YouSaid · the spoken record

Tish Rabe

lines on the record: 104
first: 2026-02-18
most recent: 2026-02-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So I get a call from Random House Pluto has been demoted. And I'm like, what? I'm on the phone. And they said, Can you fix this?”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All about our solar system. So things are going fine, and I write this mnemonic, you've seen all the planets. Now here is a trick to remember their names and remember them quick. And I write the whole thing Mallory Valerie Emily Mitz just served up nine hundred ninety nine pizzas. So so far so good. Except pizza stood for Pluto.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anything hello then after over the years I have gotten to the point where now I just know what they rhyme but speaking of mnemonics I think you'll get a kick out of this this is the page in my best selling solar system book dr. Seuss right”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I will tell you this is funny because when I first started, my husband bought me a computer program that was called A Million Gazillion Rhymes. Seriously. And I would sit there all day long and type the word in what rhymes with antenna.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I wrote a whole book for him, three actually for Nickelodeon, that are in Limerick rhyme. You know, have you met Morris? And I changed him to an oopsosaurus because he's kind of clumsy, a 12-foot tail. But anyway, have you met Morris? He's an oopsosaurus, a dinosaur, if you can't guess. But sometimes he bumps things and sometimes he thumps things and sometimes he makes a big mess. So the entire books in Limer arrived. But yes, that background, and I am sincere saying that I was really torn between majoring in English in college and being a writer or a singer. I'm very happy I decided to be a singer because now I can do both.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Interesting because I had a phenomenal English teacher in high school. High school for me, Needham High School, Needham, Massachusetts, not only did my music director end up getting me my first job in New York, but my Mr. Allen, my English teacher, was phenomenal. And what he used to have us do is write poems, sonnets. We wrote plays. And it helped me understand the format and also how to figure it out.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it was genius. I mean, he just made this stuff up all the time. So those were the two things. I had to get what the facts were for the books, keep it simple, make stuff that rhymes the kids. And what really works well about rhyme is there are kids that would not have ever known what the word migration meant. But they love the rhyme and they remembered the rhyme. So it's a very, very successful. After that, every single one of my books rhymes because it works.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know, so he made up the VLEX. So, in my book, Oh, The Pets You Can Get Oh, The Pets You Can Get takes place in Gerpletz, where they know quite a bit about caring for pets.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because at one point I was writing down that birds migrate and migration. I thought, oh, vacation, you know what? So that was one thing. And as far as guardrails, there are two kinds of rhyming in children's books and migration and vacation is perfect Susie and rhyme. Farm and barn is what they call a slant rhyme. It's close, but it's not a pure rhyme. Dr. Seuss insisted on two things. The rhythm had to be perfect. On the fifteenth of May in the jungle of Newell, Horton, the elephant sat in the pool. Doesn't vary, it never varies, and the end rhymes are pure. Something Ted did and I did as well is if he was in trouble for a rhyme, he made up a word. So, you know, in the sleep book, one of My favorites is Have you met the Van Vlecks or something like that when they sleep, they yawn so wide you can see down their necks.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A couple of things. The first thing about what to put in the book, they did the research for me for the first two books, but for all the many, many books I wrote after that, I did my own research. And what I did that really saved me and surprises a lot of people is I went to the children's department in the local library and pulled everything they had on the topic. Because already it's not in rhyme, fine, but it's already been simplified. So I would get a spiral notebook for every book and it write and write and write and write the facts about space, the facts about insects, of which I knew nothing, and get them all written down and then figure out if anything popped as a rhyming potential word. One of my very proudest was when birds want to go on a winter vacation, they all take a trip and they call it migration.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I really have to say, I think if I'd never had kids, I don't know that I would have come up with that. That's the last page in this best-selling book. But it just was flew off the shelves. Still does.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They went bananas. They're like, done, okay Just make this stuff up. It's what I do all day. I don't Oh, baby, the places you'll go is the bestseller flies off the shelf. So oh baby, the places you'll go. And the other thing just real quick about that, I am very careful to say to everyone, you do not have to have kids to write for kids many, many, many fabulous authors did not. However, the last page of OBaby the Places You'll Go. I don't even know who drew it because I don't think Ted drew it, but there's a little pregnant mom, Susie and little pregnant mom sitting there, you know. had two kids. I have a son and a daughter. And at the end, I wrote, it's a scrumptuous world and it's ready to greet you. And as for myself, well, I can't wait to meet you.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And all of a sudden, I thought, oh wow, and I called them right back. And I said, Tishrabi's a mom who thinks that it's cool to be home rhyming rhymes while her kids are at school.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She wanted it called O Baby the Places You'll Go to Be Read in Utero. I'm sitting there going over. So I went and read all of them, Courton, here's a who if I ran the zoo, if I ran the circus, the whole, you know, yurtle the turtle, fid with the moose. I read them all. And I wrote, O baby, the places you'll go Anne turned it in. And I love this story because by then my kids were in middle school, I think. And I was going to pick them up from school. And I had my car keys in my hand. My phone rang. It's random house. They said we are sending the files to the printer for O baby the places you'll go. We need a bio from you really short and it has to be funny and we need it right now So I just said, you got to give me two minutes. I hung up the phone. Never forget it.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That he could do both. I actually never spoke to him, but I spoke to his widow, Audrey Geisel, and she called me because to this day, I can never forget it. She called me. I felt like on the phone. I couldn't believe I was actually talking to her. And she said, do you remember when years ago in the 50s, they did the study where they had pregnant moms talk to their babies and sing to their babies. And when the babies were born, they recognized, and the dads too, they recognized the voices and they waved their little hands and their eyes linked and stuff. And what they used on the study was they all read the cat and the hat, the original cat in the hat book. So here we are. It's 2008, I think. Audrey Geisler called me and said, could I read all 41 of Ted Geisler's? Seuss Books and Write a book with references to all of them.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he not only did he write exclusively for Random House, but he created the beginner book series, which other authors also wrote. So he was head of the whole thing. And one thing to share about him, which is, and there are many authors that do this, but he was an author illustrator. And I'm clear to tell everybody I write the words, but I do not draw the pictures. And I had heard I missed meeting him by one year, but they used to tell me that he would come in with a brand new book. Let's say Horton here's a hoop, whatever. And literally art directors and the editors at Random House did not have to do anything. They didn't have to fix it. They didn't have to tell him to fix that elephant. They didn't have to do anything. They were so perfect when he showed up with them. So that was just, as always, amazing.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dr. Seuss, not me. Dr. Seuss wanted to write a series of books for kids about science in rhyme for early readers, four to seven year olds, and died before he could finish the first one. So they handed me a stack of research on mammals, a huge stack of research on birds. They said we are so far behind with this because we've been trying to find someone who can write in his rhythm and his rhyme scheme. And more Surorus Brachiosaurus was both, thank goodness, and they said, can you have two books ready in four months? I carried all this stuff home, and I went well. And I just started writing as a Kamala mammal and find feathered friends. And I never stopped after that.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I finally get somebody on the phone in that division and I say, tell them who I am. And oh, oh, she said, we're supposed to call you. I said, well, nobody called me. I said, I was sitting right here, but nobody called me. And she said, okay, I'll never forget it. She said, I have bad news and I have good news. What would you like to hear first? And I said, well, I'll take the bad news. And she said, we cannot publish Maurice Aurorus Brachiosaurus because we are the rhyming home of Dr. Seuss. Okay, all right. However, she said, how would you like to write a new series for Dr. Seuss? Sure. You know, you never say no. Never turn down a freelance tab. And they literally handed me.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And at the end of that one was so his friends tried to get him to eat something else. And he said, they've got his friends go broccoli's fine, it's got color and crunch, but you eat it for breakfast and dinner and lunch. So they talk them into eating something else and the last line is so one thing is true and you cannot deny it, like it or not, you won't know till you try it. Fine. Type it up. Walk down to the department at Random House, hand it to the book department, and here, nothing. And I tell the kids, this is before texting, voicemail, you know, we're used to using payphones at this point. And here are things like, oh, that didn't really work. But okay. So I finally get my courage up and I call.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, as the years went by, I kept, as I said, writing for everybody, never turned down, never turned down a book offer. You know, scholastic, we need a book on butterflies in a week. And I'll go, okay, a week. How long is that going to take me? How much am I going to earn an hour? You know, whatever it was. But I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. In 1991, I always go by how old my kids were. I guess they were like three and four. I submitted a rhyming book to Random House. I was there. I was the senior producer for home video. I was singing on all their TV stuff. And I was singing on VHSs for them. Anyway, I was right there. And I sent in a manuscript for a book Morris Aurorus was Abrachiosaurus who had the best voice in the dinosaur chorus. He liked to play tennis and swim in the sea, but mostly he liked to eat fresh broccoli.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was great, they wanted to know things like, did the kids walk away understanding that Abkadevsky is A, B, C, D, E, ABC, D, D, H-I, whatever, you know, because they always wanted to pay attention to the fact that if they made it too sophisticated, the kids would be lost. That's a very fine line because by doing the double level humor, like I just adore for genius, Joe Bailey wrote that one, that they didn't leave the kids lost. because that's not what was not the point. You know, the point was to teach them and get them ready for school curriculum. Curriculum.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A real challenge on that show was the curriculum was king. So yeah, you could go off and write a story about your lamp, whatever the curriculum of the day was, today it's seasons or cooperation or I don't know, whatever they were, that was true. They had to get that by that team. And it was a whole team. The other thing they did a lot of is focus groups. They played stuff for kids. And this was groundbreaking at the time. They tell stories about how, you know, Oscar was originally orange and the kids didn't really like it, whatever it is, you know, they changed stuff. So although it looked easy, there was a lot of background on what they could do and not do.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Grown up, right? I mean, that's hilarious. But the kids, you know, just ate it up. They just understood it. They understood what that meant, you know. So it was wonderful because every day you went into work, you had no idea who's going to come up with what today.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Basically, Joan Ganscuni told them all. She had faith in them, just do it, just go. So it was so free-flowing that people just made stuff up. I have a favorite song. People always ask me my favorite song that I did not write. It's called I Just Adore I just adore for the number for me I just adore for it's less than five more than three And the other thing is the lyrics were so”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I always felt that this is a long time memories of these things, but I sort of felt like maybe one of the writers kind of challenged him. There's only one other song any of us could find, and it's moonlight in Vermont also doesn't rhyme at all. But I don't know if someone said, yeah, why don't you write about how Kermit feels about living on this street and not have end rhymes? I don't know. I don't know if anyone challenged him or he just went home and said, I mean, the man was a genius. Whether he went home and just said, you know, I have an idea. I got nothing else to do this afternoon. I'll try to write a song that doesn't rhyme. I don't know. But they'll say one thing that was really amazing is.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But the big thing about being green is all of us who write songs for kids have end rhyme. Sunny days sleep in the clouds away on my way to where this sweet can you tell you how to get how to get to Sesame Street? Everything rhymes at end, right? Being green there's not one rhyme. Not easy being green, having to spend each day the color of the leaves, when it would be nicer to be red or yellow or gold or something much more colorful like that, it's totally talking, there's not a rhyme in it. And he came into the office and sang it for the first time, and people were thunderstruck. And of course it became a mega hit. So yeah, I just started writing songs about everything.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of wed. I can only remember how it goes, but cord of wood will find you could find out how many toothpicks are there in a cord of wood, how many picnic tables can you make out of one quart of wood? So you've got to figure out what you're putting in for the science and how you're going to make it rhyme and that kind of stuff. It certainly helped me that I had been a singer so long that I was so used to singing rhyming lyrics. One quick thing to share because very few people know this. While I was at Sesame Street, the executive producer asked Joe Rapozo. Joe Rapozo wrote the theme and he wrote all the big songs. And he said, I wonder how Kermit feel. Have you ever thought of how Kermit feels living on this crazy street with all these nutty people? And Joe Rapozo went home and wrote Being Green.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the first thing I did back and have done a lot of is a perfect example, what's the science? What are we trying to teach a child in this song? And then I always make sure that I have a verse and then what we call a B section. So the song goes somewhere and then comes back. That's always very, very key.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Chiron that was back in the day we called it Chironing the amount of time you know elephant two years whatever it was to have a baby and then at the end it was N baby you were worth the waiting So we made stuff up. And of course, happily for me, I sang a lot of it. So that was fun, too.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Producer, a television producer. I also, with three to one contact, that's when I started writing songs. Because 321 contact was a science series, and it took more time for us to explain to other composers what we needed than just to write it in-house. So I wrote songs about electricity and mammals and, you know, anything you needed. My favorite, my favorite was producers would come into my office and I'd say we need a song. I said, okay, okay. What's it about? Never forget this. And the guy, producer looks at me and says, the gestation period of different animals. I said, it's singing for me already. The gestation. So I wrote a song called, I'm Waiting for my Baby. I'm waiting for my baby feels like a long, long time. And we just took stock footage of chimpanzee and an elephant”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. And then I was senior producer for 321 contact, which was another whole story. And then I just kept writing and writing and writing and writing. And I ended up at Random House as their director of video. This was back in the VHS days. And once I was in there directing all the videos, back in the day, they used to just take the artwork for the book and move the camera around. It was called animatics. And I produced all the music and all the voiceovers and all everything for that. But now I'm in random house. I'm an author, proven author, and I happen to work there. So in the hallway, they'd say, you know, could you write a book about butterflies? I'm sure, when do you need it? So it was kind of a two-way thing. I was working as.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I was working at Sesame Street, and then I produced Big Bird in China. I was part of the crew that went to China with Big Bird in China.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, among my other things that happened is I was at Sesame Street and is Burt and the broken teapot book. I just kept writing and writing and writing and writing.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the kids now, there was more of an even playing field when the kids all hit kindergarten. And that was, people just didn't see it coming. And it was true.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think when I started, it was just really taking off, you know, literally. And I don't think anyone recognized that it was. Know as I said, they were sure how it was going to go. And something a lot of people don't know about Sesame Street is it was originally created to help every child. Learn their alphabet and their numbers because there was a disparity. Between kids who had came into kindergarten knowing. Letters in their alphabet. And the kids who came in Not knowing, and started behind before they even got started. I don't think anyone really realized that this was going to have such a huge impact because kids then Going into school and singing the numbers song Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Alligators went to the Alligator picnic. Okay, This went on all day long, you know”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dead serious. That was it, and you were there and you had your music and everything. So the fact that I actually was able to get a job in music on a television series was just magic stuff.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I look back, it was timing and luck to a lot of extent because what I ever have walked into Sesame workshop and said, you know, do you have a job for me? No. I was convinced I was going to be a star. It was just a matter of time singing. Back then, I'm sure they still do this, you would audition and they would literally let you sing nine notes.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's funny when I tell the story that I got to New York and I was auditioning and it was going okay. I would get a jingle here, a jingle there, but I couldn't support myself. And I am convinced I went home one Thanksgiving to my hometown. I'm from Needham, Massachusetts outside of Boston. Literally got out of the car and my mother told me that she'd read that my high school music teacher had gotten this job. She said, You got to get all dressed up and you got to go see him, and he hasn't seen you since she left high school. Four years ago, you've been in college. And I have to say, it took a lot of guts for me to go and come see him again. And, you know, he'd buy me lunch once a week because I wasn't eating, you know, the whole thing.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So he's behind this microphone and he's going to said, let's take a break. Everybody, the whole orchestra, let's take 10 minutes. Everybody just give them a minute. And I was standing next to him when he moved over and opened the case and took Oscar out of the case. I was standing right next to him. I had the music and everything. So everybody comes back, all these violins and cellos and clarinets. And they started it again. And Carol moved over and Oscar sang! Christmas, perfect. I never got over it. I was like, whoa. But this kind of stuff went on every single day.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh no. But that's really where my musical training came in. And also, we used to sing the jingle singers in New York in the 70s. Literally, you come into a session to this day, I'll never forget it. And literally, they would sing it through once. We are the sound of the sand of the count. Count, count, counts down. You know, four part harmony. And they look at each other, say, you take the root, I'll take the third, tissue, you take the fifth, and then somebody do the octave. One, two, three, go. And I remember holding on with a thread to this thing. And the other thing that I love about those early days, back then we had orchestras. So the Christmas, I'll never forget this, the Christmas special, full orchestra. I mean, violins. And Carol Spinney was trying to sing, I hate Christmas.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One thing that I used to do, the songs were all pre-recorded. And so the puppeteers, puppeteers would go into and record their songs in advance. So now your big bird, right? And you're going to sing a song on Sesame Street, but they are doing their dialogue. So how are they going to know when the song starts? So I would stand next to one of the cameras and count them off. So measure one, two, three, four, and then they would sing. So Carol Spinney could see me enough to know that when I pointed to him, he had to sing the song, the pre recorded song, you know, move the costume, you know, move the puppet. So he was singing the song. And the first two times I did it, I was scared to death. I was only 21. I think this is going to be the one. I'm going to go one, two, three, and start him. And it's going to be the wrong place, you know.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they wrote stuff that was funny for kids, but had all kinds of stuff in it for adults because all these studies had done if parents watched the show with their children, the kids learned more because the parents were there to help them and that kind of thing. And some of the early children's shows, you know, no parent would be caught dead sitting in front of. But Sesame Street was so nuts that everybody loved it. And that really, really made a difference, big difference.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With his work, which certainly doesn't surprise me. I think the thing was you could just watch his creative mind. The creative minds on Sesame Street when I was there, something would happen and they would just make something else up, you know. And the sense of humor and the lightness of what they were doing. And it was almost like, oh, and by the way, we're teaching kids. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Okay. The other thing they did, which was really something, is they were one of the first to do double level humor.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I worked for Jim for years, and somebody said once he was a gentle giant with a mind of steel. You know, he's a great businessman, but so creative and so nice to all of us because we were low in the totem. I mean, we were the production assistants. And he just worked and worked and worked and worked. And he would do a Sesame Street day and then fly to London and do the Muppet Show and then fly back. You know, he just worked all the time. But he was just a very, very nice to me always.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Castello are pushing a piano across a bridge in the jungle with a gorilla coming across the bridge at them. How did they get there? So, as a children's book author, I always write my last page first. So, in my I believe bunny books, my inspirational books, one of them ends with just like the I Believe Bunny, you may get a surprise, you can make a difference, even a bunny your size. Then I wrote the whole book about how he helps his friend who can't swim and then end at that page. It's a very important page in children's books because it is the last page they hear before the book is shut. Go to sleep, take a nap, go out to play, whatever, and I always write the last page first. Always.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was one of the first TV shows that had educational research behind it. So we had topics. We were going to try to teach every single season. There was a notebook like this thick with what are we trying to teach kids? Obviously numbers and letters, but compassion and sorting things by shapes and whatever it was. And then you would watch the writers just come up with stuff. It was absolutely fascinating. And they just kind of made stuff up as they went along. But the big thing I learned from the Sesame Street writers and it has saved me many, many, many times is that they wrote the endings first. So they used to look at Abbott and Costello movies and Mark's brothers movies and they looked at everything. And they used to tell me, okay, Abbott.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and the broken teapot. It's out of print, but I have a few. And in this book, Bert Breaks favorite teapot spends the whole book trying to get it fixed. And in the end, David says he's afraid David's not going to be his friend anymore because he broke his favorite teapot. And David says, you'll always be my friend. And can you help me in my restaurant next week? At the time, it just create awards and letters because, you know, it's easy to have things be about stuff. And that message obviously was that their friendship meant more than this teapot. But that was book one.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I went down and I pitched my idea to Sesame Street Books. It's your classic, right? You go pour your heart out on this story and there's dead silence. Nobody moved. I'm like, so I'm standing there going, okay, that went well. And from the back of the room, the editor for Sesame Street Books said, could you make it a story for Burt? My very first book, here it is”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I believe in my heart that my background on Sesame Street is how I can do what I do today, because I was enveloped with this every single day. One of the interesting things that happened was Sesame Street, they needed books, they needed toys, they needed merchandise. Who knew this was going to be a massive hit? And they literally asked the staff if they had ideas for books. And I, you know, courage. And I, oh, what the heck? Why got nothing to lose? I'll go down and, you know, try. And I went down to the book department and I told them about when I was a little girl and I broke my great-grandmother's teapot and it shattered into a million pieces. And my mother came in and saw the broken glass. And she said, I'm not mad or anything. I love you more than any teapot.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First of all, the most creative environment anyone could ever be in. Basically, the John Stone, who is executive producer, and Jim Henson and all the puppeteers and all the muppeteers and everybody were so creative, they just made stuff up all day long. Another interesting thing to share is that they were very worried that this show was going to bomb. You know, a six foot yellow bird, you know, a monster that only eats cookies, a grouch in a trash can, a multiracial cast. How do we think this is going to go in 1969 or whatever? And Joan Cooney, Joan Gans Cooney, who created the whole thing, just let them be creative, whatever you guys want to do, you know, go ahead. And it was so much fun to be a part of it.”
2026-02-18 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT