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The Great Muppet Fandom Panel - Winter, 2025 Edition · Muppet Fan Podcasts with ToughPigs.com

• 0:00
  This is a great Muppet fandom panel.
• 0:12
  Howdy, gang. Welcome back to the great Muppet
• 0:16
  fandom panel. It's been a hot minute, hasn't
• 0:18
  it? We haven't done a show in nearly
• 0:20
  a year. And do you see what happens to
• 0:22
  the world when there isn't a fandom panel around?
• 0:24
  Do you see what becomes of Sesame Street in The Muppets
• 0:27
  when we are not here to keep them on the old straight and
• 0:29
  narrow? I think everything's going to
• 0:30
  get much better now that we've returned.
• 0:32
  I'm your host, JD Hansel, and if you're new to the show, this is
• 0:35
  a Tough Pigs podcast, and most Tough Pigs podcasts or articles
• 0:40
  zoom in on just one topic. But this shows a little
• 0:41
  different. The Great Muppet Fandom Panel is
• 0:43
  our big picture overview of the state of The Muppets.
• 0:47
  We get a bunch of big Muppet fans together to share their
• 0:49
  thoughts on the current affairs of The Muppets.
• 0:51
  The difference this year is that it's going to be a little less
• 0:54
  rigid in its approach. It's more laid back.
• 0:57
  It's looser. Remember last year when Matt
• 1:00
  Vogel brought Back Below the Frame as a simpler show, saying
• 1:02
  it was going to be a much looser version of the podcast, and he
• 1:05
  gave us a terrific season. Well, as a Muppet fan on the
• 1:08
  Internet, I have an obligation to hold on to the false belief
• 1:12
  that anything Matt Vogel can do, I could probably pull off just
• 1:15
  as well. It hasn't been true for anyone
• 1:17
  yet, but telling yourself the lie is just part of being a fan.
• 1:20
  And Speaking of fans, let's introduce the panelists.
• 1:23
  First up, the only return guest on this show today.
• 1:26
  He's our resident news guy and video maker on the Tough Pigs
• 1:29
  team, all of us watching and wishing we'd find it.
• 1:32
  I've noticed you're Shane Keating.
• 1:36
  I'm the only veteran. Next up, it's the newest member
• 1:39
  of our team. He joined us last year to host
• 1:42
  the Tough Pigs podcast, the fantastic Miss Piggy podcast.
• 1:45
  And even though he's still kind of a newbie around here, we're
• 1:47
  glad to have him on the show. And at no time will we be
• 1:50
  stooping to any cheap 3D Danny Horn.
• 1:53
  I am so happy to be here. I've been wishing I could be on
• 1:56
  the Phantom Palette for a long time, so I'm really, really glad
• 1:58
  that I'm here in the one where you're kind of giving up.
• 2:02
  Thank you. I appreciate that.
• 2:04
  I'm glad you're here to this one too.
• 2:06
  There is something that I do, there's something that I want to
• 2:08
  just say straight up front. A lot of the things, I don't
• 2:11
  know if people know this, but like a lot of the things that
• 2:13
  happened in 2024 were like disappointing and bad.
• 2:17
  Yes, I should have clarified at the top that the themes for this
• 2:19
  episode are doom and gloom. It's going to be really unfun to
• 2:22
  talk about. That's why this is the Drudgery
• 2:25
  and tedium edition of the Great Muppet Fandom panel.
• 2:28
  Yeah, and so I don't want to spend the first time I ever
• 2:30
  appeared on the Phantom Palette being all like cynical and
• 2:32
  sarcastic and about everything. So today I am only going to
• 2:36
  discuss the official Muppets Crochet and Magurumi book.
• 2:40
  All right, that's fine. That's perfectly fine because we
• 2:44
  have other panelists here to cover the rest.
• 2:48
  Next up, another newer tough pig.
• 2:51
  You know her from her interviews with the likes of Carmen Osbar
• 2:54
  and Raleigh Crewson, along with her reviews and reports.
• 2:57
  All these other people think I'm talking to them, but I'm really
• 2:59
  just talking to Drake Lucas. Hello, I'm Drake.
• 3:03
  I guess I'm here to talk about the drudgery.
• 3:06
  I'm all in. Excellent.
• 3:08
  At the tedium. Last but not least, a newer
• 3:10
  member of the Tough Pigs team who's written terrific articles
• 3:14
  and they're one of the moderators of our Discord
• 3:16
  server. Green can be big like a
• 3:18
  mountain, or important like Katie Lynn Miller.
• 3:20
  I'm literally turning green with envy because I'm an amphibian,
• 3:25
  you see. And also they have green
• 3:30
  literally on their hands today. Does this not happen to other
• 3:34
  people? No.
• 3:35
  What did you say caused your hands to be green today?
• 3:38
  This is fountain pen ink. Okay, totally normal thing.
• 3:41
  All right, so now that you all understand the visual, you
• 3:43
  understand the audio joke and we are free to proceed with the
• 3:47
  podcast. Well, I'm wearing a big funny
• 3:50
  hat, don't forget that the people must know.
• 3:52
  Sorry, the. Biggest.
• 3:53
  Funniest hat ever. Shane Shane is wearing a huge
• 3:58
  funny hat. Every time I look away and turn
• 4:00
  back, it looks a little bit bigger than it was the last time
• 4:02
  I looked. I didn't think you could pull
• 4:04
  off Plaid cowboy hat, but man, it is you.
• 4:06
  You've heard of a 10 gallon hat? This one's at least 50.
• 4:10
  Each one of these light bulbs in it power a small city.
• 4:15
  Drake, I don't know how you're getting those red sneakers to
• 4:17
  hang from your ears, but it's really silly.
• 4:20
  That's just who I am. You just ears.
• 4:24
  Big land sneakers. We're starting here.
• 4:27
  So the big news lately that has been on all of our minds has
• 4:31
  been the Sesame Street. Not really news, but rather an
• 4:36
  article from a real newspaper. Just diving deep into precisely
• 4:40
  the things that we've been frustrated about with Sesame
• 4:42
  Street for a long time. And somehow, as we got to
• 4:46
  chatting about this in preparation for this episode, it
• 4:49
  quickly led to some of these panelists deciding they needed
• 4:55
  to watch Cookie Monsters Bake Sale 2.
• 4:58
  Is that right? Uh, would someone like to tell
• 5:01
  me what this even is? I I don't think I'd heard of it.
• 5:06
  Well, Cookie Monsters bake sale back to school.
• 5:09
  It came out this summer. It is not the official Muppet
• 5:11
  crochet. I'm a Grammy book.
• 5:13
  It is a special. I think it's like 45 minutes
• 5:17
  long and I. No, not even it's 22.
• 5:20
  Yes, it's like it. Felt like that.
• 5:21
  It's like it's like a documentary about libraries made
• 5:28
  for nobody presenting like a fake fundraiser, which is a
• 5:33
  competition between two teams that you cannot tell apart.
• 5:36
  Yep, and and it's hosted by Cookie Monster, who every time
• 5:38
  he does something slightly whimsical, the human children
• 5:41
  are forced to fake laugh. They underline the fact, like he
• 5:45
  says explicitly, that his goal in this special is to be funny,
• 5:49
  is to get giggles, and that amounts to him picking up a
• 5:55
  giant fake mustache and then everyone has to laugh.
• 5:59
  They say. It's I can't, I can't speak to
• 6:04
  it too much because I only watched the 1st 2 hours of it,
• 6:07
  which then then I found out were truly 4 minutes.
• 6:11
  I thought I was like a third of the way through.
• 6:14
  I'd made it 4 minutes in before I was like, I can't watch
• 6:17
  anymore. It's so.
• 6:18
  Dull, but I I don't know who it's for.
• 6:22
  That was my question. That was my question.
• 6:24
  The whole time is like, wait, it's too childish to be for
• 6:28
  adults, but there's no way this is for children.
• 6:33
  It they couldn't have thought it was entertainment for children,
• 6:36
  right? Well, now we have someone here
• 6:38
  who showed it to a child. Yeah, to be fair, actually my
• 6:42
  daughter enjoyed it. I thought it was going to be
• 6:45
  more of a Bake Off cooking show, which I thought was that's kind
• 6:48
  of interesting to have. Like, you know, chef master,
• 6:51
  chef junior left. Kids are into that.
• 6:52
  So I thought that's more where we were going.
• 6:54
  I didn't know it was like double their style, jump in a pit and
• 6:58
  find fake cookies. But I have to say my daughter
• 7:04
  was like rooting for one of the teams.
• 7:05
  I don't know how to competition. And then at the end she was
• 7:10
  like, that was great. I mean, in a, you know, sort of
• 7:12
  like like that was 20 minutes of my life.
• 7:15
  I'm moving on to the next thing. So but she didn't she was she
• 7:19
  was kept entertained, more entertained, I would say, than I
• 7:22
  was for 20 minutes and and left and went on with her life.
• 7:26
  So I don't, I wouldn't say it was geared toward her, but it
• 7:29
  was benign show for a child. I don't think they got much out
• 7:34
  of it and I think it was confusing to the parents.
• 7:36
  She doesn't yet feel the the pull of of time on her soul that
• 7:41
  she needs those 20 minutes back. Yet there are.
• 7:44
  So many 20 minutes that she thrown away so far in her life.
• 7:48
  So yeah, not quite that full of time and but she was definitely
• 7:53
  not jumping up and down with wild enthusiasm every time
• 7:57
  someone said something. I'm not sure how they got the
• 7:59
  kids to keep up with that. Well, Drake, what did you think
• 8:02
  of it though? I think I'm on down your side
• 8:06
  there. I just couldn't figure out why
• 8:08
  it happened. I just the people who like how
• 8:12
  Sesame Street's a set. So like where did all the
• 8:15
  customers show up from? And you know, and then they just
• 8:18
  showed a bunch of kids eating food.
• 8:20
  And I know this goes into a a different topic later, but I
• 8:22
  have to say I got sad knowing that, you know, I saw it after
• 8:27
  the post article came out. But like seeing Snuffy and Big
• 8:30
  Bird come on set and that's when the kids got amazingly excited
• 8:33
  and all like over. And I was like, there's
• 8:35
  something special to those characters.
• 8:37
  I know that's a separate conversation, but that's one
• 8:39
  thing that that kind of stuck out from watching it.
• 8:42
  That stuck out to me too. The fact that so it's presented
• 8:47
  as like a reality show, like you would see on like Food Network
• 8:51
  or HGTV or whatever, and then setting it in a world where the
• 8:56
  characters are fake. Reality shows are fake in
• 8:59
  general. That's just a fact.
• 9:01
  And then putting that into a thing that is also fake is very
• 9:06
  confusing because like Drake said, who are these people?
• 9:09
  Why are they? This is a closed set.
• 9:12
  They would have to come, right? They're not wandering into
• 9:16
  someone's neighbourhood. They are wandering into a
• 9:18
  building, very security laden building.
• 9:22
  I I think part of why we're even asking that question it of a
• 9:28
  show where impossible and magical and inexplicable things
• 9:32
  happen on the street all the time is the fact that it looks
• 9:35
  so much more like a set in this production than in most things
• 9:40
  where they like. It's very overlit.
• 9:41
  The show is usually overlit now I would say, but it's looks
• 9:44
  awful. Yeah, the characters are so
• 9:46
  washed out. Yeah, everything's washed out
• 9:48
  when you watch Sesame Street now.
• 9:50
  It's all just a bunch of bright, flashy colors, and you cannot
• 9:54
  tell the very colorful Muppets apart from the set behind them.
• 9:58
  It's rough here. The brightness is turned up even
• 10:01
  more. It feels cheap.
• 10:03
  It feels fake. They cut to interviews that look
• 10:07
  more like they were filmed for a morning show than for a reality
• 10:10
  show. But then what happens?
• 10:12
  You cut over to a pool and out of the bubbles pops Felix the
• 10:16
  Chicken, and I threw my fist in the air with Glee, cheering on
• 10:21
  Felix the Chicken. I'm just always happy when Felix
• 10:24
  exists. Yeah, he rules.
• 10:26
  Also, Yvette Nicole Brown is in it.
• 10:29
  Oh yeah. Which which confirms that she
• 10:32
  will clearly be in anything. She is the main host, I would
• 10:37
  say more so than Cookie Monster. Yeah, but Cookie Monster has
• 10:42
  been given the job of providing all of the entertainment, and
• 10:45
  it's really how do I put this? What does it mean?
• 10:53
  What does it mean? We're going to spend more than
• 10:56
  22 minutes talking about this. When a character as funny as
• 11:02
  Cookie Monster, as reliably funny as Cookie Monster cannot
• 11:08
  be funny in a production that has made that his main job.
• 11:15
  He explains that to the audience.
• 11:16
  I am here specifically to make people laugh and to earn as many
• 11:21
  laughs as I can. So this is a set upon a set.
• 11:25
  Perhaps they they scripted it on top of the script and so there
• 11:30
  was no room for any cookie monster to be funny.
• 11:34
  He could only read lines. It feels that way.
• 11:39
  So what amigurumi are, are these little crocheted dolls?
• 11:43
  Yeah. And in this book, it teaches you
• 11:46
  how to make, like, a really wide variety.
• 11:48
  And they're very cute and they're photographed really
• 11:50
  well. There's like Kermit and Piggy
• 11:51
  and Pepe. Yeah, I was thinking about that,
• 11:55
  and I was especially thinking about Sesame Street and how they
• 12:00
  have a whole cast of characters that are really funny and
• 12:02
  entertaining. And it's still struggling to to
• 12:07
  overcome just the nature of the show.
• 12:10
  And it's tough because I don't want to be down on Sesame Street
• 12:13
  all the time. And I feel like we are often at
• 12:18
  tough pigs giving it a hard time for just not not focusing
• 12:22
  primarily on being funny. We have ranted about this so
• 12:26
  much. And last year, I guess not last
• 12:27
  year, but the year before, last year, I wrote an article saying,
• 12:31
  hey, yeah, sure, it's not funny anymore, but you're going to be
• 12:33
  OK. It's, it's, it's not for us.
• 12:35
  You know, what they're doing is sometimes more important than
• 12:37
  the funny stuff. But then reading the Washington
• 12:40
  Post article, it was like, by gosh, there isn't going to be a
• 12:45
  show that is worth putting up with despite its lack of
• 12:49
  entertainment value. If this is the situation, if the
• 12:52
  situation is this dire, and if they're not really able to
• 12:55
  change course in a positive and helpful way.
• 12:57
  That's my feeling, Danny. You look eager to speak.
• 13:01
  He wants to get back to the Omega roomies.
• 13:03
  Already. Oh, that's why you're.
• 13:05
  Eating angry that they haven't come out with a companion book
• 13:08
  for knitting as well. Like he's stuck with crochet.
• 13:11
  And what are the knitters supposed to do?
• 13:13
  Danny, please go. On Oh man, it turns out that
• 13:16
  that there's actually negative things to say even about the
• 13:19
  official Muppets Amiga roomie book.
• 13:21
  But one thing, one thing that that really struck me that they
• 13:24
  did not cover in the Washington Post article was there was all
• 13:29
  this stuff about how, like, kids don't know Bert and Ernie and
• 13:32
  they're gonna focus on Elmo and Abby, Sabby and Grover and
• 13:35
  Cookie Monster going forward. And it occurred to me that they
• 13:41
  just added like 10 new characters to the show in the
• 13:45
  last couple years. Gabrielle, Tamir.
• 13:50
  Wes, Elijah. You're doing really well, G
• 13:54
  Young. Joey, Oh, G Young.
• 13:56
  Yeah, but also Joey, who likes spaghetti and.
• 14:00
  And Neve, obviously. And Neve.
• 14:03
  And so apparently that didn't go well.
• 14:05
  That didn't. Yeah.
• 14:07
  Draw the. Draw the children in.
• 14:09
  So season 46 when they moved to HBO and they cut down to 1/2
• 14:15
  hour, that's when they first said we're going to reduce the
• 14:19
  cast. Like that was their first
• 14:21
  attempt and that was Elmo, Abby, Cookie, Grover, Big Bird, Oscar
• 14:28
  and kind of Rosita. OK.
• 14:31
  And then it was after that. That's like, oh, now Abby has a
• 14:34
  stepbrother and then they need a mom and dad, and then Elmo's mom
• 14:40
  and dad are appearing more and more.
• 14:43
  And then all these other new characters started showing up.
• 14:46
  Can I just say I hate the families?
• 14:50
  I just Muppets should not have families on screen.
• 14:54
  They should have families in books.
• 14:57
  The families belong in books. But when there are families on.
• 15:01
  This is specifically a problem on Sesame Street where the
• 15:05
  premise of the show for decades was these neighbors are coming
• 15:11
  together as a community to raise an orphan 6 year old child and
• 15:16
  it's about how it takes a village.
• 15:18
  And now it doesn't take a village or a street or a
• 15:21
  neighborhood as it were. Because all of these freaking
• 15:25
  Muppets have boring parents that make the show more boring and
• 15:29
  complicate the dynamic and I think do make way more
• 15:33
  characters than any kid can be expected to remember.
• 15:36
  And they also gave up very interesting human characters to
• 15:40
  be replaced by these boring. I loved having like, you know,
• 15:44
  Maria and Luis B Big Bird's parents essentially, or Gordon B
• 15:50
  everybody, you know, like I just they had interesting characters
• 15:53
  on there that were filling a role that could be parental
• 15:57
  without needing to be like specific parents.
• 16:00
  And they were interesting and they were real in their own way.
• 16:03
  I mean, even cheesy Bob, he was authentically cheesy, you know,
• 16:06
  like there was just this authenticity to the really like.
• 16:09
  And and I liked that they played that kind of role in the fact
• 16:13
  that, you know, the human characters that are around now
• 16:15
  are not necessarily in those specific world baby Alan.
• 16:20
  But I think they gave up something really authentic and
• 16:23
  good to kind of replace it with these other ideas of what a a
• 16:27
  family is. Well, and even beyond nostalgia,
• 16:30
  I think the inclusion of real humans is important too.
• 16:34
  There's a whole movement, at least in the a book world called
• 16:39
  We Need Diverse Books. Like there there's a serious
• 16:42
  crisis of, you know, picture books being published with first
• 16:46
  of all white characters and then second after white characters
• 16:51
  are animal characters and then after that a huge percentage
• 16:55
  down. Then you have, you know, other
• 16:58
  identities and racial populations.
• 17:00
  So having actual humans on the show is just as important as
• 17:05
  also saying that, yes, these children have families, they
• 17:09
  have parents who look after them.
• 17:11
  But like, kids need to see real humans doing real human things
• 17:16
  in order to actually back up all of the curriculum that they're
• 17:21
  supposedly, you know, trying to input into all of these
• 17:27
  episodes. I it doesn't hit as hard or as
• 17:32
  personally to kids when it's a Muppet.
• 17:36
  Yes, they're paying more attention when there's a fuzzy,
• 17:39
  funny thing on the screen. But if there's, you know you're
• 17:43
  not going to see Louie walking down the street.
• 17:45
  You can't ask Louie for help. Right, right.
• 17:49
  It I do like how it's not just that.
• 17:53
  No, scratch that. I recognize the importance of
• 17:58
  the original version of the show feeling like a real St. in some
• 18:04
  ways, with real people, because that makes the show about how on
• 18:11
  your street, in your neighbourhood, with when you're
• 18:14
  just with the people that you live with and indeed the people
• 18:17
  that you meet each day. There might be something magic
• 18:20
  there. The thought that you can just
• 18:21
  turn a corner in New York on a real St. and you might see a
• 18:26
  giant yellow bird, that is a unique approach to fantasy that
• 18:32
  is rooted in the show's original belief that learning can happen
• 18:37
  anywhere. Learning can happen in these
• 18:41
  urban communities, in these diverse communities who are
• 18:44
  often overlooked and not given the same educational
• 18:47
  opportunities. Now that the show looks like a
• 18:50
  magic garden more than it looks like a street, at the very least
• 18:56
  it it looks like it's been gentrified to the extreme.
• 19:01
  Yeah, you start to feel like the show has kind of lost sight of
• 19:04
  its original premise and its original function.
• 19:07
  Yeah, I, I love, I mean, they still have the type of trash
• 19:11
  cans the Oscar lives in in New York.
• 19:13
  And when I would walk down the street with my daughter when we
• 19:15
  were little, she would still like, maybe he's in that trash
• 19:18
  can. Maybe he's in that, you know,
• 19:20
  she'd like, try to beg on the trash can.
• 19:21
  But I'm like, exactly. That's how I was.
• 19:23
  Yeah, They're seeing this, you know, they're seeing the real
• 19:26
  world around them in a show in which anything can happen.
• 19:30
  I love that way of looking at at the show.
• 19:32
  Thank you for for adding a a positive element to my crabby
• 19:36
  rats. I really, genuinely appreciate
• 19:38
  it. I just want to talk for a second
• 19:40
  also about what the curriculum is these days, because as far as
• 19:44
  I can tell from the Washington Post, they are now entirely
• 19:48
  focusing on feelings for the season for YEAH.
• 19:54
  But hasn't haven't they done that for a few seasons lately?
• 19:58
  It's been. The kindness mindfulness.
• 20:02
  Yeah, I think kindness has been the big thing.
• 20:05
  And I don't hate it in theory, I really do.
• 20:10
  Well, because true. Like if, if, if kids know their
• 20:14
  their letters and numbers, then they know their letters and
• 20:16
  numbers. And so why not focus on the
• 20:19
  thing that seems to be a crisis, which is just how are people
• 20:22
  doing right now? That feels like it's the crisis
• 20:25
  of the moment and we just genuinely need nicer, better,
• 20:29
  more thoughtful, caring, considerate people in the world
• 20:33
  as fast as possible. And so it it, I can very much
• 20:37
  appreciate Sesame Street trying to deal with that.
• 20:40
  On the other hand, I would argue that Sesame Street has spent
• 20:42
  over 50 years just trying to produce an America that is not
• 20:49
  racist and that is well educated.
• 20:51
  And if, if, if those are the goals.
• 20:56
  And give it time, another 50 years it could have.
• 21:00
  How much? Time do you need and we can say
• 21:02
  like you can't expect that much from a show, but like it's the
• 21:06
  thing that every child is watching in infancy.
• 21:10
  There are no creators of propaganda who are wishing for
• 21:14
  something better than the situation Sesame Street was in
• 21:18
  for those first several decades. You get to just beam this right
• 21:22
  into babies brains, and they had for a few decades there very
• 21:27
  little competition for the baby brains.
• 21:30
  Here's cartoons teaching you whatever we want over and over
• 21:33
  and over again for an hour every morning.
• 21:36
  I I would suggest, I would suggest that it worked for a
• 21:39
  long time and now Sesame Street is not popular anymore and so
• 21:43
  kids are not watching Sesame Street anymore and that's why we
• 21:46
  are where we are. And it's not not I mean, kids
• 21:50
  are still watching Sesame Street.
• 21:52
  I I feel like the in the Washington Post article they had
• 21:54
  a big black heading that said Sesame Street is not popular.
• 22:00
  But I, all the kids I'm around, they, they do, they do know the
• 22:06
  characters. They do.
• 22:07
  I mean Sesame Place, like you go to Sesame Place.
• 22:10
  It's not just the parents walking around nostalgic.
• 22:12
  All the kids are losing their minds over they're waiting in
• 22:15
  line for Ernie and Bert. They're waiting in line for
• 22:17
  Cookie Monster. They're into the shows.
• 22:20
  And when you walk down the street here, there's still
• 22:22
  every, you know, every 3rd kid has some character or is wearing
• 22:26
  some shirt. Well, and they're not like the
• 22:31
  pop culture juggernauts that you see.
• 22:33
  Like, they're not the PJ Masks. You know, they don't have
• 22:35
  merchandise on every single toy shelf, which I think is part of
• 22:39
  what they are counting as popularity.
• 22:41
  Not just, you know, recognizability and viewership.
• 22:46
  It's that, you know, it isn't becoming children's whole thing
• 22:51
  anymore. Yeah, yeah.
• 22:53
  Like I go to the local Barnes and Noble and there will be like
• 22:58
  a small, like there's like two small shelves of Sesame Street
• 23:01
  stuff and like a bigger bookcase.
• 23:04
  But then you'll have like these big end caps that are full of
• 23:07
  like the pigeon, Mawillin's pigeon guy or the the cat with
• 23:12
  the big Flathead. You know what I'm talking.
• 23:16
  About just be making things up right now and I'm with the cat.
• 23:18
  The nod in the green he's. Like a dark, he's like a Navy
• 23:21
  blue and he's got a big football shaped head.
• 23:23
  Heat the cat. Pete the cat is.
• 23:26
  That why is his head flat? He's just two-dimensional
• 23:29
  because he's on a book. Well, the the plush or not,
• 23:32
  they're 3 dimensional. OK.
• 23:36
  We may have lost the plot just a little bit here, which I
• 23:39
  expected would happen. Yeah, we'll talk.
• 23:41
  Pete the Cat, the new crochet book that Danny was talking
• 23:45
  about. But I mean, I, I think the idea
• 23:48
  is like they're not nonexistent. I mean they were whatever they
• 23:51
  were 14th overall and like 10 for the pre age or whatever.
• 23:56
  And there are so many shows out there and a lot of really crappy
• 24:00
  kids shows out there. So I mean, I feel as if like
• 24:03
  they have lost from where they were.
• 24:05
  I think, you know, they there's, there's a lot of issues
• 24:09
  obviously with it, but I don't think the idea is like no kid is
• 24:11
  watching it at all and no kid recommend like recognizes that
• 24:14
  when I when my daughter was in AI don't know it was either
• 24:18
  grouch or big bird onesie and I sent her to school, the kids
• 24:20
  couldn't even talk and they could all point at that and got
• 24:23
  immediately excited and knew the name.
• 24:25
  So the I feel like the branding is still out there.
• 24:28
  It's not like no, like they've disappeared, but obviously
• 24:31
  they've slipped from where they were, which is doesn't have
• 24:34
  anything to do with the quality of the show.
• 24:35
  That just means like the branding is, you know?
• 24:37
  Still strong. And I think that fixation that
• 24:40
  the article picked out where they put the episode in front of
• 24:45
  a test audience and they were, you know, asking the kids if
• 24:48
  they recognized the characters and if they understood the
• 24:52
  conflict that was going on. And, you know, I think most of
• 24:56
  them did, but they were just so disappointed with the results,
• 25:00
  it seems. Seems as if Sesame is trying to
• 25:03
  teach to a test like that. All the kids who watch it need
• 25:07
  to be able to fill out a scantron and identify all of
• 25:11
  these things. And it's just like, at a certain
• 25:13
  point, you have to trust that your audience is going to get it
• 25:17
  and that if they're not going to get it, at least they'll come
• 25:20
  back for more later. So they're kind of focusing too
• 25:23
  much on the lesson and not enough on the making sure they
• 25:28
  come back for more later. Right.
• 25:31
  Yeah, the, the secret to Sesame Street, I think has always been
• 25:34
  repetition, which is the secret of so much of teaching and and
• 25:38
  marketing and anything that you want people to remember.
• 25:41
  And they focus on a lot of repetition within episodes.
• 25:45
  And I think you're right that they just then test at the end
• 25:48
  of one episode. Has that made the kid learn the
• 25:51
  one lesson? Whereas if you can get repeat
• 25:54
  viewings from the kids coming back again and again and again,
• 25:57
  and they pick up lessons over and over again across the show,
• 26:00
  then I would expect that to do a lot more.
• 26:04
  But yeah, you're, you're teaching the test point.
• 26:06
  You, you mentioned that days ago or weeks ago, whenever it was.
• 26:09
  It has stuck with me ever since. I I love that insight.
• 26:12
  Yeah, I mentioned it on the Tough Pigs discord.
• 26:15
  And because it's something that a lot of public school teachers
• 26:19
  have to deal with, in order to get funding, a certain
• 26:22
  percentage of the kids have to pass the standardized tests.
• 26:25
  And honestly, I can see the mentality with Sesame there.
• 26:28
  If they're dependent on funding from sources who are looking
• 26:32
  only at their numbers and whether they're getting certain
• 26:36
  viewership, then they're like, that's what they're trying to
• 26:39
  get. And for some reason, they think
• 26:41
  that proving that kids understand the material is the
• 26:45
  way to get that viewership, rather than making it fun and
• 26:49
  interesting to watch a second or third time.
• 26:52
  Yeah, the the focus there seems to be they they keep saying on
• 26:57
  just identifying children's needs and meeting their needs,
• 27:01
  and that's the secret to success.
• 27:03
  But I don't know that a child who is handed an iPad in the
• 27:09
  backseat of a van is going to open it up.
• 27:12
  And, you know, just when they when it's their job to come up
• 27:15
  with their own entertainment to watch, as is so often what
• 27:17
  happens now for little kids, I don't know that they're going to
• 27:20
  say, well, let me think about what my needs are, where the
• 27:23
  gaps are in my understanding of the world.
• 27:27
  And I'm going to focus on finding the content that
• 27:30
  directly speaks to my needs as a child.
• 27:32
  Like, I think it's just going to be this looks fun and and it's
• 27:38
  going to be going back to what they know.
• 27:40
  And so it's if you're not going to make something that's fun
• 27:45
  enough to make kids choose to watch it, then you're going to
• 27:48
  have to rely on parents choosing to put it on.
• 27:51
  And they don't seem that invested in keeping the parents
• 27:54
  interested either in any way. And I think that this
• 27:58
  announcement of, well, we're pushing Big Bird to the
• 28:01
  background and Bert and Ernie and Snuffy and Oscar and the
• 28:05
  count that's that's going to make their adult fan base to the
• 28:10
  extent to which they still have one.
• 28:12
  And they do they really do. They have a big one, They truly
• 28:14
  do. But I think a lot of people are
• 28:16
  going to say, all right, so I can check out of this show then.
• 28:19
  Yeah. And I also feel it's like it's a
• 28:21
  weird, it's a weird goal to either make something for kids
• 28:24
  or something for parents. You should just make something
• 28:27
  really good. And I think most of the, the
• 28:30
  children's stories that have lasted a long time that I mean,
• 28:34
  if you look at something like Ramona, I loved Ramona when I
• 28:37
  was little. And I, I remember reading it and
• 28:40
  being like, this author gets me. It's like the first time I've
• 28:44
  read something where somebody gets me.
• 28:45
  And I was so excited to share it with my daughter.
• 28:48
  And when I shared it with my daughter, she also loved it.
• 28:50
  And I was like, see, she just knows children.
• 28:53
  Then we ended up getting like the whole series and listen to
• 28:56
  it over and over in the car. And what I found was that my
• 28:59
  husband and I were laughing because the parents say funny
• 29:03
  things and I didn't even pick up up on as a kid.
• 29:05
  I was just like so into and I realized in kind of a heartbreak
• 29:08
  breaking way, it was like, Oh no, she didn't just get me as a
• 29:10
  kid. She didn't just get kids.
• 29:12
  She got people and stories and what makes something interesting
• 29:16
  and dialogue and authenticity. And that is something that made
• 29:21
  me want to go back And I didn't realize it at the time.
• 29:23
  I just thought she like understood me and then got
• 29:25
  older. I was like, she understands life
• 29:27
  and characters and story. And that's what it is.
• 29:29
  And I think for anything that you look at, if you look at
• 29:32
  Roald Dahl, which has lasted forever, white stories, if you
• 29:35
  talk to them, they would say, I don't write down to children.
• 29:38
  I write up to children. I write a good story.
• 29:41
  Roald Dahl was like, I don't write children's literature.
• 29:44
  I write something and people tell me it's for kids.
• 29:46
  And I think that idea of like, oh, sorry, that was, I don't
• 29:50
  think that was Roald Dahl. If that was someone else fact
• 29:52
  checked me, Maurice Sendak. But I, I mean, I just think it's
• 29:55
  that idea of like, if it's good people are engaged and that's
• 30:01
  what they come back for. And I don't, I don't think
• 30:04
  necessarily it's going to matter if they know that Ernie is that
• 30:08
  one and Bert is that one. I think the idea that like,
• 30:11
  well, they, they don't know these characters name.
• 30:13
  I mean, what's to know about the count?
• 30:15
  He's purple and he counts, you know, like I don't, I don't need
• 30:17
  to know more than that, but he's entertaining and fun in what he
• 30:22
  does and he's lasting and he sticks with you.
• 30:24
  I mean that that to me I think is more important than than
• 30:28
  making sure that you are hitting, you know, the
• 30:31
  three-year old audience or the like.
• 30:34
  Yeah, 35 to 45 year old audience.
• 30:36
  Yeah. And you know what that makes me
• 30:38
  think of? And I've said this is a whole
• 30:40
  lot of Times Now. Bluey, Bluey.
• 30:43
  Exactly. But here's the thing like some
• 30:47
  kids. So my kid would not watch bluey
• 30:50
  at all. I'd I wish he would I I wanted
• 30:53
  to watch Bluey but no. So some kids will just watch
• 30:57
  what they want to watch. And so yes, Bluey is obviously
• 31:01
  proven funny for kids and adults, and yet still there is
• 31:05
  there are certain kids who don't want to watch it.
• 31:08
  And so Sesame kind of also needs to accept that fact.
• 31:11
  Yeah. But I think the more characters
• 31:13
  you have for people to identify with, the more opportunities you
• 31:16
  have to bring people in. I mean, if you're going to talk
• 31:19
  about feelings, getting rid of telly maybe or, you know,
• 31:22
  pushing telly in the background may not be, you know, the best
• 31:25
  thing. Or, or if like the grouch, I
• 31:27
  mean, you have to have space for grouchiness.
• 31:31
  Everybody has that grouch inside them.
• 31:33
  And I think it's important to acknowledge that too, and not
• 31:35
  just be adorable and the cute. And also if you want to raise
• 31:40
  your kids age, if you make the main character Elmo 3 1/2 years
• 31:44
  old, it's going to be, I think like at least Big Bird was, he's
• 31:48
  6 or whatever. But when you have when you make,
• 31:52
  when you change that focus to 3 1/2 year old and he's now the
• 31:55
  main character, you lose as kids.
• 31:59
  Find out the kids ages, you know, or, or The Muppets ages
• 32:02
  or, or just recognize that that that is a younger character.
• 32:06
  It's going to be harder to have those older kids watching
• 32:09
  because they're going to like, you know, relegate it to the the
• 32:12
  babyish pile. Yeah, I think to your point
• 32:17
  about the characters and how you need to have a lot of different
• 32:21
  characters that express different feelings and just
• 32:23
  different ways of being a person.
• 32:25
  I would say that they have introduced so many different
• 32:28
  characters over the past few years whose primary personality
• 32:31
  trait is happy, and besides that, it's the other qualities
• 32:37
  that they just want out of all of the children watching at
• 32:39
  home, like Curious, Brave, like it's just kind of the same
• 32:44
  handful. Of you see a lot of character
• 32:46
  BIOS and they all say like so and so loves playing with their
• 32:49
  friends and singing songs and and dancing and playing games.
• 32:53
  That applies to a lot of them. Yes, yes, they all do.
• 32:57
  That's the thing. And so beyond that, they come up
• 32:59
  with specific things that are not character traits, that are
• 33:03
  profile details, that are this character loves butterflies and
• 33:07
  this character loves soccer and this character.
• 33:10
  Likes comic books, Cooking with his dad, yeah.
• 33:14
  Yes, it's just a list of likes, a list of interests.
• 33:18
  And I get why they think that because if you look at Cookie
• 33:20
  Monster, he loves cookies, right?
• 33:24
  That's his thing. But what's interesting about
• 33:26
  Cookie Monster is not the fact that he loves cookies.
• 33:28
  It's the way that he loves cookies.
• 33:31
  That's. What He loves them to a lethal
• 33:33
  degree. Yeah, like it's his relationship
• 33:37
  to the things he likes and how he expresses himself that's
• 33:41
  funny and engaging about Cookie Monster, not the fact that he
• 33:45
  has a like. And so many of these other
• 33:48
  characters performed by incredibly talented people.
• 33:51
  But you can tell that they're the product of curriculum to a
• 33:56
  much greater degree than a lot of these early characters that
• 34:00
  just kind of emerged in part because their personality is
• 34:04
  happy, curious, and likes to sing with their friends and
• 34:08
  likes X, has an interest in Y, sometimes reads about Z.
• 34:15
  It kind. Of goes to like because someone,
• 34:20
  someone was talking about the Frank Oz discussions that he had
• 34:24
  at the Museum of the Moving Image.
• 34:26
  And one of the things he brought up was how they started with
• 34:31
  character. And so that to me that that this
• 34:35
  is an illustration of when you don't start with character,
• 34:37
  you're starting with curriculum, as you said, and then you're
• 34:42
  building, you're, you're trying to build a character off of the
• 34:45
  curriculum rather than coming up with a character and then
• 34:48
  finding how it fits into the curriculum.
• 34:51
  Right at this point I keep half expecting there to be an episode
• 34:57
  in which one of their educational specialists just
• 35:01
  comes on screen disguised as a new Muppet, just in a bad Muppet
• 35:06
  costume. Like, hi, I'm your new Muppet
• 35:08
  friend. I'm 3 1/2 years old.
• 35:10
  And my name, it's Jeff. I am not an educational
• 35:15
  specialist for children. All right, someone bringing the
• 35:17
  whiteboard, bringing the desk. All right, today we're going to
• 35:20
  have so much fun kids, because we're going to talk about dance.
• 35:25
  That's right. We're going to talk about dance.
• 35:28
  Wham slams the curriculum folder on the table, this massive
• 35:32
  binder. All right, let's flip through to
• 35:35
  page 273. I'm a kid like you, and we're
• 35:38
  having so much fun. I'm so happy and curious about
• 35:41
  all that we're going to learn about.
• 35:44
  I've, I've, you know, I watched a few episodes of the previous
• 35:47
  season and I really liked the episode focused on Rosita, on
• 35:54
  where she's on a basketball team and her basketball coach
• 35:57
  misheard her name and keeps calling her Rosie instead of
• 36:01
  Rosita. And she has to find the courage
• 36:03
  to speak up and say, actually, but my name is, is not Rosie.
• 36:08
  It's it's Rosita. And it's important to me.
• 36:11
  There is nothing funny in that episode.
• 36:14
  Not a bit, not a joke, not a bit.
• 36:17
  I don't care. I insist it's good television
• 36:19
  and very watchable because it's clearly serving a curricular
• 36:23
  function. But it's like a genuine story
• 36:28
  where it's like, Oh, yeah, I get this character's perspective and
• 36:31
  what the drama is here and how to a kid, it is pretty scary to
• 36:38
  have to approach an adult authority figure with a
• 36:40
  correction. And you don't know how that's
• 36:42
  going to go. And I thought that this episode
• 36:45
  actually grappled with that in a human way.
• 36:47
  Like, it all comes from a very, very grounded human place.
• 36:52
  And that, for me, counts for a heck of a lot more than when we
• 36:57
  get a show that feels like it's entirely the product of a
• 37:00
  curriculum, except where they have forced in a bunch of jokes
• 37:04
  to try to keep pulling your attention back in.
• 37:09
  I remember an interesting conversation.
• 37:12
  Rosemary Trulia is about the the.
• 37:14
  Trulia, Yeah. The curriculum person and they
• 37:17
  had a chat with her and Norman Styles, who was the writer for a
• 37:22
  long time. So you have the two sort of
• 37:24
  bringing their various viewpoints and I think they're.
• 37:26
  This is at Momi, right? It was at Momi and it, I think
• 37:30
  what it highlighted was there's always been this tension and I
• 37:34
  feel like maybe in the past they were able to have more give and
• 37:37
  take. It wasn't just like get a given
• 37:40
  that the curriculum is going to win out.
• 37:42
  Maybe if it was funny enough, interesting enough or quirky
• 37:46
  enough, they and everyone loved it and they were just having
• 37:48
  fun, they would go ahead and go with it and let the curriculum
• 37:51
  drop a little in that instance. And then you, you know, that I
• 37:54
  think there was a little bit more compromise and it feels
• 37:56
  like maybe things have just skewed a little too far one way
• 38:00
  and, and left behind some of the because obviously you have
• 38:04
  writers and talented people on there.
• 38:06
  And, and sometimes, sometimes you have to like get out of the
• 38:09
  way and let them do their thing and create something wonderful
• 38:12
  instead of trying to, to confine it too much from the beginning,
• 38:17
  you know, let it play and then maybe cut it down.
• 38:19
  But don't don't stifle all the creativity from the the get go.
• 38:24
  I think now is probably a good time to move over to Disney
• 38:28
  because I think you you put that very well.
• 38:30
  That was a very nice bow on the Sesame Street conversation.
• 38:33
  So if we look. At Going to Disney.
• 38:35
  We're going to Disney. You're paying for us to go to
• 38:38
  Disney. Yeah, that's right.
• 38:40
  We're gonna get there in 2026 to go to Muppet Vision 3D.
• 38:44
  That's my plan. Nothing will go wrong with that.
• 38:48
  So about the Muppet Vision 3D news.
• 38:51
  Yeah. I think it's fascinating that
• 38:55
  they announce Muppet Visions closure with the news of a new
• 39:01
  Muppet attraction that will presumably come with filming new
• 39:05
  footage, probably with recording new music with The Muppets.
• 39:08
  And boy, did we not care. I mean, I could be wrong.
• 39:14
  I'm sure some people really cared.
• 39:15
  But when I was looking around at the Muppet fan community, I
• 39:17
  didn't hear a heck of a lot of oh, but I'm excited about about
• 39:22
  the rock and roller coaster, about the new version of rock
• 39:25
  and roller coaster. I guess it's not a new
• 39:26
  attraction really, but you know, it's sort of a new attraction.
• 39:31
  I just didn't hear it at all. It seems like all of the focus
• 39:34
  was on what was lost. It's.
• 39:36
  Taken away, yeah. And was that wrong, or is that a
• 39:41
  good assessment of the situation?
• 39:43
  Because I can't find it in me to feel like I should feel
• 39:46
  positively about it. Well, I think part of what drove
• 39:48
  that is just that people know Muppet Vision 3D and especially
• 39:52
  it was Jim Henson's last project.
• 39:53
  People have a lot of like feelings about it, which they
• 39:55
  should because it's great. Whereas the roller coaster, the
• 39:58
  rock and roller coaster at the moment is just a piece of
• 40:01
  concept art. And so I think, you know, it's
• 40:03
  not that you're not going to have the same feelings about it.
• 40:06
  It's about, it's about the same as, you know, a whole new Muppet
• 40:11
  special on TV versus oh boy, The Muppets are going to be on.
• 40:14
  Holy moly. Yeah, well, I think I do think
• 40:19
  it's going to be. It's going to be great.
• 40:22
  It's amazing that Muppet Vision lasted for 35 years.
• 40:25
  It's sort of insane that like this, essentially this Muppet
• 40:29
  special man for 35 years, continuously, every day.
• 40:33
  Yeah, in a theater. And people kept watching it.
• 40:36
  Yeah. One thing that's funny about
• 40:38
  Movie Vision 3D is it it's all about how great 3D film is.
• 40:43
  Like that's the entire, if you want the curriculum for that,
• 40:46
  for that piece, it's it's Wow 3D and it feels like the audience
• 40:51
  kind of went through that already, you know how cool 3D
• 40:55
  movies are. And then we kind of got got over
• 40:57
  it and. You mean in the 1950s?
• 40:59
  Yeah. And the 1950s, I think.
• 41:00
  We got over it in the 1950s. Yeah, so it's kind of like
• 41:04
  making a Disney attraction about how great DVDs are, right?
• 41:07
  And then and then like expecting it to run forever and ever and
• 41:10
  ever and ever and never change. It's not gonna happen.
• 41:12
  No, no, no. You don't understand, Danny.
• 41:15
  All the people are lining up to hear Waldo see graphic talk
• 41:18
  about Disney Fast Play. Have you heard about Disney
• 41:22
  Fast? Play this is this is the
• 41:24
  ultimate Where's Waldo? I'm not going to lie, I think
• 41:29
  Waldo in 2025 it's a little embarrassing CG is so old and
• 41:35
  dated and bad. The amount of polygons in Waldo
• 41:39
  in 2025 is probably the same amount in like one of the flames
• 41:46
  on Lumiere in Mickey's fill her magic.
• 41:51
  The amount of CPU power right? Both of those things is
• 41:55
  equivalent. Yeah, you're right.
• 41:57
  You're right. I mean, it's quaint.
• 41:59
  And I think a lot of the old timey quaint things that show
• 42:02
  their age are they're not sticking around forever at the
• 42:06
  parks. And we couldn't have expected
• 42:07
  this to stick around forever. I'm glad that it it seems like
• 42:11
  the folks in Imagineering still really like and respect this
• 42:14
  property. The fact that they because.
• 42:17
  They, The Muppets, are under Imagineering.
• 42:19
  Right. They like them.
• 42:20
  They like these guys that they have, Yes, they like what they
• 42:23
  have. And what was I going to say?
• 42:27
  Something about crochet? Yeah, about the crocheting,
• 42:31
  Danny, I was hoping you could say more about that.
• 42:34
  There's a little Rizzo that's super cute.
• 42:36
  You can make Monomenon, the snouts.
• 42:39
  It's a really kind of impressive number of characters and really
• 42:42
  kind of depth and the, the photos of them are super, super
• 42:44
  cute. It's a great thing.
• 42:46
  The really gross thing, I think, is that I bet they're gonna
• 42:48
  smash up that Miss Piggy fountain and and then they're
• 42:51
  gonna sell little chunks of it back to us.
• 42:54
  Yeah, as as collectibles. That that is what they did with.
• 42:57
  For those who don't get the reference, that is what they did
• 42:59
  with the hot air balloon that was on top of the Muppet Vision
• 43:02
  3D building. They broke it and sold us the
• 43:04
  little pieces as collectibles by.
• 43:07
  Gosh and anther they did it with like one of Waldorf's shirts.
• 43:11
  I think when they when they closed the one in Disneyland as
• 43:14
  the as little pieces on a pin. Yeah, it was very strange
• 43:18
  marketing. So unfortunately I think that's
• 43:20
  where that's going. The Rock is roller coaster is
• 43:22
  that does. Plenty of space in front of rock
• 43:25
  and roller coaster isn't there. Right.
• 43:27
  That's the move. They, they justifiably could
• 43:29
  move it to the rock and roller coaster area if they wanted to,
• 43:31
  if they, if they're invested in it.
• 43:32
  But then I, I say this not knowing how plumbing works.
• 43:36
  And so there may be some expert out there who can tell me
• 43:38
  actually, that sounds doable to you as a layperson.
• 43:42
  But in fact, it would cost $3,000,000.
• 43:45
  Imagineering did a test, they ran the numbers up.
• 43:47
  Now it's $4,000,000 because it's cold outside.
• 43:51
  That's, that's how these things go.
• 43:52
  We don't know what's possible. JD, do you know, do you realize
• 43:56
  that this podcast has a connection to the rock and
• 43:59
  roller coaster attraction? No, I don't.
• 44:02
  You're not aware of this. I yesterday, just to get all
• 44:05
  psyched up for being on the show today, I listened to the
• 44:08
  previous episode, which was a year ago.
• 44:09
  So the winter 2024 episode. Matthew Gaydos predicted this.
• 44:16
  Exactly this. What?
• 44:19
  He says I and I wrote down the quote you were asking like what
• 44:22
  would you like to see in the parks?
• 44:23
  And he talked about one thing and then he says, and then
• 44:25
  obviously the other secondary one would be having the electric
• 44:28
  mayhem rock and roller coaster, which you know when ATV show
• 44:31
  about them gets cancelled. Maybe isn't the best omen that
• 44:33
  that might happen someday, but you'd still love to see it.
• 44:36
  Because who the hell listens to to Aerosmith?
• 44:39
  That's right, I I remember something.
• 44:43
  For the past few months it's been bugging me.
• 44:44
  Like someone said something about how Aerosmith is
• 44:48
  irrelevant and connected it to Doctor Teeth and the Electric
• 44:51
  Mayhem. Yep and rock and Roller Coaster
• 44:53
  and I couldn't think of what it could possibly like on what
• 44:56
  podcast that would have been. It did not occur to me that it
• 44:59
  could have been my. Own Yep.
• 45:01
  And so Matthew Gatos, I believe, is a prophet, right.
• 45:04
  Oh, and we we need to get him more on the show because he'll
• 45:08
  tell us what's happening in in the coming years.
• 45:10
  And what do we want to know though?
• 45:13
  Yeah, actually, that's a that's a bad idea.
• 45:15
  We, we're not going to be able to go on if we know what's
• 45:17
  coming. Dear Lord, I don't.
• 45:19
  Think I don't think it'll matter because JD is just going to
• 45:22
  forget it. It's true.
• 45:24
  Very, very true. There's other stuff going on
• 45:27
  right now in the world. This is not.
• 45:29
  Always like reversal situation. I think that what that goes to
• 45:34
  show is that if you study history enough, you can predict
• 45:38
  everything about the future, right?
• 45:41
  That's what commitment has taught us.
• 45:44
  You you just watch every Muppet thing in order and eventually
• 45:48
  you can see just having only gone up through the the 80s,
• 45:52
  through some Muppet Babies, you can see what's gonna happen many
• 45:56
  years later. Will they move Gonzo's
• 45:59
  bathrooms? That's my question.
• 46:02
  That's a good question. Who Pizza Rizzo we know will be
• 46:05
  destroyed? Will we still have Gonzo's Royal
• 46:07
  flush? Is the whole area gonna be
• 46:09
  Monsters Inc now? Is that the idea?
• 46:11
  Yes, I think the justification was well these buildings are
• 46:16
  already standing up and it's easier for us to just retheme a
• 46:20
  big city area than tear down another building and build a new
• 46:25
  Monsters Inc from Ash. Are we looking forward to the
• 46:28
  possibility of a new Muppet recording of a song from the
• 46:32
  roller coaster? Is that interesting?
• 46:34
  I am, yeah. Yeah, why not?
• 46:36
  Actually I I don't know rock and roller coaster very well cuz I'm
• 46:39
  on the West Coast, I'm a Disneyland guy.
• 46:42
  But I I looked it up and read about it and there's apparently
• 46:47
  like the whole pre show should be pretty impressive.
• 46:50
  I would assume that they're gonna make new things.
• 46:53
  It'll be cool to have like a new Muppet plays.
• 46:55
  I mean, I think other, other than, you know, the whole
• 46:58
  Rainbow Connection thing, I think a lot of the very
• 47:00
  strongest stuff that Muppets have done in the last many years
• 47:04
  is music related. Yeah.
• 47:07
  You know, all those songs from the Electric Mayhem show were
• 47:10
  terrific. That Mister Blue Sky video they
• 47:12
  did before that was great. Yeah.
• 47:15
  Unpack Your Adjectives by Kermit.
• 47:17
  That was pretty. Cute I guess.
• 47:19
  Well, and and Bohemian Rhapsody everybody loved.
• 47:21
  And the songs from the movies, yeah, the ones that have Muppets
• 47:25
  in them are. Wait, what are pretty good?
• 47:28
  Wait, did we just jump back to 2010 or am I forgetting
• 47:31
  something? What do you mean?
• 47:33
  Bohemian Rhapsody. Yes.
• 47:35
  That was 2009. That was 2009.
• 47:38
  That's right. Good Lord, I forgot.
• 47:39
  OK, that was that long ago. Wow.
• 47:43
  Well, I mean, as you know, The Muppets are 70 years old this
• 47:46
  year. That's true.
• 47:48
  So The Muppets are turning 70 this year, and so far we know
• 47:51
  that because they have posted about it on social media,
• 47:56
  specifically Facebook. And possibly nowhere else is
• 48:04
  that is that the case? Like they it's on.
• 48:07
  They left Twitter. Instagram.
• 48:08
  Yeah, I was gonna say. It's on the Instagram as well I.
• 48:10
  Mean that's technically. It's all still meta.
• 48:14
  It's it's all still. And threads which is also.
• 48:19
  Which is also meta, Yeah, yeah. So the threads still exists.
• 48:24
  Yep. OK, wow, I.
• 48:26
  I check every now and again. Does anything happen again?
• 48:30
  I have no idea. All right, that sounds about
• 48:32
  right, but The Muppets are posting there.
• 48:33
  So if you want to celebrate the 70th anniversary, The Muppets,
• 48:36
  you can do that there. You can do that by listening to
• 48:38
  the Muppet 70 podcast that many of you have hosted very funny
• 48:42
  episodes of. One, one question that I have as
• 48:45
  far as like this as a marketing platform is like just drawing
• 48:52
  attention to how old and worn out the franchise is, like
• 48:57
  saying it's the 70, it's the 70th here.
• 49:00
  We like it's Is this the moment where we say, hey, everybody,
• 49:03
  The Muppets are septuagenarians. It does highlight that they're
• 49:09
  old and there is a risk of highlighting that they are a
• 49:14
  product of a totally different culture and that it could raise
• 49:20
  the question once again of are these characters even still
• 49:23
  relevant? And so, but also it's like it's
• 49:26
  a big anniversary. They got to celebrate it.
• 49:27
  This is the kind of thing that. Yeah.
• 49:29
  That. It's important.
• 49:31
  It is feeling like more of a nostalgia grab than it had to be
• 49:37
  because, you know, The Muppets Mayhem came out in 2023.
• 49:42
  They could easily, when pointing to pictures and videos and fun
• 49:48
  things for Muppets, point to that as much as they're pointing
• 49:53
  to the original Muppet Show. Like this week, they're
• 49:56
  celebrated the, the week we're recording this, they are
• 49:58
  celebrating Janice. And so many people are talking
• 50:03
  about on social media, you know, having watched Muppets Mayhem.
• 50:07
  But the main account, The Muppets account, is only
• 50:11
  referring mostly to the Muppet Show or things that people are
• 50:17
  nostalgic for, as opposed to stuff that is more current, more
• 50:22
  exciting, more hey, they're still relevant.
• 50:25
  But also, that stuff is reliable.
• 50:28
  That's what people have seen. Yeah, you're right, it's a
• 50:31
  nostalgic graph, but it also helps recenter the franchise a
• 50:34
  little bit because you almost have to direct casual fans to
• 50:40
  core Muppet things so that they can fully understand and
• 50:43
  appreciate everything else. Right, right.
• 50:45
  But why can't they do both? That's true.
• 50:47
  How? How are they?
• 50:48
  How is it marketing? How is it good marketing?
• 50:51
  Because that's all this is. They're companies we shouldn't
• 50:53
  really like, depend upon them for our happiness.
• 50:55
  However. Like if they're going to do it,
• 50:58
  grab them by their nostalgia and then throw them into 2023 and
• 51:03
  say, yeah, they're still making stuff and it's still funny and
• 51:07
  still enjoyable, so watch it. Yes.
• 51:11
  There's some Disney Plus. For for a number of people I
• 51:14
  have heard from that show is enjoyable.
• 51:16
  Yes, that is factually true. Katie Lynn, I I do want to focus
• 51:21
  in on something you said. You said we're not supposed to
• 51:23
  rely on these companies for happiness.
• 51:27
  I didn't understand that at all. I guess my my my.
• 51:30
  I feel like is this very loosey goosey, the podcast that we're
• 51:34
  doing here has had any theme at all.
• 51:37
  It is the insatification of things that we love.
• 51:41
  You know, it's been throughout, you know, the Sesame
• 51:45
  conversation, it's been throughout Disney taking
• 51:48
  something apart that people have enjoyed for the last 30 years.
• 51:52
  It's been about the degradation of our social media lives.
• 51:56
  So I. My my but my question.
• 52:00
  For you. And that's why, that's why we
• 52:02
  hold onto the official Muppet crochet.
• 52:05
  I'm a book. It sounds amazing.
• 52:08
  It's really really good, you guys should look it up.
• 52:10
  I don't know how to spell. It, I don't know, I I think that
• 52:12
  falls under the same problem that Drake was talking about.
• 52:15
  You just have to follow the directions.
• 52:16
  Where do you get to do your own thing?
• 52:19
  Man, that's a. Good one, follow the curriculum.
• 52:23
  So Katie Lynn, I think my question for you then is how do
• 52:29
  you suggest one approach fandom of The Muppets in the time we're
• 52:37
  living in, in 2025, circa Trump coming back into office, like in
• 52:45
  this moment, what, what would you advise to people in terms of
• 52:50
  how they approach Muppets so as to not depend on them too much
• 52:54
  for happiness and to take the right things away from them?
• 52:56
  I am I am I. See people leaning forward as if
• 52:58
  I'm. Going to tell us please.
• 53:01
  Well, you wrote an article about how The Muppets should be our
• 53:05
  discomfort watch, right? I did.
• 53:08
  And. It got no response.
• 53:10
  It was. Great.
• 53:11
  It was a good article, and so I'm giving you the chance to use
• 53:16
  People's Muppet Nostalgia to direct them to your new article
• 53:21
  that you wanted to get a larger response.
• 53:23
  You see what I'm doing? Thank you, JD.
• 53:25
  See how it's great marketing? I, you know, I haven't done a
• 53:31
  ton of thinking about this because it's not something that
• 53:36
  would necessarily further me as a human being, but like, what
• 53:42
  are we doing right now? So Muppet fandom has clearly
• 53:45
  brought us all together. We don't all live in the same
• 53:48
  place, but we are making something that we love.
• 53:52
  And I think that goes back to what the core of The Muppets
• 53:54
  was, is that it brings people together.
• 53:57
  It brings joy when they create a joint project that they're
• 54:03
  passionate about. And so I feel like people can
• 54:07
  use that from The Muppets in terms of, you know, they're
• 54:11
  making something that they love. It doesn't necessarily have to
• 54:13
  be Muppet related, but to know that they are meeting like
• 54:18
  minded people, that they're creating, that they are bringing
• 54:21
  joy and passion to their lives. Like this is what I think fandom
• 54:25
  can do and what it should do rather than sitting back waiting
• 54:30
  for the next feeding from the company that says, OK, here,
• 54:33
  here is your tiny bit of news. Here is your tiny bit of hope.
• 54:39
  Please keep tuning in for the next bit that we're going to
• 54:42
  feed you. And then once you get that, like
• 54:46
  devolving into speculation and bickering back and forth as to
• 54:51
  what things mean and why, why they're doing this and how we
• 54:54
  can stop them and petitioning them.
• 54:57
  So like relying on the companies for that happiness is not
• 55:02
  creating happiness as far as I can see, right?
• 55:06
  Right. Yeah, it's, which is so many
• 55:10
  thoughts about that, even though I know this is supposed to be
• 55:13
  the great Muppet fandom panel. So I'm supposed to be focusing
• 55:16
  on the the panelists more, even though in this episode clearly I
• 55:20
  have just decided to. Now you've got an agenda.
• 55:22
  It's fine. Hosted with an agenda to say all
• 55:26
  of the things that I would have wanted to say on previous
• 55:28
  episodes and in all of the articles that I want to write
• 55:30
  that I don't have time to. Sorry, but you, you are
• 55:34
  absolutely right. When you look at the history of
• 55:38
  the Muppet fan community, as I've been doing a lot lately,
• 55:41
  I've been thinking a lot about the history of, of this weird,
• 55:45
  weird online community. A lot of its best moments have
• 55:49
  come when there was nothing good going on with any of the
• 55:52
  companies, like in dire situations.
• 55:56
  That's when you see generally historically, we create.
• 56:01
  We produce cool stuff and find new ways to connect with one
• 56:04
  another. New projects emerge from us
• 56:07
  being silly. And right now I keep expecting
• 56:12
  that or hoping for that. But then I open up any of my
• 56:16
  apps to see my Muppet fan friends and our whole social
• 56:21
  infrastructure is not working. Like I can't find Muppet posts
• 56:27
  on X and I I don't see many people posting on Blue sky.
• 56:33
  There's so much going on on the Tough Pigs discord that it often
• 56:38
  to me feels like just a big wall of text and I don't know how to
• 56:43
  get involved there. It's not my medium, it's not how
• 56:48
  I socialize. And that's fine.
• 56:49
  Like if it's working for other people then that's great.
• 56:51
  But I'm used to having a lot of different ways that we could
• 56:54
  connect and socialize with others.
• 56:55
  And we're in this weird time where all of the social networks
• 56:59
  are getting kind of poisoned in one way or another, if not at
• 57:03
  risk of being banned. I don't know how we're going to
• 57:08
  do the next era of Muppet fandom.
• 57:11
  That could be anything like The Muppets Twitter moment a few
• 57:14
  years ago where everyone just started chatting and creating
• 57:17
  little things, or anything like the era leading up to the 2011
• 57:22
  Muppet movie where you had tough pigs, the Muppet mindset, the
• 57:27
  Muppet wiki, the Muppet cast, and all of this new stuff
• 57:31
  showing up on YouTube. And it felt like it was, it was
• 57:34
  kind of an oligopoly of institutions, but institutions
• 57:38
  that generally raised up the thoughts and interests of fans,
• 57:44
  brought new content to light, brought new information.
• 57:47
  It, it, it felt to me like a very elevating time for the fan
• 57:50
  community. And I would say that that time
• 57:53
  around 2021-2022, even more so, I'm having a hard time seeing
• 58:00
  where or how the next one's going to come about.
• 58:02
  And so I don't quite know how to do precisely the thing that
• 58:05
  Katie Lynn Miller is talking about, except keep doing some
• 58:08
  tough pig stuff sometimes, you know?
• 58:11
  Well, those things do still exist.
• 58:13
  Tough pigs and Muppet wiki like you say.
• 58:15
  That's true, I think actually. And they're still good, by the
• 58:18
  way, and everyone should read them.
• 58:19
  Yeah, they are. Yes, I think a lot of the
• 58:22
  activity is happening with podcasts where we've got, you
• 58:25
  know, all of our podcasts have been moving right along.
• 58:28
  We've got Fraggle Talk, we've got the great Muppet fandom
• 58:31
  panel. You know, there's like, there's
• 58:32
  a lot, there's a lot of creativity going on there.
• 58:34
  That last one's a question. Maybe we got that one.
• 58:37
  Yeah, who knows? What this?
• 58:38
  Is as well as as well as Muppet Urgy and commitment that there
• 58:42
  is there are too many Muppet podcasts that I don't I don't
• 58:46
  have the time all the time to listen to all of them, which is
• 58:49
  amazing, which I I just find that's in sort of this art form
• 58:53
  where there has been this kind of blossoming of creativity and
• 58:56
  and fun. But it's also an art form that
• 59:02
  is very good at showcasing a lot of thoughts from a relatively
• 59:06
  small number of people. Yeah.
• 59:08
  And it's a little frustrating and concerning when that's one
• 59:13
  of the few remaining forms that we have.
• 59:15
  Even something like Tough Pigs. While the Tough Pigs has been
• 59:18
  producing so much of so much work that is among its best over
• 59:23
  the past years, like just the past couple of years, it's
• 59:28
  there's still kind of this sense of, oh, wow.
• 59:30
  The last thing standing from from long ago in the Muppet fan
• 59:34
  world that's still thriving is something that's driven by a a
• 59:38
  small handful of voices. The like.
• 59:41
  It's been diversified to some extent in terms of the voices
• 59:44
  that are are being elevated, but only to some very limited
• 59:48
  extent. For those of you just tuning in,
• 59:50
  this is the drudgery report from the Great Muppet fandom.
• 59:54
  Pan, you know, you know I don't. I didn't really like Jim Henson
• 59:58
  idea, man. Oh right, shoot, we meant to
• 1:00:01
  talk about Jim Henson idea. Man, Yeah, no, I wasn't crazy
• 1:00:04
  about it at all. I'll tell you why there was all
• 1:00:06
  this color grading on it. I don't know if other people.
• 1:00:10
  I don't know how I couldn't talk to anybody about it because it
• 1:00:12
  upset me so much. They they took Rita Moreno, it
• 1:00:17
  was so lovely and they put her in this dark concrete box.
• 1:00:21
  Yep. Lit, Lit, I believe, by
• 1:00:24
  cigarette lighters. And you know, so there was that.
• 1:00:28
  And then all of the clips and everything that they show uses.
• 1:00:31
  It was like this sort of Zack Snyder move of like dampening
• 1:00:35
  all of the color down to sort of a beige.
• 1:00:38
  I mean they also showed a clip from the Orson Welles show which
• 1:00:40
  I don't understand, but how? Weird fixation on that Orson
• 1:00:43
  Welles show. Lied heavily on Orson Welles.
• 1:00:47
  Never. It never aired.
• 1:00:49
  Can I say something about that just?
• 1:00:50
  But just the idea, just the idea that like that you're going to
• 1:00:53
  take The Muppets and it's the same with Zack Snyder and like
• 1:00:56
  Justice League, like, how do you, how does a person get to
• 1:00:59
  the point where they say superheroes but in black and
• 1:01:02
  white? Right.
• 1:01:03
  Yeah, Shane. Can I just say so I saw the that
• 1:01:06
  documentary at the Museum of the Moving Image, and every time
• 1:01:11
  those Orson Well clips popped up, like throughout the first
• 1:01:14
  time, people laughed. The second time people laughed
• 1:01:17
  more, and then the third time they were like, yeah, they were
• 1:01:20
  so excited when that kept happening.
• 1:01:24
  How would you characterize that audience, Shane?
• 1:01:27
  And they are enthusiastic about are Great American film makers
• 1:01:37
  and they're somewhat misguided pursuits.
• 1:01:41
  He just wanted to be Drew Barrymore.
• 1:01:43
  The Drew Barrymore Show before it was Drew Barrymore.
• 1:01:46
  God I. Don't want to.
• 1:01:49
  I'm just picturing him on a couch getting really close to
• 1:01:52
  somebody and I don't want to see that.
• 1:01:54
  Maybe the idea is that someone who doesn't know any better
• 1:01:57
  could think, well, this, this gives Jim Henson and The Muppets
• 1:02:00
  more clout and legitimacy. They're being interviewed by
• 1:02:02
  Orson Welles, maker of Citizen Kane, and it's like, well, at
• 1:02:05
  this point it's Orson Welles, maker of commercials for fish
• 1:02:07
  sticks. So I don't know, gang, that
• 1:02:14
  doesn't actually make it look like the high point of The
• 1:02:16
  Muppets career was all that spectacular.
• 1:02:19
  If this is who was interviewing them?
• 1:02:21
  Oh dear. I think with the the Idea Man a
• 1:02:25
  documentary, a lot of people were saying, oh, they didn't
• 1:02:27
  talk about this and they didn't include this and they didn't
• 1:02:30
  talk to this person. And the whole point of a
• 1:02:33
  documentary is to tell a story, and that means excluding so many
• 1:02:39
  other possible stories. So this was Ron Howard and his
• 1:02:44
  vision and what he thought was important.
• 1:02:48
  But that does not mean that there isn't more, that there
• 1:02:51
  aren't still more stories to tell and fun things to explore.
• 1:02:55
  And you know, if the story didn't, if the story with Orson
• 1:02:59
  Welles at the center did not appeal to you.
• 1:03:04
  Obviously we do not have access to the Jim Henson Archive like
• 1:03:08
  these people did, but it is perfectly possible too learn
• 1:03:13
  those stories through other means at this point.
• 1:03:16
  Muppet Wiki. Just read the entire Muppet wiki
• 1:03:18
  and. Oh yeah, easy to do all. 46,000
• 1:03:23
  articles. Woohoo.
• 1:03:25
  You you phrase that as a question as though I wouldn't
• 1:03:28
  know. It's approximately there.
• 1:03:30
  What? Are you going to do when you hit
• 1:03:31
  50? I'm trying so hard.
• 1:03:34
  Yeah, you guys don't know. You got to have Joseph Gordon
• 1:03:37
  Levitt come and and just walk along the Muppet Wiki and say, I
• 1:03:41
  remember this. This was good.
• 1:03:42
  Oh. We can get Yvette Nicole Brown.
• 1:03:45
  Yvette Nicole Brown definitely is gettable.
• 1:03:49
  Well, start a bake sale. She shows up.
• 1:03:53
  And she's just going, wow, look, there's the page for Singing in
• 1:03:56
  the Rain and the Sony plush. It's.
• 1:04:01
  Going to be great. You know, they made a gay
• 1:04:03
  episode of Fraggle Rock. That was the that was the other
• 1:04:06
  thing this year which I did, which I did not have on my on my
• 1:04:10
  bingo card of things that would ever happen.
• 1:04:13
  Danny, thank you for providing structure to this episode.
• 1:04:15
  I do suppose it needed some. Somebody has to get in there.
• 1:04:19
  Well, this was The thing is I wasn't sure if we were even
• 1:04:22
  going to get to Back to the Rock because it's not a very recent
• 1:04:25
  thing that I, I forgot happened within the past year.
• 1:04:30
  But that sees the second season of Back to the Rock did happen
• 1:04:32
  within the past year, within the time since we last did an
• 1:04:35
  episode of the show. I never know what to say about
• 1:04:39
  that show, so I'm not going to say anything else about it.
• 1:04:42
  Who else wants to talk about Back to the Rock?
• 1:04:46
  I feel like I have talked about it a whole lot already.
• 1:04:50
  It was quite the focus, especially during June Pride
• 1:04:54
  month. Becca Petunia and I had a few
• 1:04:58
  articles out there talking about Fraggle Rock, talking with
• 1:05:01
  people on Fraggle Rock. Joe did a whole podcast about
• 1:05:04
  it. Come on guys.
• 1:05:06
  That's true. It you know what it it probably
• 1:05:08
  has been talked about mostly enough.
• 1:05:10
  But Danny, since you brought it up, if you have anything else
• 1:05:14
  that you want to add, this is your moment.
• 1:05:16
  This is my moment. It's I.
• 1:05:19
  It's just that fact that they did a queer episode.
• 1:05:22
  Well, you've expressed that you're surprised by it.
• 1:05:24
  Are you happy about it? Are you happy with how it went?
• 1:05:27
  Oh, yeah, no, I think it's beautiful.
• 1:05:29
  It was a gorgeous episode. It's.
• 1:05:30
  Been a job for an award? Exactly.
• 1:05:33
  It was it was the one that I remember and so therefore it's
• 1:05:36
  the one that I'm talking about. But I have been, but I have been
• 1:05:39
  impressed with with just like how how accurately they have
• 1:05:45
  recreated the world of Fraggar Rock.
• 1:05:47
  That's like the most boring possible take, but I do.
• 1:05:51
  I do like it as a show. Do you like that they have made
• 1:05:54
  it more colorful than the original show was?
• 1:05:56
  I do. I like that very much.
• 1:05:58
  Yeah, what wasn't dimmed down like the documentary or Muppets
• 1:06:03
  Mayhem, They let it be full Technicolor.
• 1:06:05
  I like that song by Brett Goldstein.
• 1:06:08
  Those are my thoughts. Yeah.
• 1:06:10
  Do we think that Back to the Rock has solved the comedy
• 1:06:19
  versus curriculum problem that Sesame Street has been
• 1:06:23
  struggling to figure out? Like, is Back to the Rock an
• 1:06:25
  example of, hey, Sesame, you want to see how to do this in a
• 1:06:29
  way that's engaging and still teaches?
• 1:06:31
  Look here. I think I've certainly laughed
• 1:06:33
  more at the new Fraggle Rock than any new Sesame episode.
• 1:06:38
  I mean, of course, it's curricular goals are entirely
• 1:06:40
  different and much looser named at an older audience.
• 1:06:42
  They're they're you know it. It's not going to be as strict
• 1:06:45
  by its very nature. And yet Back to the Rock is, I
• 1:06:48
  would say, a pretty darn messagy didactic show that is very much
• 1:06:55
  telling you its thoughts pretty clearly and loudly.
• 1:06:59
  You you come out of each episode knowing basically what you're
• 1:07:02
  supposed to think. There was an echo chamber, an
• 1:07:07
  actual echo chamber. And you know, I don't hate that.
• 1:07:13
  I really, to me, I don't think all the messages need to be
• 1:07:16
  hidden. Like if you want to do something
• 1:07:18
  that's on the nose, to me that is is not a crime.
• 1:07:20
  But then for me, what happens is when I watch the new show, I
• 1:07:25
  start to think a lot about, all right, what is this trying to
• 1:07:28
  say? Is it something that should be
• 1:07:30
  said? And how well is it saying it?
• 1:07:31
  Like I start to focus on the messaging and what the message
• 1:07:35
  is a lot more than just the comedy.
• 1:07:38
  So even when I'm laughing at at back to the Rock as as I do,
• 1:07:41
  it's a very funny show. Anything where I'm like, oh, I,
• 1:07:45
  I would have written that differently really leaps out at
• 1:07:48
  me in a way that's not true of the original series at all.
• 1:07:52
  Also, there was there was a there was a Richard Hunt
• 1:07:54
  biography this year. Yeah, Was that this year?
• 1:07:58
  That was this. Year there was.
• 1:08:00
  Completely. I feel like, I feel like I'm the
• 1:08:02
  little Jiminy Cricket of this episode.
• 1:08:07
  No, I mean. This is why you.
• 1:08:08
  This is why you started Muppet Wiki.
• 1:08:10
  You just remember all of the Muppet things in chronological
• 1:08:13
  order. Actually, it is so funny that
• 1:08:15
  you say that because the reason I can do this is I went to the
• 1:08:17
  2024 page on Muppet Wiki and saw like, well, I don't want to talk
• 1:08:23
  about these crappy Sesame let's talk about divorce books.
• 1:08:28
  Nobody's ever heard of that just cuz it's on Muppet Wiki.
• 1:08:31
  But the Richard Hunt biography is people good though?
• 1:08:34
  Yeah. I don't know if people, I don't
• 1:08:36
  know if people have read it. Have you read it?
• 1:08:37
  I read it. Yeah, it is so good.
• 1:08:40
  Yes, and I so I don't have any very critical thoughts, but he
• 1:08:46
  grew up about 15 minutes away from where I am.
• 1:08:50
  So it's just nice to read a like a book about someone important
• 1:08:55
  in the thing that the world of things that I like and they're
• 1:08:58
  talking about. Oh, I went to that restaurant or
• 1:09:00
  oh, I know where that high school is, or oh, I've been to
• 1:09:02
  that park and just pleased that little lizard part of my brain.
• 1:09:07
  I loved seeing The Muppets through a different viewpoint.
• 1:09:11
  I feel like it's always Jim Henson, sometimes Frank Oz
• 1:09:15
  highlighting the, the growth of the company and how things went
• 1:09:19
  through a different character. I just thought highlighted
• 1:09:22
  things pulled out something different for me and, you know,
• 1:09:26
  focused on stories that we haven't heard before.
• 1:09:29
  And I, I think in the way that, you know, Katie Lynn was talking
• 1:09:33
  about the, you know, every, everything you make is only from
• 1:09:37
  you. It's one story.
• 1:09:38
  It's one perspective. It's one thing I think often
• 1:09:42
  with the, the Jim Henson stuff, it is kind of the same stories
• 1:09:47
  over and over, but told from a different angle.
• 1:09:49
  And this was like just shifting things, all that and looking at
• 1:09:52
  something else entirely. And I, I, I enjoy the aspect.
• 1:09:55
  I mean, the access of course to the people is amazing and I
• 1:09:59
  think presenting it as a way to talk about Richard Hunt also
• 1:10:04
  pulled different stories from them and and brought up new
• 1:10:07
  things. So I I liked that, that aspect
• 1:10:11
  of the biography. It was nice to hear about him as
• 1:10:14
  a guy, like he wasn't the head of the company, he wasn't this
• 1:10:18
  creative. Well, he was, but he wasn't like
• 1:10:21
  the creative wizard behind everything.
• 1:10:24
  He was just, yeah, he was just a dude from new.
• 1:10:27
  Jersey a part of. Yeah, a part of though, like all
• 1:10:29
  of these interesting things. Yeah, and I, I went to a book
• 1:10:33
  event after it came out in New York where his sister, it was a
• 1:10:38
  small, very cramped little bookstore.
• 1:10:40
  And his sister was there and the audience was like 5 people were
• 1:10:45
  Muppet fans. And the rest of the people were
• 1:10:47
  like people that they knew or were family friends and they
• 1:10:50
  were just talking about him like, oh, yeah, he loved these
• 1:10:54
  kinds of doughnuts. And oh, yeah, there was this one
• 1:10:57
  time we were like pinching pennies outside the 711.
• 1:11:00
  And that was just so fascinating to listen to.
• 1:11:04
  Wow, that sounds. I don't think, I don't think he
• 1:11:06
  actually pinched pennies outside, but that's just an
• 1:11:09
  example of the kind of thing. Right, right.
• 1:11:12
  You're a liar. And so this is what you do when
• 1:11:14
  you come off the podcasts. And everyone needs to know and
• 1:11:16
  understand that yes, the last thing that I have thought to
• 1:11:21
  mention, by which I mean you all suggested this in the chat, was
• 1:11:26
  new physical media for on two accounts.
• 1:11:29
  One, the dark crystal extended soundtrack coming to CDA 3 CD
• 1:11:36
  set and two, we got some Fraggle rock back to the rock on
• 1:11:40
  Blu-ray. Yes, Blu-ray still alive.
• 1:11:44
  I, I wish, I wish that we were getting more stuff on Blu-ray
• 1:11:48
  all the time. We have a lot of the classic
• 1:11:50
  library on Blu-ray, but I want to see like Sesame Street stuff
• 1:11:55
  on Blu-ray. So it's kind of nice to see one
• 1:11:59
  of these franchises is still invested in, in releasing some
• 1:12:02
  stuff in this format. And means that even as streaming
• 1:12:06
  services do all the wacky things that streaming services do now
• 1:12:10
  where suddenly they say, hey, everybody, Hulu is on me.
• 1:12:15
  And it's like, what? You're another streaming
• 1:12:17
  service? How can Hulu be on you?
• 1:12:19
  What does that mean? I don't know.
• 1:12:20
  What not having to worry about that, just being able to have
• 1:12:22
  the thing physically, it's pretty nice.
• 1:12:24
  Thoughts. I don't support Blu-ray releases
• 1:12:27
  of non film media like things on videotape so I don't know how
• 1:12:33
  good a Sesame Street Blu-ray unless it was the high def stuff
• 1:12:38
  would look. But thanks, Dale.
• 1:12:40
  Oh, you'd prefer it on 4K? Is that what you're saying,
• 1:12:43
  Shane? Not even 8K.
• 1:12:45
  OK. 100K. 3 DTVS. Yes, I want that pinball to look
• 1:12:51
  like it's coming right at my face.
• 1:12:54
  I think the people are demanding more content that celebrates 3D.
• 1:12:59
  It's this really exciting new technology.
• 1:13:03
  It speaks to the present moment. It's very present.
• 1:13:05
  That's how I would. No, no, no.
• 1:13:06
  The present moment thinks it's talking to that.
• 1:13:08
  It's actually talking to me. Okay.
• 1:13:15
  Is there anything, all right, edit point, Is there anything
• 1:13:18
  else that we want to cover in this episode that I should try
• 1:13:20
  to segue to or have we said enough?
• 1:13:24
  Let's just crash into Muppet history.
• 1:13:27
  Oh, right. Crash.
• 1:13:28
  Crash, crash and burn. And then no one will ever listen
• 1:13:31
  to the podcast again. We're just.
• 1:13:32
  End on that. That's the last conversation.
• 1:13:34
  Actually no no, let's record about Muppet history but edit it
• 1:13:38
  out and keep it for Patreon so. Let's just keep keep it for our
• 1:13:44
  sake. Do we?
• 1:13:46
  I thought that was funny. Yeah.
• 1:13:48
  Do we keep all this in I OK, good Muppet history is another
• 1:13:53
  thing that I don't even know how to have a conversation about.
• 1:13:58
  It's it's rough. It's it's a rough time in the
• 1:14:02
  fan community where a lot of things that felt sort of like
• 1:14:10
  institutions is maybe the wrong word, but things that felt kind
• 1:14:13
  of big and stable and ongoing, suddenly our shaken, like with
• 1:14:20
  Muppet Vision 3D, it's like this was the building that was always
• 1:14:24
  going to be there. How often did we actually go?
• 1:14:26
  Maybe not often, but it was there.
• 1:14:29
  Sesame, Sesame Street, just the continuing existence of Sesame
• 1:14:34
  Street. It's like, well, it's always
• 1:14:35
  been nice to know that it's going to be there, even if none
• 1:14:37
  of us actually want to watch what it is.
• 1:14:40
  There's something about Muppet history where it's like, well,
• 1:14:45
  it's an outpost to the normies and I guess Muppet fandom should
• 1:14:49
  have one. And it's there.
• 1:14:51
  I may not be accessing its content very often or checking
• 1:14:55
  in or really have it in my feeds much at all, but it's there.
• 1:15:00
  And now it's, it's ruined. And I, I mean, for me, I would
• 1:15:06
  not want it to be there. The rest of the fan community
• 1:15:08
  responded to the situation very well, I thought, and that was
• 1:15:12
  very nice to see. But the whole situation is still
• 1:15:18
  really unpleasant to talk about or think about.
• 1:15:22
  One thing that I think is good that kind of came out of the
• 1:15:24
  discussion about it was it it really reinforced our values as
• 1:15:30
  a fan community. And that includes like, like I
• 1:15:33
  have. I always hated Muppet History
• 1:15:35
  because they it was so much about themselves and was never
• 1:15:42
  about anybody else in the fan community.
• 1:15:45
  They never like retweeted Tough Pigs or Muppet Wiki or
• 1:15:48
  Commitment or like Moving very long or like any of the they
• 1:15:52
  never sort of shone a light on anything.
• 1:15:54
  And for them, it was really about making money in a way
• 1:15:57
  that, you know, for literally everybody else in the fandom,
• 1:16:00
  it's about giving stuff away for free.
• 1:16:03
  Right. Yeah, Muppet Wiki is about like
• 1:16:05
  taking all the things that we can find and then and then
• 1:16:07
  putting it on display. I think for me it's been
• 1:16:11
  important to focus on precisely what the problem at hand is when
• 1:16:18
  talking about Muppet history. The problem at hand was abusive
• 1:16:24
  misconduct. That's the issue.
• 1:16:27
  And so I get a little uncomfortable, I guess, when
• 1:16:35
  something that serious becomes an opportunity to focus on all
• 1:16:40
  the other reasons why. Oh, well, you know, we, we
• 1:16:43
  always knew that this was such an annoying page because it
• 1:16:46
  wasn't sharing what other people made or whatever it is.
• 1:16:49
  Like, I understand your feelings and I relate to that very much.
• 1:16:54
  But that does sort of become the dominant thing in the
• 1:16:58
  conversation is, well, was this ever the right way to be a
• 1:17:01
  Muppet fan? And it's like, I actually don't
• 1:17:05
  care what anybody's way of being a Muppet fan is.
• 1:17:07
  Or if someone like did does this to, to make money, whatever it
• 1:17:10
  is like, yeah, it would, it would be great to get income
• 1:17:13
  from all the Muppet things that I've done that I've put hours
• 1:17:16
  and hours and hours of work into.
• 1:17:17
  If I could, it would be nice. I, I don't do it for that
• 1:17:19
  reason. And I, I don't think Muppet
• 1:17:21
  history necessarily started for that reason, because it
• 1:17:23
  certainly at the start there was no way to guess that something
• 1:17:25
  like that could be profitable, I don't think.
• 1:17:28
  But nevertheless, like the the the problem here is the problem
• 1:17:33
  here, right? And I just I always want to make
• 1:17:37
  sure that that we never lose sight of that again.
• 1:17:40
  Your your points valid, Danny, But yeah, what we focus on right
• 1:17:43
  now is the tricky thing. You, you mentioned values,
• 1:17:45
  though, how this has has highlighted the values of the
• 1:17:47
  Muppet fan community. And that's true, but it's also
• 1:17:51
  another topic where it's like, well, that gets us talking about
• 1:17:54
  Muppet values and where I tend to disagree.
• 1:17:58
  I think with a lot of the rest of really with a lot of the rest
• 1:18:00
  of my my tough pigs colleagues is I'm not convinced that The
• 1:18:05
  Muppets are usually all that focused on values or that that's
• 1:18:09
  the main reason why we like them.
• 1:18:10
  I'm not sure that we should be trying to force a bunch of
• 1:18:17
  really products from companies, which is what this media is to
• 1:18:20
  be our moral guidance. And I'm not saying that anyone's
• 1:18:24
  necessarily saying that exactly. But for me, this is a moment to
• 1:18:30
  reflect on, well, how can we connect the things that we're
• 1:18:35
  inclined to focus on? If we must keep focusing on
• 1:18:37
  Muppets because we're Muppet fans and we're wired like this
• 1:18:39
  and this is what it's going to be, how can we find ways to
• 1:18:43
  channel that towards our values? Maybe that's not what it's made
• 1:18:46
  for. Maybe we're not getting our
• 1:18:47
  values from these Muppet things. But if we approach it
• 1:18:52
  selectively and find some things that are a good way to reconnect
• 1:18:57
  with our values, then I think that's good.
• 1:18:58
  And I think that that's a helpful useful of fandom.
• 1:19:02
  I have nothing profound to say. You don't have to say something
• 1:19:06
  profound. You put the silly hat back on.
• 1:19:08
  Put put your silly hat back on. That's.
• 1:19:12
  Such a silly hat shade. Oh, it gets me every time.
• 1:19:16
  It is. It's really hurting my neck
• 1:19:17
  though. Oh, all right, take it.
• 1:19:19
  Off I but I'll put on my silly neck brace.
• 1:19:26
  It's even funnier than the hat. Look at the way it spins.
• 1:19:29
  Oh. I think it probably affected
• 1:19:33
  people more who were part of the Muppet tweet community.
• 1:19:39
  I wasn't really never on Twitter because that was not my scene
• 1:19:45
  and was only starting to get a part of the new Muppet community
• 1:19:49
  on Blue Sky when all of this kind of fell apart.
• 1:19:53
  And so just like all of these other institutions that keep
• 1:19:57
  falling apart as a situations arise, institutions and and.
• 1:20:02
  People acting deplorably like it, it shakes you more depending
• 1:20:07
  on how much more investment you had in that person or thing.
• 1:20:14
  And so the, the upset, I mean, is absolutely genuine for people
• 1:20:20
  who Muppet history abused and sent inappropriate things too.
• 1:20:25
  And they have every right to feel the feelings that they
• 1:20:27
  have. And I, I am very proud of how
• 1:20:31
  the Muppet community came and supported them almost 100% in
• 1:20:36
  their favor and not in Muppet histories.
• 1:20:38
  So like, I think that is the biggest take away, but also
• 1:20:41
  again, with investing too much of your happiness in fallible
• 1:20:46
  institutions and people like we have to find it in ourselves.
• 1:20:51
  And I, I hope, you know, that we continue to learn this about the
• 1:20:56
  world and ourselves and that we can definitely come together and
• 1:20:59
  make awesome things. Just, you know, know that we'll
• 1:21:03
  be here for each other when something else comes along that
• 1:21:08
  makes us all sad. Yeah, is.
• 1:21:12
  Is there anything else that anyone wanted to mention quickly
• 1:21:14
  before I wrap up? Did we mention the crochet book?
• 1:21:19
  Yes, we did. Have we pressured you to do
• 1:21:22
  these more than once a year? Because this.
• 1:21:24
  Yeah, it's, it's it's just a lot.
• 1:21:29
  It's, it's just a lot to do. Well, so the reason why there
• 1:21:34
  was such a long gap between episodes was, well, there were
• 1:21:40
  several reasons, but one of the big ones was that I ended the
• 1:21:44
  last episode of the Great Muppet Fandom panel saying I wanted to
• 1:21:47
  do something to help with the conversation, or lack thereof,
• 1:21:52
  about the neurodiversity of the Muppet fan community.
• 1:21:56
  Which was something we didn't really know how to talk about,
• 1:21:57
  didn't know how to think about, and we didn't know how to handle
• 1:22:00
  it. If there was a situation in
• 1:22:02
  which someone talked about it inappropriately in the way that
• 1:22:06
  was very directly harmful, there was kind of no conversation to
• 1:22:10
  be had about that for for a lot of folks, especially I think who
• 1:22:15
  are older members of the Muppet fan community.
• 1:22:17
  And so for me, I felt this pressure to get on top of that
• 1:22:22
  project before I circled back to Great Muppet Fandom Panel.
• 1:22:25
  Because Great Muppet Fandom Panel as a in general, not one
• 1:22:29
  of our most popular podcasts, not by a lot.
• 1:22:32
  And. Until now.
• 1:22:33
  Until. Now.
• 1:22:35
  And so I'm like, I can put that on the back burner, but then it
• 1:22:38
  turns out that actually the whole thing breaks if we don't
• 1:22:40
  do it regularly. So if if I have any time or
• 1:22:44
  energy for it, I will try to do it more often.
• 1:22:46
  That part will probably get cut out of the show, but maybe not.
• 1:22:50
  Maybe someone was curious about where the show's been.
• 1:22:53
  It's it's conceivable. It's plausible, but they've had
• 1:22:55
  other good Tough Pigs podcasts to listen to this whole time.
• 1:22:58
  But also, go read The Muppet Beacon because yeah, they're
• 1:23:02
  fantastic articles. Yeah, and really interesting
• 1:23:05
  discussions coming out of them too.
• 1:23:06
  I I really enjoyed. Well, thank you have not
• 1:23:10
  published nearly as much as I wanted to in that series, but
• 1:23:12
  we've had the gift of Adam's article in the summer, which the
• 1:23:18
  fact that that article was going to come out, whether it was part
• 1:23:21
  of the Beacon project or not for The Muppets from Space
• 1:23:24
  anniversary meant, oh shoot, I'd better start that article series
• 1:23:28
  so that this can be part of it. And his article ended up giving
• 1:23:32
  me the name for the whole series, which I would not have
• 1:23:34
  thought of otherwise. That's such a beautiful piece
• 1:23:37
  that I highly recommend people read.
• 1:23:39
  I also highly recommend the piece from our anonymous
• 1:23:43
  contributor looking for Jobs at the Magic Store.
• 1:23:47
  A truly unique Tough Figs article unlike any other that I
• 1:23:51
  think really captures the Muppet fan experience in a unique way.
• 1:23:54
  So a plug for that project briefly.
• 1:23:58
  Anyhow, panelists, friends, we've reached the end of another
• 1:24:03
  edition of the Great Muppet Fandom Panel Drudgery Edition.
• 1:24:07
  That means it's time for me to ask the panelists where we can
• 1:24:10
  find them on the Internet. Shane, where can people find you
• 1:24:13
  on the Internet? Oh, right over there.
• 1:24:16
  OK, Katie Lynn, where can people find you on the Internet?
• 1:24:20
  I'll be a little more serious because I am one of the admins
• 1:24:24
  of the aforementioned Tough Pigs discord, so.
• 1:24:28
  Bragging over here. Find I'm a very important
• 1:24:32
  person. Be careful or she'll kick you
• 1:24:35
  out, JD. Oh, shoot.
• 1:24:36
  Yes, you are the most important person.
• 1:24:38
  All hail Katie Lynn Miller. I could have been if I had
• 1:24:42
  signed in and sent the zoom link, everyone would be
• 1:24:45
  answering to me. It's true, Drake, where can
• 1:24:49
  people find you on the Internet? I'm on the discord and blue sky
• 1:24:54
  and. Yeah, and people can read your
• 1:24:57
  articles at Tough Pigs dot. Comtoughpigs.com That's right.
• 1:25:01
  Danny, where can people find you on the Internet?
• 1:25:04
  You can listen to the first season of the fantastic Miss
• 1:25:06
  Piggy podcast on this very podcast feed.
• 1:25:10
  Just go back a little bit. That was 11 episodes.
• 1:25:13
  Then they were all completely insane.
• 1:25:16
  And also Muppet Pictures is my social media feed that is just
• 1:25:21
  for pure spreading, pure joy in the world, posting pictures on X
• 1:25:26
  and on Facebook and on Blue Sky. And those are places that need
• 1:25:30
  at least for the Muppet fans who are still on there.
• 1:25:34
  Those are people that I love. And so that's what, that's where
• 1:25:37
  you can find me there. And I got to tell you, the
• 1:25:39
  fantastic Miss Piggy podcast does live up to its name.
• 1:25:44
  It's Season 2. I am thinking and and working on
• 1:25:48
  season 2. There's going to be 1 episode
• 1:25:51
  that I've decided JD is just called JD Has thoughts.
• 1:25:55
  Oh OK, well that's what I have been.
• 1:25:57
  That's going to be great. You and I have been trying to
• 1:26:00
  figure out what my episode of that show would be for a long
• 1:26:03
  time, and that does sound like the simplest approach, even
• 1:26:05
  though it would be far too long and rambling.
• 1:26:07
  I have I have figured it out, which is just that JD has
• 1:26:10
  thoughts that he wants to share and they're and they're
• 1:26:12
  brilliant. So look forward to.
• 1:26:14
  That aw, shucks. And now, a moment of spontaneous
• 1:26:16
  applause for our panel of Muppet experts.
• 1:26:18
  Thank you. If you enjoyed this program.
• 1:26:20
  We hope you'll consider supporting us on Patreon.
• 1:26:22
  Thank you to those of you who do so now.
• 1:26:24
  This Tough Pigs Muppet Fan podcast was executive produced
• 1:26:26
  by the Tough Pigs Muppet Fan Podcast executive producer
• 1:26:29
  Johannes. Thanks to Kenny Durkin for our
• 1:26:31
  artwork. And thanks to Frank Oz, because
• 1:26:33
  it's always a good time to thank you, Frank, for toughpigs.com.
• 1:26:35
  This is JD Hansel reminding you, as I always do, of Jim Henson's
• 1:26:38
  motto, you'll never get out of the cube.
• 1:26:40
  Goodbye. You really will die here.
• 1:26:48
  Yeah, like Idea Man. My gosh, I I think that the
• 1:26:51
  makers of Idea Man must have heard my podcast if they
• 1:26:56
  actually thought it made sense to tell the story of Jim
• 1:26:59
  Henson's life as the. Cube.
• 1:27:01
  Oh my gosh, could not believe it.
• 1:27:03
  What a gift to me that they made a documentary about the cube.
• 1:27:10
  Unfortunate that it's aesthetically the opposite of
• 1:27:13
  the cube, which is a very brightly lit space.
• 1:27:16
  Whereas that's true. This was shot in the a dungeon.
• 1:27:20
  Oh dear. All right, I am going to stop.
• 1:27:23
  Are we are? We still doing that thing where
• 1:27:25
  we all talk at the same time at the beginning.
• 1:27:27
  Oh no, I was not going to do that for this episode because
• 1:27:30
  it's laid back, man. It's Matt Vogel, man, but.
• 1:27:34
  We could just talk very mellowly.
• 1:27:37
  Oh, we could just say things. OK.
• 1:27:40
  Like hey, hey, snowing outside. Yeah, it's really coming down.
• 1:27:45
  It is. Snow My blowers don't work, so
• 1:27:48
  shoveling is the way to go. Oh, that's rough.
• 1:27:51
  And it's like a weird snow. It's got a weird texture to it.
• 1:27:55
  Yeah, it's green. It's burning through my clothes.
• 1:27:59
  Green is not a texture shape. Well, it has a weird texture to
• 1:28:03
  it and it's green and it's burning through Shane's clothes
• 1:28:06
  and all the snowflakes are wearing these very silly hats.
• 1:28:11
  They're so funny. Do you know how much work that
• 1:28:14
  would have to be? There's the average snowfall is
• 1:28:17
  like at least 1000. That's 1000 unique hats.
• 1:28:20
  Yeah, but if you want to know how to make those hats, there's
• 1:28:23
  a book all about crochet. Crochet amagarumi.
• 1:28:27
  I I don't did it. Did I actually get anybody else
• 1:28:29
  to say the word Amagarumi? I was afraid.
• 1:28:33
  I was. I was also too scared.
• 1:28:35
  I didn't understand it. That was my, that was my secret.
• 1:28:37
  That was my secret competition inside my head.
• 1:28:39
  If I could, if I could say it long enough, I might get
• 1:28:42
  somebody else to say it. That the the secret word for the
• 1:28:46
  day was aggro. A mega roomie A.
• 1:28:48
  Mega roomie. A Mickey Rooney.
• 1:28:51
  A Mickey Rooney.