PBS KIDS Isn’t “Just TV.” It’s a Lifeline, and It’s Being Defunded.

Besties. This is such an important episode today. I am interviewing Sarah DeWitt,

“the Senior Vice President and General Manager of PBS Kids. PBS Kids. I don't know if you”

are like me, but during the pandemic, when I was pregnant, when I had a newborn PBS Kids, that was my toddler's lifeline. And if you've read anything in the news recently, you know that funding has been cut to PBS and PBS Kids is in jeopardy. And I'm like, how is this happening? This is the one children's programming that we can all count on. We can all rely on. I know my kids can go on to anything on PBS Kids app, and it's going to be a safe place for them.

And here's my daughter telling you how much she loves PBS Kids. It's our crazy, especially because they have a gay mouth. And yes, Besties. My children are sitting here while I do the intro because

mom never stops. So this was one of my favorite conversations. Sarah is a wealth of knowledge. She

“knows so much about children's programming. It made me feel even stronger that we need to protect”

PBS Kids at all cost. I'm so excited for you to hear this conversation. It's not just about funding and it's not just about that part of it. It's also about kids programming in general. It's also about screen time and how it affects your child's brain and what is good screen time? What is sort of bad screen time? And it's very clear that some screen time actually is good for your kid. They actually can't learn. All right. My little babies. I'm going to take care of you guys. Besties. I'm so excited

for you here this episode. I walked away feeling energized and feeling so grateful that Sarah would sit down with us and have this conversation. Welcome to after bedtime. Where the house is finally quiet, but the real noise begins. The thoughts, the questions, the wondering if you're doing any of this right. We're Kristen and Dina child behavior experts, moms, and co-founders of big little feelings. And we're not here to give you more pressure or perfect parenting energy.

Nope. We're here to tell the truth. The unfiltered, beautiful, brutal truth about what it means to raise kids and re-raise ourselves in the process. Because parenting isn't just about sleep schedules and snack hacks, it's about healing. It's about breaking cycles. It's about becoming the kind of adult you want your kids to grow up to be. This is the place where we say the quiet parts out loud and we're so glad that you're here. All right. We have Sarah DeWitt, Senior Vice President

and General Manager of PBS Kids here with us. I cannot even believe it. Sarah, welcome to after bedtime. Thank you. It's so great to be here. I'm really excited to be here. You have no idea. You're like a big celebrity in all of our books. I feel like a toddler, toddler, moms. We, we survive on PBS kids. I did too with my kids. Yes. Yeah. I'm a big

PBS kids fan through and through. Yeah. I'm always excited to talk about what we're working on,

what we're doing. Yeah. And also when your kids were little, were they big PBS kids? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it kind of came with the territory. They were absolutely. I was watching PBS kids with them. And then they also became testers for me. Like whenever new shows would come out, I'd come home and be like, okay, something new and like you watch. And then, you know, as they got older, my kids were preschool and second grade when COVID started when it was. Wow. And that

was a moment when they became like professional testers for us. Like, I need you to say, we wouldn't have anything to do. I'm like, I need you to test this game right now. If you

“see bugs, write it down, take a screenshot. Go. I think all of our kids became professional”

PBS kids are in the pandemic really. I mean, we should all thank PBS kids for for that time. And now that they're older, it's just sort of your passion. So walk me through the values of PBS kids, the overarching work that you guys do for the community for kids in general, not just a community, but frankly globally, walk me through sort of the core value of PBS kids. I mean, it goes back to like why we were created really was to be a place that was creating media for all

America's children and to help kids see worlds of possibilities and everything they do. And so we have this mission that is really about making sure we are telling the authentic stories of kids in the United States and that we also are helping introduce them to topics and ideas that

are going to be helping them get ready for school. I think another really amazing thing about PBS

in the 60s, there was the public broadcasting act reacting to all of the commercial media out there

“saying, this is a super powerful platform and nobody's doing, nobody's using it to try to think”

about what the educational possibilities are. Like what could you do with this if you weren't just trying to sell ads. And that's where you know, Mr. Rogers walked in and said, what have I got to talk directly to kids and engage with them? That's where Joan Gianz Kuni said, what if we took some of these things that we're seeing out there that are really effective in advertising and tried to use those same tactics to teach kids letters and numbers for Sesame Street. And through

the years, PBS has continued to take that on as like new platforms come in as new technologies do.

So I've been a PBS a really long time. I was brought on. I was the second person to be working

on the new PBS Kids website. And so I came in at a moment where we were thinking like, okay, the internet is now taking off. And what does it mean for kids? And what is what is a way that you could use this interactive medium to help kids learn? What could you do with that? And how would you do it in a safe way? So you know, we are non-commercial. We are really trying to like we're putting kids at the center of everything we do and think about like, how would you use this media to help

them get ready for school to help them learn? And then what can we then share with the industry, with researchers that they then can build on? Because our job too is to help

raise the bar for everybody. Like, let's really improve how every kids TV show is made

“through the research that we're doing. So that's why it's all like really it's published. It's out there.”

And so a large part of your work is I didn't actually know that's I had no idea. I should have coming into this interview. But I had no idea that a large part is also conducting research on what is best for kids brain, consuming media, the types of media, the pace of media, all of that and you're making that published. And for wow. Yeah. Okay. That's a piece a piece of the work we do. And then we also like we're unusual in that we are made up of member stations all throughout the

country. And so wherever you are, you have a local PBS station who relies on viewers like you to create their content. And those stations also take the work that PBS kids does nationally out into communities. Like they're a big piece of their job is not only meeting community needs with public media, you know, for all ages, but also trying to find the kids who can most benefit from what PBS kids is providing and make sure that they have access. They do parenting workshops.

They go in and talk to parents about how to use media, how to play with it. It's a really phenomenal ecosystem. And how do you, I mean, your one person, but how does PBS kids keep the quality where it is at in a world that is getting so fast-paced, where that's not the norm for most of other children's programming, even adult programming, social media, all of that. How is it that PBS kids has been able to maintain that really strong core value of, you know,

some people might call it quote unquote, staying behind. But in this case, it is actually also helped to have you be the gold standard of high quality kids programming by sort of staying that way. So is there pressure to sort of keep up to move quicker to go the direction that mainstream media is going or how is it that your value can stay so strong in building high quality? It's a good question because right now things are so crazy in the kids' media landscape. It's just really

wild. And I feel like often what we're doing at PBS kids feels the most countercultural,

“while also still being, honestly, cutting edge in terms of research because really, it's again,”

keeping kids of that center and being developmentally appropriate. And so, you know, there's so, so much happening and so many platforms. So I will get to your answer, but I want to just take a minute to like just go back in time a little bit, like when I started at PBS, if you wanted to create a show for kids, you had all of these gatekeepers who had to go through. Like you had to prove that you knew how to do this, you had to get a network to green light your show, the network then had to

like deliver it through platforms that were regulated by the federal government for like making sure they weren't going to be too commercial for kids or selling, you know, like all these kinds of things,

privacy and security for kids and you had to be working within that structure. And now we're in this

“moment where really anyone can make content for kids and distribute it broadly widely and the majority”

of it's being distributed on platforms that aren't regulated, that aren't made for children, that aren't really thinking about how kids grow and develop. And I feel like this is like a moment more than ever where PBS kids needs to stand firm on what is developmentally appropriate for kids. And that means that we do all the things that we're seeing, we are doing all these types of content out there. We are doing video episodes like TV that we grew up watching on PBS. We are doing games

on the internet and on apps we're doing podcasts because kids also can really learn from audio storytelling

and that's a great way of getting educational content across. We do short porn video and that's

something we're researching a lot because you can learn from a short video, but it needs to be

“paced properly and it needs to be kind of presented at a way where there's a clear beginning and end.”

So we can be in all those places but we just need to go into that place saying okay what's the PBS kids way to do this? What's a way to do this that still completely puts the kid at the center that really thinks about how they're going to learn and grow from this experience? And I love that you really did expand across platforms. For example the video games my kids love the video games and it's a really great way to not have your kid be left behind and they can still do video games,

but they are video games that like you said are regulated and for your brain and not actually harming your brain like we're seeing so much of the research of the harms of these unregulated I mean this is my podcast I'll just say YouTube and and just sort of it's the wild wild west out there are some of these things that I'm seeing that are four kids. My brain feels like it's getting destroyed watching it and I love it too. I'm like oh that's dope I mean that's dope I mean

that's dope I mean wow yeah I want to keep watching that. I mean it's very admirable and at the same time it's exciting to see that you are still regarded I hope you know this you're still regarded as the best you know you haven't been left behind in the dust and PBS kids is sort of

“they're over no you're actually regarded as the best dough and so that's I think that's what we”

can hang on to in this hard world is you can stand for your values do you what is right for kids development and still be the baseline of the best and still be like so highly trusted by parents like I think and that's a piece of it too like we know that we were the number one trusted medium brand by parents the United States and so we've got a stay true to that mission you know like I like this is like a high bar to deliver and you know it is hard I have conversations all the time

with my my friends and with other parents who are saying you know I have trouble getting my kids to PBS because they love like all this stuff and or just saying yeah my kids really into this and so I think it's really you know they assume because their kids attention is so focused on it that it's good for their kids or that this is what their kid most wants to watch and it's hard to explain like this is you know this is manipulating your kid like this is really it's built in such

a way that your kid is not able to look away and your child doesn't have the executive functioning skills yet to be able to say okay I need to stop and do something else I you know we've spent a lot of time at PBS kids even thinking about what are natural breakpoints you know that like you're at the end of a level of a game and because so many games out there right now like just

immediately throw you into the next thing and so you never kind of know where the end is and that's

because it's on a platform that's going to benefit from a kid playing as long as possible that as a parent you know at some point you actually really have to have them come sit down for dinner or it's time to go to their next activity and there needs to be a point where you can say this is the end and pull it away and have the kid not feel like oh but I'm about to miss something oh that there's a developmentally appropriate way to do this to give kids that excitement and also help them say okay

I finished that and now it is okay I can go do something else or I'm going to make another choice yeah is there research that comes from PBS directly as well about the addictive nature

it is much easier for my children to put down the iPad after they've been watching PBS kids

“much easier for them to put that screen down much harder and behaviorally finding lots of”

post viewing you know meltdowns almost to come down almost to crash and I know I'm not the only one who's in this boat we hear it from parents all the time when they are watching something else whether even you know stuff on Disney even just anything but of course definitely short form dopamine hit type of videos YouTube video games things like that is there any research behind sort of the behavioral piece of PBS kids versus other sort of faster-paced content

we haven't done that kind of like we haven't done a study of like PBS kids versus other content

I will say the research goes into the formation of the content because we are working with

child development experts academic like you know specialist in different skill areas to really be presenting the content in a way that's going to make sense for kids you know the American Academy of Pediatrics like we we read a lot of the things that they put out and they very often cite PBS kids content is being you know a good choice but we're we're thinking about their guidelines and trying to make sure that we we follow that we have you know there've been

surveys through the years where parents have said that their children behave better when they

“watch PBS kids I'm really proud of that I think that's that's awesome and that goes to how”

the content is crafted I think it also goes to our editorial guidelines we have we have some really specific things that go into our guidelines for producers one of the things that like we often have to talk to like when producers do work for commercial networks and then do a project for PBS one of the first things we kind of trip over together is that the editorial guidelines say

that adults always are to be treated with respect on PBS kids and that doesn't mean that adults

can't be wrong because definitely they're all kinds of situations where adults are wrong but kids in our shows aren't to talk back unless there's like a clear consequence you know or some sort of conversation about that and adults are people who have information who can be helpful they they can be guides for the kids and that's not the way a lot of us are a lot of other shows out there approach it but what our producers have learned is that you can still tell incredible

stories without the parents being the butt of the joke you know like there's a lot you can do and then also we hear from a lot of parents who feel like they are learning from the parents in the shows oh my god Daniel Tiger Daniel Tiger's mom she's a carpenter and she's a working mom of two like I learn everything from her the way that she responds like one of my favorite episodes is when Daniel tries to make a beach in the house okay I'm sorry I'm literally gonna drop my microphone

“I'm gonna drop my microphone that I was about to say that continue continue it's like I think you know”

like people were like she's so perfect and then there was that woman she's not you can tell she's not like her cheeks are red and she says to Daniel I am not happy right now we are going to you know I don't remember exactly what she's had oh yeah my kid was that like that age she was Daniel's age when that episode came out and I was like I feel seen like I can and also I see a way that she just managed that with like acknowledging that she was mad without flying off the handle yeah that was

about to say the exact same thing I mean have you ever seen the beach episode I think I've also talked about this on maybe three other podcasts where the where the other moms brought up that exact episode right exact episode like remember the beach episode you know Tiger y'all I'm gonna share something that has changed my life it's called little spoon there are two many things on my plate for me to be doing and thinking about and so little spoon is helping me take feeding my

kid off of my plate the thing is all of those easy convenient foods that are out there you look at the ingredients and it's horrific little spoon is the one place to shop meals and snacks for babies toddlers and big kids all made with real ingredients without having to rethink every choice or lower your standards at each developmental milestone it shows up at your door hallelujah and takes one big decision off your plate without compromising on what's important to you and knowing

the plates okay these are heat and eat meals with super foods and hidden veggies they're great

for picky eaters and getting meal time on the table in minutes the snacks are amazing they have

beyond smoothies yoga snack pouches and they make better for you versions of kids favorites like the fruit ripers and the cookie dipsters this is modern junk free snack swaps with real kid craved flavors my kids love it little spoon makes it easy with real nutritionally balanced meals and snacks designed for every stage it shows up ready to go takes the pressure off and somehow still gets devoured veggies and all no artificial dies flavors or sweeteners

either and you know what that's a win I'll take every time get 30% off your first online order at little student dot com slash BLF 30 with code BLF 30 that's LIT T L E S P O O N dot com slash BLF 30 with code BLF 30 for 30% off your first order okay quick parenting reality check we spend so much energy trying to get our kids to eat perfectly the right veggies the right protein the right balance and then they eat three crackers in it for dinner normal they all go through this so I've made peace with

“something perfection is not the goal support is and that's why hiya has been such a helpful addition”

in our house it's a children's vitamin made without sugar gummy junk or artificial dies just clean nutrition designed for the gaps modern kids actually have and my kids genuinely love the whole experience especially decorating the reusable bottle that they send you with the cute stickers they send they just love feeling ownership over it and here's something every parent needs to hear if vegetables feel like a daily battle hi is new kids daily greens plus super foods is a total

game changer it's basically chocolate milk stuffed with veggies it's a green powder packed with

over 55 whole food ingredients you just mix one scoop with milk or non dairy drink and they actually enjoy something that's feeling they're growing bodies we've worked out a special deal with hiya for their best selling children's vitamin receive 50% off your first order at hiahhealth.com/bilf that's HIV YA H-E-A-L-T-H.com/bilf and get your kids the full body nourishment that they need to grow into healthy adults here's a harsh truth that some of us just learn the hard way you can

spend all the money in the world on skincare but if your cells are stressed and dehydrated nothing is

“glowing that's why you got to focus on skin from the inside out and peaks radian skin duo is”

such a hack for this it's two parts son goddess macha which helps calm inflammation and detox from within and BT fountain which is deep a cellular level hydration for your skin barrier so instead of chasing glow with products on top of your face this is about supporting what's happening underneath it I love that it's simple morning macha all day hydration and it's designed to work together not separately this is hydration and skin support at a completely different level

redefine your standard of health so cure 20% off your order at pclif.com/bilf that's p-iq-u-e life.com/b-l-f this is hydration and skin support at a completely different level redefine your standard of health so cure 20% off your order at pclif.com/bilf that's p-iq-u-e life.com/b-l-f

“I think that is so so interesting I have never thought about the way in which although I think”

I have thought about it and then moved on the way in which a lot of content for kids the parent is kind of the enemy and there's like a fine line right because you don't want everything to be sunshine and rainbows because that's not that's not the reality of the dynamic it's hard to be a kid you don't want to be barked at all day long you know you want to be able to portray this tricky but beautiful dynamic in a realistic way but I let my daughter watch freaky Friday because I

loved that movie as a kid and she's old enough she's nine so we watched freaky Friday the first one I swear on everything for two weeks she was talking like Lindsey low hand to Jamie Lee Curtis she was it was the quote unquote attitude there's nothing wrong with feelings and all of that but it was completely different it was like sudden enemy overnight in bit she was just mock mocking the show she was exploring with the words that are said in the show in the movie

and I was like whoa you know this really matters this is wild and so I have never thought about

how PBS kids specifically has has guidelines around that and it might be I mean what you're sharing

that came out not too long ago UCLA's Center for Scholars and Storytellers did a survey of

16 year olds so that's like the first class who had Daniel like you know they're they're

old enough to be able to talk about Daniel when they like when they were like three you know and what they learned from that is that so many of these 16 year olds remembered the show could still name a strategy from the show some of them could still sing a song from the show wow almost like a huge number of them remembered it as a show that made them feel safe and then some of them even said that their strategies they learned from that show that they

“still employ today like wow argument with a friend for example they remember things from Daniel”

that is like the power of a PBS kid show that it can have that kind of lasting memory and you know when I was reading that study I was just being blown away I was being so surprised and then I mean I was a Mr. Rogers kid I can still sing a lot of those songs I mean yes I'm in the industry and continue to see them but I think even before I worked at PBS I could have rattled off Mr. Rogers songs I remembered that feeling of safety and security I remembered him saying that

I was special and so it's it's not that surprising I mean we all I think we all probably have like a touch point from PBS kids yes absolutely and so grateful that it still it still exists in this crazy chaotic world so let's talk about that for a moment because I know that

“there have been and actually maybe you should give a little bit of background for listeners that”

don't know there have been talks of funding cuts as far back as last year maybe summer of last year is that correct and then if please correct me if I'm wrong that it was sort of announced recently

that Congress has cut $1.1 billion from PBS funding right that correct for public media yeah

I can walk you through this so there are two big chunks of federal money that support PBS kids and one is the money that comes from the corporation for public broadcasting cpb if you watch PBS kids chose you've probably seen that blue cpb logo the corporation for public broadcasting is the entity that delivers federal dollars to PBS and NPR member stations and also to PBS and NPR for content production so Congress voted to rescind the funding that was in the budget for the corporation for

“public broadcasting so that is like one big chunk of funding that affected PBS news that affected”

documentaries that affected just everything member stations across the board the other big piece of funding for PBS kids was a grant from the Department of Education called ready to learn and this grant program has been around since 1995 so like 30 years old and PBS would reapply for it every five years it was to meet the goals of that administration for early childhood and it's called ready to learn because it's specifically focused on getting kids ready for school so during

no child left behind it was focused on literacy during the Obamayers it was focused on STEM you know but but on core skills to get kids ready for school so that grant program was

was terminated in May and so in effect it is a 30 million dollar cut annually to PBS kids

between those two programs so we have been defended by the federal government the effects have been have been real we've had to cut a lot of staff we've cut almost 30% of the team of PBS kids our pipeline like of shows in development has been cut back quite a bit and we were talking earlier about research and how we do research for the field all of that was funded by the federal government and so that is something that had stopped like there were research studies out in the

field for the show working out one baths and about to start for the show Lyle and the loop and it was pencils down those just ended so we're in like we're in a moment where some of the things that the the public has really benefited from that aren't as obvious like the research findings that then get published and universities can use those like students studying child development read those you know there's a great body of work out there but there's very little new going to

happen like in the near future on PBS kids because of those funding cuts and it means we can't

you know where we're thinking about so if I mentioned how like PBS kids has always been

“an innovative and kind of experimental place like really looking at median thinking like how would we”

do something with this new technology that's going to benefit kids I mean that all of that funding was coming out of this ready to learn grant because it was really trying to think about it was Congress saying we want someone to be looking at the media landscape in a non-commercial environment and think about how you could use these technologies for good and so all of that estimate cut off we continue to have philanthropic support member stations through the fall like as the funding cuts

were announced I mean just so many people in communities started reaching out and supporting their local stations we have gotten unbelievable letters from families it's just yesterday we opened the letter from a kid written in crayon that incorporated a $10 bill you know saying how much he left PBS kids and this is what his family is sending to try to support kids doing lemonade stands you know this is hard this is a lot for us to try to kind of to grapple with them this moment about how

do we keep all of this work going forward while also seeing this huge outpouring of public support

which has been amazing just there is so much parent trust and excitement around our content

“and a lot of people who don't want it to go away mm-hmm and I think something that is not as often”

mentioned but I was reading about is the education that you PBS kids is providing for kids who don't have access to even books or high quality educational programs of course you know we in a privileged position are like hey I cannot lose PBS kids because my kids learn from you and they love community and they're learning all social emotional they're learning letters they're learning all of this but I think part of what's really devastating for me to hear about the

funding cuts is knowing how involved PBS kids is helping educate kids who are in underserved

areas that just simply wouldn't have the access to the educational tools that they actually

are having through PBS kids we're cutting off sort of all of that education for those kids mm-hmm

“yes this is one of the many things that I really worry about is these are kids who are less likely”

to have good broadband at home and are less likely to have access to high quality precake so we know that the content of these shows in these games can make up deficits like you can see it and if anyone's interested like these research studies are are public information they're public they're like in journals and child development journals that show like there are statistically significant gains in literacy knowledge and in math knowledge by engaging with PBS

kids content so we know it can make a difference kids who don't have great access to broadband we through the years have been able to create our apps so that they could be used in an out of Wi-Fi and that's one of the things that we just had to drop on the on the games app we definitely have like there there's some funders who might be interested in helping us get that back up but those are the kinds of things that are going to just start to degrade a little bit just

access our member stations are out there in those communities and are continuing to try to deliver our hope is that we are going to have stations go under during this time because they are serving those kids in those communities and also thinking about the things we do for kids who often are kind of forgotten in the media landscape so last year before all the funding cuts we worked really close through with several producers to create American Sign Language interpretations

of shows so you know we've seen that where you've got like a signer in the corner but they're thinking about like what if this is for a preschooler who can't read yet and who is processing information differently than a grown-up so you can't do a lot of finger spelling you can't you know you can't expect them to be able to cover everything that's happening on screen how would you do this interpretation differently and did a lot of research with kids and

if you watch some of it like if you watch an episode of Arthur with the ASL interpretation you'll see the interpreter is wearing yellow sweater and is wearing big glasses like Arthur and is really emoting the way that the characters do kind of bringing so much to this interpretation it's a beautiful project it's had like I mean the community the deaf and hard of your in community

and for so many parents we've learned that this parents often would stand by the TV and interpret

for their kids and now the parent can sit on the couch and watch it with their kids you know like be a part of that media experience and not worry that their kid is going to miss basic things so long story to say you know when that grant was terminated that project about halted and we are so grateful that philanthropic support very quickly came in from an individual who is like no this is too important and we were able to finish that workout but to your point this is what

really worries me is that we are thinking about all kids in a way that like most media is not and we want to make sure that all kids are able to like kind of learn and grow from this content

and with these cuts you're just basically doing everything you can to stay afloat but if I'm

understanding correctly it's really going to impede sort of doing the next version of of this the next version of okay the death and heart of hearing community let's do a whole project around this that takes funding that takes all of the research that takes all of that and those are really what's also at jeopardy here with the funding cuts is you sort of are now just in survival mode of like let's let's try to not shut the stations down and just kind of keep things are the way they are

“yeah exactly I mean I think there's there's some really like great news here like I want to be”

really clear to everyone like we are still here I mean there's like when people heard that cpb with shutting down there was like a huge assumption that that meant the pbs kids was going away and we're not and this is part of this weird wacky public media in the United States structure that it wasn't all federal dollars it was also community support donations from individuals and foundations and corporate underwriters as well so you know we have this ecosystem of funding which means we're

able to kind of lean on some of the other pieces and we have a really great library of content you know like we have all of these 10 seasons of Daniel Tiger we have the air 10 years of Daniel Tiger we have like all of these seasons of of Arthur we have all this content that we can continue to deliver and people aren't going to see a big break in how they play with a pbs kids video app or the pbs kids games app but we really like it's the future that starts to get really more in jeopardy here

in terms of like how much more new content are going to be able to create yes kids love to watch things over and over again but they also need to be seeing content that is timely and meeting them where they are you know like we're in an age of like AI explosion we need storylines in episodes where kids are grappling with the question of like if the computer helped me with my art project is it still my project we need kids to learn how to write ask the right questions to get the

information they need like there's there's so much to learn in this environment that we can

“address their storytelling and that's that's what starts to really get me worried it's like how”

do we continue to be this entity who has kids at the center who's thinking about it from their needs and something that comes to my mind as a moment that I as a parent was so grateful for during Black Lives Matter pbs kids is the one that you every parent is what do I say do I say anything how do I say it how do we explain this even Martin Luther King day I want my kid to have some education around this but I'm not sure how far to go I don't know what to say even I don't know

all the facts you know so something that I am so grateful for is for example after Black Lives Matter you all did put together a sort of little programming piece that I was able to watch with my children and it was very age appropriate and I don't it wasn't specifically about George Floyd it wasn't specifically about Black Lives Matter but it was about sort of a larger picture and to be able to share with your children in an age appropriate way some of the common themes of like what we value

as a family and what you know people with different skin colors what they face and how we interact

“and I think there was even a moment where someone you know a Black child was being bullied by”

why and being made fun of for their skin color and you saw someone step in and really protect them it was a really beautiful and moving piece that pbs kids had done that I could show my children and that's one thing that I fear with the funding cut is the world is really fast-paced there are

so many things happening in the world and I always turn to pbs kids and say what have they put out

know the tsunami that's in Indonesia that's horrible and let's try to help it much as we can

“but I really completely rely on pbs kids as the trusted resource of okay if they have put out”

something this is amazing and I've been worrying how to talk about it let's watch this together

yeah that I'm so happy to hear this because there is like we're always really talking

of parents and listening to what the needs are and also you know going back again to Mr. Rogers he was one of the pioneers in saying like when something scary is going on like there's there's a way to talk to kids about it like look for the helpers I've heard that come up so much recently and that's coming right out of his playbook we similarly really thought about like there's so much anxiety among young children right now and we are hearing that from parents we're hearing

that from experts and so being able to think about like how do you address mental health through our content a lot of it is there and you know Daniel Tiger has moments where you say like okay take a deep breath Elmo is reading it like there were ways for us to pull that together and really

“be more intentional about saying this is going to be helpful for you but I think too a wonderful”

thing that you are mentioning is that parents and kids talking together is something that can make such a difference I mean that is like decades of research that if a parent has a conversation with a kid while they're watching about what it is the learning games are going to be greater and we learn during COVID that that could even be in asynchronous conversation and the learning games could will still be there it's really about talking about it that can make such a difference

and we want that to happen and we want to think about ways that parents can use this with their kids parents think it's so helpful I even remember the COVID ones you had mask series you had I mean there were so how do you explain what is happening again I think as as adults as parents we want

to shield our kids so much not always the healthiest because the kids can feel your anxiety they

can see things going on they've heard things and so how do I talk to them what should they know it's where I get like again it was Elmo putting on a mask and why is Elmo washing his hands and he's gonna watch his hands so helpful you're Steven I mean we like yeah just stepped in to say okay like

“these are a trusted guides and we're able to kind of give it some context yeah and I think like”

that COVID time really helped us also understand more about that talking about like I remember we started putting out lists of like questions you know if you know your child likes these shows hear some questions you can ask that lunch time or dinner time and it was amazing because it helped kids learn more from that show but it also supported parent child interaction like I just like I hope more than anything that what parents learned is like media is something to talk about and this

is a great critical thinking skill for kids to engage in with their parents and it's also really

fun to talk about TV shows together it's fun to talk about it and that's a skill that's gonna be carried with them throughout their lives to be able to say oh I liked this or I didn't like that or did you notice that part and oh remember when we laughed so hard together you know yeah if there is one thing that I depend on in my life it is my peloton I am telling you I exercise for a moment oh hell whenever I ball off of exercising I got to get back on that horse and that is

what's happening right now I feel like I've been in a little bit of a low and so I'm gonna get back on the horse and you know who's there for me my trusty peloton right here at home and now with the new peloton cross-training tread plus it's peloton's most elevated equipment with real-time guidance and endless ways to move alone or with your favorite instructors it's cross-training reimagine with features designed to help you reach your goals effortlessly I can just show up

and run lift sculpt push and go while peloton handles the rest I love the variety that comes with this swivel screen so I can go on like a run that I can do five minutes of stretching class I could do yoga there are just endless ways to get my exercise in no matter how busy I am let yourself run lift sculpt push and go explore the new peloton cross-training tread plus at one peloton dot com I love feeling comfy and cozy in my clothes like it matters so much to me and what I wear under my

clothes now fully determines how I even feel in my clothes before I found skims bras were either like digging in or shifting or feeling suffocating and just not doing what they promised so uncomfortable

but still supportive like everything just sits where it's supposed to without me thinking about it all

“day my personal favorite is the fits everybody brawlet because it's somehow give shape and comfort”

at the exact same time which I didn't even think was actually possible but here we are it's just one of those things where once you upgrade it you're like oh okay so this is what comfortable actually feels like shot my favorite bras in underwear at skims dot com after you place your order be sure to let them know that we sent you select podcast in the survey be sure to select our show in the drop down menu that follows hey everyone it's Matty here host of the bad brawcast if you're looking

for some good clean positivity I'm not your girl because over at the bad brawcast we dive deep into all the things we love to hate that dates bad bosses bad roommates all while finding the humor in it we also chat pop culture relationships food and all things nostalgia think of it like a sleep over with your best friends where you get to vent laugh cry and watch your favorite chick like you can listen to the bad brawcast every Monday wherever you get your podcasts or you can now

“watch the full episodes on YouTube remember to be safe be kind be hot and I'll see you on Monday”

I want to wrap up with one that is near and dear to my heart which is you have just created

the networks first autistic lead character it's so exciting it's so huge four kids you know I have

a child with autism to see themselves portrayed on the screen and to see them as the main character which has not happened and is not very often they're usually kind of the one struggling on the side you're like well that's that's sad that's not how I want my kid to see them sell so it's called Carl the collector and for those who don't know he's a raccoon he collects things which is just so relatable fake moustaches toys and Carl you follow his neurodiverse animal friends so like a few

other of them are neurodiverse and they have challenges which is great because our autistic children

“have challenges there's even I think an episode where his mom is helping him decide whether or not”

to tell his friends if he is autistic I mean when I say I was crying I was crying so first just

from me to you thank you because this is the work that you all are doing like I it's just oh okay and then secondly I have an interview point of view talk to me about this like how did this come to be how did you get here I know it's so difficult because autism can look so many different ways but you guys you did it you went for and it's so impactful well so first I was so glad that the show is here for you like this is why we do it and this is something I will just say like this is this is a kind of

thing that only PBS kids would do right like there's not a lot of original programming coming out of the commercial networks right now because people are going for like old IP and things like that but they're still in new stories to tell and they're still kids who don't see themselves yet and so this is why you know we explored something like this but yes this came to be there is an author illustrator Zach O'Hora who if you haven't seen his books they are fun and funny and he has this

whole world called fuzzy town that's all animals and we had approached him just because we loved his art style there is a member of the PBS kids team who reached out to say we love your art style if you ever thought about doing a show any vicious this idea and we were like yes the yes this is a show like this doesn't exist and so you worked on a pilot and in a very PBS way we took that into testing and had conversations with kids about like you know how did you react to

this character how do you do you know do you know what the word autism is like do you like just trying to understand like baseline where are kids who are on the spectrum or not

on the spectrum like where are they and how they look at this and we learned first of all that you

can't have a single character represent the whole spectrum like that's impossible and the advisors on the show were like girls tend to present so differently so there is one of Carl's friends lotta the fox is also in the spectrum but she presents really differently she's much better at masking she's much better at kind of mimicking social behaviors but is autistic and also like has to you know approach problems differently and so there's an opportunity then to tell these

wonderful stories about a group of friends and how they interact with each other and how you know

approach things differently than other friends do and that is real life and it's an opportunity

to kind of make this just very normal like because it is you know we have heard from several parents who knew that their kids like how the diagnosis had not hold their kids yet when kids saw that episode two different letters have come in from parents saying my child was watching your show didn't know that he was on the spectrum and afterwards said am I autistic because sometimes I feel like Carl I bet and that is like the best feedback we can get and we also heard from a

lotta kids who weren't on the spectrum who said they didn't know what that word meant but then after they watched an episode they were like oh yeah yeah yeah I know kids like this yeah my friend so my friend Lila yeah and just like oh yeah oh totally you know so we understood that it was

“still gonna be like I just it I think a lot of people would look at this and think oh this is very”

niche this is just for kids on the spectrum and it's not it's for all kids I am eating I am like sitting here beaming at what you're saying as a mom you know of a child without design because one the difference between boys and girls presenting differently this is where it all it all changed for me in terms of your show because it's so difficult that even adults really need an education

around what autism looks like and and presents like and what they need and I've never seen

a character there's one other book and it's 14 age girls it's phenomenal and it makes girls feel seen but girls are so left out of this conversation because they don't necessarily relate to the way that an autistic character on a show is presenting as autistic usually in the boy presented typical this is I'm using generalization here so beaming at that one A+ have not ever seen it anywhere else and then the way that again you would think this would be niche but with the rates of autism

in our country and many people can say oh suddenly everyone is autistic but we all know that we have all had kids with autism in our classes they just were not diagnosed with autism they presented this exact same way they were called different they were maybe called weird they were picked on they were autistic and today my kids have many autistic children in their classes and so it is

“very important for minorotypical kids to understand and to see and to go oh yeah like that's how”

they look oh and that's why maybe they you know scream or yell when I do this to them or I get too close to them oh maybe they don't like it when I hug them too much it's so important and well that's all I have because that's I just I can't I can't tell you enough just personally from this one show let alone everything else that PBS kids has done for my family even like there's some kids that the noises bother them and that headphones it's just yeah this this is real life we talk a lot

about mirrors and windows like we want to provide characters who are in mirror we want all kids to see someone who reminds them of them even if they may look like them or they may just have the same interests but like you want to be seen you want to see someone that you connect with and then we also want to make sure that we are providing windows we're providing a chance for a kid to see the life of another kid so that they can understand that life so they could be empathetic so that they can

also recognize what's like and this different I getting a Daniel Tiger song in my head you know like

“so that's what we're thinking about when we're we're testing things with the kids yeah oh okay”

I could talk to you all day but I won't but maybe you know I'm a leader to wrap it up how can we help how how can listeners help with PBS and its future and the funding and and anything else that

PBS needs how can an average person help well first of all watch PBS kids download the apps

you know engage with the content share it with your kids like usage like that's what we're here for we want we want people to be using it and then tell your friends like if your kids have favorite PBS kids shows you know your friends may not even know about it and so like we love it when parents are telling other parents about these resources about things that are there certainly like joining your member station making a donation to that member station is huge right now and then

Carl the collector really means something to my family that's a good story for that station to have

not only to talk to local funders about like the impact they're making but also the members of

“Congress about why this is important so sharing those stories supporting your local stations”

telling everybody about PBS kids and reminding them that it's free you know and you can get

in all these different places you can get down with the apps you can watch on YouTube TV you can

“watch on who live you can watch it on prime video in front of the paywall you can you know what”

Tom PBS kids that work you can watch on your local station like there's so many different ways you can

access it and just letting everybody know that's huge yes absolutely and then to quickly clear where can somebody find their local like do they just google PBS local show and then email or how

“the best way to get in contact with you guys and what if you go to the PBS kids website it will”

automatically choose your local station for you you also can go to PBS.org and put in your zip code and it will find your station and connect you to a place to donate great all right I know my action items for today all right thank you thank you so much Sarah this was really insightful and I can't state enough how appreciative I am for everything PBS has done and continues to do thank you thank you for being a fan and it was just such a pleasure this conversation thank you thank you

please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.