ShortHand: Sesame Street
RedHanded
RedHanded
4.5 • 19.6K Ratings
🗓️ 27 January 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
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Summary
Not many of us need convincing that Sesame Street is good; the Muppets have been chaotic TV icons for more than 50 years. But what not many people know is just how much good it did.
Not just unmissable TV, but a revolutionary, massive-scale outreach program. One that used ad-land tactics and groundbreaking psychological research, to reset the balance of educational privilege – and teach disadvantaged, inner-city kids how to read. It’s a sunny day. We’re sweeping the clouds away. This is the ShortHand, sponsored by the letter ‘S’.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of Shorthand, your weekly dose of being more interesting. |
| 0:21.6 | Yes, correct. |
| 0:23.5 | And that is what is going to happen to you today, whether you want it or not. |
| 0:28.6 | Now, when you look at the stuff that kids are watching these days, some of it is rough. |
| 0:34.2 | But if you think cocoa melon is bad, and it is, the study show it is, you should see |
| 0:39.2 | the kids' TV that they had in the mid-60s in America. It was a mind-numbing mix of insufferably |
| 0:45.8 | condescending hosts and shameless product placement, with an ad or a jingle slotted in every |
| 0:51.1 | few seconds. Preschool kids were watching on average 27 hours of TV a week, |
| 0:57.3 | and they all knew the beer and soap jingles better than their nursery rhymes. But then a small |
| 1:03.4 | group of producers, activists and educators had a brilliant idea to use the same Ad Land approach |
| 1:10.2 | to teach kids how to read. |
| 1:13.0 | Why not, instead of teaching them a song about Budweiser, |
| 1:16.8 | get them to sing about literacy instead, or equality, or compassion? |
| 1:21.9 | And what if, instead of being sponsored by Tutsi rolls, whatever they are? |
| 1:25.8 | They're gross. |
| 1:26.7 | They sound gross. |
| 1:28.7 | Each episode was sponsored instead by a letter of the alphabet. |
| 1:33.6 | We probably don't have to do too much to convince you that Sesame Street is the goat. |
| 1:41.1 | If you don't love the Muppets, I have very grave concerns about you as a person. And I do really, really, really, when I die, not open casket because I think it's barbaric, but I do want a Muppet version of myself in the casket at my funeral. I'll definitely die long before you. That's on you. In the casket? Yeah. Just to be clear. But then the casket's closed. No. I mean, you can see that I'm a Muppet. So it's open casket. It's just not me. It's just Muppet me. I see. I see. Okay. I just want to be clear. I mean, good. Before I don't have a will. I'm just making this Muppet Anna for you. Does she need to be dressed in anything particular? |
| 2:17.5 | Is she holding anything? making this mop it out of you. Does she need to be dressed in anything particular? |
| 2:20.5 | Is she holding anything? |
| 2:21.9 | Is she, what's her vibe? |
... |
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