Deep Dive with Sara DeWitt on Creative Intention

Kelly Corrigan Wonders

Kelly Corrigan Show

Society & Culture

4.9 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2026

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Fred Rogers (aka "Mr. Rogers") looked at television and didn't see it as a danger for kids — he saw it as a door. Sara DeWitt has spent her career walking through it. As Senior VP and General Manager of PBS Kids, she has devoted decades to asking what children's media can be when the people making it are optimizing for something other than revenue. In the seventh episode of our Wired to Create series, Sara makes the case that the right story at the right moment can do things nothing else can — and that the most powerful screen in a child's life might be the one a caring adult is watching alongside them. To connect with Kelly and get a list of her weekly takeaways, join Kelly's free Substack. This episode was made possible by a grant from the Walton Family Foundation. To learn more, please visit: waltonfamilyfoundation.org. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Kelly Corrigan Wonders.
0:10.0	I'm Kelly Corrigan, and today I'm wondering what it looks like when someone uses the newest technology not to distract kids, but to engage with them.
0:19.2	My guest is Sarah DeWitt, Senior Vice President and General Manager of PBS Kids.
0:24.7	Over the course of a great career, Sarah has been asking what could technology offer kids that nothing else can?
0:32.3	She started out as a preschool teacher.
0:34.2	She went to Stanford and landed in a class where English students learned HTML and computer science students learned improv. And that was the moment she put narrative
0:43.6	and technology into the same sentence. She then landed her first job at PBS, helping to
0:50.4	transport Mr. Rogers' neighborhood of make-believe to the internet.
0:55.8	And Sarah has spent the decades since making the case that technology in the right hands
1:00.7	is actually one of the best things we could give a child.
1:04.8	This is the seventh episode in our Wired to Create series made possible by a grant from the
1:09.4	Walton Family Foundation.
1:14.2	Here is my surprising conversation with Sarah DeWitt.
1:24.6	So, Sarah, this conversation is part of this really interesting series we've been doing called Wired to Create.
1:31.1	And it doesn't really refer to the guests, although in all cases it has been obvious that they are creative types through and through.
1:33.8	It really refers to all of us, that there is this essential part of human nature that must
1:40.3	make things.
1:42.9	So I have a feeling that you have this background too and that something happened to you
1:49.9	when you were in your master's program at Stanford with a computer science person that you were
1:56.0	paired with that sort of created a worldview. So can you talk about your education in that moment
2:02.5	when you were assigned to work with a computer science student?
2:05.6	It was definitely a spark in my life,
	...

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