Sesame Street

 Funny class, learning a lot real fast

Let’s have fun, we will have a blast!

Can you tell me how to get?

How to get to For Your Inglés! 

We’ll discover singular, stimulating, sensational, and educational Sesame Street on this week’s episode of FYI!

Transcript

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[Music] funny class learning a lot real fast let's have fun we will have a blast can you tell me how to get how to get to fyi yeah we'll discover singular stimulating sensational and educational sesame street on this week's episode of f y i welcome to for your info english you got it[Music] hello hello hello and welcome to another exciting edition of fyi this is a topic based show so you guys can come here and learn about a wide range of different topics and if you don't see topics that interest you which by the way there are over 140 episodes out right now but i'm sure you'll find something that you enjoy something that is your cup of tea normally we use that expression in the negative it's not my cup of tea no is lomio and the opposite we usually say that's right up my alley which i think you would say is justo lo que me gusta ami think about aviation aviation is right up my alley opera i've been to the opera but really it's not my cup of tea well i hope you guys enjoyed that opening song i did it with tlc tlc tender loving care as all of these episodes so remember if you don't see an episode that you'd like to hear about and i'm talking about a topic let me know contact me on social media and say hey you should do an episode on this that or the other thing and a lot of the episodes i've done have come from suggestions so thank you for your suggestions and keep them coming as we say let's take a look at the intro as we always do i rewrote the lyrics now i am aware constiente that you do not have lyrics it's la la la right in spanish it's just like your national anthem i mean what is it with you guys in lyrics what do you have against lyrics remember we can say the lyrics or the words but we don't say the letter well in english there are words let me give you the words and then i'll give you my version it starts out sunny day sweeping the clouds away so sunny day evidently dia soleado sweeping the clouds away and to sweep espares it's an irregular verb sweep swept swept so i have to start at the beginning in order to get the rhythm sing along sing with me sunny day sweeping the clouds away on can you tell me how to get how to get to sesame street and it's sesamo in spanish but it's sesame sesame and we'll talk about how they got that name a little bit later on we're going to discover so many things about this singular stimulating sensational and educational show and those were just some of the adjectives i used just be careful i know in spanish you say singular but in english it's singular i know in spanish you say estimulante in english we say stimulating i know in spanish you say sensational in english it's your turn sensational and the last one is educational i was even rhyming i guess i had a few rhymes left over from my hip hop episode my cover or my version you can say either word a cover or a version of a song i said funny class classic graciosa remember fun divertido funny gracioso i hope fyi is both to you then i said learning a lot real fast and then i said let's have fun we will have a blast lo pasaremos en grande we'll have a wonderful time we'll have a ball we'll have a blast we'll have a whale of a time do you really need more ways to say that you're having fun and then i ended up by saying can you tell me how to get now that's original lyrics there how to get to for your english really it's how to get to sesame street so folks are you ready to go back to your childhood let's find out some background information about this extremely successful show it is a long running and perhaps the longest running kids show on tv and it's not just a kids show it's an educational kids show because there are a lot of kids shows out there and it combines live action sketch comedy animation and puppetry and kids have been learning and being entertained from this show since 1969 it first aired to air is to broadcast on november 10th 1969 and it got positive reviews for the most part but we'll see there was some controversy as well and we're going to take a look at that a little bit later on in the bonus episode i just want to remind you guys there's a bonus episode every week so every week you get one episode that comes out but if you are a patron you get a second one and depending on which level you're on you can get vocabulary sheets with all the expressions and the vocabulary all the structures and you can have those forever they are in a pdf format and another thing there are over 600 posts remember i started my patreon when i started this podcast so those of you who know those of you who have been with me since the beginning that at first there were three posts but now there are over 600 or near 700 posts right now that you will instantly have access to when you join our curious community on patreon remember you can get more information at patreon.com alberto alonso and i'd like to send a shout out to all my patrons especially my super duper students javier roberto david jose maria mila alex and edgar and don't forget about my interstellar students issa paco diego and carmen if you want to join our curious community find out more on patreon.com slash alberto alonso oh and before i told you it was one of the longest running kids shows in the world no no no it is one of the longest running shows in the world period period is punto los britannicos ethan full stop full stop right isn't it more powerful to say something you know period full stop it's like so i want you to look at that word to run to run is to air to broadcast we looked at it in our theater episode i said les miserables was running on broadway for 20 years i'm making up the number but just to use it in context and we all know the stars of sesame street they are jim henson's muppets and what is a muppet well it's a word that jim henson made up and we're going to learn a lot about jim henson throughout this episode because remember he created fraggle rock and many many other characters that we grew up with but here's a little trivia question do you know how he came up with the word muppet it's a mix of the word marionette and puppet so i guess the question is whose idea was it to do a show called sesame street well at first i'll tell you and you'll find out in the bonus part it wasn't the original name they had another name but they changed it at the last minute and we'll find out more fun facts in the bonus episode but who came up with this idea to have an edutainment show i love that word educational entertainment it's my goal for fyi so you could say part of the reason i'm doing fyi is because of sesame street because of jim henson well the show wasn't jim henson's idea so this is probably a misconception to many people why well i thought it was his idea no actually he got his start in commercials so he was already working on tv programs and with tv people he would do sketches he would do commercials i mean remember he had a lot of ideas he was a visionary but he also had to pay the bills so the original idea for sesame street came about during a 1966 dinner party and a dinner party is una bellada and it was hosted by somebody named joan ganz cooney and this is a very important name in this story because this was a producer at channel 13 in new york city this is a public tv station and one of the guests at this dinner party was lloyd morissette he was an experimental educator at the carnegie corporation and he posed a question to all the dinner guests and he said do you think television can teach anything and something happened in joan gance cooney's mind a light bulb went off and said hey i don't think there's any programming on tv right now that's educational that's not a documentary style and she went to work with her team and it wasn't until a while later that they decided that they were going to work with jim henson and his creations because as i said he was already well known but not for his muppets for other characters one of the characters big bird was originally a dragon he adapted the dragon that he used in this commercial into big bird when it was time to do this project so it took three years from that dinner party until it first aired and those were three years of research they worked tirelessly they worked with child psychologists they worked with educators they left nothing to chance lans costas nothing was left to chance they paid attention to every little detail and there's an interesting story about this in a book i recommend everybody if you have not read this book you've got to read it it's called the tipping point by malcolm gladwell and there's a chapter in the book that tells the story of how sesame street was created all the research that went into it and one thing i one thing i remember that stands out in my mind is they said the child psychologists are they in this case that you couldn't put puppets and kids on screen together because that could be detrimental to the children it could traumatize them you know and blur the line between reality nevertheless when they were doing the screen tests they noticed that the kids paid attention the most when the puppets and the kids were interacting and then they said well this is the key this is how to get the kids attention and that's our client that's our target so a lot of times they ignored some of those experts but everything ev let's put it this way they dotted their eyes and crossed their t's and it worked and i guess it helps to work with jim henson the man the myth the legend the big kid the dreamer that's jim henson so this was a guy who believed in this other world this fantasy world that he created in his head and all you have to do is look at some of his creations the muppets the fraggle rock crew the dark crystal labyrinth you remember that movie because normally when you think of jim henson you think of the muppets or you think of sesame street but everything he touched was huge and everything he touched just proved that his inner child was alive and kicking and i was really lucky because i went to his birthplace i went down to mississippi and i'm going to tell you about that experience the jim henson experience it's uh in the middle of nowhere in a swamp and of course what inspired kermit the frog which you guys call la rana gustavo it took me like two years to figure that out because my name is alberto gustavo and people said like la rana gustavo and i'm like oh i'm sorry we don't have that character well yeah he's not called gustavo his name is kermit the frog but when we went down there my wife and i on our honeymoon we realized how he came up with all these characters i mean the guy was born in the middle of nowhere he was literally born in a swamp and a swamp is a wet area i think you say pantano thienaga so he used his childhood experiences in the swamp to create a lot of these characters and his first project or his first known project is called sam and friends and this was a short form comedy tv program and he did it from 1955 to 1961. this is when he was a freshman in supreme at the university of maryland so as you can see he was honing his skills buliendo honing his skills from a young age and then finally in 1958 he co-founded muppets inc with jane his wife which later became the jim henson company and he's the first one to give credit merito to his wife because she wasn't just his life partner but she was also his business partner they worked together on so many things and that's a beautiful thing because he was playing in his job and he got to work with his wife the person he loved and his friends so he was a serious guy but he believed that you have to have fun when you're working and so many things that i apply in my classes and on my shows come from jim henson and in the bonus episode we're going to take a look at some of his coolest quotes algunas de sus thetas another cool milestone for jim henson and his crew is that they were on the first season of snl what is snl saturday night live the muppets appeared so there was a crossover and before you knew it the muppets sesame street these characters were the biggest things since sliced bread and i remember my family and i we used to gather around the tv to watch the muppet show and the muppet show was amazing because the muppet show is like el ormiguero today some of the biggest celebrities in the world and they're interacting with puppets and funny sketches and this is called the muppet show if you can find episodes it ran from 1976 to 1981 and we never missed a show i remember one very well there's one where kenny rogers was on the show kenny rogers the country music singer and they're on a train and they sing the gambler the song the gambler but also they've done so many songs they did bohemian rhapsody and the crazy thing is my mother grew up with these characters i grew up with these characters and now my daughter is growing up with these characters and in the bonus episode we'll take a look at the characters some of their characteristics and will learn and laugh as always unfortunately jim henson lost his life it's another way of saying he died he lost his life on may 16 1990 in new york city he was so young he was 53 years old he died due to something called streptococcal toxic shock syndrome and his body couldn't beat it and now he will live on forever through his characters which some of them he voiced and remember voices both but also to voices in 1991 he got his star on the hollywood walk of fame and well deserved in 2011 he was named a disney legend and again everybody knows who jim henson is and more importantly they know the characters he created i figured we could take a look at the song from fraggle rock no se como va en espanol but we just learned some stuff from the sesame street song here's the fraggle rock one if you know it sing along in english it goes dancer cares away worries for another day so dance your cares away baila hasta que tus paciones se largan dance your cares away where is for another day la down in fraggle rock so what a great message if you just listen to the lyrics he was a guy who wanted to spread joy he was a guy who never grew up okay maybe physically maybe he's his body he became a grown-up or an adult and he was extremely responsible but in his heart in his soul he was a big kid and aren't we all but as with everything in life there are always naysayers naysayers are people who are doubting who are saying nah not gonna do it it's not gonna happen they're called naysayers this is an amazing story and it's just shocking in mississippi his home state it was voted that sesame street be taken off the air because of its and i quote highly racially integrated cast of children basically mississippi wasn't ready for that but that's his home state that said oh no we can't have this filth on the air but thankfully those were just a few odd opinions it seems like the general consensus is that jim henson was a huge success as of 2021 the show has won 205 emmy awards i'm not talking about jim henson i'm talking about sesame street the topic of the podcast 205 emmy awards that is the highest award you can get in television 11 grammy awards grammy is the highest award you can get in music that is more than any other children's show it has managed to stay relevant generation after generation and there are young viewers in almost every corner of this globe the show is aired in over 150 countries and they even produce them locally in many countries so there is no doubt that sesame street is a phenomenon and we're going to take a look at more fun facts and so much more in the bonus episode of fyi[Music][Applause] you