a remote control system that helped puppeteers out. So he was always pushing technical, visual, stylistic, thematic boundaries as far as he could. And they didn't always work, you know. The movies weren't, aside from The Muppet Movie, they weren't the biggest hits.

The TV show, a couple, you know, neither one of those lasted very long. But I think he was just intent on doing something different. Yeah. And he did, too, and he died in 1990 of a staff infection. Organ failure brought on by a staff infection. Did you know that? Yeah, I think pneumonia had something to do with it, too, didn't it? Not that I saw.

Oh, really? I saw organ failure caused by a group A strep infection. I'm sorry. Not staff. Very sad. And if you're ever in the mood for a good cry, watch the Jim Henson Memorial where Big Bird sings, It's Not Easy Being Green. Tough stuff, people.

His children, his legacy lives on through 1993, Jane, his wife founded the Jim Henson Legacy to preserve his contributions, chair him with the public. And like I said, he donated 500 puppets to the Center of Puppetry Arts. And there is also the Jim Henson Memorial and Muppet Museum and traveling exhibits. And his sons and daughters help run his foundation. And some of them are puppeteers themselves and run the company. The company has changed hands a lot. I have sort of the boring history.

When he was still alive, he was going to sell it to Disney for 150 million because apparently he believed in Disney's commitment to characters. So he thought like that would be a good place for the Muppets to live. Yeah. And Disney went, whoa. He bought it. Yeah. He did not get that deal finished, but it turns out 150 million was chump change because

in 2000, his children sold the entire company, including the Sesame Street characters to a German media company for 680 million. And then I believe that company fell in hard times and they bought it back in 2003 for 84 million. Isn't that crazy? Wow. The Henson children are smart. And in between all of that, there are various exchanges of percentages of stakes with other

companies and rights of certain characters. It's a little dull to go over all of that, but needless to say, they made up pretty well. And eventually, Disney now does. They do own all the Muppet studio. They own the Muppets that apparently the Henson company sold the rights to the Sesame Street characters to Sesame Street, which is pretty cool. Right. Yes.

And the creature shop still builds the Sesame Street puppets and Muppets. Yeah. So they sold the rights to the Muppets and Bear and the Big Blue House characters, which I'm not familiar with that one. Nor am I. But Disney wanted, I guess that's sort of the player to be named later that's included in the baseball trade. Right.

Man. I'm proud of the Henson kids. Yeah. They're great. And I hope we get tweeted about this one from them. They seem pretty great, Brian and Cheryl and the gang. They seem like they're doing right by the dad and there's other siblings too. And I think they're all involved.

Yeah. Super involved. And sadly, Jane passed away. I think in 2013 at the age of 78, I would have loved to have seen what kind of work he did later in his life. Oh, yeah. The fact that he died in 1990 still had like a couple of TV shows going. He's 53 years old.

Yeah. He had a lot of work left in. If you want to know more about Jim Henson, go listen to our Muppets episode. And while you're looking that up, you can also search Jim Henson on the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And we'll bring up this great article. And since I said search bar, it's time for Listener Mail. This is, I'm going to call this sophomore, smart sophomore.

Hey guys, my name is Matt and I'm a sophomore in high school. Smart sophomore. Smart sophomore. I've been in the show and I listen while I do everything. Just want to say the dark ages were only dark in Europe. The life expectancy in the dark ages is actually a little longer than before, but mostly because there were smaller wars, but things were certainly brighter in the Islamic world. In fact, people in the Middle East were really enlightened during this time.

Within about 100 years, they conquered a lot of new land, including Spain. Also the Arabic language grew to be the language of philosophy, medicine, and poetry. And Baghdad became the world's center of scholarship. They translated almost all of the famous Greek philosophers' work into Arabic. Muslims developed algebra to simplify inheritance laws and they made important strides in trigonometry to help people find a way to Mecca. Architecture grew too. The great mosque in Spain only took roughly a year while medieval cathedrals took hundreds

of years to build. So the dark ages weren't that dark and the enlightenment came earlier than most think. And that is for Matt. Thanks, Matt. That is enlightening stuff, my friend. Yeah, our numerals are Arabic. Yeah. It's true.

We should hit on some more Middle Eastern topics. Let's do it, man. Yeah. In the meantime, if you want to suggest some Middle Eastern topics for us, you can tweet them to us at SYSKpodcast. You can post them on our Facebook page at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com and, as always, hang out at our beautiful home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. I'm Munga Shatikler, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me, and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes, because I think your ideas are about to change, too.

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