Stuff You Should Know - We Got to Sesame Street

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

One of the longest-running television shows in history is also one of the best. Sesame Street was conceived as a radical idea – to give disadvantaged preschoolers a leg up in getting ready for school. It ended up becoming a beloved institution worldwide.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart podcast. Hi, it's Emily Tisch-Sussman, host of the podcast, She Pivots. In honor of Mother's Day, we have some very special guests. I'm Elaine Welteroth. And I'm Keelan Murray. Both women pivoted out of their careers after having their kids, proving that motherhood is just another chapter in our journey, not the end. Come on over to hear their full stories.

You can listen to She Pivots on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. This is Sesame Street edition, which has been a long time coming Chuck. Yeah, and I don't know if you planned this or not, but our selects episode, like the week before this comes out,

I believe is Jim Henson. I did not plan it. What? No, I really didn't. Wow, amazing. That's Kermit, I mean Kismet. Kismet. Right, that's really cool.

Yeah, if you haven't listened to those, I mean, really a couple of our greatest episodes ever in Stuff You Should Know Lore are our Muppet episodes and our Jim Henson up. So those are good primers if you haven't heard those yet. Yeah, because this definitely touches on Jim Henson because Jim Henson was a huge driver for Sesame Street initially as we'll see.

Yeah. But let's talk a little bit about Sesame Street. We should say what it is probably. Yeah. Although I would be really surprised if basically everyone listening wasn't at least familiar. But for those of you who aren't, that's fine. Sesame Street is a long-running children's television

educational program that started way back in, I think 1969 was season one, and has spread all over the world. I think it's in 150 to 170 countries, depending on who you ask. Amazing. And even more than that, in 30 of those countries, at least, there are what are called co-productions where they have basically taken the ball and said,

we're gonna make our own version of Sesame Street in conjunction with the people who make Sesame Street and just kind of adapt it to local customs and culture more. So it's a global juggernaut and it's basically globally beloved too. Yeah, I mean, not by everyone. I'm sure some people hate it. I hope you're wrong.

Oh, I was just kidding. Okay, good. I think everyone has a soft spot, at least for Sesame Street. I watched it for sure as a kid, but I wasn't like, I don't remember years and years and years and years of watching it. I moved on to Electric Company,

which felt like a little bit older version. Much more intellectual? Yeah, maybe a little bit. So I moved on to that pretty quickly, but I did love Sesame Street and the Muppets. a little bit older version. Much more intellectual? Yeah, maybe a little bit. So I moved onto that pretty quickly, but I did love Sesame Street and the Muppets, and it was right in our wheelhouse, even though it was, I guess it started just a few years

before I was born, actually, sadly. Yeah, but again, it's one of the longest-running television shows in the history of the United States. It's up there with General Hospital. It's just been going forever. It's in season 55 right now. It's been continuous every year since it started. And it is, at least in the United States, but I would suspect in a lot of parts of the world,

it's basically a rite of early childhood. It's a rite of passage. You just kind of grow up on Sesame Street. And then, like you said, I think as you start to age out of it, you move on to other stuff that was also produced by people who produced Sesame Street. Oh, I hope I don't start saying Semacy Street because that's just not gonna work.

That might be the name of it in some country. You never know, as we'll see. They do have some great names for it. Maybe we should talk a little bit just out of the gate about some of the biggest characters, most iconic characters and when they were introduced because not all of them have been around for the whole run. But from the very beginning in the first season

we got Big Bird. I know we've talked about it but there's a great documentary on Big Bird that you should watch if you're into that kind of thing. Grover was right away. Kermit was in season one although as you learned, Kermit was already on TV and other areas such that people were like, Kermit's a little,

I don't know if we're over him, but maybe a little overexposed. So they actually removed him after season one for a little while, right? Yeah, I think they were concerned that he was too commercialized. He was too associated with advertising and hawking products that they were like,

this doesn't really have a place here. Yeah, we also got Bert and Ernie in season one, Oscar the Grouch, our friend in the trash can, the Cookie Monster, and then a couple of years later, we got Aloysius Snuffleupagus, Snuffleupagus, excuse me, nice little factoid for your next dinner party is that he does have a first name and it's Aloysius.

What about the count? 72. What about Telly Monster? This was 79. I must not have been watching it that much at eight years old because I did not remember Telly Monster. I remembered him, but he wasn't a big deal to me. So I don't, yeah, I don't know.

I guess we'd cross paths. Was Dave help us with this? No, this was Dr. Claw. Oh, well. Laura Clausen. Laura might have been into Telly Monster, so maybe that's why she listed it. Well, I know he's kind of a big one,

but I think even more than Telly by far, as far as recognition goes, Elmo came along way earlier than I thought. He came along in earlier than I thought. He came along in 1980, but he was just kind of a background character. I don't even think he necessarily had a name or any big speaking parts,

but he eventually kind of caught on and became one of the more beloved Muppets of all time. Stay tuned for Act Three to learn how that happened. Yeah. How about a cliffhanger there? Yeah. And then I guesshanger there? Yep. And then I guess we'll talk a little bit about the origins. We'll come back to some of the Muppet characters later on.

Yeah, we should mention the hardware though because they have won a staggering 221 Emmy Awards. I'm not gonna degrade it by saying, well, they're daytime Emmys, but they are daytime Emmys. And you can rack up a lot of those over the years, but 221 over 55 seasons, I don't care how you slice it, that's super impressive. I have zero Emmys.

As do I, which I'm kinda surprised neither one of us has an Emmy for the work that we've done. 11 Grammys, pretty good. Sure. And then a bunch, pretty good. Sure. And then a bunch of Peabodys. I believe that the last time they got an Emmy, the producer accepted it, just yawned on stage and walked off. Just threw it in a big room,

with the rest of them. Yeah, on the pile. So we should talk about the origins of all this, because Sesame Street and the whole idea behind it grew out of two developing things in the mid-1960s. One was President Lyndon Baines Johnson's Great Society, which was this ideal policy movement toward ending poverty and inequality,

getting rid of crime, helping the environment, making a great society as far as progressives were concerned. That was one thing that was going on. So there was much more of an awareness. There was a, like they literally declared a war on poverty. So there was much more of an awareness of the difference between the advantaged and the disadvantaged, especially among children in the United States at the time.

And then on the other side of the coin, there was this growing awareness among psychologists and other educators that what had been previously neglected and ignored, which was the early childhood years, say between three and five, were really crucial to the intellectual development of a kid. Yeah. And so there came this idea to create television programming that was geared toward disadvantaged kids

between ages three and five to help them, to give them kind of a leg up before they started schooling. That's pretty much the premise of where this whole thing came from. Yeah, which is, I mean, talk about a noble cause. They were on board from the beginning, and as you'll see shortly, they really put their money where their mouths were as far as doing actual research

and studies to make sure they were doing what they intended to do. Precisely. As the story goes, in 1966, as far as origin, a woman named Joan Ganz Cooney and a dude named Lloyd Morissette were at a dinner party and they started talking about TV and like maybe TV could educate kids.

Cooney was in the newspaper biz, she started producing TV, and then as soon as New York City got a educational television station, she came on board and started working for them. And I think a documentary on a Harlem preschool was her first job and it really just got her hooks, got its hooks in her as far as like,

hey, TV can do something different. Yeah, she said in a documentary called Street Gang, I think, Colin, how we got to Sesame Street, it was from 2021, that she wanted to find out what television would do if it loved people instead of trying to sell the people. Amazing. Yeah, and this is a time where the FCC chair

back in 1961 under JFK, his name was Newton Minow, he made a name for himself historically by saying that television was a vast wasteland. And I mean, he was kind of right. There was some good stuff on at the time, but also there was some really bad stuff too. And it was, I think what he was ultimately saying though was he wasn't critiquing the smartness

of the sitcoms at the time. He was basically saying like, there's nothing to be gained from. This is all just dumb escapism and advertising, essentially, is what TV is. And we hadn't really come a very long way for a long time. No. Well, we have and we haven't.

One step forward, two steps back, maybe. Hey man, when they did away with the after-school special, TV took a nosedive as far as I'm concerned. Agreed. As far as Morissette goes, he was a VP at the Carnegie Corporation, very smart guy, he had a PhD in psychology from Yale, and his sort of lore goes that he was watching his daughter,

his young daughter, watch TV test patterns before broadcast started early one morning, and he was like, oh my God, kids, like they'll really watch anything if it's on a screen, this is not good. No, he said to Joan Ganz Cooney, isn't it ironic, don't you think? Is he related?

No, I think she has an E at the end of her name. No, I think you're right. I just wondered though, because she was in kids television. Yeah, you can't do that on television. Yeah, I was like, oh, I wonder if there's a tie there, but I guess not. She got slimed. So they started doing a little research

and they got a grant through the Carnegie Corporation because Morissette was a VP there. And he wrote a report about using TV as a good thing for preschool kids. They got another grant to develop like a more in-depth pitch basically. Did a lot more research. Again, they weren't just sort of riding from the dome.

And in 1968, they presented a proposal called Television for Preschool Children. And again, on the premise that like, hey, all we're doing is like trying to sell stuff to people. Like what if TV treated them with respect and love instead? Yeah, and I mean, TV was a great way to get to kids already by the mid-60s. I saw that, I think, oh, I don't remember what year it was,

but around the time that these guys were starting, kids were averaging 54 hours a week in front of the television. That's almost eight hours a day. That's a full workday of watching TV for kids. So I mean, they were already tuned in. So the idea of getting to them through the TV in a way that you were trying to help them,

to educate them, I mean, it was radical for the time, but it also is just totally sensible. But like you said, they weren't just going on this idea, like, of course this is gonna work. They tested this inside and out. And what became the Children's Television Workshop, which is now called Sesame Workshop, this collaborative of writers, producers, directors

for the show, but also child psychologists, sometimes religious leaders, educators, and also of different races, ethnicities, all coming together to basically say like, here are some things we can, like here's goals we wanna achieve in educating kids. We want them to learn cognitively, we want them to learn social graces.

And like, I think if we try this way or that way, we can actually achieve that, but let's we try this way or that way, we can actually achieve that, but let's try this way and try that way and test them both and see which works best. Yeah, for sure. And they had to get kids to watch though, like all of this hard work would be, it would be really, really sad if kids just didn't tune in

because, you know, as we'll see, like PBS and its precursor, the National Education Television, I guess, network was, maybe not a lot of people watched it at the time. So they knew they had to get eyeballs in front of it. So from their initial $8 million in funding from different foundations and some from the federal government,

they spent $900,000 of that eight million to promote the show, which is a pretty staggering percentage out of the gate. And they had a bunch of, they went to regular media outlets, of course, but they also hit Head Start programs and churches and daycares. I think you found out that when, like the week before their premiere,

they hired trucks with like loudspeakers to just drive around, you know, a lot of urban neighborhoods, you know, advertising that it was coming on. And like you mentioned it from the onset, Mr. Jim Henson coming aboard was also a big part of getting people to watch because the Muppets were already a thing.

Yeah, like we said, Kermit was already so commercialized, he basically was removed from the show. But they've been around since the 50s. I think Jim Henson's first puppet gig was out of high school or during high school. And he developed this schtick pretty quickly, but it wasn't associated with kids. He would take it on like the Steve Allen show

or the Jack Parr show, like late night TV and do like puppet skits that weren't at all geared toward kids and very quickly started doing advertising with them as well. They just became a thing. People knew Muppets before there was Sesame Street. So to land Jim Henson, he wasn't like some mega star, you know? He was no C.C. DeVille at the time. But he was well known. So it was kind of like, they landed a bit of a whale

by getting Jim Henson fully involved in developing and executing, or I should say producing, Sesame Street initially. You know what? I think I got the poison reference wrong in that episode recently. That's why I said that. C.C. DeVille is a guitarist, Ricky Rocket was a drummer.

You got that straight finally. Talk dirty to me. One of the reasons why also Chuck, it was so big to bring Jim Henson on was because from that research, and today this seems totally normal, but this grew out of the Children's Television Workshop research, was that puppets and animation really got kids going.

It really jazzed them. It really got their attention. And as we learned from the editorial cartoon episode, that's because they're super stimuli, so they jack kids up. And then, weirdly, some of the child psychologists involved in the development of the show were like, okay, that's fine, we need puppets. But the humans and the puppets can never interact. They can never communicate. It will scare the bejesus out of the children if they do.

And I guess somebody was like, that's a pretty ridiculous thing. And that got thrown away even before the pilot episode ran. Well, no, they actually tested it with kids and learned that the kids were not interested in the adult-only sections. Yeah. So they actually had real data.

So they tried it out and it just didn't work. No, and they should have known too. I mean, like Sesame Street was pretty groundbreaking in that it was an educational show, but there are already kids shows. Like Mr. Rogers had been around for a year before it debuted. Captain Kangaroo had been around since 1955,

but what made it different is that those shows were generally like anti-school, and they encouraged kids to explore a life of crime, whereas Sesame Street was like, no, let's go to school and be the best kind of people we can. Now can we take a break? Yes. All right, great.

We'll come back and talk a little bit about what happened on November 10th, 1969, right after this. Have you ever wished for a change, but weren't sure how to make it? Maybe you felt stuck in a job or a place or a relationship? Join me, Emily Tish Sussman, over on She Pivots, where I explore the inspiring pivots of women, dig deeper into the personal reasons behind them, and leave you with the inspiration you need to make your next pivot.

In honor of Mother's Day, we have some very special guests. I'm Elaine Welteroth. And I'm Caitlin Murray. Both women pivoted out of their careers after having their kids, proving that motherhood is just another chapter in our journey, not the end. It's like, it's kind of like, will you have more babies?

Yes. Will I always be me? Yeah. And will I continue growing? Yes. Because I was really in the trenches and I knew my worth and my value as a mom. Come on over to hear their full stories.

You can listen to She Pivots on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so I promised a specific date in mind, November 10, 1969. Again, a year before, roughly before PBS came out, a show like this would air on something called the National Education Television. And that's when it aired, ta-da! And it was a hit right out of the gate. Almost seven million viewers in season one. Ernie had a big hit song with Rubber Duckie.

It actually charted at number 16 on the billboards. That's awesome. In September 1970 and was nominated for a Grammy. And they used to do a ton of these episodes. They had 130 episodes a season for a while. And then further reduction in funding kind of over the years trimmed it down. And by the time they hit the 2000s,

they were down to 30 episodes a year. But you know, I mentioned test pilots. And James Earl Jones was, you know, it kind of depends on who you talk to. He was in one of mentioned test pilots, and James Earl Jones was, you know, it kinda depends on who you talk to, he was in one of those test pilots, so some people say he was the first celebrity guest on Sesame Street, but the actual real episode one, season one, Carol Burnett was featured as the first guest.

Yes, and Carol Burnett was laughing while she was counting to 10. James Earl Jones is just staring at the camera doing the alphabet in almost a really creepy way. Have you seen it? Oh yeah. It's great. Yeah, and that pilot was called,

the title of it was Gordon Introduces Sally to Sesame Street. And the other, I mean, in my opinion, oddball human that, in my opinion, oddball human that appeared in episode one, season one, was magician James Randi. Oh really? Yeah, pretty cool.

That is cool. Was he just doing magic or teaching kids to be skeptics? I think he was just doing magic. I didn't watch the whole episode, but I just thought that was kind of fun. But the reason James Earl Jones was on there and shortly after Harry Belafonte and a lot of other black celebrities, very early on,

was because, again, the show initially was geared toward disadvantaged inner city black kids who had just been totally overlooked and forgotten. So they wanted to show people that looked like them on TV, and so they could learn from them. So it was really kind of, I don't want to say like geared toward black kids, but there was way more for the average three or four

year old black kid growing up in America at the time that they could find anywhere else on TV. The thing is, it was also designed for everybody, for every kid. So any kid could come along and enjoy it. And that was actually seen, apparently Sesame Street is based on Harlem, I guess, and they originally had one name for it which was I think, was it 123 B Street or B Avenue? I don't know. I think it was. And so people were

like that sounds really New York and it's gonna turn off everybody outside of New York. Everyone in New York will love it, but you know, so they expanded it to Sesame Street eventually so that everybody could appreciate it more. Yeah, and part of the racial diversity was a problem in some places in the United States at the time.

Their human characters, Gordon and Susan, were a black couple and the state of Mississippi said, not in my state, that's not gonna be on television. And because it is a, PBS is a public thing, the state kind of shut that down, the state commission did, and banned it. It only took 22 days for that to be reversed,

but take heart that a local NBC affiliate stepped up during that three weeks and aired those episodes, even in Mississippi. I think that's so cool, man. Yeah, it's great. So yeah, the original human cast were Gordon and Susan, a black couple, and then Mr. Hooper and Bob, both of them were white.

Mr. Hooper ran the store, Bob was a music teacher, Gordon was a science teacher, and Susan originally started out as a housewife, developed into a nurse, and then finally became a working mom later on. Yeah, it took a couple of years to get Latina representation, because initially in the first couple of seasons,

Chicano activists and Puerto Rican activists were like, hey, where are we in this show? And so by season three, we got Maria and Luis. You did mention Gordon, originally that was a guy named Matt Robinson, but he left the show. He kind of co-created this character with Jim Henson named Roosevelt Franklin. And he was purple, but he was sort of a black-coated muppet

because he spoke using African American vernacular English. And while some people was purple, but he was sort of a black-coated muppet because he spoke using African-American vernacular English and while some people was like, no, this is great as a role model and it's real, other people were like, no, that's a negative stereotype. You know, I think it would be different today, but for the time that didn't go over so well. No, and fans of Arrested Development will probably recognize Franklin, Joe Bluth's puppet.

He was based on Roosevelt Franklin. And because of that, when I started to watch clips of Roosevelt Franklin, the original Muppet, I was like, this is going to be awful. It was not. It's actually quite ridiculous that they got rid of him because he was a really well-developed black character. It's just perplexing that they caved to that because he was a good character. Yeah. Did you say Job or Gobe, Bluth? Oh yeah, I said Job, didn't I?

It's Gobe. Just stop the listener mails right now. No, it's Job. I thought it was Gobe, no? No, it's Job. Or was that just one of the jokes? Yeah, because that's his acronym. George something Bluth.

Oh, okay. I thought there was a joke on there at some point about Gobe, but I might just be wrong on that. It's been a while. Hey man, it has been a while, so you could be right too. Don Music was another character they got rid of. Don Music was a composer who would get frustrated and bang his head on the piano keys and parents were like,

hey, my kid is banging their head on piano keys and stuff and we gotta get this character out of there. So they got rid of Don Music pretty early on as well. Poor Don. Yeah. So there's a, this is like nothing unusual for Sesame Street. They started doing that from the outset, right?

It started off with a black and white cast, and I mean that was still kind of strange or unusual for TV in America, but they keep doing it. And what's kind of saddening is every time they do it, it's like, oh my God, I can't believe how great this is that they're including this character. And then there's another segment of the public who's like, I can't believe they're

including that character. It's just sad. Either way, I think it's both kind of sad because what they're doing, what Sesame Street does, is they say there's a group of people out there who are being neglected that kids that we're talking to interact with and we need to bring them on just to normalize them because they're just normal people,

and we need to show that. So they've introduced a number of characters that proved to be controversial over the years. What I like about Sesame Street, with the exception of Roosevelt Franklin, they basically just stay mute on it, and they're like, you guys sort it out, we're gonna just do our thing over here.

Yeah, for sure. And this was pretty early on too. In 1978, they had a character with Down syndrome who was in preschool, his name was Jason Kingsley, and was the son of a writer, Emily Kingsley for Sesame Street. And so all of a sudden, they started having more kids with challenges and disabilities.

They've had kids that are hearing impaired, they've had kids that are hearing impaired, they've had kids in wheelchairs over the years. Recently they've kind of brought it into the modern age for issues that kids face sadly more and more these days. One character had food insecurity and eventually homelessness. Yeah, that's Lily. Yeah, and another whose father was in prison

and then another kid who was in foster care because her mother is battling opioid addiction. So they've never been afraid to bite off some really, really tough stuff that sadly kids have to deal with, and they know they have to deal with this stuff, so they're not backing away from it. Yeah, one of the other things that Sesame Street does

when it introduces a muppet like this is shine a light on the fact that this is an actual thing. They're not like, what obscure, terrible situation can we find and base a muppet on? Apparently, in the United States, 2.5 million children are homeless at any given time. 2.61 million children have a father or a parent who's in prison, and another 1.4 million have a parent addicted to opioids. So it's not like these are niche topics

that niche puppets are built on. These are real challenges that a lot of little kids in the United States face, whether you consider it tasteful or not. Yeah, for sure. You know, we mentioned that they put their money where their mouth is as far as continuing to do research and study about its effect on kids and potential outcomes.

Because that was the mission statement from the very beginning, so they couldn't just be like, man, we're doing a great job, so we're good. They got into the educational testing service to do a study after just season one and they sampled 943 kids from urban areas and then one rural area. And the kids, there were disadvantaged kids

in urban areas and rural areas, there were Spanish speaking kids, there were advantaged suburban kids in this study. And they found that kids really did learn from the show and that the more you watch, the more they learned and the more they knew, which was pretty great. Yeah, that was season one, right? Yeah.

Yeah, so they went back and said, let's figure out if this worked. There was a 2013 study that kind of recreated it, intentionally or otherwise. But rather than looking at the United States, they took it on an international scale. And it was a meta-analysis of 24 studies that had been conducted on the effects of Sesame Street.

And all combined, this meta-analysis looked at 10,000 children in 15 different countries. So it was a pretty robust study. And they found the same thing, that there were significant positives associated with kids watching Sesame Street and that kids who watched more performed better in school. And that this effect carried,

no matter the income level of the country, low income, middle income, high income country, doesn't matter. The effects were the same. And it hit three different outcomes, cognitive outcomes, learning about the world and social reasoning. And basically, it just turned every single one of these 10,000 children into a super child.

Yeah. Well, which is why they have the S on their chest, right? Sesame Street. Yeah, super child. Another study, I thought this one was pretty striking to me because they could actually do a fairly direct AB comparison. The American Economic Journal, Melissa Kearney and Philip Levine did a study because they were like, hey, wait a minute.

In those early years, there were UHF stations and VHF stations, and some areas had some, and then a couple of neighborhoods over, another, they may not have the same access. So they could literally compare districts and elementary schools and outcomes with people who did not have the show at all and people who had it.

And they found that the show actually did improve outcomes and that the positive effect of the show was particularly pronounced for boys and black non-Hispanic children, and children who grew up in other counties who had economic disadvantage. So it was literally helping in targeting the kids that they were hoping to target, while also being good for everyone overall.

Yeah, and one specific outcome I saw, just for an example in that study, was that the kids who watched Sesame Street were 14% more likely to be in an age-appropriate grade in middle school or high school, so they hadn't been held back, or they were 14% likelier to have not been held back than kids who didn't watch it.

Yeah, it's pretty great. Yeah, it's statistically significant. Yeah, this is a pretty good quote, too. The New Republic, their quote is that Sesame Street was essentially the first MOAC, massive online open course, providing educational content to viewers for free. And a 2015 white paper

from the early childhood education group said, it's one of the largest and least costly interventions. Yeah, and you might be like, well New Republic's a pretty liberal rag, of course it likes Sesame Street. We found a quote from the National Review, which is pretty conservative. The what? And the National Review called Sesame Street

the one great thing accomplished by LBJ's Great Society, which is a hilarious quote, and that was in 2021. Just one thing. Hey, it's good for Sesame Street though. Yeah, that's what I was saying. Everybody loves Sesame Street. So I guess we'll press on Chuck and plug into the rest of the world,

because like we said, shows up in 150 to 170 countries, and there's at least 30 co-productions around the world. And it turns out they're really fun to read about and talk about. They really are. Cause like you said, depending on the country, they're gonna tailor it for their country

and have characters that reflect things kids might recognize. So if you go to Israel and watch Oscar the Grouch, you'll see that Oscar's name Moisha Ufnik, pretty good name, it means grouch in Hebrew. Yeah, but you probably won't see Oscar the Grouch or Count Von Count in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has its own co-production called,

my best attempt is Baksh-e-Simsim, and they have cultural taboos against trash and vampirism. So Oscar and the Count don't really translate to the Afghani version of Sesame Street. The SimSims. Right. I wonder if that's the theme. Yeah, there's Sesame in Arabic or Arabic-like languages

or Arabic-related languages. SimSim or SumSum has, it seems to be what sesame is. Yeah, I think so. So if you ever run across a trivia question that says, what is sesame in Arabic, you better say SimSim. Yeah, S-I-M-S-I-M, if spelling counts. One word.

If you go to the UK and you said cookie monster, they'd say, I think you mean biscuit monster. Of course, because biscuits are cookies over there. And if you go to Latin America, you might not see Big Bird, but you might see Abelardo, who is Big Bird's cousin. It's a giant parrot. Yeah, so you've got like different characters,

or the same characters with different names, or characters that just don't show up. But there's also characters that are just totally new and they kind of follow the original Sesame Street's program of like, let's include people who are stigmatized or left out. And so the South African version of Sesame Street, Takalani, yeah, I don't know why I had trouble saying that, Takalani Sesame. Delicious. Yeah.

They included a character named Kami. Kami is based on the word Kamogelo, which means acceptance in some South African indigenous languages like Zulu. And the reason they did that is because Kami is a HIV positive orphan of a mother with AIDS who died. And this is a Muppet who is basically playing with other Muppets to show little kids

that you don't have to be fearful of having a friend who is HIV positive. It's not dangerous to play with them. And in South Africa, that was very controversial because a lot of people have HIV in South Africa, but it's still very stigmatized. So of course Sesame Street in South Africa was like, let's get Kami in there.

They could probably have an American version of that same character, or at least in the 80s. They could, I read that there was a letter written by a small panel of congresspeople to PBS basically saying don't even think about it. Oh boy. Since 98, there's been an Israeli-Palestinian co-production, which is super unique obviously,

called Reckof Sum Sum, oh yeah, or Sharz Sim Sim, like you said. And this is pretty great. It's Israeli and Palestinian kids together, and they're from separate streets, but they get together and hang out and play and talk. And when they do, the language, either Hebrew or Arabic, is translated in subtitles into the other language.

And they weren't just like, we'll just pat ourselves on the back for this. They were trying to accomplish something, so they measured outcomes again and did studies. And they found that watching the show made kids in that area more likely to use positive terms to describe kids on the other side of that conflict. And Sesame Street.

We should just say that after every great thing we talk about them doing. Yeah, and you know, actually there's a quote that kind of goes along with that. Andrew S. Natsios, who led USAID under George W. Bush, he said the Arabic language version of the show was the quote, biggest weapon against al-Qaeda and Islamic extremism.

Yeah, I thought about that too, that you're using Sesame Street to spread essentially global, good, basic human values in places where those are sometimes in short supply, you know? Yeah. I think that's cool. And then that one, the Arabic version you just mentioned, it's called Al-An-Simsim.

They use that in Syrian refugee camps because little kids in Syrian refugee camps, schools were canceled because the government dropped chemical weapons on their town. But they're still getting to watch this Arabic version of Sesame Street to make sure that they're not left behind. Yeah, and since we're here, before we break, we might as well mention that the Sesame Workshop is a non-profit that gets part of their funding

through the US federal government, through the USAID program. And just a couple of months ago, the current administration announced that, obviously USAID, and by the way, episode coming up on that soon, on that organization, is being cut at the behest of the Department of Government Efficiency.

So Sesame Street is gonna lose a lot of funding and the current president said the Arabic language version was part of hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud. But the good news is that it accounts for only 4% of their total funding. So hopefully, I mean, they were pretty much caught off guard or scrambling a bit, but hopefully that it's not like

the end of Sesame Street. No, I saw in real dollars about $5 million, but the problem is that's still a significant, like they're operating at a deficit, so they basically need every dollar they can get. So it's still hitting them. 4% even matters. Yeah, so I think in March, 2025,

they announced that they were having to lay off employees, which is not something that happens all the time at Sesame Street, although I'm sure they've tackled it plenty of times. Yeah, maybe there's an episode about it. Probably. Should we take a break? I just wanna throw out one more.

We talked about the Afghani version of Sesame Street. In 2016, they featured, they debuted a girl muppet named Zari, who goes to school wearing a hijab. Yeah, pretty great. Yep. Take that, Taliban. All right, well we're gonna take that second break and we're gonna wrap it up here right after this., stuff you should know.

Have you ever wished for a change, but weren't sure how to make it? Maybe you felt stuck in a job or a place or a relationship? Join me, Emily Tish Sussman over on She Pivots, where I explore the inspiring pivots of women, dig deeper into the personal reasons behind them and leave you with the inspiration you need to make your next pivot. In honor of Mother's Day, we have some very special guests. I'm Elaine Welteroth. And I'm Caitlin Murray.

Both women pivoted out of their careers after having their kids, proving that motherhood is just another chapter in our journey, not the end. It's kind of like, will you have more babies? Yes. Will I always be me? Yeah. And will I continue growing? Yes. Because I was really in the trenches and I knew my worse and my value as a mom. Come on over to hear their full stories. You can listen to She Pivots on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, before we broke, I was talking about how Sesame Street probably has tackled the episode of being fired, parent being fired, right? And the reason why is because they have a long history of tackling tough topics that date back pretty far. I think in 1982, that's usually where people trace the origin of Sesame Street, just taking on very adult-themed episodes

that kids sometimes have to deal with head on with the death of Mr. Hooper, who ran Hooper's store. Yeah, I mean, I have a hard time even talking about this one. It was in 1982, actor Will Lee, who played Mr. Hooper, passed away in IRL, and they were like, let's not replace him,

let's use this as an opportunity to teach kids about death and grief. And Big Bird, they aired it on Thanksgiving, so parents were more likely to be home. They got together, again, they weren't just like, hey, let's just have the writers whip something up. They got together with religious leaders

and child psychologists to kind of figure out the best way to do this. And they decided on Big Bird, kind of taking the lead in saying, very sadly, I want to give Mr. Hooper a picture that I drew when he comes back. And that's when they're like, Big Bird, I've got some bad news for you, my friend.

Yeah, Gordon famously rolled his eyes. Yeah, he's not coming back. Death is permanent. And it was famously rolled his eyes. Yeah, he's not coming back. Death is permanent. And it was a huge, huge deal for not just Sesame Street, but just how we talk to kids about this kind of thing. Yeah, because it took kids seriously as thinking, feeling individuals. Because they discussed replacing him

with a new Mr. Hooper, and just pretending like it wasn't a different actor or saying Mr. Hooper retired and he's not coming back but he's retired, not dead. And they're like, no, let's use this opportunity. It is really tear-jerking to watch. Yeah, in 1985, another big lesson came along when if you haven't seen the show,

Mr. Snuffleufagus is this sort of big, I don't even know what you call it, kind of a big long-haired, monster-y thing. But a good monster. It got a touch of Willy Mammoth, I think. Yeah, but Big Bird, Snuffleupagus was Big Bird's imaginary friend, and the adults couldn't see this imaginary friend.

And in that episode, he was seen by the rest of the cast, and they were like, hey, see this imaginary friend. And in that episode, uh, he was seen by the rest of the cast, and they were like, hey, maybe this can inspire kids who are maybe child abuse victims that you don't need to fear that adults won't believe you if you reveal something to them. And so, you know, they tackle it through Snuffleupagus all of a sudden becoming a real thing

to the adults on the show. Yeah, because he always had been real, but anytime Big Bird tried to introduce some people, he would just not be there for some reason or another. So he was real, and when they apologized to him, I think Bob, the music teacher said, "'We'll believe you whenever you tell us something "'from now on, Big Bird.'"

Like, they really kind of drove it home, beat the little kids over the head with this. They also tackled 9-11, not in a direct way by talking about the Pentagon and the Twin Towers, but it was a show very clearly centered around kids dealing with a big sort of shared tragedy and how they might go about that. Oh, let's see, what else?

Another part of that too is there was a fire at Hooper's store, they didn't show the fire, it was just off screen, they mentioned it, they referenced it happening, and some firefighters show up to put it out, and Elmo is just freaked out by this, so the firefighters stop and comfort him and tell him it's okay, and they help deal with that kind of, I don't know, I think the message was

listen to firefighters, because they're all right. Yeah, great message. Kids love fire trucks anyway, so they're halfway there. Right. They also dealt with kids who have parents in the military that are off at war at one point. They've had episodes on hurricanes and dealing with a natural disaster like that.

And they even dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 because kids were at home watching a lot of TV. And their parents are pretty stressed out. So they had a special episode all about COVID. Yeah, including when the vaccines came out, Big Bird and I think everybody else got vaccinated and Big Bird had a bandaid on his wings and my wing hurts a little bit,

but other than that I'm okay. Yeah, so you mentioned the problems with the funding. It started in the mid-80s. They had reports that expenses were gonna outpace revenues perhaps. They do a lot of licensing. I think about two thirds of their revenue comes from licensing to like books and toys and things.

The Monster at the end of this book is a classic children's book with Grover as the center character. My favorite Grover book, one of my favorite books growing up was Grover and the Everything in the World Museum. Did you ever read that one? Uh-uh.

It might have been after your time, but I love that book. Good stuff. The drawing in there is so great, and it's just, It's all Grover. Yeah. They've been talking about, the recent cuts are one thing,

but they've been talking about reducing funding and have reduced funding somewhat over the years for a long time though. I believe 2015 they were operating at a loss maybe for the first time. And so HBO stepped up and said, hey, you know what, if you give us a jump on PBS, we'll pay you some pretty good money.

So they got the episodes nine months before PBS, but in December of last year of 2024, Warner Brothers Discovery said, you know what, we're not gonna do that deal anymore. We can license backup episodes still, or we want to still, but the deal has concluded, and I think that also put them in a bit of a money bind. Yeah, so I guess HBO Max agreed to take season 25,

which is currently out now, but they're not taking season 56. And the Sesame Workshop's like, well, we're still gonna make a season 56. Who wants to buy? New episodes, brand new episodes of Sesame Street. So it's up for auction right now. I didn't see any interested buyers,

but I mean, the idea of Sesame Street just going away because no one's gonna put it on the air is mind bogglingly sad to me and I just don't think it's gonna happen. Hmm, a stuff you should know production. There you go. Do you have like, pool our money together?

100 million bucks or something? What would that cost? I don't know, but I'll bet we could get it out of Jerry. I don't know, I don't think it's gonna be 100 million bucks because that's like all of their operating costs for a year, and I mean, they get a lot of their money from licensing toys and pajamas and all that stuff. So when you buy those things,

you're actually directly helping Sesame Street. Yeah, that's where I get my pajamas. Yeah, I'll bet we could get it for 20 million right now. The problem is, Chuck, is we don't have anywhere to show it. I think that's a big obstacle we would have to overcome as well. Oh, we could cut a deal. Okay, well, God knows how much that's a big obstacle we would have to overcome as well. Ah, we could cut a deal. Okay.

Well, God knows how much that's gonna cost us, but we'll figure it out. Maybe we should finish up with some sort of random sort of factoids that you might wanna share with your friends. Here's a pretty fun stat. The characters on Sesame Street are some of the most recognizable in the world,

and certainly in the US. 75% of people under 55 told a YouGov poll that they even have a favorite character. Do you wanna know the top 10 in order? Sure. Guess, who's your favorite? We never said who our favorites were. I don't remember.

I used to like The Count. Yeah, he was great. One, two, three. Ooh, that's a good count. Cookie Monster's number one. Yeah, I think it's. Elmo's number two. Big Bird's number three.

I guess it makes sense. Grover, number four. Grover is my favorite. The Count. Mr. Stuffleup, I guess. Ernie and then Bert. And then Abby, which is a newer character, I think, I'm not sure when she came along, and then the last one, number 10, is Other.

My favorite. So the title, if you're wondering where that came from, it was from Alibaba and the 40 Thieves, Open Sesame. Cooney is on record saying that that was probably the least bad title and we thought that, you know, Open Sesame, we felt like we were opening children to knowledge and education. So it's kind of a weird little origin,

but it just, I can't think of it as anything else. Yeah, and lucky for them, it translates pretty well in Arabic, SimSim. What was the Mexican version called that had a great name? Plaza Sesamo. I love that. Yeah, I do too. Can you tell me how to get there though?

Well I'm glad you brought that up. I was looking up stuff about the theme song and it turns out there's not much interesting about it other than it debuted on the first episode and has been toyed with or altered here or there over the years, but it's the same theme song in every episode of Sesame Street. All 10 million episodes. We gotta shout out the writers. The music by Joe Raposo,

and lyrics by Raposo and John Stone and Bruce Hart. Nice. Pretty great. That was nice of you. And then, did we talk about Tickle Me Elmo? Well, no, this is the third act reveal. Okay, so we talked about Elmo suddenly becoming very famous. The reason why is because in 1996,

the Tickle Me Elmo doll became like the must-have Christmas toy. And I know we talked about it in one of our Christmas episodes, but let's just briefly mention it again. Yeah, I mean, thank you Rosie O'Donnell for this one. Tickle Me Elmo came on Rosie O'Donnell, and it was a big, big deal.

This may have been a Black Friday episode thing too, because trying to buy those Elmos at the time was a thing. There was stampeding, people went to the hospital, there were people selling them on the black market for like really high prices. So Elmo was a overnight sensation like 16 years after, or I guess 12 years after his debut. Yeah.

14 years. Damn it. Also, Elmo is the only non-human to testify before Congress. That's right. On behalf of music education in school. I got two more things. Just wanted to call out Julia, a four-year-old Muppet with autism who's been around since 2017.

And then apparently this year, season 55, one of the big themes that they're tackling are big feelings and kids dealing with them. And they're even debuting a new Muppet who's teaching kids like breathing techniques to calm themselves down. That's great. And then last thing I have is if you want a little dose of nostalgia, go watch the full compilation of the pinball count songs.

Remember those? No. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Wow, I don't, nine, 10, 11, 12. Wow, I don't remember that. It came out in 76, so yeah, you probably moved on to Electric Company by then. You're like, that's baby stuff.

It's great, you should watch it. The animation in it is beautiful. Beautifully 70s, it's great. Yeah, I love it. You got anything else? Yeah, in 2005, there was a bit of a stir because Cookie Monster was known for just ravaging cookies and stuffing them in his face and crumbs flying everywhere

and that's the beauty of Cookie Monster. But people were like, you know, maybe it's not such a good idea to have a character that's just binge eating sugar and sweets and treats. So they used Cookie Monster as an impulse control model for moderation and a cookie became a sometimes food from Cookie Monster and of course people are gonna be like, what are you kidding me, is this gonna be Veggie Monster next?

And there were letter writing campaigns and there was a petition and all this stuff. And Veggie Monster was never gonna be a thing. I guess they just filed those complaint letters in the circular file and it's like, settle down everybody. I got one more I overlooked, do you wanna hear it? Sure.

This is our cane, but Telly, remember Telly Monster we talked about? Yes, but no. Okay, so Telly has a hamster named Chuckie Sue, and he used to have a stuffed animal horse named Clark. Oh, how about that? Yeah, pretty neat, huh? Yeah.

Total coincidence too is from the 90s, both of them. Yeah, just like that Hinton up, just coming out. Yeah, lots of Kermit, Kersmit. Since I said Kersmit, of course everybody, that means it's time for listener mail. Yeah, this is a little bit on libraries from Name Redacted. Hey guys, love the many on alternative libraries. I'm a member of the board at my local library, and my wife is a school librarian.

I want to salute and celebrate our librarians who are largely thought of as old ladies with buns and cat-eye glasses, but they are actually on the front lines of the fight for the First Amendment in many ways. My local library has a teen room whose librarian is collecting the LGTBQ books discarded by other libraries because of certain bad actors. The librarian at the high school I work has sent red cards telling our heavily immigrant population

what to say if ICE immigrants show up at their door or stop them on the way to school. And apparently his wife, the librarian, has to really get involved in reference searches these days because of book banning and just getting rid of certain educational proposals. So one of her favorite T-shirts says, what is more punk than the local library?

So thanks guys for all you do and keep it up. And that is from Name Redacted. Thanks Name Redacted. I know we talked about that some in our banned books episode. Yeah. But yes, can't say it enough. God bless librarians for making sure

that people are educated as we can be, for free. That's right. Perfect fit for this episode, too. Yeah, I thought so, too. Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Name Redacted did, you can tell us your name or not. Doesn't matter. We'll clearly protect you.

You can send it via email, probably encrypted if you want, to stuffpodcasts at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hi, it's Emily Tisch-Sussman, host of the podcast, She Pivots. In honor of Mother's Day, we have some very special guests. I'm Elaine Welteroth. And I'm Keelan Murray. Both women pivoted out of their careers after having their kids, proving that motherhood

is just another chapter in our journey, not the end. Come on over to hear their full stories. You can listen to She Pivots on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to an iHeart podcast.