We Got to Sesame Street

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 https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:13Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too. And this is Sesame Street Edition, which has been a long time coming, Chuck.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:34Josh Clark?

  I did not plan it.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:36Josh Clark?

  No, I really didn't.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  Wow, amazing.

• 1:38Josh Clark?

  That's kermet. I mean, kismet.

• 1:42Speaker 02

  Curse- cursive.

• 1:43Josh Clark?

  Right. That's really cool.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  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 ep. So those are good primers if you haven't heard those yet.

• 1:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because this definitely touches on Jim Henson because Jim Henson was a huge driver for Sesame Street initially, as we'll see.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06Josh Clark?

  Well, let's talk a little bit about Sesame Street.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  We should say what it is, probably.

• 2:10Josh Clark?

  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.

• 2:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:26Josh Clark?

  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.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 2:40Josh Clark?

  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 going to 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.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, not by everyone. I'm sure some people hate it.

• 3:08Josh Clark?

  I hope you're wrong.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Oh, I was just kidding.

• 3:11Josh Clark?

  Okay, good.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  I think, I think everyone has a soft spot, at least for Sesame Street. I watched it for sure as a kid, but I, um, 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 was, felt like a little bit older.

• 3:28Josh Clark?

  Much more intellectual.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe a little bit. So I moved on to that pretty quickly, but I did, I did love Sesame Street and The Muppets. And it was, you know, right in our wheelhouse, even though it was, you know, I guess it started just a few years before I was born, actually, sadly.

• 3:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but again, it's, it's one of the longest-running television shows in the history of the United States. It's up there with, um, like, General Hospital. Like, 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. Like, 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 Sesame Street, because that's just not going to work.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  That might be the name of it in some country. You never know, as we'll see.

• 4:25Josh Clark?

  They do have some great names for it.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  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 had been around for the whole run. But from the very beginning in the first season, we got Big Bird.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  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 in other areas such that people are 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?

• 5:03Josh Clark?

  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.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. We also got Bert and Ernie in season one, Oscar the Grouch, our friend in the trashcan, the Cookie Monster. And then a couple of years later, we got Aloysius Snuffleupagus, Snuffleupagus, excuse me. A nice little factoid for your next dinner party is that he does have a first name, and it's Aloysius.

• 5:31Josh Clark?

  What about the Count?

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Seventy-two.

• 5:34Josh Clark?

  What about Telly Monster?

• 5:36Speaker 02

  This was seventy-nine. I must not have been watching it that much at eight years old, because I did not remember Telly Monster.

• 5:42Josh Clark?

  I remembered him, but he wasn't a big deal to me. So I don't, yeah, I don't know. I guess we crossed paths.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Who helped, was Dave help us with this?

• 5:52Josh Clark?

  No, this was Dr. Claw.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  Oh, well.

• 5:55Josh Clark?

  Laura Clausen.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Laura might have been into Telly Monster, so maybe that's why she listed it.

• 5:59Josh Clark?

  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 nineteen eighty, 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.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Stay tuned for Act Three to learn how that happened.

• 6:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  How about a cliffhanger there?

• 6:31Josh Clark?

  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.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, we should mention the hardware, though, because they have won a staggering 221 Emmy Awards. I'm not going to 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.

• 7:03Josh Clark?

  As do I, which I'm kind of surprised neither one of us has an Emmy for the work that we've done.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  11 Grammys, pretty good.

• 7:11Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  And then a bunch of Peabodys.

• 7:13Josh Clark?

  I believe that the last time they got an Emmy, the producer accepted it, just yawned on stage and walked off.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Just threw it in a big room, hold the rest of them.

• 7:22Josh Clark?

  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 little, 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,

• 8:06Josh Clark?

  especially among children in the United States at the time. And then at the, on the other side of the coin, there was this growing awareness among psychologists and other, like 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.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:32Josh Clark?

  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.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is, I mean, talk about a noble cause. They were, they were on board from the beginning and will, as you'll see, you know, 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.

• 9:06Josh Clark?

  Precisely.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  As the story goes, in 1966, as far as the origin, a woman named Joan Gans 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.

• 9:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah. She said in a documentary called Street Gang, I think, colon, 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 to people.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 10:01Josh Clark?

  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 like, 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.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Well, we have and we haven't. One step forward, two steps back, maybe.

• 10:47Josh Clark?

  Hey, man, when they did away with the after-school special, TV took a nosedive as far as I'm concerned.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  As far as Morissette goes, he was a VP at the Carnegie Corporation, a 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, you know, 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.

• 11:16Josh Clark?

  No. He said to Joan Gans Cooney, isn't it ironic, don't you think?

• 11:22Speaker 02

  Is he related?

• 11:23Josh Clark?

  No, I think she has an E at the end of her name.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  No, I think you're right. I just wondered, though, because she was in kids' television.

• 11:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you can't do that on television.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was like, oh, I wonder if there's a tie there, but I guess not.

• 11:32Josh Clark?

  She got slimed.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  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, you know, 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 writing 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?

• 12:12Josh Clark?

  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.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:32Josh Clark?

  So, I mean, they were already tuned in. So the idea of like getting to them through the TV in a way that you were like, you were trying to help them, to educate them, that, I mean, that was, 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, it's 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 like writers, producers, directors for the show, but also child psychologists, sometimes religious leaders, educators, and also of like different races, ethnicities, all coming together to basically say like,

• 13:16Josh Clark?

  here are some things we can, like here's goals we want to 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 try this way and try that way and test them both and see which works best.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And they, 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, you know, 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 $8 million to promote the show, which is a pretty staggering percentage out of the gate. And they had a bunch of, you know, they went to, you know, regular media outlets, of course,

• 14:19Speaker 02

  but they also hit head start programs and churches and daycares. I think you found out that when, like the week before the 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.

• 14:45Josh Clark?

  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 shtick pretty quickly, but it wasn't, 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, Muppets. People knew Muppets before there was Sesame Street. So did land Jim Henson, he wasn't like some mega star, you know?

• 15:27Josh Clark?

  He was no C.C. DeVille at the time, but he, 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.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  You know what? I think I got the, the Poison reference wrong in that episode recently.

• 15:50Josh Clark?

  That's why I said that.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  C.C. DeVille is a guitarist, Ricky Rocket was a drummer.

• 15:53Josh Clark?

  You got that straight, finally.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  Talk dirty to me.

• 15:58Josh Clark?

  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, 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.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:25Josh Clark?

  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.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Well, no, they actually tested it with kids and learned that the kids were not interested in the adult only sections.

• 16:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  So they actually had real, real data. So they, they tried it out and it just didn't work.

• 17:01Josh Clark?

  No, and they should have known too. I mean, this 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.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Now, can we take a break?

• 17:32Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  All right, great. We'll come back and talk a little bit about what happened on November 10th, 1969, right after this.

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• 20:07Speaker 02

  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 7 million viewers in season one. Ernie had a big hit song with Rubber Ducky. It actually charted at number 16 on the billboards.

• 20:35Josh Clark?

  That's awesome.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  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 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.

• 21:14Josh Clark?

  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?

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:30Josh Clark?

  It's great.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  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 appeared in episode one, season one, was magician James Randi.

• 21:46Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty cool.

• 21:48Josh Clark?

  That is cool. Was he just doing magic or teaching kids to be skeptics?

• 21:52Speaker 02

  I think he was just doing magic.

• 21:54Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  I didn't watch the whole episode, but I just thought that was kind of fun.

• 21:57Josh Clark?

  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, is it was also designed for everybody, for every kid, so any kid could

• 22:41Josh Clark?

  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?

• 22:56Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 22:57Josh Clark?

  I think it was. And so people were like, that sounds really New York and it's going to 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.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  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 going to be on television. And because it is a, you know, 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.

• 23:48Josh Clark?

  I think that's so cool, man.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's great.

• 23:51Josh Clark?

  So yeah, the first, 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.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  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-coded 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.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  You know, I think it would be different today, but for the time, that didn't go over so well.

• 24:57Josh Clark?

  No, and the fans of Arrested Development will probably recognize Franklin, Joe Bluth's puppet. He was based on Roosevelt Franklin. And because of that, I was, 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.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:22Josh Clark?

  It's just perplexing that they caved to that because he was a good character.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. Did you say Job or Gob Bluth?

• 25:30Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, I said Job, didn't I? It's Gob.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  Just stop the listener mails right now.

• 25:33Josh Clark?

  No, it's Job.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  I thought it was Gob, no?

• 25:36Josh Clark?

  No.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Or was that just one of the jokes?

• 25:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah, because his, that's his acronym. George something Bluth.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. I thought there was a joke on there at some point about Gob, but I might just be wrong on that. It's been a while.

• 25:52Josh Clark?

  It has been a while, so you could be right, too.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Don Music was another character they got rid of. That was a, Don Music was a composer. He 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 got to get this character out of there. So they got rid of Don Music pretty early on as well.

• 26:12Josh Clark?

  Poor Don.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:15Josh Clark?

  So there's a, this is like nothing unusual for Sesame Street. They started doing that from the outset, right? Like they started, like 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.

• 27:00Josh Clark?

  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, 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.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And this is, you know, 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, you know, challenges and disabilities. 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, you know, issues that kids face sadly more and more these days. One character had food insecurity and eventually homelessness.

• 27:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's Lily.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  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're. I mean, 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.

• 28:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, one of the other things that Sesame Street does when it introduces like a Muppet like this is shine a light on the fact that this is an actual thing. Like, 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.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  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, you know, its effect on kids and potential outcomes. Because that was, you know, that was the mission statement from the very beginning. So they couldn't just be like, we're doing a great job, so we're good. They got into Educational Test, 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

• 29:47Speaker 02

  learned and the more they knew, which is pretty great.

• 29:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that was, that was season one, right?

• 29:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:54Josh Clark?

  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,

• 30:39Josh Clark?

  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.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. There was one, well, which is why they have the S on their chest, right? Sesame Street.

• 31:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, super child.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Another study, I thought this one was pretty striking to me because they could actually do a fairly direct A/B 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, you know, a couple of neighborhoods over, another, you know, 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

• 31:45Speaker 02

  children who grew up in other counties who had economic disadvantage. So it was literally helping and targeting the kids that they were hoping to target while also being good for everyone overall.

• 31:57Josh Clark?

  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.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty great.

• 32:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's statistically significant.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is a pretty good quote, too. The New Republic, their quote is that Sesame Street was essentially the first MOOC, 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."

• 32:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And you might be like, well, New Republic is a pretty liberal rag, of course it likes Sesame Street. We found a quote from the National Review, which is-

• 32:48Speaker 02

  The what?

• 32:49Josh Clark?

  ...pretty conservative. 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.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Just one thing.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  Hey, it's good for Sesame Street, though.

• 33:05Josh Clark?

  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, it 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.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  They really are, because, like you said, depending on the country, they're going to 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.

• 33:44Josh Clark?

  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.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  The Simsims.

• 34:09Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  I wonder if that's the theme.

• 34:11Josh Clark?

  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.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so.

• 34:24Josh Clark?

  So if you ever run across a trivia question that says, "What is Sesame in Arabic?", you better say Simsim.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, S-I-M-S-I-M, the spelling counts.

• 34:33Josh Clark?

  One word.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  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.

• 34:52Josh Clark?

  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.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Delicious.

• 35:18Josh Clark?

  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 an HIV positive orphan of a mother with AIDS.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:37Josh Clark?

  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.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  They could probably have an American version of that same character, or at least in the 80s.

• 36:07Josh Clark?

  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.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  Right. Oh, boy. Since 98, there was a, there's been Israeli Palestinian co-production, which is super unique, obviously, called Rekoff Sum Sum. Oh, yeah. Or Shar's Sim Sim, like you said. And this is pretty great. It's Israeli and Palestinian, Palestinian kids together and we, they're from separate streets, but they get together and hang out and play and talk. And when they do, the language, you know, either Hebrew or Arabic is translated and subtitles into the other language. And they weren't just like, oh, we'll just pat ourselves on the back for this. They were trying to accomplish something, so they measured outcomes again and did studies.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  And they found that watching the show made kids in that, in that area more likely to use positive terms to describe kids on the other side of that conflict.

• 37:06Josh Clark?

  And Sesame Street.

• 37:09Josh Clark?

  We should just say that after every, every great thing, we talk about them doing.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, actually, there's a quote that kind of goes along with that. Andrew S. Natsios, who was, 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."

• 37:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I, I thought about that, too, that like you're using Sesame Street to spread, essentially, global good, basic human values in places where those are sometimes in short supply, you know?

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:45Josh Clark?

  I think that's cool. And then that, that one, the Arabic version you just mentioned, it's called Al-An-Sim-Sim. 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.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, since we're here, before we break, we might as well mention that the Sesame Workshop is a nonprofit that gets part of their funding through the US federal government, through the USAID program. And just, I think, 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, at the behest of the Department of Government Efficiency. So Sesame Street is going to lose a lot of funding. And the current president said the Arabic language version was part of hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  But the good news is, is that it accounts for only 4% of their total funding. So hopefully, I mean, they were pretty much called off guard and are scrambling a bit, but hopefully that it's not like the end of Sesame Street.

• 39:05Josh Clark?

  No, I saw it was 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.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  4% even matters.

• 39:18Josh Clark?

  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.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe there's an episode about it.

• 39:33Josh Clark?

  Probably.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Drew, take a break.

• 39:36Josh Clark?

  What I just want to 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.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, pretty great.

• 39:50Josh Clark?

  Yep. Take that Taliban.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  All right, well, we're going to take that second break and we're going to wrap it up here right after this.

• 40:06Speaker 02

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• 40:25Josh Clark?

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• 41:06Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 41:09Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  That's Alan Goya, planning engineer at AT&T, and he's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, redefining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 41:36Josh Clark?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 41:42Speaker 04

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 41:51Speaker 04

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 41:55Speaker 03

  What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 41:59Josh Clark?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.

• 42:03Speaker 05

  Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

• 42:19Josh Clark?

  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.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I have a hard time even talking about this one. It was 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 like with, 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.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  And that's when they're like, Big Bird, I've got some bad news for you, my friend.

• 43:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Gordon famously rolled his eyes.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  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, you know?

• 43:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because it took kids seriously as, you know, 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.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. In 1985, another big lesson came along when, you know, if you haven't seen the show, Mr. Snuffleupagus is this sort of big, I don't even know what you call it, kind of a big, long haired, monster-y thing.

• 44:29Josh Clark?

  A kind of touch of woolly mammoth, I think.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  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, 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 tackled it through Snuffleupagus, all of a sudden becoming a real thing to the adults on the show.

• 45:02Josh Clark?

  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.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  They also tackled 9/11, not in a direct way, by like, talking about the Pentagon and the Twin Towers. But it was a show very clearly centered around kids, you know, dealing with like, a big, sort of shared tragedy and how they might go about that.

• 45:40Josh Clark?

  Oh, uh, let's see, what else? Uh, one, 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 like comfort him and tell him it's okay. And they helped deal with that kind of, um, I don't know. I think the, the message was listen to firefighters because they're all right.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, great message. Kids love fire trucks anyway, so they're halfway there.

• 46:10Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  Uh, they also dealt with, um, like kids who have parents in the military that are off at war at one point. Uh, they've had, uh, episodes on hurricanes and like dealing with a, 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, you know, their parents are pretty stressed out, so they had a special episode all about COVID.

• 46:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, including when the vaccines came out, Big Bird and I think everybody else got vaccinated. And Big Bird had a band-aid on his wing. He said, "My wing hurts a little bit, but other than that, I'm okay."

• 46:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you mentioned the, the problems with the funding. It started in the mid eighties. They had reports that, uh, expenses were going to outpace revenues perhaps. Um, they do a lot of licensing. I think about two thirds of their revenue comes from licensing, uh, licensing to like books and toys and things. Uh, The Monster at the End of this Book is a classic children's book with Grover as, as the center character.

• 47:10Josh Clark?

  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?

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Uh-uh.

• 47:17Josh Clark?

  It might've been after your time, but I love that book.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Good stuff.

• 47:20Josh Clark?

  The drawing in there is so great and it's just, it's all Grover.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, they've been talking about, um, you know, the, the recent cuts are one thing, but they've been talking about, you know, reducing funding and have reduced funding somewhat over the years. Uh, for a long time though, um, I believe, uh, 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, we're not gonna do that deal anymore. We can license back 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.

• 48:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so I guess HBO Max agreed to take season 26, season 55, 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, who wants to buy new episodes, brand new episodes of Sesame Street? So it's up for, 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.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Hmm, a Stuff You Should Know production.

• 48:47Josh Clark?

  There you go.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Do you have like?

• 48:49Josh Clark?

  We can pool our money together.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  A hundred million bucks or something? What would that cost?

• 48:52Josh Clark?

  I don't know, but I'll bet we could get it out of Jerry. I, I don't know. I don't think it's gonna be a hundred million bucks because that's like all of their operating costs for a year. And I, 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.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd start to get my pajamas.

• 49:12Josh Clark?

  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.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  Ah, we could cut a deal.

• 49:24Josh Clark?

  Okay. Well, God knows how much that's gonna cost us, but we can, we'll figure it out.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Uh, maybe we should finish up with some sort of, uh, 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.

• 49:53Josh Clark?

  Do you wanna know the top 10 in order?

• 49:55Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 49:56Josh Clark?

  Guess, who's your favorite? We never said who our favorites were.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  I don't remember. I used to like The Count.

• 50:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he was great.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  One, two, three.

• 50:07Josh Clark?

  Ooh, that's a good count. Cookie Monster's number one.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:11Josh Clark?

  Elmo's number two. Big Bird's number three, which I guess 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, a newer character, I think. I'm not sure when she came along. And then the last one, number 10, is Other.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  My favorite. So, the title, if you're wondering where that came from, it was from Alibaba and the Forty Thieves, Open Sesame. Cooney is on record saying that that was probably the least bad title, and we thought, 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.

• 50:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and lucky for them, it translates pretty well in Arabic, Sim Sim.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  What was the, what was the Mexican version called that had a great name?

• 51:07Josh Clark?

  Plaza Sesamo.

• 51:09Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 51:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I do too.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  Can you tell me how to get there, though?

• 51:13Josh Clark?

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

• 51:31Speaker 02

  We gotta shout out the writers. The music by Joe Raposo and lyrics by Raposo and John Stone and Bruce Hart.

• 51:39Josh Clark?

  Nice. That was nice of you. And then, did we talk about Tickle Me Elmo?

• 51:45Speaker 02

  Well, no. This is the third act reveal.

• 51:47Josh Clark?

  Okay, so we talked about Elmo be, 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've talked about it in one of our Christmas episodes, but let's just briefly mention it again.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  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...

• 52:16Speaker 02

  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, you know, 16 years after, or I guess 12 years after his debut.

• 52:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  14 years. Damn it.

• 52:39Josh Clark?

  Also, Elmo is the only non-human to testify before Congress.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 52:44Josh Clark?

  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.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 53:09Josh Clark?

  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?

• 53:19Speaker 02

  No.

• 53:20Josh Clark?

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  Wow, I don't remember that.

• 53:26Josh Clark?

  It came out in 76, so yeah, you probably had moved on to Electric Company by then. You're like, that's baby stuff.

• 53:33Josh Clark?

  It's great, you should watch it. The animation in it is beautiful, beautifully 70s, it's great.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love it.

• 53:39Josh Clark?

  Got anything else?

• 53:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, in 2005, there was a bit of a stir because Cookie Monster, you know, 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.

• 53:59Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 54:00Speaker 02

  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 going to be like, what are you kidding me? Is this going to be Veggie Monster next? And there were letter writing campaigns and there was a petition and all this stuff. And Veggie Monster was never going to be a thing. They were just, I guess they just filed those complaint letters in the circular file and it's like, settle down, everybody.

• 54:31Josh Clark?

  I got one more I overlooked. Do you want to hear it?

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 54:34Josh Clark?

  This is arcane, but Telly, remember Telly Monster we talked about?

• 54:39Speaker 02

  Yes, but no.

• 54:40Josh Clark?

  Okay, so Telly has a hamster named Chucky Sue, and he used to have a stuffed animal horse named Clark.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  Oh, how about that?

• 54:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, pretty neat, huh?

• 54:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:51Josh Clark?

  Total coincidence, too, is from the 90s, both of them.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, just like that hintin' up just coming out.

• 54:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, lots of kermit, kermit. Since I said kermit, of course, everybody, that means it's time for listener mail.

• 55:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is a little bit on libraries from Name Redacted. Hey, guys, love the mini 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 LGBTQ 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.

• 55:51Speaker 02

  And apparently, his wife, the librarian, has to really get involved in reference searches these days because of like, you know, 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.

• 56:11Josh Clark?

  Thanks, Name Redacted. I know we talked about that some in our banned books episode.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:18Josh Clark?

  But yes, can't say it enough. God bless librarians for making sure that people are educated as we can be, for free.

• 56:25Speaker 02

  That's right. Perfect fit for this episode, too.

• 56:27Josh Clark?

  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 [email protected].

• 56:45Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 57:01Josh Clark?

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• 57:33Josh Clark?

  Wait, I came in for two things. How is this $47?

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• 57:49Josh Clark?

  Oh, that's actually really simple.

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• 58:32Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.